But these observations give a more minute impression of what I saw than, for the moment, I had time to take in.  The foremost part of the procession consisted of boys, many of them almost naked.  Their hands were full of branches, wreathed in a curious manner with strips of white or coloured wools.  They were all singing, and were led by a woman carrying in her arms a mis-shapen wooden idol, not much unlike those which are too frequent spectacles all over the Pacific.  Behind the boys I could now distinctly behold a man and woman of the Polynesian type, naked to the waist, and staggering with bent backs beneath showers of blows.  The people behind them, who were almost as light in colour as ourselves, were cruelly flogging them with cutting branches of trees.  Round the necks of the unfortunate victims—­criminals I presumed—­were hung chains of white and black figs, and in their hands they held certain herbs, figs, and cheese, for what purpose I was, and remain, unable to conjecture.  Whenever their cries were still for a moment, the woman who carried the idol turned round, and lifted it in her arms with words which I was unable to understand, urging on the tormentors to ply their switches with more severity.

Naturally I was alarmed by the strangeness and ferocity of the natives, so I concealed myself hastily in some brushwood behind a large tree.  Much to my horror I found that the screams, groans, and singing only drew nearer and nearer.  The procession then passed me so close that I could see blood on the backs of the victims, and on their faces an awful dread and apprehension.  Finally, the crowd reached the mouth of the river, at the very place where I had escaped from the sea.  By aid of a small pocket-glass I could make out that the men were piling great faggots of green wood, which I had noticed that some of them carried, on a spot beneath the wash of high tide.  When the pile had reached a considerable height, the two victims were placed in the middle.  Then, by some means, which I was too far off to detect, fire was produced, and applied to the wild wood in which the unhappy man and woman were enveloped.  Soon, fortunately, a thick turbid smoke, in which but little flame appeared, swept all over the beach.  I endeavoured to stop my ears, and turned my head away that I might neither see nor hear more of this spectacle, which I now perceived to be a human sacrifice more cruel than is customary even among the Fijians.

When I next ventured to look up, the last trails of smoke were vanishing away across the sea; the sun gazed down on the bright, many-coloured throng, who were now singing another of their hymns, while some of the number were gathering up ashes (human ashes!) from a blackened spot on the sand, and were throwing them into the salt water.  The wind tossed back a soft grey dust in their faces, mixed with the surf and spray.  It was dark before the crowd swept by me again, now chanting in what appeared to be a