MURDERS AT PENTECOST ISLAND.

Globe, Volume XX, Issue 1556, 13 February 1879, Page 3

MURDERS AT PENTECOST ISLAND.

[By Telegraph. | Auckland, February 12. The Magellan Cloud brings advices from Fiji to January 20th. The Marion Renny on her cruise spoke the schooner Mystery which had been on a cruise to Pentecost Island in search of labor. The Mystery sent a boat’s crow ashore, which did not return. She cruised close in shore and saw the boat capsized. They learned from a Fijian who came aboard that Muir and the boat’s crew had been murdered and eaten. The master of the Marion Penny afterwards saw the natives like ants round the boat, which they dragged into a creek. The natives at Pentecost are very threatening, saying they will murder another boat’s cre w whenever they want a feast. Later. The Mystery, after waiting until dark, and seeing no signs of the missing men, made sail and continued her voyage for the purpose of endeavoring to meet one of H.M. ci’uisers. On the 11th December .sailed for Aobia. The natives do not deny that a whiteman was killed cut of the Heather Bell. They are fighting a bush tribe, who did the deed. At the place of the mishap the natives would not come near the boat. At ihe next village they warned us to be carefn 1 , as the natives of the next place, meaning where the Mystery’s boat’s crew were massacred, they had lately fired at a ship’s boat on their calling, and they had fired at a boat belonging to the Dauntless. It is reported that a person named Chaffinch, who is a settler or i ruder on Aobia, at the time the Mystery’s boats crew were massacred, was away. On his return he was informed of it, the natives _ making no secret of it, saying that it was their intention for some time past to seize the first boat’s crew they could get hold of, and massacre those in her for a cannibal feast. This affair was owing to no fault of those in the boat. All wore sacrificed but one of the Tanna men. The bodies were cut and divided amongst the surrounding chiefs, and the names of those who perpetrated this deed are all well known to Mr Chaffinch, 'these people when threatened with a man-of-war laugh and say that they will kill them and eat them when they want another feast.