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

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“Those things

That befall preposterously.”

Once, so at least Lolóma told me, some wags took it into their heads to entrap a noted “Puck,” and if possible bake and eat him. The trap succeeded admirably. Puck was caught and covered up in a well-heated oven, made, as all Fijian ovens are, in the ground. When it was time to open the oven, a man, looking like the head cook of the party, came up, carrying in his hand a bamboo knife. This movement of the cook’s made it quite clear that everything was now ready for making a feast off the poor elf. So at least thought our wags, but not exactly so thought Robin himself. In his view, he was the last who should be served in that way. He hated cannibalism, as every real cannibal hated it, when it was to become a matter of personal experience, and he was doomed to be the eaten instead of the eater. When, therefore, the party began to uncover the oven, and the cook to flourish his bamboo knife, Puck’s voice was heard from the hollow of an adjacent tree, singing ironically, yet most jubilantly, what has ever since been known as one of the songs of Elfland:—