impse I had of it was enough to convince me
that I could not be mistaken.

Gracious God! what dreadful thoughts entered my head; in solving this
mystery perhaps I had solved another, and the fate of my lost companion
might be revealed in the shocking spectacle I had just witnessed. I
longed to have torn off the folds of cloth and satisfied the awful
doubts under which I laboured. But before I had recovered from the
consternation into which I had been thrown, the fatal packages were
hoisted aloft, and once more swung over my head. The natives now
gathered round me tumultuously, and laboured to convince me that what
I had just seen were the heads of three Happar warriors, who had been
slain in battle. This glaring falsehood added to my alarm, and it was
not until I reflected that I had observed the packages swinging from
their elevation before Toby's disappearance, that I could at all recover
my composure.

But although this horrible apprehension had been dispelled, I had
discovered enough to fill me, in my present state of mind, with the most
bitter reflections. It was plain that I had seen the last relic of some
unfortunate wretch, who must have been massacred on the beach by the
savages, in one of those perilous trading adventures which I have before
described.

It was not, however, alone the murder of the stranger that overcame me
with gloom. I shuddered at the idea of the subsequent fate his inanimate
body might have met with. Was the same doom reserved for me? Was I
destined to perish like him--like him perhaps, to be devoured and my
head to be preserved as a fearful memento of the events? My imagination
ran riot in these horrid speculations, and I felt certain that the
worst possible evils would befall me. But whatever were my misgivings, I
studiously concealed them from the islanders, as well as the full extent
of the discovery I had made.

Although the assurances which the Typees had often given me, that they
never eat human flesh, had not convinced me that such was the case, yet,
having been so long a time in the valley without witnessing anything
which indicated the existence of the practice, I began to hope that it
was an event of very rare occurrence, and that I should be spared the
horror of witnessing it during my stay among them: but, alas, these
hopes were soon destroyed.

It is a singular fact, that in all our accounts of cannibal tribes we
have seldom received the testimony of an eye-witness accou