Page:Jack Heaton, Wireless Operator (Collins, 1919).djvu/114

 to me in Spanish after trying Portuguese on me. I was quite surprised when they told me they were rubber men from Señor Castro’s fezenda whom the cannibals had captured nearly a year before.

We planned escape by the hour, though one of them said that was just what these man eaters wanted us to do and that when a fellow tried to escape they would recapture him, bring him back, put him in the proverbial pot and let him stew in his own juice. We were of a mind that it would be better to be live men turned savages than to be cooked men eaten by cannibals.

His most high worshipful King Oopla relieved me of my revolver, and came nearly shooting up the village,—which I heartily wished he had done,—also my watch, knife, compass and other trinkets which four former articles he generously kept for himself and the latter he gave to a wench whom I afterwards learned was his daughter, the Princess Jaci—which is as near as I could come to pronouncing her name. I called her Princess Mabel, the latter name being that of a shine kitchen-mechanic we once had.