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

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In the woods I could hear the crackling of breaking branches in my rear, and in the open there was always the dusky form pressing eagerly on with a relentless stride, his chest well expanded, the head well up, and the clenched hands in measured motion at his sides, one of them grasping by the middle a short club curiously knotted at the end—a weapon capable of being thrown a considerable distance, or of being used effectively in a hand-to-hand encounter.

At length, after the best part of an hour’s running, with occasional rests, I got into a sort of labyrinthine canebrake which lined the banks of a small stream trending to the coast, hoping that I might here effectually baffle my pursuer. I knew that he dare not follow me far from the coast-line for fear of the inland tribes—the landsmen, who were never on friendly terms with the mariners who lived on the shore. This was also a difficulty with me. I had a dread of momentarily rushing into the arms of some anthropophagistical mountaineer. Occasionally in my flight I had caught sight of a small native village perched on a castled crag, or half hidden in a distant ravine, and I had carefully avoided approaching those places.