After sitting a while longer, and musing
what I should do in this case, I was not able to bear sitting in
ignorance longer; so setting up my ladder to the side of the hill,
where there was a flat place, as I observed before, and then
pulling the ladder after me, I set it up again and mounted the top
of the hill, and pulling out my perspective glass, which I had
taken on purpose, I laid me down flat on my belly on the ground,
and began to look for the place. I presently found there were no
less than nine naked savages sitting round a small fire they had
made, not to warm them, for they had no need of that, the weather
being extremely hot, but, as I supposed, to dress some of their
barbarous diet of human flesh which they had brought with them,
whether alive or dead I could not tell.
They had two canoes with them, which they had hauled up upon the
shore; and as it was then ebb of tide, they seemed to me to wait
for the return of the flood to go away again. It is not easy to
imagine what confusion this sight put me into, especially seeing
them come on my side of the island, and so near to me; but when I
considered their coming must be always with the current of the ebb,
I began afterwards to be more sedate in my mind, being satisfied
that I might go abroad with safety all the time of the flood of
tide, if they were not on shore before; and having made this
observation, I went abroad about my harvest work with the more
composure.
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