“Ki ki! is it?” said Toby, in his gruff tones; “well, cook us first,
will you—but what’s this?” he added, as another savage appeared,
bearing before him a large trencher of wood, containing some kind of
steaming meat, as appeared from the odours it diffused, and which he
deposited at the feet of Mehevi. “A baked baby, I dare say! but I will
have none of it, never mind what it is. A pretty fool I should make of
myself, indeed, waked up here in the middle of the night, stuffing and
guzzling, and all to make a fat meal for a parcel of bloody-minded
cannibals one of these mornings! No; I see what they are at very
plainly, so I am resolved to starve myself into a bunch of bones and
gristle, and then, if they serve me up, they are welcome! But, I say,
Tommo, you are not going to eat any of that mess there, in the dark,
are you? Why, how can you tell what it is?”
“By tasting it, to be sure,” said I, masticating a morsel that
Kory-Kory had just put in my mouth; “and excellently good it is, too,
very much like veal.”
“A baked baby, by the soul of Captain Cook!” burst forth Toby, with
amazing vehemence. “Veal? why, there never was a calf on the island
till you landed. I tell you, you are bolting down mouthfuls from a dead
Happar’s carcass, as sure as you live, and no mistake!”
Emetics and lukewarm water! What a sensation in the abdominal regions!
Sure enough, where could the fiends incarnate have obtained meat? But I
resolved to satisfy myself at all hazards; and turning to Mehevi, I
soon made the ready chief understand that I wished a light to be
brought. When the taper came, I gazed eagerly into the vessel, and
recognized the mutilated remains of a juvenile porker! “Puarkee!”
exclaimed Kory-Kory, looking complacently at the dish; and from that
day to this I have never forgotten that such is the designation of a
pig in the Typee lingo.
The next morning, after being again abundantly feasted by the
hospitable Mehevi, Toby and myself arose to depart. But the chief
requested us to postpone our intention. “Abo, abo” (Wait, wait), he
said, and accordingly we resumed our seats, while, assisted by the
zealous Kory-Kory, he appeared to be engaged in giving directions to a
number of the natives outside, who were busily employed in making
arrangements, the nature of which we could not comprehend. But we were
not left long in our ignorance, for a few moments only had elapsed,
when the chief beckoned us to approach, and we perceived that he had
been marshalling a kind of guard of honour to escort us on our return
to the house of Marheyo.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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