About eight o’clock, it being very dark, a canoe was heard paddling toward the ship; and as soon as it was seen, both the sentinels on deck fired into it. There were two persons in the canoe, and they immediately roared out “_Tinnee_” (which was the way in which they pronounced my name), and said they were friends, and had something for me belonging to Captain Cook. When they came on board, they threw themselves at our feet, and appeared exceedingly frightened. Luckily neither of them was hurt, notwithstanding the balls of both pieces had gone through the canoe. One of them was the person, whom I have before mentioned under the name of the _Taboo_ man, who constantly attended Captain Cook with the circumstances of ceremony I have already described; and who, though a man of rank in the island, could scarcely be hindered from performing for him the lowest offices of a menial servant. After lamenting, with abundance of tears, the loss of the _Orono_, he told us that he had brought us a part of his body. He then presented to us a small bundle, wrapped up in cloth, which he brought under his arm; and it is impossible to describe the horror which seized us, on finding in it a piece of human flesh, about nine or ten pounds’ weight. This, he said, was all that remained of the body; that the rest was cut to pieces, and burnt; but that the head and all the bones, except what belonged to the trunk, were in the possession of Terreeoboo, and the other _Erees_: that what we saw had been allotted to Kaoo, the chief of the priests, to be made use of in some religious ceremony; and that he had sent it as a proof of his innocence and attachment to us. This afforded an opportunity of informing ourselves, whether they were cannibals; and we did not neglect it. We first tried, by many indirect questions, put to each of them apart, to learn in what manner the rest of the bodies had been disposed of; and finding them very constant in one story, that, after the flesh had been cut off, it was all burnt; we at last put the direct question, Whether they had not ate some of it? They immediately showed as much horror at the idea, as any European would have done; and asked, very naturally, if that was the custom amongst us? They afterward asked us, with great earnestness and apparent apprehension, “When the _Orono_ would come again? and what he would do to them on his return?” The same inquiry was frequently made afterward by others; and this idea agrees with the general tenor of their conduct toward him, which showed that they considered him as a being of a superior nature.