Читать книгу Lolóma, or two years in cannibal-land. A story of old Fiji онлайн

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Towards evening our last shot had been expended, and the enemy held off, waiting for the cover of darkness to make a grand rush and finish us with the club. Ovens were already being prepared for the approaching cannibal feast, so sure were they of the result. The captain remarked that among the insulting fire of words the natives kept up he could distinguish that they were bespeaking the three of us joint by joint. They were also preparing the three kinds of vegetables always eaten with bokola, as baked human flesh is called. These I afterwards learned were the leaves of the malawathi, the tudano, and the borodina. The two former are middle-sized trees, growing wild. The borodina is cultivated; it is a bushy shrub, seldom higher than 6ft., with a dark, glossy foliage, and berries very much like tomatoes, which have a faint aromatic smell, and are sometimes prepared like tomato sauce. These plants are wrapped round the several joints of the prepared human body, and baked with them on the hot stones of the cannibal oven.