When the schooner eventually arrived, after some little delay, she began to load up with stores, comprising food (mostly tinned), trade goods, and medicines. After this was accomplished I went on board, and the last stage of my voyage began. I had not been on a sailing vessel before, and though I tried hard to believe we were actually moving, the breeze was so light that it required a great effort. On subsequent journeys I learned to be thankful if we did not actually retreat instead of advance, for one morning I woke and heard the captain say, "We're ten miles farther back than we were last night!" [Illustration: THIS PHOTOGRAPH SHOWS HOW PRISONERS WERE CARRIED OFF THE BATTLEFIELD IN THE "BAD OLD DAYS," TO BE AFTERWARDS COOKED AND EATEN.] However, we drifted peacefully along the coast, with an unvarying mountain range in the background, looking as though gigantic tiger-skin rugs had been thrown over it. The natives, I was informed, had produced this effect by burning the grass when hunting boars and wallabies. Occasionally we would pass groups of coco palms, which denoted the existence of a village beneath them. Then, one morning, quite suddenly we found ourselves at our destination, and I stepped ashore to be surrounded by crowds of excited natives, to whom the advent of a white woman had not lost the charm of novelty. The village of Wedau, where I disembarked, had been, not many years before, the scene of frequent cannibal feasts. The Wedauans had lived in a state of continual feud with the hill-folk and other tribes at a distance, and had sallied forth on various occasions to fight with them on any convenient "merewa" or battlefield. The photograph here reproduced shows a group of natives on an old "merewa," and illustrates the method by which hapless captives were carried off the field in the bad old days, to be afterwards cooked and eaten. The victim, sometimes only stunned or wounded, was lashed by the hands and feet to a stout pole, which was borne on men's shoulders through the village. Sometimes several of these unhappy wretches were captured at a time, and the treatment they received before being mercifully killed was cruel to a degree. Samuela Aigeri, a Wedauan Christian, once related to me incidents of great barbarity which had taken place in the village in connection with the slaughter of a man taken prisoner by the villagers. The poor wretch asked in vain for water to drink, and was stoned and otherwise tormented for a considerable time before being given the _coup de grâce_. This was customary.