Page:Karel Čapek - The Absolute at Large (1927).djvu/230

 "Indeed," said Mr. Bondy thoughtfully.

"Everyone has his hobby," growled the Captain. "The local hobby here is to eat up the stranger and dry his head in smoke."

"What, smoke it as well?" Mr. Bondy exclaimed with horror.

"Oh, that's not done till after you're dead," said the Captain consolingly. "They cherish the smoked head as a souvenir. Have you ever seen those dried heads they've got in the Ethnographical Museum at Auckland?"

"No," said Bondy. "I don't think that  that I'd look very attractive if I were smoked."

"You're a bit too fat for it," observed the Captain, inspecting him critically. "It doesn't make so very much difference to a thin man."

Bondy still looked anything but tranquil. He sat droopingly on the veranda of his bungalow on the coral island of Hereheretua, which he had purchased just before the outbreak of the Greatest War. Captain Trouble was glowering suspiciously at the thicket of mangroves and bananas which surrounded the bungalow.

"How many natives are there on the island?" he asked suddenly.

"About a hundred and twenty," said G. H. Bondy.

"And how many of us are there in the bungalow?"