"After a fortnight of beating about, they raised the palms of Iriatai, sailed in through the pass, dropped anchor a stone's throw off the village, and went ashore. There were canoes hauled up on the beach, fishing tackle lay about as it had been dropped in haste, and the thatched huts seemed to have been inhabited within an hour past, but saving a dog or two and a few half-wild pigs, no living creature was in sight. The captain heard a shout from one of his men who was exploring the far end of the village, and the others hastened to the place where the Christian boy was pointing with horror to the ground. There, close to the temple of the islanders,--a long platform of rude coral blocks,--was the _umu tagata_: the oven in which human bodies were roasted whole. The bones of men, clean-picked by the cannibals of Iriatai, were scattered on all sides, and hundreds of Chilian silver dollars--current throughout the Pacific in those days--were arranged in neat patterns about the cooking-place. A few yards off, mounted on sharpened stakes along the coral wall, a row of heads was drying in the sun, and one of them--a small head from which hung wisps of long flaxen hair--made the whole story clear. The widow's daughter had been found. "The skipper was sickened--if he had caught the people then, he told me, he would have slaughtered them like sheep. Calling to his men, he set off recklessly through the bush, resolved to shoot down the savages at sight. Hour after hour the searchers struggled through the dense green bush, scratched by thorns, streaming with perspiration, stumbling over the sharp coral underfoot. It was a hot still day, and the jungle was lifeless and strangely quiet. No leaf stirred, no bird sang, and the drooping fronds of palms hung motionless overhead. Nothing moved anywhere saving the small white sea-birds which circled eerily, high above the tree-tops. The oppression of the bush cooled the skipper's anger and lowered the spirits of the searching-party; no word had been spoken for half an hour when they sat down in silence to rest, close to a pile of jagged coral blocks. Leaning against a tree-trunk, with his rifle between his knees, the captain was in the act of filling a pipe when one of the men touched his arm, signing him to make no sound. To one side of them, in the bleached mass of coral, there was a faint scratching noise, and presently, as they watched, a brown hand and arm appeared for an instant in a crevice of the rocks. "'That is their hiding-place,' the native breathed into the skipper's ear; 'I have heard my own people speak of such caverns, where they took refuge in the old wars.' "The captain thought for a moment before he spoke. 'Go alone to the mouth of the cave,' he whispered to the boy beside him; 'our rifles will protect you. See if you can talk to the savages. and if they understand you, try to persuade one or two of the men to come out.'