Page:Voyage in search of La Perouse, volume 2 (Stockdale).djvu/249

] enough to join the others, whether owing to some bodily infirmity, or to their having leaped into the sea too long after the departure of their boats to be able to take refuge in them. As the sun was already set, and they were cold, they went to warm themselves at the fire in our cook-room.

The most part of those who belonged to our expedition, and who had remained on board, would not give credit to our recital of the barbarous taste of those islanders, not being able to persuade themselves that people, of whom Captains Cook and Forster had given so favourable an account, could degrade themselves by such a horrible practice; but it was not very difficult to convince the most incredulous. I had brought with me a bone which had already been picked, and which our Surgeon-Major said was the bone of a child. I presented it to the two natives whom we had on board. One of those cannibals immediately seized it with avidity, and tore with his teeth the sinews and ligaments which yet remained. I gave it next to his companion, who found something more to pick from it.

The different signs which our people made, in order to obtain an avowal of the practice of eating human flesh, being aukwardly made, occasioned a very great mistake. An excessive con-