The Cannibals by Iain Lawrence Page A

said Mr. Mullock. “Who's for going ashore?”
    No one was. We didn't know if the canoe had gone, or if it had stopped nearby and was waiting for us to emerge. We decided that the island was safer than the sea, and that we would pass the night upon it, and all of the coming day. So we pulled ourselves along the branches, clambered up the riverbank, and hurried into the jungle.
    The trees were so huge and dense that I felt like a flea on the back of a dog. We spent the better part of an hour bashing through the first few yards. Then the jungle opened into glades and meadows, and we came to the foot of a low mountain. A stream fell down in strands of silver, into a pool that was clear and deep. It was there we chose to stay.
    And it was on this island that one of us met his end.

thirteen

A MOST UNFORTUNATE CHAPTER
    It was Mr. Mullock's idea that we keep a lookout. “Turn and turn about,” he said. “We'll go in horder of our age, starting with the youngest; that seems the fairest.”
    Well, to him it was. He stretched out on the rock beside the pool, like a green lizard sunning itself. He had hours to wait until his turn, if that ever came around. Midgely was the youngest. “Off you go,” said Mr. Mullock to him, barely raising an arm from the ground. “Over there is best, I think. Up on that ledge, away from the sound of the falls.”
    “But he can't see,” I said.
    “No matter. You never see the junglies anyway,” said Mr. Mullock. “But the boy's got ears, 'asn't 'e? Can't 'e listen as well as you or I?”
    “It's all right. I don't mind to take my turn,” said Midgely.
    But I couldn't let him sit alone at the edge of the jungle. “We'll share each other's watches,” I told him. “It will make the time go faster.”
    That may have been what Mr. Mullock wanted all along, for he called Weedle to his side as soon as Midge and I went off across the glade. What was said between them, I would never know.
    We climbed to the ledge and found it bathed in sunlight, but cool from the mist of the falls, a pleasant place to sit, if it had not been for the dangers that kept us on guard. We talked little, for there was little to be said after the first few moments. Midgely liked and trusted Mr. Mullock, and refused to hear ill of him.
    I fashioned a rough sort of sundial from a twig and a handful of pebbles. I watched our time pass in the swinging of a shadow; then down we went and Carrots took our place. He was followed by Benjamin Penny, and Penny by Weedle, and so the day passed into evening. And then we learned that the island wasn't quite as empty as Midgely had thought.
    From a distance, we heard drumming.
    It was not the sound of the headhunters' paddles, but a faster and wilder rhythm, a rattle inside of a thunder that must have come from fifty drums or more.
    “Where's that coming from?” asked Midge. “There ain't a village for a hundred miles.”
    “So much for your
book
,” said Mr. Mullock. “You prattling blind boy.”
    “But it's true,” said Midge. “We seen the fleet of islands, didn't we? The galleon and all.” He frowned, then smiled and said, “Here, I know, Tom. There's Indians come fromall over to visit Koolamalinga. That must be right; it's a gathering.”
    “Oh, it's a gathering all right,” said Mr. Mullock. “They're cannibals, you fool. Listen to the drums. That's a cannibal feast beginning.”
    With the darkness came a glow of fires in the east, and voices along with the drums. They weren't much louder than the insects that clicked and hummed and whirred around us. But it was frightful to sit there listening, so our tattered group huddled closer together as the jungle also came alive with shrills and shrieks. The last lookout had come down from the ledge at dusk.
    The water from the falls burbled and splashed. In its mist rose the moon, a silver ring above us. I could see Benjamin Penny pressed against the rock, as ugly as a gargoyle. He stared straight ahead, starting at the