"This whole time we couldn't have got more than three-quarters of a mile from where the ship lay, when, all at once, the close growth on our left hand began to break into low bush, and at length a spot offered where we might get ashore tolerably, with two or three big red ant-hills heaped up out of the close prickly-pear plant, and the black ants streaming over the bank, as well as up the trunk of a large tree. The monkeys were keeping up a chattering stir everywhere about; and two or three bright green little lizards, changing into purple and back again, as they lay gleaming in the sun on the sides of the ant-heaps, darted their long tongues out like silver bodkins at the ants coming past. In we shoved with a cheer, and had scarce moored to the tree ere the ladies were being handed out and tripping over the ground-leaves to the ankles, starting on again at every rustle and prick, for fear of snakes; till the bowman in charge was left in the boat by himself, and, there being seven of us with guns over our arms, the next notion of the griffins was to get a sight of some 'natives.'
"In fact, there was a sort of a half-track leading off near the bank, through among the long coarse grass and the ferny sprouts of young cocoas, and a wide stretch of open country seen beyond it, dotted all over with low clumps of trees and bush rounded off in the gush of light, that gave it all a straw-coloured tint up to where a bare reddish-looking ridge of hill looked over a long swell of wild forest, off a hot, pale, cloudless sky. Here and there you saw the shadow of one bluff lying purple on the side of another, and a faint blue peak between, letting north'ard into some pass through the hills, but no signs of life save a few dun big-headed buffaloes feeding about a swampy spot not very far off, and rather too shaggy, by all appearance, to make pleasant company. Accordingly, we held for a few yards under the shade, where the fat mid, thinking to show off his knowingness by getting cocoa-nuts for the ladies, began to shy balls of mud from the creek-sides at the monkeys in the trees.
"However, he brought us rather more than he bargained for, till the whole blessed jungle seemed to be gathering between us and the boat to pelt us to death with nuts as big as eighteen-pound shot, husks and all; so off we had to hurry into the glare again, Sir Charles half-carrying his daughter through guinea-grass up to the waist--when somebody felt the smell of smoke, and next minute we broke out near it, wreathing up white from inside a high bamboo fence, propped up and tied all along with cocoa-nut husk. 'What the devil!' shouted the foremost cadet, as soon as he found the opening, 'they're cannibals!--roasting a black child, by heaven!' and in he dashed, being no chicken of a fellow _ashore_ at any rate, the others after him, while the judge, Simm, and I kept outside with the ladies, who were all of a shudder of course, what with the thought, and what with the queer scent of roast meat that came to us. 'Ha, ha!' laughed the cadet next moment, 'it's only a monkey, after all!--come in, though, Sir Charles, if you please, sir--nobody here, ladies.'