The barbarian again fell back on his seat, either asleep, or feigning to be so, and began to snore like a rhinoceros. By this time Davie Doublepipe's attention was attracted to a noise within the house. "Now, Master Blueskin," said he, "have the kindness to open the door there;" then, as if suddenly recollecting himself, in a voice of thunder he exclaimed--"Surround the house, men. Shoot any one who tries to escape." This seemed to arouse our sluggish friend, who immediately got up, and staggered a few paces towards the margin of the wood, where a most remarkable object met our eyes. It was a fetish hut or temple, composed of a shed about ten feet square, raised on four bamboos. From the eaves or thatch of the roof, to the ground, might have measured ten feet; and three feet below the roof there was a platform rigged, on which sat the most unearthly and hideous production of the hand of man that I had ever witnessed. It was a round, pot-bellied, wooden figure, about three feet high, with an enormous head, a mouth from ear to ear, and little, diminutive, spindly legs and arms. A human skull, with the brain scooped out, but the red scalp, and part of the hair, and the flesh of the face adhering to it, while the lower jaw had been torn away, was hung round this horrible-looking image's neck. Immediately beneath there was a heap of white smouldering cinders, as if the embers of a large fire had been swept together, with three or four white bones protruding from the fissures in the cake of white ashes; which, from their peculiar shape and extraordinary whiteness, gave me some shuddering qualms as to the kind of living creature they had belonged to. The whole space round the heap, under the platform on which the Fetish stood, as well as the posts of the rude and horrible temple itself, was sprinkled with fresh black spots like newly dried blood--I doubted exceedingly whether the same had ever circulated through the hearts of bulls or goats. "Now, my good man, bestir you, and let us into the house," said I, by this time renovated by another small pull at a marine's canteen. The surly savage, who, in his attempt to escape, had fallen headlong, and had all this while lain as motionless as a coiled-up hedgehog, now slowly opened his eyes, and peered at me with a sort of drunken gravity--but he did not speak. I took the cutlass from the midshipman--"Now, my man, if you don't speak, it is spitting you on this same that I will be after;" and accordingly, to corroborate my word, I made a most furious demonstration with the naked weapon, when he sung out, in great terror, "Stop, massa, me is Sergeant Quacco of de -- West India, and not a savage nigir natural to dis dam country. Long live Kin Shorge, massa!" "Why," said Lieutenant Sprawl, "how came you here, my beauty?--tell us that." "Surely," quoth blackie; "no objection in de wide world, but"----