"But very soon, they found out the horrible meaning of it. For suddenly the savages, having lost all patience, with their appetites whetted by the relish of white flesh, fell upon them in the night, and killed them all but three, leaving nothing but their bones by the morrow night. Those three they kept alive, because they were too thin; until they fattened up two, and devoured them. The third, and last, was our friend Rees Edwards, who fell into a melancholy frame of mind, and refused to grow eatable, upon any kind of ration. So they put him in the temple, where they kept their chief idol, believing that this would improve his texture, and consecrating him to be sacrificed, whether he were fat, or whether he were lean, upon the appearance of the following moon. "Edwards, however, was a very clever fellow, and pretending to be altogether resigned to his fate, obtained some privileges, as a holy man now, and devoted to the glory of their great idol, _Jumbilug_. He kept a sharp watch upon the moon as well; and took strengthening victuals, as he saw her getting thinner. He had learned a good deal of their lingo by this time, and found out from them about the white man's fort, over against the further end of that island. And the very night before the new moon would appear, he slipped through a hole, which he had long been boring in the mud wall of the joss-house, and escaped into the woods, with a long start of his enemies. He made his way eastward by the stars, till sunrise, and eastward the whole of the following day, with his enemies upon his track, as you have heard already. "'Now, captain,' he said, when his tale was finished; 'you have done me the best turn one man can do another; and I wish I could make you some small return. _Jumbilug_ is the finest woman I ever saw; and it would not be so very hard to run away with her.' "I told him, that this was not in my line at all, having always been shy of the sex; except to make a joke, or pass a compliment. But he laughed, and said-- "'No fear of her tongue, captain, although she has got a very handsome one; and her teeth are all pearls, and her lips are coral, and her eyes are as blue as the sky, and much brighter, and her hair is spun gold; you never saw such a beauty.' "'I don't care a d--n for all that,' I replied, 'a woman aboard is the devil himself.'