He seized all the women and children, and shut them up in a huge temple built of palm trees and roofed with broad leaves.

This edifice was devoted to the horrible practise of cutting up human bodies that were intended to be eaten.
Ole had often heard of the cannibalism that is practised by most of the South Sea Islanders, though some tribes are worse than others; but he had never before this day come directly in contact with it.

Here, however, there could be no doubt whatever of the fact.

Portions of human bodies were strewn about this hideous temple,--some parts in a raw and bloody condition, as if they had just been cut from a lately slain victim; others in a baked state, as if ready to form part of some terrible banquet.
Sick at heart, Ole Thorwald turned from this sight with loathing.
Concluding that the natives who practised such things could not be very much distressed by being shut up for a time in a temple dedicated to the gratification of their own disgusting tastes, he barricaded the entrance securely, placed a guard over it, and hurried away to see that two other buildings, in which the remainder of the women and children had been imprisoned, were similarly secured and guarded.

Meanwhile the stalwart knight of the forehammer, to whom the duty had been assigned, placed sentries at the various entrances to the village, and disposed his men in such a way as to prevent the possibility of being taken by surprise.
These various arrangements were not made a moment too soon.