I began to move more freely around the island again and built myself a third
house. It was a very secret place in a cave. ‘No wild man will ever find
that,’ I said to myself.
Then one year something happened which I can never forget. I was again on the west
side of the island and I was walking along the shore. Suddenly, I saw something
which made me feel ill. There were heads, arms, feet, and other pieces of
men’s bodies everywhere. For a minute I couldn’t think, and then I
understood. Sometimes there were fights between the wild men on the other
islands. Then they came here to my island with their prisoners to kill them,
cook them and eat them. Slowly I went home, but I was very angry. How could men
do this? For many months I watched carefully for the smoke from fires, but I
didn’t see anything. Somehow the wild men came and went, and I never saw them.
I was angry and afraid. I wanted to shoot them all, but there were many of them
and only one of me. ‘Perhaps I can shoot two or three,’ I said to myself,
‘but then they will kill and eat me.’
Then, one morning in my twenty-third year on the island, I was out in my
fields and I saw the smoke from a fire. Quickly I went up the hill to watch.
There were nine men around the fire and they were cooking their terrible food.
Then these wild men danced round the fire, singing and shouting. This went on
for about two hours, and then they got into their boats and sailed away. I went
down to the shore and saw the blood of the dead men on the sand. ‘The next
time the come, I’m going to kill them,’ I said angrily
