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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 13876 ***
+
+THE GREAT TABOO
+
+by
+
+GRANT ALLEN
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+I desire to express my profound indebtedness, for the central
+mythological idea embodied in this tale, to Mr. J.G. Frazer's admirable
+and epoch-making work, "The Golden Bough," whose main contention I have
+endeavored incidentally to popularize in my present story. I wish also to
+express my obligations in other ways to Mr. Andrew Lang's "Myth, Ritual,
+and Religion," Mr. H.O. Forbes's "Naturalist's Wanderings," and Mr.
+Julian Thomas's "Cannibals and Convicts." If I have omitted to mention
+any other author to whom I may have owed incidental hints, it will be
+some consolation to me to reflect that I shall at least have afforded an
+opportunity for legitimate sport to the amateurs of the new and popular
+British pastime of badger-baiting or plagiary-hunting. It may also save
+critics some moments' search if I say at once that, after careful
+consideration, I have been unable to discover any moral whatsoever in
+this humble narrative. I venture to believe that in so enlightened an age
+the majority of my readers will never miss it.
+
+G.A.
+
+THE NOOK, DORKING, October, 1890.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+IN MID PACIFIC.
+
+
+"Man overboard!"
+
+It rang in Felix Thurstan's ears like the sound of a bell. He gazed about
+him in dismay, wondering what had happened.
+
+The first intimation he received of the accident was that sudden sharp
+cry from the bo'sun's mate. Almost before he had fully taken it in, in
+all its meaning, another voice, farther aft, took up the cry once more in
+an altered form: "A lady! a lady! Somebody overboard! Great heavens, it
+is _her_! It's Miss Ellis! Miss Ellis!"
+
+Next instant Felix found himself, he knew not how, struggling in a wild
+grapple with the dark, black water. A woman was clinging to him--clinging
+for dear life. But he couldn't have told you himself that minute how it
+all took place. He was too stunned and dazzled.
+
+He looked around him on the seething sea in a sudden awakening, as it
+were, to life and consciousness. All about, the great water stretched
+dark and tumultuous. White breakers surged over him. Far ahead the
+steamer's lights gleamed red and green in long lines upon the ocean. At
+first they ran fast; then they slackened somewhat. She was surely slowing
+now; they must be reversing engines and trying to stop her. They would
+put out a boat. But what hope, what chance of rescue by night, in such a
+wild waste of waves as that? And Muriel Ellis was clinging to him for
+dear life all the while, with the despairing clutch of a half-drowned
+woman!
+
+The people on the Australasian, for their part, knew better what had
+occurred. There was bustle and confusion enough on deck and on the
+captain's bridge, to be sure: "Man overboard!"--three sharp rings at the
+engine bell:--"Stop her short!--reverse engines!--lower the gig!--look
+sharp, there, all of you!" Passengers hurried up breathless at the first
+alarm to know what was the matter. Sailors loosened and lowered the boat
+from the davits with extraordinary quickness. Officers stood by, giving
+orders in monosyllables with practised calm. All was hurry and turmoil,
+yet with a marvellous sense of order and prompt obedience as well. But,
+at any rate, the people on deck hadn't the swift swirl of the boisterous
+water, the hampering wet clothes, the pervading consciousness of personal
+danger, to make their brains reel, like Felix Thurstan's. They could ask
+one another with comparative composure what had happened on board; they
+could listen without terror to the story of the accident.
+
+It was the thirteenth day out from Sydney, and the Australasian was
+rapidly nearing the equator. Toward evening the wind had freshened, and
+the sea was running high against her weather side. But it was a fine
+starlit night, though the moon had not yet risen; and as the brief
+tropical twilight faded away by quick degrees in the west, the fringe of
+cocoanut palms on the reef that bounded the little island of Boupari
+showed out for a minute or two in dark relief, some miles to leeward,
+against the pale pink horizon. In spite of the heavy sea, many passengers
+lingered late on deck that night to see the last of that coral-girt
+shore, which was to be their final glimpse of land till they reached
+Honolulu, _en route_ for San Francisco.
+
+Bit by bit, however, the cocoanut palms, silhouetted with their graceful
+waving arms for a few brief minutes in black against the glowing
+background, merged slowly into the sky or sank below the horizon. All
+grew dark. One by one, as the trees disappeared, the passengers dropped
+off for whist in the saloon, or retired to the uneasy solitude of their
+own state-rooms. At last only two or three men were left smoking and
+chatting near the top of the companion ladder; while at the stern of the
+ship Muriel Ellis looked over toward the retreating island, and talked
+with a certain timid maidenly frankness to Felix Thurstan.
+
+There's nowhere on earth for getting really to know people in a very
+short time like the deck of a great Atlantic or Pacific liner. You're
+thrown together so much, and all day long, that you see more of your
+fellow-passengers' inner life and nature in a few brief weeks than you
+would ever be likely to see in a long twelvemonth of ordinary town or
+country acquaintanceship. And Muriel Ellis had seen a great deal in those
+thirteen days of Felix Thurstan; enough to make sure in her own heart
+that she really liked him--well--so much that she looked up with a pretty
+blush of self-consciousness every time he approached and lifted his hat
+to her. Muriel was an English rector's daughter, from a country village
+in Somersetshire; and she was now on her way back from a long year's
+visit, to recruit her health, to an aunt in Paramatta. She was travelling
+under the escort of an amiable old chaperon whom the aunt in question had
+picked up for her before leaving Sydney; but, as the amiable old
+chaperon, being but an indifferent sailor, spent most of her time in her
+own berth, closely attended by the obliging stewardess, Muriel had found
+her chaperonage interfere very little with opportunities of talk with
+that nice Mr. Thurstan. And now, as the last glow of sunset died out in
+the western sky, and the last palm-tree faded away against the colder
+green darkness of the tropical night, Muriel was leaning over the
+bulwarks in confidential mood, and watching the big waves advance or
+recede, and talking the sort of talk that such an hour seems to favor
+with the handsome young civil servant who stood on guard, as it were,
+beside her. For Felix Thurstan held a government appointment at Levuka,
+in Fiji, and was now on his way home, on leave of absence after six
+years' service in that new-made colony.
+
+"How delightful it would be to live on an island like that!" Muriel
+murmured, half to herself, as she gazed out wistfully in the direction of
+the disappearing coral reef. "With those beautiful palms waving always
+over one's head, and that delicious evening air blowing cool through
+their branches! It looks such a Paradise!"
+
+Felix smiled and glanced down at her, as he steadied himself with one
+hand against the bulwark, while the ship rolled over into the trough of
+the sea heavily. "Well, I don't know about that, Miss Ellis," he answered
+with a doubtful air, eying her close as he spoke with eyes of evident
+admiration. "One might be happy anywhere, of course--in suitable society;
+but if you'd lived as long among cocoanuts in Fiji as I have, I dare say
+the poetry of these calm palm-grove islands would be a little less real
+to you. Remember, though they look so beautiful and dreamy against the
+sky like that, at sunset especially (that was a heavy one, that time;
+I'm really afraid we must go down to the cabin soon; she'll be shipping
+seas before long if we stop on deck much later--and yet, it's so
+delightful stopping up here till the dusk comes on, isn't it?)--well,
+remember, I was saying, though they look so beautiful and dreamy and
+poetical--'Summer isles of Eden lying in dark purple spheres of sea,' and
+all that sort of thing--these islands are inhabited by the fiercest and
+most bloodthirsty cannibals known to travellers."
+
+"Cannibals!" Muriel repeated, looking up at him in surprise. "You don't
+mean to say that islands like these, standing right in the very track of
+European steamers, are still heathen and cannibal?"
+
+"Oh, dear, yes," Felix replied, holding his hand out as he spoke to catch
+his companion's arm gently, and steady her against the wave that was just
+going to strike the stern: "Excuse me; just so; the sea's rising fast,
+isn't it?--Oh, dear, yes; of course they are; they're all heathen and
+cannibals. You couldn't imagine to yourself the horrible bloodthirsty
+rites that may this very minute be taking place upon that idyllic-looking
+island, under the soft waving branches of those whispering palm-trees.
+Why, I knew a man in the Marquesas myself--a hideous old native, as ugly
+as you can fancy him--who was supposed to be a god, an incarnate god, and
+was worshipped accordingly with profound devotion by all the other
+islanders. You can't picture to yourself how awful their worship was. I
+daren't even repeat it to you; it was too, too horrible. He lived in a
+hut by himself among the deepest forest, and human victims used to be
+brought--well, there, it's too loathsome! Why, see; there's a great light
+on the island now; a big bonfire or something; don't you make it out? You
+can tell it by the red glare in the sky overhead." He paused a moment;
+then he added more slowly, "I shouldn't be surprised if at this very
+moment, while we're standing here in such perfect security on the deck of
+a Christian English vessel, some unspeakable and unthinkable heathen orgy
+mayn't be going on over there beside that sacrificial fire; and if some
+poor trembling native girl isn't being led just now, with blows and
+curses and awful savage ceremonies, her hands bound behind her back--Oh,
+look out, Miss Ellis!"
+
+He was only just in time to utter the warning words. He was only just in
+time to put one hand on each side of her slender waist, and hold her
+tight so, when the big wave which he saw coming struck full tilt against
+the vessel's flank, and broke in one white drenching sheet of foam
+against her stern and quarter-deck.
+
+The suddenness of the assault took Felix's breath away. For the first few
+seconds he was only aware that a heavy sea had been shipped, and had wet
+him through and through with its unexpected deluge. A moment later, he
+was dimly conscious that his companion had slipped from his grasp, and
+was nowhere visible. The violence of the shock, and the slimy nature of
+the sea water, had made him relax his hold without knowing it, in the
+tumult of the moment, and had at the same time caused Muriel to glide
+imperceptibly through his fingers, as he had often known an ill-caught
+cricket-ball do in his school-days. Then he saw he was on his hands and
+knees on the deck. The wave had knocked him down, and dashed him against
+the bulwark on the leeward side. As he picked himself up, wet, bruised,
+and shaken, he looked about for Muriel. A terrible dread seized upon his
+soul at once. Impossible! Impossible! she couldn't have been washed
+overboard!
+
+And even as he gazed about, and held his bruised elbow in his hand, and
+wondered to himself what it could all mean, that sudden loud cry arose
+beside him from the quarter-deck, "Man overboard! Man overboard!"
+followed a moment later by the answering cry, from the men who were
+smoking under the lee of the companion, "A lady! a lady! It's Miss Ellis!
+Miss Ellis!"
+
+He didn't take it all in. He didn't reflect. He didn't even know he was
+actually doing it. But he did it, all the same, with the simple,
+straightforward, instinctive sense of duty which makes civilized man act
+aright, all unconsciously, in any moment of supreme danger and
+difficulty. Leaping on to the taffrail without one instant's delay, and
+steadying himself for an indivisible fraction of time with his hand on
+the rope ladder, he peered out into the darkness with keen eyes for a
+glimpse of Muriel Ellis's head above the fierce black water; and espying
+it for one second, as she came up on a white crest, he plunged in before
+the vessel had time to roll back to windward, and struck boldly out in
+the direction where he saw that helpless object dashed about like a cork
+on the surface of the ocean.
+
+Only those who have known such accidents at sea can possibly picture to
+themselves the instantaneous haste with which all that followed took
+place upon that bustling quarter-deck. Almost at the first cry of "Man
+overboard!" the captain's bell rang sharp and quick, as if by magic, with
+three peremptory little calls in the engine-room below. The Australasian
+was going at full speed, but in a marvellously short time, as it seemed
+to all on board, the great ship had slowed down to a perfect standstill,
+and then had reversed her engines, so that she lay, just nose to the
+wind, awaiting further orders. In the meantime, almost as soon as the
+words were out of the bo'sun's lips, a sailor amidships had rushed to the
+safety belts hung up by the companion ladder, and had flung half a dozen
+of them, one after another, with hasty but well-aimed throws, far, far
+astern, in the direction where Felix had disappeared into the black
+water. The belts were painted white, and they showed for a few seconds,
+as they fell, like bright specks on the surface of the darkling sea; then
+they sunk slowly behind as the big ship, still not quite stopped,
+ploughed her way ahead with gigantic force into the great abyss of
+darkness in front of her.
+
+It seemed but a minute, too, to the watchers on board, before a party of
+sailors, summoned by the whistle with that marvellous readiness to meet
+any emergency which long experience of sudden danger has rendered
+habitual among seafaring men, had lowered the boat, and taken their seats
+on the thwarts, and seized their oars, and were getting under way on
+their hopeless quest of search, through the dim black night, for those
+two belated souls alone in the midst of the angry Pacific.
+
+It seemed but a minute or two, I say, to the watchers on board; but oh,
+what an eternity of time to Felix Thurstan, struggling there with his
+live burden in the seething water!
+
+He had dashed into the ocean, which was dark, but warm with tropical
+heat, and had succeeded, in spite of the heavy seas then running, in
+reaching Muriel, who clung to him now with all the fierce clinging of
+despair, and impeded his movement through that swirling water. More than
+that, he saw the white life-belts that the sailors flung toward him; they
+were well and aptly flung, in the inspiration of the moment, to allow for
+the sea itself carrying them on the crest of its waves toward the two
+drowning creatures. Felix saw them distinctly, and making a great lunge
+as they passed, in spite of Muriel's struggles, which sadly hampered his
+movements, he managed to clutch at no less than three before the great
+billow, rolling on, carried them off on its top forever away from him.
+Two of these he slipped hastily over Muriel's shoulders; the other he
+put, as best he might, round his own waist; and then, for the first time,
+still clinging close to his companion's arm, and buffeted about wildly by
+that running sea, he was able to look about him in alarm for a moment,
+and realize more or less what had actually happened.
+
+By this time the Australasian was a quarter of a mile away in front of
+them, and her lights were beginning to become stationary as she slowly
+slowed and reversed engines. Then, from the summit of a great wave, Felix
+was dimly aware of a boat being lowered--for he saw a separate light
+gleaming across the sea--a search was being made in the black night,
+alas, how hopelessly! The light hovered about for many, many minutes,
+revealed to him now here, now there, searching in vain to find him, as
+wave after wave raised him time and again on its irresistible summit. The
+men in the boat were doing their best, no doubt; but what chance of
+finding any one on a dark night like that, in an angry sea, and with no
+clue to guide them toward the two struggling castaways? Current and wind
+had things all their own way. As a matter of fact, the light never came
+near the castaways at all; and after half an hour's ineffectual search,
+which seemed to Felix a whole long lifetime, it returned slowly toward
+the steamer from which it came--and left those two alone on the dark
+Pacific.
+
+"There wasn't a chance of picking 'em up," the captain said, with
+philosophic calm, as the men clambered on board again, and the
+Australasian got under way once more for the port of Honolulu. "I knew
+there wasn't a chance; but in common humanity one was bound to make some
+show of trying to save 'em. He was a brave fellow to go after her, though
+it was no good of course. He couldn't even find her, at night, and with
+such a sea as that running."
+
+And even as he spoke, Felix Thurstan, rising once more on the crest of a
+much smaller billow--for somehow the waves were getting incredibly
+smaller as he drifted on to leeward--felt his heart sink within him as he
+observed to his dismay that the Australasian must be steaming ahead once
+more, by the movement of her lights, and that they two were indeed
+abandoned to their fate on the open surface of that vast and trackless
+ocean.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+THE TEMPLE OF THE DEITY.
+
+
+While these things were happening on the sea close by, a very different
+scene indeed was being enacted meanwhile, beneath those waving palms, on
+the island of Boupari. It was strange, to be sure, as Felix Thurstan had
+said, that such unspeakable heathen orgies should be taking place within
+sight of a passing Christian English steamer. But if only he had known or
+reflected to what sort of land he was trying now to struggle ashore with
+Muriel, he might well have doubted whether it were not better to let her
+perish where she was, in the pure clear ocean, rather than to submit an
+English girl to the possibility of undergoing such horrible heathen rites
+and ceremonies.
+
+For on the island of Boupari it was high feast with the worshippers of
+their god that night. The sun had turned on the Tropic of Capricorn at
+noon, and was making his way northward, toward the equator once more;
+and his votaries, as was their wont, had all come forth to do him honor
+in due season, and to pay their respects, in the inmost and sacredest
+grove on the island, to his incarnate representative, the living spirit
+of trees and fruits and vegetation, the very high god, the divine
+Tu-Kila-Kila!
+
+Early in the evening, as soon as the sun's rim had disappeared beneath
+the ocean, a strange noise boomed forth from the central shrine of
+Boupari. Those who heard it clapped their hands to their ears and ran
+hastily forward. It was a noise like distant rumbling thunder, or the
+whir of some great English mill or factory; and at its sound every woman
+on the island threw herself on the ground prostrate, with her face in the
+dust, and waited there reverently till the audible voice of the god had
+once more subsided. For no woman knew how that sound was produced. Only
+the grown men, initiated into the mysteries of the shrine when they came
+of age at the tattooing ceremony, were aware that the strange, buzzing,
+whirring noise was nothing more or less than the cry of the bull-roarer.
+
+A bull-roarer, as many English schoolboys know, is merely a piece of
+oblong wood, pointed at either end, and fastened by a leather thong at
+one corner. But when whirled round the head by practised priestly hands,
+it produces a low rumbling noise like the wheels of a distant carriage,
+growing gradually louder and clearer, from moment to moment, till at last
+it waxes itself into a frightful din, or bursts into perfect peals of
+imitation thunder. Then it decreases again once more, as gradually as it
+rose, becoming fainter and ever fainter, like thunder as it recedes, till
+the horrible bellowing, as of supernatural bulls, dies away in the end,
+by slow degrees, into low and soft and imperceptible murmurs.
+
+But when the savage hears the distant humming of the bull-roarer, at
+whatever distance, he knows that the mysteries of his god are in full
+swing, and he hurries forward in haste, leaving his work or his pleasure,
+and running, naked as he stands, to take his share in the worship, lest
+the anger of heaven should burst forth in devouring flames to consume
+him. But the women, knowing themselves unworthy to face the dread
+presence of the high god in his wrath, rush wildly from the spot, and,
+flinging themselves down at full length, with their mouths to the dust,
+wait patiently till the voice of their deity is no longer audible.
+
+And as the bull-roarer on Boupari rang out with wild echoes from the
+coral caverns in the central grove that evening, Tu-Kila-Kila, their god,
+rose slowly from his place, and stood out from his hut, a deity revealed,
+before his reverential worshippers.
+
+As he rose, a hushed whisper ran wave-like through the dense throng of
+dusky forms that bent low, like corn beneath the wind, before him,
+"Tu-Kila-Kila rises! He rises to speak! Hush! for the voice of the mighty
+man-god!"
+
+The god, looking around him superciliously with a cynical air of
+contempt, stood forward with a firm and elastic step before his silent
+worshippers. He was a stalwart savage, in the very prime of life, tall,
+lithe, and active. His figure was that of a man well used to command;
+but his face, though handsome, was visibly marked by every external sign
+of cruelty, lust, and extreme bloodthirstiness. One might have said,
+merely to look at him, he was a being debased by all forms of brutal and
+hateful self-indulgence. A baleful light burned in his keen gray eyes.
+His lips were thick, full, purple, and wistful.
+
+"My people may look upon me," he said, in a strangely affable
+voice, standing forward and smiling with a curious half-cruel,
+half-compassionate smile upon his awe-struck followers. "On every day
+of the sun's course but this, none save the ministers dedicated to the
+service of Tu-Kila-Kila dare gaze unhurt upon his sacred person. If
+any other did, the light from his holy eyes would wither them up, and
+the glow of his glorious countenance would scorch them to ashes." He
+raised his two hands, palm outward, in front of him. "So all the year
+round," he went on, "Tu-Kila-Kila, who loves his people, and sends
+them the earlier and the later rain in the wet season, and makes their
+yams and their taro grow, and causes his sun to shine upon them
+freely--all the year round Tu-Kila-Kila, your god, sits shut up in his
+own house among the skeletons of those whom he has killed and eaten, or
+walks in his walled paddock, where his bread-fruit ripens and his
+plantains spring--himself, and the ministers that his tribesmen have
+given him."
+
+At the sound of their mystic deity's voice the savages, bending lower
+still till their foreheads touched the ground, repeated in chorus, to the
+clapping of hands, like some solemn litany: "Tu-Kila-Kila speaks true.
+Our lord is merciful. He sends down his showers upon our crops and
+fields. He causes his sun to shine brightly over us. He makes our pigs
+and our slaves bring forth their increase. Tu-Kila-Kila is good. His
+people praise him."
+
+The god took another step forward, the divine mantle of red feathers
+glowing in the sunset on his dusky shoulders, and smiled once more that
+hateful gracious smile of his. He was standing near the open door of his
+wattled hut, overshadowed by the huge spreading arms of a gigantic
+banyan-tree. Through the open door of the hut it was possible to catch
+just a passing glimpse of an awful sight within. On the beams of the
+house, and on the boughs of the trees behind it, human skeletons, half
+covered with dry flesh, hung in ghastly array, their skulls turned
+downward. They were the skeletons of the victims Tu-Kila-Kila, their
+prince, had slain and eaten; they were the trophies of the cannibal
+man-god's hateful prowess.
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila raised his right hand erect and spoke again. "I am a great
+god," he said, slowly. "I am very powerful. I make the sun to shine, and
+the yams to grow. I am the spirit of plants. Without me there would be
+nothing for you all to eat or drink in Boupari. If I were to grow old and
+die, the sun would fade away in the heavens overhead; the bread-fruit
+trees would wither and cease to bear on earth; all fruits would come to
+an end and die at once; all rivers would stop forthwith from running."
+
+His worshippers bowed down in acquiescence with awestruck faces. "It is
+true," they answered, in the same slow sing-song of assent as before.
+"Tu-Kila-Kila is the greatest of gods. We owe to him everything. We hang
+upon his favor."
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila started back, laughed, and showed his pearly white teeth.
+They were beautiful and regular, like the teeth of a tiger, a strong
+young tiger. "But I need more sacrifices than all the other gods," he
+went on, melodiously, like one who plays with consummate skill upon some
+difficult instrument. "I am greedy; I am thirsty; I am a hungry god. You
+must not stint me. I claim more human victims than all the other gods
+beside. If you want your crops to grow, and your rivers to run, the
+fields to yield you game, and the sea fish--this is what I ask: give me
+victims, victims! That is our compact. Tu-Kila-Kila calls you."
+
+The men bowed down once more and repeated humbly, "You shall have victims
+as you will, great god; only give us yam and taro and bread-fruit, and
+cause not your bright light, the sun, to grow dark in heaven over us."
+
+"Cut yourselves," Tu-Kila-Kila cried, in a peremptory voice, clapping his
+hands thrice. "I am thirsting for blood. I want your free-will offering."
+
+As he spoke, every man, as by a set ritual, took from a little skin
+wallet at his side a sharp flake of coral-stone, and, drawing it
+deliberately across his breast in a deep red gash, caused the blood to
+flow out freely over his chest and long grass waistband. Then, having
+done so, they never strove for a moment to stanch the wound, but let
+the red drops fall as they would on to the dust at their feet, without
+seeming even to be conscious at all of the fact that they were flowing.
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila smiled once more, a ghastly self-satisfied smile of
+unquestioned power. "It is well," he went on. "My people love me. They
+know my strength, how I can wither them up. They give me their blood to
+drink freely. So I will be merciful to them. I will make my sun shine and
+my rain drop from heaven. And instead of taking _all_, I will choose one
+victim." He paused, and glanced along their line significantly.
+
+"Choose, Tu-Kila-Kila," the men answered, without a moment's hesitation.
+"We are all your meat. Choose which one you will take of us."
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila walked with a leisurely tread down the lines and surveyed
+the men critically. They were all drawn up in rows, one behind the other,
+according to tribes and families; and the god walked along each row,
+examining them with a curious and interested eye, as a farmer examines
+sheep fit for the market. Now and then, he felt a leg or an arm with his
+finger and thumb, and hesitated a second. It was an important matter,
+this choosing a victim. As he passed, a close observer might have noted
+that each man trembled visibly while the god's eye was upon him, and
+looked after him askance with a terrified sidelong gaze as he passed on
+to his neighbor. But not one savage gave any overt sign or token of his
+terror or his reluctance. On the contrary, as Tu-Kila-Kila passed along
+the line with lazy, cruel deliberateness, the men kept chanting aloud
+without one tremor in their voices, "We are all your meat. Choose which
+one you will take of us."
+
+On a sudden, Tu-Kila-Kila turned sharply round, and, darting a rapid
+glance toward a row he had already passed several minutes before, he
+exclaimed, with an air of unexpected inspiration, "Tu-Kila-Kila has
+chosen. He takes Maloa."
+
+The man upon whose shoulder the god laid his heavy hand as he spoke stood
+forth from the crowd without a moment's hesitation. If anger or fear was
+in his heart at all, it could not be detected in his voice or his
+features. He bowed his head with seeming satisfaction, and answered
+humbly, "What Tu-Kila-Kila says must need be done. This is a great honor.
+He is a mighty god. We poor men must obey him. We are proud to be taken
+up and made one with divinity."
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila raised in his hand a large stone axe of some polished green
+material, closely resembling jade, which lay on a block by the door, and
+tried its edge with his finger, in an abstracted manner. "Bind him!" he
+said, quietly, turning round to his votaries. And the men, each glad to
+have escaped his own fate, bound their comrade willingly with green ropes
+of plantain fibre.
+
+"Crown him with flowers!" Tu-Kila-Kila said; and a female attendant,
+absolved from the terror of the bull-roarer by the god's command, brought
+forward a great garland of crimson hibiscus, which she flung around the
+victim's neck and shoulders.
+
+"Lay his head on the sacred stone block of our fathers," Tu-Kila-Kila
+went on, in an easy tone of command, waving his hand gracefully. And the
+men, moving forward, laid their comrade, face downward, on a huge flat
+block of polished greenstone, which lay like an altar in front of the
+hut with the mouldering skeletons.
+
+"It is well," Tu-Kila-Kila murmured once more, half aloud. "You have
+given me the free-will offering. Now for the trespass! Where is the
+woman who dared to approach too near the temple-home of the divine
+Tu-Kila-Kila? Bring the criminal forward!"
+
+The men divided, and made a lane down their middle. Then one of them, a
+minister of the man-god's shrine, led up by the hand, all trembling and
+shrinking with supernatural terror in every muscle, a well-formed young
+girl of eighteen or twenty. Her naked bronze limbs were shapely and
+lissome; but her eyes were swollen and red with tears, and her face
+strongly distorted with awe for the man-god. When she stood at last
+before Tu-Kila-Kila's dreaded face, she flung herself on the ground in an
+agony of fear.
+
+"Oh, mercy, great God!" she cried, in a feeble voice. "I have sinned, I
+have sinned. Mercy, mercy!"
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila smiled as before, a smile of imperial pride. No ray of pity
+gleamed from those steel-gray eyes. "Does Tu-Kila-Kila show mercy?" he
+asked, in a mocking voice. "Does he pardon his suppliants? Does he
+forgive trespasses? Is he not a god, and must not his wrath be appeased?
+She, being a woman, and not a wife sealed to Tu-Kila-Kila, has dared to
+look from afar upon his sacred home. She has spied the mysteries.
+Therefore she must die. My people, bind her."
+
+In a second, without more ado, while the poor trembling girl writhed and
+groaned in her agony before their eyes, that mob of wild savages, let
+loose to torture and slay, fell upon her with hideous shouts, and bound
+her, as they had bound their comrade before, with coarse native ropes of
+twisted plantain fibre.
+
+"Lay her head on the stone," Tu-Kila-Kila said, grimly. And his votaries
+obeyed him.
+
+"Now light the sacred fire to make our feast, before I slay the victims,"
+the god said, in a gloating voice, running his finger again along the
+edge of his huge hatchet.
+
+As he spoke, two men, holding in their hands hollow bamboos with coals of
+fire concealed within, which they kept aglow meanwhile by waving them up
+and down rapidly in the air, laid these primitive matches to the base of
+a great pyramidal pile of wood and palm-leaves, ready prepared beforehand
+in the yard of the temple. In a second, the dry fuel, catching the sparks
+instantly, blazed up to heaven with a wild outburst of flame. Great red
+tongues of fire licked up the mouldering mass of leaves and twigs, and
+caught at once at the trunks of palm and li wood within. A huge
+conflagration reddened the sky at once like lightning. The effect was
+magical. The glow transfigured the whole island for miles. It was, in
+fact, the blaze that Felix Thurstan had noted and remarked upon as he
+stood that evening on the silent deck of the Australasian.
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila gazed at it with horrid childish glee. "A fine fire!" he
+said, gayly. "A fire worthy of a god. It will serve me well. Tu-Kila-Kila
+will have a good oven to roast his meal in."
+
+Then he turned toward the sea, and held up his hand once more for
+silence. As he did so, an answering light upon its surface attracted his
+eye for a moment's space. It was a bright red light, mixed with white and
+green ones; in point of fact, the Australasian was passing. Tu-Kila-Kila
+pointed toward it solemnly with his plump, brown fore-finger. "See," he
+said, drawing himself up and looking preternaturally wise; "your god is
+great. I am sending some of this fire across the sea to where my sun has
+set, to aid and reinforce it. That is to keep up the fire of the sun,
+lest ever at any time it should fade and fail you. While Tu-Kila-Kila
+lives the sun will burn bright. If Tu-Kila-Kila were to die it would be
+night forever."
+
+His votaries, following their god's fore-finger as it pointed, all turned
+to look in the direction he indicated with blank surprise and
+astonishment. Such a sight had never met their eyes before, for the
+Australasian was the very first steamer to take the eastward route,
+through the dangerous and tortuous Boupari Channel. So their awe and
+surprise at the unwonted sight knew no bounds. Fire on the ocean!
+Miraculous light on the waves! Their god must, indeed, be a mighty deity
+if he could send flames like that careering over the sea! Surely the sun
+was safe in the hands of a potentate who could thus visibly reinforce it
+with red light, and white! In their astonishment and awe, they stood with
+their long hair falling down over their foreheads, and their hands held
+up to their eyes that they might gaze the farther across the dim, dark
+ocean. The borrowed light of their bonfire was moving, slowly moving over
+the watery sea. Fire and water were mixing and mingling on friendly
+terms. Impossible! Incredible! Marvellous! Miraculous! They prostrated
+themselves in their terror at Tu-Kila-Kila's feet. "Oh, great god," they
+cried, in awe-struck tones, "your power is too vast! Spare us, spare us,
+spare us!"
+
+As for Tu-Kila-Kila himself, he was not astonished at all. Strange as it
+sounds to us, he really believed in his heart what he said. Profoundly
+convinced of his own godhead, and abjectly superstitious as any of his
+own votaries, he absolutely accepted as a fact his own suggestion, that
+the light he saw was the reflection of that his men had kindled. The
+interpretation he had put upon it seemed to him a perfectly natural and
+just one. His worshippers, indeed, mere men that they were, might be
+terrified at the sight; but why should he, a god, take any special notice
+of it?
+
+He accepted his own superiority as implicitly as our European nobles and
+rulers accept theirs. He had no doubts himself, and he considered those
+who had little better than criminals.
+
+By and by, a smaller light detached itself by slow degrees from the
+greater ones. The others stood still, and halted in mid-ocean. The lesser
+light made as if it would come in the direction of Boupari. In point of
+fact, the gig had put out in search of Felix and Muriel.
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila interpreted the facts at once, however, in his own way.
+"See," he said, pointing with his plump forefinger once more, and
+encouraging with his words his terrified followers, "I am sending back a
+light again from the sun to my island. I am doing my work well. I am
+taking care of my people. Fear not for your future. In the light is yet
+another victim. A man and a woman will come to Boupari from the sun, to
+make up for the man and woman whom we eat in our feast to-night. Give me
+plenty of victims, and you will have plenty of yam. Make haste, then;
+kill, eat; let us feast Tu-Kila-Kila! To-morrow the man and woman I have
+sent from the sun will come ashore on the reef, and reach Boupari."
+
+At the words, he stepped forward and raised that heavy tomahawk. With
+one blow each he brained the two bound and defenceless victims on the
+altar-stone of his fathers. The rest, a European hand shrinks from
+revealing. The orgy was too horrible even for description.
+
+And that was the land toward which, that moment, Felix Thurstan was
+struggling, with all his might, to carry Muriel Ellis, from the myriad
+clasping arms of a comparatively gentle and merciful ocean!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+LAND; BUT WHAT LAND?
+
+
+As the last glimmering lights of the Australasian died away to seaward,
+Felix Thurstan knew in his despair there was nothing for it now but to
+strike out boldly, if he could, for the shore of the island.
+
+By this time the breakers had subsided greatly. Not, indeed, that the sea
+itself was really going down. On the contrary, a brisk wind was rising
+sharper from the east, and the waves on the open Pacific were growing
+each moment higher and loppier. But the huge mountain of water that
+washed Muriel Ellis overboard was not a regular ordinary wave; it was
+that far more powerful and dangerous mass, a shoal-water breaker. The
+Australasian had passed at that instant over a submerged coral-bar, quite
+deep enough, indeed, to let her cross its top without the slightest
+danger of grazing, but still raised so high toward the surface as to
+produce a considerable constant ground-swell, which broke in windy
+weather into huge sheets of surf, like the one that had just struck and
+washed over the Australasian, carrying Muriel with it. The very same
+cause that produced the breakers, however, bore Felix on their summit
+rapidly landward; and once he had got well beyond the region of the bar
+that begot them, he found himself soon, to his intense relief, in
+comparatively calm shoal water.
+
+Muriel Ellis, for her part, was faint with terror and with the
+buffeting of the waves; but she still floated by his side, upheld by the
+life-belts. He had been able, by immense efforts, to keep unseparated
+from her amid the rending surf of the breakers. Now that they found
+themselves in easier waters for a while, Felix began to strike out
+vigorously through the darkness for the shore. Holding up his companion
+with one hand, and swimming with all his might in the direction where a
+vague white line of surf, lit up by the red glare-of some fire far
+inland, made him suspect the nearest land to lie, he almost thought he
+had succeeded at last, after a long hour of struggle, in feeling his
+feet, after all, on a firm coral bottom.
+
+At the very moment he did so, and touched the ground underneath, another
+great wave, curling resistlessly behind him, caught him up on its crest,
+whirled him heavenward like a cork, and then dashed him down once more, a
+passive burden, on some soft and yielding substance, which he conjectured
+at once to be a beach of finely powdered coral fragments. As he touched
+this beach for an instant, the undertow of that vast dashing breaker
+sucked him back with its ebb again, a helpless, breathless creature; and
+then the succeeding wave rolled him over like a ball, upon the beach as
+before, in quick succession. Four times the back-current sucked him under
+with its wild pull in the self-same way, and four times the return wave
+flung him up upon the beach again like a fragment of sea-weed. With
+frantic efforts Felix tried at first to cling still to Muriel--to save
+her from the irresistible force of that roaring surf--to snatch her from
+the open jaws of death by sheer struggling dint of thews and muscle. He
+might as well have tried to stem Niagara. The great waves, curling
+irresistibly in huge curves landward, caught either of them up by turns
+on their arched summits, and twisted them about remorselessly, raising
+them now aloft on their foaming crest, beating them back now prone in
+their hollow trough, and flinging them fiercely at last with pitiless
+energy against the soft beach of coral. If the beach had been hard, they
+must infallibly have been ground to powder or beaten to jelly by the
+colossal force of those gigantic blows. Fortunately it was yielding,
+smooth, and clay-like, and received them almost as a layer of moist
+plaster of Paris might have done, or they would have stood no chance at
+all for their lives in that desperate battle with the blind and frantic
+forces of unrelenting nature.
+
+No man who has not himself seen the surf break on one of these
+far-southern coral shores can form any idea in his own mind of the terror
+and horror of the situation. The water, as it reaches the beach, rears
+itself aloft for a second into a huge upright wall, which, advancing
+slowly, curls over at last in a hollow circle, and pounds down upon the
+sand or reef with all the crushing force of some enormous sledge-hammer.
+But after the fourth assault, Felix felt himself flung up high and dry by
+the wave, as one may sometimes see a bit of light reed or pith flung up
+some distance ahead by an advancing tide on the beach in England. In an
+instant he steadied himself and staggered to his feet. Torn and bruised
+as he was by the pummelling of the billows, he looked eagerly into the
+water in search of his companion. The next wave flung up Muriel, as the
+last had flung himself. He bent over her with a panting heart as she lay
+there, insensible, on the long white shore. Alive or dead? that was now
+the question.
+
+Raising her hastily in his arms, with her clothes all clinging wet and
+close about her, Felix carried her over the narrow strip of tidal beach,
+above high-water level, and laid her gently down on a soft green bank of
+short tropical herbage, close to the edge of the coral. Then he bent over
+her once more, and listened eagerly at her heart. It still beat with
+faint pulses--beat--beat--beat. Felix throbbed with joy. She was alive!
+alive! He was not quite alone, then, on that unknown island!
+
+And strange as it seemed, it was only a little more than two short hours
+since they had stood and looked out across the open sea over the bulwarks
+of the Australasian together!
+
+But Felix had no time to moralize just then. The moment was clearly
+one for action. Fortunately, he happened to carry three useful things
+in his pocket when he jumped overboard after Muriel. The first was a
+pocket-knife; the second was a flask with a little whiskey in it; and the
+third, perhaps the most important of all, a small metal box of wax vesta
+matches. Pouring a little whiskey into the cup of the flask, he held it
+eagerly to Muriel's lips. The fainting girl swallowed it automatically.
+Then Felix, stooping down, tried the matches against the box. They were
+unfortunately wet, but half an hour's exposure, he knew, on sun-warmed
+stones, in that hot, tropical air, would soon restore them again. So he
+opened the box and laid them carefully out on a flat white slab of coral.
+After that, he had time to consider exactly where they were, and what
+their chances in life, if any, might now amount to.
+
+Pitch dark as it was, he had no difficulty in deciding at once by the
+general look of things that they had reached a fringing reef, such as he
+was already familiar with in the Marquesas and elsewhere. The reef was no
+doubt circular, and it enclosed within itself a second or central island,
+divided from it by a shallow lagoon of calm, still water. He walked some
+yards inland. From where he now stood, on the summit of the ridge, he
+could look either way, and by the faint reflected light of the stars, or
+the glare of the great pyre that burned on the central island, he could
+see down on one side to the ocean, with its fierce white pounding surf,
+and on the other to the lagoon, reflecting the stars overhead, and
+motionless as a mill-pond. Between them lay the low raised ridge of
+coral, covered with tall stems of cocoanut palms, and interspersed here
+and there, as far as his eye could judge, with little rectangular clumps
+of plantain and taro.
+
+But what alarmed Felix most was the fire that blazed so brightly to
+heaven on the central island; for he knew too well that meant--there were
+_men_ on the place; the land was inhabited.
+
+The cocoanuts and taro told the same doubtful tale. From the way they
+grew, even in that dim starlight, Felix recognized at once they had all
+been planted.
+
+Still, he didn't hesitate to do what he thought best for Muriel's relief
+for all that. Collecting a few sticks and fragments of palm-branches from
+the jungle about, he piled them into a heap, and waited patiently for his
+matches to dry. As soon as they were ready--and the warmth of the stone
+made them quickly inflammable--he struck a match on the box, and
+proceeded to light his fire by Muriel's side. As her clothes grew warmer,
+the poor girl opened her eyes at last, and, gazing around her, exclaimed,
+in blank terror, "Oh, Mr. Thurstan, where are we? What does all this
+mean? Where have we got to? On a desert island?"
+
+"No, _not_ on a desert island," Felix answered, shortly; "I'm afraid it's
+a great deal worse than that. To tell you the truth, I'm afraid it's
+inhabited."
+
+At that moment, by the hot embers of the great sacrificial pyre on the
+central hill, two of the savage temple-attendants, calling their god's
+attention to a sudden blaze of flame upon the fringing reef, pointed with
+their dark forefingers and called out in surprise, "See, see, a fire on
+the barrier! A fire! A fire! What can it mean? There are no men of our
+people over there to-night. Have war-canoes arrived? Has some enemy
+landed?"
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila leaned back, drained his cocoanut cup of intoxicating kava,
+and surveyed the unwonted apparition on the reef long and carefully. "It
+is nothing," he said at last, in his most deliberate manner, stroking his
+cheeks and chin contentedly with that plump round hand of his. "It is
+only the victims; the new victims I promised you. Korong! Korong! They
+have come ashore with their light from my home in the sun. They have
+brought fire afresh--holy fire to Boupari."
+
+Three or four of the savages leaped up in fierce joy, and bowed before
+him as he spoke, with eager faces. "Oh, Tu-Kila-Kila!" the eldest among
+them said, making a profound reverence, "shall we swim across to the reef
+and fetch them home to your house? Shall we take over our canoes and
+bring back your victims!"
+
+The god motioned them back with one outstretched palm. His eyes were
+flushed and his look lazy. "Not to-night, my people," he said;
+readjusting the garland of flowers round his neck, and giving a careless
+glance at the well-picked bones that a few hours before had been two
+trembling fellow creatures. "Tu-Kila-Kila has feasted his fill for this
+evening. Your god is full; his heart is happy. I have eaten human flesh;
+I have drunk of the juice of the kava. Am I not a great deity? Can I not
+do as I will? I frown, and the heavens thunder; I gnash my teeth, and the
+earth trembles. What is it to me if fresh victims come, or if they come
+not? Can I not make with a nod as many as I will of them?" He took up two
+fresh finger-bones, clean gnawed of their flesh, and knocked them
+together in a wild tune, carelessly. "If Tu-Kila-Kila chooses," he went
+on, tapping his chest with conscious pride, "he can knock these bones
+together--so--and bid them live again. Is it not I who cause women and
+beasts to bring forth their young? Is it not I who give the turtles their
+increase? And is it not a small thing to me, therefore, whether the sea
+tosses up my victims from my home in the sun, or whether it does not? Let
+us leave them alone on the reef for to-night; to-morrow we will send over
+our canoes to fetch them."
+
+It was all pure brag, all pure guesswork; and yet, Tu-Kila-Kila himself
+profoundly believed it.
+
+As he spoke, the light from Felix's fire blazed out against the dark sky,
+stronger and clearer still; and through that cloudless tropical air the
+figure of a man, standing for one moment between the flames and the
+lagoon, became distinctly visible to the keen and practised eyes of the
+savages. "I see them? I see them; I see the victims!" the foremost
+worshipper exclaimed, rushing forward a little at the sight, and beside
+himself with superstitious awe and surprise at Tu-Kila-Kila's presence.
+"Surely our god is great! He knows all things! He brings us meat from
+the setting sun, in ships of fire, in blazing canoes, across the golden
+road of the sun-bathed ocean!"
+
+As for Tu-Kila-Kila himself, leaning on his elbow at ease, he gazed
+across at the unexpected sight with very languid interest. He was a god,
+and he liked to see things conducted with proper decorum. This crowing
+and crying over a couple of spirits--mere ordinary spirits come ashore
+from the sun in a fiery boat--struck his godship as little short of
+childish. "Let them be," he answered, petulantly, crushing a blossom in
+his hand. "Let no man disturb them. They shall rest where they are till
+to-morrow morning. We have eaten; we have drunk; our soul is happy. The
+kava within us has made us like a god indeed. I shall give my ministers
+charge that no harm happen to them."
+
+He drew a whistle from his side and whistled once. There was a moment's
+pause. Then Tu-Kila-Kila spoke in a loud voice again. "The King of Fire!"
+he exclaimed, in tones of princely authority.
+
+From within the hut there came forth slowly a second stalwart savage, big
+built and burly as the great god himself, clad in a long robe or cloak of
+yellow feathers, which shone bright with a strange metallic gleam in the
+ruddy light of the huge pile of li-wood.
+
+"The King of Fire is here, Tu-Kila-Kila," the lesser god made answer,
+bending his head slightly.
+
+"Fire," Tu-Kila-Kila said, like a monarch giving orders to his attendant
+minister, "if any man touch the newcomers on the reef before I cause my
+sun to rise to-morrow morning, scorch up his flesh with your flame, and
+consume his bones to ash and cinder. If any woman go near them before
+Tu-Kila-Kila bids, let her be rolled in palm-leaves, and smeared with
+oil, and light her up for a torch on a dark night to lighten our temple."
+
+The King of Fire bent his head in assent. "It is as Tu-Kila-Kila wills,"
+he answered, submissively.
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila whistled again, this time twice. "The King of Water!" he
+exclaimed, in the same loud tone of command as before.
+
+At the words, a man of about forty, tall and sinewy, clad in a short cape
+of white albatross feathers, and with a girdle of nautilus shells
+interspersed with red coral tied around his waist, came forth to the
+summons.
+
+"The King of Water is here," he said, bending his head, but not his knee,
+before the greater deity.
+
+"Water," Tu-Kila-Kila said, with half-tipsy solemnity, "you are a god
+too. Your power is very great. But less than mine. Do, then, as I bid
+you. If any man touch my spirits, whom I have brought from my home in the
+sun in a fiery ship, before I bid him to-morrow, overturn his canoe, and
+drown him in lagoon or spring or ocean. If any woman go near them without
+Tu-Kila-Kila's leave, bind her hand and foot with ropes of porpoise hide,
+and cast her out into the surf, and dash her with your waves, and pummel
+her to pieces."
+
+The King of Water bent his head a second time. "I am a great god," he
+answered, "before all others save you: but for you, Tu-Kila-Kila, I haste
+to do your bidding. If any man disobey you, my billows shall rise and
+overwhelm him in the sea. I am a great god. I claim each year many
+drowned victims."
+
+"But not so many as me," Tu-Kila-Kila interposed, his hand playing on his
+knife with a faint air of impatience.
+
+"But not so many as you," the minor god added, in haste, as if to appease
+his rising anger. "Fire and Water ever speed to do your bidding."
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila stood up, turned toward the distant flame, and waved his
+hands round and round three times before him. "Let this be for you all a
+great taboo," he said, glancing once more toward his awe-struck
+followers. "Now the mysteries are over. Tu-Kila-Kila will sleep. He has
+eaten of human flesh. He has drunk of cocoanut rum and of new kava. He
+has brought back his sun on its way in the heavens. He has sent it
+messengers of fire to reinforce its strength. He has fetched from it
+messengers in turn with fresh fire to Boupari, fire not lighted from any
+earthly flame; fire new, divine, scorching, unspeakable. To-morrow we
+will talk with the spirits he has brought. To-night we will sleep. Now
+all go to your homes; and tell your women of this great taboo, lest they
+speak to the spirits, and fall into the hands of Fire or of Water."
+
+The savages dropped on their faces before the eye of their god and lay
+quite still. They made a path as it were from the pyre to the temple door
+with their prostrate bodies. Tu-Kila-Kila, walking with unsteady steps
+over their half-naked forms, turned to his hut in a drunken booze. He
+walked over them with no more compunction or feeling than over so many
+logs. Why should he not, indeed? For he was a god, and they were his
+meat, his servants, his worshippers.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE GUESTS OF HEAVEN.
+
+
+All that night through--their first lonely night on the island of
+Boupari--Felix sat up by his flickering fire, wide awake, half expecting
+and dreading some treacherous attack of the unknown savages. From time to
+time he kept adding dry fuel to his smouldering pile; and he never ceased
+to keep a keen eye both on the lagoon and the reef, in case an assault
+should be made upon them suddenly by land or water. He knew the South
+Seas quite well enough already to have all the possibilities of
+misfortune floating vividly before his eyes. He realized at once from his
+own previous experience the full loneliness and terror of their unarmed
+condition.
+
+For Boupari was one of those rare remote islets where the very rumor of
+our European civilization has hardly yet penetrated.
+
+As for Muriel, though she was alarmed enough, of course, and intensely
+shaken by the sudden shock she had received, the whole surroundings were
+too wholly unlike any world she had ever yet known to enable her to take
+in at once the utter horror of the situation. She only knew they were
+alone, wet, bruised, and terribly battered; and the Australasian had gone
+on, leaving them there to their fate on an unknown island. That, for the
+moment, was more than enough for her of accumulated misfortune. She come
+to herself but slowly, and as her torn clothes dried by degrees before
+the fire and the heat of the tropical night, she was so far from fully
+realizing the dangers of their position that her first and principal fear
+for the moment was lest she might take cold from her wet things drying
+upon her. She ate a little of the plantain that Felix picked for her; and
+at times, toward morning, she dozed off into an uneasy sleep, from pure
+fatigue and excess of weariness. As she slept, Felix, bending over her,
+with the biggest blade of his knife open in case of attack, watched with
+profound emotion the rise and fall of her bosom, and hesitated with
+himself, if the worst should come to the worst, as to what he ought to do
+with her.
+
+It would be impossible to let a pure young English girl like that fall
+helplessly into the hands of such bloodthirsty wretches as he knew the
+islanders were almost certain to be. Who could tell what nameless
+indignities, what incredible tortures they might wantonly inflict upon
+her innocent soul? Was it right of him to have let her come ashore at
+all? Ought he not rather to have allowed the more merciful sea to take
+her life easily, without the chance or possibility of such additional
+horrors?
+
+And now--as she slept--so calm and pure and maidenly--what was his
+duty that minute, just there to her? He felt the blade of his knife
+with his finger cautiously, and almost doubted. If only she could tell
+what things might be in store for her, would she not, herself, prefer
+death, an honorable death, at the friendly hands of a tenderhearted
+fellow-countryman, to the unspeakable insults of these man-eating
+Polynesians? If only he had the courage to release her by one blow, as
+she lay there, from the coming ill! But he hadn't; he hadn't. Even on
+board the Australasian he had been vaguely aware that he was getting very
+fond of that pretty little Miss Ellis. And now that he sat there, after
+that desperate struggle for life with the pounding waves, mounting guard
+over her through the livelong night, his own heart told him plainly, in
+tones he could not disobey, he loved her too well to dare what he thought
+best in the end for her.
+
+Still, even so, he was brave enough to feel he must never let the very
+worst of all befall her. He bethought him, in his doubt and agony, of how
+his uncle, Major Thurstan, during the great Indian mutiny, had held his
+lonely bungalow, with his wife and daughter by his side, for three long
+hours against a howling mob of native insurgents; and how, when further
+resistance was hopeless, and that great black wave of angry humanity
+burst in upon them at last, the brave soldier had drawn his revolver,
+shot his wife and daughter with unerring aim, to prevent their falling
+alive into the hands of the natives, and then blown his own brains out
+with his last remaining cartridge. As his uncle had done at Jhansi,
+thirty years before, so he himself would do on that nameless Pacific
+island--for he didn't know even now on what shore he had landed. If the
+savages bore down upon them with hostile intent, and threatened Muriel,
+he would plunge his knife first into that innocent woman's heart; and
+then bury it deep in his own, and die beside her.
+
+So the long night wore on--Muriel pillowed on loose cocoanut husk, dozing
+now and again, and waking with a start to gaze round about her wildly,
+and realize once more in what plight she found herself; Felix crouching
+by her feet, and keeping watch with eager eyes and ears on every side for
+the least sign of a noiseless, naked footfall through the tangled growth
+of that dense tropical under-bush. Time after time he clapped his hand to
+his ear, shell-wise, and listened and peered, with knitted brow,
+suspecting some sudden swoop from an ambush in the jungle of creepers
+behind the little plantain patch. Time after time he grasped his knife
+hard, and puckered his eyebrows resolutely, and stood still with bated
+breath for a fierce, wild leap upon his fancied assailant. But the night
+wore away by degrees, a minute at a time, and no man came; and dawn began
+to brighten the sea-line to eastward.
+
+As the day dawned, Felix could see more clearly exactly where he was, and
+in what surroundings. Without, the ocean broke in huge curling billows on
+the shallow beach of the fringing reef with such stupendous force that
+Felix wondered how they could ever have lived through its pounding surf
+and its fiercely retreating undertow. Within, the lagoon spread its calm
+lake-like surface away to the white coral shore of the central atoll.
+Between these two waters, the greater and the less, a waving palisade of
+tall-stemmed palm-trees rose on a narrow ribbon of circular land that
+formed the fringing reef. All night through he had felt, with a strange
+eerie misgiving, the very foundations of the land thrill under his feet
+at every dull thud or boom of the surf on its restraining barrier. Now
+that he could see that thin belt of shore in its actual shape and size,
+he was not astonished at this constant shock; what surprised him rather
+was the fact that such a speck of land could hold its own at all against
+the ceaseless cannonade of that seemingly irresistible ocean.
+
+He stood up, hatless, in his battered tweed suit, and surveyed the scene
+of their present and future adventures. It took but a glance to show him
+that the whole ground-plan of the island was entirely circular. In the
+midst of all rose the central atoll itself, a tiny mountain-peak, just
+projecting with its hills and gorges to a few hundred feet above the
+surface of the ocean. Outside it came the lagoon, with its placid ring of
+glassy water surrounding the circular island, and separated from the sea
+by an equally circular belt of fringing reef, covered thick with waving
+stems of picturesque cocoanut. It was on the reef they had landed, and
+from it they now looked across the calm lagoon with doubtful eyes toward
+the central island.
+
+As soon as the sun rose, their doubts were quickly resolved into fears
+or certainties. Scarcely had its rim begun to show itself distinctly
+above the eastern horizon, when a great bustle and confusion was
+noticeable at once on the opposite shore. Brown-skinned savages were
+collecting in eager groups by a white patch of beach, and putting out
+rude but well-manned canoes into the calm waters of the lagoon. At sight
+of their naked arms and bustling gestures, Muriel's heart sank suddenly
+within her. "Oh, Mr. Thurstan," she cried, clinging to his arm in her
+terror, "what does it all mean? Are they going to hurt us? Are these
+savages coming over? Are they coming to kill us?"
+
+Felix grasped his trusty knife hard in his right hand, and swallowed a
+groan, as he looked tenderly down upon her. "Muriel," he said, forgetting
+in the excitement of the moment the little conventionalities and
+courtesies of civilized life, "if they are, trust me, you never shall
+fall alive into their cruel hands. Sooner than that--" he held up the
+knife significantly, with its open blade before her.
+
+The poor girl clung to him harder still, with a ghastly shudder. "Oh,
+it's terrible, terrible," she cried, turning deadly pale. Then, after a
+short pause, she added, "But I would rather have it so. Do as you say. I
+could bear it from you. Promise me _that_, rather than that those
+creatures should kill me."
+
+"I promise," Felix answered, clasping her hand hard, and paused, with the
+knife ever ready in his right, awaiting the approach of the half-naked
+savages.
+
+The boats glided fast across the lagoon, propelled by the paddles of the
+stalwart Polynesians who manned them, and crowded to the water's edge
+with groups of grinning and shouting warriors. They were dressed in
+aprons of dracæna leaves only, with necklets and armlets of sharks'
+teeth and cowrie shells. A dozen canoes at least were making toward the
+reef at full speed, all bristling with spears and alive with noisy and
+boisterous savages. Muriel shrank back terror-stricken at the sight, as
+they drew nearer and nearer. But Felix, holding his breath hard, grew
+somewhat less nervous as the men approached the reef. He had seen enough
+of Polynesian life before now to feel sure these people were not upon the
+war-path. Whatever their ultimate intentions toward the castaways might
+be, their immediate object seemed friendly and good-humored. The boats,
+though large, were not regular war-canoes; the men, instead of
+brandishing their spears, and lunging out with them over the edge in
+threatening attitudes, held them erect in their hands at rest, like
+standards; they were laughing and talking, not crying their war-cry. As
+they drew near the shore, one big canoe shot suddenly a length or so
+ahead of the rest; and its leader, standing on the grotesque carved
+figure that adorned its prow, held up both his hands open and empty
+before him, in sign of peace, while at the same time he shouted out a
+word or two three times in his own language, to reassure the castaways.
+
+Felix's eye glanced cautiously from boat to boat. "He says, 'We are
+friends,'" the young man remarked in an undertone to his terrified
+companion. "I can understand his dialect. Thank Heaven, it's very close
+to Fijian. I shall be able at least to palaver to these men. I don't
+think they mean just now to harm us. I believe we can trust them, at any
+rate for the present."
+
+The poor girl drew back, in still greater awe and alarm than ever. "Oh,
+are they going to land here?" she cried, still clinging closer with both
+hands to her one friend and protector.
+
+"Try not to look so frightened!" Felix exclaimed, with a warning glance.
+"Remember, much depends upon it; savages judge you greatly by what
+demeanor you happen to assume. If you're frightened, they know their
+power; if they see you're resolute, they suspect you have some
+supernatural means of protection. Try to meet them frankly, as if you
+were not afraid of them." Then, advancing slowly to the water's edge, he
+called out aloud, in a strong, clear voice, a few words which Muriel
+didn't understand, but which were really the Fijian for "We also are
+friendly. Our medicine is good. We mean no magic. We come to you from
+across the great water. We desire your peace. Receive us and protect us!"
+
+At the sound of words which he could readily understand, and which
+differed but little, indeed, from his own language, the leader on the
+foremost canoe, who seemed by his manner to be a great chief, turned
+round to his followers and cried out in tones of superstitious awe,
+"Tu-Kila-Kila spoke well. These are, indeed, what he told us. Korong!
+Korong! They are spirits who have come to us from the disk of the sun, to
+bring us light and pure, fresh fire. Stay back there, all of you. You are
+not holy enough to approach. I and my crew, who are sanctified by the
+mysteries, we alone will go forward to meet them."
+
+As he spoke, a sudden idea, suggested by his words, struck Felix's mind.
+Superstition is the great lever by which to move the savage intelligence.
+Gathering up a few dry leaves and fragments of stick on the shore, he
+laid them together in a pile, and awaited in silence the arrival of the
+foremost islanders. The first canoe advanced slowly and cautiously, the
+men in it eying these proceedings with evident suspicion; the rest hung
+back, with their spears in array, and their hands just ready to use them
+with effect should occasion demand it.
+
+The leader of the first canoe, coming close to the shore, jumped out upon
+the reef in shallow water. Half a dozen of his followers jumped after him
+without hesitation, and brandished their weapons round their heads as
+they advanced, in savage unison. But Felix, pretending hardly to notice
+these hostile demonstrations, stepped boldly up toward his little pile
+with great deliberation, though trembling inwardly, and proceeded before
+their eyes to take a match from his box, which he displayed
+ostentatiously, all glittering in the sun, to the foremost savage. The
+leader stood by and watched him close with eyes of silent wonder. Then
+Felix, kneeling down, struck the match on the box, and applied it, as it
+lighted, to the dry leaves beside him.
+
+A chorus of astonishment burst unanimously from the delighted natives as
+the dry leaves leaped all at once into a tongue of flame, and the little
+pile caught quickly from the fire in the vesta.
+
+The leader looked hard at the two white faces, and then at the fire on
+the beach, with evident approbation. "It is as Tu-Kila-Kila said," he
+exclaimed at last with profound awe. "They are spirits from the sun, and
+they carry with them pure fire in shining boxes."
+
+Then, advancing a pace and pointing toward the canoe, he motioned Felix
+and Muriel to take their seats within it with native savage politeness.
+"Tu-Kila-Kila has sent for you," he said, in his grandest aristocratic
+air, "for your chief is a gentleman. He wishes to receive you. He saw
+your message-fire on the reef last night, and he knew you had come. He
+has made you a very great Taboo. He has put you under protection of Fire
+and Water."
+
+The people in the boats, with one accord, shouted out in wild chorus, as
+if to confirm his words, "Taboo! Taboo! Tu-Kila-Kila has said it! Taboo!
+Taboo! Ware Fire! Ware Water!"
+
+Though the dialect in which they spoke differed somewhat from that in use
+in Fiji, Felix could still make out with care almost every word of what
+the chief had said to him; and the universal Polynesian expression,
+"Taboo," in particular, somewhat reassured him as to their friendly
+intentions. Among remote heathen islanders like these, he felt sure, the
+very word itself was far too sacred to be taken in vain. They would
+respect its inviolability. He turned round to Muriel. "We must go with
+them," he said, shortly. "It's our one chance left of life now. Don't be
+too terrified; there is still some hope. They say somebody they call
+Tu-Kila-Kila has tabooed us. No one will dare to hurt us against so great
+a Taboo; for Tu-Kila-Kila is evidently some very important king or chief.
+You must step into the boat. It can't be avoided. If any harm is
+threatened, be sure I won't forget my promise."
+
+Muriel shrank back in alarm, and clung still to his arm now as
+naturally as she would have clung to a brother's. "Oh, Mr. Thurstan,"
+she cried--"Felix, I don't know what to say; I _can't_ go with them."
+
+Felix put his arm gently round her girlish waist, and half lifted her
+into the boat in spite of her reluctance. "You must," he said, with great
+firmness. "You must do as I say. I will watch over you, and take care of
+you. If the worst comes, I have always my knife, and I won't forget. Now,
+friend," he went on, in Fijian, turning round to the chief, as he took
+his seat in the canoe fearlessly among all those dusky, half-clad
+figures, "we are ready to start. We do not fear. We wish to go. Take
+us to Tu-Kila-Kila."
+
+And all the savages around, shouting in their surprise and awe, exclaimed
+once more in concert, "Tu-Kila-Kila is great. We will take them, as he
+bids us, forthwith to heaven."
+
+"What do they say?" Muriel cried, clinging close to the white man's side
+in her speechless terror. "Do you understand their language?"
+
+"Well, I can't quite make it out," Felix answered, much puzzled; "that is
+to say, not every word of it. They say they'll take us somewhere, I don't
+quite know where; but in Fijian, the word would certainly mean to
+heaven."
+
+Muriel shuddered visibly. "You don't think," she said, with a tremulous
+tongue, "they mean to kill us?"
+
+"No, I don't _think_ so," Felix replied, not over-confidently. "They said
+we were Taboo. But with savages like these, of course, one can never in
+any case be quite certain."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+ENROLLED IN OLYMPUS.
+
+
+They rowed across the lagoon, a mysterious procession, almost in
+silence--the canoe with the two Europeans going first, the others
+following at a slight distance--and landed at last on the brink of the
+central island.
+
+Several of the Boupari people leaped ashore at once; then they helped
+Felix and Muriel from the frail bark with almost deferential care, and
+led the way before them up a steep white path, that zigzagged through the
+forest toward the centre of the island. As they went, a band of natives
+preceded them in regular line of march, shouting "Taboo, taboo!" at short
+intervals, especially as they neared any group of fan-palm cottages. The
+women whom they met fell on their knees at once, till the strange
+procession had passed them by; the men only bowed their heads thrice, and
+made a rapid movement on their breasts with their fingers, which reminded
+Muriel at once of the sign of the cross in Catholic countries.
+
+So on they wended their way in silence through the deep tropical jungle,
+along a pathway just wide enough for three to walk abreast, till they
+emerged suddenly upon a large cleared space, in whose midst grew a great
+banyan-tree, with arms that dropped and rooted themselves like buttresses
+in the soil beneath. Under the banyan-tree a raised platform stood upon
+posts of bamboo. The platform was covered with fine network in yellow and
+red; and two little stools occupied the middle, as if placed there on
+purpose and waiting for their occupants.
+
+The man who had headed the first canoe turned round to Felix and motioned
+him forward. "This is Heaven," he said glibly, in his own tongue.
+"Spirits, ascend it!"
+
+Felix, much wondering what the ceremony could mean, mounted the platform
+without a word, in obedience to the chief's command, closely followed by
+Muriel, who dared not leave him for a second.
+
+"Bring water!" the chief said, shortly, in a voice of authority to one
+of his followers.
+
+The man handed up a calabash with a little water in it. The chief took
+the rude vessel from his hands in a reverential manner, and poured a few
+drops of the contents on Felix's head; the water trickled down over his
+hair and forehead. Involuntarily, Felix shook his head a little at the
+unexpected wetting, and scattered the drops right and left on his neck
+and shoulders. The chief watched this performance attentively with
+profound satisfaction. Then he turned to his attendants.
+
+"The spirit shakes his head," he said, with a deeply convinced air. "All
+is well. Heaven has chosen him. Korong! Korong! He is accepted for his
+purpose. It is well! It is well! Let us try the other one."
+
+He raised the calabash once more, and poured a few drops in like manner
+on Muriel's dark hair. The poor girl, trembling in every limb, shook her
+head also in the same unintentional fashion. The chief regarded her with
+still more complacent eyes.
+
+"It is well," he observed once more to his companions, smiling. "She,
+too, gives the sign of acceptance. Korong! Korong! Heaven is well pleased
+with both. See how her body trembles!"
+
+At that moment a girl came forward with a little basket of fruits. The
+chief chose a banana with care from the basket, peeled it with his dusky
+hands, broke it slowly in two, and handed one half very solemnly to
+Felix.
+
+"Eat, King of the Rain," he said, as he presented it. "The offering of
+Heaven."
+
+Felix ate it at once, thinking it best under the circumstances not to
+demur at all to anything his strange hosts might choose to impose upon
+him.
+
+The chief handed the other half just as solemnly to Muriel. "Eat, Queen
+of the Clouds," he said, as he placed it in her fingers. "The offering of
+Heaven."
+
+Muriel hesitated. She didn't know what his words meant, and it seemed to
+her rather the offering of a very dirty and unwashed savage. The chief
+eyed her hard. "For God's sake eat it, my child; he tells you to eat it!"
+Felix exclaimed in haste. Muriel lifted it to her lips and swallowed it
+down with difficulty. The man's dusky hands didn't inspire confidence.
+
+But the chief seemed relieved when he had seen her swallow it. "All is
+well done," he said, turning again to his followers. "We have obeyed the
+words of Tu-Kila-Kila, and his orders that he gave us. We have offered
+the strangers, the spirits from the sun, as a free gift to Heaven, and
+Heaven has accepted them. We have given them fruits, the fruits of the
+earth, and they have duly eaten them. Korong! Korong! The King of the
+Rain and the Queen of the Clouds have indeed come among us. They are
+truly gods. We will take them now, as he bid us, to Tu-Kila-Kila."
+
+"What have they done to us?" Muriel asked aside, in a terrified undertone
+of Felix.
+
+"I can't quite make out," Felix answered in the selfsame voice. "They
+call us the King of the Rain and the Queen of the Clouds in their own
+language. I think they imagine we've come from the sun and that we're a
+sort of spirits."
+
+At the sound of these words the girl who held the basket of fruits gave a
+sudden start. It almost seemed to Muriel as if she understood them. But
+when Muriel looked again she gave no further sign. She merely held her
+peace, and tried to appear wholly undisconcerted.
+
+The chief beckoned them down from the platform with a wave of his hand.
+They rose and followed him. As they rose the people around them bowed low
+to the ground. Felix could see they were bowing to Muriel and himself,
+not merely to the chief. A doubt flitted strangely across his mind for a
+moment. What could it all mean? Did they take the two strangers, then,
+for supernatural beings? Had they enrolled them as gods? If so, it might
+serve as some little protection for them.
+
+The procession formed again, three and three, three and three, in solemn
+silence. Then the chief walked in front of them with measured steps, and
+Felix and Muriel followed behind, wondering. As they went, the cry rose
+louder and louder than before, "Taboo! Taboo!" People who met them fell
+on their faces at once, as the chief cried out in a loud tone, "The King
+of the Rain! The Queen of the Clouds! Korong! Korong! They are coming!
+They are coming!"
+
+At last they reached a second cleared space, standing in a large garden
+of manilla, loquat, poncians, and hibiscus-trees. It was entered by a
+gate, a tall gate of bamboo posts. At the gate all the followers fell
+back to right and left, awe-struck. Only the chief went calmly on. He
+beckoned to Felix and Muriel to follow him.
+
+They entered, half terrified. Felix still grasped his open knife in his
+hand, ready to strike at any moment that might be necessary. The chief
+led them forward toward a very large tree near the centre of the garden.
+At the foot of the tree stood a hut, somewhat bigger and better built
+than any they had yet seen; and in front of the trunk a stalwart savage,
+very powerfully built, but with a sinister look in his cruel and lustful
+eye, was pacing up and down, like a sentinel on guard, a long spear in
+his right hand, and a tomahawk in his left, held close by his side, all
+ready for action. As he prowled up and down he seemed to be peering
+warily about him on every side, as if each instant he expected to be set
+upon by an enemy. But as the chief approached, the people without set up
+once more the cry of "Taboo! Taboo!" and the stalwart savage by the tree,
+laying down his spear and letting his tomahawk fall free, dropped in a
+second the air of watchful alarm, and advanced with some courtesy to
+greet the new-comers.
+
+"We have found them, Tu-Kila-Kila," the chief said, presenting them to
+the god with a graceful wave of his hand. "We have found the spirits that
+you brought from the sun, with the fire in their hands, and the light in
+boxes. We have taken them to Heaven. Heaven has accepted them. We have
+offered them fruit, and they have eaten the banana. The King of the
+Rain--the Queen of the Clouds! Korong! Receive them!"
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila glanced at them with an approving glance, strangely
+compounded of pleasure and terror. "They are plump," he said shortly.
+"They are indeed Korong. My sun has sent me an acceptable present."
+
+"What is your will that we should do with them?" the chief asked in a
+deeply deferential tone.
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila looked hard at Muriel--such a hateful look that the knife
+trembled irresolute for a second in Felix's hand. "Give them two fresh
+huts," he said, in a lordly way. "Give them divine platters. Give them
+all that they need. Make everything right for them."
+
+The chief bowed, and retired with an awed air from the presence. Exactly
+as he passed a certain line on the ground, marked white with a row of
+coral-sand, Tu-Kila-Kila seized his spear and his tomahawk once more, and
+mounted guard, as before, at the foot of the great tree where they had
+seen him pacing. An instantaneous change seemed to Muriel to come over
+his demeanor at that moment. While he spoke with the chief she noticed
+he looked all cruelty, lust, and hateful self-indulgence. Now that he
+paced up and down warily in front of that sacred floor, peering around
+him with keen suspicion, he seemed rather the personification of
+watchfulness, fear, and a certain slavish bodily terror. Especially, she
+observed, he cast upon Felix, as he went, a glance of angry hate; and yet
+he did not attempt to hurt or molest him in any way, defenceless as they
+both were before those numerous savages.
+
+As they emerged from the enclosure, the girl with the fruit basket stood
+near the gate, looking outward from the wall, her face turned away from
+the awful home of Tu-Kila-Kila. At the moment when Muriel passed, to her
+immense astonishment the girl spoke to her. "Don't be afraid, missy," she
+said in English, in a rather low voice, without obtrusively approaching
+them. "Boupari man not going to hurt you. Me going to be your servant. Me
+name Mali. Me very good girl. Me take plenty care of you."
+
+The unexpected sound of her own language, in the midst of so much
+unmitigated savagery, took Muriel fairly by surprise. She looked hard at
+the girl, but thought it wisest to answer nothing. This particular young
+woman, indeed, was just as dark, and to all appearance just as much of a
+savage, as any of the rest of them. But she could speak English, at any
+rate! And she said she was to be Muriel's servant!
+
+The chief led them back to the shore, talking volubly all the way in
+Polynesia to Felix. His dialect differed so much from the Fijian that
+when he spoke first Felix could hardly follow him. But he gathered
+vaguely, nevertheless, that they were to be well housed and fed for the
+present at the public expense; and even that something which the chief
+clearly regarded as a very great honor was in store for them in the
+future. Whatever these people's particular superstition might be, it
+seemed pretty evident at least that it told in the strangers' favor.
+Felix almost began to hope they might manage to live there pretty
+tolerably for the next two or three weeks, and perhaps to signal in time
+to some passing Australian liner.
+
+The rest of that wonderful eventful day was wholly occupied with
+practical details. Before long, two adjacent huts were found for them,
+near the shore of the lagoon; and Felix noticed with pleasure, not only
+that the huts themselves were new and clean, but also that the chief took
+great care to place round both of them a single circular line of white
+coral-sand, like the one he had noticed at Tu-Kila-Kila's palace-temple.
+He felt sure this white line made the space within taboo. No native would
+dare without leave to cross it.
+
+When the line was well marked out round the two huts together, the chief
+went away for a while, leaving the Europeans within their broad white
+circle, guarded by an angry-looking band of natives with long spears at
+rest, all pointed inward. The natives themselves stood well without the
+ring, but the points of their spears almost reached the line, and it was
+clear they would not for the present permit the Europeans to leave the
+charmed circle.
+
+Presently, the chief returned again, followed by two other natives in
+official costumes. One of them was a tall and handsome young man, dressed
+in a long robe or cloak of yellow feathers. The other was stouter, and
+perhaps forty or thereabouts; he wore a short cape of white albatross
+plumes, with a girdle of shells at his waist, interspersed with red
+coral.
+
+"The King of Fire will make Taboo," the chief said, solemnly.
+
+The young man with the cloak of yellow feathers stepped forward and
+spoke, toeing the line with his left foot, and brandishing a lighted
+stick in his right hand. "Taboo! Taboo! Taboo!" he cried aloud, with
+emphasis. "If any man dare to transgress this line without leave, I burn
+him to ashes. If any woman, I scorch her to a cinder. Taboo to the King
+of the Rain and the Queen of the Clouds. Taboo! Taboo! Taboo! Korong! I
+say it."
+
+He stepped back into the ranks with an air of duty performed. The chief
+looked about him curiously a moment. "The King of Water will make Taboo,"
+he repeated after a pause, in the same deep tone of profound conviction.
+
+The stouter man in the short white cape stepped forward in his turn. He
+toed the line with his naked left foot; in his brown right hand he
+carried a calabash of water. "Taboo! Taboo! Taboo!" he exclaimed aloud,
+pouring out the water upon the ground symbolically. "If any man dare to
+transgress this line without leave, I drown him in his canoe. If any
+woman, I drag her alive into the spring as she fetches water. Taboo to
+the King of the Rain and the Queen of the Clouds. Taboo! Taboo! Taboo!
+Korong! I say it."
+
+"What does it all mean?" Muriel whispered, terrified.
+
+Felix explained to her, as far as he could, in a few hurried sentences.
+"There's only one word in it I don't understand," he added, hastily, "and
+that's Korong. It doesn't occur in Fiji. They keep saying we're Korong,
+whatever that may mean; and evidently they attach some very great
+importance to it."
+
+"Let the Shadows come forward," the chief said, looking up with an air of
+dignity.
+
+A good-looking young man, and the girl who said her name was Mali,
+stepped forth from the crowd, and fell on their knees before him.
+
+The chief laid his hand on the young man's shoulder and raised him up.
+"The Shadow of the King of the Rain," he cried, turning him three times
+round. "Follow him in all his incomings and his outgoings, and serve
+him faithfully! Taboo! Taboo! Pass within the sacred circle!"
+
+He clapped his hands. The young man crossed the line with a sort of
+reverent reluctance, and took his place within the ring, close up to
+Felix.
+
+The chief laid his hand on Mali's shoulder. "The Shadow of the Queen of
+the Clouds," he said, turning her three times round. "Follow her in all
+her incomings and outgoings, and serve her faithfully. Taboo! Taboo!
+Pass within the sacred circle!"
+
+Then he waved both hands to Felix. "Go where you will now," he said.
+"Your Shadow will follow you. You are free as the rain that drops where
+it will. You are as free as the clouds that roam through heaven. No man
+will hinder you."
+
+And in a moment the spearmen dropped their spears in concert, the crowd
+fell back, and the villagers dispersed as if by magic, to their own
+houses.
+
+But Felix and Muriel were left alone beside their huts, guarded only in
+silence by their two mystic Shadows.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+FIRST DAYS IN BOUPARI.
+
+
+Throughout that day the natives brought them, from time to time, numerous
+presents of yam, bananas, and bread-fruit, neatly arranged in little
+palm-leaf baskets. A few of them brought eggs as well, and one offering
+even included a live chicken. But the people who brought them, and who
+were mostly young girls just entering upon womanhood, did not venture to
+cross the white line of coral-sand that surrounded the huts; they laid
+down their presents, with many salaams, on the ground outside, and then
+waited with a half-startled, half-reverent air for one or other of the
+two Shadows to come out and fetch them. As soon as the baskets were
+carried well within the marked line, the young girls exhibited every sign
+of pleasure, and calling aloud, "Korong! Korong!"--that mysterious
+Polynesian word of whose import Felix was ignorant--they retired once
+more by tortuous paths through the surrounding jungle.
+
+"Why do they bring us presents?" Felix asked at last of his Shadow, after
+this curious pantomime had been performed some three or four times. "Are
+they always going to keep us in such plenty?"
+
+The Shadow looked back at him with an air of considerable surprise. "They
+bring presents, of course," he said, in his own tongue, "because they are
+badly in want of rain. We have had much drought of late in Boupari; we
+need water from heaven. The banana-bushes wither; the flowers on the
+bread-fruit tree do not swell to breadfruit; the yams are thirsty.
+Therefore the fathers send their daughters with presents, maidens of the
+villages, all marriageable girls, to ask for rainfall. But they will
+always provide for you, and also for the Queen, however you behave; for
+you are both Korong. Tu-Kila-Kila has said so, and Heaven has accepted
+you."
+
+"What do you mean by Korong?" Felix asked, with some trepidation.
+
+The Shadow merely looked back at him with a sort of blank surprise that
+anybody should be ignorant of so simple a conception. "Why, Korong is
+Korong," he answered, aghast. "You are Korong yourself. The Queen of the
+Clouds is Korong, too. You are both Korong; that is why they all treat
+you with such respect and reverence."
+
+And that was as much as Felix could elicit by his subtlest questions from
+his taciturn Shadow.
+
+In fact, it was clear that in the open, at least, the Shadow was averse
+to being observed in familiar conversation with Felix. During the heat of
+the day, however, when they sat alone within the hut, he was much more
+communicative. Then he launched forth pretty freely into talk about the
+island and its life, which would no doubt have largely enlightened Felix,
+had it not been for two drawbacks to their means of inter-communication.
+In the first place, the Boupari dialect, though agreeing in all
+essentials with the Polynesian of Fiji, nevertheless contained a great
+many words and colloquial expressions unknown to the Fijians; this being
+particularly the case, as Felix soon remarked, in the whole vocabulary of
+religious rites and ceremonies. And in the second place, the Shadow was
+so rigidly bound by his own narrow and insular set of ideas, that he
+couldn't understand the difficulty Felix felt in throwing himself into
+them. Over and over again, when Felix asked him to explain some word or
+custom, he would repeat, with naïve impatience, "Why, Korong is Korong,"
+or "Tula is just Tula; even a child must surely know what Tula is; much
+more yourself, who are indeed Korong, and who have come from the sun to
+bring fresh fire to us."
+
+In the adjoining hut, Muriel, who was now beginning in some small degree
+to get rid of her most pressing fear for the immediate future, and whom
+the obvious reality of the taboo had reassured for the moment, sat with
+Mali, her own particular Shadow, unravelling the mystery of the girl's
+knowledge of English.
+
+Mali, indeed, like the other Shadow, showed every disposition to indulge
+in abundant conversation, as soon as she found herself well within the
+hut, alone with her mistress, and secluded from the prying eyes of all
+the other islanders.
+
+"Don't you be afraid, missy," she said, with genuine kindliness in her
+tone, as soon as the gifts of yam and bread-fruit had all been duly
+housed and garnered. "No harm come to you. You Korong, you know. You very
+great Taboo. Tu-Kila-Kila send King of Fire and King of Water to make
+taboo over you, so nobody hurt you."
+
+Muriel burst into tears at the sound of her own language from those dusky
+lips, and exclaimed through her sobs, clinging to the girl's hand for
+comfort as she spoke, "Why, how did you ever come to speak English?--tell
+me."
+
+Mali looked up at her with a half-astonished air. "Oh, I servant in
+Queensland, of course, missy," she answered, with great composure. "Labor
+vessel come to my island, far away, four, five years ago, steal boy,
+steal woman. My papa just kill my mamma, because he angry with her, so no
+want daughters. So my papa sell me and my sister for plenty rum, plenty
+tobacco, to gentlemen in labor vessel. Gentlemen in labor vessel take
+Jani and me away, away, to Queensland. Big sea; long voyage. We stop
+there three yam--three years--do service; then great chief in Queensland
+send us back to my island. My island too faraway; gentleman on ship not
+find it out; so he land us in little boat on Boupari. Boupari people make
+temple slave of us." And that was all; to her quite a commonplace,
+everyday history.
+
+"I see," Muriel cried. "Then you've been for three years in Australia!
+And there you learned English. Why, what did you do there?"
+
+Mali looked back at her with the same matter-of-fact air of composure as
+before. "Oh, me nurse at first," she said, shortly. "Then after, me
+housemaid, live three year in gentleman's house, good gentleman that buy
+me. Take care of little girl; clean rooms; do everything. Me know how to
+make English lady quite comfortable. Me tell that to chief; that make him
+say, 'Mali, you be Queenie's Shadow.'"
+
+To Muriel in her loneliness even such companionship as that was indeed a
+consolation. "Oh, I'm so glad you told him," she cried. "If we have to
+stop here long, before a ship takes us off, it'll be so nice to have you
+here all the time with me. You won't go away from me ever, will you?
+You'll always stop with me!"
+
+The girl's surprise showed more profoundly than ever. "Me can't go
+away," she answered, with emphasis. "Me your Shadow. That great Taboo.
+Tu-Kila-Kila great god. If me go away, Tu-Kila-Kila kill me and eat me."
+
+Muriel started back in horror. "But, Mali," she said, looking hard at the
+girl's pleasant brown face, "if you were three years in Australia, you're
+a Christian, surely!"
+
+The girl nodded her head in passive acquiescence. "Me Christian in
+Australia," she answered. "Of course me Christian. All folks make
+Christian when him go to Queensland. That what for me call Mali, and my
+sister Jani. We have other names on my own island; but when we go to
+Queensland, gentleman baptize us, call us Mali and Jani. Me Methodist in
+Queensland. Methodist very good. But Methodist god no live in Boupari.
+Not any good be Methodist here any longer. Tu-Kila-Kila god here. Him
+very powerful."
+
+"What! Not that dreadful creature that they took us to see this morning!"
+Muriel exclaimed, in horror. "Oh, Mali, you can't mean to say they think
+he's a _god_, that awful man there!"
+
+Mali nodded her assent with profound conviction. "Yes, yes; him god," she
+repeated, confidently. "Him very powerful. My sister Jani go too near him
+temple, against taboo--because her not belong-a Tu-Kila-Kila temple; and
+last night, when it great feast, plenty men catch Jani, and tie him up in
+rope; and Tu-Kila-Kila kill him, and plenty Boupari men help Tu-Kila-Kila
+eat up Jani."
+
+She said it in the same simple, matter-of-fact way as she had said that
+she was a nurse for three years in Queensland. To her it was a common
+incident of everyday life. Such accidents _will_ happen, if you break
+taboo and go too near forbidden temples.
+
+But Muriel drew back, and let the pleasant-looking brown girl's hand drop
+suddenly. "You can't mean it," she cried. "You can't mean he's a god!
+Such a wicked man as that! Oh, his very look's too horrible."
+
+Mali drew back in her turn with a somewhat terrified air, and peeped
+suspiciously around her, as if to make sure whether any one was
+listening. "Oh, hush," she said, anxiously. "Don't must talk like that.
+If Tu-Kila-Kila hear, him scorch us up to ashes. Him very great god!
+Him good! Him powerful!"
+
+"How can he be good if he does such awful things?" Muriel exclaimed,
+energetically.
+
+Mali peered around her once more with terrified eyes in the same uneasy
+way. "Take care," she said again. "Him god! Him powerful! Him can do no
+wrong. Him King of the Trees! Him King of Heaven! On Boupari island,
+Methodist god not much; no god so great like Tu-Kila-Kila."
+
+"But a _man_ can't be a god!" Muriel exclaimed, contemptuously. "He's
+nothing but a man! a savage! A cannibal!"
+
+Mali looked back at her in wondering surprise. "Not in Queensland," she
+answered, calmly--to her, all the world naturally divided itself into
+Queensland and Polynesia--"no god in Queensland. Governor, him very great
+chief; but him no god like Tu-Kila-Kila. Methodist god in sky, him only
+god that live in Queensland. But no use worship Methodist god over here
+in Boupari. Him no live here. Tu-Kila-Kila live here. All god here make
+out of man. Live in man. Korong! What for you say a man can't be a god!
+You god yourself! White gentleman there, god! Korong, Korong. Chief put
+you in Heaven, so make you a god. People pray to you now. People bring
+you presents."
+
+"You don't mean to say," Muriel cried, "they bring me these things
+because they think me a goddess?"
+
+Mali nodded a grave assent. "Same like people give money in church in
+Queensland," she answered, promptly. "Ask you make rain, make plenty
+crop, make bread-fruit grow, make banana, make plantain. You Korong now.
+While your time last, Queenie, people give you plenty of present."
+
+"While my time last?" Muriel repeated, with a curious sense of discomfort
+creeping over her slowly.
+
+The girl nodded an easy assent. "Yes, while your time last," she
+answered, laying a small bundle of palm-leaves at Muriel's back by way of
+a cushion. "For now you Korong. By and by, Korong pass to somebody else.
+This year, you Korong. So people worship you."
+
+But nothing that Muriel could say would induce the girl further to
+explain her meaning. She shook her head and looked very wise. "When a god
+come into somebody," she said, nodding toward Muriel in a mysterious way,
+"then him god himself; him Korong. When the god go away from him, him
+Korong no longer; somebody else Korong. Queenie Korong now; so people
+worship him. While him time last, people plenty kind to him."
+
+The day passed away, and night came on. As it approached, heavy clouds
+drifted up from eastward. Mali busied herself with laying out a rough bed
+in the hut for Muriel, and making her a pillow of soft moss and the
+curious lichen-like material that hangs parasitic from the trees, and is
+commonly known as "old man's beard." As both Mali and Felix assured her
+confidently no harm would come to her within so strict a Taboo, Muriel,
+worn out with fatigue and terror, lay down at last and slept soundly on
+this native substitute for a bedstead. She slept without dreaming, while
+Mali lay at her feet, ready at a moment's call. It was all so strange;
+and yet she was too utterly wearied to do otherwise than sleep, in spite
+of her strange and terrible surroundings.
+
+Felix slept, too, for some hours, but woke with a start in the night. It
+was raining heavily. He could hear the loud patter of a fierce tropical
+shower on the roof of his hut. His Shadow, at his feet, slept still
+unmoved; but when Felix rose on his elbow, the Shadow rose on a sudden,
+too, and confronted him curiously. The young man heard the rain; then he
+bowed down his face with an awed air, not visible, but audible, in the
+still darkness. "It has come!" he said, with superstitious terror. "It
+has come at last! my lord has brought it!"
+
+After that, Felix lay awake for some hours, hearing the rain on the roof,
+and puzzled in his own head by a half-uncertain memory. What was it in
+his school reading that that ceremony with the water indefinitely
+reminded him of? Wasn't there some Greek or Roman superstition about
+shaking your head when water was poured upon it? What could that
+superstition be, and what light might it cast on that mysterious
+ceremony? He wished he could remember; but it was so long since he'd read
+it, and he never cared much at school for Greek or Roman antiquities.
+
+Suddenly, in a lull of the rain, the whole context at once came back with
+a rush to him. He remembered now he had read it, some time or other, in
+some classical dictionary. It was a custom connected with Greek
+sacrifices. The officiating priest poured water or wine on the head of
+the sheep, bullock, or other victim. If the victim shook its head and
+knocked off the drops, that was a sign that it was fit for the sacrifice,
+and that the god accepted it. If the victim trembled visibly, that was a
+most favorable omen. If it stood quite still and didn't move its neck,
+then the god rejected it as unfit for his purpose. Couldn't _that_ be the
+meaning of the ceremony performed on Muriel and himself in "Heaven" that
+morning? Were they merely intended as human sacrifices? Were they to be
+kept meanwhile and, as it were, fed up for the slaughter? It was too
+horrible to believe; yet it almost looked like it.
+
+He wished he knew the meaning of that strange word, "Korong." Clearly, it
+contained the true key to the mystery.
+
+Anyhow, he had always his trusty knife. If the worst came to the
+worst--those wretches should never harm his spotless Muriel.
+
+For he loved her to-night; he would watch over and protect her. He would
+save her at least from the deadliest of insults.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+INTERCHANGE OF CIVILITIES.
+
+
+All night long, without intermission, the heavy tropical rain descended
+in torrents; at sunrise it ceased, and a bright blue vault of sky stood
+in a spotless dome over the island of Boupari.
+
+As soon as the sun was well risen, and the rain had ceased, one shy
+native girl after another came straggling up timidly to the white line
+that marked the taboo round Felix and Muriel's huts. They came with more
+baskets of fruit and eggs. Humbly saluting three times as they drew near,
+they laid down their gifts modestly just outside the line, with many loud
+ejaculations of praise and gratitude to the gods in their own language.
+
+"What do they say?" Muriel asked, in a dazed and frightened way, looking
+out of the hut door, and turning in wonder to Mali.
+
+"They say, 'Thank you, Queenie, for rain and fruits,'" Mali answered,
+unconcerned, bustling about in the hut. "Missy want to wash him face and
+hands this morning? Lady always wash every day over yonder in
+Queensland."
+
+Muriel nodded assent. It was all so strange to her. But Mali went to the
+door and beckoned carelessly to one of the native girls just outside, who
+drew near the line at the summons, with a somewhat frightened air,
+putting one finger to her mouth in coyly uncertain savage fashion.
+
+"Fetch me water from the spring!" Mali said, authoritatively, in
+Polynesian. Without a moment's delay the girl darted off at the top of
+her speed, and soon returned with a large calabash full of fresh cool
+water, which she lay down respectfully by the taboo line, not daring to
+cross it.
+
+"Why didn't you get it yourself?" Muriel asked of her Shadow, rather
+relieved than otherwise that Mali hadn't left her. It was something in
+these dire straits to have somebody always near who could at least speak
+a little English.
+
+Mali started back in surprise. "Oh, that would never do," she answered,
+catching a colloquial phrase she had often heard long before in
+Queensland. "Me missy's Shadow. That great Taboo. If me go away out of
+missy's sight, very big sin--very big danger. Man-a-Boupari catch me and
+kill me like Jani, for no me stop and wait all the time on missy."
+
+It was clear that human life was held very cheap on the island of
+Boupari.
+
+Muriel made her scanty toilet in the hut as well as she was able, with
+the calabash and water, aided by a rough shell comb which Mali had
+provided for her. Then she breakfasted, not ill, off eggs and fruit,
+which Mali cooked with some rude native skill over the open-air fire
+without in the precincts.
+
+After breakfast, Felix came in to inquire how she had passed the night in
+her new quarters. Already Muriel felt how odd was the contrast between
+the quiet politeness of his manner as an English gentleman and the
+strange savage surroundings in which they both now found themselves.
+Civilization is an attribute of communities; we necessarily leave it
+behind when we find ourselves isolated among barbarians or savages. But
+culture is a purely personal and individual possession; we carry it with
+us wherever we go; and no circumstances of life can ever deprive us of
+it.
+
+As they sat there talking, with a deep and abiding sense of awe at the
+change (Muriel more conscious than ever now of how deep was her interest
+in Felix Thurstan, who represented for her all that was dearest and best
+in England), a curious noise, as of a discordant drum or tom-tom, beaten
+in a sort of recurrent tune, was heard toward the hills; and at its very
+first sound both the Shadows, flinging themselves upon their faces with
+every sign of terror, endeavored to hide themselves under the native mats
+with which the bare little hut was roughly carpeted.
+
+"What's the matter?" Felix cried, in English, to Mali; for Muriel had
+already explained to him how the girl had picked up some knowledge of our
+tongue in Queensland.
+
+Mali trembled in every limb, so that she could hardly speak.
+"Tu-Kila-Kila come," she answered, all breathless. "No blackfellow look
+at him. Burn blackfellow up. You and Missy Korong. All right for you. Go
+out to meet him!"
+
+"Tu-Kila-Kila is coming," the young man-Shadow said, in Polynesian,
+almost in the same breath, and no less tremulously. "We dare not look
+upon his face lest he burn us to ashes. He is a very great Taboo. His
+face is fire. But you two are gods. Step forth to receive him."
+
+Felix took Muriel's hand in his, somewhat trembling himself, and led her
+forth on to the open space in front of the huts to meet the man-god. She
+followed him like a child. She was woman enough for that. She had
+implicit trust in him.
+
+As they emerged, a strange procession met their eyes unawares, coming
+down the zig-zag path that led from the hills to the shore of the lagoon,
+where their huts were situated. At its head marched two men--tall,
+straight, and supple--wearing huge feather masks over their faces, and
+beating tom-toms, decorated with long strings of shiny cowries. After
+them, in order, came a sort of hollow square of chiefs or warriors,
+surrounding with fan-palms a central object all shrouded from the view
+with the utmost precaution. This central object was covered with a huge
+regal umbrella, from whose edge hung rows of small nautilus and other
+shells, so as to form a kind of screen, like the Japanese portières now
+so common in English doorways. Two supporters held it up, one on either
+side, in long cloaks of feathers. Under the umbrella, a man seemed to
+move; and as he approached, the natives, to right and left, fled
+precipitately to their huts, snatching up their naked little ones from
+the ground as they went, and crying aloud, "Taboo, Taboo! He comes! he
+comes. Tu-Kila-Kila! Tu-Kila-Kila!"
+
+The procession wound slowly on, unheeding these common creatures, till it
+reached the huts. Then the chiefs who formed the hollow square fell back
+one by one, and the man under the umbrella, with his two supporters, came
+forward boldly. Felix noticed that they crossed without scruple the thick
+white line of sand which all the other natives so carefully respected.
+The man within the umbrella drew aside the curtain of hanging nautilus
+shells. His face was covered with a thin mask of paper mulberry bark; but
+Felix knew he was the self-same person whom they had seen the day before
+in the central temple.
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila's air was more insolent and arrogant than even before. He
+was clearly in high spirits. "You have done well, O King of the Rain," he
+said, turning gayly to Felix; "and you too, O Queen of the Clouds; you
+have done right bravely. We have all acquitted ourselves as our people
+would wish. We have made our showers to descend abundantly from heaven;
+we have caused the crops to grow; we have wetted the plantain bushes.
+See; Tu-Kila-Kila, who is so great a god, has come from his own home on
+the hills to greet you."
+
+"It has certainly rained in the night," Felix answered, dryly.
+
+But Tu-Kila-Kila was not to be put off thus. Adjusting his thin mask or
+veil of bark, so as to hide his face more thoroughly from the inferior
+god, he turned round once more to the chiefs, who even so hardly dared to
+look openly upon him. Then he struck an attitude. The man was clearly
+bursting with spiritual pride. He knew himself to be a god, and was
+filled with the insolence of his supernatural power. "See, my people," he
+cried, holding up his hands, palm outward, in his accustomed god-like
+way; "I am indeed a great deity--Lord of Heaven, Lord of Earth, Life of
+the World, Master of Time, Measurer of the Sun's Course, Spirit of
+Growth, Creator of the Harvest, Master of Mortals, Bestower of Breath
+upon Men, Chief Pillar of Heaven!"
+
+The warriors bowed down before their bloated master with unquestioning
+assent. "Giver of Life to all the host of the gods," they cried, "you are
+indeed a mighty one. Weigher of the equipoise of Heaven and Earth, we
+acknowledge your might; we give you thanks eternally."
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila swelled with visible importance. "Did I not tell you, my
+meat," he exclaimed, "I would bring you new gods, great spirits from the
+sun, fetchers of fire from my bright home in the heavens? And have they
+not come? Are they not here to-day? Have they not brought the precious
+gift of fresh fire with them?"
+
+"Tu-Kila-Kila speaks true," the chiefs echoed, submissively, with bent
+heads.
+
+"Did I not make one of them King of the Rain?" Tu-Kila-Kila asked once
+more, stretching one hand toward the sky with theatrical magnificence.
+"Did I not declare the other Queen of the Clouds in Heaven? And have I
+not caused them to bring down showers this night upon our crops? Has not
+the dry earth drunk? Am I not the great god, the Saviour of Boupari?"
+
+"Tu-Kila-Kila says well," the chiefs responded, once more, in unanimous
+chorus.
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila struck another attitude with childish self-satisfaction.
+"I go into the hut to speak with my ministers," he said, grandiloquently.
+"Fire and Water, wait you here outside while I enter and speak with my
+friends from the sun, whom I have brought for the salvation of the crops
+to Boupari."
+
+The King of Fire and the King of Water, supporting the umbrella, bowed
+assent to his words. Tu-Kila-Kila motioned Felix and Muriel into the
+nearest hut. It was the one where the two Shadows lay crouching in terror
+among the native mats. As the god tried to enter, the two cowering
+wretches set up a loud shout, "Taboo! Taboo! Mercy! Mercy! Mercy!"
+Tu-Kila-Kila retreated with a contemptuous smile. "I want to see you
+alone," he said, in Polynesian, to Felix. "Is the other hut empty? If
+not, go in and cut their throats who sit there, and make the place a
+solitude for Tu-Kila-Kila."
+
+"There is no one in the hut," Felix answered, with a nod, concealing his
+disgust at the command as far as he was able.
+
+"That is well," Tu-Kila-Kila answered, and walked into it carelessly.
+Felix followed him close and deemed it best to make Muriel enter also.
+
+As soon-as they were alone, Tu-Kila-Kila's manner altered greatly. "Come,
+now," he said, quite genially, yet with a curious under-current of hate
+in his steely gray eye; "we three are all gods. We who are in heaven need
+have no secrets from one another. Tell me the truth; did you really come
+to us direct from the sun, or are you sailing gods, dropped from a great
+canoe belonging to the warriors who seek laborers for the white men in
+the distant country?"
+
+Felix told him briefly, in as few words as possible, the story of their
+arrival.
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila listened with lively interest, then he said, very
+decisively, with great bravado, "It was _I_ who made the big wave wash
+your sister overboard. I sent it to your ship. I wanted a Korong just now
+in Boupari. It was _I_ who brought you."
+
+"You are mistaken," Felix said, simply, not thinking it worth while to
+contradict him further. "It was a purely natural accident."
+
+"Well, tell me," the savage god went on once more, eying him close and
+sharp, "they say you have brought fresh fire from the sun with you, and
+that you know how to make it burst out like lightning at will. My people
+have seen it. They tell me the wonder. I wish to see it too. We are all
+gods here; we need have no secrets. Only, I didn't want to let those
+common people outside see I asked you to show me. Make fire leap forth. I
+desire to behold it."
+
+Felix took out the match-box from his pocket, and struck a vesta
+carefully. Tu-Kila-Kila looked on with profound interest. "It is
+wonderful," he said, taking the vesta in his own hand as it burned, and
+examining it closely. "I have heard of this before, but I have never seen
+it. You are indeed gods, you white men, you sailors of the sea." He
+glanced at Muriel. "And the woman, too," he said, with a horrible leer,
+"the woman is pretty."
+
+Felix took the measure of his man at once. He opened his knife, and held
+it up threateningly. "See here, fellow," he said, in a low, slow tone,
+but with great decision, "if you dare to speak or look like that at that
+lady--god or no god, I'll drive this knife straight up to the handle in
+your heart, though your people kill me for it afterward ten thousand
+times over. I am not afraid of you. These savages may be afraid, and may
+think you are a god; but if you are, then I am a god ten thousand times
+stronger than you. One more word--one more look like that, I say--and
+I plunge this knife remorselessly into you."
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila drew back, and smiled benignly. Stalwart ruffian as he was,
+and absolute master of his own people's lives, he was yet afraid in a way
+of the strange new-comer. Vague stories of the men with white faces--the
+"sailing gods"--had reached him from time to time; and though only twice
+within his memory had European boats landed on his island, he yet knew
+enough of the race to know that they were at least very powerful
+deities--more powerful with their weapons than even he was. Besides, a
+man who could draw down fire from heaven with a piece of wax and a little
+metal box might surely wither him to ashes, if he would, as he stood
+before him. The very fact that Felix bearded him thus openly to his face
+astonished and somewhat terrified the superstitious savage. Everybody
+else on the island was afraid of him; then certainly a man who was not
+afraid must be the possessor of some most efficacious and magical
+medicine. His one fear now was lest his followers should hear and
+discover his discomfiture. He peered about him cautiously, with that
+careful gleam shining bright in his eye; then he said with a leer, in a
+very low voice, "We two need not quarrel. We are both of us gods. Neither
+of us is the stronger. We are equal, that's all. Let us live like
+brothers, not like enemies, on the island."
+
+"I don't want to be your brother," Felix answered, unable to conceal his
+loathing any more. "I hate and detest you."
+
+"What does he say?" Muriel asked, in an agony of fear at the savage's
+black looks. "Is he going to kill us?"
+
+"No," Felix answered, boldly. "I think he's afraid of us. He's going to
+do nothing. You needn't fear him."
+
+"Can she not speak?" the savage asked, pointing with his finger somewhat
+rudely toward Muriel. "Has she no voice but this, the chatter of birds?
+Does she not know the human language?"
+
+"She can speak," Felix replied, placing himself like a shield between
+Muriel and the astonished savage. "She can speak the language of the
+people of our distant country--a beautiful language which is as far
+superior to the speech of the brown men of Polynesia as the sun in the
+heavens is superior to the light of a candlenut. But she can't speak the
+wretched tongue of you Boupari cannibals. I thank Heaven she can't, for
+it saves her from understanding the hateful things your people would say
+of her. Now go! I have seen already enough of you. I am not afraid.
+Remember, I am as powerful a god as you. I need not fear. You cannot hurt
+me."
+
+A baleful light gleamed in the cannibal's eye. But he thought it best to
+temporize. Powerful as he was on his island, there was one thing yet more
+powerful by far than he; and that was Taboo--the custom and superstition
+handed down from his ancestors, These strangers were Korong; he dare not
+touch them, except in the way and manner and time appointed by custom. If
+he did, god as he was, his people themselves would turn and rend him. He
+was a god, but he was bound on every side by the strictest taboos. He
+dare not himself offer violence to Felix.
+
+So he turned with a smile and bided his time. He knew it would come. He
+could afford to laugh. Then, going to the door, he said, with his grand
+affable manner to his chiefs around, "I have spoken with the gods, my
+ministers, within. They have kissed my hands. My rain has fallen. All is
+well in the land. Arise, let us go away hence to my temple."
+
+The savages put themselves in marching order at once. "It is the voice of
+a god," they said, reverently. "Let us take back Tu-Kila-Kila to his
+temple home. Let us escort the lord of the divine umbrella. Wherever he
+is, there trees and plants put forth green leaves and flourish. At his
+bidding flowers bloom and springs of water rise up in fountains. His
+presence diffuses heavenly blessings."
+
+"I think," Felix said, turning to poor, terrified Muriel, "I've sent the
+wretch away with a bee in his bonnet."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+THE CUSTOMS OF BOUPARI.
+
+
+Human nature cannot always keep on the full stretch of excitement. It was
+wonderful to both Felix and Muriel how soon they settled down into a
+quiet routine of life on the island of Boupari. A week passed away--two
+weeks--three weeks--and the chances of release seemed to grow slenderer
+and slenderer. All they could do now was to wait for the stray accident
+of a passing ship, and then try, if possible, to signal it, or to put out
+to it in a canoe, if the natives would allow them.
+
+Meanwhile, their lives for the moment seemed fairly safe. Though for the
+first few days they lived in constant alarm, this feeling, after a time,
+gave way to one of comparative security. The strange institution of Taboo
+protected them more efficiently in their wattled huts than the whole
+police force of London could have done in a Belgravian mansion. There
+thieves break through and steal, in spite of bolts and bars and
+metropolitan constables; but at Boupari no native, however daring or
+however wicked, would ever venture to transgress the narrow line of white
+coral sand which protected the castaways like an intangible wall from all
+outer interference. Within this impalpable ring-fence they were
+absolutely safe from all rude intrusion, save that of the two Shadows,
+who waited upon them, day and night, with unfailing willingness.
+
+In other respects, considering the circumstances, their life was an easy
+one. The natives brought them freely of their simple store--yam, taro,
+bread-fruit, and cocoanut, with plenty of fish, crabs, and lobsters, as
+well as eggs by the basketful, and even sometimes chickens. They required
+no pay beyond a nod and a smile, and went away happy at those slender
+recognitions. Felix discovered, in fact, that they had got into a region
+where the arid generalizations of political economy do not apply; where
+Adam Smith is unread, and Mill neglected; where the medium of exchange is
+an unknown quantity, and where supply and demand readjust themselves
+continuously by simpler and more generous principles than the familiar
+European one of "the higgling of the market."
+
+The people, too, though utter savages, were not in their own way
+altogether unpleasing. It was their customs and superstitions, rather
+than themselves, that were so cruel and horrible. Personally, they seemed
+for the most part simple-minded and good natured creatures. At first,
+indeed, Muriel was afraid to venture for a step beyond the precincts of
+their own huts; and it was long before she could make up her mind to go
+alone through the jungle paths with Mali, unaccompanied by Felix. But by
+degrees she learned that she could walk by herself (of course, with the
+inevitable Shadow ever by her side) over the whole island, and meet
+everywhere with nothing from men, women, and children but the utmost
+respect and gracious courtesy. The young lads, as she passed, would stand
+aside from the path, with downcast eyes, and let her go by with all the
+politeness of chivalrous English gentlemen. The old men would raise their
+eyes, but cross their hands on their breasts, and stand motionless for a
+few minutes till she got almost out of sight. The women would bring their
+pretty brown babies for the fair English lady to admire or to pat on the
+head; and when Muriel now and again stooped down to caress some fat
+little naked child, lolling in the dust outside the hut, with true
+tropical laziness, the mothers would run up at the sight with delight and
+joy, and throw themselves down in ecstacies of gratitude for the notice
+she had taken of their favored little ones. "The gods of Heaven," they
+would say, with every sign of pleasure, "have looked graciously upon our
+Unaloa."
+
+At first Felix and Muriel were mainly struck with the politeness and
+deference which the natives displayed toward them. But after a time Felix
+at least began to observe, behind it all, that a certain amount of
+affection, and even of something like commiseration as well, seemed to be
+mingled with the respect and reverence showered upon them by their hosts.
+The women, especially, were often evidently touched by Muriel's innocence
+and beauty. As she walked past their huts with her light, girlish tread,
+they would come forth shyly, bowing many times as they approached, and
+offer her a long spray of the flowering hibiscus, or a pretty garland of
+crimson ti-leaves, saying at the same time, many times over, in their own
+tongue, "Receive it, Korong; receive it, Queen of the Clouds! You are
+good. You are kind. You are a daughter of the Sun. We are glad you have
+come to us."
+
+A young girl soon makes herself at home anywhere; and Muriel, protected
+alike by her native innocence and by the invisible cloak of Polynesian
+taboo, quickly learned to understand and to sympathize with these poor
+dusky mothers. One morning, some weeks after their arrival, she passed
+down the main street of the village, accompanied by Felix and their two
+attendants, and reached the _marae_--the open forum or place of public
+assembly--which stood in its midst; a circular platform, surrounded by
+bread-fruit trees, under whose broad, cool shade the people were sitting
+in little groups and talking together. They were dressed in the regular
+old-time festive costume of Polynesia; for Boupari, being a small and
+remote island, too insignificant to be visited by European ships,
+retained still all its aboriginal heathen manners and customs. The sight
+was, indeed, a curious and picturesque one. The girls, large-limbed,
+soft-skinned, and with delicately rounded figures, sat on the ground,
+laughing and talking, with their knees crossed under them; their wrists
+were encinctured with girdles of dark-red dracæna leaves, their swelling
+bosoms half concealed, half accentuated by hanging necklets of flowers.
+Their beautiful brown arms and shoulders were bare throughout; their
+long, black hair was gracefully twined and knotted with bright scarlet
+flowers. The men, strong and stalwart, sat behind on short stools or
+lounged on the buttressed roots of the bread-fruit trees, clad like the
+women in narrow waist-belts of the long red dracæna leaves, with necklets
+of sharks' teeth, pendent chain of pearly shells, a warrior's cap on
+their well-shaped heads, and an armlet of native beans, arranged below
+the shoulder, around their powerful arms. Altogether, it was a striking
+and beautiful picture. Muriel, now almost released from her early sense
+of fear, stood still to look at it.
+
+The men and girls were laughing and chatting merrily together. Most of
+them were engaged in holding up before them fine mats; and a row of
+mulberry cloth, spread along on the ground, led to a hut near one side of
+the _marae_. Toward this the eyes of the spectators were turned. "What is
+it, Mali?" Muriel whispered, her woman's instinct leading her at once to
+expect that something special was going on in the way of local
+festivities.
+
+And Mali answered at once, with many nods and smiles, "All right, Missy
+Queenie. Him a wedding, a marriage."
+
+The words had hardly escaped her lips when a very pretty young girl,
+half smothered in flowers, and decked out in beads and fancy shells,
+emerged slowly from the hut, and took her way with stately tread along
+the path carpeted with native cloth. She was girt round the waist with
+rich-colored mats, which formed a long train, like a court dress,
+trailing on the ground five or six feet behind her.
+
+"That's the bride, I suppose," Muriel whispered, now really
+interested--for what woman on earth, wherever she may be, can resist
+the seductive delights of a wedding?
+
+"Yes, her a bride," Mali answered; "and ladies what follow, them her
+bridesmaids."
+
+At the word, six other girls, similarly dressed, though without the
+train, and demure as nuns, emerged from the hut in slow order, two and
+two, behind her.
+
+Muriel and Felix moved forward with natural curiosity toward the scene.
+The natives, now ranged in a row along the path, with mats turned inward,
+made way for them gladly. All seem pleased that Heaven should thus
+auspiciously honor the occasion; and the bride herself, as well as the
+bridegroom, who, decked in shells and teeth, advanced from the opposite
+side along the path to meet her, looked up with grateful smiles at the
+two Europeans. Muriel, in return, smiled her most gracious and girlish
+recognition. As the bride drew near, she couldn't refrain from bending
+forward a little to look at the girl's really graceful costume. As she
+did so, the skirt of her own European dress brushed for a second against
+the bride's train, trailed carelessly many yards on the ground behind
+her.
+
+Almost before they could know what had happened, a wild commotion arose,
+as if by magic, in the crowd around them. Loud cries of "Taboo! Taboo!"
+mixed with inarticulate screams, burst on every side from the assembled
+natives. In the twinkling of an eye they were surrounded by an angry,
+threatening throng, who didn't dare to draw near, but, standing a yard or
+two off, drew stone knives freely and shook their fists, scowling, in the
+strangers' faces. The change was appalling in its electric suddenness.
+Muriel drew back horrified, in an agony of alarm. "Oh, what have I done!"
+she cried, piteously, clinging to Felix for support. "Why on earth are
+they angry with us?"
+
+"I don't know," Felix answered, taken aback himself. "I can't say exactly
+in what you've transgressed. But you must, unconsciously, in some way
+have offended their prejudices. I hope it's not much. At any rate they're
+clearly afraid to touch us."
+
+"Missy Queenie break taboo," Mali explained at once, with Polynesian
+frankness. "That make people angry. So him want to kill you. Missy
+Queenie touch bride with end of her dress. Korong may smile on
+bride--that very good luck; but Korong taboo; no must touch him."
+
+The crowd gathered around them, still very threatening in attitude, yet
+clearly afraid to approach within arm's-length of the strangers. Muriel
+was much frightened at their noise and at their frantic gestures. "Come
+away," she cried, catching Felix by the arm once more. "Oh, what are they
+going to do to us? Will they kill us for this? I'm so horribly afraid!
+Oh, why did I ever do it!"
+
+The poor little bride, meanwhile, left alone on the carpet, and unnoticed
+by everybody, sank suddenly down on the mats where she stood, buried her
+face in her hands, and began to sob as if her heart would break.
+Evidently, something very untoward of some sort had happened to the dusky
+lady on her wedding morning.
+
+The final touch was too much for poor Muriel's overwrought nerves. She,
+too, gave way in a tempest of sobs, and, subsiding on one of the native
+stools hard by, burst into tears herself with half-hysterical violence.
+
+Instantly, as she did so, the whole assembly seemed to change its mind
+again as if by contagious magic. A loud shout of "She cries; the Queen of
+the Clouds cries!" went up from all the assembled mob to heaven. "It is a
+good omen," Toko, the Shadow, whispered in Polynesian to Felix, seeing
+his puzzled look. "We shall have plenty of rain now; the clouds will
+break; our crops will flourish." Almost before she understood it, Muriel
+was surrounded by an eager and friendly crowd, still afraid to draw near,
+but evidently anxious to see and to comfort and console her. Many of the
+women eagerly held forward their native mats, which Mali took from them,
+and, pressing them for a second against Muriel's eyes, handed them back
+with just a suspicion of wet tears left glistening in the corner. The
+happy recipients leaped and shouted with joy. "No more drought!" they
+cried merrily, with loud shouts and gesticulations. "The Queen of the
+Clouds is good: she will weep well from heaven upon my yam and taro
+plots!"
+
+Muriel looked up, all dazed, and saw, to her intense surprise, the crowd
+was now nothing but affection and sympathy. Slowly they gathered in
+closer and closer, till they almost touched the hem of her robe; then the
+men stood by respectfully, laying their fingers on whatever she had
+wetted with her tears, while the women and girls took her hand in theirs
+and pressed it sympathetically. Mali explained their meaning with ready
+interpretation. "No cry too much, them say," she observed, nodding her
+head sagely. "Not good for Missy Queenie to cry too much. Them say, kind
+lady, be comforted."
+
+There was genuine good-nature in the way they consoled her; and Felix was
+touched by the tenderness of those savage hearts; but the additional
+explanation, given him in Polynesian by his own Shadow, tended somewhat
+to detract from the disinterestedness of their sympathy. "They say, 'It
+is good for the Queen of the Clouds to weep,'" Toko said, with frank
+bluntness; "'but not too much--for fear the rain should wash away all our
+yam and taro plants.'"
+
+By this time the little bride had roused herself from her stupor, and,
+smiling away as if nothing had happened, said a few words in a very low
+voice to Felix's Shadow. The Shadow turned most respectfully to his
+master, and, touching his sleeve-link, which was of bright gold, said, in
+a very doubtful voice, "She asks you, oh king, will you allow her, just
+for to-day, to wear this ornament?"
+
+Felix unbuttoned the shining bauble at once, and was about to hand it to
+the bride with polite gallantry. "She may wear it forever, for the matter
+of that, if she likes," he said, good-humoredly. "I make her a present
+of it."
+
+But the bride drew back as before in speechless terror, as he held out
+his hand, and seemed just on the point of bursting out into tears again
+at this untoward incident. The Shadow intervened with fortunate
+perception of the cause of the misunderstanding. "Korong must not touch
+or give anything to a bride," he said, quietly; "not with his own hand.
+He must not lay his finger on her; that would be unlucky. But he may hand
+it by his Shadow." Then he turned to his fellow-tribesmen. "These gods,"
+he said, in an explanatory voice, like one bespeaking forgiveness,
+"though they are divine, and Korong, and very powerful--see, they have
+come from the sun, and they are but strangers in Boupari--they do not yet
+know the ways of our island. They have not eaten of human flesh. They do
+not understand Taboo. But they will soon be wiser. They mean very well,
+but they do not know. Behold, he gives her this divine shining ornament
+from the sun as a present!" And, taking it in his hand, he held it up for
+a moment to public admiration. Then he passed on the trinket
+ostentatiously to the bride, who, smiling and delighted, hung it low on
+her breast among her other decorations.
+
+The whole party seemed so surprised and gratified at this proof of
+condescension on the part of the divine stranger that they crowded round
+Felix once more, praising and thanking him volubly. Muriel, anxious to
+remove the bad impression she had created by touching the bride's dress,
+hastily withdrew her own little brooch and offered it in turn to the
+Shadow as an additional present. But Toko, shaking his head vigorously,
+pointed with his forefinger many times to Mali. "Toko say him no can take
+it," Mali explained hastily, in her broken English. "Him no your Shadow;
+me your Shadow; me do everything for you; me give it to the lady." And,
+taking the brooch in her hand, she passed it over in turn amid loud cries
+of delight and shouts of approval.
+
+Thereupon, the ceremony began all over again. They seemed by their
+intervention to have interrupted some set formula. At its close the women
+crowded around Muriel and took her hand in theirs, kissing it many times
+over, with tears in their eyes, and betraying an immense amount of
+genuine feeling. One phrase in Polynesian they repeated again and again;
+a phrase that made Felix's cheek turn white, as he leaned over the poor
+English girl with a profound emotion.
+
+"What does it mean that they say?" Muriel asked at last, perceiving it
+was all one phrase, many times repeated.
+
+Felix was about to give some evasive explanation, when Mali interposed
+with her simple, unthinking translation. "Them say, Missy Queenie very
+good and kind. Make them sad to think. Make them cry to see her. Make
+them cry to see Missy Queenie Korong. Too good. Too pretty."
+
+"Why so?" Muriel exclaimed, drawing back with some faint presentiment of
+unspeakable horror.
+
+Felix tried to stop her; but the girl would not be stopped. "Because,
+when Korong time up," she answered, blurting it out, "Korong must--"
+
+Felix clapped his hand to her mouth in wild haste, and silenced her. He
+knew the worst now. He had divined the truth. But Muriel, at least, must
+be spared that knowledge.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+SOWING THE WIND.
+
+Vaguely and indefinitely one terrible truth had been forced by slow
+degrees upon Felix's mind; whatever else Korong meant, it implied at
+least some fearful doom in store, sooner or later, for the persons who
+bore it. How awful that doom might be, he could hardly imagine; but he
+must devote himself henceforth to the task of discovering what its nature
+was, and, if possible, of averting it.
+
+Yet how to reconcile this impending terror with the other obvious facts
+of the situation? the fact that they were considered divine beings and
+treated like gods; and the fact that the whole population seemed really
+to regard them with a devotion and kindliness closely bordering on
+religious reverence? If Korongs were gods, why should the people want to
+kill them? If they meant to kill them, why pay them meanwhile such
+respect and affection?
+
+One point at least was now, however, quite clear to Felix. While the
+natives, especially the women, displayed toward both of them in their
+personal aspect a sort of regretful sympathy, he could not help noticing
+at the same time that the men, at any rate, regarded them also largely
+in an impersonal light, as a sort of generalized abstraction of the
+powers of nature--an embodied form of the rain and the weather. The
+islanders were anxious to keep their white guests well supplied, well
+fed, and in perfect health, not so much for the strangers' sakes as for
+their own advantage; they evidently considered that if anything went
+wrong with either of their two new gods, corresponding misfortunes might
+happen to their crops and the produce of their bread-fruit groves. Some
+mysterious sympathy was held to subsist between the persons of the
+castaways and the state of the weather. The natives effusively thanked
+them after welcome rain, and looked askance at them, scowling, after long
+dry spells. It was for this, no doubt, that they took such pains to
+provide them with attentive Shadows, and to gird round their movements
+with taboos of excessive stringency. Nothing that the new-comers said or
+did was indifferent, it seemed, to the welfare of the community; plenty
+and prosperity depended upon the passing state of Muriel's health, and
+famine or drought might be brought about at any moment by the slightest
+imprudence in Felix's diet.
+
+How stringent these taboos really were Felix learned by slow degrees
+alone to realize. From the very beginning he had observed, to be sure,
+that they might only eat and drink the food provided for them; that they
+were supplied with a clean and fresh-built hut, as well as with brand-new
+cocoanut cups, spoons, and platters; that no litter of any sort was
+allowed to accumulate near their enclosure; and that their Shadows never
+left them, or went out of their sight, by day or by night, for a single
+moment. Now, however, he began to perceive also that the Shadows were
+there for that very purpose, to watch over them, as it were, like guards,
+on behalf of the community; to see that they ate or drank no tabooed
+object; to keep them from heedlessly transgressing any unwritten law of
+the creed of Boupari; and to be answerable for their good behavior
+generally. They were partly servants, it was true, and partly sureties;
+but they were partly also keepers, and keepers who kept a close and
+constant watch upon the persons of their prisoners. Once or twice Felix,
+growing tired for the moment of this continual surveillance, had tried to
+give Toko the slip, and to stroll away from his hut, unattended, for a
+walk through the island, in the early morning, before his Shadow had
+waked; but on each such occasion he found to his surprise that, as he
+opened the hut door, the Shadow rose at once and confronted him angrily,
+with an inquiring eye; and in time he perceived that a thin string was
+fastened to the bottom of the door, the other end of which was tied to
+the Shadow's ankle; and this string could not be cut without letting fall
+a sort of latch or bar which closed the door outside, only to be raised
+again by some external person.
+
+Clearly, it was intended that the Korong should have no chance of escape
+without the knowledge of the Shadow, who, as Felix afterward learned,
+would have paid with his own body by a cruel death for the Korong's
+disappearance.
+
+He might as well have tried to escape his own shadow as to escape the one
+the islanders had tacked on to him.
+
+All Felix's energies were now devoted to the arduous task of discovering
+what Korong really meant, and what possibility he might have of saving
+Muriel from the mysterious fate that seemed to be held in store for them.
+
+One evening, about six weeks after their arrival in the island, the young
+Englishman was strolling by himself (after the sun sank low in heaven)
+along a pretty tangled hill-side path, overhung with lianas and rope-like
+tropical creepers, while his faithful Shadow lingered a step or two
+behind, keeping a sharp lookout meanwhile on all his movements.
+
+Near the top of a little crag of volcanic rock, in the center of the
+hills, he came suddenly upon a hut with a cleared space around it,
+somewhat neater in appearance than any of the native cottages he had yet
+seen, and surrounded by a broad white belt of coral sand, exactly like
+that which ringed round and protected their own enclosure. But what
+specially attracted Felix's attention was the fact that the space outside
+this circle had been cleared into a regular flower-garden, quite European
+in the definiteness and orderliness of its quaint arrangement.
+
+"Why, who lives here?" Felix asked in Polynesian, turning round in
+surprise to his respectful Shadow.
+
+The Shadow waved his hand vaguely in an expansive way toward the sky, as
+he answered, with a certain air of awe, often observable in his speech
+when taboos were in question, "The King of Birds. A very great god. He
+speaks the bird language."
+
+"Who is he?" Felix inquired, taken aback, wondering vaguely to himself
+whether here, perchance, he might have lighted upon some stray and
+shipwrecked compatriot.
+
+"He comes from the sun like yourselves," the Shadow answered, all
+deference, but with obvious reserve. "He is a very great god. I may not
+speak much of him. But he is not Korong. He is greater than that, and
+less. He is Tula, the same as Tu-Kila-Kila."
+
+"Is he as powerful as Tu-Kila-Kila?" Felix asked, with intense interest.
+
+"Oh, no, he's not nearly so powerful as that," the Shadow answered, half
+terrified at the bare suggestion. "No god in heaven or earth is like
+Tu-Kila-Kila. This one is only king of the birds, which is a little
+province, while Tu-Kila-Kila is king of heaven and earth, of plants
+and animals, of gods and men, of all things created. At his nod the sky
+shakes and the rocks tremble. But still, this god is Tula, like
+Tu-Kila-Kila. He is not for a year. He goes on forever, till some other
+supplants him."
+
+"You say he comes from the sun," Felix put in, devoured with curiosity.
+"And he speaks the bird language? What do you mean by that? Does he speak
+like the Queen of the Clouds and myself when we talk together?"
+
+"Oh, dear, no," the Shadow answered, in a very confident tone. "He
+doesn't speak the least bit in the world like that. He speaks shriller
+and higher, and still more bird-like. It is chatter, chatter, chatter,
+like the parrots in a tree; tirra, tirra, tirra; tarra, tarra, tarra; la,
+la, la; lo, lo, lo; lu, lu, lu; li la. And he sings to himself all the
+time. He sings this way--"
+
+And then the Shadow, with that wonderful power of accurate mimicry which
+is so strong in all natural human beings, began to trill out at once,
+with a very good Parisian accent, a few lines from a well-known song in
+"La Fille de Madame Angot:"
+
+"Quand on conspi-re,
+   Quand sans frayeur
+ On pent se di-re
+   Conspirateur,
+ Pour tout le mon-de
+   Il faut avoir
+ Perruque blon-de
+   Et collet noir--
+ Perruque blon-de
+   Et collet noir."
+
+"That's how the King of the Birds sings," the Shadow said, as he
+finished, throwing back his head, and laughing with all his might at his
+own imitation. "So funny, isn't it? It's exactly like the song of the
+pink-crested parrot."
+
+"Why, Toko, it's French," Felix exclaimed, using the Fijian word for a
+Frenchman, which the Shadow, of course, on his remote island, had never
+before heard. "How on earth did he come here?"
+
+"I can't tell you," Toko answered, waving his arms seaward. "He came from
+the sun, like yourselves. But not in a sun-boat. It had no fire. He came
+in a canoe, all by himself. And Mali says"--here the Shadow lowered his
+voice to a most mysterious whisper--"he's a man-a-oui-oui."
+
+Felix quivered with excitement. "Man-a-oui-oui" is the universal name
+over semi-civilized Polynesia for a Frenchman. Felix seized upon it with
+avidity. "A man-a-oui-oui!" he cried, delighted. "How strange! How
+wonderful! I must go in at once to his hut and see him!"
+
+He had lifted his foot and was just going to cross the white line of
+coral-sand, when his Shadow, catching him suddenly and stoutly round the
+waist, pulled him back from the enclosure with every sign of horror,
+alarm, and astonishment. "No, you can't go," he cried, grappling with him
+with all his force, yet using him very tenderly for all that, as becomes
+a god. "Taboo! Taboo there!"
+
+"But I am a god myself," Felix cried, insisting upon his privileges. If
+you have to submit to the disadvantages of taboo, you may as well claim
+its advantages as well. "The King of Fire and the King of Water crossed
+my taboo line. Why shouldn't I cross equally the King of the Birds',
+then?"
+
+"So you might--as a rule," the Shadow answered with promptitude. "You are
+both gods. Your taboos do not cross. You may visit each other. You may
+transgress one another's lines without danger of falling dead on the
+ground as common men would do if they broke taboo-lines. But this is the
+Month of Birds. The king is in retreat. No man may see him except his own
+Shadow, the Little Cockatoo, who brings him his food and drink. Do you
+see that hawk's head, stuck upon the post by the door at the side. That
+is his Special Taboo. He keeps it for this month. Even gods must respect
+that sign, for a reason which it would be very bad medicine to mention.
+While the Month of Birds lasts, no man may look upon the king or hear
+him. If they did, they would die, and the carrion birds would eat them.
+Come away. This is dangerous."
+
+Scarcely were the words well out of his mouth when from the recesses of
+the hut a rollicking French voice was heard, trilling out merrily:
+
+"Quand on con-spi-re,
+   Quand, sans frayeur--"
+
+Without waiting for more, the Shadow seized Felix's arm in an agony of
+terror. "Come away!" he cried, hurriedly, "come away! What will become
+of us? This is horrible, horrible! We have broken taboo. We have heard
+the god's voice. The sky will fall on us. If his Shadow were to find it
+out and tell my people, my people would tear us limb from limb. Quick,
+quick! Hide away! Let us run fast through the forest before any man
+discover it."
+
+The Shadow's voice rang deep with alarm. Felix felt he dare not trifle
+with this superstition. Profound as was his curiosity about the
+mysterious Frenchman, he was compelled to bottle up his eagerness and
+anxiety for the moment, and patiently wait till the Month of Birds had
+run its course, and taken its inconvenient taboo along with it. These
+limitations were terrible. Yet he counted much upon the information the
+Frenchman could give him. The man had been some time on the island, it
+was clear, and doubtless he understood its ways thoroughly; he might
+cast some light at last upon the Korong mystery.
+
+So he went back through the woods with a heart somewhat lighter.
+
+Not far from their own huts he met Muriel and Mali.
+
+As they walked home together, Felix told his companion in a very few
+words the strange discovery about the Frenchman, and the impenetrable
+taboo by which he was at present surrounded. Muriel drew a deep sigh.
+"Oh, Felix," she said--for they were naturally by this time very much at
+home with one another, "did you ever know anything so dreadful as the
+mystery of these taboos? It seems as if we should never get really to the
+bottom of them. Mali's always springing some new one upon me. I don't
+believe we shall ever be able to leave the island--we're so hedged round
+with taboos. Even if we were to see a ship to-day, I don't believe they'd
+allow us to signal it."
+
+There was a red sunset; a lurid, tropical, red-and-green sunset. It boded
+mischief.
+
+They were passing by some huts at the moment, and over the stockade of
+one of them a tree was hanging with small yellow fruits, which Felix knew
+well in Fiji as wholesome and agreeable. He broke off a small branch as
+he passed; and offered a couple thoughtlessly to Muriel. She took them in
+her fingers, and tasted them gingerly. "They're not so bad," she said,
+taking another from the bough. "They're very much like gooseberries."
+
+At the same moment, Felix popped one into his own mouth, and swallowed it
+without thinking.
+
+Almost before they knew what had happened, with the same extraordinary
+rapidity as in the case of the wedding, the people in the cottages ran
+out, with every sign of fear and apprehension, and, seizing the branch
+from Felix's hands, began upbraiding the two Shadows for their want
+of attention.
+
+"We couldn't help it," Toko exclaimed, with every appearance of guilt and
+horror on his face. "They were much too sharp for us. Their hearts are
+black. How could we two interfere? These gods are so quick! They had
+picked and eaten them before we ever saw them."
+
+One of the men raised his hand with a threatening air--but against the
+Shadow, not against the sacred person of Felix. "He will be ill," he
+said, angrily, pointing toward the white man; "and she will, too. Their
+hearts are indeed black. They have sown the seed of the wind. They have
+both of them eaten of it. They will both be ill. You deserve to die! And
+what will come now to our trees and plantations?"
+
+The crowd gathered round them, cursing low and horribly. The two
+terrified Europeans slunk off to their huts, unaware of their exact
+crime, and closely followed by a scowling but despondent mob of natives.
+As they crossed their sacred boundary, Muriel cried, with a sudden
+outburst of tears, "Oh, Felix, what on earth shall we ever do to get
+rid of this terrible, unendurable godship!"
+
+The natives without set up a great shout of horror. "See, see! she
+cries!" they exclaimed, in indescribable panic. "She has eaten the
+storm-fruit, and already she cries! Oh, clouds, restrain yourselves! Oh,
+great queen, mercy! Whatever will become of us and our poor huts
+and gardens!"
+
+And for hours they crouched around, beating their breasts and shrieking.
+
+That evening, Muriel sat up late in Felix's hut, with Mali by her side,
+too frightened to go back into her own alone before those angry people.
+And all the time, just beyond the barrier line, they could hear, above
+the whistle of the wind around the hut, the droning voices of dozens of
+natives, cowering low on the ground; they seemed to be going through some
+litany or chant, as if to deprecate the result of this imprudent action.
+
+"What are they doing outside?" Felix asked of his Shadow at last, after a
+peculiarly long wail of misery.
+
+And the Shadow made answer, in very solemn tones, "They are trying to
+propitiate your mightiness, and to avert the omen, lest the rain should
+fall, and the wind should blow, and the storm-cloud should burst over the
+island to destroy them."
+
+Then Felix remembered suddenly of himself that the season when this
+storm-fruit, or storm-apple, as they called it, was ripe in Fiji, was
+also the season when the great Pacific cyclones most often swept over the
+land in full fury--storms unexampled on any other sea, like that famous
+one which wrecked so many European men-of-war a few years since in the
+harbor of Samoa.
+
+And without, the wail came louder and clearer still! "If you sow the
+bread-fruit seed, you will reap the breadfruit. If you sow the wind, you
+will reap the whirlwind. They have eaten the storm-fruit. Oh, great king,
+save us!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+REAPING THE WHIRLWIND.
+
+
+Toward midnight Muriel began to doze lightly from pure fatigue.
+
+"Put a pillow under her head, and let her sleep," Felix said in a
+whisper. "Poor child, it would be cruel to send her alone to-night into
+her own quarters."
+
+And Mali slipped a pillow of mulberry paper under her mistress's head,
+and laid it on her own lap, and bent down to watch her.
+
+But outside, beyond the line, the natives murmured loud their discontent.
+"The Queen of the Clouds stays in the King of the Rain's hut to-night,"
+they muttered, angrily. "She will not listen to us. Before morning, be
+sure, the Tempest will be born of their meeting to destroy us."
+
+About two o'clock there came a lull in the wind, which had been rising
+steadily ever since that lurid sunset. Felix looked out of the hut door.
+The moon was full. It was almost as clear as day with the bright tropical
+moonlight, silvery in the open, pale green in the shadow. The people were
+still squatting in great rings round the hut, just outside the taboo
+line, and beating gongs, and sticks and human bones, to keep time to the
+lilt of their lugubrious litany.
+
+The air felt unusually heavy and oppressive. Felix raised his eyes to the
+sky, and saw whisps of light cloud drifting in rapid flight over the
+scudding moon. Below, an ominous fog bank gathered steadily westward.
+Then one clap of thunder rent the sky. After it came a deadly silence.
+The moon was veiled. All was dark as pitch. The natives themselves fell
+on their faces and prayed with mute lips. Three minutes later, the
+cyclone had burst upon them in all its frenzy.
+
+Such a hurricane Felix had never before experienced. Its energy was
+awful. Round the palm-trees the wind played a frantic and capricious
+devil's dance. It pirouetted about the atoll in the mad glee of
+unconsciousness. Here and there it cleared lanes, hundreds of yards in
+length, among the forest-trees and the cocoanut plantations. The noise of
+snapping and falling trunks rang thick on the air. At times the cyclone
+would swoop down from above upon the swaying stem of some tall and
+stately palm that bent like grass before the wind, break it off short
+with a roar at the bottom, and lay it low at once upon the ground, with a
+crash like thunder. In other places, little playful whirlwinds seemed to
+descend from the sky in the very midst of the dense brushwood, where they
+cleared circular patches, strewn thick under foot with trunks and
+branches in their titanic sport, and yet left unhurt all about the
+surrounding forest. Then again a special cyclone of gigantic proportions
+would advance, as it were, in a single column against one stem of a
+clump, whirl round it spirally like a lightning flash, and, deserting it
+for another, leave it still standing, but turned and twisted like a screw
+by the irresistible force of its invisible fingers. The storm-god, said
+Toko, was dancing with the palm-trees. The sight was awful. Such
+destructive energy Felix had never even imagined before. No wonder the
+savages all round beheld in it the personal wrath of some mighty spirit.
+
+For in spite of the black clouds they could _see_ it all--both the
+Europeans and the islanders. The intense darkness of the night was
+lighted up for them every minute by an almost incessant blaze of sheet
+and forked lightning. The roar of the thunder mingled with the roar of
+the tempest, each in turn overtopping and drowning the other. The hut
+where Felix and Muriel sheltered themselves shook before the storm; the
+very ground of the island trembled and quivered--like the timbers of a
+great ship before a mighty sea--at each onset of the breakers upon the
+surrounding fringe-reef. And side by side with it all, to crown their
+misery, wild torrents of rain, descending in waterspouts, as it seemed,
+or dashed in great sheets against the roof of their frail tenement,
+poured fitfully on with fierce tropical energy.
+
+In the midst of the hut Muriel crouched and prayed with bloodless lips to
+Heaven. This was too, too terrible. It seemed incredible to her that on
+top of all they had been called upon to suffer of fear and suspense at
+the hands of the savages, the very dumb forces of nature themselves
+should thus be stirred up to open war against them. Her faith in
+Providence was sorely tried. Dumb forces, indeed! Why, they roared with
+more terrible voices than any wild beast on earth could possibly compass.
+The thunder and the wind were howling each other down in emulous din, and
+the very hiss of the lightning could be distinctly heard, like some huge
+snake, at times above the creaking and snapping of the trees before the
+gale in the surrounding forest.
+
+Muriel crouched there long, in the mute misery of utter despair. At her
+feet Mali crouched too, as frightened as herself, but muttering aloud
+from time to time, in a reproachful voice, "I tell Missy Queenie what
+going to happen. I warn her not. I tell her she must not eat that very
+bad storm-apple. But Missy Queenie no listen. Her take her own way, then
+storm come down upon us."
+
+And Felix's Shadow, in his own tongue, exclaimed more than once in the
+self-same tone, half terror, half expostulation, "See now what comes from
+breaking taboo? You eat the storm-fruit. The storm-fruit suits ill with
+the King of the Rain and the Queen of the Clouds. The heavens have broken
+loose. The sea has boiled. See what wind and what flood you are bringing
+upon us."
+
+By and by, above even the fierce roar of the mingled thunder and cyclone,
+a wild orgy of noise burst upon them all from without the hut. It was a
+sound as of numberless drums and tom-toms, all beaten in unison with the
+mad energy of fear; a hideous sound, suggestive of some hateful heathen
+devil-worship. Muriel clapped her hands to her ears in horror. "Oh,
+what's that?" she cried to Felix, at this new addition to their endless
+alarms. "Are the savages out there rising in a body? Have they come to
+murder us?"
+
+"Perhaps," Felix said, smoothing her hair with his hand, as a mother
+might soothe her terrified child, "perhaps they're angry with us for
+having caused this storm, as they think, by our foolish action. I believe
+they all set it down to our having unluckily eaten that unfortunate
+fruit. I'll go out to the door myself and speak to them."
+
+Muriel clung to his arm with a passionate clinging.
+
+"Oh, Felix," she cried, "no! Don't leave me here alone. My darling, I
+love you. You're all the world there is left to me now, Felix. Don't go
+out to those wretches and leave me here alone. They'll murder you!
+they'll murder you! Don't go out, I implore you. If they mean to kill us,
+let them kill us both together, in one another's arms. Oh, Felix, I am
+yours, and you are mine, my darling!"
+
+It was the first time either of them had acknowledged the fact; but
+there, before the face of that awful convulsion of nature, all the little
+deceptions and veils of life seemed rent asunder forever as by a flash of
+lightning. They stood face to face with each other's souls, and forgot
+all else in the agony of the moment. Felix clasped the trembling girl in
+his arms like a lover. The two Shadows looked on and shook with silent
+terror. If the King of the Rain thus embraced the Queen of the Clouds
+before their very eyes, amid so awful a storm, what unspeakable effects
+might not follow at once from it! But they had too much respect for those
+supernatural creatures to attempt to interfere with their action at such
+a moment. They accepted their masters almost as passively as they
+accepted the wind and the thunder, which they believed to arise from
+them.
+
+Felix laid his poor Muriel tenderly down on the mud floor again. "I
+_must_ go out, my child," he said. "For the very love of _you_, I must
+play the man, and find out what these savages mean by their drumming."
+
+He crept to the door of the hut (for no man could walk upright before
+that awful storm), and peered out into the darkness once more, awaiting
+one of the frequent flashes of lightning. He had not long to wait. In a
+moment the sky was all ablaze again from end to end, and continued so
+for many seconds consecutively. By the light of the continuous zigzags
+of fire, Felix could see for himself that hundreds and hundreds of
+natives--men, women, and children, naked, or nearly so, with their hair
+loose and wet about their cheeks--lay flat on their faces, many courses
+deep, just outside the taboo line. The wind swept over them with
+extraordinary force, and the tropical rain descended in great floods upon
+their bare backs and shoulders. But the savages, as if entranced, seemed
+to take no heed of all these earthly things. They lay grovelling in the
+mud before some unseen power; and beating their tom-toms in unison, with
+barbaric concord, they cried aloud once more as Felix appeared, in a
+weird litany that overtopped the tumultuous noise of the tempest, "Oh,
+Storm-God, hear us! Oh, great spirit, deliver us! King of the Rain and
+Queen of the Clouds, befriend us! Be angry no more! Hide your wrath from
+your people! Take away your hurricane, and we will bring you many gifts.
+Eat no longer of the storm-apple--the seed of the wind--and we will feed
+you with yam and turtle, and much choice bread-fruit. Great king, we are
+yours; you shall choose which you will of our children for your meat and
+drink; you shall sup on our blood. But take your storm away; do not
+utterly drown and submerge our island!"
+
+As they spoke they crawled nearer and nearer, with gliding serpentine
+motion, till their heads almost touched the white line of coral. But not
+a man of them all went one inch beyond it. They stopped there and gazed
+at him. Felix signed to them with his hand, and pointed vaguely to the
+sky, as much as to say _he_ was not responsible. At the gesture the whole
+assembly burst into one loud shout of gratitude. "He has heard us, he has
+heard us!" they exclaimed, with a perfect wail of joy. "He will not
+utterly destroy us. He will take away his storm. He will bring the sun
+and the moon back to us."
+
+Felix returned into the hut, somewhat reassured so far as the attitude of
+the savages went. "Don't be afraid of them, Muriel," he cried, taking her
+passionately once more in a tender embrace. "They daren't cross the
+taboo. They won't come near; they're too frightened themselves to dream
+of hurting us."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+AFTER THE STORM.
+
+
+Next morning the day broke bright and calm, as if the tempest had been
+but an evil dream of the night, now past forever. The birds sang loud;
+the lizards came forth from their holes in the wall, and basked, green
+and gold, in the warm, dry sunshine. But though the sky overhead was blue
+and the air clear, as usually happen after these alarming tropical
+cyclones and rainstorms, the memorials of the great wind that had raged
+all night long among the forests of the island were neither few nor far
+between. Everywhere the ground was strewn with leaves and branches and
+huge stems of cocoa-palms. All nature was draggled. Many of the trees
+were stripped clean of their foliage, as completely as oaks in an English
+winter; on others, big strands of twisted fibres marked the scars and
+joints where mighty boughs had been torn away by main force; while,
+elsewhere, bare stumps alone remained to mark the former presence of some
+noble dracæna or some gigantic banyan. Bread-fruits and cocoanuts lay
+tossed in the wildest confusion on the ground; the banana and
+plantain-patches were beaten level with the soil or buried deep in the
+mud; many of the huts had given way entirely; abundant wreckage strewed
+every corner of the island. It was an awful sight. Muriel shuddered to
+herself to see how much the two that night had passed through.
+
+What the outer fringing reef had suffered from the storm they hardly knew
+as yet; but from the door of the hut Felix could see for himself how even
+the calm waters of the inner lagoon had been lashed into wild fury by the
+fierce swoop of the tempest. Round the entire atoll the solid
+conglomerate coral floor was scooped under, broken up, chewed fine by the
+waves, or thrown in vast fragments on the beach of the island. By the
+eastern shore, in particular, just opposite their hut, Felix observed a
+regular wall of many feet in height, piled up by the waves like the
+familiar Chesil Beach near his old home in Dorsetshire. It was the
+shelter of that temporary barrier alone, no doubt, that had preserved
+their huts last night from the full fury of the gale, and that had
+allowed the natives to congregate in such numbers prone on their faces in
+the mud and rain, upon the unconsecrated ground outside their taboo-line.
+
+But now not an islander was to be seen within ear-shot. All had gone away
+to look after their ruined huts or their beaten-down plantain-patches,
+leaving the cruel gods, who, as they thought, had wrought all the
+mischief out of pure wantonness, to repent at leisure the harm done
+during the night to their obedient votaries.
+
+Felix was just about to cross the taboo-line and walk down to the shore
+to examine the barrier, when Toko, his Shadow, laying his hand on his
+shoulder with more genuine interest and affection than he had ever yet
+shown, exclaimed, with some horror, "Oh, no! Not that! Don't dare to go
+outside! It would be very dangerous for you. If my people were to catch
+you on profane soil just now, there's no saying what harm they might do
+to you."
+
+"Why so?" Felix exclaimed, in surprise. "Last night, surely, they were
+all prayers and promises and vows and entreaties."
+
+The young man nodded his head in acquiescence. "Ah, yes; last night," he
+answered. "That was very well then. Vows were sore needed. The storm was
+raging, and you were within your taboo. How could they dare to touch you,
+a mighty god of the tempest, at the very moment when you were rending
+their banyan-trees and snapping their cocoanut stems with your mighty
+arms like so many little chicken-bones? Even Tu-Kila-Kila himself, I
+expect, the very high god, lay frightened in his temple, cowering by his
+tree, annoyed at your wrath; he sent Fire and Water among the
+worshippers, no doubt, to offer up vows and to appease your anger."
+
+Then Felix remembered, as his Shadow spoke, that, as a matter of fact, he
+had observed the men who usually wore the red and white feather cloaks
+among the motley crowd of grovelling natives who lay flat on their faces
+in the mud of the cleared space the night before, and prayed hard for
+mercy. Only they were not wearing their robes of office at the moment, in
+accordance with a well-known savage custom; they had come naked and in
+disgrace, as befits all suppliants. They had left behind them the
+insignia of their rank in their own shaken huts, and bowed down their
+bare backs to the rain and the lightning.
+
+"Yes, I saw them among the other islanders," Felix answered,
+half-smiling, but prudently remaining within the taboo-line, as his
+Shadow advised him.
+
+Toko kept his hand still on his master's shoulder. "Oh, king," he said,
+beseechingly, and with great solemnity, "I am doing wrong to warn you; I
+am breaking a very great Taboo. I don't know what harm may come to me for
+telling you. Perhaps Tu-Kila-Kila will burn me to ashes with one glance
+of his eyes. He may know this minute what I'm saying here alone to you."
+
+It is hard for a white man to meet scruples like this; but Felix was bold
+enough to answer outright: "Tu-Kila-Kila knows nothing of the sort, and
+can never find out. Take my word for it, Toko, nothing that you say to me
+will ever reach Tu-Kila-Kila."
+
+The Shadow looked at him doubtfully, and trembled as he spoke. "I like
+you, Korong," he said, with a genuinely truthful ring in his voice. "You
+seem to me so kind and good--so different from other gods, who are very
+cruel. You never beat me. Nobody I ever served treated me as well or as
+kindly as you have done. And for _your_ sake I will even dare to break
+taboo--if you're quite, quite sure Tu-Kila-Kila will never discover it."
+
+"I'm quite sure," Felix answered, with perfect confidence. "I know it for
+certain. I swear a great oath to it."
+
+"You swear by Tu-Kila-Kila himself?" the young savage asked, anxiously.
+
+"I swear by Tu-Kila-Kila himself," Felix replied at once. "I swear,
+without doubt. He can never know it."
+
+"That is a great Taboo," the Shadow went on, meditatively, stroking
+Felix's arm. "A very great Taboo indeed. A terrible medicine. And you
+are a god; I can trust you. Well, then, you see, the secret is this:
+you are Korong, but you are a stranger, and you don't understand the
+ways of Boupari. If for three days after the end of this storm, which
+Tu-Kila-Kila has sent Fire and Water to pray and vow against, you or the
+Queen of the Clouds show yourselves outside your own taboo-line--why,
+then, the people are clear of sin; whoever takes you may rend you alive;
+they will tear you limb from limb and cut you into pieces."
+
+"Why so?" Felix asked, aghast at this discovery. They seemed to live on a
+perpetual volcano in this wonderful island; and a volcano ever breaking
+out in fresh places. They could never get to the bottom of its horrible
+superstitions.
+
+"Because you ate the storm-apple," the Shadow answered, confidently.
+"That was very wrong. You brought the tempest upon us yourselves by your
+own trespass; therefore, by the custom of Boupari, which we learn in the
+mysteries, you become full Korong for the sacrifice at once. That makes
+the term for you. The people will give you all your dues; then they will
+say, 'We are free; we have bought you with a price; we have brought your
+cocoanuts. No sin attaches to us; we are righteous; we are righteous.'
+And then they will kill you, and Fire and Water will roast you and boil
+you."
+
+"But only if we go outside the taboo-line?" Felix asked, anxiously.
+
+"Only if you go outside the taboo-line," the Shadow replied, nodding a
+hasty assent. "Inside it, till your term comes, even Tu-Kila-Kila
+himself, the very high god, whose meat we all are, dare never hurt you."
+
+"Till our term comes?" Felix inquired, once more astonished and
+perplexed. "What do you mean by that, my Shadow?"
+
+But the Shadow was either bound by some superstitious fear, or else
+incapable of putting himself into Felix's point of view. "Why, till you
+are full Korong," he answered, like one who speaks of some familiar fact,
+as who should say, till you are forty years old, or, till your beard
+grows white. "Of course, by and by, you will be full Korong. I cannot
+help you then; but, till that time comes, I would like to do my best by
+you. You have been very kind to me. I tell you much. More than this,
+it would not be lawful for me to mention."
+
+And that was the most that, by dexterous questioning, Felix could ever
+manage to get out of his mysterious Shadow.
+
+"At the end of three days we will be safe, though?" he inquired at last,
+after all other questions failed to produce an answer.
+
+"Oh, yes, at the end of three days the storm will have blown over," the
+young man answered, easily. "All will then be well. You may venture out
+once more. The rain will have dried over all the island. Fire and Water
+will have no more power over you."
+
+Felix went back to the hut to inform Muriel of this new peril thus
+suddenly sprung upon them. Poor Muriel, now almost worn out with endless
+terrors, received it calmly. "I'm growing accustomed to it all, Felix,"
+she answered, resignedly. "If only I know that you will keep your
+promise, and never let me fall alive into these wretches' hands, I shall
+feel quite safe. Oh, Felix, do you know when you took me in your arms
+like that last night, in spite of everything, I felt positively happy."
+
+About ten o'clock they were suddenly roused by a sound of many natives,
+coming in quick succession, single file, to the huts, and shouting aloud,
+"Oh, King of the Rain, oh, Queen of the Clouds, come forth for our vows!
+Receive your presents!"
+
+Felix went forth to the door to look. With a warning look in his eyes,
+his Shadow followed him. The natives were now coming up by dozens at a
+time, bringing with them, in great arm-loads, fallen cocoanuts and
+breadfruits, and branches of bananas, and large draggled clusters of
+half-ripe plantains.
+
+"Why, what are all these?" Felix exclaimed in surprise.
+
+His Shadow looked up at him, as if amused at the absurd simplicity of the
+question. "These are yours, of course," he said; "yours and the Queen's;
+they are the windfalls you made. Did you not knock them all off the trees
+for yourselves when you were coming down in such sheets from the sky last
+evening?"
+
+Felix wrung his hands in positive despair. It was clear, indeed, that to
+the minds of the natives there was no distinguishing personally between
+himself and Muriel, and the rain or the cyclone.
+
+"Will they bring them all in?" he asked, gazing in alarm at the huge pile
+of fruits the natives were making outside the huts.
+
+"Yes, all," the Shadow answered; "they are vows; they are godsends; but
+if you like, you can give some of them back. If you give much back, of
+course it will make my people less angry with you."
+
+Felix advanced near the line, holding his hand up before him to command
+silence. As he did so, he was absolutely appalled himself at the perfect
+storm of execration and abuse which his appearance excited. The foremost
+natives, brandishing their clubs and stone-tipped spears, or shaking
+their fists by the line, poured forth upon his devoted head at once all
+the most frightful curses of the Polynesian vocabulary. "Oh, evil god,"
+they cried aloud with angry faces, "oh, wicked spirit! you have a bad
+heart. See what a wrong you have purposely done us. If your heart were
+not bad, would you treat us like this? If you are indeed a god, come out
+across the line, and let us try issues together. Don't skulk like a
+coward in your hut and within your taboo, but come out and fight us. _We_
+are not afraid, who are only men. Why are _you_ afraid of us?"
+
+Felix tried to speak once more, but the din drowned his voice. As he
+paused, the people set up their loud shouts again. "Oh, you wicked god!
+You eat the storm-apple! You have wrought us much harm. You have spoiled
+our harvest. How you came down in great sheets last night! It was
+pitiful, pitiful! We would like to kill you. You might have taken our
+bread-fruits and our bananas, if you would; we give you them freely; they
+are yours; here, take them. We feed you well; we make you many offerings.
+But why did you wish to have our huts also? Why did you beat down our
+young plantations and break our canoes against the beach of the island?
+That shows a bad heart! You are an evil god! You dare not defend
+yourself. Come out and meet us."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+A POINT OF THEOLOGY.
+
+
+At last, with great difficulty, Felix managed to secure a certain
+momentary lull of silence. The natives, clustering round the line till
+they almost touched it, listened with scowling brows, and brandished
+threatening spears, tipped with points of stone or shark's teeth or
+turtle-bone, while he made his speech to them. From time to time, one or
+another interrupted him, coaxing and wheedling him, as it were, to cross
+the line; but Felix never heeded them. He was beginning to understand now
+how to treat this strange people. He took no notice of their threats or
+their entreaties either.
+
+By and by, partly by words and partly by gestures, he made them
+understand that they might take back and keep for themselves all the
+cocoanuts and bread-fruits they had brought as windfalls. At this the
+people seemed a little appeased. "His heart is not quite so bad as we
+thought," they murmured among themselves; "but if he didn't want them,
+what did he mean? Why did he beat down our huts and our plantations?"
+
+Then Felix tried to explain to them--a somewhat dangerous task--that
+neither he nor Muriel were really responsible for last night's storm; but
+at that the people, with one accord, raised a great loud shout of unmixed
+derision. "He is a god," they cried, "and yet he is ashamed of his own
+acts and deeds, afraid of what we, mere men, will do to him! Ha! ha! Take
+care! These are lies that he tells. Listen to him! Hear him!"
+
+Meanwhile, more and more natives kept coming up with windfalls of fruit,
+or with objects they had vowed in their terror to dedicate during the
+night; and Felix all the time kept explaining at the top of his voice, to
+all as they came, that he wanted nothing, and that they could take all
+back again. This curiously inconsistent action seemed to puzzle the
+wondering natives strangely. Had he made the storm, then, they asked, and
+eaten the storm-apple, for no use to himself, but out of pure
+perverseness? If he didn't even want the windfalls and the objects vowed
+to him, why had he beaten down their crops and broken their houses? They
+looked at him meaningly; but they dared not cross that great line of
+taboo. It was their own superstition alone, in that moment of danger,
+that kept their hands off those defenceless white people.
+
+At last a happy idea seemed to strike the crowd. "What he wants is a
+child?" they cried, effusively. "He thirsts for blood! Let us kill and
+roast him a proper victim!"
+
+Felix's horror at this appalling proposition knew no bounds. "If you do,"
+he cried, turning their own superstition against them in this last hour
+of need, "I will raise up a storm worse even than last night's! You do it
+at your peril! I want no victim. The people of my country eat not of
+human flesh. It is a thing detestable, horrible, hateful to God and man.
+With us, all human life alike is sacred. We spill no blood. If you dare
+to do as you say, I will raise such a storm over your heads to-night as
+will submerge and drown the whole of your island."
+
+The natives listened to him with profound interest. "We must spill no
+blood!" they repeated, looking aghast at one another. "Hear what the King
+says! We must not cut the victim's throat. We must bind a child with
+cords and roast it alive for him!"
+
+Felix hardly knew what to do or say at this atrocious proposal. "If you
+roast it alive," he cried, "you deserve to be all scorched up with
+lightning. Take care what you do! Spare the child's life! I will have no
+victim. Beware how you anger me!"
+
+But the savage no sooner says than he does. With him deliberation is
+unknown, and impulse everything. In a moment the natives had gathered in
+a circle a little way off, and began drawing lots. Several children,
+seized hurriedly up among the crowd, were huddled like so many sheep in
+the centre. Felix looked on from his enclosure, half petrified with
+horror. The lot fell upon a pretty little girl of five years old. Without
+one word of warning, without one sign of remorse, before Felix's very
+eyes, they began to bind the struggling and terrified child just outside
+the circle.
+
+The white man could stand this horrid barbarity no longer. At the risk of
+his life--at the risk of Muriel's--he must rush out to prevent them. They
+should never dare to kill that helpless child before his very eyes. Come
+what might--though even Muriel should suffer for it--he felt he _must_
+rescue that trembling little creature. Drawing his trusty knife, and
+opening the big blade ostentatiously before their eyes, he made a sudden
+dart like a wild beast across the line, and pounced down upon the party
+that guarded the victim.
+
+Was it a ruse to make him cross the line, alone, or did they really mean
+it? He hardly knew; but he had no time to debate the abstract question.
+Bursting into their midst, he seized the child with a rush in his
+circling arms, and tried to hurry back with it within the protecting
+taboo-line.
+
+Quick as lightning he was surrounded and almost cut down by a furious and
+frantic mob of half-naked savages. "Kill him! Tear him to pieces!" they
+cried in their rage. "He has a bad heart! He destroyed our huts! He broke
+down our plantations! Kill him, kill him, kill him!"
+
+As they closed in upon him, with spears and tomahawks and clubs, Felix
+saw he had nothing left for it now but a hard fight for life to return to
+the taboo-line. Holding the child in one arm, and striking wildly out
+with his knife with the other, he tried to hack his way back by main
+force to the shelter of the taboo-line in frantic lunges. The distance
+was but a few feet, but the savages pressed round him, half frightened
+still, yet gnashing their teeth and distorting their faces with anger.
+"He has broken the Taboo," they cried in vehement tones. "He has crossed
+the line willingly. Kill him! Kill him! We are free from sin. We have
+bought him with a price--with many cocoanuts!"
+
+At the sound of the struggle going on so close outside, Muriel rushed in
+frantic haste and terror from the hut. Her face was pale, but her
+demeanor was resolute. Before Mali could stop her, she, too, had crossed
+the sacred line of the coral mark, and had flung herself madly upon
+Felix's assailants, to cover his retreat with her own frail body.
+
+"Hold off!" she cried, in her horror, in English, but in accents even
+those savages could read. "You shall not touch him!"
+
+With a fierce effort Felix tore his way back, through the spears and
+clubs, toward the place of safety. The savages wounded him on the way
+more than once with their jagged stone spear-tips, and blood flowed from
+his breast and arms in profusion. But they didn't dare even so to touch
+Muriel. The sight of that pure white woman, rushing out in her weakness
+to protect her lover's life from attack, seemed to strike them with some
+fresh access of superstitious awe. One or two of themselves were wounded
+by Felix's knife, for they were unaccustomed to steel, though they had a
+few blades made out of old European barrel-hoops. For a minute or two the
+conflict was sharp and hotly contested. Then at last Felix managed to
+fling the child across the line, to push Muriel with one hand at
+arm's-length before him, and to rush himself within the sacred circle.
+
+No sooner had he crossed it than the savages drew up around, undecided as
+yet, but in a threatening body. Rank behind rank, their loose hair in
+their eyes, they stood like wild beasts balked of their prey, and yelled
+at him. Some of them brandished their spears and their stone hatchets
+angrily in their victims' faces. Others contented themselves with howling
+aloud as before, and piling curses afresh on the heads of the unpopular
+storm-gods. "Look at her," they cried, in their wrath, pointing their
+skinny brown fingers angrily at Muriel. "See, she weeps even now. She
+would flood us with her rain. She isn't satisfied with all the harm she
+has poured down upon Boupari already. She wants to drown us."
+
+And then a little knot drew up close to the line of taboo itself, and
+began to discuss in loud and serious tones a pressing question of savage
+theology and religious practice.
+
+"They have crossed the line within the three days," some of the foremost
+warriors exclaimed, in excited voices. "They are no longer taboo. We can
+do as we please with them. We may cross the line now ourselves if we
+will, and tear them to pieces. Come on! Who follows? Korong! Korong! Let
+us rend them! Let us eat them!"
+
+But though they spoke so bravely they hung back themselves, fearful
+of passing that mysterious barrier. Others of the crowd answered them
+back, warmly: "No, no; not so. Be careful what you do. Anger not the
+gods. Don't ruin Boupari. If the Taboo is not indeed broken, then how
+dare we break it? They are gods. Fear their vengeance. They are,
+indeed, terrible. See what happened to us when they merely ate of the
+storm-apple! What might not happen if we were to break taboo without due
+cause and kill them?"
+
+One old, gray-bearded warrior, in particular, held his countrymen back.
+"Mind how you trifle with gods," the old chief said, in a tone of solemn
+warning. "Mind how you provoke them. They are very mighty. When I was
+young, our people killed three sailing gods who came ashore in a small
+canoe, built of thin split logs; and within a month an awful earthquake
+devastated Boupari, and fire burst forth from a mouth in the ground, and
+the people knew that the spirits of the sailing gods were very angry.
+Wait, therefore, till Tu-Kila-Kila himself comes, and then ask of him,
+and of Fire and Water. As Tu-Kila-Kila bids you, that do you do. Is he
+not our great god, the king of us all, and the guardian of the customs of
+the island of Boupari?"
+
+"Is Tu-Kila-Kila coming?" some of the warriors asked, with bated breath.
+
+"How should he not come?" the old chief asked, drawing himself up very
+erect. "Know you not the mysteries? The rain has put out all the fires in
+Boupari. The King of Fire himself, even his hearth is cold. He tried his
+best in the storm to keep his sacred embers still smouldering; but the
+King of the Rain was stronger than he was, and put it out at last in
+spite of his endeavors. Be careful, therefore, how you deal with the King
+of the Rain, who comes down among lightnings, and is so very powerful."
+
+"And Tu-Kila-Kila comes to fetch fresh fire?" one of the nearest savages
+asked, with profound awe.
+
+"He comes to fetch fresh fire, new fire from the sun," the old man
+answered, with awe in his voice. "These foreign gods, are they not
+strangers from the sun? They have brought the divine seeds of fire,
+growing in a shining box that reflects the sunlight. They need no
+rubbing-sticks and no drill to kindle fresh flame. They touch the seed
+on the box, and, lo, like a miracle, fire bursts forth from the wood
+spontaneous. Tu-Kila-Kila comes, to behold this miracle."
+
+The warriors hung back with doubtful eyes for a moment. Then they spoke
+with one accord, "Tu-Kila-Kila shall decide. Tu-Kila-Kila! Tu-Kila-Kila!
+If the great god says the Taboo holds good, we will not hurt or offend
+the strangers. But if the great god says the Taboo is broken, and we are
+all without sin--then, Korong! Korong! we will kill them! We will eat
+them!"
+
+As the two parties thus stood glaring at one another, across that narrow
+imaginary wall, another cry went up to heaven at the distant sound of a
+peculiar tom-tom. "Tu-Kila-Kila comes!" they shouted. "Our great god
+approaches! Women, begone! Men, hide your eyes! Fly, fly from the
+brightness of his face, which is as the sun in glory! Tu-Kila-Kila comes!
+Fly far, all profane ones!"
+
+And in a moment the women had disappeared into space, and the men lay
+flat on the moist ground with low groans of surprise, and hid their faces
+in their hands in abject terror.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+AS BETWEEN GODS.
+
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila came up in his grandest panoply. The great umbrella, with
+the hanging cords, rose high over his head; the King of Fire and the King
+of Water, in their robes of state, marched slowly by his side; a whole
+group of slaves and temple attendants, clapping hands in unison, followed
+obedient at his sacred heels. But as soon as he reached the open space in
+front of the huts and began to speak, Felix could easily see, in spite of
+his own agitation and the excitement of the moment, that the implacable
+god himself was profoundly frightened. Last night's storm had, indeed,
+been terrible; but Tu-Kila-Kila mentally coupled it with Felix's attitude
+toward himself at their last interview, and really believed in his own
+heart he had met, after all, with a stronger god, more powerful than
+himself, who could make the clouds burst forth in fire and the earth
+tremble. The savage swaggered a good deal, to be sure, as is often the
+fashion with savages when frightened; but Felix could see between the
+lines, that he swaggered only on the familiar principle of whistling to
+keep your courage up, and that in his heart of hearts he was most
+unspeakably terrified.
+
+"You did not do well, O King of the Rain, last night," he said, after an
+interchange of civilities, as becomes great gods. "You have put out even
+the sacred flame on the holy hearth of the King of Fire. You have a bad
+heart. Why do you use us so?"
+
+"Why do you let your people offer human sacrifices?" Felix answered,
+boldly, taking advantage of his position. "They are hateful in our sight,
+these cannibal ways. While we remain on the island, no human life shall
+be unjustly taken. Do you understand me?"
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila drew back, and gazed around him suspiciously. In all his
+experience no one had ever dared to address him like that. Assuredly, the
+stranger from the sun must be a very great god--how great, he hardly
+dared to himself to realize. He shrugged his shoulders. "When we mighty
+deities of the first order speak together, face to face," he said, with
+an uneasy air, "it is not well that the mere common herd of men should
+overhear our profound deliberations. Let us go inside your hut. Let us
+confer in private."
+
+They entered the hut alone, Muriel still clinging to Felix's arm, in
+speechless terror. Then Felix at once began to explain the situation. As
+he spoke, a baleful light gleamed in Tu-Kila-Kila's eye. The great god
+removed his mulberry-paper mask. He was evidently delighted at the turn
+things had taken. If only he dared--but there; he dared not. "Fire and
+Water would never allow it," he murmured softly to himself. "They know
+the taboos as well as I do." It was clear to Felix that the savage would
+gladly have sacrificed him if he dared, and that he made no bones about
+letting him know it; but the custom of the islanders bound him as tightly
+as it bound themselves, and he was afraid to transgress it.
+
+"Now listen," Felix said, at last, after a long palaver, looking in the
+savage's face with a resolute air: "Tu-Kila-Kila, we are not afraid of
+you. We are not afraid of all your people. I went out alone just now to
+rescue that child, and, as you see, I succeeded in rescuing it. Your
+people have wounded me--look at the blood on my arms and chest--but I
+don't mind for wounds. I mean you to do as I say, and to make your people
+do so, too. Understand, the nation to which I belong is very powerful.
+You have heard of the sailing gods who go over the sea in canoes of fire,
+as swift as the wind, and whose weapons are hollow tubes, that belch
+forth great bolts of lightning and thunder? Very well, I am one of them.
+If ever you harm a hair of our heads, those sailing gods will before long
+send one of their mighty fire-canoes, and bring to bear upon your island
+their thunder and lightning, and destroy your huts, and punish you for
+the wrong you have ventured to do us. So now you know. Remember that you
+act exactly as I tell you."
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila was evidently overawed by the white man's resolute voice and
+manner. He had heard before of the sailing gods (as the Polynesians of
+the old school still call the Europeans); and though but one or two stray
+individuals among them had ever reached his remote island (mostly as
+castaways), he was quite well enough acquainted with their might and
+power to be deeply impressed by Felix's exhortation. So he tried to
+temporize. "Very well," he made answer, with his jauntiest air, assuming
+a tone of friendly good-fellowship toward his brother-god. "I will bear
+it in mind. I will try to humor you. While your time lasts, no man shall
+hurt you. But if I promise you that, you must do a good turn for me
+instead. You must come out before the people and give me a new fire from
+the sun, that you carry in a shining box about with you. The King of Fire
+has allowed his sacred flame to go out in deference to your flood; for
+last night, you know, you came down heavily. Never in my life have I
+known you come down heavier. The King of Fire acknowledges himself
+beaten. So give us light now before the people, that they may know we are
+gods, and may fear to disobey us."
+
+"Only on one condition," Felix answered, sternly; for he felt he had
+Tu-Kila-Kila more or less in his power now, and that he could drive a
+bargain with him. Why, he wasn't sure; but he saw Tu-Kila-Kila attached a
+profound importance to having the sacred fire relighted, as he thought,
+direct from heaven.
+
+"What condition is that?" Tu-Kila-Kila asked, glancing about him
+suspiciously.
+
+"Why, that you give up in future human sacrifices."
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila gave a start. Then he reflected for a moment. Evidently, the
+condition seemed to him a very hard one. "Do you want all the victims for
+yourself and her, then?" he asked, with a casual nod aside toward Muriel.
+
+Felix drew back, with horror depicted on every line of his face. "Heaven
+forbid!" he answered, fervently. "We want no bloodshed, no human victims.
+We ask you to give up these horrid practices, because they shock and
+revolt us. If you would have your fire lighted, you must promise us to
+put down cannibalism altogether henceforth in your island."
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila hesitated. After all, it was only for a very short time that
+these strangers could thus beard him. Their day would come soon. They
+were but Korongs. Meanwhile, it was best, no doubt, to effect a
+compromise. "Agreed," he answered, slowly. "I will put down human
+sacrifices--so long as you live among us. And I will tell the people your
+taboo is not broken. All shall be done as you will in this matter. Now,
+come out before the crowd and light the fire from Heaven."
+
+"Remember," Felix repeated, "if you break your word, my people will come
+down upon you, sooner or later, in their mighty fire-canoes, and will
+take vengeance for your crime, and destroy you utterly."
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila smiled a cunning smile. "I know all that," he answered. "I
+am a god myself, not a fool, don't you see? You are a very great god,
+too; but I am the greater. No more of words between us two. It is as
+between gods. The fire! the fire!"
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila replaced his mask. They proceeded from the hut to the open
+space within the taboo-line. The people still lay all flat on their
+faces. "Fire and Water," Tu-Kila-Kila said, in a commanding tone, "come
+forward and screen me!"
+
+The King of Fire and the King of Water unrolled a large square of native
+cloth, which they held up as a screen on two poles in front of their
+superior deity. Tu-Kila-Kila sat down on the ground, hugging his knees,
+in the common squatting savage fashion, behind the veil thus readily
+formed for him. "Taboo is removed," he said, in loud, clear tones. "My
+people may rise. The light will not burn them. They may look toward the
+place where Tu-Kila-Kila's face is hidden from them."
+
+The people all rose with one accord, and gazed straight before them.
+
+"The King of Fire will bring dry sticks," Tu-Kila-Kila said, in his
+accustomed regal manner.
+
+The King of Fire, sticking one pole of the screen into the ground
+securely, brought forward a bundle of sun-dried sticks and leaves from a
+basket beside him.
+
+"The King of the Rain, who has put out all our hearths with his flood
+last night, will relight them again with new fire, fresh flame from the
+sun, rays of our disk, divine, mystic, wonderful," Tu-Kila-Kila
+proclaimed, in his droning monotone.
+
+Felix advanced as he spoke to the pile, and struck a match before the
+eyes of all the islanders. As they saw it light, and then set fire to the
+wood, a loud cry went up once more, "Tu-Kila-Kila is great! His words are
+true! He has brought fire from the sun! His ways are wonderful!"
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila, from his point of vantage behind the curtain, strove to
+improve the occasion with a theological lesson. "That is the way we have
+learned from our divine ancestors," he said, slowly; "the rule of the
+gods in our island of Boupari. Each god, as he grows old, reincarnates
+himself visibly. Before he can grow feeble and die he immolates himself
+willingly on his own altar; and a younger and a stronger than he receives
+his spirit. Thus the gods are always young and always with you. Behold
+myself, Tu-Kila-Kila! Am I not from old times? Am I not very ancient?
+Have I not passed through many bodies? Do I not spring ever fresh from my
+own ashes? Do I not eat perpetually the flesh of new victims? Even so
+with fire. The flames of our island were becoming impure. The King of
+Fire saw his cinders flickering. So I gave my word. The King of the Rain
+descended in floods upon them. He put them all out. And now he rekindles
+them. They burn up brighter and fresher than ever. They burn to cook my
+meat, the limbs of my victims. Take heed that you do the King of the Rain
+no harm as long as he remains within his sacred circle. He is a very
+great god. He is fierce; he is cruel. His taboo is not broken. Beware!
+Beware! Disobey at your peril. I, Tu-Kila-Kila, have spoken."
+
+As he spoke, it seemed to Felix that these strange mystic words about
+each god springing fresh from his own ashes must contain the solution of
+that dread problem they were trying in vain to read. That, perhaps, was
+the secret of Korong. If only they could ever manage to understand it!
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila beat his tom-tom twice. In a second all the people fell flat
+on their faces again. Tu-Kila-Kila rose; the kings of Fire and Water held
+the umbrella over him. The attendants on either side clapped hands in
+time to the sacred tom-tom. With proud, slow tread, the god retraced his
+steps to his own palace-temple; and Muriel and Felix were left alone at
+last in their dusty enclosure.
+
+"Tu-Kila-Kila hates me," Felix said, later in the day, to his attentive
+Shadow.
+
+"Of course," the young man answered, with a tone of natural assent. "To
+be sure he hates you. How could he do otherwise? You are Korong. You may
+any day be his enemy."
+
+"But he's afraid of me, too," Felix went on. "He would have liked to let
+the people tear me in pieces. Yet he dared not risk it. He seems to dread
+offending me."
+
+"Of course," the Shadow replied, as readily as before. "He is very much
+afraid of you. You are Korong. You may any day supplant him. He would
+like to get rid of you, if he could see his way. But till your time comes
+he dare not touch you."
+
+"When will my time come?" Felix asked, with that dim apprehension of some
+horrible end coming over him yet again in all its vague weirdness.
+
+The Shadow shook his head. "That," he answered, "it is not lawful for me
+so much as to mention. I tell you too far. You will know soon enough.
+Wait, and be patient."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+"MR. THURSTAN, I PRESUME."
+
+
+Naturally enough, it was some time before Felix and Muriel could recover
+from the shock of their deadly peril. Yet, strange to say, the natives at
+the end of three days seemed positively to have forgotten all about it.
+Their loves and their hates were as shortlived as children's. As soon as
+the period of seclusion was over, their attentions to the two strangers
+redoubled in intensity. They were evidently most anxious, after this
+brief disagreement, to reassure the new gods, who came from the sun, of
+their gratitude and devotion. The men who had wounded Felix, in
+particular, now came daily in the morning with exceptional gifts of fish,
+fruit, and flowers; they would bring a crab from the sea, or a joint of
+turtle-meat. "Forgive us, O king," they cried, prostrating themselves
+humbly. "We did not mean to hurt you; we thought your time had really
+come. You are a Korong. We would not offend you. Do not refuse us your
+showers because of our sin. We are very penitent. We will do what you ask
+of us. Your look is poison. See, here is wood; here are leaves and fire;
+we are but your meat; choose and cook which you will of us!"
+
+It was useless Felix's trying to explain to them that he wanted no
+victims, and no propitiation. The more he protested, the more they
+brought gifts. "He is a very great god," they exclaimed. "He wants
+nothing from us. What can we give him that will be an acceptable gift?
+Shall we offer him ourselves, our wives, our children?"
+
+As for the women, when they saw how thoroughly frightened of them Muriel
+now was, they couldn't find means to express their regret and devotion.
+Mothers brought their little children, whom she had patted on the head,
+and offered them, just outside the line, as presents for her acceptance.
+They explained to her Shadow that they never meant to hurt her, and that,
+if only she would venture without the line, as of old, all should be
+well, and they would love and adore her. Mali translated to her mistress
+these speeches and prayers. "Them say, 'You come back, Queenie,'" she
+explained in her broken Queensland English. "'Boupari women love you very
+much. Boupari women glad you come. You kind; you beautiful! All Boupari
+men and women very much pleased with you and the gentleman, because you
+give back him cocoanut and fruit that you pick in the storm, and because
+you bring down fresh fire from heaven.'"
+
+Gradually, after several days, Felix's confidence was so far restored
+that he ventured to stroll beyond the line again; and he found himself,
+indeed, most popular among the people. In various ways he picked up
+gradually the idea that the islanders generally disliked Tu-Kila-Kila,
+and liked himself; and that they somehow regarded him as Tu-Kila-Kila's
+natural enemy. What it could all mean he did not yet understand, though
+some inklings of an explanation occasionally occurred to him. Oh, how he
+longed now for the Month of Birds to end, in order that he might pay his
+long-deferred visit to the mysterious Frenchman, from whose voice his
+Shadow had fled on that fateful evening with such sudden precipitancy.
+The Frenchman, he judged, must have been long on the island, and could
+probably give him some satisfactory solution of this abstruse problem.
+
+So he was glad, indeed, when one evening, some weeks later, his Shadow,
+observing the sky narrowly, remarked to him in a low voice, "New moon
+to-morrow! The Month of Birds will then be up. In the morning you can go
+and see your brother god at the Abode of Birds without breaking taboo.
+The Month of Turtles begins at sunrise. My family god is a turtle, so I
+know the day for it."
+
+So great was Felix's impatience to settle this question, that almost
+before the sun was up next day he had set forth from his hut, accompanied
+as usual by his faithful Shadow. Their way lay past Tu-Kila-Kila's
+temple. As they went by the entrance with the bamboo posts, Felix
+happened to glance aside through the gate to the sacred enclosure. Early
+as it was, Tu-Kila-Kila was afoot already; and, to Felix's great
+surprise, was pacing up and down, with that stealthy, wary look upon his
+cunning face that Muriel had so particularly noted on the day of their
+first arrival. His spear stood in his hand, and his tomahawk hung by his
+left side; he peered about him suspiciously, with a cautious glance, as
+he walked round and round the sacred tree he guarded so continually.
+There was something weird and awful in the sight of that savage god, thus
+condemned by his own superstition and the custom of his people to tramp
+ceaselessly up and down before the sacred banyan.
+
+At sight of Felix, however, a sudden burst of frenzy seemed to possess at
+once all Tu-Kila-Kila's limbs. He brandished his spear violently, and set
+himself spasmodically in a posture of defence. His brow grew black, and
+his eyes darted out eternal hate and suspicion. It was evident he
+expected an instant attack, and was prepared with all his might and main
+to resist aggression. Yet he never offered to desert his post by the tree
+or to assume the offensive. Clearly, he was guarding the sacred grove
+itself with jealous care, and was as eager for its safety as for his own
+life and honor.
+
+Felix passed on, wondering what it all could mean, and turned with an
+inquiring glance to his trembling Shadow. As for Toko, he had held his
+face averted meanwhile, lest he should behold the great god, and be
+scorched to a cinder; but in answer to Felix's mute inquiry he murmured
+low: "Was Tu-Kila-Kila there? Were all things right? Was he on guard at
+his post by the tree already?"
+
+"Yes," Felix replied, with that weird sense of mystery creeping over him
+now more profoundly than ever. "He was on guard by the tree and he looked
+at me angrily."
+
+"Ah," the Shadow remarked, with a sigh of regret, "he keeps watch well.
+It will be hard work to assail him. No god in Boupari ever held his place
+so tight. Who wishes to take Tu-Kila-Kila's divinity must get up early."
+
+They went on in silence to the little volcanic knoll near the centre of
+the island. There, in the neat garden plot they had observed before, a
+man, in the last relics of a very tattered European costume, much covered
+with a short cape of native cloth, was tending his flowers and singing to
+himself merrily. His back was turned to them as they came up. Felix
+paused a moment, unseen, and caught the words the stranger was singing:
+
+"Très jolie,
+ Peu polie,
+ Possédant un gros magot;
+ Fort en gueule,
+ Pas bégueule;
+ Telle était--"
+
+The stranger looked up, and paused in the midst of his lines,
+open-mouthed. For a moment he stood and stared astonished. Then, raising
+his native cap with a graceful air, and bowing low, as he would have
+bowed to a lady on the Boulevard, he advanced to greet a brother European
+with the familiar words, in good educated French, "Monsieur, I salute
+you!"
+
+To Felix, the sound of a civilized voice in the midst of so much strange
+and primitive barbarism, was like a sudden return to some forgotten
+world, so deeply and profoundly did it move and impress him. He grasped
+the sunburnt Frenchman's rugged hand in his. "Who are you?" he cried, in
+the very best Parisian he could muster up on the spur of the moment. "And
+how did you come here?"
+
+"Monsieur," the Frenchman answered, no less profoundly moved than
+himself, "this is, indeed, wonderful! Do I hear once more that beautiful
+language spoken? Do I find myself once more in the presence of a
+civilized person? What fortune! What happiness! Ah, it is glorious,
+glorious."
+
+For some seconds they stood and looked at one another in silence,
+grasping their hands hard again and again with intense emotion; then
+Felix repeated his question a second time: "Who are you, monsieur? and
+where do you come from?"
+
+"Your name, surname, age, occupation?" the Frenchman repeated, bursting
+forth at last into national levity. "Ah, monsieur, what a joy to hear
+those well-known inquiries in my ear once more. I hasten to gratify
+your legitimate curiosity. Name: Peyron; Christian name: Jules; age:
+forty-one; occupation: convict, escaped from New Caledonia."
+
+Under any other circumstances that last qualification might possibly have
+been held an undesirable one in a new acquaintance. But on the island of
+Boupari, among so many heathen cannibals, prejudices pale before
+community of blood; even a New Caledonian convict is at least a Christian
+European. Felix received the strange announcement without the faintest
+shock of surprise or disgust. He would gladly have shaken hands then and
+there with M. Jules Peyron, indeed, had he introduced himself in even
+less equivocal language as a forger, a pickpocket, or an escaped
+house-breaker.
+
+"And you, monsieur?" the ex-convict inquired, politely.
+
+Felix told him in a few words the history of their accident and their
+arrival on the island.
+
+"_Comment_?" the Frenchman exclaimed, with surprise and delight. "A lady
+as well; a charming English lady! What an acquisition to the society of
+Boupari! _Quelle chance! Quel bonheur!_ Monsieur, you are welcome, and
+mademoiselle too! And in what quality do you live here? You are a god, I
+see; otherwise you would not have dared to transgress my taboo, nor would
+this young man--your Shadow, I suppose--have permitted you to do so. But
+which sort of god, pray? Korong--or Tula?"
+
+"They call me Korong," Felix answered, all tremulous, feeling himself now
+on the very verge of solving this profound mystery.
+
+"And mademoiselle as well?" the Frenchman exclaimed, in a tone of dismay.
+
+"And mademoiselle as well," Felix replied. "At least, so I make out. We
+are both Korong. I have many times heard the natives call us so."
+
+His new acquaintance seized his hand with every appearance of genuine
+alarm and regret. "My poor friend," he exclaimed, with a horrified face,
+"this is terrible, terrible! Tu-Kila-Kila is a very hard man. What can
+we do to save your life and mademoiselle's! We are powerless! Powerless!
+I have only that much to say. I condole with you! I commiserate you!"
+
+"Why, what does Korong mean?" Felix asked, with blanched lips. "Is it
+then something so very terrible?"
+
+"Terrible! Ah, terrible!" the Frenchman answered, holding up his hands in
+horror and alarm. "I hardly know how we can avert your fate. Step within
+my poor hut, or under the shade of my Tree of Liberty here, and I will
+tell you all the little I know about it."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+THE SECRET OF KORONG.
+
+
+"You have lived here long?" Felix asked, with tremulous interest, as he
+took a seat on the bench under the big tree, toward which his new host
+politely motioned him. "You know the people well, and all their
+superstitions?"
+
+"_Hélas_, yes, monsieur," the Frenchman answered, with a sigh of regret.
+"Eighteen years have I spent altogether in this beast of a Pacific; nine
+as a convict in New Caledonia, and nine more as a god here; and, believe
+me, I hardly know which is the harder post. Yours is the first White face
+I have ever seen since my arrival in this cursed island."
+
+"And how did you come here?" Felix asked, half breathless, for the very
+magnitude of the stake at issue--no less a stake than Muriel's life--made
+him hesitate to put point-blank the question he had most at heart for the
+moment.
+
+"Monsieur," the Frenchman answered, trying to cover his rags with
+his native cape, "that explains itself easily. I was a medical student
+in Paris in the days of the Commune. Ah! that beloved Paris--how far
+away it seems now from Boupari! Like all other students I was
+advanced--Republican, Socialist--what you will--a political enthusiast.
+When the events took place--the events of '70--I espoused with
+all my heart the cause of the people. You know the rest. The
+bourgeoisie conquered. I was taken red-handed, as the Versaillais
+said--my pistol in my grasp--an open revolutionist. They tried me by
+court-martial--br'r'r--no delay--guilty, M. le President--hard labor to
+perpetuity. They sent me with that brave Louise Michel and so many other
+good comrades of the cause to New Caledonia. There, nine years of convict
+life was more than enough for me. One day I found a canoe on the shore--a
+little Kanaka canoe--you know the type--a mere shapeless dug-out. Hastily
+I loaded it with food--yam, taro, bread-fruit--I pushed it off into the
+sea--I embarked alone--I intrusted myself and all my fortunes to the Bon
+Dieu and the wide Pacific. The Bon Dieu did not wholly justify my
+confidence. It is a way he has--that inscrutable one. Six weeks I floated
+hither and thither before varying winds. At last one evening I reached
+this island. I floated ashore. And, _enfin, me voilà_!"
+
+"Then you were a political prisoner only?" Felix said, politely.
+
+M. Jules Peyron drew himself up with much dignity in his tattered
+costume. "Do I look like a card-sharper, monsieur?" he asked simply, with
+offended honor.
+
+Felix hastened to reassure him of his perfect confidence. "On the
+contrary, monsieur," he said, "the moment I heard you were a convict from
+New Caledonia, I felt certain in my heart you could be nothing less than
+one of those unfortunate and ill-treated Communards."
+
+"Monsieur," the Frenchman said, seizing his hand a second time, "I
+perceive that I have to do with a man of honor and a man of feeling.
+Well, I landed on this island, and they made me a god. From that day to
+this I have been anxious only to shuffle off my unwelcome divinity, and
+return as a mere man to the shores of Europe. Better be a valet in Paris,
+say I, than a deity of the best in Polynesia. It is a monotonous
+existence here--no society, no life--and the _cuisine_--bah, execrable!
+But till the other day, when your steamer passed, I have scarcely even
+sighted a European ship. A boat came here once, worse luck, to put off
+two girls (who didn't belong to Boupari), returned indentured laborers
+from Queensland; but, unhappily, it was during my taboo--the Month of
+Birds, as my jailers call it--and though I tried to go down to it or to
+make signals of distress, the natives stood round my hut with their
+spears in line, and prevented me by main force from signalling to them or
+communicating with them. Even the other day, I never heard of your
+arrival till a fortnight had elapsed, for I had been sick with fever, the
+fever of the country, and as soon as my Shadow told me of your advent it
+was my taboo again, and I was obliged to defer for myself the honor of
+calling upon my new acquaintances. I am a god, of course, and can do
+what I like; but while my taboo is on, _ma foi_, monsieur, I can hardly
+call my life my own, I assure you."
+
+"But your taboo is up to-day," Felix said, "so my Shadow tells me."
+
+"Your Shadow is a well-informed young man," M. Peyron answered, with easy
+French sprightliness. "As for my donkey of a valet, he never by any
+chance knows or tells me anything. I had just sent him out--the pig--to
+learn, if possible, your nationality and name, and what hours you
+preferred, as I proposed later in the day to pay my respects to
+mademoiselle, your friend, if she would deign to receive me."
+
+"Miss Ellis would be charmed, I'm sure," Felix replied, smiling in spite
+of himself at so much Parisian courtliness under so ragged an exterior.
+"It is a great pleasure to us to find we are not really alone on this
+barbarous island. But you were going to explain to me, I believe, the
+exact nature of this peril in which we both stand--the precise
+distinction between Korong and Tula?"
+
+"Alas, monsieur," the Frenchman replied, drawing circles in the dust with
+his stick with much discomposure, "I can only tell you I have been trying
+to make out the secret of this distinction myself ever since the first
+day I came to the island; but so reticent are all the natives about it,
+and so deep is the taboo by which the mystery is guarded, that even now
+I, who am myself Tula, can tell you but very little with certainty on the
+subject. All I can say for sure is this--that gods called Tula retain
+their godship in permanency for a very long time, although at the end
+some violent fate, which I do not clearly understand, is destined to
+befall them. That is my condition as King of the Birds--for no doubt
+they have told you that I, Jules Peyron--Republican, Socialist,
+Communist--have been elevated against my will to the honors of royalty.
+That is my condition, and it matters but little to me, for I know not
+when the end may come; and we can but die once; how or where, what
+matters? Meanwhile, I have my distractions, my little _agréments_--my
+gardens, my music, my birds, my native friends, my coquetries, my aviary.
+As King of the Birds, I keep a small collection of my subjects in the
+living form, not unworthy of a scientific eye. Monsieur is no
+ornithologist? Ah, no, I thought not. Well, for me, it matters little; my
+time is long. But for you and Mademoiselle, who are both Korong--" He
+paused significantly.
+
+"What happens, then, to those who are Korong?" Felix asked, with a lump
+in his throat--not for himself, but for Muriel.
+
+The Frenchman looked at him with a doubtful look. "Monsieur," he said,
+after a pause, "I hardly know how to break the truth to you properly. You
+are new to the island, and do not yet understand these savages. It is so
+terrible a fate. So deadly. So certain. Compose your mind to hear the
+worst. And remember that the worst is very terrible."
+
+Felix's blood froze within him; but he answered bravely all the same, "I
+think I have guessed it myself already. The Korong are offered as human
+sacrifices to Tu-Kila-Kila."
+
+"That is nearly so," his new friend replied, with a solemn nod of his
+head. "Every Korong is bound to die when his time comes. Your time will
+depend on the particular date when you were admitted to Heaven."
+
+Felix reflected a moment. "It was on the 26th of last month," he
+answered, shortly.
+
+"Very well," M. Peyron replied, after a brief calculation. "You have
+just six months in all to live from that date. They will offer you up by
+Tu-Kila-Kila's hut the day the sun reaches the summer solstice."
+
+"But why did they make us gods then?" Felix interposed, with tremulous
+lips. "Why treat us with such honors meanwhile, if they mean in the end
+to kill us?"
+
+He received his sentence of death with greater calmness than the
+Frenchman had expected. "Monsieur," the older arrival answered, with a
+reflective air, "there comes in the mystery. If we could solve that, we
+could find out also the way of escape for you. For there _is_ a way of
+escape for every Korong: I know it well; I gather it from all the natives
+say; it is a part of their mysteries; but what it may be, I have
+hitherto, in spite of all my efforts, failed to discover. All I _do_ know
+is this: Tu-Kila-Kila hates and dreads in his heart every Korong that is
+elevated to Heaven, and would do anything, if he dared, to get rid of him
+quietly. But he doesn't dare, because he is bound hand and foot himself,
+too, by taboos innumerable. Taboo is the real god and king of Boupari.
+All the island alike bows down to it and worships it."
+
+"Have you ever known Korongs killed?" Felix asked once more, trembling.
+
+"Yes, monsieur. Many of them, alas! And this is what happens. When the
+Korong's time is come, as these creatures say, either on the summer or
+winter solstice, he is bound with native ropes, and carried up so
+pinioned to Tu-Kila-Kila's temple. In the time before this man was
+Tu-Kila-Kila, I remember--"
+
+"Stop," Felix cried. "I don't understand. Has there then been more than
+one Tu-Kila-Kila?"
+
+"Why, yes," the Frenchman answered. "Certainly, many. And there the
+mystery comes in again. We have always among us one Tu-Kila-Kila or
+another. He is a sort of pope, or grand lama, _voyez-vous?_ No sooner is
+the last god dead than another god succeeds him and takes his name, or
+rather his title. This young man who now holds the place was known
+originally as Lavita, the son of Sami. But what is more curious still,
+the islanders always treat the new god as if he were precisely the
+self-same person as the old one. So far as I have been able to understand
+their theology, they believe in a sort of transmigration of souls. The
+soul of the Tu-Kila-Kila who is just dead passes into and animates the
+body of the Tu-Kila-Kila who succeeds to the office. Thus they speak as
+though Tu-Kila-Kila were a continuous existence; and the god of the
+moment, himself, will even often refer to events which occurred to him,
+as he says, a hundred years ago or more, but which he really knows, of
+course, only by the persistent tradition of the islanders. They are a
+very curious people, these Bouparese. But what would you have? Among
+savages, one expects things to be as among savages."
+
+Felix drew a quiet sigh. It was certain that on the island of Boupari
+that expectation, at least, was never doomed to disappointment. "And when
+a Korong is taken to Tu-Kila-Kila's temple," he asked, continuing the
+subject of most immediate interest, "what happens next to him?"
+
+"Monsieur," the Frenchman answered, "I hardly know whether I do right or
+not to say the truth to you. Each Korong is a god for one season only;
+when the year renews itself, as the savages believe, by a change of
+season, then a new Korong must be chosen by Heaven to fill the place of
+the old ones who are to be sacrificed. This they do in order that the
+seasons may be ever fresh and vigorous. Especially is that the case with
+the two meteorological gods, so to speak, the King of the Rain and the
+Queen of the Clouds. Those, I understand, are the posts in their pantheon
+which you and the lady who accompanies you occupy."
+
+"You are right," Felix answered, with profoundly painful interest. "And
+what, then, becomes of the king and queen who are sacrificed?"
+
+"I will tell you," M. Peyron answered, dropping his voice still lower
+into a sympathetic key. "But steel your mind for the worst beforehand. It
+is sufficiently terrible. On the day of your arrival, this, I learn from
+my Shadow, is just what happened. That night, Tu-Kila-Kila made his great
+feast, and offered up the two chief human sacrifices of the year, the
+free-will offering and the scapegoat of trespass. They keep then a
+festival, which answers to our own New-Year's day in Europe. Next
+morning, in accordance with custom, the King of the Rain and the Queen of
+the Clouds were to be publicly slain, in order that a new and more
+vigorous king and queen should be chosen in their place, who might make
+the crops grow better and the sky more clement. In the midst of this
+horrid ceremony, you and mademoiselle, by pure chance, arrived. You were
+immediately selected by Tu-Kila-Kila, for some reason of his own, which I
+do not sufficiently understand, but which is, nevertheless, obvious to
+all the initiated, as the next representatives of the rain-giving gods.
+You were presented to Heaven on their little platform raised about the
+ground, and Heaven accepted you. Then you were envisaged with the
+attributes of divinity; the care of the rain and the clouds was made over
+to you; and immediately after, as soon as you were gone, the old king and
+queen were laid on an altar near Tu-Kila-Kila's home, and slain with
+tomahawks. Their flesh was next hacked from their bodies with knives,
+cooked, and eaten; their bones were thrown into the sea, the mother of
+all waters, as the natives call it. And that is the fate, I fear the
+inevitable fate, that will befall you and mademoiselle at these wretches'
+hands about the commencement of a fresh season."
+
+Felix knew the worst now, and bent his head in silence. His worst fears
+were confirmed; but, after all, even this knowledge was better than so
+much uncertainty.
+
+And now that he knew when "his time was up," as the natives phrased it,
+he would know when to redeem his promise to Muriel.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+A VERY FAINT CLUE.
+
+
+"But you hinted at some hope, some chance of escape," Felix cried at
+last, looking up from the ground and mastering his emotion. "What now is
+that hope? Conceal nothing from me."
+
+"Monsieur," the Frenchman answered, shrugging his shoulders with an
+expression of utter impotence, "I have as good reasons for wishing to
+find out all that as even you can have. _Your_ secret is _my_ secret;
+but with all my pains and astuteness I have been unable to discover
+it. The natives are reticent, very reticent indeed, about all these
+matters. They fear taboo; and they fear Tu-Kila-Kila. The women, to
+be sure, in a moment of expansion, might possibly tell one; but, then,
+the women, unfortunately, are not admitted to the mysteries. They know
+no more of all these things than we do. The most I have been able to
+gather for certain is this--that on the discovery of the secret depend
+Tu-Kila-Kila's life and power. Every Boupari man knows this Great Taboo;
+it is communicated to him in the assembly of adults when he gets tattooed
+and reaches manhood. But no Boupari man ever communicates it to
+strangers; and for that reason, perhaps, as I believe, Tu-Kila-Kila often
+chooses for Korong, as far as possible, those persons who are cast by
+chance upon the island. It has always been the custom, so far as I can
+make out, to treat castaways or prisoners taken in war as gods, and then
+at the end of their term to kill them ruthlessly. This plan is popular
+with the people at large, because it saves themselves from the dangerous
+honors of deification; but it also serves Tu-Kila-Kila's purpose, because
+it usually elevates to Heaven those innocent persons who are unacquainted
+with that fatal secret which is, as the natives say, Tu-Kila-Kila's
+death--his word of dismissal."
+
+"Then if only we could find out this secret--" Felix cried.
+
+His new friend interrupted him. "What hope is there of your finding
+it out, monsieur," he exclaimed, "you, who have only a few months to
+live--when I, who have spent nine long years of exile on the island, and
+seen two Tu-Kila-Kilas rise and fall, have been unable, with my utmost
+pains, to discover it? _Tenez_; you have no idea yet of the superstitions
+of these people, or the difficulties that lie in the way of fathoming
+them. Come this way to my aviary; I will show you something that will
+help you to realize the complexities of the situation."
+
+He rose and led the way to another cleared space at the back of the hut,
+where several birds of gaudy plumage were fastened to perches on sticks
+by leathery lashes of dried shark's skin, tied just above their talons.
+"I am the King of the Birds, monsieur, you must remember," the Frenchman
+said, fondling one of his screaming _protégés_. "These are a few of my
+subjects. But I do not keep them for mere curiosity. Each of them is the
+Soul of the tribe to which it belongs. This, for example--my Cluseret--is
+the Soul of all the gray parrots; that that you see yonder--Badinguet,
+I call him--is the Soul of the hawks; this, my Mimi, is the Soul of the
+little yellow-crested kingfisher. My task as King of the Birds is to keep
+a representative of each of these always on hand; in which endeavor I
+am faithfully aided by the whole population of the island, who bring me
+eggs and nests and young birds in abundance. If the Soul of the little
+yellow kingfisher now were to die, without a successor being found ready
+at once to receive and embody it, then the whole race of little yellow
+kingfishers would vanish altogether; and if I myself, the King of the
+Birds, who am, as it were, the Soul and life of all of them, were to die
+without a successor being at hand to receive my spirit, then all the race
+of birds, with one accord, would become extinct forthwith and forever."
+
+He moved among his pets easily, like a king among his subjects. Most of
+them seemed to know him and love his presence. Presently, he came to one
+very old parrot, quite different from any Felix had ever seen on any
+trees in the island; it was a parrot with a black crest and a red mark on
+its throat, half blind with age, and tottering on its pedestal. This
+solemn old bird sat apart from all the others, nodding its head
+oracularly in the sunlight, and blinking now and again with its white
+eyelids in a curious senile fashion.
+
+The Frenchman turned to Felix with an air of profound mystery. "This
+bird," he said, solemnly stroking its head with his hand, while the
+parrot turned round to him and bit at his finger with half-doddering
+affection--"this bird is the oldest of all my birds---is it not so,
+Methuselah?--and illustrates well in one of its aspects the superstition
+of these people. Yes, my friend, you are the last of a kind now otherwise
+extinct, are you not, _mon vieux?_ No, no, there--gently! Once upon a
+time, the natives tell me, dozens of these parrots existed in the island;
+they flocked among the trees, and were held very sacred; but they were
+hard to catch and difficult to keep, and the Kings of the Birds, my
+predecessors, failed to secure an heir and coadjutor to this one. So as
+the Soul of the species, which you see here before you, grew old and
+feeble, the whole of the race to which it belonged grew old and feeble
+with it. One by one they withered away and died, till at last this
+solitary specimen alone remained to vouch for the former existence of the
+race in the island. Now, the islanders say, nothing but the Soul itself
+is left; and when the Soul dies, the red-throated parrots will be gone
+forever. One of my predecessors paid with his life in awful tortures for
+his remissness in not providing for the succession to the soulship. I
+tell you these things in order that you may see whether they cast any
+light for you upon your own position; and also because the oldest and
+wisest natives say that this parrot alone, among beasts or birds or
+uninitiated things, knows the secret on which depends the life of the
+Tu-Kila-Kila for the time being."
+
+"Can the parrot speak?" Felix asked, with profound emotion.
+
+"Monsieur, he can speak, and he speaks frequently. But not one word of
+all he says is comprehensible either to me or to any other living being.
+His tongue is that of a forgotten nation. The islanders understand him no
+more than I do. He has a very long sermon or poem, which he knows by
+heart, in some unknown language, and he repeats it often at full length
+from time to time, especially when he has eaten well and feels full and
+happy. The oldest natives tell a romantic legend about this strange
+recitation of the good Methuselah--I call him Methuselah because of his
+great age--but I do not really know whether their tale is true or purely
+fanciful. You never can trust these Polynesian traditions."
+
+"What is the legend?" Felix asked, with intense interest. "In an island
+where we find ourselves so girt round by mystery within mystery, and
+taboo within taboo, as this, every key is worth trying. It is well for us
+at least to learn everything we can about the ideas of the natives. Who
+knows what clue may supply us at last with the missing link, which will
+enable us to break through this intolerable servitude?"
+
+"Well, the story they tell us is this," the Frenchman replied,
+"though I have gathered it only a hint at a time, from very old men, who
+declared at the same moment that some religious fear--of which they have
+many--prevented them from telling me any further about it. It seems that
+a long time ago--how many years ago nobody knows, only that it was in the
+time of the thirty-ninth Tu-Kila-Kila, before the reign of Lavita, the
+son of Sami--a strange Korong was cast up upon this island by the waves
+of the sea, much as you and I have been in the present generation. By
+accident, says the story, or else, as others aver, through the
+indiscretion of a native woman who fell in love with him, and who worried
+the taboo out of her husband, the stranger became acquainted with the
+secret of Tu-Kila-Kila. As the natives themselves put it, he learned the
+Death of the High God, and where in the world his Soul was hidden.
+Thereupon, in some mysterious way or other, he became Tu-Kila-Kila
+himself, and ruled as High God for ten years or more here on this island.
+Now, up to that time, the legend goes on, none but the men of the island
+knew the secret; they learned it as soon as they were initiated in the
+great mysteries, which occur before a boy is given a spear and admitted
+to the rank of complete manhood. But sometimes a woman was told the
+secret wrongfully by her husband or her lover; and one such woman,
+apparently, told the strange Korong, and so enabled him to become
+Tu-Kila-Kila."
+
+"But where does the parrot come in?" Felix asked, with still profounder
+excitement than ever. Something within him seemed to tell him
+instinctively he was now within touch of the special key that must sooner
+or later unlock the mystery.
+
+"Well," the Frenchman went on, still stroking the parrot affectionately
+with his hand, and smoothing down the feathers on its ruffled back, "the
+strange Tu-Kila-Kila, who thus ruled in the island, though he learned to
+speak Polynesian well, had a language of his own, a language of the
+birds, which no man on earth could ever talk with him. So, to beguile his
+time and to have someone who could converse with him in his native
+dialect, he taught this parrot to speak his own tongue, and spent most of
+his days in talking with it and fondling it. At last, after he had
+instructed it by slow degrees how to repeat this long sermon or
+poem--which I have often heard it recite in a sing-song voice from
+beginning to end--his time came, as they say, and he had to give way to
+another Tu-Kila-Kila; for the Bouparese have a proverb like our own about
+the king, 'The High God is dead; may the High God live forever!' But
+before he gave up his Soul to his successor, and was eaten or buried,
+whichever is the custom, he handed over his pet to the King of the Birds,
+strictly charging all future bearers of that divine office to care for
+the parrot as they would care for a son or a daughter. And so the natives
+make much of the parrot to the present day, saying he is greater than
+any, save a Korong or a god, for he is the Soul of a dead race, summing
+it up in himself, and he knows the secret of the Death of Tu-Kila-Kila."
+
+"But you can't tell me what language he speaks?" Felix asked with a
+despairing gesture. It was terrible to stand thus within measurable
+distance of the secret which might, perhaps, save Muriel's life, and yet
+be perpetually balked by wheel within wheel of more than Egyptian
+mystery.
+
+"Who can say?" the Frenchman answered, shrugging his shoulders
+helplessly. "It isn't Polynesian; that I know well, for I speak
+Bouparese now like a native of Boupari; and it isn't the only other
+language spoken at the present day in the South Seas--the Melanesian of
+New Caledonia--for that I learned well from the Kanakas while I was
+serving my time as a convict among them. All we can say for certain is
+that it may, perhaps, be some very ancient tongue. For parrots, we know,
+are immensely long-lived. Some of them, it is said, exceed their century.
+Is it not so, eh, my friend Methuselah?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+FACING THE WORST.
+
+
+Muriel, meanwhile, sat alone in her hut, frightened at Felix's unexpected
+disappearance so early in the morning, and anxiously awaiting her lover's
+return, for she made no pretences now to herself that she did not really
+love Felix. Though the two might never return to Europe to be husband and
+wife, she did not doubt that before the eye of Heaven they were already
+betrothed to one another as truly as though they had plighted their troth
+in solemn fashion. Felix had risked his life for her, and had brought all
+this misery upon himself in the attempt to save her. Felix was now all
+the world that was left her. With Felix, she was happy, even on this
+horrible island; without him, she was miserable and terrified, no matter
+what happened.
+
+"Mali," she cried to her faithful attendant, as soon as she found Felix
+was missing from his tent, "what's become of Mr. Thurstan? Where can he
+be gone, I wonder, this morning?"
+
+"You no fear, Missy Queenie," Mali answered, with the childish
+confidence of the native Polynesian. "Mistah Thurstan, him gone to see
+man-a-oui-oui, the King of the Birds. Month of Birds finish last night;
+man-a-oui-oui no taboo any longer. King of the Birds keep very old
+parrot, Boupari folk tell me; and old parrot very wise, know how to make
+Tu-Kila-Kila. Mistah Thurstan, him gone to find man-a-oui-oui. Parrot
+tell him plenty wise thing. Parrot wiser than Boupari people; know very
+good medicine; wise like Queensland lady and gentleman." And Mali set
+herself vigorously to work to wash the wooden platter on which she served
+up her mistress's yam for breakfast.
+
+It was curious to Muriel to see how readily Mali had slipped from
+savagery to civilization in Queensland, and how easily she had slipped
+back again from civilization to savagery in Boupari. In waiting on her
+mistress she was just the ordinary trained native Australian servant; in
+every other respect she was the simple unadulterated heathen Polynesian.
+She recognized in Muriel a white lady of the English sort, and treated
+her within the hut as white ladies were invariably treated in Queensland;
+but she considered that at Boupari one must do as Boupari does, and it
+never for a moment occurred to her simple mind to doubt the omnipotence
+of Tu-Kila-Kila in his island realm any more than she had doubted the
+omnipotence of the white man and his local religion in their proper place
+(as she thought it) in Queensland.
+
+An hour or two passed before Felix returned. At last he arrived, very
+white and pale, and Muriel saw at once by the mere look on his face that
+he had learned some terrible news at the Frenchman's.
+
+"Well, you found him?" she cried, taking his hand in hers, but hardly
+daring to ask the fatal question at once.
+
+And Felix, sitting down, as pale as a ghost, answered faintly, "Yes,
+Muriel, I found him!"
+
+"And he told you everything?"
+
+"Everything he knew, my poor child. Oh, Muriel, Muriel, don't ask me what
+it is. It's too terrible to tell you."
+
+Muriel clasped her white hands together, held bloodless downward, and
+looked at him fixedly. "Mali, you can go," she said. And the Shadow,
+rising up with childish confidence, glided from the hut, and left them,
+for the first time since their arrival on the central island, alone
+together.
+
+Muriel looked at him once more with the same deadly fixed look. "With
+you, Felix," she said, slowly, "I can bear or dare anything. I feel as if
+the bitterness of death were past long ago. I know it must come. I only
+want to be quite sure when.... And besides, you must remember, I have
+your promise."
+
+Felix clasped his own hands despondently in return, and gazed across at
+her from his seat a few feet off in unspeakable misery.
+
+"Muriel," he cried, "I couldn't. I haven't the heart. I daren't."
+
+Muriel rose and laid her hand solemnly on his arm. "You will!" she
+answered, boldly. "You can! You must! I know I can trust your promise for
+that. This moment, if you like. I would not shrink. But you will never
+let me fall alive into the hands of those wretches. Felix, from _your_
+hand I could stand anything. I'm not afraid to die. I love you too
+dearly."
+
+Felix held her white little wrist in his grasp and sobbed like a child.
+Her very bravery and confidence seemed to unman him, utterly.
+
+She looked at him once more. "When?" she asked, quietly, but with lips as
+pale as death.
+
+"In about four months from now," Felix answered, endeavoring to be calm.
+
+"And they will kill us both?"
+
+"Yes, both. I think so."
+
+"Together?"
+
+"Together."
+
+Muriel drew a deep sigh.
+
+"Will you know the day beforehand?" she asked.
+
+"Yes. The Frenchman told me it. He has known others killed in the
+self-same fashion."
+
+"Then, Felix---the night before it comes, you will promise me, will you?"
+
+"Muriel, Muriel, I could never dare to kill you."
+
+She laid her hand soothingly on his. She stroked him gently. "You are
+a man," she said, looking up into his eyes with confidence. "I trust
+you. I believe in you. I know you will never let these savages hurt
+me.... Felix, in spite of everything, I've been happier since we came to
+this island together than ever I have been in my life before. I've had my
+wish. I didn't want to miss in life the one thing that life has best
+worth giving. I haven't missed it now. I know I haven't; for I love you,
+and you love me. After that, I can die, and die gladly. If I die with
+_you_, that's all I ask. These seven or eight terrible weeks have made me
+feel somehow unnaturally calm. When I came here first I lived all the
+time in an agony of terror. I've got over the agony of terror now. I'm
+quite resigned and happy. All I ask is to be saved--by you--from the
+cruel hands of these hateful cannibals."
+
+Felix raised her white hand just once to his lips. It was the first time
+he had ever ventured to kiss her. He kissed it fervently. She let it drop
+as if dead by her side.
+
+"Now tell me all that happened," she said. "I'm strong enough to bear it.
+I feel such a woman now--so wise and calm. These few weeks have made me
+grow from a girl into a woman all at once. There's nothing I daren't
+hear, if you'll tell me it, Felix."
+
+Felix took up her hand again and held it in his, as he narrated the whole
+story of his visit to the Frenchman. When Muriel had heard it, she said
+once more, slowly, "I don't think there's any hope in all these wild
+plans of playing off superstition against superstition. To my mind there
+are only two chances left for us now. One is to concoct with the
+Frenchman some means of getting away by canoe from the island--I'd rather
+trust the sea than the tender mercy of these dreadful people; the other
+is to keep a closer lookout than ever for the merest chance of a passing
+steamer."
+
+Felix drew a deep sigh. "I'm afraid neither's much use," he said. "If we
+tried to get away, dogged as we are, day and night, by our Shadows, the
+natives would follow us with their war-canoes in battle array and hack us
+to pieces; for Peyron says that, regarding us as gods, they think the
+rain would vanish from their island forever if once they allowed us to
+get away alive and carry the luck with us. And as to the steamers, we
+haven't seen a trace of one since we left the Australasian. Probably it
+was only by the purest accident that even she ever came so close in to
+Boupari."
+
+"At any rate," Muriel cried, still clasping his hand tight, and letting
+the tears now trickle slowly down her pale white cheeks, "we can talk it
+all over some day with M. Peyron."
+
+"We can talk it over to-day," Felix answered, "if it comes to that; for
+Peyron means to step round, he says, a little later in the afternoon, to
+pay his respects to the first white lady he has ever seen since he left
+New Caledonia."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+TU-KILA-KILA PLAYS A CARD.
+
+
+Before the Frenchman could carry out his plan, however, he was himself
+the recipient of the high honor of a visit from his superior god and
+chief, Tu-Kila-Kila.
+
+Every day and all day long, save on a few rare occasions when special
+duties absolved him, the custom and religion of the islanders prescribed
+that their supreme incarnate deity should keep watch and ward without
+cessation over the great spreading banyan-tree that overshadowed with
+its dark boughs his temple-palace. High god as he was held to be, and
+all-powerful within the limits of his own strict taboos, Tu-Kila-Kila was
+yet as rigidly bound within those iron laws of custom and religious usage
+as the meanest and poorest of his subject worshippers. From sunrise to
+sunset, and far on into the night, the Pillar of Heaven was compelled to
+prowl up and down, with spear in hand and tomahawk at side, as Felix had
+so often seen him, before the sacred trunk, of which he appeared to be in
+some mysterious way the appointed guardian. His very power, it seemed,
+was intimately bound up with the performance of that ceaseless and
+irksome duty; he was a god in whose hands the lives of his people were
+but as dust in the balance; but he remained so only on the onerous
+condition of pacing to and fro, like a sentry, forever before the still
+more holy and venerable object he was chosen to protect from attack or
+injury. Had he failed in his task, had he slumbered at his post, all god
+though he might be, his people themselves would have risen in a body and
+torn him limb from limb before their ancestral fetich as a sacrilegious
+pretender.
+
+At certain times and seasons, however, as for example at all high
+feasts and festivals, Tu-Kila-Kila had respite for a while from this
+constant treadmill of mechanical divinity. Whenever the moon was at the
+half-quarter, or the planets were in lucky conjunctions, or a red glow
+lit up the sky by night, or the sacred sacrificial fires of human flesh
+were lighted, then Tu-Kila-Kila could lay aside his tomahawk and spear,
+and become for a while as the islanders, his fellows, were. At other
+times, too, when he went out in state to visit the lesser deities of his
+court, the King of Fire and the King of Water made a solemn taboo before
+He left his home, which protected the sacred tree from aggression during
+its guardian's absence. Then Tu-Kila-Kila, shaded by his divine umbrella,
+and preceded by the noise of the holy tom-toms, could go like a monarch
+over all parts of his realm, giving such orders as he pleased (within the
+limits of custom) to his inferior officers. It was in this way that he
+now paid his visit to M. Jules Peyron, King of the Birds. And he did so
+for what to him were amply sufficient reasons.
+
+It had not escaped Tu-Kila-Kila's keen eye, as he paced among the
+skeletons in his yard that morning, that Felix Thurstan, the King of the
+Rain, had taken his way openly toward the Frenchman's quarters. He felt
+pretty sure, therefore, that Felix had by this time learned another white
+man was living on the island; and he thought it an ominous fact that the
+new-comer should make his way toward his fellow-European's hut on the
+very first morning when the law of taboo rendered such a visit possible.
+The savage is always by nature suspicious; and Tu-Kila-Kila had grounds
+enough of his own for suspicion in this particular instance. The two
+white men were surely brewing mischief together for the Lord of Heaven
+and Earth, the Illuminer of the Glowing Light of the Sun; he must make
+haste and see what plan they were concocting against the sacred tree and
+the person of its representative, the King of Plants and of the Host of
+Heaven.
+
+But it isn't so easy to make haste when all your movements are impeded
+and hampered by endless taboos and a minutely annoying ritual. Before
+Tu-Kila-Kila could get himself under way, sacred umbrella, tom-toms, and
+all, it was necessary for the King of Fire and the King of Water to make
+taboo on an elaborate scale with their respective elements; and so by the
+time the high god had reached M. Jules Peyron's garden, Felix Thurstan
+had already some time since returned to Muriel's hut and his own
+quarters.
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila approached the King of the Birds, amid loud clapping of
+hands, with considerable haughtiness. To say the truth, there was no love
+lost between the cannibal god and his European subordinate. The savage,
+puffed up as he was in his own conceit, had nevertheless always an
+uncomfortable sense that, in his heart of hearts, the impassive Frenchman
+had but a low opinion of him. So he invariably tried to make up by the
+solemnity of his manner and the loudness of his assertions for any
+trifling scepticism that might possibly exist in the mind of his
+follower.
+
+On this particular occasion, as he reached the Frenchman's plot,
+Tu-Kila-Kila stepped forward across the white taboo-line with a
+suspicious and peering eye. "The King of the Rain has been here," he
+said, in a pompous tone, as the Frenchman rose and saluted him
+ceremoniously. "Tu-Kila-Kila's eyes are sharp. They never sleep. The sun
+is his sight. He beholds all things. You cannot hide aught in heaven or
+earth from the knowledge of him that dwells in heaven. I look down upon
+land and sea, and spy out all that takes place or is planned in them. I
+am very holy and very cruel. I see all earth and I drink the blood of all
+men. The King of the Rain has come this morning to visit the King of the
+Birds. Where is he now? What has your divinity done with him?"
+
+He spoke from under the sheltering cover of his veiled umbrella. The
+Frenchman looked back at him with as little love as Tu-Kila-Kila himself
+would have displayed had his face been visible. "Yes, you are a very
+great god," he answered, in the conventional tone of Polynesian
+adulation, with just a faint under-current of irony running through his
+accent as he spoke. "You say the truth. You do, indeed, know all things.
+What need for me, then, to tell you, whose eye is the sun, that my
+brother, the King of the Rain, has been here and gone again? You know it
+yourself. Your eye has looked upon it. My brother was indeed with me. He
+consulted me as to the showers I should need from his clouds for the
+birds, my subjects."
+
+"And where is he gone now?" Tu-Kila-Kila asked, without attempting to
+conceal the displeasure in his tone, for he more than half suspected the
+Frenchman of a sacrilegious and monstrous design of chaffing him.
+
+The King of the Birds bowed low once more. "Tu-Kila-Kila's glance is
+keener than my hawk's," he answered, with the accustomed Polynesian
+imagery. "He sees over the land with a glance, like my parrots, and over
+the sea with sharp sight, like my albatrosses. He knows where my brother,
+the King of the Rain, has gone. For me, who am the least among all the
+gods, I sit here on my perch and blink like a crow. I do not know these
+things. They are too high and too deep for me."
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila did not like the turn the conversation was taking. Before
+his own attendants such hints, indeed, were almost dangerous. Once let
+the savage begin to doubt, and the Moral Order goes with a crash
+immediately. Besides, he must know what these white men had been talking
+about. "Fire and Water," he said in a loud voice, turning round to his
+two chief satellites, "go far down the path, and beat the tom-toms. Fence
+off with flood and flame the airy height where the King of the Birds
+lives; fence it off from all profane intrusion. I wish to confer in
+secret with this god, my brother. When we gods talk together, it is not
+well that others should hear our converse. Make a great Taboo. I,
+Tu-Kila-Kila, myself have said it."
+
+Fire and Water, bowing low, backed down the path, beating tom-toms as
+they went, and left the savage and the Frenchman alone together.
+
+As soon as they were gone, Tu-Kila-Kila laid aside his umbrella with a
+positive sigh of relief. Now his fellow-countrymen were well out of the
+way, his manner altered in a trice, as if by magic. Barbarian as he was,
+he was quite astute enough to guess that Europeans cared nothing in their
+hearts for all his mumbo-jumbo. He believed in it himself, but they did
+not, and their very unbelief made him respect and fear them.
+
+"Now that we two are alone," he said, glancing carelessly around him, "we
+two who are gods, and know the world well--we two who see everything in
+heaven or earth--there is no need for concealment--we may talk as plainly
+as we will with one another. Come, tell me the truth! The new white man
+has seen you?"
+
+"He has seen me, yes, certainly," the Frenchman admitted, taking a keen
+look deep into the savage's cunning eyes.
+
+"Does he speak your language--the language of birds?" Tu-Kila-Kila asked
+once more, with insinuating cunning. "I have heard that the sailing gods
+are of many languages. Are you and he of one speech or two? Aliens, or
+countrymen?"
+
+"He speaks my language as he speaks Polynesian," the Frenchman replied,
+keeping his eye firmly fixed on his doubtful guest, "but it is not his
+own. He has a tongue apart--the tongue of an island not far from my
+country, which we call England."
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila drew nearer, and dropped his voice to a confidential
+whisper. "Has he seen the Soul of all dead parrots?" he asked, with keen
+interest in his voice. "The parrot that knows Tu-Kila-Kila's secret? That
+one over there--the old, the very sacred one?"
+
+M. Peyron gazed round his aviary carelessly. "Oh, that one," he answered,
+with a casual glance at Methuselah, as though one parrot or another were
+much the same to him. "Yes, I think he saw it. I pointed it out to him,
+in fact, as the oldest and strangest of all my subjects."
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila's countenance fell. "Did he hear it speak?" he asked, in
+evident alarm. "Did it tell him the story of Tu-Kila-Kila's secret?"
+
+"No, it didn't speak," the Frenchman answered. "It seldom does now. It is
+very old. And if it did, I don't suppose the King of the Rain would have
+understood one word of it. Look here, great god, allay your fears. You're
+a terrible coward. I expect the real fact about the parrot is this: it is
+the last of its own race; it speaks the language of some tribe of men who
+once inhabited these islands, but are now extinct. No human being at
+present alive, most probably, knows one word of that forgotten language."
+
+"You think not?" Tu-Kila-Kila asked, a little relieved.
+
+"I am the King of the Birds, and I know the voices of my subjects by
+heart; I assure you it is as I say," M. Peyron answered, drawing himself
+up solemnly.
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila looked askance, with something very closely approaching a
+wink in his left eye. "We two are both gods," he said, with a tinge of
+irony in his tone. "We know what that means.... _I_ do not feel so
+certain."
+
+He stood close by the parrot with itching fingers. "It is very,
+very old," he went on to himself, musingly. "It can't live long. And
+then--none but Boupari men will know the secret."
+
+As he spoke he darted a strange glance of hatred toward the unconscious
+bird, the innocent repository, as he firmly believed, of the secret
+that doomed him. The Frenchman had turned his back for a moment now,
+to fetch out a stool. Tu-Kila-Kila, casting a quick, suspicious eye to
+the right and left, took a step nearer. The parrot sat mumbling on its
+perch, inarticulately, putting its head on one side, and blinking its
+half-blinded eyes in the bright tropical sunshine. Tu-Kila-Kila paused
+irresolute before its face for a second. If he only dared--one wring of
+the neck--one pinch of his finger and thumb almost!--and all would be
+over. But he dared not! he dared not! Your savage is overawed by the
+blind terrors of taboo. His predecessor, some elder Tu-Kila-Kila of
+forgotten days, had laid a great charm upon that parrot's life. Whoever
+hurt it was to die an awful death of unspeakable torment. The King of the
+Birds had special charge to guard it. If even the Cannibal God himself
+wrought it harm, who could tell what judgment might fall upon him
+forthwith, what terrible vengeance the dead Tu-Kila-Kila might wreak
+upon him in his ghostly anger? And that dead Tu-Kila-Kila was his own
+Soul! His own Soul might flare up within him in some mystic way and burn
+him to ashes.
+
+And yet--suppose this hateful new-comer, the King of the Rain, whom
+he had himself made Korong on purpose to get rid of him the more easily,
+and so had elevated into his own worst potential enemy--suppose this
+new-comer, the King of the Rain, were by chance to speak that other
+dialect of the bird-language, which the King of the Birds himself knew
+not, but which the parrot had learned from his old master, the ancient
+Tu-Kila-Kila of other days, and in which the bird still recited the
+secret of the sacred tree and the Death of the Great God--ah, then he
+might still have to fight hard for his divinity. He gazed angrily at
+the bird. Methuselah blinked, and put his head on one side, and looked
+craftily askance at him. Tu-Kila-Kila hated it, that insolent creature.
+Was he not a god, and should he be thus bearded in his own island by a
+mere Soul of dead birds, a poor, wretched parrot? But the curse! What
+might not that portend? Ah, well, he would risk it. Glancing around him
+once more to the right and left, to make sure that nobody was looking,
+the cunning savage put forth his hand stealthily, and tried with a
+friendly caress to seize the parrot.
+
+In a moment, before he had time to know what was happening,
+Methuselah--sleepy old dotard as he seemed--had woke up at once to a
+sense of danger. Turning suddenly round upon the sleek, caressing hand,
+he darted his beak with a vicious peck at his assailant, and bit the
+divine finger of the Pillar of Heaven as carelessly as he would have
+bitten any child on Boupari. Tu-Kila-Kila, thunder-struck, drew back his
+arm with a start of surprise and a loud cry of pain. The bird had wounded
+him. He shook his hand and stamped. Blood was dropping on the ground from
+the man-god's finger. He hardly knew what strange evil this omen of harm
+might portend for the world. The Soul of all dead parrots had carried out
+the curse, and had drawn red drops from the sacred veins of Tu-Kila-Kila.
+
+One must be a savage one's self, and superstitious at that, fully to
+understand the awful significance of this deadly occurrence. To draw
+blood from a god, and, above all, to let that blood fall upon the dust of
+the ground, is the very worst luck--too awful for the human mind to
+contemplate.
+
+At the same moment, the parrot, awakened by the unexpected attack, threw
+back its head on its perch, and, laughing loud and long to itself in its
+own harsh way, began to pour forth a whole volley of oaths in a guttural
+language, of which neither Tu-Kila-Kila nor the Frenchman understood one
+syllable. And at the same moment, too, M. Peyron himself, recalled from
+the door of his hut by Tu-Kila-Kila's sharp cry of pain and by his liege
+subject's voluble flow of loud speech and laughter, ran up all agog to
+know what was the matter.
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila, with an effort, tried to hide in his robe his wounded
+finger. But the Frenchman caught at the meaning of the whole scene at
+once, and interposed himself hastily between the parrot and its
+assailant. "_Hé!_ my Methuselah," he cried, in French, stroking the
+exultant bird with his hand, and smoothing its ruffled feathers, "did he
+try to choke you, then? Did he try to get over you? That was a brave
+bird! You did well, _mon ami_, to bite him!... No, no, Life of the World,
+and Measurer of the Sun's Course," he went on, in Polynesian, "you shall
+not go near him. Keep your distance, I beg of you. You may be a high
+god--though you were a scurvy wretch enough, don't you recollect, when
+you were only Lavita, the son of Sami--but I know your tricks. Hands off
+from my birds, say I. A curse is on the head of the Soul of dead parrots.
+You tried to hurt him, and see how the curse has worked itself out! The
+blood of the great god, the Pillar of Heaven, has stained the gray dust
+of the island of Boupari."
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila stood sucking his finger, and looking the very picture of
+the most savage sheepishness.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+DOMESTIC BLISS.
+
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila went home that day in a very bad humor. The portent of the
+bitten finger had seriously disturbed him. For, strange as it sounds to
+us, he really believed himself in his own divinity; and the bare thought
+that the holy soil of earth should be dabbled and wet with the blood of a
+god gave him no little uneasiness in his own mind on his way homeward.
+Besides, what would his people think of it if they found it out? At all
+hazards almost, he must strive to conceal this episode of the bite from
+the men of Boupari. A god who gets wounded, and, worse still, gets
+wounded in the very act of trying to break a great taboo laid on by
+himself in a previous incarnation--such a god undoubtedly lays himself
+open to the gravest misapprehensions on the part of his worshippers.
+Indeed, it was not even certain whether his people, if they knew, would
+any longer regard him as a god at all. The devotion of savages is
+profound, but it is far from personal. When deities pass so readily from
+one body to another, you must always keep a sharp lookout lest the great
+spirit should at any minute have deserted his earthly tabernacle, and
+have taken up his abode in a fresh representative. Honor the gods by all
+means; but make sure at the same time what particular house they are just
+then inhabiting.
+
+It was the hour of siesta in Tu-Kila-Kila's tent. For a short space in
+the middle of the day, during the heat of the sun, while Fire and Water,
+with their embers and their calabash, sat on guard in a porch by the
+bamboo gate, Tu-Kila-Kila, Pillar of Heaven and Threshold of Earth, had
+respite for a while from his daily task of guarding the sacred banyan,
+and could take his ease after his meal in his own quarters. While that
+precious hour of taboo lasted, no wandering dragon or spirit of the air
+could hurt the holy tree, and no human assailant dare touch or approach
+it. Even the disease-making gods, who walk in the pestilence, could not
+blight or wither it. At all other times Tu-Kila-Kila mounted guard over
+his tree with a jealousy that fairly astonished Felix Thurstan's soul;
+for Felix Thurstan only dimly understood as yet how implicitly
+Tu-Kila-Kila's own life and office were bound up with the inviolability
+of the banyan he protected.
+
+Within the hut, during that playtime of siesta, while the lizards (who
+are also gods) ran up and down the wall, and puffed their orange throats,
+Tu-Kila-Kila lounged at his ease that afternoon, with one of his many
+wives--a tall and beautiful Polynesian woman, lithe and supple, as is the
+wont of her race, and as exquisitely formed in every limb and feature as
+a sculptured Greek goddess. A graceful wreath of crimson hibiscus adorned
+her shapely head, round which her long and glossy black hair was coiled
+in great rings with artistic profusion. A festoon of blue flowers and
+dark-red dracæna leaves hung like a chaplet over her olive-brown neck and
+swelling bust. One breadth of native cloth did duty for an apron or
+girdle round her waist and hips. All else was naked. Her plump brown arms
+were set off by the green and crimson of the flowers that decked her.
+Tu-Kila-Kila glanced at his slave with approving eyes. He always liked
+Ula; she pleased him the best of all his women. And she knew his ways,
+too: she never contradicted him.
+
+Among savages, guile is woman's best protection. The wife who knows when
+to give way with hypocritical obedience, and when to coax or wheedle her
+yielding lord, runs the best chance in the end for her life. Her model is
+not the oak, but the willow. She must be able to watch for the rising
+signs of ill-humor in her master's mind, and guard against them
+carefully. If she is wise, she keeps out of her husband's way when his
+anger is aroused, but soothes and flatters him to the top of his bent
+when his temper is just slightly or momentarily ruffled.
+
+"The Lord of Heaven and Earth is ill at ease," Ula murmured,
+insinuatingly, as Tu-Kila-Kila winced once with the pain of his swollen
+finger. "What has happened today to the Increaser of Bread-Fruit? My lord
+is sad. His eye is downcast. Who has crossed my master's will? Who
+has dared to anger him?"
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila kept the wounded hand wrapped up in a soft leaf, like a
+woolly mullein. All the way home he had been obliged to conceal it, and
+disguise the pain he felt, lest Fire and Water should discover his
+secret. For he dared not let his people know that the Soul of all dead
+parrots had bitten his finger, and drawn blood from the sacred veins of
+the man-god. But he almost hesitated now whether or not he should confide
+in Ula. A god may surely trust his own wedded wives. And yet--such need
+to be careful--women are so treacherous! He suspected Ula sometimes of
+being a great deal too fond of that young man Toko, who used to be one of
+the temple attendants, and whom he had given as Shadow accordingly to the
+King of the Rain, so as to get rid of him altogether from among the crowd
+of his followers. So he kept his own counsel for the moment, and
+disguised his misfortune. "I have been to see the King of the Birds this
+morning," he said, in a grumbling voice; "and I do not like him. That
+God is too insolent. For my part I hate these strangers, one and all.
+They have no respect for Tu-Kila-Kila like the men of Boupari. They are
+as bad as atheists. They fear not the gods, and the customs of our
+fathers are not in them."
+
+Ula crept nearer, with one lithe round arm laid caressingly close to her
+master's neck. "Then why do you make them Korong?" she asked, with
+feminine curiosity, like some wife who seeks to worm out of her husband
+the secret of freemasonry. "Why do you not cook them and eat them at
+once, as soon as they arrive? They are very good food--so white and fine.
+That last new-comer, now--the Queen of the Clouds--why not eat her? She
+is plump and tender."
+
+"I like her," Tu-Kila-Kila responded, in a gloating tone. "I like her
+every way. I would have brought her here to my temple and admitted her at
+once to be one of Tu-Kila-Kila's wives--only that Fire and Water would
+not have permitted me. They have too many taboos, those awkward gods. I
+do not love them. But I make my strangers Korong for a very wise reason.
+You women are fools; you understand nothing; you do not know the
+mysteries. These things are a great deal too high and too deep for you.
+You could not comprehend them. But men know well why. They are wise; they
+have been initiated. Much more, then, do I, who am the very high god--who
+eat human flesh and drink blood like water--who cause the sun to shine
+and the fruits to grow--without whom the day in heaven would fade and die
+out, and the foundations of the earth would be shaken like a plantain
+leaf."
+
+Ula laid her soft brown hand soothingly on the great god's arm just above
+the elbow. "Tell me," she said, leaning forward toward him, and looking
+deep into his eyes with those great speaking gray orbs of hers; "tell
+me, O Sustainer of the Equipoise of Heaven; I know you are great; I know
+you are mighty; I know you are holy and wise and cruel; but why must you
+let these sailing gods who come from unknown lands beyond the place
+where the sun rises or sets--why must you let them so trouble and annoy
+you? Why do you not at once eat them up and be done with them? Is not
+their flesh sweet? Is not their blood red? Are they not a dainty well fit
+for the banquet of Tu-Kila-Kila?"
+
+The savage looked at her for a moment and hesitated. A very beautiful
+woman this Ula, certainly. Not one of all his wives had larger brown
+limbs, or whiter teeth, or a deeper respect for his divine nature. He had
+almost a mind--it was only Ula? Why not break the silence enjoined upon
+gods toward women, and explain this matter to her? Not the great secret
+itself, of course--the secret on which hung the Death and Transmigration
+of Tu-Kila-Kila--oh, no; not that one. The savage was far too cunning
+in his generation to intrust that final terrible Taboo to the ears of a
+woman. But the reason why he made all strangers Korong. A woman might
+surely be trusted with that--especially Ula. She was so very handsome.
+And she was always so respectful to him.
+
+"Well, the fact of it is," he answered, laying his hand on her neck, that
+plump brown neck of hers, under the garland of dracæna leaves, and
+stroking it voluptuously, "the sailing gods who happen upon this island
+from time to time are made Korong--but hush! it is taboo." He gazed
+around the hut suspiciously. "Are all the others away?" he asked, in a
+frightened tone. "Fire and Water would denounce me to all my people if
+once they found I had told a taboo to a woman. And as for you, they would
+take you, because you knew it, and would pull your flesh from your bones
+with hot stone pincers!"
+
+Ula rose and looked about her at the door of the tent. She nodded thrice;
+then she glided back, serpentine, and threw herself gracefully, in a
+statuesque pose, on the native mat beside him. "Here, drink some more
+kava," she cried, holding a bowl to his lips, and wheedling him with her
+eyes. "Kava is good; it is fit for gods. It makes them royally drunk, as
+becomes great deities. The spirits of our ancestors dwell in the bowl;
+when you drink of the kava they mount by degrees into your heart and
+head. They inspire brave words. They give you thoughts of heaven. Drink,
+my master, drink. The Ruler of the Sun in Heaven is thirsty."
+
+She lay propped on one elbow, with her face close to his; and offered
+him, with one brown, irresistible hand, the intoxicating liquor.
+Tu-Kila-Kila took the bowl, and drank a second time, for he had drunk of
+it once with his dinner already. It was seldom he allowed himself the
+luxury of a second draught of that very stupefying native intoxicant, for
+he knew too well the danger of insecurely guarding his sacred tree; but
+on this particular occasion, as on so many others in the collective life
+of humanity, "the woman tempted him," and he acted as she told him. He
+drank it off deep. "Ha, ha! that is good!" he cried, smacking his lips.
+"That is a drink fit for a god. No woman can make kava like you, Ula." He
+toyed with her arms and neck lazily once more. "You are the queen of my
+wives," he went on, in a dreamy voice. "I like you so well, that, plump
+as you are, I really believe, Ula, I could never make up my mind to eat
+you."
+
+"My lord is very gracious," Ula made answer, in a soft, low tone,
+pretending to caress him. And for some minutes more she continued to make
+much of him in the fulsome strain of Polynesian flattery.
+
+At last the kava had clearly got into Tu-Kila-Kila's head. Then Ula bent
+forward once more and again attacked him. "Now I know you will tell me,"
+she said, coaxingly, "why you make them Korong. As long as I live, I will
+never speak or hint of it to anybody anywhere. And if I do--why, the
+remedy is near. I am your meat--take me and eat me."
+
+Even cannibals are human; and at the touch of her soft hand, Tu-Kila-Kila
+gave way slowly. "I made them Korong," he answered, in rather thick
+accents, "because it is less dangerous for me to make them so than to
+choose for the post from among our own islanders. Sooner or later, my day
+must come; but I can put it off best by making my enemies out of
+strangers who arrive upon our island, and not out of those of my own
+household. All Boupari men who have been initiated know the terrible
+secret--they know where lies the Death of Tu-Kila-Kila. The strangers who
+come to us from the sun or the sea do not know it; and therefore my life
+is safest with them. So I make them Korong whenever I can, to prolong my
+own days, and to guard my secret."
+
+"And the Death of Tu-Kila-Kila?" the woman whispered, very low, still
+soothing his arm with her hand and patting his cheek softly from time to
+time with a gentle, caressing motion. "Tell me where does that live? Who
+holds it in charge? Where is Tu-Kila-Kila's great spirit laid by in
+safety? I know it is in the tree; but where and in what part of it?"
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila drew back with a little cry of surprise. "You know it is in
+the tree!" he cried. "You know my soul is kept there! Why, Ula, who told
+you that? and you a woman! Bad medicine indeed! Some man has been
+blabbing what he learned in the mysteries. If this should reach the ears
+of the King of the Rain--" he paused mysteriously.
+
+"What? What?" Ula cried, seizing his hand in hers, and pressing it hard
+to her bosom in her anxiety and eagerness. "Tell me the secret! Tell me!"
+
+With a sudden sharp howl of darting pain, Tu-Kila-Kila withdrew his hand.
+She had squeezed the finger the parrot had bitten, and blood began once
+more to flow from it freely.
+
+A wild impulse of revenge came over the savage. He caught her by the
+neck with his other hand, pressed her throat hard, till she was black in
+the face, kicked her several times with ferocious rage, and then flung
+her away from him to the other side of the hut with a fierce and
+untranslatable native imprecation.
+
+Ula, shaken and hurt, darted away toward the door, with a face of abject
+terror. For every reason on earth she was intensely alarmed. Were it
+merely as a matter of purely earthly fear, she had ground enough for
+fright in having so roused the hasty anger of that powerful and
+implacable creature. He would kill her and eat her with far less
+compunction than an English farmer would kill and eat one of his own
+barnyard chickens. But besides that, it terrified her not a little in
+more mysterious ways to see the blood of a god falling upon the earth so
+freely. She knew not what awful results to herself and her race might
+follow from so terrible a desecration.
+
+But, to her utter astonishment, the great god himself, mad with rage as
+he was, seemed none the less almost as profoundly frightened and
+surprised as she herself was. "What did you do that for?" he cried, now
+sufficiently recovered for thought and speech, wringing his hand with
+pain, and then popping his finger hastily into his mouth to ease it. "You
+are a clumsy thing. And you want to destroy me, too, with your foolish
+clumsiness."
+
+He looked at her and scowled. He was very angry. But the savage woman is
+nothing if not quick-witted and politic. In a flash of intuition, Ula saw
+at once he was more frightened than hurt; he was afraid of the effect of
+this strange revelation upon his own reputation for supreme godship. With
+every mark and gesture of deprecatory servility the woman sidled back to
+his side like a whipped dog. For a second she looked down on the floor
+at the drops of blood; then, without one word of warning or one instant's
+hesitation, she bit her own finger hard till blood flowed from it freely.
+"I will show this to Fire and Water," she said, holding it up before his
+eyes all red and bleeding. "I will say you were angry with me and bit me
+for a punishment, as you often do. They will never find out it was the
+blood of a god. Have no fear for their eyes. Let me look at your finger."
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila, half appeased by her clever quickness, held his hand out
+sulkily, like a disobedient child. Ula examined it close. "A bite," she
+said, shortly. "A bite from a bird! a peck from a parrot."
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila jerked out a surly assent. "Yes, the Soul of all dead
+parrots," he answered, with an angry glare. "It bit me this morning at
+the King of the Birds'. A vicious brute. But no one else saw it."
+
+Ula put the finger up to her own mouth, and sucked the wound gently.
+Her medicine stanched it. Then she took a thin leaf of the paper
+mulberry, soft, cool, and soothing, and bound it round the place with a
+strip of the lace-like inner bark, as deftly as any hospital nurse in
+London would have done it. These savage women are capital hands in
+sickness. Tu-Kila-Kila sat and sulked meanwhile, like a disappointed
+child. When Ula had finished, she nodded her head and glided softly away.
+She knew her chance of learning the secret was gone for the moment, and
+she had too much of the guile of the savage woman to spoil her chances by
+loitering about unnecessarily while her lord was in his present
+ungracious humor.
+
+As she stole from the hut, Tu-Kila-Kila, looking ruefully at his wounded
+hand, and then at that light and supple retreating figure, muttered
+sulkily to himself, with a very bad grace, "the woman knows too much. She
+nearly wormed my secret out of me. She knows that Tu-Kila-Kila's life and
+soul are bound up in the tree. She knows that I bled, and that the parrot
+bit me. If she blabs, as women will do, mischief may come of it. I am a
+great god, a very great god--keen, bloodthirsty, cruel. And I like that
+woman. But it would be wiser and safer, perhaps, after all, to forego my
+affection and to make a great feast of her."
+
+And Ula, looking back with a smile and a nod, and holding up her own
+bitten and bleeding hand with a farewell shake, as if to remind her
+divine husband of her promise to show it to Fire and Water, murmured low
+to herself as she went, "He is a very great god; a very great god, no
+doubt; but I hate him, I hate him! He would eat me to-morrow if I didn't
+coax him and wheedle him and keep him in a good temper. You want to be
+sharp, indeed, to be the wife of a god. I got off to-day with the skin of
+my teeth. He might have turned and killed me. If only I could find out
+the Great Taboo, I would tell it to the stranger, the King of the Rain;
+and then, perhaps, Tu-Kila-Kila would die. And the stranger would become
+Tu-Kila-Kila in turn, and I would be one of his wives; and Toko, who is
+his Shadow, would return again to the service of Tu-Kila-Kila's temple."
+
+But Fire, as she passed, was saying to Water, "We are getting tired in
+Boupari of Lavita, the son of Sami. If the luck of the island is not to
+change, it is high time, I think, we should have a new Tu-Kila-Kila."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+COUNCIL OF WAR.
+
+
+That same afternoon Muriel had a visitor. M. Jules Peyron, formerly of
+the Collége de France, no longer a mere Polynesian god, but a French
+gentleman of the Boulevards in voice and manner, came to pay his
+respects, as in duty bound, to Mademoiselle Ellis. M. Peyron had
+performed his toilet under trying circumstances, to the best of his
+ability. The remnants of his European clothes, much patched and overhung
+with squares of native tappa cloth, were hidden as much as possible by a
+wide feather cloak, very savage in effect, but more seemly, at any rate,
+than the tattered garments in which Felix had first found him in his own
+garden parterre. M. Peyron, however, was fully aware of the defects of
+his costume, and profoundly apologetic. "It is with ten thousand regrets,
+mademoiselle," he said, many times over, bowing low and simpering, "that
+I venture to appear in a lady's _salon_--for, after all, wherever a
+European lady goes, there her _salon_ follows her--in such a _tenue_
+as that in which I am now compelled to present myself. _Mais que
+voulez-vous? Nous ne sommes pas à Paris_!" For to M. Peyron, as innocent
+in his way as Mali herself, the whole world divided itself into Paris and
+the Provinces.
+
+Nevertheless, it was touching to both the new-comers to see the
+Frenchman's delight at meeting once more with civilized beings. "Figure
+to yourself, mademoiselle," he said, with true French effusion--"figure
+to yourself the joy and surprise with which I, this morning, receive
+monsieur, your friend, at my humble cottage! For the first time after
+nine years on this hateful island, I see again a European face; I hear
+again the sound, the beautiful sound of that charming French language. My
+emotion, believe me, was too profound for words. When monsieur was gone,
+I retired to my hut, I sat down on the floor, I gave myself over to
+tears, tears of joy and gratitude, to think I should once more catch a
+glimpse of civilization! This afternoon, I ask myself, can I venture
+to go out and pay my respects, thus attired, in these rags, to a European
+lady? For a long time I doubt, I wonder, I hesitate. In my quality of
+Frenchman, I would have wished to call in civilized costume upon a
+civilized household. But what would you have? Necessity knows no law. I
+am compelled to envelope myself in my savage robe of office as a
+Polynesian god--a robe of office which, for the rest, is not without an
+interest of its own for the scientific ethnologist. It belongs to me
+especially as King of the Birds, and in it, in effect, is represented
+at least one feather of each kind or color from every part of the body
+of every species of bird that inhabits Boupari. I thus sum up, _pour
+ainsi dire_, in my official costume all the birds of the island, as
+Tu-Kila-Kila, the very high god, sums up, in his quaint and curious
+dress, the land and the sea, the trees and the stones, earth and air, and
+fire and water."
+
+Familiarity with danger begets at last a certain callous indifference.
+Muriel was surprised in her own mind to discover how easily they could
+chat with M. Peyron on such indifferent subjects, with that awful doom of
+an approaching death hanging over them so shortly. But the fact was,
+terrors of every kind had so encompassed them round since their arrival
+on the island that the mere additional certainty of a date and mode of
+execution was rather a relief to their minds than otherwise. It partook
+of the nature of a reprieve, not of a sentence. Besides, this meeting
+with another speaker of a European tongue seemed to them so full of
+promise and hope that they almost forgot the terrors of their threatened
+end in their discussion of possible schemes for escape to freedom. Even
+M. Peyron himself, who had spent nine long years of exile in the island,
+felt that the arrival of two new Europeans gave him some hope of
+effecting at last his own retreat from this unendurable position. His
+talk was all of passing steamers. If the Australasian had come near
+enough once to sight the island, he argued, then the homeward-bound
+vessel, _en route_ for Honolulu, must have begun to take a new course
+considerably to the eastward of the old navigable channel. If this were
+so, their obvious plan was to keep a watch, day and night, for another
+passing Australian liner, and whenever one hove in sight, to steal away
+to the shore, seize a stray canoe, overpower, if possible, their Shadows,
+or give them the slip, and make one bold stroke for freedom on the open
+ocean.
+
+None of them could conceal from their own minds, to be sure, the extreme
+difficulty of carrying out this programme. In the first place, it was a
+toss-up whether they ever sighted another steamer at all; for during the
+weeks they had already passed on the island, not a sign of one had
+appeared from any quarter. Then, again, even supposing a steamer ever
+hove in sight, what likelihood that they could make out for her in an
+open canoe in time to attract attention before she had passed the island?
+Tu-Kila-Kila would never willingly let them go; their Shadows would watch
+them with unceasing care; the whole body of natives would combine
+together to prevent their departure. If they ran away at all, they must
+run for their lives; as soon as the islanders discovered they were gone,
+every war-canoe in the place would be manned at once with bloodthirsty
+savages, who would follow on their track with relentless persistence.
+
+As for Muriel, less prepared for such dangerous adventures than the two
+men, she was rather inclined to attach a certain romantic importance (as
+a girl might do) to the story of the parrot and the possible disclosures
+which it could make if it could only communicate with them. The
+mysterious element in the history of that unique bird attracted her
+fancy. "The only one of its race now left alive," she said, with slow
+reflectiveness. "Like Dolly Pentreath, the last old woman who could speak
+Cornish! I wonder how long parrots ever live? Do you know at all,
+monsieur? You are the King of the Birds--you ought to be an authority on
+their habits and manners."
+
+The Frenchman smiled a gallant smile. "Unhappily, mademoiselle," he said,
+"though, as a medical student, I took up to a certain extent biological
+science in general at the Collége de France, I never paid any special or
+peculiar attention in Paris to birds in particular. But it is the
+universal opinion of the natives (if that counts for much) that parrots
+live to a very great age; and this one old parrot of mine, whom I call
+Methuselah on account of his advanced years, is considered by them all to
+be a perfect patriarch. In effect, when the oldest men now living on the
+island were little boys, they tell me that Methuselah was already a
+venerable and much-venerated parrot. He must certainly have outlived all
+the rest of his race by at least the best part of three-quarters of a
+century. For the islanders themselves not infrequently live, by unanimous
+consent, to be over a hundred."
+
+"I remember to have read somewhere," Felix said, turning it over in his
+mind, "that when Humboldt was travelling in the wilds of South America he
+found one very old parrot in an Indian village, which, the Indians
+assured him, spoke the language of an extinct tribe, incomprehensible
+then by any living person. If I recollect aright, Humboldt believed that
+particular bird must have lived to be nearly a hundred and fifty."
+
+"That is so, monsieur," the Frenchman answered. "I remember the case
+well, and have often recalled it. I recollect our professor mentioning it
+one day in the course of his lectures. And I have always mentally coupled
+that parrot of Humboldt's with my own old friend and subject, Methuselah.
+However, that only impresses upon one more fully the folly of hoping that
+we can learn anything worth knowing from him. I have heard him recite his
+story many times over, though now he repeats it less frequently than he
+used formerly to do; and I feel convinced it is couched in some unknown
+and, no doubt, forgotten language. It is a much more guttural and
+unpleasant tongue than any of the soft dialects now spoken in Polynesia.
+It belonged, I am convinced, to that yet earlier and more savage race
+which the Polynesians must have displaced; and as such it is now, I feel
+certain, practically irrecoverable."
+
+"If they were more savage than the Polynesians," Muriel said, with a
+profound sigh, "I'm sorry for anybody who fell into their clutches."
+
+"But what would not many philologists at home in England give," Felix
+murmured, philosophically, "for a transcript of the words that parrot can
+speak--perhaps a last relic of the very earliest and most primitive form
+of human language!"
+
+At the very moment when these things were passing under the wattled roof
+of Muriel's hut, it happened that on the taboo-space outside, Toko, the
+Shadow, stood talking for a moment with Ula, the fourteenth wife of the
+great Tu-Kila-Kila.
+
+"I never see you now, Toko," the beautiful Polynesian said, leaning
+almost across the white line of coral-sand which she dared not
+transgress. "Times are dull at the temple since you came to be Shadow to
+the white-faced stranger."
+
+"It was for that that Tu-Kila-Kila sent me here," the Shadow answered,
+with profound conviction. "He is jealous, the great god. He is bad. He is
+cruel. He wanted to get rid of me. So he sent me away to the King of the
+Rain that I might not see you."
+
+Ula pouted, and held up her wounded finger before his eyes
+coquettishly. "See what he did to me," she said, with a mute appeal
+for sympathy--though in that particular matter the truth was not in
+her. "Your god was angry with me to-day because I hurt his hand, and
+he clutched me by the throat, and almost choked me. He has a bad heart.
+See how he bit me and drew blood. Some of these days, I believe, he will
+kill me and eat me."
+
+The Shadow glanced around him suspiciously with an uneasy air. Then he
+whispered low, in a voice half grudge, half terror, "If he does, he is a
+great god--he can search all the world--I fear him much, but Toko's heart
+is warm. Let Tu-Kila-Kila look out for vengeance."
+
+The woman glanced across at him open-eyed, with her enticing look. "If
+the King of the Rain, who is Korong, knew all the secret," she murmured,
+slowly, "he would soon be Tu-Kila-Kila himself; and you and I could then
+meet together freely."
+
+The Shadow started. It was a terrible suggestion. "You mean to say--" he
+cried; then fear overcame him, and, crouching down where he sat, he gazed
+around him, terrified. Who could say that the wind would not report his
+words to Tu-Kila-Kila?
+
+Ula laughed at his fears. "Pooh," she answered, smiling. "You are a man;
+and yet you are afraid of a little taboo. I am a woman; and yet if I knew
+the secret as you do, I would break taboo as easily as I would break an
+egg-shell. I would tell the white-faced stranger all--if only it would
+bring you and me together forever."
+
+"It is a great risk, a very great risk," the Shadow answered, trembling.
+"Tu-Kila-Kila is a mighty god. He may be listening this moment, and may
+pinch us to death by his spirits for our words, or burn us to ashes with
+a flash of his anger."
+
+The woman smiled an incredulous smile. "If you had lived as near
+Tu-Kila-Kila as I have," she answered, boldly, "you would think as
+little, perhaps, of his divinity as I do."
+
+For even in Polynesia, superstitious as it is, no hero is a god to his
+wives or his valets.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+METHUSELAH GIVES SIGN.
+
+
+All the hopes of the three Europeans were concentrated now on the bare
+off-chance of a passing steamer. M. Peyron in particular was fully
+convinced that, if the Australasian had found the inner channel
+practicable, other ships in future would follow her example. With this
+idea firmly fixed in his head, he arranged with Felix that one or other
+of them should keep watch alternately by night as far as possible; and he
+also undertook that a canoe should constantly be in readiness to carry
+them away to the supposititious ship, if occasion arose for it. Muriel
+took counsel with Mali on the question of rousing the Frenchman if a
+steamer appeared, and they were the first to sight it; and Mali, in whom
+renewed intercourse with white people had restored to some extent the
+civilized Queensland attitude of mind, readily enough promised to assist
+in their scheme, provided she was herself taken with them, and so
+relieved from the terrible vengeance which would otherwise overtake her.
+"If Boupari man catch me," she said, in her simple, graphic, Polynesian
+way, "Boupari man kill me, and lay me in leaves, and cook me very nice,
+and make great feast of me, like him do with Jani." From that untimely
+end both Felix and Muriel promised faithfully, as far as in them lay, to
+protect her.
+
+To communicate with M. Peyron by daytime, without arousing the
+ever-wakeful suspicion of the natives, Felix hit upon an excellent plan.
+He burnished his metal matchbox to the very highest polish it was capable
+of taking, and then heliographed by means of sun-flashes on the Morse
+code. He had learned the code in Fiji in the course of his official
+duties; and he taught the Frenchman now readily enough how to read and
+reply with the other half of the box, torn off for the purpose.
+
+It was three or four days, however, before the two English wanderers
+ventured to return M. Peyron's visit. They didn't wish to attract too
+greatly the attention of the islanders. Gradually, as their stay on the
+island went on, they learned the truth that Tu-Kila-Kila's eyes, as he
+himself had boasted, were literally everywhere. For he had spies of his
+own, told off in every direction, who dogged the steps of his victims
+unseen. Sometimes, as Felix and Muriel walked unsuspecting through the
+jungle paths, closely followed by their Shadows, a stealthy brown figure,
+crouched low to the ground, would cross the road for a moment behind
+them, and disappear again noiselessly into the dense mass of underbrush.
+Then Mali or Toko, turning round, all hushed, with a terrified look,
+would murmur low to themselves, or to one another, "There goes one of
+the Eyes of Tu-Kila-Kila!" It was only by slow degrees that this system
+of espionage grew clear to the strangers; but as soon as they had learned
+its reality and ubiquity, they felt at once how undesirable it would be
+for them to excite the terrible man-god's jealousy and suspicion by being
+observed too often in close personal intercourse with their fellow-exile
+and victim, the Frenchman. It was this that made them have recourse to
+the device of the heliograph.
+
+So three or four days passed before Muriel dared to approach M. Peyron's
+cottage. When she did at last go there with Felix, it was in the early
+morning, before the fierce tropical sun, that beat full on the island,
+had begun to exert its midday force and power. The path that led there
+lay through the thick and tangled mass of brushwood which covered the
+greater part of the island with its dense vegetation; it was overhung by
+huge tree-ferns and broad-leaved Southern bushes, and abutted at last on
+the little wind-swept knoll where the King of the Birds had his
+appropriate dwelling-place. The Frenchman received them with studied
+Parisian hospitality. He had decorated his arbor with fresh flowers for
+the occasion, and bright tropical fruits, with their own green leaves,
+did duty for the coffee or the absinthe of his fatherland on his homemade
+rustic table. Yet in spite of all the rudeness of the physical
+surroundings, they felt themselves at home again with this one exiled
+European; the faint flavor of civilization pervaded and permeated the
+Frenchman's hut after the unmixed savagery to which they had now been so
+long accustomed.
+
+Muriel's curiosity, however, centred most about the mysterious old
+parrot, of whose strange legend so much had been said to her. After they
+had sat for a little under the shade of the spreading banyan, to cool
+down from their walk--for it was an oppressive morning--M. Peyron led her
+round to his aviary at the back of the hut, and introduced her, by their
+native names, to all his subjects. "I am responsible for their lives," he
+said, gravely, "for their welfare, for their happiness. If I were to let
+one of them grow old without a successor in the field to follow him up
+and receive his soul--as in the case of my friend Methuselah here, who
+was so neglected by my predecessors--the whole species would die out for
+want of a spirit, and my own life would atone for that of my people.
+There you have the central principle of the theology of Boupari. Every
+race, every element, every power of nature, is summed up for them in some
+particular person or thing; and on the life of that person or thing
+depends, as they believe, the entire health of the species, the sequence
+of events, the whole order and succession of natural phenomena."
+
+Felix approached the mysterious and venerable bird with somewhat
+incautious fingers. "It looks very old," he said, trying to stroke its
+head and neck with a friendly gesture. "You do well, indeed, in calling
+it Methuselah."
+
+As he spoke, the bird, alarmed at the vague consciousness of a hand and
+voice which it did not recognize and mindful of Tu-Kila-Kila's recent
+attack, made a vicious peck at the fingers outstretched to caress it.
+"Take care!" the Frenchman cried, in a warning voice. "The patriarch's
+temper is no longer what it was sixty or seventy years ago. He grows old
+and peevish. His humor is soured. He will sing no longer the lively
+little scraps of Offenbach I have taught him. He does nothing but sit
+still and mumble now in his own forgotten language. And he's dreadfully
+cross--so crabbed--_mon Dieu_, what a character! Why, the other day, as I
+told you, he bit Tu-Kila-Kila himself, the high god of the island, with a
+good hard peck, when that savage tried to touch him; you'd have laughed
+to see his godship sent off bleeding to his hut with a wounded finger! I
+will confess I was by no means sorry at the sight myself. I do not love
+that god, nor he me; and I was glad when Methuselah, on whom he is afraid
+to revenge himself openly, gave him a nice smart bite for trying to
+interfere with him."
+
+"He's very snappish, to be sure," Felix said, with a smile, trying once
+more to push forward one hand to stroke the bird cautiously. But
+Methuselah resented all such unauthorized intrusions. He was growing too
+old to put up with strangers. He made a second vicious attempt to peck at
+the hand held out to soothe him, and screamed, as he did so, in the usual
+discordant and unpleasant voice of an angry or frightened parrot.
+
+"Why, Felix," Muriel put in, taking him by the arm with a girlish
+gesture--for even the terrors by which they were surrounded hadn't wholly
+succeeded in killing out the woman within her--"how clumsy you are! You
+don't understand one bit how to manage parrots. I had a parrot of my own
+at my aunt's in Australia, and I know their ways and all about them. Just
+let me try him." She held out her soft white hand toward the sulky bird
+with a fearless, caressing gesture. "Pretty Poll, pretty Poll!" she said,
+in English, in the conventional tone of address to their kind. "Did the
+naughty man go and frighten her then? Was she afraid of his hand? Did
+Polly want a lump of sugar?"
+
+On a sudden the bird opened its eyes quickly with an awakened air, and
+looked her back in the face, half blindly, half quizzingly. It preened
+its wings for a second, and crooned with pleasure. Then it put forward
+its neck, with its head on one side, took her dainty finger gently
+between its beak and tongue, bit it for pure love with a soft, short
+pressure, and at once allowed her to stroke its back and sides with a
+very pleased and surprised expression. The success of her skill flattered
+Muriel. "There! it knows me!" she cried, with childish delight; "it
+understands I'm a friend! It takes to me at once! Pretty Poll! Pretty
+Poll! Come, Poll, come and kiss me!"
+
+The bird drew back at the words, and steadied itself for a moment
+knowingly on its perch. Then it held up its head, gazed around it with a
+vacant air, as if suddenly awakened from a very long sleep, and, opening
+its mouth, exclaimed in loud, clear, sharp, and distinct tones--and in
+English--"Pretty Poll! Pretty Poll! Polly wants a buss! Polly wants a
+nice sweet bit of apple!"
+
+For a moment M. Peyron couldn't imagine what had happened. Felix looked
+at Muriel. Muriel looked at Felix. The Englishman held out both his hands
+to her in a wild fervor of surprise. Muriel took them in her own, and
+looked deep into his eyes, while tears rose suddenly and dropped down her
+cheeks, one by one, unchecked. They couldn't say why, themselves; they
+didn't know wherefore; yet this unexpected echo of their own tongue, in
+the mouth of that strange and mysterious bird, thrilled through them
+instinctively with a strange, unearthly tremor. In some dim and
+unexplained way, they felt half unconsciously to themselves that this
+discovery was, perhaps, the first clue to the solution of the terrible
+secret whose meshes encompassed them.
+
+M. Peyron looked on in mute astonishment. He had heard the bird repeat
+that strange jargon so often that it had ceased to have even the
+possibility of a meaning for him. It was the way of Methuselah--just his
+language that he talked; so harsh! so guttural! "Pretty Poll! Pretty
+Poll!" he had noticed the bird harp upon those quaint words again and
+again. They were part, no doubt, of that old primitive and forgotten
+Pacific language the creature had learned in other days from some earlier
+bearer of the name and ghastly honors of Tu-Kila-Kila. Why should these
+English seem so profoundly moved by them?
+
+"Mademoiselle doesn't surely understand the barbarous dialect which our
+Methuselah speaks!" he exclaimed in surprise, glancing half suspiciously
+from one to the other of these incomprehensible Britons. Like most other
+Frenchmen, he had been brought up in total ignorance of every European
+language except his own; and the words the parrot pronounced, when
+delivered with the well-known additions of parrot harshness and parrot
+volubility, seemed to him so inexpressibly barbaric in their clicks and
+jerks that he hadn't yet arrived at the faintest inkling of the truth as
+he observed their emotion.
+
+Felix seized his new friend's hand in his and wrung it warmly. "Don't you
+see what it is?" he exclaimed, half beside himself with this vague hope
+of some unknown solution. "Don't you realize how the thing stands?
+Don't you guess the truth? This isn't a Polynesian, dialect at all. It's
+our own mother tongue. The bird speaks English!"
+
+"English!" M. Peyron replied, with incredulous scorn. "What! Methuselah
+speak English! Oh, no, monsieur, impossible. _Vous vous trompez, j'en
+suis sûr_. I can never believe it. Those harsh, inarticulate sounds to
+belong to the noble language of Shaxper and Newtowne! _Ah, monsieur,
+incroyable! vous vous trompez; vous vous trompez!_"
+
+As he spoke, the bird put its head on one side once more, and, looking
+out of its half-blind old eyes with a crafty glance round the corner at
+Muriel, observed again, in not very polite English, "Pretty Poll! Pretty
+Poll! Polly wants some fruit! Polly wants a nut! Polly wants to go to
+bed!... God save the king! To hell with all papists!"
+
+"Monsieur," Felix said, a certain solemn feeling of surprise coming over
+him slowly at this last strange clause, "it is perfectly true. The bird
+speaks English. The bird that knows the secret of which we are all in
+search--the bird that can tell us the truth about Tu-Kila-Kila--can tell
+us in the tongue which mademoiselle and I speak as our native language.
+And what is more--and more strange--gather from his tone and the tenor of
+his remarks, he was taught, long since--a century ago, or more--and by an
+English sailor!"
+
+Muriel held out a bit of banana on a sharp stick to the bird.
+Methuselah-Polly took it gingerly off the end, like a well-behaved
+parrot? "God save the king!" Muriel said, in a quiet voice, trying to
+draw him on to speak a little further.
+
+Methuselah twisted his eye sideways, first this way, then that, and
+responded in a very clear tone, indeed, "God save the king! Confound the
+Duke of York! Long live Dr. Oates! And to hell with all papists!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+TANTALIZING, VERY.
+
+
+They looked at one another again with a wild surmise. The voice was as
+the voice of some long past age. Could the parrot be speaking to them in
+the words of seventeenth-century English?
+
+Even M. Peyron, who at first had received the strange discovery with
+incredulity, woke up before long to the importance of this sudden and
+unexpected revelation. The Tu-Kila-Kila who had taught Methuselah that
+long poem or sermon, which native tradition regarded as containing the
+central secret of their creed or its mysteries, and which the cruel and
+cunning Tu-Kila-Kila of to-day believed to be of immense importance to
+his safety--that Tu-Kila-Kila of other days was, in all probability, no
+other than an English sailor. Cast on these shores, perhaps, as they
+themselves had been, by the mercy of the waves, he had managed to master
+the language and religion of the savages among whom he found himself
+thrown; he had risen to be the representative of the cannibal god; and,
+during long months or years of tedious exile, he had beguiled his leisure
+by imparting to the unconscious ears of a bird the weird secret of his
+success, for the benefit of any others of his own race who might be
+similarly treated by fortune in future. Strange and romantic as it all
+sounded, they could hardly doubt now that this was the real explanation
+of the bird's command of English words. One problem alone remained to
+disturb their souls. Was the bird really in possession of any local
+secret and mystery at all, or was this the whole burden of the message he
+had brought down across the vast abyss of time--"God save the king, and
+to hell with all papists?"
+
+Felix turned to M. Peyron in a perfect tumult of suspense. "What he
+recites is long?" he said, interrogatively, with profound interest. "You
+have heard him say much more than this at times? The words he has just
+uttered are not those of the sermon or poem you mentioned?"
+
+M. Peyron opened his hands expansively before him. "Oh, _mon Dieu_, no,
+monsieur," he answered, with effusion. "You should hear him recite it.
+He's never done. It is whole chapters--whole chapters; a perfect Henriade
+in parrot-talk. When once he begins, there's no possibility of checking
+or stopping him. On, on he goes. Farewell to the rest; he insists on
+pouring it all forth to the very last sentence. Gabble, gabble, gabble;
+chatter, chatter, chatter; pouf, pouf, pouf; boum, boum, boum; he runs
+ahead eternally in one long discordant sing-song monotone. The person who
+taught him must have taken entire months to teach him, a phrase at a
+time, paragraph by paragraph. It is wonderful a bird's memory could hold
+so much. But till now, taking it for granted he spoke only some wild
+South Pacific dialect, I never paid much attention to Methuselah's
+vagaries."
+
+"Hush. He's going to speak," Muriel cried, holding up, in alarm, one
+warning finger.
+
+And the bird, his tongue-strings evidently loosened by the strange
+recurrence after so many years of those familiar English sounds, "Pretty
+Poll! Pretty Poll!" opened his mouth again in a loud chuckle of delight,
+and cried, with persistent shrillness, "God save the king! A fig for
+all arrant knaves and roundheads!"
+
+A creepier feeling than ever came over the two English listeners at those
+astounding words. "Great heavens!" Felix exclaimed to the unsuspecting
+Frenchman, "he speaks in the style of the Stuarts and the Commonwealth!"
+
+The Frenchman started. "_Époque Louis Quatorze_!" he murmured,
+translating the date mentally into his own more familiar chronology. "Two
+centuries since! Oh, incredible! incredible! Methuselah is old, but not
+quite so much of a patriarch as that. Even Humboldt's parrot could hardly
+have lived for two hundred years in the wilds of South America."
+
+Felix regarded the venerable creature with a look of almost superstitious
+awe. "Facts are facts," he answered shortly, shutting his mouth with a
+little snap. "Unless this bird has been deliberately taught historical
+details in an archaic diction--and a shipwrecked sailor is hardly likely
+to be antiquarian enough to conceive such an idea--he is undoubtedly a
+survival from the days of the Commonwealth or the Restoration. And you
+say he runs on with his tale for an hour at a time! Good heavens, what
+a thought! I wish we could manage to start him now. Does he begin it
+often?"
+
+"Monsieur," the Frenchman answered, "when I came here first, though
+Methuselah was already very old and feeble, he was not quite a dotard,
+and he used to recite it all every morning regularly. That was the hour,
+I suppose, at which the master, who first taught him this lengthy
+recitation, used originally to impress it upon him. In those days his
+sight and his memory were far more clear than now. But by degrees, since
+my arrival, he has grown dull and stupid. The natives tell me that fifty
+years ago, while he was already old, he was still bright and lively, and
+would recite the whole poem whenever anybody presented him with his
+greatest dainty, the claw of a moora-crab. Nowadays, however, when he can
+hardly eat, and hardly mumble, he is much less persistent and less
+coherent than formerly. To say the truth, I have discouraged him in his
+efforts, because his pertinacity annoyed me. So now he seldom gets
+through all his lesson at one bout, as he used to do at the beginning.
+The best way to get him on is for me to sing him one of my French songs.
+That seems to excite him, or to rouse him to rivalry. Then he will put
+his head on one side, listen critically for a while, smile a superior
+smile, and finally begin--jabber, jabber, jabber--trying to talk me down,
+as if I were a brother parrot."
+
+"Oh, do sing now!" Muriel cried, with intense persuasion in her voice.
+"I do so want to hear it." She meant, of course, the parrot's story.
+
+But the Frenchman bowed, and laid his hand on his heart. "Ah,
+mademoiselle," he said, "your wish is almost a royal command. And yet, do
+you know, it is so long since I have sung, except to please myself--my
+music is so rusty, old pieces you have heard--I have no accompaniment,
+no score--_mais enfin_, we are all so far from Paris!"
+
+Muriel didn't dare to undeceive him as to her meaning, lest he should
+refuse to sing in real earnest, and the chance of learning the parrot's
+secret might slip by them irretrievably. "Oh, monsieur," she cried,
+fitting herself to his humor at once, and speaking as ceremoniously as if
+she were assisting at a musical party in the Avenue Victor Hugo, "don't
+decline, I beg of you, on those accounts. We are both most anxious to
+hear your song. Don't disappoint us, pray. Please begin immediately."
+
+"Ah, mademoiselle," the Frenchman said, "who could resist such an appeal?
+You are altogether too flattering." And then, in the same cheery voice
+that Felix had heard on the first day he visited the King of Birds' hut,
+M. Peyron began, in very decent style, to pour forth the merry sounds of
+his rollicking song:
+
+"Quand on conspi-re,
+    Quand sans frayeur
+ On peut se di-re
+    Conspirateur--
+ Pour tout le mon-de
+    Il faut avoir
+ Perruque blon-de
+    Et collet noir."
+
+He had hardly got as far as the end of the first stanza, however, when
+Methuselah, listening, with his ear cocked up most knowingly, to the
+Frenchman's song, raised his head in opposition, and, sitting bolt
+upright on his perch, began to scream forth a voluble stream of words in
+one unbroken flood, so fast that Muriel could hardly follow them. The
+bird spoke in a thick and very harsh voice, and, what was more remarkable
+still, with a distinct and extremely peculiar North Country accent. "In
+the nineteenth year of the reign of his most gracious majesty, King
+Charles the Second," he blurted out, viciously, with an angry look at the
+Frenchman, "I, Nathaniel Cross, of the borough of Sunderland, in the
+county of Doorham, in England, an able-bodied mariner, then sailing the
+South Seas in the good bark Martyr Prince, of the Port of Great Grimsby,
+whereof one Thomas Wells, gent., under God, was master--"
+
+"Oh, hush, hush!" Muriel cried, unable to catch the parrot's precious
+words through the emulous echo of the Frenchman's music. "Whereof one
+Thomas Wells, gent., under God, was master--go on, Polly."
+
+"Perruque blonde
+   Et collet noir,"
+
+the Frenchman repeated, with a half-offended voice, finishing his stanza.
+
+But just as he stopped, Methuselah stopped too, and, throwing back his
+head in the air with a triumphant look, stared hard at his vanquished and
+silenced opponent out of those blinking gray eyes of his. "I thought I'd
+be too much for you!" he seemed to say, wrathfully.
+
+"Whereof one Thomas Wells, gent., under God, was master," Muriel
+suggested again, all agog with excitement. "Go on, good bird! Go on,
+pretty Polly."
+
+But Methuselah was evidently put off the scent now by the unseasonable
+interruption. Instead of continuing, he threw back his head a second time
+with a triumphant air and laughed aloud boisterously. "Pretty Polly," he
+cried. "Pretty Polly wants a nut. Tu-Kila-Kila maroo! Pretty Poll! Pretty
+Polly!"
+
+"Sing again, for Heaven's sake!" Felix exclaimed, in a profoundly
+agitated mood, explaining briefly to the Frenchman the full significance
+of the words Methuselah had just begun to utter.
+
+The Frenchman struck up his tune afresh to give the bird a start; but all
+to no avail. Methuselah was evidently in no humor for talking just then.
+He listened with a callous, uncritical air, bringing his white eyelids
+down slowly and sleepily over his bleared gray eyes. Then he nodded his
+head slowly. "No use," the Frenchman murmured, pursing his lips up
+gravely. "The bird won't talk. It's going off to sleep now. Methuselah
+gets visibly older every day, monsieur and mademoiselle. You are only
+just in time to catch his last accents."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+A MESSAGE FROM THE DEAD.
+
+
+Early next morning, as Felix lay still in his hut, dozing, and just
+vaguely conscious of a buzz of a mosquito close to his ear, he was
+aroused by a sudden loud cry outside--a cry that called his native name
+three times, running: "O King of the Rain, King of the Rain, King of the
+Rain, awake! High time to be up! The King of the Birds sends you health
+and greeting!"
+
+Felix rose at once; and his Shadow, rising before him, and unbolting the
+loose wooden fastener of the door, went out in haste to see who called
+beyond the white taboo-line of their sacred precincts.
+
+A native woman, tall, lithe, and handsome, stood there in the full light
+of morning, beckoning. A strange glow of hatred gleamed in her large gray
+eyes. Her shapely brown bosom heaved and panted heavily. Big beads
+glistened moistly on her smooth, high brow. It was clear she had run all
+the way in haste. She was deeply excited and full of eager anxiety.
+
+"Why, what do you want here so early, Ula?" the Shadow asked, in
+surprise--for it was indeed she. "How have you slipped away, as soon as
+the sun is risen, from the sacred hut of Tu-Kila-Kila?"
+
+Ula's gray eyes flashed angry fire as she answered. "He has beaten me
+again," she cried, in revengeful tones; "see the weals on my back! See my
+arms and shoulders! He has drawn blood from my wounds. He is the most
+hateful of gods. I should love to kill him. Therefore I slipped away from
+him with the early dawn and came to consult with his enemy, the King of
+the Birds, because I heard the words that the Eyes of Tu-Kila-Kila, who
+pervade the world, report to their master. The Eyes have told him that
+the King of the Rain, the Queen of the Clouds, and the King of the Birds
+are plotting together in secret against Tu-Kila-Kila. When I heard that,
+I was glad; I went to the King of the Birds to warn him of his danger;
+and the King of the Birds, concerned for your safety, has sent me in
+haste to ask his brother gods to go at once to him."
+
+In a minute Felix was up and had called out Mali from the neighboring
+hut. "Tell Missy Queenie," he cried, "to come with me to see the
+man-a-oui-oui! The man-a-oui-oui has sent me for us to come. She must
+make great haste. He wants us immediately."
+
+With a word and a sign to Toko, Ula glided away stealthily, with the
+cat-like tread of the native Polynesian woman, back to her hated husband.
+
+Felix went out to the door and heliographed with his bright metal plate,
+turned on the Frenchman's hill, "What is it?"
+
+In a moment the answer flashed back, word by word, "Come quick, if you
+want to hear. Methuselah is reciting!"
+
+A few seconds later Muriel emerged from her hut, and the two Europeans,
+closely followed, as always, by their inseparable Shadows, took the
+winding side-path that led through the jungle by a devious way, avoiding
+the front of Tu-Kila-Kila's temple, to the Frenchman's cottage.
+
+They found M. Peyron very much excited, partly by Ula's news of
+Tu-Kila-Kila's attitude, but more still by Methuselah's agitated
+condition. "The whole night through, my dear friends," he cried, seizing
+their hands, "that bird has been chattering, chattering, chattering. _Oh,
+mon Dieu, quel oiseau!_ It seems as though the words heard yesterday from
+mademoiselle had struck some lost chord in the creature's memory. But he
+is also very feeble. I can see that well. His garrulity is the garrulity
+of old age in its last flickering moments. He mumbles and mutters.
+He chuckles to himself. If you don't hear his message now and at once,
+it's my solemn conviction you will never hear it."
+
+He led them out to the aviary, where Methuselah, in effect, was sitting
+on his perch, most tremulous and woebegone. His feathers shuddered
+visibly; he could no longer preen himself. "Listen to what he says," the
+Frenchman exclaimed, in a very serious voice. "It is your last, last
+chance. If the secret is ever to be unravelled at all, by Methuselah's
+aid, now is, without doubt, the proper moment to unravel it."
+
+Muriel put out her hand and stroked the bird gently. "Pretty Poll," she
+said, soothingly, in a sympathetic voice. "Pretty Poll! Poor Poll! Was he
+ill! Was he suffering?"
+
+At the sound of those familiar words, unheard so long till yesterday, the
+parrot took her finger in his beak once more, and bit it with the
+tenderness of his kind in their softer moments. Then he threw back his
+head with a sort of mechanical twist, and screamed out at the top of his
+voice, for the last time on earth, his mysterious message:
+
+"Pretty Poll! Pretty Poll! God save the king! Confound the Duke of York!
+Death to all arrant knaves and roundheads!
+
+"In the nineteenth year of the reign of his most gracious majesty, King
+Charles the Second, I, Nathaniel Cross, of the borough of Sunderland, in
+the county of Doorham, in England, an able-bodied mariner, then sailing
+the South Seas in the good bark Martyr Prince, of the Port of Great
+Grimsby, whereof one Thomas Wells, gent., under God, was master, was, by
+stress of weather, wrecked and cast away on the shores of this island,
+called by its gentile inhabitants by the name of Boo Parry. In which
+wreck, as it befell, Thomas Wells, gent., and his equipment were, by
+divine disposition, killed and drowned, save and except three mariners,
+whereof I am one, who in God's good providence swam safely through an
+exceeding great flood of waves and landed at last on this island. There
+my two companions, Owen Williams, of Swansea, in the parts of Wales, and
+Lewis le Pickard, a French Hewgenott refugee, were at once, by the said
+gentiles, cruelly entreated, and after great torture cooked and eaten at
+the temple of their chief god, Too-Keela-Keela. But I, myself, having
+through God's grace found favor in their eyes, was promoted to the post
+which in their speech is called Korong, the nature of which this bird, my
+mouthpiece, will hereafter, to your ears, more fully discover."
+
+Having said so much, in a very jerky way, Methuselah paused, and blinked
+his eyes wearily.
+
+"What does he say?" the Frenchman began, eager to know the truth. But
+Felix, fearful lest any interruption might break the thread of the bird's
+discourse and cheat them of the sequel, held up a warning finger, and
+then laid it on his lips in mute injunction. Methuselah threw back his
+head at that and laughed aloud. "God save the king!" he cried again, in a
+still feebler way, "and to hell with all papists!"
+
+It was strange how they all hung on the words of that unconscious
+messenger from a dead and gone age, who himself knew nothing of the
+import of the words he was uttering. Methuselah laughed at their
+earnestness, shook his head once or twice, and seemed to think to
+himself. Then he remembered afresh the point he had broken off at.
+
+"More fully discover. For seven years have I now lived on this island,
+never having seen or h'ard Christian face or voice; and at the end of
+that time, feeling my health feail, and being apprehensive lest any of my
+fellow-countrymen should hereafter suffer the same fate as I have done, I
+began to teach this parrot his message, a few words at a time, impressing
+it duly and fully on his memory.
+
+"Larn, then, O wayfarer, that the people of Boo Parry are most arrant
+gentiles, heathens, and carribals. And this, as I discover, is the nature
+and method of their vile faith. They hold that the gods are each and
+several incarnate in some one particular human being. This human being
+they worship and reverence with all ghostly respect as his incarnation.
+And chiefly, above all, do they revere the great god Too-Keela-Keela,
+whose representative (may the Lord in Heaven forgive me for the same) I
+myself am at this present speaking. Having thus, for my sins, attained to
+that impious honor.
+
+"God save the king! Confound the Duke of York! To hell with all papists!
+
+"It is the fashion of this people to hold that their gods must always be
+strong and lusty. For they argue to themselves thus: that the continuance
+of the rain must needs depend upon the vigor and subtlety of its Soul,
+the rain-god. So the continuance and fruitfulness of the trees and plants
+which yield them food must needs depend upon the health of the tree-god.
+And the life of the world, and the light of the sun, and the well-being
+of all things that in them are, must depend upon the strength and cunning
+of the high god of all, Too-Keela-Keela. Hence they take great care and
+woorship of their gods, surrounding them with many rules which they call
+Taboo, and restricting them as to what they shall eat, and what drink,
+and wherewithal they shall seemly clothe themselves. For they think that
+if the King of the Rain at' anything that might cause the colick, or like
+humor or distemper, the weather will thereafter be stormy and
+tempestuous; but so long as the King of the Rain fares well and retains
+his health, so long will the weather over their island of Boo Parry be
+clear and prosperous.
+
+"Furthermore, as I have larned from their theologians, being myself,
+indeed, the greatest of their gods, it is evident that they may not let
+any god die, lest that department of nature over which he presideth
+should wither away and feail, as it were, with him. But reasonably no
+care that mortal man can exercise will prevent the possibility of their
+god--seeing he is but one of themselves--growing old and feeble and dying
+at last. To prevent which calamity, these gentile folk have invented (as
+I believe by the aid and device of Sathan) this horrid and most unnatural
+practice. The man-god must be killed so soon as he showeth in body or
+mind that his native powers are beginning to feail. And it is necessary
+that he be killed, according to their faith, in this ensuing fashion.
+
+"If the man-god were to die slowly by a death in the course of nature,
+the ways of the world might be stopped altogether. Hence these savages
+catch the soul of their god, as it were, ere it grow old and feeble, and
+transfer it betimes, by a magic device, to a suitable successor. And
+surely, they say, this suitable successor can be none other than him that
+is able to take it from him. This, then, is their horrid counsel and
+device--that each one of their gods should kill his antecessor. In doing
+thus, he taketh the old god's life and soul, which thereupon migrates and
+dwells within him. And by this tenure--may Heaven be merciful to me, a
+sinner--do I, Nathaniel Cross, of the county of Doorham, now hold this
+dignity of Too-Keela-Keela, having slain, therefor, in just quarrel, my
+antecessor in the high godship."
+
+As he reached these words Methuselah paused, and choked in his throat
+slightly. The mere mechanical effort of continuing the speech he had
+learned by heart two hundred years before, and repeated so often since
+that it had become part of his being, was now almost too much for him.
+The Frenchman was right. They were only just in time. A few days later,
+and the secret would have died with the bird that preserved it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+AN UNFINISHED TALE.
+
+
+For a minute or two Methuselah mumbled inarticulately to himself. Then,
+to their intense discomfiture, he began once more: "In the nineteenth
+year of the reign of his most gracious majesty, King Charles the Second,
+I, Nathaniel Cross--"
+
+"Oh, this will never do," Felix cried. "We haven't got yet to the secret
+at all. Muriel, do try to set him right. He must waste no breath. We
+can't afford now to let him go all over it."
+
+Muriel stretched out her hand and soothed the bird gently as before.
+"Having slain, therefore, my predecessor in the high godship," she
+suggested, in the same singsong voice as the parrot's.
+
+To her immense relief, Methuselah took the hint with charming docility.
+
+"In the high godship," he went on, mechanically, where he had stopped.
+"And this here is the manner whereby I obtained it. The Too-Keela-Keela
+from time to time doth generally appoint any castaway stranger that comes
+to the island to the post of Korong--that is to say, an annual god or
+victim. For, as the year doth renew itself at each change of seasons, so
+do these carribals in their gentilisme believe and hold that the gods of
+the seasons--to wit, the King of the Rain, the Queen of the Clouds, the
+Lord of Green Leaves, the King of Fruits, and others--must needs be
+sleain and renewed at the diverse solstices. Now, it so happened that I,
+on my arrival in the island, was appointed Korong, and promoted to the
+post of King of the Rain, having a native woman assigned me as Queen of
+the Clouds, with whom I might keep company. This woman being, after her
+kind, enamored of me, and anxious to escape her own fate, to be sleain by
+my side, did betray to me that secret which they call in their tongue the
+Great Taboo, and which had been betrayed to herself in turn by a native
+man, her former lover. For the men are instructed in these things in the
+mysteries when they coom of age, but not the women.
+
+"And the Great Taboo is this: No man can becoom a Too-Keela-Keela unless
+he first sleay the man in whom the high god is incarnate for the moment.
+But in order that he may sleay him, he must also himself be a full
+Korong, only those persons who are already gods being capable for the
+highest post in their hierarchy; even as with ourselves, none but he that
+is a deacon may become a priest, and none but he that is a priest may be
+made a bishop. For this reason, then, the Too-Keela-Keela prefers to
+advance a stranger to the post of Korong, seeing that such a person will
+not have been initiated in the mysteries of the island, and therefore
+will not be aware of those sundry steps which must needs be taken of him
+that would inherit the godship.
+
+"Furthermore, even a Korong can only obtain the highest rank of
+Too-Keela-Keela if he order all things according to the forms and
+ceremonies of the Taboo parfectly. For these gentiles are very careful of
+the levitical parts of their religion, deriving the same, as it seems to
+me, from the polity of the Hebrews, the fame of whose tabernacle must
+sure have gone forth through the ends of the woorld, and the knowledge of
+whose temple must have been yet more wide dispersed by Solomon, his
+ships, when they came into these parts to fetch gold from Ophir. And the
+ceremony is, that before any man may sleay the 'arthly tenement of
+Too-Keela-Keela and inherit his soul, which is in very truth, as they do
+think the god himself, he must needs fight with the person in whom
+Too-Keela-Keela doth then dwell, and for this reason: If the holder of
+the soul can defend himself in fight, then it is clear that his strength
+is not one whit decayed, nor is his vigor feailing; nor yet has his
+assailant been able to take his soul from him. But if the Korong in open
+fight do sleay the person in whom Too-Keela-Keela dwells, he becometh at
+once a Too-Keela-Keela himself--that is to say, in their tongue, the Lord
+of Lords, because he hath taken the life of him that preceded him.
+
+"Yet so intricate is the theology and practice of these loathsome
+savages, that not even now have I explained it in full to you, O
+shipwrecked mariner, for your aid and protection. For a Korong, though it
+be a part of his privilege to contend, if he will, with Too-Keela-Keela
+for the high godship and princedom of this isle, may only do so at
+certain appointed times, places, and seasons. Above all things, it is
+necessary that he should first find out the hiding-place of the soul of
+Too-Keela-Keela. For though the Too-Keela-Keela for the time that is, be
+animated by the god, yet, for greater security, he doth not keep his soul
+in his own body, but, being above all things the god of fruitfulness and
+generation, who causes women to bear children, and the plant called taro
+to bring forth its increase, he keepeth his soul in the great sacred tree
+behind his temple, which is thus the Father of All Trees, and the
+chiefest abode of the great god Too-Keela-Keela.
+
+"Nor does Too-Keela-Keela's soul abide equally in every part of this
+aforesaid tree; but in a certain bough of it, resembling a mistletoe,
+which hath yellow leaves, and, being broken off, groweth ever green and
+yellow afresh; which is the central mystery of all their Sathanic
+religion. For in this very bough--easy to be discerned by the eye among
+the green leaves of the tree--" the bird paused and faltered.
+
+Muriel leaned forward in an agony of excitement. "Among the green leaves
+of the tree--" she went on soothing him.
+
+Her voice seemed to give the parrot a fresh impulse to speak. "--Is
+contained, as it were," he continued, feebly, "the divine essence itself,
+the soul and life of Too-Keela-Keela. Whoever, then, being a full Korong,
+breaks this off, hath thus possessed himself of the very god in person.
+This, however, he must do by exceeding stealth; for Too-Keela-Keela,
+or rather the man that bears that name, being the guardian and defender
+of the great god, walks ever up and down, by day and by night, in
+exceeding great cunning, armed with a spear and with a hatchet of stone,
+around the root of the tree, watching jealously over the branch which is,
+as he believes, his own soul and being. I, therefore, being warned of the
+Taboo by the woman that was my consort, did craftily, near the appointed
+time for my own death, creep out of my hut, and my consort, having
+induced one of the wives of Too-Keela-Keela to make him drunken with too
+much of that intoxicating drink which they do call kava, did proceed--did
+proceed--did proceed--In the nineteenth year of the reign of his most
+gracious majesty, King Charles the Second--"
+
+Muriel bent forward once more in an agony of suspense. "Oh, go on, good
+Poll!" she cried. "Go on. Remember it. Did proceed to--"
+
+The single syllable helped Methuselah's memory. "--Did proceed to
+stealthily pluck the bough, and, having shown the same to Fire and Water,
+the guardians of the Taboo, did boldly challenge to single combat the
+bodily tenement of the god, with spear and hatchet, provided for me in
+accordance with ancient custom by Fire and Water. In which combat,
+Heaven mercifully befriending me against my enemy, I did coom out
+conqueror; and was thereupon proclaimed Too-Keela-Keela myself, with
+ceremonies too many and barbarous to mention, lest I raise your gorge at
+them. But that which is most important to tell you for your own guidance
+and safety, O mariner, is this--that being the sole and only end I have
+in imparting this history to so strange a messenger--that after you have
+by craft plucked the sacred branch, and by force of arms over-cootn
+Too-Keela-Keela, it is by all means needful, whether you will or not,
+that submitting to the hateful and gentile custom of this people--of this
+people--Pretty Poll! Pretty Poll! God save--God save the king! Death
+to the nineteenth year of the reign of all arrant knaves and roundheads."
+
+He dropped his head on his breast, and blinked his white eyelids more
+feebly than ever. His strength was failing him fast. The Soul of all dead
+parrots was wearing out. M. Peyron, who had stood by all this time, not
+knowing in any way what might be the value of the bird's disclosures,
+came forward and stroked poor Methuselah with his caressing hand. But
+Methuselah was incapable now of any further effort. He opened his blind
+eyes sleepily for the last, last time, and stared around him with a blank
+stare at the fading universe. "God save the king!" he screamed aloud with
+a terrible gasp, true to his colors still. "God save the king, and to
+hell with all papists!"
+
+Then he fell off his perch, stone dead, on the ground. They were never to
+hear the conclusion of that strange, quaint message from a forgotten age
+to our more sceptical century.
+
+Felix looked at Muriel, and Muriel looked at Felix. They could hardly
+contain themselves with awe and surprise. The parrot's words were so
+human, its speech was so real to them, that they felt as though the
+English Tu-Kila-Kila of two hundred years back had really and truly
+been speaking to them from that perch; it was a human creature indeed
+that lay dead before them. Felix raised the warm body from the ground
+with positive reverence. "We will bury it decently," he said in French,
+turning to M. Peyron. "He was a plucky bird, indeed, and he has carried
+out his master's intentions nobly."
+
+As they spoke, a little rustling in the jungle hard by attracted their
+attention. Felix turned to look. A stealthy brown figure glided away in
+silence through the tangled brushwood. M. Peyron started. "We are
+observed, monsieur," he said. "We must look out for squalls! It is one
+of the Eyes of Tu-Kila-Kila!"
+
+"Let him do his worst!" Felix answered. "We know his secret now, and can
+protect ourselves against him. Let us return to the shade, monsieur, and
+talk this all over. Methuselah has indeed given us something to-day very
+serious to think about."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+TU-KILA-KILA STRIKES.
+
+
+And yet, when all was said and done, knowledge of Tu-Kila-Kila's secret
+didn't seem to bring Felix and Muriel much nearer a solution of their own
+great problems than they had been from the beginning. In spite of all
+Methuselah had told them, they were as far off as ever from securing
+their escape, or even from the chance of sighting an English steamer.
+
+This last was still the main hope and expectation of all three Europeans.
+M. Peyron, who was a bit of a mathematician, had accurately calculated
+the time, from what Felix told him, when the Australasian would pass
+again on her next homeward voyage; and, when that time arrived, it was
+their united intention to watch night and day for the faintest glimmer
+of her lights, or the faintest wreath of her smoke on the far eastern
+horizon. They had ventured to confide their design to all three of
+their Shadows; and the Shadows, attached by the kindness to which they
+were so little accustomed among their own people, had in every case
+agreed to assist them with the canoe, if occasion served them. So for a
+time the two doomed victims subsided into their accustomed calm of
+mingled hope and despair, waiting patiently for the expected arrival of
+the much-longed-for Australasian.
+
+If she took that course once, why not a second time? And if ever she hove
+in sight, might they not hope, after all, to signal to her with their
+rudely constructed heliograph, and stop her?
+
+As for Methuselah's secret, there was only one way, Felix thought, in
+which it could now prove of any use to them. When the actual day of their
+doom drew nigh, he might, perhaps, be tempted to try the fate which
+Nathaniel Cross, of Sunderland, had successfully courted. That might gain
+them at least a little respite. Though even so he hardly knew what good
+it could do him to be elevated for a while into the chief god of the
+island. It might not even avail him to save Muriel's life; for he did not
+doubt that when the awful day itself had actually come the natives would
+do their best to kill her in spite of him, unless he anticipated them by
+fulfilling his own terrible, yet merciful, promise.
+
+Week after week went by--month after month passed--and the date when the
+Australasian might reasonably be expected to reappear drew nearer and
+nearer. They waited and trembled. At last, a few days before the time
+M. Peyron had calculated, as Felix was sitting under the big shady tree
+in his garden one morning, while Muriel, now worn out with hope deferred,
+lay within her hut alone with Mali, a sound of tom-toms and beaten palms
+was heard on the hill-path. The natives around fell on their faces or
+fled. It announced the speedy approach of Tu-Kila-Kila.
+
+By this time both the castaways had grown comparatively accustomed to
+that hideous noise, and to the hateful presence which it preceded and
+heralded. A dozen temple attendants tripped on either side down the
+hillpath, to guard him, clapping their hands in a barbaric measure as
+they went; Fire and Water, in the midst, supported and flanked the divine
+umbrella. Felix rose from his seat with very little ceremony, indeed, as
+the great god crossed the white taboo-line of his precincts, followed
+only beyond the limit by Fire and Water.
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila was in his most insolent vein. He glanced around with a
+horrid light of triumph dancing visibly in his eyes. It was clear he had
+come, intent upon some grand theatrical _coup_. He meant to take the
+white-faced stranger by surprise this time. "Good-morning, O King of the
+Rain," he exclaimed, in a loud voice and with boisterous familiarity.
+"How do you like your outlook now? Things are getting on. Things are
+getting on. The end of your rule is drawing very near, isn't it? Before
+long I must make the seasons change. I must make my sun turn. I must
+twist round my sky. And then, I shall need a new Korong instead of you, O
+pale-faced one!"
+
+Felix looked back at him without moving a muscle.
+
+"I am well," he answered shortly, restraining his anger. "The year turns
+round whether you will or not. You are right that the sun will soon begin
+to move southward on its path again. But many things may happen to all of
+us meanwhile. _I_ am not afraid of you."
+
+As he spoke, he drew his knife, and opened the blade, unostentatiously,
+but firmly. If the worst were really coming now, sooner than he expected,
+he would at least not forget his promise to Muriel.
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila smiled a hateful and ominous smile. "I am a great god," he
+said, calmly, striking an attitude as was his wont. "Hear how my people
+clap their hands in my honor! I order all things. I dispose the course of
+nature in heaven and earth. If I look at a cocoa-nut tree, it dies; if I
+glance at a bread-fruit, it withers away. We will see before long whether
+or not you are afraid of me. Meanwhile, O Korong, I have come to claim my
+dues at your hands. Prepare for your fate. To-morrow the Queen of the
+Clouds must be sealed my bride. Fetch her out, that I may speak with her.
+I have come to tell her so."
+
+It was a thunderbolt from a clear sky, and it fell with terrible effect
+on Felix. For a moment the knife trembled in his grasp with an almost
+irresistible impulse. He could hardly restrain himself, as he heard those
+horrible, incredible words, and saw the loathsome smirk on the speaker's
+face by which they were accompanied, from leaping then and there at the
+savage's throat, and plunging his blade to the haft into the vile
+creature's body. But by a violent effort he mastered his indignation and
+wrath for the present. Planting himself full in front of Tu-Kila-Kila,
+and blocking the way to the door of that sacred English girl's hut--oh,
+how horrible it was to him even to think of her purity being contaminated
+by the vile neighborhood, for one minute, of that loathsome monster! He
+looked full into the wretch's face, and answered very distinctly, in low,
+slow tones, "If you dare to take one step toward the place where that
+lady now rests, if you dare to move your foot one inch nearer, if you
+dare to ask to see her face again, I will plunge the knife hilt-deep into
+your vile heart, and kill you where you stand without one second's
+deliberation. Now you hear my words and you know what I mean. My weapon
+is keener and fiercer than any you Polynesians ever saw. Repeat those
+words once more, and by all that's true and holy, before they're out of
+your mouth I leap upon you and stab you."
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila drew back in sudden surprise. He was unaccustomed to be so
+bearded in his own sacred island. "Well, I shall claim her to-morrow," he
+faltered out, taken aback by Felix's unexpected energy. He paused for a
+second, then he went on more slowly: "To-morrow I will come with all my
+people to claim my bride. This afternoon they will bring her mats of
+grass and necklets of nautilus shell to deck her for her wedding, as
+becomes Tu-Kila-Kila's chosen one. The young maids of Boupari will adorn
+her for her lord, in the accustomed dress of Tu-Kila-Kila's wives. They
+will clap their hands; they will sing the marriage song. Then early in
+the morning I will come to fetch her--and woe to him who strives to
+prevent me!"
+
+Felix looked at him long, with a fixed and dogged look.
+
+"What has made you think of this devilry?" he asked at last, still
+grasping his knife hard, and half undecided whether or not to use it.
+"You have invented all these ideas. You have no claim, even in the horrid
+customs of your savage country, to demand such a sacrifice."
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila laughed loud, a laugh of triumphant and discordant
+merriment. "Ha, ha!" he cried, "you do not understand our customs, and
+will you teach _me_, the very high god, the guardian of the laws and
+practices of Boupari? You know nothing; you are as a little child. I am
+absolute wisdom. With every Korong, this is always our rule. Till the
+moon is full, on the last month before we offer up the sacrifice, the
+Queen of the Clouds dwells apart with her Shadow in her own new temple.
+So our fathers decreed it. But at the full of the moon, when the day has
+come, the usage is that Tu-Kila-Kila, the very high god, confers upon her
+the honor of making her his bride. It is a mighty honor. The feast is
+great. Blood flows like water. For seven days and nights, then, she lives
+with Tu-Kila-Kila in his sacred abode, the threshold of Heaven; she eats
+of human flesh; she tastes human blood; she drinks abundantly of the
+divine kava. At the end of that time, in accordance with the custom of
+our fathers, those great dead gods, Tu-Kila-Kila performs the high act of
+sacrifice. He puts on his mask of the face of a shark, for he is holy and
+cruel; he brings forth the Queen of the Clouds before the eyes of all his
+people, attired in her wedding robes, and made drunk with kava. Then he
+gashes her with knives; he offers her up to Heaven that accepted her; and
+the King of the Rain he offers after her; and all the people eat of their
+flesh, Korong! and drink of their blood, so that the body of gods and
+goddesses may dwell within all of them. And when all is done, the high
+god chooses a new king and queen at his will (for he is a mighty god),
+who rule for six moons more, and then are offered up, at the end, in like
+fashion."
+
+As he spoke, the ferocious light that gleamed in the savage's eye made
+Felix positively mad with anger. But he answered nothing directly. "Is
+this so?" he asked, turning for confirmation to Fire and Water. "Is it
+the custom of Boupari that Tu-Kila-Kila should wed the Queen of the
+Clouds seven days before the date appointed for her sacrifice?"
+
+The King of Fire and the King of Water, tried guardians of the etiquette
+of Tu-Kila-Kila's court, made answer at once with one accord, "It is so,
+O King of the Rain. Your lips have said it. Tu-Kila-Kila speaks the
+solemn truth. He is a very great god. Such is the custom of Boupari."
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila laughed his triumph in harsh, savage outbursts.
+
+But Felix drew back for a second, irresolute. At last he stood face to
+face with the absolute need for immediate action. Now was almost the
+moment when he must redeem his terrible promise to Muriel. And yet, even
+so, there was still one chance of life, one respite left. The mystic
+yellow bough on the sacred banyan! the Great Taboo! the wager of battle
+with Tu-Kila-Kila! Quick as lightning it all came up in his excited
+brain. Time after time, since he heard Methuselah's strange message
+from the grave, had he passed Tu-Kila-Kila's temple enclosure and
+looked up with vague awe at that sacred parasite that grew so
+conspicuously in a fork of the branches. It was easy to secure it, if no
+man guarded. There still remained one night. In that one short night he
+must do his best--and worst. If all then failed, he must die himself with
+Muriel!
+
+For two seconds he hesitated. It was hateful even to temporize with so
+hideous a proposition. But for Muriel's sake, for her dear life's sake,
+he must meet these savages with guile for guile. "If it be, indeed, the
+custom of Boupari," he answered back, with pale and trembling lips, "and
+if I, one man, am powerless to prevent it, I will give your message,
+myself, to the Queen of the Clouds, and you may send, as you say, your
+wedding decorations. But come what will--mark this--you shall not see her
+yourself to-day. You shall not speak to her. There I draw a line--so,
+with my stick in the dust, if you try to advance one step beyond, I stab
+you to the heart. Wait till to-morrow to take your prey. Give me one more
+night. Great god as you are, if you are wise, you will not drive an angry
+man to utter desperation."
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila looked with a suspicious side glance at the gleaming steel
+blade Felix still fingered tremulously. Though Boupari was one of those
+rare and isolated small islands unvisited as yet by European trade, he
+had, nevertheless, heard enough of the sailing gods to know that their
+skill was deep and their weapons very dangerous. It would be foolish to
+provoke this man to wrath too soon. To-morrow, when taboo was removed,
+and all was free license, he would come when he willed and take his
+bride, backed up by the full force of his assembled people. Meanwhile,
+why provoke a brother god too far? After all, in a little more than a
+week from now the pale-faced Korong would be eaten and digested!
+
+"Very well," he said, sulkily, but still with the sullen light of revenge
+gleaming bright in his eye. "Take my message to the queen. You may be my
+herald. Tell her what honor is in store for her--to be first the wife and
+then the meat of Tu-Kila-Kila! She is a very fair woman. I like her well.
+I have longed for her for months. Tomorrow, at the early dawn, by the
+break of day, I will come with all my people and take her home by main
+force to me."
+
+He looked at Felix and scowled, an angry scowl of revenge. Then, as he
+turned and walked away, under cover of the great umbrella, with its
+dangling pendants on either side, the temple attendants clapped their
+hands in unison. Fire and Water marched slow and held the umbrella over
+him. As he disappeared in the distance, and the sound of his tom-toms
+grew dim on the hills, Toko, the Shadow, who had lain flat, trembling, on
+his face in the hut while the god was speaking, came out and looked
+anxiously and fearfully after him.
+
+"The time is ripe," he said, in a very low voice to Felix. "A Korong may
+strike. All the people of Boupari murmur among themselves. They say this
+fellow has held the spirit of Tu-Kila-Kila within himself too long. He
+waxes insolent. They think it is high time the great God of Heaven should
+find before long some other fleshly tabernacle."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+A RASH RESOLVE.
+
+
+The rest of that day was a time of profound and intense anxiety. Felix
+and Muriel remained alone in their huts, absorbed in plans of escape, but
+messengers of many sorts from chiefs and gods kept continually coming to
+them. The natives evidently regarded it as a period of preparation. The
+Eyes of Tu-Kila-Kila surrounded their precinct; yet Felix couldn't help
+noticing that they seemed in many ways less watchful than of old, and
+that they whispered and conferred very much in a mysterious fashion with
+the people of the village. More than once Toko shook his head, sagely,
+"If only any one dared break the Great Taboo," he said, with some terror
+on his face, "our people would be glad. It would greatly please them.
+They are tired of this Tu-Kila-Kila. He has held the god in his breast
+far, far too long. They would willingly see some other in place of him."
+
+Before noon, the young girls of the village, bringing native mats and
+huge strings of nautilus shells, trooped up to the hut, like bridesmaids,
+with flowers in their hands, to deck Muriel for her approaching wedding.
+Before them they carried quantities of red and brown tappa-cloth and
+very fine net-work, the dowry to be presented by the royal bride to her
+divine husband. Within the hut, they decked out the Queen of the Clouds
+with garlands of flowers and necklets of shells, in solemn native
+fashion, bewailing her fate all the time to a measured dirge in their
+own language. Muriel could see that their sympathy, though partly
+conventional, was largely real as well. Many of the young girls seized
+her hand convulsively from time to time, and kissed it with genuine
+feeling. The gentle young English woman had won their savage hearts
+by her purity and innocence. "Poor thing, poor thing," they said,
+stroking her hand tenderly. "She is too good for Korong! Too good for
+Tu-Kila-Kila! If only we knew the Great Taboo like the men, we would tell
+her everything. She is too good to die. We are sorry she is to be
+sacrificed!"
+
+But when all their preparations were finished, the chief among them
+raised a calabash with a little scented oil in it, and poured a few drops
+solemnly on Muriel's head. "Oh, great god!" she said, in her own tongue,
+"we offer this sacrifice, a goddess herself, to you. We obey your words.
+You are very holy. We will each of us eat a portion of her flesh at your
+feast. So give us good crops, strong health, many children!"
+
+"What does she say?" Muriel asked, pale and awestruck, of Mali.
+
+Mali translated the words with perfect _sang-froid_. At that awful sound
+Muriel drew back, chill and cold to the marrow. How inconceivable was the
+state of mind of these terrible people! They were really sorry for her;
+they kissed her hand with fervor; and yet they deliberately and solemnly
+proposed to eat her!
+
+Toward evening the young girls at last retired, in regular order, to the
+clapping of hands, and Felix was left alone with Muriel and the Shadows.
+
+Already he had explained to Muriel what he intended to do; and Muriel,
+half dazed with terror and paralyzed by these awful preparations,
+consented passively. "But how if you never come back, Felix?" she cried
+at last, clinging to him passionately.
+
+Felix looked at her with a fixed look. "I have thought of that," he said.
+"M. Peyron, to whom I sent a message by flashes, has helped me in my
+difficulty. This bowl has poison in it. Peyron sent it to me to-day. He
+prepared it himself from the root of the kava bean. If by sunrise
+to-morrow you have heard no news, drink it off at once. It will instantly
+kill you. You shall _not_ fall alive into that creature's clutches."
+
+By slow degrees the evening wore on, and night approached--the last night
+that remained to them. Felix had decided to make his attempt about one in
+the morning. The moon was nearly full now, and there would be plenty
+of light. Supposing he succeeded, if they gained nothing else, they would
+gain at least a day or two's respite.
+
+As dusk set in, and they sat by the door of the hut, they were all
+surprised to see Ula approach the precinct stealthily through the
+jungle, accompanied by two of Tu-Kila-Kila's Eyes, yet apparently on some
+strange and friendly message. She beckoned imperiously with one finger to
+Toko to cross the line. The Shadow rose, and without one word of
+explanation went out to speak to her. The woman gave her message in
+short, sharp sentences. "We have found out all," she said, breathing
+hard. "Fire and Water have learned it. But Tu-Kila-Kila himself knows
+nothing. We have found out that the King of the Rain has discovered the
+secret of the Great Taboo. He heard it from the Soul of all dead parrots.
+Tu-Kila-Kila's Eyes saw, and learned, and understood. But they said
+nothing to Tu-Kila-Kila. For my counsel was wise; I planned that they
+should not, with Fire and Water. Fire and Water and all the people of
+Boupari think, with me, the time has come that there should arise among
+us a new Tu-Kila-Kila. This one let his blood fall out upon the dust of
+the ground. His luck has gone. We have need of another."
+
+"Then for what have you come?" Toko asked, all awestruck. It was terrible
+to him for a woman to meddle in such high matters.
+
+"I have come," Ula answered, laying her hand on his arm, and holding her
+face close to his with profound solemnity--"I have come to say to the
+King of the Rain, 'Whatever you do, that do quickly.' To-night I will
+engage to keep Tu-Kila-Kila in his temple. He shall see nothing. He
+shall hear nothing. I know not the Great Taboo; but I know from him this
+much--that if by wile or guile I keep him alone in his temple to-night,
+the King of the Rain may fight with him in single combat; and if the King
+of the Rain conquers in the battle, he becomes himself the home of the
+great deity."
+
+She nodded thrice, with her hands on her forehead, and withdrew as
+stealthily as she had come through the jungle. The Eyes of Tu-Kila-Kila,
+falling into line, remained behind, and kept watch upon the huts with the
+closest apparent scrutiny.
+
+More than ever they were hemmed in by mystery on mystery.
+
+The Shadow went back and reported to Felix. Felix, turning it over in his
+own mind, wondered and debated. Was this true, or a trap to lure him to
+destruction?
+
+As the night wore on, and the hour drew nigh, Muriel sat beside her
+friend and lover, in blank despair and agony. How could she ever allow
+him to leave her now? How could she venture to remain alone with Mali in
+her hut in this last extremity? It was awful to be so girt with
+mysterious enemies. "I must go with you, Felix! I must go, too!" she
+cried over and over again. "I daren't remain behind with all these awful
+men. And then, if he kills either of us, he will kill us at least both
+together."
+
+But Felix knew he might do nothing of the sort. A more terrible chance
+was still in reserve. He might spare Muriel. And against that awful
+possibility he felt it his duty now to guard at all hazard.
+
+"No, Muriel," he said, kissing her, and holding her pale hand, "I must go
+alone. You can't come with me. If I return, we will have gained at least
+a respite, till the Australasian may turn up. If I don't, you will at any
+rate have strength of mind left to swallow the poison, before
+Tu-Kila-Kila comes to claim you."
+
+Hour after hour passed by slowly, and Felix and the Shadow watched the
+stars at the door, to know when the hour for the attempt had arrived. The
+eyes of Tu-Kila-Kila, peering silent from just beyond the line, saw them
+watching all the time, but gave no sign or token of disapproval. With
+heads bent low, and tangled hair about their faces, they stood like
+statues, watching, watching sullenly. Were they only waiting till he
+moved, Felix wondered; and would they then hasten off by short routes
+through the jungle to warn their master of the impending conflict?
+
+At last the hour came when Felix felt sure there was the greatest chance
+of Tu-Kila-Kila sleeping soundly in his hut, and forgetting the defence
+of the sacred bough on the holy banyan-tree. He rose from his seat with a
+gesture for silence, and moved forward to Muriel. The poor girl flung
+herself, all tears, into his arms. "Oh, Felix, Felix," she cried, "redeem
+your promise now! Kill us both here together, and then, at least, I shall
+never be separated from you! It wouldn't be wrong! It can't be wrong! We
+would surely be forgiven if we did it only to escape falling into the
+hands of these terrible savages!"
+
+Felix clasped her to his bosom with a faltering heart. "No, Muriel," he
+said, slowly. "Not yet. Not yet. I must leave no opening on earth untried
+by which I can possibly or conceivably save you. It's as hard for me
+to leave you here alone as for you to be left. But for your own dear
+sake, I must steel myself. I must do it."
+
+He kissed her many times over. He wiped away her tears. Then, with a
+gentle movement, he untwined her clasping arms. "You must let me go, my
+own darling," he said, "You must let me go, without crossing the border.
+If you pass beyond the taboo-line to-night, Heaven only knows what,
+perhaps, may happen to you. We must give these people no handle of
+offence. Good-night, Muriel, my own heart's wife; and if I never come
+back, then good-by forever."
+
+She clung to his arm still. He disentangled himself, gently. The Shadow
+rose at the same moment, and followed in silence to the open door. Muriel
+rushed after them, wildly. "Oh, Felix, Felix, come back," she cried,
+bursting into wild floods of hot, fierce tears. "Come back and let me die
+with you! Let me die! Let me die with you!"
+
+Felix crossed the white line without one word of reply, and went forth
+into the night, half unmanned by this effort. Muriel sank, where she
+stood, into Mali's arms. The girl caught her and supported her. But
+before she had fainted quite away, Muriel had time vaguely to see and
+note one significant fact. The Eyes of Tu-Kila-Kila, who stood watching
+the huts with lynx-like care, nodded twice to Toko, the Shadow, as he
+passed between them; then they stealthily turned and dogged the two men's
+footsteps afar off in the jungle.
+
+Muriel was left by herself in the hut, face to face with Mali.
+
+"Let us pray, Mali," she cried, seizing her Shadow's arm.
+
+And Mali, moved suddenly by some half-obliterated impulse, exclaimed in
+concert, in a terrified voice, "Let us pray to Methodist God in heaven!"
+
+For her life, too, hung on the issue of that rash endeavor.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+A STRANGE ALLY.
+
+
+In Tu-Kila-Kila's temple-hut, meanwhile, the jealous, revengeful god,
+enshrined among his skeletons, was having in his turn an anxious and
+doubtful time of it. Ever since his sacred blood had stained the dust of
+earth by the Frenchman's cottage and in his own temple, Tu-Kila-Kila,
+for all his bluster, had been deeply stirred and terrified in his inmost
+soul by that unlucky portent. A savage, even if he be a god, is always
+superstitious. Could it be that his own time was, indeed, drawing nigh?
+That he, who had remorselessly killed and eaten so many hundreds of human
+victims, was himself to fall a prey to some more successful competitor?
+Had the white-faced stranger, the King of the Rain, really learned the
+secrets of the Great Taboo from the Soul of all dead parrots? Did that
+mysterious bird speak the tongue of these new fire-bearing Korongs,
+whose doom was fixed for the approaching solstice? Tu-Kila-Kila wondered
+and doubted. His suspicions were keen, and deeply aroused. Late that
+night he still lurked by the sacred banyan-tree, and when at last he
+retired to his own inner temple, white with the grinning skulls of the
+victims he had devoured, it was with strict injunctions to Fire and
+Water, and to his Eyes that watched there, to bring him word at once of
+any projected aggression on the part of the stranger.
+
+Within the temple-hut, however, Ula awaited him. That was a pleasant
+change. The beautiful, supple, satin-skinned Polynesian looked more
+beautiful and more treacherous than ever that fateful evening. Her great
+brown limbs, smooth and glossy as pearl, were set off by a narrow girdle
+or waistband of green and scarlet leaves, twined spirally around her.
+Armlets of nautilus shell threw up the dainty plumpness of her soft,
+round forearm. A garland hung festooned across one shapely shoulder;
+her bosom was bare or but half hidden by the crimson hibiscus that
+nestled voluptuously upon it. As Tu-Kila-Kila entered, she lifted her
+large eyes, and, smiling, showed two even rows of pearly white teeth. "My
+master has come!" she cried, holding up both lissome arms with a gesture
+to welcome him. "The great god relaxes his care of the world for a while.
+All goes on well. He leaves his sun to sleep and his stars to shine, and
+he retires to rest on the unworthy bosom of her, his mate, his meat, that
+is honored to love him."
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila was scarcely just then in a mood for dalliance. "The Queen
+of the Clouds comes hither to-morrow," he answered, casting a somewhat
+contemptuous glance at Ula's more dusky and solid charms. "I go to
+seek her with the wedding gifts early in the morning. For a week she
+shall be mine. And after that--" he lifted his tomahawk and brought it
+down on a huge block of wood significantly.
+
+Ula smiled once more, that deep, treacherous smile of hers, and showed
+her white teeth even deeper than ever. "If my lord, the great god, rises
+so early to-morrow," she said, sidling up toward him voluptuously, "to
+seek one more bride for his sacred temple, all the more reason he should
+take his rest and sleep soundly to-night. Is he not a god? Are not his
+limbs tired? Does he not need divine silence and slumber?"
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila pouted. "I could sleep more soundly," he said, with a snort,
+"if I knew what my enemy, the Korong, is doing. I have set my Eyes to
+watch him, yet I do not feel secure. They are not to be trusted. I shall
+be happier far when I have killed and eaten him." He passed his hand
+across his bosom with a reflective air. You have a great sense of
+security toward your enemy, no doubt, when you know that he slumbers,
+well digested, within you.
+
+Ula raised herself on her elbow, and gazed snake-like into his face, "My
+lord's Eyes are everywhere," she said, reverently, with every mark of
+respect. "He sees and knows all things. Who can hide anything on earth
+from his face? Even when he is asleep, his Eyes watch well for him. Then
+why should the great god, the Measurer of Heaven and Earth, the King of
+Men, fear a white-faced stranger? To-morrow the Queen of the Clouds will
+be yours, and the stranger will be abased: ha, ha, he will grieve at it!
+To-night, Fire and Water keep guard and watch over you. Whoever would
+hurt you must pass through Fire and Water before he reach your door. Fire
+would burn, Water would drown. This is a Great Taboo. No stranger dare
+face it."
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila lifted himself up in his thrasonic mood. "If he did," he
+cried, swelling himself, "I would shrivel him to ashes with one flash of
+my eyes. I would scorch him to a cinder with one stroke of my lightning."
+
+Ula smiled again, a well-satisfied smile. She was working her man up.
+"Tu-Kila-Kila is great," she repeated, slowly. "All earth obeys him. All
+heaven fears him."
+
+The savage took her hand with a doubtful air. "And yet," he said, toying
+with it, half irresolute, "when I went to the white-faced stranger's hut
+this morning, he did not speak fair; he answered me insolently. His words
+were bold. He talked to me as one talks to a man, not to a great god.
+Ula, I wonder if he knows my secret?"
+
+Ula started back in well-affected horror. "A white-faced stranger from
+the sun know your secret, O great king!" she cried, hiding her face in a
+square of cloth. "See me beat my breast! Impossible! Impossible! No
+one of your subjects would dare to tell him so great a taboo. It would be
+rank blasphemy. If they did, your anger would utterly consume them!"
+
+"That is true," Tu-Kila-Kila said, practically, "but I might not discover
+it. I am a very great god. My Eyes are everywhere. No corner of the world
+is hid from my gaze. All the concerns of heaven and earth are my care,
+And, therefore; sometimes, I overlook some detail."
+
+"No man alive would dare to tell the Great Taboo!" Ula repeated,
+confidently. "Why, even I myself, who am the most favored of your
+wives, and who am permitted to bask in the light of your presence--even
+I, Ula--I do not know it. How much less, then, the spirit from the sun,
+the sailing god, the white-faced stranger!"
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila pursed up his brow and looked preternaturally wise, as the
+savage loves to do. "But the parrot," he cried, "the Soul of all dead
+parrots! _He_ knew the secret, they say:--I taught it him myself in an
+ancient day, many, many years ago--when no man now living was born, save
+only I--in another incarnation--and _he_ may have told it. For the
+strangers, they say, speak the language of birds; and in the language of
+birds did I tell the Great Taboo to him."
+
+Ula pooh-poohed the mighty man-god's fears. "No, no," she cried, with
+confidence; "he can never have told them. If he had, would not your Eyes
+that watch ever for all that happens on heaven or earth, have straightway
+reported it to you? The parrot died without yielding up the tale. Were it
+otherwise, Toko, who loves and worships you, would surely have told me."
+
+The man-god puckered his brows slightly, as if he liked not the security.
+"Well, somehow, Ula," he said, feeling her soft brown arms with his
+divine hand, slowly, "I have always had my doubts since that day the Soul
+of all dead parrots bit me. A vicious bird! What did he mean by his
+bite?" He lowered his voice and looked at her fixedly. "Did not his
+spilling my blood portend," he asked, with a shudder of fear, "that
+through that ill-omened bird I, who was once Lavita, should cease to be
+Tu-Kila-Kila?"
+
+Ula smiled contentedly again. To say the truth, that was precisely the
+interpretation she herself had put on that terrific omen. The parrot had
+spilled Tu-Kila-Kila's sacred blood upon the soil of earth. According to
+her simple natural philosophy, that was a certain sign that through the
+parrot's instrumentality Tu-Kila-Kila's life would be forfeited to the
+great eternal earth-spirit. Or, rather, the earth-spirit would claim the
+blood of the man Lavita, in whose body it dwelt, and would itself migrate
+to some new earthly tabernacle.
+
+But for all that, she dissembled. "Great god," she cried, smiling, a
+benign smile, "you are tired! You are thirsty! Care for heaven and
+earth has wearied you out. You feel the fatigue of upholding the sun in
+heaven. Your arms must ache. Your thews must give under you. Drink of the
+soul-inspiring juice of the kava! My hands have prepared the divine cup.
+For Tu-Kila-Kila did I make it--fresh, pure, invigorating!"
+
+She held the bowl to his lips with an enticing smile. Tu-Kila-Kila
+hesitated and glanced around him suspiciously. "What if the white-faced
+stranger should come to-night?" he whispered, hoarsely. "He may have
+discovered the Great Taboo, after all. Who can tell the ways of the
+world, how they come about? My people are so treacherous. Some traitor
+may have betrayed it to him."
+
+"Impossible," the beautiful, snake-like woman answered, with a strong
+gesture of natural dissent. "And even if he came, would not kava, the
+divine, inspiriting drink of the gods, in which dwell the embodied souls
+of our fathers--would not kava make you more vigorous, strong for the
+fight? Would it not course through your limbs like fire? Would it not
+pour into your soul the divine, abiding strength of your mighty mother,
+the eternal earth-spirit?"
+
+"A little," Tu-Kila-Kila said, yielding, "but not too much. Too much
+would stupefy me. When the spirits, that the kava-tree sucks up from the
+earth, are too strong within us, they overpower our own strength, so that
+even I, the high god--even I can do nothing."
+
+Ula held the bowl to his lips, and enticed him to drink with her
+beautiful eyes. "A deep draught, O supporter of the sun in heaven," she
+cried, pressing his arm tenderly. "Am I not Ula? Did I not brew it for
+you? Am I not the chief and most favored among your women? I will sit at
+the door. I will watch all night. I will not close an eye. Not a footfall
+on the ground but my ear shall hear it."
+
+"Do." Tu-Kila-Kila said, laconically. "I fear Fire and Water. Those gods
+love me not. Fain would they make me migrate into some other body. But I
+myself like it not. This one suits me admirably. Ula, that kava is
+stronger than you are used to make it."
+
+"No, no," Ula cried, pressing it to his lips a second time, passionately.
+"You are a very great god. You are tired; it overcomes you. And if you
+sleep, I will watch. Fire and Water dare not disobey your commands. Are
+you not great? Your Eyes are everywhere. And I, even I, will be as one of
+them."
+
+The savage gulped down a few more mouthfuls of the intoxicating liquid.
+Then he glanced up again suddenly with a quick, suspicious look. The
+cunning of his race gave him wisdom in spite of the deadly strength of
+the kava Ula had brewed too deep for him. With a sudden resolve, he rose
+and staggered out. "You are a serpent, woman!" he cried angrily, seeing
+the smile that lurked upon Ula's face. "To-morrow I will kill you. I will
+take the white woman for my bride, and she and I will feast off your
+carrion body. You have tried to betray me, but you are not cunning
+enough, not strong enough. No woman shall kill me. I am a very great god.
+I will not yield. I will wait by the tree. This is a trap you have set,
+but I do not fall into it. If the King of the Rain comes, I shall be
+there to meet him."
+
+He seized his spear and hatchet and walked forth, erect, without one sign
+of drunkenness. Ula trembled to herself as she saw him go. She was
+playing a deep game. Had she given him only just enough kava to
+strengthen and inspire him?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+WAGER OF BATTLE.
+
+
+Felix wound his way painfully through the deep fern-brake of the jungle,
+by no regular path, so as to avoid exciting the alarm of the natives, and
+to take Tu-Kila-Kila's palace-temple from the rear, where the big tree,
+which overshadowed it with its drooping branches, was most easily
+approachable. As he and Toko crept on, bending low, through that dense
+tropical scrub, in deathly silence, they were aware all the time of a
+low, crackling sound that rang ever some paces in the rear on their trail
+through the forest. It was Tu-Kila-Kila's Eyes, following them stealthily
+from afar, footstep for footstep, through the dense undergrowth of bush,
+and the crisp fallen leaves and twigs that snapped light beneath their
+footfall. What hope of success with those watchful spies, keen as beagles
+and cruel as bloodhounds, following ever on their track? What chance of
+escape for Felix and Muriel, with the cannibal man-gods toils laid round
+on every side to insure their destruction?
+
+Silently and cautiously the two men groped their way on through the dark
+gloom of the woods, in spite of their mute pursuers. The moonlight
+flickered down athwart the trackless soil as they went; the hum of
+insects innumerable droned deep along the underbrush. Now and then the
+startled scream of a night jar broke the monotony of the buzz that was
+worse than silence; owls boomed from the hollow trees, and fireflies
+darted dim through the open spaces. At last they emerged upon the cleared
+area of the temple. There Felix, without one moment's hesitation, with a
+firm and resolute tread, stepped over the white coral line that marked
+the taboo of the great god's precincts. That was a declaration of open
+war; he had crossed the Rubicon of Tu-Kila-Kila's empire. Toko stood
+trembling on the far side; none might pass that mystic line unbidden and
+live, save the Korong alone who could succeed in breaking off the bough
+"with yellow leaves, resembling a mistletoe," of which Methuselah, the
+parrot, had told Felix and Muriel, and so earn the right to fight for his
+life with the redoubted and redoubtable Tu-Kila-Kila.
+
+As he stepped over the taboo-line, Felix was aware of many native eyes
+fixed stonily upon him from the surrounding precinct. Clearly they were
+awaiting him. Yet not a soul gave the alarm; that in itself would have
+been to break taboo. Every man or woman among the temple attendants
+within that charmed circle stood on gaze curiously. Close by, Ula, the
+favorite wife of the man-god, crouched low by the hut, with one finger
+on her treacherous lips, bending eagerly forward, in silent expectation
+of what next might happen. Once, and once only, she glanced at Toko
+with a mute sign of triumph; then she fixed her big eyes on Felix in
+tremulous anxiety; for to her as to him, life and death now hung
+absolutely on the issue of his enterprise. A little farther back the King
+of Fire and the King of Water, in full sacrificial robes, stood smiling
+sardonically. For them it was merely a question of one master more or
+less, one Tu-Kila-Kila in place of another. They had no special interest
+in the upshot of the contest, save in so far as they always hated most
+the man who for the moment held by his own strong arm the superior
+godship over them. Around, Tu-Kila-Kila's Eyes kept watch and ward in
+sinister silence. Taboo was stronger than even the commands of the high
+god himself. When once a Korong had crossed that fatal line, unbidden and
+unwelcomed by Tu-Kila-Kila, he came as Tu-Kila-Kila's foe and would-be
+successor; the duty of every guardian of the temple was then to see fair
+play between the god that was and the god that might be--the Tu-Kila-Kila
+of the hour and the Tu-Kila-Kila who might possibly supplant him.
+
+"Let the great spirit itself choose which body it will inhabit," the King
+of Fire murmured in a soft, low voice, glancing toward a dark spot at the
+foot of the big tree. The moonlight fell dim through the branches on the
+place where he looked. The glibbering bones of dead victims rattled
+lightly in the wind. Felix's eyes followed the King of Fire's, and saw,
+lying asleep upon the ground, Tu-Kila-Kila himself, with his spear and
+tomahawk.
+
+He lay there, huddled up by the very roots of the tree, breathing deep
+and regularly. Right over his head projected the branch, in one part of
+whose boughs grew the fateful parasite. By the dim light of the moon,
+straggling through the dense foliage, Felix could see its yellow leaves
+distinctly. Beneath it hung a skeleton, suspended by invisible cords,
+head downward from the branches. It was the skeleton of a previous Korong
+who had tried in vain to reach the bough, and perished. Tu-Kila-Kila had
+made high feast on the victim's flesh; his bones, now collected together
+and cunningly fastened with native rope, served at once as a warning and
+as a trap or pitfall for all who might rashly venture to follow him.
+
+Felix stood for one moment, alone and awe-struck, a solitary civilized
+man, among those hideous surroundings. Above, the cold moon; all about,
+the grim, stolid, half-hostile natives; close by, that strange,
+serpentine, savage wife, guarding, cat-like, the sleep of her cannibal
+husband; behind, the watchful Eyes of Tu-Kila-Kila, waiting ever in the
+background, ready to raise a loud shout of alarm and warning the moment
+the fatal branch was actually broken, but mute, by their vows, till that
+moment was accomplished. Then a sudden wild impulse urged him on to the
+attempt. The banyan had dropped down rooting offsets to the ground, after
+the fashion of its kind, from its main branches. Felix seized one of
+these and swung himself lightly up, till he reached the very limb on
+which the sacred parasite itself was growing.
+
+To get to the parasite, however, he must pass directly above
+Tu-Kila-Kila's head, and over the point where that ghastly grinning
+skeleton was suspended, as by an unseen hair, from the fork that bore it.
+
+He walked along, balancing himself, and clutching, as he went, at the
+neighboring boughs, while Tu-Kila-Kila, overcome with the kava, slept
+stolidly and heavily on beneath him. At last he was almost within grasp
+of the parasite. Could he lunge out and clutch it? One try--one effort!
+No, no; he almost lost footing and fell over in the attempt. He couldn't
+keep his balance so. He must try farther on. Come what might, he must go
+past the skeleton.
+
+The grisly mass swung again, clanking its bones as it swung, and groaned
+in the wind ominously. The breeze whistled audibly through its hollow
+skull and vacant eye-sockets. Tu-Kila-Kila turned uneasily in his sleep
+below. Felix saw there was not one instant of time to be lost now. He
+passed on boldly; and as he passed, a dozen thin cords of paper mulberry,
+stretched every way in an invisible network among the boughs, too small
+to be seen in the dim moonlight, caught him with their toils and almost
+overthrew him. They broke with his weight, and Felix himself, tumbling
+blindly, fell forward. At the cost of a sprained wrist and a great jerk
+on his bruised fingers, he caught at a bough by his side, but wrenched it
+away suddenly. It was touch and go. At the very same moment, the skeleton
+fell heavily, and rattled on the ground beside Tu-Kila-Kila.
+
+Before Felix could discover what had actually happened, a very great
+shout went up all round below, and made him stagger with excitement.
+Tu-Kila-Kila was awake, and had started up, all intent, mad with wrath
+and kava. Glaring about him wildly, and brandishing his great spear in
+his stalwart hands, he screamed aloud, in a perfect frenzy of passion and
+despair: "Where is he, the Korong? Bring him on, my meat! Let me devour
+his heart! Let me tear him to pieces. Let me drink of his blood! Let me
+kill him and eat him!"
+
+Sick and desperate at the accident, Felix, in turn, clinging hard to his
+bough with one hand, gazed wildly about him to look for the parasite. But
+it had gone as if by magic. He glanced around in despair, vaguely
+conscious that nothing was left for it now but to drop to the ground
+and let himself be killed at leisure by that frantic savage. Yet even as
+he did so, he was aware of that great cry--a cry as of triumph--still
+rending the air. Fire and Water had rushed forward, and were holding back
+Tu-Kila-Kila, now black in the face from rage, with all their might. Ula
+was smiling a malicious joy. The Eyes were all agog with interest and
+excitement. And from one and all that wild scream rose unanimous to the
+startled sky: "He has it! He has it! The Soul of the Tree! The Spirit of
+the World! The great god's abode. Hold off your hands, Lavita, son of
+Sami! Your trial has come. He has it! He has it!"
+
+Felix looked about him with a whirling brain. His eye fell suddenly.
+There, in his own hand, lay the fateful bough. In his efforts to steady
+himself, he had clutched at it by pure accident, and broken it off
+unawares with the force of his clutching. As fortune would have it, he
+grasped it still. His senses reeled. He was almost dead with excitement,
+suspense, and uncertainty, mingled with pain of his wrenched wrist. But
+for Muriel's sake he pulled himself together. Gazing down and trying hard
+to take it all in--that strange savage scene--he saw that Tu-Kila-Kila
+was making frantic attempts to lunge at him with the spear, while the
+King of Fire and the King of Water, stern and relentless, were holding
+him off by main force, and striving their best to appease and quiet him.
+
+There was an awful pause. Then a voice broke the stillness from beyond
+the taboo-line:
+
+"The Shadow of the King of the Rain speaks," it said, in very solemn,
+conventional accents. "Korong! Korong! The Great Taboo is broken. Fire
+and Water, hold him in whom dwells the god till my master comes. He has
+the Soul of all the spirits of the wood in his hands. He will fight for
+his right. Taboo! Taboo! I, Toko, have said it."
+
+He clapped his hands thrice.
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila made a wild effort to break away once more. But the King of
+Fire, standing opposite him, spoke still louder and clearer. "If you
+touch the Korong before the line is drawn," he said, with a voice of
+authority, "you are no Tu-Kila-Kila, but an outcast and a criminal. All
+the people will hold you with forked sticks, while the Korong burns you
+alive slowly, limb by limb, with me, who am Fire, the fierce, the
+consuming. I will scorch you and bake you till you are as a bamboo in the
+flame. Taboo! Taboo! Taboo! I, Fire, have said it."
+
+The King of Water, with three attendants, forced Tu-Kila-Kila on one
+side for a moment. Ula stood by and smiled pleased compliance. A temple
+slave, trembling all over at this conflict of the gods, brought out a
+calabash full of white coral-sand. The King of Water spat on it and
+blessed it. By this time a dozen natives, at least, had assembled outside
+the taboo-line, and stood eagerly watching the result of the combat. The
+temple slave made a long white mark with the coral-sand on one side of
+the cleared area. Then he handed the calabash solemnly to Toko. Toko
+crossed the sacred precinct with a few inaudible words of muttered charm,
+to save the Taboo, as prescribed in the mysteries. Then he drew a similar
+line on the ground on his side, some twenty yards off. "Descend, O my
+lord!" he cried to Felix; and Felix, still holding the bough tight in his
+hand, swung himself blindly from the tree, and took his place by Toko.
+
+"Toe the line!" Toko cried, and Felix toed it.
+
+"Bring up your god!" the Shadow called out aloud to the King of Water.
+And the King of Water, using no special ceremony with so great a duty,
+dragged Tu-Kila-Kila helplessly along with him to the farther taboo-line.
+
+The King of Water brought a spear and tomahawk. He handed them to Felix.
+"With these weapons," he said, "fight, and merit heaven. I hold the bough
+meanwhile--the victor takes it."
+
+The King of Fire stood out between the lists. "Korongs and gods," he
+said, "the King of the Rain has plucked the sacred bough, according to
+our fathers' rites, and claims trial which of you two shall henceforth
+hold the sacred soul of the world, the great Tu-Kila-Kila. Wager of
+Battle decides the day. Keep toe to line. At the end of my words, forth,
+forward, and fight for it. The great god knows his own, and will choose
+his abode. Taboo, Taboo, Taboo! I, Fire, have spoken it."
+
+Scarcely were the words well out of his mouth, when, with a wild whoop of
+rage, Tu-Kila-Kila, who had the advantage of knowing the rules of the
+game, so to speak, dashed madly forward, drunk with passion and kava, and
+gave one lunge with his spear full tilt at the breast of the startled and
+unprepared white man. His aim, though frantic, was not at fault. The
+spear struck Felix high up on the left side. He felt a dull thud of pain;
+a faint gurgle of blood. Even in the pale moonlight his eye told him at
+once a red stream was trickling--out over his flannel shirt. He was
+pricked, at least. The great god had wounded him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+VICTORY--AND AFTER?
+
+
+The great god had wounded him. But not to the heart. Felix, as good luck
+would have it, happened to be wearing buckled braces. He had worn them on
+board, and, like the rest of his costume, had, of course, never since
+been able to discard them. They stood him in good stead now. The buckle
+caught the very point of the bone-tipped spear, and broke the force of
+the blow, as the great god lunged forward. The wound was but a graze, and
+Tu-Kila-Kila's light shaft snapped short in the middle.
+
+Madder and wilder than ever, the savage pitched it away, yelling, rushed
+forward with a fierce curse on his angry tongue, and flung himself, tooth
+and nail, on his astonished opponent.
+
+The suddenness of the onslaught almost took the Englishman's breath away.
+By this time, however, Felix had pulled together his ideas and taken in
+the situation. Tu-Kila-Kila was attacking him now with his heavy stone
+axe. He must parry those deadly blows. He must be alert, but watchful. He
+must put himself in a posture of defence at once. Above all, he must keep
+cool and have his wits about him.
+
+If he could but have drawn his knife, he would have stood a better chance
+in that hand-to-hand conflict. But there was no time now for such tactics
+as those. Besides, even in close fight with a bloodthirsty savage, an
+English gentleman's sense of fair play never for one moment deserts him.
+Felix felt, if they were to fight it out face to face for their lives,
+they should fight at least on a perfect equality. Steel against stone was
+a mean advantage. Parrying Tu-Kila-Kila's first desperate blow with the
+haft of his own hatchet, he leaped aside half a second to gain breath and
+strength. Then he rushed on, and dealt one deadly downstroke with the
+ponderous weapon.
+
+For a minute or two they closed, in perfectly savage single combat.
+Fire and Water, observant and impartial, stood by like seconds to see
+the god himself decide the issue, which of the two combatants should be
+his living representative. The contest was brief but very hard-fought.
+Tu-Kila-Kila, inspired with the last frenzy of despair, rushed wildly
+on his opponent with hands and fists, and teeth and nails, dealing his
+blows in blind fury, right and left, and seeking only to sell his life
+as dearly as possible. In this last extremity, his very superstitions
+told against him. Everything seemed to show his hour had come. The
+parrot's bite--the omen of his own blood that stained the dust of
+earth--Ula's treachery--the chance by which the Korong had learned the
+Great Taboo--Felix's accidental or providential success in breaking off
+the bough--the length of time he himself had held the divine honors--the
+probability that the god would by this time begin to prefer a new and
+stronger representative--all these things alike combined to fire the
+drunk and maddened savage with the energy of despair. He fell upon his
+enemy like a tiger upon an elephant. He fought with his tomahawk and his
+feet and his whole lithe body; he foamed at the mouth with impotent rage;
+he spent his force on the air in the extremity of his passion.
+
+Felix, on the other hand, sobered by pain, and nerved by the fixed
+consciousness that Muriel's safety now depended absolutely on his perfect
+coolness, fought with the calm skill of a practised fencer. Happily he
+had learned the gentle art of thrust and parry years before in England;
+and though both weapon and opponent were here so different, the lesson of
+quickness and calm watchfulness he had gained in that civilized school
+stood him in good stead, even now, under such adverse circumstances.
+Tu-Kila-Kila, getting spent, drew back for a second at last, and panted
+for breath. That faint breathing-space of a moment's duration sealed his
+fate. Seizing his chance with consummate skill, Felix closed upon the
+breathless monster, and brought down the heavy stone hammer point blank
+upon the centre of his crashing skull. The weapon drove home. It cleft a
+great red gash in the cannibal's head. Tu-Kila-Kila reeled and fell.
+There was an infinitesimal pause of silence and suspense. Then a great
+shout went up from all round to heaven, "He has killed him! He has
+killed him! We have a new-made god! Tu-Kila-Kila is dead! Long live
+Tu-Kila-Kila!"
+
+Felix drew back for a moment, panting and breathless, and wiped his wet
+brow with his sleeve, his brain all whirling. At his feet, the savage lay
+stretched, like a log. Felix gazed at the blood-bespattered face
+remorsefully. It is an awful thing, even in a just quarrel, to feel that
+you have really taken a human life! The responsibility is enough to
+appall the bravest of us. He stooped down and examined the prostrate body
+with solemn reverence. Blood was flowing in torrents from the wounded
+head. But Tu-Kila-Kila was dead--stone-dead forever.
+
+Hot tears of relief welled up into Felix's eyes. He touched the body
+cautiously with a reverent hand. No life. No motion.
+
+Just as he did so, the woman Ula came forward, bare-limbed and beautiful,
+all triumph in her walk, a proud, insensitive savage. One second she
+gazed at the great corpse disdainfully. Then she lifted her dainty foot,
+and gave it a contemptuous kick. "The body of Lavita, the son of Sami,"
+she said, with a gesture of hatred. "He had a bad heart. We will cook it
+and eat it." Next turning to Felix, "Oh, Tu-Kila-Kila," she cried,
+clapping her hands three times and bowing low to the ground, "you are a
+very great god. We will serve you and salute you. Am not I, Ula, one of
+your wives, your meat? Do with me as you will. Toko, you are henceforth
+the great god's Shadow!"
+
+Felix gazed at the beautiful, heartless creature, all horrified. Even on
+Boupari, that cannibal island, he was hardly prepared for quite so low a
+depth of savage insensibility. But all the people around, now a hundred
+or more, standing naked before their new god, took up the shout in
+concert. "The body of Lavita, the son of Sami," they cried. "A carrion
+corpse! The god has deserted it. The great soul of the world has entered
+the heart of the white-faced stranger from the disk of the sun; the King
+of the Rain; the great Tu-Kila-Kila. We will cook and eat the body of
+Lavita, the son of Sami. He was a bad man. He is a worn-out shell.
+Nothing remains of him now. The great god has left him."
+
+They clapped their hands in a set measure as they recited this hymn.
+The King of Fire retreated into the temple. Ula stood by, and whispered
+low with Toko. There was a ceremonial pause of some fifteen minutes.
+Presently, from the inner recesses of the temple itself, a low noise
+issued forth as of a rising wind. For some seconds it buzzed and hummed,
+droningly. But at the very first note of that holy sound Ula dropped her
+lover's hand, as one drops a red-hot coal, and darted wildly off at
+full speed, like some frightened wild beast, into the thick jungle. Every
+other woman near began to rush away with equally instantaneous signs of
+haste and fear. The men, on the other hand, erect and naked, with their
+hands on their foreheads, crossed the taboo-line at once. It was the
+summons to all who had been initiated at the mysteries--the sacred
+bull-roarer was calling the assembly of the men of Boupari.
+
+For several minutes it buzzed and droned, that mystic implement, growing
+louder and louder, till it roared like thunder. One after another, the
+men of the island rushed in as if mad or in flight for their lives before
+some fierce beast pursuing them. They ran up, panting, and dripping with
+sweat; their hands clapped to their foreheads; their eyes starting wildly
+from their staring sockets; torn and bleeding and lacerated by the thorns
+and branches of the jungle, for each man ran straight across country from
+the spot where he lay asleep, in the direction of the sound, and never
+paused or drew breath, for dear life's sake, till he stood beside the
+corpse of the dead Tu-Kila-Kila.
+
+And every moment the cry pealed louder and louder still. "Lavita, the son
+of Sami, is dead, praise Heaven! The King of the Rain has slain him, and
+is now the true Tu-Kila-Kila!"
+
+Felix bent irresolute over the fallen savage's bloodstained corpse. What
+next was expected of him he hardly knew or cared. His one desire now was
+to return to Muriel--to Muriel, whom he had rescued from something worse
+than death at the hateful hands of that accursed creature who lay
+breathless forever on the ground beside him.
+
+Somebody came up just then, and seized his hand warmly. Felix looked up
+with a start. It was their friend, the Frenchman. "Ah, my captain, you
+have done well," M. Peyron cried, admiring him. "What courage! What
+coolness! What pluck! What soldiership! I couldn't see all. But I was in
+at the death! And oh, _mon Dieu_, how I admired and envied you!"
+
+By this time the bull-roarer had ceased to bellow among the rocks. The
+King of Fire stood forth. In his hands he held a length of bamboo-stick
+with a lighted coal in it. "Bring wood and palm-leaves," he said, in a
+tone of command. "Let me light myself up, that I may blaze before
+Tu-Kila-Kila."
+
+He turned and bowed thrice very low before Felix. "The accepted of
+Heaven," he cried, holding his hands above him. "The very high god! The
+King of all Things! He sends down his showers upon our crops and our
+fields. He causes his sun to shine brightly over us. He makes our pigs
+and our slaves bring forth their increase. All we are but his meat. We,
+his people, praise him."
+
+And all the men of Boupari, naked and bleeding, bent low in response.
+"Tu-Kila-Kila is great," they chanted, as they clapped their hands. "We
+thank him that he has chosen a fresh incarnation. The sun will not fade
+in the heavens overhead, nor the bread-fruits wither and cease to bear
+fruit on earth. Tu-Kila-Kila, our god, is great. He springs ever young
+and fresh, like the herbs of the field. He is a most high god. We, his
+people, praise him."
+
+Four temple attendants brought sticks and leaves, while Felix stood
+still, half dazed with the newness of these strange preparations. The
+King of Fire, with his torch, set light to the pile. It blazed merrily on
+high. "I, Fire, salute you," he cried, bending over it toward Felix.
+
+"Now cut up the body of Lavita, the son of Sami," he went on, turning
+toward it contemptuously. "I will cook it in my flame, that Tu-Kila-Kila
+the great may eat of it."
+
+Felix drew back with a face all aglow with horror and disgust. "Don't
+touch that body!" he cried, authoritatively, putting his foot down firm.
+"Leave it alone at once. I refuse to allow you." Then he turned to
+M. Peyron. "The King of the Birds and I," he said, with calm resolve, "we
+two will bury it."
+
+The King of Fire drew back at these strange words, nonplussed. This
+was, indeed, an ill-omened break in the ceremony of initiation of a new
+Tu-Kila-Kila, to which he had never before in his life been accustomed.
+He hardly knew how to comport himself under such singular circumstances.
+It was as though the sovereign of England, on coronation-day, should
+refuse to be crowned, and intimate to the archbishop, in his full
+canonicals, a confirmed preference for the republican form of Government.
+It was a contingency that law and custom in Boupari had neither, in their
+wisdom, foreseen nor provided for.
+
+The King of Water whispered low in the new god's ear. "You must eat of
+his body, my lord," he said. "That is absolutely necessary. Every one of
+us must eat of the flesh of the god; but you, above all, must eat his
+heart, his divine nature. Otherwise you can never be full Tu-Kila-Kila."
+
+"I don't care a straw for that," Felix cried, now aroused to a full sense
+of the break in Methuselah's story and trembling with apprehension. "You
+may kill me if you like; we can die only once; but human flesh I can
+never taste; nor will I, while I live, allow you to touch this dead man's
+body. We will bury it ourselves, the King of the Birds and I. You may
+tell your people so. That is my last word." He raised his voice to the
+customary ceremonial pitch. "I, the new Tu-Kila-Kila," he said, "have
+spoken it."
+
+The King of Fire and the King of Water, taken aback at his boldness,
+conferred together for some seconds privately. The people meanwhile
+looked on and wondered. What could this strange hitch in the divine
+proceedings mean? Was the god himself recalcitrant? Never in their lives
+had the oldest men among them known anything like it.
+
+And as they whispered and debated, awe-struck but discordant, a shout
+arose once more from the outer circle--a mighty shout of mingled
+surprise, alarm, and terror. "Taboo! Taboo! Fence the mysteries. Beware!
+Oh, great god, we warn you. The mysteries are in danger! Cut her down!
+Kill her! A woman! A woman!"
+
+At the words, Felix was aware of somebody bursting through the dense
+crowd and rushing wildly toward him. Next moment, Muriel hung and sobbed
+on his shoulder, while Mali, just behind her, stood crying and moaning.
+
+Felix held the poor startled girl in his arms and soothed her. And
+all around another great cry arose from five hundred lips: "Two women
+have profaned the mysteries of the god. They are Tu-Kila-Kila's
+trespass-offering. Let us kill them and eat them!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+
+SUSPENSE.
+
+
+In a moment, Felix's mind was fully made up. There was no time to think;
+it was the hour for action. He saw how he must comport himself toward
+this strange wild people. Seating Muriel gently on the ground, Mali
+beside her, and stepping forward himself, with Peyron's hand in his, he
+beckoned to the vast and surging crowd to bespeak respectful silence.
+
+A mighty hush fell at once upon the people. The King of Fire and the King
+of Water stood back, obedient to his nod. They waited for the upshot of
+this strange new development.
+
+"Men of Boupari," Felix began, speaking with a marvellous fluency in
+their own tongue, for the excitement itself supplied him with eloquence;
+"I have killed your late god in the prescribed way; I have plucked the
+sacred bough, and fought in single combat by the established rules of
+your own religion. Fire and Water, you guardians of this holy island, is
+it not so? You saw all things done, did you not, after the precepts of
+your ancestors?"
+
+The King of Fire bowed low and answered: "Tu-Kila-Kila speaks, indeed,
+the truth. Water and I, with our own eyes, have seen it."
+
+"And now," Felix went on, "I am myself, by your own laws, Tu-Kila-Kila."
+
+The King of Fire made a gesture of dissent. "Oh, great god, pardon me,"
+he murmured, "if I say aught, now, to contradict you; but you are not a
+full Tu-Kila-Kila yet till you have eaten of the heart of the god, your
+predecessor."
+
+"Then where is now the spirit of Tu-Kila-Kila, the very high god, if I am
+not he?" Felix asked, abruptly, thus puzzling them with a hard problem in
+their own savage theology.
+
+The King of Fire gave a start, and pondered. This was a detail of his
+creed that had never before so much as occurred to him. All faiths have
+their _cruces_. "I do not well know," he answered, "whether it is in the
+heart of Lavita, the son of Sami, or in your own body. But I feel sure it
+must now be certainly somewhere, though just where our fathers have never
+told us."
+
+Felix recognized at once that he had gained a point. "Then look to it
+well," he said, austerely. "Be careful how you act. Do nothing rash. For
+either the soul of the god is in the heart of Lavita, the son of Sami;
+and then, since I refuse to eat it, it will decay away, as Lavita's body
+decays, and the world will shrivel up, and all things will perish,
+because the god is dead and crumbled to dust forever. Or else it is in my
+body, who am god in his place; and then, if anybody does me harm or hurt,
+he will be an impious wretch, and will have broken taboo, and Heaven
+knows what evils and misfortunes may not, therefore, fall on each and all
+of you."
+
+A very old chief rose from the ranks outside. His hair was white and
+his eyes bleared. "Tu-Kila-Kila speaks well," he cried, in a loud but
+mumbling voice. "His words are wise. He argues to the point. He is very
+cunning. I advise you, my people, to be careful how you anger the
+white-faced stranger, for you know what he is; he is cruel; he is
+powerful. There was never any storm in my time--and I am an old man--so
+great in Boupari as the storm that rose when the King of the Rain ate the
+storm-apple. Our yams and our taros even now are suffering from it. He is
+a mighty strong god. Beware how you tamper with him!"
+
+He sat down, trembling. A younger chief rose from a nearer rank, and
+said his say in turn. "I do not agree with our father," he cried,
+pointing to the chief who had just spoken. "His word is evil; he is much
+mistaken. I have another thought. My thought is this. Let us kill and eat
+the white-faced stranger at once, by wager of battle; and let whosoever
+fights and overcomes him receive his honors, and take to wife the fair
+woman, the Queen of the Clouds, the sun-faced Korong, whom he brought
+from the sun with him."
+
+"But who will then be Tu-Kila-Kila?" Felix asked, turning round upon him
+quickly. Habituation to danger had made him unnaturally alert in such
+utmost extremities.
+
+"Why, the man who slays you," the young chief answered, pointedly,
+grasping his heavy tomahawk with profound expression.
+
+"I think not," Felix answered. "Your reasoning is bad. For if I am not
+Tu-Kila-Kila, how can any man become Tu-Kila-Kila by killing me? And if I
+am Tu-Kila-Kila, how dare you, not being yourself Korong, and not having
+broken off the sacred bough, as I did, venture to attack me? You wish to
+set aside all the customs of Boupari. Are you not ashamed of such gross
+impiety?"
+
+"Tu-Kila-Kila speaks well," the King of Fire put in, for he had no cause
+to love the aggressive young chief, and he thought better of his chances
+in life as Felix's minister. "Besides, now I think of it, he _must_ be
+Tu-Kila-Kila, because he has taken the life of the last great god, whom
+he slew with his hands; and therefore the life is now his--he holds it."
+
+Felix was emboldened by this favorable opinion to strike out a fresh line
+in a further direction. He stood forward once more, and beckoned again
+for silence. "Yes, my people," he said calmly, with slow articulation,
+"by the custom of your race and the creed you profess I am now indeed,
+and in every truth, the abode of your great god, Tu-Kila-Kila. But,
+furthermore, I have a new revelation to make to you. I am going to
+instruct you in a fresh way. This creed that you hold is full of errors.
+As Tu-Kila-Kila, I mean to take my own course, no islander hindering me.
+If you try to depose me, what great gods have you now got left? None,
+save only Fire and Water, my ministers. King of the Rain there is none;
+for I, who was he, am now Tu-Kila-Kila. Tu-Kila-Kila there is none, save
+only me; for the other, that was, I have fought and conquered. The Queen
+of the Clouds is with me. The King of the Birds is with me. Consider,
+then, O friends, that if you kill us all, you will have nowhere to turn;
+you will be left quite godless."
+
+"It is true," the people murmured, looking about them, half puzzled. "He
+is wise. He speaks well. He is indeed a Tu-Kila-Kila."
+
+Felix pressed his advantage home at once. "Now listen," he said, lifting
+up one solemn forefinger. "I come from a country very far away, where the
+customs are better by many yams than those of Boupari. And now that I am
+indeed Tu-Kila-Kila--your god, your master--I will change and alter some
+of your customs that seem to me here and now most undesirable. In the
+first place--hear this!--I will put down all cannibalism. No man shall
+eat of human flesh on pain of death. And to begin with, no man shall cook
+or eat the body of Lavita, the son of Sami. On that I am determined--I,
+Tu-Kila-Kila. The King of the Birds and I, we will dig a pit, and we will
+bury in it the corpse of this man that was once your god, and whom his
+own wickedness compelled me to fight and slay, in order to prevent more
+cruelty and bloodshed."
+
+The young chief stood up, all red in his wrath, and interrupted him,
+brandishing a coral-stone hatchet. "This is blasphemy," he said. "This is
+sheer rank blasphemy. These are not good words. They are very bad
+medicine. The white-faced Korong is no true Tu-Kila-Kila. His advice
+is evil--and ill-luck would follow it. He wishes to change the sacred
+customs of Boupari. Now, that is not well. My counsel is this: let us eat
+him now, unless he changes his heart, and amends his ways, and partakes,
+as is right, of the body of Lavita, the son of Sami."
+
+The assembly swayed visibly, this way and that, some inclining to the
+conservative view of the rash young chief, and others to the cautious
+liberalism of the gray-haired warrior. Felix noted their division, and
+spoke once more, this time still more authoritatively than ever.
+
+"Furthermore," he said, "my people, hear me. As I came in a ship
+propelled by fire over the high waves of the sea, so I go away in one. We
+watch for such a ship to pass by Boupari. When it comes, the Queen of the
+Clouds--upon whose life I place a great Taboo; let no man dare to touch
+her at his peril; if he does, I will rush upon him and kill him as I
+killed Lavita, the son of Sami. When it comes, the Queen of the Clouds,
+the King of the Birds, and I, we will go away back in it to the land
+whence we came, and be quit of Boupari. But we will not leave it fireless
+or godless. When I return back home again to my own far land, I will send
+out messengers, very good men, who will tell you of a God more powerful
+by much than any you ever knew, and very righteous. They will teach you
+great things you never dreamed of. Therefore, I ask you now to disperse
+to your own homes, while the King of Birds and I bury the body of Lavita,
+the son of Sami."
+
+All this time Muriel had been seated on the ground, listening with
+profound interest, but scarcely understanding a word, though here and
+there, after her six months' stay in the island, a single phrase was
+dimly intelligible to her. But now, at this critical moment she rose,
+and, standing upright by Felix's side in her spotless English purity
+among those assembled savages, she pointed just once with her uplifted
+finger to the calm vault of heaven, and then across the moonlit horizon
+of the sea, and last of all to the clustering huts and villages of
+Boupari. "Tell them," she said to Felix, with blanched lips, but without
+one sign of a tremor in her fearless voice, "I will pray for them to
+Heaven, when I go across the sea, and will think of the children that I
+loved to pat and play with, and will send out messengers from our home
+beyond the waves, to make them wiser and happier and better."
+
+Felix translated her simple message to them in its pure womanly
+goodness. Even the natives were touched. They whispered and hesitated.
+Then after a time of much murmured debate, the King of Fire stood forward
+as a mediator. "There is an oracle, O Korong," he said, "not to prejudge
+the matter, which decides all these things--a great conch-shell at a
+sacred grove in the neighboring island of Aloa Mauna. It is the holiest
+oracle of all our holy religion. We gods and men of Boupari have taken
+counsel together, and have come to a conclusion. We will put forth a
+canoe and send men with blood on their faces to inquire at Aloa Mauna of
+the very great oracle. Till then, you are neither Tu-Kila-Kila, nor not
+Tu-Kila-Kila. It behooves us to be very careful how we deal with gods.
+Our people will stand round your precinct in a row, and guard you with
+their spears. You shall not cross the taboo line to them, nor they to
+you: all shall be neutral. Food shall be laid by the line, as always,
+morn, noon, and night; and your Shadows shall take it in; but you shall
+not come out. Neither shall you bury the body of Lavita, the son of Sami.
+Till the canoe comes back it shall lie in the sun and rot there."
+
+He clapped his hands twice.
+
+In a moment a tom-tom began to beat from behind, and the people all
+crowded without the circle. The King of Fire came forward ostentatiously
+and made taboo. "If, any man cross this line," he said in a droning
+sing-song, "till the canoe return from the great oracle of our faith on
+Aloa Mauna, I, Fire, will scorch him into cinder and ashes. If any woman
+transgress, I will pitch her with palm oil, and light her up for a lamp
+on a moonless night to lighten this temple."
+
+The King of Water distributed shark's-tooth spears. At once a great
+serried wall hemmed in the Europeans all round, and they sat down to
+wait, the three whites together, for the upshot of the mission to Aloa
+Mauna.
+
+And the dawn now gleamed red on the eastern horizon.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+AT SEA: OFF BOUPARI.
+
+
+Thirteen days out from Sydney, the good ship Australasian was nearing the
+equator.
+
+It was four of the clock in the afternoon, and the captain (off duty)
+paced the deck, puffing a cigar, and talking idly with a passenger on
+former experiences.
+
+Eight bells went on the quarter-deck; time to change watches.
+
+"This is only our second trip through this channel," the captain
+said, gazing across with a casual glance at the palm-trees that
+stood dark against the blue horizon. "We used to go a hundred miles
+to eastward, here, to avoid the reefs. But last voyage I came
+through this way quite safely--though we had a nasty accident on the
+road--unavoidable--unavoidable! Big sea was running free over the
+sunken shoals; caught the ship aft unawares, and stove in better than
+half a dozen portholes. Lady passenger on deck happened to be leaning
+over the weather gunwale; big sea caught her up on its crest in a jiffy,
+lifted her like a baby, and laid her down again gently, just so, on the
+bed of the ocean. By George, sir, I was annoyed. It was quite a romance,
+poor thing; quite a romance; we all felt so put out about it the rest
+of that voyage. Young fellow on board, nephew of Sir Theodore Thurstan,
+of the Colonial Office, was in love with Miss Ellis--girl's name was
+Ellis--father's a parson somewhere down in Somersetshire--and as soon as
+the big sea took her up on its crest, what does Thurstan go and do, but
+he ups on the taffrail, and, before you could say Jack Robinson, jumps
+over to save her."
+
+"But he didn't succeed?" the passenger asked, with languid interest.
+
+"Succeed, my dear sir? and with a sea running twelve feet high like that?
+Why, it was pitch dark, and such a surf on that the gig could hardly go
+through it." The captain smiled, and puffed away pensively. "Drowned,"
+he said, after a brief pause, with complacent composure. "Drowned.
+Drowned. Drowned. Went to the bottom, both of 'em. Davy Jones's locker.
+But unavoidable, quite. These accidents _will_ happen, even on the
+best-regulated liners. Why, there was my brother Tom, in the Cunard
+service--same that boast they never lost a passenger; there was my
+brother Tom, he was out one day off the Newfoundland banks, heavy swell
+setting in from the nor'-nor'-east, icebergs ahead, passengers battened
+down--Bless my soul, how that light seems to come and go, don't it?"
+
+It was a reflected light, flashing from the island straight in the
+captain's eyes, small and insignificant as to size, but strong for all
+that in the full tropical sunshine, and glittering like a diamond from a
+vague elevation near the centre of the island.
+
+"Seems to come and go in regular order," the passenger observed,
+reflectively, withdrawing his cigar. "Looks for all the world just like
+naval signalling."
+
+The captain paused, and shaded his eyes a moment. "Hanged if that isn't
+just what it _is_," he answered, slowly. "It's a rigged-up heliograph,
+and they're using the Morse code; dash my eyes if they aren't. Well, this
+_is_ civilization! What the dickens can have come to the island of
+Boupari? There isn't a darned European soul in the place, nor ever has
+been. Anchorage unsafe; no harbor; bad reef; too small for missionaries
+to make a living, and natives got nothing worth speaking of to trade in."
+
+"What do they say?" the passenger asked, with suddenly quickened
+interest.
+
+"How the devil should I tell you yet, sir?" the captain retorted with
+choleric grumpiness. "Don't you see I'm spelling it out, letter by
+letter? O, r, e, s, c, u, e, u, s, c, o, m, e, w, e, l, l, a, r, m, e,
+d--Yes. yes, I twig it." And the captain jotted it down in his note-book
+for some seconds, silently.
+
+"Run up the flag there," he shouted, a moment later, rushing hastily
+forward. "Stop her at once, Walker. Easy, easy. Get ready the gig. Well,
+upon my soul, there _is_ a rum start anyway."
+
+"What does the message say?" the passenger inquired, with intense
+surprise.
+
+"Say? Well, there's what I make it out," the captain answered, handing
+him the scrap of paper on which he had jotted down the letters. "I missed
+the beginning, but the end's all right. Look alive there, boys, will you.
+Bring out the Winchester. Take cutlasses, all hands. I'll go along myself
+in her."
+
+The passenger took the piece of paper on which he read, "and send a boat
+to rescue us. Come well armed. Savages on guard. Thurstan, Ellis."
+
+In less than three minutes the boat was lowered and manned, and the
+captain, with the Winchester six-shooter by his side, seated grim in the
+stern, took command of the tiller.
+
+On the island it was the first day of Felix and Muriel's imprisonment in
+the dusty precinct of Tu-Kila-Kila's temple. All the morning through,
+they had sat under the shade of a smaller banyan in the outer corner; for
+Muriel could neither enter the noisome hut nor go near the great tree
+with the skeletons on its branches; nor could she sit where the dead
+savage's body, still festering in the sun, attracted the buzzing blue
+flies by thousands, to drink up the blood that lay thick on the earth in
+a pool around it. Hard by, the natives sat, keen as lynxes, in a great
+circle just outside the white taboo-line, where, with serried spears,
+they kept watch and ward over the persons of their doubtful gods or
+victims. M. Peyron, alone preserving his equanimity under these adverse
+circumstances, hummed low to himself in very dubious tones; even he
+felt his French gayety had somewhat forsaken him; this revolution in
+Boupari failed to excite his Parisian ardor.
+
+About one o'clock in the day, however, looking casually seaward--what was
+this that M. Peyron, to his great surprise, descried far away on the dim
+southern horizon? A low black line, lying close to the water? No, no; not
+a steamer!
+
+Too prudent to excite the natives' attention unnecessarily, the
+cautious Frenchman whispered, in the most commonplace voice on earth to
+Felix: "Don't look at once; and when you do look, mind you don't exhibit
+any agitation in your tone or manner. But what do you make that out to
+be--that long black haze on the horizon to southward?"
+
+Felix looked, disregarding the friendly injunction, at once. At the same
+moment, Muriel turned her eyes quickly in the self-same direction.
+Neither made the faintest sign of outer emotion; but Muriel clenched her
+white hands hard, till the nails dug into the palm, in her effort to
+restrain herself, as she murmured very low, in an agitated voice, "_Un
+vapeur, un vapeur_!"
+
+"So I think," M. Peyron answered, very low and calm. "It is, indeed, a
+steamer!"
+
+For three long hours those anxious souls waited and watched it draw
+nearer and nearer. Slowly the natives, too, began to perceive the
+unaccustomed object. As it drew abreast of the island, and the decisive
+moment arrived for prompt action, Felix rose in his place once more
+and cried aloud, "My people, I told you a ship, propelled by fire, would
+come from the far land across the sea to take us. The ship has come; you
+can see for yourselves the thick black smoke that issues in huge puffs
+from the mouth of the monster. Now, listen to me, and dare not to disobey
+me. My word is law; let all men see to it. I am going to send a message
+of fire from the sun to the great canoe that walks upon the water. If any
+man ventures to stop me from doing it the people from the great canoe
+will land on this isle and take vengeance for his act, and kill with the
+thunder which the sailing gods carry ever about with them."
+
+By this time the island was alive with commotion. Hundreds of natives,
+with their long hair falling unkempt about their keen brown faces,
+were gazing with open eyes at the big black ship that ploughed her way
+so fast against wind and tide over the surface of the waters. Some of
+them shouted and gesticulated with panic fear; others seemed half
+inclined to waste no time on preparation or doubt, but to rush on at
+once, and immolate their captives before a rescue was possible. But
+Felix, keeping ever his cool head undisturbed, stood on the dusty mound
+by Tu-Kila-Kila's house, and taking in his hand the little mirror he had
+made from the match-box, flashed the light from the sun full in their
+eyes for a moment, to the astonishment and discomfiture of all those
+gaping savages. Then he focussed it on the Australasian, across the surf
+and the waves, and with a throbbing heart began to make his last faint
+bid for life and freedom.
+
+For four or five minutes he went flashing on, uncertain of the effect,
+whether they saw or saw not. Then a cry from Muriel burst at once upon
+his ears. She clasped her hands convulsively in an agony of joy. "They
+see us! They see us!"
+
+And sure enough, scarcely half a minute later, a British flag ran gayly
+up the mainmast, and a boat seemed to drop down over the side of the
+vessel.
+
+As for the natives, they watched these proceedings with considerable
+surprise and no little discomfiture--Fire and Water, in particular,
+whispering together, much alarmed, with many superstitious nods and
+taboos, in the corner of the enclosure.
+
+Gradually, as the boat drew nearer and nearer, divided counsels prevailed
+among the savages. With no certainly recognized Tu-Kila-Kila to marshal
+their movements, each man stood in doubt from whom to take his orders. At
+last, the King of Fire, in a hesitating voice, gave the word of command.
+"Half the warriors to the shore to repel the enemy; half to watch round
+the taboo-line, lest the Korongs escape us! Let Breathless Fear, our
+war-god, go before the face of our troops, invisible!"
+
+And, quick as thought, at his word, the warriors had paired off, two and
+two, in long lines; some running hastily down to the beach, to man the
+war-canoes, while others remained, with shark's tooth spears still set in
+a looser circle, round the great temple-enclosure of Tu-Kila-Kila.
+
+For Muriel, this suspense was positively terrible. To feel one was so
+close to the hope of rescue, and yet to know that before that help
+arrived, or even as it came up, those savages might any moment run their
+ghastly spears through them.
+
+But Felix made the best of his position still. "Remember," he cried, at
+the top of his voice, as the warriors started at a run for the water's
+edge, "your Tu-Kila-Kila tells you, these new-comers are his friends.
+Whoever hurts them, does so at his peril. This is a great Taboo. I bid
+you receive them. Beware for your lives. I, Tu-Kila-Kila the Great, have
+said it."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII.
+
+THE DOWNFALL OF A PANTHEON.
+
+
+The Australasian's gig entered the lagoon through the fringing reef by
+its narrow seaward mouth, and rowed steadily for the landing place on the
+main island.
+
+A little way out from shore, amid loud screams and yells, the natives
+came up with it in their laden war-canoes. Shouting and gesticulating and
+brandishing their spears with the shark's tooth tips, they endeavored to
+stop its progress landward by pure noise and bravado.
+
+"We must be careful what we do, boys," the captain observed, in a quiet
+voice of seamanlike resolution to his armed companions. "We mustn't
+frighten the savages too much, or show too hostile a front, for fear they
+should retaliate on our friends on the island." He held up his hand, with
+the gold braid on the wrist, to command silence; and the natives, gazing
+open-mouthed, looked and wondered at the gesture. These sailing gods were
+certainly arrayed in most gorgeous vestments, and their canoe, though
+devoid of a grinning figure-head, was provided with a most admirable and
+well-uniformed equipment.
+
+A coral rock jutted high out of the sea to the left hard by. Its summit
+was crowded with a basking population of sea-gulls and pelicans. The
+captain gave the word to "easy all." In a second the gig stopped short,
+as those stout arms held her. He rose in his place and lifted the
+six-shooter. Then he pointed it ostentatiously at the rock, away from the
+native canoes, and held up his hand yet again for silence. "We'll give
+'em a taste of what we can do, boys," he said, "just to show 'em, not to
+hurt 'em." At that he drew the trigger twice. His first two chambers were
+loaded on purpose with duck-shot cartridges. Twice the big gun roared;
+twice the fire flashed red from its smoking mouth. As the smoke cleared
+away, the natives, dumb with surprise, and perfectly cowed with terror,
+saw ten or a dozen torn and bleeding birds float mangled upon the water.
+
+"Now for the dynamite!" the captain said, cheerily, proceeding to lower a
+small object overboard by a single wire, while he held up his hand a
+third time to bespeak silence and attention.
+
+The natives looked again, with eyes starting from their heads. The
+captain gave a little click, and pointed with his finger to a spot on
+the water's top, a little way in front of him. Instantly, a loud report,
+and a column of water spurted up into the air, some ten or twelve feet,
+in a boisterous fountain. As it subsided again, a hundred or so of the
+bright-colored fish that browse among the submerged, coral-groves of
+these still lagoons, rose dead or dying to the seething, boiling surface.
+
+The captain smiled. Instantly the natives set up a terrified shout.
+"It is even as he said," they cried. "These gods are his ministers!
+The white-faced Korong is a very great deity! He is indeed the true
+Tu-Kila-Kila. These gods have come for him. They are very mighty. Thunder
+and lightning and waterspouts are theirs. The waves do as they bid. The
+sea obeys them. They are here to take away our Tu-Kila-Kila from our
+midst. And what will then become of the island of Boupari? Will it not
+sink in the waves of the sea and disappear? Will not the sun in heaven
+grow dark, and the moon cease to shed its benign light on the earth, when
+Tu-Kila-Kila the Great returns at last to his own far country?"
+
+"That lot'll do for 'em, I expect," the captain said cheerily, with a
+confident smile. "Now forward all, boys. I fancy we've astonished the
+natives a trifle."
+
+They rowed on steadily, but cautiously, toward the white bank of sand
+which formed the usual landing-place, the captain holding the six-shooter
+in readiness all the time, and keeping an eye firmly fixed on every
+movement of the savages. But the warriors in the canoes, thoroughly cowed
+and overawed by this singular exhibition of the strangers' prowess,
+paddled on in whispering silence, nearly abreast of the gig, but at a
+safe distance, as they thought, and eyed the advancing Europeans with
+quiet looks of unmixed suspicion.
+
+At last, the adventurous young chief, who had advised killing Felix
+off-hand on the island, mustered up courage to paddle his own canoe a
+little nearer, and flung his spear madly in the direction of the gig. It
+fell short by ten yards. He stood eying it angrily. But the captain,
+grimly quiet, raising his Winchester to his shoulder without one second's
+delay, and marking his man, fired at the young chief as he stood, still
+half in the attitude of throwing, on the prow of his canoe, an easy aim
+for fire-arms. The ball went clean through the savage's breast, and then
+ricochetted three times on the water afar off. The young chief fell stone
+dead into the sea like a log, and sank instantly to the bottom.
+
+It was a critical moment. The captain felt uncertain whether the natives
+would close round them in force or not. It is always dangerous to fire a
+shot at savages. But the Boupari men were too utterly awed to venture on
+defence. "He was Tu-Kila-Kila's enemy," they cried, in astonished tones.
+"He raised his voice against the very high god. Therefore, the very high
+god's friends have smitten him with their lightning. Their thunderbolt
+went through him, and hit the water beyond. How strong is their hand!
+They can kill from afar. They are mighty gods. Let no man strive to fight
+against the friends of Tu-Kila-Kila."
+
+The sailors rowed on and reached the landing-place. There, half of them,
+headed by the captain, disembarked in good order, with drawn cutlasses,
+while the other half remained behind to guard the gig, under the third
+officer. The natives also disembarked, a little way off, and, making
+humble signs of submission with knee and arm, endeavored, by pantomime,
+to express the idea of their willingness to guide the strangers to their
+friends' quarters.
+
+The captain waved them on with his hand. The natives, reassured, led the
+way, at some distance ahead, along the paths through the jungle. The
+captain had his finger on his six-shooter the while; every sailor grasped
+his cutlass and kept his revolver ready for action. "I don't half like
+the look of it," the captain observed, partly to himself. "They seem to
+be leading us into an ambuscade or something. Keep a sharp lookout
+against surprise from the jungle, boys; and if any native shows fight
+shoot him down instantly."
+
+At last they emerged upon a clear space in the front, where a great group
+of savages stood in a circle, with serried spears, round a large wattled
+hut that occupied the elevated centre of the clearing.
+
+For a minute or two the action of the savages was uncertain. Half of the
+defenders turned round to face the invaders angrily; the other half stood
+irresolute, with their spears still held inward, guarding a white line of
+sand with inflexible devotion.
+
+The warriors who had preceded them from the shore called aloud to their
+friends by the temple in startled tones. The captain and sailors had no
+idea what their words meant. But just then, from the midst of the circle,
+an English voice cried out in haste, "Don't fire! Do nothing rash! We're
+safe. Don't be frightened. The natives are disposed to parley and
+palaver. Take care how you act. They're terribly afraid of you."
+
+Just outside the taboo-line the captain halted. The gray-headed old
+chief, who had accompanied his fellows to the shore, spoke out in
+Polynesian. "Do not resist them," he said, "my people. If you do, you
+will be blasted by their lightning like a bare bamboo in a mighty
+cyclone. They carry thunder in their hands. They are mighty, mighty gods.
+The white-faced Korong spoke no more than the truth. Let them do as they
+will with us. We are but their meat. We are as dust beneath their sole,
+and as driven mulberry-leaves before the breath of the tempest."
+
+The defenders hesitated still a little. Then, suddenly losing heart, they
+broke rank at last at a point close by where the captain of the
+Australasian stood, one man after another falling aside slowly and
+shamefacedly a pace or two. The captain, unhesitatingly, overstepped the
+white taboo-line. Next instant, Felix and Muriel were grasping his hand
+hard, and M. Peyron was bowing a polite Parisian reception.
+
+Forthwith, the sailors crowded round them in a hollow square. Muriel and
+Felix, half faint with relief from their long and anxious suspense,
+staggered slowly down the seaward path between them. But there was no
+need now for further show of defence. The islanders, pressing near and
+flinging away their weapons, followed the procession close, with tears
+and lamentations. As they went on, the women, rushing out of their huts
+while the fugitives passed, tore their hair on their heads, and beat
+their breasts in terror. The warriors who had come from the shore
+recounted, with their own exaggerative additions, the miracle of the
+six-shooter and the dynamite cartridge. Gradually they approached the
+landing-place on the beach. There the third officer sat waiting in the
+gig to receive them. The lamentations of the islanders now became
+positively poignant. "Oh, my father," they cried aloud, "my brother, my
+revered one, you are indeed the true Tu-Kila-Kila. Do not go away like
+this and desert us! Oh, our mother, great queen, mighty goddess, stop
+with us! Take not away your sun from the heavens, nor your rain from the
+crops. We acknowledge we have sinned; we have done very wrong; but the
+chief sinner is dead; the wrong-doer has paid; spare us who remain; spare
+us, great deity; do not make the bright lights of heaven become dark over
+us. Stay with your worshippers, and we will give you choice young girls
+to eat every day, we will sacrifice the tenderest of our children to feed
+you."
+
+It is an awful thing for any race or nation when its taboos fail all at
+once, and die out entirely. To the men of Boupari, the Tu-Kila-Kila of
+the moment represented both the Moral Order and the regular sequence of
+the physical universe. Anarchy and chaos might rule when he was gone. The
+sun might be quenched, and the people run riot. No wonder they shrank
+from the fearful consequence that might next ensue. King and priest, god
+and religion, all at one fell blow were to be taken away from them!
+
+Felix turned round on the shore and spoke to them again. "My people," he
+said, in a kindly tone--for, after all, he pitied them--"you need have no
+fear. When I am gone, the sun will still shine and the trees will still
+bear fruit every year as formerly. I will send the messengers I promised
+from my own land to teach you. Until they come, I leave you this as a
+great Taboo. Tu-Kila-Kila enjoins it. Shed no human blood; eat no human
+flesh. Those who do will be punished when another fire-canoe comes from
+the far land to bring my messengers."
+
+The King of Fire bent low at the words. "Oh, Tu-Kila-Kila," he said, "it
+shall be done as you say. Till your messengers come, every man shall live
+at peace with all his neighbors."
+
+They stepped into the gig. Mali and Toko followed before M. Peyron as
+naturally as they had always followed their masters on the island before.
+
+"Who are these?" the captain asked, smiling.
+
+"Our Shadows," Felix answered. "Let them come. I will pay their passage
+when I reach San Francisco. They have been very faithful to us, and they
+are afraid to remain, lest the islanders should kill them for letting us
+go or for not accompanying us."
+
+"Very well," the captain answered. "Forward all, there, boys! Now, ahead
+for the ship. And thank God, we're well out of it!"
+
+But the islanders still stood on the shore and wept, stretching their
+hands in vain after the departing boat, and crying aloud in piteous
+tones, "Oh, my father, return! Oh, my mother, come back! Oh, very great
+gods, do not fly and desert us!"
+
+Seven weeks later Mr. and Mrs. Felix Thurstan, who had been married in
+the cathedral at Honolulu the very morning the Australasian arrived
+there, sat in an eminently respectable drawing-room in a London square,
+where Mrs. Ellis, Muriel's aunt by marriage, was acting as their hostess.
+
+"But how dreadful it is to think, dear," Mrs. Ellis remarked for the
+twentieth time since their arrival, with a deep-drawn sigh, "how dreadful
+to think that you and Felix should have been all those months alone on
+the island together without being married!"
+
+Muriel looked up with a quiet smile toward Felix. "I think, Aunt Mary,"
+she said, dreamily, "if you'd been there yourself, and suffered all those
+fears, and passed through all those horrors that we did together, you'd
+have troubled your head very little indeed about such conventionalities,
+as whether or not you happened to be married.... Besides," she added,
+after a pause, with a fine perception of the inexorable stringency of
+Mrs. Grundy's law, "we weren't quite without chaperons, either, don't you
+know; for our Shadows, of course, were always with us."
+
+Whereat Felix smiled an equally quiet smile. "And terrible as it all
+was," he put in, "I shall never regret it, because it made Muriel know
+how profoundly I loved her, and it made me know how brave and trustful
+and pure a woman could be under such awful conditions."
+
+But Mrs. Ellis sat still in her chair and smiled uncomfortably. It
+affected her spirits. Taboos, after all, are much the same in England as
+in Boupari.
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 13876 ***
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+    <title>
+      The Great Taboo, by Grant Allen
+    </title>
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+  <body>
+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 13876 ***</div>
+    <div style="height: 8em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h1>
+      THE GREAT TABOO
+    </h1>
+    <h2>
+      By Grant Allen
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <b>CONTENTS</b>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_PREF"> PREFACE </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0001"> CHAPTER I. &mdash; IN MID PACIFIC. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0002"> CHAPTER II. &mdash; THE TEMPLE OF THE DEITY. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0003"> CHAPTER III. &mdash; LAND; BUT WHAT LAND? </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0004"> CHAPTER IV. &mdash; THE GUESTS OF HEAVEN. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0005"> CHAPTER V. &mdash; ENROLLED IN OLYMPUS. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0006"> CHAPTER VI. &mdash; FIRST DAYS IN BOUPARI.
+      </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0007"> CHAPTER VII. &mdash; INTERCHANGE OF CIVILITIES.
+      </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0008"> CHAPTER VIII. &mdash; THE CUSTOMS OF BOUPARI.
+      </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0009"> CHAPTER IX. &mdash; SOWING THE WIND. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0010"> CHAPTER X. &mdash; REAPING THE WHIRLWIND. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0011"> CHAPTER XI. &mdash; AFTER THE STORM. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0012"> CHAPTER XII. &mdash; A POINT OF THEOLOGY. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0013"> CHAPTER XIII. &mdash; AS BETWEEN GODS. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0014"> CHAPTER XIV. &mdash; &ldquo;MR. THURSTAN, I
+      PRESUME.&rdquo; </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0015"> CHAPTER XV. &mdash; THE SECRET OF KORONG. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0016"> CHAPTER XVI. &mdash; A VERY FAINT CLUE. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0017"> CHAPTER XVII. &mdash; FACING THE WORST. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0018"> CHAPTER XVIII. &mdash; TU-KILA-KILA PLAYS A CARD.
+      </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0019"> CHAPTER XIX. &mdash; DOMESTIC BLISS. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0020"> CHAPTER XX. &mdash; COUNCIL OF WAR. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0021"> CHAPTER XXI. &mdash; METHUSELAH GIVES SIGN. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0022"> CHAPTER XXII. &mdash; TANTALIZING, VERY. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0023"> CHAPTER XXIII. &mdash; A MESSAGE FROM THE DEAD.
+      </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0024"> CHAPTER XXIV. &mdash; AN UNFINISHED TALE. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0025"> CHAPTER XXV. &mdash; TU-KILA-KILA STRIKES. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0026"> CHAPTER XXVI. &mdash; A RASH RESOLVE. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0027"> CHAPTER XXVII. &mdash; A STRANGE ALLY. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0028"> CHAPTER XXVIII. &mdash; WAGER OF BATTLE. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0029"> CHAPTER XXIX. &mdash; VICTORY&mdash;AND AFTER?
+      </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0030"> CHAPTER XXX. &mdash; SUSPENSE. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0031"> CHAPTER XXXI. &mdash; AT SEA: OFF BOUPARI.
+      </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0032"> CHAPTER XXXII. &mdash; THE DOWNFALL OF A
+      PANTHEON. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_PREF" id="link2H_PREF"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PREFACE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I desire to express my profound indebtedness, for the central mythological
+      idea embodied in this tale, to Mr. J.G. Frazer&rsquo;s admirable and
+      epoch-making work, &ldquo;The Golden Bough,&rdquo; whose main contention I
+      have endeavored incidentally to popularize in my present story. I wish
+      also to express my obligations in other ways to Mr. Andrew Lang&rsquo;s
+      &ldquo;Myth, Ritual, and Religion,&rdquo; Mr. H.O. Forbes&rsquo;s &ldquo;Naturalist&rsquo;s
+      Wanderings,&rdquo; and Mr. Julian Thomas&rsquo;s &ldquo;Cannibals and
+      Convicts.&rdquo; If I have omitted to mention any other author to whom I
+      may have owed incidental hints, it will be some consolation to me to
+      reflect that I shall at least have afforded an opportunity for legitimate
+      sport to the amateurs of the new and popular British pastime of
+      badger-baiting or plagiary-hunting. It may also save critics some moments&rsquo;
+      search if I say at once that, after careful consideration, I have been
+      unable to discover any moral whatsoever in this humble narrative. I
+      venture to believe that in so enlightened an age the majority of my
+      readers will never miss it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      G.A.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NOOK, DORKING, October, 1890.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0001" id="link2HCH0001"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER I. &mdash; IN MID PACIFIC.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Man overboard!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It rang in Felix Thurstan&rsquo;s ears like the sound of a bell. He gazed
+      about him in dismay, wondering what had happened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first intimation he received of the accident was that sudden sharp cry
+      from the bo&rsquo;sun&rsquo;s mate. Almost before he had fully taken it
+      in, in all its meaning, another voice, farther aft, took up the cry once
+      more in an altered form: &ldquo;A lady! a lady! Somebody overboard! Great
+      heavens, it is <i>her</i>! It&rsquo;s Miss Ellis! Miss Ellis!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next instant Felix found himself, he knew not how, struggling in a wild
+      grapple with the dark, black water. A woman was clinging to him&mdash;clinging
+      for dear life. But he couldn&rsquo;t have told you himself that minute how
+      it all took place. He was too stunned and dazzled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked around him on the seething sea in a sudden awakening, as it
+      were, to life and consciousness. All about, the great water stretched dark
+      and tumultuous. White breakers surged over him. Far ahead the steamer&rsquo;s
+      lights gleamed red and green in long lines upon the ocean. At first they
+      ran fast; then they slackened somewhat. She was surely slowing now; they
+      must be reversing engines and trying to stop her. They would put out a
+      boat. But what hope, what chance of rescue by night, in such a wild waste
+      of waves as that? And Muriel Ellis was clinging to him for dear life all
+      the while, with the despairing clutch of a half-drowned woman!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The people on the Australasian, for their part, knew better what had
+      occurred. There was bustle and confusion enough on deck and on the captain&rsquo;s
+      bridge, to be sure: &ldquo;Man overboard!&rdquo;&mdash;three sharp rings
+      at the engine bell:&mdash;&ldquo;Stop her short!&mdash;reverse engines!&mdash;lower
+      the gig!&mdash;look sharp, there, all of you!&rdquo; Passengers hurried up
+      breathless at the first alarm to know what was the matter. Sailors
+      loosened and lowered the boat from the davits with extraordinary
+      quickness. Officers stood by, giving orders in monosyllables with
+      practised calm. All was hurry and turmoil, yet with a marvellous sense of
+      order and prompt obedience as well. But, at any rate, the people on deck
+      hadn&rsquo;t the swift swirl of the boisterous water, the hampering wet
+      clothes, the pervading consciousness of personal danger, to make their
+      brains reel, like Felix Thurstan&rsquo;s. They could ask one another with
+      comparative composure what had happened on board; they could listen
+      without terror to the story of the accident.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the thirteenth day out from Sydney, and the Australasian was
+      rapidly nearing the equator. Toward evening the wind had freshened, and
+      the sea was running high against her weather side. But it was a fine
+      starlit night, though the moon had not yet risen; and as the brief
+      tropical twilight faded away by quick degrees in the west, the fringe of
+      cocoanut palms on the reef that bounded the little island of Boupari
+      showed out for a minute or two in dark relief, some miles to leeward,
+      against the pale pink horizon. In spite of the heavy sea, many passengers
+      lingered late on deck that night to see the last of that coral-girt shore,
+      which was to be their final glimpse of land till they reached Honolulu, <i>en
+      route</i> for San Francisco.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bit by bit, however, the cocoanut palms, silhouetted with their graceful
+      waving arms for a few brief minutes in black against the glowing
+      background, merged slowly into the sky or sank below the horizon. All grew
+      dark. One by one, as the trees disappeared, the passengers dropped off for
+      whist in the saloon, or retired to the uneasy solitude of their own
+      state-rooms. At last only two or three men were left smoking and chatting
+      near the top of the companion ladder; while at the stern of the ship
+      Muriel Ellis looked over toward the retreating island, and talked with a
+      certain timid maidenly frankness to Felix Thurstan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There&rsquo;s nowhere on earth for getting really to know people in a very
+      short time like the deck of a great Atlantic or Pacific liner. You&rsquo;re
+      thrown together so much, and all day long, that you see more of your
+      fellow-passengers&rsquo; inner life and nature in a few brief weeks than
+      you would ever be likely to see in a long twelvemonth of ordinary town or
+      country acquaintanceship. And Muriel Ellis had seen a great deal in those
+      thirteen days of Felix Thurstan; enough to make sure in her own heart that
+      she really liked him&mdash;well&mdash;so much that she looked up with a
+      pretty blush of self-consciousness every time he approached and lifted his
+      hat to her. Muriel was an English rector&rsquo;s daughter, from a country
+      village in Somersetshire; and she was now on her way back from a long year&rsquo;s
+      visit, to recruit her health, to an aunt in Paramatta. She was travelling
+      under the escort of an amiable old chaperon whom the aunt in question had
+      picked up for her before leaving Sydney; but, as the amiable old chaperon,
+      being but an indifferent sailor, spent most of her time in her own berth,
+      closely attended by the obliging stewardess, Muriel had found her
+      chaperonage interfere very little with opportunities of talk with that
+      nice Mr. Thurstan. And now, as the last glow of sunset died out in the
+      western sky, and the last palm-tree faded away against the colder green
+      darkness of the tropical night, Muriel was leaning over the bulwarks in
+      confidential mood, and watching the big waves advance or recede, and
+      talking the sort of talk that such an hour seems to favor with the
+      handsome young civil servant who stood on guard, as it were, beside her.
+      For Felix Thurstan held a government appointment at Levuka, in Fiji, and
+      was now on his way home, on leave of absence after six years&rsquo;
+      service in that new-made colony.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How delightful it would be to live on an island like that!&rdquo;
+      Muriel murmured, half to herself, as she gazed out wistfully in the
+      direction of the disappearing coral reef. &ldquo;With those beautiful
+      palms waving always over one&rsquo;s head, and that delicious evening air
+      blowing cool through their branches! It looks such a Paradise!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix smiled and glanced down at her, as he steadied himself with one hand
+      against the bulwark, while the ship rolled over into the trough of the sea
+      heavily. &ldquo;Well, I don&rsquo;t know about that, Miss Ellis,&rdquo; he
+      answered with a doubtful air, eying her close as he spoke with eyes of
+      evident admiration. &ldquo;One might be happy anywhere, of course&mdash;in
+      suitable society; but if you&rsquo;d lived as long among cocoanuts in Fiji
+      as I have, I dare say the poetry of these calm palm-grove islands would be
+      a little less real to you. Remember, though they look so beautiful and
+      dreamy against the sky like that, at sunset especially (that was a heavy
+      one, that time; I&rsquo;m really afraid we must go down to the cabin soon;
+      she&rsquo;ll be shipping seas before long if we stop on deck much later&mdash;and
+      yet, it&rsquo;s so delightful stopping up here till the dusk comes on, isn&rsquo;t
+      it?)&mdash;well, remember, I was saying, though they look so beautiful and
+      dreamy and poetical&mdash;&lsquo;Summer isles of Eden lying in dark purple
+      spheres of sea,&rsquo; and all that sort of thing&mdash;these islands are
+      inhabited by the fiercest and most bloodthirsty cannibals known to
+      travellers.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cannibals!&rdquo; Muriel repeated, looking up at him in surprise.
+      &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t mean to say that islands like these, standing right
+      in the very track of European steamers, are still heathen and cannibal?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, dear, yes,&rdquo; Felix replied, holding his hand out as he
+      spoke to catch his companion&rsquo;s arm gently, and steady her against
+      the wave that was just going to strike the stern: &ldquo;Excuse me; just
+      so; the sea&rsquo;s rising fast, isn&rsquo;t it?&mdash;Oh, dear, yes; of
+      course they are; they&rsquo;re all heathen and cannibals. You couldn&rsquo;t
+      imagine to yourself the horrible bloodthirsty rites that may this very
+      minute be taking place upon that idyllic-looking island, under the soft
+      waving branches of those whispering palm-trees. Why, I knew a man in the
+      Marquesas myself&mdash;a hideous old native, as ugly as you can fancy him&mdash;who
+      was supposed to be a god, an incarnate god, and was worshipped accordingly
+      with profound devotion by all the other islanders. You can&rsquo;t picture
+      to yourself how awful their worship was. I daren&rsquo;t even repeat it to
+      you; it was too, too horrible. He lived in a hut by himself among the
+      deepest forest, and human victims used to be brought&mdash;well, there, it&rsquo;s
+      too loathsome! Why, see; there&rsquo;s a great light on the island now; a
+      big bonfire or something; don&rsquo;t you make it out? You can tell it by
+      the red glare in the sky overhead.&rdquo; He paused a moment; then he
+      added more slowly, &ldquo;I shouldn&rsquo;t be surprised if at this very
+      moment, while we&rsquo;re standing here in such perfect security on the
+      deck of a Christian English vessel, some unspeakable and unthinkable
+      heathen orgy mayn&rsquo;t be going on over there beside that sacrificial
+      fire; and if some poor trembling native girl isn&rsquo;t being led just
+      now, with blows and curses and awful savage ceremonies, her hands bound
+      behind her back&mdash;Oh, look out, Miss Ellis!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was only just in time to utter the warning words. He was only just in
+      time to put one hand on each side of her slender waist, and hold her tight
+      so, when the big wave which he saw coming struck full tilt against the
+      vessel&rsquo;s flank, and broke in one white drenching sheet of foam
+      against her stern and quarter-deck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The suddenness of the assault took Felix&rsquo;s breath away. For the
+      first few seconds he was only aware that a heavy sea had been shipped, and
+      had wet him through and through with its unexpected deluge. A moment
+      later, he was dimly conscious that his companion had slipped from his
+      grasp, and was nowhere visible. The violence of the shock, and the slimy
+      nature of the sea water, had made him relax his hold without knowing it,
+      in the tumult of the moment, and had at the same time caused Muriel to
+      glide imperceptibly through his fingers, as he had often known an
+      ill-caught cricket-ball do in his school-days. Then he saw he was on his
+      hands and knees on the deck. The wave had knocked him down, and dashed him
+      against the bulwark on the leeward side. As he picked himself up, wet,
+      bruised, and shaken, he looked about for Muriel. A terrible dread seized
+      upon his soul at once. Impossible! Impossible! she couldn&rsquo;t have
+      been washed overboard!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And even as he gazed about, and held his bruised elbow in his hand, and
+      wondered to himself what it could all mean, that sudden loud cry arose
+      beside him from the quarter-deck, &ldquo;Man overboard! Man overboard!&rdquo;
+      followed a moment later by the answering cry, from the men who were
+      smoking under the lee of the companion, &ldquo;A lady! a lady! It&rsquo;s
+      Miss Ellis! Miss Ellis!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He didn&rsquo;t take it all in. He didn&rsquo;t reflect. He didn&rsquo;t
+      even know he was actually doing it. But he did it, all the same, with the
+      simple, straightforward, instinctive sense of duty which makes civilized
+      man act aright, all unconsciously, in any moment of supreme danger and
+      difficulty. Leaping on to the taffrail without one instant&rsquo;s delay,
+      and steadying himself for an indivisible fraction of time with his hand on
+      the rope ladder, he peered out into the darkness with keen eyes for a
+      glimpse of Muriel Ellis&rsquo;s head above the fierce black water; and
+      espying it for one second, as she came up on a white crest, he plunged in
+      before the vessel had time to roll back to windward, and struck boldly out
+      in the direction where he saw that helpless object dashed about like a
+      cork on the surface of the ocean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Only those who have known such accidents at sea can possibly picture to
+      themselves the instantaneous haste with which all that followed took place
+      upon that bustling quarter-deck. Almost at the first cry of &ldquo;Man
+      overboard!&rdquo; the captain&rsquo;s bell rang sharp and quick, as if by
+      magic, with three peremptory little calls in the engine-room below. The
+      Australasian was going at full speed, but in a marvellously short time, as
+      it seemed to all on board, the great ship had slowed down to a perfect
+      standstill, and then had reversed her engines, so that she lay, just nose
+      to the wind, awaiting further orders. In the meantime, almost as soon as
+      the words were out of the bo&rsquo;sun&rsquo;s lips, a sailor amidships
+      had rushed to the safety belts hung up by the companion ladder, and had
+      flung half a dozen of them, one after another, with hasty but well-aimed
+      throws, far, far astern, in the direction where Felix had disappeared into
+      the black water. The belts were painted white, and they showed for a few
+      seconds, as they fell, like bright specks on the surface of the darkling
+      sea; then they sunk slowly behind as the big ship, still not quite
+      stopped, ploughed her way ahead with gigantic force into the great abyss
+      of darkness in front of her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It seemed but a minute, too, to the watchers on board, before a party of
+      sailors, summoned by the whistle with that marvellous readiness to meet
+      any emergency which long experience of sudden danger has rendered habitual
+      among seafaring men, had lowered the boat, and taken their seats on the
+      thwarts, and seized their oars, and were getting under way on their
+      hopeless quest of search, through the dim black night, for those two
+      belated souls alone in the midst of the angry Pacific.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It seemed but a minute or two, I say, to the watchers on board; but oh,
+      what an eternity of time to Felix Thurstan, struggling there with his live
+      burden in the seething water!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had dashed into the ocean, which was dark, but warm with tropical heat,
+      and had succeeded, in spite of the heavy seas then running, in reaching
+      Muriel, who clung to him now with all the fierce clinging of despair, and
+      impeded his movement through that swirling water. More than that, he saw
+      the white life-belts that the sailors flung toward him; they were well and
+      aptly flung, in the inspiration of the moment, to allow for the sea itself
+      carrying them on the crest of its waves toward the two drowning creatures.
+      Felix saw them distinctly, and making a great lunge as they passed, in
+      spite of Muriel&rsquo;s struggles, which sadly hampered his movements, he
+      managed to clutch at no less than three before the great billow, rolling
+      on, carried them off on its top forever away from him. Two of these he
+      slipped hastily over Muriel&rsquo;s shoulders; the other he put, as best
+      he might, round his own waist; and then, for the first time, still
+      clinging close to his companion&rsquo;s arm, and buffeted about wildly by
+      that running sea, he was able to look about him in alarm for a moment, and
+      realize more or less what had actually happened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By this time the Australasian was a quarter of a mile away in front of
+      them, and her lights were beginning to become stationary as she slowly
+      slowed and reversed engines. Then, from the summit of a great wave, Felix
+      was dimly aware of a boat being lowered&mdash;for he saw a separate light
+      gleaming across the sea&mdash;a search was being made in the black night,
+      alas, how hopelessly! The light hovered about for many, many minutes,
+      revealed to him now here, now there, searching in vain to find him, as
+      wave after wave raised him time and again on its irresistible summit. The
+      men in the boat were doing their best, no doubt; but what chance of
+      finding any one on a dark night like that, in an angry sea, and with no
+      clue to guide them toward the two struggling castaways? Current and wind
+      had things all their own way. As a matter of fact, the light never came
+      near the castaways at all; and after half an hour&rsquo;s ineffectual
+      search, which seemed to Felix a whole long lifetime, it returned slowly
+      toward the steamer from which it came&mdash;and left those two alone on
+      the dark Pacific.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There wasn&rsquo;t a chance of picking &rsquo;em up,&rdquo; the
+      captain said, with philosophic calm, as the men clambered on board again,
+      and the Australasian got under way once more for the port of Honolulu.
+      &ldquo;I knew there wasn&rsquo;t a chance; but in common humanity one was
+      bound to make some show of trying to save &rsquo;em. He was a brave fellow
+      to go after her, though it was no good of course. He couldn&rsquo;t even
+      find her, at night, and with such a sea as that running.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And even as he spoke, Felix Thurstan, rising once more on the crest of a
+      much smaller billow&mdash;for somehow the waves were getting incredibly
+      smaller as he drifted on to leeward&mdash;felt his heart sink within him
+      as he observed to his dismay that the Australasian must be steaming ahead
+      once more, by the movement of her lights, and that they two were indeed
+      abandoned to their fate on the open surface of that vast and trackless
+      ocean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER II. &mdash; THE TEMPLE OF THE DEITY.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      While these things were happening on the sea close by, a very different
+      scene indeed was being enacted meanwhile, beneath those waving palms, on
+      the island of Boupari. It was strange, to be sure, as Felix Thurstan had
+      said, that such unspeakable heathen orgies should be taking place within
+      sight of a passing Christian English steamer. But if only he had known or
+      reflected to what sort of land he was trying now to struggle ashore with
+      Muriel, he might well have doubted whether it were not better to let her
+      perish where she was, in the pure clear ocean, rather than to submit an
+      English girl to the possibility of undergoing such horrible heathen rites
+      and ceremonies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For on the island of Boupari it was high feast with the worshippers of
+      their god that night. The sun had turned on the Tropic of Capricorn at
+      noon, and was making his way northward, toward the equator once more; and
+      his votaries, as was their wont, had all come forth to do him honor in due
+      season, and to pay their respects, in the inmost and sacredest grove on
+      the island, to his incarnate representative, the living spirit of trees
+      and fruits and vegetation, the very high god, the divine Tu-Kila-Kila!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Early in the evening, as soon as the sun&rsquo;s rim had disappeared
+      beneath the ocean, a strange noise boomed forth from the central shrine of
+      Boupari. Those who heard it clapped their hands to their ears and ran
+      hastily forward. It was a noise like distant rumbling thunder, or the whir
+      of some great English mill or factory; and at its sound every woman on the
+      island threw herself on the ground prostrate, with her face in the dust,
+      and waited there reverently till the audible voice of the god had once
+      more subsided. For no woman knew how that sound was produced. Only the
+      grown men, initiated into the mysteries of the shrine when they came of
+      age at the tattooing ceremony, were aware that the strange, buzzing,
+      whirring noise was nothing more or less than the cry of the bull-roarer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A bull-roarer, as many English schoolboys know, is merely a piece of
+      oblong wood, pointed at either end, and fastened by a leather thong at one
+      corner. But when whirled round the head by practised priestly hands, it
+      produces a low rumbling noise like the wheels of a distant carriage,
+      growing gradually louder and clearer, from moment to moment, till at last
+      it waxes itself into a frightful din, or bursts into perfect peals of
+      imitation thunder. Then it decreases again once more, as gradually as it
+      rose, becoming fainter and ever fainter, like thunder as it recedes, till
+      the horrible bellowing, as of supernatural bulls, dies away in the end, by
+      slow degrees, into low and soft and imperceptible murmurs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But when the savage hears the distant humming of the bull-roarer, at
+      whatever distance, he knows that the mysteries of his god are in full
+      swing, and he hurries forward in haste, leaving his work or his pleasure,
+      and running, naked as he stands, to take his share in the worship, lest
+      the anger of heaven should burst forth in devouring flames to consume him.
+      But the women, knowing themselves unworthy to face the dread presence of
+      the high god in his wrath, rush wildly from the spot, and, flinging
+      themselves down at full length, with their mouths to the dust, wait
+      patiently till the voice of their deity is no longer audible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And as the bull-roarer on Boupari rang out with wild echoes from the coral
+      caverns in the central grove that evening, Tu-Kila-Kila, their god, rose
+      slowly from his place, and stood out from his hut, a deity revealed,
+      before his reverential worshippers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he rose, a hushed whisper ran wave-like through the dense throng of
+      dusky forms that bent low, like corn beneath the wind, before him, &ldquo;Tu-Kila-Kila
+      rises! He rises to speak! Hush! for the voice of the mighty man-god!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The god, looking around him superciliously with a cynical air of contempt,
+      stood forward with a firm and elastic step before his silent worshippers.
+      He was a stalwart savage, in the very prime of life, tall, lithe, and
+      active. His figure was that of a man well used to command; but his face,
+      though handsome, was visibly marked by every external sign of cruelty,
+      lust, and extreme bloodthirstiness. One might have said, merely to look at
+      him, he was a being debased by all forms of brutal and hateful
+      self-indulgence. A baleful light burned in his keen gray eyes. His lips
+      were thick, full, purple, and wistful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My people may look upon me,&rdquo; he said, in a strangely affable
+      voice, standing forward and smiling with a curious half-cruel,
+      half-compassionate smile upon his awe-struck followers. &ldquo;On every
+      day of the sun&rsquo;s course but this, none save the ministers dedicated
+      to the service of Tu-Kila-Kila dare gaze unhurt upon his sacred person. If
+      any other did, the light from his holy eyes would wither them up, and the
+      glow of his glorious countenance would scorch them to ashes.&rdquo; He
+      raised his two hands, palm outward, in front of him. &ldquo;So all the
+      year round,&rdquo; he went on, &ldquo;Tu-Kila-Kila, who loves his people,
+      and sends them the earlier and the later rain in the wet season, and makes
+      their yams and their taro grow, and causes his sun to shine upon them
+      freely&mdash;all the year round Tu-Kila-Kila, your god, sits shut up in
+      his own house among the skeletons of those whom he has killed and eaten,
+      or walks in his walled paddock, where his bread-fruit ripens and his
+      plantains spring&mdash;himself, and the ministers that his tribesmen have
+      given him.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the sound of their mystic deity&rsquo;s voice the savages, bending
+      lower still till their foreheads touched the ground, repeated in chorus,
+      to the clapping of hands, like some solemn litany: &ldquo;Tu-Kila-Kila
+      speaks true. Our lord is merciful. He sends down his showers upon our
+      crops and fields. He causes his sun to shine brightly over us. He makes
+      our pigs and our slaves bring forth their increase. Tu-Kila-Kila is good.
+      His people praise him.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The god took another step forward, the divine mantle of red feathers
+      glowing in the sunset on his dusky shoulders, and smiled once more that
+      hateful gracious smile of his. He was standing near the open door of his
+      wattled hut, overshadowed by the huge spreading arms of a gigantic
+      banyan-tree. Through the open door of the hut it was possible to catch
+      just a passing glimpse of an awful sight within. On the beams of the
+      house, and on the boughs of the trees behind it, human skeletons, half
+      covered with dry flesh, hung in ghastly array, their skulls turned
+      downward. They were the skeletons of the victims Tu-Kila-Kila, their
+      prince, had slain and eaten; they were the trophies of the cannibal
+      man-god&rsquo;s hateful prowess.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila raised his right hand erect and spoke again. &ldquo;I am a
+      great god,&rdquo; he said, slowly. &ldquo;I am very powerful. I make the
+      sun to shine, and the yams to grow. I am the spirit of plants. Without me
+      there would be nothing for you all to eat or drink in Boupari. If I were
+      to grow old and die, the sun would fade away in the heavens overhead; the
+      bread-fruit trees would wither and cease to bear on earth; all fruits
+      would come to an end and die at once; all rivers would stop forthwith from
+      running.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His worshippers bowed down in acquiescence with awestruck faces. &ldquo;It
+      is true,&rdquo; they answered, in the same slow sing-song of assent as
+      before. &ldquo;Tu-Kila-Kila is the greatest of gods. We owe to him
+      everything. We hang upon his favor.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila started back, laughed, and showed his pearly white teeth.
+      They were beautiful and regular, like the teeth of a tiger, a strong young
+      tiger. &ldquo;But I need more sacrifices than all the other gods,&rdquo;
+      he went on, melodiously, like one who plays with consummate skill upon
+      some difficult instrument. &ldquo;I am greedy; I am thirsty; I am a hungry
+      god. You must not stint me. I claim more human victims than all the other
+      gods beside. If you want your crops to grow, and your rivers to run, the
+      fields to yield you game, and the sea fish&mdash;this is what I ask: give
+      me victims, victims! That is our compact. Tu-Kila-Kila calls you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The men bowed down once more and repeated humbly, &ldquo;You shall have
+      victims as you will, great god; only give us yam and taro and bread-fruit,
+      and cause not your bright light, the sun, to grow dark in heaven over us.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cut yourselves,&rdquo; Tu-Kila-Kila cried, in a peremptory voice,
+      clapping his hands thrice. &ldquo;I am thirsting for blood. I want your
+      free-will offering.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he spoke, every man, as by a set ritual, took from a little skin wallet
+      at his side a sharp flake of coral-stone, and, drawing it deliberately
+      across his breast in a deep red gash, caused the blood to flow out freely
+      over his chest and long grass waistband. Then, having done so, they never
+      strove for a moment to stanch the wound, but let the red drops fall as
+      they would on to the dust at their feet, without seeming even to be
+      conscious at all of the fact that they were flowing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila smiled once more, a ghastly self-satisfied smile of
+      unquestioned power. &ldquo;It is well,&rdquo; he went on. &ldquo;My people
+      love me. They know my strength, how I can wither them up. They give me
+      their blood to drink freely. So I will be merciful to them. I will make my
+      sun shine and my rain drop from heaven. And instead of taking <i>all</i>,
+      I will choose one victim.&rdquo; He paused, and glanced along their line
+      significantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Choose, Tu-Kila-Kila,&rdquo; the men answered, without a moment&rsquo;s
+      hesitation. &ldquo;We are all your meat. Choose which one you will take of
+      us.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila walked with a leisurely tread down the lines and surveyed the
+      men critically. They were all drawn up in rows, one behind the other,
+      according to tribes and families; and the god walked along each row,
+      examining them with a curious and interested eye, as a farmer examines
+      sheep fit for the market. Now and then, he felt a leg or an arm with his
+      finger and thumb, and hesitated a second. It was an important matter, this
+      choosing a victim. As he passed, a close observer might have noted that
+      each man trembled visibly while the god&rsquo;s eye was upon him, and
+      looked after him askance with a terrified sidelong gaze as he passed on to
+      his neighbor. But not one savage gave any overt sign or token of his
+      terror or his reluctance. On the contrary, as Tu-Kila-Kila passed along
+      the line with lazy, cruel deliberateness, the men kept chanting aloud
+      without one tremor in their voices, &ldquo;We are all your meat. Choose
+      which one you will take of us.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On a sudden, Tu-Kila-Kila turned sharply round, and, darting a rapid
+      glance toward a row he had already passed several minutes before, he
+      exclaimed, with an air of unexpected inspiration, &ldquo;Tu-Kila-Kila has
+      chosen. He takes Maloa.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man upon whose shoulder the god laid his heavy hand as he spoke stood
+      forth from the crowd without a moment&rsquo;s hesitation. If anger or fear
+      was in his heart at all, it could not be detected in his voice or his
+      features. He bowed his head with seeming satisfaction, and answered
+      humbly, &ldquo;What Tu-Kila-Kila says must need be done. This is a great
+      honor. He is a mighty god. We poor men must obey him. We are proud to be
+      taken up and made one with divinity.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila raised in his hand a large stone axe of some polished green
+      material, closely resembling jade, which lay on a block by the door, and
+      tried its edge with his finger, in an abstracted manner. &ldquo;Bind him!&rdquo;
+      he said, quietly, turning round to his votaries. And the men, each glad to
+      have escaped his own fate, bound their comrade willingly with green ropes
+      of plantain fibre.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Crown him with flowers!&rdquo; Tu-Kila-Kila said; and a female
+      attendant, absolved from the terror of the bull-roarer by the god&rsquo;s
+      command, brought forward a great garland of crimson hibiscus, which she
+      flung around the victim&rsquo;s neck and shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lay his head on the sacred stone block of our fathers,&rdquo;
+      Tu-Kila-Kila went on, in an easy tone of command, waving his hand
+      gracefully. And the men, moving forward, laid their comrade, face
+      downward, on a huge flat block of polished greenstone, which lay like an
+      altar in front of the hut with the mouldering skeletons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is well,&rdquo; Tu-Kila-Kila murmured once more, half aloud.
+      &ldquo;You have given me the free-will offering. Now for the trespass!
+      Where is the woman who dared to approach too near the temple-home of the
+      divine Tu-Kila-Kila? Bring the criminal forward!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The men divided, and made a lane down their middle. Then one of them, a
+      minister of the man-god&rsquo;s shrine, led up by the hand, all trembling
+      and shrinking with supernatural terror in every muscle, a well-formed
+      young girl of eighteen or twenty. Her naked bronze limbs were shapely and
+      lissome; but her eyes were swollen and red with tears, and her face
+      strongly distorted with awe for the man-god. When she stood at last before
+      Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s dreaded face, she flung herself on the ground in an
+      agony of fear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, mercy, great God!&rdquo; she cried, in a feeble voice. &ldquo;I
+      have sinned, I have sinned. Mercy, mercy!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila smiled as before, a smile of imperial pride. No ray of pity
+      gleamed from those steel-gray eyes. &ldquo;Does Tu-Kila-Kila show mercy?&rdquo;
+      he asked, in a mocking voice. &ldquo;Does he pardon his suppliants? Does
+      he forgive trespasses? Is he not a god, and must not his wrath be
+      appeased? She, being a woman, and not a wife sealed to Tu-Kila-Kila, has
+      dared to look from afar upon his sacred home. She has spied the mysteries.
+      Therefore she must die. My people, bind her.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a second, without more ado, while the poor trembling girl writhed and
+      groaned in her agony before their eyes, that mob of wild savages, let
+      loose to torture and slay, fell upon her with hideous shouts, and bound
+      her, as they had bound their comrade before, with coarse native ropes of
+      twisted plantain fibre.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lay her head on the stone,&rdquo; Tu-Kila-Kila said, grimly. And
+      his votaries obeyed him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now light the sacred fire to make our feast, before I slay the
+      victims,&rdquo; the god said, in a gloating voice, running his finger
+      again along the edge of his huge hatchet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he spoke, two men, holding in their hands hollow bamboos with coals of
+      fire concealed within, which they kept aglow meanwhile by waving them up
+      and down rapidly in the air, laid these primitive matches to the base of a
+      great pyramidal pile of wood and palm-leaves, ready prepared beforehand in
+      the yard of the temple. In a second, the dry fuel, catching the sparks
+      instantly, blazed up to heaven with a wild outburst of flame. Great red
+      tongues of fire licked up the mouldering mass of leaves and twigs, and
+      caught at once at the trunks of palm and li wood within. A huge
+      conflagration reddened the sky at once like lightning. The effect was
+      magical. The glow transfigured the whole island for miles. It was, in
+      fact, the blaze that Felix Thurstan had noted and remarked upon as he
+      stood that evening on the silent deck of the Australasian.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila gazed at it with horrid childish glee. &ldquo;A fine fire!&rdquo;
+      he said, gayly. &ldquo;A fire worthy of a god. It will serve me well.
+      Tu-Kila-Kila will have a good oven to roast his meal in.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he turned toward the sea, and held up his hand once more for silence.
+      As he did so, an answering light upon its surface attracted his eye for a
+      moment&rsquo;s space. It was a bright red light, mixed with white and
+      green ones; in point of fact, the Australasian was passing. Tu-Kila-Kila
+      pointed toward it solemnly with his plump, brown fore-finger. &ldquo;See,&rdquo;
+      he said, drawing himself up and looking preternaturally wise; &ldquo;your
+      god is great. I am sending some of this fire across the sea to where my
+      sun has set, to aid and reinforce it. That is to keep up the fire of the
+      sun, lest ever at any time it should fade and fail you. While Tu-Kila-Kila
+      lives the sun will burn bright. If Tu-Kila-Kila were to die it would be
+      night forever.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His votaries, following their god&rsquo;s fore-finger as it pointed, all
+      turned to look in the direction he indicated with blank surprise and
+      astonishment. Such a sight had never met their eyes before, for the
+      Australasian was the very first steamer to take the eastward route,
+      through the dangerous and tortuous Boupari Channel. So their awe and
+      surprise at the unwonted sight knew no bounds. Fire on the ocean!
+      Miraculous light on the waves! Their god must, indeed, be a mighty deity
+      if he could send flames like that careering over the sea! Surely the sun
+      was safe in the hands of a potentate who could thus visibly reinforce it
+      with red light, and white! In their astonishment and awe, they stood with
+      their long hair falling down over their foreheads, and their hands held up
+      to their eyes that they might gaze the farther across the dim, dark ocean.
+      The borrowed light of their bonfire was moving, slowly moving over the
+      watery sea. Fire and water were mixing and mingling on friendly terms.
+      Impossible! Incredible! Marvellous! Miraculous! They prostrated themselves
+      in their terror at Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s feet. &ldquo;Oh, great god,&rdquo;
+      they cried, in awe-struck tones, &ldquo;your power is too vast! Spare us,
+      spare us, spare us!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As for Tu-Kila-Kila himself, he was not astonished at all. Strange as it
+      sounds to us, he really believed in his heart what he said. Profoundly
+      convinced of his own godhead, and abjectly superstitious as any of his own
+      votaries, he absolutely accepted as a fact his own suggestion, that the
+      light he saw was the reflection of that his men had kindled. The
+      interpretation he had put upon it seemed to him a perfectly natural and
+      just one. His worshippers, indeed, mere men that they were, might be
+      terrified at the sight; but why should he, a god, take any special notice
+      of it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He accepted his own superiority as implicitly as our European nobles and
+      rulers accept theirs. He had no doubts himself, and he considered those
+      who had little better than criminals.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By and by, a smaller light detached itself by slow degrees from the
+      greater ones. The others stood still, and halted in mid-ocean. The lesser
+      light made as if it would come in the direction of Boupari. In point of
+      fact, the gig had put out in search of Felix and Muriel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila interpreted the facts at once, however, in his own way.
+      &ldquo;See,&rdquo; he said, pointing with his plump forefinger once more,
+      and encouraging with his words his terrified followers, &ldquo;I am
+      sending back a light again from the sun to my island. I am doing my work
+      well. I am taking care of my people. Fear not for your future. In the
+      light is yet another victim. A man and a woman will come to Boupari from
+      the sun, to make up for the man and woman whom we eat in our feast
+      to-night. Give me plenty of victims, and you will have plenty of yam. Make
+      haste, then; kill, eat; let us feast Tu-Kila-Kila! To-morrow the man and
+      woman I have sent from the sun will come ashore on the reef, and reach
+      Boupari.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the words, he stepped forward and raised that heavy tomahawk. With one
+      blow each he brained the two bound and defenceless victims on the
+      altar-stone of his fathers. The rest, a European hand shrinks from
+      revealing. The orgy was too horrible even for description.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And that was the land toward which, that moment, Felix Thurstan was
+      struggling, with all his might, to carry Muriel Ellis, from the myriad
+      clasping arms of a comparatively gentle and merciful ocean!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER III. &mdash; LAND; BUT WHAT LAND?
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      As the last glimmering lights of the Australasian died away to seaward,
+      Felix Thurstan knew in his despair there was nothing for it now but to
+      strike out boldly, if he could, for the shore of the island.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By this time the breakers had subsided greatly. Not, indeed, that the sea
+      itself was really going down. On the contrary, a brisk wind was rising
+      sharper from the east, and the waves on the open Pacific were growing each
+      moment higher and loppier. But the huge mountain of water that washed
+      Muriel Ellis overboard was not a regular ordinary wave; it was that far
+      more powerful and dangerous mass, a shoal-water breaker. The Australasian
+      had passed at that instant over a submerged coral-bar, quite deep enough,
+      indeed, to let her cross its top without the slightest danger of grazing,
+      but still raised so high toward the surface as to produce a considerable
+      constant ground-swell, which broke in windy weather into huge sheets of
+      surf, like the one that had just struck and washed over the Australasian,
+      carrying Muriel with it. The very same cause that produced the breakers,
+      however, bore Felix on their summit rapidly landward; and once he had got
+      well beyond the region of the bar that begot them, he found himself soon,
+      to his intense relief, in comparatively calm shoal water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Muriel Ellis, for her part, was faint with terror and with the buffeting
+      of the waves; but she still floated by his side, upheld by the life-belts.
+      He had been able, by immense efforts, to keep unseparated from her amid
+      the rending surf of the breakers. Now that they found themselves in easier
+      waters for a while, Felix began to strike out vigorously through the
+      darkness for the shore. Holding up his companion with one hand, and
+      swimming with all his might in the direction where a vague white line of
+      surf, lit up by the red glare-of some fire far inland, made him suspect
+      the nearest land to lie, he almost thought he had succeeded at last, after
+      a long hour of struggle, in feeling his feet, after all, on a firm coral
+      bottom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the very moment he did so, and touched the ground underneath, another
+      great wave, curling resistlessly behind him, caught him up on its crest,
+      whirled him heavenward like a cork, and then dashed him down once more, a
+      passive burden, on some soft and yielding substance, which he conjectured
+      at once to be a beach of finely powdered coral fragments. As he touched
+      this beach for an instant, the undertow of that vast dashing breaker
+      sucked him back with its ebb again, a helpless, breathless creature; and
+      then the succeeding wave rolled him over like a ball, upon the beach as
+      before, in quick succession. Four times the back-current sucked him under
+      with its wild pull in the self-same way, and four times the return wave
+      flung him up upon the beach again like a fragment of sea-weed. With
+      frantic efforts Felix tried at first to cling still to Muriel&mdash;to
+      save her from the irresistible force of that roaring surf&mdash;to snatch
+      her from the open jaws of death by sheer struggling dint of thews and
+      muscle. He might as well have tried to stem Niagara. The great waves,
+      curling irresistibly in huge curves landward, caught either of them up by
+      turns on their arched summits, and twisted them about remorselessly,
+      raising them now aloft on their foaming crest, beating them back now prone
+      in their hollow trough, and flinging them fiercely at last with pitiless
+      energy against the soft beach of coral. If the beach had been hard, they
+      must infallibly have been ground to powder or beaten to jelly by the
+      colossal force of those gigantic blows. Fortunately it was yielding,
+      smooth, and clay-like, and received them almost as a layer of moist
+      plaster of Paris might have done, or they would have stood no chance at
+      all for their lives in that desperate battle with the blind and frantic
+      forces of unrelenting nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No man who has not himself seen the surf break on one of these
+      far-southern coral shores can form any idea in his own mind of the terror
+      and horror of the situation. The water, as it reaches the beach, rears
+      itself aloft for a second into a huge upright wall, which, advancing
+      slowly, curls over at last in a hollow circle, and pounds down upon the
+      sand or reef with all the crushing force of some enormous sledge-hammer.
+      But after the fourth assault, Felix felt himself flung up high and dry by
+      the wave, as one may sometimes see a bit of light reed or pith flung up
+      some distance ahead by an advancing tide on the beach in England. In an
+      instant he steadied himself and staggered to his feet. Torn and bruised as
+      he was by the pummelling of the billows, he looked eagerly into the water
+      in search of his companion. The next wave flung up Muriel, as the last had
+      flung himself. He bent over her with a panting heart as she lay there,
+      insensible, on the long white shore. Alive or dead? that was now the
+      question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Raising her hastily in his arms, with her clothes all clinging wet and
+      close about her, Felix carried her over the narrow strip of tidal beach,
+      above high-water level, and laid her gently down on a soft green bank of
+      short tropical herbage, close to the edge of the coral. Then he bent over
+      her once more, and listened eagerly at her heart. It still beat with faint
+      pulses&mdash;beat&mdash;beat&mdash;beat. Felix throbbed with joy. She was
+      alive! alive! He was not quite alone, then, on that unknown island!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And strange as it seemed, it was only a little more than two short hours
+      since they had stood and looked out across the open sea over the bulwarks
+      of the Australasian together!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Felix had no time to moralize just then. The moment was clearly one
+      for action. Fortunately, he happened to carry three useful things in his
+      pocket when he jumped overboard after Muriel. The first was a
+      pocket-knife; the second was a flask with a little whiskey in it; and the
+      third, perhaps the most important of all, a small metal box of wax vesta
+      matches. Pouring a little whiskey into the cup of the flask, he held it
+      eagerly to Muriel&rsquo;s lips. The fainting girl swallowed it
+      automatically. Then Felix, stooping down, tried the matches against the
+      box. They were unfortunately wet, but half an hour&rsquo;s exposure, he
+      knew, on sun-warmed stones, in that hot, tropical air, would soon restore
+      them again. So he opened the box and laid them carefully out on a flat
+      white slab of coral. After that, he had time to consider exactly where
+      they were, and what their chances in life, if any, might now amount to.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pitch dark as it was, he had no difficulty in deciding at once by the
+      general look of things that they had reached a fringing reef, such as he
+      was already familiar with in the Marquesas and elsewhere. The reef was no
+      doubt circular, and it enclosed within itself a second or central island,
+      divided from it by a shallow lagoon of calm, still water. He walked some
+      yards inland. From where he now stood, on the summit of the ridge, he
+      could look either way, and by the faint reflected light of the stars, or
+      the glare of the great pyre that burned on the central island, he could
+      see down on one side to the ocean, with its fierce white pounding surf,
+      and on the other to the lagoon, reflecting the stars overhead, and
+      motionless as a mill-pond. Between them lay the low raised ridge of coral,
+      covered with tall stems of cocoanut palms, and interspersed here and
+      there, as far as his eye could judge, with little rectangular clumps of
+      plantain and taro.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But what alarmed Felix most was the fire that blazed so brightly to heaven
+      on the central island; for he knew too well that meant&mdash;there were <i>men</i>
+      on the place; the land was inhabited.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The cocoanuts and taro told the same doubtful tale. From the way they
+      grew, even in that dim starlight, Felix recognized at once they had all
+      been planted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Still, he didn&rsquo;t hesitate to do what he thought best for Muriel&rsquo;s
+      relief for all that. Collecting a few sticks and fragments of
+      palm-branches from the jungle about, he piled them into a heap, and waited
+      patiently for his matches to dry. As soon as they were ready&mdash;and the
+      warmth of the stone made them quickly inflammable&mdash;he struck a match
+      on the box, and proceeded to light his fire by Muriel&rsquo;s side. As her
+      clothes grew warmer, the poor girl opened her eyes at last, and, gazing
+      around her, exclaimed, in blank terror, &ldquo;Oh, Mr. Thurstan, where are
+      we? What does all this mean? Where have we got to? On a desert island?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, <i>not</i> on a desert island,&rdquo; Felix answered, shortly;
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid it&rsquo;s a great deal worse than that. To tell
+      you the truth, I&rsquo;m afraid it&rsquo;s inhabited.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At that moment, by the hot embers of the great sacrificial pyre on the
+      central hill, two of the savage temple-attendants, calling their god&rsquo;s
+      attention to a sudden blaze of flame upon the fringing reef, pointed with
+      their dark forefingers and called out in surprise, &ldquo;See, see, a fire
+      on the barrier! A fire! A fire! What can it mean? There are no men of our
+      people over there to-night. Have war-canoes arrived? Has some enemy
+      landed?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila leaned back, drained his cocoanut cup of intoxicating kava,
+      and surveyed the unwonted apparition on the reef long and carefully.
+      &ldquo;It is nothing,&rdquo; he said at last, in his most deliberate
+      manner, stroking his cheeks and chin contentedly with that plump round
+      hand of his. &ldquo;It is only the victims; the new victims I promised
+      you. Korong! Korong! They have come ashore with their light from my home
+      in the sun. They have brought fire afresh&mdash;holy fire to Boupari.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Three or four of the savages leaped up in fierce joy, and bowed before him
+      as he spoke, with eager faces. &ldquo;Oh, Tu-Kila-Kila!&rdquo; the eldest
+      among them said, making a profound reverence, &ldquo;shall we swim across
+      to the reef and fetch them home to your house? Shall we take over our
+      canoes and bring back your victims!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The god motioned them back with one outstretched palm. His eyes were
+      flushed and his look lazy. &ldquo;Not to-night, my people,&rdquo; he said;
+      readjusting the garland of flowers round his neck, and giving a careless
+      glance at the well-picked bones that a few hours before had been two
+      trembling fellow creatures. &ldquo;Tu-Kila-Kila has feasted his fill for
+      this evening. Your god is full; his heart is happy. I have eaten human
+      flesh; I have drunk of the juice of the kava. Am I not a great deity? Can
+      I not do as I will? I frown, and the heavens thunder; I gnash my teeth,
+      and the earth trembles. What is it to me if fresh victims come, or if they
+      come not? Can I not make with a nod as many as I will of them?&rdquo; He
+      took up two fresh finger-bones, clean gnawed of their flesh, and knocked
+      them together in a wild tune, carelessly. &ldquo;If Tu-Kila-Kila chooses,&rdquo;
+      he went on, tapping his chest with conscious pride, &ldquo;he can knock
+      these bones together&mdash;so&mdash;and bid them live again. Is it not I
+      who cause women and beasts to bring forth their young? Is it not I who
+      give the turtles their increase? And is it not a small thing to me,
+      therefore, whether the sea tosses up my victims from my home in the sun,
+      or whether it does not? Let us leave them alone on the reef for to-night;
+      to-morrow we will send over our canoes to fetch them.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was all pure brag, all pure guesswork; and yet, Tu-Kila-Kila himself
+      profoundly believed it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he spoke, the light from Felix&rsquo;s fire blazed out against the dark
+      sky, stronger and clearer still; and through that cloudless tropical air
+      the figure of a man, standing for one moment between the flames and the
+      lagoon, became distinctly visible to the keen and practised eyes of the
+      savages. &ldquo;I see them? I see them; I see the victims!&rdquo; the
+      foremost worshipper exclaimed, rushing forward a little at the sight, and
+      beside himself with superstitious awe and surprise at Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s
+      presence. &ldquo;Surely our god is great! He knows all things! He brings
+      us meat from the setting sun, in ships of fire, in blazing canoes, across
+      the golden road of the sun-bathed ocean!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As for Tu-Kila-Kila himself, leaning on his elbow at ease, he gazed across
+      at the unexpected sight with very languid interest. He was a god, and he
+      liked to see things conducted with proper decorum. This crowing and crying
+      over a couple of spirits&mdash;mere ordinary spirits come ashore from the
+      sun in a fiery boat&mdash;struck his godship as little short of childish.
+      &ldquo;Let them be,&rdquo; he answered, petulantly, crushing a blossom in
+      his hand. &ldquo;Let no man disturb them. They shall rest where they are
+      till to-morrow morning. We have eaten; we have drunk; our soul is happy.
+      The kava within us has made us like a god indeed. I shall give my
+      ministers charge that no harm happen to them.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He drew a whistle from his side and whistled once. There was a moment&rsquo;s
+      pause. Then Tu-Kila-Kila spoke in a loud voice again. &ldquo;The King of
+      Fire!&rdquo; he exclaimed, in tones of princely authority.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From within the hut there came forth slowly a second stalwart savage, big
+      built and burly as the great god himself, clad in a long robe or cloak of
+      yellow feathers, which shone bright with a strange metallic gleam in the
+      ruddy light of the huge pile of li-wood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The King of Fire is here, Tu-Kila-Kila,&rdquo; the lesser god made
+      answer, bending his head slightly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fire,&rdquo; Tu-Kila-Kila said, like a monarch giving orders to his
+      attendant minister, &ldquo;if any man touch the newcomers on the reef
+      before I cause my sun to rise to-morrow morning, scorch up his flesh with
+      your flame, and consume his bones to ash and cinder. If any woman go near
+      them before Tu-Kila-Kila bids, let her be rolled in palm-leaves, and
+      smeared with oil, and light her up for a torch on a dark night to lighten
+      our temple.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The King of Fire bent his head in assent. &ldquo;It is as Tu-Kila-Kila
+      wills,&rdquo; he answered, submissively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila whistled again, this time twice. &ldquo;The King of Water!&rdquo;
+      he exclaimed, in the same loud tone of command as before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the words, a man of about forty, tall and sinewy, clad in a short cape
+      of white albatross feathers, and with a girdle of nautilus shells
+      interspersed with red coral tied around his waist, came forth to the
+      summons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The King of Water is here,&rdquo; he said, bending his head, but
+      not his knee, before the greater deity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Water,&rdquo; Tu-Kila-Kila said, with half-tipsy solemnity, &ldquo;you
+      are a god too. Your power is very great. But less than mine. Do, then, as
+      I bid you. If any man touch my spirits, whom I have brought from my home
+      in the sun in a fiery ship, before I bid him to-morrow, overturn his
+      canoe, and drown him in lagoon or spring or ocean. If any woman go near
+      them without Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s leave, bind her hand and foot with ropes
+      of porpoise hide, and cast her out into the surf, and dash her with your
+      waves, and pummel her to pieces.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The King of Water bent his head a second time. &ldquo;I am a great god,&rdquo;
+      he answered, &ldquo;before all others save you: but for you, Tu-Kila-Kila,
+      I haste to do your bidding. If any man disobey you, my billows shall rise
+      and overwhelm him in the sea. I am a great god. I claim each year many
+      drowned victims.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But not so many as me,&rdquo; Tu-Kila-Kila interposed, his hand
+      playing on his knife with a faint air of impatience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But not so many as you,&rdquo; the minor god added, in haste, as if
+      to appease his rising anger. &ldquo;Fire and Water ever speed to do your
+      bidding.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila stood up, turned toward the distant flame, and waved his
+      hands round and round three times before him. &ldquo;Let this be for you
+      all a great taboo,&rdquo; he said, glancing once more toward his
+      awe-struck followers. &ldquo;Now the mysteries are over. Tu-Kila-Kila will
+      sleep. He has eaten of human flesh. He has drunk of cocoanut rum and of
+      new kava. He has brought back his sun on its way in the heavens. He has
+      sent it messengers of fire to reinforce its strength. He has fetched from
+      it messengers in turn with fresh fire to Boupari, fire not lighted from
+      any earthly flame; fire new, divine, scorching, unspeakable. To-morrow we
+      will talk with the spirits he has brought. To-night we will sleep. Now all
+      go to your homes; and tell your women of this great taboo, lest they speak
+      to the spirits, and fall into the hands of Fire or of Water.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The savages dropped on their faces before the eye of their god and lay
+      quite still. They made a path as it were from the pyre to the temple door
+      with their prostrate bodies. Tu-Kila-Kila, walking with unsteady steps
+      over their half-naked forms, turned to his hut in a drunken booze. He
+      walked over them with no more compunction or feeling than over so many
+      logs. Why should he not, indeed? For he was a god, and they were his meat,
+      his servants, his worshippers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IV. &mdash; THE GUESTS OF HEAVEN.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      All that night through&mdash;their first lonely night on the island of
+      Boupari&mdash;Felix sat up by his flickering fire, wide awake, half
+      expecting and dreading some treacherous attack of the unknown savages.
+      From time to time he kept adding dry fuel to his smouldering pile; and he
+      never ceased to keep a keen eye both on the lagoon and the reef, in case
+      an assault should be made upon them suddenly by land or water. He knew the
+      South Seas quite well enough already to have all the possibilities of
+      misfortune floating vividly before his eyes. He realized at once from his
+      own previous experience the full loneliness and terror of their unarmed
+      condition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For Boupari was one of those rare remote islets where the very rumor of
+      our European civilization has hardly yet penetrated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As for Muriel, though she was alarmed enough, of course, and intensely
+      shaken by the sudden shock she had received, the whole surroundings were
+      too wholly unlike any world she had ever yet known to enable her to take
+      in at once the utter horror of the situation. She only knew they were
+      alone, wet, bruised, and terribly battered; and the Australasian had gone
+      on, leaving them there to their fate on an unknown island. That, for the
+      moment, was more than enough for her of accumulated misfortune. She come
+      to herself but slowly, and as her torn clothes dried by degrees before the
+      fire and the heat of the tropical night, she was so far from fully
+      realizing the dangers of their position that her first and principal fear
+      for the moment was lest she might take cold from her wet things drying
+      upon her. She ate a little of the plantain that Felix picked for her; and
+      at times, toward morning, she dozed off into an uneasy sleep, from pure
+      fatigue and excess of weariness. As she slept, Felix, bending over her,
+      with the biggest blade of his knife open in case of attack, watched with
+      profound emotion the rise and fall of her bosom, and hesitated with
+      himself, if the worst should come to the worst, as to what he ought to do
+      with her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It would be impossible to let a pure young English girl like that fall
+      helplessly into the hands of such bloodthirsty wretches as he knew the
+      islanders were almost certain to be. Who could tell what nameless
+      indignities, what incredible tortures they might wantonly inflict upon her
+      innocent soul? Was it right of him to have let her come ashore at all?
+      Ought he not rather to have allowed the more merciful sea to take her life
+      easily, without the chance or possibility of such additional horrors?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And now&mdash;as she slept&mdash;so calm and pure and maidenly&mdash;what
+      was his duty that minute, just there to her? He felt the blade of his
+      knife with his finger cautiously, and almost doubted. If only she could
+      tell what things might be in store for her, would she not, herself, prefer
+      death, an honorable death, at the friendly hands of a tenderhearted
+      fellow-countryman, to the unspeakable insults of these man-eating
+      Polynesians? If only he had the courage to release her by one blow, as she
+      lay there, from the coming ill! But he hadn&rsquo;t; he hadn&rsquo;t. Even
+      on board the Australasian he had been vaguely aware that he was getting
+      very fond of that pretty little Miss Ellis. And now that he sat there,
+      after that desperate struggle for life with the pounding waves, mounting
+      guard over her through the livelong night, his own heart told him plainly,
+      in tones he could not disobey, he loved her too well to dare what he
+      thought best in the end for her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Still, even so, he was brave enough to feel he must never let the very
+      worst of all befall her. He bethought him, in his doubt and agony, of how
+      his uncle, Major Thurstan, during the great Indian mutiny, had held his
+      lonely bungalow, with his wife and daughter by his side, for three long
+      hours against a howling mob of native insurgents; and how, when further
+      resistance was hopeless, and that great black wave of angry humanity burst
+      in upon them at last, the brave soldier had drawn his revolver, shot his
+      wife and daughter with unerring aim, to prevent their falling alive into
+      the hands of the natives, and then blown his own brains out with his last
+      remaining cartridge. As his uncle had done at Jhansi, thirty years before,
+      so he himself would do on that nameless Pacific island&mdash;for he didn&rsquo;t
+      know even now on what shore he had landed. If the savages bore down upon
+      them with hostile intent, and threatened Muriel, he would plunge his knife
+      first into that innocent woman&rsquo;s heart; and then bury it deep in his
+      own, and die beside her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So the long night wore on&mdash;Muriel pillowed on loose cocoanut husk,
+      dozing now and again, and waking with a start to gaze round about her
+      wildly, and realize once more in what plight she found herself; Felix
+      crouching by her feet, and keeping watch with eager eyes and ears on every
+      side for the least sign of a noiseless, naked footfall through the tangled
+      growth of that dense tropical under-bush. Time after time he clapped his
+      hand to his ear, shell-wise, and listened and peered, with knitted brow,
+      suspecting some sudden swoop from an ambush in the jungle of creepers
+      behind the little plantain patch. Time after time he grasped his knife
+      hard, and puckered his eyebrows resolutely, and stood still with bated
+      breath for a fierce, wild leap upon his fancied assailant. But the night
+      wore away by degrees, a minute at a time, and no man came; and dawn began
+      to brighten the sea-line to eastward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the day dawned, Felix could see more clearly exactly where he was, and
+      in what surroundings. Without, the ocean broke in huge curling billows on
+      the shallow beach of the fringing reef with such stupendous force that
+      Felix wondered how they could ever have lived through its pounding surf
+      and its fiercely retreating undertow. Within, the lagoon spread its calm
+      lake-like surface away to the white coral shore of the central atoll.
+      Between these two waters, the greater and the less, a waving palisade of
+      tall-stemmed palm-trees rose on a narrow ribbon of circular land that
+      formed the fringing reef. All night through he had felt, with a strange
+      eerie misgiving, the very foundations of the land thrill under his feet at
+      every dull thud or boom of the surf on its restraining barrier. Now that
+      he could see that thin belt of shore in its actual shape and size, he was
+      not astonished at this constant shock; what surprised him rather was the
+      fact that such a speck of land could hold its own at all against the
+      ceaseless cannonade of that seemingly irresistible ocean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stood up, hatless, in his battered tweed suit, and surveyed the scene
+      of their present and future adventures. It took but a glance to show him
+      that the whole ground-plan of the island was entirely circular. In the
+      midst of all rose the central atoll itself, a tiny mountain-peak, just
+      projecting with its hills and gorges to a few hundred feet above the
+      surface of the ocean. Outside it came the lagoon, with its placid ring of
+      glassy water surrounding the circular island, and separated from the sea
+      by an equally circular belt of fringing reef, covered thick with waving
+      stems of picturesque cocoanut. It was on the reef they had landed, and
+      from it they now looked across the calm lagoon with doubtful eyes toward
+      the central island.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As soon as the sun rose, their doubts were quickly resolved into fears or
+      certainties. Scarcely had its rim begun to show itself distinctly above
+      the eastern horizon, when a great bustle and confusion was noticeable at
+      once on the opposite shore. Brown-skinned savages were collecting in eager
+      groups by a white patch of beach, and putting out rude but well-manned
+      canoes into the calm waters of the lagoon. At sight of their naked arms
+      and bustling gestures, Muriel&rsquo;s heart sank suddenly within her.
+      &ldquo;Oh, Mr. Thurstan,&rdquo; she cried, clinging to his arm in her
+      terror, &ldquo;what does it all mean? Are they going to hurt us? Are these
+      savages coming over? Are they coming to kill us?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix grasped his trusty knife hard in his right hand, and swallowed a
+      groan, as he looked tenderly down upon her. &ldquo;Muriel,&rdquo; he said,
+      forgetting in the excitement of the moment the little conventionalities
+      and courtesies of civilized life, &ldquo;if they are, trust me, you never
+      shall fall alive into their cruel hands. Sooner than that&mdash;&rdquo; he
+      held up the knife significantly, with its open blade before her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The poor girl clung to him harder still, with a ghastly shudder. &ldquo;Oh,
+      it&rsquo;s terrible, terrible,&rdquo; she cried, turning deadly pale.
+      Then, after a short pause, she added, &ldquo;But I would rather have it
+      so. Do as you say. I could bear it from you. Promise me <i>that</i>,
+      rather than that those creatures should kill me.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I promise,&rdquo; Felix answered, clasping her hand hard, and
+      paused, with the knife ever ready in his right, awaiting the approach of
+      the half-naked savages.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The boats glided fast across the lagoon, propelled by the paddles of the
+      stalwart Polynesians who manned them, and crowded to the water&rsquo;s
+      edge with groups of grinning and shouting warriors. They were dressed in
+      aprons of dracæna leaves only, with necklets and armlets of sharks&rsquo;
+      teeth and cowrie shells. A dozen canoes at least were making toward the
+      reef at full speed, all bristling with spears and alive with noisy and
+      boisterous savages. Muriel shrank back terror-stricken at the sight, as
+      they drew nearer and nearer. But Felix, holding his breath hard, grew
+      somewhat less nervous as the men approached the reef. He had seen enough
+      of Polynesian life before now to feel sure these people were not upon the
+      war-path. Whatever their ultimate intentions toward the castaways might
+      be, their immediate object seemed friendly and good-humored. The boats,
+      though large, were not regular war-canoes; the men, instead of brandishing
+      their spears, and lunging out with them over the edge in threatening
+      attitudes, held them erect in their hands at rest, like standards; they
+      were laughing and talking, not crying their war-cry. As they drew near the
+      shore, one big canoe shot suddenly a length or so ahead of the rest; and
+      its leader, standing on the grotesque carved figure that adorned its prow,
+      held up both his hands open and empty before him, in sign of peace, while
+      at the same time he shouted out a word or two three times in his own
+      language, to reassure the castaways.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix&rsquo;s eye glanced cautiously from boat to boat. &ldquo;He says,
+      &lsquo;We are friends,&rsquo;&rdquo; the young man remarked in an
+      undertone to his terrified companion. &ldquo;I can understand his dialect.
+      Thank Heaven, it&rsquo;s very close to Fijian. I shall be able at least to
+      palaver to these men. I don&rsquo;t think they mean just now to harm us. I
+      believe we can trust them, at any rate for the present.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The poor girl drew back, in still greater awe and alarm than ever. &ldquo;Oh,
+      are they going to land here?&rdquo; she cried, still clinging closer with
+      both hands to her one friend and protector.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Try not to look so frightened!&rdquo; Felix exclaimed, with a
+      warning glance. &ldquo;Remember, much depends upon it; savages judge you
+      greatly by what demeanor you happen to assume. If you&rsquo;re frightened,
+      they know their power; if they see you&rsquo;re resolute, they suspect you
+      have some supernatural means of protection. Try to meet them frankly, as
+      if you were not afraid of them.&rdquo; Then, advancing slowly to the water&rsquo;s
+      edge, he called out aloud, in a strong, clear voice, a few words which
+      Muriel didn&rsquo;t understand, but which were really the Fijian for
+      &ldquo;We also are friendly. Our medicine is good. We mean no magic. We
+      come to you from across the great water. We desire your peace. Receive us
+      and protect us!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the sound of words which he could readily understand, and which
+      differed but little, indeed, from his own language, the leader on the
+      foremost canoe, who seemed by his manner to be a great chief, turned round
+      to his followers and cried out in tones of superstitious awe, &ldquo;Tu-Kila-Kila
+      spoke well. These are, indeed, what he told us. Korong! Korong! They are
+      spirits who have come to us from the disk of the sun, to bring us light
+      and pure, fresh fire. Stay back there, all of you. You are not holy enough
+      to approach. I and my crew, who are sanctified by the mysteries, we alone
+      will go forward to meet them.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he spoke, a sudden idea, suggested by his words, struck Felix&rsquo;s
+      mind. Superstition is the great lever by which to move the savage
+      intelligence. Gathering up a few dry leaves and fragments of stick on the
+      shore, he laid them together in a pile, and awaited in silence the arrival
+      of the foremost islanders. The first canoe advanced slowly and cautiously,
+      the men in it eying these proceedings with evident suspicion; the rest
+      hung back, with their spears in array, and their hands just ready to use
+      them with effect should occasion demand it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The leader of the first canoe, coming close to the shore, jumped out upon
+      the reef in shallow water. Half a dozen of his followers jumped after him
+      without hesitation, and brandished their weapons round their heads as they
+      advanced, in savage unison. But Felix, pretending hardly to notice these
+      hostile demonstrations, stepped boldly up toward his little pile with
+      great deliberation, though trembling inwardly, and proceeded before their
+      eyes to take a match from his box, which he displayed ostentatiously, all
+      glittering in the sun, to the foremost savage. The leader stood by and
+      watched him close with eyes of silent wonder. Then Felix, kneeling down,
+      struck the match on the box, and applied it, as it lighted, to the dry
+      leaves beside him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A chorus of astonishment burst unanimously from the delighted natives as
+      the dry leaves leaped all at once into a tongue of flame, and the little
+      pile caught quickly from the fire in the vesta.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The leader looked hard at the two white faces, and then at the fire on the
+      beach, with evident approbation. &ldquo;It is as Tu-Kila-Kila said,&rdquo;
+      he exclaimed at last with profound awe. &ldquo;They are spirits from the
+      sun, and they carry with them pure fire in shining boxes.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, advancing a pace and pointing toward the canoe, he motioned Felix
+      and Muriel to take their seats within it with native savage politeness.
+      &ldquo;Tu-Kila-Kila has sent for you,&rdquo; he said, in his grandest
+      aristocratic air, &ldquo;for your chief is a gentleman. He wishes to
+      receive you. He saw your message-fire on the reef last night, and he knew
+      you had come. He has made you a very great Taboo. He has put you under
+      protection of Fire and Water.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The people in the boats, with one accord, shouted out in wild chorus, as
+      if to confirm his words, &ldquo;Taboo! Taboo! Tu-Kila-Kila has said it!
+      Taboo! Taboo! Ware Fire! Ware Water!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Though the dialect in which they spoke differed somewhat from that in use
+      in Fiji, Felix could still make out with care almost every word of what
+      the chief had said to him; and the universal Polynesian expression,
+      &ldquo;Taboo,&rdquo; in particular, somewhat reassured him as to their
+      friendly intentions. Among remote heathen islanders like these, he felt
+      sure, the very word itself was far too sacred to be taken in vain. They
+      would respect its inviolability. He turned round to Muriel. &ldquo;We must
+      go with them,&rdquo; he said, shortly. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s our one chance
+      left of life now. Don&rsquo;t be too terrified; there is still some hope.
+      They say somebody they call Tu-Kila-Kila has tabooed us. No one will dare
+      to hurt us against so great a Taboo; for Tu-Kila-Kila is evidently some
+      very important king or chief. You must step into the boat. It can&rsquo;t
+      be avoided. If any harm is threatened, be sure I won&rsquo;t forget my
+      promise.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Muriel shrank back in alarm, and clung still to his arm now as naturally
+      as she would have clung to a brother&rsquo;s. &ldquo;Oh, Mr. Thurstan,&rdquo;
+      she cried&mdash;&ldquo;Felix, I don&rsquo;t know what to say; I <i>can&rsquo;t</i>
+      go with them.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix put his arm gently round her girlish waist, and half lifted her into
+      the boat in spite of her reluctance. &ldquo;You must,&rdquo; he said, with
+      great firmness. &ldquo;You must do as I say. I will watch over you, and
+      take care of you. If the worst comes, I have always my knife, and I won&rsquo;t
+      forget. Now, friend,&rdquo; he went on, in Fijian, turning round to the
+      chief, as he took his seat in the canoe fearlessly among all those dusky,
+      half-clad figures, &ldquo;we are ready to start. We do not fear. We wish
+      to go. Take us to Tu-Kila-Kila.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And all the savages around, shouting in their surprise and awe, exclaimed
+      once more in concert, &ldquo;Tu-Kila-Kila is great. We will take them, as
+      he bids us, forthwith to heaven.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do they say?&rdquo; Muriel cried, clinging close to the white
+      man&rsquo;s side in her speechless terror. &ldquo;Do you understand their
+      language?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I can&rsquo;t quite make it out,&rdquo; Felix answered, much
+      puzzled; &ldquo;that is to say, not every word of it. They say they&rsquo;ll
+      take us somewhere, I don&rsquo;t quite know where; but in Fijian, the word
+      would certainly mean to heaven.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Muriel shuddered visibly. &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t think,&rdquo; she said,
+      with a tremulous tongue, &ldquo;they mean to kill us?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I don&rsquo;t <i>think</i> so,&rdquo; Felix replied, not
+      over-confidently. &ldquo;They said we were Taboo. But with savages like
+      these, of course, one can never in any case be quite certain.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER V. &mdash; ENROLLED IN OLYMPUS.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      They rowed across the lagoon, a mysterious procession, almost in silence&mdash;the
+      canoe with the two Europeans going first, the others following at a slight
+      distance&mdash;and landed at last on the brink of the central island.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Several of the Boupari people leaped ashore at once; then they helped
+      Felix and Muriel from the frail bark with almost deferential care, and led
+      the way before them up a steep white path, that zigzagged through the
+      forest toward the centre of the island. As they went, a band of natives
+      preceded them in regular line of march, shouting &ldquo;Taboo, taboo!&rdquo;
+      at short intervals, especially as they neared any group of fan-palm
+      cottages. The women whom they met fell on their knees at once, till the
+      strange procession had passed them by; the men only bowed their heads
+      thrice, and made a rapid movement on their breasts with their fingers,
+      which reminded Muriel at once of the sign of the cross in Catholic
+      countries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So on they wended their way in silence through the deep tropical jungle,
+      along a pathway just wide enough for three to walk abreast, till they
+      emerged suddenly upon a large cleared space, in whose midst grew a great
+      banyan-tree, with arms that dropped and rooted themselves like buttresses
+      in the soil beneath. Under the banyan-tree a raised platform stood upon
+      posts of bamboo. The platform was covered with fine network in yellow and
+      red; and two little stools occupied the middle, as if placed there on
+      purpose and waiting for their occupants.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man who had headed the first canoe turned round to Felix and motioned
+      him forward. &ldquo;This is Heaven,&rdquo; he said glibly, in his own
+      tongue. &ldquo;Spirits, ascend it!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix, much wondering what the ceremony could mean, mounted the platform
+      without a word, in obedience to the chief&rsquo;s command, closely
+      followed by Muriel, who dared not leave him for a second.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bring water!&rdquo; the chief said, shortly, in a voice of
+      authority to one of his followers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man handed up a calabash with a little water in it. The chief took the
+      rude vessel from his hands in a reverential manner, and poured a few drops
+      of the contents on Felix&rsquo;s head; the water trickled down over his
+      hair and forehead. Involuntarily, Felix shook his head a little at the
+      unexpected wetting, and scattered the drops right and left on his neck and
+      shoulders. The chief watched this performance attentively with profound
+      satisfaction. Then he turned to his attendants.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The spirit shakes his head,&rdquo; he said, with a deeply convinced
+      air. &ldquo;All is well. Heaven has chosen him. Korong! Korong! He is
+      accepted for his purpose. It is well! It is well! Let us try the other
+      one.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He raised the calabash once more, and poured a few drops in like manner on
+      Muriel&rsquo;s dark hair. The poor girl, trembling in every limb, shook
+      her head also in the same unintentional fashion. The chief regarded her
+      with still more complacent eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is well,&rdquo; he observed once more to his companions,
+      smiling. &ldquo;She, too, gives the sign of acceptance. Korong! Korong!
+      Heaven is well pleased with both. See how her body trembles!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At that moment a girl came forward with a little basket of fruits. The
+      chief chose a banana with care from the basket, peeled it with his dusky
+      hands, broke it slowly in two, and handed one half very solemnly to Felix.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eat, King of the Rain,&rdquo; he said, as he presented it. &ldquo;The
+      offering of Heaven.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix ate it at once, thinking it best under the circumstances not to
+      demur at all to anything his strange hosts might choose to impose upon
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The chief handed the other half just as solemnly to Muriel. &ldquo;Eat,
+      Queen of the Clouds,&rdquo; he said, as he placed it in her fingers.
+      &ldquo;The offering of Heaven.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Muriel hesitated. She didn&rsquo;t know what his words meant, and it
+      seemed to her rather the offering of a very dirty and unwashed savage. The
+      chief eyed her hard. &ldquo;For God&rsquo;s sake eat it, my child; he
+      tells you to eat it!&rdquo; Felix exclaimed in haste. Muriel lifted it to
+      her lips and swallowed it down with difficulty. The man&rsquo;s dusky
+      hands didn&rsquo;t inspire confidence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the chief seemed relieved when he had seen her swallow it. &ldquo;All
+      is well done,&rdquo; he said, turning again to his followers. &ldquo;We
+      have obeyed the words of Tu-Kila-Kila, and his orders that he gave us. We
+      have offered the strangers, the spirits from the sun, as a free gift to
+      Heaven, and Heaven has accepted them. We have given them fruits, the
+      fruits of the earth, and they have duly eaten them. Korong! Korong! The
+      King of the Rain and the Queen of the Clouds have indeed come among us.
+      They are truly gods. We will take them now, as he bid us, to Tu-Kila-Kila.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What have they done to us?&rdquo; Muriel asked aside, in a
+      terrified undertone of Felix.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t quite make out,&rdquo; Felix answered in the selfsame
+      voice. &ldquo;They call us the King of the Rain and the Queen of the
+      Clouds in their own language. I think they imagine we&rsquo;ve come from
+      the sun and that we&rsquo;re a sort of spirits.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the sound of these words the girl who held the basket of fruits gave a
+      sudden start. It almost seemed to Muriel as if she understood them. But
+      when Muriel looked again she gave no further sign. She merely held her
+      peace, and tried to appear wholly undisconcerted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The chief beckoned them down from the platform with a wave of his hand.
+      They rose and followed him. As they rose the people around them bowed low
+      to the ground. Felix could see they were bowing to Muriel and himself, not
+      merely to the chief. A doubt flitted strangely across his mind for a
+      moment. What could it all mean? Did they take the two strangers, then, for
+      supernatural beings? Had they enrolled them as gods? If so, it might serve
+      as some little protection for them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The procession formed again, three and three, three and three, in solemn
+      silence. Then the chief walked in front of them with measured steps, and
+      Felix and Muriel followed behind, wondering. As they went, the cry rose
+      louder and louder than before, &ldquo;Taboo! Taboo!&rdquo; People who met
+      them fell on their faces at once, as the chief cried out in a loud tone,
+      &ldquo;The King of the Rain! The Queen of the Clouds! Korong! Korong! They
+      are coming! They are coming!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last they reached a second cleared space, standing in a large garden of
+      manilla, loquat, poncians, and hibiscus-trees. It was entered by a gate, a
+      tall gate of bamboo posts. At the gate all the followers fell back to
+      right and left, awe-struck. Only the chief went calmly on. He beckoned to
+      Felix and Muriel to follow him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They entered, half terrified. Felix still grasped his open knife in his
+      hand, ready to strike at any moment that might be necessary. The chief led
+      them forward toward a very large tree near the centre of the garden. At
+      the foot of the tree stood a hut, somewhat bigger and better built than
+      any they had yet seen; and in front of the trunk a stalwart savage, very
+      powerfully built, but with a sinister look in his cruel and lustful eye,
+      was pacing up and down, like a sentinel on guard, a long spear in his
+      right hand, and a tomahawk in his left, held close by his side, all ready
+      for action. As he prowled up and down he seemed to be peering warily about
+      him on every side, as if each instant he expected to be set upon by an
+      enemy. But as the chief approached, the people without set up once more
+      the cry of &ldquo;Taboo! Taboo!&rdquo; and the stalwart savage by the
+      tree, laying down his spear and letting his tomahawk fall free, dropped in
+      a second the air of watchful alarm, and advanced with some courtesy to
+      greet the new-comers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We have found them, Tu-Kila-Kila,&rdquo; the chief said, presenting
+      them to the god with a graceful wave of his hand. &ldquo;We have found the
+      spirits that you brought from the sun, with the fire in their hands, and
+      the light in boxes. We have taken them to Heaven. Heaven has accepted
+      them. We have offered them fruit, and they have eaten the banana. The King
+      of the Rain&mdash;the Queen of the Clouds! Korong! Receive them!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila glanced at them with an approving glance, strangely
+      compounded of pleasure and terror. &ldquo;They are plump,&rdquo; he said
+      shortly. &ldquo;They are indeed Korong. My sun has sent me an acceptable
+      present.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is your will that we should do with them?&rdquo; the chief
+      asked in a deeply deferential tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila looked hard at Muriel&mdash;such a hateful look that the
+      knife trembled irresolute for a second in Felix&rsquo;s hand. &ldquo;Give
+      them two fresh huts,&rdquo; he said, in a lordly way. &ldquo;Give them
+      divine platters. Give them all that they need. Make everything right for
+      them.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The chief bowed, and retired with an awed air from the presence. Exactly
+      as he passed a certain line on the ground, marked white with a row of
+      coral-sand, Tu-Kila-Kila seized his spear and his tomahawk once more, and
+      mounted guard, as before, at the foot of the great tree where they had
+      seen him pacing. An instantaneous change seemed to Muriel to come over his
+      demeanor at that moment. While he spoke with the chief she noticed he
+      looked all cruelty, lust, and hateful self-indulgence. Now that he paced
+      up and down warily in front of that sacred floor, peering around him with
+      keen suspicion, he seemed rather the personification of watchfulness,
+      fear, and a certain slavish bodily terror. Especially, she observed, he
+      cast upon Felix, as he went, a glance of angry hate; and yet he did not
+      attempt to hurt or molest him in any way, defenceless as they both were
+      before those numerous savages.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As they emerged from the enclosure, the girl with the fruit basket stood
+      near the gate, looking outward from the wall, her face turned away from
+      the awful home of Tu-Kila-Kila. At the moment when Muriel passed, to her
+      immense astonishment the girl spoke to her. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t be afraid,
+      missy,&rdquo; she said in English, in a rather low voice, without
+      obtrusively approaching them. &ldquo;Boupari man not going to hurt you. Me
+      going to be your servant. Me name Mali. Me very good girl. Me take plenty
+      care of you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The unexpected sound of her own language, in the midst of so much
+      unmitigated savagery, took Muriel fairly by surprise. She looked hard at
+      the girl, but thought it wisest to answer nothing. This particular young
+      woman, indeed, was just as dark, and to all appearance just as much of a
+      savage, as any of the rest of them. But she could speak English, at any
+      rate! And she said she was to be Muriel&rsquo;s servant!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The chief led them back to the shore, talking volubly all the way in
+      Polynesia to Felix. His dialect differed so much from the Fijian that when
+      he spoke first Felix could hardly follow him. But he gathered vaguely,
+      nevertheless, that they were to be well housed and fed for the present at
+      the public expense; and even that something which the chief clearly
+      regarded as a very great honor was in store for them in the future.
+      Whatever these people&rsquo;s particular superstition might be, it seemed
+      pretty evident at least that it told in the strangers&rsquo; favor. Felix
+      almost began to hope they might manage to live there pretty tolerably for
+      the next two or three weeks, and perhaps to signal in time to some passing
+      Australian liner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The rest of that wonderful eventful day was wholly occupied with practical
+      details. Before long, two adjacent huts were found for them, near the
+      shore of the lagoon; and Felix noticed with pleasure, not only that the
+      huts themselves were new and clean, but also that the chief took great
+      care to place round both of them a single circular line of white
+      coral-sand, like the one he had noticed at Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s
+      palace-temple. He felt sure this white line made the space within taboo.
+      No native would dare without leave to cross it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the line was well marked out round the two huts together, the chief
+      went away for a while, leaving the Europeans within their broad white
+      circle, guarded by an angry-looking band of natives with long spears at
+      rest, all pointed inward. The natives themselves stood well without the
+      ring, but the points of their spears almost reached the line, and it was
+      clear they would not for the present permit the Europeans to leave the
+      charmed circle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently, the chief returned again, followed by two other natives in
+      official costumes. One of them was a tall and handsome young man, dressed
+      in a long robe or cloak of yellow feathers. The other was stouter, and
+      perhaps forty or thereabouts; he wore a short cape of white albatross
+      plumes, with a girdle of shells at his waist, interspersed with red coral.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The King of Fire will make Taboo,&rdquo; the chief said, solemnly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The young man with the cloak of yellow feathers stepped forward and spoke,
+      toeing the line with his left foot, and brandishing a lighted stick in his
+      right hand. &ldquo;Taboo! Taboo! Taboo!&rdquo; he cried aloud, with
+      emphasis. &ldquo;If any man dare to transgress this line without leave, I
+      burn him to ashes. If any woman, I scorch her to a cinder. Taboo to the
+      King of the Rain and the Queen of the Clouds. Taboo! Taboo! Taboo! Korong!
+      I say it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stepped back into the ranks with an air of duty performed. The chief
+      looked about him curiously a moment. &ldquo;The King of Water will make
+      Taboo,&rdquo; he repeated after a pause, in the same deep tone of profound
+      conviction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The stouter man in the short white cape stepped forward in his turn. He
+      toed the line with his naked left foot; in his brown right hand he carried
+      a calabash of water. &ldquo;Taboo! Taboo! Taboo!&rdquo; he exclaimed
+      aloud, pouring out the water upon the ground symbolically. &ldquo;If any
+      man dare to transgress this line without leave, I drown him in his canoe.
+      If any woman, I drag her alive into the spring as she fetches water. Taboo
+      to the King of the Rain and the Queen of the Clouds. Taboo! Taboo! Taboo!
+      Korong! I say it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What does it all mean?&rdquo; Muriel whispered, terrified.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix explained to her, as far as he could, in a few hurried sentences.
+      &ldquo;There&rsquo;s only one word in it I don&rsquo;t understand,&rdquo;
+      he added, hastily, &ldquo;and that&rsquo;s Korong. It doesn&rsquo;t occur
+      in Fiji. They keep saying we&rsquo;re Korong, whatever that may mean; and
+      evidently they attach some very great importance to it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let the Shadows come forward,&rdquo; the chief said, looking up
+      with an air of dignity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A good-looking young man, and the girl who said her name was Mali, stepped
+      forth from the crowd, and fell on their knees before him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The chief laid his hand on the young man&rsquo;s shoulder and raised him
+      up. &ldquo;The Shadow of the King of the Rain,&rdquo; he cried, turning
+      him three times round. &ldquo;Follow him in all his incomings and his
+      outgoings, and serve him faithfully! Taboo! Taboo! Pass within the sacred
+      circle!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He clapped his hands. The young man crossed the line with a sort of
+      reverent reluctance, and took his place within the ring, close up to
+      Felix.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The chief laid his hand on Mali&rsquo;s shoulder. &ldquo;The Shadow of the
+      Queen of the Clouds,&rdquo; he said, turning her three times round.
+      &ldquo;Follow her in all her incomings and outgoings, and serve her
+      faithfully. Taboo! Taboo! Pass within the sacred circle!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he waved both hands to Felix. &ldquo;Go where you will now,&rdquo; he
+      said. &ldquo;Your Shadow will follow you. You are free as the rain that
+      drops where it will. You are as free as the clouds that roam through
+      heaven. No man will hinder you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And in a moment the spearmen dropped their spears in concert, the crowd
+      fell back, and the villagers dispersed as if by magic, to their own
+      houses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Felix and Muriel were left alone beside their huts, guarded only in
+      silence by their two mystic Shadows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0006" id="link2HCH0006"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VI. &mdash; FIRST DAYS IN BOUPARI.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Throughout that day the natives brought them, from time to time, numerous
+      presents of yam, bananas, and bread-fruit, neatly arranged in little
+      palm-leaf baskets. A few of them brought eggs as well, and one offering
+      even included a live chicken. But the people who brought them, and who
+      were mostly young girls just entering upon womanhood, did not venture to
+      cross the white line of coral-sand that surrounded the huts; they laid
+      down their presents, with many salaams, on the ground outside, and then
+      waited with a half-startled, half-reverent air for one or other of the two
+      Shadows to come out and fetch them. As soon as the baskets were carried
+      well within the marked line, the young girls exhibited every sign of
+      pleasure, and calling aloud, &ldquo;Korong! Korong!&rdquo;&mdash;that
+      mysterious Polynesian word of whose import Felix was ignorant&mdash;they
+      retired once more by tortuous paths through the surrounding jungle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why do they bring us presents?&rdquo; Felix asked at last of his
+      Shadow, after this curious pantomime had been performed some three or four
+      times. &ldquo;Are they always going to keep us in such plenty?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Shadow looked back at him with an air of considerable surprise.
+      &ldquo;They bring presents, of course,&rdquo; he said, in his own tongue,
+      &ldquo;because they are badly in want of rain. We have had much drought of
+      late in Boupari; we need water from heaven. The banana-bushes wither; the
+      flowers on the bread-fruit tree do not swell to breadfruit; the yams are
+      thirsty. Therefore the fathers send their daughters with presents, maidens
+      of the villages, all marriageable girls, to ask for rainfall. But they
+      will always provide for you, and also for the Queen, however you behave;
+      for you are both Korong. Tu-Kila-Kila has said so, and Heaven has accepted
+      you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean by Korong?&rdquo; Felix asked, with some
+      trepidation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Shadow merely looked back at him with a sort of blank surprise that
+      anybody should be ignorant of so simple a conception. &ldquo;Why, Korong
+      is Korong,&rdquo; he answered, aghast. &ldquo;You are Korong yourself. The
+      Queen of the Clouds is Korong, too. You are both Korong; that is why they
+      all treat you with such respect and reverence.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And that was as much as Felix could elicit by his subtlest questions from
+      his taciturn Shadow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In fact, it was clear that in the open, at least, the Shadow was averse to
+      being observed in familiar conversation with Felix. During the heat of the
+      day, however, when they sat alone within the hut, he was much more
+      communicative. Then he launched forth pretty freely into talk about the
+      island and its life, which would no doubt have largely enlightened Felix,
+      had it not been for two drawbacks to their means of inter-communication.
+      In the first place, the Boupari dialect, though agreeing in all essentials
+      with the Polynesian of Fiji, nevertheless contained a great many words and
+      colloquial expressions unknown to the Fijians; this being particularly the
+      case, as Felix soon remarked, in the whole vocabulary of religious rites
+      and ceremonies. And in the second place, the Shadow was so rigidly bound
+      by his own narrow and insular set of ideas, that he couldn&rsquo;t
+      understand the difficulty Felix felt in throwing himself into them. Over
+      and over again, when Felix asked him to explain some word or custom, he
+      would repeat, with naïve impatience, &ldquo;Why, Korong is Korong,&rdquo;
+      or &ldquo;Tula is just Tula; even a child must surely know what Tula is;
+      much more yourself, who are indeed Korong, and who have come from the sun
+      to bring fresh fire to us.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the adjoining hut, Muriel, who was now beginning in some small degree
+      to get rid of her most pressing fear for the immediate future, and whom
+      the obvious reality of the taboo had reassured for the moment, sat with
+      Mali, her own particular Shadow, unravelling the mystery of the girl&rsquo;s
+      knowledge of English.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mali, indeed, like the other Shadow, showed every disposition to indulge
+      in abundant conversation, as soon as she found herself well within the
+      hut, alone with her mistress, and secluded from the prying eyes of all the
+      other islanders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you be afraid, missy,&rdquo; she said, with genuine
+      kindliness in her tone, as soon as the gifts of yam and bread-fruit had
+      all been duly housed and garnered. &ldquo;No harm come to you. You Korong,
+      you know. You very great Taboo. Tu-Kila-Kila send King of Fire and King of
+      Water to make taboo over you, so nobody hurt you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Muriel burst into tears at the sound of her own language from those dusky
+      lips, and exclaimed through her sobs, clinging to the girl&rsquo;s hand
+      for comfort as she spoke, &ldquo;Why, how did you ever come to speak
+      English?&mdash;tell me.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mali looked up at her with a half-astonished air. &ldquo;Oh, I servant in
+      Queensland, of course, missy,&rdquo; she answered, with great composure.
+      &ldquo;Labor vessel come to my island, far away, four, five years ago,
+      steal boy, steal woman. My papa just kill my mamma, because he angry with
+      her, so no want daughters. So my papa sell me and my sister for plenty
+      rum, plenty tobacco, to gentlemen in labor vessel. Gentlemen in labor
+      vessel take Jani and me away, away, to Queensland. Big sea; long voyage.
+      We stop there three yam&mdash;three years&mdash;do service; then great
+      chief in Queensland send us back to my island. My island too faraway;
+      gentleman on ship not find it out; so he land us in little boat on
+      Boupari. Boupari people make temple slave of us.&rdquo; And that was all;
+      to her quite a commonplace, everyday history.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see,&rdquo; Muriel cried. &ldquo;Then you&rsquo;ve been for three
+      years in Australia! And there you learned English. Why, what did you do
+      there?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mali looked back at her with the same matter-of-fact air of composure as
+      before. &ldquo;Oh, me nurse at first,&rdquo; she said, shortly. &ldquo;Then
+      after, me housemaid, live three year in gentleman&rsquo;s house, good
+      gentleman that buy me. Take care of little girl; clean rooms; do
+      everything. Me know how to make English lady quite comfortable. Me tell
+      that to chief; that make him say, &lsquo;Mali, you be Queenie&rsquo;s
+      Shadow.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Muriel in her loneliness even such companionship as that was indeed a
+      consolation. &ldquo;Oh, I&rsquo;m so glad you told him,&rdquo; she cried.
+      &ldquo;If we have to stop here long, before a ship takes us off, it&rsquo;ll
+      be so nice to have you here all the time with me. You won&rsquo;t go away
+      from me ever, will you? You&rsquo;ll always stop with me!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl&rsquo;s surprise showed more profoundly than ever. &ldquo;Me can&rsquo;t
+      go away,&rdquo; she answered, with emphasis. &ldquo;Me your Shadow. That
+      great Taboo. Tu-Kila-Kila great god. If me go away, Tu-Kila-Kila kill me
+      and eat me.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Muriel started back in horror. &ldquo;But, Mali,&rdquo; she said, looking
+      hard at the girl&rsquo;s pleasant brown face, &ldquo;if you were three
+      years in Australia, you&rsquo;re a Christian, surely!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl nodded her head in passive acquiescence. &ldquo;Me Christian in
+      Australia,&rdquo; she answered. &ldquo;Of course me Christian. All folks
+      make Christian when him go to Queensland. That what for me call Mali, and
+      my sister Jani. We have other names on my own island; but when we go to
+      Queensland, gentleman baptize us, call us Mali and Jani. Me Methodist in
+      Queensland. Methodist very good. But Methodist god no live in Boupari. Not
+      any good be Methodist here any longer. Tu-Kila-Kila god here. Him very
+      powerful.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What! Not that dreadful creature that they took us to see this
+      morning!&rdquo; Muriel exclaimed, in horror. &ldquo;Oh, Mali, you can&rsquo;t
+      mean to say they think he&rsquo;s a <i>god</i>, that awful man there!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mali nodded her assent with profound conviction. &ldquo;Yes, yes; him god,&rdquo;
+      she repeated, confidently. &ldquo;Him very powerful. My sister Jani go too
+      near him temple, against taboo&mdash;because her not belong-a Tu-Kila-Kila
+      temple; and last night, when it great feast, plenty men catch Jani, and
+      tie him up in rope; and Tu-Kila-Kila kill him, and plenty Boupari men help
+      Tu-Kila-Kila eat up Jani.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She said it in the same simple, matter-of-fact way as she had said that
+      she was a nurse for three years in Queensland. To her it was a common
+      incident of everyday life. Such accidents <i>will</i> happen, if you break
+      taboo and go too near forbidden temples.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Muriel drew back, and let the pleasant-looking brown girl&rsquo;s hand
+      drop suddenly. &ldquo;You can&rsquo;t mean it,&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;You
+      can&rsquo;t mean he&rsquo;s a god! Such a wicked man as that! Oh, his very
+      look&rsquo;s too horrible.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mali drew back in her turn with a somewhat terrified air, and peeped
+      suspiciously around her, as if to make sure whether any one was listening.
+      &ldquo;Oh, hush,&rdquo; she said, anxiously. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t must talk
+      like that. If Tu-Kila-Kila hear, him scorch us up to ashes. Him very great
+      god! Him good! Him powerful!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How can he be good if he does such awful things?&rdquo; Muriel
+      exclaimed, energetically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mali peered around her once more with terrified eyes in the same uneasy
+      way. &ldquo;Take care,&rdquo; she said again. &ldquo;Him god! Him
+      powerful! Him can do no wrong. Him King of the Trees! Him King of Heaven!
+      On Boupari island, Methodist god not much; no god so great like
+      Tu-Kila-Kila.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But a <i>man</i> can&rsquo;t be a god!&rdquo; Muriel exclaimed,
+      contemptuously. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s nothing but a man! a savage! A cannibal!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mali looked back at her in wondering surprise. &ldquo;Not in Queensland,&rdquo;
+      she answered, calmly&mdash;to her, all the world naturally divided itself
+      into Queensland and Polynesia&mdash;&ldquo;no god in Queensland. Governor,
+      him very great chief; but him no god like Tu-Kila-Kila. Methodist god in
+      sky, him only god that live in Queensland. But no use worship Methodist
+      god over here in Boupari. Him no live here. Tu-Kila-Kila live here. All
+      god here make out of man. Live in man. Korong! What for you say a man can&rsquo;t
+      be a god! You god yourself! White gentleman there, god! Korong, Korong.
+      Chief put you in Heaven, so make you a god. People pray to you now. People
+      bring you presents.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t mean to say,&rdquo; Muriel cried, &ldquo;they bring
+      me these things because they think me a goddess?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mali nodded a grave assent. &ldquo;Same like people give money in church
+      in Queensland,&rdquo; she answered, promptly. &ldquo;Ask you make rain,
+      make plenty crop, make bread-fruit grow, make banana, make plantain. You
+      Korong now. While your time last, Queenie, people give you plenty of
+      present.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;While my time last?&rdquo; Muriel repeated, with a curious sense of
+      discomfort creeping over her slowly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl nodded an easy assent. &ldquo;Yes, while your time last,&rdquo;
+      she answered, laying a small bundle of palm-leaves at Muriel&rsquo;s back
+      by way of a cushion. &ldquo;For now you Korong. By and by, Korong pass to
+      somebody else. This year, you Korong. So people worship you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But nothing that Muriel could say would induce the girl further to explain
+      her meaning. She shook her head and looked very wise. &ldquo;When a god
+      come into somebody,&rdquo; she said, nodding toward Muriel in a mysterious
+      way, &ldquo;then him god himself; him Korong. When the god go away from
+      him, him Korong no longer; somebody else Korong. Queenie Korong now; so
+      people worship him. While him time last, people plenty kind to him.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The day passed away, and night came on. As it approached, heavy clouds
+      drifted up from eastward. Mali busied herself with laying out a rough bed
+      in the hut for Muriel, and making her a pillow of soft moss and the
+      curious lichen-like material that hangs parasitic from the trees, and is
+      commonly known as &ldquo;old man&rsquo;s beard.&rdquo; As both Mali and
+      Felix assured her confidently no harm would come to her within so strict a
+      Taboo, Muriel, worn out with fatigue and terror, lay down at last and
+      slept soundly on this native substitute for a bedstead. She slept without
+      dreaming, while Mali lay at her feet, ready at a moment&rsquo;s call. It
+      was all so strange; and yet she was too utterly wearied to do otherwise
+      than sleep, in spite of her strange and terrible surroundings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix slept, too, for some hours, but woke with a start in the night. It
+      was raining heavily. He could hear the loud patter of a fierce tropical
+      shower on the roof of his hut. His Shadow, at his feet, slept still
+      unmoved; but when Felix rose on his elbow, the Shadow rose on a sudden,
+      too, and confronted him curiously. The young man heard the rain; then he
+      bowed down his face with an awed air, not visible, but audible, in the
+      still darkness. &ldquo;It has come!&rdquo; he said, with superstitious
+      terror. &ldquo;It has come at last! my lord has brought it!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After that, Felix lay awake for some hours, hearing the rain on the roof,
+      and puzzled in his own head by a half-uncertain memory. What was it in his
+      school reading that that ceremony with the water indefinitely reminded him
+      of? Wasn&rsquo;t there some Greek or Roman superstition about shaking your
+      head when water was poured upon it? What could that superstition be, and
+      what light might it cast on that mysterious ceremony? He wished he could
+      remember; but it was so long since he&rsquo;d read it, and he never cared
+      much at school for Greek or Roman antiquities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly, in a lull of the rain, the whole context at once came back with
+      a rush to him. He remembered now he had read it, some time or other, in
+      some classical dictionary. It was a custom connected with Greek
+      sacrifices. The officiating priest poured water or wine on the head of the
+      sheep, bullock, or other victim. If the victim shook its head and knocked
+      off the drops, that was a sign that it was fit for the sacrifice, and that
+      the god accepted it. If the victim trembled visibly, that was a most
+      favorable omen. If it stood quite still and didn&rsquo;t move its neck,
+      then the god rejected it as unfit for his purpose. Couldn&rsquo;t <i>that</i>
+      be the meaning of the ceremony performed on Muriel and himself in &ldquo;Heaven&rdquo;
+      that morning? Were they merely intended as human sacrifices? Were they to
+      be kept meanwhile and, as it were, fed up for the slaughter? It was too
+      horrible to believe; yet it almost looked like it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He wished he knew the meaning of that strange word, &ldquo;Korong.&rdquo;
+      Clearly, it contained the true key to the mystery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Anyhow, he had always his trusty knife. If the worst came to the worst&mdash;those
+      wretches should never harm his spotless Muriel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For he loved her to-night; he would watch over and protect her. He would
+      save her at least from the deadliest of insults.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0007" id="link2HCH0007"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VII. &mdash; INTERCHANGE OF CIVILITIES.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      All night long, without intermission, the heavy tropical rain descended in
+      torrents; at sunrise it ceased, and a bright blue vault of sky stood in a
+      spotless dome over the island of Boupari.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As soon as the sun was well risen, and the rain had ceased, one shy native
+      girl after another came straggling up timidly to the white line that
+      marked the taboo round Felix and Muriel&rsquo;s huts. They came with more
+      baskets of fruit and eggs. Humbly saluting three times as they drew near,
+      they laid down their gifts modestly just outside the line, with many loud
+      ejaculations of praise and gratitude to the gods in their own language.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do they say?&rdquo; Muriel asked, in a dazed and frightened
+      way, looking out of the hut door, and turning in wonder to Mali.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They say, &lsquo;Thank you, Queenie, for rain and fruits,&rsquo;&rdquo;
+      Mali answered, unconcerned, bustling about in the hut. &ldquo;Missy want
+      to wash him face and hands this morning? Lady always wash every day over
+      yonder in Queensland.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Muriel nodded assent. It was all so strange to her. But Mali went to the
+      door and beckoned carelessly to one of the native girls just outside, who
+      drew near the line at the summons, with a somewhat frightened air, putting
+      one finger to her mouth in coyly uncertain savage fashion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fetch me water from the spring!&rdquo; Mali said, authoritatively,
+      in Polynesian. Without a moment&rsquo;s delay the girl darted off at the
+      top of her speed, and soon returned with a large calabash full of fresh
+      cool water, which she lay down respectfully by the taboo line, not daring
+      to cross it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why didn&rsquo;t you get it yourself?&rdquo; Muriel asked of her
+      Shadow, rather relieved than otherwise that Mali hadn&rsquo;t left her. It
+      was something in these dire straits to have somebody always near who could
+      at least speak a little English.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mali started back in surprise. &ldquo;Oh, that would never do,&rdquo; she
+      answered, catching a colloquial phrase she had often heard long before in
+      Queensland. &ldquo;Me missy&rsquo;s Shadow. That great Taboo. If me go
+      away out of missy&rsquo;s sight, very big sin&mdash;very big danger.
+      Man-a-Boupari catch me and kill me like Jani, for no me stop and wait all
+      the time on missy.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was clear that human life was held very cheap on the island of Boupari.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Muriel made her scanty toilet in the hut as well as she was able, with the
+      calabash and water, aided by a rough shell comb which Mali had provided
+      for her. Then she breakfasted, not ill, off eggs and fruit, which Mali
+      cooked with some rude native skill over the open-air fire without in the
+      precincts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After breakfast, Felix came in to inquire how she had passed the night in
+      her new quarters. Already Muriel felt how odd was the contrast between the
+      quiet politeness of his manner as an English gentleman and the strange
+      savage surroundings in which they both now found themselves. Civilization
+      is an attribute of communities; we necessarily leave it behind when we
+      find ourselves isolated among barbarians or savages. But culture is a
+      purely personal and individual possession; we carry it with us wherever we
+      go; and no circumstances of life can ever deprive us of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As they sat there talking, with a deep and abiding sense of awe at the
+      change (Muriel more conscious than ever now of how deep was her interest
+      in Felix Thurstan, who represented for her all that was dearest and best
+      in England), a curious noise, as of a discordant drum or tom-tom, beaten
+      in a sort of recurrent tune, was heard toward the hills; and at its very
+      first sound both the Shadows, flinging themselves upon their faces with
+      every sign of terror, endeavored to hide themselves under the native mats
+      with which the bare little hut was roughly carpeted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What&rsquo;s the matter?&rdquo; Felix cried, in English, to Mali;
+      for Muriel had already explained to him how the girl had picked up some
+      knowledge of our tongue in Queensland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mali trembled in every limb, so that she could hardly speak. &ldquo;Tu-Kila-Kila
+      come,&rdquo; she answered, all breathless. &ldquo;No blackfellow look at
+      him. Burn blackfellow up. You and Missy Korong. All right for you. Go out
+      to meet him!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tu-Kila-Kila is coming,&rdquo; the young man-Shadow said, in
+      Polynesian, almost in the same breath, and no less tremulously. &ldquo;We
+      dare not look upon his face lest he burn us to ashes. He is a very great
+      Taboo. His face is fire. But you two are gods. Step forth to receive him.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix took Muriel&rsquo;s hand in his, somewhat trembling himself, and led
+      her forth on to the open space in front of the huts to meet the man-god.
+      She followed him like a child. She was woman enough for that. She had
+      implicit trust in him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As they emerged, a strange procession met their eyes unawares, coming down
+      the zig-zag path that led from the hills to the shore of the lagoon, where
+      their huts were situated. At its head marched two men&mdash;tall,
+      straight, and supple&mdash;wearing huge feather masks over their faces,
+      and beating tom-toms, decorated with long strings of shiny cowries. After
+      them, in order, came a sort of hollow square of chiefs or warriors,
+      surrounding with fan-palms a central object all shrouded from the view
+      with the utmost precaution. This central object was covered with a huge
+      regal umbrella, from whose edge hung rows of small nautilus and other
+      shells, so as to form a kind of screen, like the Japanese portières now so
+      common in English doorways. Two supporters held it up, one on either side,
+      in long cloaks of feathers. Under the umbrella, a man seemed to move; and
+      as he approached, the natives, to right and left, fled precipitately to
+      their huts, snatching up their naked little ones from the ground as they
+      went, and crying aloud, &ldquo;Taboo, Taboo! He comes! he comes.
+      Tu-Kila-Kila! Tu-Kila-Kila!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The procession wound slowly on, unheeding these common creatures, till it
+      reached the huts. Then the chiefs who formed the hollow square fell back
+      one by one, and the man under the umbrella, with his two supporters, came
+      forward boldly. Felix noticed that they crossed without scruple the thick
+      white line of sand which all the other natives so carefully respected. The
+      man within the umbrella drew aside the curtain of hanging nautilus shells.
+      His face was covered with a thin mask of paper mulberry bark; but Felix
+      knew he was the self-same person whom they had seen the day before in the
+      central temple.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s air was more insolent and arrogant than even before.
+      He was clearly in high spirits. &ldquo;You have done well, O King of the
+      Rain,&rdquo; he said, turning gayly to Felix; &ldquo;and you too, O Queen
+      of the Clouds; you have done right bravely. We have all acquitted
+      ourselves as our people would wish. We have made our showers to descend
+      abundantly from heaven; we have caused the crops to grow; we have wetted
+      the plantain bushes. See; Tu-Kila-Kila, who is so great a god, has come
+      from his own home on the hills to greet you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It has certainly rained in the night,&rdquo; Felix answered, dryly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Tu-Kila-Kila was not to be put off thus. Adjusting his thin mask or
+      veil of bark, so as to hide his face more thoroughly from the inferior
+      god, he turned round once more to the chiefs, who even so hardly dared to
+      look openly upon him. Then he struck an attitude. The man was clearly
+      bursting with spiritual pride. He knew himself to be a god, and was filled
+      with the insolence of his supernatural power. &ldquo;See, my people,&rdquo;
+      he cried, holding up his hands, palm outward, in his accustomed god-like
+      way; &ldquo;I am indeed a great deity&mdash;Lord of Heaven, Lord of Earth,
+      Life of the World, Master of Time, Measurer of the Sun&rsquo;s Course,
+      Spirit of Growth, Creator of the Harvest, Master of Mortals, Bestower of
+      Breath upon Men, Chief Pillar of Heaven!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The warriors bowed down before their bloated master with unquestioning
+      assent. &ldquo;Giver of Life to all the host of the gods,&rdquo; they
+      cried, &ldquo;you are indeed a mighty one. Weigher of the equipoise of
+      Heaven and Earth, we acknowledge your might; we give you thanks eternally.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila swelled with visible importance. &ldquo;Did I not tell you,
+      my meat,&rdquo; he exclaimed, &ldquo;I would bring you new gods, great
+      spirits from the sun, fetchers of fire from my bright home in the heavens?
+      And have they not come? Are they not here to-day? Have they not brought
+      the precious gift of fresh fire with them?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tu-Kila-Kila speaks true,&rdquo; the chiefs echoed, submissively,
+      with bent heads.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did I not make one of them King of the Rain?&rdquo; Tu-Kila-Kila
+      asked once more, stretching one hand toward the sky with theatrical
+      magnificence. &ldquo;Did I not declare the other Queen of the Clouds in
+      Heaven? And have I not caused them to bring down showers this night upon
+      our crops? Has not the dry earth drunk? Am I not the great god, the
+      Saviour of Boupari?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tu-Kila-Kila says well,&rdquo; the chiefs responded, once more, in
+      unanimous chorus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila struck another attitude with childish self-satisfaction.
+      &ldquo;I go into the hut to speak with my ministers,&rdquo; he said,
+      grandiloquently. &ldquo;Fire and Water, wait you here outside while I
+      enter and speak with my friends from the sun, whom I have brought for the
+      salvation of the crops to Boupari.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The King of Fire and the King of Water, supporting the umbrella, bowed
+      assent to his words. Tu-Kila-Kila motioned Felix and Muriel into the
+      nearest hut. It was the one where the two Shadows lay crouching in terror
+      among the native mats. As the god tried to enter, the two cowering
+      wretches set up a loud shout, &ldquo;Taboo! Taboo! Mercy! Mercy! Mercy!&rdquo;
+      Tu-Kila-Kila retreated with a contemptuous smile. &ldquo;I want to see you
+      alone,&rdquo; he said, in Polynesian, to Felix. &ldquo;Is the other hut
+      empty? If not, go in and cut their throats who sit there, and make the
+      place a solitude for Tu-Kila-Kila.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is no one in the hut,&rdquo; Felix answered, with a nod,
+      concealing his disgust at the command as far as he was able.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is well,&rdquo; Tu-Kila-Kila answered, and walked into it
+      carelessly. Felix followed him close and deemed it best to make Muriel
+      enter also.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As soon-as they were alone, Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s manner altered greatly.
+      &ldquo;Come, now,&rdquo; he said, quite genially, yet with a curious
+      under-current of hate in his steely gray eye; &ldquo;we three are all
+      gods. We who are in heaven need have no secrets from one another. Tell me
+      the truth; did you really come to us direct from the sun, or are you
+      sailing gods, dropped from a great canoe belonging to the warriors who
+      seek laborers for the white men in the distant country?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix told him briefly, in as few words as possible, the story of their
+      arrival.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila listened with lively interest, then he said, very decisively,
+      with great bravado, &ldquo;It was <i>I</i> who made the big wave wash your
+      sister overboard. I sent it to your ship. I wanted a Korong just now in
+      Boupari. It was <i>I</i> who brought you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are mistaken,&rdquo; Felix said, simply, not thinking it worth
+      while to contradict him further. &ldquo;It was a purely natural accident.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, tell me,&rdquo; the savage god went on once more, eying him
+      close and sharp, &ldquo;they say you have brought fresh fire from the sun
+      with you, and that you know how to make it burst out like lightning at
+      will. My people have seen it. They tell me the wonder. I wish to see it
+      too. We are all gods here; we need have no secrets. Only, I didn&rsquo;t
+      want to let those common people outside see I asked you to show me. Make
+      fire leap forth. I desire to behold it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix took out the match-box from his pocket, and struck a vesta
+      carefully. Tu-Kila-Kila looked on with profound interest. &ldquo;It is
+      wonderful,&rdquo; he said, taking the vesta in his own hand as it burned,
+      and examining it closely. &ldquo;I have heard of this before, but I have
+      never seen it. You are indeed gods, you white men, you sailors of the sea.&rdquo;
+      He glanced at Muriel. &ldquo;And the woman, too,&rdquo; he said, with a
+      horrible leer, &ldquo;the woman is pretty.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix took the measure of his man at once. He opened his knife, and held
+      it up threateningly. &ldquo;See here, fellow,&rdquo; he said, in a low,
+      slow tone, but with great decision, &ldquo;if you dare to speak or look
+      like that at that lady&mdash;god or no god, I&rsquo;ll drive this knife
+      straight up to the handle in your heart, though your people kill me for it
+      afterward ten thousand times over. I am not afraid of you. These savages
+      may be afraid, and may think you are a god; but if you are, then I am a
+      god ten thousand times stronger than you. One more word&mdash;one more
+      look like that, I say&mdash;and I plunge this knife remorselessly into
+      you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila drew back, and smiled benignly. Stalwart ruffian as he was,
+      and absolute master of his own people&rsquo;s lives, he was yet afraid in
+      a way of the strange new-comer. Vague stories of the men with white faces&mdash;the
+      &ldquo;sailing gods&rdquo;&mdash;had reached him from time to time; and
+      though only twice within his memory had European boats landed on his
+      island, he yet knew enough of the race to know that they were at least
+      very powerful deities&mdash;more powerful with their weapons than even he
+      was. Besides, a man who could draw down fire from heaven with a piece of
+      wax and a little metal box might surely wither him to ashes, if he would,
+      as he stood before him. The very fact that Felix bearded him thus openly
+      to his face astonished and somewhat terrified the superstitious savage.
+      Everybody else on the island was afraid of him; then certainly a man who
+      was not afraid must be the possessor of some most efficacious and magical
+      medicine. His one fear now was lest his followers should hear and discover
+      his discomfiture. He peered about him cautiously, with that careful gleam
+      shining bright in his eye; then he said with a leer, in a very low voice,
+      &ldquo;We two need not quarrel. We are both of us gods. Neither of us is
+      the stronger. We are equal, that&rsquo;s all. Let us live like brothers,
+      not like enemies, on the island.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want to be your brother,&rdquo; Felix answered,
+      unable to conceal his loathing any more. &ldquo;I hate and detest you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What does he say?&rdquo; Muriel asked, in an agony of fear at the
+      savage&rsquo;s black looks. &ldquo;Is he going to kill us?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; Felix answered, boldly. &ldquo;I think he&rsquo;s afraid
+      of us. He&rsquo;s going to do nothing. You needn&rsquo;t fear him.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can she not speak?&rdquo; the savage asked, pointing with his
+      finger somewhat rudely toward Muriel. &ldquo;Has she no voice but this,
+      the chatter of birds? Does she not know the human language?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She can speak,&rdquo; Felix replied, placing himself like a shield
+      between Muriel and the astonished savage. &ldquo;She can speak the
+      language of the people of our distant country&mdash;a beautiful language
+      which is as far superior to the speech of the brown men of Polynesia as
+      the sun in the heavens is superior to the light of a candlenut. But she
+      can&rsquo;t speak the wretched tongue of you Boupari cannibals. I thank
+      Heaven she can&rsquo;t, for it saves her from understanding the hateful
+      things your people would say of her. Now go! I have seen already enough of
+      you. I am not afraid. Remember, I am as powerful a god as you. I need not
+      fear. You cannot hurt me.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A baleful light gleamed in the cannibal&rsquo;s eye. But he thought it
+      best to temporize. Powerful as he was on his island, there was one thing
+      yet more powerful by far than he; and that was Taboo&mdash;the custom and
+      superstition handed down from his ancestors, These strangers were Korong;
+      he dare not touch them, except in the way and manner and time appointed by
+      custom. If he did, god as he was, his people themselves would turn and
+      rend him. He was a god, but he was bound on every side by the strictest
+      taboos. He dare not himself offer violence to Felix.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So he turned with a smile and bided his time. He knew it would come. He
+      could afford to laugh. Then, going to the door, he said, with his grand
+      affable manner to his chiefs around, &ldquo;I have spoken with the gods,
+      my ministers, within. They have kissed my hands. My rain has fallen. All
+      is well in the land. Arise, let us go away hence to my temple.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The savages put themselves in marching order at once. &ldquo;It is the
+      voice of a god,&rdquo; they said, reverently. &ldquo;Let us take back
+      Tu-Kila-Kila to his temple home. Let us escort the lord of the divine
+      umbrella. Wherever he is, there trees and plants put forth green leaves
+      and flourish. At his bidding flowers bloom and springs of water rise up in
+      fountains. His presence diffuses heavenly blessings.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think,&rdquo; Felix said, turning to poor, terrified Muriel,
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve sent the wretch away with a bee in his bonnet.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0008" id="link2HCH0008"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VIII. &mdash; THE CUSTOMS OF BOUPARI.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Human nature cannot always keep on the full stretch of excitement. It was
+      wonderful to both Felix and Muriel how soon they settled down into a quiet
+      routine of life on the island of Boupari. A week passed away&mdash;two
+      weeks&mdash;three weeks&mdash;and the chances of release seemed to grow
+      slenderer and slenderer. All they could do now was to wait for the stray
+      accident of a passing ship, and then try, if possible, to signal it, or to
+      put out to it in a canoe, if the natives would allow them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile, their lives for the moment seemed fairly safe. Though for the
+      first few days they lived in constant alarm, this feeling, after a time,
+      gave way to one of comparative security. The strange institution of Taboo
+      protected them more efficiently in their wattled huts than the whole
+      police force of London could have done in a Belgravian mansion. There
+      thieves break through and steal, in spite of bolts and bars and
+      metropolitan constables; but at Boupari no native, however daring or
+      however wicked, would ever venture to transgress the narrow line of white
+      coral sand which protected the castaways like an intangible wall from all
+      outer interference. Within this impalpable ring-fence they were absolutely
+      safe from all rude intrusion, save that of the two Shadows, who waited
+      upon them, day and night, with unfailing willingness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In other respects, considering the circumstances, their life was an easy
+      one. The natives brought them freely of their simple store&mdash;yam,
+      taro, bread-fruit, and cocoanut, with plenty of fish, crabs, and lobsters,
+      as well as eggs by the basketful, and even sometimes chickens. They
+      required no pay beyond a nod and a smile, and went away happy at those
+      slender recognitions. Felix discovered, in fact, that they had got into a
+      region where the arid generalizations of political economy do not apply;
+      where Adam Smith is unread, and Mill neglected; where the medium of
+      exchange is an unknown quantity, and where supply and demand readjust
+      themselves continuously by simpler and more generous principles than the
+      familiar European one of &ldquo;the higgling of the market.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The people, too, though utter savages, were not in their own way
+      altogether unpleasing. It was their customs and superstitions, rather than
+      themselves, that were so cruel and horrible. Personally, they seemed for
+      the most part simple-minded and good natured creatures. At first, indeed,
+      Muriel was afraid to venture for a step beyond the precincts of their own
+      huts; and it was long before she could make up her mind to go alone
+      through the jungle paths with Mali, unaccompanied by Felix. But by degrees
+      she learned that she could walk by herself (of course, with the inevitable
+      Shadow ever by her side) over the whole island, and meet everywhere with
+      nothing from men, women, and children but the utmost respect and gracious
+      courtesy. The young lads, as she passed, would stand aside from the path,
+      with downcast eyes, and let her go by with all the politeness of
+      chivalrous English gentlemen. The old men would raise their eyes, but
+      cross their hands on their breasts, and stand motionless for a few minutes
+      till she got almost out of sight. The women would bring their pretty brown
+      babies for the fair English lady to admire or to pat on the head; and when
+      Muriel now and again stooped down to caress some fat little naked child,
+      lolling in the dust outside the hut, with true tropical laziness, the
+      mothers would run up at the sight with delight and joy, and throw
+      themselves down in ecstacies of gratitude for the notice she had taken of
+      their favored little ones. &ldquo;The gods of Heaven,&rdquo; they would
+      say, with every sign of pleasure, &ldquo;have looked graciously upon our
+      Unaloa.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At first Felix and Muriel were mainly struck with the politeness and
+      deference which the natives displayed toward them. But after a time Felix
+      at least began to observe, behind it all, that a certain amount of
+      affection, and even of something like commiseration as well, seemed to be
+      mingled with the respect and reverence showered upon them by their hosts.
+      The women, especially, were often evidently touched by Muriel&rsquo;s
+      innocence and beauty. As she walked past their huts with her light,
+      girlish tread, they would come forth shyly, bowing many times as they
+      approached, and offer her a long spray of the flowering hibiscus, or a
+      pretty garland of crimson ti-leaves, saying at the same time, many times
+      over, in their own tongue, &ldquo;Receive it, Korong; receive it, Queen of
+      the Clouds! You are good. You are kind. You are a daughter of the Sun. We
+      are glad you have come to us.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A young girl soon makes herself at home anywhere; and Muriel, protected
+      alike by her native innocence and by the invisible cloak of Polynesian
+      taboo, quickly learned to understand and to sympathize with these poor
+      dusky mothers. One morning, some weeks after their arrival, she passed
+      down the main street of the village, accompanied by Felix and their two
+      attendants, and reached the <i>marae</i>&mdash;the open forum or place of
+      public assembly&mdash;which stood in its midst; a circular platform,
+      surrounded by bread-fruit trees, under whose broad, cool shade the people
+      were sitting in little groups and talking together. They were dressed in
+      the regular old-time festive costume of Polynesia; for Boupari, being a
+      small and remote island, too insignificant to be visited by European
+      ships, retained still all its aboriginal heathen manners and customs. The
+      sight was, indeed, a curious and picturesque one. The girls, large-limbed,
+      soft-skinned, and with delicately rounded figures, sat on the ground,
+      laughing and talking, with their knees crossed under them; their wrists
+      were encinctured with girdles of dark-red dracæna leaves, their swelling
+      bosoms half concealed, half accentuated by hanging necklets of flowers.
+      Their beautiful brown arms and shoulders were bare throughout; their long,
+      black hair was gracefully twined and knotted with bright scarlet flowers.
+      The men, strong and stalwart, sat behind on short stools or lounged on the
+      buttressed roots of the bread-fruit trees, clad like the women in narrow
+      waist-belts of the long red dracæna leaves, with necklets of sharks&rsquo;
+      teeth, pendent chain of pearly shells, a warrior&rsquo;s cap on their
+      well-shaped heads, and an armlet of native beans, arranged below the
+      shoulder, around their powerful arms. Altogether, it was a striking and
+      beautiful picture. Muriel, now almost released from her early sense of
+      fear, stood still to look at it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The men and girls were laughing and chatting merrily together. Most of
+      them were engaged in holding up before them fine mats; and a row of
+      mulberry cloth, spread along on the ground, led to a hut near one side of
+      the <i>marae</i>. Toward this the eyes of the spectators were turned.
+      &ldquo;What is it, Mali?&rdquo; Muriel whispered, her woman&rsquo;s
+      instinct leading her at once to expect that something special was going on
+      in the way of local festivities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Mali answered at once, with many nods and smiles, &ldquo;All right,
+      Missy Queenie. Him a wedding, a marriage.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The words had hardly escaped her lips when a very pretty young girl, half
+      smothered in flowers, and decked out in beads and fancy shells, emerged
+      slowly from the hut, and took her way with stately tread along the path
+      carpeted with native cloth. She was girt round the waist with rich-colored
+      mats, which formed a long train, like a court dress, trailing on the
+      ground five or six feet behind her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s the bride, I suppose,&rdquo; Muriel whispered, now
+      really interested&mdash;for what woman on earth, wherever she may be, can
+      resist the seductive delights of a wedding?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, her a bride,&rdquo; Mali answered; &ldquo;and ladies what
+      follow, them her bridesmaids.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the word, six other girls, similarly dressed, though without the train,
+      and demure as nuns, emerged from the hut in slow order, two and two,
+      behind her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Muriel and Felix moved forward with natural curiosity toward the scene.
+      The natives, now ranged in a row along the path, with mats turned inward,
+      made way for them gladly. All seem pleased that Heaven should thus
+      auspiciously honor the occasion; and the bride herself, as well as the
+      bridegroom, who, decked in shells and teeth, advanced from the opposite
+      side along the path to meet her, looked up with grateful smiles at the two
+      Europeans. Muriel, in return, smiled her most gracious and girlish
+      recognition. As the bride drew near, she couldn&rsquo;t refrain from
+      bending forward a little to look at the girl&rsquo;s really graceful
+      costume. As she did so, the skirt of her own European dress brushed for a
+      second against the bride&rsquo;s train, trailed carelessly many yards on
+      the ground behind her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Almost before they could know what had happened, a wild commotion arose,
+      as if by magic, in the crowd around them. Loud cries of &ldquo;Taboo!
+      Taboo!&rdquo; mixed with inarticulate screams, burst on every side from
+      the assembled natives. In the twinkling of an eye they were surrounded by
+      an angry, threatening throng, who didn&rsquo;t dare to draw near, but,
+      standing a yard or two off, drew stone knives freely and shook their
+      fists, scowling, in the strangers&rsquo; faces. The change was appalling
+      in its electric suddenness. Muriel drew back horrified, in an agony of
+      alarm. &ldquo;Oh, what have I done!&rdquo; she cried, piteously, clinging
+      to Felix for support. &ldquo;Why on earth are they angry with us?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know,&rdquo; Felix answered, taken aback himself.
+      &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t say exactly in what you&rsquo;ve transgressed. But
+      you must, unconsciously, in some way have offended their prejudices. I
+      hope it&rsquo;s not much. At any rate they&rsquo;re clearly afraid to
+      touch us.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Missy Queenie break taboo,&rdquo; Mali explained at once, with
+      Polynesian frankness. &ldquo;That make people angry. So him want to kill
+      you. Missy Queenie touch bride with end of her dress. Korong may smile on
+      bride&mdash;that very good luck; but Korong taboo; no must touch him.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The crowd gathered around them, still very threatening in attitude, yet
+      clearly afraid to approach within arm&rsquo;s-length of the strangers.
+      Muriel was much frightened at their noise and at their frantic gestures.
+      &ldquo;Come away,&rdquo; she cried, catching Felix by the arm once more.
+      &ldquo;Oh, what are they going to do to us? Will they kill us for this? I&rsquo;m
+      so horribly afraid! Oh, why did I ever do it!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The poor little bride, meanwhile, left alone on the carpet, and unnoticed
+      by everybody, sank suddenly down on the mats where she stood, buried her
+      face in her hands, and began to sob as if her heart would break.
+      Evidently, something very untoward of some sort had happened to the dusky
+      lady on her wedding morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The final touch was too much for poor Muriel&rsquo;s overwrought nerves.
+      She, too, gave way in a tempest of sobs, and, subsiding on one of the
+      native stools hard by, burst into tears herself with half-hysterical
+      violence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Instantly, as she did so, the whole assembly seemed to change its mind
+      again as if by contagious magic. A loud shout of &ldquo;She cries; the
+      Queen of the Clouds cries!&rdquo; went up from all the assembled mob to
+      heaven. &ldquo;It is a good omen,&rdquo; Toko, the Shadow, whispered in
+      Polynesian to Felix, seeing his puzzled look. &ldquo;We shall have plenty
+      of rain now; the clouds will break; our crops will flourish.&rdquo; Almost
+      before she understood it, Muriel was surrounded by an eager and friendly
+      crowd, still afraid to draw near, but evidently anxious to see and to
+      comfort and console her. Many of the women eagerly held forward their
+      native mats, which Mali took from them, and, pressing them for a second
+      against Muriel&rsquo;s eyes, handed them back with just a suspicion of wet
+      tears left glistening in the corner. The happy recipients leaped and
+      shouted with joy. &ldquo;No more drought!&rdquo; they cried merrily, with
+      loud shouts and gesticulations. &ldquo;The Queen of the Clouds is good:
+      she will weep well from heaven upon my yam and taro plots!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Muriel looked up, all dazed, and saw, to her intense surprise, the crowd
+      was now nothing but affection and sympathy. Slowly they gathered in closer
+      and closer, till they almost touched the hem of her robe; then the men
+      stood by respectfully, laying their fingers on whatever she had wetted
+      with her tears, while the women and girls took her hand in theirs and
+      pressed it sympathetically. Mali explained their meaning with ready
+      interpretation. &ldquo;No cry too much, them say,&rdquo; she observed,
+      nodding her head sagely. &ldquo;Not good for Missy Queenie to cry too
+      much. Them say, kind lady, be comforted.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was genuine good-nature in the way they consoled her; and Felix was
+      touched by the tenderness of those savage hearts; but the additional
+      explanation, given him in Polynesian by his own Shadow, tended somewhat to
+      detract from the disinterestedness of their sympathy. &ldquo;They say,
+      &lsquo;It is good for the Queen of the Clouds to weep,&rsquo;&rdquo; Toko
+      said, with frank bluntness; &ldquo;&lsquo;but not too much&mdash;for fear
+      the rain should wash away all our yam and taro plants.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By this time the little bride had roused herself from her stupor, and,
+      smiling away as if nothing had happened, said a few words in a very low
+      voice to Felix&rsquo;s Shadow. The Shadow turned most respectfully to his
+      master, and, touching his sleeve-link, which was of bright gold, said, in
+      a very doubtful voice, &ldquo;She asks you, oh king, will you allow her,
+      just for to-day, to wear this ornament?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix unbuttoned the shining bauble at once, and was about to hand it to
+      the bride with polite gallantry. &ldquo;She may wear it forever, for the
+      matter of that, if she likes,&rdquo; he said, good-humoredly. &ldquo;I
+      make her a present of it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the bride drew back as before in speechless terror, as he held out his
+      hand, and seemed just on the point of bursting out into tears again at
+      this untoward incident. The Shadow intervened with fortunate perception of
+      the cause of the misunderstanding. &ldquo;Korong must not touch or give
+      anything to a bride,&rdquo; he said, quietly; &ldquo;not with his own
+      hand. He must not lay his finger on her; that would be unlucky. But he may
+      hand it by his Shadow.&rdquo; Then he turned to his fellow-tribesmen.
+      &ldquo;These gods,&rdquo; he said, in an explanatory voice, like one
+      bespeaking forgiveness, &ldquo;though they are divine, and Korong, and
+      very powerful&mdash;see, they have come from the sun, and they are but
+      strangers in Boupari&mdash;they do not yet know the ways of our island.
+      They have not eaten of human flesh. They do not understand Taboo. But they
+      will soon be wiser. They mean very well, but they do not know. Behold, he
+      gives her this divine shining ornament from the sun as a present!&rdquo;
+      And, taking it in his hand, he held it up for a moment to public
+      admiration. Then he passed on the trinket ostentatiously to the bride,
+      who, smiling and delighted, hung it low on her breast among her other
+      decorations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The whole party seemed so surprised and gratified at this proof of
+      condescension on the part of the divine stranger that they crowded round
+      Felix once more, praising and thanking him volubly. Muriel, anxious to
+      remove the bad impression she had created by touching the bride&rsquo;s
+      dress, hastily withdrew her own little brooch and offered it in turn to
+      the Shadow as an additional present. But Toko, shaking his head
+      vigorously, pointed with his forefinger many times to Mali. &ldquo;Toko
+      say him no can take it,&rdquo; Mali explained hastily, in her broken
+      English. &ldquo;Him no your Shadow; me your Shadow; me do everything for
+      you; me give it to the lady.&rdquo; And, taking the brooch in her hand,
+      she passed it over in turn amid loud cries of delight and shouts of
+      approval.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thereupon, the ceremony began all over again. They seemed by their
+      intervention to have interrupted some set formula. At its close the women
+      crowded around Muriel and took her hand in theirs, kissing it many times
+      over, with tears in their eyes, and betraying an immense amount of genuine
+      feeling. One phrase in Polynesian they repeated again and again; a phrase
+      that made Felix&rsquo;s cheek turn white, as he leaned over the poor
+      English girl with a profound emotion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What does it mean that they say?&rdquo; Muriel asked at last,
+      perceiving it was all one phrase, many times repeated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix was about to give some evasive explanation, when Mali interposed
+      with her simple, unthinking translation. &ldquo;Them say, Missy Queenie
+      very good and kind. Make them sad to think. Make them cry to see her. Make
+      them cry to see Missy Queenie Korong. Too good. Too pretty.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why so?&rdquo; Muriel exclaimed, drawing back with some faint
+      presentiment of unspeakable horror.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix tried to stop her; but the girl would not be stopped. &ldquo;Because,
+      when Korong time up,&rdquo; she answered, blurting it out, &ldquo;Korong
+      must&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix clapped his hand to her mouth in wild haste, and silenced her. He
+      knew the worst now. He had divined the truth. But Muriel, at least, must
+      be spared that knowledge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0009" id="link2HCH0009"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IX. &mdash; SOWING THE WIND.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Vaguely and indefinitely one terrible truth had been forced by slow
+      degrees upon Felix&rsquo;s mind; whatever else Korong meant, it implied at
+      least some fearful doom in store, sooner or later, for the persons who
+      bore it. How awful that doom might be, he could hardly imagine; but he
+      must devote himself henceforth to the task of discovering what its nature
+      was, and, if possible, of averting it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet how to reconcile this impending terror with the other obvious facts of
+      the situation? the fact that they were considered divine beings and
+      treated like gods; and the fact that the whole population seemed really to
+      regard them with a devotion and kindliness closely bordering on religious
+      reverence? If Korongs were gods, why should the people want to kill them?
+      If they meant to kill them, why pay them meanwhile such respect and
+      affection?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One point at least was now, however, quite clear to Felix. While the
+      natives, especially the women, displayed toward both of them in their
+      personal aspect a sort of regretful sympathy, he could not help noticing
+      at the same time that the men, at any rate, regarded them also largely in
+      an impersonal light, as a sort of generalized abstraction of the powers of
+      nature&mdash;an embodied form of the rain and the weather. The islanders
+      were anxious to keep their white guests well supplied, well fed, and in
+      perfect health, not so much for the strangers&rsquo; sakes as for their
+      own advantage; they evidently considered that if anything went wrong with
+      either of their two new gods, corresponding misfortunes might happen to
+      their crops and the produce of their bread-fruit groves. Some mysterious
+      sympathy was held to subsist between the persons of the castaways and the
+      state of the weather. The natives effusively thanked them after welcome
+      rain, and looked askance at them, scowling, after long dry spells. It was
+      for this, no doubt, that they took such pains to provide them with
+      attentive Shadows, and to gird round their movements with taboos of
+      excessive stringency. Nothing that the new-comers said or did was
+      indifferent, it seemed, to the welfare of the community; plenty and
+      prosperity depended upon the passing state of Muriel&rsquo;s health, and
+      famine or drought might be brought about at any moment by the slightest
+      imprudence in Felix&rsquo;s diet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How stringent these taboos really were Felix learned by slow degrees alone
+      to realize. From the very beginning he had observed, to be sure, that they
+      might only eat and drink the food provided for them; that they were
+      supplied with a clean and fresh-built hut, as well as with brand-new
+      cocoanut cups, spoons, and platters; that no litter of any sort was
+      allowed to accumulate near their enclosure; and that their Shadows never
+      left them, or went out of their sight, by day or by night, for a single
+      moment. Now, however, he began to perceive also that the Shadows were
+      there for that very purpose, to watch over them, as it were, like guards,
+      on behalf of the community; to see that they ate or drank no tabooed
+      object; to keep them from heedlessly transgressing any unwritten law of
+      the creed of Boupari; and to be answerable for their good behavior
+      generally. They were partly servants, it was true, and partly sureties;
+      but they were partly also keepers, and keepers who kept a close and
+      constant watch upon the persons of their prisoners. Once or twice Felix,
+      growing tired for the moment of this continual surveillance, had tried to
+      give Toko the slip, and to stroll away from his hut, unattended, for a
+      walk through the island, in the early morning, before his Shadow had
+      waked; but on each such occasion he found to his surprise that, as he
+      opened the hut door, the Shadow rose at once and confronted him angrily,
+      with an inquiring eye; and in time he perceived that a thin string was
+      fastened to the bottom of the door, the other end of which was tied to the
+      Shadow&rsquo;s ankle; and this string could not be cut without letting
+      fall a sort of latch or bar which closed the door outside, only to be
+      raised again by some external person.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Clearly, it was intended that the Korong should have no chance of escape
+      without the knowledge of the Shadow, who, as Felix afterward learned,
+      would have paid with his own body by a cruel death for the Korong&rsquo;s
+      disappearance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He might as well have tried to escape his own shadow as to escape the one
+      the islanders had tacked on to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All Felix&rsquo;s energies were now devoted to the arduous task of
+      discovering what Korong really meant, and what possibility he might have
+      of saving Muriel from the mysterious fate that seemed to be held in store
+      for them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One evening, about six weeks after their arrival in the island, the young
+      Englishman was strolling by himself (after the sun sank low in heaven)
+      along a pretty tangled hill-side path, overhung with lianas and rope-like
+      tropical creepers, while his faithful Shadow lingered a step or two
+      behind, keeping a sharp lookout meanwhile on all his movements.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Near the top of a little crag of volcanic rock, in the center of the
+      hills, he came suddenly upon a hut with a cleared space around it,
+      somewhat neater in appearance than any of the native cottages he had yet
+      seen, and surrounded by a broad white belt of coral sand, exactly like
+      that which ringed round and protected their own enclosure. But what
+      specially attracted Felix&rsquo;s attention was the fact that the space
+      outside this circle had been cleared into a regular flower-garden, quite
+      European in the definiteness and orderliness of its quaint arrangement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, who lives here?&rdquo; Felix asked in Polynesian, turning
+      round in surprise to his respectful Shadow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Shadow waved his hand vaguely in an expansive way toward the sky, as
+      he answered, with a certain air of awe, often observable in his speech
+      when taboos were in question, &ldquo;The King of Birds. A very great god.
+      He speaks the bird language.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who is he?&rdquo; Felix inquired, taken aback, wondering vaguely to
+      himself whether here, perchance, he might have lighted upon some stray and
+      shipwrecked compatriot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He comes from the sun like yourselves,&rdquo; the Shadow answered,
+      all deference, but with obvious reserve. &ldquo;He is a very great god. I
+      may not speak much of him. But he is not Korong. He is greater than that,
+      and less. He is Tula, the same as Tu-Kila-Kila.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is he as powerful as Tu-Kila-Kila?&rdquo; Felix asked, with intense
+      interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no, he&rsquo;s not nearly so powerful as that,&rdquo; the
+      Shadow answered, half terrified at the bare suggestion. &ldquo;No god in
+      heaven or earth is like Tu-Kila-Kila. This one is only king of the birds,
+      which is a little province, while Tu-Kila-Kila is king of heaven and
+      earth, of plants and animals, of gods and men, of all things created. At
+      his nod the sky shakes and the rocks tremble. But still, this god is Tula,
+      like Tu-Kila-Kila. He is not for a year. He goes on forever, till some
+      other supplants him.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You say he comes from the sun,&rdquo; Felix put in, devoured with
+      curiosity. &ldquo;And he speaks the bird language? What do you mean by
+      that? Does he speak like the Queen of the Clouds and myself when we talk
+      together?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, dear, no,&rdquo; the Shadow answered, in a very confident tone.
+      &ldquo;He doesn&rsquo;t speak the least bit in the world like that. He
+      speaks shriller and higher, and still more bird-like. It is chatter,
+      chatter, chatter, like the parrots in a tree; tirra, tirra, tirra; tarra,
+      tarra, tarra; la, la, la; lo, lo, lo; lu, lu, lu; li la. And he sings to
+      himself all the time. He sings this way&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then the Shadow, with that wonderful power of accurate mimicry which
+      is so strong in all natural human beings, began to trill out at once, with
+      a very good Parisian accent, a few lines from a well-known song in &ldquo;La
+      Fille de Madame Angot:&rdquo;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+&ldquo;Quand on conspi-re,
+   Quand sans frayeur
+ On pent se di-re
+   Conspirateur,
+ Pour tout le mon-de
+   Il faut avoir
+ Perruque blon-de
+   Et collet noir
+ Perruque blon-de
+   Et collet noir.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s how the King of the Birds sings,&rdquo; the Shadow
+      said, as he finished, throwing back his head, and laughing with all his
+      might at his own imitation. &ldquo;So funny, isn&rsquo;t it? It&rsquo;s
+      exactly like the song of the pink-crested parrot.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, Toko, it&rsquo;s French,&rdquo; Felix exclaimed, using the
+      Fijian word for a Frenchman, which the Shadow, of course, on his remote
+      island, had never before heard. &ldquo;How on earth did he come here?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t tell you,&rdquo; Toko answered, waving his arms
+      seaward. &ldquo;He came from the sun, like yourselves. But not in a
+      sun-boat. It had no fire. He came in a canoe, all by himself. And Mali
+      says&rdquo;&mdash;here the Shadow lowered his voice to a most mysterious
+      whisper&mdash;&ldquo;he&rsquo;s a man-a-oui-oui.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix quivered with excitement. &ldquo;Man-a-oui-oui&rdquo; is the
+      universal name over semi-civilized Polynesia for a Frenchman. Felix seized
+      upon it with avidity. &ldquo;A man-a-oui-oui!&rdquo; he cried, delighted.
+      &ldquo;How strange! How wonderful! I must go in at once to his hut and see
+      him!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had lifted his foot and was just going to cross the white line of
+      coral-sand, when his Shadow, catching him suddenly and stoutly round the
+      waist, pulled him back from the enclosure with every sign of horror,
+      alarm, and astonishment. &ldquo;No, you can&rsquo;t go,&rdquo; he cried,
+      grappling with him with all his force, yet using him very tenderly for all
+      that, as becomes a god. &ldquo;Taboo! Taboo there!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I am a god myself,&rdquo; Felix cried, insisting upon his
+      privileges. If you have to submit to the disadvantages of taboo, you may
+      as well claim its advantages as well. &ldquo;The King of Fire and the King
+      of Water crossed my taboo line. Why shouldn&rsquo;t I cross equally the
+      King of the Birds&rsquo;, then?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So you might&mdash;as a rule,&rdquo; the Shadow answered with
+      promptitude. &ldquo;You are both gods. Your taboos do not cross. You may
+      visit each other. You may transgress one another&rsquo;s lines without
+      danger of falling dead on the ground as common men would do if they broke
+      taboo-lines. But this is the Month of Birds. The king is in retreat. No
+      man may see him except his own Shadow, the Little Cockatoo, who brings him
+      his food and drink. Do you see that hawk&rsquo;s head, stuck upon the post
+      by the door at the side. That is his Special Taboo. He keeps it for this
+      month. Even gods must respect that sign, for a reason which it would be
+      very bad medicine to mention. While the Month of Birds lasts, no man may
+      look upon the king or hear him. If they did, they would die, and the
+      carrion birds would eat them. Come away. This is dangerous.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Scarcely were the words well out of his mouth when from the recesses of
+      the hut a rollicking French voice was heard, trilling out merrily:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+&ldquo;Quand on con-spi-re,
+   Quand, sans frayeur&mdash;&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      Without waiting for more, the Shadow seized Felix&rsquo;s arm in an agony
+      of terror. &ldquo;Come away!&rdquo; he cried, hurriedly, &ldquo;come away!
+      What will become of us? This is horrible, horrible! We have broken taboo.
+      We have heard the god&rsquo;s voice. The sky will fall on us. If his
+      Shadow were to find it out and tell my people, my people would tear us
+      limb from limb. Quick, quick! Hide away! Let us run fast through the
+      forest before any man discover it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Shadow&rsquo;s voice rang deep with alarm. Felix felt he dare not
+      trifle with this superstition. Profound as was his curiosity about the
+      mysterious Frenchman, he was compelled to bottle up his eagerness and
+      anxiety for the moment, and patiently wait till the Month of Birds had run
+      its course, and taken its inconvenient taboo along with it. These
+      limitations were terrible. Yet he counted much upon the information the
+      Frenchman could give him. The man had been some time on the island, it was
+      clear, and doubtless he understood its ways thoroughly; he might cast some
+      light at last upon the Korong mystery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So he went back through the woods with a heart somewhat lighter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not far from their own huts he met Muriel and Mali.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As they walked home together, Felix told his companion in a very few words
+      the strange discovery about the Frenchman, and the impenetrable taboo by
+      which he was at present surrounded. Muriel drew a deep sigh. &ldquo;Oh,
+      Felix,&rdquo; she said&mdash;for they were naturally by this time very
+      much at home with one another, &ldquo;did you ever know anything so
+      dreadful as the mystery of these taboos? It seems as if we should never
+      get really to the bottom of them. Mali&rsquo;s always springing some new
+      one upon me. I don&rsquo;t believe we shall ever be able to leave the
+      island&mdash;we&rsquo;re so hedged round with taboos. Even if we were to
+      see a ship to-day, I don&rsquo;t believe they&rsquo;d allow us to signal
+      it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a red sunset; a lurid, tropical, red-and-green sunset. It boded
+      mischief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were passing by some huts at the moment, and over the stockade of one
+      of them a tree was hanging with small yellow fruits, which Felix knew well
+      in Fiji as wholesome and agreeable. He broke off a small branch as he
+      passed; and offered a couple thoughtlessly to Muriel. She took them in her
+      fingers, and tasted them gingerly. &ldquo;They&rsquo;re not so bad,&rdquo;
+      she said, taking another from the bough. &ldquo;They&rsquo;re very much
+      like gooseberries.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the same moment, Felix popped one into his own mouth, and swallowed it
+      without thinking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Almost before they knew what had happened, with the same extraordinary
+      rapidity as in the case of the wedding, the people in the cottages ran
+      out, with every sign of fear and apprehension, and, seizing the branch
+      from Felix&rsquo;s hands, began upbraiding the two Shadows for their want
+      of attention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We couldn&rsquo;t help it,&rdquo; Toko exclaimed, with every
+      appearance of guilt and horror on his face. &ldquo;They were much too
+      sharp for us. Their hearts are black. How could we two interfere? These
+      gods are so quick! They had picked and eaten them before we ever saw them.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One of the men raised his hand with a threatening air&mdash;but against
+      the Shadow, not against the sacred person of Felix. &ldquo;He will be ill,&rdquo;
+      he said, angrily, pointing toward the white man; &ldquo;and she will, too.
+      Their hearts are indeed black. They have sown the seed of the wind. They
+      have both of them eaten of it. They will both be ill. You deserve to die!
+      And what will come now to our trees and plantations?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The crowd gathered round them, cursing low and horribly. The two terrified
+      Europeans slunk off to their huts, unaware of their exact crime, and
+      closely followed by a scowling but despondent mob of natives. As they
+      crossed their sacred boundary, Muriel cried, with a sudden outburst of
+      tears, &ldquo;Oh, Felix, what on earth shall we ever do to get rid of this
+      terrible, unendurable godship!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The natives without set up a great shout of horror. &ldquo;See, see! she
+      cries!&rdquo; they exclaimed, in indescribable panic. &ldquo;She has eaten
+      the storm-fruit, and already she cries! Oh, clouds, restrain yourselves!
+      Oh, great queen, mercy! Whatever will become of us and our poor huts and
+      gardens!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And for hours they crouched around, beating their breasts and shrieking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That evening, Muriel sat up late in Felix&rsquo;s hut, with Mali by her
+      side, too frightened to go back into her own alone before those angry
+      people. And all the time, just beyond the barrier line, they could hear,
+      above the whistle of the wind around the hut, the droning voices of dozens
+      of natives, cowering low on the ground; they seemed to be going through
+      some litany or chant, as if to deprecate the result of this imprudent
+      action.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are they doing outside?&rdquo; Felix asked of his Shadow at
+      last, after a peculiarly long wail of misery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the Shadow made answer, in very solemn tones, &ldquo;They are trying
+      to propitiate your mightiness, and to avert the omen, lest the rain should
+      fall, and the wind should blow, and the storm-cloud should burst over the
+      island to destroy them.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Felix remembered suddenly of himself that the season when this
+      storm-fruit, or storm-apple, as they called it, was ripe in Fiji, was also
+      the season when the great Pacific cyclones most often swept over the land
+      in full fury&mdash;storms unexampled on any other sea, like that famous
+      one which wrecked so many European men-of-war a few years since in the
+      harbor of Samoa.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And without, the wail came louder and clearer still! &ldquo;If you sow the
+      bread-fruit seed, you will reap the breadfruit. If you sow the wind, you
+      will reap the whirlwind. They have eaten the storm-fruit. Oh, great king,
+      save us!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0010" id="link2HCH0010"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER X. &mdash; REAPING THE WHIRLWIND.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Toward midnight Muriel began to doze lightly from pure fatigue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Put a pillow under her head, and let her sleep,&rdquo; Felix said
+      in a whisper. &ldquo;Poor child, it would be cruel to send her alone
+      to-night into her own quarters.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Mali slipped a pillow of mulberry paper under her mistress&rsquo;s
+      head, and laid it on her own lap, and bent down to watch her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But outside, beyond the line, the natives murmured loud their discontent.
+      &ldquo;The Queen of the Clouds stays in the King of the Rain&rsquo;s hut
+      to-night,&rdquo; they muttered, angrily. &ldquo;She will not listen to us.
+      Before morning, be sure, the Tempest will be born of their meeting to
+      destroy us.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      About two o&rsquo;clock there came a lull in the wind, which had been
+      rising steadily ever since that lurid sunset. Felix looked out of the hut
+      door. The moon was full. It was almost as clear as day with the bright
+      tropical moonlight, silvery in the open, pale green in the shadow. The
+      people were still squatting in great rings round the hut, just outside the
+      taboo line, and beating gongs, and sticks and human bones, to keep time to
+      the lilt of their lugubrious litany.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The air felt unusually heavy and oppressive. Felix raised his eyes to the
+      sky, and saw whisps of light cloud drifting in rapid flight over the
+      scudding moon. Below, an ominous fog bank gathered steadily westward. Then
+      one clap of thunder rent the sky. After it came a deadly silence. The moon
+      was veiled. All was dark as pitch. The natives themselves fell on their
+      faces and prayed with mute lips. Three minutes later, the cyclone had
+      burst upon them in all its frenzy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such a hurricane Felix had never before experienced. Its energy was awful.
+      Round the palm-trees the wind played a frantic and capricious devil&rsquo;s
+      dance. It pirouetted about the atoll in the mad glee of unconsciousness.
+      Here and there it cleared lanes, hundreds of yards in length, among the
+      forest-trees and the cocoanut plantations. The noise of snapping and
+      falling trunks rang thick on the air. At times the cyclone would swoop
+      down from above upon the swaying stem of some tall and stately palm that
+      bent like grass before the wind, break it off short with a roar at the
+      bottom, and lay it low at once upon the ground, with a crash like thunder.
+      In other places, little playful whirlwinds seemed to descend from the sky
+      in the very midst of the dense brushwood, where they cleared circular
+      patches, strewn thick under foot with trunks and branches in their titanic
+      sport, and yet left unhurt all about the surrounding forest. Then again a
+      special cyclone of gigantic proportions would advance, as it were, in a
+      single column against one stem of a clump, whirl round it spirally like a
+      lightning flash, and, deserting it for another, leave it still standing,
+      but turned and twisted like a screw by the irresistible force of its
+      invisible fingers. The storm-god, said Toko, was dancing with the
+      palm-trees. The sight was awful. Such destructive energy Felix had never
+      even imagined before. No wonder the savages all round beheld in it the
+      personal wrath of some mighty spirit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For in spite of the black clouds they could <i>see</i> it all&mdash;both
+      the Europeans and the islanders. The intense darkness of the night was
+      lighted up for them every minute by an almost incessant blaze of sheet and
+      forked lightning. The roar of the thunder mingled with the roar of the
+      tempest, each in turn overtopping and drowning the other. The hut where
+      Felix and Muriel sheltered themselves shook before the storm; the very
+      ground of the island trembled and quivered&mdash;like the timbers of a
+      great ship before a mighty sea&mdash;at each onset of the breakers upon
+      the surrounding fringe-reef. And side by side with it all, to crown their
+      misery, wild torrents of rain, descending in waterspouts, as it seemed, or
+      dashed in great sheets against the roof of their frail tenement, poured
+      fitfully on with fierce tropical energy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the midst of the hut Muriel crouched and prayed with bloodless lips to
+      Heaven. This was too, too terrible. It seemed incredible to her that on
+      top of all they had been called upon to suffer of fear and suspense at the
+      hands of the savages, the very dumb forces of nature themselves should
+      thus be stirred up to open war against them. Her faith in Providence was
+      sorely tried. Dumb forces, indeed! Why, they roared with more terrible
+      voices than any wild beast on earth could possibly compass. The thunder
+      and the wind were howling each other down in emulous din, and the very
+      hiss of the lightning could be distinctly heard, like some huge snake, at
+      times above the creaking and snapping of the trees before the gale in the
+      surrounding forest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Muriel crouched there long, in the mute misery of utter despair. At her
+      feet Mali crouched too, as frightened as herself, but muttering aloud from
+      time to time, in a reproachful voice, &ldquo;I tell Missy Queenie what
+      going to happen. I warn her not. I tell her she must not eat that very bad
+      storm-apple. But Missy Queenie no listen. Her take her own way, then storm
+      come down upon us.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Felix&rsquo;s Shadow, in his own tongue, exclaimed more than once in
+      the self-same tone, half terror, half expostulation, &ldquo;See now what
+      comes from breaking taboo? You eat the storm-fruit. The storm-fruit suits
+      ill with the King of the Rain and the Queen of the Clouds. The heavens
+      have broken loose. The sea has boiled. See what wind and what flood you
+      are bringing upon us.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By and by, above even the fierce roar of the mingled thunder and cyclone,
+      a wild orgy of noise burst upon them all from without the hut. It was a
+      sound as of numberless drums and tom-toms, all beaten in unison with the
+      mad energy of fear; a hideous sound, suggestive of some hateful heathen
+      devil-worship. Muriel clapped her hands to her ears in horror. &ldquo;Oh,
+      what&rsquo;s that?&rdquo; she cried to Felix, at this new addition to
+      their endless alarms. &ldquo;Are the savages out there rising in a body?
+      Have they come to murder us?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps,&rdquo; Felix said, smoothing her hair with his hand, as a
+      mother might soothe her terrified child, &ldquo;perhaps they&rsquo;re
+      angry with us for having caused this storm, as they think, by our foolish
+      action. I believe they all set it down to our having unluckily eaten that
+      unfortunate fruit. I&rsquo;ll go out to the door myself and speak to them.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Muriel clung to his arm with a passionate clinging.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Felix,&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;no! Don&rsquo;t leave me here
+      alone. My darling, I love you. You&rsquo;re all the world there is left to
+      me now, Felix. Don&rsquo;t go out to those wretches and leave me here
+      alone. They&rsquo;ll murder you! they&rsquo;ll murder you! Don&rsquo;t go
+      out, I implore you. If they mean to kill us, let them kill us both
+      together, in one another&rsquo;s arms. Oh, Felix, I am yours, and you are
+      mine, my darling!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the first time either of them had acknowledged the fact; but there,
+      before the face of that awful convulsion of nature, all the little
+      deceptions and veils of life seemed rent asunder forever as by a flash of
+      lightning. They stood face to face with each other&rsquo;s souls, and
+      forgot all else in the agony of the moment. Felix clasped the trembling
+      girl in his arms like a lover. The two Shadows looked on and shook with
+      silent terror. If the King of the Rain thus embraced the Queen of the
+      Clouds before their very eyes, amid so awful a storm, what unspeakable
+      effects might not follow at once from it! But they had too much respect
+      for those supernatural creatures to attempt to interfere with their action
+      at such a moment. They accepted their masters almost as passively as they
+      accepted the wind and the thunder, which they believed to arise from them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix laid his poor Muriel tenderly down on the mud floor again. &ldquo;I
+      <i>must</i> go out, my child,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;For the very love of
+      <i>you</i>, I must play the man, and find out what these savages mean by
+      their drumming.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He crept to the door of the hut (for no man could walk upright before that
+      awful storm), and peered out into the darkness once more, awaiting one of
+      the frequent flashes of lightning. He had not long to wait. In a moment
+      the sky was all ablaze again from end to end, and continued so for many
+      seconds consecutively. By the light of the continuous zigzags of fire,
+      Felix could see for himself that hundreds and hundreds of natives&mdash;men,
+      women, and children, naked, or nearly so, with their hair loose and wet
+      about their cheeks&mdash;lay flat on their faces, many courses deep, just
+      outside the taboo line. The wind swept over them with extraordinary force,
+      and the tropical rain descended in great floods upon their bare backs and
+      shoulders. But the savages, as if entranced, seemed to take no heed of all
+      these earthly things. They lay grovelling in the mud before some unseen
+      power; and beating their tom-toms in unison, with barbaric concord, they
+      cried aloud once more as Felix appeared, in a weird litany that overtopped
+      the tumultuous noise of the tempest, &ldquo;Oh, Storm-God, hear us! Oh,
+      great spirit, deliver us! King of the Rain and Queen of the Clouds,
+      befriend us! Be angry no more! Hide your wrath from your people! Take away
+      your hurricane, and we will bring you many gifts. Eat no longer of the
+      storm-apple&mdash;the seed of the wind&mdash;and we will feed you with yam
+      and turtle, and much choice bread-fruit. Great king, we are yours; you
+      shall choose which you will of our children for your meat and drink; you
+      shall sup on our blood. But take your storm away; do not utterly drown and
+      submerge our island!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As they spoke they crawled nearer and nearer, with gliding serpentine
+      motion, till their heads almost touched the white line of coral. But not a
+      man of them all went one inch beyond it. They stopped there and gazed at
+      him. Felix signed to them with his hand, and pointed vaguely to the sky,
+      as much as to say <i>he</i> was not responsible. At the gesture the whole
+      assembly burst into one loud shout of gratitude. &ldquo;He has heard us,
+      he has heard us!&rdquo; they exclaimed, with a perfect wail of joy.
+      &ldquo;He will not utterly destroy us. He will take away his storm. He
+      will bring the sun and the moon back to us.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix returned into the hut, somewhat reassured so far as the attitude of
+      the savages went. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t be afraid of them, Muriel,&rdquo; he
+      cried, taking her passionately once more in a tender embrace. &ldquo;They
+      daren&rsquo;t cross the taboo. They won&rsquo;t come near; they&rsquo;re
+      too frightened themselves to dream of hurting us.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0011" id="link2HCH0011"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XI. &mdash; AFTER THE STORM.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Next morning the day broke bright and calm, as if the tempest had been but
+      an evil dream of the night, now past forever. The birds sang loud; the
+      lizards came forth from their holes in the wall, and basked, green and
+      gold, in the warm, dry sunshine. But though the sky overhead was blue and
+      the air clear, as usually happen after these alarming tropical cyclones
+      and rainstorms, the memorials of the great wind that had raged all night
+      long among the forests of the island were neither few nor far between.
+      Everywhere the ground was strewn with leaves and branches and huge stems
+      of cocoa-palms. All nature was draggled. Many of the trees were stripped
+      clean of their foliage, as completely as oaks in an English winter; on
+      others, big strands of twisted fibres marked the scars and joints where
+      mighty boughs had been torn away by main force; while, elsewhere, bare
+      stumps alone remained to mark the former presence of some noble dracæna or
+      some gigantic banyan. Bread-fruits and cocoanuts lay tossed in the wildest
+      confusion on the ground; the banana and plantain-patches were beaten level
+      with the soil or buried deep in the mud; many of the huts had given way
+      entirely; abundant wreckage strewed every corner of the island. It was an
+      awful sight. Muriel shuddered to herself to see how much the two that
+      night had passed through.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What the outer fringing reef had suffered from the storm they hardly knew
+      as yet; but from the door of the hut Felix could see for himself how even
+      the calm waters of the inner lagoon had been lashed into wild fury by the
+      fierce swoop of the tempest. Round the entire atoll the solid conglomerate
+      coral floor was scooped under, broken up, chewed fine by the waves, or
+      thrown in vast fragments on the beach of the island. By the eastern shore,
+      in particular, just opposite their hut, Felix observed a regular wall of
+      many feet in height, piled up by the waves like the familiar Chesil Beach
+      near his old home in Dorsetshire. It was the shelter of that temporary
+      barrier alone, no doubt, that had preserved their huts last night from the
+      full fury of the gale, and that had allowed the natives to congregate in
+      such numbers prone on their faces in the mud and rain, upon the
+      unconsecrated ground outside their taboo-line.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But now not an islander was to be seen within ear-shot. All had gone away
+      to look after their ruined huts or their beaten-down plantain-patches,
+      leaving the cruel gods, who, as they thought, had wrought all the mischief
+      out of pure wantonness, to repent at leisure the harm done during the
+      night to their obedient votaries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix was just about to cross the taboo-line and walk down to the shore to
+      examine the barrier, when Toko, his Shadow, laying his hand on his
+      shoulder with more genuine interest and affection than he had ever yet
+      shown, exclaimed, with some horror, &ldquo;Oh, no! Not that! Don&rsquo;t
+      dare to go outside! It would be very dangerous for you. If my people were
+      to catch you on profane soil just now, there&rsquo;s no saying what harm
+      they might do to you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why so?&rdquo; Felix exclaimed, in surprise. &ldquo;Last night,
+      surely, they were all prayers and promises and vows and entreaties.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The young man nodded his head in acquiescence. &ldquo;Ah, yes; last night,&rdquo;
+      he answered. &ldquo;That was very well then. Vows were sore needed. The
+      storm was raging, and you were within your taboo. How could they dare to
+      touch you, a mighty god of the tempest, at the very moment when you were
+      rending their banyan-trees and snapping their cocoanut stems with your
+      mighty arms like so many little chicken-bones? Even Tu-Kila-Kila himself,
+      I expect, the very high god, lay frightened in his temple, cowering by his
+      tree, annoyed at your wrath; he sent Fire and Water among the worshippers,
+      no doubt, to offer up vows and to appease your anger.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Felix remembered, as his Shadow spoke, that, as a matter of fact, he
+      had observed the men who usually wore the red and white feather cloaks
+      among the motley crowd of grovelling natives who lay flat on their faces
+      in the mud of the cleared space the night before, and prayed hard for
+      mercy. Only they were not wearing their robes of office at the moment, in
+      accordance with a well-known savage custom; they had come naked and in
+      disgrace, as befits all suppliants. They had left behind them the insignia
+      of their rank in their own shaken huts, and bowed down their bare backs to
+      the rain and the lightning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I saw them among the other islanders,&rdquo; Felix answered,
+      half-smiling, but prudently remaining within the taboo-line, as his Shadow
+      advised him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Toko kept his hand still on his master&rsquo;s shoulder. &ldquo;Oh, king,&rdquo;
+      he said, beseechingly, and with great solemnity, &ldquo;I am doing wrong
+      to warn you; I am breaking a very great Taboo. I don&rsquo;t know what
+      harm may come to me for telling you. Perhaps Tu-Kila-Kila will burn me to
+      ashes with one glance of his eyes. He may know this minute what I&rsquo;m
+      saying here alone to you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is hard for a white man to meet scruples like this; but Felix was bold
+      enough to answer outright: &ldquo;Tu-Kila-Kila knows nothing of the sort,
+      and can never find out. Take my word for it, Toko, nothing that you say to
+      me will ever reach Tu-Kila-Kila.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Shadow looked at him doubtfully, and trembled as he spoke. &ldquo;I
+      like you, Korong,&rdquo; he said, with a genuinely truthful ring in his
+      voice. &ldquo;You seem to me so kind and good&mdash;so different from
+      other gods, who are very cruel. You never beat me. Nobody I ever served
+      treated me as well or as kindly as you have done. And for <i>your</i> sake
+      I will even dare to break taboo&mdash;if you&rsquo;re quite, quite sure
+      Tu-Kila-Kila will never discover it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m quite sure,&rdquo; Felix answered, with perfect
+      confidence. &ldquo;I know it for certain. I swear a great oath to it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You swear by Tu-Kila-Kila himself?&rdquo; the young savage asked,
+      anxiously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I swear by Tu-Kila-Kila himself,&rdquo; Felix replied at once.
+      &ldquo;I swear, without doubt. He can never know it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is a great Taboo,&rdquo; the Shadow went on, meditatively,
+      stroking Felix&rsquo;s arm. &ldquo;A very great Taboo indeed. A terrible
+      medicine. And you are a god; I can trust you. Well, then, you see, the
+      secret is this: you are Korong, but you are a stranger, and you don&rsquo;t
+      understand the ways of Boupari. If for three days after the end of this
+      storm, which Tu-Kila-Kila has sent Fire and Water to pray and vow against,
+      you or the Queen of the Clouds show yourselves outside your own taboo-line&mdash;why,
+      then, the people are clear of sin; whoever takes you may rend you alive;
+      they will tear you limb from limb and cut you into pieces.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why so?&rdquo; Felix asked, aghast at this discovery. They seemed
+      to live on a perpetual volcano in this wonderful island; and a volcano
+      ever breaking out in fresh places. They could never get to the bottom of
+      its horrible superstitions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because you ate the storm-apple,&rdquo; the Shadow answered,
+      confidently. &ldquo;That was very wrong. You brought the tempest upon us
+      yourselves by your own trespass; therefore, by the custom of Boupari,
+      which we learn in the mysteries, you become full Korong for the sacrifice
+      at once. That makes the term for you. The people will give you all your
+      dues; then they will say, &lsquo;We are free; we have bought you with a
+      price; we have brought your cocoanuts. No sin attaches to us; we are
+      righteous; we are righteous.&rsquo; And then they will kill you, and Fire
+      and Water will roast you and boil you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But only if we go outside the taboo-line?&rdquo; Felix asked,
+      anxiously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only if you go outside the taboo-line,&rdquo; the Shadow replied,
+      nodding a hasty assent. &ldquo;Inside it, till your term comes, even
+      Tu-Kila-Kila himself, the very high god, whose meat we all are, dare never
+      hurt you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Till our term comes?&rdquo; Felix inquired, once more astonished
+      and perplexed. &ldquo;What do you mean by that, my Shadow?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the Shadow was either bound by some superstitious fear, or else
+      incapable of putting himself into Felix&rsquo;s point of view. &ldquo;Why,
+      till you are full Korong,&rdquo; he answered, like one who speaks of some
+      familiar fact, as who should say, till you are forty years old, or, till
+      your beard grows white. &ldquo;Of course, by and by, you will be full
+      Korong. I cannot help you then; but, till that time comes, I would like to
+      do my best by you. You have been very kind to me. I tell you much. More
+      than this, it would not be lawful for me to mention.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And that was the most that, by dexterous questioning, Felix could ever
+      manage to get out of his mysterious Shadow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At the end of three days we will be safe, though?&rdquo; he
+      inquired at last, after all other questions failed to produce an answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes, at the end of three days the storm will have blown over,&rdquo;
+      the young man answered, easily. &ldquo;All will then be well. You may
+      venture out once more. The rain will have dried over all the island. Fire
+      and Water will have no more power over you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix went back to the hut to inform Muriel of this new peril thus
+      suddenly sprung upon them. Poor Muriel, now almost worn out with endless
+      terrors, received it calmly. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m growing accustomed to it
+      all, Felix,&rdquo; she answered, resignedly. &ldquo;If only I know that
+      you will keep your promise, and never let me fall alive into these
+      wretches&rsquo; hands, I shall feel quite safe. Oh, Felix, do you know
+      when you took me in your arms like that last night, in spite of
+      everything, I felt positively happy.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      About ten o&rsquo;clock they were suddenly roused by a sound of many
+      natives, coming in quick succession, single file, to the huts, and
+      shouting aloud, &ldquo;Oh, King of the Rain, oh, Queen of the Clouds, come
+      forth for our vows! Receive your presents!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix went forth to the door to look. With a warning look in his eyes, his
+      Shadow followed him. The natives were now coming up by dozens at a time,
+      bringing with them, in great arm-loads, fallen cocoanuts and breadfruits,
+      and branches of bananas, and large draggled clusters of half-ripe
+      plantains.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, what are all these?&rdquo; Felix exclaimed in surprise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His Shadow looked up at him, as if amused at the absurd simplicity of the
+      question. &ldquo;These are yours, of course,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;yours
+      and the Queen&rsquo;s; they are the windfalls you made. Did you not knock
+      them all off the trees for yourselves when you were coming down in such
+      sheets from the sky last evening?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix wrung his hands in positive despair. It was clear, indeed, that to
+      the minds of the natives there was no distinguishing personally between
+      himself and Muriel, and the rain or the cyclone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will they bring them all in?&rdquo; he asked, gazing in alarm at
+      the huge pile of fruits the natives were making outside the huts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, all,&rdquo; the Shadow answered; &ldquo;they are vows; they
+      are godsends; but if you like, you can give some of them back. If you give
+      much back, of course it will make my people less angry with you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix advanced near the line, holding his hand up before him to command
+      silence. As he did so, he was absolutely appalled himself at the perfect
+      storm of execration and abuse which his appearance excited. The foremost
+      natives, brandishing their clubs and stone-tipped spears, or shaking their
+      fists by the line, poured forth upon his devoted head at once all the most
+      frightful curses of the Polynesian vocabulary. &ldquo;Oh, evil god,&rdquo;
+      they cried aloud with angry faces, &ldquo;oh, wicked spirit! you have a
+      bad heart. See what a wrong you have purposely done us. If your heart were
+      not bad, would you treat us like this? If you are indeed a god, come out
+      across the line, and let us try issues together. Don&rsquo;t skulk like a
+      coward in your hut and within your taboo, but come out and fight us. <i>We</i>
+      are not afraid, who are only men. Why are <i>you</i> afraid of us?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix tried to speak once more, but the din drowned his voice. As he
+      paused, the people set up their loud shouts again. &ldquo;Oh, you wicked
+      god! You eat the storm-apple! You have wrought us much harm. You have
+      spoiled our harvest. How you came down in great sheets last night! It was
+      pitiful, pitiful! We would like to kill you. You might have taken our
+      bread-fruits and our bananas, if you would; we give you them freely; they
+      are yours; here, take them. We feed you well; we make you many offerings.
+      But why did you wish to have our huts also? Why did you beat down our
+      young plantations and break our canoes against the beach of the island?
+      That shows a bad heart! You are an evil god! You dare not defend yourself.
+      Come out and meet us.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0012" id="link2HCH0012"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XII. &mdash; A POINT OF THEOLOGY.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      At last, with great difficulty, Felix managed to secure a certain
+      momentary lull of silence. The natives, clustering round the line till
+      they almost touched it, listened with scowling brows, and brandished
+      threatening spears, tipped with points of stone or shark&rsquo;s teeth or
+      turtle-bone, while he made his speech to them. From time to time, one or
+      another interrupted him, coaxing and wheedling him, as it were, to cross
+      the line; but Felix never heeded them. He was beginning to understand now
+      how to treat this strange people. He took no notice of their threats or
+      their entreaties either.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By and by, partly by words and partly by gestures, he made them understand
+      that they might take back and keep for themselves all the cocoanuts and
+      bread-fruits they had brought as windfalls. At this the people seemed a
+      little appeased. &ldquo;His heart is not quite so bad as we thought,&rdquo;
+      they murmured among themselves; &ldquo;but if he didn&rsquo;t want them,
+      what did he mean? Why did he beat down our huts and our plantations?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Felix tried to explain to them&mdash;a somewhat dangerous task&mdash;that
+      neither he nor Muriel were really responsible for last night&rsquo;s
+      storm; but at that the people, with one accord, raised a great loud shout
+      of unmixed derision. &ldquo;He is a god,&rdquo; they cried, &ldquo;and yet
+      he is ashamed of his own acts and deeds, afraid of what we, mere men, will
+      do to him! Ha! ha! Take care! These are lies that he tells. Listen to him!
+      Hear him!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile, more and more natives kept coming up with windfalls of fruit,
+      or with objects they had vowed in their terror to dedicate during the
+      night; and Felix all the time kept explaining at the top of his voice, to
+      all as they came, that he wanted nothing, and that they could take all
+      back again. This curiously inconsistent action seemed to puzzle the
+      wondering natives strangely. Had he made the storm, then, they asked, and
+      eaten the storm-apple, for no use to himself, but out of pure
+      perverseness? If he didn&rsquo;t even want the windfalls and the objects
+      vowed to him, why had he beaten down their crops and broken their houses?
+      They looked at him meaningly; but they dared not cross that great line of
+      taboo. It was their own superstition alone, in that moment of danger, that
+      kept their hands off those defenceless white people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last a happy idea seemed to strike the crowd. &ldquo;What he wants is a
+      child?&rdquo; they cried, effusively. &ldquo;He thirsts for blood! Let us
+      kill and roast him a proper victim!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix&rsquo;s horror at this appalling proposition knew no bounds. &ldquo;If
+      you do,&rdquo; he cried, turning their own superstition against them in
+      this last hour of need, &ldquo;I will raise up a storm worse even than
+      last night&rsquo;s! You do it at your peril! I want no victim. The people
+      of my country eat not of human flesh. It is a thing detestable, horrible,
+      hateful to God and man. With us, all human life alike is sacred. We spill
+      no blood. If you dare to do as you say, I will raise such a storm over
+      your heads to-night as will submerge and drown the whole of your island.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The natives listened to him with profound interest. &ldquo;We must spill
+      no blood!&rdquo; they repeated, looking aghast at one another. &ldquo;Hear
+      what the King says! We must not cut the victim&rsquo;s throat. We must
+      bind a child with cords and roast it alive for him!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix hardly knew what to do or say at this atrocious proposal. &ldquo;If
+      you roast it alive,&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;you deserve to be all scorched
+      up with lightning. Take care what you do! Spare the child&rsquo;s life! I
+      will have no victim. Beware how you anger me!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the savage no sooner says than he does. With him deliberation is
+      unknown, and impulse everything. In a moment the natives had gathered in a
+      circle a little way off, and began drawing lots. Several children, seized
+      hurriedly up among the crowd, were huddled like so many sheep in the
+      centre. Felix looked on from his enclosure, half petrified with horror.
+      The lot fell upon a pretty little girl of five years old. Without one word
+      of warning, without one sign of remorse, before Felix&rsquo;s very eyes,
+      they began to bind the struggling and terrified child just outside the
+      circle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The white man could stand this horrid barbarity no longer. At the risk of
+      his life&mdash;at the risk of Muriel&rsquo;s&mdash;he must rush out to
+      prevent them. They should never dare to kill that helpless child before
+      his very eyes. Come what might&mdash;though even Muriel should suffer for
+      it&mdash;he felt he <i>must</i> rescue that trembling little creature.
+      Drawing his trusty knife, and opening the big blade ostentatiously before
+      their eyes, he made a sudden dart like a wild beast across the line, and
+      pounced down upon the party that guarded the victim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Was it a ruse to make him cross the line, alone, or did they really mean
+      it? He hardly knew; but he had no time to debate the abstract question.
+      Bursting into their midst, he seized the child with a rush in his circling
+      arms, and tried to hurry back with it within the protecting taboo-line.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Quick as lightning he was surrounded and almost cut down by a furious and
+      frantic mob of half-naked savages. &ldquo;Kill him! Tear him to pieces!&rdquo;
+      they cried in their rage. &ldquo;He has a bad heart! He destroyed our
+      huts! He broke down our plantations! Kill him, kill him, kill him!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As they closed in upon him, with spears and tomahawks and clubs, Felix saw
+      he had nothing left for it now but a hard fight for life to return to the
+      taboo-line. Holding the child in one arm, and striking wildly out with his
+      knife with the other, he tried to hack his way back by main force to the
+      shelter of the taboo-line in frantic lunges. The distance was but a few
+      feet, but the savages pressed round him, half frightened still, yet
+      gnashing their teeth and distorting their faces with anger. &ldquo;He has
+      broken the Taboo,&rdquo; they cried in vehement tones. &ldquo;He has
+      crossed the line willingly. Kill him! Kill him! We are free from sin. We
+      have bought him with a price&mdash;with many cocoanuts!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the sound of the struggle going on so close outside, Muriel rushed in
+      frantic haste and terror from the hut. Her face was pale, but her demeanor
+      was resolute. Before Mali could stop her, she, too, had crossed the sacred
+      line of the coral mark, and had flung herself madly upon Felix&rsquo;s
+      assailants, to cover his retreat with her own frail body.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hold off!&rdquo; she cried, in her horror, in English, but in
+      accents even those savages could read. &ldquo;You shall not touch him!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a fierce effort Felix tore his way back, through the spears and
+      clubs, toward the place of safety. The savages wounded him on the way more
+      than once with their jagged stone spear-tips, and blood flowed from his
+      breast and arms in profusion. But they didn&rsquo;t dare even so to touch
+      Muriel. The sight of that pure white woman, rushing out in her weakness to
+      protect her lover&rsquo;s life from attack, seemed to strike them with
+      some fresh access of superstitious awe. One or two of themselves were
+      wounded by Felix&rsquo;s knife, for they were unaccustomed to steel,
+      though they had a few blades made out of old European barrel-hoops. For a
+      minute or two the conflict was sharp and hotly contested. Then at last
+      Felix managed to fling the child across the line, to push Muriel with one
+      hand at arm&rsquo;s-length before him, and to rush himself within the
+      sacred circle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No sooner had he crossed it than the savages drew up around, undecided as
+      yet, but in a threatening body. Rank behind rank, their loose hair in
+      their eyes, they stood like wild beasts balked of their prey, and yelled
+      at him. Some of them brandished their spears and their stone hatchets
+      angrily in their victims&rsquo; faces. Others contented themselves with
+      howling aloud as before, and piling curses afresh on the heads of the
+      unpopular storm-gods. &ldquo;Look at her,&rdquo; they cried, in their
+      wrath, pointing their skinny brown fingers angrily at Muriel. &ldquo;See,
+      she weeps even now. She would flood us with her rain. She isn&rsquo;t
+      satisfied with all the harm she has poured down upon Boupari already. She
+      wants to drown us.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then a little knot drew up close to the line of taboo itself, and
+      began to discuss in loud and serious tones a pressing question of savage
+      theology and religious practice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They have crossed the line within the three days,&rdquo; some of
+      the foremost warriors exclaimed, in excited voices. &ldquo;They are no
+      longer taboo. We can do as we please with them. We may cross the line now
+      ourselves if we will, and tear them to pieces. Come on! Who follows?
+      Korong! Korong! Let us rend them! Let us eat them!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But though they spoke so bravely they hung back themselves, fearful of
+      passing that mysterious barrier. Others of the crowd answered them back,
+      warmly: &ldquo;No, no; not so. Be careful what you do. Anger not the gods.
+      Don&rsquo;t ruin Boupari. If the Taboo is not indeed broken, then how dare
+      we break it? They are gods. Fear their vengeance. They are, indeed,
+      terrible. See what happened to us when they merely ate of the storm-apple!
+      What might not happen if we were to break taboo without due cause and kill
+      them?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One old, gray-bearded warrior, in particular, held his countrymen back.
+      &ldquo;Mind how you trifle with gods,&rdquo; the old chief said, in a tone
+      of solemn warning. &ldquo;Mind how you provoke them. They are very mighty.
+      When I was young, our people killed three sailing gods who came ashore in
+      a small canoe, built of thin split logs; and within a month an awful
+      earthquake devastated Boupari, and fire burst forth from a mouth in the
+      ground, and the people knew that the spirits of the sailing gods were very
+      angry. Wait, therefore, till Tu-Kila-Kila himself comes, and then ask of
+      him, and of Fire and Water. As Tu-Kila-Kila bids you, that do you do. Is
+      he not our great god, the king of us all, and the guardian of the customs
+      of the island of Boupari?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is Tu-Kila-Kila coming?&rdquo; some of the warriors asked, with
+      bated breath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How should he not come?&rdquo; the old chief asked, drawing himself
+      up very erect. &ldquo;Know you not the mysteries? The rain has put out all
+      the fires in Boupari. The King of Fire himself, even his hearth is cold.
+      He tried his best in the storm to keep his sacred embers still
+      smouldering; but the King of the Rain was stronger than he was, and put it
+      out at last in spite of his endeavors. Be careful, therefore, how you deal
+      with the King of the Rain, who comes down among lightnings, and is so very
+      powerful.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And Tu-Kila-Kila comes to fetch fresh fire?&rdquo; one of the
+      nearest savages asked, with profound awe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He comes to fetch fresh fire, new fire from the sun,&rdquo; the old
+      man answered, with awe in his voice. &ldquo;These foreign gods, are they
+      not strangers from the sun? They have brought the divine seeds of fire,
+      growing in a shining box that reflects the sunlight. They need no
+      rubbing-sticks and no drill to kindle fresh flame. They touch the seed on
+      the box, and, lo, like a miracle, fire bursts forth from the wood
+      spontaneous. Tu-Kila-Kila comes, to behold this miracle.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The warriors hung back with doubtful eyes for a moment. Then they spoke
+      with one accord, &ldquo;Tu-Kila-Kila shall decide. Tu-Kila-Kila!
+      Tu-Kila-Kila! If the great god says the Taboo holds good, we will not hurt
+      or offend the strangers. But if the great god says the Taboo is broken,
+      and we are all without sin&mdash;then, Korong! Korong! we will kill them!
+      We will eat them!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the two parties thus stood glaring at one another, across that narrow
+      imaginary wall, another cry went up to heaven at the distant sound of a
+      peculiar tom-tom. &ldquo;Tu-Kila-Kila comes!&rdquo; they shouted. &ldquo;Our
+      great god approaches! Women, begone! Men, hide your eyes! Fly, fly from
+      the brightness of his face, which is as the sun in glory! Tu-Kila-Kila
+      comes! Fly far, all profane ones!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And in a moment the women had disappeared into space, and the men lay flat
+      on the moist ground with low groans of surprise, and hid their faces in
+      their hands in abject terror.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0013" id="link2HCH0013"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIII. &mdash; AS BETWEEN GODS.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila came up in his grandest panoply. The great umbrella, with the
+      hanging cords, rose high over his head; the King of Fire and the King of
+      Water, in their robes of state, marched slowly by his side; a whole group
+      of slaves and temple attendants, clapping hands in unison, followed
+      obedient at his sacred heels. But as soon as he reached the open space in
+      front of the huts and began to speak, Felix could easily see, in spite of
+      his own agitation and the excitement of the moment, that the implacable
+      god himself was profoundly frightened. Last night&rsquo;s storm had,
+      indeed, been terrible; but Tu-Kila-Kila mentally coupled it with Felix&rsquo;s
+      attitude toward himself at their last interview, and really believed in
+      his own heart he had met, after all, with a stronger god, more powerful
+      than himself, who could make the clouds burst forth in fire and the earth
+      tremble. The savage swaggered a good deal, to be sure, as is often the
+      fashion with savages when frightened; but Felix could see between the
+      lines, that he swaggered only on the familiar principle of whistling to
+      keep your courage up, and that in his heart of hearts he was most
+      unspeakably terrified.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You did not do well, O King of the Rain, last night,&rdquo; he
+      said, after an interchange of civilities, as becomes great gods. &ldquo;You
+      have put out even the sacred flame on the holy hearth of the King of Fire.
+      You have a bad heart. Why do you use us so?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why do you let your people offer human sacrifices?&rdquo; Felix
+      answered, boldly, taking advantage of his position. &ldquo;They are
+      hateful in our sight, these cannibal ways. While we remain on the island,
+      no human life shall be unjustly taken. Do you understand me?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila drew back, and gazed around him suspiciously. In all his
+      experience no one had ever dared to address him like that. Assuredly, the
+      stranger from the sun must be a very great god&mdash;how great, he hardly
+      dared to himself to realize. He shrugged his shoulders. &ldquo;When we
+      mighty deities of the first order speak together, face to face,&rdquo; he
+      said, with an uneasy air, &ldquo;it is not well that the mere common herd
+      of men should overhear our profound deliberations. Let us go inside your
+      hut. Let us confer in private.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They entered the hut alone, Muriel still clinging to Felix&rsquo;s arm, in
+      speechless terror. Then Felix at once began to explain the situation. As
+      he spoke, a baleful light gleamed in Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s eye. The great
+      god removed his mulberry-paper mask. He was evidently delighted at the
+      turn things had taken. If only he dared&mdash;but there; he dared not.
+      &ldquo;Fire and Water would never allow it,&rdquo; he murmured softly to
+      himself. &ldquo;They know the taboos as well as I do.&rdquo; It was clear
+      to Felix that the savage would gladly have sacrificed him if he dared, and
+      that he made no bones about letting him know it; but the custom of the
+      islanders bound him as tightly as it bound themselves, and he was afraid
+      to transgress it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now listen,&rdquo; Felix said, at last, after a long palaver,
+      looking in the savage&rsquo;s face with a resolute air: &ldquo;Tu-Kila-Kila,
+      we are not afraid of you. We are not afraid of all your people. I went out
+      alone just now to rescue that child, and, as you see, I succeeded in
+      rescuing it. Your people have wounded me&mdash;look at the blood on my
+      arms and chest&mdash;but I don&rsquo;t mind for wounds. I mean you to do
+      as I say, and to make your people do so, too. Understand, the nation to
+      which I belong is very powerful. You have heard of the sailing gods who go
+      over the sea in canoes of fire, as swift as the wind, and whose weapons
+      are hollow tubes, that belch forth great bolts of lightning and thunder?
+      Very well, I am one of them. If ever you harm a hair of our heads, those
+      sailing gods will before long send one of their mighty fire-canoes, and
+      bring to bear upon your island their thunder and lightning, and destroy
+      your huts, and punish you for the wrong you have ventured to do us. So now
+      you know. Remember that you act exactly as I tell you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila was evidently overawed by the white man&rsquo;s resolute
+      voice and manner. He had heard before of the sailing gods (as the
+      Polynesians of the old school still call the Europeans); and though but
+      one or two stray individuals among them had ever reached his remote island
+      (mostly as castaways), he was quite well enough acquainted with their
+      might and power to be deeply impressed by Felix&rsquo;s exhortation. So he
+      tried to temporize. &ldquo;Very well,&rdquo; he made answer, with his
+      jauntiest air, assuming a tone of friendly good-fellowship toward his
+      brother-god. &ldquo;I will bear it in mind. I will try to humor you. While
+      your time lasts, no man shall hurt you. But if I promise you that, you
+      must do a good turn for me instead. You must come out before the people
+      and give me a new fire from the sun, that you carry in a shining box about
+      with you. The King of Fire has allowed his sacred flame to go out in
+      deference to your flood; for last night, you know, you came down heavily.
+      Never in my life have I known you come down heavier. The King of Fire
+      acknowledges himself beaten. So give us light now before the people, that
+      they may know we are gods, and may fear to disobey us.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only on one condition,&rdquo; Felix answered, sternly; for he felt
+      he had Tu-Kila-Kila more or less in his power now, and that he could drive
+      a bargain with him. Why, he wasn&rsquo;t sure; but he saw Tu-Kila-Kila
+      attached a profound importance to having the sacred fire relighted, as he
+      thought, direct from heaven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What condition is that?&rdquo; Tu-Kila-Kila asked, glancing about
+      him suspiciously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, that you give up in future human sacrifices.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila gave a start. Then he reflected for a moment. Evidently, the
+      condition seemed to him a very hard one. &ldquo;Do you want all the
+      victims for yourself and her, then?&rdquo; he asked, with a casual nod
+      aside toward Muriel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix drew back, with horror depicted on every line of his face. &ldquo;Heaven
+      forbid!&rdquo; he answered, fervently. &ldquo;We want no bloodshed, no
+      human victims. We ask you to give up these horrid practices, because they
+      shock and revolt us. If you would have your fire lighted, you must promise
+      us to put down cannibalism altogether henceforth in your island.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila hesitated. After all, it was only for a very short time that
+      these strangers could thus beard him. Their day would come soon. They were
+      but Korongs. Meanwhile, it was best, no doubt, to effect a compromise.
+      &ldquo;Agreed,&rdquo; he answered, slowly. &ldquo;I will put down human
+      sacrifices&mdash;so long as you live among us. And I will tell the people
+      your taboo is not broken. All shall be done as you will in this matter.
+      Now, come out before the crowd and light the fire from Heaven.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Remember,&rdquo; Felix repeated, &ldquo;if you break your word, my
+      people will come down upon you, sooner or later, in their mighty
+      fire-canoes, and will take vengeance for your crime, and destroy you
+      utterly.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila smiled a cunning smile. &ldquo;I know all that,&rdquo; he
+      answered. &ldquo;I am a god myself, not a fool, don&rsquo;t you see? You
+      are a very great god, too; but I am the greater. No more of words between
+      us two. It is as between gods. The fire! the fire!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila replaced his mask. They proceeded from the hut to the open
+      space within the taboo-line. The people still lay all flat on their faces.
+      &ldquo;Fire and Water,&rdquo; Tu-Kila-Kila said, in a commanding tone,
+      &ldquo;come forward and screen me!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The King of Fire and the King of Water unrolled a large square of native
+      cloth, which they held up as a screen on two poles in front of their
+      superior deity. Tu-Kila-Kila sat down on the ground, hugging his knees, in
+      the common squatting savage fashion, behind the veil thus readily formed
+      for him. &ldquo;Taboo is removed,&rdquo; he said, in loud, clear tones.
+      &ldquo;My people may rise. The light will not burn them. They may look
+      toward the place where Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s face is hidden from them.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The people all rose with one accord, and gazed straight before them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The King of Fire will bring dry sticks,&rdquo; Tu-Kila-Kila said,
+      in his accustomed regal manner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The King of Fire, sticking one pole of the screen into the ground
+      securely, brought forward a bundle of sun-dried sticks and leaves from a
+      basket beside him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The King of the Rain, who has put out all our hearths with his
+      flood last night, will relight them again with new fire, fresh flame from
+      the sun, rays of our disk, divine, mystic, wonderful,&rdquo; Tu-Kila-Kila
+      proclaimed, in his droning monotone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix advanced as he spoke to the pile, and struck a match before the eyes
+      of all the islanders. As they saw it light, and then set fire to the wood,
+      a loud cry went up once more, &ldquo;Tu-Kila-Kila is great! His words are
+      true! He has brought fire from the sun! His ways are wonderful!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila, from his point of vantage behind the curtain, strove to
+      improve the occasion with a theological lesson. &ldquo;That is the way we
+      have learned from our divine ancestors,&rdquo; he said, slowly; &ldquo;the
+      rule of the gods in our island of Boupari. Each god, as he grows old,
+      reincarnates himself visibly. Before he can grow feeble and die he
+      immolates himself willingly on his own altar; and a younger and a stronger
+      than he receives his spirit. Thus the gods are always young and always
+      with you. Behold myself, Tu-Kila-Kila! Am I not from old times? Am I not
+      very ancient? Have I not passed through many bodies? Do I not spring ever
+      fresh from my own ashes? Do I not eat perpetually the flesh of new
+      victims? Even so with fire. The flames of our island were becoming impure.
+      The King of Fire saw his cinders flickering. So I gave my word. The King
+      of the Rain descended in floods upon them. He put them all out. And now he
+      rekindles them. They burn up brighter and fresher than ever. They burn to
+      cook my meat, the limbs of my victims. Take heed that you do the King of
+      the Rain no harm as long as he remains within his sacred circle. He is a
+      very great god. He is fierce; he is cruel. His taboo is not broken.
+      Beware! Beware! Disobey at your peril. I, Tu-Kila-Kila, have spoken.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he spoke, it seemed to Felix that these strange mystic words about each
+      god springing fresh from his own ashes must contain the solution of that
+      dread problem they were trying in vain to read. That, perhaps, was the
+      secret of Korong. If only they could ever manage to understand it!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila beat his tom-tom twice. In a second all the people fell flat
+      on their faces again. Tu-Kila-Kila rose; the kings of Fire and Water held
+      the umbrella over him. The attendants on either side clapped hands in time
+      to the sacred tom-tom. With proud, slow tread, the god retraced his steps
+      to his own palace-temple; and Muriel and Felix were left alone at last in
+      their dusty enclosure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tu-Kila-Kila hates me,&rdquo; Felix said, later in the day, to his
+      attentive Shadow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; the young man answered, with a tone of natural
+      assent. &ldquo;To be sure he hates you. How could he do otherwise? You are
+      Korong. You may any day be his enemy.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But he&rsquo;s afraid of me, too,&rdquo; Felix went on. &ldquo;He
+      would have liked to let the people tear me in pieces. Yet he dared not
+      risk it. He seems to dread offending me.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; the Shadow replied, as readily as before. &ldquo;He
+      is very much afraid of you. You are Korong. You may any day supplant him.
+      He would like to get rid of you, if he could see his way. But till your
+      time comes he dare not touch you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When will my time come?&rdquo; Felix asked, with that dim
+      apprehension of some horrible end coming over him yet again in all its
+      vague weirdness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Shadow shook his head. &ldquo;That,&rdquo; he answered, &ldquo;it is
+      not lawful for me so much as to mention. I tell you too far. You will know
+      soon enough. Wait, and be patient.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0014" id="link2HCH0014"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIV. &mdash; &ldquo;MR. THURSTAN, I PRESUME.&rdquo;
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Naturally enough, it was some time before Felix and Muriel could recover
+      from the shock of their deadly peril. Yet, strange to say, the natives at
+      the end of three days seemed positively to have forgotten all about it.
+      Their loves and their hates were as shortlived as children&rsquo;s. As
+      soon as the period of seclusion was over, their attentions to the two
+      strangers redoubled in intensity. They were evidently most anxious, after
+      this brief disagreement, to reassure the new gods, who came from the sun,
+      of their gratitude and devotion. The men who had wounded Felix, in
+      particular, now came daily in the morning with exceptional gifts of fish,
+      fruit, and flowers; they would bring a crab from the sea, or a joint of
+      turtle-meat. &ldquo;Forgive us, O king,&rdquo; they cried, prostrating
+      themselves humbly. &ldquo;We did not mean to hurt you; we thought your
+      time had really come. You are a Korong. We would not offend you. Do not
+      refuse us your showers because of our sin. We are very penitent. We will
+      do what you ask of us. Your look is poison. See, here is wood; here are
+      leaves and fire; we are but your meat; choose and cook which you will of
+      us!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was useless Felix&rsquo;s trying to explain to them that he wanted no
+      victims, and no propitiation. The more he protested, the more they brought
+      gifts. &ldquo;He is a very great god,&rdquo; they exclaimed. &ldquo;He
+      wants nothing from us. What can we give him that will be an acceptable
+      gift? Shall we offer him ourselves, our wives, our children?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As for the women, when they saw how thoroughly frightened of them Muriel
+      now was, they couldn&rsquo;t find means to express their regret and
+      devotion. Mothers brought their little children, whom she had patted on
+      the head, and offered them, just outside the line, as presents for her
+      acceptance. They explained to her Shadow that they never meant to hurt
+      her, and that, if only she would venture without the line, as of old, all
+      should be well, and they would love and adore her. Mali translated to her
+      mistress these speeches and prayers. &ldquo;Them say, &lsquo;You come
+      back, Queenie,&rsquo;&rdquo; she explained in her broken Queensland
+      English. &ldquo;&lsquo;Boupari women love you very much. Boupari women
+      glad you come. You kind; you beautiful! All Boupari men and women very
+      much pleased with you and the gentleman, because you give back him
+      cocoanut and fruit that you pick in the storm, and because you bring down
+      fresh fire from heaven.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gradually, after several days, Felix&rsquo;s confidence was so far
+      restored that he ventured to stroll beyond the line again; and he found
+      himself, indeed, most popular among the people. In various ways he picked
+      up gradually the idea that the islanders generally disliked Tu-Kila-Kila,
+      and liked himself; and that they somehow regarded him as Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s
+      natural enemy. What it could all mean he did not yet understand, though
+      some inklings of an explanation occasionally occurred to him. Oh, how he
+      longed now for the Month of Birds to end, in order that he might pay his
+      long-deferred visit to the mysterious Frenchman, from whose voice his
+      Shadow had fled on that fateful evening with such sudden precipitancy. The
+      Frenchman, he judged, must have been long on the island, and could
+      probably give him some satisfactory solution of this abstruse problem.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So he was glad, indeed, when one evening, some weeks later, his Shadow,
+      observing the sky narrowly, remarked to him in a low voice, &ldquo;New
+      moon to-morrow! The Month of Birds will then be up. In the morning you can
+      go and see your brother god at the Abode of Birds without breaking taboo.
+      The Month of Turtles begins at sunrise. My family god is a turtle, so I
+      know the day for it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So great was Felix&rsquo;s impatience to settle this question, that almost
+      before the sun was up next day he had set forth from his hut, accompanied
+      as usual by his faithful Shadow. Their way lay past Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s
+      temple. As they went by the entrance with the bamboo posts, Felix happened
+      to glance aside through the gate to the sacred enclosure. Early as it was,
+      Tu-Kila-Kila was afoot already; and, to Felix&rsquo;s great surprise, was
+      pacing up and down, with that stealthy, wary look upon his cunning face
+      that Muriel had so particularly noted on the day of their first arrival.
+      His spear stood in his hand, and his tomahawk hung by his left side; he
+      peered about him suspiciously, with a cautious glance, as he walked round
+      and round the sacred tree he guarded so continually. There was something
+      weird and awful in the sight of that savage god, thus condemned by his own
+      superstition and the custom of his people to tramp ceaselessly up and down
+      before the sacred banyan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At sight of Felix, however, a sudden burst of frenzy seemed to possess at
+      once all Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s limbs. He brandished his spear violently,
+      and set himself spasmodically in a posture of defence. His brow grew
+      black, and his eyes darted out eternal hate and suspicion. It was evident
+      he expected an instant attack, and was prepared with all his might and
+      main to resist aggression. Yet he never offered to desert his post by the
+      tree or to assume the offensive. Clearly, he was guarding the sacred grove
+      itself with jealous care, and was as eager for its safety as for his own
+      life and honor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix passed on, wondering what it all could mean, and turned with an
+      inquiring glance to his trembling Shadow. As for Toko, he had held his
+      face averted meanwhile, lest he should behold the great god, and be
+      scorched to a cinder; but in answer to Felix&rsquo;s mute inquiry he
+      murmured low: &ldquo;Was Tu-Kila-Kila there? Were all things right? Was he
+      on guard at his post by the tree already?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; Felix replied, with that weird sense of mystery
+      creeping over him now more profoundly than ever. &ldquo;He was on guard by
+      the tree and he looked at me angrily.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; the Shadow remarked, with a sigh of regret, &ldquo;he
+      keeps watch well. It will be hard work to assail him. No god in Boupari
+      ever held his place so tight. Who wishes to take Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s
+      divinity must get up early.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They went on in silence to the little volcanic knoll near the centre of
+      the island. There, in the neat garden plot they had observed before, a
+      man, in the last relics of a very tattered European costume, much covered
+      with a short cape of native cloth, was tending his flowers and singing to
+      himself merrily. His back was turned to them as they came up. Felix paused
+      a moment, unseen, and caught the words the stranger was singing:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+&ldquo;Très jolie,
+ Peu polie,
+ Possédant un gros magot;
+ Fort en gueule,
+ Pas bégueule;
+ Telle était&mdash;&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      The stranger looked up, and paused in the midst of his lines,
+      open-mouthed. For a moment he stood and stared astonished. Then, raising
+      his native cap with a graceful air, and bowing low, as he would have bowed
+      to a lady on the Boulevard, he advanced to greet a brother European with
+      the familiar words, in good educated French, &ldquo;Monsieur, I salute
+      you!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Felix, the sound of a civilized voice in the midst of so much strange
+      and primitive barbarism, was like a sudden return to some forgotten world,
+      so deeply and profoundly did it move and impress him. He grasped the
+      sunburnt Frenchman&rsquo;s rugged hand in his. &ldquo;Who are you?&rdquo;
+      he cried, in the very best Parisian he could muster up on the spur of the
+      moment. &ldquo;And how did you come here?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur,&rdquo; the Frenchman answered, no less profoundly moved
+      than himself, &ldquo;this is, indeed, wonderful! Do I hear once more that
+      beautiful language spoken? Do I find myself once more in the presence of a
+      civilized person? What fortune! What happiness! Ah, it is glorious,
+      glorious.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For some seconds they stood and looked at one another in silence, grasping
+      their hands hard again and again with intense emotion; then Felix repeated
+      his question a second time: &ldquo;Who are you, monsieur? and where do you
+      come from?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your name, surname, age, occupation?&rdquo; the Frenchman repeated,
+      bursting forth at last into national levity. &ldquo;Ah, monsieur, what a
+      joy to hear those well-known inquiries in my ear once more. I hasten to
+      gratify your legitimate curiosity. Name: Peyron; Christian name: Jules;
+      age: forty-one; occupation: convict, escaped from New Caledonia.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Under any other circumstances that last qualification might possibly have
+      been held an undesirable one in a new acquaintance. But on the island of
+      Boupari, among so many heathen cannibals, prejudices pale before community
+      of blood; even a New Caledonian convict is at least a Christian European.
+      Felix received the strange announcement without the faintest shock of
+      surprise or disgust. He would gladly have shaken hands then and there with
+      M. Jules Peyron, indeed, had he introduced himself in even less equivocal
+      language as a forger, a pickpocket, or an escaped house-breaker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you, monsieur?&rdquo; the ex-convict inquired, politely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix told him in a few words the history of their accident and their
+      arrival on the island.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Comment</i>?&rdquo; the Frenchman exclaimed, with surprise and
+      delight. &ldquo;A lady as well; a charming English lady! What an
+      acquisition to the society of Boupari! <i>Quelle chance! Quel bonheur!</i>
+      Monsieur, you are welcome, and mademoiselle too! And in what quality do
+      you live here? You are a god, I see; otherwise you would not have dared to
+      transgress my taboo, nor would this young man&mdash;your Shadow, I suppose&mdash;have
+      permitted you to do so. But which sort of god, pray? Korong&mdash;or Tula?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They call me Korong,&rdquo; Felix answered, all tremulous, feeling
+      himself now on the very verge of solving this profound mystery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And mademoiselle as well?&rdquo; the Frenchman exclaimed, in a tone
+      of dismay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And mademoiselle as well,&rdquo; Felix replied. &ldquo;At least, so
+      I make out. We are both Korong. I have many times heard the natives call
+      us so.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His new acquaintance seized his hand with every appearance of genuine
+      alarm and regret. &ldquo;My poor friend,&rdquo; he exclaimed, with a
+      horrified face, &ldquo;this is terrible, terrible! Tu-Kila-Kila is a very
+      hard man. What can we do to save your life and mademoiselle&rsquo;s! We
+      are powerless! Powerless! I have only that much to say. I condole with
+      you! I commiserate you!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, what does Korong mean?&rdquo; Felix asked, with blanched lips.
+      &ldquo;Is it then something so very terrible?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Terrible! Ah, terrible!&rdquo; the Frenchman answered, holding up
+      his hands in horror and alarm. &ldquo;I hardly know how we can avert your
+      fate. Step within my poor hut, or under the shade of my Tree of Liberty
+      here, and I will tell you all the little I know about it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0015" id="link2HCH0015"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XV. &mdash; THE SECRET OF KORONG.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have lived here long?&rdquo; Felix asked, with tremulous
+      interest, as he took a seat on the bench under the big tree, toward which
+      his new host politely motioned him. &ldquo;You know the people well, and
+      all their superstitions?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Hélas</i>, yes, monsieur,&rdquo; the Frenchman answered, with a
+      sigh of regret. &ldquo;Eighteen years have I spent altogether in this
+      beast of a Pacific; nine as a convict in New Caledonia, and nine more as a
+      god here; and, believe me, I hardly know which is the harder post. Yours
+      is the first White face I have ever seen since my arrival in this cursed
+      island.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And how did you come here?&rdquo; Felix asked, half breathless, for
+      the very magnitude of the stake at issue&mdash;no less a stake than Muriel&rsquo;s
+      life&mdash;made him hesitate to put point-blank the question he had most
+      at heart for the moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur,&rdquo; the Frenchman answered, trying to cover his rags
+      with his native cape, &ldquo;that explains itself easily. I was a medical
+      student in Paris in the days of the Commune. Ah! that beloved Paris&mdash;how
+      far away it seems now from Boupari! Like all other students I was advanced&mdash;Republican,
+      Socialist&mdash;what you will&mdash;a political enthusiast. When the
+      events took place&mdash;the events of &lsquo;70&mdash;I espoused with all
+      my heart the cause of the people. You know the rest. The bourgeoisie
+      conquered. I was taken red-handed, as the Versaillais said&mdash;my pistol
+      in my grasp&mdash;an open revolutionist. They tried me by court-martial&mdash;br&rsquo;r&rsquo;r&mdash;no
+      delay&mdash;guilty, M. le President&mdash;hard labor to perpetuity. They
+      sent me with that brave Louise Michel and so many other good comrades of
+      the cause to New Caledonia. There, nine years of convict life was more
+      than enough for me. One day I found a canoe on the shore&mdash;a little
+      Kanaka canoe&mdash;you know the type&mdash;a mere shapeless dug-out.
+      Hastily I loaded it with food&mdash;yam, taro, bread-fruit&mdash;I pushed
+      it off into the sea&mdash;I embarked alone&mdash;I intrusted myself and
+      all my fortunes to the Bon Dieu and the wide Pacific. The Bon Dieu did not
+      wholly justify my confidence. It is a way he has&mdash;that inscrutable
+      one. Six weeks I floated hither and thither before varying winds. At last
+      one evening I reached this island. I floated ashore. And, <i>enfin, me
+      voilà</i>!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you were a political prisoner only?&rdquo; Felix said,
+      politely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      M. Jules Peyron drew himself up with much dignity in his tattered costume.
+      &ldquo;Do I look like a card-sharper, monsieur?&rdquo; he asked simply,
+      with offended honor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix hastened to reassure him of his perfect confidence. &ldquo;On the
+      contrary, monsieur,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;the moment I heard you were a
+      convict from New Caledonia, I felt certain in my heart you could be
+      nothing less than one of those unfortunate and ill-treated Communards.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur,&rdquo; the Frenchman said, seizing his hand a second
+      time, &ldquo;I perceive that I have to do with a man of honor and a man of
+      feeling. Well, I landed on this island, and they made me a god. From that
+      day to this I have been anxious only to shuffle off my unwelcome divinity,
+      and return as a mere man to the shores of Europe. Better be a valet in
+      Paris, say I, than a deity of the best in Polynesia. It is a monotonous
+      existence here&mdash;no society, no life&mdash;and the <i>cuisine</i>&mdash;bah,
+      execrable! But till the other day, when your steamer passed, I have
+      scarcely even sighted a European ship. A boat came here once, worse luck,
+      to put off two girls (who didn&rsquo;t belong to Boupari), returned
+      indentured laborers from Queensland; but, unhappily, it was during my
+      taboo&mdash;the Month of Birds, as my jailers call it&mdash;and though I
+      tried to go down to it or to make signals of distress, the natives stood
+      round my hut with their spears in line, and prevented me by main force
+      from signalling to them or communicating with them. Even the other day, I
+      never heard of your arrival till a fortnight had elapsed, for I had been
+      sick with fever, the fever of the country, and as soon as my Shadow told
+      me of your advent it was my taboo again, and I was obliged to defer for
+      myself the honor of calling upon my new acquaintances. I am a god, of
+      course, and can do what I like; but while my taboo is on, <i>ma foi</i>,
+      monsieur, I can hardly call my life my own, I assure you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But your taboo is up to-day,&rdquo; Felix said, &ldquo;so my Shadow
+      tells me.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your Shadow is a well-informed young man,&rdquo; M. Peyron
+      answered, with easy French sprightliness. &ldquo;As for my donkey of a
+      valet, he never by any chance knows or tells me anything. I had just sent
+      him out&mdash;the pig&mdash;to learn, if possible, your nationality and
+      name, and what hours you preferred, as I proposed later in the day to pay
+      my respects to mademoiselle, your friend, if she would deign to receive
+      me.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Miss Ellis would be charmed, I&rsquo;m sure,&rdquo; Felix replied,
+      smiling in spite of himself at so much Parisian courtliness under so
+      ragged an exterior. &ldquo;It is a great pleasure to us to find we are not
+      really alone on this barbarous island. But you were going to explain to
+      me, I believe, the exact nature of this peril in which we both stand&mdash;the
+      precise distinction between Korong and Tula?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Alas, monsieur,&rdquo; the Frenchman replied, drawing circles in
+      the dust with his stick with much discomposure, &ldquo;I can only tell you
+      I have been trying to make out the secret of this distinction myself ever
+      since the first day I came to the island; but so reticent are all the
+      natives about it, and so deep is the taboo by which the mystery is
+      guarded, that even now I, who am myself Tula, can tell you but very little
+      with certainty on the subject. All I can say for sure is this&mdash;that
+      gods called Tula retain their godship in permanency for a very long time,
+      although at the end some violent fate, which I do not clearly understand,
+      is destined to befall them. That is my condition as King of the Birds&mdash;for
+      no doubt they have told you that I, Jules Peyron&mdash;Republican,
+      Socialist, Communist&mdash;have been elevated against my will to the
+      honors of royalty. That is my condition, and it matters but little to me,
+      for I know not when the end may come; and we can but die once; how or
+      where, what matters? Meanwhile, I have my distractions, my little <i>agréments</i>&mdash;my
+      gardens, my music, my birds, my native friends, my coquetries, my aviary.
+      As King of the Birds, I keep a small collection of my subjects in the
+      living form, not unworthy of a scientific eye. Monsieur is no
+      ornithologist? Ah, no, I thought not. Well, for me, it matters little; my
+      time is long. But for you and Mademoiselle, who are both Korong&mdash;&rdquo;
+      He paused significantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What happens, then, to those who are Korong?&rdquo; Felix asked,
+      with a lump in his throat&mdash;not for himself, but for Muriel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Frenchman looked at him with a doubtful look. &ldquo;Monsieur,&rdquo;
+      he said, after a pause, &ldquo;I hardly know how to break the truth to you
+      properly. You are new to the island, and do not yet understand these
+      savages. It is so terrible a fate. So deadly. So certain. Compose your
+      mind to hear the worst. And remember that the worst is very terrible.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix&rsquo;s blood froze within him; but he answered bravely all the
+      same, &ldquo;I think I have guessed it myself already. The Korong are
+      offered as human sacrifices to Tu-Kila-Kila.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is nearly so,&rdquo; his new friend replied, with a solemn nod
+      of his head. &ldquo;Every Korong is bound to die when his time comes. Your
+      time will depend on the particular date when you were admitted to Heaven.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix reflected a moment. &ldquo;It was on the 26th of last month,&rdquo;
+      he answered, shortly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well,&rdquo; M. Peyron replied, after a brief calculation.
+      &ldquo;You have just six months in all to live from that date. They will
+      offer you up by Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s hut the day the sun reaches the
+      summer solstice.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But why did they make us gods then?&rdquo; Felix interposed, with
+      tremulous lips. &ldquo;Why treat us with such honors meanwhile, if they
+      mean in the end to kill us?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He received his sentence of death with greater calmness than the Frenchman
+      had expected. &ldquo;Monsieur,&rdquo; the older arrival answered, with a
+      reflective air, &ldquo;there comes in the mystery. If we could solve that,
+      we could find out also the way of escape for you. For there <i>is</i> a
+      way of escape for every Korong: I know it well; I gather it from all the
+      natives say; it is a part of their mysteries; but what it may be, I have
+      hitherto, in spite of all my efforts, failed to discover. All I <i>do</i>
+      know is this: Tu-Kila-Kila hates and dreads in his heart every Korong that
+      is elevated to Heaven, and would do anything, if he dared, to get rid of
+      him quietly. But he doesn&rsquo;t dare, because he is bound hand and foot
+      himself, too, by taboos innumerable. Taboo is the real god and king of
+      Boupari. All the island alike bows down to it and worships it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you ever known Korongs killed?&rdquo; Felix asked once more,
+      trembling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, monsieur. Many of them, alas! And this is what happens. When
+      the Korong&rsquo;s time is come, as these creatures say, either on the
+      summer or winter solstice, he is bound with native ropes, and carried up
+      so pinioned to Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s temple. In the time before this man
+      was Tu-Kila-Kila, I remember&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stop,&rdquo; Felix cried. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t understand. Has
+      there then been more than one Tu-Kila-Kila?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, yes,&rdquo; the Frenchman answered. &ldquo;Certainly, many.
+      And there the mystery comes in again. We have always among us one
+      Tu-Kila-Kila or another. He is a sort of pope, or grand lama, <i>voyez-vous?</i>
+      No sooner is the last god dead than another god succeeds him and takes his
+      name, or rather his title. This young man who now holds the place was
+      known originally as Lavita, the son of Sami. But what is more curious
+      still, the islanders always treat the new god as if he were precisely the
+      self-same person as the old one. So far as I have been able to understand
+      their theology, they believe in a sort of transmigration of souls. The
+      soul of the Tu-Kila-Kila who is just dead passes into and animates the
+      body of the Tu-Kila-Kila who succeeds to the office. Thus they speak as
+      though Tu-Kila-Kila were a continuous existence; and the god of the
+      moment, himself, will even often refer to events which occurred to him, as
+      he says, a hundred years ago or more, but which he really knows, of
+      course, only by the persistent tradition of the islanders. They are a very
+      curious people, these Bouparese. But what would you have? Among savages,
+      one expects things to be as among savages.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix drew a quiet sigh. It was certain that on the island of Boupari that
+      expectation, at least, was never doomed to disappointment. &ldquo;And when
+      a Korong is taken to Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s temple,&rdquo; he asked,
+      continuing the subject of most immediate interest, &ldquo;what happens
+      next to him?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur,&rdquo; the Frenchman answered, &ldquo;I hardly know
+      whether I do right or not to say the truth to you. Each Korong is a god
+      for one season only; when the year renews itself, as the savages believe,
+      by a change of season, then a new Korong must be chosen by Heaven to fill
+      the place of the old ones who are to be sacrificed. This they do in order
+      that the seasons may be ever fresh and vigorous. Especially is that the
+      case with the two meteorological gods, so to speak, the King of the Rain
+      and the Queen of the Clouds. Those, I understand, are the posts in their
+      pantheon which you and the lady who accompanies you occupy.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are right,&rdquo; Felix answered, with profoundly painful
+      interest. &ldquo;And what, then, becomes of the king and queen who are
+      sacrificed?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will tell you,&rdquo; M. Peyron answered, dropping his voice
+      still lower into a sympathetic key. &ldquo;But steel your mind for the
+      worst beforehand. It is sufficiently terrible. On the day of your arrival,
+      this, I learn from my Shadow, is just what happened. That night,
+      Tu-Kila-Kila made his great feast, and offered up the two chief human
+      sacrifices of the year, the free-will offering and the scapegoat of
+      trespass. They keep then a festival, which answers to our own New-Year&rsquo;s
+      day in Europe. Next morning, in accordance with custom, the King of the
+      Rain and the Queen of the Clouds were to be publicly slain, in order that
+      a new and more vigorous king and queen should be chosen in their place,
+      who might make the crops grow better and the sky more clement. In the
+      midst of this horrid ceremony, you and mademoiselle, by pure chance,
+      arrived. You were immediately selected by Tu-Kila-Kila, for some reason of
+      his own, which I do not sufficiently understand, but which is,
+      nevertheless, obvious to all the initiated, as the next representatives of
+      the rain-giving gods. You were presented to Heaven on their little
+      platform raised about the ground, and Heaven accepted you. Then you were
+      envisaged with the attributes of divinity; the care of the rain and the
+      clouds was made over to you; and immediately after, as soon as you were
+      gone, the old king and queen were laid on an altar near Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s
+      home, and slain with tomahawks. Their flesh was next hacked from their
+      bodies with knives, cooked, and eaten; their bones were thrown into the
+      sea, the mother of all waters, as the natives call it. And that is the
+      fate, I fear the inevitable fate, that will befall you and mademoiselle at
+      these wretches&rsquo; hands about the commencement of a fresh season.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix knew the worst now, and bent his head in silence. His worst fears
+      were confirmed; but, after all, even this knowledge was better than so
+      much uncertainty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And now that he knew when &ldquo;his time was up,&rdquo; as the natives
+      phrased it, he would know when to redeem his promise to Muriel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0016" id="link2HCH0016"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XVI. &mdash; A VERY FAINT CLUE.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you hinted at some hope, some chance of escape,&rdquo; Felix
+      cried at last, looking up from the ground and mastering his emotion.
+      &ldquo;What now is that hope? Conceal nothing from me.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur,&rdquo; the Frenchman answered, shrugging his shoulders
+      with an expression of utter impotence, &ldquo;I have as good reasons for
+      wishing to find out all that as even you can have. <i>Your</i> secret is
+      <i>my</i> secret; but with all my pains and astuteness I have been unable
+      to discover it. The natives are reticent, very reticent indeed, about all
+      these matters. They fear taboo; and they fear Tu-Kila-Kila. The women, to
+      be sure, in a moment of expansion, might possibly tell one; but, then, the
+      women, unfortunately, are not admitted to the mysteries. They know no more
+      of all these things than we do. The most I have been able to gather for
+      certain is this&mdash;that on the discovery of the secret depend
+      Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s life and power. Every Boupari man knows this Great
+      Taboo; it is communicated to him in the assembly of adults when he gets
+      tattooed and reaches manhood. But no Boupari man ever communicates it to
+      strangers; and for that reason, perhaps, as I believe, Tu-Kila-Kila often
+      chooses for Korong, as far as possible, those persons who are cast by
+      chance upon the island. It has always been the custom, so far as I can
+      make out, to treat castaways or prisoners taken in war as gods, and then
+      at the end of their term to kill them ruthlessly. This plan is popular
+      with the people at large, because it saves themselves from the dangerous
+      honors of deification; but it also serves Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s purpose,
+      because it usually elevates to Heaven those innocent persons who are
+      unacquainted with that fatal secret which is, as the natives say,
+      Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s death&mdash;his word of dismissal.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then if only we could find out this secret&mdash;&rdquo; Felix
+      cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His new friend interrupted him. &ldquo;What hope is there of your finding
+      it out, monsieur,&rdquo; he exclaimed, &ldquo;you, who have only a few
+      months to live&mdash;when I, who have spent nine long years of exile on
+      the island, and seen two Tu-Kila-Kilas rise and fall, have been unable,
+      with my utmost pains, to discover it? <i>Tenez</i>; you have no idea yet
+      of the superstitions of these people, or the difficulties that lie in the
+      way of fathoming them. Come this way to my aviary; I will show you
+      something that will help you to realize the complexities of the situation.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He rose and led the way to another cleared space at the back of the hut,
+      where several birds of gaudy plumage were fastened to perches on sticks by
+      leathery lashes of dried shark&rsquo;s skin, tied just above their talons.
+      &ldquo;I am the King of the Birds, monsieur, you must remember,&rdquo; the
+      Frenchman said, fondling one of his screaming <i>protégés</i>. &ldquo;These
+      are a few of my subjects. But I do not keep them for mere curiosity. Each
+      of them is the Soul of the tribe to which it belongs. This, for example&mdash;my
+      Cluseret&mdash;is the Soul of all the gray parrots; that that you see
+      yonder&mdash;Badinguet, I call him&mdash;is the Soul of the hawks; this,
+      my Mimi, is the Soul of the little yellow-crested kingfisher. My task as
+      King of the Birds is to keep a representative of each of these always on
+      hand; in which endeavor I am faithfully aided by the whole population of
+      the island, who bring me eggs and nests and young birds in abundance. If
+      the Soul of the little yellow kingfisher now were to die, without a
+      successor being found ready at once to receive and embody it, then the
+      whole race of little yellow kingfishers would vanish altogether; and if I
+      myself, the King of the Birds, who am, as it were, the Soul and life of
+      all of them, were to die without a successor being at hand to receive my
+      spirit, then all the race of birds, with one accord, would become extinct
+      forthwith and forever.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He moved among his pets easily, like a king among his subjects. Most of
+      them seemed to know him and love his presence. Presently, he came to one
+      very old parrot, quite different from any Felix had ever seen on any trees
+      in the island; it was a parrot with a black crest and a red mark on its
+      throat, half blind with age, and tottering on its pedestal. This solemn
+      old bird sat apart from all the others, nodding its head oracularly in the
+      sunlight, and blinking now and again with its white eyelids in a curious
+      senile fashion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Frenchman turned to Felix with an air of profound mystery. &ldquo;This
+      bird,&rdquo; he said, solemnly stroking its head with his hand, while the
+      parrot turned round to him and bit at his finger with half-doddering
+      affection&mdash;&ldquo;this bird is the oldest of all my birds&mdash;-is
+      it not so, Methuselah?&mdash;and illustrates well in one of its aspects
+      the superstition of these people. Yes, my friend, you are the last of a
+      kind now otherwise extinct, are you not, <i>mon vieux?</i> No, no, there&mdash;gently!
+      Once upon a time, the natives tell me, dozens of these parrots existed in
+      the island; they flocked among the trees, and were held very sacred; but
+      they were hard to catch and difficult to keep, and the Kings of the Birds,
+      my predecessors, failed to secure an heir and coadjutor to this one. So as
+      the Soul of the species, which you see here before you, grew old and
+      feeble, the whole of the race to which it belonged grew old and feeble
+      with it. One by one they withered away and died, till at last this
+      solitary specimen alone remained to vouch for the former existence of the
+      race in the island. Now, the islanders say, nothing but the Soul itself is
+      left; and when the Soul dies, the red-throated parrots will be gone
+      forever. One of my predecessors paid with his life in awful tortures for
+      his remissness in not providing for the succession to the soulship. I tell
+      you these things in order that you may see whether they cast any light for
+      you upon your own position; and also because the oldest and wisest natives
+      say that this parrot alone, among beasts or birds or uninitiated things,
+      knows the secret on which depends the life of the Tu-Kila-Kila for the
+      time being.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can the parrot speak?&rdquo; Felix asked, with profound emotion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur, he can speak, and he speaks frequently. But not one word
+      of all he says is comprehensible either to me or to any other living
+      being. His tongue is that of a forgotten nation. The islanders understand
+      him no more than I do. He has a very long sermon or poem, which he knows
+      by heart, in some unknown language, and he repeats it often at full length
+      from time to time, especially when he has eaten well and feels full and
+      happy. The oldest natives tell a romantic legend about this strange
+      recitation of the good Methuselah&mdash;I call him Methuselah because of
+      his great age&mdash;but I do not really know whether their tale is true or
+      purely fanciful. You never can trust these Polynesian traditions.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is the legend?&rdquo; Felix asked, with intense interest.
+      &ldquo;In an island where we find ourselves so girt round by mystery
+      within mystery, and taboo within taboo, as this, every key is worth
+      trying. It is well for us at least to learn everything we can about the
+      ideas of the natives. Who knows what clue may supply us at last with the
+      missing link, which will enable us to break through this intolerable
+      servitude?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, the story they tell us is this,&rdquo; the Frenchman replied,
+      &ldquo;though I have gathered it only a hint at a time, from very old men,
+      who declared at the same moment that some religious fear&mdash;of which
+      they have many&mdash;prevented them from telling me any further about it.
+      It seems that a long time ago&mdash;how many years ago nobody knows, only
+      that it was in the time of the thirty-ninth Tu-Kila-Kila, before the reign
+      of Lavita, the son of Sami&mdash;a strange Korong was cast up upon this
+      island by the waves of the sea, much as you and I have been in the present
+      generation. By accident, says the story, or else, as others aver, through
+      the indiscretion of a native woman who fell in love with him, and who
+      worried the taboo out of her husband, the stranger became acquainted with
+      the secret of Tu-Kila-Kila. As the natives themselves put it, he learned
+      the Death of the High God, and where in the world his Soul was hidden.
+      Thereupon, in some mysterious way or other, he became Tu-Kila-Kila
+      himself, and ruled as High God for ten years or more here on this island.
+      Now, up to that time, the legend goes on, none but the men of the island
+      knew the secret; they learned it as soon as they were initiated in the
+      great mysteries, which occur before a boy is given a spear and admitted to
+      the rank of complete manhood. But sometimes a woman was told the secret
+      wrongfully by her husband or her lover; and one such woman, apparently,
+      told the strange Korong, and so enabled him to become Tu-Kila-Kila.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But where does the parrot come in?&rdquo; Felix asked, with still
+      profounder excitement than ever. Something within him seemed to tell him
+      instinctively he was now within touch of the special key that must sooner
+      or later unlock the mystery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; the Frenchman went on, still stroking the parrot
+      affectionately with his hand, and smoothing down the feathers on its
+      ruffled back, &ldquo;the strange Tu-Kila-Kila, who thus ruled in the
+      island, though he learned to speak Polynesian well, had a language of his
+      own, a language of the birds, which no man on earth could ever talk with
+      him. So, to beguile his time and to have someone who could converse with
+      him in his native dialect, he taught this parrot to speak his own tongue,
+      and spent most of his days in talking with it and fondling it. At last,
+      after he had instructed it by slow degrees how to repeat this long sermon
+      or poem&mdash;which I have often heard it recite in a sing-song voice from
+      beginning to end&mdash;his time came, as they say, and he had to give way
+      to another Tu-Kila-Kila; for the Bouparese have a proverb like our own
+      about the king, &lsquo;The High God is dead; may the High God live
+      forever!&rsquo; But before he gave up his Soul to his successor, and was
+      eaten or buried, whichever is the custom, he handed over his pet to the
+      King of the Birds, strictly charging all future bearers of that divine
+      office to care for the parrot as they would care for a son or a daughter.
+      And so the natives make much of the parrot to the present day, saying he
+      is greater than any, save a Korong or a god, for he is the Soul of a dead
+      race, summing it up in himself, and he knows the secret of the Death of
+      Tu-Kila-Kila.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you can&rsquo;t tell me what language he speaks?&rdquo; Felix
+      asked with a despairing gesture. It was terrible to stand thus within
+      measurable distance of the secret which might, perhaps, save Muriel&rsquo;s
+      life, and yet be perpetually balked by wheel within wheel of more than
+      Egyptian mystery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who can say?&rdquo; the Frenchman answered, shrugging his shoulders
+      helplessly. &ldquo;It isn&rsquo;t Polynesian; that I know well, for I
+      speak Bouparese now like a native of Boupari; and it isn&rsquo;t the only
+      other language spoken at the present day in the South Seas&mdash;the
+      Melanesian of New Caledonia&mdash;for that I learned well from the Kanakas
+      while I was serving my time as a convict among them. All we can say for
+      certain is that it may, perhaps, be some very ancient tongue. For parrots,
+      we know, are immensely long-lived. Some of them, it is said, exceed their
+      century. Is it not so, eh, my friend Methuselah?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0017" id="link2HCH0017"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XVII. &mdash; FACING THE WORST.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Muriel, meanwhile, sat alone in her hut, frightened at Felix&rsquo;s
+      unexpected disappearance so early in the morning, and anxiously awaiting
+      her lover&rsquo;s return, for she made no pretences now to herself that
+      she did not really love Felix. Though the two might never return to Europe
+      to be husband and wife, she did not doubt that before the eye of Heaven
+      they were already betrothed to one another as truly as though they had
+      plighted their troth in solemn fashion. Felix had risked his life for her,
+      and had brought all this misery upon himself in the attempt to save her.
+      Felix was now all the world that was left her. With Felix, she was happy,
+      even on this horrible island; without him, she was miserable and
+      terrified, no matter what happened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mali,&rdquo; she cried to her faithful attendant, as soon as she
+      found Felix was missing from his tent, &ldquo;what&rsquo;s become of Mr.
+      Thurstan? Where can he be gone, I wonder, this morning?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You no fear, Missy Queenie,&rdquo; Mali answered, with the childish
+      confidence of the native Polynesian. &ldquo;Mistah Thurstan, him gone to
+      see man-a-oui-oui, the King of the Birds. Month of Birds finish last
+      night; man-a-oui-oui no taboo any longer. King of the Birds keep very old
+      parrot, Boupari folk tell me; and old parrot very wise, know how to make
+      Tu-Kila-Kila. Mistah Thurstan, him gone to find man-a-oui-oui. Parrot tell
+      him plenty wise thing. Parrot wiser than Boupari people; know very good
+      medicine; wise like Queensland lady and gentleman.&rdquo; And Mali set
+      herself vigorously to work to wash the wooden platter on which she served
+      up her mistress&rsquo;s yam for breakfast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was curious to Muriel to see how readily Mali had slipped from savagery
+      to civilization in Queensland, and how easily she had slipped back again
+      from civilization to savagery in Boupari. In waiting on her mistress she
+      was just the ordinary trained native Australian servant; in every other
+      respect she was the simple unadulterated heathen Polynesian. She
+      recognized in Muriel a white lady of the English sort, and treated her
+      within the hut as white ladies were invariably treated in Queensland; but
+      she considered that at Boupari one must do as Boupari does, and it never
+      for a moment occurred to her simple mind to doubt the omnipotence of
+      Tu-Kila-Kila in his island realm any more than she had doubted the
+      omnipotence of the white man and his local religion in their proper place
+      (as she thought it) in Queensland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An hour or two passed before Felix returned. At last he arrived, very
+      white and pale, and Muriel saw at once by the mere look on his face that
+      he had learned some terrible news at the Frenchman&rsquo;s.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you found him?&rdquo; she cried, taking his hand in hers, but
+      hardly daring to ask the fatal question at once.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Felix, sitting down, as pale as a ghost, answered faintly, &ldquo;Yes,
+      Muriel, I found him!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And he told you everything?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Everything he knew, my poor child. Oh, Muriel, Muriel, don&rsquo;t
+      ask me what it is. It&rsquo;s too terrible to tell you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Muriel clasped her white hands together, held bloodless downward, and
+      looked at him fixedly. &ldquo;Mali, you can go,&rdquo; she said. And the
+      Shadow, rising up with childish confidence, glided from the hut, and left
+      them, for the first time since their arrival on the central island, alone
+      together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Muriel looked at him once more with the same deadly fixed look. &ldquo;With
+      you, Felix,&rdquo; she said, slowly, &ldquo;I can bear or dare anything. I
+      feel as if the bitterness of death were past long ago. I know it must
+      come. I only want to be quite sure when.... And besides, you must
+      remember, I have your promise.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix clasped his own hands despondently in return, and gazed across at
+      her from his seat a few feet off in unspeakable misery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Muriel,&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;I couldn&rsquo;t. I haven&rsquo;t
+      the heart. I daren&rsquo;t.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Muriel rose and laid her hand solemnly on his arm. &ldquo;You will!&rdquo;
+      she answered, boldly. &ldquo;You can! You must! I know I can trust your
+      promise for that. This moment, if you like. I would not shrink. But you
+      will never let me fall alive into the hands of those wretches. Felix, from
+      <i>your</i> hand I could stand anything. I&rsquo;m not afraid to die. I
+      love you too dearly.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix held her white little wrist in his grasp and sobbed like a child.
+      Her very bravery and confidence seemed to unman him, utterly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked at him once more. &ldquo;When?&rdquo; she asked, quietly, but
+      with lips as pale as death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In about four months from now,&rdquo; Felix answered, endeavoring
+      to be calm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And they will kill us both?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, both. I think so.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Together?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Together.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Muriel drew a deep sigh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you know the day beforehand?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. The Frenchman told me it. He has known others killed in the
+      self-same fashion.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then, Felix&mdash;-the night before it comes, you will promise me,
+      will you?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Muriel, Muriel, I could never dare to kill you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She laid her hand soothingly on his. She stroked him gently. &ldquo;You
+      are a man,&rdquo; she said, looking up into his eyes with confidence.
+      &ldquo;I trust you. I believe in you. I know you will never let these
+      savages hurt me.... Felix, in spite of everything, I&rsquo;ve been happier
+      since we came to this island together than ever I have been in my life
+      before. I&rsquo;ve had my wish. I didn&rsquo;t want to miss in life the
+      one thing that life has best worth giving. I haven&rsquo;t missed it now.
+      I know I haven&rsquo;t; for I love you, and you love me. After that, I can
+      die, and die gladly. If I die with <i>you</i>, that&rsquo;s all I ask.
+      These seven or eight terrible weeks have made me feel somehow unnaturally
+      calm. When I came here first I lived all the time in an agony of terror. I&rsquo;ve
+      got over the agony of terror now. I&rsquo;m quite resigned and happy. All
+      I ask is to be saved&mdash;by you&mdash;from the cruel hands of these
+      hateful cannibals.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix raised her white hand just once to his lips. It was the first time
+      he had ever ventured to kiss her. He kissed it fervently. She let it drop
+      as if dead by her side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now tell me all that happened,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m
+      strong enough to bear it. I feel such a woman now&mdash;so wise and calm.
+      These few weeks have made me grow from a girl into a woman all at once.
+      There&rsquo;s nothing I daren&rsquo;t hear, if you&rsquo;ll tell me it,
+      Felix.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix took up her hand again and held it in his, as he narrated the whole
+      story of his visit to the Frenchman. When Muriel had heard it, she said
+      once more, slowly, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think there&rsquo;s any hope in
+      all these wild plans of playing off superstition against superstition. To
+      my mind there are only two chances left for us now. One is to concoct with
+      the Frenchman some means of getting away by canoe from the island&mdash;I&rsquo;d
+      rather trust the sea than the tender mercy of these dreadful people; the
+      other is to keep a closer lookout than ever for the merest chance of a
+      passing steamer.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix drew a deep sigh. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid neither&rsquo;s much use,&rdquo;
+      he said. &ldquo;If we tried to get away, dogged as we are, day and night,
+      by our Shadows, the natives would follow us with their war-canoes in
+      battle array and hack us to pieces; for Peyron says that, regarding us as
+      gods, they think the rain would vanish from their island forever if once
+      they allowed us to get away alive and carry the luck with us. And as to
+      the steamers, we haven&rsquo;t seen a trace of one since we left the
+      Australasian. Probably it was only by the purest accident that even she
+      ever came so close in to Boupari.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At any rate,&rdquo; Muriel cried, still clasping his hand tight,
+      and letting the tears now trickle slowly down her pale white cheeks,
+      &ldquo;we can talk it all over some day with M. Peyron.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We can talk it over to-day,&rdquo; Felix answered, &ldquo;if it
+      comes to that; for Peyron means to step round, he says, a little later in
+      the afternoon, to pay his respects to the first white lady he has ever
+      seen since he left New Caledonia.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0018" id="link2HCH0018"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XVIII. &mdash; TU-KILA-KILA PLAYS A CARD.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Before the Frenchman could carry out his plan, however, he was himself the
+      recipient of the high honor of a visit from his superior god and chief,
+      Tu-Kila-Kila.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Every day and all day long, save on a few rare occasions when special
+      duties absolved him, the custom and religion of the islanders prescribed
+      that their supreme incarnate deity should keep watch and ward without
+      cessation over the great spreading banyan-tree that overshadowed with its
+      dark boughs his temple-palace. High god as he was held to be, and
+      all-powerful within the limits of his own strict taboos, Tu-Kila-Kila was
+      yet as rigidly bound within those iron laws of custom and religious usage
+      as the meanest and poorest of his subject worshippers. From sunrise to
+      sunset, and far on into the night, the Pillar of Heaven was compelled to
+      prowl up and down, with spear in hand and tomahawk at side, as Felix had
+      so often seen him, before the sacred trunk, of which he appeared to be in
+      some mysterious way the appointed guardian. His very power, it seemed, was
+      intimately bound up with the performance of that ceaseless and irksome
+      duty; he was a god in whose hands the lives of his people were but as dust
+      in the balance; but he remained so only on the onerous condition of pacing
+      to and fro, like a sentry, forever before the still more holy and
+      venerable object he was chosen to protect from attack or injury. Had he
+      failed in his task, had he slumbered at his post, all god though he might
+      be, his people themselves would have risen in a body and torn him limb
+      from limb before their ancestral fetich as a sacrilegious pretender.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At certain times and seasons, however, as for example at all high feasts
+      and festivals, Tu-Kila-Kila had respite for a while from this constant
+      treadmill of mechanical divinity. Whenever the moon was at the
+      half-quarter, or the planets were in lucky conjunctions, or a red glow lit
+      up the sky by night, or the sacred sacrificial fires of human flesh were
+      lighted, then Tu-Kila-Kila could lay aside his tomahawk and spear, and
+      become for a while as the islanders, his fellows, were. At other times,
+      too, when he went out in state to visit the lesser deities of his court,
+      the King of Fire and the King of Water made a solemn taboo before He left
+      his home, which protected the sacred tree from aggression during its
+      guardian&rsquo;s absence. Then Tu-Kila-Kila, shaded by his divine
+      umbrella, and preceded by the noise of the holy tom-toms, could go like a
+      monarch over all parts of his realm, giving such orders as he pleased
+      (within the limits of custom) to his inferior officers. It was in this way
+      that he now paid his visit to M. Jules Peyron, King of the Birds. And he
+      did so for what to him were amply sufficient reasons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It had not escaped Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s keen eye, as he paced among the
+      skeletons in his yard that morning, that Felix Thurstan, the King of the
+      Rain, had taken his way openly toward the Frenchman&rsquo;s quarters. He
+      felt pretty sure, therefore, that Felix had by this time learned another
+      white man was living on the island; and he thought it an ominous fact that
+      the new-comer should make his way toward his fellow-European&rsquo;s hut
+      on the very first morning when the law of taboo rendered such a visit
+      possible. The savage is always by nature suspicious; and Tu-Kila-Kila had
+      grounds enough of his own for suspicion in this particular instance. The
+      two white men were surely brewing mischief together for the Lord of Heaven
+      and Earth, the Illuminer of the Glowing Light of the Sun; he must make
+      haste and see what plan they were concocting against the sacred tree and
+      the person of its representative, the King of Plants and of the Host of
+      Heaven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it isn&rsquo;t so easy to make haste when all your movements are
+      impeded and hampered by endless taboos and a minutely annoying ritual.
+      Before Tu-Kila-Kila could get himself under way, sacred umbrella,
+      tom-toms, and all, it was necessary for the King of Fire and the King of
+      Water to make taboo on an elaborate scale with their respective elements;
+      and so by the time the high god had reached M. Jules Peyron&rsquo;s
+      garden, Felix Thurstan had already some time since returned to Muriel&rsquo;s
+      hut and his own quarters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila approached the King of the Birds, amid loud clapping of
+      hands, with considerable haughtiness. To say the truth, there was no love
+      lost between the cannibal god and his European subordinate. The savage,
+      puffed up as he was in his own conceit, had nevertheless always an
+      uncomfortable sense that, in his heart of hearts, the impassive Frenchman
+      had but a low opinion of him. So he invariably tried to make up by the
+      solemnity of his manner and the loudness of his assertions for any
+      trifling scepticism that might possibly exist in the mind of his follower.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On this particular occasion, as he reached the Frenchman&rsquo;s plot,
+      Tu-Kila-Kila stepped forward across the white taboo-line with a suspicious
+      and peering eye. &ldquo;The King of the Rain has been here,&rdquo; he
+      said, in a pompous tone, as the Frenchman rose and saluted him
+      ceremoniously. &ldquo;Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s eyes are sharp. They never
+      sleep. The sun is his sight. He beholds all things. You cannot hide aught
+      in heaven or earth from the knowledge of him that dwells in heaven. I look
+      down upon land and sea, and spy out all that takes place or is planned in
+      them. I am very holy and very cruel. I see all earth and I drink the blood
+      of all men. The King of the Rain has come this morning to visit the King
+      of the Birds. Where is he now? What has your divinity done with him?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He spoke from under the sheltering cover of his veiled umbrella. The
+      Frenchman looked back at him with as little love as Tu-Kila-Kila himself
+      would have displayed had his face been visible. &ldquo;Yes, you are a very
+      great god,&rdquo; he answered, in the conventional tone of Polynesian
+      adulation, with just a faint under-current of irony running through his
+      accent as he spoke. &ldquo;You say the truth. You do, indeed, know all
+      things. What need for me, then, to tell you, whose eye is the sun, that my
+      brother, the King of the Rain, has been here and gone again? You know it
+      yourself. Your eye has looked upon it. My brother was indeed with me. He
+      consulted me as to the showers I should need from his clouds for the
+      birds, my subjects.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And where is he gone now?&rdquo; Tu-Kila-Kila asked, without
+      attempting to conceal the displeasure in his tone, for he more than half
+      suspected the Frenchman of a sacrilegious and monstrous design of chaffing
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The King of the Birds bowed low once more. &ldquo;Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s
+      glance is keener than my hawk&rsquo;s,&rdquo; he answered, with the
+      accustomed Polynesian imagery. &ldquo;He sees over the land with a glance,
+      like my parrots, and over the sea with sharp sight, like my albatrosses.
+      He knows where my brother, the King of the Rain, has gone. For me, who am
+      the least among all the gods, I sit here on my perch and blink like a
+      crow. I do not know these things. They are too high and too deep for me.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila did not like the turn the conversation was taking. Before his
+      own attendants such hints, indeed, were almost dangerous. Once let the
+      savage begin to doubt, and the Moral Order goes with a crash immediately.
+      Besides, he must know what these white men had been talking about. &ldquo;Fire
+      and Water,&rdquo; he said in a loud voice, turning round to his two chief
+      satellites, &ldquo;go far down the path, and beat the tom-toms. Fence off
+      with flood and flame the airy height where the King of the Birds lives;
+      fence it off from all profane intrusion. I wish to confer in secret with
+      this god, my brother. When we gods talk together, it is not well that
+      others should hear our converse. Make a great Taboo. I, Tu-Kila-Kila,
+      myself have said it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fire and Water, bowing low, backed down the path, beating tom-toms as they
+      went, and left the savage and the Frenchman alone together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As soon as they were gone, Tu-Kila-Kila laid aside his umbrella with a
+      positive sigh of relief. Now his fellow-countrymen were well out of the
+      way, his manner altered in a trice, as if by magic. Barbarian as he was,
+      he was quite astute enough to guess that Europeans cared nothing in their
+      hearts for all his mumbo-jumbo. He believed in it himself, but they did
+      not, and their very unbelief made him respect and fear them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now that we two are alone,&rdquo; he said, glancing carelessly
+      around him, &ldquo;we two who are gods, and know the world well&mdash;we
+      two who see everything in heaven or earth&mdash;there is no need for
+      concealment&mdash;we may talk as plainly as we will with one another.
+      Come, tell me the truth! The new white man has seen you?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has seen me, yes, certainly,&rdquo; the Frenchman admitted,
+      taking a keen look deep into the savage&rsquo;s cunning eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does he speak your language&mdash;the language of birds?&rdquo;
+      Tu-Kila-Kila asked once more, with insinuating cunning. &ldquo;I have
+      heard that the sailing gods are of many languages. Are you and he of one
+      speech or two? Aliens, or countrymen?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He speaks my language as he speaks Polynesian,&rdquo; the Frenchman
+      replied, keeping his eye firmly fixed on his doubtful guest, &ldquo;but it
+      is not his own. He has a tongue apart&mdash;the tongue of an island not
+      far from my country, which we call England.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila drew nearer, and dropped his voice to a confidential whisper.
+      &ldquo;Has he seen the Soul of all dead parrots?&rdquo; he asked, with
+      keen interest in his voice. &ldquo;The parrot that knows Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s
+      secret? That one over there&mdash;the old, the very sacred one?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      M. Peyron gazed round his aviary carelessly. &ldquo;Oh, that one,&rdquo;
+      he answered, with a casual glance at Methuselah, as though one parrot or
+      another were much the same to him. &ldquo;Yes, I think he saw it. I
+      pointed it out to him, in fact, as the oldest and strangest of all my
+      subjects.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s countenance fell. &ldquo;Did he hear it speak?&rdquo;
+      he asked, in evident alarm. &ldquo;Did it tell him the story of
+      Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s secret?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, it didn&rsquo;t speak,&rdquo; the Frenchman answered. &ldquo;It
+      seldom does now. It is very old. And if it did, I don&rsquo;t suppose the
+      King of the Rain would have understood one word of it. Look here, great
+      god, allay your fears. You&rsquo;re a terrible coward. I expect the real
+      fact about the parrot is this: it is the last of its own race; it speaks
+      the language of some tribe of men who once inhabited these islands, but
+      are now extinct. No human being at present alive, most probably, knows one
+      word of that forgotten language.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You think not?&rdquo; Tu-Kila-Kila asked, a little relieved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am the King of the Birds, and I know the voices of my subjects by
+      heart; I assure you it is as I say,&rdquo; M. Peyron answered, drawing
+      himself up solemnly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila looked askance, with something very closely approaching a
+      wink in his left eye. &ldquo;We two are both gods,&rdquo; he said, with a
+      tinge of irony in his tone. &ldquo;We know what that means.... <i>I</i> do
+      not feel so certain.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stood close by the parrot with itching fingers. &ldquo;It is very, very
+      old,&rdquo; he went on to himself, musingly. &ldquo;It can&rsquo;t live
+      long. And then&mdash;none but Boupari men will know the secret.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he spoke he darted a strange glance of hatred toward the unconscious
+      bird, the innocent repository, as he firmly believed, of the secret that
+      doomed him. The Frenchman had turned his back for a moment now, to fetch
+      out a stool. Tu-Kila-Kila, casting a quick, suspicious eye to the right
+      and left, took a step nearer. The parrot sat mumbling on its perch,
+      inarticulately, putting its head on one side, and blinking its
+      half-blinded eyes in the bright tropical sunshine. Tu-Kila-Kila paused
+      irresolute before its face for a second. If he only dared&mdash;one wring
+      of the neck&mdash;one pinch of his finger and thumb almost!&mdash;and all
+      would be over. But he dared not! he dared not! Your savage is overawed by
+      the blind terrors of taboo. His predecessor, some elder Tu-Kila-Kila of
+      forgotten days, had laid a great charm upon that parrot&rsquo;s life.
+      Whoever hurt it was to die an awful death of unspeakable torment. The King
+      of the Birds had special charge to guard it. If even the Cannibal God
+      himself wrought it harm, who could tell what judgment might fall upon him
+      forthwith, what terrible vengeance the dead Tu-Kila-Kila might wreak upon
+      him in his ghostly anger? And that dead Tu-Kila-Kila was his own Soul! His
+      own Soul might flare up within him in some mystic way and burn him to
+      ashes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And yet&mdash;suppose this hateful new-comer, the King of the Rain, whom
+      he had himself made Korong on purpose to get rid of him the more easily,
+      and so had elevated into his own worst potential enemy&mdash;suppose this
+      new-comer, the King of the Rain, were by chance to speak that other
+      dialect of the bird-language, which the King of the Birds himself knew
+      not, but which the parrot had learned from his old master, the ancient
+      Tu-Kila-Kila of other days, and in which the bird still recited the secret
+      of the sacred tree and the Death of the Great God&mdash;ah, then he might
+      still have to fight hard for his divinity. He gazed angrily at the bird.
+      Methuselah blinked, and put his head on one side, and looked craftily
+      askance at him. Tu-Kila-Kila hated it, that insolent creature. Was he not
+      a god, and should he be thus bearded in his own island by a mere Soul of
+      dead birds, a poor, wretched parrot? But the curse! What might not that
+      portend? Ah, well, he would risk it. Glancing around him once more to the
+      right and left, to make sure that nobody was looking, the cunning savage
+      put forth his hand stealthily, and tried with a friendly caress to seize
+      the parrot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a moment, before he had time to know what was happening, Methuselah&mdash;sleepy
+      old dotard as he seemed&mdash;had woke up at once to a sense of danger.
+      Turning suddenly round upon the sleek, caressing hand, he darted his beak
+      with a vicious peck at his assailant, and bit the divine finger of the
+      Pillar of Heaven as carelessly as he would have bitten any child on
+      Boupari. Tu-Kila-Kila, thunder-struck, drew back his arm with a start of
+      surprise and a loud cry of pain. The bird had wounded him. He shook his
+      hand and stamped. Blood was dropping on the ground from the man-god&rsquo;s
+      finger. He hardly knew what strange evil this omen of harm might portend
+      for the world. The Soul of all dead parrots had carried out the curse, and
+      had drawn red drops from the sacred veins of Tu-Kila-Kila.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One must be a savage one&rsquo;s self, and superstitious at that, fully to
+      understand the awful significance of this deadly occurrence. To draw blood
+      from a god, and, above all, to let that blood fall upon the dust of the
+      ground, is the very worst luck&mdash;too awful for the human mind to
+      contemplate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the same moment, the parrot, awakened by the unexpected attack, threw
+      back its head on its perch, and, laughing loud and long to itself in its
+      own harsh way, began to pour forth a whole volley of oaths in a guttural
+      language, of which neither Tu-Kila-Kila nor the Frenchman understood one
+      syllable. And at the same moment, too, M. Peyron himself, recalled from
+      the door of his hut by Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s sharp cry of pain and by his
+      liege subject&rsquo;s voluble flow of loud speech and laughter, ran up all
+      agog to know what was the matter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila, with an effort, tried to hide in his robe his wounded
+      finger. But the Frenchman caught at the meaning of the whole scene at
+      once, and interposed himself hastily between the parrot and its assailant.
+      &ldquo;<i>Hé!</i> my Methuselah,&rdquo; he cried, in French, stroking the
+      exultant bird with his hand, and smoothing its ruffled feathers, &ldquo;did
+      he try to choke you, then? Did he try to get over you? That was a brave
+      bird! You did well, <i>mon ami</i>, to bite him!... No, no, Life of the
+      World, and Measurer of the Sun&rsquo;s Course,&rdquo; he went on, in
+      Polynesian, &ldquo;you shall not go near him. Keep your distance, I beg of
+      you. You may be a high god&mdash;though you were a scurvy wretch enough,
+      don&rsquo;t you recollect, when you were only Lavita, the son of Sami&mdash;but
+      I know your tricks. Hands off from my birds, say I. A curse is on the head
+      of the Soul of dead parrots. You tried to hurt him, and see how the curse
+      has worked itself out! The blood of the great god, the Pillar of Heaven,
+      has stained the gray dust of the island of Boupari.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila stood sucking his finger, and looking the very picture of the
+      most savage sheepishness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0019" id="link2HCH0019"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIX. &mdash; DOMESTIC BLISS.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila went home that day in a very bad humor. The portent of the
+      bitten finger had seriously disturbed him. For, strange as it sounds to
+      us, he really believed himself in his own divinity; and the bare thought
+      that the holy soil of earth should be dabbled and wet with the blood of a
+      god gave him no little uneasiness in his own mind on his way homeward.
+      Besides, what would his people think of it if they found it out? At all
+      hazards almost, he must strive to conceal this episode of the bite from
+      the men of Boupari. A god who gets wounded, and, worse still, gets wounded
+      in the very act of trying to break a great taboo laid on by himself in a
+      previous incarnation&mdash;such a god undoubtedly lays himself open to the
+      gravest misapprehensions on the part of his worshippers. Indeed, it was
+      not even certain whether his people, if they knew, would any longer regard
+      him as a god at all. The devotion of savages is profound, but it is far
+      from personal. When deities pass so readily from one body to another, you
+      must always keep a sharp lookout lest the great spirit should at any
+      minute have deserted his earthly tabernacle, and have taken up his abode
+      in a fresh representative. Honor the gods by all means; but make sure at
+      the same time what particular house they are just then inhabiting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the hour of siesta in Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s tent. For a short space
+      in the middle of the day, during the heat of the sun, while Fire and
+      Water, with their embers and their calabash, sat on guard in a porch by
+      the bamboo gate, Tu-Kila-Kila, Pillar of Heaven and Threshold of Earth,
+      had respite for a while from his daily task of guarding the sacred banyan,
+      and could take his ease after his meal in his own quarters. While that
+      precious hour of taboo lasted, no wandering dragon or spirit of the air
+      could hurt the holy tree, and no human assailant dare touch or approach
+      it. Even the disease-making gods, who walk in the pestilence, could not
+      blight or wither it. At all other times Tu-Kila-Kila mounted guard over
+      his tree with a jealousy that fairly astonished Felix Thurstan&rsquo;s
+      soul; for Felix Thurstan only dimly understood as yet how implicitly
+      Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s own life and office were bound up with the
+      inviolability of the banyan he protected.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Within the hut, during that playtime of siesta, while the lizards (who are
+      also gods) ran up and down the wall, and puffed their orange throats,
+      Tu-Kila-Kila lounged at his ease that afternoon, with one of his many
+      wives&mdash;a tall and beautiful Polynesian woman, lithe and supple, as is
+      the wont of her race, and as exquisitely formed in every limb and feature
+      as a sculptured Greek goddess. A graceful wreath of crimson hibiscus
+      adorned her shapely head, round which her long and glossy black hair was
+      coiled in great rings with artistic profusion. A festoon of blue flowers
+      and dark-red dracæna leaves hung like a chaplet over her olive-brown neck
+      and swelling bust. One breadth of native cloth did duty for an apron or
+      girdle round her waist and hips. All else was naked. Her plump brown arms
+      were set off by the green and crimson of the flowers that decked her.
+      Tu-Kila-Kila glanced at his slave with approving eyes. He always liked
+      Ula; she pleased him the best of all his women. And she knew his ways,
+      too: she never contradicted him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Among savages, guile is woman&rsquo;s best protection. The wife who knows
+      when to give way with hypocritical obedience, and when to coax or wheedle
+      her yielding lord, runs the best chance in the end for her life. Her model
+      is not the oak, but the willow. She must be able to watch for the rising
+      signs of ill-humor in her master&rsquo;s mind, and guard against them
+      carefully. If she is wise, she keeps out of her husband&rsquo;s way when
+      his anger is aroused, but soothes and flatters him to the top of his bent
+      when his temper is just slightly or momentarily ruffled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Lord of Heaven and Earth is ill at ease,&rdquo; Ula murmured,
+      insinuatingly, as Tu-Kila-Kila winced once with the pain of his swollen
+      finger. &ldquo;What has happened today to the Increaser of Bread-Fruit? My
+      lord is sad. His eye is downcast. Who has crossed my master&rsquo;s will?
+      Who has dared to anger him?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila kept the wounded hand wrapped up in a soft leaf, like a
+      woolly mullein. All the way home he had been obliged to conceal it, and
+      disguise the pain he felt, lest Fire and Water should discover his secret.
+      For he dared not let his people know that the Soul of all dead parrots had
+      bitten his finger, and drawn blood from the sacred veins of the man-god.
+      But he almost hesitated now whether or not he should confide in Ula. A god
+      may surely trust his own wedded wives. And yet&mdash;such need to be
+      careful&mdash;women are so treacherous! He suspected Ula sometimes of
+      being a great deal too fond of that young man Toko, who used to be one of
+      the temple attendants, and whom he had given as Shadow accordingly to the
+      King of the Rain, so as to get rid of him altogether from among the crowd
+      of his followers. So he kept his own counsel for the moment, and disguised
+      his misfortune. &ldquo;I have been to see the King of the Birds this
+      morning,&rdquo; he said, in a grumbling voice; &ldquo;and I do not like
+      him. That God is too insolent. For my part I hate these strangers, one and
+      all. They have no respect for Tu-Kila-Kila like the men of Boupari. They
+      are as bad as atheists. They fear not the gods, and the customs of our
+      fathers are not in them.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ula crept nearer, with one lithe round arm laid caressingly close to her
+      master&rsquo;s neck. &ldquo;Then why do you make them Korong?&rdquo; she
+      asked, with feminine curiosity, like some wife who seeks to worm out of
+      her husband the secret of freemasonry. &ldquo;Why do you not cook them and
+      eat them at once, as soon as they arrive? They are very good food&mdash;so
+      white and fine. That last new-comer, now&mdash;the Queen of the Clouds&mdash;why
+      not eat her? She is plump and tender.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I like her,&rdquo; Tu-Kila-Kila responded, in a gloating tone.
+      &ldquo;I like her every way. I would have brought her here to my temple
+      and admitted her at once to be one of Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s wives&mdash;only
+      that Fire and Water would not have permitted me. They have too many
+      taboos, those awkward gods. I do not love them. But I make my strangers
+      Korong for a very wise reason. You women are fools; you understand
+      nothing; you do not know the mysteries. These things are a great deal too
+      high and too deep for you. You could not comprehend them. But men know
+      well why. They are wise; they have been initiated. Much more, then, do I,
+      who am the very high god&mdash;who eat human flesh and drink blood like
+      water&mdash;who cause the sun to shine and the fruits to grow&mdash;without
+      whom the day in heaven would fade and die out, and the foundations of the
+      earth would be shaken like a plantain leaf.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ula laid her soft brown hand soothingly on the great god&rsquo;s arm just
+      above the elbow. &ldquo;Tell me,&rdquo; she said, leaning forward toward
+      him, and looking deep into his eyes with those great speaking gray orbs of
+      hers; &ldquo;tell me, O Sustainer of the Equipoise of Heaven; I know you
+      are great; I know you are mighty; I know you are holy and wise and cruel;
+      but why must you let these sailing gods who come from unknown lands beyond
+      the place where the sun rises or sets&mdash;why must you let them so
+      trouble and annoy you? Why do you not at once eat them up and be done with
+      them? Is not their flesh sweet? Is not their blood red? Are they not a
+      dainty well fit for the banquet of Tu-Kila-Kila?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The savage looked at her for a moment and hesitated. A very beautiful
+      woman this Ula, certainly. Not one of all his wives had larger brown
+      limbs, or whiter teeth, or a deeper respect for his divine nature. He had
+      almost a mind&mdash;it was only Ula? Why not break the silence enjoined
+      upon gods toward women, and explain this matter to her? Not the great
+      secret itself, of course&mdash;the secret on which hung the Death and
+      Transmigration of Tu-Kila-Kila&mdash;oh, no; not that one. The savage was
+      far too cunning in his generation to intrust that final terrible Taboo to
+      the ears of a woman. But the reason why he made all strangers Korong. A
+      woman might surely be trusted with that&mdash;especially Ula. She was so
+      very handsome. And she was always so respectful to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, the fact of it is,&rdquo; he answered, laying his hand on her
+      neck, that plump brown neck of hers, under the garland of dracæna leaves,
+      and stroking it voluptuously, &ldquo;the sailing gods who happen upon this
+      island from time to time are made Korong&mdash;but hush! it is taboo.&rdquo;
+      He gazed around the hut suspiciously. &ldquo;Are all the others away?&rdquo;
+      he asked, in a frightened tone. &ldquo;Fire and Water would denounce me to
+      all my people if once they found I had told a taboo to a woman. And as for
+      you, they would take you, because you knew it, and would pull your flesh
+      from your bones with hot stone pincers!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ula rose and looked about her at the door of the tent. She nodded thrice;
+      then she glided back, serpentine, and threw herself gracefully, in a
+      statuesque pose, on the native mat beside him. &ldquo;Here, drink some
+      more kava,&rdquo; she cried, holding a bowl to his lips, and wheedling him
+      with her eyes. &ldquo;Kava is good; it is fit for gods. It makes them
+      royally drunk, as becomes great deities. The spirits of our ancestors
+      dwell in the bowl; when you drink of the kava they mount by degrees into
+      your heart and head. They inspire brave words. They give you thoughts of
+      heaven. Drink, my master, drink. The Ruler of the Sun in Heaven is
+      thirsty.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She lay propped on one elbow, with her face close to his; and offered him,
+      with one brown, irresistible hand, the intoxicating liquor. Tu-Kila-Kila
+      took the bowl, and drank a second time, for he had drunk of it once with
+      his dinner already. It was seldom he allowed himself the luxury of a
+      second draught of that very stupefying native intoxicant, for he knew too
+      well the danger of insecurely guarding his sacred tree; but on this
+      particular occasion, as on so many others in the collective life of
+      humanity, &ldquo;the woman tempted him,&rdquo; and he acted as she told
+      him. He drank it off deep. &ldquo;Ha, ha! that is good!&rdquo; he cried,
+      smacking his lips. &ldquo;That is a drink fit for a god. No woman can make
+      kava like you, Ula.&rdquo; He toyed with her arms and neck lazily once
+      more. &ldquo;You are the queen of my wives,&rdquo; he went on, in a dreamy
+      voice. &ldquo;I like you so well, that, plump as you are, I really
+      believe, Ula, I could never make up my mind to eat you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My lord is very gracious,&rdquo; Ula made answer, in a soft, low
+      tone, pretending to caress him. And for some minutes more she continued to
+      make much of him in the fulsome strain of Polynesian flattery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last the kava had clearly got into Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s head. Then Ula
+      bent forward once more and again attacked him. &ldquo;Now I know you will
+      tell me,&rdquo; she said, coaxingly, &ldquo;why you make them Korong. As
+      long as I live, I will never speak or hint of it to anybody anywhere. And
+      if I do&mdash;why, the remedy is near. I am your meat&mdash;take me and
+      eat me.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even cannibals are human; and at the touch of her soft hand, Tu-Kila-Kila
+      gave way slowly. &ldquo;I made them Korong,&rdquo; he answered, in rather
+      thick accents, &ldquo;because it is less dangerous for me to make them so
+      than to choose for the post from among our own islanders. Sooner or later,
+      my day must come; but I can put it off best by making my enemies out of
+      strangers who arrive upon our island, and not out of those of my own
+      household. All Boupari men who have been initiated know the terrible
+      secret&mdash;they know where lies the Death of Tu-Kila-Kila. The strangers
+      who come to us from the sun or the sea do not know it; and therefore my
+      life is safest with them. So I make them Korong whenever I can, to prolong
+      my own days, and to guard my secret.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And the Death of Tu-Kila-Kila?&rdquo; the woman whispered, very
+      low, still soothing his arm with her hand and patting his cheek softly
+      from time to time with a gentle, caressing motion. &ldquo;Tell me where
+      does that live? Who holds it in charge? Where is Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s
+      great spirit laid by in safety? I know it is in the tree; but where and in
+      what part of it?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila drew back with a little cry of surprise. &ldquo;You know it
+      is in the tree!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;You know my soul is kept there!
+      Why, Ula, who told you that? and you a woman! Bad medicine indeed! Some
+      man has been blabbing what he learned in the mysteries. If this should
+      reach the ears of the King of the Rain&mdash;&rdquo; he paused
+      mysteriously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What? What?&rdquo; Ula cried, seizing his hand in hers, and
+      pressing it hard to her bosom in her anxiety and eagerness. &ldquo;Tell me
+      the secret! Tell me!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a sudden sharp howl of darting pain, Tu-Kila-Kila withdrew his hand.
+      She had squeezed the finger the parrot had bitten, and blood began once
+      more to flow from it freely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A wild impulse of revenge came over the savage. He caught her by the neck
+      with his other hand, pressed her throat hard, till she was black in the
+      face, kicked her several times with ferocious rage, and then flung her
+      away from him to the other side of the hut with a fierce and
+      untranslatable native imprecation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ula, shaken and hurt, darted away toward the door, with a face of abject
+      terror. For every reason on earth she was intensely alarmed. Were it
+      merely as a matter of purely earthly fear, she had ground enough for
+      fright in having so roused the hasty anger of that powerful and implacable
+      creature. He would kill her and eat her with far less compunction than an
+      English farmer would kill and eat one of his own barnyard chickens. But
+      besides that, it terrified her not a little in more mysterious ways to see
+      the blood of a god falling upon the earth so freely. She knew not what
+      awful results to herself and her race might follow from so terrible a
+      desecration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, to her utter astonishment, the great god himself, mad with rage as he
+      was, seemed none the less almost as profoundly frightened and surprised as
+      she herself was. &ldquo;What did you do that for?&rdquo; he cried, now
+      sufficiently recovered for thought and speech, wringing his hand with
+      pain, and then popping his finger hastily into his mouth to ease it.
+      &ldquo;You are a clumsy thing. And you want to destroy me, too, with your
+      foolish clumsiness.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked at her and scowled. He was very angry. But the savage woman is
+      nothing if not quick-witted and politic. In a flash of intuition, Ula saw
+      at once he was more frightened than hurt; he was afraid of the effect of
+      this strange revelation upon his own reputation for supreme godship. With
+      every mark and gesture of deprecatory servility the woman sidled back to
+      his side like a whipped dog. For a second she looked down on the floor at
+      the drops of blood; then, without one word of warning or one instant&rsquo;s
+      hesitation, she bit her own finger hard till blood flowed from it freely.
+      &ldquo;I will show this to Fire and Water,&rdquo; she said, holding it up
+      before his eyes all red and bleeding. &ldquo;I will say you were angry
+      with me and bit me for a punishment, as you often do. They will never find
+      out it was the blood of a god. Have no fear for their eyes. Let me look at
+      your finger.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila, half appeased by her clever quickness, held his hand out
+      sulkily, like a disobedient child. Ula examined it close. &ldquo;A bite,&rdquo;
+      she said, shortly. &ldquo;A bite from a bird! a peck from a parrot.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila jerked out a surly assent. &ldquo;Yes, the Soul of all dead
+      parrots,&rdquo; he answered, with an angry glare. &ldquo;It bit me this
+      morning at the King of the Birds&rsquo;. A vicious brute. But no one else
+      saw it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ula put the finger up to her own mouth, and sucked the wound gently. Her
+      medicine stanched it. Then she took a thin leaf of the paper mulberry,
+      soft, cool, and soothing, and bound it round the place with a strip of the
+      lace-like inner bark, as deftly as any hospital nurse in London would have
+      done it. These savage women are capital hands in sickness. Tu-Kila-Kila
+      sat and sulked meanwhile, like a disappointed child. When Ula had
+      finished, she nodded her head and glided softly away. She knew her chance
+      of learning the secret was gone for the moment, and she had too much of
+      the guile of the savage woman to spoil her chances by loitering about
+      unnecessarily while her lord was in his present ungracious humor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As she stole from the hut, Tu-Kila-Kila, looking ruefully at his wounded
+      hand, and then at that light and supple retreating figure, muttered
+      sulkily to himself, with a very bad grace, &ldquo;the woman knows too
+      much. She nearly wormed my secret out of me. She knows that Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s
+      life and soul are bound up in the tree. She knows that I bled, and that
+      the parrot bit me. If she blabs, as women will do, mischief may come of
+      it. I am a great god, a very great god&mdash;keen, bloodthirsty, cruel.
+      And I like that woman. But it would be wiser and safer, perhaps, after
+      all, to forego my affection and to make a great feast of her.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Ula, looking back with a smile and a nod, and holding up her own
+      bitten and bleeding hand with a farewell shake, as if to remind her divine
+      husband of her promise to show it to Fire and Water, murmured low to
+      herself as she went, &ldquo;He is a very great god; a very great god, no
+      doubt; but I hate him, I hate him! He would eat me to-morrow if I didn&rsquo;t
+      coax him and wheedle him and keep him in a good temper. You want to be
+      sharp, indeed, to be the wife of a god. I got off to-day with the skin of
+      my teeth. He might have turned and killed me. If only I could find out the
+      Great Taboo, I would tell it to the stranger, the King of the Rain; and
+      then, perhaps, Tu-Kila-Kila would die. And the stranger would become
+      Tu-Kila-Kila in turn, and I would be one of his wives; and Toko, who is
+      his Shadow, would return again to the service of Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s
+      temple.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Fire, as she passed, was saying to Water, &ldquo;We are getting tired
+      in Boupari of Lavita, the son of Sami. If the luck of the island is not to
+      change, it is high time, I think, we should have a new Tu-Kila-Kila.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0020" id="link2HCH0020"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XX. &mdash; COUNCIL OF WAR.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      That same afternoon Muriel had a visitor. M. Jules Peyron, formerly of the
+      Collége de France, no longer a mere Polynesian god, but a French gentleman
+      of the Boulevards in voice and manner, came to pay his respects, as in
+      duty bound, to Mademoiselle Ellis. M. Peyron had performed his toilet
+      under trying circumstances, to the best of his ability. The remnants of
+      his European clothes, much patched and overhung with squares of native
+      tappa cloth, were hidden as much as possible by a wide feather cloak, very
+      savage in effect, but more seemly, at any rate, than the tattered garments
+      in which Felix had first found him in his own garden parterre. M. Peyron,
+      however, was fully aware of the defects of his costume, and profoundly
+      apologetic. &ldquo;It is with ten thousand regrets, mademoiselle,&rdquo;
+      he said, many times over, bowing low and simpering, &ldquo;that I venture
+      to appear in a lady&rsquo;s <i>salon</i>&mdash;for, after all, wherever a
+      European lady goes, there her <i>salon</i> follows her&mdash;in such a <i>tenue</i>
+      as that in which I am now compelled to present myself. <i>Mais que
+      voulez-vous? Nous ne sommes pas à Paris</i>!&rdquo; For to M. Peyron, as
+      innocent in his way as Mali herself, the whole world divided itself into
+      Paris and the Provinces.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nevertheless, it was touching to both the new-comers to see the Frenchman&rsquo;s
+      delight at meeting once more with civilized beings. &ldquo;Figure to
+      yourself, mademoiselle,&rdquo; he said, with true French effusion&mdash;&ldquo;figure
+      to yourself the joy and surprise with which I, this morning, receive
+      monsieur, your friend, at my humble cottage! For the first time after nine
+      years on this hateful island, I see again a European face; I hear again
+      the sound, the beautiful sound of that charming French language. My
+      emotion, believe me, was too profound for words. When monsieur was gone, I
+      retired to my hut, I sat down on the floor, I gave myself over to tears,
+      tears of joy and gratitude, to think I should once more catch a glimpse of
+      civilization! This afternoon, I ask myself, can I venture to go out and
+      pay my respects, thus attired, in these rags, to a European lady? For a
+      long time I doubt, I wonder, I hesitate. In my quality of Frenchman, I
+      would have wished to call in civilized costume upon a civilized household.
+      But what would you have? Necessity knows no law. I am compelled to
+      envelope myself in my savage robe of office as a Polynesian god&mdash;a
+      robe of office which, for the rest, is not without an interest of its own
+      for the scientific ethnologist. It belongs to me especially as King of the
+      Birds, and in it, in effect, is represented at least one feather of each
+      kind or color from every part of the body of every species of bird that
+      inhabits Boupari. I thus sum up, <i>pour ainsi dire</i>, in my official
+      costume all the birds of the island, as Tu-Kila-Kila, the very high god,
+      sums up, in his quaint and curious dress, the land and the sea, the trees
+      and the stones, earth and air, and fire and water.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Familiarity with danger begets at last a certain callous indifference.
+      Muriel was surprised in her own mind to discover how easily they could
+      chat with M. Peyron on such indifferent subjects, with that awful doom of
+      an approaching death hanging over them so shortly. But the fact was,
+      terrors of every kind had so encompassed them round since their arrival on
+      the island that the mere additional certainty of a date and mode of
+      execution was rather a relief to their minds than otherwise. It partook of
+      the nature of a reprieve, not of a sentence. Besides, this meeting with
+      another speaker of a European tongue seemed to them so full of promise and
+      hope that they almost forgot the terrors of their threatened end in their
+      discussion of possible schemes for escape to freedom. Even M. Peyron
+      himself, who had spent nine long years of exile in the island, felt that
+      the arrival of two new Europeans gave him some hope of effecting at last
+      his own retreat from this unendurable position. His talk was all of
+      passing steamers. If the Australasian had come near enough once to sight
+      the island, he argued, then the homeward-bound vessel, <i>en route</i> for
+      Honolulu, must have begun to take a new course considerably to the
+      eastward of the old navigable channel. If this were so, their obvious plan
+      was to keep a watch, day and night, for another passing Australian liner,
+      and whenever one hove in sight, to steal away to the shore, seize a stray
+      canoe, overpower, if possible, their Shadows, or give them the slip, and
+      make one bold stroke for freedom on the open ocean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      None of them could conceal from their own minds, to be sure, the extreme
+      difficulty of carrying out this programme. In the first place, it was a
+      toss-up whether they ever sighted another steamer at all; for during the
+      weeks they had already passed on the island, not a sign of one had
+      appeared from any quarter. Then, again, even supposing a steamer ever hove
+      in sight, what likelihood that they could make out for her in an open
+      canoe in time to attract attention before she had passed the island?
+      Tu-Kila-Kila would never willingly let them go; their Shadows would watch
+      them with unceasing care; the whole body of natives would combine together
+      to prevent their departure. If they ran away at all, they must run for
+      their lives; as soon as the islanders discovered they were gone, every
+      war-canoe in the place would be manned at once with bloodthirsty savages,
+      who would follow on their track with relentless persistence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As for Muriel, less prepared for such dangerous adventures than the two
+      men, she was rather inclined to attach a certain romantic importance (as a
+      girl might do) to the story of the parrot and the possible disclosures
+      which it could make if it could only communicate with them. The mysterious
+      element in the history of that unique bird attracted her fancy. &ldquo;The
+      only one of its race now left alive,&rdquo; she said, with slow
+      reflectiveness. &ldquo;Like Dolly Pentreath, the last old woman who could
+      speak Cornish! I wonder how long parrots ever live? Do you know at all,
+      monsieur? You are the King of the Birds&mdash;you ought to be an authority
+      on their habits and manners.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Frenchman smiled a gallant smile. &ldquo;Unhappily, mademoiselle,&rdquo;
+      he said, &ldquo;though, as a medical student, I took up to a certain
+      extent biological science in general at the Collége de France, I never
+      paid any special or peculiar attention in Paris to birds in particular.
+      But it is the universal opinion of the natives (if that counts for much)
+      that parrots live to a very great age; and this one old parrot of mine,
+      whom I call Methuselah on account of his advanced years, is considered by
+      them all to be a perfect patriarch. In effect, when the oldest men now
+      living on the island were little boys, they tell me that Methuselah was
+      already a venerable and much-venerated parrot. He must certainly have
+      outlived all the rest of his race by at least the best part of
+      three-quarters of a century. For the islanders themselves not infrequently
+      live, by unanimous consent, to be over a hundred.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I remember to have read somewhere,&rdquo; Felix said, turning it
+      over in his mind, &ldquo;that when Humboldt was travelling in the wilds of
+      South America he found one very old parrot in an Indian village, which,
+      the Indians assured him, spoke the language of an extinct tribe,
+      incomprehensible then by any living person. If I recollect aright,
+      Humboldt believed that particular bird must have lived to be nearly a
+      hundred and fifty.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is so, monsieur,&rdquo; the Frenchman answered. &ldquo;I
+      remember the case well, and have often recalled it. I recollect our
+      professor mentioning it one day in the course of his lectures. And I have
+      always mentally coupled that parrot of Humboldt&rsquo;s with my own old
+      friend and subject, Methuselah. However, that only impresses upon one more
+      fully the folly of hoping that we can learn anything worth knowing from
+      him. I have heard him recite his story many times over, though now he
+      repeats it less frequently than he used formerly to do; and I feel
+      convinced it is couched in some unknown and, no doubt, forgotten language.
+      It is a much more guttural and unpleasant tongue than any of the soft
+      dialects now spoken in Polynesia. It belonged, I am convinced, to that yet
+      earlier and more savage race which the Polynesians must have displaced;
+      and as such it is now, I feel certain, practically irrecoverable.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If they were more savage than the Polynesians,&rdquo; Muriel said,
+      with a profound sigh, &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sorry for anybody who fell into
+      their clutches.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what would not many philologists at home in England give,&rdquo;
+      Felix murmured, philosophically, &ldquo;for a transcript of the words that
+      parrot can speak&mdash;perhaps a last relic of the very earliest and most
+      primitive form of human language!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the very moment when these things were passing under the wattled roof
+      of Muriel&rsquo;s hut, it happened that on the taboo-space outside, Toko,
+      the Shadow, stood talking for a moment with Ula, the fourteenth wife of
+      the great Tu-Kila-Kila.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I never see you now, Toko,&rdquo; the beautiful Polynesian said,
+      leaning almost across the white line of coral-sand which she dared not
+      transgress. &ldquo;Times are dull at the temple since you came to be
+      Shadow to the white-faced stranger.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was for that that Tu-Kila-Kila sent me here,&rdquo; the Shadow
+      answered, with profound conviction. &ldquo;He is jealous, the great god.
+      He is bad. He is cruel. He wanted to get rid of me. So he sent me away to
+      the King of the Rain that I might not see you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ula pouted, and held up her wounded finger before his eyes coquettishly.
+      &ldquo;See what he did to me,&rdquo; she said, with a mute appeal for
+      sympathy&mdash;though in that particular matter the truth was not in her.
+      &ldquo;Your god was angry with me to-day because I hurt his hand, and he
+      clutched me by the throat, and almost choked me. He has a bad heart. See
+      how he bit me and drew blood. Some of these days, I believe, he will kill
+      me and eat me.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Shadow glanced around him suspiciously with an uneasy air. Then he
+      whispered low, in a voice half grudge, half terror, &ldquo;If he does, he
+      is a great god&mdash;he can search all the world&mdash;I fear him much,
+      but Toko&rsquo;s heart is warm. Let Tu-Kila-Kila look out for vengeance.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The woman glanced across at him open-eyed, with her enticing look. &ldquo;If
+      the King of the Rain, who is Korong, knew all the secret,&rdquo; she
+      murmured, slowly, &ldquo;he would soon be Tu-Kila-Kila himself; and you
+      and I could then meet together freely.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Shadow started. It was a terrible suggestion. &ldquo;You mean to say&mdash;&rdquo;
+      he cried; then fear overcame him, and, crouching down where he sat, he
+      gazed around him, terrified. Who could say that the wind would not report
+      his words to Tu-Kila-Kila?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ula laughed at his fears. &ldquo;Pooh,&rdquo; she answered, smiling.
+      &ldquo;You are a man; and yet you are afraid of a little taboo. I am a
+      woman; and yet if I knew the secret as you do, I would break taboo as
+      easily as I would break an egg-shell. I would tell the white-faced
+      stranger all&mdash;if only it would bring you and me together forever.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is a great risk, a very great risk,&rdquo; the Shadow answered,
+      trembling. &ldquo;Tu-Kila-Kila is a mighty god. He may be listening this
+      moment, and may pinch us to death by his spirits for our words, or burn us
+      to ashes with a flash of his anger.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The woman smiled an incredulous smile. &ldquo;If you had lived as near
+      Tu-Kila-Kila as I have,&rdquo; she answered, boldly, &ldquo;you would
+      think as little, perhaps, of his divinity as I do.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For even in Polynesia, superstitious as it is, no hero is a god to his
+      wives or his valets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0021" id="link2HCH0021"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXI. &mdash; METHUSELAH GIVES SIGN.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      All the hopes of the three Europeans were concentrated now on the bare
+      off-chance of a passing steamer. M. Peyron in particular was fully
+      convinced that, if the Australasian had found the inner channel
+      practicable, other ships in future would follow her example. With this
+      idea firmly fixed in his head, he arranged with Felix that one or other of
+      them should keep watch alternately by night as far as possible; and he
+      also undertook that a canoe should constantly be in readiness to carry
+      them away to the supposititious ship, if occasion arose for it. Muriel
+      took counsel with Mali on the question of rousing the Frenchman if a
+      steamer appeared, and they were the first to sight it; and Mali, in whom
+      renewed intercourse with white people had restored to some extent the
+      civilized Queensland attitude of mind, readily enough promised to assist
+      in their scheme, provided she was herself taken with them, and so relieved
+      from the terrible vengeance which would otherwise overtake her. &ldquo;If
+      Boupari man catch me,&rdquo; she said, in her simple, graphic, Polynesian
+      way, &ldquo;Boupari man kill me, and lay me in leaves, and cook me very
+      nice, and make great feast of me, like him do with Jani.&rdquo; From that
+      untimely end both Felix and Muriel promised faithfully, as far as in them
+      lay, to protect her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To communicate with M. Peyron by daytime, without arousing the
+      ever-wakeful suspicion of the natives, Felix hit upon an excellent plan.
+      He burnished his metal matchbox to the very highest polish it was capable
+      of taking, and then heliographed by means of sun-flashes on the Morse
+      code. He had learned the code in Fiji in the course of his official
+      duties; and he taught the Frenchman now readily enough how to read and
+      reply with the other half of the box, torn off for the purpose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was three or four days, however, before the two English wanderers
+      ventured to return M. Peyron&rsquo;s visit. They didn&rsquo;t wish to
+      attract too greatly the attention of the islanders. Gradually, as their
+      stay on the island went on, they learned the truth that Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s
+      eyes, as he himself had boasted, were literally everywhere. For he had
+      spies of his own, told off in every direction, who dogged the steps of his
+      victims unseen. Sometimes, as Felix and Muriel walked unsuspecting through
+      the jungle paths, closely followed by their Shadows, a stealthy brown
+      figure, crouched low to the ground, would cross the road for a moment
+      behind them, and disappear again noiselessly into the dense mass of
+      underbrush. Then Mali or Toko, turning round, all hushed, with a terrified
+      look, would murmur low to themselves, or to one another, &ldquo;There goes
+      one of the Eyes of Tu-Kila-Kila!&rdquo; It was only by slow degrees that
+      this system of espionage grew clear to the strangers; but as soon as they
+      had learned its reality and ubiquity, they felt at once how undesirable it
+      would be for them to excite the terrible man-god&rsquo;s jealousy and
+      suspicion by being observed too often in close personal intercourse with
+      their fellow-exile and victim, the Frenchman. It was this that made them
+      have recourse to the device of the heliograph.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So three or four days passed before Muriel dared to approach M. Peyron&rsquo;s
+      cottage. When she did at last go there with Felix, it was in the early
+      morning, before the fierce tropical sun, that beat full on the island, had
+      begun to exert its midday force and power. The path that led there lay
+      through the thick and tangled mass of brushwood which covered the greater
+      part of the island with its dense vegetation; it was overhung by huge
+      tree-ferns and broad-leaved Southern bushes, and abutted at last on the
+      little wind-swept knoll where the King of the Birds had his appropriate
+      dwelling-place. The Frenchman received them with studied Parisian
+      hospitality. He had decorated his arbor with fresh flowers for the
+      occasion, and bright tropical fruits, with their own green leaves, did
+      duty for the coffee or the absinthe of his fatherland on his homemade
+      rustic table. Yet in spite of all the rudeness of the physical
+      surroundings, they felt themselves at home again with this one exiled
+      European; the faint flavor of civilization pervaded and permeated the
+      Frenchman&rsquo;s hut after the unmixed savagery to which they had now
+      been so long accustomed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Muriel&rsquo;s curiosity, however, centred most about the mysterious old
+      parrot, of whose strange legend so much had been said to her. After they
+      had sat for a little under the shade of the spreading banyan, to cool down
+      from their walk&mdash;for it was an oppressive morning&mdash;M. Peyron led
+      her round to his aviary at the back of the hut, and introduced her, by
+      their native names, to all his subjects. &ldquo;I am responsible for their
+      lives,&rdquo; he said, gravely, &ldquo;for their welfare, for their
+      happiness. If I were to let one of them grow old without a successor in
+      the field to follow him up and receive his soul&mdash;as in the case of my
+      friend Methuselah here, who was so neglected by my predecessors&mdash;the
+      whole species would die out for want of a spirit, and my own life would
+      atone for that of my people. There you have the central principle of the
+      theology of Boupari. Every race, every element, every power of nature, is
+      summed up for them in some particular person or thing; and on the life of
+      that person or thing depends, as they believe, the entire health of the
+      species, the sequence of events, the whole order and succession of natural
+      phenomena.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix approached the mysterious and venerable bird with somewhat
+      incautious fingers. &ldquo;It looks very old,&rdquo; he said, trying to
+      stroke its head and neck with a friendly gesture. &ldquo;You do well,
+      indeed, in calling it Methuselah.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he spoke, the bird, alarmed at the vague consciousness of a hand and
+      voice which it did not recognize and mindful of Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s
+      recent attack, made a vicious peck at the fingers outstretched to caress
+      it. &ldquo;Take care!&rdquo; the Frenchman cried, in a warning voice.
+      &ldquo;The patriarch&rsquo;s temper is no longer what it was sixty or
+      seventy years ago. He grows old and peevish. His humor is soured. He will
+      sing no longer the lively little scraps of Offenbach I have taught him. He
+      does nothing but sit still and mumble now in his own forgotten language.
+      And he&rsquo;s dreadfully cross&mdash;so crabbed&mdash;<i>mon Dieu</i>,
+      what a character! Why, the other day, as I told you, he bit Tu-Kila-Kila
+      himself, the high god of the island, with a good hard peck, when that
+      savage tried to touch him; you&rsquo;d have laughed to see his godship
+      sent off bleeding to his hut with a wounded finger! I will confess I was
+      by no means sorry at the sight myself. I do not love that god, nor he me;
+      and I was glad when Methuselah, on whom he is afraid to revenge himself
+      openly, gave him a nice smart bite for trying to interfere with him.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;s very snappish, to be sure,&rdquo; Felix said, with a
+      smile, trying once more to push forward one hand to stroke the bird
+      cautiously. But Methuselah resented all such unauthorized intrusions. He
+      was growing too old to put up with strangers. He made a second vicious
+      attempt to peck at the hand held out to soothe him, and screamed, as he
+      did so, in the usual discordant and unpleasant voice of an angry or
+      frightened parrot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, Felix,&rdquo; Muriel put in, taking him by the arm with a
+      girlish gesture&mdash;for even the terrors by which they were surrounded
+      hadn&rsquo;t wholly succeeded in killing out the woman within her&mdash;&ldquo;how
+      clumsy you are! You don&rsquo;t understand one bit how to manage parrots.
+      I had a parrot of my own at my aunt&rsquo;s in Australia, and I know their
+      ways and all about them. Just let me try him.&rdquo; She held out her soft
+      white hand toward the sulky bird with a fearless, caressing gesture.
+      &ldquo;Pretty Poll, pretty Poll!&rdquo; she said, in English, in the
+      conventional tone of address to their kind. &ldquo;Did the naughty man go
+      and frighten her then? Was she afraid of his hand? Did Polly want a lump
+      of sugar?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On a sudden the bird opened its eyes quickly with an awakened air, and
+      looked her back in the face, half blindly, half quizzingly. It preened its
+      wings for a second, and crooned with pleasure. Then it put forward its
+      neck, with its head on one side, took her dainty finger gently between its
+      beak and tongue, bit it for pure love with a soft, short pressure, and at
+      once allowed her to stroke its back and sides with a very pleased and
+      surprised expression. The success of her skill flattered Muriel. &ldquo;There!
+      it knows me!&rdquo; she cried, with childish delight; &ldquo;it
+      understands I&rsquo;m a friend! It takes to me at once! Pretty Poll!
+      Pretty Poll! Come, Poll, come and kiss me!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The bird drew back at the words, and steadied itself for a moment
+      knowingly on its perch. Then it held up its head, gazed around it with a
+      vacant air, as if suddenly awakened from a very long sleep, and, opening
+      its mouth, exclaimed in loud, clear, sharp, and distinct tones&mdash;and
+      in English&mdash;&ldquo;Pretty Poll! Pretty Poll! Polly wants a buss!
+      Polly wants a nice sweet bit of apple!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment M. Peyron couldn&rsquo;t imagine what had happened. Felix
+      looked at Muriel. Muriel looked at Felix. The Englishman held out both his
+      hands to her in a wild fervor of surprise. Muriel took them in her own,
+      and looked deep into his eyes, while tears rose suddenly and dropped down
+      her cheeks, one by one, unchecked. They couldn&rsquo;t say why,
+      themselves; they didn&rsquo;t know wherefore; yet this unexpected echo of
+      their own tongue, in the mouth of that strange and mysterious bird,
+      thrilled through them instinctively with a strange, unearthly tremor. In
+      some dim and unexplained way, they felt half unconsciously to themselves
+      that this discovery was, perhaps, the first clue to the solution of the
+      terrible secret whose meshes encompassed them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      M. Peyron looked on in mute astonishment. He had heard the bird repeat
+      that strange jargon so often that it had ceased to have even the
+      possibility of a meaning for him. It was the way of Methuselah&mdash;just
+      his language that he talked; so harsh! so guttural! &ldquo;Pretty Poll!
+      Pretty Poll!&rdquo; he had noticed the bird harp upon those quaint words
+      again and again. They were part, no doubt, of that old primitive and
+      forgotten Pacific language the creature had learned in other days from
+      some earlier bearer of the name and ghastly honors of Tu-Kila-Kila. Why
+      should these English seem so profoundly moved by them?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mademoiselle doesn&rsquo;t surely understand the barbarous dialect
+      which our Methuselah speaks!&rdquo; he exclaimed in surprise, glancing
+      half suspiciously from one to the other of these incomprehensible Britons.
+      Like most other Frenchmen, he had been brought up in total ignorance of
+      every European language except his own; and the words the parrot
+      pronounced, when delivered with the well-known additions of parrot
+      harshness and parrot volubility, seemed to him so inexpressibly barbaric
+      in their clicks and jerks that he hadn&rsquo;t yet arrived at the faintest
+      inkling of the truth as he observed their emotion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix seized his new friend&rsquo;s hand in his and wrung it warmly.
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you see what it is?&rdquo; he exclaimed, half beside
+      himself with this vague hope of some unknown solution. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t
+      you realize how the thing stands? Don&rsquo;t you guess the truth? This
+      isn&rsquo;t a Polynesian, dialect at all. It&rsquo;s our own mother
+      tongue. The bird speaks English!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;English!&rdquo; M. Peyron replied, with incredulous scorn. &ldquo;What!
+      Methuselah speak English! Oh, no, monsieur, impossible. <i>Vous vous
+      trompez, j&rsquo;en suis sûr</i>. I can never believe it. Those harsh,
+      inarticulate sounds to belong to the noble language of Shaxper and
+      Newtowne! <i>Ah, monsieur, incroyable! vous vous trompez; vous vous
+      trompez!</i>&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he spoke, the bird put its head on one side once more, and, looking out
+      of its half-blind old eyes with a crafty glance round the corner at
+      Muriel, observed again, in not very polite English, &ldquo;Pretty Poll!
+      Pretty Poll! Polly wants some fruit! Polly wants a nut! Polly wants to go
+      to bed!... God save the king! To hell with all papists!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur,&rdquo; Felix said, a certain solemn feeling of surprise
+      coming over him slowly at this last strange clause, &ldquo;it is perfectly
+      true. The bird speaks English. The bird that knows the secret of which we
+      are all in search&mdash;the bird that can tell us the truth about
+      Tu-Kila-Kila&mdash;can tell us in the tongue which mademoiselle and I
+      speak as our native language. And what is more&mdash;and more strange&mdash;gather
+      from his tone and the tenor of his remarks, he was taught, long since&mdash;a
+      century ago, or more&mdash;and by an English sailor!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Muriel held out a bit of banana on a sharp stick to the bird.
+      Methuselah-Polly took it gingerly off the end, like a well-behaved parrot?
+      &ldquo;God save the king!&rdquo; Muriel said, in a quiet voice, trying to
+      draw him on to speak a little further.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Methuselah twisted his eye sideways, first this way, then that, and
+      responded in a very clear tone, indeed, &ldquo;God save the king! Confound
+      the Duke of York! Long live Dr. Oates! And to hell with all papists!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0022" id="link2HCH0022"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXII. &mdash; TANTALIZING, VERY.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      They looked at one another again with a wild surmise. The voice was as the
+      voice of some long past age. Could the parrot be speaking to them in the
+      words of seventeenth-century English?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even M. Peyron, who at first had received the strange discovery with
+      incredulity, woke up before long to the importance of this sudden and
+      unexpected revelation. The Tu-Kila-Kila who had taught Methuselah that
+      long poem or sermon, which native tradition regarded as containing the
+      central secret of their creed or its mysteries, and which the cruel and
+      cunning Tu-Kila-Kila of to-day believed to be of immense importance to his
+      safety&mdash;that Tu-Kila-Kila of other days was, in all probability, no
+      other than an English sailor. Cast on these shores, perhaps, as they
+      themselves had been, by the mercy of the waves, he had managed to master
+      the language and religion of the savages among whom he found himself
+      thrown; he had risen to be the representative of the cannibal god; and,
+      during long months or years of tedious exile, he had beguiled his leisure
+      by imparting to the unconscious ears of a bird the weird secret of his
+      success, for the benefit of any others of his own race who might be
+      similarly treated by fortune in future. Strange and romantic as it all
+      sounded, they could hardly doubt now that this was the real explanation of
+      the bird&rsquo;s command of English words. One problem alone remained to
+      disturb their souls. Was the bird really in possession of any local secret
+      and mystery at all, or was this the whole burden of the message he had
+      brought down across the vast abyss of time&mdash;&ldquo;God save the king,
+      and to hell with all papists?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix turned to M. Peyron in a perfect tumult of suspense. &ldquo;What he
+      recites is long?&rdquo; he said, interrogatively, with profound interest.
+      &ldquo;You have heard him say much more than this at times? The words he
+      has just uttered are not those of the sermon or poem you mentioned?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      M. Peyron opened his hands expansively before him. &ldquo;Oh, <i>mon Dieu</i>,
+      no, monsieur,&rdquo; he answered, with effusion. &ldquo;You should hear
+      him recite it. He&rsquo;s never done. It is whole chapters&mdash;whole
+      chapters; a perfect Henriade in parrot-talk. When once he begins, there&rsquo;s
+      no possibility of checking or stopping him. On, on he goes. Farewell to
+      the rest; he insists on pouring it all forth to the very last sentence.
+      Gabble, gabble, gabble; chatter, chatter, chatter; pouf, pouf, pouf; boum,
+      boum, boum; he runs ahead eternally in one long discordant sing-song
+      monotone. The person who taught him must have taken entire months to teach
+      him, a phrase at a time, paragraph by paragraph. It is wonderful a bird&rsquo;s
+      memory could hold so much. But till now, taking it for granted he spoke
+      only some wild South Pacific dialect, I never paid much attention to
+      Methuselah&rsquo;s vagaries.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hush. He&rsquo;s going to speak,&rdquo; Muriel cried, holding up,
+      in alarm, one warning finger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the bird, his tongue-strings evidently loosened by the strange
+      recurrence after so many years of those familiar English sounds, &ldquo;Pretty
+      Poll! Pretty Poll!&rdquo; opened his mouth again in a loud chuckle of
+      delight, and cried, with persistent shrillness, &ldquo;God save the king!
+      A fig for all arrant knaves and roundheads!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A creepier feeling than ever came over the two English listeners at those
+      astounding words. &ldquo;Great heavens!&rdquo; Felix exclaimed to the
+      unsuspecting Frenchman, &ldquo;he speaks in the style of the Stuarts and
+      the Commonwealth!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Frenchman started. &ldquo;<i>Époque Louis Quatorze</i>!&rdquo; he
+      murmured, translating the date mentally into his own more familiar
+      chronology. &ldquo;Two centuries since! Oh, incredible! incredible!
+      Methuselah is old, but not quite so much of a patriarch as that. Even
+      Humboldt&rsquo;s parrot could hardly have lived for two hundred years in
+      the wilds of South America.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix regarded the venerable creature with a look of almost superstitious
+      awe. &ldquo;Facts are facts,&rdquo; he answered shortly, shutting his
+      mouth with a little snap. &ldquo;Unless this bird has been deliberately
+      taught historical details in an archaic diction&mdash;and a shipwrecked
+      sailor is hardly likely to be antiquarian enough to conceive such an idea&mdash;he
+      is undoubtedly a survival from the days of the Commonwealth or the
+      Restoration. And you say he runs on with his tale for an hour at a time!
+      Good heavens, what a thought! I wish we could manage to start him now.
+      Does he begin it often?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur,&rdquo; the Frenchman answered, &ldquo;when I came here
+      first, though Methuselah was already very old and feeble, he was not quite
+      a dotard, and he used to recite it all every morning regularly. That was
+      the hour, I suppose, at which the master, who first taught him this
+      lengthy recitation, used originally to impress it upon him. In those days
+      his sight and his memory were far more clear than now. But by degrees,
+      since my arrival, he has grown dull and stupid. The natives tell me that
+      fifty years ago, while he was already old, he was still bright and lively,
+      and would recite the whole poem whenever anybody presented him with his
+      greatest dainty, the claw of a moora-crab. Nowadays, however, when he can
+      hardly eat, and hardly mumble, he is much less persistent and less
+      coherent than formerly. To say the truth, I have discouraged him in his
+      efforts, because his pertinacity annoyed me. So now he seldom gets through
+      all his lesson at one bout, as he used to do at the beginning. The best
+      way to get him on is for me to sing him one of my French songs. That seems
+      to excite him, or to rouse him to rivalry. Then he will put his head on
+      one side, listen critically for a while, smile a superior smile, and
+      finally begin&mdash;jabber, jabber, jabber&mdash;trying to talk me down,
+      as if I were a brother parrot.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, do sing now!&rdquo; Muriel cried, with intense persuasion in
+      her voice. &ldquo;I do so want to hear it.&rdquo; She meant, of course,
+      the parrot&rsquo;s story.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the Frenchman bowed, and laid his hand on his heart. &ldquo;Ah,
+      mademoiselle,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;your wish is almost a royal command.
+      And yet, do you know, it is so long since I have sung, except to please
+      myself&mdash;my music is so rusty, old pieces you have heard&mdash;I have
+      no accompaniment, no score&mdash;<i>mais enfin</i>, we are all so far from
+      Paris!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Muriel didn&rsquo;t dare to undeceive him as to her meaning, lest he
+      should refuse to sing in real earnest, and the chance of learning the
+      parrot&rsquo;s secret might slip by them irretrievably. &ldquo;Oh,
+      monsieur,&rdquo; she cried, fitting herself to his humor at once, and
+      speaking as ceremoniously as if she were assisting at a musical party in
+      the Avenue Victor Hugo, &ldquo;don&rsquo;t decline, I beg of you, on those
+      accounts. We are both most anxious to hear your song. Don&rsquo;t
+      disappoint us, pray. Please begin immediately.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, mademoiselle,&rdquo; the Frenchman said, &ldquo;who could
+      resist such an appeal? You are altogether too flattering.&rdquo; And then,
+      in the same cheery voice that Felix had heard on the first day he visited
+      the King of Birds&rsquo; hut, M. Peyron began, in very decent style, to
+      pour forth the merry sounds of his rollicking song:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+&ldquo;Quand on conspi-re,
+    Quand sans frayeur
+ On peut se di-re
+    Conspirateur
+ Pour tout le mon-de
+    Il faut avoir
+ Perruque blon-de
+    Et collet noir.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      He had hardly got as far as the end of the first stanza, however, when
+      Methuselah, listening, with his ear cocked up most knowingly, to the
+      Frenchman&rsquo;s song, raised his head in opposition, and, sitting bolt
+      upright on his perch, began to scream forth a voluble stream of words in
+      one unbroken flood, so fast that Muriel could hardly follow them. The bird
+      spoke in a thick and very harsh voice, and, what was more remarkable
+      still, with a distinct and extremely peculiar North Country accent.
+      &ldquo;In the nineteenth year of the reign of his most gracious majesty,
+      King Charles the Second,&rdquo; he blurted out, viciously, with an angry
+      look at the Frenchman, &ldquo;I, Nathaniel Cross, of the borough of
+      Sunderland, in the county of Doorham, in England, an able-bodied mariner,
+      then sailing the South Seas in the good bark Martyr Prince, of the Port of
+      Great Grimsby, whereof one Thomas Wells, gent., under God, was master&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, hush, hush!&rdquo; Muriel cried, unable to catch the parrot&rsquo;s
+      precious words through the emulous echo of the Frenchman&rsquo;s music.
+      &ldquo;Whereof one Thomas Wells, gent., under God, was master&mdash;go on,
+      Polly.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+&ldquo;Perruque blonde
+   Et collet noir,&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      the Frenchman repeated, with a half-offended voice, finishing his stanza.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But just as he stopped, Methuselah stopped too, and, throwing back his
+      head in the air with a triumphant look, stared hard at his vanquished and
+      silenced opponent out of those blinking gray eyes of his. &ldquo;I thought
+      I&rsquo;d be too much for you!&rdquo; he seemed to say, wrathfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whereof one Thomas Wells, gent., under God, was master,&rdquo;
+      Muriel suggested again, all agog with excitement. &ldquo;Go on, good bird!
+      Go on, pretty Polly.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Methuselah was evidently put off the scent now by the unseasonable
+      interruption. Instead of continuing, he threw back his head a second time
+      with a triumphant air and laughed aloud boisterously. &ldquo;Pretty Polly,&rdquo;
+      he cried. &ldquo;Pretty Polly wants a nut. Tu-Kila-Kila maroo! Pretty
+      Poll! Pretty Polly!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sing again, for Heaven&rsquo;s sake!&rdquo; Felix exclaimed, in a
+      profoundly agitated mood, explaining briefly to the Frenchman the full
+      significance of the words Methuselah had just begun to utter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Frenchman struck up his tune afresh to give the bird a start; but all
+      to no avail. Methuselah was evidently in no humor for talking just then.
+      He listened with a callous, uncritical air, bringing his white eyelids
+      down slowly and sleepily over his bleared gray eyes. Then he nodded his
+      head slowly. &ldquo;No use,&rdquo; the Frenchman murmured, pursing his
+      lips up gravely. &ldquo;The bird won&rsquo;t talk. It&rsquo;s going off to
+      sleep now. Methuselah gets visibly older every day, monsieur and
+      mademoiselle. You are only just in time to catch his last accents.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0023" id="link2HCH0023"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXIII. &mdash; A MESSAGE FROM THE DEAD.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Early next morning, as Felix lay still in his hut, dozing, and just
+      vaguely conscious of a buzz of a mosquito close to his ear, he was aroused
+      by a sudden loud cry outside&mdash;a cry that called his native name three
+      times, running: &ldquo;O King of the Rain, King of the Rain, King of the
+      Rain, awake! High time to be up! The King of the Birds sends you health
+      and greeting!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix rose at once; and his Shadow, rising before him, and unbolting the
+      loose wooden fastener of the door, went out in haste to see who called
+      beyond the white taboo-line of their sacred precincts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A native woman, tall, lithe, and handsome, stood there in the full light
+      of morning, beckoning. A strange glow of hatred gleamed in her large gray
+      eyes. Her shapely brown bosom heaved and panted heavily. Big beads
+      glistened moistly on her smooth, high brow. It was clear she had run all
+      the way in haste. She was deeply excited and full of eager anxiety.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, what do you want here so early, Ula?&rdquo; the Shadow asked,
+      in surprise&mdash;for it was indeed she. &ldquo;How have you slipped away,
+      as soon as the sun is risen, from the sacred hut of Tu-Kila-Kila?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ula&rsquo;s gray eyes flashed angry fire as she answered. &ldquo;He has
+      beaten me again,&rdquo; she cried, in revengeful tones; &ldquo;see the
+      weals on my back! See my arms and shoulders! He has drawn blood from my
+      wounds. He is the most hateful of gods. I should love to kill him.
+      Therefore I slipped away from him with the early dawn and came to consult
+      with his enemy, the King of the Birds, because I heard the words that the
+      Eyes of Tu-Kila-Kila, who pervade the world, report to their master. The
+      Eyes have told him that the King of the Rain, the Queen of the Clouds, and
+      the King of the Birds are plotting together in secret against
+      Tu-Kila-Kila. When I heard that, I was glad; I went to the King of the
+      Birds to warn him of his danger; and the King of the Birds, concerned for
+      your safety, has sent me in haste to ask his brother gods to go at once to
+      him.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a minute Felix was up and had called out Mali from the neighboring hut.
+      &ldquo;Tell Missy Queenie,&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;to come with me to see
+      the man-a-oui-oui! The man-a-oui-oui has sent me for us to come. She must
+      make great haste. He wants us immediately.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a word and a sign to Toko, Ula glided away stealthily, with the
+      cat-like tread of the native Polynesian woman, back to her hated husband.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix went out to the door and heliographed with his bright metal plate,
+      turned on the Frenchman&rsquo;s hill, &ldquo;What is it?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a moment the answer flashed back, word by word, &ldquo;Come quick, if
+      you want to hear. Methuselah is reciting!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A few seconds later Muriel emerged from her hut, and the two Europeans,
+      closely followed, as always, by their inseparable Shadows, took the
+      winding side-path that led through the jungle by a devious way, avoiding
+      the front of Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s temple, to the Frenchman&rsquo;s
+      cottage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They found M. Peyron very much excited, partly by Ula&rsquo;s news of
+      Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s attitude, but more still by Methuselah&rsquo;s
+      agitated condition. &ldquo;The whole night through, my dear friends,&rdquo;
+      he cried, seizing their hands, &ldquo;that bird has been chattering,
+      chattering, chattering. <i>Oh, mon Dieu, quel oiseau!</i> It seems as
+      though the words heard yesterday from mademoiselle had struck some lost
+      chord in the creature&rsquo;s memory. But he is also very feeble. I can
+      see that well. His garrulity is the garrulity of old age in its last
+      flickering moments. He mumbles and mutters. He chuckles to himself. If you
+      don&rsquo;t hear his message now and at once, it&rsquo;s my solemn
+      conviction you will never hear it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He led them out to the aviary, where Methuselah, in effect, was sitting on
+      his perch, most tremulous and woebegone. His feathers shuddered visibly;
+      he could no longer preen himself. &ldquo;Listen to what he says,&rdquo;
+      the Frenchman exclaimed, in a very serious voice. &ldquo;It is your last,
+      last chance. If the secret is ever to be unravelled at all, by Methuselah&rsquo;s
+      aid, now is, without doubt, the proper moment to unravel it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Muriel put out her hand and stroked the bird gently. &ldquo;Pretty Poll,&rdquo;
+      she said, soothingly, in a sympathetic voice. &ldquo;Pretty Poll! Poor
+      Poll! Was he ill! Was he suffering?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the sound of those familiar words, unheard so long till yesterday, the
+      parrot took her finger in his beak once more, and bit it with the
+      tenderness of his kind in their softer moments. Then he threw back his
+      head with a sort of mechanical twist, and screamed out at the top of his
+      voice, for the last time on earth, his mysterious message:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pretty Poll! Pretty Poll! God save the king! Confound the Duke of
+      York! Death to all arrant knaves and roundheads!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the nineteenth year of the reign of his most gracious majesty,
+      King Charles the Second, I, Nathaniel Cross, of the borough of Sunderland,
+      in the county of Doorham, in England, an able-bodied mariner, then sailing
+      the South Seas in the good bark Martyr Prince, of the Port of Great
+      Grimsby, whereof one Thomas Wells, gent., under God, was master, was, by
+      stress of weather, wrecked and cast away on the shores of this island,
+      called by its gentile inhabitants by the name of Boo Parry. In which
+      wreck, as it befell, Thomas Wells, gent., and his equipment were, by
+      divine disposition, killed and drowned, save and except three mariners,
+      whereof I am one, who in God&rsquo;s good providence swam safely through
+      an exceeding great flood of waves and landed at last on this island. There
+      my two companions, Owen Williams, of Swansea, in the parts of Wales, and
+      Lewis le Pickard, a French Hewgenott refugee, were at once, by the said
+      gentiles, cruelly entreated, and after great torture cooked and eaten at
+      the temple of their chief god, Too-Keela-Keela. But I, myself, having
+      through God&rsquo;s grace found favor in their eyes, was promoted to the
+      post which in their speech is called Korong, the nature of which this
+      bird, my mouthpiece, will hereafter, to your ears, more fully discover.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Having said so much, in a very jerky way, Methuselah paused, and blinked
+      his eyes wearily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What does he say?&rdquo; the Frenchman began, eager to know the
+      truth. But Felix, fearful lest any interruption might break the thread of
+      the bird&rsquo;s discourse and cheat them of the sequel, held up a warning
+      finger, and then laid it on his lips in mute injunction. Methuselah threw
+      back his head at that and laughed aloud. &ldquo;God save the king!&rdquo;
+      he cried again, in a still feebler way, &ldquo;and to hell with all
+      papists!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was strange how they all hung on the words of that unconscious
+      messenger from a dead and gone age, who himself knew nothing of the import
+      of the words he was uttering. Methuselah laughed at their earnestness,
+      shook his head once or twice, and seemed to think to himself. Then he
+      remembered afresh the point he had broken off at.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;More fully discover. For seven years have I now lived on this
+      island, never having seen or h&rsquo;ard Christian face or voice; and at
+      the end of that time, feeling my health feail, and being apprehensive lest
+      any of my fellow-countrymen should hereafter suffer the same fate as I
+      have done, I began to teach this parrot his message, a few words at a
+      time, impressing it duly and fully on his memory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Larn, then, O wayfarer, that the people of Boo Parry are most
+      arrant gentiles, heathens, and carribals. And this, as I discover, is the
+      nature and method of their vile faith. They hold that the gods are each
+      and several incarnate in some one particular human being. This human being
+      they worship and reverence with all ghostly respect as his incarnation.
+      And chiefly, above all, do they revere the great god Too-Keela-Keela,
+      whose representative (may the Lord in Heaven forgive me for the same) I
+      myself am at this present speaking. Having thus, for my sins, attained to
+      that impious honor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God save the king! Confound the Duke of York! To hell with all
+      papists!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is the fashion of this people to hold that their gods must
+      always be strong and lusty. For they argue to themselves thus: that the
+      continuance of the rain must needs depend upon the vigor and subtlety of
+      its Soul, the rain-god. So the continuance and fruitfulness of the trees
+      and plants which yield them food must needs depend upon the health of the
+      tree-god. And the life of the world, and the light of the sun, and the
+      well-being of all things that in them are, must depend upon the strength
+      and cunning of the high god of all, Too-Keela-Keela. Hence they take great
+      care and woorship of their gods, surrounding them with many rules which
+      they call Taboo, and restricting them as to what they shall eat, and what
+      drink, and wherewithal they shall seemly clothe themselves. For they think
+      that if the King of the Rain at&rsquo; anything that might cause the
+      colick, or like humor or distemper, the weather will thereafter be stormy
+      and tempestuous; but so long as the King of the Rain fares well and
+      retains his health, so long will the weather over their island of Boo
+      Parry be clear and prosperous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Furthermore, as I have larned from their theologians, being myself,
+      indeed, the greatest of their gods, it is evident that they may not let
+      any god die, lest that department of nature over which he presideth should
+      wither away and feail, as it were, with him. But reasonably no care that
+      mortal man can exercise will prevent the possibility of their god&mdash;seeing
+      he is but one of themselves&mdash;growing old and feeble and dying at
+      last. To prevent which calamity, these gentile folk have invented (as I
+      believe by the aid and device of Sathan) this horrid and most unnatural
+      practice. The man-god must be killed so soon as he showeth in body or mind
+      that his native powers are beginning to feail. And it is necessary that he
+      be killed, according to their faith, in this ensuing fashion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If the man-god were to die slowly by a death in the course of
+      nature, the ways of the world might be stopped altogether. Hence these
+      savages catch the soul of their god, as it were, ere it grow old and
+      feeble, and transfer it betimes, by a magic device, to a suitable
+      successor. And surely, they say, this suitable successor can be none other
+      than him that is able to take it from him. This, then, is their horrid
+      counsel and device&mdash;that each one of their gods should kill his
+      antecessor. In doing thus, he taketh the old god&rsquo;s life and soul,
+      which thereupon migrates and dwells within him. And by this tenure&mdash;may
+      Heaven be merciful to me, a sinner&mdash;do I, Nathaniel Cross, of the
+      county of Doorham, now hold this dignity of Too-Keela-Keela, having slain,
+      therefor, in just quarrel, my antecessor in the high godship.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he reached these words Methuselah paused, and choked in his throat
+      slightly. The mere mechanical effort of continuing the speech he had
+      learned by heart two hundred years before, and repeated so often since
+      that it had become part of his being, was now almost too much for him. The
+      Frenchman was right. They were only just in time. A few days later, and
+      the secret would have died with the bird that preserved it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0024" id="link2HCH0024"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXIV. &mdash; AN UNFINISHED TALE.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      For a minute or two Methuselah mumbled inarticulately to himself. Then, to
+      their intense discomfiture, he began once more: &ldquo;In the nineteenth
+      year of the reign of his most gracious majesty, King Charles the Second,
+      I, Nathaniel Cross&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, this will never do,&rdquo; Felix cried. &ldquo;We haven&rsquo;t
+      got yet to the secret at all. Muriel, do try to set him right. He must
+      waste no breath. We can&rsquo;t afford now to let him go all over it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Muriel stretched out her hand and soothed the bird gently as before.
+      &ldquo;Having slain, therefore, my predecessor in the high godship,&rdquo;
+      she suggested, in the same singsong voice as the parrot&rsquo;s.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To her immense relief, Methuselah took the hint with charming docility.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the high godship,&rdquo; he went on, mechanically, where he had
+      stopped. &ldquo;And this here is the manner whereby I obtained it. The
+      Too-Keela-Keela from time to time doth generally appoint any castaway
+      stranger that comes to the island to the post of Korong&mdash;that is to
+      say, an annual god or victim. For, as the year doth renew itself at each
+      change of seasons, so do these carribals in their gentilisme believe and
+      hold that the gods of the seasons&mdash;to wit, the King of the Rain, the
+      Queen of the Clouds, the Lord of Green Leaves, the King of Fruits, and
+      others&mdash;must needs be sleain and renewed at the diverse solstices.
+      Now, it so happened that I, on my arrival in the island, was appointed
+      Korong, and promoted to the post of King of the Rain, having a native
+      woman assigned me as Queen of the Clouds, with whom I might keep company.
+      This woman being, after her kind, enamored of me, and anxious to escape
+      her own fate, to be sleain by my side, did betray to me that secret which
+      they call in their tongue the Great Taboo, and which had been betrayed to
+      herself in turn by a native man, her former lover. For the men are
+      instructed in these things in the mysteries when they coom of age, but not
+      the women.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And the Great Taboo is this: No man can becoom a Too-Keela-Keela
+      unless he first sleay the man in whom the high god is incarnate for the
+      moment. But in order that he may sleay him, he must also himself be a full
+      Korong, only those persons who are already gods being capable for the
+      highest post in their hierarchy; even as with ourselves, none but he that
+      is a deacon may become a priest, and none but he that is a priest may be
+      made a bishop. For this reason, then, the Too-Keela-Keela prefers to
+      advance a stranger to the post of Korong, seeing that such a person will
+      not have been initiated in the mysteries of the island, and therefore will
+      not be aware of those sundry steps which must needs be taken of him that
+      would inherit the godship.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Furthermore, even a Korong can only obtain the highest rank of
+      Too-Keela-Keela if he order all things according to the forms and
+      ceremonies of the Taboo parfectly. For these gentiles are very careful of
+      the levitical parts of their religion, deriving the same, as it seems to
+      me, from the polity of the Hebrews, the fame of whose tabernacle must sure
+      have gone forth through the ends of the woorld, and the knowledge of whose
+      temple must have been yet more wide dispersed by Solomon, his ships, when
+      they came into these parts to fetch gold from Ophir. And the ceremony is,
+      that before any man may sleay the &lsquo;arthly tenement of
+      Too-Keela-Keela and inherit his soul, which is in very truth, as they do
+      think the god himself, he must needs fight with the person in whom
+      Too-Keela-Keela doth then dwell, and for this reason: If the holder of the
+      soul can defend himself in fight, then it is clear that his strength is
+      not one whit decayed, nor is his vigor feailing; nor yet has his assailant
+      been able to take his soul from him. But if the Korong in open fight do
+      sleay the person in whom Too-Keela-Keela dwells, he becometh at once a
+      Too-Keela-Keela himself&mdash;that is to say, in their tongue, the Lord of
+      Lords, because he hath taken the life of him that preceded him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yet so intricate is the theology and practice of these loathsome
+      savages, that not even now have I explained it in full to you, O
+      shipwrecked mariner, for your aid and protection. For a Korong, though it
+      be a part of his privilege to contend, if he will, with Too-Keela-Keela
+      for the high godship and princedom of this isle, may only do so at certain
+      appointed times, places, and seasons. Above all things, it is necessary
+      that he should first find out the hiding-place of the soul of
+      Too-Keela-Keela. For though the Too-Keela-Keela for the time that is, be
+      animated by the god, yet, for greater security, he doth not keep his soul
+      in his own body, but, being above all things the god of fruitfulness and
+      generation, who causes women to bear children, and the plant called taro
+      to bring forth its increase, he keepeth his soul in the great sacred tree
+      behind his temple, which is thus the Father of All Trees, and the chiefest
+      abode of the great god Too-Keela-Keela.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nor does Too-Keela-Keela&rsquo;s soul abide equally in every part
+      of this aforesaid tree; but in a certain bough of it, resembling a
+      mistletoe, which hath yellow leaves, and, being broken off, groweth ever
+      green and yellow afresh; which is the central mystery of all their
+      Sathanic religion. For in this very bough&mdash;easy to be discerned by
+      the eye among the green leaves of the tree&mdash;&rdquo; the bird paused
+      and faltered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Muriel leaned forward in an agony of excitement. &ldquo;Among the green
+      leaves of the tree&mdash;&rdquo; she went on soothing him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her voice seemed to give the parrot a fresh impulse to speak. &ldquo;&mdash;Is
+      contained, as it were,&rdquo; he continued, feebly, &ldquo;the divine
+      essence itself, the soul and life of Too-Keela-Keela. Whoever, then, being
+      a full Korong, breaks this off, hath thus possessed himself of the very
+      god in person. This, however, he must do by exceeding stealth; for
+      Too-Keela-Keela, or rather the man that bears that name, being the
+      guardian and defender of the great god, walks ever up and down, by day and
+      by night, in exceeding great cunning, armed with a spear and with a
+      hatchet of stone, around the root of the tree, watching jealously over the
+      branch which is, as he believes, his own soul and being. I, therefore,
+      being warned of the Taboo by the woman that was my consort, did craftily,
+      near the appointed time for my own death, creep out of my hut, and my
+      consort, having induced one of the wives of Too-Keela-Keela to make him
+      drunken with too much of that intoxicating drink which they do call kava,
+      did proceed&mdash;did proceed&mdash;did proceed&mdash;In the nineteenth
+      year of the reign of his most gracious majesty, King Charles the Second&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Muriel bent forward once more in an agony of suspense. &ldquo;Oh, go on,
+      good Poll!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;Go on. Remember it. Did proceed to&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The single syllable helped Methuselah&rsquo;s memory. &ldquo;&mdash;Did
+      proceed to stealthily pluck the bough, and, having shown the same to Fire
+      and Water, the guardians of the Taboo, did boldly challenge to single
+      combat the bodily tenement of the god, with spear and hatchet, provided
+      for me in accordance with ancient custom by Fire and Water. In which
+      combat, Heaven mercifully befriending me against my enemy, I did coom out
+      conqueror; and was thereupon proclaimed Too-Keela-Keela myself, with
+      ceremonies too many and barbarous to mention, lest I raise your gorge at
+      them. But that which is most important to tell you for your own guidance
+      and safety, O mariner, is this&mdash;that being the sole and only end I
+      have in imparting this history to so strange a messenger&mdash;that after
+      you have by craft plucked the sacred branch, and by force of arms
+      over-cootn Too-Keela-Keela, it is by all means needful, whether you will
+      or not, that submitting to the hateful and gentile custom of this people&mdash;of
+      this people&mdash;Pretty Poll! Pretty Poll! God save&mdash;God save the
+      king! Death to the nineteenth year of the reign of all arrant knaves and
+      roundheads.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He dropped his head on his breast, and blinked his white eyelids more
+      feebly than ever. His strength was failing him fast. The Soul of all dead
+      parrots was wearing out. M. Peyron, who had stood by all this time, not
+      knowing in any way what might be the value of the bird&rsquo;s
+      disclosures, came forward and stroked poor Methuselah with his caressing
+      hand. But Methuselah was incapable now of any further effort. He opened
+      his blind eyes sleepily for the last, last time, and stared around him
+      with a blank stare at the fading universe. &ldquo;God save the king!&rdquo;
+      he screamed aloud with a terrible gasp, true to his colors still. &ldquo;God
+      save the king, and to hell with all papists!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he fell off his perch, stone dead, on the ground. They were never to
+      hear the conclusion of that strange, quaint message from a forgotten age
+      to our more sceptical century.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix looked at Muriel, and Muriel looked at Felix. They could hardly
+      contain themselves with awe and surprise. The parrot&rsquo;s words were so
+      human, its speech was so real to them, that they felt as though the
+      English Tu-Kila-Kila of two hundred years back had really and truly been
+      speaking to them from that perch; it was a human creature indeed that lay
+      dead before them. Felix raised the warm body from the ground with positive
+      reverence. &ldquo;We will bury it decently,&rdquo; he said in French,
+      turning to M. Peyron. &ldquo;He was a plucky bird, indeed, and he has
+      carried out his master&rsquo;s intentions nobly.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As they spoke, a little rustling in the jungle hard by attracted their
+      attention. Felix turned to look. A stealthy brown figure glided away in
+      silence through the tangled brushwood. M. Peyron started. &ldquo;We are
+      observed, monsieur,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;We must look out for squalls!
+      It is one of the Eyes of Tu-Kila-Kila!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let him do his worst!&rdquo; Felix answered. &ldquo;We know his
+      secret now, and can protect ourselves against him. Let us return to the
+      shade, monsieur, and talk this all over. Methuselah has indeed given us
+      something to-day very serious to think about.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0025" id="link2HCH0025"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXV. &mdash; TU-KILA-KILA STRIKES.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      And yet, when all was said and done, knowledge of Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s
+      secret didn&rsquo;t seem to bring Felix and Muriel much nearer a solution
+      of their own great problems than they had been from the beginning. In
+      spite of all Methuselah had told them, they were as far off as ever from
+      securing their escape, or even from the chance of sighting an English
+      steamer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This last was still the main hope and expectation of all three Europeans.
+      M. Peyron, who was a bit of a mathematician, had accurately calculated the
+      time, from what Felix told him, when the Australasian would pass again on
+      her next homeward voyage; and, when that time arrived, it was their united
+      intention to watch night and day for the faintest glimmer of her lights,
+      or the faintest wreath of her smoke on the far eastern horizon. They had
+      ventured to confide their design to all three of their Shadows; and the
+      Shadows, attached by the kindness to which they were so little accustomed
+      among their own people, had in every case agreed to assist them with the
+      canoe, if occasion served them. So for a time the two doomed victims
+      subsided into their accustomed calm of mingled hope and despair, waiting
+      patiently for the expected arrival of the much-longed-for Australasian.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If she took that course once, why not a second time? And if ever she hove
+      in sight, might they not hope, after all, to signal to her with their
+      rudely constructed heliograph, and stop her?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As for Methuselah&rsquo;s secret, there was only one way, Felix thought,
+      in which it could now prove of any use to them. When the actual day of
+      their doom drew nigh, he might, perhaps, be tempted to try the fate which
+      Nathaniel Cross, of Sunderland, had successfully courted. That might gain
+      them at least a little respite. Though even so he hardly knew what good it
+      could do him to be elevated for a while into the chief god of the island.
+      It might not even avail him to save Muriel&rsquo;s life; for he did not
+      doubt that when the awful day itself had actually come the natives would
+      do their best to kill her in spite of him, unless he anticipated them by
+      fulfilling his own terrible, yet merciful, promise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Week after week went by&mdash;month after month passed&mdash;and the date
+      when the Australasian might reasonably be expected to reappear drew nearer
+      and nearer. They waited and trembled. At last, a few days before the time
+      M. Peyron had calculated, as Felix was sitting under the big shady tree in
+      his garden one morning, while Muriel, now worn out with hope deferred, lay
+      within her hut alone with Mali, a sound of tom-toms and beaten palms was
+      heard on the hill-path. The natives around fell on their faces or fled. It
+      announced the speedy approach of Tu-Kila-Kila.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By this time both the castaways had grown comparatively accustomed to that
+      hideous noise, and to the hateful presence which it preceded and heralded.
+      A dozen temple attendants tripped on either side down the hillpath, to
+      guard him, clapping their hands in a barbaric measure as they went; Fire
+      and Water, in the midst, supported and flanked the divine umbrella. Felix
+      rose from his seat with very little ceremony, indeed, as the great god
+      crossed the white taboo-line of his precincts, followed only beyond the
+      limit by Fire and Water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila was in his most insolent vein. He glanced around with a
+      horrid light of triumph dancing visibly in his eyes. It was clear he had
+      come, intent upon some grand theatrical <i>coup</i>. He meant to take the
+      white-faced stranger by surprise this time. &ldquo;Good-morning, O King of
+      the Rain,&rdquo; he exclaimed, in a loud voice and with boisterous
+      familiarity. &ldquo;How do you like your outlook now? Things are getting
+      on. Things are getting on. The end of your rule is drawing very near, isn&rsquo;t
+      it? Before long I must make the seasons change. I must make my sun turn. I
+      must twist round my sky. And then, I shall need a new Korong instead of
+      you, O pale-faced one!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix looked back at him without moving a muscle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am well,&rdquo; he answered shortly, restraining his anger.
+      &ldquo;The year turns round whether you will or not. You are right that
+      the sun will soon begin to move southward on its path again. But many
+      things may happen to all of us meanwhile. <i>I</i> am not afraid of you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he spoke, he drew his knife, and opened the blade, unostentatiously,
+      but firmly. If the worst were really coming now, sooner than he expected,
+      he would at least not forget his promise to Muriel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila smiled a hateful and ominous smile. &ldquo;I am a great god,&rdquo;
+      he said, calmly, striking an attitude as was his wont. &ldquo;Hear how my
+      people clap their hands in my honor! I order all things. I dispose the
+      course of nature in heaven and earth. If I look at a cocoa-nut tree, it
+      dies; if I glance at a bread-fruit, it withers away. We will see before
+      long whether or not you are afraid of me. Meanwhile, O Korong, I have come
+      to claim my dues at your hands. Prepare for your fate. To-morrow the Queen
+      of the Clouds must be sealed my bride. Fetch her out, that I may speak
+      with her. I have come to tell her so.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a thunderbolt from a clear sky, and it fell with terrible effect on
+      Felix. For a moment the knife trembled in his grasp with an almost
+      irresistible impulse. He could hardly restrain himself, as he heard those
+      horrible, incredible words, and saw the loathsome smirk on the speaker&rsquo;s
+      face by which they were accompanied, from leaping then and there at the
+      savage&rsquo;s throat, and plunging his blade to the haft into the vile
+      creature&rsquo;s body. But by a violent effort he mastered his indignation
+      and wrath for the present. Planting himself full in front of Tu-Kila-Kila,
+      and blocking the way to the door of that sacred English girl&rsquo;s hut&mdash;oh,
+      how horrible it was to him even to think of her purity being contaminated
+      by the vile neighborhood, for one minute, of that loathsome monster! He
+      looked full into the wretch&rsquo;s face, and answered very distinctly, in
+      low, slow tones, &ldquo;If you dare to take one step toward the place
+      where that lady now rests, if you dare to move your foot one inch nearer,
+      if you dare to ask to see her face again, I will plunge the knife
+      hilt-deep into your vile heart, and kill you where you stand without one
+      second&rsquo;s deliberation. Now you hear my words and you know what I
+      mean. My weapon is keener and fiercer than any you Polynesians ever saw.
+      Repeat those words once more, and by all that&rsquo;s true and holy,
+      before they&rsquo;re out of your mouth I leap upon you and stab you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila drew back in sudden surprise. He was unaccustomed to be so
+      bearded in his own sacred island. &ldquo;Well, I shall claim her
+      to-morrow,&rdquo; he faltered out, taken aback by Felix&rsquo;s unexpected
+      energy. He paused for a second, then he went on more slowly: &ldquo;To-morrow
+      I will come with all my people to claim my bride. This afternoon they will
+      bring her mats of grass and necklets of nautilus shell to deck her for her
+      wedding, as becomes Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s chosen one. The young maids of
+      Boupari will adorn her for her lord, in the accustomed dress of
+      Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s wives. They will clap their hands; they will sing the
+      marriage song. Then early in the morning I will come to fetch her&mdash;and
+      woe to him who strives to prevent me!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix looked at him long, with a fixed and dogged look.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What has made you think of this devilry?&rdquo; he asked at last,
+      still grasping his knife hard, and half undecided whether or not to use
+      it. &ldquo;You have invented all these ideas. You have no claim, even in
+      the horrid customs of your savage country, to demand such a sacrifice.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila laughed loud, a laugh of triumphant and discordant merriment.
+      &ldquo;Ha, ha!&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;you do not understand our customs,
+      and will you teach <i>me</i>, the very high god, the guardian of the laws
+      and practices of Boupari? You know nothing; you are as a little child. I
+      am absolute wisdom. With every Korong, this is always our rule. Till the
+      moon is full, on the last month before we offer up the sacrifice, the
+      Queen of the Clouds dwells apart with her Shadow in her own new temple. So
+      our fathers decreed it. But at the full of the moon, when the day has
+      come, the usage is that Tu-Kila-Kila, the very high god, confers upon her
+      the honor of making her his bride. It is a mighty honor. The feast is
+      great. Blood flows like water. For seven days and nights, then, she lives
+      with Tu-Kila-Kila in his sacred abode, the threshold of Heaven; she eats
+      of human flesh; she tastes human blood; she drinks abundantly of the
+      divine kava. At the end of that time, in accordance with the custom of our
+      fathers, those great dead gods, Tu-Kila-Kila performs the high act of
+      sacrifice. He puts on his mask of the face of a shark, for he is holy and
+      cruel; he brings forth the Queen of the Clouds before the eyes of all his
+      people, attired in her wedding robes, and made drunk with kava. Then he
+      gashes her with knives; he offers her up to Heaven that accepted her; and
+      the King of the Rain he offers after her; and all the people eat of their
+      flesh, Korong! and drink of their blood, so that the body of gods and
+      goddesses may dwell within all of them. And when all is done, the high god
+      chooses a new king and queen at his will (for he is a mighty god), who
+      rule for six moons more, and then are offered up, at the end, in like
+      fashion.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he spoke, the ferocious light that gleamed in the savage&rsquo;s eye
+      made Felix positively mad with anger. But he answered nothing directly.
+      &ldquo;Is this so?&rdquo; he asked, turning for confirmation to Fire and
+      Water. &ldquo;Is it the custom of Boupari that Tu-Kila-Kila should wed the
+      Queen of the Clouds seven days before the date appointed for her
+      sacrifice?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The King of Fire and the King of Water, tried guardians of the etiquette
+      of Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s court, made answer at once with one accord,
+      &ldquo;It is so, O King of the Rain. Your lips have said it. Tu-Kila-Kila
+      speaks the solemn truth. He is a very great god. Such is the custom of
+      Boupari.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila laughed his triumph in harsh, savage outbursts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Felix drew back for a second, irresolute. At last he stood face to
+      face with the absolute need for immediate action. Now was almost the
+      moment when he must redeem his terrible promise to Muriel. And yet, even
+      so, there was still one chance of life, one respite left. The mystic
+      yellow bough on the sacred banyan! the Great Taboo! the wager of battle
+      with Tu-Kila-Kila! Quick as lightning it all came up in his excited brain.
+      Time after time, since he heard Methuselah&rsquo;s strange message from
+      the grave, had he passed Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s temple enclosure and looked
+      up with vague awe at that sacred parasite that grew so conspicuously in a
+      fork of the branches. It was easy to secure it, if no man guarded. There
+      still remained one night. In that one short night he must do his best&mdash;and
+      worst. If all then failed, he must die himself with Muriel!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For two seconds he hesitated. It was hateful even to temporize with so
+      hideous a proposition. But for Muriel&rsquo;s sake, for her dear life&rsquo;s
+      sake, he must meet these savages with guile for guile. &ldquo;If it be,
+      indeed, the custom of Boupari,&rdquo; he answered back, with pale and
+      trembling lips, &ldquo;and if I, one man, am powerless to prevent it, I
+      will give your message, myself, to the Queen of the Clouds, and you may
+      send, as you say, your wedding decorations. But come what will&mdash;mark
+      this&mdash;you shall not see her yourself to-day. You shall not speak to
+      her. There I draw a line&mdash;so, with my stick in the dust, if you try
+      to advance one step beyond, I stab you to the heart. Wait till to-morrow
+      to take your prey. Give me one more night. Great god as you are, if you
+      are wise, you will not drive an angry man to utter desperation.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila looked with a suspicious side glance at the gleaming steel
+      blade Felix still fingered tremulously. Though Boupari was one of those
+      rare and isolated small islands unvisited as yet by European trade, he
+      had, nevertheless, heard enough of the sailing gods to know that their
+      skill was deep and their weapons very dangerous. It would be foolish to
+      provoke this man to wrath too soon. To-morrow, when taboo was removed, and
+      all was free license, he would come when he willed and take his bride,
+      backed up by the full force of his assembled people. Meanwhile, why
+      provoke a brother god too far? After all, in a little more than a week
+      from now the pale-faced Korong would be eaten and digested!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well,&rdquo; he said, sulkily, but still with the sullen light
+      of revenge gleaming bright in his eye. &ldquo;Take my message to the
+      queen. You may be my herald. Tell her what honor is in store for her&mdash;to
+      be first the wife and then the meat of Tu-Kila-Kila! She is a very fair
+      woman. I like her well. I have longed for her for months. Tomorrow, at the
+      early dawn, by the break of day, I will come with all my people and take
+      her home by main force to me.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked at Felix and scowled, an angry scowl of revenge. Then, as he
+      turned and walked away, under cover of the great umbrella, with its
+      dangling pendants on either side, the temple attendants clapped their
+      hands in unison. Fire and Water marched slow and held the umbrella over
+      him. As he disappeared in the distance, and the sound of his tom-toms grew
+      dim on the hills, Toko, the Shadow, who had lain flat, trembling, on his
+      face in the hut while the god was speaking, came out and looked anxiously
+      and fearfully after him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The time is ripe,&rdquo; he said, in a very low voice to Felix.
+      &ldquo;A Korong may strike. All the people of Boupari murmur among
+      themselves. They say this fellow has held the spirit of Tu-Kila-Kila
+      within himself too long. He waxes insolent. They think it is high time the
+      great God of Heaven should find before long some other fleshly tabernacle.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0026" id="link2HCH0026"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXVI. &mdash; A RASH RESOLVE.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The rest of that day was a time of profound and intense anxiety. Felix and
+      Muriel remained alone in their huts, absorbed in plans of escape, but
+      messengers of many sorts from chiefs and gods kept continually coming to
+      them. The natives evidently regarded it as a period of preparation. The
+      Eyes of Tu-Kila-Kila surrounded their precinct; yet Felix couldn&rsquo;t
+      help noticing that they seemed in many ways less watchful than of old, and
+      that they whispered and conferred very much in a mysterious fashion with
+      the people of the village. More than once Toko shook his head, sagely,
+      &ldquo;If only any one dared break the Great Taboo,&rdquo; he said, with
+      some terror on his face, &ldquo;our people would be glad. It would greatly
+      please them. They are tired of this Tu-Kila-Kila. He has held the god in
+      his breast far, far too long. They would willingly see some other in place
+      of him.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before noon, the young girls of the village, bringing native mats and huge
+      strings of nautilus shells, trooped up to the hut, like bridesmaids, with
+      flowers in their hands, to deck Muriel for her approaching wedding. Before
+      them they carried quantities of red and brown tappa-cloth and very fine
+      net-work, the dowry to be presented by the royal bride to her divine
+      husband. Within the hut, they decked out the Queen of the Clouds with
+      garlands of flowers and necklets of shells, in solemn native fashion,
+      bewailing her fate all the time to a measured dirge in their own language.
+      Muriel could see that their sympathy, though partly conventional, was
+      largely real as well. Many of the young girls seized her hand convulsively
+      from time to time, and kissed it with genuine feeling. The gentle young
+      English woman had won their savage hearts by her purity and innocence.
+      &ldquo;Poor thing, poor thing,&rdquo; they said, stroking her hand
+      tenderly. &ldquo;She is too good for Korong! Too good for Tu-Kila-Kila! If
+      only we knew the Great Taboo like the men, we would tell her everything.
+      She is too good to die. We are sorry she is to be sacrificed!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But when all their preparations were finished, the chief among them raised
+      a calabash with a little scented oil in it, and poured a few drops
+      solemnly on Muriel&rsquo;s head. &ldquo;Oh, great god!&rdquo; she said, in
+      her own tongue, &ldquo;we offer this sacrifice, a goddess herself, to you.
+      We obey your words. You are very holy. We will each of us eat a portion of
+      her flesh at your feast. So give us good crops, strong health, many
+      children!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What does she say?&rdquo; Muriel asked, pale and awestruck, of
+      Mali.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mali translated the words with perfect <i>sang-froid</i>. At that awful
+      sound Muriel drew back, chill and cold to the marrow. How inconceivable
+      was the state of mind of these terrible people! They were really sorry for
+      her; they kissed her hand with fervor; and yet they deliberately and
+      solemnly proposed to eat her!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Toward evening the young girls at last retired, in regular order, to the
+      clapping of hands, and Felix was left alone with Muriel and the Shadows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Already he had explained to Muriel what he intended to do; and Muriel,
+      half dazed with terror and paralyzed by these awful preparations,
+      consented passively. &ldquo;But how if you never come back, Felix?&rdquo;
+      she cried at last, clinging to him passionately.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix looked at her with a fixed look. &ldquo;I have thought of that,&rdquo;
+      he said. &ldquo;M. Peyron, to whom I sent a message by flashes, has helped
+      me in my difficulty. This bowl has poison in it. Peyron sent it to me
+      to-day. He prepared it himself from the root of the kava bean. If by
+      sunrise to-morrow you have heard no news, drink it off at once. It will
+      instantly kill you. You shall <i>not</i> fall alive into that creature&rsquo;s
+      clutches.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By slow degrees the evening wore on, and night approached&mdash;the last
+      night that remained to them. Felix had decided to make his attempt about
+      one in the morning. The moon was nearly full now, and there would be
+      plenty of light. Supposing he succeeded, if they gained nothing else, they
+      would gain at least a day or two&rsquo;s respite.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As dusk set in, and they sat by the door of the hut, they were all
+      surprised to see Ula approach the precinct stealthily through the jungle,
+      accompanied by two of Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s Eyes, yet apparently on some
+      strange and friendly message. She beckoned imperiously with one finger to
+      Toko to cross the line. The Shadow rose, and without one word of
+      explanation went out to speak to her. The woman gave her message in short,
+      sharp sentences. &ldquo;We have found out all,&rdquo; she said, breathing
+      hard. &ldquo;Fire and Water have learned it. But Tu-Kila-Kila himself
+      knows nothing. We have found out that the King of the Rain has discovered
+      the secret of the Great Taboo. He heard it from the Soul of all dead
+      parrots. Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s Eyes saw, and learned, and understood. But
+      they said nothing to Tu-Kila-Kila. For my counsel was wise; I planned that
+      they should not, with Fire and Water. Fire and Water and all the people of
+      Boupari think, with me, the time has come that there should arise among us
+      a new Tu-Kila-Kila. This one let his blood fall out upon the dust of the
+      ground. His luck has gone. We have need of another.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then for what have you come?&rdquo; Toko asked, all awestruck. It
+      was terrible to him for a woman to meddle in such high matters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have come,&rdquo; Ula answered, laying her hand on his arm, and
+      holding her face close to his with profound solemnity&mdash;&ldquo;I have
+      come to say to the King of the Rain, &lsquo;Whatever you do, that do
+      quickly.&rsquo; To-night I will engage to keep Tu-Kila-Kila in his temple.
+      He shall see nothing. He shall hear nothing. I know not the Great Taboo;
+      but I know from him this much&mdash;that if by wile or guile I keep him
+      alone in his temple to-night, the King of the Rain may fight with him in
+      single combat; and if the King of the Rain conquers in the battle, he
+      becomes himself the home of the great deity.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She nodded thrice, with her hands on her forehead, and withdrew as
+      stealthily as she had come through the jungle. The Eyes of Tu-Kila-Kila,
+      falling into line, remained behind, and kept watch upon the huts with the
+      closest apparent scrutiny.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      More than ever they were hemmed in by mystery on mystery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Shadow went back and reported to Felix. Felix, turning it over in his
+      own mind, wondered and debated. Was this true, or a trap to lure him to
+      destruction?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the night wore on, and the hour drew nigh, Muriel sat beside her friend
+      and lover, in blank despair and agony. How could she ever allow him to
+      leave her now? How could she venture to remain alone with Mali in her hut
+      in this last extremity? It was awful to be so girt with mysterious
+      enemies. &ldquo;I must go with you, Felix! I must go, too!&rdquo; she
+      cried over and over again. &ldquo;I daren&rsquo;t remain behind with all
+      these awful men. And then, if he kills either of us, he will kill us at
+      least both together.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Felix knew he might do nothing of the sort. A more terrible chance was
+      still in reserve. He might spare Muriel. And against that awful
+      possibility he felt it his duty now to guard at all hazard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, Muriel,&rdquo; he said, kissing her, and holding her pale hand,
+      &ldquo;I must go alone. You can&rsquo;t come with me. If I return, we will
+      have gained at least a respite, till the Australasian may turn up. If I
+      don&rsquo;t, you will at any rate have strength of mind left to swallow
+      the poison, before Tu-Kila-Kila comes to claim you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hour after hour passed by slowly, and Felix and the Shadow watched the
+      stars at the door, to know when the hour for the attempt had arrived. The
+      eyes of Tu-Kila-Kila, peering silent from just beyond the line, saw them
+      watching all the time, but gave no sign or token of disapproval. With
+      heads bent low, and tangled hair about their faces, they stood like
+      statues, watching, watching sullenly. Were they only waiting till he
+      moved, Felix wondered; and would they then hasten off by short routes
+      through the jungle to warn their master of the impending conflict?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last the hour came when Felix felt sure there was the greatest chance
+      of Tu-Kila-Kila sleeping soundly in his hut, and forgetting the defence of
+      the sacred bough on the holy banyan-tree. He rose from his seat with a
+      gesture for silence, and moved forward to Muriel. The poor girl flung
+      herself, all tears, into his arms. &ldquo;Oh, Felix, Felix,&rdquo; she
+      cried, &ldquo;redeem your promise now! Kill us both here together, and
+      then, at least, I shall never be separated from you! It wouldn&rsquo;t be
+      wrong! It can&rsquo;t be wrong! We would surely be forgiven if we did it
+      only to escape falling into the hands of these terrible savages!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix clasped her to his bosom with a faltering heart. &ldquo;No, Muriel,&rdquo;
+      he said, slowly. &ldquo;Not yet. Not yet. I must leave no opening on earth
+      untried by which I can possibly or conceivably save you. It&rsquo;s as
+      hard for me to leave you here alone as for you to be left. But for your
+      own dear sake, I must steel myself. I must do it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He kissed her many times over. He wiped away her tears. Then, with a
+      gentle movement, he untwined her clasping arms. &ldquo;You must let me go,
+      my own darling,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;You must let me go, without
+      crossing the border. If you pass beyond the taboo-line to-night, Heaven
+      only knows what, perhaps, may happen to you. We must give these people no
+      handle of offence. Good-night, Muriel, my own heart&rsquo;s wife; and if I
+      never come back, then good-by forever.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She clung to his arm still. He disentangled himself, gently. The Shadow
+      rose at the same moment, and followed in silence to the open door. Muriel
+      rushed after them, wildly. &ldquo;Oh, Felix, Felix, come back,&rdquo; she
+      cried, bursting into wild floods of hot, fierce tears. &ldquo;Come back
+      and let me die with you! Let me die! Let me die with you!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix crossed the white line without one word of reply, and went forth
+      into the night, half unmanned by this effort. Muriel sank, where she
+      stood, into Mali&rsquo;s arms. The girl caught her and supported her. But
+      before she had fainted quite away, Muriel had time vaguely to see and note
+      one significant fact. The Eyes of Tu-Kila-Kila, who stood watching the
+      huts with lynx-like care, nodded twice to Toko, the Shadow, as he passed
+      between them; then they stealthily turned and dogged the two men&rsquo;s
+      footsteps afar off in the jungle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Muriel was left by herself in the hut, face to face with Mali.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let us pray, Mali,&rdquo; she cried, seizing her Shadow&rsquo;s
+      arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Mali, moved suddenly by some half-obliterated impulse, exclaimed in
+      concert, in a terrified voice, &ldquo;Let us pray to Methodist God in
+      heaven!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For her life, too, hung on the issue of that rash endeavor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0027" id="link2HCH0027"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXVII. &mdash; A STRANGE ALLY.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      In Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s temple-hut, meanwhile, the jealous, revengeful
+      god, enshrined among his skeletons, was having in his turn an anxious and
+      doubtful time of it. Ever since his sacred blood had stained the dust of
+      earth by the Frenchman&rsquo;s cottage and in his own temple,
+      Tu-Kila-Kila, for all his bluster, had been deeply stirred and terrified
+      in his inmost soul by that unlucky portent. A savage, even if he be a god,
+      is always superstitious. Could it be that his own time was, indeed,
+      drawing nigh? That he, who had remorselessly killed and eaten so many
+      hundreds of human victims, was himself to fall a prey to some more
+      successful competitor? Had the white-faced stranger, the King of the Rain,
+      really learned the secrets of the Great Taboo from the Soul of all dead
+      parrots? Did that mysterious bird speak the tongue of these new
+      fire-bearing Korongs, whose doom was fixed for the approaching solstice?
+      Tu-Kila-Kila wondered and doubted. His suspicions were keen, and deeply
+      aroused. Late that night he still lurked by the sacred banyan-tree, and
+      when at last he retired to his own inner temple, white with the grinning
+      skulls of the victims he had devoured, it was with strict injunctions to
+      Fire and Water, and to his Eyes that watched there, to bring him word at
+      once of any projected aggression on the part of the stranger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Within the temple-hut, however, Ula awaited him. That was a pleasant
+      change. The beautiful, supple, satin-skinned Polynesian looked more
+      beautiful and more treacherous than ever that fateful evening. Her great
+      brown limbs, smooth and glossy as pearl, were set off by a narrow girdle
+      or waistband of green and scarlet leaves, twined spirally around her.
+      Armlets of nautilus shell threw up the dainty plumpness of her soft, round
+      forearm. A garland hung festooned across one shapely shoulder; her bosom
+      was bare or but half hidden by the crimson hibiscus that nestled
+      voluptuously upon it. As Tu-Kila-Kila entered, she lifted her large eyes,
+      and, smiling, showed two even rows of pearly white teeth. &ldquo;My master
+      has come!&rdquo; she cried, holding up both lissome arms with a gesture to
+      welcome him. &ldquo;The great god relaxes his care of the world for a
+      while. All goes on well. He leaves his sun to sleep and his stars to
+      shine, and he retires to rest on the unworthy bosom of her, his mate, his
+      meat, that is honored to love him.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila was scarcely just then in a mood for dalliance. &ldquo;The
+      Queen of the Clouds comes hither to-morrow,&rdquo; he answered, casting a
+      somewhat contemptuous glance at Ula&rsquo;s more dusky and solid charms.
+      &ldquo;I go to seek her with the wedding gifts early in the morning. For a
+      week she shall be mine. And after that&mdash;&rdquo; he lifted his
+      tomahawk and brought it down on a huge block of wood significantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ula smiled once more, that deep, treacherous smile of hers, and showed her
+      white teeth even deeper than ever. &ldquo;If my lord, the great god, rises
+      so early to-morrow,&rdquo; she said, sidling up toward him voluptuously,
+      &ldquo;to seek one more bride for his sacred temple, all the more reason
+      he should take his rest and sleep soundly to-night. Is he not a god? Are
+      not his limbs tired? Does he not need divine silence and slumber?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila pouted. &ldquo;I could sleep more soundly,&rdquo; he said,
+      with a snort, &ldquo;if I knew what my enemy, the Korong, is doing. I have
+      set my Eyes to watch him, yet I do not feel secure. They are not to be
+      trusted. I shall be happier far when I have killed and eaten him.&rdquo;
+      He passed his hand across his bosom with a reflective air. You have a
+      great sense of security toward your enemy, no doubt, when you know that he
+      slumbers, well digested, within you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ula raised herself on her elbow, and gazed snake-like into his face,
+      &ldquo;My lord&rsquo;s Eyes are everywhere,&rdquo; she said, reverently,
+      with every mark of respect. &ldquo;He sees and knows all things. Who can
+      hide anything on earth from his face? Even when he is asleep, his Eyes
+      watch well for him. Then why should the great god, the Measurer of Heaven
+      and Earth, the King of Men, fear a white-faced stranger? To-morrow the
+      Queen of the Clouds will be yours, and the stranger will be abased: ha,
+      ha, he will grieve at it! To-night, Fire and Water keep guard and watch
+      over you. Whoever would hurt you must pass through Fire and Water before
+      he reach your door. Fire would burn, Water would drown. This is a Great
+      Taboo. No stranger dare face it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila lifted himself up in his thrasonic mood. &ldquo;If he did,&rdquo;
+      he cried, swelling himself, &ldquo;I would shrivel him to ashes with one
+      flash of my eyes. I would scorch him to a cinder with one stroke of my
+      lightning.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ula smiled again, a well-satisfied smile. She was working her man up.
+      &ldquo;Tu-Kila-Kila is great,&rdquo; she repeated, slowly. &ldquo;All
+      earth obeys him. All heaven fears him.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The savage took her hand with a doubtful air. &ldquo;And yet,&rdquo; he
+      said, toying with it, half irresolute, &ldquo;when I went to the
+      white-faced stranger&rsquo;s hut this morning, he did not speak fair; he
+      answered me insolently. His words were bold. He talked to me as one talks
+      to a man, not to a great god. Ula, I wonder if he knows my secret?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ula started back in well-affected horror. &ldquo;A white-faced stranger
+      from the sun know your secret, O great king!&rdquo; she cried, hiding her
+      face in a square of cloth. &ldquo;See me beat my breast! Impossible!
+      Impossible! No one of your subjects would dare to tell him so great a
+      taboo. It would be rank blasphemy. If they did, your anger would utterly
+      consume them!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is true,&rdquo; Tu-Kila-Kila said, practically, &ldquo;but I
+      might not discover it. I am a very great god. My Eyes are everywhere. No
+      corner of the world is hid from my gaze. All the concerns of heaven and
+      earth are my care, And, therefore; sometimes, I overlook some detail.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No man alive would dare to tell the Great Taboo!&rdquo; Ula
+      repeated, confidently. &ldquo;Why, even I myself, who am the most favored
+      of your wives, and who am permitted to bask in the light of your presence&mdash;even
+      I, Ula&mdash;I do not know it. How much less, then, the spirit from the
+      sun, the sailing god, the white-faced stranger!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila pursed up his brow and looked preternaturally wise, as the
+      savage loves to do. &ldquo;But the parrot,&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;the
+      Soul of all dead parrots! <i>He</i> knew the secret, they say:&mdash;I
+      taught it him myself in an ancient day, many, many years ago&mdash;when no
+      man now living was born, save only I&mdash;in another incarnation&mdash;and
+      <i>he</i> may have told it. For the strangers, they say, speak the
+      language of birds; and in the language of birds did I tell the Great Taboo
+      to him.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ula pooh-poohed the mighty man-god&rsquo;s fears. &ldquo;No, no,&rdquo;
+      she cried, with confidence; &ldquo;he can never have told them. If he had,
+      would not your Eyes that watch ever for all that happens on heaven or
+      earth, have straightway reported it to you? The parrot died without
+      yielding up the tale. Were it otherwise, Toko, who loves and worships you,
+      would surely have told me.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man-god puckered his brows slightly, as if he liked not the security.
+      &ldquo;Well, somehow, Ula,&rdquo; he said, feeling her soft brown arms
+      with his divine hand, slowly, &ldquo;I have always had my doubts since
+      that day the Soul of all dead parrots bit me. A vicious bird! What did he
+      mean by his bite?&rdquo; He lowered his voice and looked at her fixedly.
+      &ldquo;Did not his spilling my blood portend,&rdquo; he asked, with a
+      shudder of fear, &ldquo;that through that ill-omened bird I, who was once
+      Lavita, should cease to be Tu-Kila-Kila?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ula smiled contentedly again. To say the truth, that was precisely the
+      interpretation she herself had put on that terrific omen. The parrot had
+      spilled Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s sacred blood upon the soil of earth.
+      According to her simple natural philosophy, that was a certain sign that
+      through the parrot&rsquo;s instrumentality Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s life would
+      be forfeited to the great eternal earth-spirit. Or, rather, the
+      earth-spirit would claim the blood of the man Lavita, in whose body it
+      dwelt, and would itself migrate to some new earthly tabernacle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But for all that, she dissembled. &ldquo;Great god,&rdquo; she cried,
+      smiling, a benign smile, &ldquo;you are tired! You are thirsty! Care for
+      heaven and earth has wearied you out. You feel the fatigue of upholding
+      the sun in heaven. Your arms must ache. Your thews must give under you.
+      Drink of the soul-inspiring juice of the kava! My hands have prepared the
+      divine cup. For Tu-Kila-Kila did I make it&mdash;fresh, pure,
+      invigorating!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She held the bowl to his lips with an enticing smile. Tu-Kila-Kila
+      hesitated and glanced around him suspiciously. &ldquo;What if the
+      white-faced stranger should come to-night?&rdquo; he whispered, hoarsely.
+      &ldquo;He may have discovered the Great Taboo, after all. Who can tell the
+      ways of the world, how they come about? My people are so treacherous. Some
+      traitor may have betrayed it to him.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Impossible,&rdquo; the beautiful, snake-like woman answered, with a
+      strong gesture of natural dissent. &ldquo;And even if he came, would not
+      kava, the divine, inspiriting drink of the gods, in which dwell the
+      embodied souls of our fathers&mdash;would not kava make you more vigorous,
+      strong for the fight? Would it not course through your limbs like fire?
+      Would it not pour into your soul the divine, abiding strength of your
+      mighty mother, the eternal earth-spirit?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A little,&rdquo; Tu-Kila-Kila said, yielding, &ldquo;but not too
+      much. Too much would stupefy me. When the spirits, that the kava-tree
+      sucks up from the earth, are too strong within us, they overpower our own
+      strength, so that even I, the high god&mdash;even I can do nothing.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ula held the bowl to his lips, and enticed him to drink with her beautiful
+      eyes. &ldquo;A deep draught, O supporter of the sun in heaven,&rdquo; she
+      cried, pressing his arm tenderly. &ldquo;Am I not Ula? Did I not brew it
+      for you? Am I not the chief and most favored among your women? I will sit
+      at the door. I will watch all night. I will not close an eye. Not a
+      footfall on the ground but my ear shall hear it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do.&rdquo; Tu-Kila-Kila said, laconically. &ldquo;I fear Fire and
+      Water. Those gods love me not. Fain would they make me migrate into some
+      other body. But I myself like it not. This one suits me admirably. Ula,
+      that kava is stronger than you are used to make it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no,&rdquo; Ula cried, pressing it to his lips a second time,
+      passionately. &ldquo;You are a very great god. You are tired; it overcomes
+      you. And if you sleep, I will watch. Fire and Water dare not disobey your
+      commands. Are you not great? Your Eyes are everywhere. And I, even I, will
+      be as one of them.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The savage gulped down a few more mouthfuls of the intoxicating liquid.
+      Then he glanced up again suddenly with a quick, suspicious look. The
+      cunning of his race gave him wisdom in spite of the deadly strength of the
+      kava Ula had brewed too deep for him. With a sudden resolve, he rose and
+      staggered out. &ldquo;You are a serpent, woman!&rdquo; he cried angrily,
+      seeing the smile that lurked upon Ula&rsquo;s face. &ldquo;To-morrow I
+      will kill you. I will take the white woman for my bride, and she and I
+      will feast off your carrion body. You have tried to betray me, but you are
+      not cunning enough, not strong enough. No woman shall kill me. I am a very
+      great god. I will not yield. I will wait by the tree. This is a trap you
+      have set, but I do not fall into it. If the King of the Rain comes, I
+      shall be there to meet him.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He seized his spear and hatchet and walked forth, erect, without one sign
+      of drunkenness. Ula trembled to herself as she saw him go. She was playing
+      a deep game. Had she given him only just enough kava to strengthen and
+      inspire him?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0028" id="link2HCH0028"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXVIII. &mdash; WAGER OF BATTLE.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Felix wound his way painfully through the deep fern-brake of the jungle,
+      by no regular path, so as to avoid exciting the alarm of the natives, and
+      to take Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s palace-temple from the rear, where the big
+      tree, which overshadowed it with its drooping branches, was most easily
+      approachable. As he and Toko crept on, bending low, through that dense
+      tropical scrub, in deathly silence, they were aware all the time of a low,
+      crackling sound that rang ever some paces in the rear on their trail
+      through the forest. It was Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s Eyes, following them
+      stealthily from afar, footstep for footstep, through the dense undergrowth
+      of bush, and the crisp fallen leaves and twigs that snapped light beneath
+      their footfall. What hope of success with those watchful spies, keen as
+      beagles and cruel as bloodhounds, following ever on their track? What
+      chance of escape for Felix and Muriel, with the cannibal man-gods toils
+      laid round on every side to insure their destruction?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Silently and cautiously the two men groped their way on through the dark
+      gloom of the woods, in spite of their mute pursuers. The moonlight
+      flickered down athwart the trackless soil as they went; the hum of insects
+      innumerable droned deep along the underbrush. Now and then the startled
+      scream of a night jar broke the monotony of the buzz that was worse than
+      silence; owls boomed from the hollow trees, and fireflies darted dim
+      through the open spaces. At last they emerged upon the cleared area of the
+      temple. There Felix, without one moment&rsquo;s hesitation, with a firm
+      and resolute tread, stepped over the white coral line that marked the
+      taboo of the great god&rsquo;s precincts. That was a declaration of open
+      war; he had crossed the Rubicon of Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s empire. Toko stood
+      trembling on the far side; none might pass that mystic line unbidden and
+      live, save the Korong alone who could succeed in breaking off the bough
+      &ldquo;with yellow leaves, resembling a mistletoe,&rdquo; of which
+      Methuselah, the parrot, had told Felix and Muriel, and so earn the right
+      to fight for his life with the redoubted and redoubtable Tu-Kila-Kila.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he stepped over the taboo-line, Felix was aware of many native eyes
+      fixed stonily upon him from the surrounding precinct. Clearly they were
+      awaiting him. Yet not a soul gave the alarm; that in itself would have
+      been to break taboo. Every man or woman among the temple attendants within
+      that charmed circle stood on gaze curiously. Close by, Ula, the favorite
+      wife of the man-god, crouched low by the hut, with one finger on her
+      treacherous lips, bending eagerly forward, in silent expectation of what
+      next might happen. Once, and once only, she glanced at Toko with a mute
+      sign of triumph; then she fixed her big eyes on Felix in tremulous
+      anxiety; for to her as to him, life and death now hung absolutely on the
+      issue of his enterprise. A little farther back the King of Fire and the
+      King of Water, in full sacrificial robes, stood smiling sardonically. For
+      them it was merely a question of one master more or less, one Tu-Kila-Kila
+      in place of another. They had no special interest in the upshot of the
+      contest, save in so far as they always hated most the man who for the
+      moment held by his own strong arm the superior godship over them. Around,
+      Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s Eyes kept watch and ward in sinister silence. Taboo
+      was stronger than even the commands of the high god himself. When once a
+      Korong had crossed that fatal line, unbidden and unwelcomed by
+      Tu-Kila-Kila, he came as Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s foe and would-be successor;
+      the duty of every guardian of the temple was then to see fair play between
+      the god that was and the god that might be&mdash;the Tu-Kila-Kila of the
+      hour and the Tu-Kila-Kila who might possibly supplant him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let the great spirit itself choose which body it will inhabit,&rdquo;
+      the King of Fire murmured in a soft, low voice, glancing toward a dark
+      spot at the foot of the big tree. The moonlight fell dim through the
+      branches on the place where he looked. The glibbering bones of dead
+      victims rattled lightly in the wind. Felix&rsquo;s eyes followed the King
+      of Fire&rsquo;s, and saw, lying asleep upon the ground, Tu-Kila-Kila
+      himself, with his spear and tomahawk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He lay there, huddled up by the very roots of the tree, breathing deep and
+      regularly. Right over his head projected the branch, in one part of whose
+      boughs grew the fateful parasite. By the dim light of the moon, straggling
+      through the dense foliage, Felix could see its yellow leaves distinctly.
+      Beneath it hung a skeleton, suspended by invisible cords, head downward
+      from the branches. It was the skeleton of a previous Korong who had tried
+      in vain to reach the bough, and perished. Tu-Kila-Kila had made high feast
+      on the victim&rsquo;s flesh; his bones, now collected together and
+      cunningly fastened with native rope, served at once as a warning and as a
+      trap or pitfall for all who might rashly venture to follow him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix stood for one moment, alone and awe-struck, a solitary civilized
+      man, among those hideous surroundings. Above, the cold moon; all about,
+      the grim, stolid, half-hostile natives; close by, that strange,
+      serpentine, savage wife, guarding, cat-like, the sleep of her cannibal
+      husband; behind, the watchful Eyes of Tu-Kila-Kila, waiting ever in the
+      background, ready to raise a loud shout of alarm and warning the moment
+      the fatal branch was actually broken, but mute, by their vows, till that
+      moment was accomplished. Then a sudden wild impulse urged him on to the
+      attempt. The banyan had dropped down rooting offsets to the ground, after
+      the fashion of its kind, from its main branches. Felix seized one of these
+      and swung himself lightly up, till he reached the very limb on which the
+      sacred parasite itself was growing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To get to the parasite, however, he must pass directly above Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s
+      head, and over the point where that ghastly grinning skeleton was
+      suspended, as by an unseen hair, from the fork that bore it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He walked along, balancing himself, and clutching, as he went, at the
+      neighboring boughs, while Tu-Kila-Kila, overcome with the kava, slept
+      stolidly and heavily on beneath him. At last he was almost within grasp of
+      the parasite. Could he lunge out and clutch it? One try&mdash;one effort!
+      No, no; he almost lost footing and fell over in the attempt. He couldn&rsquo;t
+      keep his balance so. He must try farther on. Come what might, he must go
+      past the skeleton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The grisly mass swung again, clanking its bones as it swung, and groaned
+      in the wind ominously. The breeze whistled audibly through its hollow
+      skull and vacant eye-sockets. Tu-Kila-Kila turned uneasily in his sleep
+      below. Felix saw there was not one instant of time to be lost now. He
+      passed on boldly; and as he passed, a dozen thin cords of paper mulberry,
+      stretched every way in an invisible network among the boughs, too small to
+      be seen in the dim moonlight, caught him with their toils and almost
+      overthrew him. They broke with his weight, and Felix himself, tumbling
+      blindly, fell forward. At the cost of a sprained wrist and a great jerk on
+      his bruised fingers, he caught at a bough by his side, but wrenched it
+      away suddenly. It was touch and go. At the very same moment, the skeleton
+      fell heavily, and rattled on the ground beside Tu-Kila-Kila.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before Felix could discover what had actually happened, a very great shout
+      went up all round below, and made him stagger with excitement.
+      Tu-Kila-Kila was awake, and had started up, all intent, mad with wrath and
+      kava. Glaring about him wildly, and brandishing his great spear in his
+      stalwart hands, he screamed aloud, in a perfect frenzy of passion and
+      despair: &ldquo;Where is he, the Korong? Bring him on, my meat! Let me
+      devour his heart! Let me tear him to pieces. Let me drink of his blood!
+      Let me kill him and eat him!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sick and desperate at the accident, Felix, in turn, clinging hard to his
+      bough with one hand, gazed wildly about him to look for the parasite. But
+      it had gone as if by magic. He glanced around in despair, vaguely
+      conscious that nothing was left for it now but to drop to the ground and
+      let himself be killed at leisure by that frantic savage. Yet even as he
+      did so, he was aware of that great cry&mdash;a cry as of triumph&mdash;still
+      rending the air. Fire and Water had rushed forward, and were holding back
+      Tu-Kila-Kila, now black in the face from rage, with all their might. Ula
+      was smiling a malicious joy. The Eyes were all agog with interest and
+      excitement. And from one and all that wild scream rose unanimous to the
+      startled sky: &ldquo;He has it! He has it! The Soul of the Tree! The
+      Spirit of the World! The great god&rsquo;s abode. Hold off your hands,
+      Lavita, son of Sami! Your trial has come. He has it! He has it!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix looked about him with a whirling brain. His eye fell suddenly.
+      There, in his own hand, lay the fateful bough. In his efforts to steady
+      himself, he had clutched at it by pure accident, and broken it off
+      unawares with the force of his clutching. As fortune would have it, he
+      grasped it still. His senses reeled. He was almost dead with excitement,
+      suspense, and uncertainty, mingled with pain of his wrenched wrist. But
+      for Muriel&rsquo;s sake he pulled himself together. Gazing down and trying
+      hard to take it all in&mdash;that strange savage scene&mdash;he saw that
+      Tu-Kila-Kila was making frantic attempts to lunge at him with the spear,
+      while the King of Fire and the King of Water, stern and relentless, were
+      holding him off by main force, and striving their best to appease and
+      quiet him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was an awful pause. Then a voice broke the stillness from beyond the
+      taboo-line:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Shadow of the King of the Rain speaks,&rdquo; it said, in very
+      solemn, conventional accents. &ldquo;Korong! Korong! The Great Taboo is
+      broken. Fire and Water, hold him in whom dwells the god till my master
+      comes. He has the Soul of all the spirits of the wood in his hands. He
+      will fight for his right. Taboo! Taboo! I, Toko, have said it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He clapped his hands thrice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila made a wild effort to break away once more. But the King of
+      Fire, standing opposite him, spoke still louder and clearer. &ldquo;If you
+      touch the Korong before the line is drawn,&rdquo; he said, with a voice of
+      authority, &ldquo;you are no Tu-Kila-Kila, but an outcast and a criminal.
+      All the people will hold you with forked sticks, while the Korong burns
+      you alive slowly, limb by limb, with me, who am Fire, the fierce, the
+      consuming. I will scorch you and bake you till you are as a bamboo in the
+      flame. Taboo! Taboo! Taboo! I, Fire, have said it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The King of Water, with three attendants, forced Tu-Kila-Kila on one side
+      for a moment. Ula stood by and smiled pleased compliance. A temple slave,
+      trembling all over at this conflict of the gods, brought out a calabash
+      full of white coral-sand. The King of Water spat on it and blessed it. By
+      this time a dozen natives, at least, had assembled outside the taboo-line,
+      and stood eagerly watching the result of the combat. The temple slave made
+      a long white mark with the coral-sand on one side of the cleared area.
+      Then he handed the calabash solemnly to Toko. Toko crossed the sacred
+      precinct with a few inaudible words of muttered charm, to save the Taboo,
+      as prescribed in the mysteries. Then he drew a similar line on the ground
+      on his side, some twenty yards off. &ldquo;Descend, O my lord!&rdquo; he
+      cried to Felix; and Felix, still holding the bough tight in his hand,
+      swung himself blindly from the tree, and took his place by Toko.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Toe the line!&rdquo; Toko cried, and Felix toed it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bring up your god!&rdquo; the Shadow called out aloud to the King
+      of Water. And the King of Water, using no special ceremony with so great a
+      duty, dragged Tu-Kila-Kila helplessly along with him to the farther
+      taboo-line.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The King of Water brought a spear and tomahawk. He handed them to Felix.
+      &ldquo;With these weapons,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;fight, and merit heaven.
+      I hold the bough meanwhile&mdash;the victor takes it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The King of Fire stood out between the lists. &ldquo;Korongs and gods,&rdquo;
+      he said, &ldquo;the King of the Rain has plucked the sacred bough,
+      according to our fathers&rsquo; rites, and claims trial which of you two
+      shall henceforth hold the sacred soul of the world, the great
+      Tu-Kila-Kila. Wager of Battle decides the day. Keep toe to line. At the
+      end of my words, forth, forward, and fight for it. The great god knows his
+      own, and will choose his abode. Taboo, Taboo, Taboo! I, Fire, have spoken
+      it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Scarcely were the words well out of his mouth, when, with a wild whoop of
+      rage, Tu-Kila-Kila, who had the advantage of knowing the rules of the
+      game, so to speak, dashed madly forward, drunk with passion and kava, and
+      gave one lunge with his spear full tilt at the breast of the startled and
+      unprepared white man. His aim, though frantic, was not at fault. The spear
+      struck Felix high up on the left side. He felt a dull thud of pain; a
+      faint gurgle of blood. Even in the pale moonlight his eye told him at once
+      a red stream was trickling&mdash;out over his flannel shirt. He was
+      pricked, at least. The great god had wounded him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0029" id="link2HCH0029"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXIX. &mdash; VICTORY&mdash;AND AFTER?
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The great god had wounded him. But not to the heart. Felix, as good luck
+      would have it, happened to be wearing buckled braces. He had worn them on
+      board, and, like the rest of his costume, had, of course, never since been
+      able to discard them. They stood him in good stead now. The buckle caught
+      the very point of the bone-tipped spear, and broke the force of the blow,
+      as the great god lunged forward. The wound was but a graze, and
+      Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s light shaft snapped short in the middle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Madder and wilder than ever, the savage pitched it away, yelling, rushed
+      forward with a fierce curse on his angry tongue, and flung himself, tooth
+      and nail, on his astonished opponent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The suddenness of the onslaught almost took the Englishman&rsquo;s breath
+      away. By this time, however, Felix had pulled together his ideas and taken
+      in the situation. Tu-Kila-Kila was attacking him now with his heavy stone
+      axe. He must parry those deadly blows. He must be alert, but watchful. He
+      must put himself in a posture of defence at once. Above all, he must keep
+      cool and have his wits about him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If he could but have drawn his knife, he would have stood a better chance
+      in that hand-to-hand conflict. But there was no time now for such tactics
+      as those. Besides, even in close fight with a bloodthirsty savage, an
+      English gentleman&rsquo;s sense of fair play never for one moment deserts
+      him. Felix felt, if they were to fight it out face to face for their
+      lives, they should fight at least on a perfect equality. Steel against
+      stone was a mean advantage. Parrying Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s first desperate
+      blow with the haft of his own hatchet, he leaped aside half a second to
+      gain breath and strength. Then he rushed on, and dealt one deadly
+      downstroke with the ponderous weapon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a minute or two they closed, in perfectly savage single combat. Fire
+      and Water, observant and impartial, stood by like seconds to see the god
+      himself decide the issue, which of the two combatants should be his living
+      representative. The contest was brief but very hard-fought. Tu-Kila-Kila,
+      inspired with the last frenzy of despair, rushed wildly on his opponent
+      with hands and fists, and teeth and nails, dealing his blows in blind
+      fury, right and left, and seeking only to sell his life as dearly as
+      possible. In this last extremity, his very superstitions told against him.
+      Everything seemed to show his hour had come. The parrot&rsquo;s bite&mdash;the
+      omen of his own blood that stained the dust of earth&mdash;Ula&rsquo;s
+      treachery&mdash;the chance by which the Korong had learned the Great Taboo&mdash;Felix&rsquo;s
+      accidental or providential success in breaking off the bough&mdash;the
+      length of time he himself had held the divine honors&mdash;the probability
+      that the god would by this time begin to prefer a new and stronger
+      representative&mdash;all these things alike combined to fire the drunk and
+      maddened savage with the energy of despair. He fell upon his enemy like a
+      tiger upon an elephant. He fought with his tomahawk and his feet and his
+      whole lithe body; he foamed at the mouth with impotent rage; he spent his
+      force on the air in the extremity of his passion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix, on the other hand, sobered by pain, and nerved by the fixed
+      consciousness that Muriel&rsquo;s safety now depended absolutely on his
+      perfect coolness, fought with the calm skill of a practised fencer.
+      Happily he had learned the gentle art of thrust and parry years before in
+      England; and though both weapon and opponent were here so different, the
+      lesson of quickness and calm watchfulness he had gained in that civilized
+      school stood him in good stead, even now, under such adverse
+      circumstances. Tu-Kila-Kila, getting spent, drew back for a second at
+      last, and panted for breath. That faint breathing-space of a moment&rsquo;s
+      duration sealed his fate. Seizing his chance with consummate skill, Felix
+      closed upon the breathless monster, and brought down the heavy stone
+      hammer point blank upon the centre of his crashing skull. The weapon drove
+      home. It cleft a great red gash in the cannibal&rsquo;s head. Tu-Kila-Kila
+      reeled and fell. There was an infinitesimal pause of silence and suspense.
+      Then a great shout went up from all round to heaven, &ldquo;He has killed
+      him! He has killed him! We have a new-made god! Tu-Kila-Kila is dead! Long
+      live Tu-Kila-Kila!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix drew back for a moment, panting and breathless, and wiped his wet
+      brow with his sleeve, his brain all whirling. At his feet, the savage lay
+      stretched, like a log. Felix gazed at the blood-bespattered face
+      remorsefully. It is an awful thing, even in a just quarrel, to feel that
+      you have really taken a human life! The responsibility is enough to appall
+      the bravest of us. He stooped down and examined the prostrate body with
+      solemn reverence. Blood was flowing in torrents from the wounded head. But
+      Tu-Kila-Kila was dead&mdash;stone-dead forever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hot tears of relief welled up into Felix&rsquo;s eyes. He touched the body
+      cautiously with a reverent hand. No life. No motion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Just as he did so, the woman Ula came forward, bare-limbed and beautiful,
+      all triumph in her walk, a proud, insensitive savage. One second she gazed
+      at the great corpse disdainfully. Then she lifted her dainty foot, and
+      gave it a contemptuous kick. &ldquo;The body of Lavita, the son of Sami,&rdquo;
+      she said, with a gesture of hatred. &ldquo;He had a bad heart. We will
+      cook it and eat it.&rdquo; Next turning to Felix, &ldquo;Oh, Tu-Kila-Kila,&rdquo;
+      she cried, clapping her hands three times and bowing low to the ground,
+      &ldquo;you are a very great god. We will serve you and salute you. Am not
+      I, Ula, one of your wives, your meat? Do with me as you will. Toko, you
+      are henceforth the great god&rsquo;s Shadow!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix gazed at the beautiful, heartless creature, all horrified. Even on
+      Boupari, that cannibal island, he was hardly prepared for quite so low a
+      depth of savage insensibility. But all the people around, now a hundred or
+      more, standing naked before their new god, took up the shout in concert.
+      &ldquo;The body of Lavita, the son of Sami,&rdquo; they cried. &ldquo;A
+      carrion corpse! The god has deserted it. The great soul of the world has
+      entered the heart of the white-faced stranger from the disk of the sun;
+      the King of the Rain; the great Tu-Kila-Kila. We will cook and eat the
+      body of Lavita, the son of Sami. He was a bad man. He is a worn-out shell.
+      Nothing remains of him now. The great god has left him.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They clapped their hands in a set measure as they recited this hymn. The
+      King of Fire retreated into the temple. Ula stood by, and whispered low
+      with Toko. There was a ceremonial pause of some fifteen minutes.
+      Presently, from the inner recesses of the temple itself, a low noise
+      issued forth as of a rising wind. For some seconds it buzzed and hummed,
+      droningly. But at the very first note of that holy sound Ula dropped her
+      lover&rsquo;s hand, as one drops a red-hot coal, and darted wildly off at
+      full speed, like some frightened wild beast, into the thick jungle. Every
+      other woman near began to rush away with equally instantaneous signs of
+      haste and fear. The men, on the other hand, erect and naked, with their
+      hands on their foreheads, crossed the taboo-line at once. It was the
+      summons to all who had been initiated at the mysteries&mdash;the sacred
+      bull-roarer was calling the assembly of the men of Boupari.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For several minutes it buzzed and droned, that mystic implement, growing
+      louder and louder, till it roared like thunder. One after another, the men
+      of the island rushed in as if mad or in flight for their lives before some
+      fierce beast pursuing them. They ran up, panting, and dripping with sweat;
+      their hands clapped to their foreheads; their eyes starting wildly from
+      their staring sockets; torn and bleeding and lacerated by the thorns and
+      branches of the jungle, for each man ran straight across country from the
+      spot where he lay asleep, in the direction of the sound, and never paused
+      or drew breath, for dear life&rsquo;s sake, till he stood beside the
+      corpse of the dead Tu-Kila-Kila.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And every moment the cry pealed louder and louder still. &ldquo;Lavita,
+      the son of Sami, is dead, praise Heaven! The King of the Rain has slain
+      him, and is now the true Tu-Kila-Kila!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix bent irresolute over the fallen savage&rsquo;s bloodstained corpse.
+      What next was expected of him he hardly knew or cared. His one desire now
+      was to return to Muriel&mdash;to Muriel, whom he had rescued from
+      something worse than death at the hateful hands of that accursed creature
+      who lay breathless forever on the ground beside him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Somebody came up just then, and seized his hand warmly. Felix looked up
+      with a start. It was their friend, the Frenchman. &ldquo;Ah, my captain,
+      you have done well,&rdquo; M. Peyron cried, admiring him. &ldquo;What
+      courage! What coolness! What pluck! What soldiership! I couldn&rsquo;t see
+      all. But I was in at the death! And oh, <i>mon Dieu</i>, how I admired and
+      envied you!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By this time the bull-roarer had ceased to bellow among the rocks. The
+      King of Fire stood forth. In his hands he held a length of bamboo-stick
+      with a lighted coal in it. &ldquo;Bring wood and palm-leaves,&rdquo; he
+      said, in a tone of command. &ldquo;Let me light myself up, that I may
+      blaze before Tu-Kila-Kila.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned and bowed thrice very low before Felix. &ldquo;The accepted of
+      Heaven,&rdquo; he cried, holding his hands above him. &ldquo;The very high
+      god! The King of all Things! He sends down his showers upon our crops and
+      our fields. He causes his sun to shine brightly over us. He makes our pigs
+      and our slaves bring forth their increase. All we are but his meat. We,
+      his people, praise him.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And all the men of Boupari, naked and bleeding, bent low in response.
+      &ldquo;Tu-Kila-Kila is great,&rdquo; they chanted, as they clapped their
+      hands. &ldquo;We thank him that he has chosen a fresh incarnation. The sun
+      will not fade in the heavens overhead, nor the bread-fruits wither and
+      cease to bear fruit on earth. Tu-Kila-Kila, our god, is great. He springs
+      ever young and fresh, like the herbs of the field. He is a most high god.
+      We, his people, praise him.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Four temple attendants brought sticks and leaves, while Felix stood still,
+      half dazed with the newness of these strange preparations. The King of
+      Fire, with his torch, set light to the pile. It blazed merrily on high.
+      &ldquo;I, Fire, salute you,&rdquo; he cried, bending over it toward Felix.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now cut up the body of Lavita, the son of Sami,&rdquo; he went on,
+      turning toward it contemptuously. &ldquo;I will cook it in my flame, that
+      Tu-Kila-Kila the great may eat of it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix drew back with a face all aglow with horror and disgust. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t
+      touch that body!&rdquo; he cried, authoritatively, putting his foot down
+      firm. &ldquo;Leave it alone at once. I refuse to allow you.&rdquo; Then he
+      turned to M. Peyron. &ldquo;The King of the Birds and I,&rdquo; he said,
+      with calm resolve, &ldquo;we two will bury it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The King of Fire drew back at these strange words, nonplussed. This was,
+      indeed, an ill-omened break in the ceremony of initiation of a new
+      Tu-Kila-Kila, to which he had never before in his life been accustomed. He
+      hardly knew how to comport himself under such singular circumstances. It
+      was as though the sovereign of England, on coronation-day, should refuse
+      to be crowned, and intimate to the archbishop, in his full canonicals, a
+      confirmed preference for the republican form of Government. It was a
+      contingency that law and custom in Boupari had neither, in their wisdom,
+      foreseen nor provided for.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The King of Water whispered low in the new god&rsquo;s ear. &ldquo;You
+      must eat of his body, my lord,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;That is absolutely
+      necessary. Every one of us must eat of the flesh of the god; but you,
+      above all, must eat his heart, his divine nature. Otherwise you can never
+      be full Tu-Kila-Kila.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t care a straw for that,&rdquo; Felix cried, now
+      aroused to a full sense of the break in Methuselah&rsquo;s story and
+      trembling with apprehension. &ldquo;You may kill me if you like; we can
+      die only once; but human flesh I can never taste; nor will I, while I
+      live, allow you to touch this dead man&rsquo;s body. We will bury it
+      ourselves, the King of the Birds and I. You may tell your people so. That
+      is my last word.&rdquo; He raised his voice to the customary ceremonial
+      pitch. &ldquo;I, the new Tu-Kila-Kila,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;have spoken
+      it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The King of Fire and the King of Water, taken aback at his boldness,
+      conferred together for some seconds privately. The people meanwhile looked
+      on and wondered. What could this strange hitch in the divine proceedings
+      mean? Was the god himself recalcitrant? Never in their lives had the
+      oldest men among them known anything like it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And as they whispered and debated, awe-struck but discordant, a shout
+      arose once more from the outer circle&mdash;a mighty shout of mingled
+      surprise, alarm, and terror. &ldquo;Taboo! Taboo! Fence the mysteries.
+      Beware! Oh, great god, we warn you. The mysteries are in danger! Cut her
+      down! Kill her! A woman! A woman!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the words, Felix was aware of somebody bursting through the dense crowd
+      and rushing wildly toward him. Next moment, Muriel hung and sobbed on his
+      shoulder, while Mali, just behind her, stood crying and moaning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix held the poor startled girl in his arms and soothed her. And all
+      around another great cry arose from five hundred lips: &ldquo;Two women
+      have profaned the mysteries of the god. They are Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s
+      trespass-offering. Let us kill them and eat them!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0030" id="link2HCH0030"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXX. &mdash; SUSPENSE.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      In a moment, Felix&rsquo;s mind was fully made up. There was no time to
+      think; it was the hour for action. He saw how he must comport himself
+      toward this strange wild people. Seating Muriel gently on the ground, Mali
+      beside her, and stepping forward himself, with Peyron&rsquo;s hand in his,
+      he beckoned to the vast and surging crowd to bespeak respectful silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A mighty hush fell at once upon the people. The King of Fire and the King
+      of Water stood back, obedient to his nod. They waited for the upshot of
+      this strange new development.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Men of Boupari,&rdquo; Felix began, speaking with a marvellous
+      fluency in their own tongue, for the excitement itself supplied him with
+      eloquence; &ldquo;I have killed your late god in the prescribed way; I
+      have plucked the sacred bough, and fought in single combat by the
+      established rules of your own religion. Fire and Water, you guardians of
+      this holy island, is it not so? You saw all things done, did you not,
+      after the precepts of your ancestors?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The King of Fire bowed low and answered: &ldquo;Tu-Kila-Kila speaks,
+      indeed, the truth. Water and I, with our own eyes, have seen it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And now,&rdquo; Felix went on, &ldquo;I am myself, by your own
+      laws, Tu-Kila-Kila.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The King of Fire made a gesture of dissent. &ldquo;Oh, great god, pardon
+      me,&rdquo; he murmured, &ldquo;if I say aught, now, to contradict you; but
+      you are not a full Tu-Kila-Kila yet till you have eaten of the heart of
+      the god, your predecessor.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then where is now the spirit of Tu-Kila-Kila, the very high god, if
+      I am not he?&rdquo; Felix asked, abruptly, thus puzzling them with a hard
+      problem in their own savage theology.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The King of Fire gave a start, and pondered. This was a detail of his
+      creed that had never before so much as occurred to him. All faiths have
+      their <i>cruces</i>. &ldquo;I do not well know,&rdquo; he answered,
+      &ldquo;whether it is in the heart of Lavita, the son of Sami, or in your
+      own body. But I feel sure it must now be certainly somewhere, though just
+      where our fathers have never told us.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix recognized at once that he had gained a point. &ldquo;Then look to
+      it well,&rdquo; he said, austerely. &ldquo;Be careful how you act. Do
+      nothing rash. For either the soul of the god is in the heart of Lavita,
+      the son of Sami; and then, since I refuse to eat it, it will decay away,
+      as Lavita&rsquo;s body decays, and the world will shrivel up, and all
+      things will perish, because the god is dead and crumbled to dust forever.
+      Or else it is in my body, who am god in his place; and then, if anybody
+      does me harm or hurt, he will be an impious wretch, and will have broken
+      taboo, and Heaven knows what evils and misfortunes may not, therefore,
+      fall on each and all of you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A very old chief rose from the ranks outside. His hair was white and his
+      eyes bleared. &ldquo;Tu-Kila-Kila speaks well,&rdquo; he cried, in a loud
+      but mumbling voice. &ldquo;His words are wise. He argues to the point. He
+      is very cunning. I advise you, my people, to be careful how you anger the
+      white-faced stranger, for you know what he is; he is cruel; he is
+      powerful. There was never any storm in my time&mdash;and I am an old man&mdash;so
+      great in Boupari as the storm that rose when the King of the Rain ate the
+      storm-apple. Our yams and our taros even now are suffering from it. He is
+      a mighty strong god. Beware how you tamper with him!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He sat down, trembling. A younger chief rose from a nearer rank, and said
+      his say in turn. &ldquo;I do not agree with our father,&rdquo; he cried,
+      pointing to the chief who had just spoken. &ldquo;His word is evil; he is
+      much mistaken. I have another thought. My thought is this. Let us kill and
+      eat the white-faced stranger at once, by wager of battle; and let
+      whosoever fights and overcomes him receive his honors, and take to wife
+      the fair woman, the Queen of the Clouds, the sun-faced Korong, whom he
+      brought from the sun with him.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But who will then be Tu-Kila-Kila?&rdquo; Felix asked, turning
+      round upon him quickly. Habituation to danger had made him unnaturally
+      alert in such utmost extremities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, the man who slays you,&rdquo; the young chief answered,
+      pointedly, grasping his heavy tomahawk with profound expression.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think not,&rdquo; Felix answered. &ldquo;Your reasoning is bad.
+      For if I am not Tu-Kila-Kila, how can any man become Tu-Kila-Kila by
+      killing me? And if I am Tu-Kila-Kila, how dare you, not being yourself
+      Korong, and not having broken off the sacred bough, as I did, venture to
+      attack me? You wish to set aside all the customs of Boupari. Are you not
+      ashamed of such gross impiety?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tu-Kila-Kila speaks well,&rdquo; the King of Fire put in, for he
+      had no cause to love the aggressive young chief, and he thought better of
+      his chances in life as Felix&rsquo;s minister. &ldquo;Besides, now I think
+      of it, he <i>must</i> be Tu-Kila-Kila, because he has taken the life of
+      the last great god, whom he slew with his hands; and therefore the life is
+      now his&mdash;he holds it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix was emboldened by this favorable opinion to strike out a fresh line
+      in a further direction. He stood forward once more, and beckoned again for
+      silence. &ldquo;Yes, my people,&rdquo; he said calmly, with slow
+      articulation, &ldquo;by the custom of your race and the creed you profess
+      I am now indeed, and in every truth, the abode of your great god,
+      Tu-Kila-Kila. But, furthermore, I have a new revelation to make to you. I
+      am going to instruct you in a fresh way. This creed that you hold is full
+      of errors. As Tu-Kila-Kila, I mean to take my own course, no islander
+      hindering me. If you try to depose me, what great gods have you now got
+      left? None, save only Fire and Water, my ministers. King of the Rain there
+      is none; for I, who was he, am now Tu-Kila-Kila. Tu-Kila-Kila there is
+      none, save only me; for the other, that was, I have fought and conquered.
+      The Queen of the Clouds is with me. The King of the Birds is with me.
+      Consider, then, O friends, that if you kill us all, you will have nowhere
+      to turn; you will be left quite godless.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is true,&rdquo; the people murmured, looking about them, half
+      puzzled. &ldquo;He is wise. He speaks well. He is indeed a Tu-Kila-Kila.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix pressed his advantage home at once. &ldquo;Now listen,&rdquo; he
+      said, lifting up one solemn forefinger. &ldquo;I come from a country very
+      far away, where the customs are better by many yams than those of Boupari.
+      And now that I am indeed Tu-Kila-Kila&mdash;your god, your master&mdash;I
+      will change and alter some of your customs that seem to me here and now
+      most undesirable. In the first place&mdash;hear this!&mdash;I will put
+      down all cannibalism. No man shall eat of human flesh on pain of death.
+      And to begin with, no man shall cook or eat the body of Lavita, the son of
+      Sami. On that I am determined&mdash;I, Tu-Kila-Kila. The King of the Birds
+      and I, we will dig a pit, and we will bury in it the corpse of this man
+      that was once your god, and whom his own wickedness compelled me to fight
+      and slay, in order to prevent more cruelty and bloodshed.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The young chief stood up, all red in his wrath, and interrupted him,
+      brandishing a coral-stone hatchet. &ldquo;This is blasphemy,&rdquo; he
+      said. &ldquo;This is sheer rank blasphemy. These are not good words. They
+      are very bad medicine. The white-faced Korong is no true Tu-Kila-Kila. His
+      advice is evil&mdash;and ill-luck would follow it. He wishes to change the
+      sacred customs of Boupari. Now, that is not well. My counsel is this: let
+      us eat him now, unless he changes his heart, and amends his ways, and
+      partakes, as is right, of the body of Lavita, the son of Sami.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The assembly swayed visibly, this way and that, some inclining to the
+      conservative view of the rash young chief, and others to the cautious
+      liberalism of the gray-haired warrior. Felix noted their division, and
+      spoke once more, this time still more authoritatively than ever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Furthermore,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;my people, hear me. As I came
+      in a ship propelled by fire over the high waves of the sea, so I go away
+      in one. We watch for such a ship to pass by Boupari. When it comes, the
+      Queen of the Clouds&mdash;upon whose life I place a great Taboo; let no
+      man dare to touch her at his peril; if he does, I will rush upon him and
+      kill him as I killed Lavita, the son of Sami. When it comes, the Queen of
+      the Clouds, the King of the Birds, and I, we will go away back in it to
+      the land whence we came, and be quit of Boupari. But we will not leave it
+      fireless or godless. When I return back home again to my own far land, I
+      will send out messengers, very good men, who will tell you of a God more
+      powerful by much than any you ever knew, and very righteous. They will
+      teach you great things you never dreamed of. Therefore, I ask you now to
+      disperse to your own homes, while the King of Birds and I bury the body of
+      Lavita, the son of Sami.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All this time Muriel had been seated on the ground, listening with
+      profound interest, but scarcely understanding a word, though here and
+      there, after her six months&rsquo; stay in the island, a single phrase was
+      dimly intelligible to her. But now, at this critical moment she rose, and,
+      standing upright by Felix&rsquo;s side in her spotless English purity
+      among those assembled savages, she pointed just once with her uplifted
+      finger to the calm vault of heaven, and then across the moonlit horizon of
+      the sea, and last of all to the clustering huts and villages of Boupari.
+      &ldquo;Tell them,&rdquo; she said to Felix, with blanched lips, but
+      without one sign of a tremor in her fearless voice, &ldquo;I will pray for
+      them to Heaven, when I go across the sea, and will think of the children
+      that I loved to pat and play with, and will send out messengers from our
+      home beyond the waves, to make them wiser and happier and better.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix translated her simple message to them in its pure womanly goodness.
+      Even the natives were touched. They whispered and hesitated. Then after a
+      time of much murmured debate, the King of Fire stood forward as a
+      mediator. &ldquo;There is an oracle, O Korong,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;not
+      to prejudge the matter, which decides all these things&mdash;a great
+      conch-shell at a sacred grove in the neighboring island of Aloa Mauna. It
+      is the holiest oracle of all our holy religion. We gods and men of Boupari
+      have taken counsel together, and have come to a conclusion. We will put
+      forth a canoe and send men with blood on their faces to inquire at Aloa
+      Mauna of the very great oracle. Till then, you are neither Tu-Kila-Kila,
+      nor not Tu-Kila-Kila. It behooves us to be very careful how we deal with
+      gods. Our people will stand round your precinct in a row, and guard you
+      with their spears. You shall not cross the taboo line to them, nor they to
+      you: all shall be neutral. Food shall be laid by the line, as always,
+      morn, noon, and night; and your Shadows shall take it in; but you shall
+      not come out. Neither shall you bury the body of Lavita, the son of Sami.
+      Till the canoe comes back it shall lie in the sun and rot there.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He clapped his hands twice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a moment a tom-tom began to beat from behind, and the people all
+      crowded without the circle. The King of Fire came forward ostentatiously
+      and made taboo. &ldquo;If, any man cross this line,&rdquo; he said in a
+      droning sing-song, &ldquo;till the canoe return from the great oracle of
+      our faith on Aloa Mauna, I, Fire, will scorch him into cinder and ashes.
+      If any woman transgress, I will pitch her with palm oil, and light her up
+      for a lamp on a moonless night to lighten this temple.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The King of Water distributed shark&rsquo;s-tooth spears. At once a great
+      serried wall hemmed in the Europeans all round, and they sat down to wait,
+      the three whites together, for the upshot of the mission to Aloa Mauna.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the dawn now gleamed red on the eastern horizon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0031" id="link2HCH0031"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXXI. &mdash; AT SEA: OFF BOUPARI.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Thirteen days out from Sydney, the good ship Australasian was nearing the
+      equator.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was four of the clock in the afternoon, and the captain (off duty)
+      paced the deck, puffing a cigar, and talking idly with a passenger on
+      former experiences.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Eight bells went on the quarter-deck; time to change watches.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is only our second trip through this channel,&rdquo; the
+      captain said, gazing across with a casual glance at the palm-trees that
+      stood dark against the blue horizon. &ldquo;We used to go a hundred miles
+      to eastward, here, to avoid the reefs. But last voyage I came through this
+      way quite safely&mdash;though we had a nasty accident on the road&mdash;unavoidable&mdash;unavoidable!
+      Big sea was running free over the sunken shoals; caught the ship aft
+      unawares, and stove in better than half a dozen portholes. Lady passenger
+      on deck happened to be leaning over the weather gunwale; big sea caught
+      her up on its crest in a jiffy, lifted her like a baby, and laid her down
+      again gently, just so, on the bed of the ocean. By George, sir, I was
+      annoyed. It was quite a romance, poor thing; quite a romance; we all felt
+      so put out about it the rest of that voyage. Young fellow on board, nephew
+      of Sir Theodore Thurstan, of the Colonial Office, was in love with Miss
+      Ellis&mdash;girl&rsquo;s name was Ellis&mdash;father&rsquo;s a parson
+      somewhere down in Somersetshire&mdash;and as soon as the big sea took her
+      up on its crest, what does Thurstan go and do, but he ups on the taffrail,
+      and, before you could say Jack Robinson, jumps over to save her.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But he didn&rsquo;t succeed?&rdquo; the passenger asked, with
+      languid interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Succeed, my dear sir? and with a sea running twelve feet high like
+      that? Why, it was pitch dark, and such a surf on that the gig could hardly
+      go through it.&rdquo; The captain smiled, and puffed away pensively.
+      &ldquo;Drowned,&rdquo; he said, after a brief pause, with complacent
+      composure. &ldquo;Drowned. Drowned. Drowned. Went to the bottom, both of
+      &rsquo;em. Davy Jones&rsquo;s locker. But unavoidable, quite. These
+      accidents <i>will</i> happen, even on the best-regulated liners. Why,
+      there was my brother Tom, in the Cunard service&mdash;same that boast they
+      never lost a passenger; there was my brother Tom, he was out one day off
+      the Newfoundland banks, heavy swell setting in from the nor&rsquo;-nor&rsquo;-east,
+      icebergs ahead, passengers battened down&mdash;Bless my soul, how that
+      light seems to come and go, don&rsquo;t it?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a reflected light, flashing from the island straight in the captain&rsquo;s
+      eyes, small and insignificant as to size, but strong for all that in the
+      full tropical sunshine, and glittering like a diamond from a vague
+      elevation near the centre of the island.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Seems to come and go in regular order,&rdquo; the passenger
+      observed, reflectively, withdrawing his cigar. &ldquo;Looks for all the
+      world just like naval signalling.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The captain paused, and shaded his eyes a moment. &ldquo;Hanged if that
+      isn&rsquo;t just what it <i>is</i>,&rdquo; he answered, slowly. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s
+      a rigged-up heliograph, and they&rsquo;re using the Morse code; dash my
+      eyes if they aren&rsquo;t. Well, this <i>is</i> civilization! What the
+      dickens can have come to the island of Boupari? There isn&rsquo;t a darned
+      European soul in the place, nor ever has been. Anchorage unsafe; no
+      harbor; bad reef; too small for missionaries to make a living, and natives
+      got nothing worth speaking of to trade in.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do they say?&rdquo; the passenger asked, with suddenly
+      quickened interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How the devil should I tell you yet, sir?&rdquo; the captain
+      retorted with choleric grumpiness. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you see I&rsquo;m
+      spelling it out, letter by letter? O, r, e, s, c, u, e, u, s, c, o, m, e,
+      w, e, l, l, a, r, m, e, d&mdash;Yes. yes, I twig it.&rdquo; And the
+      captain jotted it down in his note-book for some seconds, silently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Run up the flag there,&rdquo; he shouted, a moment later, rushing
+      hastily forward. &ldquo;Stop her at once, Walker. Easy, easy. Get ready
+      the gig. Well, upon my soul, there <i>is</i> a rum start anyway.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What does the message say?&rdquo; the passenger inquired, with
+      intense surprise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say? Well, there&rsquo;s what I make it out,&rdquo; the captain
+      answered, handing him the scrap of paper on which he had jotted down the
+      letters. &ldquo;I missed the beginning, but the end&rsquo;s all right.
+      Look alive there, boys, will you. Bring out the Winchester. Take
+      cutlasses, all hands. I&rsquo;ll go along myself in her.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The passenger took the piece of paper on which he read, &ldquo;and send a
+      boat to rescue us. Come well armed. Savages on guard. Thurstan, Ellis.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In less than three minutes the boat was lowered and manned, and the
+      captain, with the Winchester six-shooter by his side, seated grim in the
+      stern, took command of the tiller.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the island it was the first day of Felix and Muriel&rsquo;s
+      imprisonment in the dusty precinct of Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s temple. All the
+      morning through, they had sat under the shade of a smaller banyan in the
+      outer corner; for Muriel could neither enter the noisome hut nor go near
+      the great tree with the skeletons on its branches; nor could she sit where
+      the dead savage&rsquo;s body, still festering in the sun, attracted the
+      buzzing blue flies by thousands, to drink up the blood that lay thick on
+      the earth in a pool around it. Hard by, the natives sat, keen as lynxes,
+      in a great circle just outside the white taboo-line, where, with serried
+      spears, they kept watch and ward over the persons of their doubtful gods
+      or victims. M. Peyron, alone preserving his equanimity under these adverse
+      circumstances, hummed low to himself in very dubious tones; even he felt
+      his French gayety had somewhat forsaken him; this revolution in Boupari
+      failed to excite his Parisian ardor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      About one o&rsquo;clock in the day, however, looking casually seaward&mdash;what
+      was this that M. Peyron, to his great surprise, descried far away on the
+      dim southern horizon? A low black line, lying close to the water? No, no;
+      not a steamer!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Too prudent to excite the natives&rsquo; attention unnecessarily, the
+      cautious Frenchman whispered, in the most commonplace voice on earth to
+      Felix: &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t look at once; and when you do look, mind you don&rsquo;t
+      exhibit any agitation in your tone or manner. But what do you make that
+      out to be&mdash;that long black haze on the horizon to southward?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix looked, disregarding the friendly injunction, at once. At the same
+      moment, Muriel turned her eyes quickly in the self-same direction. Neither
+      made the faintest sign of outer emotion; but Muriel clenched her white
+      hands hard, till the nails dug into the palm, in her effort to restrain
+      herself, as she murmured very low, in an agitated voice, &ldquo;<i>Un
+      vapeur, un vapeur</i>!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So I think,&rdquo; M. Peyron answered, very low and calm. &ldquo;It
+      is, indeed, a steamer!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For three long hours those anxious souls waited and watched it draw nearer
+      and nearer. Slowly the natives, too, began to perceive the unaccustomed
+      object. As it drew abreast of the island, and the decisive moment arrived
+      for prompt action, Felix rose in his place once more and cried aloud,
+      &ldquo;My people, I told you a ship, propelled by fire, would come from
+      the far land across the sea to take us. The ship has come; you can see for
+      yourselves the thick black smoke that issues in huge puffs from the mouth
+      of the monster. Now, listen to me, and dare not to disobey me. My word is
+      law; let all men see to it. I am going to send a message of fire from the
+      sun to the great canoe that walks upon the water. If any man ventures to
+      stop me from doing it the people from the great canoe will land on this
+      isle and take vengeance for his act, and kill with the thunder which the
+      sailing gods carry ever about with them.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By this time the island was alive with commotion. Hundreds of natives,
+      with their long hair falling unkempt about their keen brown faces, were
+      gazing with open eyes at the big black ship that ploughed her way so fast
+      against wind and tide over the surface of the waters. Some of them shouted
+      and gesticulated with panic fear; others seemed half inclined to waste no
+      time on preparation or doubt, but to rush on at once, and immolate their
+      captives before a rescue was possible. But Felix, keeping ever his cool
+      head undisturbed, stood on the dusty mound by Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s house,
+      and taking in his hand the little mirror he had made from the match-box,
+      flashed the light from the sun full in their eyes for a moment, to the
+      astonishment and discomfiture of all those gaping savages. Then he
+      focussed it on the Australasian, across the surf and the waves, and with a
+      throbbing heart began to make his last faint bid for life and freedom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For four or five minutes he went flashing on, uncertain of the effect,
+      whether they saw or saw not. Then a cry from Muriel burst at once upon his
+      ears. She clasped her hands convulsively in an agony of joy. &ldquo;They
+      see us! They see us!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And sure enough, scarcely half a minute later, a British flag ran gayly up
+      the mainmast, and a boat seemed to drop down over the side of the vessel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As for the natives, they watched these proceedings with considerable
+      surprise and no little discomfiture&mdash;Fire and Water, in particular,
+      whispering together, much alarmed, with many superstitious nods and
+      taboos, in the corner of the enclosure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gradually, as the boat drew nearer and nearer, divided counsels prevailed
+      among the savages. With no certainly recognized Tu-Kila-Kila to marshal
+      their movements, each man stood in doubt from whom to take his orders. At
+      last, the King of Fire, in a hesitating voice, gave the word of command.
+      &ldquo;Half the warriors to the shore to repel the enemy; half to watch
+      round the taboo-line, lest the Korongs escape us! Let Breathless Fear, our
+      war-god, go before the face of our troops, invisible!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And, quick as thought, at his word, the warriors had paired off, two and
+      two, in long lines; some running hastily down to the beach, to man the
+      war-canoes, while others remained, with shark&rsquo;s tooth spears still
+      set in a looser circle, round the great temple-enclosure of Tu-Kila-Kila.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For Muriel, this suspense was positively terrible. To feel one was so
+      close to the hope of rescue, and yet to know that before that help
+      arrived, or even as it came up, those savages might any moment run their
+      ghastly spears through them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Felix made the best of his position still. &ldquo;Remember,&rdquo; he
+      cried, at the top of his voice, as the warriors started at a run for the
+      water&rsquo;s edge, &ldquo;your Tu-Kila-Kila tells you, these new-comers
+      are his friends. Whoever hurts them, does so at his peril. This is a great
+      Taboo. I bid you receive them. Beware for your lives. I, Tu-Kila-Kila the
+      Great, have said it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0032" id="link2HCH0032"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXXII. &mdash; THE DOWNFALL OF A PANTHEON.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The Australasian&rsquo;s gig entered the lagoon through the fringing reef
+      by its narrow seaward mouth, and rowed steadily for the landing place on
+      the main island.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A little way out from shore, amid loud screams and yells, the natives came
+      up with it in their laden war-canoes. Shouting and gesticulating and
+      brandishing their spears with the shark&rsquo;s tooth tips, they
+      endeavored to stop its progress landward by pure noise and bravado.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We must be careful what we do, boys,&rdquo; the captain observed,
+      in a quiet voice of seamanlike resolution to his armed companions. &ldquo;We
+      mustn&rsquo;t frighten the savages too much, or show too hostile a front,
+      for fear they should retaliate on our friends on the island.&rdquo; He
+      held up his hand, with the gold braid on the wrist, to command silence;
+      and the natives, gazing open-mouthed, looked and wondered at the gesture.
+      These sailing gods were certainly arrayed in most gorgeous vestments, and
+      their canoe, though devoid of a grinning figure-head, was provided with a
+      most admirable and well-uniformed equipment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A coral rock jutted high out of the sea to the left hard by. Its summit
+      was crowded with a basking population of sea-gulls and pelicans. The
+      captain gave the word to &ldquo;easy all.&rdquo; In a second the gig
+      stopped short, as those stout arms held her. He rose in his place and
+      lifted the six-shooter. Then he pointed it ostentatiously at the rock,
+      away from the native canoes, and held up his hand yet again for silence.
+      &ldquo;We&rsquo;ll give 'em a taste of what we can do, boys,&rdquo; he
+      said, &ldquo;just to show &rsquo;em, not to hurt &rsquo;em.&rdquo; At that
+      he drew the trigger twice. His first two chambers were loaded on purpose
+      with duck-shot cartridges. Twice the big gun roared; twice the fire
+      flashed red from its smoking mouth. As the smoke cleared away, the
+      natives, dumb with surprise, and perfectly cowed with terror, saw ten or a
+      dozen torn and bleeding birds float mangled upon the water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now for the dynamite!&rdquo; the captain said, cheerily, proceeding
+      to lower a small object overboard by a single wire, while he held up his
+      hand a third time to bespeak silence and attention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The natives looked again, with eyes starting from their heads. The captain
+      gave a little click, and pointed with his finger to a spot on the water&rsquo;s
+      top, a little way in front of him. Instantly, a loud report, and a column
+      of water spurted up into the air, some ten or twelve feet, in a boisterous
+      fountain. As it subsided again, a hundred or so of the bright-colored fish
+      that browse among the submerged, coral-groves of these still lagoons, rose
+      dead or dying to the seething, boiling surface.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The captain smiled. Instantly the natives set up a terrified shout.
+      &ldquo;It is even as he said,&rdquo; they cried. &ldquo;These gods are his
+      ministers! The white-faced Korong is a very great deity! He is indeed the
+      true Tu-Kila-Kila. These gods have come for him. They are very mighty.
+      Thunder and lightning and waterspouts are theirs. The waves do as they
+      bid. The sea obeys them. They are here to take away our Tu-Kila-Kila from
+      our midst. And what will then become of the island of Boupari? Will it not
+      sink in the waves of the sea and disappear? Will not the sun in heaven
+      grow dark, and the moon cease to shed its benign light on the earth, when
+      Tu-Kila-Kila the Great returns at last to his own far country?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That lot&rsquo;ll do for &rsquo;em, I expect,&rdquo; the captain
+      said cheerily, with a confident smile. &ldquo;Now forward all, boys. I
+      fancy we&rsquo;ve astonished the natives a trifle.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They rowed on steadily, but cautiously, toward the white bank of sand
+      which formed the usual landing-place, the captain holding the six-shooter
+      in readiness all the time, and keeping an eye firmly fixed on every
+      movement of the savages. But the warriors in the canoes, thoroughly cowed
+      and overawed by this singular exhibition of the strangers&rsquo; prowess,
+      paddled on in whispering silence, nearly abreast of the gig, but at a safe
+      distance, as they thought, and eyed the advancing Europeans with quiet
+      looks of unmixed suspicion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last, the adventurous young chief, who had advised killing Felix
+      off-hand on the island, mustered up courage to paddle his own canoe a
+      little nearer, and flung his spear madly in the direction of the gig. It
+      fell short by ten yards. He stood eying it angrily. But the captain,
+      grimly quiet, raising his Winchester to his shoulder without one second&rsquo;s
+      delay, and marking his man, fired at the young chief as he stood, still
+      half in the attitude of throwing, on the prow of his canoe, an easy aim
+      for fire-arms. The ball went clean through the savage&rsquo;s breast, and
+      then ricochetted three times on the water afar off. The young chief fell
+      stone dead into the sea like a log, and sank instantly to the bottom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a critical moment. The captain felt uncertain whether the natives
+      would close round them in force or not. It is always dangerous to fire a
+      shot at savages. But the Boupari men were too utterly awed to venture on
+      defence. &ldquo;He was Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s enemy,&rdquo; they cried, in
+      astonished tones. &ldquo;He raised his voice against the very high god.
+      Therefore, the very high god&rsquo;s friends have smitten him with their
+      lightning. Their thunderbolt went through him, and hit the water beyond.
+      How strong is their hand! They can kill from afar. They are mighty gods.
+      Let no man strive to fight against the friends of Tu-Kila-Kila.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sailors rowed on and reached the landing-place. There, half of them,
+      headed by the captain, disembarked in good order, with drawn cutlasses,
+      while the other half remained behind to guard the gig, under the third
+      officer. The natives also disembarked, a little way off, and, making
+      humble signs of submission with knee and arm, endeavored, by pantomime, to
+      express the idea of their willingness to guide the strangers to their
+      friends&rsquo; quarters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The captain waved them on with his hand. The natives, reassured, led the
+      way, at some distance ahead, along the paths through the jungle. The
+      captain had his finger on his six-shooter the while; every sailor grasped
+      his cutlass and kept his revolver ready for action. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t
+      half like the look of it,&rdquo; the captain observed, partly to himself.
+      &ldquo;They seem to be leading us into an ambuscade or something. Keep a
+      sharp lookout against surprise from the jungle, boys; and if any native
+      shows fight shoot him down instantly.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last they emerged upon a clear space in the front, where a great group
+      of savages stood in a circle, with serried spears, round a large wattled
+      hut that occupied the elevated centre of the clearing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a minute or two the action of the savages was uncertain. Half of the
+      defenders turned round to face the invaders angrily; the other half stood
+      irresolute, with their spears still held inward, guarding a white line of
+      sand with inflexible devotion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The warriors who had preceded them from the shore called aloud to their
+      friends by the temple in startled tones. The captain and sailors had no
+      idea what their words meant. But just then, from the midst of the circle,
+      an English voice cried out in haste, &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t fire! Do nothing
+      rash! We&rsquo;re safe. Don&rsquo;t be frightened. The natives are
+      disposed to parley and palaver. Take care how you act. They&rsquo;re
+      terribly afraid of you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Just outside the taboo-line the captain halted. The gray-headed old chief,
+      who had accompanied his fellows to the shore, spoke out in Polynesian.
+      &ldquo;Do not resist them,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;my people. If you do,
+      you will be blasted by their lightning like a bare bamboo in a mighty
+      cyclone. They carry thunder in their hands. They are mighty, mighty gods.
+      The white-faced Korong spoke no more than the truth. Let them do as they
+      will with us. We are but their meat. We are as dust beneath their sole,
+      and as driven mulberry-leaves before the breath of the tempest.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The defenders hesitated still a little. Then, suddenly losing heart, they
+      broke rank at last at a point close by where the captain of the
+      Australasian stood, one man after another falling aside slowly and
+      shamefacedly a pace or two. The captain, unhesitatingly, overstepped the
+      white taboo-line. Next instant, Felix and Muriel were grasping his hand
+      hard, and M. Peyron was bowing a polite Parisian reception.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Forthwith, the sailors crowded round them in a hollow square. Muriel and
+      Felix, half faint with relief from their long and anxious suspense,
+      staggered slowly down the seaward path between them. But there was no need
+      now for further show of defence. The islanders, pressing near and flinging
+      away their weapons, followed the procession close, with tears and
+      lamentations. As they went on, the women, rushing out of their huts while
+      the fugitives passed, tore their hair on their heads, and beat their
+      breasts in terror. The warriors who had come from the shore recounted,
+      with their own exaggerative additions, the miracle of the six-shooter and
+      the dynamite cartridge. Gradually they approached the landing-place on the
+      beach. There the third officer sat waiting in the gig to receive them. The
+      lamentations of the islanders now became positively poignant. &ldquo;Oh,
+      my father,&rdquo; they cried aloud, &ldquo;my brother, my revered one, you
+      are indeed the true Tu-Kila-Kila. Do not go away like this and desert us!
+      Oh, our mother, great queen, mighty goddess, stop with us! Take not away
+      your sun from the heavens, nor your rain from the crops. We acknowledge we
+      have sinned; we have done very wrong; but the chief sinner is dead; the
+      wrong-doer has paid; spare us who remain; spare us, great deity; do not
+      make the bright lights of heaven become dark over us. Stay with your
+      worshippers, and we will give you choice young girls to eat every day, we
+      will sacrifice the tenderest of our children to feed you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is an awful thing for any race or nation when its taboos fail all at
+      once, and die out entirely. To the men of Boupari, the Tu-Kila-Kila of the
+      moment represented both the Moral Order and the regular sequence of the
+      physical universe. Anarchy and chaos might rule when he was gone. The sun
+      might be quenched, and the people run riot. No wonder they shrank from the
+      fearful consequence that might next ensue. King and priest, god and
+      religion, all at one fell blow were to be taken away from them!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix turned round on the shore and spoke to them again. &ldquo;My people,&rdquo;
+      he said, in a kindly tone&mdash;for, after all, he pitied them&mdash;&ldquo;you
+      need have no fear. When I am gone, the sun will still shine and the trees
+      will still bear fruit every year as formerly. I will send the messengers I
+      promised from my own land to teach you. Until they come, I leave you this
+      as a great Taboo. Tu-Kila-Kila enjoins it. Shed no human blood; eat no
+      human flesh. Those who do will be punished when another fire-canoe comes
+      from the far land to bring my messengers.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The King of Fire bent low at the words. &ldquo;Oh, Tu-Kila-Kila,&rdquo; he
+      said, &ldquo;it shall be done as you say. Till your messengers come, every
+      man shall live at peace with all his neighbors.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They stepped into the gig. Mali and Toko followed before M. Peyron as
+      naturally as they had always followed their masters on the island before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who are these?&rdquo; the captain asked, smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Our Shadows,&rdquo; Felix answered. &ldquo;Let them come. I will
+      pay their passage when I reach San Francisco. They have been very faithful
+      to us, and they are afraid to remain, lest the islanders should kill them
+      for letting us go or for not accompanying us.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well,&rdquo; the captain answered. &ldquo;Forward all, there,
+      boys! Now, ahead for the ship. And thank God, we&rsquo;re well out of it!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the islanders still stood on the shore and wept, stretching their
+      hands in vain after the departing boat, and crying aloud in piteous tones,
+      &ldquo;Oh, my father, return! Oh, my mother, come back! Oh, very great
+      gods, do not fly and desert us!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seven weeks later Mr. and Mrs. Felix Thurstan, who had been married in the
+      cathedral at Honolulu the very morning the Australasian arrived there, sat
+      in an eminently respectable drawing-room in a London square, where Mrs.
+      Ellis, Muriel&rsquo;s aunt by marriage, was acting as their hostess.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But how dreadful it is to think, dear,&rdquo; Mrs. Ellis remarked
+      for the twentieth time since their arrival, with a deep-drawn sigh,
+      &ldquo;how dreadful to think that you and Felix should have been all those
+      months alone on the island together without being married!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Muriel looked up with a quiet smile toward Felix. &ldquo;I think, Aunt
+      Mary,&rdquo; she said, dreamily, &ldquo;if you&rsquo;d been there
+      yourself, and suffered all those fears, and passed through all those
+      horrors that we did together, you&rsquo;d have troubled your head very
+      little indeed about such conventionalities, as whether or not you happened
+      to be married.... Besides,&rdquo; she added, after a pause, with a fine
+      perception of the inexorable stringency of Mrs. Grundy&rsquo;s law,
+      &ldquo;we weren&rsquo;t quite without chaperons, either, don&rsquo;t you
+      know; for our Shadows, of course, were always with us.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whereat Felix smiled an equally quiet smile. &ldquo;And terrible as it all
+      was,&rdquo; he put in, &ldquo;I shall never regret it, because it made
+      Muriel know how profoundly I loved her, and it made me know how brave and
+      trustful and pure a woman could be under such awful conditions.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Mrs. Ellis sat still in her chair and smiled uncomfortably. It
+      affected her spirits. Taboos, after all, are much the same in England as
+      in Boupari.
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 6em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+  <div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 13876 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #13876 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13876)
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Great Taboo, by Grant Allen
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Great Taboo
+
+Author: Grant Allen
+
+Release Date: October 26, 2004  [eBook #13876]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GREAT TABOO***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Mary Meehan and the Project Gutenberg Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+THE GREAT TABOO
+
+by
+
+GRANT ALLEN
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+I desire to express my profound indebtedness, for the central
+mythological idea embodied in this tale, to Mr. J.G. Frazer's admirable
+and epoch-making work, "The Golden Bough," whose main contention I have
+endeavored incidentally to popularize in my present story. I wish also to
+express my obligations in other ways to Mr. Andrew Lang's "Myth, Ritual,
+and Religion," Mr. H.O. Forbes's "Naturalist's Wanderings," and Mr.
+Julian Thomas's "Cannibals and Convicts." If I have omitted to mention
+any other author to whom I may have owed incidental hints, it will be
+some consolation to me to reflect that I shall at least have afforded an
+opportunity for legitimate sport to the amateurs of the new and popular
+British pastime of badger-baiting or plagiary-hunting. It may also save
+critics some moments' search if I say at once that, after careful
+consideration, I have been unable to discover any moral whatsoever in
+this humble narrative. I venture to believe that in so enlightened an age
+the majority of my readers will never miss it.
+
+G.A.
+
+THE NOOK, DORKING, October, 1890.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+IN MID PACIFIC.
+
+
+"Man overboard!"
+
+It rang in Felix Thurstan's ears like the sound of a bell. He gazed about
+him in dismay, wondering what had happened.
+
+The first intimation he received of the accident was that sudden sharp
+cry from the bo'sun's mate. Almost before he had fully taken it in, in
+all its meaning, another voice, farther aft, took up the cry once more in
+an altered form: "A lady! a lady! Somebody overboard! Great heavens, it
+is _her_! It's Miss Ellis! Miss Ellis!"
+
+Next instant Felix found himself, he knew not how, struggling in a wild
+grapple with the dark, black water. A woman was clinging to him--clinging
+for dear life. But he couldn't have told you himself that minute how it
+all took place. He was too stunned and dazzled.
+
+He looked around him on the seething sea in a sudden awakening, as it
+were, to life and consciousness. All about, the great water stretched
+dark and tumultuous. White breakers surged over him. Far ahead the
+steamer's lights gleamed red and green in long lines upon the ocean. At
+first they ran fast; then they slackened somewhat. She was surely slowing
+now; they must be reversing engines and trying to stop her. They would
+put out a boat. But what hope, what chance of rescue by night, in such a
+wild waste of waves as that? And Muriel Ellis was clinging to him for
+dear life all the while, with the despairing clutch of a half-drowned
+woman!
+
+The people on the Australasian, for their part, knew better what had
+occurred. There was bustle and confusion enough on deck and on the
+captain's bridge, to be sure: "Man overboard!"--three sharp rings at the
+engine bell:--"Stop her short!--reverse engines!--lower the gig!--look
+sharp, there, all of you!" Passengers hurried up breathless at the first
+alarm to know what was the matter. Sailors loosened and lowered the boat
+from the davits with extraordinary quickness. Officers stood by, giving
+orders in monosyllables with practised calm. All was hurry and turmoil,
+yet with a marvellous sense of order and prompt obedience as well. But,
+at any rate, the people on deck hadn't the swift swirl of the boisterous
+water, the hampering wet clothes, the pervading consciousness of personal
+danger, to make their brains reel, like Felix Thurstan's. They could ask
+one another with comparative composure what had happened on board; they
+could listen without terror to the story of the accident.
+
+It was the thirteenth day out from Sydney, and the Australasian was
+rapidly nearing the equator. Toward evening the wind had freshened, and
+the sea was running high against her weather side. But it was a fine
+starlit night, though the moon had not yet risen; and as the brief
+tropical twilight faded away by quick degrees in the west, the fringe of
+cocoanut palms on the reef that bounded the little island of Boupari
+showed out for a minute or two in dark relief, some miles to leeward,
+against the pale pink horizon. In spite of the heavy sea, many passengers
+lingered late on deck that night to see the last of that coral-girt
+shore, which was to be their final glimpse of land till they reached
+Honolulu, _en route_ for San Francisco.
+
+Bit by bit, however, the cocoanut palms, silhouetted with their graceful
+waving arms for a few brief minutes in black against the glowing
+background, merged slowly into the sky or sank below the horizon. All
+grew dark. One by one, as the trees disappeared, the passengers dropped
+off for whist in the saloon, or retired to the uneasy solitude of their
+own state-rooms. At last only two or three men were left smoking and
+chatting near the top of the companion ladder; while at the stern of the
+ship Muriel Ellis looked over toward the retreating island, and talked
+with a certain timid maidenly frankness to Felix Thurstan.
+
+There's nowhere on earth for getting really to know people in a very
+short time like the deck of a great Atlantic or Pacific liner. You're
+thrown together so much, and all day long, that you see more of your
+fellow-passengers' inner life and nature in a few brief weeks than you
+would ever be likely to see in a long twelvemonth of ordinary town or
+country acquaintanceship. And Muriel Ellis had seen a great deal in those
+thirteen days of Felix Thurstan; enough to make sure in her own heart
+that she really liked him--well--so much that she looked up with a pretty
+blush of self-consciousness every time he approached and lifted his hat
+to her. Muriel was an English rector's daughter, from a country village
+in Somersetshire; and she was now on her way back from a long year's
+visit, to recruit her health, to an aunt in Paramatta. She was travelling
+under the escort of an amiable old chaperon whom the aunt in question had
+picked up for her before leaving Sydney; but, as the amiable old
+chaperon, being but an indifferent sailor, spent most of her time in her
+own berth, closely attended by the obliging stewardess, Muriel had found
+her chaperonage interfere very little with opportunities of talk with
+that nice Mr. Thurstan. And now, as the last glow of sunset died out in
+the western sky, and the last palm-tree faded away against the colder
+green darkness of the tropical night, Muriel was leaning over the
+bulwarks in confidential mood, and watching the big waves advance or
+recede, and talking the sort of talk that such an hour seems to favor
+with the handsome young civil servant who stood on guard, as it were,
+beside her. For Felix Thurstan held a government appointment at Levuka,
+in Fiji, and was now on his way home, on leave of absence after six
+years' service in that new-made colony.
+
+"How delightful it would be to live on an island like that!" Muriel
+murmured, half to herself, as she gazed out wistfully in the direction of
+the disappearing coral reef. "With those beautiful palms waving always
+over one's head, and that delicious evening air blowing cool through
+their branches! It looks such a Paradise!"
+
+Felix smiled and glanced down at her, as he steadied himself with one
+hand against the bulwark, while the ship rolled over into the trough of
+the sea heavily. "Well, I don't know about that, Miss Ellis," he answered
+with a doubtful air, eying her close as he spoke with eyes of evident
+admiration. "One might be happy anywhere, of course--in suitable society;
+but if you'd lived as long among cocoanuts in Fiji as I have, I dare say
+the poetry of these calm palm-grove islands would be a little less real
+to you. Remember, though they look so beautiful and dreamy against the
+sky like that, at sunset especially (that was a heavy one, that time;
+I'm really afraid we must go down to the cabin soon; she'll be shipping
+seas before long if we stop on deck much later--and yet, it's so
+delightful stopping up here till the dusk comes on, isn't it?)--well,
+remember, I was saying, though they look so beautiful and dreamy and
+poetical--'Summer isles of Eden lying in dark purple spheres of sea,' and
+all that sort of thing--these islands are inhabited by the fiercest and
+most bloodthirsty cannibals known to travellers."
+
+"Cannibals!" Muriel repeated, looking up at him in surprise. "You don't
+mean to say that islands like these, standing right in the very track of
+European steamers, are still heathen and cannibal?"
+
+"Oh, dear, yes," Felix replied, holding his hand out as he spoke to catch
+his companion's arm gently, and steady her against the wave that was just
+going to strike the stern: "Excuse me; just so; the sea's rising fast,
+isn't it?--Oh, dear, yes; of course they are; they're all heathen and
+cannibals. You couldn't imagine to yourself the horrible bloodthirsty
+rites that may this very minute be taking place upon that idyllic-looking
+island, under the soft waving branches of those whispering palm-trees.
+Why, I knew a man in the Marquesas myself--a hideous old native, as ugly
+as you can fancy him--who was supposed to be a god, an incarnate god, and
+was worshipped accordingly with profound devotion by all the other
+islanders. You can't picture to yourself how awful their worship was. I
+daren't even repeat it to you; it was too, too horrible. He lived in a
+hut by himself among the deepest forest, and human victims used to be
+brought--well, there, it's too loathsome! Why, see; there's a great light
+on the island now; a big bonfire or something; don't you make it out? You
+can tell it by the red glare in the sky overhead." He paused a moment;
+then he added more slowly, "I shouldn't be surprised if at this very
+moment, while we're standing here in such perfect security on the deck of
+a Christian English vessel, some unspeakable and unthinkable heathen orgy
+mayn't be going on over there beside that sacrificial fire; and if some
+poor trembling native girl isn't being led just now, with blows and
+curses and awful savage ceremonies, her hands bound behind her back--Oh,
+look out, Miss Ellis!"
+
+He was only just in time to utter the warning words. He was only just in
+time to put one hand on each side of her slender waist, and hold her
+tight so, when the big wave which he saw coming struck full tilt against
+the vessel's flank, and broke in one white drenching sheet of foam
+against her stern and quarter-deck.
+
+The suddenness of the assault took Felix's breath away. For the first few
+seconds he was only aware that a heavy sea had been shipped, and had wet
+him through and through with its unexpected deluge. A moment later, he
+was dimly conscious that his companion had slipped from his grasp, and
+was nowhere visible. The violence of the shock, and the slimy nature of
+the sea water, had made him relax his hold without knowing it, in the
+tumult of the moment, and had at the same time caused Muriel to glide
+imperceptibly through his fingers, as he had often known an ill-caught
+cricket-ball do in his school-days. Then he saw he was on his hands and
+knees on the deck. The wave had knocked him down, and dashed him against
+the bulwark on the leeward side. As he picked himself up, wet, bruised,
+and shaken, he looked about for Muriel. A terrible dread seized upon his
+soul at once. Impossible! Impossible! she couldn't have been washed
+overboard!
+
+And even as he gazed about, and held his bruised elbow in his hand, and
+wondered to himself what it could all mean, that sudden loud cry arose
+beside him from the quarter-deck, "Man overboard! Man overboard!"
+followed a moment later by the answering cry, from the men who were
+smoking under the lee of the companion, "A lady! a lady! It's Miss Ellis!
+Miss Ellis!"
+
+He didn't take it all in. He didn't reflect. He didn't even know he was
+actually doing it. But he did it, all the same, with the simple,
+straightforward, instinctive sense of duty which makes civilized man act
+aright, all unconsciously, in any moment of supreme danger and
+difficulty. Leaping on to the taffrail without one instant's delay, and
+steadying himself for an indivisible fraction of time with his hand on
+the rope ladder, he peered out into the darkness with keen eyes for a
+glimpse of Muriel Ellis's head above the fierce black water; and espying
+it for one second, as she came up on a white crest, he plunged in before
+the vessel had time to roll back to windward, and struck boldly out in
+the direction where he saw that helpless object dashed about like a cork
+on the surface of the ocean.
+
+Only those who have known such accidents at sea can possibly picture to
+themselves the instantaneous haste with which all that followed took
+place upon that bustling quarter-deck. Almost at the first cry of "Man
+overboard!" the captain's bell rang sharp and quick, as if by magic, with
+three peremptory little calls in the engine-room below. The Australasian
+was going at full speed, but in a marvellously short time, as it seemed
+to all on board, the great ship had slowed down to a perfect standstill,
+and then had reversed her engines, so that she lay, just nose to the
+wind, awaiting further orders. In the meantime, almost as soon as the
+words were out of the bo'sun's lips, a sailor amidships had rushed to the
+safety belts hung up by the companion ladder, and had flung half a dozen
+of them, one after another, with hasty but well-aimed throws, far, far
+astern, in the direction where Felix had disappeared into the black
+water. The belts were painted white, and they showed for a few seconds,
+as they fell, like bright specks on the surface of the darkling sea; then
+they sunk slowly behind as the big ship, still not quite stopped,
+ploughed her way ahead with gigantic force into the great abyss of
+darkness in front of her.
+
+It seemed but a minute, too, to the watchers on board, before a party of
+sailors, summoned by the whistle with that marvellous readiness to meet
+any emergency which long experience of sudden danger has rendered
+habitual among seafaring men, had lowered the boat, and taken their seats
+on the thwarts, and seized their oars, and were getting under way on
+their hopeless quest of search, through the dim black night, for those
+two belated souls alone in the midst of the angry Pacific.
+
+It seemed but a minute or two, I say, to the watchers on board; but oh,
+what an eternity of time to Felix Thurstan, struggling there with his
+live burden in the seething water!
+
+He had dashed into the ocean, which was dark, but warm with tropical
+heat, and had succeeded, in spite of the heavy seas then running, in
+reaching Muriel, who clung to him now with all the fierce clinging of
+despair, and impeded his movement through that swirling water. More than
+that, he saw the white life-belts that the sailors flung toward him; they
+were well and aptly flung, in the inspiration of the moment, to allow for
+the sea itself carrying them on the crest of its waves toward the two
+drowning creatures. Felix saw them distinctly, and making a great lunge
+as they passed, in spite of Muriel's struggles, which sadly hampered his
+movements, he managed to clutch at no less than three before the great
+billow, rolling on, carried them off on its top forever away from him.
+Two of these he slipped hastily over Muriel's shoulders; the other he
+put, as best he might, round his own waist; and then, for the first time,
+still clinging close to his companion's arm, and buffeted about wildly by
+that running sea, he was able to look about him in alarm for a moment,
+and realize more or less what had actually happened.
+
+By this time the Australasian was a quarter of a mile away in front of
+them, and her lights were beginning to become stationary as she slowly
+slowed and reversed engines. Then, from the summit of a great wave, Felix
+was dimly aware of a boat being lowered--for he saw a separate light
+gleaming across the sea--a search was being made in the black night,
+alas, how hopelessly! The light hovered about for many, many minutes,
+revealed to him now here, now there, searching in vain to find him, as
+wave after wave raised him time and again on its irresistible summit. The
+men in the boat were doing their best, no doubt; but what chance of
+finding any one on a dark night like that, in an angry sea, and with no
+clue to guide them toward the two struggling castaways? Current and wind
+had things all their own way. As a matter of fact, the light never came
+near the castaways at all; and after half an hour's ineffectual search,
+which seemed to Felix a whole long lifetime, it returned slowly toward
+the steamer from which it came--and left those two alone on the dark
+Pacific.
+
+"There wasn't a chance of picking 'em up," the captain said, with
+philosophic calm, as the men clambered on board again, and the
+Australasian got under way once more for the port of Honolulu. "I knew
+there wasn't a chance; but in common humanity one was bound to make some
+show of trying to save 'em. He was a brave fellow to go after her, though
+it was no good of course. He couldn't even find her, at night, and with
+such a sea as that running."
+
+And even as he spoke, Felix Thurstan, rising once more on the crest of a
+much smaller billow--for somehow the waves were getting incredibly
+smaller as he drifted on to leeward--felt his heart sink within him as he
+observed to his dismay that the Australasian must be steaming ahead once
+more, by the movement of her lights, and that they two were indeed
+abandoned to their fate on the open surface of that vast and trackless
+ocean.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+THE TEMPLE OF THE DEITY.
+
+
+While these things were happening on the sea close by, a very different
+scene indeed was being enacted meanwhile, beneath those waving palms, on
+the island of Boupari. It was strange, to be sure, as Felix Thurstan had
+said, that such unspeakable heathen orgies should be taking place within
+sight of a passing Christian English steamer. But if only he had known or
+reflected to what sort of land he was trying now to struggle ashore with
+Muriel, he might well have doubted whether it were not better to let her
+perish where she was, in the pure clear ocean, rather than to submit an
+English girl to the possibility of undergoing such horrible heathen rites
+and ceremonies.
+
+For on the island of Boupari it was high feast with the worshippers of
+their god that night. The sun had turned on the Tropic of Capricorn at
+noon, and was making his way northward, toward the equator once more;
+and his votaries, as was their wont, had all come forth to do him honor
+in due season, and to pay their respects, in the inmost and sacredest
+grove on the island, to his incarnate representative, the living spirit
+of trees and fruits and vegetation, the very high god, the divine
+Tu-Kila-Kila!
+
+Early in the evening, as soon as the sun's rim had disappeared beneath
+the ocean, a strange noise boomed forth from the central shrine of
+Boupari. Those who heard it clapped their hands to their ears and ran
+hastily forward. It was a noise like distant rumbling thunder, or the
+whir of some great English mill or factory; and at its sound every woman
+on the island threw herself on the ground prostrate, with her face in the
+dust, and waited there reverently till the audible voice of the god had
+once more subsided. For no woman knew how that sound was produced. Only
+the grown men, initiated into the mysteries of the shrine when they came
+of age at the tattooing ceremony, were aware that the strange, buzzing,
+whirring noise was nothing more or less than the cry of the bull-roarer.
+
+A bull-roarer, as many English schoolboys know, is merely a piece of
+oblong wood, pointed at either end, and fastened by a leather thong at
+one corner. But when whirled round the head by practised priestly hands,
+it produces a low rumbling noise like the wheels of a distant carriage,
+growing gradually louder and clearer, from moment to moment, till at last
+it waxes itself into a frightful din, or bursts into perfect peals of
+imitation thunder. Then it decreases again once more, as gradually as it
+rose, becoming fainter and ever fainter, like thunder as it recedes, till
+the horrible bellowing, as of supernatural bulls, dies away in the end,
+by slow degrees, into low and soft and imperceptible murmurs.
+
+But when the savage hears the distant humming of the bull-roarer, at
+whatever distance, he knows that the mysteries of his god are in full
+swing, and he hurries forward in haste, leaving his work or his pleasure,
+and running, naked as he stands, to take his share in the worship, lest
+the anger of heaven should burst forth in devouring flames to consume
+him. But the women, knowing themselves unworthy to face the dread
+presence of the high god in his wrath, rush wildly from the spot, and,
+flinging themselves down at full length, with their mouths to the dust,
+wait patiently till the voice of their deity is no longer audible.
+
+And as the bull-roarer on Boupari rang out with wild echoes from the
+coral caverns in the central grove that evening, Tu-Kila-Kila, their god,
+rose slowly from his place, and stood out from his hut, a deity revealed,
+before his reverential worshippers.
+
+As he rose, a hushed whisper ran wave-like through the dense throng of
+dusky forms that bent low, like corn beneath the wind, before him,
+"Tu-Kila-Kila rises! He rises to speak! Hush! for the voice of the mighty
+man-god!"
+
+The god, looking around him superciliously with a cynical air of
+contempt, stood forward with a firm and elastic step before his silent
+worshippers. He was a stalwart savage, in the very prime of life, tall,
+lithe, and active. His figure was that of a man well used to command;
+but his face, though handsome, was visibly marked by every external sign
+of cruelty, lust, and extreme bloodthirstiness. One might have said,
+merely to look at him, he was a being debased by all forms of brutal and
+hateful self-indulgence. A baleful light burned in his keen gray eyes.
+His lips were thick, full, purple, and wistful.
+
+"My people may look upon me," he said, in a strangely affable
+voice, standing forward and smiling with a curious half-cruel,
+half-compassionate smile upon his awe-struck followers. "On every day
+of the sun's course but this, none save the ministers dedicated to the
+service of Tu-Kila-Kila dare gaze unhurt upon his sacred person. If
+any other did, the light from his holy eyes would wither them up, and
+the glow of his glorious countenance would scorch them to ashes." He
+raised his two hands, palm outward, in front of him. "So all the year
+round," he went on, "Tu-Kila-Kila, who loves his people, and sends
+them the earlier and the later rain in the wet season, and makes their
+yams and their taro grow, and causes his sun to shine upon them
+freely--all the year round Tu-Kila-Kila, your god, sits shut up in his
+own house among the skeletons of those whom he has killed and eaten, or
+walks in his walled paddock, where his bread-fruit ripens and his
+plantains spring--himself, and the ministers that his tribesmen have
+given him."
+
+At the sound of their mystic deity's voice the savages, bending lower
+still till their foreheads touched the ground, repeated in chorus, to the
+clapping of hands, like some solemn litany: "Tu-Kila-Kila speaks true.
+Our lord is merciful. He sends down his showers upon our crops and
+fields. He causes his sun to shine brightly over us. He makes our pigs
+and our slaves bring forth their increase. Tu-Kila-Kila is good. His
+people praise him."
+
+The god took another step forward, the divine mantle of red feathers
+glowing in the sunset on his dusky shoulders, and smiled once more that
+hateful gracious smile of his. He was standing near the open door of his
+wattled hut, overshadowed by the huge spreading arms of a gigantic
+banyan-tree. Through the open door of the hut it was possible to catch
+just a passing glimpse of an awful sight within. On the beams of the
+house, and on the boughs of the trees behind it, human skeletons, half
+covered with dry flesh, hung in ghastly array, their skulls turned
+downward. They were the skeletons of the victims Tu-Kila-Kila, their
+prince, had slain and eaten; they were the trophies of the cannibal
+man-god's hateful prowess.
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila raised his right hand erect and spoke again. "I am a great
+god," he said, slowly. "I am very powerful. I make the sun to shine, and
+the yams to grow. I am the spirit of plants. Without me there would be
+nothing for you all to eat or drink in Boupari. If I were to grow old and
+die, the sun would fade away in the heavens overhead; the bread-fruit
+trees would wither and cease to bear on earth; all fruits would come to
+an end and die at once; all rivers would stop forthwith from running."
+
+His worshippers bowed down in acquiescence with awestruck faces. "It is
+true," they answered, in the same slow sing-song of assent as before.
+"Tu-Kila-Kila is the greatest of gods. We owe to him everything. We hang
+upon his favor."
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila started back, laughed, and showed his pearly white teeth.
+They were beautiful and regular, like the teeth of a tiger, a strong
+young tiger. "But I need more sacrifices than all the other gods," he
+went on, melodiously, like one who plays with consummate skill upon some
+difficult instrument. "I am greedy; I am thirsty; I am a hungry god. You
+must not stint me. I claim more human victims than all the other gods
+beside. If you want your crops to grow, and your rivers to run, the
+fields to yield you game, and the sea fish--this is what I ask: give me
+victims, victims! That is our compact. Tu-Kila-Kila calls you."
+
+The men bowed down once more and repeated humbly, "You shall have victims
+as you will, great god; only give us yam and taro and bread-fruit, and
+cause not your bright light, the sun, to grow dark in heaven over us."
+
+"Cut yourselves," Tu-Kila-Kila cried, in a peremptory voice, clapping his
+hands thrice. "I am thirsting for blood. I want your free-will offering."
+
+As he spoke, every man, as by a set ritual, took from a little skin
+wallet at his side a sharp flake of coral-stone, and, drawing it
+deliberately across his breast in a deep red gash, caused the blood to
+flow out freely over his chest and long grass waistband. Then, having
+done so, they never strove for a moment to stanch the wound, but let
+the red drops fall as they would on to the dust at their feet, without
+seeming even to be conscious at all of the fact that they were flowing.
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila smiled once more, a ghastly self-satisfied smile of
+unquestioned power. "It is well," he went on. "My people love me. They
+know my strength, how I can wither them up. They give me their blood to
+drink freely. So I will be merciful to them. I will make my sun shine and
+my rain drop from heaven. And instead of taking _all_, I will choose one
+victim." He paused, and glanced along their line significantly.
+
+"Choose, Tu-Kila-Kila," the men answered, without a moment's hesitation.
+"We are all your meat. Choose which one you will take of us."
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila walked with a leisurely tread down the lines and surveyed
+the men critically. They were all drawn up in rows, one behind the other,
+according to tribes and families; and the god walked along each row,
+examining them with a curious and interested eye, as a farmer examines
+sheep fit for the market. Now and then, he felt a leg or an arm with his
+finger and thumb, and hesitated a second. It was an important matter,
+this choosing a victim. As he passed, a close observer might have noted
+that each man trembled visibly while the god's eye was upon him, and
+looked after him askance with a terrified sidelong gaze as he passed on
+to his neighbor. But not one savage gave any overt sign or token of his
+terror or his reluctance. On the contrary, as Tu-Kila-Kila passed along
+the line with lazy, cruel deliberateness, the men kept chanting aloud
+without one tremor in their voices, "We are all your meat. Choose which
+one you will take of us."
+
+On a sudden, Tu-Kila-Kila turned sharply round, and, darting a rapid
+glance toward a row he had already passed several minutes before, he
+exclaimed, with an air of unexpected inspiration, "Tu-Kila-Kila has
+chosen. He takes Maloa."
+
+The man upon whose shoulder the god laid his heavy hand as he spoke stood
+forth from the crowd without a moment's hesitation. If anger or fear was
+in his heart at all, it could not be detected in his voice or his
+features. He bowed his head with seeming satisfaction, and answered
+humbly, "What Tu-Kila-Kila says must need be done. This is a great honor.
+He is a mighty god. We poor men must obey him. We are proud to be taken
+up and made one with divinity."
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila raised in his hand a large stone axe of some polished green
+material, closely resembling jade, which lay on a block by the door, and
+tried its edge with his finger, in an abstracted manner. "Bind him!" he
+said, quietly, turning round to his votaries. And the men, each glad to
+have escaped his own fate, bound their comrade willingly with green ropes
+of plantain fibre.
+
+"Crown him with flowers!" Tu-Kila-Kila said; and a female attendant,
+absolved from the terror of the bull-roarer by the god's command, brought
+forward a great garland of crimson hibiscus, which she flung around the
+victim's neck and shoulders.
+
+"Lay his head on the sacred stone block of our fathers," Tu-Kila-Kila
+went on, in an easy tone of command, waving his hand gracefully. And the
+men, moving forward, laid their comrade, face downward, on a huge flat
+block of polished greenstone, which lay like an altar in front of the
+hut with the mouldering skeletons.
+
+"It is well," Tu-Kila-Kila murmured once more, half aloud. "You have
+given me the free-will offering. Now for the trespass! Where is the
+woman who dared to approach too near the temple-home of the divine
+Tu-Kila-Kila? Bring the criminal forward!"
+
+The men divided, and made a lane down their middle. Then one of them, a
+minister of the man-god's shrine, led up by the hand, all trembling and
+shrinking with supernatural terror in every muscle, a well-formed young
+girl of eighteen or twenty. Her naked bronze limbs were shapely and
+lissome; but her eyes were swollen and red with tears, and her face
+strongly distorted with awe for the man-god. When she stood at last
+before Tu-Kila-Kila's dreaded face, she flung herself on the ground in an
+agony of fear.
+
+"Oh, mercy, great God!" she cried, in a feeble voice. "I have sinned, I
+have sinned. Mercy, mercy!"
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila smiled as before, a smile of imperial pride. No ray of pity
+gleamed from those steel-gray eyes. "Does Tu-Kila-Kila show mercy?" he
+asked, in a mocking voice. "Does he pardon his suppliants? Does he
+forgive trespasses? Is he not a god, and must not his wrath be appeased?
+She, being a woman, and not a wife sealed to Tu-Kila-Kila, has dared to
+look from afar upon his sacred home. She has spied the mysteries.
+Therefore she must die. My people, bind her."
+
+In a second, without more ado, while the poor trembling girl writhed and
+groaned in her agony before their eyes, that mob of wild savages, let
+loose to torture and slay, fell upon her with hideous shouts, and bound
+her, as they had bound their comrade before, with coarse native ropes of
+twisted plantain fibre.
+
+"Lay her head on the stone," Tu-Kila-Kila said, grimly. And his votaries
+obeyed him.
+
+"Now light the sacred fire to make our feast, before I slay the victims,"
+the god said, in a gloating voice, running his finger again along the
+edge of his huge hatchet.
+
+As he spoke, two men, holding in their hands hollow bamboos with coals of
+fire concealed within, which they kept aglow meanwhile by waving them up
+and down rapidly in the air, laid these primitive matches to the base of
+a great pyramidal pile of wood and palm-leaves, ready prepared beforehand
+in the yard of the temple. In a second, the dry fuel, catching the sparks
+instantly, blazed up to heaven with a wild outburst of flame. Great red
+tongues of fire licked up the mouldering mass of leaves and twigs, and
+caught at once at the trunks of palm and li wood within. A huge
+conflagration reddened the sky at once like lightning. The effect was
+magical. The glow transfigured the whole island for miles. It was, in
+fact, the blaze that Felix Thurstan had noted and remarked upon as he
+stood that evening on the silent deck of the Australasian.
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila gazed at it with horrid childish glee. "A fine fire!" he
+said, gayly. "A fire worthy of a god. It will serve me well. Tu-Kila-Kila
+will have a good oven to roast his meal in."
+
+Then he turned toward the sea, and held up his hand once more for
+silence. As he did so, an answering light upon its surface attracted his
+eye for a moment's space. It was a bright red light, mixed with white and
+green ones; in point of fact, the Australasian was passing. Tu-Kila-Kila
+pointed toward it solemnly with his plump, brown fore-finger. "See," he
+said, drawing himself up and looking preternaturally wise; "your god is
+great. I am sending some of this fire across the sea to where my sun has
+set, to aid and reinforce it. That is to keep up the fire of the sun,
+lest ever at any time it should fade and fail you. While Tu-Kila-Kila
+lives the sun will burn bright. If Tu-Kila-Kila were to die it would be
+night forever."
+
+His votaries, following their god's fore-finger as it pointed, all turned
+to look in the direction he indicated with blank surprise and
+astonishment. Such a sight had never met their eyes before, for the
+Australasian was the very first steamer to take the eastward route,
+through the dangerous and tortuous Boupari Channel. So their awe and
+surprise at the unwonted sight knew no bounds. Fire on the ocean!
+Miraculous light on the waves! Their god must, indeed, be a mighty deity
+if he could send flames like that careering over the sea! Surely the sun
+was safe in the hands of a potentate who could thus visibly reinforce it
+with red light, and white! In their astonishment and awe, they stood with
+their long hair falling down over their foreheads, and their hands held
+up to their eyes that they might gaze the farther across the dim, dark
+ocean. The borrowed light of their bonfire was moving, slowly moving over
+the watery sea. Fire and water were mixing and mingling on friendly
+terms. Impossible! Incredible! Marvellous! Miraculous! They prostrated
+themselves in their terror at Tu-Kila-Kila's feet. "Oh, great god," they
+cried, in awe-struck tones, "your power is too vast! Spare us, spare us,
+spare us!"
+
+As for Tu-Kila-Kila himself, he was not astonished at all. Strange as it
+sounds to us, he really believed in his heart what he said. Profoundly
+convinced of his own godhead, and abjectly superstitious as any of his
+own votaries, he absolutely accepted as a fact his own suggestion, that
+the light he saw was the reflection of that his men had kindled. The
+interpretation he had put upon it seemed to him a perfectly natural and
+just one. His worshippers, indeed, mere men that they were, might be
+terrified at the sight; but why should he, a god, take any special notice
+of it?
+
+He accepted his own superiority as implicitly as our European nobles and
+rulers accept theirs. He had no doubts himself, and he considered those
+who had little better than criminals.
+
+By and by, a smaller light detached itself by slow degrees from the
+greater ones. The others stood still, and halted in mid-ocean. The lesser
+light made as if it would come in the direction of Boupari. In point of
+fact, the gig had put out in search of Felix and Muriel.
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila interpreted the facts at once, however, in his own way.
+"See," he said, pointing with his plump forefinger once more, and
+encouraging with his words his terrified followers, "I am sending back a
+light again from the sun to my island. I am doing my work well. I am
+taking care of my people. Fear not for your future. In the light is yet
+another victim. A man and a woman will come to Boupari from the sun, to
+make up for the man and woman whom we eat in our feast to-night. Give me
+plenty of victims, and you will have plenty of yam. Make haste, then;
+kill, eat; let us feast Tu-Kila-Kila! To-morrow the man and woman I have
+sent from the sun will come ashore on the reef, and reach Boupari."
+
+At the words, he stepped forward and raised that heavy tomahawk. With
+one blow each he brained the two bound and defenceless victims on the
+altar-stone of his fathers. The rest, a European hand shrinks from
+revealing. The orgy was too horrible even for description.
+
+And that was the land toward which, that moment, Felix Thurstan was
+struggling, with all his might, to carry Muriel Ellis, from the myriad
+clasping arms of a comparatively gentle and merciful ocean!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+LAND; BUT WHAT LAND?
+
+
+As the last glimmering lights of the Australasian died away to seaward,
+Felix Thurstan knew in his despair there was nothing for it now but to
+strike out boldly, if he could, for the shore of the island.
+
+By this time the breakers had subsided greatly. Not, indeed, that the sea
+itself was really going down. On the contrary, a brisk wind was rising
+sharper from the east, and the waves on the open Pacific were growing
+each moment higher and loppier. But the huge mountain of water that
+washed Muriel Ellis overboard was not a regular ordinary wave; it was
+that far more powerful and dangerous mass, a shoal-water breaker. The
+Australasian had passed at that instant over a submerged coral-bar, quite
+deep enough, indeed, to let her cross its top without the slightest
+danger of grazing, but still raised so high toward the surface as to
+produce a considerable constant ground-swell, which broke in windy
+weather into huge sheets of surf, like the one that had just struck and
+washed over the Australasian, carrying Muriel with it. The very same
+cause that produced the breakers, however, bore Felix on their summit
+rapidly landward; and once he had got well beyond the region of the bar
+that begot them, he found himself soon, to his intense relief, in
+comparatively calm shoal water.
+
+Muriel Ellis, for her part, was faint with terror and with the
+buffeting of the waves; but she still floated by his side, upheld by the
+life-belts. He had been able, by immense efforts, to keep unseparated
+from her amid the rending surf of the breakers. Now that they found
+themselves in easier waters for a while, Felix began to strike out
+vigorously through the darkness for the shore. Holding up his companion
+with one hand, and swimming with all his might in the direction where a
+vague white line of surf, lit up by the red glare-of some fire far
+inland, made him suspect the nearest land to lie, he almost thought he
+had succeeded at last, after a long hour of struggle, in feeling his
+feet, after all, on a firm coral bottom.
+
+At the very moment he did so, and touched the ground underneath, another
+great wave, curling resistlessly behind him, caught him up on its crest,
+whirled him heavenward like a cork, and then dashed him down once more, a
+passive burden, on some soft and yielding substance, which he conjectured
+at once to be a beach of finely powdered coral fragments. As he touched
+this beach for an instant, the undertow of that vast dashing breaker
+sucked him back with its ebb again, a helpless, breathless creature; and
+then the succeeding wave rolled him over like a ball, upon the beach as
+before, in quick succession. Four times the back-current sucked him under
+with its wild pull in the self-same way, and four times the return wave
+flung him up upon the beach again like a fragment of sea-weed. With
+frantic efforts Felix tried at first to cling still to Muriel--to save
+her from the irresistible force of that roaring surf--to snatch her from
+the open jaws of death by sheer struggling dint of thews and muscle. He
+might as well have tried to stem Niagara. The great waves, curling
+irresistibly in huge curves landward, caught either of them up by turns
+on their arched summits, and twisted them about remorselessly, raising
+them now aloft on their foaming crest, beating them back now prone in
+their hollow trough, and flinging them fiercely at last with pitiless
+energy against the soft beach of coral. If the beach had been hard, they
+must infallibly have been ground to powder or beaten to jelly by the
+colossal force of those gigantic blows. Fortunately it was yielding,
+smooth, and clay-like, and received them almost as a layer of moist
+plaster of Paris might have done, or they would have stood no chance at
+all for their lives in that desperate battle with the blind and frantic
+forces of unrelenting nature.
+
+No man who has not himself seen the surf break on one of these
+far-southern coral shores can form any idea in his own mind of the terror
+and horror of the situation. The water, as it reaches the beach, rears
+itself aloft for a second into a huge upright wall, which, advancing
+slowly, curls over at last in a hollow circle, and pounds down upon the
+sand or reef with all the crushing force of some enormous sledge-hammer.
+But after the fourth assault, Felix felt himself flung up high and dry by
+the wave, as one may sometimes see a bit of light reed or pith flung up
+some distance ahead by an advancing tide on the beach in England. In an
+instant he steadied himself and staggered to his feet. Torn and bruised
+as he was by the pummelling of the billows, he looked eagerly into the
+water in search of his companion. The next wave flung up Muriel, as the
+last had flung himself. He bent over her with a panting heart as she lay
+there, insensible, on the long white shore. Alive or dead? that was now
+the question.
+
+Raising her hastily in his arms, with her clothes all clinging wet and
+close about her, Felix carried her over the narrow strip of tidal beach,
+above high-water level, and laid her gently down on a soft green bank of
+short tropical herbage, close to the edge of the coral. Then he bent over
+her once more, and listened eagerly at her heart. It still beat with
+faint pulses--beat--beat--beat. Felix throbbed with joy. She was alive!
+alive! He was not quite alone, then, on that unknown island!
+
+And strange as it seemed, it was only a little more than two short hours
+since they had stood and looked out across the open sea over the bulwarks
+of the Australasian together!
+
+But Felix had no time to moralize just then. The moment was clearly
+one for action. Fortunately, he happened to carry three useful things
+in his pocket when he jumped overboard after Muriel. The first was a
+pocket-knife; the second was a flask with a little whiskey in it; and the
+third, perhaps the most important of all, a small metal box of wax vesta
+matches. Pouring a little whiskey into the cup of the flask, he held it
+eagerly to Muriel's lips. The fainting girl swallowed it automatically.
+Then Felix, stooping down, tried the matches against the box. They were
+unfortunately wet, but half an hour's exposure, he knew, on sun-warmed
+stones, in that hot, tropical air, would soon restore them again. So he
+opened the box and laid them carefully out on a flat white slab of coral.
+After that, he had time to consider exactly where they were, and what
+their chances in life, if any, might now amount to.
+
+Pitch dark as it was, he had no difficulty in deciding at once by the
+general look of things that they had reached a fringing reef, such as he
+was already familiar with in the Marquesas and elsewhere. The reef was no
+doubt circular, and it enclosed within itself a second or central island,
+divided from it by a shallow lagoon of calm, still water. He walked some
+yards inland. From where he now stood, on the summit of the ridge, he
+could look either way, and by the faint reflected light of the stars, or
+the glare of the great pyre that burned on the central island, he could
+see down on one side to the ocean, with its fierce white pounding surf,
+and on the other to the lagoon, reflecting the stars overhead, and
+motionless as a mill-pond. Between them lay the low raised ridge of
+coral, covered with tall stems of cocoanut palms, and interspersed here
+and there, as far as his eye could judge, with little rectangular clumps
+of plantain and taro.
+
+But what alarmed Felix most was the fire that blazed so brightly to
+heaven on the central island; for he knew too well that meant--there were
+_men_ on the place; the land was inhabited.
+
+The cocoanuts and taro told the same doubtful tale. From the way they
+grew, even in that dim starlight, Felix recognized at once they had all
+been planted.
+
+Still, he didn't hesitate to do what he thought best for Muriel's relief
+for all that. Collecting a few sticks and fragments of palm-branches from
+the jungle about, he piled them into a heap, and waited patiently for his
+matches to dry. As soon as they were ready--and the warmth of the stone
+made them quickly inflammable--he struck a match on the box, and
+proceeded to light his fire by Muriel's side. As her clothes grew warmer,
+the poor girl opened her eyes at last, and, gazing around her, exclaimed,
+in blank terror, "Oh, Mr. Thurstan, where are we? What does all this
+mean? Where have we got to? On a desert island?"
+
+"No, _not_ on a desert island," Felix answered, shortly; "I'm afraid it's
+a great deal worse than that. To tell you the truth, I'm afraid it's
+inhabited."
+
+At that moment, by the hot embers of the great sacrificial pyre on the
+central hill, two of the savage temple-attendants, calling their god's
+attention to a sudden blaze of flame upon the fringing reef, pointed with
+their dark forefingers and called out in surprise, "See, see, a fire on
+the barrier! A fire! A fire! What can it mean? There are no men of our
+people over there to-night. Have war-canoes arrived? Has some enemy
+landed?"
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila leaned back, drained his cocoanut cup of intoxicating kava,
+and surveyed the unwonted apparition on the reef long and carefully. "It
+is nothing," he said at last, in his most deliberate manner, stroking his
+cheeks and chin contentedly with that plump round hand of his. "It is
+only the victims; the new victims I promised you. Korong! Korong! They
+have come ashore with their light from my home in the sun. They have
+brought fire afresh--holy fire to Boupari."
+
+Three or four of the savages leaped up in fierce joy, and bowed before
+him as he spoke, with eager faces. "Oh, Tu-Kila-Kila!" the eldest among
+them said, making a profound reverence, "shall we swim across to the reef
+and fetch them home to your house? Shall we take over our canoes and
+bring back your victims!"
+
+The god motioned them back with one outstretched palm. His eyes were
+flushed and his look lazy. "Not to-night, my people," he said;
+readjusting the garland of flowers round his neck, and giving a careless
+glance at the well-picked bones that a few hours before had been two
+trembling fellow creatures. "Tu-Kila-Kila has feasted his fill for this
+evening. Your god is full; his heart is happy. I have eaten human flesh;
+I have drunk of the juice of the kava. Am I not a great deity? Can I not
+do as I will? I frown, and the heavens thunder; I gnash my teeth, and the
+earth trembles. What is it to me if fresh victims come, or if they come
+not? Can I not make with a nod as many as I will of them?" He took up two
+fresh finger-bones, clean gnawed of their flesh, and knocked them
+together in a wild tune, carelessly. "If Tu-Kila-Kila chooses," he went
+on, tapping his chest with conscious pride, "he can knock these bones
+together--so--and bid them live again. Is it not I who cause women and
+beasts to bring forth their young? Is it not I who give the turtles their
+increase? And is it not a small thing to me, therefore, whether the sea
+tosses up my victims from my home in the sun, or whether it does not? Let
+us leave them alone on the reef for to-night; to-morrow we will send over
+our canoes to fetch them."
+
+It was all pure brag, all pure guesswork; and yet, Tu-Kila-Kila himself
+profoundly believed it.
+
+As he spoke, the light from Felix's fire blazed out against the dark sky,
+stronger and clearer still; and through that cloudless tropical air the
+figure of a man, standing for one moment between the flames and the
+lagoon, became distinctly visible to the keen and practised eyes of the
+savages. "I see them? I see them; I see the victims!" the foremost
+worshipper exclaimed, rushing forward a little at the sight, and beside
+himself with superstitious awe and surprise at Tu-Kila-Kila's presence.
+"Surely our god is great! He knows all things! He brings us meat from
+the setting sun, in ships of fire, in blazing canoes, across the golden
+road of the sun-bathed ocean!"
+
+As for Tu-Kila-Kila himself, leaning on his elbow at ease, he gazed
+across at the unexpected sight with very languid interest. He was a god,
+and he liked to see things conducted with proper decorum. This crowing
+and crying over a couple of spirits--mere ordinary spirits come ashore
+from the sun in a fiery boat--struck his godship as little short of
+childish. "Let them be," he answered, petulantly, crushing a blossom in
+his hand. "Let no man disturb them. They shall rest where they are till
+to-morrow morning. We have eaten; we have drunk; our soul is happy. The
+kava within us has made us like a god indeed. I shall give my ministers
+charge that no harm happen to them."
+
+He drew a whistle from his side and whistled once. There was a moment's
+pause. Then Tu-Kila-Kila spoke in a loud voice again. "The King of Fire!"
+he exclaimed, in tones of princely authority.
+
+From within the hut there came forth slowly a second stalwart savage, big
+built and burly as the great god himself, clad in a long robe or cloak of
+yellow feathers, which shone bright with a strange metallic gleam in the
+ruddy light of the huge pile of li-wood.
+
+"The King of Fire is here, Tu-Kila-Kila," the lesser god made answer,
+bending his head slightly.
+
+"Fire," Tu-Kila-Kila said, like a monarch giving orders to his attendant
+minister, "if any man touch the newcomers on the reef before I cause my
+sun to rise to-morrow morning, scorch up his flesh with your flame, and
+consume his bones to ash and cinder. If any woman go near them before
+Tu-Kila-Kila bids, let her be rolled in palm-leaves, and smeared with
+oil, and light her up for a torch on a dark night to lighten our temple."
+
+The King of Fire bent his head in assent. "It is as Tu-Kila-Kila wills,"
+he answered, submissively.
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila whistled again, this time twice. "The King of Water!" he
+exclaimed, in the same loud tone of command as before.
+
+At the words, a man of about forty, tall and sinewy, clad in a short cape
+of white albatross feathers, and with a girdle of nautilus shells
+interspersed with red coral tied around his waist, came forth to the
+summons.
+
+"The King of Water is here," he said, bending his head, but not his knee,
+before the greater deity.
+
+"Water," Tu-Kila-Kila said, with half-tipsy solemnity, "you are a god
+too. Your power is very great. But less than mine. Do, then, as I bid
+you. If any man touch my spirits, whom I have brought from my home in the
+sun in a fiery ship, before I bid him to-morrow, overturn his canoe, and
+drown him in lagoon or spring or ocean. If any woman go near them without
+Tu-Kila-Kila's leave, bind her hand and foot with ropes of porpoise hide,
+and cast her out into the surf, and dash her with your waves, and pummel
+her to pieces."
+
+The King of Water bent his head a second time. "I am a great god," he
+answered, "before all others save you: but for you, Tu-Kila-Kila, I haste
+to do your bidding. If any man disobey you, my billows shall rise and
+overwhelm him in the sea. I am a great god. I claim each year many
+drowned victims."
+
+"But not so many as me," Tu-Kila-Kila interposed, his hand playing on his
+knife with a faint air of impatience.
+
+"But not so many as you," the minor god added, in haste, as if to appease
+his rising anger. "Fire and Water ever speed to do your bidding."
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila stood up, turned toward the distant flame, and waved his
+hands round and round three times before him. "Let this be for you all a
+great taboo," he said, glancing once more toward his awe-struck
+followers. "Now the mysteries are over. Tu-Kila-Kila will sleep. He has
+eaten of human flesh. He has drunk of cocoanut rum and of new kava. He
+has brought back his sun on its way in the heavens. He has sent it
+messengers of fire to reinforce its strength. He has fetched from it
+messengers in turn with fresh fire to Boupari, fire not lighted from any
+earthly flame; fire new, divine, scorching, unspeakable. To-morrow we
+will talk with the spirits he has brought. To-night we will sleep. Now
+all go to your homes; and tell your women of this great taboo, lest they
+speak to the spirits, and fall into the hands of Fire or of Water."
+
+The savages dropped on their faces before the eye of their god and lay
+quite still. They made a path as it were from the pyre to the temple door
+with their prostrate bodies. Tu-Kila-Kila, walking with unsteady steps
+over their half-naked forms, turned to his hut in a drunken booze. He
+walked over them with no more compunction or feeling than over so many
+logs. Why should he not, indeed? For he was a god, and they were his
+meat, his servants, his worshippers.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE GUESTS OF HEAVEN.
+
+
+All that night through--their first lonely night on the island of
+Boupari--Felix sat up by his flickering fire, wide awake, half expecting
+and dreading some treacherous attack of the unknown savages. From time to
+time he kept adding dry fuel to his smouldering pile; and he never ceased
+to keep a keen eye both on the lagoon and the reef, in case an assault
+should be made upon them suddenly by land or water. He knew the South
+Seas quite well enough already to have all the possibilities of
+misfortune floating vividly before his eyes. He realized at once from his
+own previous experience the full loneliness and terror of their unarmed
+condition.
+
+For Boupari was one of those rare remote islets where the very rumor of
+our European civilization has hardly yet penetrated.
+
+As for Muriel, though she was alarmed enough, of course, and intensely
+shaken by the sudden shock she had received, the whole surroundings were
+too wholly unlike any world she had ever yet known to enable her to take
+in at once the utter horror of the situation. She only knew they were
+alone, wet, bruised, and terribly battered; and the Australasian had gone
+on, leaving them there to their fate on an unknown island. That, for the
+moment, was more than enough for her of accumulated misfortune. She come
+to herself but slowly, and as her torn clothes dried by degrees before
+the fire and the heat of the tropical night, she was so far from fully
+realizing the dangers of their position that her first and principal fear
+for the moment was lest she might take cold from her wet things drying
+upon her. She ate a little of the plantain that Felix picked for her; and
+at times, toward morning, she dozed off into an uneasy sleep, from pure
+fatigue and excess of weariness. As she slept, Felix, bending over her,
+with the biggest blade of his knife open in case of attack, watched with
+profound emotion the rise and fall of her bosom, and hesitated with
+himself, if the worst should come to the worst, as to what he ought to do
+with her.
+
+It would be impossible to let a pure young English girl like that fall
+helplessly into the hands of such bloodthirsty wretches as he knew the
+islanders were almost certain to be. Who could tell what nameless
+indignities, what incredible tortures they might wantonly inflict upon
+her innocent soul? Was it right of him to have let her come ashore at
+all? Ought he not rather to have allowed the more merciful sea to take
+her life easily, without the chance or possibility of such additional
+horrors?
+
+And now--as she slept--so calm and pure and maidenly--what was his
+duty that minute, just there to her? He felt the blade of his knife
+with his finger cautiously, and almost doubted. If only she could tell
+what things might be in store for her, would she not, herself, prefer
+death, an honorable death, at the friendly hands of a tenderhearted
+fellow-countryman, to the unspeakable insults of these man-eating
+Polynesians? If only he had the courage to release her by one blow, as
+she lay there, from the coming ill! But he hadn't; he hadn't. Even on
+board the Australasian he had been vaguely aware that he was getting very
+fond of that pretty little Miss Ellis. And now that he sat there, after
+that desperate struggle for life with the pounding waves, mounting guard
+over her through the livelong night, his own heart told him plainly, in
+tones he could not disobey, he loved her too well to dare what he thought
+best in the end for her.
+
+Still, even so, he was brave enough to feel he must never let the very
+worst of all befall her. He bethought him, in his doubt and agony, of how
+his uncle, Major Thurstan, during the great Indian mutiny, had held his
+lonely bungalow, with his wife and daughter by his side, for three long
+hours against a howling mob of native insurgents; and how, when further
+resistance was hopeless, and that great black wave of angry humanity
+burst in upon them at last, the brave soldier had drawn his revolver,
+shot his wife and daughter with unerring aim, to prevent their falling
+alive into the hands of the natives, and then blown his own brains out
+with his last remaining cartridge. As his uncle had done at Jhansi,
+thirty years before, so he himself would do on that nameless Pacific
+island--for he didn't know even now on what shore he had landed. If the
+savages bore down upon them with hostile intent, and threatened Muriel,
+he would plunge his knife first into that innocent woman's heart; and
+then bury it deep in his own, and die beside her.
+
+So the long night wore on--Muriel pillowed on loose cocoanut husk, dozing
+now and again, and waking with a start to gaze round about her wildly,
+and realize once more in what plight she found herself; Felix crouching
+by her feet, and keeping watch with eager eyes and ears on every side for
+the least sign of a noiseless, naked footfall through the tangled growth
+of that dense tropical under-bush. Time after time he clapped his hand to
+his ear, shell-wise, and listened and peered, with knitted brow,
+suspecting some sudden swoop from an ambush in the jungle of creepers
+behind the little plantain patch. Time after time he grasped his knife
+hard, and puckered his eyebrows resolutely, and stood still with bated
+breath for a fierce, wild leap upon his fancied assailant. But the night
+wore away by degrees, a minute at a time, and no man came; and dawn began
+to brighten the sea-line to eastward.
+
+As the day dawned, Felix could see more clearly exactly where he was, and
+in what surroundings. Without, the ocean broke in huge curling billows on
+the shallow beach of the fringing reef with such stupendous force that
+Felix wondered how they could ever have lived through its pounding surf
+and its fiercely retreating undertow. Within, the lagoon spread its calm
+lake-like surface away to the white coral shore of the central atoll.
+Between these two waters, the greater and the less, a waving palisade of
+tall-stemmed palm-trees rose on a narrow ribbon of circular land that
+formed the fringing reef. All night through he had felt, with a strange
+eerie misgiving, the very foundations of the land thrill under his feet
+at every dull thud or boom of the surf on its restraining barrier. Now
+that he could see that thin belt of shore in its actual shape and size,
+he was not astonished at this constant shock; what surprised him rather
+was the fact that such a speck of land could hold its own at all against
+the ceaseless cannonade of that seemingly irresistible ocean.
+
+He stood up, hatless, in his battered tweed suit, and surveyed the scene
+of their present and future adventures. It took but a glance to show him
+that the whole ground-plan of the island was entirely circular. In the
+midst of all rose the central atoll itself, a tiny mountain-peak, just
+projecting with its hills and gorges to a few hundred feet above the
+surface of the ocean. Outside it came the lagoon, with its placid ring of
+glassy water surrounding the circular island, and separated from the sea
+by an equally circular belt of fringing reef, covered thick with waving
+stems of picturesque cocoanut. It was on the reef they had landed, and
+from it they now looked across the calm lagoon with doubtful eyes toward
+the central island.
+
+As soon as the sun rose, their doubts were quickly resolved into fears
+or certainties. Scarcely had its rim begun to show itself distinctly
+above the eastern horizon, when a great bustle and confusion was
+noticeable at once on the opposite shore. Brown-skinned savages were
+collecting in eager groups by a white patch of beach, and putting out
+rude but well-manned canoes into the calm waters of the lagoon. At sight
+of their naked arms and bustling gestures, Muriel's heart sank suddenly
+within her. "Oh, Mr. Thurstan," she cried, clinging to his arm in her
+terror, "what does it all mean? Are they going to hurt us? Are these
+savages coming over? Are they coming to kill us?"
+
+Felix grasped his trusty knife hard in his right hand, and swallowed a
+groan, as he looked tenderly down upon her. "Muriel," he said, forgetting
+in the excitement of the moment the little conventionalities and
+courtesies of civilized life, "if they are, trust me, you never shall
+fall alive into their cruel hands. Sooner than that--" he held up the
+knife significantly, with its open blade before her.
+
+The poor girl clung to him harder still, with a ghastly shudder. "Oh,
+it's terrible, terrible," she cried, turning deadly pale. Then, after a
+short pause, she added, "But I would rather have it so. Do as you say. I
+could bear it from you. Promise me _that_, rather than that those
+creatures should kill me."
+
+"I promise," Felix answered, clasping her hand hard, and paused, with the
+knife ever ready in his right, awaiting the approach of the half-naked
+savages.
+
+The boats glided fast across the lagoon, propelled by the paddles of the
+stalwart Polynesians who manned them, and crowded to the water's edge
+with groups of grinning and shouting warriors. They were dressed in
+aprons of dracæna leaves only, with necklets and armlets of sharks'
+teeth and cowrie shells. A dozen canoes at least were making toward the
+reef at full speed, all bristling with spears and alive with noisy and
+boisterous savages. Muriel shrank back terror-stricken at the sight, as
+they drew nearer and nearer. But Felix, holding his breath hard, grew
+somewhat less nervous as the men approached the reef. He had seen enough
+of Polynesian life before now to feel sure these people were not upon the
+war-path. Whatever their ultimate intentions toward the castaways might
+be, their immediate object seemed friendly and good-humored. The boats,
+though large, were not regular war-canoes; the men, instead of
+brandishing their spears, and lunging out with them over the edge in
+threatening attitudes, held them erect in their hands at rest, like
+standards; they were laughing and talking, not crying their war-cry. As
+they drew near the shore, one big canoe shot suddenly a length or so
+ahead of the rest; and its leader, standing on the grotesque carved
+figure that adorned its prow, held up both his hands open and empty
+before him, in sign of peace, while at the same time he shouted out a
+word or two three times in his own language, to reassure the castaways.
+
+Felix's eye glanced cautiously from boat to boat. "He says, 'We are
+friends,'" the young man remarked in an undertone to his terrified
+companion. "I can understand his dialect. Thank Heaven, it's very close
+to Fijian. I shall be able at least to palaver to these men. I don't
+think they mean just now to harm us. I believe we can trust them, at any
+rate for the present."
+
+The poor girl drew back, in still greater awe and alarm than ever. "Oh,
+are they going to land here?" she cried, still clinging closer with both
+hands to her one friend and protector.
+
+"Try not to look so frightened!" Felix exclaimed, with a warning glance.
+"Remember, much depends upon it; savages judge you greatly by what
+demeanor you happen to assume. If you're frightened, they know their
+power; if they see you're resolute, they suspect you have some
+supernatural means of protection. Try to meet them frankly, as if you
+were not afraid of them." Then, advancing slowly to the water's edge, he
+called out aloud, in a strong, clear voice, a few words which Muriel
+didn't understand, but which were really the Fijian for "We also are
+friendly. Our medicine is good. We mean no magic. We come to you from
+across the great water. We desire your peace. Receive us and protect us!"
+
+At the sound of words which he could readily understand, and which
+differed but little, indeed, from his own language, the leader on the
+foremost canoe, who seemed by his manner to be a great chief, turned
+round to his followers and cried out in tones of superstitious awe,
+"Tu-Kila-Kila spoke well. These are, indeed, what he told us. Korong!
+Korong! They are spirits who have come to us from the disk of the sun, to
+bring us light and pure, fresh fire. Stay back there, all of you. You are
+not holy enough to approach. I and my crew, who are sanctified by the
+mysteries, we alone will go forward to meet them."
+
+As he spoke, a sudden idea, suggested by his words, struck Felix's mind.
+Superstition is the great lever by which to move the savage intelligence.
+Gathering up a few dry leaves and fragments of stick on the shore, he
+laid them together in a pile, and awaited in silence the arrival of the
+foremost islanders. The first canoe advanced slowly and cautiously, the
+men in it eying these proceedings with evident suspicion; the rest hung
+back, with their spears in array, and their hands just ready to use them
+with effect should occasion demand it.
+
+The leader of the first canoe, coming close to the shore, jumped out upon
+the reef in shallow water. Half a dozen of his followers jumped after him
+without hesitation, and brandished their weapons round their heads as
+they advanced, in savage unison. But Felix, pretending hardly to notice
+these hostile demonstrations, stepped boldly up toward his little pile
+with great deliberation, though trembling inwardly, and proceeded before
+their eyes to take a match from his box, which he displayed
+ostentatiously, all glittering in the sun, to the foremost savage. The
+leader stood by and watched him close with eyes of silent wonder. Then
+Felix, kneeling down, struck the match on the box, and applied it, as it
+lighted, to the dry leaves beside him.
+
+A chorus of astonishment burst unanimously from the delighted natives as
+the dry leaves leaped all at once into a tongue of flame, and the little
+pile caught quickly from the fire in the vesta.
+
+The leader looked hard at the two white faces, and then at the fire on
+the beach, with evident approbation. "It is as Tu-Kila-Kila said," he
+exclaimed at last with profound awe. "They are spirits from the sun, and
+they carry with them pure fire in shining boxes."
+
+Then, advancing a pace and pointing toward the canoe, he motioned Felix
+and Muriel to take their seats within it with native savage politeness.
+"Tu-Kila-Kila has sent for you," he said, in his grandest aristocratic
+air, "for your chief is a gentleman. He wishes to receive you. He saw
+your message-fire on the reef last night, and he knew you had come. He
+has made you a very great Taboo. He has put you under protection of Fire
+and Water."
+
+The people in the boats, with one accord, shouted out in wild chorus, as
+if to confirm his words, "Taboo! Taboo! Tu-Kila-Kila has said it! Taboo!
+Taboo! Ware Fire! Ware Water!"
+
+Though the dialect in which they spoke differed somewhat from that in use
+in Fiji, Felix could still make out with care almost every word of what
+the chief had said to him; and the universal Polynesian expression,
+"Taboo," in particular, somewhat reassured him as to their friendly
+intentions. Among remote heathen islanders like these, he felt sure, the
+very word itself was far too sacred to be taken in vain. They would
+respect its inviolability. He turned round to Muriel. "We must go with
+them," he said, shortly. "It's our one chance left of life now. Don't be
+too terrified; there is still some hope. They say somebody they call
+Tu-Kila-Kila has tabooed us. No one will dare to hurt us against so great
+a Taboo; for Tu-Kila-Kila is evidently some very important king or chief.
+You must step into the boat. It can't be avoided. If any harm is
+threatened, be sure I won't forget my promise."
+
+Muriel shrank back in alarm, and clung still to his arm now as
+naturally as she would have clung to a brother's. "Oh, Mr. Thurstan,"
+she cried--"Felix, I don't know what to say; I _can't_ go with them."
+
+Felix put his arm gently round her girlish waist, and half lifted her
+into the boat in spite of her reluctance. "You must," he said, with great
+firmness. "You must do as I say. I will watch over you, and take care of
+you. If the worst comes, I have always my knife, and I won't forget. Now,
+friend," he went on, in Fijian, turning round to the chief, as he took
+his seat in the canoe fearlessly among all those dusky, half-clad
+figures, "we are ready to start. We do not fear. We wish to go. Take
+us to Tu-Kila-Kila."
+
+And all the savages around, shouting in their surprise and awe, exclaimed
+once more in concert, "Tu-Kila-Kila is great. We will take them, as he
+bids us, forthwith to heaven."
+
+"What do they say?" Muriel cried, clinging close to the white man's side
+in her speechless terror. "Do you understand their language?"
+
+"Well, I can't quite make it out," Felix answered, much puzzled; "that is
+to say, not every word of it. They say they'll take us somewhere, I don't
+quite know where; but in Fijian, the word would certainly mean to
+heaven."
+
+Muriel shuddered visibly. "You don't think," she said, with a tremulous
+tongue, "they mean to kill us?"
+
+"No, I don't _think_ so," Felix replied, not over-confidently. "They said
+we were Taboo. But with savages like these, of course, one can never in
+any case be quite certain."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+ENROLLED IN OLYMPUS.
+
+
+They rowed across the lagoon, a mysterious procession, almost in
+silence--the canoe with the two Europeans going first, the others
+following at a slight distance--and landed at last on the brink of the
+central island.
+
+Several of the Boupari people leaped ashore at once; then they helped
+Felix and Muriel from the frail bark with almost deferential care, and
+led the way before them up a steep white path, that zigzagged through the
+forest toward the centre of the island. As they went, a band of natives
+preceded them in regular line of march, shouting "Taboo, taboo!" at short
+intervals, especially as they neared any group of fan-palm cottages. The
+women whom they met fell on their knees at once, till the strange
+procession had passed them by; the men only bowed their heads thrice, and
+made a rapid movement on their breasts with their fingers, which reminded
+Muriel at once of the sign of the cross in Catholic countries.
+
+So on they wended their way in silence through the deep tropical jungle,
+along a pathway just wide enough for three to walk abreast, till they
+emerged suddenly upon a large cleared space, in whose midst grew a great
+banyan-tree, with arms that dropped and rooted themselves like buttresses
+in the soil beneath. Under the banyan-tree a raised platform stood upon
+posts of bamboo. The platform was covered with fine network in yellow and
+red; and two little stools occupied the middle, as if placed there on
+purpose and waiting for their occupants.
+
+The man who had headed the first canoe turned round to Felix and motioned
+him forward. "This is Heaven," he said glibly, in his own tongue.
+"Spirits, ascend it!"
+
+Felix, much wondering what the ceremony could mean, mounted the platform
+without a word, in obedience to the chief's command, closely followed by
+Muriel, who dared not leave him for a second.
+
+"Bring water!" the chief said, shortly, in a voice of authority to one
+of his followers.
+
+The man handed up a calabash with a little water in it. The chief took
+the rude vessel from his hands in a reverential manner, and poured a few
+drops of the contents on Felix's head; the water trickled down over his
+hair and forehead. Involuntarily, Felix shook his head a little at the
+unexpected wetting, and scattered the drops right and left on his neck
+and shoulders. The chief watched this performance attentively with
+profound satisfaction. Then he turned to his attendants.
+
+"The spirit shakes his head," he said, with a deeply convinced air. "All
+is well. Heaven has chosen him. Korong! Korong! He is accepted for his
+purpose. It is well! It is well! Let us try the other one."
+
+He raised the calabash once more, and poured a few drops in like manner
+on Muriel's dark hair. The poor girl, trembling in every limb, shook her
+head also in the same unintentional fashion. The chief regarded her with
+still more complacent eyes.
+
+"It is well," he observed once more to his companions, smiling. "She,
+too, gives the sign of acceptance. Korong! Korong! Heaven is well pleased
+with both. See how her body trembles!"
+
+At that moment a girl came forward with a little basket of fruits. The
+chief chose a banana with care from the basket, peeled it with his dusky
+hands, broke it slowly in two, and handed one half very solemnly to
+Felix.
+
+"Eat, King of the Rain," he said, as he presented it. "The offering of
+Heaven."
+
+Felix ate it at once, thinking it best under the circumstances not to
+demur at all to anything his strange hosts might choose to impose upon
+him.
+
+The chief handed the other half just as solemnly to Muriel. "Eat, Queen
+of the Clouds," he said, as he placed it in her fingers. "The offering of
+Heaven."
+
+Muriel hesitated. She didn't know what his words meant, and it seemed to
+her rather the offering of a very dirty and unwashed savage. The chief
+eyed her hard. "For God's sake eat it, my child; he tells you to eat it!"
+Felix exclaimed in haste. Muriel lifted it to her lips and swallowed it
+down with difficulty. The man's dusky hands didn't inspire confidence.
+
+But the chief seemed relieved when he had seen her swallow it. "All is
+well done," he said, turning again to his followers. "We have obeyed the
+words of Tu-Kila-Kila, and his orders that he gave us. We have offered
+the strangers, the spirits from the sun, as a free gift to Heaven, and
+Heaven has accepted them. We have given them fruits, the fruits of the
+earth, and they have duly eaten them. Korong! Korong! The King of the
+Rain and the Queen of the Clouds have indeed come among us. They are
+truly gods. We will take them now, as he bid us, to Tu-Kila-Kila."
+
+"What have they done to us?" Muriel asked aside, in a terrified undertone
+of Felix.
+
+"I can't quite make out," Felix answered in the selfsame voice. "They
+call us the King of the Rain and the Queen of the Clouds in their own
+language. I think they imagine we've come from the sun and that we're a
+sort of spirits."
+
+At the sound of these words the girl who held the basket of fruits gave a
+sudden start. It almost seemed to Muriel as if she understood them. But
+when Muriel looked again she gave no further sign. She merely held her
+peace, and tried to appear wholly undisconcerted.
+
+The chief beckoned them down from the platform with a wave of his hand.
+They rose and followed him. As they rose the people around them bowed low
+to the ground. Felix could see they were bowing to Muriel and himself,
+not merely to the chief. A doubt flitted strangely across his mind for a
+moment. What could it all mean? Did they take the two strangers, then,
+for supernatural beings? Had they enrolled them as gods? If so, it might
+serve as some little protection for them.
+
+The procession formed again, three and three, three and three, in solemn
+silence. Then the chief walked in front of them with measured steps, and
+Felix and Muriel followed behind, wondering. As they went, the cry rose
+louder and louder than before, "Taboo! Taboo!" People who met them fell
+on their faces at once, as the chief cried out in a loud tone, "The King
+of the Rain! The Queen of the Clouds! Korong! Korong! They are coming!
+They are coming!"
+
+At last they reached a second cleared space, standing in a large garden
+of manilla, loquat, poncians, and hibiscus-trees. It was entered by a
+gate, a tall gate of bamboo posts. At the gate all the followers fell
+back to right and left, awe-struck. Only the chief went calmly on. He
+beckoned to Felix and Muriel to follow him.
+
+They entered, half terrified. Felix still grasped his open knife in his
+hand, ready to strike at any moment that might be necessary. The chief
+led them forward toward a very large tree near the centre of the garden.
+At the foot of the tree stood a hut, somewhat bigger and better built
+than any they had yet seen; and in front of the trunk a stalwart savage,
+very powerfully built, but with a sinister look in his cruel and lustful
+eye, was pacing up and down, like a sentinel on guard, a long spear in
+his right hand, and a tomahawk in his left, held close by his side, all
+ready for action. As he prowled up and down he seemed to be peering
+warily about him on every side, as if each instant he expected to be set
+upon by an enemy. But as the chief approached, the people without set up
+once more the cry of "Taboo! Taboo!" and the stalwart savage by the tree,
+laying down his spear and letting his tomahawk fall free, dropped in a
+second the air of watchful alarm, and advanced with some courtesy to
+greet the new-comers.
+
+"We have found them, Tu-Kila-Kila," the chief said, presenting them to
+the god with a graceful wave of his hand. "We have found the spirits that
+you brought from the sun, with the fire in their hands, and the light in
+boxes. We have taken them to Heaven. Heaven has accepted them. We have
+offered them fruit, and they have eaten the banana. The King of the
+Rain--the Queen of the Clouds! Korong! Receive them!"
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila glanced at them with an approving glance, strangely
+compounded of pleasure and terror. "They are plump," he said shortly.
+"They are indeed Korong. My sun has sent me an acceptable present."
+
+"What is your will that we should do with them?" the chief asked in a
+deeply deferential tone.
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila looked hard at Muriel--such a hateful look that the knife
+trembled irresolute for a second in Felix's hand. "Give them two fresh
+huts," he said, in a lordly way. "Give them divine platters. Give them
+all that they need. Make everything right for them."
+
+The chief bowed, and retired with an awed air from the presence. Exactly
+as he passed a certain line on the ground, marked white with a row of
+coral-sand, Tu-Kila-Kila seized his spear and his tomahawk once more, and
+mounted guard, as before, at the foot of the great tree where they had
+seen him pacing. An instantaneous change seemed to Muriel to come over
+his demeanor at that moment. While he spoke with the chief she noticed
+he looked all cruelty, lust, and hateful self-indulgence. Now that he
+paced up and down warily in front of that sacred floor, peering around
+him with keen suspicion, he seemed rather the personification of
+watchfulness, fear, and a certain slavish bodily terror. Especially, she
+observed, he cast upon Felix, as he went, a glance of angry hate; and yet
+he did not attempt to hurt or molest him in any way, defenceless as they
+both were before those numerous savages.
+
+As they emerged from the enclosure, the girl with the fruit basket stood
+near the gate, looking outward from the wall, her face turned away from
+the awful home of Tu-Kila-Kila. At the moment when Muriel passed, to her
+immense astonishment the girl spoke to her. "Don't be afraid, missy," she
+said in English, in a rather low voice, without obtrusively approaching
+them. "Boupari man not going to hurt you. Me going to be your servant. Me
+name Mali. Me very good girl. Me take plenty care of you."
+
+The unexpected sound of her own language, in the midst of so much
+unmitigated savagery, took Muriel fairly by surprise. She looked hard at
+the girl, but thought it wisest to answer nothing. This particular young
+woman, indeed, was just as dark, and to all appearance just as much of a
+savage, as any of the rest of them. But she could speak English, at any
+rate! And she said she was to be Muriel's servant!
+
+The chief led them back to the shore, talking volubly all the way in
+Polynesia to Felix. His dialect differed so much from the Fijian that
+when he spoke first Felix could hardly follow him. But he gathered
+vaguely, nevertheless, that they were to be well housed and fed for the
+present at the public expense; and even that something which the chief
+clearly regarded as a very great honor was in store for them in the
+future. Whatever these people's particular superstition might be, it
+seemed pretty evident at least that it told in the strangers' favor.
+Felix almost began to hope they might manage to live there pretty
+tolerably for the next two or three weeks, and perhaps to signal in time
+to some passing Australian liner.
+
+The rest of that wonderful eventful day was wholly occupied with
+practical details. Before long, two adjacent huts were found for them,
+near the shore of the lagoon; and Felix noticed with pleasure, not only
+that the huts themselves were new and clean, but also that the chief took
+great care to place round both of them a single circular line of white
+coral-sand, like the one he had noticed at Tu-Kila-Kila's palace-temple.
+He felt sure this white line made the space within taboo. No native would
+dare without leave to cross it.
+
+When the line was well marked out round the two huts together, the chief
+went away for a while, leaving the Europeans within their broad white
+circle, guarded by an angry-looking band of natives with long spears at
+rest, all pointed inward. The natives themselves stood well without the
+ring, but the points of their spears almost reached the line, and it was
+clear they would not for the present permit the Europeans to leave the
+charmed circle.
+
+Presently, the chief returned again, followed by two other natives in
+official costumes. One of them was a tall and handsome young man, dressed
+in a long robe or cloak of yellow feathers. The other was stouter, and
+perhaps forty or thereabouts; he wore a short cape of white albatross
+plumes, with a girdle of shells at his waist, interspersed with red
+coral.
+
+"The King of Fire will make Taboo," the chief said, solemnly.
+
+The young man with the cloak of yellow feathers stepped forward and
+spoke, toeing the line with his left foot, and brandishing a lighted
+stick in his right hand. "Taboo! Taboo! Taboo!" he cried aloud, with
+emphasis. "If any man dare to transgress this line without leave, I burn
+him to ashes. If any woman, I scorch her to a cinder. Taboo to the King
+of the Rain and the Queen of the Clouds. Taboo! Taboo! Taboo! Korong! I
+say it."
+
+He stepped back into the ranks with an air of duty performed. The chief
+looked about him curiously a moment. "The King of Water will make Taboo,"
+he repeated after a pause, in the same deep tone of profound conviction.
+
+The stouter man in the short white cape stepped forward in his turn. He
+toed the line with his naked left foot; in his brown right hand he
+carried a calabash of water. "Taboo! Taboo! Taboo!" he exclaimed aloud,
+pouring out the water upon the ground symbolically. "If any man dare to
+transgress this line without leave, I drown him in his canoe. If any
+woman, I drag her alive into the spring as she fetches water. Taboo to
+the King of the Rain and the Queen of the Clouds. Taboo! Taboo! Taboo!
+Korong! I say it."
+
+"What does it all mean?" Muriel whispered, terrified.
+
+Felix explained to her, as far as he could, in a few hurried sentences.
+"There's only one word in it I don't understand," he added, hastily, "and
+that's Korong. It doesn't occur in Fiji. They keep saying we're Korong,
+whatever that may mean; and evidently they attach some very great
+importance to it."
+
+"Let the Shadows come forward," the chief said, looking up with an air of
+dignity.
+
+A good-looking young man, and the girl who said her name was Mali,
+stepped forth from the crowd, and fell on their knees before him.
+
+The chief laid his hand on the young man's shoulder and raised him up.
+"The Shadow of the King of the Rain," he cried, turning him three times
+round. "Follow him in all his incomings and his outgoings, and serve
+him faithfully! Taboo! Taboo! Pass within the sacred circle!"
+
+He clapped his hands. The young man crossed the line with a sort of
+reverent reluctance, and took his place within the ring, close up to
+Felix.
+
+The chief laid his hand on Mali's shoulder. "The Shadow of the Queen of
+the Clouds," he said, turning her three times round. "Follow her in all
+her incomings and outgoings, and serve her faithfully. Taboo! Taboo!
+Pass within the sacred circle!"
+
+Then he waved both hands to Felix. "Go where you will now," he said.
+"Your Shadow will follow you. You are free as the rain that drops where
+it will. You are as free as the clouds that roam through heaven. No man
+will hinder you."
+
+And in a moment the spearmen dropped their spears in concert, the crowd
+fell back, and the villagers dispersed as if by magic, to their own
+houses.
+
+But Felix and Muriel were left alone beside their huts, guarded only in
+silence by their two mystic Shadows.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+FIRST DAYS IN BOUPARI.
+
+
+Throughout that day the natives brought them, from time to time, numerous
+presents of yam, bananas, and bread-fruit, neatly arranged in little
+palm-leaf baskets. A few of them brought eggs as well, and one offering
+even included a live chicken. But the people who brought them, and who
+were mostly young girls just entering upon womanhood, did not venture to
+cross the white line of coral-sand that surrounded the huts; they laid
+down their presents, with many salaams, on the ground outside, and then
+waited with a half-startled, half-reverent air for one or other of the
+two Shadows to come out and fetch them. As soon as the baskets were
+carried well within the marked line, the young girls exhibited every sign
+of pleasure, and calling aloud, "Korong! Korong!"--that mysterious
+Polynesian word of whose import Felix was ignorant--they retired once
+more by tortuous paths through the surrounding jungle.
+
+"Why do they bring us presents?" Felix asked at last of his Shadow, after
+this curious pantomime had been performed some three or four times. "Are
+they always going to keep us in such plenty?"
+
+The Shadow looked back at him with an air of considerable surprise. "They
+bring presents, of course," he said, in his own tongue, "because they are
+badly in want of rain. We have had much drought of late in Boupari; we
+need water from heaven. The banana-bushes wither; the flowers on the
+bread-fruit tree do not swell to breadfruit; the yams are thirsty.
+Therefore the fathers send their daughters with presents, maidens of the
+villages, all marriageable girls, to ask for rainfall. But they will
+always provide for you, and also for the Queen, however you behave; for
+you are both Korong. Tu-Kila-Kila has said so, and Heaven has accepted
+you."
+
+"What do you mean by Korong?" Felix asked, with some trepidation.
+
+The Shadow merely looked back at him with a sort of blank surprise that
+anybody should be ignorant of so simple a conception. "Why, Korong is
+Korong," he answered, aghast. "You are Korong yourself. The Queen of the
+Clouds is Korong, too. You are both Korong; that is why they all treat
+you with such respect and reverence."
+
+And that was as much as Felix could elicit by his subtlest questions from
+his taciturn Shadow.
+
+In fact, it was clear that in the open, at least, the Shadow was averse
+to being observed in familiar conversation with Felix. During the heat of
+the day, however, when they sat alone within the hut, he was much more
+communicative. Then he launched forth pretty freely into talk about the
+island and its life, which would no doubt have largely enlightened Felix,
+had it not been for two drawbacks to their means of inter-communication.
+In the first place, the Boupari dialect, though agreeing in all
+essentials with the Polynesian of Fiji, nevertheless contained a great
+many words and colloquial expressions unknown to the Fijians; this being
+particularly the case, as Felix soon remarked, in the whole vocabulary of
+religious rites and ceremonies. And in the second place, the Shadow was
+so rigidly bound by his own narrow and insular set of ideas, that he
+couldn't understand the difficulty Felix felt in throwing himself into
+them. Over and over again, when Felix asked him to explain some word or
+custom, he would repeat, with naïve impatience, "Why, Korong is Korong,"
+or "Tula is just Tula; even a child must surely know what Tula is; much
+more yourself, who are indeed Korong, and who have come from the sun to
+bring fresh fire to us."
+
+In the adjoining hut, Muriel, who was now beginning in some small degree
+to get rid of her most pressing fear for the immediate future, and whom
+the obvious reality of the taboo had reassured for the moment, sat with
+Mali, her own particular Shadow, unravelling the mystery of the girl's
+knowledge of English.
+
+Mali, indeed, like the other Shadow, showed every disposition to indulge
+in abundant conversation, as soon as she found herself well within the
+hut, alone with her mistress, and secluded from the prying eyes of all
+the other islanders.
+
+"Don't you be afraid, missy," she said, with genuine kindliness in her
+tone, as soon as the gifts of yam and bread-fruit had all been duly
+housed and garnered. "No harm come to you. You Korong, you know. You very
+great Taboo. Tu-Kila-Kila send King of Fire and King of Water to make
+taboo over you, so nobody hurt you."
+
+Muriel burst into tears at the sound of her own language from those dusky
+lips, and exclaimed through her sobs, clinging to the girl's hand for
+comfort as she spoke, "Why, how did you ever come to speak English?--tell
+me."
+
+Mali looked up at her with a half-astonished air. "Oh, I servant in
+Queensland, of course, missy," she answered, with great composure. "Labor
+vessel come to my island, far away, four, five years ago, steal boy,
+steal woman. My papa just kill my mamma, because he angry with her, so no
+want daughters. So my papa sell me and my sister for plenty rum, plenty
+tobacco, to gentlemen in labor vessel. Gentlemen in labor vessel take
+Jani and me away, away, to Queensland. Big sea; long voyage. We stop
+there three yam--three years--do service; then great chief in Queensland
+send us back to my island. My island too faraway; gentleman on ship not
+find it out; so he land us in little boat on Boupari. Boupari people make
+temple slave of us." And that was all; to her quite a commonplace,
+everyday history.
+
+"I see," Muriel cried. "Then you've been for three years in Australia!
+And there you learned English. Why, what did you do there?"
+
+Mali looked back at her with the same matter-of-fact air of composure as
+before. "Oh, me nurse at first," she said, shortly. "Then after, me
+housemaid, live three year in gentleman's house, good gentleman that buy
+me. Take care of little girl; clean rooms; do everything. Me know how to
+make English lady quite comfortable. Me tell that to chief; that make him
+say, 'Mali, you be Queenie's Shadow.'"
+
+To Muriel in her loneliness even such companionship as that was indeed a
+consolation. "Oh, I'm so glad you told him," she cried. "If we have to
+stop here long, before a ship takes us off, it'll be so nice to have you
+here all the time with me. You won't go away from me ever, will you?
+You'll always stop with me!"
+
+The girl's surprise showed more profoundly than ever. "Me can't go
+away," she answered, with emphasis. "Me your Shadow. That great Taboo.
+Tu-Kila-Kila great god. If me go away, Tu-Kila-Kila kill me and eat me."
+
+Muriel started back in horror. "But, Mali," she said, looking hard at the
+girl's pleasant brown face, "if you were three years in Australia, you're
+a Christian, surely!"
+
+The girl nodded her head in passive acquiescence. "Me Christian in
+Australia," she answered. "Of course me Christian. All folks make
+Christian when him go to Queensland. That what for me call Mali, and my
+sister Jani. We have other names on my own island; but when we go to
+Queensland, gentleman baptize us, call us Mali and Jani. Me Methodist in
+Queensland. Methodist very good. But Methodist god no live in Boupari.
+Not any good be Methodist here any longer. Tu-Kila-Kila god here. Him
+very powerful."
+
+"What! Not that dreadful creature that they took us to see this morning!"
+Muriel exclaimed, in horror. "Oh, Mali, you can't mean to say they think
+he's a _god_, that awful man there!"
+
+Mali nodded her assent with profound conviction. "Yes, yes; him god," she
+repeated, confidently. "Him very powerful. My sister Jani go too near him
+temple, against taboo--because her not belong-a Tu-Kila-Kila temple; and
+last night, when it great feast, plenty men catch Jani, and tie him up in
+rope; and Tu-Kila-Kila kill him, and plenty Boupari men help Tu-Kila-Kila
+eat up Jani."
+
+She said it in the same simple, matter-of-fact way as she had said that
+she was a nurse for three years in Queensland. To her it was a common
+incident of everyday life. Such accidents _will_ happen, if you break
+taboo and go too near forbidden temples.
+
+But Muriel drew back, and let the pleasant-looking brown girl's hand drop
+suddenly. "You can't mean it," she cried. "You can't mean he's a god!
+Such a wicked man as that! Oh, his very look's too horrible."
+
+Mali drew back in her turn with a somewhat terrified air, and peeped
+suspiciously around her, as if to make sure whether any one was
+listening. "Oh, hush," she said, anxiously. "Don't must talk like that.
+If Tu-Kila-Kila hear, him scorch us up to ashes. Him very great god!
+Him good! Him powerful!"
+
+"How can he be good if he does such awful things?" Muriel exclaimed,
+energetically.
+
+Mali peered around her once more with terrified eyes in the same uneasy
+way. "Take care," she said again. "Him god! Him powerful! Him can do no
+wrong. Him King of the Trees! Him King of Heaven! On Boupari island,
+Methodist god not much; no god so great like Tu-Kila-Kila."
+
+"But a _man_ can't be a god!" Muriel exclaimed, contemptuously. "He's
+nothing but a man! a savage! A cannibal!"
+
+Mali looked back at her in wondering surprise. "Not in Queensland," she
+answered, calmly--to her, all the world naturally divided itself into
+Queensland and Polynesia--"no god in Queensland. Governor, him very great
+chief; but him no god like Tu-Kila-Kila. Methodist god in sky, him only
+god that live in Queensland. But no use worship Methodist god over here
+in Boupari. Him no live here. Tu-Kila-Kila live here. All god here make
+out of man. Live in man. Korong! What for you say a man can't be a god!
+You god yourself! White gentleman there, god! Korong, Korong. Chief put
+you in Heaven, so make you a god. People pray to you now. People bring
+you presents."
+
+"You don't mean to say," Muriel cried, "they bring me these things
+because they think me a goddess?"
+
+Mali nodded a grave assent. "Same like people give money in church in
+Queensland," she answered, promptly. "Ask you make rain, make plenty
+crop, make bread-fruit grow, make banana, make plantain. You Korong now.
+While your time last, Queenie, people give you plenty of present."
+
+"While my time last?" Muriel repeated, with a curious sense of discomfort
+creeping over her slowly.
+
+The girl nodded an easy assent. "Yes, while your time last," she
+answered, laying a small bundle of palm-leaves at Muriel's back by way of
+a cushion. "For now you Korong. By and by, Korong pass to somebody else.
+This year, you Korong. So people worship you."
+
+But nothing that Muriel could say would induce the girl further to
+explain her meaning. She shook her head and looked very wise. "When a god
+come into somebody," she said, nodding toward Muriel in a mysterious way,
+"then him god himself; him Korong. When the god go away from him, him
+Korong no longer; somebody else Korong. Queenie Korong now; so people
+worship him. While him time last, people plenty kind to him."
+
+The day passed away, and night came on. As it approached, heavy clouds
+drifted up from eastward. Mali busied herself with laying out a rough bed
+in the hut for Muriel, and making her a pillow of soft moss and the
+curious lichen-like material that hangs parasitic from the trees, and is
+commonly known as "old man's beard." As both Mali and Felix assured her
+confidently no harm would come to her within so strict a Taboo, Muriel,
+worn out with fatigue and terror, lay down at last and slept soundly on
+this native substitute for a bedstead. She slept without dreaming, while
+Mali lay at her feet, ready at a moment's call. It was all so strange;
+and yet she was too utterly wearied to do otherwise than sleep, in spite
+of her strange and terrible surroundings.
+
+Felix slept, too, for some hours, but woke with a start in the night. It
+was raining heavily. He could hear the loud patter of a fierce tropical
+shower on the roof of his hut. His Shadow, at his feet, slept still
+unmoved; but when Felix rose on his elbow, the Shadow rose on a sudden,
+too, and confronted him curiously. The young man heard the rain; then he
+bowed down his face with an awed air, not visible, but audible, in the
+still darkness. "It has come!" he said, with superstitious terror. "It
+has come at last! my lord has brought it!"
+
+After that, Felix lay awake for some hours, hearing the rain on the roof,
+and puzzled in his own head by a half-uncertain memory. What was it in
+his school reading that that ceremony with the water indefinitely
+reminded him of? Wasn't there some Greek or Roman superstition about
+shaking your head when water was poured upon it? What could that
+superstition be, and what light might it cast on that mysterious
+ceremony? He wished he could remember; but it was so long since he'd read
+it, and he never cared much at school for Greek or Roman antiquities.
+
+Suddenly, in a lull of the rain, the whole context at once came back with
+a rush to him. He remembered now he had read it, some time or other, in
+some classical dictionary. It was a custom connected with Greek
+sacrifices. The officiating priest poured water or wine on the head of
+the sheep, bullock, or other victim. If the victim shook its head and
+knocked off the drops, that was a sign that it was fit for the sacrifice,
+and that the god accepted it. If the victim trembled visibly, that was a
+most favorable omen. If it stood quite still and didn't move its neck,
+then the god rejected it as unfit for his purpose. Couldn't _that_ be the
+meaning of the ceremony performed on Muriel and himself in "Heaven" that
+morning? Were they merely intended as human sacrifices? Were they to be
+kept meanwhile and, as it were, fed up for the slaughter? It was too
+horrible to believe; yet it almost looked like it.
+
+He wished he knew the meaning of that strange word, "Korong." Clearly, it
+contained the true key to the mystery.
+
+Anyhow, he had always his trusty knife. If the worst came to the
+worst--those wretches should never harm his spotless Muriel.
+
+For he loved her to-night; he would watch over and protect her. He would
+save her at least from the deadliest of insults.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+INTERCHANGE OF CIVILITIES.
+
+
+All night long, without intermission, the heavy tropical rain descended
+in torrents; at sunrise it ceased, and a bright blue vault of sky stood
+in a spotless dome over the island of Boupari.
+
+As soon as the sun was well risen, and the rain had ceased, one shy
+native girl after another came straggling up timidly to the white line
+that marked the taboo round Felix and Muriel's huts. They came with more
+baskets of fruit and eggs. Humbly saluting three times as they drew near,
+they laid down their gifts modestly just outside the line, with many loud
+ejaculations of praise and gratitude to the gods in their own language.
+
+"What do they say?" Muriel asked, in a dazed and frightened way, looking
+out of the hut door, and turning in wonder to Mali.
+
+"They say, 'Thank you, Queenie, for rain and fruits,'" Mali answered,
+unconcerned, bustling about in the hut. "Missy want to wash him face and
+hands this morning? Lady always wash every day over yonder in
+Queensland."
+
+Muriel nodded assent. It was all so strange to her. But Mali went to the
+door and beckoned carelessly to one of the native girls just outside, who
+drew near the line at the summons, with a somewhat frightened air,
+putting one finger to her mouth in coyly uncertain savage fashion.
+
+"Fetch me water from the spring!" Mali said, authoritatively, in
+Polynesian. Without a moment's delay the girl darted off at the top of
+her speed, and soon returned with a large calabash full of fresh cool
+water, which she lay down respectfully by the taboo line, not daring to
+cross it.
+
+"Why didn't you get it yourself?" Muriel asked of her Shadow, rather
+relieved than otherwise that Mali hadn't left her. It was something in
+these dire straits to have somebody always near who could at least speak
+a little English.
+
+Mali started back in surprise. "Oh, that would never do," she answered,
+catching a colloquial phrase she had often heard long before in
+Queensland. "Me missy's Shadow. That great Taboo. If me go away out of
+missy's sight, very big sin--very big danger. Man-a-Boupari catch me and
+kill me like Jani, for no me stop and wait all the time on missy."
+
+It was clear that human life was held very cheap on the island of
+Boupari.
+
+Muriel made her scanty toilet in the hut as well as she was able, with
+the calabash and water, aided by a rough shell comb which Mali had
+provided for her. Then she breakfasted, not ill, off eggs and fruit,
+which Mali cooked with some rude native skill over the open-air fire
+without in the precincts.
+
+After breakfast, Felix came in to inquire how she had passed the night in
+her new quarters. Already Muriel felt how odd was the contrast between
+the quiet politeness of his manner as an English gentleman and the
+strange savage surroundings in which they both now found themselves.
+Civilization is an attribute of communities; we necessarily leave it
+behind when we find ourselves isolated among barbarians or savages. But
+culture is a purely personal and individual possession; we carry it with
+us wherever we go; and no circumstances of life can ever deprive us of
+it.
+
+As they sat there talking, with a deep and abiding sense of awe at the
+change (Muriel more conscious than ever now of how deep was her interest
+in Felix Thurstan, who represented for her all that was dearest and best
+in England), a curious noise, as of a discordant drum or tom-tom, beaten
+in a sort of recurrent tune, was heard toward the hills; and at its very
+first sound both the Shadows, flinging themselves upon their faces with
+every sign of terror, endeavored to hide themselves under the native mats
+with which the bare little hut was roughly carpeted.
+
+"What's the matter?" Felix cried, in English, to Mali; for Muriel had
+already explained to him how the girl had picked up some knowledge of our
+tongue in Queensland.
+
+Mali trembled in every limb, so that she could hardly speak.
+"Tu-Kila-Kila come," she answered, all breathless. "No blackfellow look
+at him. Burn blackfellow up. You and Missy Korong. All right for you. Go
+out to meet him!"
+
+"Tu-Kila-Kila is coming," the young man-Shadow said, in Polynesian,
+almost in the same breath, and no less tremulously. "We dare not look
+upon his face lest he burn us to ashes. He is a very great Taboo. His
+face is fire. But you two are gods. Step forth to receive him."
+
+Felix took Muriel's hand in his, somewhat trembling himself, and led her
+forth on to the open space in front of the huts to meet the man-god. She
+followed him like a child. She was woman enough for that. She had
+implicit trust in him.
+
+As they emerged, a strange procession met their eyes unawares, coming
+down the zig-zag path that led from the hills to the shore of the lagoon,
+where their huts were situated. At its head marched two men--tall,
+straight, and supple--wearing huge feather masks over their faces, and
+beating tom-toms, decorated with long strings of shiny cowries. After
+them, in order, came a sort of hollow square of chiefs or warriors,
+surrounding with fan-palms a central object all shrouded from the view
+with the utmost precaution. This central object was covered with a huge
+regal umbrella, from whose edge hung rows of small nautilus and other
+shells, so as to form a kind of screen, like the Japanese portières now
+so common in English doorways. Two supporters held it up, one on either
+side, in long cloaks of feathers. Under the umbrella, a man seemed to
+move; and as he approached, the natives, to right and left, fled
+precipitately to their huts, snatching up their naked little ones from
+the ground as they went, and crying aloud, "Taboo, Taboo! He comes! he
+comes. Tu-Kila-Kila! Tu-Kila-Kila!"
+
+The procession wound slowly on, unheeding these common creatures, till it
+reached the huts. Then the chiefs who formed the hollow square fell back
+one by one, and the man under the umbrella, with his two supporters, came
+forward boldly. Felix noticed that they crossed without scruple the thick
+white line of sand which all the other natives so carefully respected.
+The man within the umbrella drew aside the curtain of hanging nautilus
+shells. His face was covered with a thin mask of paper mulberry bark; but
+Felix knew he was the self-same person whom they had seen the day before
+in the central temple.
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila's air was more insolent and arrogant than even before. He
+was clearly in high spirits. "You have done well, O King of the Rain," he
+said, turning gayly to Felix; "and you too, O Queen of the Clouds; you
+have done right bravely. We have all acquitted ourselves as our people
+would wish. We have made our showers to descend abundantly from heaven;
+we have caused the crops to grow; we have wetted the plantain bushes.
+See; Tu-Kila-Kila, who is so great a god, has come from his own home on
+the hills to greet you."
+
+"It has certainly rained in the night," Felix answered, dryly.
+
+But Tu-Kila-Kila was not to be put off thus. Adjusting his thin mask or
+veil of bark, so as to hide his face more thoroughly from the inferior
+god, he turned round once more to the chiefs, who even so hardly dared to
+look openly upon him. Then he struck an attitude. The man was clearly
+bursting with spiritual pride. He knew himself to be a god, and was
+filled with the insolence of his supernatural power. "See, my people," he
+cried, holding up his hands, palm outward, in his accustomed god-like
+way; "I am indeed a great deity--Lord of Heaven, Lord of Earth, Life of
+the World, Master of Time, Measurer of the Sun's Course, Spirit of
+Growth, Creator of the Harvest, Master of Mortals, Bestower of Breath
+upon Men, Chief Pillar of Heaven!"
+
+The warriors bowed down before their bloated master with unquestioning
+assent. "Giver of Life to all the host of the gods," they cried, "you are
+indeed a mighty one. Weigher of the equipoise of Heaven and Earth, we
+acknowledge your might; we give you thanks eternally."
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila swelled with visible importance. "Did I not tell you, my
+meat," he exclaimed, "I would bring you new gods, great spirits from the
+sun, fetchers of fire from my bright home in the heavens? And have they
+not come? Are they not here to-day? Have they not brought the precious
+gift of fresh fire with them?"
+
+"Tu-Kila-Kila speaks true," the chiefs echoed, submissively, with bent
+heads.
+
+"Did I not make one of them King of the Rain?" Tu-Kila-Kila asked once
+more, stretching one hand toward the sky with theatrical magnificence.
+"Did I not declare the other Queen of the Clouds in Heaven? And have I
+not caused them to bring down showers this night upon our crops? Has not
+the dry earth drunk? Am I not the great god, the Saviour of Boupari?"
+
+"Tu-Kila-Kila says well," the chiefs responded, once more, in unanimous
+chorus.
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila struck another attitude with childish self-satisfaction.
+"I go into the hut to speak with my ministers," he said, grandiloquently.
+"Fire and Water, wait you here outside while I enter and speak with my
+friends from the sun, whom I have brought for the salvation of the crops
+to Boupari."
+
+The King of Fire and the King of Water, supporting the umbrella, bowed
+assent to his words. Tu-Kila-Kila motioned Felix and Muriel into the
+nearest hut. It was the one where the two Shadows lay crouching in terror
+among the native mats. As the god tried to enter, the two cowering
+wretches set up a loud shout, "Taboo! Taboo! Mercy! Mercy! Mercy!"
+Tu-Kila-Kila retreated with a contemptuous smile. "I want to see you
+alone," he said, in Polynesian, to Felix. "Is the other hut empty? If
+not, go in and cut their throats who sit there, and make the place a
+solitude for Tu-Kila-Kila."
+
+"There is no one in the hut," Felix answered, with a nod, concealing his
+disgust at the command as far as he was able.
+
+"That is well," Tu-Kila-Kila answered, and walked into it carelessly.
+Felix followed him close and deemed it best to make Muriel enter also.
+
+As soon-as they were alone, Tu-Kila-Kila's manner altered greatly. "Come,
+now," he said, quite genially, yet with a curious under-current of hate
+in his steely gray eye; "we three are all gods. We who are in heaven need
+have no secrets from one another. Tell me the truth; did you really come
+to us direct from the sun, or are you sailing gods, dropped from a great
+canoe belonging to the warriors who seek laborers for the white men in
+the distant country?"
+
+Felix told him briefly, in as few words as possible, the story of their
+arrival.
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila listened with lively interest, then he said, very
+decisively, with great bravado, "It was _I_ who made the big wave wash
+your sister overboard. I sent it to your ship. I wanted a Korong just now
+in Boupari. It was _I_ who brought you."
+
+"You are mistaken," Felix said, simply, not thinking it worth while to
+contradict him further. "It was a purely natural accident."
+
+"Well, tell me," the savage god went on once more, eying him close and
+sharp, "they say you have brought fresh fire from the sun with you, and
+that you know how to make it burst out like lightning at will. My people
+have seen it. They tell me the wonder. I wish to see it too. We are all
+gods here; we need have no secrets. Only, I didn't want to let those
+common people outside see I asked you to show me. Make fire leap forth. I
+desire to behold it."
+
+Felix took out the match-box from his pocket, and struck a vesta
+carefully. Tu-Kila-Kila looked on with profound interest. "It is
+wonderful," he said, taking the vesta in his own hand as it burned, and
+examining it closely. "I have heard of this before, but I have never seen
+it. You are indeed gods, you white men, you sailors of the sea." He
+glanced at Muriel. "And the woman, too," he said, with a horrible leer,
+"the woman is pretty."
+
+Felix took the measure of his man at once. He opened his knife, and held
+it up threateningly. "See here, fellow," he said, in a low, slow tone,
+but with great decision, "if you dare to speak or look like that at that
+lady--god or no god, I'll drive this knife straight up to the handle in
+your heart, though your people kill me for it afterward ten thousand
+times over. I am not afraid of you. These savages may be afraid, and may
+think you are a god; but if you are, then I am a god ten thousand times
+stronger than you. One more word--one more look like that, I say--and
+I plunge this knife remorselessly into you."
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila drew back, and smiled benignly. Stalwart ruffian as he was,
+and absolute master of his own people's lives, he was yet afraid in a way
+of the strange new-comer. Vague stories of the men with white faces--the
+"sailing gods"--had reached him from time to time; and though only twice
+within his memory had European boats landed on his island, he yet knew
+enough of the race to know that they were at least very powerful
+deities--more powerful with their weapons than even he was. Besides, a
+man who could draw down fire from heaven with a piece of wax and a little
+metal box might surely wither him to ashes, if he would, as he stood
+before him. The very fact that Felix bearded him thus openly to his face
+astonished and somewhat terrified the superstitious savage. Everybody
+else on the island was afraid of him; then certainly a man who was not
+afraid must be the possessor of some most efficacious and magical
+medicine. His one fear now was lest his followers should hear and
+discover his discomfiture. He peered about him cautiously, with that
+careful gleam shining bright in his eye; then he said with a leer, in a
+very low voice, "We two need not quarrel. We are both of us gods. Neither
+of us is the stronger. We are equal, that's all. Let us live like
+brothers, not like enemies, on the island."
+
+"I don't want to be your brother," Felix answered, unable to conceal his
+loathing any more. "I hate and detest you."
+
+"What does he say?" Muriel asked, in an agony of fear at the savage's
+black looks. "Is he going to kill us?"
+
+"No," Felix answered, boldly. "I think he's afraid of us. He's going to
+do nothing. You needn't fear him."
+
+"Can she not speak?" the savage asked, pointing with his finger somewhat
+rudely toward Muriel. "Has she no voice but this, the chatter of birds?
+Does she not know the human language?"
+
+"She can speak," Felix replied, placing himself like a shield between
+Muriel and the astonished savage. "She can speak the language of the
+people of our distant country--a beautiful language which is as far
+superior to the speech of the brown men of Polynesia as the sun in the
+heavens is superior to the light of a candlenut. But she can't speak the
+wretched tongue of you Boupari cannibals. I thank Heaven she can't, for
+it saves her from understanding the hateful things your people would say
+of her. Now go! I have seen already enough of you. I am not afraid.
+Remember, I am as powerful a god as you. I need not fear. You cannot hurt
+me."
+
+A baleful light gleamed in the cannibal's eye. But he thought it best to
+temporize. Powerful as he was on his island, there was one thing yet more
+powerful by far than he; and that was Taboo--the custom and superstition
+handed down from his ancestors, These strangers were Korong; he dare not
+touch them, except in the way and manner and time appointed by custom. If
+he did, god as he was, his people themselves would turn and rend him. He
+was a god, but he was bound on every side by the strictest taboos. He
+dare not himself offer violence to Felix.
+
+So he turned with a smile and bided his time. He knew it would come. He
+could afford to laugh. Then, going to the door, he said, with his grand
+affable manner to his chiefs around, "I have spoken with the gods, my
+ministers, within. They have kissed my hands. My rain has fallen. All is
+well in the land. Arise, let us go away hence to my temple."
+
+The savages put themselves in marching order at once. "It is the voice of
+a god," they said, reverently. "Let us take back Tu-Kila-Kila to his
+temple home. Let us escort the lord of the divine umbrella. Wherever he
+is, there trees and plants put forth green leaves and flourish. At his
+bidding flowers bloom and springs of water rise up in fountains. His
+presence diffuses heavenly blessings."
+
+"I think," Felix said, turning to poor, terrified Muriel, "I've sent the
+wretch away with a bee in his bonnet."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+THE CUSTOMS OF BOUPARI.
+
+
+Human nature cannot always keep on the full stretch of excitement. It was
+wonderful to both Felix and Muriel how soon they settled down into a
+quiet routine of life on the island of Boupari. A week passed away--two
+weeks--three weeks--and the chances of release seemed to grow slenderer
+and slenderer. All they could do now was to wait for the stray accident
+of a passing ship, and then try, if possible, to signal it, or to put out
+to it in a canoe, if the natives would allow them.
+
+Meanwhile, their lives for the moment seemed fairly safe. Though for the
+first few days they lived in constant alarm, this feeling, after a time,
+gave way to one of comparative security. The strange institution of Taboo
+protected them more efficiently in their wattled huts than the whole
+police force of London could have done in a Belgravian mansion. There
+thieves break through and steal, in spite of bolts and bars and
+metropolitan constables; but at Boupari no native, however daring or
+however wicked, would ever venture to transgress the narrow line of white
+coral sand which protected the castaways like an intangible wall from all
+outer interference. Within this impalpable ring-fence they were
+absolutely safe from all rude intrusion, save that of the two Shadows,
+who waited upon them, day and night, with unfailing willingness.
+
+In other respects, considering the circumstances, their life was an easy
+one. The natives brought them freely of their simple store--yam, taro,
+bread-fruit, and cocoanut, with plenty of fish, crabs, and lobsters, as
+well as eggs by the basketful, and even sometimes chickens. They required
+no pay beyond a nod and a smile, and went away happy at those slender
+recognitions. Felix discovered, in fact, that they had got into a region
+where the arid generalizations of political economy do not apply; where
+Adam Smith is unread, and Mill neglected; where the medium of exchange is
+an unknown quantity, and where supply and demand readjust themselves
+continuously by simpler and more generous principles than the familiar
+European one of "the higgling of the market."
+
+The people, too, though utter savages, were not in their own way
+altogether unpleasing. It was their customs and superstitions, rather
+than themselves, that were so cruel and horrible. Personally, they seemed
+for the most part simple-minded and good natured creatures. At first,
+indeed, Muriel was afraid to venture for a step beyond the precincts of
+their own huts; and it was long before she could make up her mind to go
+alone through the jungle paths with Mali, unaccompanied by Felix. But by
+degrees she learned that she could walk by herself (of course, with the
+inevitable Shadow ever by her side) over the whole island, and meet
+everywhere with nothing from men, women, and children but the utmost
+respect and gracious courtesy. The young lads, as she passed, would stand
+aside from the path, with downcast eyes, and let her go by with all the
+politeness of chivalrous English gentlemen. The old men would raise their
+eyes, but cross their hands on their breasts, and stand motionless for a
+few minutes till she got almost out of sight. The women would bring their
+pretty brown babies for the fair English lady to admire or to pat on the
+head; and when Muriel now and again stooped down to caress some fat
+little naked child, lolling in the dust outside the hut, with true
+tropical laziness, the mothers would run up at the sight with delight and
+joy, and throw themselves down in ecstacies of gratitude for the notice
+she had taken of their favored little ones. "The gods of Heaven," they
+would say, with every sign of pleasure, "have looked graciously upon our
+Unaloa."
+
+At first Felix and Muriel were mainly struck with the politeness and
+deference which the natives displayed toward them. But after a time Felix
+at least began to observe, behind it all, that a certain amount of
+affection, and even of something like commiseration as well, seemed to be
+mingled with the respect and reverence showered upon them by their hosts.
+The women, especially, were often evidently touched by Muriel's innocence
+and beauty. As she walked past their huts with her light, girlish tread,
+they would come forth shyly, bowing many times as they approached, and
+offer her a long spray of the flowering hibiscus, or a pretty garland of
+crimson ti-leaves, saying at the same time, many times over, in their own
+tongue, "Receive it, Korong; receive it, Queen of the Clouds! You are
+good. You are kind. You are a daughter of the Sun. We are glad you have
+come to us."
+
+A young girl soon makes herself at home anywhere; and Muriel, protected
+alike by her native innocence and by the invisible cloak of Polynesian
+taboo, quickly learned to understand and to sympathize with these poor
+dusky mothers. One morning, some weeks after their arrival, she passed
+down the main street of the village, accompanied by Felix and their two
+attendants, and reached the _marae_--the open forum or place of public
+assembly--which stood in its midst; a circular platform, surrounded by
+bread-fruit trees, under whose broad, cool shade the people were sitting
+in little groups and talking together. They were dressed in the regular
+old-time festive costume of Polynesia; for Boupari, being a small and
+remote island, too insignificant to be visited by European ships,
+retained still all its aboriginal heathen manners and customs. The sight
+was, indeed, a curious and picturesque one. The girls, large-limbed,
+soft-skinned, and with delicately rounded figures, sat on the ground,
+laughing and talking, with their knees crossed under them; their wrists
+were encinctured with girdles of dark-red dracæna leaves, their swelling
+bosoms half concealed, half accentuated by hanging necklets of flowers.
+Their beautiful brown arms and shoulders were bare throughout; their
+long, black hair was gracefully twined and knotted with bright scarlet
+flowers. The men, strong and stalwart, sat behind on short stools or
+lounged on the buttressed roots of the bread-fruit trees, clad like the
+women in narrow waist-belts of the long red dracæna leaves, with necklets
+of sharks' teeth, pendent chain of pearly shells, a warrior's cap on
+their well-shaped heads, and an armlet of native beans, arranged below
+the shoulder, around their powerful arms. Altogether, it was a striking
+and beautiful picture. Muriel, now almost released from her early sense
+of fear, stood still to look at it.
+
+The men and girls were laughing and chatting merrily together. Most of
+them were engaged in holding up before them fine mats; and a row of
+mulberry cloth, spread along on the ground, led to a hut near one side of
+the _marae_. Toward this the eyes of the spectators were turned. "What is
+it, Mali?" Muriel whispered, her woman's instinct leading her at once to
+expect that something special was going on in the way of local
+festivities.
+
+And Mali answered at once, with many nods and smiles, "All right, Missy
+Queenie. Him a wedding, a marriage."
+
+The words had hardly escaped her lips when a very pretty young girl,
+half smothered in flowers, and decked out in beads and fancy shells,
+emerged slowly from the hut, and took her way with stately tread along
+the path carpeted with native cloth. She was girt round the waist with
+rich-colored mats, which formed a long train, like a court dress,
+trailing on the ground five or six feet behind her.
+
+"That's the bride, I suppose," Muriel whispered, now really
+interested--for what woman on earth, wherever she may be, can resist
+the seductive delights of a wedding?
+
+"Yes, her a bride," Mali answered; "and ladies what follow, them her
+bridesmaids."
+
+At the word, six other girls, similarly dressed, though without the
+train, and demure as nuns, emerged from the hut in slow order, two and
+two, behind her.
+
+Muriel and Felix moved forward with natural curiosity toward the scene.
+The natives, now ranged in a row along the path, with mats turned inward,
+made way for them gladly. All seem pleased that Heaven should thus
+auspiciously honor the occasion; and the bride herself, as well as the
+bridegroom, who, decked in shells and teeth, advanced from the opposite
+side along the path to meet her, looked up with grateful smiles at the
+two Europeans. Muriel, in return, smiled her most gracious and girlish
+recognition. As the bride drew near, she couldn't refrain from bending
+forward a little to look at the girl's really graceful costume. As she
+did so, the skirt of her own European dress brushed for a second against
+the bride's train, trailed carelessly many yards on the ground behind
+her.
+
+Almost before they could know what had happened, a wild commotion arose,
+as if by magic, in the crowd around them. Loud cries of "Taboo! Taboo!"
+mixed with inarticulate screams, burst on every side from the assembled
+natives. In the twinkling of an eye they were surrounded by an angry,
+threatening throng, who didn't dare to draw near, but, standing a yard or
+two off, drew stone knives freely and shook their fists, scowling, in the
+strangers' faces. The change was appalling in its electric suddenness.
+Muriel drew back horrified, in an agony of alarm. "Oh, what have I done!"
+she cried, piteously, clinging to Felix for support. "Why on earth are
+they angry with us?"
+
+"I don't know," Felix answered, taken aback himself. "I can't say exactly
+in what you've transgressed. But you must, unconsciously, in some way
+have offended their prejudices. I hope it's not much. At any rate they're
+clearly afraid to touch us."
+
+"Missy Queenie break taboo," Mali explained at once, with Polynesian
+frankness. "That make people angry. So him want to kill you. Missy
+Queenie touch bride with end of her dress. Korong may smile on
+bride--that very good luck; but Korong taboo; no must touch him."
+
+The crowd gathered around them, still very threatening in attitude, yet
+clearly afraid to approach within arm's-length of the strangers. Muriel
+was much frightened at their noise and at their frantic gestures. "Come
+away," she cried, catching Felix by the arm once more. "Oh, what are they
+going to do to us? Will they kill us for this? I'm so horribly afraid!
+Oh, why did I ever do it!"
+
+The poor little bride, meanwhile, left alone on the carpet, and unnoticed
+by everybody, sank suddenly down on the mats where she stood, buried her
+face in her hands, and began to sob as if her heart would break.
+Evidently, something very untoward of some sort had happened to the dusky
+lady on her wedding morning.
+
+The final touch was too much for poor Muriel's overwrought nerves. She,
+too, gave way in a tempest of sobs, and, subsiding on one of the native
+stools hard by, burst into tears herself with half-hysterical violence.
+
+Instantly, as she did so, the whole assembly seemed to change its mind
+again as if by contagious magic. A loud shout of "She cries; the Queen of
+the Clouds cries!" went up from all the assembled mob to heaven. "It is a
+good omen," Toko, the Shadow, whispered in Polynesian to Felix, seeing
+his puzzled look. "We shall have plenty of rain now; the clouds will
+break; our crops will flourish." Almost before she understood it, Muriel
+was surrounded by an eager and friendly crowd, still afraid to draw near,
+but evidently anxious to see and to comfort and console her. Many of the
+women eagerly held forward their native mats, which Mali took from them,
+and, pressing them for a second against Muriel's eyes, handed them back
+with just a suspicion of wet tears left glistening in the corner. The
+happy recipients leaped and shouted with joy. "No more drought!" they
+cried merrily, with loud shouts and gesticulations. "The Queen of the
+Clouds is good: she will weep well from heaven upon my yam and taro
+plots!"
+
+Muriel looked up, all dazed, and saw, to her intense surprise, the crowd
+was now nothing but affection and sympathy. Slowly they gathered in
+closer and closer, till they almost touched the hem of her robe; then the
+men stood by respectfully, laying their fingers on whatever she had
+wetted with her tears, while the women and girls took her hand in theirs
+and pressed it sympathetically. Mali explained their meaning with ready
+interpretation. "No cry too much, them say," she observed, nodding her
+head sagely. "Not good for Missy Queenie to cry too much. Them say, kind
+lady, be comforted."
+
+There was genuine good-nature in the way they consoled her; and Felix was
+touched by the tenderness of those savage hearts; but the additional
+explanation, given him in Polynesian by his own Shadow, tended somewhat
+to detract from the disinterestedness of their sympathy. "They say, 'It
+is good for the Queen of the Clouds to weep,'" Toko said, with frank
+bluntness; "'but not too much--for fear the rain should wash away all our
+yam and taro plants.'"
+
+By this time the little bride had roused herself from her stupor, and,
+smiling away as if nothing had happened, said a few words in a very low
+voice to Felix's Shadow. The Shadow turned most respectfully to his
+master, and, touching his sleeve-link, which was of bright gold, said, in
+a very doubtful voice, "She asks you, oh king, will you allow her, just
+for to-day, to wear this ornament?"
+
+Felix unbuttoned the shining bauble at once, and was about to hand it to
+the bride with polite gallantry. "She may wear it forever, for the matter
+of that, if she likes," he said, good-humoredly. "I make her a present
+of it."
+
+But the bride drew back as before in speechless terror, as he held out
+his hand, and seemed just on the point of bursting out into tears again
+at this untoward incident. The Shadow intervened with fortunate
+perception of the cause of the misunderstanding. "Korong must not touch
+or give anything to a bride," he said, quietly; "not with his own hand.
+He must not lay his finger on her; that would be unlucky. But he may hand
+it by his Shadow." Then he turned to his fellow-tribesmen. "These gods,"
+he said, in an explanatory voice, like one bespeaking forgiveness,
+"though they are divine, and Korong, and very powerful--see, they have
+come from the sun, and they are but strangers in Boupari--they do not yet
+know the ways of our island. They have not eaten of human flesh. They do
+not understand Taboo. But they will soon be wiser. They mean very well,
+but they do not know. Behold, he gives her this divine shining ornament
+from the sun as a present!" And, taking it in his hand, he held it up for
+a moment to public admiration. Then he passed on the trinket
+ostentatiously to the bride, who, smiling and delighted, hung it low on
+her breast among her other decorations.
+
+The whole party seemed so surprised and gratified at this proof of
+condescension on the part of the divine stranger that they crowded round
+Felix once more, praising and thanking him volubly. Muriel, anxious to
+remove the bad impression she had created by touching the bride's dress,
+hastily withdrew her own little brooch and offered it in turn to the
+Shadow as an additional present. But Toko, shaking his head vigorously,
+pointed with his forefinger many times to Mali. "Toko say him no can take
+it," Mali explained hastily, in her broken English. "Him no your Shadow;
+me your Shadow; me do everything for you; me give it to the lady." And,
+taking the brooch in her hand, she passed it over in turn amid loud cries
+of delight and shouts of approval.
+
+Thereupon, the ceremony began all over again. They seemed by their
+intervention to have interrupted some set formula. At its close the women
+crowded around Muriel and took her hand in theirs, kissing it many times
+over, with tears in their eyes, and betraying an immense amount of
+genuine feeling. One phrase in Polynesian they repeated again and again;
+a phrase that made Felix's cheek turn white, as he leaned over the poor
+English girl with a profound emotion.
+
+"What does it mean that they say?" Muriel asked at last, perceiving it
+was all one phrase, many times repeated.
+
+Felix was about to give some evasive explanation, when Mali interposed
+with her simple, unthinking translation. "Them say, Missy Queenie very
+good and kind. Make them sad to think. Make them cry to see her. Make
+them cry to see Missy Queenie Korong. Too good. Too pretty."
+
+"Why so?" Muriel exclaimed, drawing back with some faint presentiment of
+unspeakable horror.
+
+Felix tried to stop her; but the girl would not be stopped. "Because,
+when Korong time up," she answered, blurting it out, "Korong must--"
+
+Felix clapped his hand to her mouth in wild haste, and silenced her. He
+knew the worst now. He had divined the truth. But Muriel, at least, must
+be spared that knowledge.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+SOWING THE WIND.
+
+Vaguely and indefinitely one terrible truth had been forced by slow
+degrees upon Felix's mind; whatever else Korong meant, it implied at
+least some fearful doom in store, sooner or later, for the persons who
+bore it. How awful that doom might be, he could hardly imagine; but he
+must devote himself henceforth to the task of discovering what its nature
+was, and, if possible, of averting it.
+
+Yet how to reconcile this impending terror with the other obvious facts
+of the situation? the fact that they were considered divine beings and
+treated like gods; and the fact that the whole population seemed really
+to regard them with a devotion and kindliness closely bordering on
+religious reverence? If Korongs were gods, why should the people want to
+kill them? If they meant to kill them, why pay them meanwhile such
+respect and affection?
+
+One point at least was now, however, quite clear to Felix. While the
+natives, especially the women, displayed toward both of them in their
+personal aspect a sort of regretful sympathy, he could not help noticing
+at the same time that the men, at any rate, regarded them also largely
+in an impersonal light, as a sort of generalized abstraction of the
+powers of nature--an embodied form of the rain and the weather. The
+islanders were anxious to keep their white guests well supplied, well
+fed, and in perfect health, not so much for the strangers' sakes as for
+their own advantage; they evidently considered that if anything went
+wrong with either of their two new gods, corresponding misfortunes might
+happen to their crops and the produce of their bread-fruit groves. Some
+mysterious sympathy was held to subsist between the persons of the
+castaways and the state of the weather. The natives effusively thanked
+them after welcome rain, and looked askance at them, scowling, after long
+dry spells. It was for this, no doubt, that they took such pains to
+provide them with attentive Shadows, and to gird round their movements
+with taboos of excessive stringency. Nothing that the new-comers said or
+did was indifferent, it seemed, to the welfare of the community; plenty
+and prosperity depended upon the passing state of Muriel's health, and
+famine or drought might be brought about at any moment by the slightest
+imprudence in Felix's diet.
+
+How stringent these taboos really were Felix learned by slow degrees
+alone to realize. From the very beginning he had observed, to be sure,
+that they might only eat and drink the food provided for them; that they
+were supplied with a clean and fresh-built hut, as well as with brand-new
+cocoanut cups, spoons, and platters; that no litter of any sort was
+allowed to accumulate near their enclosure; and that their Shadows never
+left them, or went out of their sight, by day or by night, for a single
+moment. Now, however, he began to perceive also that the Shadows were
+there for that very purpose, to watch over them, as it were, like guards,
+on behalf of the community; to see that they ate or drank no tabooed
+object; to keep them from heedlessly transgressing any unwritten law of
+the creed of Boupari; and to be answerable for their good behavior
+generally. They were partly servants, it was true, and partly sureties;
+but they were partly also keepers, and keepers who kept a close and
+constant watch upon the persons of their prisoners. Once or twice Felix,
+growing tired for the moment of this continual surveillance, had tried to
+give Toko the slip, and to stroll away from his hut, unattended, for a
+walk through the island, in the early morning, before his Shadow had
+waked; but on each such occasion he found to his surprise that, as he
+opened the hut door, the Shadow rose at once and confronted him angrily,
+with an inquiring eye; and in time he perceived that a thin string was
+fastened to the bottom of the door, the other end of which was tied to
+the Shadow's ankle; and this string could not be cut without letting fall
+a sort of latch or bar which closed the door outside, only to be raised
+again by some external person.
+
+Clearly, it was intended that the Korong should have no chance of escape
+without the knowledge of the Shadow, who, as Felix afterward learned,
+would have paid with his own body by a cruel death for the Korong's
+disappearance.
+
+He might as well have tried to escape his own shadow as to escape the one
+the islanders had tacked on to him.
+
+All Felix's energies were now devoted to the arduous task of discovering
+what Korong really meant, and what possibility he might have of saving
+Muriel from the mysterious fate that seemed to be held in store for them.
+
+One evening, about six weeks after their arrival in the island, the young
+Englishman was strolling by himself (after the sun sank low in heaven)
+along a pretty tangled hill-side path, overhung with lianas and rope-like
+tropical creepers, while his faithful Shadow lingered a step or two
+behind, keeping a sharp lookout meanwhile on all his movements.
+
+Near the top of a little crag of volcanic rock, in the center of the
+hills, he came suddenly upon a hut with a cleared space around it,
+somewhat neater in appearance than any of the native cottages he had yet
+seen, and surrounded by a broad white belt of coral sand, exactly like
+that which ringed round and protected their own enclosure. But what
+specially attracted Felix's attention was the fact that the space outside
+this circle had been cleared into a regular flower-garden, quite European
+in the definiteness and orderliness of its quaint arrangement.
+
+"Why, who lives here?" Felix asked in Polynesian, turning round in
+surprise to his respectful Shadow.
+
+The Shadow waved his hand vaguely in an expansive way toward the sky, as
+he answered, with a certain air of awe, often observable in his speech
+when taboos were in question, "The King of Birds. A very great god. He
+speaks the bird language."
+
+"Who is he?" Felix inquired, taken aback, wondering vaguely to himself
+whether here, perchance, he might have lighted upon some stray and
+shipwrecked compatriot.
+
+"He comes from the sun like yourselves," the Shadow answered, all
+deference, but with obvious reserve. "He is a very great god. I may not
+speak much of him. But he is not Korong. He is greater than that, and
+less. He is Tula, the same as Tu-Kila-Kila."
+
+"Is he as powerful as Tu-Kila-Kila?" Felix asked, with intense interest.
+
+"Oh, no, he's not nearly so powerful as that," the Shadow answered, half
+terrified at the bare suggestion. "No god in heaven or earth is like
+Tu-Kila-Kila. This one is only king of the birds, which is a little
+province, while Tu-Kila-Kila is king of heaven and earth, of plants
+and animals, of gods and men, of all things created. At his nod the sky
+shakes and the rocks tremble. But still, this god is Tula, like
+Tu-Kila-Kila. He is not for a year. He goes on forever, till some other
+supplants him."
+
+"You say he comes from the sun," Felix put in, devoured with curiosity.
+"And he speaks the bird language? What do you mean by that? Does he speak
+like the Queen of the Clouds and myself when we talk together?"
+
+"Oh, dear, no," the Shadow answered, in a very confident tone. "He
+doesn't speak the least bit in the world like that. He speaks shriller
+and higher, and still more bird-like. It is chatter, chatter, chatter,
+like the parrots in a tree; tirra, tirra, tirra; tarra, tarra, tarra; la,
+la, la; lo, lo, lo; lu, lu, lu; li la. And he sings to himself all the
+time. He sings this way--"
+
+And then the Shadow, with that wonderful power of accurate mimicry which
+is so strong in all natural human beings, began to trill out at once,
+with a very good Parisian accent, a few lines from a well-known song in
+"La Fille de Madame Angot:"
+
+"Quand on conspi-re,
+   Quand sans frayeur
+ On pent se di-re
+   Conspirateur,
+ Pour tout le mon-de
+   Il faut avoir
+ Perruque blon-de
+   Et collet noir--
+ Perruque blon-de
+   Et collet noir."
+
+"That's how the King of the Birds sings," the Shadow said, as he
+finished, throwing back his head, and laughing with all his might at his
+own imitation. "So funny, isn't it? It's exactly like the song of the
+pink-crested parrot."
+
+"Why, Toko, it's French," Felix exclaimed, using the Fijian word for a
+Frenchman, which the Shadow, of course, on his remote island, had never
+before heard. "How on earth did he come here?"
+
+"I can't tell you," Toko answered, waving his arms seaward. "He came from
+the sun, like yourselves. But not in a sun-boat. It had no fire. He came
+in a canoe, all by himself. And Mali says"--here the Shadow lowered his
+voice to a most mysterious whisper--"he's a man-a-oui-oui."
+
+Felix quivered with excitement. "Man-a-oui-oui" is the universal name
+over semi-civilized Polynesia for a Frenchman. Felix seized upon it with
+avidity. "A man-a-oui-oui!" he cried, delighted. "How strange! How
+wonderful! I must go in at once to his hut and see him!"
+
+He had lifted his foot and was just going to cross the white line of
+coral-sand, when his Shadow, catching him suddenly and stoutly round the
+waist, pulled him back from the enclosure with every sign of horror,
+alarm, and astonishment. "No, you can't go," he cried, grappling with him
+with all his force, yet using him very tenderly for all that, as becomes
+a god. "Taboo! Taboo there!"
+
+"But I am a god myself," Felix cried, insisting upon his privileges. If
+you have to submit to the disadvantages of taboo, you may as well claim
+its advantages as well. "The King of Fire and the King of Water crossed
+my taboo line. Why shouldn't I cross equally the King of the Birds',
+then?"
+
+"So you might--as a rule," the Shadow answered with promptitude. "You are
+both gods. Your taboos do not cross. You may visit each other. You may
+transgress one another's lines without danger of falling dead on the
+ground as common men would do if they broke taboo-lines. But this is the
+Month of Birds. The king is in retreat. No man may see him except his own
+Shadow, the Little Cockatoo, who brings him his food and drink. Do you
+see that hawk's head, stuck upon the post by the door at the side. That
+is his Special Taboo. He keeps it for this month. Even gods must respect
+that sign, for a reason which it would be very bad medicine to mention.
+While the Month of Birds lasts, no man may look upon the king or hear
+him. If they did, they would die, and the carrion birds would eat them.
+Come away. This is dangerous."
+
+Scarcely were the words well out of his mouth when from the recesses of
+the hut a rollicking French voice was heard, trilling out merrily:
+
+"Quand on con-spi-re,
+   Quand, sans frayeur--"
+
+Without waiting for more, the Shadow seized Felix's arm in an agony of
+terror. "Come away!" he cried, hurriedly, "come away! What will become
+of us? This is horrible, horrible! We have broken taboo. We have heard
+the god's voice. The sky will fall on us. If his Shadow were to find it
+out and tell my people, my people would tear us limb from limb. Quick,
+quick! Hide away! Let us run fast through the forest before any man
+discover it."
+
+The Shadow's voice rang deep with alarm. Felix felt he dare not trifle
+with this superstition. Profound as was his curiosity about the
+mysterious Frenchman, he was compelled to bottle up his eagerness and
+anxiety for the moment, and patiently wait till the Month of Birds had
+run its course, and taken its inconvenient taboo along with it. These
+limitations were terrible. Yet he counted much upon the information the
+Frenchman could give him. The man had been some time on the island, it
+was clear, and doubtless he understood its ways thoroughly; he might
+cast some light at last upon the Korong mystery.
+
+So he went back through the woods with a heart somewhat lighter.
+
+Not far from their own huts he met Muriel and Mali.
+
+As they walked home together, Felix told his companion in a very few
+words the strange discovery about the Frenchman, and the impenetrable
+taboo by which he was at present surrounded. Muriel drew a deep sigh.
+"Oh, Felix," she said--for they were naturally by this time very much at
+home with one another, "did you ever know anything so dreadful as the
+mystery of these taboos? It seems as if we should never get really to the
+bottom of them. Mali's always springing some new one upon me. I don't
+believe we shall ever be able to leave the island--we're so hedged round
+with taboos. Even if we were to see a ship to-day, I don't believe they'd
+allow us to signal it."
+
+There was a red sunset; a lurid, tropical, red-and-green sunset. It boded
+mischief.
+
+They were passing by some huts at the moment, and over the stockade of
+one of them a tree was hanging with small yellow fruits, which Felix knew
+well in Fiji as wholesome and agreeable. He broke off a small branch as
+he passed; and offered a couple thoughtlessly to Muriel. She took them in
+her fingers, and tasted them gingerly. "They're not so bad," she said,
+taking another from the bough. "They're very much like gooseberries."
+
+At the same moment, Felix popped one into his own mouth, and swallowed it
+without thinking.
+
+Almost before they knew what had happened, with the same extraordinary
+rapidity as in the case of the wedding, the people in the cottages ran
+out, with every sign of fear and apprehension, and, seizing the branch
+from Felix's hands, began upbraiding the two Shadows for their want
+of attention.
+
+"We couldn't help it," Toko exclaimed, with every appearance of guilt and
+horror on his face. "They were much too sharp for us. Their hearts are
+black. How could we two interfere? These gods are so quick! They had
+picked and eaten them before we ever saw them."
+
+One of the men raised his hand with a threatening air--but against the
+Shadow, not against the sacred person of Felix. "He will be ill," he
+said, angrily, pointing toward the white man; "and she will, too. Their
+hearts are indeed black. They have sown the seed of the wind. They have
+both of them eaten of it. They will both be ill. You deserve to die! And
+what will come now to our trees and plantations?"
+
+The crowd gathered round them, cursing low and horribly. The two
+terrified Europeans slunk off to their huts, unaware of their exact
+crime, and closely followed by a scowling but despondent mob of natives.
+As they crossed their sacred boundary, Muriel cried, with a sudden
+outburst of tears, "Oh, Felix, what on earth shall we ever do to get
+rid of this terrible, unendurable godship!"
+
+The natives without set up a great shout of horror. "See, see! she
+cries!" they exclaimed, in indescribable panic. "She has eaten the
+storm-fruit, and already she cries! Oh, clouds, restrain yourselves! Oh,
+great queen, mercy! Whatever will become of us and our poor huts
+and gardens!"
+
+And for hours they crouched around, beating their breasts and shrieking.
+
+That evening, Muriel sat up late in Felix's hut, with Mali by her side,
+too frightened to go back into her own alone before those angry people.
+And all the time, just beyond the barrier line, they could hear, above
+the whistle of the wind around the hut, the droning voices of dozens of
+natives, cowering low on the ground; they seemed to be going through some
+litany or chant, as if to deprecate the result of this imprudent action.
+
+"What are they doing outside?" Felix asked of his Shadow at last, after a
+peculiarly long wail of misery.
+
+And the Shadow made answer, in very solemn tones, "They are trying to
+propitiate your mightiness, and to avert the omen, lest the rain should
+fall, and the wind should blow, and the storm-cloud should burst over the
+island to destroy them."
+
+Then Felix remembered suddenly of himself that the season when this
+storm-fruit, or storm-apple, as they called it, was ripe in Fiji, was
+also the season when the great Pacific cyclones most often swept over the
+land in full fury--storms unexampled on any other sea, like that famous
+one which wrecked so many European men-of-war a few years since in the
+harbor of Samoa.
+
+And without, the wail came louder and clearer still! "If you sow the
+bread-fruit seed, you will reap the breadfruit. If you sow the wind, you
+will reap the whirlwind. They have eaten the storm-fruit. Oh, great king,
+save us!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+REAPING THE WHIRLWIND.
+
+
+Toward midnight Muriel began to doze lightly from pure fatigue.
+
+"Put a pillow under her head, and let her sleep," Felix said in a
+whisper. "Poor child, it would be cruel to send her alone to-night into
+her own quarters."
+
+And Mali slipped a pillow of mulberry paper under her mistress's head,
+and laid it on her own lap, and bent down to watch her.
+
+But outside, beyond the line, the natives murmured loud their discontent.
+"The Queen of the Clouds stays in the King of the Rain's hut to-night,"
+they muttered, angrily. "She will not listen to us. Before morning, be
+sure, the Tempest will be born of their meeting to destroy us."
+
+About two o'clock there came a lull in the wind, which had been rising
+steadily ever since that lurid sunset. Felix looked out of the hut door.
+The moon was full. It was almost as clear as day with the bright tropical
+moonlight, silvery in the open, pale green in the shadow. The people were
+still squatting in great rings round the hut, just outside the taboo
+line, and beating gongs, and sticks and human bones, to keep time to the
+lilt of their lugubrious litany.
+
+The air felt unusually heavy and oppressive. Felix raised his eyes to the
+sky, and saw whisps of light cloud drifting in rapid flight over the
+scudding moon. Below, an ominous fog bank gathered steadily westward.
+Then one clap of thunder rent the sky. After it came a deadly silence.
+The moon was veiled. All was dark as pitch. The natives themselves fell
+on their faces and prayed with mute lips. Three minutes later, the
+cyclone had burst upon them in all its frenzy.
+
+Such a hurricane Felix had never before experienced. Its energy was
+awful. Round the palm-trees the wind played a frantic and capricious
+devil's dance. It pirouetted about the atoll in the mad glee of
+unconsciousness. Here and there it cleared lanes, hundreds of yards in
+length, among the forest-trees and the cocoanut plantations. The noise of
+snapping and falling trunks rang thick on the air. At times the cyclone
+would swoop down from above upon the swaying stem of some tall and
+stately palm that bent like grass before the wind, break it off short
+with a roar at the bottom, and lay it low at once upon the ground, with a
+crash like thunder. In other places, little playful whirlwinds seemed to
+descend from the sky in the very midst of the dense brushwood, where they
+cleared circular patches, strewn thick under foot with trunks and
+branches in their titanic sport, and yet left unhurt all about the
+surrounding forest. Then again a special cyclone of gigantic proportions
+would advance, as it were, in a single column against one stem of a
+clump, whirl round it spirally like a lightning flash, and, deserting it
+for another, leave it still standing, but turned and twisted like a screw
+by the irresistible force of its invisible fingers. The storm-god, said
+Toko, was dancing with the palm-trees. The sight was awful. Such
+destructive energy Felix had never even imagined before. No wonder the
+savages all round beheld in it the personal wrath of some mighty spirit.
+
+For in spite of the black clouds they could _see_ it all--both the
+Europeans and the islanders. The intense darkness of the night was
+lighted up for them every minute by an almost incessant blaze of sheet
+and forked lightning. The roar of the thunder mingled with the roar of
+the tempest, each in turn overtopping and drowning the other. The hut
+where Felix and Muriel sheltered themselves shook before the storm; the
+very ground of the island trembled and quivered--like the timbers of a
+great ship before a mighty sea--at each onset of the breakers upon the
+surrounding fringe-reef. And side by side with it all, to crown their
+misery, wild torrents of rain, descending in waterspouts, as it seemed,
+or dashed in great sheets against the roof of their frail tenement,
+poured fitfully on with fierce tropical energy.
+
+In the midst of the hut Muriel crouched and prayed with bloodless lips to
+Heaven. This was too, too terrible. It seemed incredible to her that on
+top of all they had been called upon to suffer of fear and suspense at
+the hands of the savages, the very dumb forces of nature themselves
+should thus be stirred up to open war against them. Her faith in
+Providence was sorely tried. Dumb forces, indeed! Why, they roared with
+more terrible voices than any wild beast on earth could possibly compass.
+The thunder and the wind were howling each other down in emulous din, and
+the very hiss of the lightning could be distinctly heard, like some huge
+snake, at times above the creaking and snapping of the trees before the
+gale in the surrounding forest.
+
+Muriel crouched there long, in the mute misery of utter despair. At her
+feet Mali crouched too, as frightened as herself, but muttering aloud
+from time to time, in a reproachful voice, "I tell Missy Queenie what
+going to happen. I warn her not. I tell her she must not eat that very
+bad storm-apple. But Missy Queenie no listen. Her take her own way, then
+storm come down upon us."
+
+And Felix's Shadow, in his own tongue, exclaimed more than once in the
+self-same tone, half terror, half expostulation, "See now what comes from
+breaking taboo? You eat the storm-fruit. The storm-fruit suits ill with
+the King of the Rain and the Queen of the Clouds. The heavens have broken
+loose. The sea has boiled. See what wind and what flood you are bringing
+upon us."
+
+By and by, above even the fierce roar of the mingled thunder and cyclone,
+a wild orgy of noise burst upon them all from without the hut. It was a
+sound as of numberless drums and tom-toms, all beaten in unison with the
+mad energy of fear; a hideous sound, suggestive of some hateful heathen
+devil-worship. Muriel clapped her hands to her ears in horror. "Oh,
+what's that?" she cried to Felix, at this new addition to their endless
+alarms. "Are the savages out there rising in a body? Have they come to
+murder us?"
+
+"Perhaps," Felix said, smoothing her hair with his hand, as a mother
+might soothe her terrified child, "perhaps they're angry with us for
+having caused this storm, as they think, by our foolish action. I believe
+they all set it down to our having unluckily eaten that unfortunate
+fruit. I'll go out to the door myself and speak to them."
+
+Muriel clung to his arm with a passionate clinging.
+
+"Oh, Felix," she cried, "no! Don't leave me here alone. My darling, I
+love you. You're all the world there is left to me now, Felix. Don't go
+out to those wretches and leave me here alone. They'll murder you!
+they'll murder you! Don't go out, I implore you. If they mean to kill us,
+let them kill us both together, in one another's arms. Oh, Felix, I am
+yours, and you are mine, my darling!"
+
+It was the first time either of them had acknowledged the fact; but
+there, before the face of that awful convulsion of nature, all the little
+deceptions and veils of life seemed rent asunder forever as by a flash of
+lightning. They stood face to face with each other's souls, and forgot
+all else in the agony of the moment. Felix clasped the trembling girl in
+his arms like a lover. The two Shadows looked on and shook with silent
+terror. If the King of the Rain thus embraced the Queen of the Clouds
+before their very eyes, amid so awful a storm, what unspeakable effects
+might not follow at once from it! But they had too much respect for those
+supernatural creatures to attempt to interfere with their action at such
+a moment. They accepted their masters almost as passively as they
+accepted the wind and the thunder, which they believed to arise from
+them.
+
+Felix laid his poor Muriel tenderly down on the mud floor again. "I
+_must_ go out, my child," he said. "For the very love of _you_, I must
+play the man, and find out what these savages mean by their drumming."
+
+He crept to the door of the hut (for no man could walk upright before
+that awful storm), and peered out into the darkness once more, awaiting
+one of the frequent flashes of lightning. He had not long to wait. In a
+moment the sky was all ablaze again from end to end, and continued so
+for many seconds consecutively. By the light of the continuous zigzags
+of fire, Felix could see for himself that hundreds and hundreds of
+natives--men, women, and children, naked, or nearly so, with their hair
+loose and wet about their cheeks--lay flat on their faces, many courses
+deep, just outside the taboo line. The wind swept over them with
+extraordinary force, and the tropical rain descended in great floods upon
+their bare backs and shoulders. But the savages, as if entranced, seemed
+to take no heed of all these earthly things. They lay grovelling in the
+mud before some unseen power; and beating their tom-toms in unison, with
+barbaric concord, they cried aloud once more as Felix appeared, in a
+weird litany that overtopped the tumultuous noise of the tempest, "Oh,
+Storm-God, hear us! Oh, great spirit, deliver us! King of the Rain and
+Queen of the Clouds, befriend us! Be angry no more! Hide your wrath from
+your people! Take away your hurricane, and we will bring you many gifts.
+Eat no longer of the storm-apple--the seed of the wind--and we will feed
+you with yam and turtle, and much choice bread-fruit. Great king, we are
+yours; you shall choose which you will of our children for your meat and
+drink; you shall sup on our blood. But take your storm away; do not
+utterly drown and submerge our island!"
+
+As they spoke they crawled nearer and nearer, with gliding serpentine
+motion, till their heads almost touched the white line of coral. But not
+a man of them all went one inch beyond it. They stopped there and gazed
+at him. Felix signed to them with his hand, and pointed vaguely to the
+sky, as much as to say _he_ was not responsible. At the gesture the whole
+assembly burst into one loud shout of gratitude. "He has heard us, he has
+heard us!" they exclaimed, with a perfect wail of joy. "He will not
+utterly destroy us. He will take away his storm. He will bring the sun
+and the moon back to us."
+
+Felix returned into the hut, somewhat reassured so far as the attitude of
+the savages went. "Don't be afraid of them, Muriel," he cried, taking her
+passionately once more in a tender embrace. "They daren't cross the
+taboo. They won't come near; they're too frightened themselves to dream
+of hurting us."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+AFTER THE STORM.
+
+
+Next morning the day broke bright and calm, as if the tempest had been
+but an evil dream of the night, now past forever. The birds sang loud;
+the lizards came forth from their holes in the wall, and basked, green
+and gold, in the warm, dry sunshine. But though the sky overhead was blue
+and the air clear, as usually happen after these alarming tropical
+cyclones and rainstorms, the memorials of the great wind that had raged
+all night long among the forests of the island were neither few nor far
+between. Everywhere the ground was strewn with leaves and branches and
+huge stems of cocoa-palms. All nature was draggled. Many of the trees
+were stripped clean of their foliage, as completely as oaks in an English
+winter; on others, big strands of twisted fibres marked the scars and
+joints where mighty boughs had been torn away by main force; while,
+elsewhere, bare stumps alone remained to mark the former presence of some
+noble dracæna or some gigantic banyan. Bread-fruits and cocoanuts lay
+tossed in the wildest confusion on the ground; the banana and
+plantain-patches were beaten level with the soil or buried deep in the
+mud; many of the huts had given way entirely; abundant wreckage strewed
+every corner of the island. It was an awful sight. Muriel shuddered to
+herself to see how much the two that night had passed through.
+
+What the outer fringing reef had suffered from the storm they hardly knew
+as yet; but from the door of the hut Felix could see for himself how even
+the calm waters of the inner lagoon had been lashed into wild fury by the
+fierce swoop of the tempest. Round the entire atoll the solid
+conglomerate coral floor was scooped under, broken up, chewed fine by the
+waves, or thrown in vast fragments on the beach of the island. By the
+eastern shore, in particular, just opposite their hut, Felix observed a
+regular wall of many feet in height, piled up by the waves like the
+familiar Chesil Beach near his old home in Dorsetshire. It was the
+shelter of that temporary barrier alone, no doubt, that had preserved
+their huts last night from the full fury of the gale, and that had
+allowed the natives to congregate in such numbers prone on their faces in
+the mud and rain, upon the unconsecrated ground outside their taboo-line.
+
+But now not an islander was to be seen within ear-shot. All had gone away
+to look after their ruined huts or their beaten-down plantain-patches,
+leaving the cruel gods, who, as they thought, had wrought all the
+mischief out of pure wantonness, to repent at leisure the harm done
+during the night to their obedient votaries.
+
+Felix was just about to cross the taboo-line and walk down to the shore
+to examine the barrier, when Toko, his Shadow, laying his hand on his
+shoulder with more genuine interest and affection than he had ever yet
+shown, exclaimed, with some horror, "Oh, no! Not that! Don't dare to go
+outside! It would be very dangerous for you. If my people were to catch
+you on profane soil just now, there's no saying what harm they might do
+to you."
+
+"Why so?" Felix exclaimed, in surprise. "Last night, surely, they were
+all prayers and promises and vows and entreaties."
+
+The young man nodded his head in acquiescence. "Ah, yes; last night," he
+answered. "That was very well then. Vows were sore needed. The storm was
+raging, and you were within your taboo. How could they dare to touch you,
+a mighty god of the tempest, at the very moment when you were rending
+their banyan-trees and snapping their cocoanut stems with your mighty
+arms like so many little chicken-bones? Even Tu-Kila-Kila himself, I
+expect, the very high god, lay frightened in his temple, cowering by his
+tree, annoyed at your wrath; he sent Fire and Water among the
+worshippers, no doubt, to offer up vows and to appease your anger."
+
+Then Felix remembered, as his Shadow spoke, that, as a matter of fact, he
+had observed the men who usually wore the red and white feather cloaks
+among the motley crowd of grovelling natives who lay flat on their faces
+in the mud of the cleared space the night before, and prayed hard for
+mercy. Only they were not wearing their robes of office at the moment, in
+accordance with a well-known savage custom; they had come naked and in
+disgrace, as befits all suppliants. They had left behind them the
+insignia of their rank in their own shaken huts, and bowed down their
+bare backs to the rain and the lightning.
+
+"Yes, I saw them among the other islanders," Felix answered,
+half-smiling, but prudently remaining within the taboo-line, as his
+Shadow advised him.
+
+Toko kept his hand still on his master's shoulder. "Oh, king," he said,
+beseechingly, and with great solemnity, "I am doing wrong to warn you; I
+am breaking a very great Taboo. I don't know what harm may come to me for
+telling you. Perhaps Tu-Kila-Kila will burn me to ashes with one glance
+of his eyes. He may know this minute what I'm saying here alone to you."
+
+It is hard for a white man to meet scruples like this; but Felix was bold
+enough to answer outright: "Tu-Kila-Kila knows nothing of the sort, and
+can never find out. Take my word for it, Toko, nothing that you say to me
+will ever reach Tu-Kila-Kila."
+
+The Shadow looked at him doubtfully, and trembled as he spoke. "I like
+you, Korong," he said, with a genuinely truthful ring in his voice. "You
+seem to me so kind and good--so different from other gods, who are very
+cruel. You never beat me. Nobody I ever served treated me as well or as
+kindly as you have done. And for _your_ sake I will even dare to break
+taboo--if you're quite, quite sure Tu-Kila-Kila will never discover it."
+
+"I'm quite sure," Felix answered, with perfect confidence. "I know it for
+certain. I swear a great oath to it."
+
+"You swear by Tu-Kila-Kila himself?" the young savage asked, anxiously.
+
+"I swear by Tu-Kila-Kila himself," Felix replied at once. "I swear,
+without doubt. He can never know it."
+
+"That is a great Taboo," the Shadow went on, meditatively, stroking
+Felix's arm. "A very great Taboo indeed. A terrible medicine. And you
+are a god; I can trust you. Well, then, you see, the secret is this:
+you are Korong, but you are a stranger, and you don't understand the
+ways of Boupari. If for three days after the end of this storm, which
+Tu-Kila-Kila has sent Fire and Water to pray and vow against, you or the
+Queen of the Clouds show yourselves outside your own taboo-line--why,
+then, the people are clear of sin; whoever takes you may rend you alive;
+they will tear you limb from limb and cut you into pieces."
+
+"Why so?" Felix asked, aghast at this discovery. They seemed to live on a
+perpetual volcano in this wonderful island; and a volcano ever breaking
+out in fresh places. They could never get to the bottom of its horrible
+superstitions.
+
+"Because you ate the storm-apple," the Shadow answered, confidently.
+"That was very wrong. You brought the tempest upon us yourselves by your
+own trespass; therefore, by the custom of Boupari, which we learn in the
+mysteries, you become full Korong for the sacrifice at once. That makes
+the term for you. The people will give you all your dues; then they will
+say, 'We are free; we have bought you with a price; we have brought your
+cocoanuts. No sin attaches to us; we are righteous; we are righteous.'
+And then they will kill you, and Fire and Water will roast you and boil
+you."
+
+"But only if we go outside the taboo-line?" Felix asked, anxiously.
+
+"Only if you go outside the taboo-line," the Shadow replied, nodding a
+hasty assent. "Inside it, till your term comes, even Tu-Kila-Kila
+himself, the very high god, whose meat we all are, dare never hurt you."
+
+"Till our term comes?" Felix inquired, once more astonished and
+perplexed. "What do you mean by that, my Shadow?"
+
+But the Shadow was either bound by some superstitious fear, or else
+incapable of putting himself into Felix's point of view. "Why, till you
+are full Korong," he answered, like one who speaks of some familiar fact,
+as who should say, till you are forty years old, or, till your beard
+grows white. "Of course, by and by, you will be full Korong. I cannot
+help you then; but, till that time comes, I would like to do my best by
+you. You have been very kind to me. I tell you much. More than this,
+it would not be lawful for me to mention."
+
+And that was the most that, by dexterous questioning, Felix could ever
+manage to get out of his mysterious Shadow.
+
+"At the end of three days we will be safe, though?" he inquired at last,
+after all other questions failed to produce an answer.
+
+"Oh, yes, at the end of three days the storm will have blown over," the
+young man answered, easily. "All will then be well. You may venture out
+once more. The rain will have dried over all the island. Fire and Water
+will have no more power over you."
+
+Felix went back to the hut to inform Muriel of this new peril thus
+suddenly sprung upon them. Poor Muriel, now almost worn out with endless
+terrors, received it calmly. "I'm growing accustomed to it all, Felix,"
+she answered, resignedly. "If only I know that you will keep your
+promise, and never let me fall alive into these wretches' hands, I shall
+feel quite safe. Oh, Felix, do you know when you took me in your arms
+like that last night, in spite of everything, I felt positively happy."
+
+About ten o'clock they were suddenly roused by a sound of many natives,
+coming in quick succession, single file, to the huts, and shouting aloud,
+"Oh, King of the Rain, oh, Queen of the Clouds, come forth for our vows!
+Receive your presents!"
+
+Felix went forth to the door to look. With a warning look in his eyes,
+his Shadow followed him. The natives were now coming up by dozens at a
+time, bringing with them, in great arm-loads, fallen cocoanuts and
+breadfruits, and branches of bananas, and large draggled clusters of
+half-ripe plantains.
+
+"Why, what are all these?" Felix exclaimed in surprise.
+
+His Shadow looked up at him, as if amused at the absurd simplicity of the
+question. "These are yours, of course," he said; "yours and the Queen's;
+they are the windfalls you made. Did you not knock them all off the trees
+for yourselves when you were coming down in such sheets from the sky last
+evening?"
+
+Felix wrung his hands in positive despair. It was clear, indeed, that to
+the minds of the natives there was no distinguishing personally between
+himself and Muriel, and the rain or the cyclone.
+
+"Will they bring them all in?" he asked, gazing in alarm at the huge pile
+of fruits the natives were making outside the huts.
+
+"Yes, all," the Shadow answered; "they are vows; they are godsends; but
+if you like, you can give some of them back. If you give much back, of
+course it will make my people less angry with you."
+
+Felix advanced near the line, holding his hand up before him to command
+silence. As he did so, he was absolutely appalled himself at the perfect
+storm of execration and abuse which his appearance excited. The foremost
+natives, brandishing their clubs and stone-tipped spears, or shaking
+their fists by the line, poured forth upon his devoted head at once all
+the most frightful curses of the Polynesian vocabulary. "Oh, evil god,"
+they cried aloud with angry faces, "oh, wicked spirit! you have a bad
+heart. See what a wrong you have purposely done us. If your heart were
+not bad, would you treat us like this? If you are indeed a god, come out
+across the line, and let us try issues together. Don't skulk like a
+coward in your hut and within your taboo, but come out and fight us. _We_
+are not afraid, who are only men. Why are _you_ afraid of us?"
+
+Felix tried to speak once more, but the din drowned his voice. As he
+paused, the people set up their loud shouts again. "Oh, you wicked god!
+You eat the storm-apple! You have wrought us much harm. You have spoiled
+our harvest. How you came down in great sheets last night! It was
+pitiful, pitiful! We would like to kill you. You might have taken our
+bread-fruits and our bananas, if you would; we give you them freely; they
+are yours; here, take them. We feed you well; we make you many offerings.
+But why did you wish to have our huts also? Why did you beat down our
+young plantations and break our canoes against the beach of the island?
+That shows a bad heart! You are an evil god! You dare not defend
+yourself. Come out and meet us."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+A POINT OF THEOLOGY.
+
+
+At last, with great difficulty, Felix managed to secure a certain
+momentary lull of silence. The natives, clustering round the line till
+they almost touched it, listened with scowling brows, and brandished
+threatening spears, tipped with points of stone or shark's teeth or
+turtle-bone, while he made his speech to them. From time to time, one or
+another interrupted him, coaxing and wheedling him, as it were, to cross
+the line; but Felix never heeded them. He was beginning to understand now
+how to treat this strange people. He took no notice of their threats or
+their entreaties either.
+
+By and by, partly by words and partly by gestures, he made them
+understand that they might take back and keep for themselves all the
+cocoanuts and bread-fruits they had brought as windfalls. At this the
+people seemed a little appeased. "His heart is not quite so bad as we
+thought," they murmured among themselves; "but if he didn't want them,
+what did he mean? Why did he beat down our huts and our plantations?"
+
+Then Felix tried to explain to them--a somewhat dangerous task--that
+neither he nor Muriel were really responsible for last night's storm; but
+at that the people, with one accord, raised a great loud shout of unmixed
+derision. "He is a god," they cried, "and yet he is ashamed of his own
+acts and deeds, afraid of what we, mere men, will do to him! Ha! ha! Take
+care! These are lies that he tells. Listen to him! Hear him!"
+
+Meanwhile, more and more natives kept coming up with windfalls of fruit,
+or with objects they had vowed in their terror to dedicate during the
+night; and Felix all the time kept explaining at the top of his voice, to
+all as they came, that he wanted nothing, and that they could take all
+back again. This curiously inconsistent action seemed to puzzle the
+wondering natives strangely. Had he made the storm, then, they asked, and
+eaten the storm-apple, for no use to himself, but out of pure
+perverseness? If he didn't even want the windfalls and the objects vowed
+to him, why had he beaten down their crops and broken their houses? They
+looked at him meaningly; but they dared not cross that great line of
+taboo. It was their own superstition alone, in that moment of danger,
+that kept their hands off those defenceless white people.
+
+At last a happy idea seemed to strike the crowd. "What he wants is a
+child?" they cried, effusively. "He thirsts for blood! Let us kill and
+roast him a proper victim!"
+
+Felix's horror at this appalling proposition knew no bounds. "If you do,"
+he cried, turning their own superstition against them in this last hour
+of need, "I will raise up a storm worse even than last night's! You do it
+at your peril! I want no victim. The people of my country eat not of
+human flesh. It is a thing detestable, horrible, hateful to God and man.
+With us, all human life alike is sacred. We spill no blood. If you dare
+to do as you say, I will raise such a storm over your heads to-night as
+will submerge and drown the whole of your island."
+
+The natives listened to him with profound interest. "We must spill no
+blood!" they repeated, looking aghast at one another. "Hear what the King
+says! We must not cut the victim's throat. We must bind a child with
+cords and roast it alive for him!"
+
+Felix hardly knew what to do or say at this atrocious proposal. "If you
+roast it alive," he cried, "you deserve to be all scorched up with
+lightning. Take care what you do! Spare the child's life! I will have no
+victim. Beware how you anger me!"
+
+But the savage no sooner says than he does. With him deliberation is
+unknown, and impulse everything. In a moment the natives had gathered in
+a circle a little way off, and began drawing lots. Several children,
+seized hurriedly up among the crowd, were huddled like so many sheep in
+the centre. Felix looked on from his enclosure, half petrified with
+horror. The lot fell upon a pretty little girl of five years old. Without
+one word of warning, without one sign of remorse, before Felix's very
+eyes, they began to bind the struggling and terrified child just outside
+the circle.
+
+The white man could stand this horrid barbarity no longer. At the risk of
+his life--at the risk of Muriel's--he must rush out to prevent them. They
+should never dare to kill that helpless child before his very eyes. Come
+what might--though even Muriel should suffer for it--he felt he _must_
+rescue that trembling little creature. Drawing his trusty knife, and
+opening the big blade ostentatiously before their eyes, he made a sudden
+dart like a wild beast across the line, and pounced down upon the party
+that guarded the victim.
+
+Was it a ruse to make him cross the line, alone, or did they really mean
+it? He hardly knew; but he had no time to debate the abstract question.
+Bursting into their midst, he seized the child with a rush in his
+circling arms, and tried to hurry back with it within the protecting
+taboo-line.
+
+Quick as lightning he was surrounded and almost cut down by a furious and
+frantic mob of half-naked savages. "Kill him! Tear him to pieces!" they
+cried in their rage. "He has a bad heart! He destroyed our huts! He broke
+down our plantations! Kill him, kill him, kill him!"
+
+As they closed in upon him, with spears and tomahawks and clubs, Felix
+saw he had nothing left for it now but a hard fight for life to return to
+the taboo-line. Holding the child in one arm, and striking wildly out
+with his knife with the other, he tried to hack his way back by main
+force to the shelter of the taboo-line in frantic lunges. The distance
+was but a few feet, but the savages pressed round him, half frightened
+still, yet gnashing their teeth and distorting their faces with anger.
+"He has broken the Taboo," they cried in vehement tones. "He has crossed
+the line willingly. Kill him! Kill him! We are free from sin. We have
+bought him with a price--with many cocoanuts!"
+
+At the sound of the struggle going on so close outside, Muriel rushed in
+frantic haste and terror from the hut. Her face was pale, but her
+demeanor was resolute. Before Mali could stop her, she, too, had crossed
+the sacred line of the coral mark, and had flung herself madly upon
+Felix's assailants, to cover his retreat with her own frail body.
+
+"Hold off!" she cried, in her horror, in English, but in accents even
+those savages could read. "You shall not touch him!"
+
+With a fierce effort Felix tore his way back, through the spears and
+clubs, toward the place of safety. The savages wounded him on the way
+more than once with their jagged stone spear-tips, and blood flowed from
+his breast and arms in profusion. But they didn't dare even so to touch
+Muriel. The sight of that pure white woman, rushing out in her weakness
+to protect her lover's life from attack, seemed to strike them with some
+fresh access of superstitious awe. One or two of themselves were wounded
+by Felix's knife, for they were unaccustomed to steel, though they had a
+few blades made out of old European barrel-hoops. For a minute or two the
+conflict was sharp and hotly contested. Then at last Felix managed to
+fling the child across the line, to push Muriel with one hand at
+arm's-length before him, and to rush himself within the sacred circle.
+
+No sooner had he crossed it than the savages drew up around, undecided as
+yet, but in a threatening body. Rank behind rank, their loose hair in
+their eyes, they stood like wild beasts balked of their prey, and yelled
+at him. Some of them brandished their spears and their stone hatchets
+angrily in their victims' faces. Others contented themselves with howling
+aloud as before, and piling curses afresh on the heads of the unpopular
+storm-gods. "Look at her," they cried, in their wrath, pointing their
+skinny brown fingers angrily at Muriel. "See, she weeps even now. She
+would flood us with her rain. She isn't satisfied with all the harm she
+has poured down upon Boupari already. She wants to drown us."
+
+And then a little knot drew up close to the line of taboo itself, and
+began to discuss in loud and serious tones a pressing question of savage
+theology and religious practice.
+
+"They have crossed the line within the three days," some of the foremost
+warriors exclaimed, in excited voices. "They are no longer taboo. We can
+do as we please with them. We may cross the line now ourselves if we
+will, and tear them to pieces. Come on! Who follows? Korong! Korong! Let
+us rend them! Let us eat them!"
+
+But though they spoke so bravely they hung back themselves, fearful
+of passing that mysterious barrier. Others of the crowd answered them
+back, warmly: "No, no; not so. Be careful what you do. Anger not the
+gods. Don't ruin Boupari. If the Taboo is not indeed broken, then how
+dare we break it? They are gods. Fear their vengeance. They are,
+indeed, terrible. See what happened to us when they merely ate of the
+storm-apple! What might not happen if we were to break taboo without due
+cause and kill them?"
+
+One old, gray-bearded warrior, in particular, held his countrymen back.
+"Mind how you trifle with gods," the old chief said, in a tone of solemn
+warning. "Mind how you provoke them. They are very mighty. When I was
+young, our people killed three sailing gods who came ashore in a small
+canoe, built of thin split logs; and within a month an awful earthquake
+devastated Boupari, and fire burst forth from a mouth in the ground, and
+the people knew that the spirits of the sailing gods were very angry.
+Wait, therefore, till Tu-Kila-Kila himself comes, and then ask of him,
+and of Fire and Water. As Tu-Kila-Kila bids you, that do you do. Is he
+not our great god, the king of us all, and the guardian of the customs of
+the island of Boupari?"
+
+"Is Tu-Kila-Kila coming?" some of the warriors asked, with bated breath.
+
+"How should he not come?" the old chief asked, drawing himself up very
+erect. "Know you not the mysteries? The rain has put out all the fires in
+Boupari. The King of Fire himself, even his hearth is cold. He tried his
+best in the storm to keep his sacred embers still smouldering; but the
+King of the Rain was stronger than he was, and put it out at last in
+spite of his endeavors. Be careful, therefore, how you deal with the King
+of the Rain, who comes down among lightnings, and is so very powerful."
+
+"And Tu-Kila-Kila comes to fetch fresh fire?" one of the nearest savages
+asked, with profound awe.
+
+"He comes to fetch fresh fire, new fire from the sun," the old man
+answered, with awe in his voice. "These foreign gods, are they not
+strangers from the sun? They have brought the divine seeds of fire,
+growing in a shining box that reflects the sunlight. They need no
+rubbing-sticks and no drill to kindle fresh flame. They touch the seed
+on the box, and, lo, like a miracle, fire bursts forth from the wood
+spontaneous. Tu-Kila-Kila comes, to behold this miracle."
+
+The warriors hung back with doubtful eyes for a moment. Then they spoke
+with one accord, "Tu-Kila-Kila shall decide. Tu-Kila-Kila! Tu-Kila-Kila!
+If the great god says the Taboo holds good, we will not hurt or offend
+the strangers. But if the great god says the Taboo is broken, and we are
+all without sin--then, Korong! Korong! we will kill them! We will eat
+them!"
+
+As the two parties thus stood glaring at one another, across that narrow
+imaginary wall, another cry went up to heaven at the distant sound of a
+peculiar tom-tom. "Tu-Kila-Kila comes!" they shouted. "Our great god
+approaches! Women, begone! Men, hide your eyes! Fly, fly from the
+brightness of his face, which is as the sun in glory! Tu-Kila-Kila comes!
+Fly far, all profane ones!"
+
+And in a moment the women had disappeared into space, and the men lay
+flat on the moist ground with low groans of surprise, and hid their faces
+in their hands in abject terror.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+AS BETWEEN GODS.
+
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila came up in his grandest panoply. The great umbrella, with
+the hanging cords, rose high over his head; the King of Fire and the King
+of Water, in their robes of state, marched slowly by his side; a whole
+group of slaves and temple attendants, clapping hands in unison, followed
+obedient at his sacred heels. But as soon as he reached the open space in
+front of the huts and began to speak, Felix could easily see, in spite of
+his own agitation and the excitement of the moment, that the implacable
+god himself was profoundly frightened. Last night's storm had, indeed,
+been terrible; but Tu-Kila-Kila mentally coupled it with Felix's attitude
+toward himself at their last interview, and really believed in his own
+heart he had met, after all, with a stronger god, more powerful than
+himself, who could make the clouds burst forth in fire and the earth
+tremble. The savage swaggered a good deal, to be sure, as is often the
+fashion with savages when frightened; but Felix could see between the
+lines, that he swaggered only on the familiar principle of whistling to
+keep your courage up, and that in his heart of hearts he was most
+unspeakably terrified.
+
+"You did not do well, O King of the Rain, last night," he said, after an
+interchange of civilities, as becomes great gods. "You have put out even
+the sacred flame on the holy hearth of the King of Fire. You have a bad
+heart. Why do you use us so?"
+
+"Why do you let your people offer human sacrifices?" Felix answered,
+boldly, taking advantage of his position. "They are hateful in our sight,
+these cannibal ways. While we remain on the island, no human life shall
+be unjustly taken. Do you understand me?"
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila drew back, and gazed around him suspiciously. In all his
+experience no one had ever dared to address him like that. Assuredly, the
+stranger from the sun must be a very great god--how great, he hardly
+dared to himself to realize. He shrugged his shoulders. "When we mighty
+deities of the first order speak together, face to face," he said, with
+an uneasy air, "it is not well that the mere common herd of men should
+overhear our profound deliberations. Let us go inside your hut. Let us
+confer in private."
+
+They entered the hut alone, Muriel still clinging to Felix's arm, in
+speechless terror. Then Felix at once began to explain the situation. As
+he spoke, a baleful light gleamed in Tu-Kila-Kila's eye. The great god
+removed his mulberry-paper mask. He was evidently delighted at the turn
+things had taken. If only he dared--but there; he dared not. "Fire and
+Water would never allow it," he murmured softly to himself. "They know
+the taboos as well as I do." It was clear to Felix that the savage would
+gladly have sacrificed him if he dared, and that he made no bones about
+letting him know it; but the custom of the islanders bound him as tightly
+as it bound themselves, and he was afraid to transgress it.
+
+"Now listen," Felix said, at last, after a long palaver, looking in the
+savage's face with a resolute air: "Tu-Kila-Kila, we are not afraid of
+you. We are not afraid of all your people. I went out alone just now to
+rescue that child, and, as you see, I succeeded in rescuing it. Your
+people have wounded me--look at the blood on my arms and chest--but I
+don't mind for wounds. I mean you to do as I say, and to make your people
+do so, too. Understand, the nation to which I belong is very powerful.
+You have heard of the sailing gods who go over the sea in canoes of fire,
+as swift as the wind, and whose weapons are hollow tubes, that belch
+forth great bolts of lightning and thunder? Very well, I am one of them.
+If ever you harm a hair of our heads, those sailing gods will before long
+send one of their mighty fire-canoes, and bring to bear upon your island
+their thunder and lightning, and destroy your huts, and punish you for
+the wrong you have ventured to do us. So now you know. Remember that you
+act exactly as I tell you."
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila was evidently overawed by the white man's resolute voice and
+manner. He had heard before of the sailing gods (as the Polynesians of
+the old school still call the Europeans); and though but one or two stray
+individuals among them had ever reached his remote island (mostly as
+castaways), he was quite well enough acquainted with their might and
+power to be deeply impressed by Felix's exhortation. So he tried to
+temporize. "Very well," he made answer, with his jauntiest air, assuming
+a tone of friendly good-fellowship toward his brother-god. "I will bear
+it in mind. I will try to humor you. While your time lasts, no man shall
+hurt you. But if I promise you that, you must do a good turn for me
+instead. You must come out before the people and give me a new fire from
+the sun, that you carry in a shining box about with you. The King of Fire
+has allowed his sacred flame to go out in deference to your flood; for
+last night, you know, you came down heavily. Never in my life have I
+known you come down heavier. The King of Fire acknowledges himself
+beaten. So give us light now before the people, that they may know we are
+gods, and may fear to disobey us."
+
+"Only on one condition," Felix answered, sternly; for he felt he had
+Tu-Kila-Kila more or less in his power now, and that he could drive a
+bargain with him. Why, he wasn't sure; but he saw Tu-Kila-Kila attached a
+profound importance to having the sacred fire relighted, as he thought,
+direct from heaven.
+
+"What condition is that?" Tu-Kila-Kila asked, glancing about him
+suspiciously.
+
+"Why, that you give up in future human sacrifices."
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila gave a start. Then he reflected for a moment. Evidently, the
+condition seemed to him a very hard one. "Do you want all the victims for
+yourself and her, then?" he asked, with a casual nod aside toward Muriel.
+
+Felix drew back, with horror depicted on every line of his face. "Heaven
+forbid!" he answered, fervently. "We want no bloodshed, no human victims.
+We ask you to give up these horrid practices, because they shock and
+revolt us. If you would have your fire lighted, you must promise us to
+put down cannibalism altogether henceforth in your island."
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila hesitated. After all, it was only for a very short time that
+these strangers could thus beard him. Their day would come soon. They
+were but Korongs. Meanwhile, it was best, no doubt, to effect a
+compromise. "Agreed," he answered, slowly. "I will put down human
+sacrifices--so long as you live among us. And I will tell the people your
+taboo is not broken. All shall be done as you will in this matter. Now,
+come out before the crowd and light the fire from Heaven."
+
+"Remember," Felix repeated, "if you break your word, my people will come
+down upon you, sooner or later, in their mighty fire-canoes, and will
+take vengeance for your crime, and destroy you utterly."
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila smiled a cunning smile. "I know all that," he answered. "I
+am a god myself, not a fool, don't you see? You are a very great god,
+too; but I am the greater. No more of words between us two. It is as
+between gods. The fire! the fire!"
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila replaced his mask. They proceeded from the hut to the open
+space within the taboo-line. The people still lay all flat on their
+faces. "Fire and Water," Tu-Kila-Kila said, in a commanding tone, "come
+forward and screen me!"
+
+The King of Fire and the King of Water unrolled a large square of native
+cloth, which they held up as a screen on two poles in front of their
+superior deity. Tu-Kila-Kila sat down on the ground, hugging his knees,
+in the common squatting savage fashion, behind the veil thus readily
+formed for him. "Taboo is removed," he said, in loud, clear tones. "My
+people may rise. The light will not burn them. They may look toward the
+place where Tu-Kila-Kila's face is hidden from them."
+
+The people all rose with one accord, and gazed straight before them.
+
+"The King of Fire will bring dry sticks," Tu-Kila-Kila said, in his
+accustomed regal manner.
+
+The King of Fire, sticking one pole of the screen into the ground
+securely, brought forward a bundle of sun-dried sticks and leaves from a
+basket beside him.
+
+"The King of the Rain, who has put out all our hearths with his flood
+last night, will relight them again with new fire, fresh flame from the
+sun, rays of our disk, divine, mystic, wonderful," Tu-Kila-Kila
+proclaimed, in his droning monotone.
+
+Felix advanced as he spoke to the pile, and struck a match before the
+eyes of all the islanders. As they saw it light, and then set fire to the
+wood, a loud cry went up once more, "Tu-Kila-Kila is great! His words are
+true! He has brought fire from the sun! His ways are wonderful!"
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila, from his point of vantage behind the curtain, strove to
+improve the occasion with a theological lesson. "That is the way we have
+learned from our divine ancestors," he said, slowly; "the rule of the
+gods in our island of Boupari. Each god, as he grows old, reincarnates
+himself visibly. Before he can grow feeble and die he immolates himself
+willingly on his own altar; and a younger and a stronger than he receives
+his spirit. Thus the gods are always young and always with you. Behold
+myself, Tu-Kila-Kila! Am I not from old times? Am I not very ancient?
+Have I not passed through many bodies? Do I not spring ever fresh from my
+own ashes? Do I not eat perpetually the flesh of new victims? Even so
+with fire. The flames of our island were becoming impure. The King of
+Fire saw his cinders flickering. So I gave my word. The King of the Rain
+descended in floods upon them. He put them all out. And now he rekindles
+them. They burn up brighter and fresher than ever. They burn to cook my
+meat, the limbs of my victims. Take heed that you do the King of the Rain
+no harm as long as he remains within his sacred circle. He is a very
+great god. He is fierce; he is cruel. His taboo is not broken. Beware!
+Beware! Disobey at your peril. I, Tu-Kila-Kila, have spoken."
+
+As he spoke, it seemed to Felix that these strange mystic words about
+each god springing fresh from his own ashes must contain the solution of
+that dread problem they were trying in vain to read. That, perhaps, was
+the secret of Korong. If only they could ever manage to understand it!
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila beat his tom-tom twice. In a second all the people fell flat
+on their faces again. Tu-Kila-Kila rose; the kings of Fire and Water held
+the umbrella over him. The attendants on either side clapped hands in
+time to the sacred tom-tom. With proud, slow tread, the god retraced his
+steps to his own palace-temple; and Muriel and Felix were left alone at
+last in their dusty enclosure.
+
+"Tu-Kila-Kila hates me," Felix said, later in the day, to his attentive
+Shadow.
+
+"Of course," the young man answered, with a tone of natural assent. "To
+be sure he hates you. How could he do otherwise? You are Korong. You may
+any day be his enemy."
+
+"But he's afraid of me, too," Felix went on. "He would have liked to let
+the people tear me in pieces. Yet he dared not risk it. He seems to dread
+offending me."
+
+"Of course," the Shadow replied, as readily as before. "He is very much
+afraid of you. You are Korong. You may any day supplant him. He would
+like to get rid of you, if he could see his way. But till your time comes
+he dare not touch you."
+
+"When will my time come?" Felix asked, with that dim apprehension of some
+horrible end coming over him yet again in all its vague weirdness.
+
+The Shadow shook his head. "That," he answered, "it is not lawful for me
+so much as to mention. I tell you too far. You will know soon enough.
+Wait, and be patient."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+"MR. THURSTAN, I PRESUME."
+
+
+Naturally enough, it was some time before Felix and Muriel could recover
+from the shock of their deadly peril. Yet, strange to say, the natives at
+the end of three days seemed positively to have forgotten all about it.
+Their loves and their hates were as shortlived as children's. As soon as
+the period of seclusion was over, their attentions to the two strangers
+redoubled in intensity. They were evidently most anxious, after this
+brief disagreement, to reassure the new gods, who came from the sun, of
+their gratitude and devotion. The men who had wounded Felix, in
+particular, now came daily in the morning with exceptional gifts of fish,
+fruit, and flowers; they would bring a crab from the sea, or a joint of
+turtle-meat. "Forgive us, O king," they cried, prostrating themselves
+humbly. "We did not mean to hurt you; we thought your time had really
+come. You are a Korong. We would not offend you. Do not refuse us your
+showers because of our sin. We are very penitent. We will do what you ask
+of us. Your look is poison. See, here is wood; here are leaves and fire;
+we are but your meat; choose and cook which you will of us!"
+
+It was useless Felix's trying to explain to them that he wanted no
+victims, and no propitiation. The more he protested, the more they
+brought gifts. "He is a very great god," they exclaimed. "He wants
+nothing from us. What can we give him that will be an acceptable gift?
+Shall we offer him ourselves, our wives, our children?"
+
+As for the women, when they saw how thoroughly frightened of them Muriel
+now was, they couldn't find means to express their regret and devotion.
+Mothers brought their little children, whom she had patted on the head,
+and offered them, just outside the line, as presents for her acceptance.
+They explained to her Shadow that they never meant to hurt her, and that,
+if only she would venture without the line, as of old, all should be
+well, and they would love and adore her. Mali translated to her mistress
+these speeches and prayers. "Them say, 'You come back, Queenie,'" she
+explained in her broken Queensland English. "'Boupari women love you very
+much. Boupari women glad you come. You kind; you beautiful! All Boupari
+men and women very much pleased with you and the gentleman, because you
+give back him cocoanut and fruit that you pick in the storm, and because
+you bring down fresh fire from heaven.'"
+
+Gradually, after several days, Felix's confidence was so far restored
+that he ventured to stroll beyond the line again; and he found himself,
+indeed, most popular among the people. In various ways he picked up
+gradually the idea that the islanders generally disliked Tu-Kila-Kila,
+and liked himself; and that they somehow regarded him as Tu-Kila-Kila's
+natural enemy. What it could all mean he did not yet understand, though
+some inklings of an explanation occasionally occurred to him. Oh, how he
+longed now for the Month of Birds to end, in order that he might pay his
+long-deferred visit to the mysterious Frenchman, from whose voice his
+Shadow had fled on that fateful evening with such sudden precipitancy.
+The Frenchman, he judged, must have been long on the island, and could
+probably give him some satisfactory solution of this abstruse problem.
+
+So he was glad, indeed, when one evening, some weeks later, his Shadow,
+observing the sky narrowly, remarked to him in a low voice, "New moon
+to-morrow! The Month of Birds will then be up. In the morning you can go
+and see your brother god at the Abode of Birds without breaking taboo.
+The Month of Turtles begins at sunrise. My family god is a turtle, so I
+know the day for it."
+
+So great was Felix's impatience to settle this question, that almost
+before the sun was up next day he had set forth from his hut, accompanied
+as usual by his faithful Shadow. Their way lay past Tu-Kila-Kila's
+temple. As they went by the entrance with the bamboo posts, Felix
+happened to glance aside through the gate to the sacred enclosure. Early
+as it was, Tu-Kila-Kila was afoot already; and, to Felix's great
+surprise, was pacing up and down, with that stealthy, wary look upon his
+cunning face that Muriel had so particularly noted on the day of their
+first arrival. His spear stood in his hand, and his tomahawk hung by his
+left side; he peered about him suspiciously, with a cautious glance, as
+he walked round and round the sacred tree he guarded so continually.
+There was something weird and awful in the sight of that savage god, thus
+condemned by his own superstition and the custom of his people to tramp
+ceaselessly up and down before the sacred banyan.
+
+At sight of Felix, however, a sudden burst of frenzy seemed to possess at
+once all Tu-Kila-Kila's limbs. He brandished his spear violently, and set
+himself spasmodically in a posture of defence. His brow grew black, and
+his eyes darted out eternal hate and suspicion. It was evident he
+expected an instant attack, and was prepared with all his might and main
+to resist aggression. Yet he never offered to desert his post by the tree
+or to assume the offensive. Clearly, he was guarding the sacred grove
+itself with jealous care, and was as eager for its safety as for his own
+life and honor.
+
+Felix passed on, wondering what it all could mean, and turned with an
+inquiring glance to his trembling Shadow. As for Toko, he had held his
+face averted meanwhile, lest he should behold the great god, and be
+scorched to a cinder; but in answer to Felix's mute inquiry he murmured
+low: "Was Tu-Kila-Kila there? Were all things right? Was he on guard at
+his post by the tree already?"
+
+"Yes," Felix replied, with that weird sense of mystery creeping over him
+now more profoundly than ever. "He was on guard by the tree and he looked
+at me angrily."
+
+"Ah," the Shadow remarked, with a sigh of regret, "he keeps watch well.
+It will be hard work to assail him. No god in Boupari ever held his place
+so tight. Who wishes to take Tu-Kila-Kila's divinity must get up early."
+
+They went on in silence to the little volcanic knoll near the centre of
+the island. There, in the neat garden plot they had observed before, a
+man, in the last relics of a very tattered European costume, much covered
+with a short cape of native cloth, was tending his flowers and singing to
+himself merrily. His back was turned to them as they came up. Felix
+paused a moment, unseen, and caught the words the stranger was singing:
+
+"Très jolie,
+ Peu polie,
+ Possédant un gros magot;
+ Fort en gueule,
+ Pas bégueule;
+ Telle était--"
+
+The stranger looked up, and paused in the midst of his lines,
+open-mouthed. For a moment he stood and stared astonished. Then, raising
+his native cap with a graceful air, and bowing low, as he would have
+bowed to a lady on the Boulevard, he advanced to greet a brother European
+with the familiar words, in good educated French, "Monsieur, I salute
+you!"
+
+To Felix, the sound of a civilized voice in the midst of so much strange
+and primitive barbarism, was like a sudden return to some forgotten
+world, so deeply and profoundly did it move and impress him. He grasped
+the sunburnt Frenchman's rugged hand in his. "Who are you?" he cried, in
+the very best Parisian he could muster up on the spur of the moment. "And
+how did you come here?"
+
+"Monsieur," the Frenchman answered, no less profoundly moved than
+himself, "this is, indeed, wonderful! Do I hear once more that beautiful
+language spoken? Do I find myself once more in the presence of a
+civilized person? What fortune! What happiness! Ah, it is glorious,
+glorious."
+
+For some seconds they stood and looked at one another in silence,
+grasping their hands hard again and again with intense emotion; then
+Felix repeated his question a second time: "Who are you, monsieur? and
+where do you come from?"
+
+"Your name, surname, age, occupation?" the Frenchman repeated, bursting
+forth at last into national levity. "Ah, monsieur, what a joy to hear
+those well-known inquiries in my ear once more. I hasten to gratify
+your legitimate curiosity. Name: Peyron; Christian name: Jules; age:
+forty-one; occupation: convict, escaped from New Caledonia."
+
+Under any other circumstances that last qualification might possibly have
+been held an undesirable one in a new acquaintance. But on the island of
+Boupari, among so many heathen cannibals, prejudices pale before
+community of blood; even a New Caledonian convict is at least a Christian
+European. Felix received the strange announcement without the faintest
+shock of surprise or disgust. He would gladly have shaken hands then and
+there with M. Jules Peyron, indeed, had he introduced himself in even
+less equivocal language as a forger, a pickpocket, or an escaped
+house-breaker.
+
+"And you, monsieur?" the ex-convict inquired, politely.
+
+Felix told him in a few words the history of their accident and their
+arrival on the island.
+
+"_Comment_?" the Frenchman exclaimed, with surprise and delight. "A lady
+as well; a charming English lady! What an acquisition to the society of
+Boupari! _Quelle chance! Quel bonheur!_ Monsieur, you are welcome, and
+mademoiselle too! And in what quality do you live here? You are a god, I
+see; otherwise you would not have dared to transgress my taboo, nor would
+this young man--your Shadow, I suppose--have permitted you to do so. But
+which sort of god, pray? Korong--or Tula?"
+
+"They call me Korong," Felix answered, all tremulous, feeling himself now
+on the very verge of solving this profound mystery.
+
+"And mademoiselle as well?" the Frenchman exclaimed, in a tone of dismay.
+
+"And mademoiselle as well," Felix replied. "At least, so I make out. We
+are both Korong. I have many times heard the natives call us so."
+
+His new acquaintance seized his hand with every appearance of genuine
+alarm and regret. "My poor friend," he exclaimed, with a horrified face,
+"this is terrible, terrible! Tu-Kila-Kila is a very hard man. What can
+we do to save your life and mademoiselle's! We are powerless! Powerless!
+I have only that much to say. I condole with you! I commiserate you!"
+
+"Why, what does Korong mean?" Felix asked, with blanched lips. "Is it
+then something so very terrible?"
+
+"Terrible! Ah, terrible!" the Frenchman answered, holding up his hands in
+horror and alarm. "I hardly know how we can avert your fate. Step within
+my poor hut, or under the shade of my Tree of Liberty here, and I will
+tell you all the little I know about it."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+THE SECRET OF KORONG.
+
+
+"You have lived here long?" Felix asked, with tremulous interest, as he
+took a seat on the bench under the big tree, toward which his new host
+politely motioned him. "You know the people well, and all their
+superstitions?"
+
+"_Hélas_, yes, monsieur," the Frenchman answered, with a sigh of regret.
+"Eighteen years have I spent altogether in this beast of a Pacific; nine
+as a convict in New Caledonia, and nine more as a god here; and, believe
+me, I hardly know which is the harder post. Yours is the first White face
+I have ever seen since my arrival in this cursed island."
+
+"And how did you come here?" Felix asked, half breathless, for the very
+magnitude of the stake at issue--no less a stake than Muriel's life--made
+him hesitate to put point-blank the question he had most at heart for the
+moment.
+
+"Monsieur," the Frenchman answered, trying to cover his rags with
+his native cape, "that explains itself easily. I was a medical student
+in Paris in the days of the Commune. Ah! that beloved Paris--how far
+away it seems now from Boupari! Like all other students I was
+advanced--Republican, Socialist--what you will--a political enthusiast.
+When the events took place--the events of '70--I espoused with
+all my heart the cause of the people. You know the rest. The
+bourgeoisie conquered. I was taken red-handed, as the Versaillais
+said--my pistol in my grasp--an open revolutionist. They tried me by
+court-martial--br'r'r--no delay--guilty, M. le President--hard labor to
+perpetuity. They sent me with that brave Louise Michel and so many other
+good comrades of the cause to New Caledonia. There, nine years of convict
+life was more than enough for me. One day I found a canoe on the shore--a
+little Kanaka canoe--you know the type--a mere shapeless dug-out. Hastily
+I loaded it with food--yam, taro, bread-fruit--I pushed it off into the
+sea--I embarked alone--I intrusted myself and all my fortunes to the Bon
+Dieu and the wide Pacific. The Bon Dieu did not wholly justify my
+confidence. It is a way he has--that inscrutable one. Six weeks I floated
+hither and thither before varying winds. At last one evening I reached
+this island. I floated ashore. And, _enfin, me voilà_!"
+
+"Then you were a political prisoner only?" Felix said, politely.
+
+M. Jules Peyron drew himself up with much dignity in his tattered
+costume. "Do I look like a card-sharper, monsieur?" he asked simply, with
+offended honor.
+
+Felix hastened to reassure him of his perfect confidence. "On the
+contrary, monsieur," he said, "the moment I heard you were a convict from
+New Caledonia, I felt certain in my heart you could be nothing less than
+one of those unfortunate and ill-treated Communards."
+
+"Monsieur," the Frenchman said, seizing his hand a second time, "I
+perceive that I have to do with a man of honor and a man of feeling.
+Well, I landed on this island, and they made me a god. From that day to
+this I have been anxious only to shuffle off my unwelcome divinity, and
+return as a mere man to the shores of Europe. Better be a valet in Paris,
+say I, than a deity of the best in Polynesia. It is a monotonous
+existence here--no society, no life--and the _cuisine_--bah, execrable!
+But till the other day, when your steamer passed, I have scarcely even
+sighted a European ship. A boat came here once, worse luck, to put off
+two girls (who didn't belong to Boupari), returned indentured laborers
+from Queensland; but, unhappily, it was during my taboo--the Month of
+Birds, as my jailers call it--and though I tried to go down to it or to
+make signals of distress, the natives stood round my hut with their
+spears in line, and prevented me by main force from signalling to them or
+communicating with them. Even the other day, I never heard of your
+arrival till a fortnight had elapsed, for I had been sick with fever, the
+fever of the country, and as soon as my Shadow told me of your advent it
+was my taboo again, and I was obliged to defer for myself the honor of
+calling upon my new acquaintances. I am a god, of course, and can do
+what I like; but while my taboo is on, _ma foi_, monsieur, I can hardly
+call my life my own, I assure you."
+
+"But your taboo is up to-day," Felix said, "so my Shadow tells me."
+
+"Your Shadow is a well-informed young man," M. Peyron answered, with easy
+French sprightliness. "As for my donkey of a valet, he never by any
+chance knows or tells me anything. I had just sent him out--the pig--to
+learn, if possible, your nationality and name, and what hours you
+preferred, as I proposed later in the day to pay my respects to
+mademoiselle, your friend, if she would deign to receive me."
+
+"Miss Ellis would be charmed, I'm sure," Felix replied, smiling in spite
+of himself at so much Parisian courtliness under so ragged an exterior.
+"It is a great pleasure to us to find we are not really alone on this
+barbarous island. But you were going to explain to me, I believe, the
+exact nature of this peril in which we both stand--the precise
+distinction between Korong and Tula?"
+
+"Alas, monsieur," the Frenchman replied, drawing circles in the dust with
+his stick with much discomposure, "I can only tell you I have been trying
+to make out the secret of this distinction myself ever since the first
+day I came to the island; but so reticent are all the natives about it,
+and so deep is the taboo by which the mystery is guarded, that even now
+I, who am myself Tula, can tell you but very little with certainty on the
+subject. All I can say for sure is this--that gods called Tula retain
+their godship in permanency for a very long time, although at the end
+some violent fate, which I do not clearly understand, is destined to
+befall them. That is my condition as King of the Birds--for no doubt
+they have told you that I, Jules Peyron--Republican, Socialist,
+Communist--have been elevated against my will to the honors of royalty.
+That is my condition, and it matters but little to me, for I know not
+when the end may come; and we can but die once; how or where, what
+matters? Meanwhile, I have my distractions, my little _agréments_--my
+gardens, my music, my birds, my native friends, my coquetries, my aviary.
+As King of the Birds, I keep a small collection of my subjects in the
+living form, not unworthy of a scientific eye. Monsieur is no
+ornithologist? Ah, no, I thought not. Well, for me, it matters little; my
+time is long. But for you and Mademoiselle, who are both Korong--" He
+paused significantly.
+
+"What happens, then, to those who are Korong?" Felix asked, with a lump
+in his throat--not for himself, but for Muriel.
+
+The Frenchman looked at him with a doubtful look. "Monsieur," he said,
+after a pause, "I hardly know how to break the truth to you properly. You
+are new to the island, and do not yet understand these savages. It is so
+terrible a fate. So deadly. So certain. Compose your mind to hear the
+worst. And remember that the worst is very terrible."
+
+Felix's blood froze within him; but he answered bravely all the same, "I
+think I have guessed it myself already. The Korong are offered as human
+sacrifices to Tu-Kila-Kila."
+
+"That is nearly so," his new friend replied, with a solemn nod of his
+head. "Every Korong is bound to die when his time comes. Your time will
+depend on the particular date when you were admitted to Heaven."
+
+Felix reflected a moment. "It was on the 26th of last month," he
+answered, shortly.
+
+"Very well," M. Peyron replied, after a brief calculation. "You have
+just six months in all to live from that date. They will offer you up by
+Tu-Kila-Kila's hut the day the sun reaches the summer solstice."
+
+"But why did they make us gods then?" Felix interposed, with tremulous
+lips. "Why treat us with such honors meanwhile, if they mean in the end
+to kill us?"
+
+He received his sentence of death with greater calmness than the
+Frenchman had expected. "Monsieur," the older arrival answered, with a
+reflective air, "there comes in the mystery. If we could solve that, we
+could find out also the way of escape for you. For there _is_ a way of
+escape for every Korong: I know it well; I gather it from all the natives
+say; it is a part of their mysteries; but what it may be, I have
+hitherto, in spite of all my efforts, failed to discover. All I _do_ know
+is this: Tu-Kila-Kila hates and dreads in his heart every Korong that is
+elevated to Heaven, and would do anything, if he dared, to get rid of him
+quietly. But he doesn't dare, because he is bound hand and foot himself,
+too, by taboos innumerable. Taboo is the real god and king of Boupari.
+All the island alike bows down to it and worships it."
+
+"Have you ever known Korongs killed?" Felix asked once more, trembling.
+
+"Yes, monsieur. Many of them, alas! And this is what happens. When the
+Korong's time is come, as these creatures say, either on the summer or
+winter solstice, he is bound with native ropes, and carried up so
+pinioned to Tu-Kila-Kila's temple. In the time before this man was
+Tu-Kila-Kila, I remember--"
+
+"Stop," Felix cried. "I don't understand. Has there then been more than
+one Tu-Kila-Kila?"
+
+"Why, yes," the Frenchman answered. "Certainly, many. And there the
+mystery comes in again. We have always among us one Tu-Kila-Kila or
+another. He is a sort of pope, or grand lama, _voyez-vous?_ No sooner is
+the last god dead than another god succeeds him and takes his name, or
+rather his title. This young man who now holds the place was known
+originally as Lavita, the son of Sami. But what is more curious still,
+the islanders always treat the new god as if he were precisely the
+self-same person as the old one. So far as I have been able to understand
+their theology, they believe in a sort of transmigration of souls. The
+soul of the Tu-Kila-Kila who is just dead passes into and animates the
+body of the Tu-Kila-Kila who succeeds to the office. Thus they speak as
+though Tu-Kila-Kila were a continuous existence; and the god of the
+moment, himself, will even often refer to events which occurred to him,
+as he says, a hundred years ago or more, but which he really knows, of
+course, only by the persistent tradition of the islanders. They are a
+very curious people, these Bouparese. But what would you have? Among
+savages, one expects things to be as among savages."
+
+Felix drew a quiet sigh. It was certain that on the island of Boupari
+that expectation, at least, was never doomed to disappointment. "And when
+a Korong is taken to Tu-Kila-Kila's temple," he asked, continuing the
+subject of most immediate interest, "what happens next to him?"
+
+"Monsieur," the Frenchman answered, "I hardly know whether I do right or
+not to say the truth to you. Each Korong is a god for one season only;
+when the year renews itself, as the savages believe, by a change of
+season, then a new Korong must be chosen by Heaven to fill the place of
+the old ones who are to be sacrificed. This they do in order that the
+seasons may be ever fresh and vigorous. Especially is that the case with
+the two meteorological gods, so to speak, the King of the Rain and the
+Queen of the Clouds. Those, I understand, are the posts in their pantheon
+which you and the lady who accompanies you occupy."
+
+"You are right," Felix answered, with profoundly painful interest. "And
+what, then, becomes of the king and queen who are sacrificed?"
+
+"I will tell you," M. Peyron answered, dropping his voice still lower
+into a sympathetic key. "But steel your mind for the worst beforehand. It
+is sufficiently terrible. On the day of your arrival, this, I learn from
+my Shadow, is just what happened. That night, Tu-Kila-Kila made his great
+feast, and offered up the two chief human sacrifices of the year, the
+free-will offering and the scapegoat of trespass. They keep then a
+festival, which answers to our own New-Year's day in Europe. Next
+morning, in accordance with custom, the King of the Rain and the Queen of
+the Clouds were to be publicly slain, in order that a new and more
+vigorous king and queen should be chosen in their place, who might make
+the crops grow better and the sky more clement. In the midst of this
+horrid ceremony, you and mademoiselle, by pure chance, arrived. You were
+immediately selected by Tu-Kila-Kila, for some reason of his own, which I
+do not sufficiently understand, but which is, nevertheless, obvious to
+all the initiated, as the next representatives of the rain-giving gods.
+You were presented to Heaven on their little platform raised about the
+ground, and Heaven accepted you. Then you were envisaged with the
+attributes of divinity; the care of the rain and the clouds was made over
+to you; and immediately after, as soon as you were gone, the old king and
+queen were laid on an altar near Tu-Kila-Kila's home, and slain with
+tomahawks. Their flesh was next hacked from their bodies with knives,
+cooked, and eaten; their bones were thrown into the sea, the mother of
+all waters, as the natives call it. And that is the fate, I fear the
+inevitable fate, that will befall you and mademoiselle at these wretches'
+hands about the commencement of a fresh season."
+
+Felix knew the worst now, and bent his head in silence. His worst fears
+were confirmed; but, after all, even this knowledge was better than so
+much uncertainty.
+
+And now that he knew when "his time was up," as the natives phrased it,
+he would know when to redeem his promise to Muriel.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+A VERY FAINT CLUE.
+
+
+"But you hinted at some hope, some chance of escape," Felix cried at
+last, looking up from the ground and mastering his emotion. "What now is
+that hope? Conceal nothing from me."
+
+"Monsieur," the Frenchman answered, shrugging his shoulders with an
+expression of utter impotence, "I have as good reasons for wishing to
+find out all that as even you can have. _Your_ secret is _my_ secret;
+but with all my pains and astuteness I have been unable to discover
+it. The natives are reticent, very reticent indeed, about all these
+matters. They fear taboo; and they fear Tu-Kila-Kila. The women, to
+be sure, in a moment of expansion, might possibly tell one; but, then,
+the women, unfortunately, are not admitted to the mysteries. They know
+no more of all these things than we do. The most I have been able to
+gather for certain is this--that on the discovery of the secret depend
+Tu-Kila-Kila's life and power. Every Boupari man knows this Great Taboo;
+it is communicated to him in the assembly of adults when he gets tattooed
+and reaches manhood. But no Boupari man ever communicates it to
+strangers; and for that reason, perhaps, as I believe, Tu-Kila-Kila often
+chooses for Korong, as far as possible, those persons who are cast by
+chance upon the island. It has always been the custom, so far as I can
+make out, to treat castaways or prisoners taken in war as gods, and then
+at the end of their term to kill them ruthlessly. This plan is popular
+with the people at large, because it saves themselves from the dangerous
+honors of deification; but it also serves Tu-Kila-Kila's purpose, because
+it usually elevates to Heaven those innocent persons who are unacquainted
+with that fatal secret which is, as the natives say, Tu-Kila-Kila's
+death--his word of dismissal."
+
+"Then if only we could find out this secret--" Felix cried.
+
+His new friend interrupted him. "What hope is there of your finding
+it out, monsieur," he exclaimed, "you, who have only a few months to
+live--when I, who have spent nine long years of exile on the island, and
+seen two Tu-Kila-Kilas rise and fall, have been unable, with my utmost
+pains, to discover it? _Tenez_; you have no idea yet of the superstitions
+of these people, or the difficulties that lie in the way of fathoming
+them. Come this way to my aviary; I will show you something that will
+help you to realize the complexities of the situation."
+
+He rose and led the way to another cleared space at the back of the hut,
+where several birds of gaudy plumage were fastened to perches on sticks
+by leathery lashes of dried shark's skin, tied just above their talons.
+"I am the King of the Birds, monsieur, you must remember," the Frenchman
+said, fondling one of his screaming _protégés_. "These are a few of my
+subjects. But I do not keep them for mere curiosity. Each of them is the
+Soul of the tribe to which it belongs. This, for example--my Cluseret--is
+the Soul of all the gray parrots; that that you see yonder--Badinguet,
+I call him--is the Soul of the hawks; this, my Mimi, is the Soul of the
+little yellow-crested kingfisher. My task as King of the Birds is to keep
+a representative of each of these always on hand; in which endeavor I
+am faithfully aided by the whole population of the island, who bring me
+eggs and nests and young birds in abundance. If the Soul of the little
+yellow kingfisher now were to die, without a successor being found ready
+at once to receive and embody it, then the whole race of little yellow
+kingfishers would vanish altogether; and if I myself, the King of the
+Birds, who am, as it were, the Soul and life of all of them, were to die
+without a successor being at hand to receive my spirit, then all the race
+of birds, with one accord, would become extinct forthwith and forever."
+
+He moved among his pets easily, like a king among his subjects. Most of
+them seemed to know him and love his presence. Presently, he came to one
+very old parrot, quite different from any Felix had ever seen on any
+trees in the island; it was a parrot with a black crest and a red mark on
+its throat, half blind with age, and tottering on its pedestal. This
+solemn old bird sat apart from all the others, nodding its head
+oracularly in the sunlight, and blinking now and again with its white
+eyelids in a curious senile fashion.
+
+The Frenchman turned to Felix with an air of profound mystery. "This
+bird," he said, solemnly stroking its head with his hand, while the
+parrot turned round to him and bit at his finger with half-doddering
+affection--"this bird is the oldest of all my birds---is it not so,
+Methuselah?--and illustrates well in one of its aspects the superstition
+of these people. Yes, my friend, you are the last of a kind now otherwise
+extinct, are you not, _mon vieux?_ No, no, there--gently! Once upon a
+time, the natives tell me, dozens of these parrots existed in the island;
+they flocked among the trees, and were held very sacred; but they were
+hard to catch and difficult to keep, and the Kings of the Birds, my
+predecessors, failed to secure an heir and coadjutor to this one. So as
+the Soul of the species, which you see here before you, grew old and
+feeble, the whole of the race to which it belonged grew old and feeble
+with it. One by one they withered away and died, till at last this
+solitary specimen alone remained to vouch for the former existence of the
+race in the island. Now, the islanders say, nothing but the Soul itself
+is left; and when the Soul dies, the red-throated parrots will be gone
+forever. One of my predecessors paid with his life in awful tortures for
+his remissness in not providing for the succession to the soulship. I
+tell you these things in order that you may see whether they cast any
+light for you upon your own position; and also because the oldest and
+wisest natives say that this parrot alone, among beasts or birds or
+uninitiated things, knows the secret on which depends the life of the
+Tu-Kila-Kila for the time being."
+
+"Can the parrot speak?" Felix asked, with profound emotion.
+
+"Monsieur, he can speak, and he speaks frequently. But not one word of
+all he says is comprehensible either to me or to any other living being.
+His tongue is that of a forgotten nation. The islanders understand him no
+more than I do. He has a very long sermon or poem, which he knows by
+heart, in some unknown language, and he repeats it often at full length
+from time to time, especially when he has eaten well and feels full and
+happy. The oldest natives tell a romantic legend about this strange
+recitation of the good Methuselah--I call him Methuselah because of his
+great age--but I do not really know whether their tale is true or purely
+fanciful. You never can trust these Polynesian traditions."
+
+"What is the legend?" Felix asked, with intense interest. "In an island
+where we find ourselves so girt round by mystery within mystery, and
+taboo within taboo, as this, every key is worth trying. It is well for us
+at least to learn everything we can about the ideas of the natives. Who
+knows what clue may supply us at last with the missing link, which will
+enable us to break through this intolerable servitude?"
+
+"Well, the story they tell us is this," the Frenchman replied,
+"though I have gathered it only a hint at a time, from very old men, who
+declared at the same moment that some religious fear--of which they have
+many--prevented them from telling me any further about it. It seems that
+a long time ago--how many years ago nobody knows, only that it was in the
+time of the thirty-ninth Tu-Kila-Kila, before the reign of Lavita, the
+son of Sami--a strange Korong was cast up upon this island by the waves
+of the sea, much as you and I have been in the present generation. By
+accident, says the story, or else, as others aver, through the
+indiscretion of a native woman who fell in love with him, and who worried
+the taboo out of her husband, the stranger became acquainted with the
+secret of Tu-Kila-Kila. As the natives themselves put it, he learned the
+Death of the High God, and where in the world his Soul was hidden.
+Thereupon, in some mysterious way or other, he became Tu-Kila-Kila
+himself, and ruled as High God for ten years or more here on this island.
+Now, up to that time, the legend goes on, none but the men of the island
+knew the secret; they learned it as soon as they were initiated in the
+great mysteries, which occur before a boy is given a spear and admitted
+to the rank of complete manhood. But sometimes a woman was told the
+secret wrongfully by her husband or her lover; and one such woman,
+apparently, told the strange Korong, and so enabled him to become
+Tu-Kila-Kila."
+
+"But where does the parrot come in?" Felix asked, with still profounder
+excitement than ever. Something within him seemed to tell him
+instinctively he was now within touch of the special key that must sooner
+or later unlock the mystery.
+
+"Well," the Frenchman went on, still stroking the parrot affectionately
+with his hand, and smoothing down the feathers on its ruffled back, "the
+strange Tu-Kila-Kila, who thus ruled in the island, though he learned to
+speak Polynesian well, had a language of his own, a language of the
+birds, which no man on earth could ever talk with him. So, to beguile his
+time and to have someone who could converse with him in his native
+dialect, he taught this parrot to speak his own tongue, and spent most of
+his days in talking with it and fondling it. At last, after he had
+instructed it by slow degrees how to repeat this long sermon or
+poem--which I have often heard it recite in a sing-song voice from
+beginning to end--his time came, as they say, and he had to give way to
+another Tu-Kila-Kila; for the Bouparese have a proverb like our own about
+the king, 'The High God is dead; may the High God live forever!' But
+before he gave up his Soul to his successor, and was eaten or buried,
+whichever is the custom, he handed over his pet to the King of the Birds,
+strictly charging all future bearers of that divine office to care for
+the parrot as they would care for a son or a daughter. And so the natives
+make much of the parrot to the present day, saying he is greater than
+any, save a Korong or a god, for he is the Soul of a dead race, summing
+it up in himself, and he knows the secret of the Death of Tu-Kila-Kila."
+
+"But you can't tell me what language he speaks?" Felix asked with a
+despairing gesture. It was terrible to stand thus within measurable
+distance of the secret which might, perhaps, save Muriel's life, and yet
+be perpetually balked by wheel within wheel of more than Egyptian
+mystery.
+
+"Who can say?" the Frenchman answered, shrugging his shoulders
+helplessly. "It isn't Polynesian; that I know well, for I speak
+Bouparese now like a native of Boupari; and it isn't the only other
+language spoken at the present day in the South Seas--the Melanesian of
+New Caledonia--for that I learned well from the Kanakas while I was
+serving my time as a convict among them. All we can say for certain is
+that it may, perhaps, be some very ancient tongue. For parrots, we know,
+are immensely long-lived. Some of them, it is said, exceed their century.
+Is it not so, eh, my friend Methuselah?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+FACING THE WORST.
+
+
+Muriel, meanwhile, sat alone in her hut, frightened at Felix's unexpected
+disappearance so early in the morning, and anxiously awaiting her lover's
+return, for she made no pretences now to herself that she did not really
+love Felix. Though the two might never return to Europe to be husband and
+wife, she did not doubt that before the eye of Heaven they were already
+betrothed to one another as truly as though they had plighted their troth
+in solemn fashion. Felix had risked his life for her, and had brought all
+this misery upon himself in the attempt to save her. Felix was now all
+the world that was left her. With Felix, she was happy, even on this
+horrible island; without him, she was miserable and terrified, no matter
+what happened.
+
+"Mali," she cried to her faithful attendant, as soon as she found Felix
+was missing from his tent, "what's become of Mr. Thurstan? Where can he
+be gone, I wonder, this morning?"
+
+"You no fear, Missy Queenie," Mali answered, with the childish
+confidence of the native Polynesian. "Mistah Thurstan, him gone to see
+man-a-oui-oui, the King of the Birds. Month of Birds finish last night;
+man-a-oui-oui no taboo any longer. King of the Birds keep very old
+parrot, Boupari folk tell me; and old parrot very wise, know how to make
+Tu-Kila-Kila. Mistah Thurstan, him gone to find man-a-oui-oui. Parrot
+tell him plenty wise thing. Parrot wiser than Boupari people; know very
+good medicine; wise like Queensland lady and gentleman." And Mali set
+herself vigorously to work to wash the wooden platter on which she served
+up her mistress's yam for breakfast.
+
+It was curious to Muriel to see how readily Mali had slipped from
+savagery to civilization in Queensland, and how easily she had slipped
+back again from civilization to savagery in Boupari. In waiting on her
+mistress she was just the ordinary trained native Australian servant; in
+every other respect she was the simple unadulterated heathen Polynesian.
+She recognized in Muriel a white lady of the English sort, and treated
+her within the hut as white ladies were invariably treated in Queensland;
+but she considered that at Boupari one must do as Boupari does, and it
+never for a moment occurred to her simple mind to doubt the omnipotence
+of Tu-Kila-Kila in his island realm any more than she had doubted the
+omnipotence of the white man and his local religion in their proper place
+(as she thought it) in Queensland.
+
+An hour or two passed before Felix returned. At last he arrived, very
+white and pale, and Muriel saw at once by the mere look on his face that
+he had learned some terrible news at the Frenchman's.
+
+"Well, you found him?" she cried, taking his hand in hers, but hardly
+daring to ask the fatal question at once.
+
+And Felix, sitting down, as pale as a ghost, answered faintly, "Yes,
+Muriel, I found him!"
+
+"And he told you everything?"
+
+"Everything he knew, my poor child. Oh, Muriel, Muriel, don't ask me what
+it is. It's too terrible to tell you."
+
+Muriel clasped her white hands together, held bloodless downward, and
+looked at him fixedly. "Mali, you can go," she said. And the Shadow,
+rising up with childish confidence, glided from the hut, and left them,
+for the first time since their arrival on the central island, alone
+together.
+
+Muriel looked at him once more with the same deadly fixed look. "With
+you, Felix," she said, slowly, "I can bear or dare anything. I feel as if
+the bitterness of death were past long ago. I know it must come. I only
+want to be quite sure when.... And besides, you must remember, I have
+your promise."
+
+Felix clasped his own hands despondently in return, and gazed across at
+her from his seat a few feet off in unspeakable misery.
+
+"Muriel," he cried, "I couldn't. I haven't the heart. I daren't."
+
+Muriel rose and laid her hand solemnly on his arm. "You will!" she
+answered, boldly. "You can! You must! I know I can trust your promise for
+that. This moment, if you like. I would not shrink. But you will never
+let me fall alive into the hands of those wretches. Felix, from _your_
+hand I could stand anything. I'm not afraid to die. I love you too
+dearly."
+
+Felix held her white little wrist in his grasp and sobbed like a child.
+Her very bravery and confidence seemed to unman him, utterly.
+
+She looked at him once more. "When?" she asked, quietly, but with lips as
+pale as death.
+
+"In about four months from now," Felix answered, endeavoring to be calm.
+
+"And they will kill us both?"
+
+"Yes, both. I think so."
+
+"Together?"
+
+"Together."
+
+Muriel drew a deep sigh.
+
+"Will you know the day beforehand?" she asked.
+
+"Yes. The Frenchman told me it. He has known others killed in the
+self-same fashion."
+
+"Then, Felix---the night before it comes, you will promise me, will you?"
+
+"Muriel, Muriel, I could never dare to kill you."
+
+She laid her hand soothingly on his. She stroked him gently. "You are
+a man," she said, looking up into his eyes with confidence. "I trust
+you. I believe in you. I know you will never let these savages hurt
+me.... Felix, in spite of everything, I've been happier since we came to
+this island together than ever I have been in my life before. I've had my
+wish. I didn't want to miss in life the one thing that life has best
+worth giving. I haven't missed it now. I know I haven't; for I love you,
+and you love me. After that, I can die, and die gladly. If I die with
+_you_, that's all I ask. These seven or eight terrible weeks have made me
+feel somehow unnaturally calm. When I came here first I lived all the
+time in an agony of terror. I've got over the agony of terror now. I'm
+quite resigned and happy. All I ask is to be saved--by you--from the
+cruel hands of these hateful cannibals."
+
+Felix raised her white hand just once to his lips. It was the first time
+he had ever ventured to kiss her. He kissed it fervently. She let it drop
+as if dead by her side.
+
+"Now tell me all that happened," she said. "I'm strong enough to bear it.
+I feel such a woman now--so wise and calm. These few weeks have made me
+grow from a girl into a woman all at once. There's nothing I daren't
+hear, if you'll tell me it, Felix."
+
+Felix took up her hand again and held it in his, as he narrated the whole
+story of his visit to the Frenchman. When Muriel had heard it, she said
+once more, slowly, "I don't think there's any hope in all these wild
+plans of playing off superstition against superstition. To my mind there
+are only two chances left for us now. One is to concoct with the
+Frenchman some means of getting away by canoe from the island--I'd rather
+trust the sea than the tender mercy of these dreadful people; the other
+is to keep a closer lookout than ever for the merest chance of a passing
+steamer."
+
+Felix drew a deep sigh. "I'm afraid neither's much use," he said. "If we
+tried to get away, dogged as we are, day and night, by our Shadows, the
+natives would follow us with their war-canoes in battle array and hack us
+to pieces; for Peyron says that, regarding us as gods, they think the
+rain would vanish from their island forever if once they allowed us to
+get away alive and carry the luck with us. And as to the steamers, we
+haven't seen a trace of one since we left the Australasian. Probably it
+was only by the purest accident that even she ever came so close in to
+Boupari."
+
+"At any rate," Muriel cried, still clasping his hand tight, and letting
+the tears now trickle slowly down her pale white cheeks, "we can talk it
+all over some day with M. Peyron."
+
+"We can talk it over to-day," Felix answered, "if it comes to that; for
+Peyron means to step round, he says, a little later in the afternoon, to
+pay his respects to the first white lady he has ever seen since he left
+New Caledonia."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+TU-KILA-KILA PLAYS A CARD.
+
+
+Before the Frenchman could carry out his plan, however, he was himself
+the recipient of the high honor of a visit from his superior god and
+chief, Tu-Kila-Kila.
+
+Every day and all day long, save on a few rare occasions when special
+duties absolved him, the custom and religion of the islanders prescribed
+that their supreme incarnate deity should keep watch and ward without
+cessation over the great spreading banyan-tree that overshadowed with
+its dark boughs his temple-palace. High god as he was held to be, and
+all-powerful within the limits of his own strict taboos, Tu-Kila-Kila was
+yet as rigidly bound within those iron laws of custom and religious usage
+as the meanest and poorest of his subject worshippers. From sunrise to
+sunset, and far on into the night, the Pillar of Heaven was compelled to
+prowl up and down, with spear in hand and tomahawk at side, as Felix had
+so often seen him, before the sacred trunk, of which he appeared to be in
+some mysterious way the appointed guardian. His very power, it seemed,
+was intimately bound up with the performance of that ceaseless and
+irksome duty; he was a god in whose hands the lives of his people were
+but as dust in the balance; but he remained so only on the onerous
+condition of pacing to and fro, like a sentry, forever before the still
+more holy and venerable object he was chosen to protect from attack or
+injury. Had he failed in his task, had he slumbered at his post, all god
+though he might be, his people themselves would have risen in a body and
+torn him limb from limb before their ancestral fetich as a sacrilegious
+pretender.
+
+At certain times and seasons, however, as for example at all high
+feasts and festivals, Tu-Kila-Kila had respite for a while from this
+constant treadmill of mechanical divinity. Whenever the moon was at the
+half-quarter, or the planets were in lucky conjunctions, or a red glow
+lit up the sky by night, or the sacred sacrificial fires of human flesh
+were lighted, then Tu-Kila-Kila could lay aside his tomahawk and spear,
+and become for a while as the islanders, his fellows, were. At other
+times, too, when he went out in state to visit the lesser deities of his
+court, the King of Fire and the King of Water made a solemn taboo before
+He left his home, which protected the sacred tree from aggression during
+its guardian's absence. Then Tu-Kila-Kila, shaded by his divine umbrella,
+and preceded by the noise of the holy tom-toms, could go like a monarch
+over all parts of his realm, giving such orders as he pleased (within the
+limits of custom) to his inferior officers. It was in this way that he
+now paid his visit to M. Jules Peyron, King of the Birds. And he did so
+for what to him were amply sufficient reasons.
+
+It had not escaped Tu-Kila-Kila's keen eye, as he paced among the
+skeletons in his yard that morning, that Felix Thurstan, the King of the
+Rain, had taken his way openly toward the Frenchman's quarters. He felt
+pretty sure, therefore, that Felix had by this time learned another white
+man was living on the island; and he thought it an ominous fact that the
+new-comer should make his way toward his fellow-European's hut on the
+very first morning when the law of taboo rendered such a visit possible.
+The savage is always by nature suspicious; and Tu-Kila-Kila had grounds
+enough of his own for suspicion in this particular instance. The two
+white men were surely brewing mischief together for the Lord of Heaven
+and Earth, the Illuminer of the Glowing Light of the Sun; he must make
+haste and see what plan they were concocting against the sacred tree and
+the person of its representative, the King of Plants and of the Host of
+Heaven.
+
+But it isn't so easy to make haste when all your movements are impeded
+and hampered by endless taboos and a minutely annoying ritual. Before
+Tu-Kila-Kila could get himself under way, sacred umbrella, tom-toms, and
+all, it was necessary for the King of Fire and the King of Water to make
+taboo on an elaborate scale with their respective elements; and so by the
+time the high god had reached M. Jules Peyron's garden, Felix Thurstan
+had already some time since returned to Muriel's hut and his own
+quarters.
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila approached the King of the Birds, amid loud clapping of
+hands, with considerable haughtiness. To say the truth, there was no love
+lost between the cannibal god and his European subordinate. The savage,
+puffed up as he was in his own conceit, had nevertheless always an
+uncomfortable sense that, in his heart of hearts, the impassive Frenchman
+had but a low opinion of him. So he invariably tried to make up by the
+solemnity of his manner and the loudness of his assertions for any
+trifling scepticism that might possibly exist in the mind of his
+follower.
+
+On this particular occasion, as he reached the Frenchman's plot,
+Tu-Kila-Kila stepped forward across the white taboo-line with a
+suspicious and peering eye. "The King of the Rain has been here," he
+said, in a pompous tone, as the Frenchman rose and saluted him
+ceremoniously. "Tu-Kila-Kila's eyes are sharp. They never sleep. The sun
+is his sight. He beholds all things. You cannot hide aught in heaven or
+earth from the knowledge of him that dwells in heaven. I look down upon
+land and sea, and spy out all that takes place or is planned in them. I
+am very holy and very cruel. I see all earth and I drink the blood of all
+men. The King of the Rain has come this morning to visit the King of the
+Birds. Where is he now? What has your divinity done with him?"
+
+He spoke from under the sheltering cover of his veiled umbrella. The
+Frenchman looked back at him with as little love as Tu-Kila-Kila himself
+would have displayed had his face been visible. "Yes, you are a very
+great god," he answered, in the conventional tone of Polynesian
+adulation, with just a faint under-current of irony running through his
+accent as he spoke. "You say the truth. You do, indeed, know all things.
+What need for me, then, to tell you, whose eye is the sun, that my
+brother, the King of the Rain, has been here and gone again? You know it
+yourself. Your eye has looked upon it. My brother was indeed with me. He
+consulted me as to the showers I should need from his clouds for the
+birds, my subjects."
+
+"And where is he gone now?" Tu-Kila-Kila asked, without attempting to
+conceal the displeasure in his tone, for he more than half suspected the
+Frenchman of a sacrilegious and monstrous design of chaffing him.
+
+The King of the Birds bowed low once more. "Tu-Kila-Kila's glance is
+keener than my hawk's," he answered, with the accustomed Polynesian
+imagery. "He sees over the land with a glance, like my parrots, and over
+the sea with sharp sight, like my albatrosses. He knows where my brother,
+the King of the Rain, has gone. For me, who am the least among all the
+gods, I sit here on my perch and blink like a crow. I do not know these
+things. They are too high and too deep for me."
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila did not like the turn the conversation was taking. Before
+his own attendants such hints, indeed, were almost dangerous. Once let
+the savage begin to doubt, and the Moral Order goes with a crash
+immediately. Besides, he must know what these white men had been talking
+about. "Fire and Water," he said in a loud voice, turning round to his
+two chief satellites, "go far down the path, and beat the tom-toms. Fence
+off with flood and flame the airy height where the King of the Birds
+lives; fence it off from all profane intrusion. I wish to confer in
+secret with this god, my brother. When we gods talk together, it is not
+well that others should hear our converse. Make a great Taboo. I,
+Tu-Kila-Kila, myself have said it."
+
+Fire and Water, bowing low, backed down the path, beating tom-toms as
+they went, and left the savage and the Frenchman alone together.
+
+As soon as they were gone, Tu-Kila-Kila laid aside his umbrella with a
+positive sigh of relief. Now his fellow-countrymen were well out of the
+way, his manner altered in a trice, as if by magic. Barbarian as he was,
+he was quite astute enough to guess that Europeans cared nothing in their
+hearts for all his mumbo-jumbo. He believed in it himself, but they did
+not, and their very unbelief made him respect and fear them.
+
+"Now that we two are alone," he said, glancing carelessly around him, "we
+two who are gods, and know the world well--we two who see everything in
+heaven or earth--there is no need for concealment--we may talk as plainly
+as we will with one another. Come, tell me the truth! The new white man
+has seen you?"
+
+"He has seen me, yes, certainly," the Frenchman admitted, taking a keen
+look deep into the savage's cunning eyes.
+
+"Does he speak your language--the language of birds?" Tu-Kila-Kila asked
+once more, with insinuating cunning. "I have heard that the sailing gods
+are of many languages. Are you and he of one speech or two? Aliens, or
+countrymen?"
+
+"He speaks my language as he speaks Polynesian," the Frenchman replied,
+keeping his eye firmly fixed on his doubtful guest, "but it is not his
+own. He has a tongue apart--the tongue of an island not far from my
+country, which we call England."
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila drew nearer, and dropped his voice to a confidential
+whisper. "Has he seen the Soul of all dead parrots?" he asked, with keen
+interest in his voice. "The parrot that knows Tu-Kila-Kila's secret? That
+one over there--the old, the very sacred one?"
+
+M. Peyron gazed round his aviary carelessly. "Oh, that one," he answered,
+with a casual glance at Methuselah, as though one parrot or another were
+much the same to him. "Yes, I think he saw it. I pointed it out to him,
+in fact, as the oldest and strangest of all my subjects."
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila's countenance fell. "Did he hear it speak?" he asked, in
+evident alarm. "Did it tell him the story of Tu-Kila-Kila's secret?"
+
+"No, it didn't speak," the Frenchman answered. "It seldom does now. It is
+very old. And if it did, I don't suppose the King of the Rain would have
+understood one word of it. Look here, great god, allay your fears. You're
+a terrible coward. I expect the real fact about the parrot is this: it is
+the last of its own race; it speaks the language of some tribe of men who
+once inhabited these islands, but are now extinct. No human being at
+present alive, most probably, knows one word of that forgotten language."
+
+"You think not?" Tu-Kila-Kila asked, a little relieved.
+
+"I am the King of the Birds, and I know the voices of my subjects by
+heart; I assure you it is as I say," M. Peyron answered, drawing himself
+up solemnly.
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila looked askance, with something very closely approaching a
+wink in his left eye. "We two are both gods," he said, with a tinge of
+irony in his tone. "We know what that means.... _I_ do not feel so
+certain."
+
+He stood close by the parrot with itching fingers. "It is very,
+very old," he went on to himself, musingly. "It can't live long. And
+then--none but Boupari men will know the secret."
+
+As he spoke he darted a strange glance of hatred toward the unconscious
+bird, the innocent repository, as he firmly believed, of the secret
+that doomed him. The Frenchman had turned his back for a moment now,
+to fetch out a stool. Tu-Kila-Kila, casting a quick, suspicious eye to
+the right and left, took a step nearer. The parrot sat mumbling on its
+perch, inarticulately, putting its head on one side, and blinking its
+half-blinded eyes in the bright tropical sunshine. Tu-Kila-Kila paused
+irresolute before its face for a second. If he only dared--one wring of
+the neck--one pinch of his finger and thumb almost!--and all would be
+over. But he dared not! he dared not! Your savage is overawed by the
+blind terrors of taboo. His predecessor, some elder Tu-Kila-Kila of
+forgotten days, had laid a great charm upon that parrot's life. Whoever
+hurt it was to die an awful death of unspeakable torment. The King of the
+Birds had special charge to guard it. If even the Cannibal God himself
+wrought it harm, who could tell what judgment might fall upon him
+forthwith, what terrible vengeance the dead Tu-Kila-Kila might wreak
+upon him in his ghostly anger? And that dead Tu-Kila-Kila was his own
+Soul! His own Soul might flare up within him in some mystic way and burn
+him to ashes.
+
+And yet--suppose this hateful new-comer, the King of the Rain, whom
+he had himself made Korong on purpose to get rid of him the more easily,
+and so had elevated into his own worst potential enemy--suppose this
+new-comer, the King of the Rain, were by chance to speak that other
+dialect of the bird-language, which the King of the Birds himself knew
+not, but which the parrot had learned from his old master, the ancient
+Tu-Kila-Kila of other days, and in which the bird still recited the
+secret of the sacred tree and the Death of the Great God--ah, then he
+might still have to fight hard for his divinity. He gazed angrily at
+the bird. Methuselah blinked, and put his head on one side, and looked
+craftily askance at him. Tu-Kila-Kila hated it, that insolent creature.
+Was he not a god, and should he be thus bearded in his own island by a
+mere Soul of dead birds, a poor, wretched parrot? But the curse! What
+might not that portend? Ah, well, he would risk it. Glancing around him
+once more to the right and left, to make sure that nobody was looking,
+the cunning savage put forth his hand stealthily, and tried with a
+friendly caress to seize the parrot.
+
+In a moment, before he had time to know what was happening,
+Methuselah--sleepy old dotard as he seemed--had woke up at once to a
+sense of danger. Turning suddenly round upon the sleek, caressing hand,
+he darted his beak with a vicious peck at his assailant, and bit the
+divine finger of the Pillar of Heaven as carelessly as he would have
+bitten any child on Boupari. Tu-Kila-Kila, thunder-struck, drew back his
+arm with a start of surprise and a loud cry of pain. The bird had wounded
+him. He shook his hand and stamped. Blood was dropping on the ground from
+the man-god's finger. He hardly knew what strange evil this omen of harm
+might portend for the world. The Soul of all dead parrots had carried out
+the curse, and had drawn red drops from the sacred veins of Tu-Kila-Kila.
+
+One must be a savage one's self, and superstitious at that, fully to
+understand the awful significance of this deadly occurrence. To draw
+blood from a god, and, above all, to let that blood fall upon the dust of
+the ground, is the very worst luck--too awful for the human mind to
+contemplate.
+
+At the same moment, the parrot, awakened by the unexpected attack, threw
+back its head on its perch, and, laughing loud and long to itself in its
+own harsh way, began to pour forth a whole volley of oaths in a guttural
+language, of which neither Tu-Kila-Kila nor the Frenchman understood one
+syllable. And at the same moment, too, M. Peyron himself, recalled from
+the door of his hut by Tu-Kila-Kila's sharp cry of pain and by his liege
+subject's voluble flow of loud speech and laughter, ran up all agog to
+know what was the matter.
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila, with an effort, tried to hide in his robe his wounded
+finger. But the Frenchman caught at the meaning of the whole scene at
+once, and interposed himself hastily between the parrot and its
+assailant. "_Hé!_ my Methuselah," he cried, in French, stroking the
+exultant bird with his hand, and smoothing its ruffled feathers, "did he
+try to choke you, then? Did he try to get over you? That was a brave
+bird! You did well, _mon ami_, to bite him!... No, no, Life of the World,
+and Measurer of the Sun's Course," he went on, in Polynesian, "you shall
+not go near him. Keep your distance, I beg of you. You may be a high
+god--though you were a scurvy wretch enough, don't you recollect, when
+you were only Lavita, the son of Sami--but I know your tricks. Hands off
+from my birds, say I. A curse is on the head of the Soul of dead parrots.
+You tried to hurt him, and see how the curse has worked itself out! The
+blood of the great god, the Pillar of Heaven, has stained the gray dust
+of the island of Boupari."
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila stood sucking his finger, and looking the very picture of
+the most savage sheepishness.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+DOMESTIC BLISS.
+
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila went home that day in a very bad humor. The portent of the
+bitten finger had seriously disturbed him. For, strange as it sounds to
+us, he really believed himself in his own divinity; and the bare thought
+that the holy soil of earth should be dabbled and wet with the blood of a
+god gave him no little uneasiness in his own mind on his way homeward.
+Besides, what would his people think of it if they found it out? At all
+hazards almost, he must strive to conceal this episode of the bite from
+the men of Boupari. A god who gets wounded, and, worse still, gets
+wounded in the very act of trying to break a great taboo laid on by
+himself in a previous incarnation--such a god undoubtedly lays himself
+open to the gravest misapprehensions on the part of his worshippers.
+Indeed, it was not even certain whether his people, if they knew, would
+any longer regard him as a god at all. The devotion of savages is
+profound, but it is far from personal. When deities pass so readily from
+one body to another, you must always keep a sharp lookout lest the great
+spirit should at any minute have deserted his earthly tabernacle, and
+have taken up his abode in a fresh representative. Honor the gods by all
+means; but make sure at the same time what particular house they are just
+then inhabiting.
+
+It was the hour of siesta in Tu-Kila-Kila's tent. For a short space in
+the middle of the day, during the heat of the sun, while Fire and Water,
+with their embers and their calabash, sat on guard in a porch by the
+bamboo gate, Tu-Kila-Kila, Pillar of Heaven and Threshold of Earth, had
+respite for a while from his daily task of guarding the sacred banyan,
+and could take his ease after his meal in his own quarters. While that
+precious hour of taboo lasted, no wandering dragon or spirit of the air
+could hurt the holy tree, and no human assailant dare touch or approach
+it. Even the disease-making gods, who walk in the pestilence, could not
+blight or wither it. At all other times Tu-Kila-Kila mounted guard over
+his tree with a jealousy that fairly astonished Felix Thurstan's soul;
+for Felix Thurstan only dimly understood as yet how implicitly
+Tu-Kila-Kila's own life and office were bound up with the inviolability
+of the banyan he protected.
+
+Within the hut, during that playtime of siesta, while the lizards (who
+are also gods) ran up and down the wall, and puffed their orange throats,
+Tu-Kila-Kila lounged at his ease that afternoon, with one of his many
+wives--a tall and beautiful Polynesian woman, lithe and supple, as is the
+wont of her race, and as exquisitely formed in every limb and feature as
+a sculptured Greek goddess. A graceful wreath of crimson hibiscus adorned
+her shapely head, round which her long and glossy black hair was coiled
+in great rings with artistic profusion. A festoon of blue flowers and
+dark-red dracæna leaves hung like a chaplet over her olive-brown neck and
+swelling bust. One breadth of native cloth did duty for an apron or
+girdle round her waist and hips. All else was naked. Her plump brown arms
+were set off by the green and crimson of the flowers that decked her.
+Tu-Kila-Kila glanced at his slave with approving eyes. He always liked
+Ula; she pleased him the best of all his women. And she knew his ways,
+too: she never contradicted him.
+
+Among savages, guile is woman's best protection. The wife who knows when
+to give way with hypocritical obedience, and when to coax or wheedle her
+yielding lord, runs the best chance in the end for her life. Her model is
+not the oak, but the willow. She must be able to watch for the rising
+signs of ill-humor in her master's mind, and guard against them
+carefully. If she is wise, she keeps out of her husband's way when his
+anger is aroused, but soothes and flatters him to the top of his bent
+when his temper is just slightly or momentarily ruffled.
+
+"The Lord of Heaven and Earth is ill at ease," Ula murmured,
+insinuatingly, as Tu-Kila-Kila winced once with the pain of his swollen
+finger. "What has happened today to the Increaser of Bread-Fruit? My lord
+is sad. His eye is downcast. Who has crossed my master's will? Who
+has dared to anger him?"
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila kept the wounded hand wrapped up in a soft leaf, like a
+woolly mullein. All the way home he had been obliged to conceal it, and
+disguise the pain he felt, lest Fire and Water should discover his
+secret. For he dared not let his people know that the Soul of all dead
+parrots had bitten his finger, and drawn blood from the sacred veins of
+the man-god. But he almost hesitated now whether or not he should confide
+in Ula. A god may surely trust his own wedded wives. And yet--such need
+to be careful--women are so treacherous! He suspected Ula sometimes of
+being a great deal too fond of that young man Toko, who used to be one of
+the temple attendants, and whom he had given as Shadow accordingly to the
+King of the Rain, so as to get rid of him altogether from among the crowd
+of his followers. So he kept his own counsel for the moment, and
+disguised his misfortune. "I have been to see the King of the Birds this
+morning," he said, in a grumbling voice; "and I do not like him. That
+God is too insolent. For my part I hate these strangers, one and all.
+They have no respect for Tu-Kila-Kila like the men of Boupari. They are
+as bad as atheists. They fear not the gods, and the customs of our
+fathers are not in them."
+
+Ula crept nearer, with one lithe round arm laid caressingly close to her
+master's neck. "Then why do you make them Korong?" she asked, with
+feminine curiosity, like some wife who seeks to worm out of her husband
+the secret of freemasonry. "Why do you not cook them and eat them at
+once, as soon as they arrive? They are very good food--so white and fine.
+That last new-comer, now--the Queen of the Clouds--why not eat her? She
+is plump and tender."
+
+"I like her," Tu-Kila-Kila responded, in a gloating tone. "I like her
+every way. I would have brought her here to my temple and admitted her at
+once to be one of Tu-Kila-Kila's wives--only that Fire and Water would
+not have permitted me. They have too many taboos, those awkward gods. I
+do not love them. But I make my strangers Korong for a very wise reason.
+You women are fools; you understand nothing; you do not know the
+mysteries. These things are a great deal too high and too deep for you.
+You could not comprehend them. But men know well why. They are wise; they
+have been initiated. Much more, then, do I, who am the very high god--who
+eat human flesh and drink blood like water--who cause the sun to shine
+and the fruits to grow--without whom the day in heaven would fade and die
+out, and the foundations of the earth would be shaken like a plantain
+leaf."
+
+Ula laid her soft brown hand soothingly on the great god's arm just above
+the elbow. "Tell me," she said, leaning forward toward him, and looking
+deep into his eyes with those great speaking gray orbs of hers; "tell
+me, O Sustainer of the Equipoise of Heaven; I know you are great; I know
+you are mighty; I know you are holy and wise and cruel; but why must you
+let these sailing gods who come from unknown lands beyond the place
+where the sun rises or sets--why must you let them so trouble and annoy
+you? Why do you not at once eat them up and be done with them? Is not
+their flesh sweet? Is not their blood red? Are they not a dainty well fit
+for the banquet of Tu-Kila-Kila?"
+
+The savage looked at her for a moment and hesitated. A very beautiful
+woman this Ula, certainly. Not one of all his wives had larger brown
+limbs, or whiter teeth, or a deeper respect for his divine nature. He had
+almost a mind--it was only Ula? Why not break the silence enjoined upon
+gods toward women, and explain this matter to her? Not the great secret
+itself, of course--the secret on which hung the Death and Transmigration
+of Tu-Kila-Kila--oh, no; not that one. The savage was far too cunning
+in his generation to intrust that final terrible Taboo to the ears of a
+woman. But the reason why he made all strangers Korong. A woman might
+surely be trusted with that--especially Ula. She was so very handsome.
+And she was always so respectful to him.
+
+"Well, the fact of it is," he answered, laying his hand on her neck, that
+plump brown neck of hers, under the garland of dracæna leaves, and
+stroking it voluptuously, "the sailing gods who happen upon this island
+from time to time are made Korong--but hush! it is taboo." He gazed
+around the hut suspiciously. "Are all the others away?" he asked, in a
+frightened tone. "Fire and Water would denounce me to all my people if
+once they found I had told a taboo to a woman. And as for you, they would
+take you, because you knew it, and would pull your flesh from your bones
+with hot stone pincers!"
+
+Ula rose and looked about her at the door of the tent. She nodded thrice;
+then she glided back, serpentine, and threw herself gracefully, in a
+statuesque pose, on the native mat beside him. "Here, drink some more
+kava," she cried, holding a bowl to his lips, and wheedling him with her
+eyes. "Kava is good; it is fit for gods. It makes them royally drunk, as
+becomes great deities. The spirits of our ancestors dwell in the bowl;
+when you drink of the kava they mount by degrees into your heart and
+head. They inspire brave words. They give you thoughts of heaven. Drink,
+my master, drink. The Ruler of the Sun in Heaven is thirsty."
+
+She lay propped on one elbow, with her face close to his; and offered
+him, with one brown, irresistible hand, the intoxicating liquor.
+Tu-Kila-Kila took the bowl, and drank a second time, for he had drunk of
+it once with his dinner already. It was seldom he allowed himself the
+luxury of a second draught of that very stupefying native intoxicant, for
+he knew too well the danger of insecurely guarding his sacred tree; but
+on this particular occasion, as on so many others in the collective life
+of humanity, "the woman tempted him," and he acted as she told him. He
+drank it off deep. "Ha, ha! that is good!" he cried, smacking his lips.
+"That is a drink fit for a god. No woman can make kava like you, Ula." He
+toyed with her arms and neck lazily once more. "You are the queen of my
+wives," he went on, in a dreamy voice. "I like you so well, that, plump
+as you are, I really believe, Ula, I could never make up my mind to eat
+you."
+
+"My lord is very gracious," Ula made answer, in a soft, low tone,
+pretending to caress him. And for some minutes more she continued to make
+much of him in the fulsome strain of Polynesian flattery.
+
+At last the kava had clearly got into Tu-Kila-Kila's head. Then Ula bent
+forward once more and again attacked him. "Now I know you will tell me,"
+she said, coaxingly, "why you make them Korong. As long as I live, I will
+never speak or hint of it to anybody anywhere. And if I do--why, the
+remedy is near. I am your meat--take me and eat me."
+
+Even cannibals are human; and at the touch of her soft hand, Tu-Kila-Kila
+gave way slowly. "I made them Korong," he answered, in rather thick
+accents, "because it is less dangerous for me to make them so than to
+choose for the post from among our own islanders. Sooner or later, my day
+must come; but I can put it off best by making my enemies out of
+strangers who arrive upon our island, and not out of those of my own
+household. All Boupari men who have been initiated know the terrible
+secret--they know where lies the Death of Tu-Kila-Kila. The strangers who
+come to us from the sun or the sea do not know it; and therefore my life
+is safest with them. So I make them Korong whenever I can, to prolong my
+own days, and to guard my secret."
+
+"And the Death of Tu-Kila-Kila?" the woman whispered, very low, still
+soothing his arm with her hand and patting his cheek softly from time to
+time with a gentle, caressing motion. "Tell me where does that live? Who
+holds it in charge? Where is Tu-Kila-Kila's great spirit laid by in
+safety? I know it is in the tree; but where and in what part of it?"
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila drew back with a little cry of surprise. "You know it is in
+the tree!" he cried. "You know my soul is kept there! Why, Ula, who told
+you that? and you a woman! Bad medicine indeed! Some man has been
+blabbing what he learned in the mysteries. If this should reach the ears
+of the King of the Rain--" he paused mysteriously.
+
+"What? What?" Ula cried, seizing his hand in hers, and pressing it hard
+to her bosom in her anxiety and eagerness. "Tell me the secret! Tell me!"
+
+With a sudden sharp howl of darting pain, Tu-Kila-Kila withdrew his hand.
+She had squeezed the finger the parrot had bitten, and blood began once
+more to flow from it freely.
+
+A wild impulse of revenge came over the savage. He caught her by the
+neck with his other hand, pressed her throat hard, till she was black in
+the face, kicked her several times with ferocious rage, and then flung
+her away from him to the other side of the hut with a fierce and
+untranslatable native imprecation.
+
+Ula, shaken and hurt, darted away toward the door, with a face of abject
+terror. For every reason on earth she was intensely alarmed. Were it
+merely as a matter of purely earthly fear, she had ground enough for
+fright in having so roused the hasty anger of that powerful and
+implacable creature. He would kill her and eat her with far less
+compunction than an English farmer would kill and eat one of his own
+barnyard chickens. But besides that, it terrified her not a little in
+more mysterious ways to see the blood of a god falling upon the earth so
+freely. She knew not what awful results to herself and her race might
+follow from so terrible a desecration.
+
+But, to her utter astonishment, the great god himself, mad with rage as
+he was, seemed none the less almost as profoundly frightened and
+surprised as she herself was. "What did you do that for?" he cried, now
+sufficiently recovered for thought and speech, wringing his hand with
+pain, and then popping his finger hastily into his mouth to ease it. "You
+are a clumsy thing. And you want to destroy me, too, with your foolish
+clumsiness."
+
+He looked at her and scowled. He was very angry. But the savage woman is
+nothing if not quick-witted and politic. In a flash of intuition, Ula saw
+at once he was more frightened than hurt; he was afraid of the effect of
+this strange revelation upon his own reputation for supreme godship. With
+every mark and gesture of deprecatory servility the woman sidled back to
+his side like a whipped dog. For a second she looked down on the floor
+at the drops of blood; then, without one word of warning or one instant's
+hesitation, she bit her own finger hard till blood flowed from it freely.
+"I will show this to Fire and Water," she said, holding it up before his
+eyes all red and bleeding. "I will say you were angry with me and bit me
+for a punishment, as you often do. They will never find out it was the
+blood of a god. Have no fear for their eyes. Let me look at your finger."
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila, half appeased by her clever quickness, held his hand out
+sulkily, like a disobedient child. Ula examined it close. "A bite," she
+said, shortly. "A bite from a bird! a peck from a parrot."
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila jerked out a surly assent. "Yes, the Soul of all dead
+parrots," he answered, with an angry glare. "It bit me this morning at
+the King of the Birds'. A vicious brute. But no one else saw it."
+
+Ula put the finger up to her own mouth, and sucked the wound gently.
+Her medicine stanched it. Then she took a thin leaf of the paper
+mulberry, soft, cool, and soothing, and bound it round the place with a
+strip of the lace-like inner bark, as deftly as any hospital nurse in
+London would have done it. These savage women are capital hands in
+sickness. Tu-Kila-Kila sat and sulked meanwhile, like a disappointed
+child. When Ula had finished, she nodded her head and glided softly away.
+She knew her chance of learning the secret was gone for the moment, and
+she had too much of the guile of the savage woman to spoil her chances by
+loitering about unnecessarily while her lord was in his present
+ungracious humor.
+
+As she stole from the hut, Tu-Kila-Kila, looking ruefully at his wounded
+hand, and then at that light and supple retreating figure, muttered
+sulkily to himself, with a very bad grace, "the woman knows too much. She
+nearly wormed my secret out of me. She knows that Tu-Kila-Kila's life and
+soul are bound up in the tree. She knows that I bled, and that the parrot
+bit me. If she blabs, as women will do, mischief may come of it. I am a
+great god, a very great god--keen, bloodthirsty, cruel. And I like that
+woman. But it would be wiser and safer, perhaps, after all, to forego my
+affection and to make a great feast of her."
+
+And Ula, looking back with a smile and a nod, and holding up her own
+bitten and bleeding hand with a farewell shake, as if to remind her
+divine husband of her promise to show it to Fire and Water, murmured low
+to herself as she went, "He is a very great god; a very great god, no
+doubt; but I hate him, I hate him! He would eat me to-morrow if I didn't
+coax him and wheedle him and keep him in a good temper. You want to be
+sharp, indeed, to be the wife of a god. I got off to-day with the skin of
+my teeth. He might have turned and killed me. If only I could find out
+the Great Taboo, I would tell it to the stranger, the King of the Rain;
+and then, perhaps, Tu-Kila-Kila would die. And the stranger would become
+Tu-Kila-Kila in turn, and I would be one of his wives; and Toko, who is
+his Shadow, would return again to the service of Tu-Kila-Kila's temple."
+
+But Fire, as she passed, was saying to Water, "We are getting tired in
+Boupari of Lavita, the son of Sami. If the luck of the island is not to
+change, it is high time, I think, we should have a new Tu-Kila-Kila."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+COUNCIL OF WAR.
+
+
+That same afternoon Muriel had a visitor. M. Jules Peyron, formerly of
+the Collége de France, no longer a mere Polynesian god, but a French
+gentleman of the Boulevards in voice and manner, came to pay his
+respects, as in duty bound, to Mademoiselle Ellis. M. Peyron had
+performed his toilet under trying circumstances, to the best of his
+ability. The remnants of his European clothes, much patched and overhung
+with squares of native tappa cloth, were hidden as much as possible by a
+wide feather cloak, very savage in effect, but more seemly, at any rate,
+than the tattered garments in which Felix had first found him in his own
+garden parterre. M. Peyron, however, was fully aware of the defects of
+his costume, and profoundly apologetic. "It is with ten thousand regrets,
+mademoiselle," he said, many times over, bowing low and simpering, "that
+I venture to appear in a lady's _salon_--for, after all, wherever a
+European lady goes, there her _salon_ follows her--in such a _tenue_
+as that in which I am now compelled to present myself. _Mais que
+voulez-vous? Nous ne sommes pas à Paris_!" For to M. Peyron, as innocent
+in his way as Mali herself, the whole world divided itself into Paris and
+the Provinces.
+
+Nevertheless, it was touching to both the new-comers to see the
+Frenchman's delight at meeting once more with civilized beings. "Figure
+to yourself, mademoiselle," he said, with true French effusion--"figure
+to yourself the joy and surprise with which I, this morning, receive
+monsieur, your friend, at my humble cottage! For the first time after
+nine years on this hateful island, I see again a European face; I hear
+again the sound, the beautiful sound of that charming French language. My
+emotion, believe me, was too profound for words. When monsieur was gone,
+I retired to my hut, I sat down on the floor, I gave myself over to
+tears, tears of joy and gratitude, to think I should once more catch a
+glimpse of civilization! This afternoon, I ask myself, can I venture
+to go out and pay my respects, thus attired, in these rags, to a European
+lady? For a long time I doubt, I wonder, I hesitate. In my quality of
+Frenchman, I would have wished to call in civilized costume upon a
+civilized household. But what would you have? Necessity knows no law. I
+am compelled to envelope myself in my savage robe of office as a
+Polynesian god--a robe of office which, for the rest, is not without an
+interest of its own for the scientific ethnologist. It belongs to me
+especially as King of the Birds, and in it, in effect, is represented
+at least one feather of each kind or color from every part of the body
+of every species of bird that inhabits Boupari. I thus sum up, _pour
+ainsi dire_, in my official costume all the birds of the island, as
+Tu-Kila-Kila, the very high god, sums up, in his quaint and curious
+dress, the land and the sea, the trees and the stones, earth and air, and
+fire and water."
+
+Familiarity with danger begets at last a certain callous indifference.
+Muriel was surprised in her own mind to discover how easily they could
+chat with M. Peyron on such indifferent subjects, with that awful doom of
+an approaching death hanging over them so shortly. But the fact was,
+terrors of every kind had so encompassed them round since their arrival
+on the island that the mere additional certainty of a date and mode of
+execution was rather a relief to their minds than otherwise. It partook
+of the nature of a reprieve, not of a sentence. Besides, this meeting
+with another speaker of a European tongue seemed to them so full of
+promise and hope that they almost forgot the terrors of their threatened
+end in their discussion of possible schemes for escape to freedom. Even
+M. Peyron himself, who had spent nine long years of exile in the island,
+felt that the arrival of two new Europeans gave him some hope of
+effecting at last his own retreat from this unendurable position. His
+talk was all of passing steamers. If the Australasian had come near
+enough once to sight the island, he argued, then the homeward-bound
+vessel, _en route_ for Honolulu, must have begun to take a new course
+considerably to the eastward of the old navigable channel. If this were
+so, their obvious plan was to keep a watch, day and night, for another
+passing Australian liner, and whenever one hove in sight, to steal away
+to the shore, seize a stray canoe, overpower, if possible, their Shadows,
+or give them the slip, and make one bold stroke for freedom on the open
+ocean.
+
+None of them could conceal from their own minds, to be sure, the extreme
+difficulty of carrying out this programme. In the first place, it was a
+toss-up whether they ever sighted another steamer at all; for during the
+weeks they had already passed on the island, not a sign of one had
+appeared from any quarter. Then, again, even supposing a steamer ever
+hove in sight, what likelihood that they could make out for her in an
+open canoe in time to attract attention before she had passed the island?
+Tu-Kila-Kila would never willingly let them go; their Shadows would watch
+them with unceasing care; the whole body of natives would combine
+together to prevent their departure. If they ran away at all, they must
+run for their lives; as soon as the islanders discovered they were gone,
+every war-canoe in the place would be manned at once with bloodthirsty
+savages, who would follow on their track with relentless persistence.
+
+As for Muriel, less prepared for such dangerous adventures than the two
+men, she was rather inclined to attach a certain romantic importance (as
+a girl might do) to the story of the parrot and the possible disclosures
+which it could make if it could only communicate with them. The
+mysterious element in the history of that unique bird attracted her
+fancy. "The only one of its race now left alive," she said, with slow
+reflectiveness. "Like Dolly Pentreath, the last old woman who could speak
+Cornish! I wonder how long parrots ever live? Do you know at all,
+monsieur? You are the King of the Birds--you ought to be an authority on
+their habits and manners."
+
+The Frenchman smiled a gallant smile. "Unhappily, mademoiselle," he said,
+"though, as a medical student, I took up to a certain extent biological
+science in general at the Collége de France, I never paid any special or
+peculiar attention in Paris to birds in particular. But it is the
+universal opinion of the natives (if that counts for much) that parrots
+live to a very great age; and this one old parrot of mine, whom I call
+Methuselah on account of his advanced years, is considered by them all to
+be a perfect patriarch. In effect, when the oldest men now living on the
+island were little boys, they tell me that Methuselah was already a
+venerable and much-venerated parrot. He must certainly have outlived all
+the rest of his race by at least the best part of three-quarters of a
+century. For the islanders themselves not infrequently live, by unanimous
+consent, to be over a hundred."
+
+"I remember to have read somewhere," Felix said, turning it over in his
+mind, "that when Humboldt was travelling in the wilds of South America he
+found one very old parrot in an Indian village, which, the Indians
+assured him, spoke the language of an extinct tribe, incomprehensible
+then by any living person. If I recollect aright, Humboldt believed that
+particular bird must have lived to be nearly a hundred and fifty."
+
+"That is so, monsieur," the Frenchman answered. "I remember the case
+well, and have often recalled it. I recollect our professor mentioning it
+one day in the course of his lectures. And I have always mentally coupled
+that parrot of Humboldt's with my own old friend and subject, Methuselah.
+However, that only impresses upon one more fully the folly of hoping that
+we can learn anything worth knowing from him. I have heard him recite his
+story many times over, though now he repeats it less frequently than he
+used formerly to do; and I feel convinced it is couched in some unknown
+and, no doubt, forgotten language. It is a much more guttural and
+unpleasant tongue than any of the soft dialects now spoken in Polynesia.
+It belonged, I am convinced, to that yet earlier and more savage race
+which the Polynesians must have displaced; and as such it is now, I feel
+certain, practically irrecoverable."
+
+"If they were more savage than the Polynesians," Muriel said, with a
+profound sigh, "I'm sorry for anybody who fell into their clutches."
+
+"But what would not many philologists at home in England give," Felix
+murmured, philosophically, "for a transcript of the words that parrot can
+speak--perhaps a last relic of the very earliest and most primitive form
+of human language!"
+
+At the very moment when these things were passing under the wattled roof
+of Muriel's hut, it happened that on the taboo-space outside, Toko, the
+Shadow, stood talking for a moment with Ula, the fourteenth wife of the
+great Tu-Kila-Kila.
+
+"I never see you now, Toko," the beautiful Polynesian said, leaning
+almost across the white line of coral-sand which she dared not
+transgress. "Times are dull at the temple since you came to be Shadow to
+the white-faced stranger."
+
+"It was for that that Tu-Kila-Kila sent me here," the Shadow answered,
+with profound conviction. "He is jealous, the great god. He is bad. He is
+cruel. He wanted to get rid of me. So he sent me away to the King of the
+Rain that I might not see you."
+
+Ula pouted, and held up her wounded finger before his eyes
+coquettishly. "See what he did to me," she said, with a mute appeal
+for sympathy--though in that particular matter the truth was not in
+her. "Your god was angry with me to-day because I hurt his hand, and
+he clutched me by the throat, and almost choked me. He has a bad heart.
+See how he bit me and drew blood. Some of these days, I believe, he will
+kill me and eat me."
+
+The Shadow glanced around him suspiciously with an uneasy air. Then he
+whispered low, in a voice half grudge, half terror, "If he does, he is a
+great god--he can search all the world--I fear him much, but Toko's heart
+is warm. Let Tu-Kila-Kila look out for vengeance."
+
+The woman glanced across at him open-eyed, with her enticing look. "If
+the King of the Rain, who is Korong, knew all the secret," she murmured,
+slowly, "he would soon be Tu-Kila-Kila himself; and you and I could then
+meet together freely."
+
+The Shadow started. It was a terrible suggestion. "You mean to say--" he
+cried; then fear overcame him, and, crouching down where he sat, he gazed
+around him, terrified. Who could say that the wind would not report his
+words to Tu-Kila-Kila?
+
+Ula laughed at his fears. "Pooh," she answered, smiling. "You are a man;
+and yet you are afraid of a little taboo. I am a woman; and yet if I knew
+the secret as you do, I would break taboo as easily as I would break an
+egg-shell. I would tell the white-faced stranger all--if only it would
+bring you and me together forever."
+
+"It is a great risk, a very great risk," the Shadow answered, trembling.
+"Tu-Kila-Kila is a mighty god. He may be listening this moment, and may
+pinch us to death by his spirits for our words, or burn us to ashes with
+a flash of his anger."
+
+The woman smiled an incredulous smile. "If you had lived as near
+Tu-Kila-Kila as I have," she answered, boldly, "you would think as
+little, perhaps, of his divinity as I do."
+
+For even in Polynesia, superstitious as it is, no hero is a god to his
+wives or his valets.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+METHUSELAH GIVES SIGN.
+
+
+All the hopes of the three Europeans were concentrated now on the bare
+off-chance of a passing steamer. M. Peyron in particular was fully
+convinced that, if the Australasian had found the inner channel
+practicable, other ships in future would follow her example. With this
+idea firmly fixed in his head, he arranged with Felix that one or other
+of them should keep watch alternately by night as far as possible; and he
+also undertook that a canoe should constantly be in readiness to carry
+them away to the supposititious ship, if occasion arose for it. Muriel
+took counsel with Mali on the question of rousing the Frenchman if a
+steamer appeared, and they were the first to sight it; and Mali, in whom
+renewed intercourse with white people had restored to some extent the
+civilized Queensland attitude of mind, readily enough promised to assist
+in their scheme, provided she was herself taken with them, and so
+relieved from the terrible vengeance which would otherwise overtake her.
+"If Boupari man catch me," she said, in her simple, graphic, Polynesian
+way, "Boupari man kill me, and lay me in leaves, and cook me very nice,
+and make great feast of me, like him do with Jani." From that untimely
+end both Felix and Muriel promised faithfully, as far as in them lay, to
+protect her.
+
+To communicate with M. Peyron by daytime, without arousing the
+ever-wakeful suspicion of the natives, Felix hit upon an excellent plan.
+He burnished his metal matchbox to the very highest polish it was capable
+of taking, and then heliographed by means of sun-flashes on the Morse
+code. He had learned the code in Fiji in the course of his official
+duties; and he taught the Frenchman now readily enough how to read and
+reply with the other half of the box, torn off for the purpose.
+
+It was three or four days, however, before the two English wanderers
+ventured to return M. Peyron's visit. They didn't wish to attract too
+greatly the attention of the islanders. Gradually, as their stay on the
+island went on, they learned the truth that Tu-Kila-Kila's eyes, as he
+himself had boasted, were literally everywhere. For he had spies of his
+own, told off in every direction, who dogged the steps of his victims
+unseen. Sometimes, as Felix and Muriel walked unsuspecting through the
+jungle paths, closely followed by their Shadows, a stealthy brown figure,
+crouched low to the ground, would cross the road for a moment behind
+them, and disappear again noiselessly into the dense mass of underbrush.
+Then Mali or Toko, turning round, all hushed, with a terrified look,
+would murmur low to themselves, or to one another, "There goes one of
+the Eyes of Tu-Kila-Kila!" It was only by slow degrees that this system
+of espionage grew clear to the strangers; but as soon as they had learned
+its reality and ubiquity, they felt at once how undesirable it would be
+for them to excite the terrible man-god's jealousy and suspicion by being
+observed too often in close personal intercourse with their fellow-exile
+and victim, the Frenchman. It was this that made them have recourse to
+the device of the heliograph.
+
+So three or four days passed before Muriel dared to approach M. Peyron's
+cottage. When she did at last go there with Felix, it was in the early
+morning, before the fierce tropical sun, that beat full on the island,
+had begun to exert its midday force and power. The path that led there
+lay through the thick and tangled mass of brushwood which covered the
+greater part of the island with its dense vegetation; it was overhung by
+huge tree-ferns and broad-leaved Southern bushes, and abutted at last on
+the little wind-swept knoll where the King of the Birds had his
+appropriate dwelling-place. The Frenchman received them with studied
+Parisian hospitality. He had decorated his arbor with fresh flowers for
+the occasion, and bright tropical fruits, with their own green leaves,
+did duty for the coffee or the absinthe of his fatherland on his homemade
+rustic table. Yet in spite of all the rudeness of the physical
+surroundings, they felt themselves at home again with this one exiled
+European; the faint flavor of civilization pervaded and permeated the
+Frenchman's hut after the unmixed savagery to which they had now been so
+long accustomed.
+
+Muriel's curiosity, however, centred most about the mysterious old
+parrot, of whose strange legend so much had been said to her. After they
+had sat for a little under the shade of the spreading banyan, to cool
+down from their walk--for it was an oppressive morning--M. Peyron led her
+round to his aviary at the back of the hut, and introduced her, by their
+native names, to all his subjects. "I am responsible for their lives," he
+said, gravely, "for their welfare, for their happiness. If I were to let
+one of them grow old without a successor in the field to follow him up
+and receive his soul--as in the case of my friend Methuselah here, who
+was so neglected by my predecessors--the whole species would die out for
+want of a spirit, and my own life would atone for that of my people.
+There you have the central principle of the theology of Boupari. Every
+race, every element, every power of nature, is summed up for them in some
+particular person or thing; and on the life of that person or thing
+depends, as they believe, the entire health of the species, the sequence
+of events, the whole order and succession of natural phenomena."
+
+Felix approached the mysterious and venerable bird with somewhat
+incautious fingers. "It looks very old," he said, trying to stroke its
+head and neck with a friendly gesture. "You do well, indeed, in calling
+it Methuselah."
+
+As he spoke, the bird, alarmed at the vague consciousness of a hand and
+voice which it did not recognize and mindful of Tu-Kila-Kila's recent
+attack, made a vicious peck at the fingers outstretched to caress it.
+"Take care!" the Frenchman cried, in a warning voice. "The patriarch's
+temper is no longer what it was sixty or seventy years ago. He grows old
+and peevish. His humor is soured. He will sing no longer the lively
+little scraps of Offenbach I have taught him. He does nothing but sit
+still and mumble now in his own forgotten language. And he's dreadfully
+cross--so crabbed--_mon Dieu_, what a character! Why, the other day, as I
+told you, he bit Tu-Kila-Kila himself, the high god of the island, with a
+good hard peck, when that savage tried to touch him; you'd have laughed
+to see his godship sent off bleeding to his hut with a wounded finger! I
+will confess I was by no means sorry at the sight myself. I do not love
+that god, nor he me; and I was glad when Methuselah, on whom he is afraid
+to revenge himself openly, gave him a nice smart bite for trying to
+interfere with him."
+
+"He's very snappish, to be sure," Felix said, with a smile, trying once
+more to push forward one hand to stroke the bird cautiously. But
+Methuselah resented all such unauthorized intrusions. He was growing too
+old to put up with strangers. He made a second vicious attempt to peck at
+the hand held out to soothe him, and screamed, as he did so, in the usual
+discordant and unpleasant voice of an angry or frightened parrot.
+
+"Why, Felix," Muriel put in, taking him by the arm with a girlish
+gesture--for even the terrors by which they were surrounded hadn't wholly
+succeeded in killing out the woman within her--"how clumsy you are! You
+don't understand one bit how to manage parrots. I had a parrot of my own
+at my aunt's in Australia, and I know their ways and all about them. Just
+let me try him." She held out her soft white hand toward the sulky bird
+with a fearless, caressing gesture. "Pretty Poll, pretty Poll!" she said,
+in English, in the conventional tone of address to their kind. "Did the
+naughty man go and frighten her then? Was she afraid of his hand? Did
+Polly want a lump of sugar?"
+
+On a sudden the bird opened its eyes quickly with an awakened air, and
+looked her back in the face, half blindly, half quizzingly. It preened
+its wings for a second, and crooned with pleasure. Then it put forward
+its neck, with its head on one side, took her dainty finger gently
+between its beak and tongue, bit it for pure love with a soft, short
+pressure, and at once allowed her to stroke its back and sides with a
+very pleased and surprised expression. The success of her skill flattered
+Muriel. "There! it knows me!" she cried, with childish delight; "it
+understands I'm a friend! It takes to me at once! Pretty Poll! Pretty
+Poll! Come, Poll, come and kiss me!"
+
+The bird drew back at the words, and steadied itself for a moment
+knowingly on its perch. Then it held up its head, gazed around it with a
+vacant air, as if suddenly awakened from a very long sleep, and, opening
+its mouth, exclaimed in loud, clear, sharp, and distinct tones--and in
+English--"Pretty Poll! Pretty Poll! Polly wants a buss! Polly wants a
+nice sweet bit of apple!"
+
+For a moment M. Peyron couldn't imagine what had happened. Felix looked
+at Muriel. Muriel looked at Felix. The Englishman held out both his hands
+to her in a wild fervor of surprise. Muriel took them in her own, and
+looked deep into his eyes, while tears rose suddenly and dropped down her
+cheeks, one by one, unchecked. They couldn't say why, themselves; they
+didn't know wherefore; yet this unexpected echo of their own tongue, in
+the mouth of that strange and mysterious bird, thrilled through them
+instinctively with a strange, unearthly tremor. In some dim and
+unexplained way, they felt half unconsciously to themselves that this
+discovery was, perhaps, the first clue to the solution of the terrible
+secret whose meshes encompassed them.
+
+M. Peyron looked on in mute astonishment. He had heard the bird repeat
+that strange jargon so often that it had ceased to have even the
+possibility of a meaning for him. It was the way of Methuselah--just his
+language that he talked; so harsh! so guttural! "Pretty Poll! Pretty
+Poll!" he had noticed the bird harp upon those quaint words again and
+again. They were part, no doubt, of that old primitive and forgotten
+Pacific language the creature had learned in other days from some earlier
+bearer of the name and ghastly honors of Tu-Kila-Kila. Why should these
+English seem so profoundly moved by them?
+
+"Mademoiselle doesn't surely understand the barbarous dialect which our
+Methuselah speaks!" he exclaimed in surprise, glancing half suspiciously
+from one to the other of these incomprehensible Britons. Like most other
+Frenchmen, he had been brought up in total ignorance of every European
+language except his own; and the words the parrot pronounced, when
+delivered with the well-known additions of parrot harshness and parrot
+volubility, seemed to him so inexpressibly barbaric in their clicks and
+jerks that he hadn't yet arrived at the faintest inkling of the truth as
+he observed their emotion.
+
+Felix seized his new friend's hand in his and wrung it warmly. "Don't you
+see what it is?" he exclaimed, half beside himself with this vague hope
+of some unknown solution. "Don't you realize how the thing stands?
+Don't you guess the truth? This isn't a Polynesian, dialect at all. It's
+our own mother tongue. The bird speaks English!"
+
+"English!" M. Peyron replied, with incredulous scorn. "What! Methuselah
+speak English! Oh, no, monsieur, impossible. _Vous vous trompez, j'en
+suis sûr_. I can never believe it. Those harsh, inarticulate sounds to
+belong to the noble language of Shaxper and Newtowne! _Ah, monsieur,
+incroyable! vous vous trompez; vous vous trompez!_"
+
+As he spoke, the bird put its head on one side once more, and, looking
+out of its half-blind old eyes with a crafty glance round the corner at
+Muriel, observed again, in not very polite English, "Pretty Poll! Pretty
+Poll! Polly wants some fruit! Polly wants a nut! Polly wants to go to
+bed!... God save the king! To hell with all papists!"
+
+"Monsieur," Felix said, a certain solemn feeling of surprise coming over
+him slowly at this last strange clause, "it is perfectly true. The bird
+speaks English. The bird that knows the secret of which we are all in
+search--the bird that can tell us the truth about Tu-Kila-Kila--can tell
+us in the tongue which mademoiselle and I speak as our native language.
+And what is more--and more strange--gather from his tone and the tenor of
+his remarks, he was taught, long since--a century ago, or more--and by an
+English sailor!"
+
+Muriel held out a bit of banana on a sharp stick to the bird.
+Methuselah-Polly took it gingerly off the end, like a well-behaved
+parrot? "God save the king!" Muriel said, in a quiet voice, trying to
+draw him on to speak a little further.
+
+Methuselah twisted his eye sideways, first this way, then that, and
+responded in a very clear tone, indeed, "God save the king! Confound the
+Duke of York! Long live Dr. Oates! And to hell with all papists!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+TANTALIZING, VERY.
+
+
+They looked at one another again with a wild surmise. The voice was as
+the voice of some long past age. Could the parrot be speaking to them in
+the words of seventeenth-century English?
+
+Even M. Peyron, who at first had received the strange discovery with
+incredulity, woke up before long to the importance of this sudden and
+unexpected revelation. The Tu-Kila-Kila who had taught Methuselah that
+long poem or sermon, which native tradition regarded as containing the
+central secret of their creed or its mysteries, and which the cruel and
+cunning Tu-Kila-Kila of to-day believed to be of immense importance to
+his safety--that Tu-Kila-Kila of other days was, in all probability, no
+other than an English sailor. Cast on these shores, perhaps, as they
+themselves had been, by the mercy of the waves, he had managed to master
+the language and religion of the savages among whom he found himself
+thrown; he had risen to be the representative of the cannibal god; and,
+during long months or years of tedious exile, he had beguiled his leisure
+by imparting to the unconscious ears of a bird the weird secret of his
+success, for the benefit of any others of his own race who might be
+similarly treated by fortune in future. Strange and romantic as it all
+sounded, they could hardly doubt now that this was the real explanation
+of the bird's command of English words. One problem alone remained to
+disturb their souls. Was the bird really in possession of any local
+secret and mystery at all, or was this the whole burden of the message he
+had brought down across the vast abyss of time--"God save the king, and
+to hell with all papists?"
+
+Felix turned to M. Peyron in a perfect tumult of suspense. "What he
+recites is long?" he said, interrogatively, with profound interest. "You
+have heard him say much more than this at times? The words he has just
+uttered are not those of the sermon or poem you mentioned?"
+
+M. Peyron opened his hands expansively before him. "Oh, _mon Dieu_, no,
+monsieur," he answered, with effusion. "You should hear him recite it.
+He's never done. It is whole chapters--whole chapters; a perfect Henriade
+in parrot-talk. When once he begins, there's no possibility of checking
+or stopping him. On, on he goes. Farewell to the rest; he insists on
+pouring it all forth to the very last sentence. Gabble, gabble, gabble;
+chatter, chatter, chatter; pouf, pouf, pouf; boum, boum, boum; he runs
+ahead eternally in one long discordant sing-song monotone. The person who
+taught him must have taken entire months to teach him, a phrase at a
+time, paragraph by paragraph. It is wonderful a bird's memory could hold
+so much. But till now, taking it for granted he spoke only some wild
+South Pacific dialect, I never paid much attention to Methuselah's
+vagaries."
+
+"Hush. He's going to speak," Muriel cried, holding up, in alarm, one
+warning finger.
+
+And the bird, his tongue-strings evidently loosened by the strange
+recurrence after so many years of those familiar English sounds, "Pretty
+Poll! Pretty Poll!" opened his mouth again in a loud chuckle of delight,
+and cried, with persistent shrillness, "God save the king! A fig for
+all arrant knaves and roundheads!"
+
+A creepier feeling than ever came over the two English listeners at those
+astounding words. "Great heavens!" Felix exclaimed to the unsuspecting
+Frenchman, "he speaks in the style of the Stuarts and the Commonwealth!"
+
+The Frenchman started. "_Époque Louis Quatorze_!" he murmured,
+translating the date mentally into his own more familiar chronology. "Two
+centuries since! Oh, incredible! incredible! Methuselah is old, but not
+quite so much of a patriarch as that. Even Humboldt's parrot could hardly
+have lived for two hundred years in the wilds of South America."
+
+Felix regarded the venerable creature with a look of almost superstitious
+awe. "Facts are facts," he answered shortly, shutting his mouth with a
+little snap. "Unless this bird has been deliberately taught historical
+details in an archaic diction--and a shipwrecked sailor is hardly likely
+to be antiquarian enough to conceive such an idea--he is undoubtedly a
+survival from the days of the Commonwealth or the Restoration. And you
+say he runs on with his tale for an hour at a time! Good heavens, what
+a thought! I wish we could manage to start him now. Does he begin it
+often?"
+
+"Monsieur," the Frenchman answered, "when I came here first, though
+Methuselah was already very old and feeble, he was not quite a dotard,
+and he used to recite it all every morning regularly. That was the hour,
+I suppose, at which the master, who first taught him this lengthy
+recitation, used originally to impress it upon him. In those days his
+sight and his memory were far more clear than now. But by degrees, since
+my arrival, he has grown dull and stupid. The natives tell me that fifty
+years ago, while he was already old, he was still bright and lively, and
+would recite the whole poem whenever anybody presented him with his
+greatest dainty, the claw of a moora-crab. Nowadays, however, when he can
+hardly eat, and hardly mumble, he is much less persistent and less
+coherent than formerly. To say the truth, I have discouraged him in his
+efforts, because his pertinacity annoyed me. So now he seldom gets
+through all his lesson at one bout, as he used to do at the beginning.
+The best way to get him on is for me to sing him one of my French songs.
+That seems to excite him, or to rouse him to rivalry. Then he will put
+his head on one side, listen critically for a while, smile a superior
+smile, and finally begin--jabber, jabber, jabber--trying to talk me down,
+as if I were a brother parrot."
+
+"Oh, do sing now!" Muriel cried, with intense persuasion in her voice.
+"I do so want to hear it." She meant, of course, the parrot's story.
+
+But the Frenchman bowed, and laid his hand on his heart. "Ah,
+mademoiselle," he said, "your wish is almost a royal command. And yet, do
+you know, it is so long since I have sung, except to please myself--my
+music is so rusty, old pieces you have heard--I have no accompaniment,
+no score--_mais enfin_, we are all so far from Paris!"
+
+Muriel didn't dare to undeceive him as to her meaning, lest he should
+refuse to sing in real earnest, and the chance of learning the parrot's
+secret might slip by them irretrievably. "Oh, monsieur," she cried,
+fitting herself to his humor at once, and speaking as ceremoniously as if
+she were assisting at a musical party in the Avenue Victor Hugo, "don't
+decline, I beg of you, on those accounts. We are both most anxious to
+hear your song. Don't disappoint us, pray. Please begin immediately."
+
+"Ah, mademoiselle," the Frenchman said, "who could resist such an appeal?
+You are altogether too flattering." And then, in the same cheery voice
+that Felix had heard on the first day he visited the King of Birds' hut,
+M. Peyron began, in very decent style, to pour forth the merry sounds of
+his rollicking song:
+
+"Quand on conspi-re,
+    Quand sans frayeur
+ On peut se di-re
+    Conspirateur--
+ Pour tout le mon-de
+    Il faut avoir
+ Perruque blon-de
+    Et collet noir."
+
+He had hardly got as far as the end of the first stanza, however, when
+Methuselah, listening, with his ear cocked up most knowingly, to the
+Frenchman's song, raised his head in opposition, and, sitting bolt
+upright on his perch, began to scream forth a voluble stream of words in
+one unbroken flood, so fast that Muriel could hardly follow them. The
+bird spoke in a thick and very harsh voice, and, what was more remarkable
+still, with a distinct and extremely peculiar North Country accent. "In
+the nineteenth year of the reign of his most gracious majesty, King
+Charles the Second," he blurted out, viciously, with an angry look at the
+Frenchman, "I, Nathaniel Cross, of the borough of Sunderland, in the
+county of Doorham, in England, an able-bodied mariner, then sailing the
+South Seas in the good bark Martyr Prince, of the Port of Great Grimsby,
+whereof one Thomas Wells, gent., under God, was master--"
+
+"Oh, hush, hush!" Muriel cried, unable to catch the parrot's precious
+words through the emulous echo of the Frenchman's music. "Whereof one
+Thomas Wells, gent., under God, was master--go on, Polly."
+
+"Perruque blonde
+   Et collet noir,"
+
+the Frenchman repeated, with a half-offended voice, finishing his stanza.
+
+But just as he stopped, Methuselah stopped too, and, throwing back his
+head in the air with a triumphant look, stared hard at his vanquished and
+silenced opponent out of those blinking gray eyes of his. "I thought I'd
+be too much for you!" he seemed to say, wrathfully.
+
+"Whereof one Thomas Wells, gent., under God, was master," Muriel
+suggested again, all agog with excitement. "Go on, good bird! Go on,
+pretty Polly."
+
+But Methuselah was evidently put off the scent now by the unseasonable
+interruption. Instead of continuing, he threw back his head a second time
+with a triumphant air and laughed aloud boisterously. "Pretty Polly," he
+cried. "Pretty Polly wants a nut. Tu-Kila-Kila maroo! Pretty Poll! Pretty
+Polly!"
+
+"Sing again, for Heaven's sake!" Felix exclaimed, in a profoundly
+agitated mood, explaining briefly to the Frenchman the full significance
+of the words Methuselah had just begun to utter.
+
+The Frenchman struck up his tune afresh to give the bird a start; but all
+to no avail. Methuselah was evidently in no humor for talking just then.
+He listened with a callous, uncritical air, bringing his white eyelids
+down slowly and sleepily over his bleared gray eyes. Then he nodded his
+head slowly. "No use," the Frenchman murmured, pursing his lips up
+gravely. "The bird won't talk. It's going off to sleep now. Methuselah
+gets visibly older every day, monsieur and mademoiselle. You are only
+just in time to catch his last accents."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+A MESSAGE FROM THE DEAD.
+
+
+Early next morning, as Felix lay still in his hut, dozing, and just
+vaguely conscious of a buzz of a mosquito close to his ear, he was
+aroused by a sudden loud cry outside--a cry that called his native name
+three times, running: "O King of the Rain, King of the Rain, King of the
+Rain, awake! High time to be up! The King of the Birds sends you health
+and greeting!"
+
+Felix rose at once; and his Shadow, rising before him, and unbolting the
+loose wooden fastener of the door, went out in haste to see who called
+beyond the white taboo-line of their sacred precincts.
+
+A native woman, tall, lithe, and handsome, stood there in the full light
+of morning, beckoning. A strange glow of hatred gleamed in her large gray
+eyes. Her shapely brown bosom heaved and panted heavily. Big beads
+glistened moistly on her smooth, high brow. It was clear she had run all
+the way in haste. She was deeply excited and full of eager anxiety.
+
+"Why, what do you want here so early, Ula?" the Shadow asked, in
+surprise--for it was indeed she. "How have you slipped away, as soon as
+the sun is risen, from the sacred hut of Tu-Kila-Kila?"
+
+Ula's gray eyes flashed angry fire as she answered. "He has beaten me
+again," she cried, in revengeful tones; "see the weals on my back! See my
+arms and shoulders! He has drawn blood from my wounds. He is the most
+hateful of gods. I should love to kill him. Therefore I slipped away from
+him with the early dawn and came to consult with his enemy, the King of
+the Birds, because I heard the words that the Eyes of Tu-Kila-Kila, who
+pervade the world, report to their master. The Eyes have told him that
+the King of the Rain, the Queen of the Clouds, and the King of the Birds
+are plotting together in secret against Tu-Kila-Kila. When I heard that,
+I was glad; I went to the King of the Birds to warn him of his danger;
+and the King of the Birds, concerned for your safety, has sent me in
+haste to ask his brother gods to go at once to him."
+
+In a minute Felix was up and had called out Mali from the neighboring
+hut. "Tell Missy Queenie," he cried, "to come with me to see the
+man-a-oui-oui! The man-a-oui-oui has sent me for us to come. She must
+make great haste. He wants us immediately."
+
+With a word and a sign to Toko, Ula glided away stealthily, with the
+cat-like tread of the native Polynesian woman, back to her hated husband.
+
+Felix went out to the door and heliographed with his bright metal plate,
+turned on the Frenchman's hill, "What is it?"
+
+In a moment the answer flashed back, word by word, "Come quick, if you
+want to hear. Methuselah is reciting!"
+
+A few seconds later Muriel emerged from her hut, and the two Europeans,
+closely followed, as always, by their inseparable Shadows, took the
+winding side-path that led through the jungle by a devious way, avoiding
+the front of Tu-Kila-Kila's temple, to the Frenchman's cottage.
+
+They found M. Peyron very much excited, partly by Ula's news of
+Tu-Kila-Kila's attitude, but more still by Methuselah's agitated
+condition. "The whole night through, my dear friends," he cried, seizing
+their hands, "that bird has been chattering, chattering, chattering. _Oh,
+mon Dieu, quel oiseau!_ It seems as though the words heard yesterday from
+mademoiselle had struck some lost chord in the creature's memory. But he
+is also very feeble. I can see that well. His garrulity is the garrulity
+of old age in its last flickering moments. He mumbles and mutters.
+He chuckles to himself. If you don't hear his message now and at once,
+it's my solemn conviction you will never hear it."
+
+He led them out to the aviary, where Methuselah, in effect, was sitting
+on his perch, most tremulous and woebegone. His feathers shuddered
+visibly; he could no longer preen himself. "Listen to what he says," the
+Frenchman exclaimed, in a very serious voice. "It is your last, last
+chance. If the secret is ever to be unravelled at all, by Methuselah's
+aid, now is, without doubt, the proper moment to unravel it."
+
+Muriel put out her hand and stroked the bird gently. "Pretty Poll," she
+said, soothingly, in a sympathetic voice. "Pretty Poll! Poor Poll! Was he
+ill! Was he suffering?"
+
+At the sound of those familiar words, unheard so long till yesterday, the
+parrot took her finger in his beak once more, and bit it with the
+tenderness of his kind in their softer moments. Then he threw back his
+head with a sort of mechanical twist, and screamed out at the top of his
+voice, for the last time on earth, his mysterious message:
+
+"Pretty Poll! Pretty Poll! God save the king! Confound the Duke of York!
+Death to all arrant knaves and roundheads!
+
+"In the nineteenth year of the reign of his most gracious majesty, King
+Charles the Second, I, Nathaniel Cross, of the borough of Sunderland, in
+the county of Doorham, in England, an able-bodied mariner, then sailing
+the South Seas in the good bark Martyr Prince, of the Port of Great
+Grimsby, whereof one Thomas Wells, gent., under God, was master, was, by
+stress of weather, wrecked and cast away on the shores of this island,
+called by its gentile inhabitants by the name of Boo Parry. In which
+wreck, as it befell, Thomas Wells, gent., and his equipment were, by
+divine disposition, killed and drowned, save and except three mariners,
+whereof I am one, who in God's good providence swam safely through an
+exceeding great flood of waves and landed at last on this island. There
+my two companions, Owen Williams, of Swansea, in the parts of Wales, and
+Lewis le Pickard, a French Hewgenott refugee, were at once, by the said
+gentiles, cruelly entreated, and after great torture cooked and eaten at
+the temple of their chief god, Too-Keela-Keela. But I, myself, having
+through God's grace found favor in their eyes, was promoted to the post
+which in their speech is called Korong, the nature of which this bird, my
+mouthpiece, will hereafter, to your ears, more fully discover."
+
+Having said so much, in a very jerky way, Methuselah paused, and blinked
+his eyes wearily.
+
+"What does he say?" the Frenchman began, eager to know the truth. But
+Felix, fearful lest any interruption might break the thread of the bird's
+discourse and cheat them of the sequel, held up a warning finger, and
+then laid it on his lips in mute injunction. Methuselah threw back his
+head at that and laughed aloud. "God save the king!" he cried again, in a
+still feebler way, "and to hell with all papists!"
+
+It was strange how they all hung on the words of that unconscious
+messenger from a dead and gone age, who himself knew nothing of the
+import of the words he was uttering. Methuselah laughed at their
+earnestness, shook his head once or twice, and seemed to think to
+himself. Then he remembered afresh the point he had broken off at.
+
+"More fully discover. For seven years have I now lived on this island,
+never having seen or h'ard Christian face or voice; and at the end of
+that time, feeling my health feail, and being apprehensive lest any of my
+fellow-countrymen should hereafter suffer the same fate as I have done, I
+began to teach this parrot his message, a few words at a time, impressing
+it duly and fully on his memory.
+
+"Larn, then, O wayfarer, that the people of Boo Parry are most arrant
+gentiles, heathens, and carribals. And this, as I discover, is the nature
+and method of their vile faith. They hold that the gods are each and
+several incarnate in some one particular human being. This human being
+they worship and reverence with all ghostly respect as his incarnation.
+And chiefly, above all, do they revere the great god Too-Keela-Keela,
+whose representative (may the Lord in Heaven forgive me for the same) I
+myself am at this present speaking. Having thus, for my sins, attained to
+that impious honor.
+
+"God save the king! Confound the Duke of York! To hell with all papists!
+
+"It is the fashion of this people to hold that their gods must always be
+strong and lusty. For they argue to themselves thus: that the continuance
+of the rain must needs depend upon the vigor and subtlety of its Soul,
+the rain-god. So the continuance and fruitfulness of the trees and plants
+which yield them food must needs depend upon the health of the tree-god.
+And the life of the world, and the light of the sun, and the well-being
+of all things that in them are, must depend upon the strength and cunning
+of the high god of all, Too-Keela-Keela. Hence they take great care and
+woorship of their gods, surrounding them with many rules which they call
+Taboo, and restricting them as to what they shall eat, and what drink,
+and wherewithal they shall seemly clothe themselves. For they think that
+if the King of the Rain at' anything that might cause the colick, or like
+humor or distemper, the weather will thereafter be stormy and
+tempestuous; but so long as the King of the Rain fares well and retains
+his health, so long will the weather over their island of Boo Parry be
+clear and prosperous.
+
+"Furthermore, as I have larned from their theologians, being myself,
+indeed, the greatest of their gods, it is evident that they may not let
+any god die, lest that department of nature over which he presideth
+should wither away and feail, as it were, with him. But reasonably no
+care that mortal man can exercise will prevent the possibility of their
+god--seeing he is but one of themselves--growing old and feeble and dying
+at last. To prevent which calamity, these gentile folk have invented (as
+I believe by the aid and device of Sathan) this horrid and most unnatural
+practice. The man-god must be killed so soon as he showeth in body or
+mind that his native powers are beginning to feail. And it is necessary
+that he be killed, according to their faith, in this ensuing fashion.
+
+"If the man-god were to die slowly by a death in the course of nature,
+the ways of the world might be stopped altogether. Hence these savages
+catch the soul of their god, as it were, ere it grow old and feeble, and
+transfer it betimes, by a magic device, to a suitable successor. And
+surely, they say, this suitable successor can be none other than him that
+is able to take it from him. This, then, is their horrid counsel and
+device--that each one of their gods should kill his antecessor. In doing
+thus, he taketh the old god's life and soul, which thereupon migrates and
+dwells within him. And by this tenure--may Heaven be merciful to me, a
+sinner--do I, Nathaniel Cross, of the county of Doorham, now hold this
+dignity of Too-Keela-Keela, having slain, therefor, in just quarrel, my
+antecessor in the high godship."
+
+As he reached these words Methuselah paused, and choked in his throat
+slightly. The mere mechanical effort of continuing the speech he had
+learned by heart two hundred years before, and repeated so often since
+that it had become part of his being, was now almost too much for him.
+The Frenchman was right. They were only just in time. A few days later,
+and the secret would have died with the bird that preserved it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+AN UNFINISHED TALE.
+
+
+For a minute or two Methuselah mumbled inarticulately to himself. Then,
+to their intense discomfiture, he began once more: "In the nineteenth
+year of the reign of his most gracious majesty, King Charles the Second,
+I, Nathaniel Cross--"
+
+"Oh, this will never do," Felix cried. "We haven't got yet to the secret
+at all. Muriel, do try to set him right. He must waste no breath. We
+can't afford now to let him go all over it."
+
+Muriel stretched out her hand and soothed the bird gently as before.
+"Having slain, therefore, my predecessor in the high godship," she
+suggested, in the same singsong voice as the parrot's.
+
+To her immense relief, Methuselah took the hint with charming docility.
+
+"In the high godship," he went on, mechanically, where he had stopped.
+"And this here is the manner whereby I obtained it. The Too-Keela-Keela
+from time to time doth generally appoint any castaway stranger that comes
+to the island to the post of Korong--that is to say, an annual god or
+victim. For, as the year doth renew itself at each change of seasons, so
+do these carribals in their gentilisme believe and hold that the gods of
+the seasons--to wit, the King of the Rain, the Queen of the Clouds, the
+Lord of Green Leaves, the King of Fruits, and others--must needs be
+sleain and renewed at the diverse solstices. Now, it so happened that I,
+on my arrival in the island, was appointed Korong, and promoted to the
+post of King of the Rain, having a native woman assigned me as Queen of
+the Clouds, with whom I might keep company. This woman being, after her
+kind, enamored of me, and anxious to escape her own fate, to be sleain by
+my side, did betray to me that secret which they call in their tongue the
+Great Taboo, and which had been betrayed to herself in turn by a native
+man, her former lover. For the men are instructed in these things in the
+mysteries when they coom of age, but not the women.
+
+"And the Great Taboo is this: No man can becoom a Too-Keela-Keela unless
+he first sleay the man in whom the high god is incarnate for the moment.
+But in order that he may sleay him, he must also himself be a full
+Korong, only those persons who are already gods being capable for the
+highest post in their hierarchy; even as with ourselves, none but he that
+is a deacon may become a priest, and none but he that is a priest may be
+made a bishop. For this reason, then, the Too-Keela-Keela prefers to
+advance a stranger to the post of Korong, seeing that such a person will
+not have been initiated in the mysteries of the island, and therefore
+will not be aware of those sundry steps which must needs be taken of him
+that would inherit the godship.
+
+"Furthermore, even a Korong can only obtain the highest rank of
+Too-Keela-Keela if he order all things according to the forms and
+ceremonies of the Taboo parfectly. For these gentiles are very careful of
+the levitical parts of their religion, deriving the same, as it seems to
+me, from the polity of the Hebrews, the fame of whose tabernacle must
+sure have gone forth through the ends of the woorld, and the knowledge of
+whose temple must have been yet more wide dispersed by Solomon, his
+ships, when they came into these parts to fetch gold from Ophir. And the
+ceremony is, that before any man may sleay the 'arthly tenement of
+Too-Keela-Keela and inherit his soul, which is in very truth, as they do
+think the god himself, he must needs fight with the person in whom
+Too-Keela-Keela doth then dwell, and for this reason: If the holder of
+the soul can defend himself in fight, then it is clear that his strength
+is not one whit decayed, nor is his vigor feailing; nor yet has his
+assailant been able to take his soul from him. But if the Korong in open
+fight do sleay the person in whom Too-Keela-Keela dwells, he becometh at
+once a Too-Keela-Keela himself--that is to say, in their tongue, the Lord
+of Lords, because he hath taken the life of him that preceded him.
+
+"Yet so intricate is the theology and practice of these loathsome
+savages, that not even now have I explained it in full to you, O
+shipwrecked mariner, for your aid and protection. For a Korong, though it
+be a part of his privilege to contend, if he will, with Too-Keela-Keela
+for the high godship and princedom of this isle, may only do so at
+certain appointed times, places, and seasons. Above all things, it is
+necessary that he should first find out the hiding-place of the soul of
+Too-Keela-Keela. For though the Too-Keela-Keela for the time that is, be
+animated by the god, yet, for greater security, he doth not keep his soul
+in his own body, but, being above all things the god of fruitfulness and
+generation, who causes women to bear children, and the plant called taro
+to bring forth its increase, he keepeth his soul in the great sacred tree
+behind his temple, which is thus the Father of All Trees, and the
+chiefest abode of the great god Too-Keela-Keela.
+
+"Nor does Too-Keela-Keela's soul abide equally in every part of this
+aforesaid tree; but in a certain bough of it, resembling a mistletoe,
+which hath yellow leaves, and, being broken off, groweth ever green and
+yellow afresh; which is the central mystery of all their Sathanic
+religion. For in this very bough--easy to be discerned by the eye among
+the green leaves of the tree--" the bird paused and faltered.
+
+Muriel leaned forward in an agony of excitement. "Among the green leaves
+of the tree--" she went on soothing him.
+
+Her voice seemed to give the parrot a fresh impulse to speak. "--Is
+contained, as it were," he continued, feebly, "the divine essence itself,
+the soul and life of Too-Keela-Keela. Whoever, then, being a full Korong,
+breaks this off, hath thus possessed himself of the very god in person.
+This, however, he must do by exceeding stealth; for Too-Keela-Keela,
+or rather the man that bears that name, being the guardian and defender
+of the great god, walks ever up and down, by day and by night, in
+exceeding great cunning, armed with a spear and with a hatchet of stone,
+around the root of the tree, watching jealously over the branch which is,
+as he believes, his own soul and being. I, therefore, being warned of the
+Taboo by the woman that was my consort, did craftily, near the appointed
+time for my own death, creep out of my hut, and my consort, having
+induced one of the wives of Too-Keela-Keela to make him drunken with too
+much of that intoxicating drink which they do call kava, did proceed--did
+proceed--did proceed--In the nineteenth year of the reign of his most
+gracious majesty, King Charles the Second--"
+
+Muriel bent forward once more in an agony of suspense. "Oh, go on, good
+Poll!" she cried. "Go on. Remember it. Did proceed to--"
+
+The single syllable helped Methuselah's memory. "--Did proceed to
+stealthily pluck the bough, and, having shown the same to Fire and Water,
+the guardians of the Taboo, did boldly challenge to single combat the
+bodily tenement of the god, with spear and hatchet, provided for me in
+accordance with ancient custom by Fire and Water. In which combat,
+Heaven mercifully befriending me against my enemy, I did coom out
+conqueror; and was thereupon proclaimed Too-Keela-Keela myself, with
+ceremonies too many and barbarous to mention, lest I raise your gorge at
+them. But that which is most important to tell you for your own guidance
+and safety, O mariner, is this--that being the sole and only end I have
+in imparting this history to so strange a messenger--that after you have
+by craft plucked the sacred branch, and by force of arms over-cootn
+Too-Keela-Keela, it is by all means needful, whether you will or not,
+that submitting to the hateful and gentile custom of this people--of this
+people--Pretty Poll! Pretty Poll! God save--God save the king! Death
+to the nineteenth year of the reign of all arrant knaves and roundheads."
+
+He dropped his head on his breast, and blinked his white eyelids more
+feebly than ever. His strength was failing him fast. The Soul of all dead
+parrots was wearing out. M. Peyron, who had stood by all this time, not
+knowing in any way what might be the value of the bird's disclosures,
+came forward and stroked poor Methuselah with his caressing hand. But
+Methuselah was incapable now of any further effort. He opened his blind
+eyes sleepily for the last, last time, and stared around him with a blank
+stare at the fading universe. "God save the king!" he screamed aloud with
+a terrible gasp, true to his colors still. "God save the king, and to
+hell with all papists!"
+
+Then he fell off his perch, stone dead, on the ground. They were never to
+hear the conclusion of that strange, quaint message from a forgotten age
+to our more sceptical century.
+
+Felix looked at Muriel, and Muriel looked at Felix. They could hardly
+contain themselves with awe and surprise. The parrot's words were so
+human, its speech was so real to them, that they felt as though the
+English Tu-Kila-Kila of two hundred years back had really and truly
+been speaking to them from that perch; it was a human creature indeed
+that lay dead before them. Felix raised the warm body from the ground
+with positive reverence. "We will bury it decently," he said in French,
+turning to M. Peyron. "He was a plucky bird, indeed, and he has carried
+out his master's intentions nobly."
+
+As they spoke, a little rustling in the jungle hard by attracted their
+attention. Felix turned to look. A stealthy brown figure glided away in
+silence through the tangled brushwood. M. Peyron started. "We are
+observed, monsieur," he said. "We must look out for squalls! It is one
+of the Eyes of Tu-Kila-Kila!"
+
+"Let him do his worst!" Felix answered. "We know his secret now, and can
+protect ourselves against him. Let us return to the shade, monsieur, and
+talk this all over. Methuselah has indeed given us something to-day very
+serious to think about."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+TU-KILA-KILA STRIKES.
+
+
+And yet, when all was said and done, knowledge of Tu-Kila-Kila's secret
+didn't seem to bring Felix and Muriel much nearer a solution of their own
+great problems than they had been from the beginning. In spite of all
+Methuselah had told them, they were as far off as ever from securing
+their escape, or even from the chance of sighting an English steamer.
+
+This last was still the main hope and expectation of all three Europeans.
+M. Peyron, who was a bit of a mathematician, had accurately calculated
+the time, from what Felix told him, when the Australasian would pass
+again on her next homeward voyage; and, when that time arrived, it was
+their united intention to watch night and day for the faintest glimmer
+of her lights, or the faintest wreath of her smoke on the far eastern
+horizon. They had ventured to confide their design to all three of
+their Shadows; and the Shadows, attached by the kindness to which they
+were so little accustomed among their own people, had in every case
+agreed to assist them with the canoe, if occasion served them. So for a
+time the two doomed victims subsided into their accustomed calm of
+mingled hope and despair, waiting patiently for the expected arrival of
+the much-longed-for Australasian.
+
+If she took that course once, why not a second time? And if ever she hove
+in sight, might they not hope, after all, to signal to her with their
+rudely constructed heliograph, and stop her?
+
+As for Methuselah's secret, there was only one way, Felix thought, in
+which it could now prove of any use to them. When the actual day of their
+doom drew nigh, he might, perhaps, be tempted to try the fate which
+Nathaniel Cross, of Sunderland, had successfully courted. That might gain
+them at least a little respite. Though even so he hardly knew what good
+it could do him to be elevated for a while into the chief god of the
+island. It might not even avail him to save Muriel's life; for he did not
+doubt that when the awful day itself had actually come the natives would
+do their best to kill her in spite of him, unless he anticipated them by
+fulfilling his own terrible, yet merciful, promise.
+
+Week after week went by--month after month passed--and the date when the
+Australasian might reasonably be expected to reappear drew nearer and
+nearer. They waited and trembled. At last, a few days before the time
+M. Peyron had calculated, as Felix was sitting under the big shady tree
+in his garden one morning, while Muriel, now worn out with hope deferred,
+lay within her hut alone with Mali, a sound of tom-toms and beaten palms
+was heard on the hill-path. The natives around fell on their faces or
+fled. It announced the speedy approach of Tu-Kila-Kila.
+
+By this time both the castaways had grown comparatively accustomed to
+that hideous noise, and to the hateful presence which it preceded and
+heralded. A dozen temple attendants tripped on either side down the
+hillpath, to guard him, clapping their hands in a barbaric measure as
+they went; Fire and Water, in the midst, supported and flanked the divine
+umbrella. Felix rose from his seat with very little ceremony, indeed, as
+the great god crossed the white taboo-line of his precincts, followed
+only beyond the limit by Fire and Water.
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila was in his most insolent vein. He glanced around with a
+horrid light of triumph dancing visibly in his eyes. It was clear he had
+come, intent upon some grand theatrical _coup_. He meant to take the
+white-faced stranger by surprise this time. "Good-morning, O King of the
+Rain," he exclaimed, in a loud voice and with boisterous familiarity.
+"How do you like your outlook now? Things are getting on. Things are
+getting on. The end of your rule is drawing very near, isn't it? Before
+long I must make the seasons change. I must make my sun turn. I must
+twist round my sky. And then, I shall need a new Korong instead of you, O
+pale-faced one!"
+
+Felix looked back at him without moving a muscle.
+
+"I am well," he answered shortly, restraining his anger. "The year turns
+round whether you will or not. You are right that the sun will soon begin
+to move southward on its path again. But many things may happen to all of
+us meanwhile. _I_ am not afraid of you."
+
+As he spoke, he drew his knife, and opened the blade, unostentatiously,
+but firmly. If the worst were really coming now, sooner than he expected,
+he would at least not forget his promise to Muriel.
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila smiled a hateful and ominous smile. "I am a great god," he
+said, calmly, striking an attitude as was his wont. "Hear how my people
+clap their hands in my honor! I order all things. I dispose the course of
+nature in heaven and earth. If I look at a cocoa-nut tree, it dies; if I
+glance at a bread-fruit, it withers away. We will see before long whether
+or not you are afraid of me. Meanwhile, O Korong, I have come to claim my
+dues at your hands. Prepare for your fate. To-morrow the Queen of the
+Clouds must be sealed my bride. Fetch her out, that I may speak with her.
+I have come to tell her so."
+
+It was a thunderbolt from a clear sky, and it fell with terrible effect
+on Felix. For a moment the knife trembled in his grasp with an almost
+irresistible impulse. He could hardly restrain himself, as he heard those
+horrible, incredible words, and saw the loathsome smirk on the speaker's
+face by which they were accompanied, from leaping then and there at the
+savage's throat, and plunging his blade to the haft into the vile
+creature's body. But by a violent effort he mastered his indignation and
+wrath for the present. Planting himself full in front of Tu-Kila-Kila,
+and blocking the way to the door of that sacred English girl's hut--oh,
+how horrible it was to him even to think of her purity being contaminated
+by the vile neighborhood, for one minute, of that loathsome monster! He
+looked full into the wretch's face, and answered very distinctly, in low,
+slow tones, "If you dare to take one step toward the place where that
+lady now rests, if you dare to move your foot one inch nearer, if you
+dare to ask to see her face again, I will plunge the knife hilt-deep into
+your vile heart, and kill you where you stand without one second's
+deliberation. Now you hear my words and you know what I mean. My weapon
+is keener and fiercer than any you Polynesians ever saw. Repeat those
+words once more, and by all that's true and holy, before they're out of
+your mouth I leap upon you and stab you."
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila drew back in sudden surprise. He was unaccustomed to be so
+bearded in his own sacred island. "Well, I shall claim her to-morrow," he
+faltered out, taken aback by Felix's unexpected energy. He paused for a
+second, then he went on more slowly: "To-morrow I will come with all my
+people to claim my bride. This afternoon they will bring her mats of
+grass and necklets of nautilus shell to deck her for her wedding, as
+becomes Tu-Kila-Kila's chosen one. The young maids of Boupari will adorn
+her for her lord, in the accustomed dress of Tu-Kila-Kila's wives. They
+will clap their hands; they will sing the marriage song. Then early in
+the morning I will come to fetch her--and woe to him who strives to
+prevent me!"
+
+Felix looked at him long, with a fixed and dogged look.
+
+"What has made you think of this devilry?" he asked at last, still
+grasping his knife hard, and half undecided whether or not to use it.
+"You have invented all these ideas. You have no claim, even in the horrid
+customs of your savage country, to demand such a sacrifice."
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila laughed loud, a laugh of triumphant and discordant
+merriment. "Ha, ha!" he cried, "you do not understand our customs, and
+will you teach _me_, the very high god, the guardian of the laws and
+practices of Boupari? You know nothing; you are as a little child. I am
+absolute wisdom. With every Korong, this is always our rule. Till the
+moon is full, on the last month before we offer up the sacrifice, the
+Queen of the Clouds dwells apart with her Shadow in her own new temple.
+So our fathers decreed it. But at the full of the moon, when the day has
+come, the usage is that Tu-Kila-Kila, the very high god, confers upon her
+the honor of making her his bride. It is a mighty honor. The feast is
+great. Blood flows like water. For seven days and nights, then, she lives
+with Tu-Kila-Kila in his sacred abode, the threshold of Heaven; she eats
+of human flesh; she tastes human blood; she drinks abundantly of the
+divine kava. At the end of that time, in accordance with the custom of
+our fathers, those great dead gods, Tu-Kila-Kila performs the high act of
+sacrifice. He puts on his mask of the face of a shark, for he is holy and
+cruel; he brings forth the Queen of the Clouds before the eyes of all his
+people, attired in her wedding robes, and made drunk with kava. Then he
+gashes her with knives; he offers her up to Heaven that accepted her; and
+the King of the Rain he offers after her; and all the people eat of their
+flesh, Korong! and drink of their blood, so that the body of gods and
+goddesses may dwell within all of them. And when all is done, the high
+god chooses a new king and queen at his will (for he is a mighty god),
+who rule for six moons more, and then are offered up, at the end, in like
+fashion."
+
+As he spoke, the ferocious light that gleamed in the savage's eye made
+Felix positively mad with anger. But he answered nothing directly. "Is
+this so?" he asked, turning for confirmation to Fire and Water. "Is it
+the custom of Boupari that Tu-Kila-Kila should wed the Queen of the
+Clouds seven days before the date appointed for her sacrifice?"
+
+The King of Fire and the King of Water, tried guardians of the etiquette
+of Tu-Kila-Kila's court, made answer at once with one accord, "It is so,
+O King of the Rain. Your lips have said it. Tu-Kila-Kila speaks the
+solemn truth. He is a very great god. Such is the custom of Boupari."
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila laughed his triumph in harsh, savage outbursts.
+
+But Felix drew back for a second, irresolute. At last he stood face to
+face with the absolute need for immediate action. Now was almost the
+moment when he must redeem his terrible promise to Muriel. And yet, even
+so, there was still one chance of life, one respite left. The mystic
+yellow bough on the sacred banyan! the Great Taboo! the wager of battle
+with Tu-Kila-Kila! Quick as lightning it all came up in his excited
+brain. Time after time, since he heard Methuselah's strange message
+from the grave, had he passed Tu-Kila-Kila's temple enclosure and
+looked up with vague awe at that sacred parasite that grew so
+conspicuously in a fork of the branches. It was easy to secure it, if no
+man guarded. There still remained one night. In that one short night he
+must do his best--and worst. If all then failed, he must die himself with
+Muriel!
+
+For two seconds he hesitated. It was hateful even to temporize with so
+hideous a proposition. But for Muriel's sake, for her dear life's sake,
+he must meet these savages with guile for guile. "If it be, indeed, the
+custom of Boupari," he answered back, with pale and trembling lips, "and
+if I, one man, am powerless to prevent it, I will give your message,
+myself, to the Queen of the Clouds, and you may send, as you say, your
+wedding decorations. But come what will--mark this--you shall not see her
+yourself to-day. You shall not speak to her. There I draw a line--so,
+with my stick in the dust, if you try to advance one step beyond, I stab
+you to the heart. Wait till to-morrow to take your prey. Give me one more
+night. Great god as you are, if you are wise, you will not drive an angry
+man to utter desperation."
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila looked with a suspicious side glance at the gleaming steel
+blade Felix still fingered tremulously. Though Boupari was one of those
+rare and isolated small islands unvisited as yet by European trade, he
+had, nevertheless, heard enough of the sailing gods to know that their
+skill was deep and their weapons very dangerous. It would be foolish to
+provoke this man to wrath too soon. To-morrow, when taboo was removed,
+and all was free license, he would come when he willed and take his
+bride, backed up by the full force of his assembled people. Meanwhile,
+why provoke a brother god too far? After all, in a little more than a
+week from now the pale-faced Korong would be eaten and digested!
+
+"Very well," he said, sulkily, but still with the sullen light of revenge
+gleaming bright in his eye. "Take my message to the queen. You may be my
+herald. Tell her what honor is in store for her--to be first the wife and
+then the meat of Tu-Kila-Kila! She is a very fair woman. I like her well.
+I have longed for her for months. Tomorrow, at the early dawn, by the
+break of day, I will come with all my people and take her home by main
+force to me."
+
+He looked at Felix and scowled, an angry scowl of revenge. Then, as he
+turned and walked away, under cover of the great umbrella, with its
+dangling pendants on either side, the temple attendants clapped their
+hands in unison. Fire and Water marched slow and held the umbrella over
+him. As he disappeared in the distance, and the sound of his tom-toms
+grew dim on the hills, Toko, the Shadow, who had lain flat, trembling, on
+his face in the hut while the god was speaking, came out and looked
+anxiously and fearfully after him.
+
+"The time is ripe," he said, in a very low voice to Felix. "A Korong may
+strike. All the people of Boupari murmur among themselves. They say this
+fellow has held the spirit of Tu-Kila-Kila within himself too long. He
+waxes insolent. They think it is high time the great God of Heaven should
+find before long some other fleshly tabernacle."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+A RASH RESOLVE.
+
+
+The rest of that day was a time of profound and intense anxiety. Felix
+and Muriel remained alone in their huts, absorbed in plans of escape, but
+messengers of many sorts from chiefs and gods kept continually coming to
+them. The natives evidently regarded it as a period of preparation. The
+Eyes of Tu-Kila-Kila surrounded their precinct; yet Felix couldn't help
+noticing that they seemed in many ways less watchful than of old, and
+that they whispered and conferred very much in a mysterious fashion with
+the people of the village. More than once Toko shook his head, sagely,
+"If only any one dared break the Great Taboo," he said, with some terror
+on his face, "our people would be glad. It would greatly please them.
+They are tired of this Tu-Kila-Kila. He has held the god in his breast
+far, far too long. They would willingly see some other in place of him."
+
+Before noon, the young girls of the village, bringing native mats and
+huge strings of nautilus shells, trooped up to the hut, like bridesmaids,
+with flowers in their hands, to deck Muriel for her approaching wedding.
+Before them they carried quantities of red and brown tappa-cloth and
+very fine net-work, the dowry to be presented by the royal bride to her
+divine husband. Within the hut, they decked out the Queen of the Clouds
+with garlands of flowers and necklets of shells, in solemn native
+fashion, bewailing her fate all the time to a measured dirge in their
+own language. Muriel could see that their sympathy, though partly
+conventional, was largely real as well. Many of the young girls seized
+her hand convulsively from time to time, and kissed it with genuine
+feeling. The gentle young English woman had won their savage hearts
+by her purity and innocence. "Poor thing, poor thing," they said,
+stroking her hand tenderly. "She is too good for Korong! Too good for
+Tu-Kila-Kila! If only we knew the Great Taboo like the men, we would tell
+her everything. She is too good to die. We are sorry she is to be
+sacrificed!"
+
+But when all their preparations were finished, the chief among them
+raised a calabash with a little scented oil in it, and poured a few drops
+solemnly on Muriel's head. "Oh, great god!" she said, in her own tongue,
+"we offer this sacrifice, a goddess herself, to you. We obey your words.
+You are very holy. We will each of us eat a portion of her flesh at your
+feast. So give us good crops, strong health, many children!"
+
+"What does she say?" Muriel asked, pale and awestruck, of Mali.
+
+Mali translated the words with perfect _sang-froid_. At that awful sound
+Muriel drew back, chill and cold to the marrow. How inconceivable was the
+state of mind of these terrible people! They were really sorry for her;
+they kissed her hand with fervor; and yet they deliberately and solemnly
+proposed to eat her!
+
+Toward evening the young girls at last retired, in regular order, to the
+clapping of hands, and Felix was left alone with Muriel and the Shadows.
+
+Already he had explained to Muriel what he intended to do; and Muriel,
+half dazed with terror and paralyzed by these awful preparations,
+consented passively. "But how if you never come back, Felix?" she cried
+at last, clinging to him passionately.
+
+Felix looked at her with a fixed look. "I have thought of that," he said.
+"M. Peyron, to whom I sent a message by flashes, has helped me in my
+difficulty. This bowl has poison in it. Peyron sent it to me to-day. He
+prepared it himself from the root of the kava bean. If by sunrise
+to-morrow you have heard no news, drink it off at once. It will instantly
+kill you. You shall _not_ fall alive into that creature's clutches."
+
+By slow degrees the evening wore on, and night approached--the last night
+that remained to them. Felix had decided to make his attempt about one in
+the morning. The moon was nearly full now, and there would be plenty
+of light. Supposing he succeeded, if they gained nothing else, they would
+gain at least a day or two's respite.
+
+As dusk set in, and they sat by the door of the hut, they were all
+surprised to see Ula approach the precinct stealthily through the
+jungle, accompanied by two of Tu-Kila-Kila's Eyes, yet apparently on some
+strange and friendly message. She beckoned imperiously with one finger to
+Toko to cross the line. The Shadow rose, and without one word of
+explanation went out to speak to her. The woman gave her message in
+short, sharp sentences. "We have found out all," she said, breathing
+hard. "Fire and Water have learned it. But Tu-Kila-Kila himself knows
+nothing. We have found out that the King of the Rain has discovered the
+secret of the Great Taboo. He heard it from the Soul of all dead parrots.
+Tu-Kila-Kila's Eyes saw, and learned, and understood. But they said
+nothing to Tu-Kila-Kila. For my counsel was wise; I planned that they
+should not, with Fire and Water. Fire and Water and all the people of
+Boupari think, with me, the time has come that there should arise among
+us a new Tu-Kila-Kila. This one let his blood fall out upon the dust of
+the ground. His luck has gone. We have need of another."
+
+"Then for what have you come?" Toko asked, all awestruck. It was terrible
+to him for a woman to meddle in such high matters.
+
+"I have come," Ula answered, laying her hand on his arm, and holding her
+face close to his with profound solemnity--"I have come to say to the
+King of the Rain, 'Whatever you do, that do quickly.' To-night I will
+engage to keep Tu-Kila-Kila in his temple. He shall see nothing. He
+shall hear nothing. I know not the Great Taboo; but I know from him this
+much--that if by wile or guile I keep him alone in his temple to-night,
+the King of the Rain may fight with him in single combat; and if the King
+of the Rain conquers in the battle, he becomes himself the home of the
+great deity."
+
+She nodded thrice, with her hands on her forehead, and withdrew as
+stealthily as she had come through the jungle. The Eyes of Tu-Kila-Kila,
+falling into line, remained behind, and kept watch upon the huts with the
+closest apparent scrutiny.
+
+More than ever they were hemmed in by mystery on mystery.
+
+The Shadow went back and reported to Felix. Felix, turning it over in his
+own mind, wondered and debated. Was this true, or a trap to lure him to
+destruction?
+
+As the night wore on, and the hour drew nigh, Muriel sat beside her
+friend and lover, in blank despair and agony. How could she ever allow
+him to leave her now? How could she venture to remain alone with Mali in
+her hut in this last extremity? It was awful to be so girt with
+mysterious enemies. "I must go with you, Felix! I must go, too!" she
+cried over and over again. "I daren't remain behind with all these awful
+men. And then, if he kills either of us, he will kill us at least both
+together."
+
+But Felix knew he might do nothing of the sort. A more terrible chance
+was still in reserve. He might spare Muriel. And against that awful
+possibility he felt it his duty now to guard at all hazard.
+
+"No, Muriel," he said, kissing her, and holding her pale hand, "I must go
+alone. You can't come with me. If I return, we will have gained at least
+a respite, till the Australasian may turn up. If I don't, you will at any
+rate have strength of mind left to swallow the poison, before
+Tu-Kila-Kila comes to claim you."
+
+Hour after hour passed by slowly, and Felix and the Shadow watched the
+stars at the door, to know when the hour for the attempt had arrived. The
+eyes of Tu-Kila-Kila, peering silent from just beyond the line, saw them
+watching all the time, but gave no sign or token of disapproval. With
+heads bent low, and tangled hair about their faces, they stood like
+statues, watching, watching sullenly. Were they only waiting till he
+moved, Felix wondered; and would they then hasten off by short routes
+through the jungle to warn their master of the impending conflict?
+
+At last the hour came when Felix felt sure there was the greatest chance
+of Tu-Kila-Kila sleeping soundly in his hut, and forgetting the defence
+of the sacred bough on the holy banyan-tree. He rose from his seat with a
+gesture for silence, and moved forward to Muriel. The poor girl flung
+herself, all tears, into his arms. "Oh, Felix, Felix," she cried, "redeem
+your promise now! Kill us both here together, and then, at least, I shall
+never be separated from you! It wouldn't be wrong! It can't be wrong! We
+would surely be forgiven if we did it only to escape falling into the
+hands of these terrible savages!"
+
+Felix clasped her to his bosom with a faltering heart. "No, Muriel," he
+said, slowly. "Not yet. Not yet. I must leave no opening on earth untried
+by which I can possibly or conceivably save you. It's as hard for me
+to leave you here alone as for you to be left. But for your own dear
+sake, I must steel myself. I must do it."
+
+He kissed her many times over. He wiped away her tears. Then, with a
+gentle movement, he untwined her clasping arms. "You must let me go, my
+own darling," he said, "You must let me go, without crossing the border.
+If you pass beyond the taboo-line to-night, Heaven only knows what,
+perhaps, may happen to you. We must give these people no handle of
+offence. Good-night, Muriel, my own heart's wife; and if I never come
+back, then good-by forever."
+
+She clung to his arm still. He disentangled himself, gently. The Shadow
+rose at the same moment, and followed in silence to the open door. Muriel
+rushed after them, wildly. "Oh, Felix, Felix, come back," she cried,
+bursting into wild floods of hot, fierce tears. "Come back and let me die
+with you! Let me die! Let me die with you!"
+
+Felix crossed the white line without one word of reply, and went forth
+into the night, half unmanned by this effort. Muriel sank, where she
+stood, into Mali's arms. The girl caught her and supported her. But
+before she had fainted quite away, Muriel had time vaguely to see and
+note one significant fact. The Eyes of Tu-Kila-Kila, who stood watching
+the huts with lynx-like care, nodded twice to Toko, the Shadow, as he
+passed between them; then they stealthily turned and dogged the two men's
+footsteps afar off in the jungle.
+
+Muriel was left by herself in the hut, face to face with Mali.
+
+"Let us pray, Mali," she cried, seizing her Shadow's arm.
+
+And Mali, moved suddenly by some half-obliterated impulse, exclaimed in
+concert, in a terrified voice, "Let us pray to Methodist God in heaven!"
+
+For her life, too, hung on the issue of that rash endeavor.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+A STRANGE ALLY.
+
+
+In Tu-Kila-Kila's temple-hut, meanwhile, the jealous, revengeful god,
+enshrined among his skeletons, was having in his turn an anxious and
+doubtful time of it. Ever since his sacred blood had stained the dust of
+earth by the Frenchman's cottage and in his own temple, Tu-Kila-Kila,
+for all his bluster, had been deeply stirred and terrified in his inmost
+soul by that unlucky portent. A savage, even if he be a god, is always
+superstitious. Could it be that his own time was, indeed, drawing nigh?
+That he, who had remorselessly killed and eaten so many hundreds of human
+victims, was himself to fall a prey to some more successful competitor?
+Had the white-faced stranger, the King of the Rain, really learned the
+secrets of the Great Taboo from the Soul of all dead parrots? Did that
+mysterious bird speak the tongue of these new fire-bearing Korongs,
+whose doom was fixed for the approaching solstice? Tu-Kila-Kila wondered
+and doubted. His suspicions were keen, and deeply aroused. Late that
+night he still lurked by the sacred banyan-tree, and when at last he
+retired to his own inner temple, white with the grinning skulls of the
+victims he had devoured, it was with strict injunctions to Fire and
+Water, and to his Eyes that watched there, to bring him word at once of
+any projected aggression on the part of the stranger.
+
+Within the temple-hut, however, Ula awaited him. That was a pleasant
+change. The beautiful, supple, satin-skinned Polynesian looked more
+beautiful and more treacherous than ever that fateful evening. Her great
+brown limbs, smooth and glossy as pearl, were set off by a narrow girdle
+or waistband of green and scarlet leaves, twined spirally around her.
+Armlets of nautilus shell threw up the dainty plumpness of her soft,
+round forearm. A garland hung festooned across one shapely shoulder;
+her bosom was bare or but half hidden by the crimson hibiscus that
+nestled voluptuously upon it. As Tu-Kila-Kila entered, she lifted her
+large eyes, and, smiling, showed two even rows of pearly white teeth. "My
+master has come!" she cried, holding up both lissome arms with a gesture
+to welcome him. "The great god relaxes his care of the world for a while.
+All goes on well. He leaves his sun to sleep and his stars to shine, and
+he retires to rest on the unworthy bosom of her, his mate, his meat, that
+is honored to love him."
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila was scarcely just then in a mood for dalliance. "The Queen
+of the Clouds comes hither to-morrow," he answered, casting a somewhat
+contemptuous glance at Ula's more dusky and solid charms. "I go to
+seek her with the wedding gifts early in the morning. For a week she
+shall be mine. And after that--" he lifted his tomahawk and brought it
+down on a huge block of wood significantly.
+
+Ula smiled once more, that deep, treacherous smile of hers, and showed
+her white teeth even deeper than ever. "If my lord, the great god, rises
+so early to-morrow," she said, sidling up toward him voluptuously, "to
+seek one more bride for his sacred temple, all the more reason he should
+take his rest and sleep soundly to-night. Is he not a god? Are not his
+limbs tired? Does he not need divine silence and slumber?"
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila pouted. "I could sleep more soundly," he said, with a snort,
+"if I knew what my enemy, the Korong, is doing. I have set my Eyes to
+watch him, yet I do not feel secure. They are not to be trusted. I shall
+be happier far when I have killed and eaten him." He passed his hand
+across his bosom with a reflective air. You have a great sense of
+security toward your enemy, no doubt, when you know that he slumbers,
+well digested, within you.
+
+Ula raised herself on her elbow, and gazed snake-like into his face, "My
+lord's Eyes are everywhere," she said, reverently, with every mark of
+respect. "He sees and knows all things. Who can hide anything on earth
+from his face? Even when he is asleep, his Eyes watch well for him. Then
+why should the great god, the Measurer of Heaven and Earth, the King of
+Men, fear a white-faced stranger? To-morrow the Queen of the Clouds will
+be yours, and the stranger will be abased: ha, ha, he will grieve at it!
+To-night, Fire and Water keep guard and watch over you. Whoever would
+hurt you must pass through Fire and Water before he reach your door. Fire
+would burn, Water would drown. This is a Great Taboo. No stranger dare
+face it."
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila lifted himself up in his thrasonic mood. "If he did," he
+cried, swelling himself, "I would shrivel him to ashes with one flash of
+my eyes. I would scorch him to a cinder with one stroke of my lightning."
+
+Ula smiled again, a well-satisfied smile. She was working her man up.
+"Tu-Kila-Kila is great," she repeated, slowly. "All earth obeys him. All
+heaven fears him."
+
+The savage took her hand with a doubtful air. "And yet," he said, toying
+with it, half irresolute, "when I went to the white-faced stranger's hut
+this morning, he did not speak fair; he answered me insolently. His words
+were bold. He talked to me as one talks to a man, not to a great god.
+Ula, I wonder if he knows my secret?"
+
+Ula started back in well-affected horror. "A white-faced stranger from
+the sun know your secret, O great king!" she cried, hiding her face in a
+square of cloth. "See me beat my breast! Impossible! Impossible! No
+one of your subjects would dare to tell him so great a taboo. It would be
+rank blasphemy. If they did, your anger would utterly consume them!"
+
+"That is true," Tu-Kila-Kila said, practically, "but I might not discover
+it. I am a very great god. My Eyes are everywhere. No corner of the world
+is hid from my gaze. All the concerns of heaven and earth are my care,
+And, therefore; sometimes, I overlook some detail."
+
+"No man alive would dare to tell the Great Taboo!" Ula repeated,
+confidently. "Why, even I myself, who am the most favored of your
+wives, and who am permitted to bask in the light of your presence--even
+I, Ula--I do not know it. How much less, then, the spirit from the sun,
+the sailing god, the white-faced stranger!"
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila pursed up his brow and looked preternaturally wise, as the
+savage loves to do. "But the parrot," he cried, "the Soul of all dead
+parrots! _He_ knew the secret, they say:--I taught it him myself in an
+ancient day, many, many years ago--when no man now living was born, save
+only I--in another incarnation--and _he_ may have told it. For the
+strangers, they say, speak the language of birds; and in the language of
+birds did I tell the Great Taboo to him."
+
+Ula pooh-poohed the mighty man-god's fears. "No, no," she cried, with
+confidence; "he can never have told them. If he had, would not your Eyes
+that watch ever for all that happens on heaven or earth, have straightway
+reported it to you? The parrot died without yielding up the tale. Were it
+otherwise, Toko, who loves and worships you, would surely have told me."
+
+The man-god puckered his brows slightly, as if he liked not the security.
+"Well, somehow, Ula," he said, feeling her soft brown arms with his
+divine hand, slowly, "I have always had my doubts since that day the Soul
+of all dead parrots bit me. A vicious bird! What did he mean by his
+bite?" He lowered his voice and looked at her fixedly. "Did not his
+spilling my blood portend," he asked, with a shudder of fear, "that
+through that ill-omened bird I, who was once Lavita, should cease to be
+Tu-Kila-Kila?"
+
+Ula smiled contentedly again. To say the truth, that was precisely the
+interpretation she herself had put on that terrific omen. The parrot had
+spilled Tu-Kila-Kila's sacred blood upon the soil of earth. According to
+her simple natural philosophy, that was a certain sign that through the
+parrot's instrumentality Tu-Kila-Kila's life would be forfeited to the
+great eternal earth-spirit. Or, rather, the earth-spirit would claim the
+blood of the man Lavita, in whose body it dwelt, and would itself migrate
+to some new earthly tabernacle.
+
+But for all that, she dissembled. "Great god," she cried, smiling, a
+benign smile, "you are tired! You are thirsty! Care for heaven and
+earth has wearied you out. You feel the fatigue of upholding the sun in
+heaven. Your arms must ache. Your thews must give under you. Drink of the
+soul-inspiring juice of the kava! My hands have prepared the divine cup.
+For Tu-Kila-Kila did I make it--fresh, pure, invigorating!"
+
+She held the bowl to his lips with an enticing smile. Tu-Kila-Kila
+hesitated and glanced around him suspiciously. "What if the white-faced
+stranger should come to-night?" he whispered, hoarsely. "He may have
+discovered the Great Taboo, after all. Who can tell the ways of the
+world, how they come about? My people are so treacherous. Some traitor
+may have betrayed it to him."
+
+"Impossible," the beautiful, snake-like woman answered, with a strong
+gesture of natural dissent. "And even if he came, would not kava, the
+divine, inspiriting drink of the gods, in which dwell the embodied souls
+of our fathers--would not kava make you more vigorous, strong for the
+fight? Would it not course through your limbs like fire? Would it not
+pour into your soul the divine, abiding strength of your mighty mother,
+the eternal earth-spirit?"
+
+"A little," Tu-Kila-Kila said, yielding, "but not too much. Too much
+would stupefy me. When the spirits, that the kava-tree sucks up from the
+earth, are too strong within us, they overpower our own strength, so that
+even I, the high god--even I can do nothing."
+
+Ula held the bowl to his lips, and enticed him to drink with her
+beautiful eyes. "A deep draught, O supporter of the sun in heaven," she
+cried, pressing his arm tenderly. "Am I not Ula? Did I not brew it for
+you? Am I not the chief and most favored among your women? I will sit at
+the door. I will watch all night. I will not close an eye. Not a footfall
+on the ground but my ear shall hear it."
+
+"Do." Tu-Kila-Kila said, laconically. "I fear Fire and Water. Those gods
+love me not. Fain would they make me migrate into some other body. But I
+myself like it not. This one suits me admirably. Ula, that kava is
+stronger than you are used to make it."
+
+"No, no," Ula cried, pressing it to his lips a second time, passionately.
+"You are a very great god. You are tired; it overcomes you. And if you
+sleep, I will watch. Fire and Water dare not disobey your commands. Are
+you not great? Your Eyes are everywhere. And I, even I, will be as one of
+them."
+
+The savage gulped down a few more mouthfuls of the intoxicating liquid.
+Then he glanced up again suddenly with a quick, suspicious look. The
+cunning of his race gave him wisdom in spite of the deadly strength of
+the kava Ula had brewed too deep for him. With a sudden resolve, he rose
+and staggered out. "You are a serpent, woman!" he cried angrily, seeing
+the smile that lurked upon Ula's face. "To-morrow I will kill you. I will
+take the white woman for my bride, and she and I will feast off your
+carrion body. You have tried to betray me, but you are not cunning
+enough, not strong enough. No woman shall kill me. I am a very great god.
+I will not yield. I will wait by the tree. This is a trap you have set,
+but I do not fall into it. If the King of the Rain comes, I shall be
+there to meet him."
+
+He seized his spear and hatchet and walked forth, erect, without one sign
+of drunkenness. Ula trembled to herself as she saw him go. She was
+playing a deep game. Had she given him only just enough kava to
+strengthen and inspire him?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+WAGER OF BATTLE.
+
+
+Felix wound his way painfully through the deep fern-brake of the jungle,
+by no regular path, so as to avoid exciting the alarm of the natives, and
+to take Tu-Kila-Kila's palace-temple from the rear, where the big tree,
+which overshadowed it with its drooping branches, was most easily
+approachable. As he and Toko crept on, bending low, through that dense
+tropical scrub, in deathly silence, they were aware all the time of a
+low, crackling sound that rang ever some paces in the rear on their trail
+through the forest. It was Tu-Kila-Kila's Eyes, following them stealthily
+from afar, footstep for footstep, through the dense undergrowth of bush,
+and the crisp fallen leaves and twigs that snapped light beneath their
+footfall. What hope of success with those watchful spies, keen as beagles
+and cruel as bloodhounds, following ever on their track? What chance of
+escape for Felix and Muriel, with the cannibal man-gods toils laid round
+on every side to insure their destruction?
+
+Silently and cautiously the two men groped their way on through the dark
+gloom of the woods, in spite of their mute pursuers. The moonlight
+flickered down athwart the trackless soil as they went; the hum of
+insects innumerable droned deep along the underbrush. Now and then the
+startled scream of a night jar broke the monotony of the buzz that was
+worse than silence; owls boomed from the hollow trees, and fireflies
+darted dim through the open spaces. At last they emerged upon the cleared
+area of the temple. There Felix, without one moment's hesitation, with a
+firm and resolute tread, stepped over the white coral line that marked
+the taboo of the great god's precincts. That was a declaration of open
+war; he had crossed the Rubicon of Tu-Kila-Kila's empire. Toko stood
+trembling on the far side; none might pass that mystic line unbidden and
+live, save the Korong alone who could succeed in breaking off the bough
+"with yellow leaves, resembling a mistletoe," of which Methuselah, the
+parrot, had told Felix and Muriel, and so earn the right to fight for his
+life with the redoubted and redoubtable Tu-Kila-Kila.
+
+As he stepped over the taboo-line, Felix was aware of many native eyes
+fixed stonily upon him from the surrounding precinct. Clearly they were
+awaiting him. Yet not a soul gave the alarm; that in itself would have
+been to break taboo. Every man or woman among the temple attendants
+within that charmed circle stood on gaze curiously. Close by, Ula, the
+favorite wife of the man-god, crouched low by the hut, with one finger
+on her treacherous lips, bending eagerly forward, in silent expectation
+of what next might happen. Once, and once only, she glanced at Toko
+with a mute sign of triumph; then she fixed her big eyes on Felix in
+tremulous anxiety; for to her as to him, life and death now hung
+absolutely on the issue of his enterprise. A little farther back the King
+of Fire and the King of Water, in full sacrificial robes, stood smiling
+sardonically. For them it was merely a question of one master more or
+less, one Tu-Kila-Kila in place of another. They had no special interest
+in the upshot of the contest, save in so far as they always hated most
+the man who for the moment held by his own strong arm the superior
+godship over them. Around, Tu-Kila-Kila's Eyes kept watch and ward in
+sinister silence. Taboo was stronger than even the commands of the high
+god himself. When once a Korong had crossed that fatal line, unbidden and
+unwelcomed by Tu-Kila-Kila, he came as Tu-Kila-Kila's foe and would-be
+successor; the duty of every guardian of the temple was then to see fair
+play between the god that was and the god that might be--the Tu-Kila-Kila
+of the hour and the Tu-Kila-Kila who might possibly supplant him.
+
+"Let the great spirit itself choose which body it will inhabit," the King
+of Fire murmured in a soft, low voice, glancing toward a dark spot at the
+foot of the big tree. The moonlight fell dim through the branches on the
+place where he looked. The glibbering bones of dead victims rattled
+lightly in the wind. Felix's eyes followed the King of Fire's, and saw,
+lying asleep upon the ground, Tu-Kila-Kila himself, with his spear and
+tomahawk.
+
+He lay there, huddled up by the very roots of the tree, breathing deep
+and regularly. Right over his head projected the branch, in one part of
+whose boughs grew the fateful parasite. By the dim light of the moon,
+straggling through the dense foliage, Felix could see its yellow leaves
+distinctly. Beneath it hung a skeleton, suspended by invisible cords,
+head downward from the branches. It was the skeleton of a previous Korong
+who had tried in vain to reach the bough, and perished. Tu-Kila-Kila had
+made high feast on the victim's flesh; his bones, now collected together
+and cunningly fastened with native rope, served at once as a warning and
+as a trap or pitfall for all who might rashly venture to follow him.
+
+Felix stood for one moment, alone and awe-struck, a solitary civilized
+man, among those hideous surroundings. Above, the cold moon; all about,
+the grim, stolid, half-hostile natives; close by, that strange,
+serpentine, savage wife, guarding, cat-like, the sleep of her cannibal
+husband; behind, the watchful Eyes of Tu-Kila-Kila, waiting ever in the
+background, ready to raise a loud shout of alarm and warning the moment
+the fatal branch was actually broken, but mute, by their vows, till that
+moment was accomplished. Then a sudden wild impulse urged him on to the
+attempt. The banyan had dropped down rooting offsets to the ground, after
+the fashion of its kind, from its main branches. Felix seized one of
+these and swung himself lightly up, till he reached the very limb on
+which the sacred parasite itself was growing.
+
+To get to the parasite, however, he must pass directly above
+Tu-Kila-Kila's head, and over the point where that ghastly grinning
+skeleton was suspended, as by an unseen hair, from the fork that bore it.
+
+He walked along, balancing himself, and clutching, as he went, at the
+neighboring boughs, while Tu-Kila-Kila, overcome with the kava, slept
+stolidly and heavily on beneath him. At last he was almost within grasp
+of the parasite. Could he lunge out and clutch it? One try--one effort!
+No, no; he almost lost footing and fell over in the attempt. He couldn't
+keep his balance so. He must try farther on. Come what might, he must go
+past the skeleton.
+
+The grisly mass swung again, clanking its bones as it swung, and groaned
+in the wind ominously. The breeze whistled audibly through its hollow
+skull and vacant eye-sockets. Tu-Kila-Kila turned uneasily in his sleep
+below. Felix saw there was not one instant of time to be lost now. He
+passed on boldly; and as he passed, a dozen thin cords of paper mulberry,
+stretched every way in an invisible network among the boughs, too small
+to be seen in the dim moonlight, caught him with their toils and almost
+overthrew him. They broke with his weight, and Felix himself, tumbling
+blindly, fell forward. At the cost of a sprained wrist and a great jerk
+on his bruised fingers, he caught at a bough by his side, but wrenched it
+away suddenly. It was touch and go. At the very same moment, the skeleton
+fell heavily, and rattled on the ground beside Tu-Kila-Kila.
+
+Before Felix could discover what had actually happened, a very great
+shout went up all round below, and made him stagger with excitement.
+Tu-Kila-Kila was awake, and had started up, all intent, mad with wrath
+and kava. Glaring about him wildly, and brandishing his great spear in
+his stalwart hands, he screamed aloud, in a perfect frenzy of passion and
+despair: "Where is he, the Korong? Bring him on, my meat! Let me devour
+his heart! Let me tear him to pieces. Let me drink of his blood! Let me
+kill him and eat him!"
+
+Sick and desperate at the accident, Felix, in turn, clinging hard to his
+bough with one hand, gazed wildly about him to look for the parasite. But
+it had gone as if by magic. He glanced around in despair, vaguely
+conscious that nothing was left for it now but to drop to the ground
+and let himself be killed at leisure by that frantic savage. Yet even as
+he did so, he was aware of that great cry--a cry as of triumph--still
+rending the air. Fire and Water had rushed forward, and were holding back
+Tu-Kila-Kila, now black in the face from rage, with all their might. Ula
+was smiling a malicious joy. The Eyes were all agog with interest and
+excitement. And from one and all that wild scream rose unanimous to the
+startled sky: "He has it! He has it! The Soul of the Tree! The Spirit of
+the World! The great god's abode. Hold off your hands, Lavita, son of
+Sami! Your trial has come. He has it! He has it!"
+
+Felix looked about him with a whirling brain. His eye fell suddenly.
+There, in his own hand, lay the fateful bough. In his efforts to steady
+himself, he had clutched at it by pure accident, and broken it off
+unawares with the force of his clutching. As fortune would have it, he
+grasped it still. His senses reeled. He was almost dead with excitement,
+suspense, and uncertainty, mingled with pain of his wrenched wrist. But
+for Muriel's sake he pulled himself together. Gazing down and trying hard
+to take it all in--that strange savage scene--he saw that Tu-Kila-Kila
+was making frantic attempts to lunge at him with the spear, while the
+King of Fire and the King of Water, stern and relentless, were holding
+him off by main force, and striving their best to appease and quiet him.
+
+There was an awful pause. Then a voice broke the stillness from beyond
+the taboo-line:
+
+"The Shadow of the King of the Rain speaks," it said, in very solemn,
+conventional accents. "Korong! Korong! The Great Taboo is broken. Fire
+and Water, hold him in whom dwells the god till my master comes. He has
+the Soul of all the spirits of the wood in his hands. He will fight for
+his right. Taboo! Taboo! I, Toko, have said it."
+
+He clapped his hands thrice.
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila made a wild effort to break away once more. But the King of
+Fire, standing opposite him, spoke still louder and clearer. "If you
+touch the Korong before the line is drawn," he said, with a voice of
+authority, "you are no Tu-Kila-Kila, but an outcast and a criminal. All
+the people will hold you with forked sticks, while the Korong burns you
+alive slowly, limb by limb, with me, who am Fire, the fierce, the
+consuming. I will scorch you and bake you till you are as a bamboo in the
+flame. Taboo! Taboo! Taboo! I, Fire, have said it."
+
+The King of Water, with three attendants, forced Tu-Kila-Kila on one
+side for a moment. Ula stood by and smiled pleased compliance. A temple
+slave, trembling all over at this conflict of the gods, brought out a
+calabash full of white coral-sand. The King of Water spat on it and
+blessed it. By this time a dozen natives, at least, had assembled outside
+the taboo-line, and stood eagerly watching the result of the combat. The
+temple slave made a long white mark with the coral-sand on one side of
+the cleared area. Then he handed the calabash solemnly to Toko. Toko
+crossed the sacred precinct with a few inaudible words of muttered charm,
+to save the Taboo, as prescribed in the mysteries. Then he drew a similar
+line on the ground on his side, some twenty yards off. "Descend, O my
+lord!" he cried to Felix; and Felix, still holding the bough tight in his
+hand, swung himself blindly from the tree, and took his place by Toko.
+
+"Toe the line!" Toko cried, and Felix toed it.
+
+"Bring up your god!" the Shadow called out aloud to the King of Water.
+And the King of Water, using no special ceremony with so great a duty,
+dragged Tu-Kila-Kila helplessly along with him to the farther taboo-line.
+
+The King of Water brought a spear and tomahawk. He handed them to Felix.
+"With these weapons," he said, "fight, and merit heaven. I hold the bough
+meanwhile--the victor takes it."
+
+The King of Fire stood out between the lists. "Korongs and gods," he
+said, "the King of the Rain has plucked the sacred bough, according to
+our fathers' rites, and claims trial which of you two shall henceforth
+hold the sacred soul of the world, the great Tu-Kila-Kila. Wager of
+Battle decides the day. Keep toe to line. At the end of my words, forth,
+forward, and fight for it. The great god knows his own, and will choose
+his abode. Taboo, Taboo, Taboo! I, Fire, have spoken it."
+
+Scarcely were the words well out of his mouth, when, with a wild whoop of
+rage, Tu-Kila-Kila, who had the advantage of knowing the rules of the
+game, so to speak, dashed madly forward, drunk with passion and kava, and
+gave one lunge with his spear full tilt at the breast of the startled and
+unprepared white man. His aim, though frantic, was not at fault. The
+spear struck Felix high up on the left side. He felt a dull thud of pain;
+a faint gurgle of blood. Even in the pale moonlight his eye told him at
+once a red stream was trickling--out over his flannel shirt. He was
+pricked, at least. The great god had wounded him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+VICTORY--AND AFTER?
+
+
+The great god had wounded him. But not to the heart. Felix, as good luck
+would have it, happened to be wearing buckled braces. He had worn them on
+board, and, like the rest of his costume, had, of course, never since
+been able to discard them. They stood him in good stead now. The buckle
+caught the very point of the bone-tipped spear, and broke the force of
+the blow, as the great god lunged forward. The wound was but a graze, and
+Tu-Kila-Kila's light shaft snapped short in the middle.
+
+Madder and wilder than ever, the savage pitched it away, yelling, rushed
+forward with a fierce curse on his angry tongue, and flung himself, tooth
+and nail, on his astonished opponent.
+
+The suddenness of the onslaught almost took the Englishman's breath away.
+By this time, however, Felix had pulled together his ideas and taken in
+the situation. Tu-Kila-Kila was attacking him now with his heavy stone
+axe. He must parry those deadly blows. He must be alert, but watchful. He
+must put himself in a posture of defence at once. Above all, he must keep
+cool and have his wits about him.
+
+If he could but have drawn his knife, he would have stood a better chance
+in that hand-to-hand conflict. But there was no time now for such tactics
+as those. Besides, even in close fight with a bloodthirsty savage, an
+English gentleman's sense of fair play never for one moment deserts him.
+Felix felt, if they were to fight it out face to face for their lives,
+they should fight at least on a perfect equality. Steel against stone was
+a mean advantage. Parrying Tu-Kila-Kila's first desperate blow with the
+haft of his own hatchet, he leaped aside half a second to gain breath and
+strength. Then he rushed on, and dealt one deadly downstroke with the
+ponderous weapon.
+
+For a minute or two they closed, in perfectly savage single combat.
+Fire and Water, observant and impartial, stood by like seconds to see
+the god himself decide the issue, which of the two combatants should be
+his living representative. The contest was brief but very hard-fought.
+Tu-Kila-Kila, inspired with the last frenzy of despair, rushed wildly
+on his opponent with hands and fists, and teeth and nails, dealing his
+blows in blind fury, right and left, and seeking only to sell his life
+as dearly as possible. In this last extremity, his very superstitions
+told against him. Everything seemed to show his hour had come. The
+parrot's bite--the omen of his own blood that stained the dust of
+earth--Ula's treachery--the chance by which the Korong had learned the
+Great Taboo--Felix's accidental or providential success in breaking off
+the bough--the length of time he himself had held the divine honors--the
+probability that the god would by this time begin to prefer a new and
+stronger representative--all these things alike combined to fire the
+drunk and maddened savage with the energy of despair. He fell upon his
+enemy like a tiger upon an elephant. He fought with his tomahawk and his
+feet and his whole lithe body; he foamed at the mouth with impotent rage;
+he spent his force on the air in the extremity of his passion.
+
+Felix, on the other hand, sobered by pain, and nerved by the fixed
+consciousness that Muriel's safety now depended absolutely on his perfect
+coolness, fought with the calm skill of a practised fencer. Happily he
+had learned the gentle art of thrust and parry years before in England;
+and though both weapon and opponent were here so different, the lesson of
+quickness and calm watchfulness he had gained in that civilized school
+stood him in good stead, even now, under such adverse circumstances.
+Tu-Kila-Kila, getting spent, drew back for a second at last, and panted
+for breath. That faint breathing-space of a moment's duration sealed his
+fate. Seizing his chance with consummate skill, Felix closed upon the
+breathless monster, and brought down the heavy stone hammer point blank
+upon the centre of his crashing skull. The weapon drove home. It cleft a
+great red gash in the cannibal's head. Tu-Kila-Kila reeled and fell.
+There was an infinitesimal pause of silence and suspense. Then a great
+shout went up from all round to heaven, "He has killed him! He has
+killed him! We have a new-made god! Tu-Kila-Kila is dead! Long live
+Tu-Kila-Kila!"
+
+Felix drew back for a moment, panting and breathless, and wiped his wet
+brow with his sleeve, his brain all whirling. At his feet, the savage lay
+stretched, like a log. Felix gazed at the blood-bespattered face
+remorsefully. It is an awful thing, even in a just quarrel, to feel that
+you have really taken a human life! The responsibility is enough to
+appall the bravest of us. He stooped down and examined the prostrate body
+with solemn reverence. Blood was flowing in torrents from the wounded
+head. But Tu-Kila-Kila was dead--stone-dead forever.
+
+Hot tears of relief welled up into Felix's eyes. He touched the body
+cautiously with a reverent hand. No life. No motion.
+
+Just as he did so, the woman Ula came forward, bare-limbed and beautiful,
+all triumph in her walk, a proud, insensitive savage. One second she
+gazed at the great corpse disdainfully. Then she lifted her dainty foot,
+and gave it a contemptuous kick. "The body of Lavita, the son of Sami,"
+she said, with a gesture of hatred. "He had a bad heart. We will cook it
+and eat it." Next turning to Felix, "Oh, Tu-Kila-Kila," she cried,
+clapping her hands three times and bowing low to the ground, "you are a
+very great god. We will serve you and salute you. Am not I, Ula, one of
+your wives, your meat? Do with me as you will. Toko, you are henceforth
+the great god's Shadow!"
+
+Felix gazed at the beautiful, heartless creature, all horrified. Even on
+Boupari, that cannibal island, he was hardly prepared for quite so low a
+depth of savage insensibility. But all the people around, now a hundred
+or more, standing naked before their new god, took up the shout in
+concert. "The body of Lavita, the son of Sami," they cried. "A carrion
+corpse! The god has deserted it. The great soul of the world has entered
+the heart of the white-faced stranger from the disk of the sun; the King
+of the Rain; the great Tu-Kila-Kila. We will cook and eat the body of
+Lavita, the son of Sami. He was a bad man. He is a worn-out shell.
+Nothing remains of him now. The great god has left him."
+
+They clapped their hands in a set measure as they recited this hymn.
+The King of Fire retreated into the temple. Ula stood by, and whispered
+low with Toko. There was a ceremonial pause of some fifteen minutes.
+Presently, from the inner recesses of the temple itself, a low noise
+issued forth as of a rising wind. For some seconds it buzzed and hummed,
+droningly. But at the very first note of that holy sound Ula dropped her
+lover's hand, as one drops a red-hot coal, and darted wildly off at
+full speed, like some frightened wild beast, into the thick jungle. Every
+other woman near began to rush away with equally instantaneous signs of
+haste and fear. The men, on the other hand, erect and naked, with their
+hands on their foreheads, crossed the taboo-line at once. It was the
+summons to all who had been initiated at the mysteries--the sacred
+bull-roarer was calling the assembly of the men of Boupari.
+
+For several minutes it buzzed and droned, that mystic implement, growing
+louder and louder, till it roared like thunder. One after another, the
+men of the island rushed in as if mad or in flight for their lives before
+some fierce beast pursuing them. They ran up, panting, and dripping with
+sweat; their hands clapped to their foreheads; their eyes starting wildly
+from their staring sockets; torn and bleeding and lacerated by the thorns
+and branches of the jungle, for each man ran straight across country from
+the spot where he lay asleep, in the direction of the sound, and never
+paused or drew breath, for dear life's sake, till he stood beside the
+corpse of the dead Tu-Kila-Kila.
+
+And every moment the cry pealed louder and louder still. "Lavita, the son
+of Sami, is dead, praise Heaven! The King of the Rain has slain him, and
+is now the true Tu-Kila-Kila!"
+
+Felix bent irresolute over the fallen savage's bloodstained corpse. What
+next was expected of him he hardly knew or cared. His one desire now was
+to return to Muriel--to Muriel, whom he had rescued from something worse
+than death at the hateful hands of that accursed creature who lay
+breathless forever on the ground beside him.
+
+Somebody came up just then, and seized his hand warmly. Felix looked up
+with a start. It was their friend, the Frenchman. "Ah, my captain, you
+have done well," M. Peyron cried, admiring him. "What courage! What
+coolness! What pluck! What soldiership! I couldn't see all. But I was in
+at the death! And oh, _mon Dieu_, how I admired and envied you!"
+
+By this time the bull-roarer had ceased to bellow among the rocks. The
+King of Fire stood forth. In his hands he held a length of bamboo-stick
+with a lighted coal in it. "Bring wood and palm-leaves," he said, in a
+tone of command. "Let me light myself up, that I may blaze before
+Tu-Kila-Kila."
+
+He turned and bowed thrice very low before Felix. "The accepted of
+Heaven," he cried, holding his hands above him. "The very high god! The
+King of all Things! He sends down his showers upon our crops and our
+fields. He causes his sun to shine brightly over us. He makes our pigs
+and our slaves bring forth their increase. All we are but his meat. We,
+his people, praise him."
+
+And all the men of Boupari, naked and bleeding, bent low in response.
+"Tu-Kila-Kila is great," they chanted, as they clapped their hands. "We
+thank him that he has chosen a fresh incarnation. The sun will not fade
+in the heavens overhead, nor the bread-fruits wither and cease to bear
+fruit on earth. Tu-Kila-Kila, our god, is great. He springs ever young
+and fresh, like the herbs of the field. He is a most high god. We, his
+people, praise him."
+
+Four temple attendants brought sticks and leaves, while Felix stood
+still, half dazed with the newness of these strange preparations. The
+King of Fire, with his torch, set light to the pile. It blazed merrily on
+high. "I, Fire, salute you," he cried, bending over it toward Felix.
+
+"Now cut up the body of Lavita, the son of Sami," he went on, turning
+toward it contemptuously. "I will cook it in my flame, that Tu-Kila-Kila
+the great may eat of it."
+
+Felix drew back with a face all aglow with horror and disgust. "Don't
+touch that body!" he cried, authoritatively, putting his foot down firm.
+"Leave it alone at once. I refuse to allow you." Then he turned to
+M. Peyron. "The King of the Birds and I," he said, with calm resolve, "we
+two will bury it."
+
+The King of Fire drew back at these strange words, nonplussed. This
+was, indeed, an ill-omened break in the ceremony of initiation of a new
+Tu-Kila-Kila, to which he had never before in his life been accustomed.
+He hardly knew how to comport himself under such singular circumstances.
+It was as though the sovereign of England, on coronation-day, should
+refuse to be crowned, and intimate to the archbishop, in his full
+canonicals, a confirmed preference for the republican form of Government.
+It was a contingency that law and custom in Boupari had neither, in their
+wisdom, foreseen nor provided for.
+
+The King of Water whispered low in the new god's ear. "You must eat of
+his body, my lord," he said. "That is absolutely necessary. Every one of
+us must eat of the flesh of the god; but you, above all, must eat his
+heart, his divine nature. Otherwise you can never be full Tu-Kila-Kila."
+
+"I don't care a straw for that," Felix cried, now aroused to a full sense
+of the break in Methuselah's story and trembling with apprehension. "You
+may kill me if you like; we can die only once; but human flesh I can
+never taste; nor will I, while I live, allow you to touch this dead man's
+body. We will bury it ourselves, the King of the Birds and I. You may
+tell your people so. That is my last word." He raised his voice to the
+customary ceremonial pitch. "I, the new Tu-Kila-Kila," he said, "have
+spoken it."
+
+The King of Fire and the King of Water, taken aback at his boldness,
+conferred together for some seconds privately. The people meanwhile
+looked on and wondered. What could this strange hitch in the divine
+proceedings mean? Was the god himself recalcitrant? Never in their lives
+had the oldest men among them known anything like it.
+
+And as they whispered and debated, awe-struck but discordant, a shout
+arose once more from the outer circle--a mighty shout of mingled
+surprise, alarm, and terror. "Taboo! Taboo! Fence the mysteries. Beware!
+Oh, great god, we warn you. The mysteries are in danger! Cut her down!
+Kill her! A woman! A woman!"
+
+At the words, Felix was aware of somebody bursting through the dense
+crowd and rushing wildly toward him. Next moment, Muriel hung and sobbed
+on his shoulder, while Mali, just behind her, stood crying and moaning.
+
+Felix held the poor startled girl in his arms and soothed her. And
+all around another great cry arose from five hundred lips: "Two women
+have profaned the mysteries of the god. They are Tu-Kila-Kila's
+trespass-offering. Let us kill them and eat them!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+
+SUSPENSE.
+
+
+In a moment, Felix's mind was fully made up. There was no time to think;
+it was the hour for action. He saw how he must comport himself toward
+this strange wild people. Seating Muriel gently on the ground, Mali
+beside her, and stepping forward himself, with Peyron's hand in his, he
+beckoned to the vast and surging crowd to bespeak respectful silence.
+
+A mighty hush fell at once upon the people. The King of Fire and the King
+of Water stood back, obedient to his nod. They waited for the upshot of
+this strange new development.
+
+"Men of Boupari," Felix began, speaking with a marvellous fluency in
+their own tongue, for the excitement itself supplied him with eloquence;
+"I have killed your late god in the prescribed way; I have plucked the
+sacred bough, and fought in single combat by the established rules of
+your own religion. Fire and Water, you guardians of this holy island, is
+it not so? You saw all things done, did you not, after the precepts of
+your ancestors?"
+
+The King of Fire bowed low and answered: "Tu-Kila-Kila speaks, indeed,
+the truth. Water and I, with our own eyes, have seen it."
+
+"And now," Felix went on, "I am myself, by your own laws, Tu-Kila-Kila."
+
+The King of Fire made a gesture of dissent. "Oh, great god, pardon me,"
+he murmured, "if I say aught, now, to contradict you; but you are not a
+full Tu-Kila-Kila yet till you have eaten of the heart of the god, your
+predecessor."
+
+"Then where is now the spirit of Tu-Kila-Kila, the very high god, if I am
+not he?" Felix asked, abruptly, thus puzzling them with a hard problem in
+their own savage theology.
+
+The King of Fire gave a start, and pondered. This was a detail of his
+creed that had never before so much as occurred to him. All faiths have
+their _cruces_. "I do not well know," he answered, "whether it is in the
+heart of Lavita, the son of Sami, or in your own body. But I feel sure it
+must now be certainly somewhere, though just where our fathers have never
+told us."
+
+Felix recognized at once that he had gained a point. "Then look to it
+well," he said, austerely. "Be careful how you act. Do nothing rash. For
+either the soul of the god is in the heart of Lavita, the son of Sami;
+and then, since I refuse to eat it, it will decay away, as Lavita's body
+decays, and the world will shrivel up, and all things will perish,
+because the god is dead and crumbled to dust forever. Or else it is in my
+body, who am god in his place; and then, if anybody does me harm or hurt,
+he will be an impious wretch, and will have broken taboo, and Heaven
+knows what evils and misfortunes may not, therefore, fall on each and all
+of you."
+
+A very old chief rose from the ranks outside. His hair was white and
+his eyes bleared. "Tu-Kila-Kila speaks well," he cried, in a loud but
+mumbling voice. "His words are wise. He argues to the point. He is very
+cunning. I advise you, my people, to be careful how you anger the
+white-faced stranger, for you know what he is; he is cruel; he is
+powerful. There was never any storm in my time--and I am an old man--so
+great in Boupari as the storm that rose when the King of the Rain ate the
+storm-apple. Our yams and our taros even now are suffering from it. He is
+a mighty strong god. Beware how you tamper with him!"
+
+He sat down, trembling. A younger chief rose from a nearer rank, and
+said his say in turn. "I do not agree with our father," he cried,
+pointing to the chief who had just spoken. "His word is evil; he is much
+mistaken. I have another thought. My thought is this. Let us kill and eat
+the white-faced stranger at once, by wager of battle; and let whosoever
+fights and overcomes him receive his honors, and take to wife the fair
+woman, the Queen of the Clouds, the sun-faced Korong, whom he brought
+from the sun with him."
+
+"But who will then be Tu-Kila-Kila?" Felix asked, turning round upon him
+quickly. Habituation to danger had made him unnaturally alert in such
+utmost extremities.
+
+"Why, the man who slays you," the young chief answered, pointedly,
+grasping his heavy tomahawk with profound expression.
+
+"I think not," Felix answered. "Your reasoning is bad. For if I am not
+Tu-Kila-Kila, how can any man become Tu-Kila-Kila by killing me? And if I
+am Tu-Kila-Kila, how dare you, not being yourself Korong, and not having
+broken off the sacred bough, as I did, venture to attack me? You wish to
+set aside all the customs of Boupari. Are you not ashamed of such gross
+impiety?"
+
+"Tu-Kila-Kila speaks well," the King of Fire put in, for he had no cause
+to love the aggressive young chief, and he thought better of his chances
+in life as Felix's minister. "Besides, now I think of it, he _must_ be
+Tu-Kila-Kila, because he has taken the life of the last great god, whom
+he slew with his hands; and therefore the life is now his--he holds it."
+
+Felix was emboldened by this favorable opinion to strike out a fresh line
+in a further direction. He stood forward once more, and beckoned again
+for silence. "Yes, my people," he said calmly, with slow articulation,
+"by the custom of your race and the creed you profess I am now indeed,
+and in every truth, the abode of your great god, Tu-Kila-Kila. But,
+furthermore, I have a new revelation to make to you. I am going to
+instruct you in a fresh way. This creed that you hold is full of errors.
+As Tu-Kila-Kila, I mean to take my own course, no islander hindering me.
+If you try to depose me, what great gods have you now got left? None,
+save only Fire and Water, my ministers. King of the Rain there is none;
+for I, who was he, am now Tu-Kila-Kila. Tu-Kila-Kila there is none, save
+only me; for the other, that was, I have fought and conquered. The Queen
+of the Clouds is with me. The King of the Birds is with me. Consider,
+then, O friends, that if you kill us all, you will have nowhere to turn;
+you will be left quite godless."
+
+"It is true," the people murmured, looking about them, half puzzled. "He
+is wise. He speaks well. He is indeed a Tu-Kila-Kila."
+
+Felix pressed his advantage home at once. "Now listen," he said, lifting
+up one solemn forefinger. "I come from a country very far away, where the
+customs are better by many yams than those of Boupari. And now that I am
+indeed Tu-Kila-Kila--your god, your master--I will change and alter some
+of your customs that seem to me here and now most undesirable. In the
+first place--hear this!--I will put down all cannibalism. No man shall
+eat of human flesh on pain of death. And to begin with, no man shall cook
+or eat the body of Lavita, the son of Sami. On that I am determined--I,
+Tu-Kila-Kila. The King of the Birds and I, we will dig a pit, and we will
+bury in it the corpse of this man that was once your god, and whom his
+own wickedness compelled me to fight and slay, in order to prevent more
+cruelty and bloodshed."
+
+The young chief stood up, all red in his wrath, and interrupted him,
+brandishing a coral-stone hatchet. "This is blasphemy," he said. "This is
+sheer rank blasphemy. These are not good words. They are very bad
+medicine. The white-faced Korong is no true Tu-Kila-Kila. His advice
+is evil--and ill-luck would follow it. He wishes to change the sacred
+customs of Boupari. Now, that is not well. My counsel is this: let us eat
+him now, unless he changes his heart, and amends his ways, and partakes,
+as is right, of the body of Lavita, the son of Sami."
+
+The assembly swayed visibly, this way and that, some inclining to the
+conservative view of the rash young chief, and others to the cautious
+liberalism of the gray-haired warrior. Felix noted their division, and
+spoke once more, this time still more authoritatively than ever.
+
+"Furthermore," he said, "my people, hear me. As I came in a ship
+propelled by fire over the high waves of the sea, so I go away in one. We
+watch for such a ship to pass by Boupari. When it comes, the Queen of the
+Clouds--upon whose life I place a great Taboo; let no man dare to touch
+her at his peril; if he does, I will rush upon him and kill him as I
+killed Lavita, the son of Sami. When it comes, the Queen of the Clouds,
+the King of the Birds, and I, we will go away back in it to the land
+whence we came, and be quit of Boupari. But we will not leave it fireless
+or godless. When I return back home again to my own far land, I will send
+out messengers, very good men, who will tell you of a God more powerful
+by much than any you ever knew, and very righteous. They will teach you
+great things you never dreamed of. Therefore, I ask you now to disperse
+to your own homes, while the King of Birds and I bury the body of Lavita,
+the son of Sami."
+
+All this time Muriel had been seated on the ground, listening with
+profound interest, but scarcely understanding a word, though here and
+there, after her six months' stay in the island, a single phrase was
+dimly intelligible to her. But now, at this critical moment she rose,
+and, standing upright by Felix's side in her spotless English purity
+among those assembled savages, she pointed just once with her uplifted
+finger to the calm vault of heaven, and then across the moonlit horizon
+of the sea, and last of all to the clustering huts and villages of
+Boupari. "Tell them," she said to Felix, with blanched lips, but without
+one sign of a tremor in her fearless voice, "I will pray for them to
+Heaven, when I go across the sea, and will think of the children that I
+loved to pat and play with, and will send out messengers from our home
+beyond the waves, to make them wiser and happier and better."
+
+Felix translated her simple message to them in its pure womanly
+goodness. Even the natives were touched. They whispered and hesitated.
+Then after a time of much murmured debate, the King of Fire stood forward
+as a mediator. "There is an oracle, O Korong," he said, "not to prejudge
+the matter, which decides all these things--a great conch-shell at a
+sacred grove in the neighboring island of Aloa Mauna. It is the holiest
+oracle of all our holy religion. We gods and men of Boupari have taken
+counsel together, and have come to a conclusion. We will put forth a
+canoe and send men with blood on their faces to inquire at Aloa Mauna of
+the very great oracle. Till then, you are neither Tu-Kila-Kila, nor not
+Tu-Kila-Kila. It behooves us to be very careful how we deal with gods.
+Our people will stand round your precinct in a row, and guard you with
+their spears. You shall not cross the taboo line to them, nor they to
+you: all shall be neutral. Food shall be laid by the line, as always,
+morn, noon, and night; and your Shadows shall take it in; but you shall
+not come out. Neither shall you bury the body of Lavita, the son of Sami.
+Till the canoe comes back it shall lie in the sun and rot there."
+
+He clapped his hands twice.
+
+In a moment a tom-tom began to beat from behind, and the people all
+crowded without the circle. The King of Fire came forward ostentatiously
+and made taboo. "If, any man cross this line," he said in a droning
+sing-song, "till the canoe return from the great oracle of our faith on
+Aloa Mauna, I, Fire, will scorch him into cinder and ashes. If any woman
+transgress, I will pitch her with palm oil, and light her up for a lamp
+on a moonless night to lighten this temple."
+
+The King of Water distributed shark's-tooth spears. At once a great
+serried wall hemmed in the Europeans all round, and they sat down to
+wait, the three whites together, for the upshot of the mission to Aloa
+Mauna.
+
+And the dawn now gleamed red on the eastern horizon.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+AT SEA: OFF BOUPARI.
+
+
+Thirteen days out from Sydney, the good ship Australasian was nearing the
+equator.
+
+It was four of the clock in the afternoon, and the captain (off duty)
+paced the deck, puffing a cigar, and talking idly with a passenger on
+former experiences.
+
+Eight bells went on the quarter-deck; time to change watches.
+
+"This is only our second trip through this channel," the captain
+said, gazing across with a casual glance at the palm-trees that
+stood dark against the blue horizon. "We used to go a hundred miles
+to eastward, here, to avoid the reefs. But last voyage I came
+through this way quite safely--though we had a nasty accident on the
+road--unavoidable--unavoidable! Big sea was running free over the
+sunken shoals; caught the ship aft unawares, and stove in better than
+half a dozen portholes. Lady passenger on deck happened to be leaning
+over the weather gunwale; big sea caught her up on its crest in a jiffy,
+lifted her like a baby, and laid her down again gently, just so, on the
+bed of the ocean. By George, sir, I was annoyed. It was quite a romance,
+poor thing; quite a romance; we all felt so put out about it the rest
+of that voyage. Young fellow on board, nephew of Sir Theodore Thurstan,
+of the Colonial Office, was in love with Miss Ellis--girl's name was
+Ellis--father's a parson somewhere down in Somersetshire--and as soon as
+the big sea took her up on its crest, what does Thurstan go and do, but
+he ups on the taffrail, and, before you could say Jack Robinson, jumps
+over to save her."
+
+"But he didn't succeed?" the passenger asked, with languid interest.
+
+"Succeed, my dear sir? and with a sea running twelve feet high like that?
+Why, it was pitch dark, and such a surf on that the gig could hardly go
+through it." The captain smiled, and puffed away pensively. "Drowned,"
+he said, after a brief pause, with complacent composure. "Drowned.
+Drowned. Drowned. Went to the bottom, both of 'em. Davy Jones's locker.
+But unavoidable, quite. These accidents _will_ happen, even on the
+best-regulated liners. Why, there was my brother Tom, in the Cunard
+service--same that boast they never lost a passenger; there was my
+brother Tom, he was out one day off the Newfoundland banks, heavy swell
+setting in from the nor'-nor'-east, icebergs ahead, passengers battened
+down--Bless my soul, how that light seems to come and go, don't it?"
+
+It was a reflected light, flashing from the island straight in the
+captain's eyes, small and insignificant as to size, but strong for all
+that in the full tropical sunshine, and glittering like a diamond from a
+vague elevation near the centre of the island.
+
+"Seems to come and go in regular order," the passenger observed,
+reflectively, withdrawing his cigar. "Looks for all the world just like
+naval signalling."
+
+The captain paused, and shaded his eyes a moment. "Hanged if that isn't
+just what it _is_," he answered, slowly. "It's a rigged-up heliograph,
+and they're using the Morse code; dash my eyes if they aren't. Well, this
+_is_ civilization! What the dickens can have come to the island of
+Boupari? There isn't a darned European soul in the place, nor ever has
+been. Anchorage unsafe; no harbor; bad reef; too small for missionaries
+to make a living, and natives got nothing worth speaking of to trade in."
+
+"What do they say?" the passenger asked, with suddenly quickened
+interest.
+
+"How the devil should I tell you yet, sir?" the captain retorted with
+choleric grumpiness. "Don't you see I'm spelling it out, letter by
+letter? O, r, e, s, c, u, e, u, s, c, o, m, e, w, e, l, l, a, r, m, e,
+d--Yes. yes, I twig it." And the captain jotted it down in his note-book
+for some seconds, silently.
+
+"Run up the flag there," he shouted, a moment later, rushing hastily
+forward. "Stop her at once, Walker. Easy, easy. Get ready the gig. Well,
+upon my soul, there _is_ a rum start anyway."
+
+"What does the message say?" the passenger inquired, with intense
+surprise.
+
+"Say? Well, there's what I make it out," the captain answered, handing
+him the scrap of paper on which he had jotted down the letters. "I missed
+the beginning, but the end's all right. Look alive there, boys, will you.
+Bring out the Winchester. Take cutlasses, all hands. I'll go along myself
+in her."
+
+The passenger took the piece of paper on which he read, "and send a boat
+to rescue us. Come well armed. Savages on guard. Thurstan, Ellis."
+
+In less than three minutes the boat was lowered and manned, and the
+captain, with the Winchester six-shooter by his side, seated grim in the
+stern, took command of the tiller.
+
+On the island it was the first day of Felix and Muriel's imprisonment in
+the dusty precinct of Tu-Kila-Kila's temple. All the morning through,
+they had sat under the shade of a smaller banyan in the outer corner; for
+Muriel could neither enter the noisome hut nor go near the great tree
+with the skeletons on its branches; nor could she sit where the dead
+savage's body, still festering in the sun, attracted the buzzing blue
+flies by thousands, to drink up the blood that lay thick on the earth in
+a pool around it. Hard by, the natives sat, keen as lynxes, in a great
+circle just outside the white taboo-line, where, with serried spears,
+they kept watch and ward over the persons of their doubtful gods or
+victims. M. Peyron, alone preserving his equanimity under these adverse
+circumstances, hummed low to himself in very dubious tones; even he
+felt his French gayety had somewhat forsaken him; this revolution in
+Boupari failed to excite his Parisian ardor.
+
+About one o'clock in the day, however, looking casually seaward--what was
+this that M. Peyron, to his great surprise, descried far away on the dim
+southern horizon? A low black line, lying close to the water? No, no; not
+a steamer!
+
+Too prudent to excite the natives' attention unnecessarily, the
+cautious Frenchman whispered, in the most commonplace voice on earth to
+Felix: "Don't look at once; and when you do look, mind you don't exhibit
+any agitation in your tone or manner. But what do you make that out to
+be--that long black haze on the horizon to southward?"
+
+Felix looked, disregarding the friendly injunction, at once. At the same
+moment, Muriel turned her eyes quickly in the self-same direction.
+Neither made the faintest sign of outer emotion; but Muriel clenched her
+white hands hard, till the nails dug into the palm, in her effort to
+restrain herself, as she murmured very low, in an agitated voice, "_Un
+vapeur, un vapeur_!"
+
+"So I think," M. Peyron answered, very low and calm. "It is, indeed, a
+steamer!"
+
+For three long hours those anxious souls waited and watched it draw
+nearer and nearer. Slowly the natives, too, began to perceive the
+unaccustomed object. As it drew abreast of the island, and the decisive
+moment arrived for prompt action, Felix rose in his place once more
+and cried aloud, "My people, I told you a ship, propelled by fire, would
+come from the far land across the sea to take us. The ship has come; you
+can see for yourselves the thick black smoke that issues in huge puffs
+from the mouth of the monster. Now, listen to me, and dare not to disobey
+me. My word is law; let all men see to it. I am going to send a message
+of fire from the sun to the great canoe that walks upon the water. If any
+man ventures to stop me from doing it the people from the great canoe
+will land on this isle and take vengeance for his act, and kill with the
+thunder which the sailing gods carry ever about with them."
+
+By this time the island was alive with commotion. Hundreds of natives,
+with their long hair falling unkempt about their keen brown faces,
+were gazing with open eyes at the big black ship that ploughed her way
+so fast against wind and tide over the surface of the waters. Some of
+them shouted and gesticulated with panic fear; others seemed half
+inclined to waste no time on preparation or doubt, but to rush on at
+once, and immolate their captives before a rescue was possible. But
+Felix, keeping ever his cool head undisturbed, stood on the dusty mound
+by Tu-Kila-Kila's house, and taking in his hand the little mirror he had
+made from the match-box, flashed the light from the sun full in their
+eyes for a moment, to the astonishment and discomfiture of all those
+gaping savages. Then he focussed it on the Australasian, across the surf
+and the waves, and with a throbbing heart began to make his last faint
+bid for life and freedom.
+
+For four or five minutes he went flashing on, uncertain of the effect,
+whether they saw or saw not. Then a cry from Muriel burst at once upon
+his ears. She clasped her hands convulsively in an agony of joy. "They
+see us! They see us!"
+
+And sure enough, scarcely half a minute later, a British flag ran gayly
+up the mainmast, and a boat seemed to drop down over the side of the
+vessel.
+
+As for the natives, they watched these proceedings with considerable
+surprise and no little discomfiture--Fire and Water, in particular,
+whispering together, much alarmed, with many superstitious nods and
+taboos, in the corner of the enclosure.
+
+Gradually, as the boat drew nearer and nearer, divided counsels prevailed
+among the savages. With no certainly recognized Tu-Kila-Kila to marshal
+their movements, each man stood in doubt from whom to take his orders. At
+last, the King of Fire, in a hesitating voice, gave the word of command.
+"Half the warriors to the shore to repel the enemy; half to watch round
+the taboo-line, lest the Korongs escape us! Let Breathless Fear, our
+war-god, go before the face of our troops, invisible!"
+
+And, quick as thought, at his word, the warriors had paired off, two and
+two, in long lines; some running hastily down to the beach, to man the
+war-canoes, while others remained, with shark's tooth spears still set in
+a looser circle, round the great temple-enclosure of Tu-Kila-Kila.
+
+For Muriel, this suspense was positively terrible. To feel one was so
+close to the hope of rescue, and yet to know that before that help
+arrived, or even as it came up, those savages might any moment run their
+ghastly spears through them.
+
+But Felix made the best of his position still. "Remember," he cried, at
+the top of his voice, as the warriors started at a run for the water's
+edge, "your Tu-Kila-Kila tells you, these new-comers are his friends.
+Whoever hurts them, does so at his peril. This is a great Taboo. I bid
+you receive them. Beware for your lives. I, Tu-Kila-Kila the Great, have
+said it."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII.
+
+THE DOWNFALL OF A PANTHEON.
+
+
+The Australasian's gig entered the lagoon through the fringing reef by
+its narrow seaward mouth, and rowed steadily for the landing place on the
+main island.
+
+A little way out from shore, amid loud screams and yells, the natives
+came up with it in their laden war-canoes. Shouting and gesticulating and
+brandishing their spears with the shark's tooth tips, they endeavored to
+stop its progress landward by pure noise and bravado.
+
+"We must be careful what we do, boys," the captain observed, in a quiet
+voice of seamanlike resolution to his armed companions. "We mustn't
+frighten the savages too much, or show too hostile a front, for fear they
+should retaliate on our friends on the island." He held up his hand, with
+the gold braid on the wrist, to command silence; and the natives, gazing
+open-mouthed, looked and wondered at the gesture. These sailing gods were
+certainly arrayed in most gorgeous vestments, and their canoe, though
+devoid of a grinning figure-head, was provided with a most admirable and
+well-uniformed equipment.
+
+A coral rock jutted high out of the sea to the left hard by. Its summit
+was crowded with a basking population of sea-gulls and pelicans. The
+captain gave the word to "easy all." In a second the gig stopped short,
+as those stout arms held her. He rose in his place and lifted the
+six-shooter. Then he pointed it ostentatiously at the rock, away from the
+native canoes, and held up his hand yet again for silence. "We'll give
+'em a taste of what we can do, boys," he said, "just to show 'em, not to
+hurt 'em." At that he drew the trigger twice. His first two chambers were
+loaded on purpose with duck-shot cartridges. Twice the big gun roared;
+twice the fire flashed red from its smoking mouth. As the smoke cleared
+away, the natives, dumb with surprise, and perfectly cowed with terror,
+saw ten or a dozen torn and bleeding birds float mangled upon the water.
+
+"Now for the dynamite!" the captain said, cheerily, proceeding to lower a
+small object overboard by a single wire, while he held up his hand a
+third time to bespeak silence and attention.
+
+The natives looked again, with eyes starting from their heads. The
+captain gave a little click, and pointed with his finger to a spot on
+the water's top, a little way in front of him. Instantly, a loud report,
+and a column of water spurted up into the air, some ten or twelve feet,
+in a boisterous fountain. As it subsided again, a hundred or so of the
+bright-colored fish that browse among the submerged, coral-groves of
+these still lagoons, rose dead or dying to the seething, boiling surface.
+
+The captain smiled. Instantly the natives set up a terrified shout.
+"It is even as he said," they cried. "These gods are his ministers!
+The white-faced Korong is a very great deity! He is indeed the true
+Tu-Kila-Kila. These gods have come for him. They are very mighty. Thunder
+and lightning and waterspouts are theirs. The waves do as they bid. The
+sea obeys them. They are here to take away our Tu-Kila-Kila from our
+midst. And what will then become of the island of Boupari? Will it not
+sink in the waves of the sea and disappear? Will not the sun in heaven
+grow dark, and the moon cease to shed its benign light on the earth, when
+Tu-Kila-Kila the Great returns at last to his own far country?"
+
+"That lot'll do for 'em, I expect," the captain said cheerily, with a
+confident smile. "Now forward all, boys. I fancy we've astonished the
+natives a trifle."
+
+They rowed on steadily, but cautiously, toward the white bank of sand
+which formed the usual landing-place, the captain holding the six-shooter
+in readiness all the time, and keeping an eye firmly fixed on every
+movement of the savages. But the warriors in the canoes, thoroughly cowed
+and overawed by this singular exhibition of the strangers' prowess,
+paddled on in whispering silence, nearly abreast of the gig, but at a
+safe distance, as they thought, and eyed the advancing Europeans with
+quiet looks of unmixed suspicion.
+
+At last, the adventurous young chief, who had advised killing Felix
+off-hand on the island, mustered up courage to paddle his own canoe a
+little nearer, and flung his spear madly in the direction of the gig. It
+fell short by ten yards. He stood eying it angrily. But the captain,
+grimly quiet, raising his Winchester to his shoulder without one second's
+delay, and marking his man, fired at the young chief as he stood, still
+half in the attitude of throwing, on the prow of his canoe, an easy aim
+for fire-arms. The ball went clean through the savage's breast, and then
+ricochetted three times on the water afar off. The young chief fell stone
+dead into the sea like a log, and sank instantly to the bottom.
+
+It was a critical moment. The captain felt uncertain whether the natives
+would close round them in force or not. It is always dangerous to fire a
+shot at savages. But the Boupari men were too utterly awed to venture on
+defence. "He was Tu-Kila-Kila's enemy," they cried, in astonished tones.
+"He raised his voice against the very high god. Therefore, the very high
+god's friends have smitten him with their lightning. Their thunderbolt
+went through him, and hit the water beyond. How strong is their hand!
+They can kill from afar. They are mighty gods. Let no man strive to fight
+against the friends of Tu-Kila-Kila."
+
+The sailors rowed on and reached the landing-place. There, half of them,
+headed by the captain, disembarked in good order, with drawn cutlasses,
+while the other half remained behind to guard the gig, under the third
+officer. The natives also disembarked, a little way off, and, making
+humble signs of submission with knee and arm, endeavored, by pantomime,
+to express the idea of their willingness to guide the strangers to their
+friends' quarters.
+
+The captain waved them on with his hand. The natives, reassured, led the
+way, at some distance ahead, along the paths through the jungle. The
+captain had his finger on his six-shooter the while; every sailor grasped
+his cutlass and kept his revolver ready for action. "I don't half like
+the look of it," the captain observed, partly to himself. "They seem to
+be leading us into an ambuscade or something. Keep a sharp lookout
+against surprise from the jungle, boys; and if any native shows fight
+shoot him down instantly."
+
+At last they emerged upon a clear space in the front, where a great group
+of savages stood in a circle, with serried spears, round a large wattled
+hut that occupied the elevated centre of the clearing.
+
+For a minute or two the action of the savages was uncertain. Half of the
+defenders turned round to face the invaders angrily; the other half stood
+irresolute, with their spears still held inward, guarding a white line of
+sand with inflexible devotion.
+
+The warriors who had preceded them from the shore called aloud to their
+friends by the temple in startled tones. The captain and sailors had no
+idea what their words meant. But just then, from the midst of the circle,
+an English voice cried out in haste, "Don't fire! Do nothing rash! We're
+safe. Don't be frightened. The natives are disposed to parley and
+palaver. Take care how you act. They're terribly afraid of you."
+
+Just outside the taboo-line the captain halted. The gray-headed old
+chief, who had accompanied his fellows to the shore, spoke out in
+Polynesian. "Do not resist them," he said, "my people. If you do, you
+will be blasted by their lightning like a bare bamboo in a mighty
+cyclone. They carry thunder in their hands. They are mighty, mighty gods.
+The white-faced Korong spoke no more than the truth. Let them do as they
+will with us. We are but their meat. We are as dust beneath their sole,
+and as driven mulberry-leaves before the breath of the tempest."
+
+The defenders hesitated still a little. Then, suddenly losing heart, they
+broke rank at last at a point close by where the captain of the
+Australasian stood, one man after another falling aside slowly and
+shamefacedly a pace or two. The captain, unhesitatingly, overstepped the
+white taboo-line. Next instant, Felix and Muriel were grasping his hand
+hard, and M. Peyron was bowing a polite Parisian reception.
+
+Forthwith, the sailors crowded round them in a hollow square. Muriel and
+Felix, half faint with relief from their long and anxious suspense,
+staggered slowly down the seaward path between them. But there was no
+need now for further show of defence. The islanders, pressing near and
+flinging away their weapons, followed the procession close, with tears
+and lamentations. As they went on, the women, rushing out of their huts
+while the fugitives passed, tore their hair on their heads, and beat
+their breasts in terror. The warriors who had come from the shore
+recounted, with their own exaggerative additions, the miracle of the
+six-shooter and the dynamite cartridge. Gradually they approached the
+landing-place on the beach. There the third officer sat waiting in the
+gig to receive them. The lamentations of the islanders now became
+positively poignant. "Oh, my father," they cried aloud, "my brother, my
+revered one, you are indeed the true Tu-Kila-Kila. Do not go away like
+this and desert us! Oh, our mother, great queen, mighty goddess, stop
+with us! Take not away your sun from the heavens, nor your rain from the
+crops. We acknowledge we have sinned; we have done very wrong; but the
+chief sinner is dead; the wrong-doer has paid; spare us who remain; spare
+us, great deity; do not make the bright lights of heaven become dark over
+us. Stay with your worshippers, and we will give you choice young girls
+to eat every day, we will sacrifice the tenderest of our children to feed
+you."
+
+It is an awful thing for any race or nation when its taboos fail all at
+once, and die out entirely. To the men of Boupari, the Tu-Kila-Kila of
+the moment represented both the Moral Order and the regular sequence of
+the physical universe. Anarchy and chaos might rule when he was gone. The
+sun might be quenched, and the people run riot. No wonder they shrank
+from the fearful consequence that might next ensue. King and priest, god
+and religion, all at one fell blow were to be taken away from them!
+
+Felix turned round on the shore and spoke to them again. "My people," he
+said, in a kindly tone--for, after all, he pitied them--"you need have no
+fear. When I am gone, the sun will still shine and the trees will still
+bear fruit every year as formerly. I will send the messengers I promised
+from my own land to teach you. Until they come, I leave you this as a
+great Taboo. Tu-Kila-Kila enjoins it. Shed no human blood; eat no human
+flesh. Those who do will be punished when another fire-canoe comes from
+the far land to bring my messengers."
+
+The King of Fire bent low at the words. "Oh, Tu-Kila-Kila," he said, "it
+shall be done as you say. Till your messengers come, every man shall live
+at peace with all his neighbors."
+
+They stepped into the gig. Mali and Toko followed before M. Peyron as
+naturally as they had always followed their masters on the island before.
+
+"Who are these?" the captain asked, smiling.
+
+"Our Shadows," Felix answered. "Let them come. I will pay their passage
+when I reach San Francisco. They have been very faithful to us, and they
+are afraid to remain, lest the islanders should kill them for letting us
+go or for not accompanying us."
+
+"Very well," the captain answered. "Forward all, there, boys! Now, ahead
+for the ship. And thank God, we're well out of it!"
+
+But the islanders still stood on the shore and wept, stretching their
+hands in vain after the departing boat, and crying aloud in piteous
+tones, "Oh, my father, return! Oh, my mother, come back! Oh, very great
+gods, do not fly and desert us!"
+
+Seven weeks later Mr. and Mrs. Felix Thurstan, who had been married in
+the cathedral at Honolulu the very morning the Australasian arrived
+there, sat in an eminently respectable drawing-room in a London square,
+where Mrs. Ellis, Muriel's aunt by marriage, was acting as their hostess.
+
+"But how dreadful it is to think, dear," Mrs. Ellis remarked for the
+twentieth time since their arrival, with a deep-drawn sigh, "how dreadful
+to think that you and Felix should have been all those months alone on
+the island together without being married!"
+
+Muriel looked up with a quiet smile toward Felix. "I think, Aunt Mary,"
+she said, dreamily, "if you'd been there yourself, and suffered all those
+fears, and passed through all those horrors that we did together, you'd
+have troubled your head very little indeed about such conventionalities,
+as whether or not you happened to be married.... Besides," she added,
+after a pause, with a fine perception of the inexorable stringency of
+Mrs. Grundy's law, "we weren't quite without chaperons, either, don't you
+know; for our Shadows, of course, were always with us."
+
+Whereat Felix smiled an equally quiet smile. "And terrible as it all
+was," he put in, "I shall never regret it, because it made Muriel know
+how profoundly I loved her, and it made me know how brave and trustful
+and pure a woman could be under such awful conditions."
+
+But Mrs. Ellis sat still in her chair and smiled uncomfortably. It
+affected her spirits. Taboos, after all, are much the same in England as
+in Boupari.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GREAT TABOO***
+
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+    <title>
+      The Great Taboo, by Grant Allen
+    </title>
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+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Great Taboo, by Grant Allen
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Great Taboo
+
+Author: Grant Allen
+
+Release Date: October 26, 2004  [eBook #13876]
+Last Updated: September 10, 2018
+
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GREAT TABOO***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Mary Meehan and the Project Gutenberg Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+HTML file produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <div style="height: 8em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h1>
+      THE GREAT TABOO
+    </h1>
+    <h2>
+      By Grant Allen
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <b>CONTENTS</b>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_PREF"> PREFACE </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0001"> CHAPTER I. &mdash; IN MID PACIFIC. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0002"> CHAPTER II. &mdash; THE TEMPLE OF THE DEITY. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0003"> CHAPTER III. &mdash; LAND; BUT WHAT LAND? </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0004"> CHAPTER IV. &mdash; THE GUESTS OF HEAVEN. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0005"> CHAPTER V. &mdash; ENROLLED IN OLYMPUS. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0006"> CHAPTER VI. &mdash; FIRST DAYS IN BOUPARI.
+      </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0007"> CHAPTER VII. &mdash; INTERCHANGE OF CIVILITIES.
+      </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0008"> CHAPTER VIII. &mdash; THE CUSTOMS OF BOUPARI.
+      </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0009"> CHAPTER IX. &mdash; SOWING THE WIND. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0010"> CHAPTER X. &mdash; REAPING THE WHIRLWIND. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0011"> CHAPTER XI. &mdash; AFTER THE STORM. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0012"> CHAPTER XII. &mdash; A POINT OF THEOLOGY. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0013"> CHAPTER XIII. &mdash; AS BETWEEN GODS. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0014"> CHAPTER XIV. &mdash; &ldquo;MR. THURSTAN, I
+      PRESUME.&rdquo; </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0015"> CHAPTER XV. &mdash; THE SECRET OF KORONG. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0016"> CHAPTER XVI. &mdash; A VERY FAINT CLUE. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0017"> CHAPTER XVII. &mdash; FACING THE WORST. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0018"> CHAPTER XVIII. &mdash; TU-KILA-KILA PLAYS A CARD.
+      </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0019"> CHAPTER XIX. &mdash; DOMESTIC BLISS. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0020"> CHAPTER XX. &mdash; COUNCIL OF WAR. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0021"> CHAPTER XXI. &mdash; METHUSELAH GIVES SIGN. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0022"> CHAPTER XXII. &mdash; TANTALIZING, VERY. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0023"> CHAPTER XXIII. &mdash; A MESSAGE FROM THE DEAD.
+      </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0024"> CHAPTER XXIV. &mdash; AN UNFINISHED TALE. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0025"> CHAPTER XXV. &mdash; TU-KILA-KILA STRIKES. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0026"> CHAPTER XXVI. &mdash; A RASH RESOLVE. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0027"> CHAPTER XXVII. &mdash; A STRANGE ALLY. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0028"> CHAPTER XXVIII. &mdash; WAGER OF BATTLE. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0029"> CHAPTER XXIX. &mdash; VICTORY&mdash;AND AFTER?
+      </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0030"> CHAPTER XXX. &mdash; SUSPENSE. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0031"> CHAPTER XXXI. &mdash; AT SEA: OFF BOUPARI.
+      </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0032"> CHAPTER XXXII. &mdash; THE DOWNFALL OF A
+      PANTHEON. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_PREF" id="link2H_PREF"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PREFACE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I desire to express my profound indebtedness, for the central mythological
+      idea embodied in this tale, to Mr. J.G. Frazer&rsquo;s admirable and
+      epoch-making work, &ldquo;The Golden Bough,&rdquo; whose main contention I
+      have endeavored incidentally to popularize in my present story. I wish
+      also to express my obligations in other ways to Mr. Andrew Lang&rsquo;s
+      &ldquo;Myth, Ritual, and Religion,&rdquo; Mr. H.O. Forbes&rsquo;s &ldquo;Naturalist&rsquo;s
+      Wanderings,&rdquo; and Mr. Julian Thomas&rsquo;s &ldquo;Cannibals and
+      Convicts.&rdquo; If I have omitted to mention any other author to whom I
+      may have owed incidental hints, it will be some consolation to me to
+      reflect that I shall at least have afforded an opportunity for legitimate
+      sport to the amateurs of the new and popular British pastime of
+      badger-baiting or plagiary-hunting. It may also save critics some moments&rsquo;
+      search if I say at once that, after careful consideration, I have been
+      unable to discover any moral whatsoever in this humble narrative. I
+      venture to believe that in so enlightened an age the majority of my
+      readers will never miss it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      G.A.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NOOK, DORKING, October, 1890.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0001" id="link2HCH0001"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER I. &mdash; IN MID PACIFIC.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Man overboard!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It rang in Felix Thurstan&rsquo;s ears like the sound of a bell. He gazed
+      about him in dismay, wondering what had happened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first intimation he received of the accident was that sudden sharp cry
+      from the bo&rsquo;sun&rsquo;s mate. Almost before he had fully taken it
+      in, in all its meaning, another voice, farther aft, took up the cry once
+      more in an altered form: &ldquo;A lady! a lady! Somebody overboard! Great
+      heavens, it is <i>her</i>! It&rsquo;s Miss Ellis! Miss Ellis!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next instant Felix found himself, he knew not how, struggling in a wild
+      grapple with the dark, black water. A woman was clinging to him&mdash;clinging
+      for dear life. But he couldn&rsquo;t have told you himself that minute how
+      it all took place. He was too stunned and dazzled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked around him on the seething sea in a sudden awakening, as it
+      were, to life and consciousness. All about, the great water stretched dark
+      and tumultuous. White breakers surged over him. Far ahead the steamer&rsquo;s
+      lights gleamed red and green in long lines upon the ocean. At first they
+      ran fast; then they slackened somewhat. She was surely slowing now; they
+      must be reversing engines and trying to stop her. They would put out a
+      boat. But what hope, what chance of rescue by night, in such a wild waste
+      of waves as that? And Muriel Ellis was clinging to him for dear life all
+      the while, with the despairing clutch of a half-drowned woman!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The people on the Australasian, for their part, knew better what had
+      occurred. There was bustle and confusion enough on deck and on the captain&rsquo;s
+      bridge, to be sure: &ldquo;Man overboard!&rdquo;&mdash;three sharp rings
+      at the engine bell:&mdash;&ldquo;Stop her short!&mdash;reverse engines!&mdash;lower
+      the gig!&mdash;look sharp, there, all of you!&rdquo; Passengers hurried up
+      breathless at the first alarm to know what was the matter. Sailors
+      loosened and lowered the boat from the davits with extraordinary
+      quickness. Officers stood by, giving orders in monosyllables with
+      practised calm. All was hurry and turmoil, yet with a marvellous sense of
+      order and prompt obedience as well. But, at any rate, the people on deck
+      hadn&rsquo;t the swift swirl of the boisterous water, the hampering wet
+      clothes, the pervading consciousness of personal danger, to make their
+      brains reel, like Felix Thurstan&rsquo;s. They could ask one another with
+      comparative composure what had happened on board; they could listen
+      without terror to the story of the accident.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the thirteenth day out from Sydney, and the Australasian was
+      rapidly nearing the equator. Toward evening the wind had freshened, and
+      the sea was running high against her weather side. But it was a fine
+      starlit night, though the moon had not yet risen; and as the brief
+      tropical twilight faded away by quick degrees in the west, the fringe of
+      cocoanut palms on the reef that bounded the little island of Boupari
+      showed out for a minute or two in dark relief, some miles to leeward,
+      against the pale pink horizon. In spite of the heavy sea, many passengers
+      lingered late on deck that night to see the last of that coral-girt shore,
+      which was to be their final glimpse of land till they reached Honolulu, <i>en
+      route</i> for San Francisco.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bit by bit, however, the cocoanut palms, silhouetted with their graceful
+      waving arms for a few brief minutes in black against the glowing
+      background, merged slowly into the sky or sank below the horizon. All grew
+      dark. One by one, as the trees disappeared, the passengers dropped off for
+      whist in the saloon, or retired to the uneasy solitude of their own
+      state-rooms. At last only two or three men were left smoking and chatting
+      near the top of the companion ladder; while at the stern of the ship
+      Muriel Ellis looked over toward the retreating island, and talked with a
+      certain timid maidenly frankness to Felix Thurstan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There&rsquo;s nowhere on earth for getting really to know people in a very
+      short time like the deck of a great Atlantic or Pacific liner. You&rsquo;re
+      thrown together so much, and all day long, that you see more of your
+      fellow-passengers&rsquo; inner life and nature in a few brief weeks than
+      you would ever be likely to see in a long twelvemonth of ordinary town or
+      country acquaintanceship. And Muriel Ellis had seen a great deal in those
+      thirteen days of Felix Thurstan; enough to make sure in her own heart that
+      she really liked him&mdash;well&mdash;so much that she looked up with a
+      pretty blush of self-consciousness every time he approached and lifted his
+      hat to her. Muriel was an English rector&rsquo;s daughter, from a country
+      village in Somersetshire; and she was now on her way back from a long year&rsquo;s
+      visit, to recruit her health, to an aunt in Paramatta. She was travelling
+      under the escort of an amiable old chaperon whom the aunt in question had
+      picked up for her before leaving Sydney; but, as the amiable old chaperon,
+      being but an indifferent sailor, spent most of her time in her own berth,
+      closely attended by the obliging stewardess, Muriel had found her
+      chaperonage interfere very little with opportunities of talk with that
+      nice Mr. Thurstan. And now, as the last glow of sunset died out in the
+      western sky, and the last palm-tree faded away against the colder green
+      darkness of the tropical night, Muriel was leaning over the bulwarks in
+      confidential mood, and watching the big waves advance or recede, and
+      talking the sort of talk that such an hour seems to favor with the
+      handsome young civil servant who stood on guard, as it were, beside her.
+      For Felix Thurstan held a government appointment at Levuka, in Fiji, and
+      was now on his way home, on leave of absence after six years&rsquo;
+      service in that new-made colony.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How delightful it would be to live on an island like that!&rdquo;
+      Muriel murmured, half to herself, as she gazed out wistfully in the
+      direction of the disappearing coral reef. &ldquo;With those beautiful
+      palms waving always over one&rsquo;s head, and that delicious evening air
+      blowing cool through their branches! It looks such a Paradise!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix smiled and glanced down at her, as he steadied himself with one hand
+      against the bulwark, while the ship rolled over into the trough of the sea
+      heavily. &ldquo;Well, I don&rsquo;t know about that, Miss Ellis,&rdquo; he
+      answered with a doubtful air, eying her close as he spoke with eyes of
+      evident admiration. &ldquo;One might be happy anywhere, of course&mdash;in
+      suitable society; but if you&rsquo;d lived as long among cocoanuts in Fiji
+      as I have, I dare say the poetry of these calm palm-grove islands would be
+      a little less real to you. Remember, though they look so beautiful and
+      dreamy against the sky like that, at sunset especially (that was a heavy
+      one, that time; I&rsquo;m really afraid we must go down to the cabin soon;
+      she&rsquo;ll be shipping seas before long if we stop on deck much later&mdash;and
+      yet, it&rsquo;s so delightful stopping up here till the dusk comes on, isn&rsquo;t
+      it?)&mdash;well, remember, I was saying, though they look so beautiful and
+      dreamy and poetical&mdash;&lsquo;Summer isles of Eden lying in dark purple
+      spheres of sea,&rsquo; and all that sort of thing&mdash;these islands are
+      inhabited by the fiercest and most bloodthirsty cannibals known to
+      travellers.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cannibals!&rdquo; Muriel repeated, looking up at him in surprise.
+      &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t mean to say that islands like these, standing right
+      in the very track of European steamers, are still heathen and cannibal?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, dear, yes,&rdquo; Felix replied, holding his hand out as he
+      spoke to catch his companion&rsquo;s arm gently, and steady her against
+      the wave that was just going to strike the stern: &ldquo;Excuse me; just
+      so; the sea&rsquo;s rising fast, isn&rsquo;t it?&mdash;Oh, dear, yes; of
+      course they are; they&rsquo;re all heathen and cannibals. You couldn&rsquo;t
+      imagine to yourself the horrible bloodthirsty rites that may this very
+      minute be taking place upon that idyllic-looking island, under the soft
+      waving branches of those whispering palm-trees. Why, I knew a man in the
+      Marquesas myself&mdash;a hideous old native, as ugly as you can fancy him&mdash;who
+      was supposed to be a god, an incarnate god, and was worshipped accordingly
+      with profound devotion by all the other islanders. You can&rsquo;t picture
+      to yourself how awful their worship was. I daren&rsquo;t even repeat it to
+      you; it was too, too horrible. He lived in a hut by himself among the
+      deepest forest, and human victims used to be brought&mdash;well, there, it&rsquo;s
+      too loathsome! Why, see; there&rsquo;s a great light on the island now; a
+      big bonfire or something; don&rsquo;t you make it out? You can tell it by
+      the red glare in the sky overhead.&rdquo; He paused a moment; then he
+      added more slowly, &ldquo;I shouldn&rsquo;t be surprised if at this very
+      moment, while we&rsquo;re standing here in such perfect security on the
+      deck of a Christian English vessel, some unspeakable and unthinkable
+      heathen orgy mayn&rsquo;t be going on over there beside that sacrificial
+      fire; and if some poor trembling native girl isn&rsquo;t being led just
+      now, with blows and curses and awful savage ceremonies, her hands bound
+      behind her back&mdash;Oh, look out, Miss Ellis!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was only just in time to utter the warning words. He was only just in
+      time to put one hand on each side of her slender waist, and hold her tight
+      so, when the big wave which he saw coming struck full tilt against the
+      vessel&rsquo;s flank, and broke in one white drenching sheet of foam
+      against her stern and quarter-deck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The suddenness of the assault took Felix&rsquo;s breath away. For the
+      first few seconds he was only aware that a heavy sea had been shipped, and
+      had wet him through and through with its unexpected deluge. A moment
+      later, he was dimly conscious that his companion had slipped from his
+      grasp, and was nowhere visible. The violence of the shock, and the slimy
+      nature of the sea water, had made him relax his hold without knowing it,
+      in the tumult of the moment, and had at the same time caused Muriel to
+      glide imperceptibly through his fingers, as he had often known an
+      ill-caught cricket-ball do in his school-days. Then he saw he was on his
+      hands and knees on the deck. The wave had knocked him down, and dashed him
+      against the bulwark on the leeward side. As he picked himself up, wet,
+      bruised, and shaken, he looked about for Muriel. A terrible dread seized
+      upon his soul at once. Impossible! Impossible! she couldn&rsquo;t have
+      been washed overboard!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And even as he gazed about, and held his bruised elbow in his hand, and
+      wondered to himself what it could all mean, that sudden loud cry arose
+      beside him from the quarter-deck, &ldquo;Man overboard! Man overboard!&rdquo;
+      followed a moment later by the answering cry, from the men who were
+      smoking under the lee of the companion, &ldquo;A lady! a lady! It&rsquo;s
+      Miss Ellis! Miss Ellis!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He didn&rsquo;t take it all in. He didn&rsquo;t reflect. He didn&rsquo;t
+      even know he was actually doing it. But he did it, all the same, with the
+      simple, straightforward, instinctive sense of duty which makes civilized
+      man act aright, all unconsciously, in any moment of supreme danger and
+      difficulty. Leaping on to the taffrail without one instant&rsquo;s delay,
+      and steadying himself for an indivisible fraction of time with his hand on
+      the rope ladder, he peered out into the darkness with keen eyes for a
+      glimpse of Muriel Ellis&rsquo;s head above the fierce black water; and
+      espying it for one second, as she came up on a white crest, he plunged in
+      before the vessel had time to roll back to windward, and struck boldly out
+      in the direction where he saw that helpless object dashed about like a
+      cork on the surface of the ocean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Only those who have known such accidents at sea can possibly picture to
+      themselves the instantaneous haste with which all that followed took place
+      upon that bustling quarter-deck. Almost at the first cry of &ldquo;Man
+      overboard!&rdquo; the captain&rsquo;s bell rang sharp and quick, as if by
+      magic, with three peremptory little calls in the engine-room below. The
+      Australasian was going at full speed, but in a marvellously short time, as
+      it seemed to all on board, the great ship had slowed down to a perfect
+      standstill, and then had reversed her engines, so that she lay, just nose
+      to the wind, awaiting further orders. In the meantime, almost as soon as
+      the words were out of the bo&rsquo;sun&rsquo;s lips, a sailor amidships
+      had rushed to the safety belts hung up by the companion ladder, and had
+      flung half a dozen of them, one after another, with hasty but well-aimed
+      throws, far, far astern, in the direction where Felix had disappeared into
+      the black water. The belts were painted white, and they showed for a few
+      seconds, as they fell, like bright specks on the surface of the darkling
+      sea; then they sunk slowly behind as the big ship, still not quite
+      stopped, ploughed her way ahead with gigantic force into the great abyss
+      of darkness in front of her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It seemed but a minute, too, to the watchers on board, before a party of
+      sailors, summoned by the whistle with that marvellous readiness to meet
+      any emergency which long experience of sudden danger has rendered habitual
+      among seafaring men, had lowered the boat, and taken their seats on the
+      thwarts, and seized their oars, and were getting under way on their
+      hopeless quest of search, through the dim black night, for those two
+      belated souls alone in the midst of the angry Pacific.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It seemed but a minute or two, I say, to the watchers on board; but oh,
+      what an eternity of time to Felix Thurstan, struggling there with his live
+      burden in the seething water!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had dashed into the ocean, which was dark, but warm with tropical heat,
+      and had succeeded, in spite of the heavy seas then running, in reaching
+      Muriel, who clung to him now with all the fierce clinging of despair, and
+      impeded his movement through that swirling water. More than that, he saw
+      the white life-belts that the sailors flung toward him; they were well and
+      aptly flung, in the inspiration of the moment, to allow for the sea itself
+      carrying them on the crest of its waves toward the two drowning creatures.
+      Felix saw them distinctly, and making a great lunge as they passed, in
+      spite of Muriel&rsquo;s struggles, which sadly hampered his movements, he
+      managed to clutch at no less than three before the great billow, rolling
+      on, carried them off on its top forever away from him. Two of these he
+      slipped hastily over Muriel&rsquo;s shoulders; the other he put, as best
+      he might, round his own waist; and then, for the first time, still
+      clinging close to his companion&rsquo;s arm, and buffeted about wildly by
+      that running sea, he was able to look about him in alarm for a moment, and
+      realize more or less what had actually happened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By this time the Australasian was a quarter of a mile away in front of
+      them, and her lights were beginning to become stationary as she slowly
+      slowed and reversed engines. Then, from the summit of a great wave, Felix
+      was dimly aware of a boat being lowered&mdash;for he saw a separate light
+      gleaming across the sea&mdash;a search was being made in the black night,
+      alas, how hopelessly! The light hovered about for many, many minutes,
+      revealed to him now here, now there, searching in vain to find him, as
+      wave after wave raised him time and again on its irresistible summit. The
+      men in the boat were doing their best, no doubt; but what chance of
+      finding any one on a dark night like that, in an angry sea, and with no
+      clue to guide them toward the two struggling castaways? Current and wind
+      had things all their own way. As a matter of fact, the light never came
+      near the castaways at all; and after half an hour&rsquo;s ineffectual
+      search, which seemed to Felix a whole long lifetime, it returned slowly
+      toward the steamer from which it came&mdash;and left those two alone on
+      the dark Pacific.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There wasn&rsquo;t a chance of picking &rsquo;em up,&rdquo; the
+      captain said, with philosophic calm, as the men clambered on board again,
+      and the Australasian got under way once more for the port of Honolulu.
+      &ldquo;I knew there wasn&rsquo;t a chance; but in common humanity one was
+      bound to make some show of trying to save &rsquo;em. He was a brave fellow
+      to go after her, though it was no good of course. He couldn&rsquo;t even
+      find her, at night, and with such a sea as that running.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And even as he spoke, Felix Thurstan, rising once more on the crest of a
+      much smaller billow&mdash;for somehow the waves were getting incredibly
+      smaller as he drifted on to leeward&mdash;felt his heart sink within him
+      as he observed to his dismay that the Australasian must be steaming ahead
+      once more, by the movement of her lights, and that they two were indeed
+      abandoned to their fate on the open surface of that vast and trackless
+      ocean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER II. &mdash; THE TEMPLE OF THE DEITY.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      While these things were happening on the sea close by, a very different
+      scene indeed was being enacted meanwhile, beneath those waving palms, on
+      the island of Boupari. It was strange, to be sure, as Felix Thurstan had
+      said, that such unspeakable heathen orgies should be taking place within
+      sight of a passing Christian English steamer. But if only he had known or
+      reflected to what sort of land he was trying now to struggle ashore with
+      Muriel, he might well have doubted whether it were not better to let her
+      perish where she was, in the pure clear ocean, rather than to submit an
+      English girl to the possibility of undergoing such horrible heathen rites
+      and ceremonies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For on the island of Boupari it was high feast with the worshippers of
+      their god that night. The sun had turned on the Tropic of Capricorn at
+      noon, and was making his way northward, toward the equator once more; and
+      his votaries, as was their wont, had all come forth to do him honor in due
+      season, and to pay their respects, in the inmost and sacredest grove on
+      the island, to his incarnate representative, the living spirit of trees
+      and fruits and vegetation, the very high god, the divine Tu-Kila-Kila!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Early in the evening, as soon as the sun&rsquo;s rim had disappeared
+      beneath the ocean, a strange noise boomed forth from the central shrine of
+      Boupari. Those who heard it clapped their hands to their ears and ran
+      hastily forward. It was a noise like distant rumbling thunder, or the whir
+      of some great English mill or factory; and at its sound every woman on the
+      island threw herself on the ground prostrate, with her face in the dust,
+      and waited there reverently till the audible voice of the god had once
+      more subsided. For no woman knew how that sound was produced. Only the
+      grown men, initiated into the mysteries of the shrine when they came of
+      age at the tattooing ceremony, were aware that the strange, buzzing,
+      whirring noise was nothing more or less than the cry of the bull-roarer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A bull-roarer, as many English schoolboys know, is merely a piece of
+      oblong wood, pointed at either end, and fastened by a leather thong at one
+      corner. But when whirled round the head by practised priestly hands, it
+      produces a low rumbling noise like the wheels of a distant carriage,
+      growing gradually louder and clearer, from moment to moment, till at last
+      it waxes itself into a frightful din, or bursts into perfect peals of
+      imitation thunder. Then it decreases again once more, as gradually as it
+      rose, becoming fainter and ever fainter, like thunder as it recedes, till
+      the horrible bellowing, as of supernatural bulls, dies away in the end, by
+      slow degrees, into low and soft and imperceptible murmurs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But when the savage hears the distant humming of the bull-roarer, at
+      whatever distance, he knows that the mysteries of his god are in full
+      swing, and he hurries forward in haste, leaving his work or his pleasure,
+      and running, naked as he stands, to take his share in the worship, lest
+      the anger of heaven should burst forth in devouring flames to consume him.
+      But the women, knowing themselves unworthy to face the dread presence of
+      the high god in his wrath, rush wildly from the spot, and, flinging
+      themselves down at full length, with their mouths to the dust, wait
+      patiently till the voice of their deity is no longer audible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And as the bull-roarer on Boupari rang out with wild echoes from the coral
+      caverns in the central grove that evening, Tu-Kila-Kila, their god, rose
+      slowly from his place, and stood out from his hut, a deity revealed,
+      before his reverential worshippers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he rose, a hushed whisper ran wave-like through the dense throng of
+      dusky forms that bent low, like corn beneath the wind, before him, &ldquo;Tu-Kila-Kila
+      rises! He rises to speak! Hush! for the voice of the mighty man-god!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The god, looking around him superciliously with a cynical air of contempt,
+      stood forward with a firm and elastic step before his silent worshippers.
+      He was a stalwart savage, in the very prime of life, tall, lithe, and
+      active. His figure was that of a man well used to command; but his face,
+      though handsome, was visibly marked by every external sign of cruelty,
+      lust, and extreme bloodthirstiness. One might have said, merely to look at
+      him, he was a being debased by all forms of brutal and hateful
+      self-indulgence. A baleful light burned in his keen gray eyes. His lips
+      were thick, full, purple, and wistful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My people may look upon me,&rdquo; he said, in a strangely affable
+      voice, standing forward and smiling with a curious half-cruel,
+      half-compassionate smile upon his awe-struck followers. &ldquo;On every
+      day of the sun&rsquo;s course but this, none save the ministers dedicated
+      to the service of Tu-Kila-Kila dare gaze unhurt upon his sacred person. If
+      any other did, the light from his holy eyes would wither them up, and the
+      glow of his glorious countenance would scorch them to ashes.&rdquo; He
+      raised his two hands, palm outward, in front of him. &ldquo;So all the
+      year round,&rdquo; he went on, &ldquo;Tu-Kila-Kila, who loves his people,
+      and sends them the earlier and the later rain in the wet season, and makes
+      their yams and their taro grow, and causes his sun to shine upon them
+      freely&mdash;all the year round Tu-Kila-Kila, your god, sits shut up in
+      his own house among the skeletons of those whom he has killed and eaten,
+      or walks in his walled paddock, where his bread-fruit ripens and his
+      plantains spring&mdash;himself, and the ministers that his tribesmen have
+      given him.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the sound of their mystic deity&rsquo;s voice the savages, bending
+      lower still till their foreheads touched the ground, repeated in chorus,
+      to the clapping of hands, like some solemn litany: &ldquo;Tu-Kila-Kila
+      speaks true. Our lord is merciful. He sends down his showers upon our
+      crops and fields. He causes his sun to shine brightly over us. He makes
+      our pigs and our slaves bring forth their increase. Tu-Kila-Kila is good.
+      His people praise him.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The god took another step forward, the divine mantle of red feathers
+      glowing in the sunset on his dusky shoulders, and smiled once more that
+      hateful gracious smile of his. He was standing near the open door of his
+      wattled hut, overshadowed by the huge spreading arms of a gigantic
+      banyan-tree. Through the open door of the hut it was possible to catch
+      just a passing glimpse of an awful sight within. On the beams of the
+      house, and on the boughs of the trees behind it, human skeletons, half
+      covered with dry flesh, hung in ghastly array, their skulls turned
+      downward. They were the skeletons of the victims Tu-Kila-Kila, their
+      prince, had slain and eaten; they were the trophies of the cannibal
+      man-god&rsquo;s hateful prowess.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila raised his right hand erect and spoke again. &ldquo;I am a
+      great god,&rdquo; he said, slowly. &ldquo;I am very powerful. I make the
+      sun to shine, and the yams to grow. I am the spirit of plants. Without me
+      there would be nothing for you all to eat or drink in Boupari. If I were
+      to grow old and die, the sun would fade away in the heavens overhead; the
+      bread-fruit trees would wither and cease to bear on earth; all fruits
+      would come to an end and die at once; all rivers would stop forthwith from
+      running.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His worshippers bowed down in acquiescence with awestruck faces. &ldquo;It
+      is true,&rdquo; they answered, in the same slow sing-song of assent as
+      before. &ldquo;Tu-Kila-Kila is the greatest of gods. We owe to him
+      everything. We hang upon his favor.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila started back, laughed, and showed his pearly white teeth.
+      They were beautiful and regular, like the teeth of a tiger, a strong young
+      tiger. &ldquo;But I need more sacrifices than all the other gods,&rdquo;
+      he went on, melodiously, like one who plays with consummate skill upon
+      some difficult instrument. &ldquo;I am greedy; I am thirsty; I am a hungry
+      god. You must not stint me. I claim more human victims than all the other
+      gods beside. If you want your crops to grow, and your rivers to run, the
+      fields to yield you game, and the sea fish&mdash;this is what I ask: give
+      me victims, victims! That is our compact. Tu-Kila-Kila calls you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The men bowed down once more and repeated humbly, &ldquo;You shall have
+      victims as you will, great god; only give us yam and taro and bread-fruit,
+      and cause not your bright light, the sun, to grow dark in heaven over us.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cut yourselves,&rdquo; Tu-Kila-Kila cried, in a peremptory voice,
+      clapping his hands thrice. &ldquo;I am thirsting for blood. I want your
+      free-will offering.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he spoke, every man, as by a set ritual, took from a little skin wallet
+      at his side a sharp flake of coral-stone, and, drawing it deliberately
+      across his breast in a deep red gash, caused the blood to flow out freely
+      over his chest and long grass waistband. Then, having done so, they never
+      strove for a moment to stanch the wound, but let the red drops fall as
+      they would on to the dust at their feet, without seeming even to be
+      conscious at all of the fact that they were flowing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila smiled once more, a ghastly self-satisfied smile of
+      unquestioned power. &ldquo;It is well,&rdquo; he went on. &ldquo;My people
+      love me. They know my strength, how I can wither them up. They give me
+      their blood to drink freely. So I will be merciful to them. I will make my
+      sun shine and my rain drop from heaven. And instead of taking <i>all</i>,
+      I will choose one victim.&rdquo; He paused, and glanced along their line
+      significantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Choose, Tu-Kila-Kila,&rdquo; the men answered, without a moment&rsquo;s
+      hesitation. &ldquo;We are all your meat. Choose which one you will take of
+      us.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila walked with a leisurely tread down the lines and surveyed the
+      men critically. They were all drawn up in rows, one behind the other,
+      according to tribes and families; and the god walked along each row,
+      examining them with a curious and interested eye, as a farmer examines
+      sheep fit for the market. Now and then, he felt a leg or an arm with his
+      finger and thumb, and hesitated a second. It was an important matter, this
+      choosing a victim. As he passed, a close observer might have noted that
+      each man trembled visibly while the god&rsquo;s eye was upon him, and
+      looked after him askance with a terrified sidelong gaze as he passed on to
+      his neighbor. But not one savage gave any overt sign or token of his
+      terror or his reluctance. On the contrary, as Tu-Kila-Kila passed along
+      the line with lazy, cruel deliberateness, the men kept chanting aloud
+      without one tremor in their voices, &ldquo;We are all your meat. Choose
+      which one you will take of us.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On a sudden, Tu-Kila-Kila turned sharply round, and, darting a rapid
+      glance toward a row he had already passed several minutes before, he
+      exclaimed, with an air of unexpected inspiration, &ldquo;Tu-Kila-Kila has
+      chosen. He takes Maloa.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man upon whose shoulder the god laid his heavy hand as he spoke stood
+      forth from the crowd without a moment&rsquo;s hesitation. If anger or fear
+      was in his heart at all, it could not be detected in his voice or his
+      features. He bowed his head with seeming satisfaction, and answered
+      humbly, &ldquo;What Tu-Kila-Kila says must need be done. This is a great
+      honor. He is a mighty god. We poor men must obey him. We are proud to be
+      taken up and made one with divinity.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila raised in his hand a large stone axe of some polished green
+      material, closely resembling jade, which lay on a block by the door, and
+      tried its edge with his finger, in an abstracted manner. &ldquo;Bind him!&rdquo;
+      he said, quietly, turning round to his votaries. And the men, each glad to
+      have escaped his own fate, bound their comrade willingly with green ropes
+      of plantain fibre.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Crown him with flowers!&rdquo; Tu-Kila-Kila said; and a female
+      attendant, absolved from the terror of the bull-roarer by the god&rsquo;s
+      command, brought forward a great garland of crimson hibiscus, which she
+      flung around the victim&rsquo;s neck and shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lay his head on the sacred stone block of our fathers,&rdquo;
+      Tu-Kila-Kila went on, in an easy tone of command, waving his hand
+      gracefully. And the men, moving forward, laid their comrade, face
+      downward, on a huge flat block of polished greenstone, which lay like an
+      altar in front of the hut with the mouldering skeletons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is well,&rdquo; Tu-Kila-Kila murmured once more, half aloud.
+      &ldquo;You have given me the free-will offering. Now for the trespass!
+      Where is the woman who dared to approach too near the temple-home of the
+      divine Tu-Kila-Kila? Bring the criminal forward!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The men divided, and made a lane down their middle. Then one of them, a
+      minister of the man-god&rsquo;s shrine, led up by the hand, all trembling
+      and shrinking with supernatural terror in every muscle, a well-formed
+      young girl of eighteen or twenty. Her naked bronze limbs were shapely and
+      lissome; but her eyes were swollen and red with tears, and her face
+      strongly distorted with awe for the man-god. When she stood at last before
+      Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s dreaded face, she flung herself on the ground in an
+      agony of fear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, mercy, great God!&rdquo; she cried, in a feeble voice. &ldquo;I
+      have sinned, I have sinned. Mercy, mercy!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila smiled as before, a smile of imperial pride. No ray of pity
+      gleamed from those steel-gray eyes. &ldquo;Does Tu-Kila-Kila show mercy?&rdquo;
+      he asked, in a mocking voice. &ldquo;Does he pardon his suppliants? Does
+      he forgive trespasses? Is he not a god, and must not his wrath be
+      appeased? She, being a woman, and not a wife sealed to Tu-Kila-Kila, has
+      dared to look from afar upon his sacred home. She has spied the mysteries.
+      Therefore she must die. My people, bind her.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a second, without more ado, while the poor trembling girl writhed and
+      groaned in her agony before their eyes, that mob of wild savages, let
+      loose to torture and slay, fell upon her with hideous shouts, and bound
+      her, as they had bound their comrade before, with coarse native ropes of
+      twisted plantain fibre.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lay her head on the stone,&rdquo; Tu-Kila-Kila said, grimly. And
+      his votaries obeyed him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now light the sacred fire to make our feast, before I slay the
+      victims,&rdquo; the god said, in a gloating voice, running his finger
+      again along the edge of his huge hatchet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he spoke, two men, holding in their hands hollow bamboos with coals of
+      fire concealed within, which they kept aglow meanwhile by waving them up
+      and down rapidly in the air, laid these primitive matches to the base of a
+      great pyramidal pile of wood and palm-leaves, ready prepared beforehand in
+      the yard of the temple. In a second, the dry fuel, catching the sparks
+      instantly, blazed up to heaven with a wild outburst of flame. Great red
+      tongues of fire licked up the mouldering mass of leaves and twigs, and
+      caught at once at the trunks of palm and li wood within. A huge
+      conflagration reddened the sky at once like lightning. The effect was
+      magical. The glow transfigured the whole island for miles. It was, in
+      fact, the blaze that Felix Thurstan had noted and remarked upon as he
+      stood that evening on the silent deck of the Australasian.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila gazed at it with horrid childish glee. &ldquo;A fine fire!&rdquo;
+      he said, gayly. &ldquo;A fire worthy of a god. It will serve me well.
+      Tu-Kila-Kila will have a good oven to roast his meal in.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he turned toward the sea, and held up his hand once more for silence.
+      As he did so, an answering light upon its surface attracted his eye for a
+      moment&rsquo;s space. It was a bright red light, mixed with white and
+      green ones; in point of fact, the Australasian was passing. Tu-Kila-Kila
+      pointed toward it solemnly with his plump, brown fore-finger. &ldquo;See,&rdquo;
+      he said, drawing himself up and looking preternaturally wise; &ldquo;your
+      god is great. I am sending some of this fire across the sea to where my
+      sun has set, to aid and reinforce it. That is to keep up the fire of the
+      sun, lest ever at any time it should fade and fail you. While Tu-Kila-Kila
+      lives the sun will burn bright. If Tu-Kila-Kila were to die it would be
+      night forever.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His votaries, following their god&rsquo;s fore-finger as it pointed, all
+      turned to look in the direction he indicated with blank surprise and
+      astonishment. Such a sight had never met their eyes before, for the
+      Australasian was the very first steamer to take the eastward route,
+      through the dangerous and tortuous Boupari Channel. So their awe and
+      surprise at the unwonted sight knew no bounds. Fire on the ocean!
+      Miraculous light on the waves! Their god must, indeed, be a mighty deity
+      if he could send flames like that careering over the sea! Surely the sun
+      was safe in the hands of a potentate who could thus visibly reinforce it
+      with red light, and white! In their astonishment and awe, they stood with
+      their long hair falling down over their foreheads, and their hands held up
+      to their eyes that they might gaze the farther across the dim, dark ocean.
+      The borrowed light of their bonfire was moving, slowly moving over the
+      watery sea. Fire and water were mixing and mingling on friendly terms.
+      Impossible! Incredible! Marvellous! Miraculous! They prostrated themselves
+      in their terror at Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s feet. &ldquo;Oh, great god,&rdquo;
+      they cried, in awe-struck tones, &ldquo;your power is too vast! Spare us,
+      spare us, spare us!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As for Tu-Kila-Kila himself, he was not astonished at all. Strange as it
+      sounds to us, he really believed in his heart what he said. Profoundly
+      convinced of his own godhead, and abjectly superstitious as any of his own
+      votaries, he absolutely accepted as a fact his own suggestion, that the
+      light he saw was the reflection of that his men had kindled. The
+      interpretation he had put upon it seemed to him a perfectly natural and
+      just one. His worshippers, indeed, mere men that they were, might be
+      terrified at the sight; but why should he, a god, take any special notice
+      of it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He accepted his own superiority as implicitly as our European nobles and
+      rulers accept theirs. He had no doubts himself, and he considered those
+      who had little better than criminals.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By and by, a smaller light detached itself by slow degrees from the
+      greater ones. The others stood still, and halted in mid-ocean. The lesser
+      light made as if it would come in the direction of Boupari. In point of
+      fact, the gig had put out in search of Felix and Muriel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila interpreted the facts at once, however, in his own way.
+      &ldquo;See,&rdquo; he said, pointing with his plump forefinger once more,
+      and encouraging with his words his terrified followers, &ldquo;I am
+      sending back a light again from the sun to my island. I am doing my work
+      well. I am taking care of my people. Fear not for your future. In the
+      light is yet another victim. A man and a woman will come to Boupari from
+      the sun, to make up for the man and woman whom we eat in our feast
+      to-night. Give me plenty of victims, and you will have plenty of yam. Make
+      haste, then; kill, eat; let us feast Tu-Kila-Kila! To-morrow the man and
+      woman I have sent from the sun will come ashore on the reef, and reach
+      Boupari.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the words, he stepped forward and raised that heavy tomahawk. With one
+      blow each he brained the two bound and defenceless victims on the
+      altar-stone of his fathers. The rest, a European hand shrinks from
+      revealing. The orgy was too horrible even for description.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And that was the land toward which, that moment, Felix Thurstan was
+      struggling, with all his might, to carry Muriel Ellis, from the myriad
+      clasping arms of a comparatively gentle and merciful ocean!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER III. &mdash; LAND; BUT WHAT LAND?
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      As the last glimmering lights of the Australasian died away to seaward,
+      Felix Thurstan knew in his despair there was nothing for it now but to
+      strike out boldly, if he could, for the shore of the island.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By this time the breakers had subsided greatly. Not, indeed, that the sea
+      itself was really going down. On the contrary, a brisk wind was rising
+      sharper from the east, and the waves on the open Pacific were growing each
+      moment higher and loppier. But the huge mountain of water that washed
+      Muriel Ellis overboard was not a regular ordinary wave; it was that far
+      more powerful and dangerous mass, a shoal-water breaker. The Australasian
+      had passed at that instant over a submerged coral-bar, quite deep enough,
+      indeed, to let her cross its top without the slightest danger of grazing,
+      but still raised so high toward the surface as to produce a considerable
+      constant ground-swell, which broke in windy weather into huge sheets of
+      surf, like the one that had just struck and washed over the Australasian,
+      carrying Muriel with it. The very same cause that produced the breakers,
+      however, bore Felix on their summit rapidly landward; and once he had got
+      well beyond the region of the bar that begot them, he found himself soon,
+      to his intense relief, in comparatively calm shoal water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Muriel Ellis, for her part, was faint with terror and with the buffeting
+      of the waves; but she still floated by his side, upheld by the life-belts.
+      He had been able, by immense efforts, to keep unseparated from her amid
+      the rending surf of the breakers. Now that they found themselves in easier
+      waters for a while, Felix began to strike out vigorously through the
+      darkness for the shore. Holding up his companion with one hand, and
+      swimming with all his might in the direction where a vague white line of
+      surf, lit up by the red glare-of some fire far inland, made him suspect
+      the nearest land to lie, he almost thought he had succeeded at last, after
+      a long hour of struggle, in feeling his feet, after all, on a firm coral
+      bottom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the very moment he did so, and touched the ground underneath, another
+      great wave, curling resistlessly behind him, caught him up on its crest,
+      whirled him heavenward like a cork, and then dashed him down once more, a
+      passive burden, on some soft and yielding substance, which he conjectured
+      at once to be a beach of finely powdered coral fragments. As he touched
+      this beach for an instant, the undertow of that vast dashing breaker
+      sucked him back with its ebb again, a helpless, breathless creature; and
+      then the succeeding wave rolled him over like a ball, upon the beach as
+      before, in quick succession. Four times the back-current sucked him under
+      with its wild pull in the self-same way, and four times the return wave
+      flung him up upon the beach again like a fragment of sea-weed. With
+      frantic efforts Felix tried at first to cling still to Muriel&mdash;to
+      save her from the irresistible force of that roaring surf&mdash;to snatch
+      her from the open jaws of death by sheer struggling dint of thews and
+      muscle. He might as well have tried to stem Niagara. The great waves,
+      curling irresistibly in huge curves landward, caught either of them up by
+      turns on their arched summits, and twisted them about remorselessly,
+      raising them now aloft on their foaming crest, beating them back now prone
+      in their hollow trough, and flinging them fiercely at last with pitiless
+      energy against the soft beach of coral. If the beach had been hard, they
+      must infallibly have been ground to powder or beaten to jelly by the
+      colossal force of those gigantic blows. Fortunately it was yielding,
+      smooth, and clay-like, and received them almost as a layer of moist
+      plaster of Paris might have done, or they would have stood no chance at
+      all for their lives in that desperate battle with the blind and frantic
+      forces of unrelenting nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No man who has not himself seen the surf break on one of these
+      far-southern coral shores can form any idea in his own mind of the terror
+      and horror of the situation. The water, as it reaches the beach, rears
+      itself aloft for a second into a huge upright wall, which, advancing
+      slowly, curls over at last in a hollow circle, and pounds down upon the
+      sand or reef with all the crushing force of some enormous sledge-hammer.
+      But after the fourth assault, Felix felt himself flung up high and dry by
+      the wave, as one may sometimes see a bit of light reed or pith flung up
+      some distance ahead by an advancing tide on the beach in England. In an
+      instant he steadied himself and staggered to his feet. Torn and bruised as
+      he was by the pummelling of the billows, he looked eagerly into the water
+      in search of his companion. The next wave flung up Muriel, as the last had
+      flung himself. He bent over her with a panting heart as she lay there,
+      insensible, on the long white shore. Alive or dead? that was now the
+      question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Raising her hastily in his arms, with her clothes all clinging wet and
+      close about her, Felix carried her over the narrow strip of tidal beach,
+      above high-water level, and laid her gently down on a soft green bank of
+      short tropical herbage, close to the edge of the coral. Then he bent over
+      her once more, and listened eagerly at her heart. It still beat with faint
+      pulses&mdash;beat&mdash;beat&mdash;beat. Felix throbbed with joy. She was
+      alive! alive! He was not quite alone, then, on that unknown island!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And strange as it seemed, it was only a little more than two short hours
+      since they had stood and looked out across the open sea over the bulwarks
+      of the Australasian together!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Felix had no time to moralize just then. The moment was clearly one
+      for action. Fortunately, he happened to carry three useful things in his
+      pocket when he jumped overboard after Muriel. The first was a
+      pocket-knife; the second was a flask with a little whiskey in it; and the
+      third, perhaps the most important of all, a small metal box of wax vesta
+      matches. Pouring a little whiskey into the cup of the flask, he held it
+      eagerly to Muriel&rsquo;s lips. The fainting girl swallowed it
+      automatically. Then Felix, stooping down, tried the matches against the
+      box. They were unfortunately wet, but half an hour&rsquo;s exposure, he
+      knew, on sun-warmed stones, in that hot, tropical air, would soon restore
+      them again. So he opened the box and laid them carefully out on a flat
+      white slab of coral. After that, he had time to consider exactly where
+      they were, and what their chances in life, if any, might now amount to.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pitch dark as it was, he had no difficulty in deciding at once by the
+      general look of things that they had reached a fringing reef, such as he
+      was already familiar with in the Marquesas and elsewhere. The reef was no
+      doubt circular, and it enclosed within itself a second or central island,
+      divided from it by a shallow lagoon of calm, still water. He walked some
+      yards inland. From where he now stood, on the summit of the ridge, he
+      could look either way, and by the faint reflected light of the stars, or
+      the glare of the great pyre that burned on the central island, he could
+      see down on one side to the ocean, with its fierce white pounding surf,
+      and on the other to the lagoon, reflecting the stars overhead, and
+      motionless as a mill-pond. Between them lay the low raised ridge of coral,
+      covered with tall stems of cocoanut palms, and interspersed here and
+      there, as far as his eye could judge, with little rectangular clumps of
+      plantain and taro.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But what alarmed Felix most was the fire that blazed so brightly to heaven
+      on the central island; for he knew too well that meant&mdash;there were <i>men</i>
+      on the place; the land was inhabited.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The cocoanuts and taro told the same doubtful tale. From the way they
+      grew, even in that dim starlight, Felix recognized at once they had all
+      been planted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Still, he didn&rsquo;t hesitate to do what he thought best for Muriel&rsquo;s
+      relief for all that. Collecting a few sticks and fragments of
+      palm-branches from the jungle about, he piled them into a heap, and waited
+      patiently for his matches to dry. As soon as they were ready&mdash;and the
+      warmth of the stone made them quickly inflammable&mdash;he struck a match
+      on the box, and proceeded to light his fire by Muriel&rsquo;s side. As her
+      clothes grew warmer, the poor girl opened her eyes at last, and, gazing
+      around her, exclaimed, in blank terror, &ldquo;Oh, Mr. Thurstan, where are
+      we? What does all this mean? Where have we got to? On a desert island?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, <i>not</i> on a desert island,&rdquo; Felix answered, shortly;
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid it&rsquo;s a great deal worse than that. To tell
+      you the truth, I&rsquo;m afraid it&rsquo;s inhabited.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At that moment, by the hot embers of the great sacrificial pyre on the
+      central hill, two of the savage temple-attendants, calling their god&rsquo;s
+      attention to a sudden blaze of flame upon the fringing reef, pointed with
+      their dark forefingers and called out in surprise, &ldquo;See, see, a fire
+      on the barrier! A fire! A fire! What can it mean? There are no men of our
+      people over there to-night. Have war-canoes arrived? Has some enemy
+      landed?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila leaned back, drained his cocoanut cup of intoxicating kava,
+      and surveyed the unwonted apparition on the reef long and carefully.
+      &ldquo;It is nothing,&rdquo; he said at last, in his most deliberate
+      manner, stroking his cheeks and chin contentedly with that plump round
+      hand of his. &ldquo;It is only the victims; the new victims I promised
+      you. Korong! Korong! They have come ashore with their light from my home
+      in the sun. They have brought fire afresh&mdash;holy fire to Boupari.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Three or four of the savages leaped up in fierce joy, and bowed before him
+      as he spoke, with eager faces. &ldquo;Oh, Tu-Kila-Kila!&rdquo; the eldest
+      among them said, making a profound reverence, &ldquo;shall we swim across
+      to the reef and fetch them home to your house? Shall we take over our
+      canoes and bring back your victims!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The god motioned them back with one outstretched palm. His eyes were
+      flushed and his look lazy. &ldquo;Not to-night, my people,&rdquo; he said;
+      readjusting the garland of flowers round his neck, and giving a careless
+      glance at the well-picked bones that a few hours before had been two
+      trembling fellow creatures. &ldquo;Tu-Kila-Kila has feasted his fill for
+      this evening. Your god is full; his heart is happy. I have eaten human
+      flesh; I have drunk of the juice of the kava. Am I not a great deity? Can
+      I not do as I will? I frown, and the heavens thunder; I gnash my teeth,
+      and the earth trembles. What is it to me if fresh victims come, or if they
+      come not? Can I not make with a nod as many as I will of them?&rdquo; He
+      took up two fresh finger-bones, clean gnawed of their flesh, and knocked
+      them together in a wild tune, carelessly. &ldquo;If Tu-Kila-Kila chooses,&rdquo;
+      he went on, tapping his chest with conscious pride, &ldquo;he can knock
+      these bones together&mdash;so&mdash;and bid them live again. Is it not I
+      who cause women and beasts to bring forth their young? Is it not I who
+      give the turtles their increase? And is it not a small thing to me,
+      therefore, whether the sea tosses up my victims from my home in the sun,
+      or whether it does not? Let us leave them alone on the reef for to-night;
+      to-morrow we will send over our canoes to fetch them.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was all pure brag, all pure guesswork; and yet, Tu-Kila-Kila himself
+      profoundly believed it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he spoke, the light from Felix&rsquo;s fire blazed out against the dark
+      sky, stronger and clearer still; and through that cloudless tropical air
+      the figure of a man, standing for one moment between the flames and the
+      lagoon, became distinctly visible to the keen and practised eyes of the
+      savages. &ldquo;I see them? I see them; I see the victims!&rdquo; the
+      foremost worshipper exclaimed, rushing forward a little at the sight, and
+      beside himself with superstitious awe and surprise at Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s
+      presence. &ldquo;Surely our god is great! He knows all things! He brings
+      us meat from the setting sun, in ships of fire, in blazing canoes, across
+      the golden road of the sun-bathed ocean!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As for Tu-Kila-Kila himself, leaning on his elbow at ease, he gazed across
+      at the unexpected sight with very languid interest. He was a god, and he
+      liked to see things conducted with proper decorum. This crowing and crying
+      over a couple of spirits&mdash;mere ordinary spirits come ashore from the
+      sun in a fiery boat&mdash;struck his godship as little short of childish.
+      &ldquo;Let them be,&rdquo; he answered, petulantly, crushing a blossom in
+      his hand. &ldquo;Let no man disturb them. They shall rest where they are
+      till to-morrow morning. We have eaten; we have drunk; our soul is happy.
+      The kava within us has made us like a god indeed. I shall give my
+      ministers charge that no harm happen to them.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He drew a whistle from his side and whistled once. There was a moment&rsquo;s
+      pause. Then Tu-Kila-Kila spoke in a loud voice again. &ldquo;The King of
+      Fire!&rdquo; he exclaimed, in tones of princely authority.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From within the hut there came forth slowly a second stalwart savage, big
+      built and burly as the great god himself, clad in a long robe or cloak of
+      yellow feathers, which shone bright with a strange metallic gleam in the
+      ruddy light of the huge pile of li-wood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The King of Fire is here, Tu-Kila-Kila,&rdquo; the lesser god made
+      answer, bending his head slightly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fire,&rdquo; Tu-Kila-Kila said, like a monarch giving orders to his
+      attendant minister, &ldquo;if any man touch the newcomers on the reef
+      before I cause my sun to rise to-morrow morning, scorch up his flesh with
+      your flame, and consume his bones to ash and cinder. If any woman go near
+      them before Tu-Kila-Kila bids, let her be rolled in palm-leaves, and
+      smeared with oil, and light her up for a torch on a dark night to lighten
+      our temple.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The King of Fire bent his head in assent. &ldquo;It is as Tu-Kila-Kila
+      wills,&rdquo; he answered, submissively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila whistled again, this time twice. &ldquo;The King of Water!&rdquo;
+      he exclaimed, in the same loud tone of command as before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the words, a man of about forty, tall and sinewy, clad in a short cape
+      of white albatross feathers, and with a girdle of nautilus shells
+      interspersed with red coral tied around his waist, came forth to the
+      summons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The King of Water is here,&rdquo; he said, bending his head, but
+      not his knee, before the greater deity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Water,&rdquo; Tu-Kila-Kila said, with half-tipsy solemnity, &ldquo;you
+      are a god too. Your power is very great. But less than mine. Do, then, as
+      I bid you. If any man touch my spirits, whom I have brought from my home
+      in the sun in a fiery ship, before I bid him to-morrow, overturn his
+      canoe, and drown him in lagoon or spring or ocean. If any woman go near
+      them without Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s leave, bind her hand and foot with ropes
+      of porpoise hide, and cast her out into the surf, and dash her with your
+      waves, and pummel her to pieces.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The King of Water bent his head a second time. &ldquo;I am a great god,&rdquo;
+      he answered, &ldquo;before all others save you: but for you, Tu-Kila-Kila,
+      I haste to do your bidding. If any man disobey you, my billows shall rise
+      and overwhelm him in the sea. I am a great god. I claim each year many
+      drowned victims.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But not so many as me,&rdquo; Tu-Kila-Kila interposed, his hand
+      playing on his knife with a faint air of impatience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But not so many as you,&rdquo; the minor god added, in haste, as if
+      to appease his rising anger. &ldquo;Fire and Water ever speed to do your
+      bidding.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila stood up, turned toward the distant flame, and waved his
+      hands round and round three times before him. &ldquo;Let this be for you
+      all a great taboo,&rdquo; he said, glancing once more toward his
+      awe-struck followers. &ldquo;Now the mysteries are over. Tu-Kila-Kila will
+      sleep. He has eaten of human flesh. He has drunk of cocoanut rum and of
+      new kava. He has brought back his sun on its way in the heavens. He has
+      sent it messengers of fire to reinforce its strength. He has fetched from
+      it messengers in turn with fresh fire to Boupari, fire not lighted from
+      any earthly flame; fire new, divine, scorching, unspeakable. To-morrow we
+      will talk with the spirits he has brought. To-night we will sleep. Now all
+      go to your homes; and tell your women of this great taboo, lest they speak
+      to the spirits, and fall into the hands of Fire or of Water.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The savages dropped on their faces before the eye of their god and lay
+      quite still. They made a path as it were from the pyre to the temple door
+      with their prostrate bodies. Tu-Kila-Kila, walking with unsteady steps
+      over their half-naked forms, turned to his hut in a drunken booze. He
+      walked over them with no more compunction or feeling than over so many
+      logs. Why should he not, indeed? For he was a god, and they were his meat,
+      his servants, his worshippers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IV. &mdash; THE GUESTS OF HEAVEN.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      All that night through&mdash;their first lonely night on the island of
+      Boupari&mdash;Felix sat up by his flickering fire, wide awake, half
+      expecting and dreading some treacherous attack of the unknown savages.
+      From time to time he kept adding dry fuel to his smouldering pile; and he
+      never ceased to keep a keen eye both on the lagoon and the reef, in case
+      an assault should be made upon them suddenly by land or water. He knew the
+      South Seas quite well enough already to have all the possibilities of
+      misfortune floating vividly before his eyes. He realized at once from his
+      own previous experience the full loneliness and terror of their unarmed
+      condition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For Boupari was one of those rare remote islets where the very rumor of
+      our European civilization has hardly yet penetrated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As for Muriel, though she was alarmed enough, of course, and intensely
+      shaken by the sudden shock she had received, the whole surroundings were
+      too wholly unlike any world she had ever yet known to enable her to take
+      in at once the utter horror of the situation. She only knew they were
+      alone, wet, bruised, and terribly battered; and the Australasian had gone
+      on, leaving them there to their fate on an unknown island. That, for the
+      moment, was more than enough for her of accumulated misfortune. She come
+      to herself but slowly, and as her torn clothes dried by degrees before the
+      fire and the heat of the tropical night, she was so far from fully
+      realizing the dangers of their position that her first and principal fear
+      for the moment was lest she might take cold from her wet things drying
+      upon her. She ate a little of the plantain that Felix picked for her; and
+      at times, toward morning, she dozed off into an uneasy sleep, from pure
+      fatigue and excess of weariness. As she slept, Felix, bending over her,
+      with the biggest blade of his knife open in case of attack, watched with
+      profound emotion the rise and fall of her bosom, and hesitated with
+      himself, if the worst should come to the worst, as to what he ought to do
+      with her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It would be impossible to let a pure young English girl like that fall
+      helplessly into the hands of such bloodthirsty wretches as he knew the
+      islanders were almost certain to be. Who could tell what nameless
+      indignities, what incredible tortures they might wantonly inflict upon her
+      innocent soul? Was it right of him to have let her come ashore at all?
+      Ought he not rather to have allowed the more merciful sea to take her life
+      easily, without the chance or possibility of such additional horrors?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And now&mdash;as she slept&mdash;so calm and pure and maidenly&mdash;what
+      was his duty that minute, just there to her? He felt the blade of his
+      knife with his finger cautiously, and almost doubted. If only she could
+      tell what things might be in store for her, would she not, herself, prefer
+      death, an honorable death, at the friendly hands of a tenderhearted
+      fellow-countryman, to the unspeakable insults of these man-eating
+      Polynesians? If only he had the courage to release her by one blow, as she
+      lay there, from the coming ill! But he hadn&rsquo;t; he hadn&rsquo;t. Even
+      on board the Australasian he had been vaguely aware that he was getting
+      very fond of that pretty little Miss Ellis. And now that he sat there,
+      after that desperate struggle for life with the pounding waves, mounting
+      guard over her through the livelong night, his own heart told him plainly,
+      in tones he could not disobey, he loved her too well to dare what he
+      thought best in the end for her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Still, even so, he was brave enough to feel he must never let the very
+      worst of all befall her. He bethought him, in his doubt and agony, of how
+      his uncle, Major Thurstan, during the great Indian mutiny, had held his
+      lonely bungalow, with his wife and daughter by his side, for three long
+      hours against a howling mob of native insurgents; and how, when further
+      resistance was hopeless, and that great black wave of angry humanity burst
+      in upon them at last, the brave soldier had drawn his revolver, shot his
+      wife and daughter with unerring aim, to prevent their falling alive into
+      the hands of the natives, and then blown his own brains out with his last
+      remaining cartridge. As his uncle had done at Jhansi, thirty years before,
+      so he himself would do on that nameless Pacific island&mdash;for he didn&rsquo;t
+      know even now on what shore he had landed. If the savages bore down upon
+      them with hostile intent, and threatened Muriel, he would plunge his knife
+      first into that innocent woman&rsquo;s heart; and then bury it deep in his
+      own, and die beside her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So the long night wore on&mdash;Muriel pillowed on loose cocoanut husk,
+      dozing now and again, and waking with a start to gaze round about her
+      wildly, and realize once more in what plight she found herself; Felix
+      crouching by her feet, and keeping watch with eager eyes and ears on every
+      side for the least sign of a noiseless, naked footfall through the tangled
+      growth of that dense tropical under-bush. Time after time he clapped his
+      hand to his ear, shell-wise, and listened and peered, with knitted brow,
+      suspecting some sudden swoop from an ambush in the jungle of creepers
+      behind the little plantain patch. Time after time he grasped his knife
+      hard, and puckered his eyebrows resolutely, and stood still with bated
+      breath for a fierce, wild leap upon his fancied assailant. But the night
+      wore away by degrees, a minute at a time, and no man came; and dawn began
+      to brighten the sea-line to eastward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the day dawned, Felix could see more clearly exactly where he was, and
+      in what surroundings. Without, the ocean broke in huge curling billows on
+      the shallow beach of the fringing reef with such stupendous force that
+      Felix wondered how they could ever have lived through its pounding surf
+      and its fiercely retreating undertow. Within, the lagoon spread its calm
+      lake-like surface away to the white coral shore of the central atoll.
+      Between these two waters, the greater and the less, a waving palisade of
+      tall-stemmed palm-trees rose on a narrow ribbon of circular land that
+      formed the fringing reef. All night through he had felt, with a strange
+      eerie misgiving, the very foundations of the land thrill under his feet at
+      every dull thud or boom of the surf on its restraining barrier. Now that
+      he could see that thin belt of shore in its actual shape and size, he was
+      not astonished at this constant shock; what surprised him rather was the
+      fact that such a speck of land could hold its own at all against the
+      ceaseless cannonade of that seemingly irresistible ocean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stood up, hatless, in his battered tweed suit, and surveyed the scene
+      of their present and future adventures. It took but a glance to show him
+      that the whole ground-plan of the island was entirely circular. In the
+      midst of all rose the central atoll itself, a tiny mountain-peak, just
+      projecting with its hills and gorges to a few hundred feet above the
+      surface of the ocean. Outside it came the lagoon, with its placid ring of
+      glassy water surrounding the circular island, and separated from the sea
+      by an equally circular belt of fringing reef, covered thick with waving
+      stems of picturesque cocoanut. It was on the reef they had landed, and
+      from it they now looked across the calm lagoon with doubtful eyes toward
+      the central island.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As soon as the sun rose, their doubts were quickly resolved into fears or
+      certainties. Scarcely had its rim begun to show itself distinctly above
+      the eastern horizon, when a great bustle and confusion was noticeable at
+      once on the opposite shore. Brown-skinned savages were collecting in eager
+      groups by a white patch of beach, and putting out rude but well-manned
+      canoes into the calm waters of the lagoon. At sight of their naked arms
+      and bustling gestures, Muriel&rsquo;s heart sank suddenly within her.
+      &ldquo;Oh, Mr. Thurstan,&rdquo; she cried, clinging to his arm in her
+      terror, &ldquo;what does it all mean? Are they going to hurt us? Are these
+      savages coming over? Are they coming to kill us?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix grasped his trusty knife hard in his right hand, and swallowed a
+      groan, as he looked tenderly down upon her. &ldquo;Muriel,&rdquo; he said,
+      forgetting in the excitement of the moment the little conventionalities
+      and courtesies of civilized life, &ldquo;if they are, trust me, you never
+      shall fall alive into their cruel hands. Sooner than that&mdash;&rdquo; he
+      held up the knife significantly, with its open blade before her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The poor girl clung to him harder still, with a ghastly shudder. &ldquo;Oh,
+      it&rsquo;s terrible, terrible,&rdquo; she cried, turning deadly pale.
+      Then, after a short pause, she added, &ldquo;But I would rather have it
+      so. Do as you say. I could bear it from you. Promise me <i>that</i>,
+      rather than that those creatures should kill me.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I promise,&rdquo; Felix answered, clasping her hand hard, and
+      paused, with the knife ever ready in his right, awaiting the approach of
+      the half-naked savages.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The boats glided fast across the lagoon, propelled by the paddles of the
+      stalwart Polynesians who manned them, and crowded to the water&rsquo;s
+      edge with groups of grinning and shouting warriors. They were dressed in
+      aprons of dracæna leaves only, with necklets and armlets of sharks&rsquo;
+      teeth and cowrie shells. A dozen canoes at least were making toward the
+      reef at full speed, all bristling with spears and alive with noisy and
+      boisterous savages. Muriel shrank back terror-stricken at the sight, as
+      they drew nearer and nearer. But Felix, holding his breath hard, grew
+      somewhat less nervous as the men approached the reef. He had seen enough
+      of Polynesian life before now to feel sure these people were not upon the
+      war-path. Whatever their ultimate intentions toward the castaways might
+      be, their immediate object seemed friendly and good-humored. The boats,
+      though large, were not regular war-canoes; the men, instead of brandishing
+      their spears, and lunging out with them over the edge in threatening
+      attitudes, held them erect in their hands at rest, like standards; they
+      were laughing and talking, not crying their war-cry. As they drew near the
+      shore, one big canoe shot suddenly a length or so ahead of the rest; and
+      its leader, standing on the grotesque carved figure that adorned its prow,
+      held up both his hands open and empty before him, in sign of peace, while
+      at the same time he shouted out a word or two three times in his own
+      language, to reassure the castaways.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix&rsquo;s eye glanced cautiously from boat to boat. &ldquo;He says,
+      &lsquo;We are friends,&rsquo;&rdquo; the young man remarked in an
+      undertone to his terrified companion. &ldquo;I can understand his dialect.
+      Thank Heaven, it&rsquo;s very close to Fijian. I shall be able at least to
+      palaver to these men. I don&rsquo;t think they mean just now to harm us. I
+      believe we can trust them, at any rate for the present.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The poor girl drew back, in still greater awe and alarm than ever. &ldquo;Oh,
+      are they going to land here?&rdquo; she cried, still clinging closer with
+      both hands to her one friend and protector.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Try not to look so frightened!&rdquo; Felix exclaimed, with a
+      warning glance. &ldquo;Remember, much depends upon it; savages judge you
+      greatly by what demeanor you happen to assume. If you&rsquo;re frightened,
+      they know their power; if they see you&rsquo;re resolute, they suspect you
+      have some supernatural means of protection. Try to meet them frankly, as
+      if you were not afraid of them.&rdquo; Then, advancing slowly to the water&rsquo;s
+      edge, he called out aloud, in a strong, clear voice, a few words which
+      Muriel didn&rsquo;t understand, but which were really the Fijian for
+      &ldquo;We also are friendly. Our medicine is good. We mean no magic. We
+      come to you from across the great water. We desire your peace. Receive us
+      and protect us!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the sound of words which he could readily understand, and which
+      differed but little, indeed, from his own language, the leader on the
+      foremost canoe, who seemed by his manner to be a great chief, turned round
+      to his followers and cried out in tones of superstitious awe, &ldquo;Tu-Kila-Kila
+      spoke well. These are, indeed, what he told us. Korong! Korong! They are
+      spirits who have come to us from the disk of the sun, to bring us light
+      and pure, fresh fire. Stay back there, all of you. You are not holy enough
+      to approach. I and my crew, who are sanctified by the mysteries, we alone
+      will go forward to meet them.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he spoke, a sudden idea, suggested by his words, struck Felix&rsquo;s
+      mind. Superstition is the great lever by which to move the savage
+      intelligence. Gathering up a few dry leaves and fragments of stick on the
+      shore, he laid them together in a pile, and awaited in silence the arrival
+      of the foremost islanders. The first canoe advanced slowly and cautiously,
+      the men in it eying these proceedings with evident suspicion; the rest
+      hung back, with their spears in array, and their hands just ready to use
+      them with effect should occasion demand it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The leader of the first canoe, coming close to the shore, jumped out upon
+      the reef in shallow water. Half a dozen of his followers jumped after him
+      without hesitation, and brandished their weapons round their heads as they
+      advanced, in savage unison. But Felix, pretending hardly to notice these
+      hostile demonstrations, stepped boldly up toward his little pile with
+      great deliberation, though trembling inwardly, and proceeded before their
+      eyes to take a match from his box, which he displayed ostentatiously, all
+      glittering in the sun, to the foremost savage. The leader stood by and
+      watched him close with eyes of silent wonder. Then Felix, kneeling down,
+      struck the match on the box, and applied it, as it lighted, to the dry
+      leaves beside him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A chorus of astonishment burst unanimously from the delighted natives as
+      the dry leaves leaped all at once into a tongue of flame, and the little
+      pile caught quickly from the fire in the vesta.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The leader looked hard at the two white faces, and then at the fire on the
+      beach, with evident approbation. &ldquo;It is as Tu-Kila-Kila said,&rdquo;
+      he exclaimed at last with profound awe. &ldquo;They are spirits from the
+      sun, and they carry with them pure fire in shining boxes.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, advancing a pace and pointing toward the canoe, he motioned Felix
+      and Muriel to take their seats within it with native savage politeness.
+      &ldquo;Tu-Kila-Kila has sent for you,&rdquo; he said, in his grandest
+      aristocratic air, &ldquo;for your chief is a gentleman. He wishes to
+      receive you. He saw your message-fire on the reef last night, and he knew
+      you had come. He has made you a very great Taboo. He has put you under
+      protection of Fire and Water.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The people in the boats, with one accord, shouted out in wild chorus, as
+      if to confirm his words, &ldquo;Taboo! Taboo! Tu-Kila-Kila has said it!
+      Taboo! Taboo! Ware Fire! Ware Water!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Though the dialect in which they spoke differed somewhat from that in use
+      in Fiji, Felix could still make out with care almost every word of what
+      the chief had said to him; and the universal Polynesian expression,
+      &ldquo;Taboo,&rdquo; in particular, somewhat reassured him as to their
+      friendly intentions. Among remote heathen islanders like these, he felt
+      sure, the very word itself was far too sacred to be taken in vain. They
+      would respect its inviolability. He turned round to Muriel. &ldquo;We must
+      go with them,&rdquo; he said, shortly. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s our one chance
+      left of life now. Don&rsquo;t be too terrified; there is still some hope.
+      They say somebody they call Tu-Kila-Kila has tabooed us. No one will dare
+      to hurt us against so great a Taboo; for Tu-Kila-Kila is evidently some
+      very important king or chief. You must step into the boat. It can&rsquo;t
+      be avoided. If any harm is threatened, be sure I won&rsquo;t forget my
+      promise.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Muriel shrank back in alarm, and clung still to his arm now as naturally
+      as she would have clung to a brother&rsquo;s. &ldquo;Oh, Mr. Thurstan,&rdquo;
+      she cried&mdash;&ldquo;Felix, I don&rsquo;t know what to say; I <i>can&rsquo;t</i>
+      go with them.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix put his arm gently round her girlish waist, and half lifted her into
+      the boat in spite of her reluctance. &ldquo;You must,&rdquo; he said, with
+      great firmness. &ldquo;You must do as I say. I will watch over you, and
+      take care of you. If the worst comes, I have always my knife, and I won&rsquo;t
+      forget. Now, friend,&rdquo; he went on, in Fijian, turning round to the
+      chief, as he took his seat in the canoe fearlessly among all those dusky,
+      half-clad figures, &ldquo;we are ready to start. We do not fear. We wish
+      to go. Take us to Tu-Kila-Kila.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And all the savages around, shouting in their surprise and awe, exclaimed
+      once more in concert, &ldquo;Tu-Kila-Kila is great. We will take them, as
+      he bids us, forthwith to heaven.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do they say?&rdquo; Muriel cried, clinging close to the white
+      man&rsquo;s side in her speechless terror. &ldquo;Do you understand their
+      language?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I can&rsquo;t quite make it out,&rdquo; Felix answered, much
+      puzzled; &ldquo;that is to say, not every word of it. They say they&rsquo;ll
+      take us somewhere, I don&rsquo;t quite know where; but in Fijian, the word
+      would certainly mean to heaven.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Muriel shuddered visibly. &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t think,&rdquo; she said,
+      with a tremulous tongue, &ldquo;they mean to kill us?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I don&rsquo;t <i>think</i> so,&rdquo; Felix replied, not
+      over-confidently. &ldquo;They said we were Taboo. But with savages like
+      these, of course, one can never in any case be quite certain.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER V. &mdash; ENROLLED IN OLYMPUS.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      They rowed across the lagoon, a mysterious procession, almost in silence&mdash;the
+      canoe with the two Europeans going first, the others following at a slight
+      distance&mdash;and landed at last on the brink of the central island.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Several of the Boupari people leaped ashore at once; then they helped
+      Felix and Muriel from the frail bark with almost deferential care, and led
+      the way before them up a steep white path, that zigzagged through the
+      forest toward the centre of the island. As they went, a band of natives
+      preceded them in regular line of march, shouting &ldquo;Taboo, taboo!&rdquo;
+      at short intervals, especially as they neared any group of fan-palm
+      cottages. The women whom they met fell on their knees at once, till the
+      strange procession had passed them by; the men only bowed their heads
+      thrice, and made a rapid movement on their breasts with their fingers,
+      which reminded Muriel at once of the sign of the cross in Catholic
+      countries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So on they wended their way in silence through the deep tropical jungle,
+      along a pathway just wide enough for three to walk abreast, till they
+      emerged suddenly upon a large cleared space, in whose midst grew a great
+      banyan-tree, with arms that dropped and rooted themselves like buttresses
+      in the soil beneath. Under the banyan-tree a raised platform stood upon
+      posts of bamboo. The platform was covered with fine network in yellow and
+      red; and two little stools occupied the middle, as if placed there on
+      purpose and waiting for their occupants.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man who had headed the first canoe turned round to Felix and motioned
+      him forward. &ldquo;This is Heaven,&rdquo; he said glibly, in his own
+      tongue. &ldquo;Spirits, ascend it!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix, much wondering what the ceremony could mean, mounted the platform
+      without a word, in obedience to the chief&rsquo;s command, closely
+      followed by Muriel, who dared not leave him for a second.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bring water!&rdquo; the chief said, shortly, in a voice of
+      authority to one of his followers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man handed up a calabash with a little water in it. The chief took the
+      rude vessel from his hands in a reverential manner, and poured a few drops
+      of the contents on Felix&rsquo;s head; the water trickled down over his
+      hair and forehead. Involuntarily, Felix shook his head a little at the
+      unexpected wetting, and scattered the drops right and left on his neck and
+      shoulders. The chief watched this performance attentively with profound
+      satisfaction. Then he turned to his attendants.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The spirit shakes his head,&rdquo; he said, with a deeply convinced
+      air. &ldquo;All is well. Heaven has chosen him. Korong! Korong! He is
+      accepted for his purpose. It is well! It is well! Let us try the other
+      one.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He raised the calabash once more, and poured a few drops in like manner on
+      Muriel&rsquo;s dark hair. The poor girl, trembling in every limb, shook
+      her head also in the same unintentional fashion. The chief regarded her
+      with still more complacent eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is well,&rdquo; he observed once more to his companions,
+      smiling. &ldquo;She, too, gives the sign of acceptance. Korong! Korong!
+      Heaven is well pleased with both. See how her body trembles!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At that moment a girl came forward with a little basket of fruits. The
+      chief chose a banana with care from the basket, peeled it with his dusky
+      hands, broke it slowly in two, and handed one half very solemnly to Felix.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eat, King of the Rain,&rdquo; he said, as he presented it. &ldquo;The
+      offering of Heaven.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix ate it at once, thinking it best under the circumstances not to
+      demur at all to anything his strange hosts might choose to impose upon
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The chief handed the other half just as solemnly to Muriel. &ldquo;Eat,
+      Queen of the Clouds,&rdquo; he said, as he placed it in her fingers.
+      &ldquo;The offering of Heaven.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Muriel hesitated. She didn&rsquo;t know what his words meant, and it
+      seemed to her rather the offering of a very dirty and unwashed savage. The
+      chief eyed her hard. &ldquo;For God&rsquo;s sake eat it, my child; he
+      tells you to eat it!&rdquo; Felix exclaimed in haste. Muriel lifted it to
+      her lips and swallowed it down with difficulty. The man&rsquo;s dusky
+      hands didn&rsquo;t inspire confidence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the chief seemed relieved when he had seen her swallow it. &ldquo;All
+      is well done,&rdquo; he said, turning again to his followers. &ldquo;We
+      have obeyed the words of Tu-Kila-Kila, and his orders that he gave us. We
+      have offered the strangers, the spirits from the sun, as a free gift to
+      Heaven, and Heaven has accepted them. We have given them fruits, the
+      fruits of the earth, and they have duly eaten them. Korong! Korong! The
+      King of the Rain and the Queen of the Clouds have indeed come among us.
+      They are truly gods. We will take them now, as he bid us, to Tu-Kila-Kila.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What have they done to us?&rdquo; Muriel asked aside, in a
+      terrified undertone of Felix.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t quite make out,&rdquo; Felix answered in the selfsame
+      voice. &ldquo;They call us the King of the Rain and the Queen of the
+      Clouds in their own language. I think they imagine we&rsquo;ve come from
+      the sun and that we&rsquo;re a sort of spirits.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the sound of these words the girl who held the basket of fruits gave a
+      sudden start. It almost seemed to Muriel as if she understood them. But
+      when Muriel looked again she gave no further sign. She merely held her
+      peace, and tried to appear wholly undisconcerted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The chief beckoned them down from the platform with a wave of his hand.
+      They rose and followed him. As they rose the people around them bowed low
+      to the ground. Felix could see they were bowing to Muriel and himself, not
+      merely to the chief. A doubt flitted strangely across his mind for a
+      moment. What could it all mean? Did they take the two strangers, then, for
+      supernatural beings? Had they enrolled them as gods? If so, it might serve
+      as some little protection for them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The procession formed again, three and three, three and three, in solemn
+      silence. Then the chief walked in front of them with measured steps, and
+      Felix and Muriel followed behind, wondering. As they went, the cry rose
+      louder and louder than before, &ldquo;Taboo! Taboo!&rdquo; People who met
+      them fell on their faces at once, as the chief cried out in a loud tone,
+      &ldquo;The King of the Rain! The Queen of the Clouds! Korong! Korong! They
+      are coming! They are coming!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last they reached a second cleared space, standing in a large garden of
+      manilla, loquat, poncians, and hibiscus-trees. It was entered by a gate, a
+      tall gate of bamboo posts. At the gate all the followers fell back to
+      right and left, awe-struck. Only the chief went calmly on. He beckoned to
+      Felix and Muriel to follow him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They entered, half terrified. Felix still grasped his open knife in his
+      hand, ready to strike at any moment that might be necessary. The chief led
+      them forward toward a very large tree near the centre of the garden. At
+      the foot of the tree stood a hut, somewhat bigger and better built than
+      any they had yet seen; and in front of the trunk a stalwart savage, very
+      powerfully built, but with a sinister look in his cruel and lustful eye,
+      was pacing up and down, like a sentinel on guard, a long spear in his
+      right hand, and a tomahawk in his left, held close by his side, all ready
+      for action. As he prowled up and down he seemed to be peering warily about
+      him on every side, as if each instant he expected to be set upon by an
+      enemy. But as the chief approached, the people without set up once more
+      the cry of &ldquo;Taboo! Taboo!&rdquo; and the stalwart savage by the
+      tree, laying down his spear and letting his tomahawk fall free, dropped in
+      a second the air of watchful alarm, and advanced with some courtesy to
+      greet the new-comers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We have found them, Tu-Kila-Kila,&rdquo; the chief said, presenting
+      them to the god with a graceful wave of his hand. &ldquo;We have found the
+      spirits that you brought from the sun, with the fire in their hands, and
+      the light in boxes. We have taken them to Heaven. Heaven has accepted
+      them. We have offered them fruit, and they have eaten the banana. The King
+      of the Rain&mdash;the Queen of the Clouds! Korong! Receive them!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila glanced at them with an approving glance, strangely
+      compounded of pleasure and terror. &ldquo;They are plump,&rdquo; he said
+      shortly. &ldquo;They are indeed Korong. My sun has sent me an acceptable
+      present.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is your will that we should do with them?&rdquo; the chief
+      asked in a deeply deferential tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila looked hard at Muriel&mdash;such a hateful look that the
+      knife trembled irresolute for a second in Felix&rsquo;s hand. &ldquo;Give
+      them two fresh huts,&rdquo; he said, in a lordly way. &ldquo;Give them
+      divine platters. Give them all that they need. Make everything right for
+      them.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The chief bowed, and retired with an awed air from the presence. Exactly
+      as he passed a certain line on the ground, marked white with a row of
+      coral-sand, Tu-Kila-Kila seized his spear and his tomahawk once more, and
+      mounted guard, as before, at the foot of the great tree where they had
+      seen him pacing. An instantaneous change seemed to Muriel to come over his
+      demeanor at that moment. While he spoke with the chief she noticed he
+      looked all cruelty, lust, and hateful self-indulgence. Now that he paced
+      up and down warily in front of that sacred floor, peering around him with
+      keen suspicion, he seemed rather the personification of watchfulness,
+      fear, and a certain slavish bodily terror. Especially, she observed, he
+      cast upon Felix, as he went, a glance of angry hate; and yet he did not
+      attempt to hurt or molest him in any way, defenceless as they both were
+      before those numerous savages.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As they emerged from the enclosure, the girl with the fruit basket stood
+      near the gate, looking outward from the wall, her face turned away from
+      the awful home of Tu-Kila-Kila. At the moment when Muriel passed, to her
+      immense astonishment the girl spoke to her. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t be afraid,
+      missy,&rdquo; she said in English, in a rather low voice, without
+      obtrusively approaching them. &ldquo;Boupari man not going to hurt you. Me
+      going to be your servant. Me name Mali. Me very good girl. Me take plenty
+      care of you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The unexpected sound of her own language, in the midst of so much
+      unmitigated savagery, took Muriel fairly by surprise. She looked hard at
+      the girl, but thought it wisest to answer nothing. This particular young
+      woman, indeed, was just as dark, and to all appearance just as much of a
+      savage, as any of the rest of them. But she could speak English, at any
+      rate! And she said she was to be Muriel&rsquo;s servant!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The chief led them back to the shore, talking volubly all the way in
+      Polynesia to Felix. His dialect differed so much from the Fijian that when
+      he spoke first Felix could hardly follow him. But he gathered vaguely,
+      nevertheless, that they were to be well housed and fed for the present at
+      the public expense; and even that something which the chief clearly
+      regarded as a very great honor was in store for them in the future.
+      Whatever these people&rsquo;s particular superstition might be, it seemed
+      pretty evident at least that it told in the strangers&rsquo; favor. Felix
+      almost began to hope they might manage to live there pretty tolerably for
+      the next two or three weeks, and perhaps to signal in time to some passing
+      Australian liner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The rest of that wonderful eventful day was wholly occupied with practical
+      details. Before long, two adjacent huts were found for them, near the
+      shore of the lagoon; and Felix noticed with pleasure, not only that the
+      huts themselves were new and clean, but also that the chief took great
+      care to place round both of them a single circular line of white
+      coral-sand, like the one he had noticed at Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s
+      palace-temple. He felt sure this white line made the space within taboo.
+      No native would dare without leave to cross it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the line was well marked out round the two huts together, the chief
+      went away for a while, leaving the Europeans within their broad white
+      circle, guarded by an angry-looking band of natives with long spears at
+      rest, all pointed inward. The natives themselves stood well without the
+      ring, but the points of their spears almost reached the line, and it was
+      clear they would not for the present permit the Europeans to leave the
+      charmed circle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently, the chief returned again, followed by two other natives in
+      official costumes. One of them was a tall and handsome young man, dressed
+      in a long robe or cloak of yellow feathers. The other was stouter, and
+      perhaps forty or thereabouts; he wore a short cape of white albatross
+      plumes, with a girdle of shells at his waist, interspersed with red coral.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The King of Fire will make Taboo,&rdquo; the chief said, solemnly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The young man with the cloak of yellow feathers stepped forward and spoke,
+      toeing the line with his left foot, and brandishing a lighted stick in his
+      right hand. &ldquo;Taboo! Taboo! Taboo!&rdquo; he cried aloud, with
+      emphasis. &ldquo;If any man dare to transgress this line without leave, I
+      burn him to ashes. If any woman, I scorch her to a cinder. Taboo to the
+      King of the Rain and the Queen of the Clouds. Taboo! Taboo! Taboo! Korong!
+      I say it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stepped back into the ranks with an air of duty performed. The chief
+      looked about him curiously a moment. &ldquo;The King of Water will make
+      Taboo,&rdquo; he repeated after a pause, in the same deep tone of profound
+      conviction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The stouter man in the short white cape stepped forward in his turn. He
+      toed the line with his naked left foot; in his brown right hand he carried
+      a calabash of water. &ldquo;Taboo! Taboo! Taboo!&rdquo; he exclaimed
+      aloud, pouring out the water upon the ground symbolically. &ldquo;If any
+      man dare to transgress this line without leave, I drown him in his canoe.
+      If any woman, I drag her alive into the spring as she fetches water. Taboo
+      to the King of the Rain and the Queen of the Clouds. Taboo! Taboo! Taboo!
+      Korong! I say it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What does it all mean?&rdquo; Muriel whispered, terrified.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix explained to her, as far as he could, in a few hurried sentences.
+      &ldquo;There&rsquo;s only one word in it I don&rsquo;t understand,&rdquo;
+      he added, hastily, &ldquo;and that&rsquo;s Korong. It doesn&rsquo;t occur
+      in Fiji. They keep saying we&rsquo;re Korong, whatever that may mean; and
+      evidently they attach some very great importance to it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let the Shadows come forward,&rdquo; the chief said, looking up
+      with an air of dignity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A good-looking young man, and the girl who said her name was Mali, stepped
+      forth from the crowd, and fell on their knees before him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The chief laid his hand on the young man&rsquo;s shoulder and raised him
+      up. &ldquo;The Shadow of the King of the Rain,&rdquo; he cried, turning
+      him three times round. &ldquo;Follow him in all his incomings and his
+      outgoings, and serve him faithfully! Taboo! Taboo! Pass within the sacred
+      circle!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He clapped his hands. The young man crossed the line with a sort of
+      reverent reluctance, and took his place within the ring, close up to
+      Felix.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The chief laid his hand on Mali&rsquo;s shoulder. &ldquo;The Shadow of the
+      Queen of the Clouds,&rdquo; he said, turning her three times round.
+      &ldquo;Follow her in all her incomings and outgoings, and serve her
+      faithfully. Taboo! Taboo! Pass within the sacred circle!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he waved both hands to Felix. &ldquo;Go where you will now,&rdquo; he
+      said. &ldquo;Your Shadow will follow you. You are free as the rain that
+      drops where it will. You are as free as the clouds that roam through
+      heaven. No man will hinder you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And in a moment the spearmen dropped their spears in concert, the crowd
+      fell back, and the villagers dispersed as if by magic, to their own
+      houses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Felix and Muriel were left alone beside their huts, guarded only in
+      silence by their two mystic Shadows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0006" id="link2HCH0006"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VI. &mdash; FIRST DAYS IN BOUPARI.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Throughout that day the natives brought them, from time to time, numerous
+      presents of yam, bananas, and bread-fruit, neatly arranged in little
+      palm-leaf baskets. A few of them brought eggs as well, and one offering
+      even included a live chicken. But the people who brought them, and who
+      were mostly young girls just entering upon womanhood, did not venture to
+      cross the white line of coral-sand that surrounded the huts; they laid
+      down their presents, with many salaams, on the ground outside, and then
+      waited with a half-startled, half-reverent air for one or other of the two
+      Shadows to come out and fetch them. As soon as the baskets were carried
+      well within the marked line, the young girls exhibited every sign of
+      pleasure, and calling aloud, &ldquo;Korong! Korong!&rdquo;&mdash;that
+      mysterious Polynesian word of whose import Felix was ignorant&mdash;they
+      retired once more by tortuous paths through the surrounding jungle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why do they bring us presents?&rdquo; Felix asked at last of his
+      Shadow, after this curious pantomime had been performed some three or four
+      times. &ldquo;Are they always going to keep us in such plenty?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Shadow looked back at him with an air of considerable surprise.
+      &ldquo;They bring presents, of course,&rdquo; he said, in his own tongue,
+      &ldquo;because they are badly in want of rain. We have had much drought of
+      late in Boupari; we need water from heaven. The banana-bushes wither; the
+      flowers on the bread-fruit tree do not swell to breadfruit; the yams are
+      thirsty. Therefore the fathers send their daughters with presents, maidens
+      of the villages, all marriageable girls, to ask for rainfall. But they
+      will always provide for you, and also for the Queen, however you behave;
+      for you are both Korong. Tu-Kila-Kila has said so, and Heaven has accepted
+      you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean by Korong?&rdquo; Felix asked, with some
+      trepidation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Shadow merely looked back at him with a sort of blank surprise that
+      anybody should be ignorant of so simple a conception. &ldquo;Why, Korong
+      is Korong,&rdquo; he answered, aghast. &ldquo;You are Korong yourself. The
+      Queen of the Clouds is Korong, too. You are both Korong; that is why they
+      all treat you with such respect and reverence.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And that was as much as Felix could elicit by his subtlest questions from
+      his taciturn Shadow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In fact, it was clear that in the open, at least, the Shadow was averse to
+      being observed in familiar conversation with Felix. During the heat of the
+      day, however, when they sat alone within the hut, he was much more
+      communicative. Then he launched forth pretty freely into talk about the
+      island and its life, which would no doubt have largely enlightened Felix,
+      had it not been for two drawbacks to their means of inter-communication.
+      In the first place, the Boupari dialect, though agreeing in all essentials
+      with the Polynesian of Fiji, nevertheless contained a great many words and
+      colloquial expressions unknown to the Fijians; this being particularly the
+      case, as Felix soon remarked, in the whole vocabulary of religious rites
+      and ceremonies. And in the second place, the Shadow was so rigidly bound
+      by his own narrow and insular set of ideas, that he couldn&rsquo;t
+      understand the difficulty Felix felt in throwing himself into them. Over
+      and over again, when Felix asked him to explain some word or custom, he
+      would repeat, with naïve impatience, &ldquo;Why, Korong is Korong,&rdquo;
+      or &ldquo;Tula is just Tula; even a child must surely know what Tula is;
+      much more yourself, who are indeed Korong, and who have come from the sun
+      to bring fresh fire to us.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the adjoining hut, Muriel, who was now beginning in some small degree
+      to get rid of her most pressing fear for the immediate future, and whom
+      the obvious reality of the taboo had reassured for the moment, sat with
+      Mali, her own particular Shadow, unravelling the mystery of the girl&rsquo;s
+      knowledge of English.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mali, indeed, like the other Shadow, showed every disposition to indulge
+      in abundant conversation, as soon as she found herself well within the
+      hut, alone with her mistress, and secluded from the prying eyes of all the
+      other islanders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you be afraid, missy,&rdquo; she said, with genuine
+      kindliness in her tone, as soon as the gifts of yam and bread-fruit had
+      all been duly housed and garnered. &ldquo;No harm come to you. You Korong,
+      you know. You very great Taboo. Tu-Kila-Kila send King of Fire and King of
+      Water to make taboo over you, so nobody hurt you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Muriel burst into tears at the sound of her own language from those dusky
+      lips, and exclaimed through her sobs, clinging to the girl&rsquo;s hand
+      for comfort as she spoke, &ldquo;Why, how did you ever come to speak
+      English?&mdash;tell me.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mali looked up at her with a half-astonished air. &ldquo;Oh, I servant in
+      Queensland, of course, missy,&rdquo; she answered, with great composure.
+      &ldquo;Labor vessel come to my island, far away, four, five years ago,
+      steal boy, steal woman. My papa just kill my mamma, because he angry with
+      her, so no want daughters. So my papa sell me and my sister for plenty
+      rum, plenty tobacco, to gentlemen in labor vessel. Gentlemen in labor
+      vessel take Jani and me away, away, to Queensland. Big sea; long voyage.
+      We stop there three yam&mdash;three years&mdash;do service; then great
+      chief in Queensland send us back to my island. My island too faraway;
+      gentleman on ship not find it out; so he land us in little boat on
+      Boupari. Boupari people make temple slave of us.&rdquo; And that was all;
+      to her quite a commonplace, everyday history.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see,&rdquo; Muriel cried. &ldquo;Then you&rsquo;ve been for three
+      years in Australia! And there you learned English. Why, what did you do
+      there?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mali looked back at her with the same matter-of-fact air of composure as
+      before. &ldquo;Oh, me nurse at first,&rdquo; she said, shortly. &ldquo;Then
+      after, me housemaid, live three year in gentleman&rsquo;s house, good
+      gentleman that buy me. Take care of little girl; clean rooms; do
+      everything. Me know how to make English lady quite comfortable. Me tell
+      that to chief; that make him say, &lsquo;Mali, you be Queenie&rsquo;s
+      Shadow.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Muriel in her loneliness even such companionship as that was indeed a
+      consolation. &ldquo;Oh, I&rsquo;m so glad you told him,&rdquo; she cried.
+      &ldquo;If we have to stop here long, before a ship takes us off, it&rsquo;ll
+      be so nice to have you here all the time with me. You won&rsquo;t go away
+      from me ever, will you? You&rsquo;ll always stop with me!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl&rsquo;s surprise showed more profoundly than ever. &ldquo;Me can&rsquo;t
+      go away,&rdquo; she answered, with emphasis. &ldquo;Me your Shadow. That
+      great Taboo. Tu-Kila-Kila great god. If me go away, Tu-Kila-Kila kill me
+      and eat me.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Muriel started back in horror. &ldquo;But, Mali,&rdquo; she said, looking
+      hard at the girl&rsquo;s pleasant brown face, &ldquo;if you were three
+      years in Australia, you&rsquo;re a Christian, surely!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl nodded her head in passive acquiescence. &ldquo;Me Christian in
+      Australia,&rdquo; she answered. &ldquo;Of course me Christian. All folks
+      make Christian when him go to Queensland. That what for me call Mali, and
+      my sister Jani. We have other names on my own island; but when we go to
+      Queensland, gentleman baptize us, call us Mali and Jani. Me Methodist in
+      Queensland. Methodist very good. But Methodist god no live in Boupari. Not
+      any good be Methodist here any longer. Tu-Kila-Kila god here. Him very
+      powerful.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What! Not that dreadful creature that they took us to see this
+      morning!&rdquo; Muriel exclaimed, in horror. &ldquo;Oh, Mali, you can&rsquo;t
+      mean to say they think he&rsquo;s a <i>god</i>, that awful man there!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mali nodded her assent with profound conviction. &ldquo;Yes, yes; him god,&rdquo;
+      she repeated, confidently. &ldquo;Him very powerful. My sister Jani go too
+      near him temple, against taboo&mdash;because her not belong-a Tu-Kila-Kila
+      temple; and last night, when it great feast, plenty men catch Jani, and
+      tie him up in rope; and Tu-Kila-Kila kill him, and plenty Boupari men help
+      Tu-Kila-Kila eat up Jani.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She said it in the same simple, matter-of-fact way as she had said that
+      she was a nurse for three years in Queensland. To her it was a common
+      incident of everyday life. Such accidents <i>will</i> happen, if you break
+      taboo and go too near forbidden temples.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Muriel drew back, and let the pleasant-looking brown girl&rsquo;s hand
+      drop suddenly. &ldquo;You can&rsquo;t mean it,&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;You
+      can&rsquo;t mean he&rsquo;s a god! Such a wicked man as that! Oh, his very
+      look&rsquo;s too horrible.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mali drew back in her turn with a somewhat terrified air, and peeped
+      suspiciously around her, as if to make sure whether any one was listening.
+      &ldquo;Oh, hush,&rdquo; she said, anxiously. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t must talk
+      like that. If Tu-Kila-Kila hear, him scorch us up to ashes. Him very great
+      god! Him good! Him powerful!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How can he be good if he does such awful things?&rdquo; Muriel
+      exclaimed, energetically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mali peered around her once more with terrified eyes in the same uneasy
+      way. &ldquo;Take care,&rdquo; she said again. &ldquo;Him god! Him
+      powerful! Him can do no wrong. Him King of the Trees! Him King of Heaven!
+      On Boupari island, Methodist god not much; no god so great like
+      Tu-Kila-Kila.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But a <i>man</i> can&rsquo;t be a god!&rdquo; Muriel exclaimed,
+      contemptuously. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s nothing but a man! a savage! A cannibal!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mali looked back at her in wondering surprise. &ldquo;Not in Queensland,&rdquo;
+      she answered, calmly&mdash;to her, all the world naturally divided itself
+      into Queensland and Polynesia&mdash;&ldquo;no god in Queensland. Governor,
+      him very great chief; but him no god like Tu-Kila-Kila. Methodist god in
+      sky, him only god that live in Queensland. But no use worship Methodist
+      god over here in Boupari. Him no live here. Tu-Kila-Kila live here. All
+      god here make out of man. Live in man. Korong! What for you say a man can&rsquo;t
+      be a god! You god yourself! White gentleman there, god! Korong, Korong.
+      Chief put you in Heaven, so make you a god. People pray to you now. People
+      bring you presents.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t mean to say,&rdquo; Muriel cried, &ldquo;they bring
+      me these things because they think me a goddess?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mali nodded a grave assent. &ldquo;Same like people give money in church
+      in Queensland,&rdquo; she answered, promptly. &ldquo;Ask you make rain,
+      make plenty crop, make bread-fruit grow, make banana, make plantain. You
+      Korong now. While your time last, Queenie, people give you plenty of
+      present.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;While my time last?&rdquo; Muriel repeated, with a curious sense of
+      discomfort creeping over her slowly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl nodded an easy assent. &ldquo;Yes, while your time last,&rdquo;
+      she answered, laying a small bundle of palm-leaves at Muriel&rsquo;s back
+      by way of a cushion. &ldquo;For now you Korong. By and by, Korong pass to
+      somebody else. This year, you Korong. So people worship you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But nothing that Muriel could say would induce the girl further to explain
+      her meaning. She shook her head and looked very wise. &ldquo;When a god
+      come into somebody,&rdquo; she said, nodding toward Muriel in a mysterious
+      way, &ldquo;then him god himself; him Korong. When the god go away from
+      him, him Korong no longer; somebody else Korong. Queenie Korong now; so
+      people worship him. While him time last, people plenty kind to him.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The day passed away, and night came on. As it approached, heavy clouds
+      drifted up from eastward. Mali busied herself with laying out a rough bed
+      in the hut for Muriel, and making her a pillow of soft moss and the
+      curious lichen-like material that hangs parasitic from the trees, and is
+      commonly known as &ldquo;old man&rsquo;s beard.&rdquo; As both Mali and
+      Felix assured her confidently no harm would come to her within so strict a
+      Taboo, Muriel, worn out with fatigue and terror, lay down at last and
+      slept soundly on this native substitute for a bedstead. She slept without
+      dreaming, while Mali lay at her feet, ready at a moment&rsquo;s call. It
+      was all so strange; and yet she was too utterly wearied to do otherwise
+      than sleep, in spite of her strange and terrible surroundings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix slept, too, for some hours, but woke with a start in the night. It
+      was raining heavily. He could hear the loud patter of a fierce tropical
+      shower on the roof of his hut. His Shadow, at his feet, slept still
+      unmoved; but when Felix rose on his elbow, the Shadow rose on a sudden,
+      too, and confronted him curiously. The young man heard the rain; then he
+      bowed down his face with an awed air, not visible, but audible, in the
+      still darkness. &ldquo;It has come!&rdquo; he said, with superstitious
+      terror. &ldquo;It has come at last! my lord has brought it!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After that, Felix lay awake for some hours, hearing the rain on the roof,
+      and puzzled in his own head by a half-uncertain memory. What was it in his
+      school reading that that ceremony with the water indefinitely reminded him
+      of? Wasn&rsquo;t there some Greek or Roman superstition about shaking your
+      head when water was poured upon it? What could that superstition be, and
+      what light might it cast on that mysterious ceremony? He wished he could
+      remember; but it was so long since he&rsquo;d read it, and he never cared
+      much at school for Greek or Roman antiquities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly, in a lull of the rain, the whole context at once came back with
+      a rush to him. He remembered now he had read it, some time or other, in
+      some classical dictionary. It was a custom connected with Greek
+      sacrifices. The officiating priest poured water or wine on the head of the
+      sheep, bullock, or other victim. If the victim shook its head and knocked
+      off the drops, that was a sign that it was fit for the sacrifice, and that
+      the god accepted it. If the victim trembled visibly, that was a most
+      favorable omen. If it stood quite still and didn&rsquo;t move its neck,
+      then the god rejected it as unfit for his purpose. Couldn&rsquo;t <i>that</i>
+      be the meaning of the ceremony performed on Muriel and himself in &ldquo;Heaven&rdquo;
+      that morning? Were they merely intended as human sacrifices? Were they to
+      be kept meanwhile and, as it were, fed up for the slaughter? It was too
+      horrible to believe; yet it almost looked like it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He wished he knew the meaning of that strange word, &ldquo;Korong.&rdquo;
+      Clearly, it contained the true key to the mystery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Anyhow, he had always his trusty knife. If the worst came to the worst&mdash;those
+      wretches should never harm his spotless Muriel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For he loved her to-night; he would watch over and protect her. He would
+      save her at least from the deadliest of insults.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0007" id="link2HCH0007"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VII. &mdash; INTERCHANGE OF CIVILITIES.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      All night long, without intermission, the heavy tropical rain descended in
+      torrents; at sunrise it ceased, and a bright blue vault of sky stood in a
+      spotless dome over the island of Boupari.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As soon as the sun was well risen, and the rain had ceased, one shy native
+      girl after another came straggling up timidly to the white line that
+      marked the taboo round Felix and Muriel&rsquo;s huts. They came with more
+      baskets of fruit and eggs. Humbly saluting three times as they drew near,
+      they laid down their gifts modestly just outside the line, with many loud
+      ejaculations of praise and gratitude to the gods in their own language.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do they say?&rdquo; Muriel asked, in a dazed and frightened
+      way, looking out of the hut door, and turning in wonder to Mali.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They say, &lsquo;Thank you, Queenie, for rain and fruits,&rsquo;&rdquo;
+      Mali answered, unconcerned, bustling about in the hut. &ldquo;Missy want
+      to wash him face and hands this morning? Lady always wash every day over
+      yonder in Queensland.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Muriel nodded assent. It was all so strange to her. But Mali went to the
+      door and beckoned carelessly to one of the native girls just outside, who
+      drew near the line at the summons, with a somewhat frightened air, putting
+      one finger to her mouth in coyly uncertain savage fashion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fetch me water from the spring!&rdquo; Mali said, authoritatively,
+      in Polynesian. Without a moment&rsquo;s delay the girl darted off at the
+      top of her speed, and soon returned with a large calabash full of fresh
+      cool water, which she lay down respectfully by the taboo line, not daring
+      to cross it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why didn&rsquo;t you get it yourself?&rdquo; Muriel asked of her
+      Shadow, rather relieved than otherwise that Mali hadn&rsquo;t left her. It
+      was something in these dire straits to have somebody always near who could
+      at least speak a little English.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mali started back in surprise. &ldquo;Oh, that would never do,&rdquo; she
+      answered, catching a colloquial phrase she had often heard long before in
+      Queensland. &ldquo;Me missy&rsquo;s Shadow. That great Taboo. If me go
+      away out of missy&rsquo;s sight, very big sin&mdash;very big danger.
+      Man-a-Boupari catch me and kill me like Jani, for no me stop and wait all
+      the time on missy.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was clear that human life was held very cheap on the island of Boupari.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Muriel made her scanty toilet in the hut as well as she was able, with the
+      calabash and water, aided by a rough shell comb which Mali had provided
+      for her. Then she breakfasted, not ill, off eggs and fruit, which Mali
+      cooked with some rude native skill over the open-air fire without in the
+      precincts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After breakfast, Felix came in to inquire how she had passed the night in
+      her new quarters. Already Muriel felt how odd was the contrast between the
+      quiet politeness of his manner as an English gentleman and the strange
+      savage surroundings in which they both now found themselves. Civilization
+      is an attribute of communities; we necessarily leave it behind when we
+      find ourselves isolated among barbarians or savages. But culture is a
+      purely personal and individual possession; we carry it with us wherever we
+      go; and no circumstances of life can ever deprive us of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As they sat there talking, with a deep and abiding sense of awe at the
+      change (Muriel more conscious than ever now of how deep was her interest
+      in Felix Thurstan, who represented for her all that was dearest and best
+      in England), a curious noise, as of a discordant drum or tom-tom, beaten
+      in a sort of recurrent tune, was heard toward the hills; and at its very
+      first sound both the Shadows, flinging themselves upon their faces with
+      every sign of terror, endeavored to hide themselves under the native mats
+      with which the bare little hut was roughly carpeted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What&rsquo;s the matter?&rdquo; Felix cried, in English, to Mali;
+      for Muriel had already explained to him how the girl had picked up some
+      knowledge of our tongue in Queensland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mali trembled in every limb, so that she could hardly speak. &ldquo;Tu-Kila-Kila
+      come,&rdquo; she answered, all breathless. &ldquo;No blackfellow look at
+      him. Burn blackfellow up. You and Missy Korong. All right for you. Go out
+      to meet him!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tu-Kila-Kila is coming,&rdquo; the young man-Shadow said, in
+      Polynesian, almost in the same breath, and no less tremulously. &ldquo;We
+      dare not look upon his face lest he burn us to ashes. He is a very great
+      Taboo. His face is fire. But you two are gods. Step forth to receive him.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix took Muriel&rsquo;s hand in his, somewhat trembling himself, and led
+      her forth on to the open space in front of the huts to meet the man-god.
+      She followed him like a child. She was woman enough for that. She had
+      implicit trust in him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As they emerged, a strange procession met their eyes unawares, coming down
+      the zig-zag path that led from the hills to the shore of the lagoon, where
+      their huts were situated. At its head marched two men&mdash;tall,
+      straight, and supple&mdash;wearing huge feather masks over their faces,
+      and beating tom-toms, decorated with long strings of shiny cowries. After
+      them, in order, came a sort of hollow square of chiefs or warriors,
+      surrounding with fan-palms a central object all shrouded from the view
+      with the utmost precaution. This central object was covered with a huge
+      regal umbrella, from whose edge hung rows of small nautilus and other
+      shells, so as to form a kind of screen, like the Japanese portières now so
+      common in English doorways. Two supporters held it up, one on either side,
+      in long cloaks of feathers. Under the umbrella, a man seemed to move; and
+      as he approached, the natives, to right and left, fled precipitately to
+      their huts, snatching up their naked little ones from the ground as they
+      went, and crying aloud, &ldquo;Taboo, Taboo! He comes! he comes.
+      Tu-Kila-Kila! Tu-Kila-Kila!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The procession wound slowly on, unheeding these common creatures, till it
+      reached the huts. Then the chiefs who formed the hollow square fell back
+      one by one, and the man under the umbrella, with his two supporters, came
+      forward boldly. Felix noticed that they crossed without scruple the thick
+      white line of sand which all the other natives so carefully respected. The
+      man within the umbrella drew aside the curtain of hanging nautilus shells.
+      His face was covered with a thin mask of paper mulberry bark; but Felix
+      knew he was the self-same person whom they had seen the day before in the
+      central temple.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s air was more insolent and arrogant than even before.
+      He was clearly in high spirits. &ldquo;You have done well, O King of the
+      Rain,&rdquo; he said, turning gayly to Felix; &ldquo;and you too, O Queen
+      of the Clouds; you have done right bravely. We have all acquitted
+      ourselves as our people would wish. We have made our showers to descend
+      abundantly from heaven; we have caused the crops to grow; we have wetted
+      the plantain bushes. See; Tu-Kila-Kila, who is so great a god, has come
+      from his own home on the hills to greet you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It has certainly rained in the night,&rdquo; Felix answered, dryly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Tu-Kila-Kila was not to be put off thus. Adjusting his thin mask or
+      veil of bark, so as to hide his face more thoroughly from the inferior
+      god, he turned round once more to the chiefs, who even so hardly dared to
+      look openly upon him. Then he struck an attitude. The man was clearly
+      bursting with spiritual pride. He knew himself to be a god, and was filled
+      with the insolence of his supernatural power. &ldquo;See, my people,&rdquo;
+      he cried, holding up his hands, palm outward, in his accustomed god-like
+      way; &ldquo;I am indeed a great deity&mdash;Lord of Heaven, Lord of Earth,
+      Life of the World, Master of Time, Measurer of the Sun&rsquo;s Course,
+      Spirit of Growth, Creator of the Harvest, Master of Mortals, Bestower of
+      Breath upon Men, Chief Pillar of Heaven!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The warriors bowed down before their bloated master with unquestioning
+      assent. &ldquo;Giver of Life to all the host of the gods,&rdquo; they
+      cried, &ldquo;you are indeed a mighty one. Weigher of the equipoise of
+      Heaven and Earth, we acknowledge your might; we give you thanks eternally.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila swelled with visible importance. &ldquo;Did I not tell you,
+      my meat,&rdquo; he exclaimed, &ldquo;I would bring you new gods, great
+      spirits from the sun, fetchers of fire from my bright home in the heavens?
+      And have they not come? Are they not here to-day? Have they not brought
+      the precious gift of fresh fire with them?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tu-Kila-Kila speaks true,&rdquo; the chiefs echoed, submissively,
+      with bent heads.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did I not make one of them King of the Rain?&rdquo; Tu-Kila-Kila
+      asked once more, stretching one hand toward the sky with theatrical
+      magnificence. &ldquo;Did I not declare the other Queen of the Clouds in
+      Heaven? And have I not caused them to bring down showers this night upon
+      our crops? Has not the dry earth drunk? Am I not the great god, the
+      Saviour of Boupari?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tu-Kila-Kila says well,&rdquo; the chiefs responded, once more, in
+      unanimous chorus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila struck another attitude with childish self-satisfaction.
+      &ldquo;I go into the hut to speak with my ministers,&rdquo; he said,
+      grandiloquently. &ldquo;Fire and Water, wait you here outside while I
+      enter and speak with my friends from the sun, whom I have brought for the
+      salvation of the crops to Boupari.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The King of Fire and the King of Water, supporting the umbrella, bowed
+      assent to his words. Tu-Kila-Kila motioned Felix and Muriel into the
+      nearest hut. It was the one where the two Shadows lay crouching in terror
+      among the native mats. As the god tried to enter, the two cowering
+      wretches set up a loud shout, &ldquo;Taboo! Taboo! Mercy! Mercy! Mercy!&rdquo;
+      Tu-Kila-Kila retreated with a contemptuous smile. &ldquo;I want to see you
+      alone,&rdquo; he said, in Polynesian, to Felix. &ldquo;Is the other hut
+      empty? If not, go in and cut their throats who sit there, and make the
+      place a solitude for Tu-Kila-Kila.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is no one in the hut,&rdquo; Felix answered, with a nod,
+      concealing his disgust at the command as far as he was able.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is well,&rdquo; Tu-Kila-Kila answered, and walked into it
+      carelessly. Felix followed him close and deemed it best to make Muriel
+      enter also.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As soon-as they were alone, Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s manner altered greatly.
+      &ldquo;Come, now,&rdquo; he said, quite genially, yet with a curious
+      under-current of hate in his steely gray eye; &ldquo;we three are all
+      gods. We who are in heaven need have no secrets from one another. Tell me
+      the truth; did you really come to us direct from the sun, or are you
+      sailing gods, dropped from a great canoe belonging to the warriors who
+      seek laborers for the white men in the distant country?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix told him briefly, in as few words as possible, the story of their
+      arrival.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila listened with lively interest, then he said, very decisively,
+      with great bravado, &ldquo;It was <i>I</i> who made the big wave wash your
+      sister overboard. I sent it to your ship. I wanted a Korong just now in
+      Boupari. It was <i>I</i> who brought you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are mistaken,&rdquo; Felix said, simply, not thinking it worth
+      while to contradict him further. &ldquo;It was a purely natural accident.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, tell me,&rdquo; the savage god went on once more, eying him
+      close and sharp, &ldquo;they say you have brought fresh fire from the sun
+      with you, and that you know how to make it burst out like lightning at
+      will. My people have seen it. They tell me the wonder. I wish to see it
+      too. We are all gods here; we need have no secrets. Only, I didn&rsquo;t
+      want to let those common people outside see I asked you to show me. Make
+      fire leap forth. I desire to behold it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix took out the match-box from his pocket, and struck a vesta
+      carefully. Tu-Kila-Kila looked on with profound interest. &ldquo;It is
+      wonderful,&rdquo; he said, taking the vesta in his own hand as it burned,
+      and examining it closely. &ldquo;I have heard of this before, but I have
+      never seen it. You are indeed gods, you white men, you sailors of the sea.&rdquo;
+      He glanced at Muriel. &ldquo;And the woman, too,&rdquo; he said, with a
+      horrible leer, &ldquo;the woman is pretty.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix took the measure of his man at once. He opened his knife, and held
+      it up threateningly. &ldquo;See here, fellow,&rdquo; he said, in a low,
+      slow tone, but with great decision, &ldquo;if you dare to speak or look
+      like that at that lady&mdash;god or no god, I&rsquo;ll drive this knife
+      straight up to the handle in your heart, though your people kill me for it
+      afterward ten thousand times over. I am not afraid of you. These savages
+      may be afraid, and may think you are a god; but if you are, then I am a
+      god ten thousand times stronger than you. One more word&mdash;one more
+      look like that, I say&mdash;and I plunge this knife remorselessly into
+      you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila drew back, and smiled benignly. Stalwart ruffian as he was,
+      and absolute master of his own people&rsquo;s lives, he was yet afraid in
+      a way of the strange new-comer. Vague stories of the men with white faces&mdash;the
+      &ldquo;sailing gods&rdquo;&mdash;had reached him from time to time; and
+      though only twice within his memory had European boats landed on his
+      island, he yet knew enough of the race to know that they were at least
+      very powerful deities&mdash;more powerful with their weapons than even he
+      was. Besides, a man who could draw down fire from heaven with a piece of
+      wax and a little metal box might surely wither him to ashes, if he would,
+      as he stood before him. The very fact that Felix bearded him thus openly
+      to his face astonished and somewhat terrified the superstitious savage.
+      Everybody else on the island was afraid of him; then certainly a man who
+      was not afraid must be the possessor of some most efficacious and magical
+      medicine. His one fear now was lest his followers should hear and discover
+      his discomfiture. He peered about him cautiously, with that careful gleam
+      shining bright in his eye; then he said with a leer, in a very low voice,
+      &ldquo;We two need not quarrel. We are both of us gods. Neither of us is
+      the stronger. We are equal, that&rsquo;s all. Let us live like brothers,
+      not like enemies, on the island.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want to be your brother,&rdquo; Felix answered,
+      unable to conceal his loathing any more. &ldquo;I hate and detest you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What does he say?&rdquo; Muriel asked, in an agony of fear at the
+      savage&rsquo;s black looks. &ldquo;Is he going to kill us?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; Felix answered, boldly. &ldquo;I think he&rsquo;s afraid
+      of us. He&rsquo;s going to do nothing. You needn&rsquo;t fear him.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can she not speak?&rdquo; the savage asked, pointing with his
+      finger somewhat rudely toward Muriel. &ldquo;Has she no voice but this,
+      the chatter of birds? Does she not know the human language?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She can speak,&rdquo; Felix replied, placing himself like a shield
+      between Muriel and the astonished savage. &ldquo;She can speak the
+      language of the people of our distant country&mdash;a beautiful language
+      which is as far superior to the speech of the brown men of Polynesia as
+      the sun in the heavens is superior to the light of a candlenut. But she
+      can&rsquo;t speak the wretched tongue of you Boupari cannibals. I thank
+      Heaven she can&rsquo;t, for it saves her from understanding the hateful
+      things your people would say of her. Now go! I have seen already enough of
+      you. I am not afraid. Remember, I am as powerful a god as you. I need not
+      fear. You cannot hurt me.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A baleful light gleamed in the cannibal&rsquo;s eye. But he thought it
+      best to temporize. Powerful as he was on his island, there was one thing
+      yet more powerful by far than he; and that was Taboo&mdash;the custom and
+      superstition handed down from his ancestors, These strangers were Korong;
+      he dare not touch them, except in the way and manner and time appointed by
+      custom. If he did, god as he was, his people themselves would turn and
+      rend him. He was a god, but he was bound on every side by the strictest
+      taboos. He dare not himself offer violence to Felix.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So he turned with a smile and bided his time. He knew it would come. He
+      could afford to laugh. Then, going to the door, he said, with his grand
+      affable manner to his chiefs around, &ldquo;I have spoken with the gods,
+      my ministers, within. They have kissed my hands. My rain has fallen. All
+      is well in the land. Arise, let us go away hence to my temple.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The savages put themselves in marching order at once. &ldquo;It is the
+      voice of a god,&rdquo; they said, reverently. &ldquo;Let us take back
+      Tu-Kila-Kila to his temple home. Let us escort the lord of the divine
+      umbrella. Wherever he is, there trees and plants put forth green leaves
+      and flourish. At his bidding flowers bloom and springs of water rise up in
+      fountains. His presence diffuses heavenly blessings.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think,&rdquo; Felix said, turning to poor, terrified Muriel,
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve sent the wretch away with a bee in his bonnet.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0008" id="link2HCH0008"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VIII. &mdash; THE CUSTOMS OF BOUPARI.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Human nature cannot always keep on the full stretch of excitement. It was
+      wonderful to both Felix and Muriel how soon they settled down into a quiet
+      routine of life on the island of Boupari. A week passed away&mdash;two
+      weeks&mdash;three weeks&mdash;and the chances of release seemed to grow
+      slenderer and slenderer. All they could do now was to wait for the stray
+      accident of a passing ship, and then try, if possible, to signal it, or to
+      put out to it in a canoe, if the natives would allow them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile, their lives for the moment seemed fairly safe. Though for the
+      first few days they lived in constant alarm, this feeling, after a time,
+      gave way to one of comparative security. The strange institution of Taboo
+      protected them more efficiently in their wattled huts than the whole
+      police force of London could have done in a Belgravian mansion. There
+      thieves break through and steal, in spite of bolts and bars and
+      metropolitan constables; but at Boupari no native, however daring or
+      however wicked, would ever venture to transgress the narrow line of white
+      coral sand which protected the castaways like an intangible wall from all
+      outer interference. Within this impalpable ring-fence they were absolutely
+      safe from all rude intrusion, save that of the two Shadows, who waited
+      upon them, day and night, with unfailing willingness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In other respects, considering the circumstances, their life was an easy
+      one. The natives brought them freely of their simple store&mdash;yam,
+      taro, bread-fruit, and cocoanut, with plenty of fish, crabs, and lobsters,
+      as well as eggs by the basketful, and even sometimes chickens. They
+      required no pay beyond a nod and a smile, and went away happy at those
+      slender recognitions. Felix discovered, in fact, that they had got into a
+      region where the arid generalizations of political economy do not apply;
+      where Adam Smith is unread, and Mill neglected; where the medium of
+      exchange is an unknown quantity, and where supply and demand readjust
+      themselves continuously by simpler and more generous principles than the
+      familiar European one of &ldquo;the higgling of the market.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The people, too, though utter savages, were not in their own way
+      altogether unpleasing. It was their customs and superstitions, rather than
+      themselves, that were so cruel and horrible. Personally, they seemed for
+      the most part simple-minded and good natured creatures. At first, indeed,
+      Muriel was afraid to venture for a step beyond the precincts of their own
+      huts; and it was long before she could make up her mind to go alone
+      through the jungle paths with Mali, unaccompanied by Felix. But by degrees
+      she learned that she could walk by herself (of course, with the inevitable
+      Shadow ever by her side) over the whole island, and meet everywhere with
+      nothing from men, women, and children but the utmost respect and gracious
+      courtesy. The young lads, as she passed, would stand aside from the path,
+      with downcast eyes, and let her go by with all the politeness of
+      chivalrous English gentlemen. The old men would raise their eyes, but
+      cross their hands on their breasts, and stand motionless for a few minutes
+      till she got almost out of sight. The women would bring their pretty brown
+      babies for the fair English lady to admire or to pat on the head; and when
+      Muriel now and again stooped down to caress some fat little naked child,
+      lolling in the dust outside the hut, with true tropical laziness, the
+      mothers would run up at the sight with delight and joy, and throw
+      themselves down in ecstacies of gratitude for the notice she had taken of
+      their favored little ones. &ldquo;The gods of Heaven,&rdquo; they would
+      say, with every sign of pleasure, &ldquo;have looked graciously upon our
+      Unaloa.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At first Felix and Muriel were mainly struck with the politeness and
+      deference which the natives displayed toward them. But after a time Felix
+      at least began to observe, behind it all, that a certain amount of
+      affection, and even of something like commiseration as well, seemed to be
+      mingled with the respect and reverence showered upon them by their hosts.
+      The women, especially, were often evidently touched by Muriel&rsquo;s
+      innocence and beauty. As she walked past their huts with her light,
+      girlish tread, they would come forth shyly, bowing many times as they
+      approached, and offer her a long spray of the flowering hibiscus, or a
+      pretty garland of crimson ti-leaves, saying at the same time, many times
+      over, in their own tongue, &ldquo;Receive it, Korong; receive it, Queen of
+      the Clouds! You are good. You are kind. You are a daughter of the Sun. We
+      are glad you have come to us.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A young girl soon makes herself at home anywhere; and Muriel, protected
+      alike by her native innocence and by the invisible cloak of Polynesian
+      taboo, quickly learned to understand and to sympathize with these poor
+      dusky mothers. One morning, some weeks after their arrival, she passed
+      down the main street of the village, accompanied by Felix and their two
+      attendants, and reached the <i>marae</i>&mdash;the open forum or place of
+      public assembly&mdash;which stood in its midst; a circular platform,
+      surrounded by bread-fruit trees, under whose broad, cool shade the people
+      were sitting in little groups and talking together. They were dressed in
+      the regular old-time festive costume of Polynesia; for Boupari, being a
+      small and remote island, too insignificant to be visited by European
+      ships, retained still all its aboriginal heathen manners and customs. The
+      sight was, indeed, a curious and picturesque one. The girls, large-limbed,
+      soft-skinned, and with delicately rounded figures, sat on the ground,
+      laughing and talking, with their knees crossed under them; their wrists
+      were encinctured with girdles of dark-red dracæna leaves, their swelling
+      bosoms half concealed, half accentuated by hanging necklets of flowers.
+      Their beautiful brown arms and shoulders were bare throughout; their long,
+      black hair was gracefully twined and knotted with bright scarlet flowers.
+      The men, strong and stalwart, sat behind on short stools or lounged on the
+      buttressed roots of the bread-fruit trees, clad like the women in narrow
+      waist-belts of the long red dracæna leaves, with necklets of sharks&rsquo;
+      teeth, pendent chain of pearly shells, a warrior&rsquo;s cap on their
+      well-shaped heads, and an armlet of native beans, arranged below the
+      shoulder, around their powerful arms. Altogether, it was a striking and
+      beautiful picture. Muriel, now almost released from her early sense of
+      fear, stood still to look at it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The men and girls were laughing and chatting merrily together. Most of
+      them were engaged in holding up before them fine mats; and a row of
+      mulberry cloth, spread along on the ground, led to a hut near one side of
+      the <i>marae</i>. Toward this the eyes of the spectators were turned.
+      &ldquo;What is it, Mali?&rdquo; Muriel whispered, her woman&rsquo;s
+      instinct leading her at once to expect that something special was going on
+      in the way of local festivities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Mali answered at once, with many nods and smiles, &ldquo;All right,
+      Missy Queenie. Him a wedding, a marriage.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The words had hardly escaped her lips when a very pretty young girl, half
+      smothered in flowers, and decked out in beads and fancy shells, emerged
+      slowly from the hut, and took her way with stately tread along the path
+      carpeted with native cloth. She was girt round the waist with rich-colored
+      mats, which formed a long train, like a court dress, trailing on the
+      ground five or six feet behind her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s the bride, I suppose,&rdquo; Muriel whispered, now
+      really interested&mdash;for what woman on earth, wherever she may be, can
+      resist the seductive delights of a wedding?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, her a bride,&rdquo; Mali answered; &ldquo;and ladies what
+      follow, them her bridesmaids.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the word, six other girls, similarly dressed, though without the train,
+      and demure as nuns, emerged from the hut in slow order, two and two,
+      behind her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Muriel and Felix moved forward with natural curiosity toward the scene.
+      The natives, now ranged in a row along the path, with mats turned inward,
+      made way for them gladly. All seem pleased that Heaven should thus
+      auspiciously honor the occasion; and the bride herself, as well as the
+      bridegroom, who, decked in shells and teeth, advanced from the opposite
+      side along the path to meet her, looked up with grateful smiles at the two
+      Europeans. Muriel, in return, smiled her most gracious and girlish
+      recognition. As the bride drew near, she couldn&rsquo;t refrain from
+      bending forward a little to look at the girl&rsquo;s really graceful
+      costume. As she did so, the skirt of her own European dress brushed for a
+      second against the bride&rsquo;s train, trailed carelessly many yards on
+      the ground behind her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Almost before they could know what had happened, a wild commotion arose,
+      as if by magic, in the crowd around them. Loud cries of &ldquo;Taboo!
+      Taboo!&rdquo; mixed with inarticulate screams, burst on every side from
+      the assembled natives. In the twinkling of an eye they were surrounded by
+      an angry, threatening throng, who didn&rsquo;t dare to draw near, but,
+      standing a yard or two off, drew stone knives freely and shook their
+      fists, scowling, in the strangers&rsquo; faces. The change was appalling
+      in its electric suddenness. Muriel drew back horrified, in an agony of
+      alarm. &ldquo;Oh, what have I done!&rdquo; she cried, piteously, clinging
+      to Felix for support. &ldquo;Why on earth are they angry with us?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know,&rdquo; Felix answered, taken aback himself.
+      &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t say exactly in what you&rsquo;ve transgressed. But
+      you must, unconsciously, in some way have offended their prejudices. I
+      hope it&rsquo;s not much. At any rate they&rsquo;re clearly afraid to
+      touch us.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Missy Queenie break taboo,&rdquo; Mali explained at once, with
+      Polynesian frankness. &ldquo;That make people angry. So him want to kill
+      you. Missy Queenie touch bride with end of her dress. Korong may smile on
+      bride&mdash;that very good luck; but Korong taboo; no must touch him.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The crowd gathered around them, still very threatening in attitude, yet
+      clearly afraid to approach within arm&rsquo;s-length of the strangers.
+      Muriel was much frightened at their noise and at their frantic gestures.
+      &ldquo;Come away,&rdquo; she cried, catching Felix by the arm once more.
+      &ldquo;Oh, what are they going to do to us? Will they kill us for this? I&rsquo;m
+      so horribly afraid! Oh, why did I ever do it!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The poor little bride, meanwhile, left alone on the carpet, and unnoticed
+      by everybody, sank suddenly down on the mats where she stood, buried her
+      face in her hands, and began to sob as if her heart would break.
+      Evidently, something very untoward of some sort had happened to the dusky
+      lady on her wedding morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The final touch was too much for poor Muriel&rsquo;s overwrought nerves.
+      She, too, gave way in a tempest of sobs, and, subsiding on one of the
+      native stools hard by, burst into tears herself with half-hysterical
+      violence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Instantly, as she did so, the whole assembly seemed to change its mind
+      again as if by contagious magic. A loud shout of &ldquo;She cries; the
+      Queen of the Clouds cries!&rdquo; went up from all the assembled mob to
+      heaven. &ldquo;It is a good omen,&rdquo; Toko, the Shadow, whispered in
+      Polynesian to Felix, seeing his puzzled look. &ldquo;We shall have plenty
+      of rain now; the clouds will break; our crops will flourish.&rdquo; Almost
+      before she understood it, Muriel was surrounded by an eager and friendly
+      crowd, still afraid to draw near, but evidently anxious to see and to
+      comfort and console her. Many of the women eagerly held forward their
+      native mats, which Mali took from them, and, pressing them for a second
+      against Muriel&rsquo;s eyes, handed them back with just a suspicion of wet
+      tears left glistening in the corner. The happy recipients leaped and
+      shouted with joy. &ldquo;No more drought!&rdquo; they cried merrily, with
+      loud shouts and gesticulations. &ldquo;The Queen of the Clouds is good:
+      she will weep well from heaven upon my yam and taro plots!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Muriel looked up, all dazed, and saw, to her intense surprise, the crowd
+      was now nothing but affection and sympathy. Slowly they gathered in closer
+      and closer, till they almost touched the hem of her robe; then the men
+      stood by respectfully, laying their fingers on whatever she had wetted
+      with her tears, while the women and girls took her hand in theirs and
+      pressed it sympathetically. Mali explained their meaning with ready
+      interpretation. &ldquo;No cry too much, them say,&rdquo; she observed,
+      nodding her head sagely. &ldquo;Not good for Missy Queenie to cry too
+      much. Them say, kind lady, be comforted.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was genuine good-nature in the way they consoled her; and Felix was
+      touched by the tenderness of those savage hearts; but the additional
+      explanation, given him in Polynesian by his own Shadow, tended somewhat to
+      detract from the disinterestedness of their sympathy. &ldquo;They say,
+      &lsquo;It is good for the Queen of the Clouds to weep,&rsquo;&rdquo; Toko
+      said, with frank bluntness; &ldquo;&lsquo;but not too much&mdash;for fear
+      the rain should wash away all our yam and taro plants.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By this time the little bride had roused herself from her stupor, and,
+      smiling away as if nothing had happened, said a few words in a very low
+      voice to Felix&rsquo;s Shadow. The Shadow turned most respectfully to his
+      master, and, touching his sleeve-link, which was of bright gold, said, in
+      a very doubtful voice, &ldquo;She asks you, oh king, will you allow her,
+      just for to-day, to wear this ornament?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix unbuttoned the shining bauble at once, and was about to hand it to
+      the bride with polite gallantry. &ldquo;She may wear it forever, for the
+      matter of that, if she likes,&rdquo; he said, good-humoredly. &ldquo;I
+      make her a present of it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the bride drew back as before in speechless terror, as he held out his
+      hand, and seemed just on the point of bursting out into tears again at
+      this untoward incident. The Shadow intervened with fortunate perception of
+      the cause of the misunderstanding. &ldquo;Korong must not touch or give
+      anything to a bride,&rdquo; he said, quietly; &ldquo;not with his own
+      hand. He must not lay his finger on her; that would be unlucky. But he may
+      hand it by his Shadow.&rdquo; Then he turned to his fellow-tribesmen.
+      &ldquo;These gods,&rdquo; he said, in an explanatory voice, like one
+      bespeaking forgiveness, &ldquo;though they are divine, and Korong, and
+      very powerful&mdash;see, they have come from the sun, and they are but
+      strangers in Boupari&mdash;they do not yet know the ways of our island.
+      They have not eaten of human flesh. They do not understand Taboo. But they
+      will soon be wiser. They mean very well, but they do not know. Behold, he
+      gives her this divine shining ornament from the sun as a present!&rdquo;
+      And, taking it in his hand, he held it up for a moment to public
+      admiration. Then he passed on the trinket ostentatiously to the bride,
+      who, smiling and delighted, hung it low on her breast among her other
+      decorations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The whole party seemed so surprised and gratified at this proof of
+      condescension on the part of the divine stranger that they crowded round
+      Felix once more, praising and thanking him volubly. Muriel, anxious to
+      remove the bad impression she had created by touching the bride&rsquo;s
+      dress, hastily withdrew her own little brooch and offered it in turn to
+      the Shadow as an additional present. But Toko, shaking his head
+      vigorously, pointed with his forefinger many times to Mali. &ldquo;Toko
+      say him no can take it,&rdquo; Mali explained hastily, in her broken
+      English. &ldquo;Him no your Shadow; me your Shadow; me do everything for
+      you; me give it to the lady.&rdquo; And, taking the brooch in her hand,
+      she passed it over in turn amid loud cries of delight and shouts of
+      approval.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thereupon, the ceremony began all over again. They seemed by their
+      intervention to have interrupted some set formula. At its close the women
+      crowded around Muriel and took her hand in theirs, kissing it many times
+      over, with tears in their eyes, and betraying an immense amount of genuine
+      feeling. One phrase in Polynesian they repeated again and again; a phrase
+      that made Felix&rsquo;s cheek turn white, as he leaned over the poor
+      English girl with a profound emotion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What does it mean that they say?&rdquo; Muriel asked at last,
+      perceiving it was all one phrase, many times repeated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix was about to give some evasive explanation, when Mali interposed
+      with her simple, unthinking translation. &ldquo;Them say, Missy Queenie
+      very good and kind. Make them sad to think. Make them cry to see her. Make
+      them cry to see Missy Queenie Korong. Too good. Too pretty.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why so?&rdquo; Muriel exclaimed, drawing back with some faint
+      presentiment of unspeakable horror.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix tried to stop her; but the girl would not be stopped. &ldquo;Because,
+      when Korong time up,&rdquo; she answered, blurting it out, &ldquo;Korong
+      must&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix clapped his hand to her mouth in wild haste, and silenced her. He
+      knew the worst now. He had divined the truth. But Muriel, at least, must
+      be spared that knowledge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0009" id="link2HCH0009"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IX. &mdash; SOWING THE WIND.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Vaguely and indefinitely one terrible truth had been forced by slow
+      degrees upon Felix&rsquo;s mind; whatever else Korong meant, it implied at
+      least some fearful doom in store, sooner or later, for the persons who
+      bore it. How awful that doom might be, he could hardly imagine; but he
+      must devote himself henceforth to the task of discovering what its nature
+      was, and, if possible, of averting it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet how to reconcile this impending terror with the other obvious facts of
+      the situation? the fact that they were considered divine beings and
+      treated like gods; and the fact that the whole population seemed really to
+      regard them with a devotion and kindliness closely bordering on religious
+      reverence? If Korongs were gods, why should the people want to kill them?
+      If they meant to kill them, why pay them meanwhile such respect and
+      affection?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One point at least was now, however, quite clear to Felix. While the
+      natives, especially the women, displayed toward both of them in their
+      personal aspect a sort of regretful sympathy, he could not help noticing
+      at the same time that the men, at any rate, regarded them also largely in
+      an impersonal light, as a sort of generalized abstraction of the powers of
+      nature&mdash;an embodied form of the rain and the weather. The islanders
+      were anxious to keep their white guests well supplied, well fed, and in
+      perfect health, not so much for the strangers&rsquo; sakes as for their
+      own advantage; they evidently considered that if anything went wrong with
+      either of their two new gods, corresponding misfortunes might happen to
+      their crops and the produce of their bread-fruit groves. Some mysterious
+      sympathy was held to subsist between the persons of the castaways and the
+      state of the weather. The natives effusively thanked them after welcome
+      rain, and looked askance at them, scowling, after long dry spells. It was
+      for this, no doubt, that they took such pains to provide them with
+      attentive Shadows, and to gird round their movements with taboos of
+      excessive stringency. Nothing that the new-comers said or did was
+      indifferent, it seemed, to the welfare of the community; plenty and
+      prosperity depended upon the passing state of Muriel&rsquo;s health, and
+      famine or drought might be brought about at any moment by the slightest
+      imprudence in Felix&rsquo;s diet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How stringent these taboos really were Felix learned by slow degrees alone
+      to realize. From the very beginning he had observed, to be sure, that they
+      might only eat and drink the food provided for them; that they were
+      supplied with a clean and fresh-built hut, as well as with brand-new
+      cocoanut cups, spoons, and platters; that no litter of any sort was
+      allowed to accumulate near their enclosure; and that their Shadows never
+      left them, or went out of their sight, by day or by night, for a single
+      moment. Now, however, he began to perceive also that the Shadows were
+      there for that very purpose, to watch over them, as it were, like guards,
+      on behalf of the community; to see that they ate or drank no tabooed
+      object; to keep them from heedlessly transgressing any unwritten law of
+      the creed of Boupari; and to be answerable for their good behavior
+      generally. They were partly servants, it was true, and partly sureties;
+      but they were partly also keepers, and keepers who kept a close and
+      constant watch upon the persons of their prisoners. Once or twice Felix,
+      growing tired for the moment of this continual surveillance, had tried to
+      give Toko the slip, and to stroll away from his hut, unattended, for a
+      walk through the island, in the early morning, before his Shadow had
+      waked; but on each such occasion he found to his surprise that, as he
+      opened the hut door, the Shadow rose at once and confronted him angrily,
+      with an inquiring eye; and in time he perceived that a thin string was
+      fastened to the bottom of the door, the other end of which was tied to the
+      Shadow&rsquo;s ankle; and this string could not be cut without letting
+      fall a sort of latch or bar which closed the door outside, only to be
+      raised again by some external person.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Clearly, it was intended that the Korong should have no chance of escape
+      without the knowledge of the Shadow, who, as Felix afterward learned,
+      would have paid with his own body by a cruel death for the Korong&rsquo;s
+      disappearance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He might as well have tried to escape his own shadow as to escape the one
+      the islanders had tacked on to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All Felix&rsquo;s energies were now devoted to the arduous task of
+      discovering what Korong really meant, and what possibility he might have
+      of saving Muriel from the mysterious fate that seemed to be held in store
+      for them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One evening, about six weeks after their arrival in the island, the young
+      Englishman was strolling by himself (after the sun sank low in heaven)
+      along a pretty tangled hill-side path, overhung with lianas and rope-like
+      tropical creepers, while his faithful Shadow lingered a step or two
+      behind, keeping a sharp lookout meanwhile on all his movements.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Near the top of a little crag of volcanic rock, in the center of the
+      hills, he came suddenly upon a hut with a cleared space around it,
+      somewhat neater in appearance than any of the native cottages he had yet
+      seen, and surrounded by a broad white belt of coral sand, exactly like
+      that which ringed round and protected their own enclosure. But what
+      specially attracted Felix&rsquo;s attention was the fact that the space
+      outside this circle had been cleared into a regular flower-garden, quite
+      European in the definiteness and orderliness of its quaint arrangement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, who lives here?&rdquo; Felix asked in Polynesian, turning
+      round in surprise to his respectful Shadow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Shadow waved his hand vaguely in an expansive way toward the sky, as
+      he answered, with a certain air of awe, often observable in his speech
+      when taboos were in question, &ldquo;The King of Birds. A very great god.
+      He speaks the bird language.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who is he?&rdquo; Felix inquired, taken aback, wondering vaguely to
+      himself whether here, perchance, he might have lighted upon some stray and
+      shipwrecked compatriot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He comes from the sun like yourselves,&rdquo; the Shadow answered,
+      all deference, but with obvious reserve. &ldquo;He is a very great god. I
+      may not speak much of him. But he is not Korong. He is greater than that,
+      and less. He is Tula, the same as Tu-Kila-Kila.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is he as powerful as Tu-Kila-Kila?&rdquo; Felix asked, with intense
+      interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no, he&rsquo;s not nearly so powerful as that,&rdquo; the
+      Shadow answered, half terrified at the bare suggestion. &ldquo;No god in
+      heaven or earth is like Tu-Kila-Kila. This one is only king of the birds,
+      which is a little province, while Tu-Kila-Kila is king of heaven and
+      earth, of plants and animals, of gods and men, of all things created. At
+      his nod the sky shakes and the rocks tremble. But still, this god is Tula,
+      like Tu-Kila-Kila. He is not for a year. He goes on forever, till some
+      other supplants him.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You say he comes from the sun,&rdquo; Felix put in, devoured with
+      curiosity. &ldquo;And he speaks the bird language? What do you mean by
+      that? Does he speak like the Queen of the Clouds and myself when we talk
+      together?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, dear, no,&rdquo; the Shadow answered, in a very confident tone.
+      &ldquo;He doesn&rsquo;t speak the least bit in the world like that. He
+      speaks shriller and higher, and still more bird-like. It is chatter,
+      chatter, chatter, like the parrots in a tree; tirra, tirra, tirra; tarra,
+      tarra, tarra; la, la, la; lo, lo, lo; lu, lu, lu; li la. And he sings to
+      himself all the time. He sings this way&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then the Shadow, with that wonderful power of accurate mimicry which
+      is so strong in all natural human beings, began to trill out at once, with
+      a very good Parisian accent, a few lines from a well-known song in &ldquo;La
+      Fille de Madame Angot:&rdquo;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+&ldquo;Quand on conspi-re,
+   Quand sans frayeur
+ On pent se di-re
+   Conspirateur,
+ Pour tout le mon-de
+   Il faut avoir
+ Perruque blon-de
+   Et collet noir
+ Perruque blon-de
+   Et collet noir.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s how the King of the Birds sings,&rdquo; the Shadow
+      said, as he finished, throwing back his head, and laughing with all his
+      might at his own imitation. &ldquo;So funny, isn&rsquo;t it? It&rsquo;s
+      exactly like the song of the pink-crested parrot.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, Toko, it&rsquo;s French,&rdquo; Felix exclaimed, using the
+      Fijian word for a Frenchman, which the Shadow, of course, on his remote
+      island, had never before heard. &ldquo;How on earth did he come here?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t tell you,&rdquo; Toko answered, waving his arms
+      seaward. &ldquo;He came from the sun, like yourselves. But not in a
+      sun-boat. It had no fire. He came in a canoe, all by himself. And Mali
+      says&rdquo;&mdash;here the Shadow lowered his voice to a most mysterious
+      whisper&mdash;&ldquo;he&rsquo;s a man-a-oui-oui.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix quivered with excitement. &ldquo;Man-a-oui-oui&rdquo; is the
+      universal name over semi-civilized Polynesia for a Frenchman. Felix seized
+      upon it with avidity. &ldquo;A man-a-oui-oui!&rdquo; he cried, delighted.
+      &ldquo;How strange! How wonderful! I must go in at once to his hut and see
+      him!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had lifted his foot and was just going to cross the white line of
+      coral-sand, when his Shadow, catching him suddenly and stoutly round the
+      waist, pulled him back from the enclosure with every sign of horror,
+      alarm, and astonishment. &ldquo;No, you can&rsquo;t go,&rdquo; he cried,
+      grappling with him with all his force, yet using him very tenderly for all
+      that, as becomes a god. &ldquo;Taboo! Taboo there!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I am a god myself,&rdquo; Felix cried, insisting upon his
+      privileges. If you have to submit to the disadvantages of taboo, you may
+      as well claim its advantages as well. &ldquo;The King of Fire and the King
+      of Water crossed my taboo line. Why shouldn&rsquo;t I cross equally the
+      King of the Birds&rsquo;, then?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So you might&mdash;as a rule,&rdquo; the Shadow answered with
+      promptitude. &ldquo;You are both gods. Your taboos do not cross. You may
+      visit each other. You may transgress one another&rsquo;s lines without
+      danger of falling dead on the ground as common men would do if they broke
+      taboo-lines. But this is the Month of Birds. The king is in retreat. No
+      man may see him except his own Shadow, the Little Cockatoo, who brings him
+      his food and drink. Do you see that hawk&rsquo;s head, stuck upon the post
+      by the door at the side. That is his Special Taboo. He keeps it for this
+      month. Even gods must respect that sign, for a reason which it would be
+      very bad medicine to mention. While the Month of Birds lasts, no man may
+      look upon the king or hear him. If they did, they would die, and the
+      carrion birds would eat them. Come away. This is dangerous.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Scarcely were the words well out of his mouth when from the recesses of
+      the hut a rollicking French voice was heard, trilling out merrily:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+&ldquo;Quand on con-spi-re,
+   Quand, sans frayeur&mdash;&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      Without waiting for more, the Shadow seized Felix&rsquo;s arm in an agony
+      of terror. &ldquo;Come away!&rdquo; he cried, hurriedly, &ldquo;come away!
+      What will become of us? This is horrible, horrible! We have broken taboo.
+      We have heard the god&rsquo;s voice. The sky will fall on us. If his
+      Shadow were to find it out and tell my people, my people would tear us
+      limb from limb. Quick, quick! Hide away! Let us run fast through the
+      forest before any man discover it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Shadow&rsquo;s voice rang deep with alarm. Felix felt he dare not
+      trifle with this superstition. Profound as was his curiosity about the
+      mysterious Frenchman, he was compelled to bottle up his eagerness and
+      anxiety for the moment, and patiently wait till the Month of Birds had run
+      its course, and taken its inconvenient taboo along with it. These
+      limitations were terrible. Yet he counted much upon the information the
+      Frenchman could give him. The man had been some time on the island, it was
+      clear, and doubtless he understood its ways thoroughly; he might cast some
+      light at last upon the Korong mystery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So he went back through the woods with a heart somewhat lighter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not far from their own huts he met Muriel and Mali.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As they walked home together, Felix told his companion in a very few words
+      the strange discovery about the Frenchman, and the impenetrable taboo by
+      which he was at present surrounded. Muriel drew a deep sigh. &ldquo;Oh,
+      Felix,&rdquo; she said&mdash;for they were naturally by this time very
+      much at home with one another, &ldquo;did you ever know anything so
+      dreadful as the mystery of these taboos? It seems as if we should never
+      get really to the bottom of them. Mali&rsquo;s always springing some new
+      one upon me. I don&rsquo;t believe we shall ever be able to leave the
+      island&mdash;we&rsquo;re so hedged round with taboos. Even if we were to
+      see a ship to-day, I don&rsquo;t believe they&rsquo;d allow us to signal
+      it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a red sunset; a lurid, tropical, red-and-green sunset. It boded
+      mischief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were passing by some huts at the moment, and over the stockade of one
+      of them a tree was hanging with small yellow fruits, which Felix knew well
+      in Fiji as wholesome and agreeable. He broke off a small branch as he
+      passed; and offered a couple thoughtlessly to Muriel. She took them in her
+      fingers, and tasted them gingerly. &ldquo;They&rsquo;re not so bad,&rdquo;
+      she said, taking another from the bough. &ldquo;They&rsquo;re very much
+      like gooseberries.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the same moment, Felix popped one into his own mouth, and swallowed it
+      without thinking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Almost before they knew what had happened, with the same extraordinary
+      rapidity as in the case of the wedding, the people in the cottages ran
+      out, with every sign of fear and apprehension, and, seizing the branch
+      from Felix&rsquo;s hands, began upbraiding the two Shadows for their want
+      of attention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We couldn&rsquo;t help it,&rdquo; Toko exclaimed, with every
+      appearance of guilt and horror on his face. &ldquo;They were much too
+      sharp for us. Their hearts are black. How could we two interfere? These
+      gods are so quick! They had picked and eaten them before we ever saw them.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One of the men raised his hand with a threatening air&mdash;but against
+      the Shadow, not against the sacred person of Felix. &ldquo;He will be ill,&rdquo;
+      he said, angrily, pointing toward the white man; &ldquo;and she will, too.
+      Their hearts are indeed black. They have sown the seed of the wind. They
+      have both of them eaten of it. They will both be ill. You deserve to die!
+      And what will come now to our trees and plantations?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The crowd gathered round them, cursing low and horribly. The two terrified
+      Europeans slunk off to their huts, unaware of their exact crime, and
+      closely followed by a scowling but despondent mob of natives. As they
+      crossed their sacred boundary, Muriel cried, with a sudden outburst of
+      tears, &ldquo;Oh, Felix, what on earth shall we ever do to get rid of this
+      terrible, unendurable godship!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The natives without set up a great shout of horror. &ldquo;See, see! she
+      cries!&rdquo; they exclaimed, in indescribable panic. &ldquo;She has eaten
+      the storm-fruit, and already she cries! Oh, clouds, restrain yourselves!
+      Oh, great queen, mercy! Whatever will become of us and our poor huts and
+      gardens!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And for hours they crouched around, beating their breasts and shrieking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That evening, Muriel sat up late in Felix&rsquo;s hut, with Mali by her
+      side, too frightened to go back into her own alone before those angry
+      people. And all the time, just beyond the barrier line, they could hear,
+      above the whistle of the wind around the hut, the droning voices of dozens
+      of natives, cowering low on the ground; they seemed to be going through
+      some litany or chant, as if to deprecate the result of this imprudent
+      action.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are they doing outside?&rdquo; Felix asked of his Shadow at
+      last, after a peculiarly long wail of misery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the Shadow made answer, in very solemn tones, &ldquo;They are trying
+      to propitiate your mightiness, and to avert the omen, lest the rain should
+      fall, and the wind should blow, and the storm-cloud should burst over the
+      island to destroy them.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Felix remembered suddenly of himself that the season when this
+      storm-fruit, or storm-apple, as they called it, was ripe in Fiji, was also
+      the season when the great Pacific cyclones most often swept over the land
+      in full fury&mdash;storms unexampled on any other sea, like that famous
+      one which wrecked so many European men-of-war a few years since in the
+      harbor of Samoa.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And without, the wail came louder and clearer still! &ldquo;If you sow the
+      bread-fruit seed, you will reap the breadfruit. If you sow the wind, you
+      will reap the whirlwind. They have eaten the storm-fruit. Oh, great king,
+      save us!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0010" id="link2HCH0010"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER X. &mdash; REAPING THE WHIRLWIND.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Toward midnight Muriel began to doze lightly from pure fatigue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Put a pillow under her head, and let her sleep,&rdquo; Felix said
+      in a whisper. &ldquo;Poor child, it would be cruel to send her alone
+      to-night into her own quarters.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Mali slipped a pillow of mulberry paper under her mistress&rsquo;s
+      head, and laid it on her own lap, and bent down to watch her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But outside, beyond the line, the natives murmured loud their discontent.
+      &ldquo;The Queen of the Clouds stays in the King of the Rain&rsquo;s hut
+      to-night,&rdquo; they muttered, angrily. &ldquo;She will not listen to us.
+      Before morning, be sure, the Tempest will be born of their meeting to
+      destroy us.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      About two o&rsquo;clock there came a lull in the wind, which had been
+      rising steadily ever since that lurid sunset. Felix looked out of the hut
+      door. The moon was full. It was almost as clear as day with the bright
+      tropical moonlight, silvery in the open, pale green in the shadow. The
+      people were still squatting in great rings round the hut, just outside the
+      taboo line, and beating gongs, and sticks and human bones, to keep time to
+      the lilt of their lugubrious litany.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The air felt unusually heavy and oppressive. Felix raised his eyes to the
+      sky, and saw whisps of light cloud drifting in rapid flight over the
+      scudding moon. Below, an ominous fog bank gathered steadily westward. Then
+      one clap of thunder rent the sky. After it came a deadly silence. The moon
+      was veiled. All was dark as pitch. The natives themselves fell on their
+      faces and prayed with mute lips. Three minutes later, the cyclone had
+      burst upon them in all its frenzy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such a hurricane Felix had never before experienced. Its energy was awful.
+      Round the palm-trees the wind played a frantic and capricious devil&rsquo;s
+      dance. It pirouetted about the atoll in the mad glee of unconsciousness.
+      Here and there it cleared lanes, hundreds of yards in length, among the
+      forest-trees and the cocoanut plantations. The noise of snapping and
+      falling trunks rang thick on the air. At times the cyclone would swoop
+      down from above upon the swaying stem of some tall and stately palm that
+      bent like grass before the wind, break it off short with a roar at the
+      bottom, and lay it low at once upon the ground, with a crash like thunder.
+      In other places, little playful whirlwinds seemed to descend from the sky
+      in the very midst of the dense brushwood, where they cleared circular
+      patches, strewn thick under foot with trunks and branches in their titanic
+      sport, and yet left unhurt all about the surrounding forest. Then again a
+      special cyclone of gigantic proportions would advance, as it were, in a
+      single column against one stem of a clump, whirl round it spirally like a
+      lightning flash, and, deserting it for another, leave it still standing,
+      but turned and twisted like a screw by the irresistible force of its
+      invisible fingers. The storm-god, said Toko, was dancing with the
+      palm-trees. The sight was awful. Such destructive energy Felix had never
+      even imagined before. No wonder the savages all round beheld in it the
+      personal wrath of some mighty spirit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For in spite of the black clouds they could <i>see</i> it all&mdash;both
+      the Europeans and the islanders. The intense darkness of the night was
+      lighted up for them every minute by an almost incessant blaze of sheet and
+      forked lightning. The roar of the thunder mingled with the roar of the
+      tempest, each in turn overtopping and drowning the other. The hut where
+      Felix and Muriel sheltered themselves shook before the storm; the very
+      ground of the island trembled and quivered&mdash;like the timbers of a
+      great ship before a mighty sea&mdash;at each onset of the breakers upon
+      the surrounding fringe-reef. And side by side with it all, to crown their
+      misery, wild torrents of rain, descending in waterspouts, as it seemed, or
+      dashed in great sheets against the roof of their frail tenement, poured
+      fitfully on with fierce tropical energy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the midst of the hut Muriel crouched and prayed with bloodless lips to
+      Heaven. This was too, too terrible. It seemed incredible to her that on
+      top of all they had been called upon to suffer of fear and suspense at the
+      hands of the savages, the very dumb forces of nature themselves should
+      thus be stirred up to open war against them. Her faith in Providence was
+      sorely tried. Dumb forces, indeed! Why, they roared with more terrible
+      voices than any wild beast on earth could possibly compass. The thunder
+      and the wind were howling each other down in emulous din, and the very
+      hiss of the lightning could be distinctly heard, like some huge snake, at
+      times above the creaking and snapping of the trees before the gale in the
+      surrounding forest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Muriel crouched there long, in the mute misery of utter despair. At her
+      feet Mali crouched too, as frightened as herself, but muttering aloud from
+      time to time, in a reproachful voice, &ldquo;I tell Missy Queenie what
+      going to happen. I warn her not. I tell her she must not eat that very bad
+      storm-apple. But Missy Queenie no listen. Her take her own way, then storm
+      come down upon us.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Felix&rsquo;s Shadow, in his own tongue, exclaimed more than once in
+      the self-same tone, half terror, half expostulation, &ldquo;See now what
+      comes from breaking taboo? You eat the storm-fruit. The storm-fruit suits
+      ill with the King of the Rain and the Queen of the Clouds. The heavens
+      have broken loose. The sea has boiled. See what wind and what flood you
+      are bringing upon us.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By and by, above even the fierce roar of the mingled thunder and cyclone,
+      a wild orgy of noise burst upon them all from without the hut. It was a
+      sound as of numberless drums and tom-toms, all beaten in unison with the
+      mad energy of fear; a hideous sound, suggestive of some hateful heathen
+      devil-worship. Muriel clapped her hands to her ears in horror. &ldquo;Oh,
+      what&rsquo;s that?&rdquo; she cried to Felix, at this new addition to
+      their endless alarms. &ldquo;Are the savages out there rising in a body?
+      Have they come to murder us?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps,&rdquo; Felix said, smoothing her hair with his hand, as a
+      mother might soothe her terrified child, &ldquo;perhaps they&rsquo;re
+      angry with us for having caused this storm, as they think, by our foolish
+      action. I believe they all set it down to our having unluckily eaten that
+      unfortunate fruit. I&rsquo;ll go out to the door myself and speak to them.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Muriel clung to his arm with a passionate clinging.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Felix,&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;no! Don&rsquo;t leave me here
+      alone. My darling, I love you. You&rsquo;re all the world there is left to
+      me now, Felix. Don&rsquo;t go out to those wretches and leave me here
+      alone. They&rsquo;ll murder you! they&rsquo;ll murder you! Don&rsquo;t go
+      out, I implore you. If they mean to kill us, let them kill us both
+      together, in one another&rsquo;s arms. Oh, Felix, I am yours, and you are
+      mine, my darling!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the first time either of them had acknowledged the fact; but there,
+      before the face of that awful convulsion of nature, all the little
+      deceptions and veils of life seemed rent asunder forever as by a flash of
+      lightning. They stood face to face with each other&rsquo;s souls, and
+      forgot all else in the agony of the moment. Felix clasped the trembling
+      girl in his arms like a lover. The two Shadows looked on and shook with
+      silent terror. If the King of the Rain thus embraced the Queen of the
+      Clouds before their very eyes, amid so awful a storm, what unspeakable
+      effects might not follow at once from it! But they had too much respect
+      for those supernatural creatures to attempt to interfere with their action
+      at such a moment. They accepted their masters almost as passively as they
+      accepted the wind and the thunder, which they believed to arise from them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix laid his poor Muriel tenderly down on the mud floor again. &ldquo;I
+      <i>must</i> go out, my child,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;For the very love of
+      <i>you</i>, I must play the man, and find out what these savages mean by
+      their drumming.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He crept to the door of the hut (for no man could walk upright before that
+      awful storm), and peered out into the darkness once more, awaiting one of
+      the frequent flashes of lightning. He had not long to wait. In a moment
+      the sky was all ablaze again from end to end, and continued so for many
+      seconds consecutively. By the light of the continuous zigzags of fire,
+      Felix could see for himself that hundreds and hundreds of natives&mdash;men,
+      women, and children, naked, or nearly so, with their hair loose and wet
+      about their cheeks&mdash;lay flat on their faces, many courses deep, just
+      outside the taboo line. The wind swept over them with extraordinary force,
+      and the tropical rain descended in great floods upon their bare backs and
+      shoulders. But the savages, as if entranced, seemed to take no heed of all
+      these earthly things. They lay grovelling in the mud before some unseen
+      power; and beating their tom-toms in unison, with barbaric concord, they
+      cried aloud once more as Felix appeared, in a weird litany that overtopped
+      the tumultuous noise of the tempest, &ldquo;Oh, Storm-God, hear us! Oh,
+      great spirit, deliver us! King of the Rain and Queen of the Clouds,
+      befriend us! Be angry no more! Hide your wrath from your people! Take away
+      your hurricane, and we will bring you many gifts. Eat no longer of the
+      storm-apple&mdash;the seed of the wind&mdash;and we will feed you with yam
+      and turtle, and much choice bread-fruit. Great king, we are yours; you
+      shall choose which you will of our children for your meat and drink; you
+      shall sup on our blood. But take your storm away; do not utterly drown and
+      submerge our island!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As they spoke they crawled nearer and nearer, with gliding serpentine
+      motion, till their heads almost touched the white line of coral. But not a
+      man of them all went one inch beyond it. They stopped there and gazed at
+      him. Felix signed to them with his hand, and pointed vaguely to the sky,
+      as much as to say <i>he</i> was not responsible. At the gesture the whole
+      assembly burst into one loud shout of gratitude. &ldquo;He has heard us,
+      he has heard us!&rdquo; they exclaimed, with a perfect wail of joy.
+      &ldquo;He will not utterly destroy us. He will take away his storm. He
+      will bring the sun and the moon back to us.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix returned into the hut, somewhat reassured so far as the attitude of
+      the savages went. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t be afraid of them, Muriel,&rdquo; he
+      cried, taking her passionately once more in a tender embrace. &ldquo;They
+      daren&rsquo;t cross the taboo. They won&rsquo;t come near; they&rsquo;re
+      too frightened themselves to dream of hurting us.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0011" id="link2HCH0011"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XI. &mdash; AFTER THE STORM.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Next morning the day broke bright and calm, as if the tempest had been but
+      an evil dream of the night, now past forever. The birds sang loud; the
+      lizards came forth from their holes in the wall, and basked, green and
+      gold, in the warm, dry sunshine. But though the sky overhead was blue and
+      the air clear, as usually happen after these alarming tropical cyclones
+      and rainstorms, the memorials of the great wind that had raged all night
+      long among the forests of the island were neither few nor far between.
+      Everywhere the ground was strewn with leaves and branches and huge stems
+      of cocoa-palms. All nature was draggled. Many of the trees were stripped
+      clean of their foliage, as completely as oaks in an English winter; on
+      others, big strands of twisted fibres marked the scars and joints where
+      mighty boughs had been torn away by main force; while, elsewhere, bare
+      stumps alone remained to mark the former presence of some noble dracæna or
+      some gigantic banyan. Bread-fruits and cocoanuts lay tossed in the wildest
+      confusion on the ground; the banana and plantain-patches were beaten level
+      with the soil or buried deep in the mud; many of the huts had given way
+      entirely; abundant wreckage strewed every corner of the island. It was an
+      awful sight. Muriel shuddered to herself to see how much the two that
+      night had passed through.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What the outer fringing reef had suffered from the storm they hardly knew
+      as yet; but from the door of the hut Felix could see for himself how even
+      the calm waters of the inner lagoon had been lashed into wild fury by the
+      fierce swoop of the tempest. Round the entire atoll the solid conglomerate
+      coral floor was scooped under, broken up, chewed fine by the waves, or
+      thrown in vast fragments on the beach of the island. By the eastern shore,
+      in particular, just opposite their hut, Felix observed a regular wall of
+      many feet in height, piled up by the waves like the familiar Chesil Beach
+      near his old home in Dorsetshire. It was the shelter of that temporary
+      barrier alone, no doubt, that had preserved their huts last night from the
+      full fury of the gale, and that had allowed the natives to congregate in
+      such numbers prone on their faces in the mud and rain, upon the
+      unconsecrated ground outside their taboo-line.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But now not an islander was to be seen within ear-shot. All had gone away
+      to look after their ruined huts or their beaten-down plantain-patches,
+      leaving the cruel gods, who, as they thought, had wrought all the mischief
+      out of pure wantonness, to repent at leisure the harm done during the
+      night to their obedient votaries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix was just about to cross the taboo-line and walk down to the shore to
+      examine the barrier, when Toko, his Shadow, laying his hand on his
+      shoulder with more genuine interest and affection than he had ever yet
+      shown, exclaimed, with some horror, &ldquo;Oh, no! Not that! Don&rsquo;t
+      dare to go outside! It would be very dangerous for you. If my people were
+      to catch you on profane soil just now, there&rsquo;s no saying what harm
+      they might do to you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why so?&rdquo; Felix exclaimed, in surprise. &ldquo;Last night,
+      surely, they were all prayers and promises and vows and entreaties.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The young man nodded his head in acquiescence. &ldquo;Ah, yes; last night,&rdquo;
+      he answered. &ldquo;That was very well then. Vows were sore needed. The
+      storm was raging, and you were within your taboo. How could they dare to
+      touch you, a mighty god of the tempest, at the very moment when you were
+      rending their banyan-trees and snapping their cocoanut stems with your
+      mighty arms like so many little chicken-bones? Even Tu-Kila-Kila himself,
+      I expect, the very high god, lay frightened in his temple, cowering by his
+      tree, annoyed at your wrath; he sent Fire and Water among the worshippers,
+      no doubt, to offer up vows and to appease your anger.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Felix remembered, as his Shadow spoke, that, as a matter of fact, he
+      had observed the men who usually wore the red and white feather cloaks
+      among the motley crowd of grovelling natives who lay flat on their faces
+      in the mud of the cleared space the night before, and prayed hard for
+      mercy. Only they were not wearing their robes of office at the moment, in
+      accordance with a well-known savage custom; they had come naked and in
+      disgrace, as befits all suppliants. They had left behind them the insignia
+      of their rank in their own shaken huts, and bowed down their bare backs to
+      the rain and the lightning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I saw them among the other islanders,&rdquo; Felix answered,
+      half-smiling, but prudently remaining within the taboo-line, as his Shadow
+      advised him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Toko kept his hand still on his master&rsquo;s shoulder. &ldquo;Oh, king,&rdquo;
+      he said, beseechingly, and with great solemnity, &ldquo;I am doing wrong
+      to warn you; I am breaking a very great Taboo. I don&rsquo;t know what
+      harm may come to me for telling you. Perhaps Tu-Kila-Kila will burn me to
+      ashes with one glance of his eyes. He may know this minute what I&rsquo;m
+      saying here alone to you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is hard for a white man to meet scruples like this; but Felix was bold
+      enough to answer outright: &ldquo;Tu-Kila-Kila knows nothing of the sort,
+      and can never find out. Take my word for it, Toko, nothing that you say to
+      me will ever reach Tu-Kila-Kila.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Shadow looked at him doubtfully, and trembled as he spoke. &ldquo;I
+      like you, Korong,&rdquo; he said, with a genuinely truthful ring in his
+      voice. &ldquo;You seem to me so kind and good&mdash;so different from
+      other gods, who are very cruel. You never beat me. Nobody I ever served
+      treated me as well or as kindly as you have done. And for <i>your</i> sake
+      I will even dare to break taboo&mdash;if you&rsquo;re quite, quite sure
+      Tu-Kila-Kila will never discover it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m quite sure,&rdquo; Felix answered, with perfect
+      confidence. &ldquo;I know it for certain. I swear a great oath to it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You swear by Tu-Kila-Kila himself?&rdquo; the young savage asked,
+      anxiously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I swear by Tu-Kila-Kila himself,&rdquo; Felix replied at once.
+      &ldquo;I swear, without doubt. He can never know it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is a great Taboo,&rdquo; the Shadow went on, meditatively,
+      stroking Felix&rsquo;s arm. &ldquo;A very great Taboo indeed. A terrible
+      medicine. And you are a god; I can trust you. Well, then, you see, the
+      secret is this: you are Korong, but you are a stranger, and you don&rsquo;t
+      understand the ways of Boupari. If for three days after the end of this
+      storm, which Tu-Kila-Kila has sent Fire and Water to pray and vow against,
+      you or the Queen of the Clouds show yourselves outside your own taboo-line&mdash;why,
+      then, the people are clear of sin; whoever takes you may rend you alive;
+      they will tear you limb from limb and cut you into pieces.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why so?&rdquo; Felix asked, aghast at this discovery. They seemed
+      to live on a perpetual volcano in this wonderful island; and a volcano
+      ever breaking out in fresh places. They could never get to the bottom of
+      its horrible superstitions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because you ate the storm-apple,&rdquo; the Shadow answered,
+      confidently. &ldquo;That was very wrong. You brought the tempest upon us
+      yourselves by your own trespass; therefore, by the custom of Boupari,
+      which we learn in the mysteries, you become full Korong for the sacrifice
+      at once. That makes the term for you. The people will give you all your
+      dues; then they will say, &lsquo;We are free; we have bought you with a
+      price; we have brought your cocoanuts. No sin attaches to us; we are
+      righteous; we are righteous.&rsquo; And then they will kill you, and Fire
+      and Water will roast you and boil you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But only if we go outside the taboo-line?&rdquo; Felix asked,
+      anxiously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only if you go outside the taboo-line,&rdquo; the Shadow replied,
+      nodding a hasty assent. &ldquo;Inside it, till your term comes, even
+      Tu-Kila-Kila himself, the very high god, whose meat we all are, dare never
+      hurt you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Till our term comes?&rdquo; Felix inquired, once more astonished
+      and perplexed. &ldquo;What do you mean by that, my Shadow?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the Shadow was either bound by some superstitious fear, or else
+      incapable of putting himself into Felix&rsquo;s point of view. &ldquo;Why,
+      till you are full Korong,&rdquo; he answered, like one who speaks of some
+      familiar fact, as who should say, till you are forty years old, or, till
+      your beard grows white. &ldquo;Of course, by and by, you will be full
+      Korong. I cannot help you then; but, till that time comes, I would like to
+      do my best by you. You have been very kind to me. I tell you much. More
+      than this, it would not be lawful for me to mention.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And that was the most that, by dexterous questioning, Felix could ever
+      manage to get out of his mysterious Shadow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At the end of three days we will be safe, though?&rdquo; he
+      inquired at last, after all other questions failed to produce an answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes, at the end of three days the storm will have blown over,&rdquo;
+      the young man answered, easily. &ldquo;All will then be well. You may
+      venture out once more. The rain will have dried over all the island. Fire
+      and Water will have no more power over you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix went back to the hut to inform Muriel of this new peril thus
+      suddenly sprung upon them. Poor Muriel, now almost worn out with endless
+      terrors, received it calmly. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m growing accustomed to it
+      all, Felix,&rdquo; she answered, resignedly. &ldquo;If only I know that
+      you will keep your promise, and never let me fall alive into these
+      wretches&rsquo; hands, I shall feel quite safe. Oh, Felix, do you know
+      when you took me in your arms like that last night, in spite of
+      everything, I felt positively happy.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      About ten o&rsquo;clock they were suddenly roused by a sound of many
+      natives, coming in quick succession, single file, to the huts, and
+      shouting aloud, &ldquo;Oh, King of the Rain, oh, Queen of the Clouds, come
+      forth for our vows! Receive your presents!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix went forth to the door to look. With a warning look in his eyes, his
+      Shadow followed him. The natives were now coming up by dozens at a time,
+      bringing with them, in great arm-loads, fallen cocoanuts and breadfruits,
+      and branches of bananas, and large draggled clusters of half-ripe
+      plantains.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, what are all these?&rdquo; Felix exclaimed in surprise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His Shadow looked up at him, as if amused at the absurd simplicity of the
+      question. &ldquo;These are yours, of course,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;yours
+      and the Queen&rsquo;s; they are the windfalls you made. Did you not knock
+      them all off the trees for yourselves when you were coming down in such
+      sheets from the sky last evening?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix wrung his hands in positive despair. It was clear, indeed, that to
+      the minds of the natives there was no distinguishing personally between
+      himself and Muriel, and the rain or the cyclone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will they bring them all in?&rdquo; he asked, gazing in alarm at
+      the huge pile of fruits the natives were making outside the huts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, all,&rdquo; the Shadow answered; &ldquo;they are vows; they
+      are godsends; but if you like, you can give some of them back. If you give
+      much back, of course it will make my people less angry with you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix advanced near the line, holding his hand up before him to command
+      silence. As he did so, he was absolutely appalled himself at the perfect
+      storm of execration and abuse which his appearance excited. The foremost
+      natives, brandishing their clubs and stone-tipped spears, or shaking their
+      fists by the line, poured forth upon his devoted head at once all the most
+      frightful curses of the Polynesian vocabulary. &ldquo;Oh, evil god,&rdquo;
+      they cried aloud with angry faces, &ldquo;oh, wicked spirit! you have a
+      bad heart. See what a wrong you have purposely done us. If your heart were
+      not bad, would you treat us like this? If you are indeed a god, come out
+      across the line, and let us try issues together. Don&rsquo;t skulk like a
+      coward in your hut and within your taboo, but come out and fight us. <i>We</i>
+      are not afraid, who are only men. Why are <i>you</i> afraid of us?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix tried to speak once more, but the din drowned his voice. As he
+      paused, the people set up their loud shouts again. &ldquo;Oh, you wicked
+      god! You eat the storm-apple! You have wrought us much harm. You have
+      spoiled our harvest. How you came down in great sheets last night! It was
+      pitiful, pitiful! We would like to kill you. You might have taken our
+      bread-fruits and our bananas, if you would; we give you them freely; they
+      are yours; here, take them. We feed you well; we make you many offerings.
+      But why did you wish to have our huts also? Why did you beat down our
+      young plantations and break our canoes against the beach of the island?
+      That shows a bad heart! You are an evil god! You dare not defend yourself.
+      Come out and meet us.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0012" id="link2HCH0012"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XII. &mdash; A POINT OF THEOLOGY.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      At last, with great difficulty, Felix managed to secure a certain
+      momentary lull of silence. The natives, clustering round the line till
+      they almost touched it, listened with scowling brows, and brandished
+      threatening spears, tipped with points of stone or shark&rsquo;s teeth or
+      turtle-bone, while he made his speech to them. From time to time, one or
+      another interrupted him, coaxing and wheedling him, as it were, to cross
+      the line; but Felix never heeded them. He was beginning to understand now
+      how to treat this strange people. He took no notice of their threats or
+      their entreaties either.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By and by, partly by words and partly by gestures, he made them understand
+      that they might take back and keep for themselves all the cocoanuts and
+      bread-fruits they had brought as windfalls. At this the people seemed a
+      little appeased. &ldquo;His heart is not quite so bad as we thought,&rdquo;
+      they murmured among themselves; &ldquo;but if he didn&rsquo;t want them,
+      what did he mean? Why did he beat down our huts and our plantations?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Felix tried to explain to them&mdash;a somewhat dangerous task&mdash;that
+      neither he nor Muriel were really responsible for last night&rsquo;s
+      storm; but at that the people, with one accord, raised a great loud shout
+      of unmixed derision. &ldquo;He is a god,&rdquo; they cried, &ldquo;and yet
+      he is ashamed of his own acts and deeds, afraid of what we, mere men, will
+      do to him! Ha! ha! Take care! These are lies that he tells. Listen to him!
+      Hear him!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile, more and more natives kept coming up with windfalls of fruit,
+      or with objects they had vowed in their terror to dedicate during the
+      night; and Felix all the time kept explaining at the top of his voice, to
+      all as they came, that he wanted nothing, and that they could take all
+      back again. This curiously inconsistent action seemed to puzzle the
+      wondering natives strangely. Had he made the storm, then, they asked, and
+      eaten the storm-apple, for no use to himself, but out of pure
+      perverseness? If he didn&rsquo;t even want the windfalls and the objects
+      vowed to him, why had he beaten down their crops and broken their houses?
+      They looked at him meaningly; but they dared not cross that great line of
+      taboo. It was their own superstition alone, in that moment of danger, that
+      kept their hands off those defenceless white people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last a happy idea seemed to strike the crowd. &ldquo;What he wants is a
+      child?&rdquo; they cried, effusively. &ldquo;He thirsts for blood! Let us
+      kill and roast him a proper victim!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix&rsquo;s horror at this appalling proposition knew no bounds. &ldquo;If
+      you do,&rdquo; he cried, turning their own superstition against them in
+      this last hour of need, &ldquo;I will raise up a storm worse even than
+      last night&rsquo;s! You do it at your peril! I want no victim. The people
+      of my country eat not of human flesh. It is a thing detestable, horrible,
+      hateful to God and man. With us, all human life alike is sacred. We spill
+      no blood. If you dare to do as you say, I will raise such a storm over
+      your heads to-night as will submerge and drown the whole of your island.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The natives listened to him with profound interest. &ldquo;We must spill
+      no blood!&rdquo; they repeated, looking aghast at one another. &ldquo;Hear
+      what the King says! We must not cut the victim&rsquo;s throat. We must
+      bind a child with cords and roast it alive for him!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix hardly knew what to do or say at this atrocious proposal. &ldquo;If
+      you roast it alive,&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;you deserve to be all scorched
+      up with lightning. Take care what you do! Spare the child&rsquo;s life! I
+      will have no victim. Beware how you anger me!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the savage no sooner says than he does. With him deliberation is
+      unknown, and impulse everything. In a moment the natives had gathered in a
+      circle a little way off, and began drawing lots. Several children, seized
+      hurriedly up among the crowd, were huddled like so many sheep in the
+      centre. Felix looked on from his enclosure, half petrified with horror.
+      The lot fell upon a pretty little girl of five years old. Without one word
+      of warning, without one sign of remorse, before Felix&rsquo;s very eyes,
+      they began to bind the struggling and terrified child just outside the
+      circle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The white man could stand this horrid barbarity no longer. At the risk of
+      his life&mdash;at the risk of Muriel&rsquo;s&mdash;he must rush out to
+      prevent them. They should never dare to kill that helpless child before
+      his very eyes. Come what might&mdash;though even Muriel should suffer for
+      it&mdash;he felt he <i>must</i> rescue that trembling little creature.
+      Drawing his trusty knife, and opening the big blade ostentatiously before
+      their eyes, he made a sudden dart like a wild beast across the line, and
+      pounced down upon the party that guarded the victim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Was it a ruse to make him cross the line, alone, or did they really mean
+      it? He hardly knew; but he had no time to debate the abstract question.
+      Bursting into their midst, he seized the child with a rush in his circling
+      arms, and tried to hurry back with it within the protecting taboo-line.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Quick as lightning he was surrounded and almost cut down by a furious and
+      frantic mob of half-naked savages. &ldquo;Kill him! Tear him to pieces!&rdquo;
+      they cried in their rage. &ldquo;He has a bad heart! He destroyed our
+      huts! He broke down our plantations! Kill him, kill him, kill him!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As they closed in upon him, with spears and tomahawks and clubs, Felix saw
+      he had nothing left for it now but a hard fight for life to return to the
+      taboo-line. Holding the child in one arm, and striking wildly out with his
+      knife with the other, he tried to hack his way back by main force to the
+      shelter of the taboo-line in frantic lunges. The distance was but a few
+      feet, but the savages pressed round him, half frightened still, yet
+      gnashing their teeth and distorting their faces with anger. &ldquo;He has
+      broken the Taboo,&rdquo; they cried in vehement tones. &ldquo;He has
+      crossed the line willingly. Kill him! Kill him! We are free from sin. We
+      have bought him with a price&mdash;with many cocoanuts!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the sound of the struggle going on so close outside, Muriel rushed in
+      frantic haste and terror from the hut. Her face was pale, but her demeanor
+      was resolute. Before Mali could stop her, she, too, had crossed the sacred
+      line of the coral mark, and had flung herself madly upon Felix&rsquo;s
+      assailants, to cover his retreat with her own frail body.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hold off!&rdquo; she cried, in her horror, in English, but in
+      accents even those savages could read. &ldquo;You shall not touch him!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a fierce effort Felix tore his way back, through the spears and
+      clubs, toward the place of safety. The savages wounded him on the way more
+      than once with their jagged stone spear-tips, and blood flowed from his
+      breast and arms in profusion. But they didn&rsquo;t dare even so to touch
+      Muriel. The sight of that pure white woman, rushing out in her weakness to
+      protect her lover&rsquo;s life from attack, seemed to strike them with
+      some fresh access of superstitious awe. One or two of themselves were
+      wounded by Felix&rsquo;s knife, for they were unaccustomed to steel,
+      though they had a few blades made out of old European barrel-hoops. For a
+      minute or two the conflict was sharp and hotly contested. Then at last
+      Felix managed to fling the child across the line, to push Muriel with one
+      hand at arm&rsquo;s-length before him, and to rush himself within the
+      sacred circle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No sooner had he crossed it than the savages drew up around, undecided as
+      yet, but in a threatening body. Rank behind rank, their loose hair in
+      their eyes, they stood like wild beasts balked of their prey, and yelled
+      at him. Some of them brandished their spears and their stone hatchets
+      angrily in their victims&rsquo; faces. Others contented themselves with
+      howling aloud as before, and piling curses afresh on the heads of the
+      unpopular storm-gods. &ldquo;Look at her,&rdquo; they cried, in their
+      wrath, pointing their skinny brown fingers angrily at Muriel. &ldquo;See,
+      she weeps even now. She would flood us with her rain. She isn&rsquo;t
+      satisfied with all the harm she has poured down upon Boupari already. She
+      wants to drown us.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then a little knot drew up close to the line of taboo itself, and
+      began to discuss in loud and serious tones a pressing question of savage
+      theology and religious practice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They have crossed the line within the three days,&rdquo; some of
+      the foremost warriors exclaimed, in excited voices. &ldquo;They are no
+      longer taboo. We can do as we please with them. We may cross the line now
+      ourselves if we will, and tear them to pieces. Come on! Who follows?
+      Korong! Korong! Let us rend them! Let us eat them!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But though they spoke so bravely they hung back themselves, fearful of
+      passing that mysterious barrier. Others of the crowd answered them back,
+      warmly: &ldquo;No, no; not so. Be careful what you do. Anger not the gods.
+      Don&rsquo;t ruin Boupari. If the Taboo is not indeed broken, then how dare
+      we break it? They are gods. Fear their vengeance. They are, indeed,
+      terrible. See what happened to us when they merely ate of the storm-apple!
+      What might not happen if we were to break taboo without due cause and kill
+      them?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One old, gray-bearded warrior, in particular, held his countrymen back.
+      &ldquo;Mind how you trifle with gods,&rdquo; the old chief said, in a tone
+      of solemn warning. &ldquo;Mind how you provoke them. They are very mighty.
+      When I was young, our people killed three sailing gods who came ashore in
+      a small canoe, built of thin split logs; and within a month an awful
+      earthquake devastated Boupari, and fire burst forth from a mouth in the
+      ground, and the people knew that the spirits of the sailing gods were very
+      angry. Wait, therefore, till Tu-Kila-Kila himself comes, and then ask of
+      him, and of Fire and Water. As Tu-Kila-Kila bids you, that do you do. Is
+      he not our great god, the king of us all, and the guardian of the customs
+      of the island of Boupari?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is Tu-Kila-Kila coming?&rdquo; some of the warriors asked, with
+      bated breath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How should he not come?&rdquo; the old chief asked, drawing himself
+      up very erect. &ldquo;Know you not the mysteries? The rain has put out all
+      the fires in Boupari. The King of Fire himself, even his hearth is cold.
+      He tried his best in the storm to keep his sacred embers still
+      smouldering; but the King of the Rain was stronger than he was, and put it
+      out at last in spite of his endeavors. Be careful, therefore, how you deal
+      with the King of the Rain, who comes down among lightnings, and is so very
+      powerful.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And Tu-Kila-Kila comes to fetch fresh fire?&rdquo; one of the
+      nearest savages asked, with profound awe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He comes to fetch fresh fire, new fire from the sun,&rdquo; the old
+      man answered, with awe in his voice. &ldquo;These foreign gods, are they
+      not strangers from the sun? They have brought the divine seeds of fire,
+      growing in a shining box that reflects the sunlight. They need no
+      rubbing-sticks and no drill to kindle fresh flame. They touch the seed on
+      the box, and, lo, like a miracle, fire bursts forth from the wood
+      spontaneous. Tu-Kila-Kila comes, to behold this miracle.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The warriors hung back with doubtful eyes for a moment. Then they spoke
+      with one accord, &ldquo;Tu-Kila-Kila shall decide. Tu-Kila-Kila!
+      Tu-Kila-Kila! If the great god says the Taboo holds good, we will not hurt
+      or offend the strangers. But if the great god says the Taboo is broken,
+      and we are all without sin&mdash;then, Korong! Korong! we will kill them!
+      We will eat them!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the two parties thus stood glaring at one another, across that narrow
+      imaginary wall, another cry went up to heaven at the distant sound of a
+      peculiar tom-tom. &ldquo;Tu-Kila-Kila comes!&rdquo; they shouted. &ldquo;Our
+      great god approaches! Women, begone! Men, hide your eyes! Fly, fly from
+      the brightness of his face, which is as the sun in glory! Tu-Kila-Kila
+      comes! Fly far, all profane ones!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And in a moment the women had disappeared into space, and the men lay flat
+      on the moist ground with low groans of surprise, and hid their faces in
+      their hands in abject terror.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0013" id="link2HCH0013"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIII. &mdash; AS BETWEEN GODS.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila came up in his grandest panoply. The great umbrella, with the
+      hanging cords, rose high over his head; the King of Fire and the King of
+      Water, in their robes of state, marched slowly by his side; a whole group
+      of slaves and temple attendants, clapping hands in unison, followed
+      obedient at his sacred heels. But as soon as he reached the open space in
+      front of the huts and began to speak, Felix could easily see, in spite of
+      his own agitation and the excitement of the moment, that the implacable
+      god himself was profoundly frightened. Last night&rsquo;s storm had,
+      indeed, been terrible; but Tu-Kila-Kila mentally coupled it with Felix&rsquo;s
+      attitude toward himself at their last interview, and really believed in
+      his own heart he had met, after all, with a stronger god, more powerful
+      than himself, who could make the clouds burst forth in fire and the earth
+      tremble. The savage swaggered a good deal, to be sure, as is often the
+      fashion with savages when frightened; but Felix could see between the
+      lines, that he swaggered only on the familiar principle of whistling to
+      keep your courage up, and that in his heart of hearts he was most
+      unspeakably terrified.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You did not do well, O King of the Rain, last night,&rdquo; he
+      said, after an interchange of civilities, as becomes great gods. &ldquo;You
+      have put out even the sacred flame on the holy hearth of the King of Fire.
+      You have a bad heart. Why do you use us so?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why do you let your people offer human sacrifices?&rdquo; Felix
+      answered, boldly, taking advantage of his position. &ldquo;They are
+      hateful in our sight, these cannibal ways. While we remain on the island,
+      no human life shall be unjustly taken. Do you understand me?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila drew back, and gazed around him suspiciously. In all his
+      experience no one had ever dared to address him like that. Assuredly, the
+      stranger from the sun must be a very great god&mdash;how great, he hardly
+      dared to himself to realize. He shrugged his shoulders. &ldquo;When we
+      mighty deities of the first order speak together, face to face,&rdquo; he
+      said, with an uneasy air, &ldquo;it is not well that the mere common herd
+      of men should overhear our profound deliberations. Let us go inside your
+      hut. Let us confer in private.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They entered the hut alone, Muriel still clinging to Felix&rsquo;s arm, in
+      speechless terror. Then Felix at once began to explain the situation. As
+      he spoke, a baleful light gleamed in Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s eye. The great
+      god removed his mulberry-paper mask. He was evidently delighted at the
+      turn things had taken. If only he dared&mdash;but there; he dared not.
+      &ldquo;Fire and Water would never allow it,&rdquo; he murmured softly to
+      himself. &ldquo;They know the taboos as well as I do.&rdquo; It was clear
+      to Felix that the savage would gladly have sacrificed him if he dared, and
+      that he made no bones about letting him know it; but the custom of the
+      islanders bound him as tightly as it bound themselves, and he was afraid
+      to transgress it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now listen,&rdquo; Felix said, at last, after a long palaver,
+      looking in the savage&rsquo;s face with a resolute air: &ldquo;Tu-Kila-Kila,
+      we are not afraid of you. We are not afraid of all your people. I went out
+      alone just now to rescue that child, and, as you see, I succeeded in
+      rescuing it. Your people have wounded me&mdash;look at the blood on my
+      arms and chest&mdash;but I don&rsquo;t mind for wounds. I mean you to do
+      as I say, and to make your people do so, too. Understand, the nation to
+      which I belong is very powerful. You have heard of the sailing gods who go
+      over the sea in canoes of fire, as swift as the wind, and whose weapons
+      are hollow tubes, that belch forth great bolts of lightning and thunder?
+      Very well, I am one of them. If ever you harm a hair of our heads, those
+      sailing gods will before long send one of their mighty fire-canoes, and
+      bring to bear upon your island their thunder and lightning, and destroy
+      your huts, and punish you for the wrong you have ventured to do us. So now
+      you know. Remember that you act exactly as I tell you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila was evidently overawed by the white man&rsquo;s resolute
+      voice and manner. He had heard before of the sailing gods (as the
+      Polynesians of the old school still call the Europeans); and though but
+      one or two stray individuals among them had ever reached his remote island
+      (mostly as castaways), he was quite well enough acquainted with their
+      might and power to be deeply impressed by Felix&rsquo;s exhortation. So he
+      tried to temporize. &ldquo;Very well,&rdquo; he made answer, with his
+      jauntiest air, assuming a tone of friendly good-fellowship toward his
+      brother-god. &ldquo;I will bear it in mind. I will try to humor you. While
+      your time lasts, no man shall hurt you. But if I promise you that, you
+      must do a good turn for me instead. You must come out before the people
+      and give me a new fire from the sun, that you carry in a shining box about
+      with you. The King of Fire has allowed his sacred flame to go out in
+      deference to your flood; for last night, you know, you came down heavily.
+      Never in my life have I known you come down heavier. The King of Fire
+      acknowledges himself beaten. So give us light now before the people, that
+      they may know we are gods, and may fear to disobey us.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only on one condition,&rdquo; Felix answered, sternly; for he felt
+      he had Tu-Kila-Kila more or less in his power now, and that he could drive
+      a bargain with him. Why, he wasn&rsquo;t sure; but he saw Tu-Kila-Kila
+      attached a profound importance to having the sacred fire relighted, as he
+      thought, direct from heaven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What condition is that?&rdquo; Tu-Kila-Kila asked, glancing about
+      him suspiciously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, that you give up in future human sacrifices.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila gave a start. Then he reflected for a moment. Evidently, the
+      condition seemed to him a very hard one. &ldquo;Do you want all the
+      victims for yourself and her, then?&rdquo; he asked, with a casual nod
+      aside toward Muriel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix drew back, with horror depicted on every line of his face. &ldquo;Heaven
+      forbid!&rdquo; he answered, fervently. &ldquo;We want no bloodshed, no
+      human victims. We ask you to give up these horrid practices, because they
+      shock and revolt us. If you would have your fire lighted, you must promise
+      us to put down cannibalism altogether henceforth in your island.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila hesitated. After all, it was only for a very short time that
+      these strangers could thus beard him. Their day would come soon. They were
+      but Korongs. Meanwhile, it was best, no doubt, to effect a compromise.
+      &ldquo;Agreed,&rdquo; he answered, slowly. &ldquo;I will put down human
+      sacrifices&mdash;so long as you live among us. And I will tell the people
+      your taboo is not broken. All shall be done as you will in this matter.
+      Now, come out before the crowd and light the fire from Heaven.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Remember,&rdquo; Felix repeated, &ldquo;if you break your word, my
+      people will come down upon you, sooner or later, in their mighty
+      fire-canoes, and will take vengeance for your crime, and destroy you
+      utterly.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila smiled a cunning smile. &ldquo;I know all that,&rdquo; he
+      answered. &ldquo;I am a god myself, not a fool, don&rsquo;t you see? You
+      are a very great god, too; but I am the greater. No more of words between
+      us two. It is as between gods. The fire! the fire!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila replaced his mask. They proceeded from the hut to the open
+      space within the taboo-line. The people still lay all flat on their faces.
+      &ldquo;Fire and Water,&rdquo; Tu-Kila-Kila said, in a commanding tone,
+      &ldquo;come forward and screen me!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The King of Fire and the King of Water unrolled a large square of native
+      cloth, which they held up as a screen on two poles in front of their
+      superior deity. Tu-Kila-Kila sat down on the ground, hugging his knees, in
+      the common squatting savage fashion, behind the veil thus readily formed
+      for him. &ldquo;Taboo is removed,&rdquo; he said, in loud, clear tones.
+      &ldquo;My people may rise. The light will not burn them. They may look
+      toward the place where Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s face is hidden from them.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The people all rose with one accord, and gazed straight before them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The King of Fire will bring dry sticks,&rdquo; Tu-Kila-Kila said,
+      in his accustomed regal manner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The King of Fire, sticking one pole of the screen into the ground
+      securely, brought forward a bundle of sun-dried sticks and leaves from a
+      basket beside him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The King of the Rain, who has put out all our hearths with his
+      flood last night, will relight them again with new fire, fresh flame from
+      the sun, rays of our disk, divine, mystic, wonderful,&rdquo; Tu-Kila-Kila
+      proclaimed, in his droning monotone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix advanced as he spoke to the pile, and struck a match before the eyes
+      of all the islanders. As they saw it light, and then set fire to the wood,
+      a loud cry went up once more, &ldquo;Tu-Kila-Kila is great! His words are
+      true! He has brought fire from the sun! His ways are wonderful!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila, from his point of vantage behind the curtain, strove to
+      improve the occasion with a theological lesson. &ldquo;That is the way we
+      have learned from our divine ancestors,&rdquo; he said, slowly; &ldquo;the
+      rule of the gods in our island of Boupari. Each god, as he grows old,
+      reincarnates himself visibly. Before he can grow feeble and die he
+      immolates himself willingly on his own altar; and a younger and a stronger
+      than he receives his spirit. Thus the gods are always young and always
+      with you. Behold myself, Tu-Kila-Kila! Am I not from old times? Am I not
+      very ancient? Have I not passed through many bodies? Do I not spring ever
+      fresh from my own ashes? Do I not eat perpetually the flesh of new
+      victims? Even so with fire. The flames of our island were becoming impure.
+      The King of Fire saw his cinders flickering. So I gave my word. The King
+      of the Rain descended in floods upon them. He put them all out. And now he
+      rekindles them. They burn up brighter and fresher than ever. They burn to
+      cook my meat, the limbs of my victims. Take heed that you do the King of
+      the Rain no harm as long as he remains within his sacred circle. He is a
+      very great god. He is fierce; he is cruel. His taboo is not broken.
+      Beware! Beware! Disobey at your peril. I, Tu-Kila-Kila, have spoken.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he spoke, it seemed to Felix that these strange mystic words about each
+      god springing fresh from his own ashes must contain the solution of that
+      dread problem they were trying in vain to read. That, perhaps, was the
+      secret of Korong. If only they could ever manage to understand it!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila beat his tom-tom twice. In a second all the people fell flat
+      on their faces again. Tu-Kila-Kila rose; the kings of Fire and Water held
+      the umbrella over him. The attendants on either side clapped hands in time
+      to the sacred tom-tom. With proud, slow tread, the god retraced his steps
+      to his own palace-temple; and Muriel and Felix were left alone at last in
+      their dusty enclosure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tu-Kila-Kila hates me,&rdquo; Felix said, later in the day, to his
+      attentive Shadow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; the young man answered, with a tone of natural
+      assent. &ldquo;To be sure he hates you. How could he do otherwise? You are
+      Korong. You may any day be his enemy.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But he&rsquo;s afraid of me, too,&rdquo; Felix went on. &ldquo;He
+      would have liked to let the people tear me in pieces. Yet he dared not
+      risk it. He seems to dread offending me.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; the Shadow replied, as readily as before. &ldquo;He
+      is very much afraid of you. You are Korong. You may any day supplant him.
+      He would like to get rid of you, if he could see his way. But till your
+      time comes he dare not touch you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When will my time come?&rdquo; Felix asked, with that dim
+      apprehension of some horrible end coming over him yet again in all its
+      vague weirdness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Shadow shook his head. &ldquo;That,&rdquo; he answered, &ldquo;it is
+      not lawful for me so much as to mention. I tell you too far. You will know
+      soon enough. Wait, and be patient.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0014" id="link2HCH0014"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIV. &mdash; &ldquo;MR. THURSTAN, I PRESUME.&rdquo;
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Naturally enough, it was some time before Felix and Muriel could recover
+      from the shock of their deadly peril. Yet, strange to say, the natives at
+      the end of three days seemed positively to have forgotten all about it.
+      Their loves and their hates were as shortlived as children&rsquo;s. As
+      soon as the period of seclusion was over, their attentions to the two
+      strangers redoubled in intensity. They were evidently most anxious, after
+      this brief disagreement, to reassure the new gods, who came from the sun,
+      of their gratitude and devotion. The men who had wounded Felix, in
+      particular, now came daily in the morning with exceptional gifts of fish,
+      fruit, and flowers; they would bring a crab from the sea, or a joint of
+      turtle-meat. &ldquo;Forgive us, O king,&rdquo; they cried, prostrating
+      themselves humbly. &ldquo;We did not mean to hurt you; we thought your
+      time had really come. You are a Korong. We would not offend you. Do not
+      refuse us your showers because of our sin. We are very penitent. We will
+      do what you ask of us. Your look is poison. See, here is wood; here are
+      leaves and fire; we are but your meat; choose and cook which you will of
+      us!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was useless Felix&rsquo;s trying to explain to them that he wanted no
+      victims, and no propitiation. The more he protested, the more they brought
+      gifts. &ldquo;He is a very great god,&rdquo; they exclaimed. &ldquo;He
+      wants nothing from us. What can we give him that will be an acceptable
+      gift? Shall we offer him ourselves, our wives, our children?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As for the women, when they saw how thoroughly frightened of them Muriel
+      now was, they couldn&rsquo;t find means to express their regret and
+      devotion. Mothers brought their little children, whom she had patted on
+      the head, and offered them, just outside the line, as presents for her
+      acceptance. They explained to her Shadow that they never meant to hurt
+      her, and that, if only she would venture without the line, as of old, all
+      should be well, and they would love and adore her. Mali translated to her
+      mistress these speeches and prayers. &ldquo;Them say, &lsquo;You come
+      back, Queenie,&rsquo;&rdquo; she explained in her broken Queensland
+      English. &ldquo;&lsquo;Boupari women love you very much. Boupari women
+      glad you come. You kind; you beautiful! All Boupari men and women very
+      much pleased with you and the gentleman, because you give back him
+      cocoanut and fruit that you pick in the storm, and because you bring down
+      fresh fire from heaven.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gradually, after several days, Felix&rsquo;s confidence was so far
+      restored that he ventured to stroll beyond the line again; and he found
+      himself, indeed, most popular among the people. In various ways he picked
+      up gradually the idea that the islanders generally disliked Tu-Kila-Kila,
+      and liked himself; and that they somehow regarded him as Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s
+      natural enemy. What it could all mean he did not yet understand, though
+      some inklings of an explanation occasionally occurred to him. Oh, how he
+      longed now for the Month of Birds to end, in order that he might pay his
+      long-deferred visit to the mysterious Frenchman, from whose voice his
+      Shadow had fled on that fateful evening with such sudden precipitancy. The
+      Frenchman, he judged, must have been long on the island, and could
+      probably give him some satisfactory solution of this abstruse problem.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So he was glad, indeed, when one evening, some weeks later, his Shadow,
+      observing the sky narrowly, remarked to him in a low voice, &ldquo;New
+      moon to-morrow! The Month of Birds will then be up. In the morning you can
+      go and see your brother god at the Abode of Birds without breaking taboo.
+      The Month of Turtles begins at sunrise. My family god is a turtle, so I
+      know the day for it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So great was Felix&rsquo;s impatience to settle this question, that almost
+      before the sun was up next day he had set forth from his hut, accompanied
+      as usual by his faithful Shadow. Their way lay past Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s
+      temple. As they went by the entrance with the bamboo posts, Felix happened
+      to glance aside through the gate to the sacred enclosure. Early as it was,
+      Tu-Kila-Kila was afoot already; and, to Felix&rsquo;s great surprise, was
+      pacing up and down, with that stealthy, wary look upon his cunning face
+      that Muriel had so particularly noted on the day of their first arrival.
+      His spear stood in his hand, and his tomahawk hung by his left side; he
+      peered about him suspiciously, with a cautious glance, as he walked round
+      and round the sacred tree he guarded so continually. There was something
+      weird and awful in the sight of that savage god, thus condemned by his own
+      superstition and the custom of his people to tramp ceaselessly up and down
+      before the sacred banyan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At sight of Felix, however, a sudden burst of frenzy seemed to possess at
+      once all Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s limbs. He brandished his spear violently,
+      and set himself spasmodically in a posture of defence. His brow grew
+      black, and his eyes darted out eternal hate and suspicion. It was evident
+      he expected an instant attack, and was prepared with all his might and
+      main to resist aggression. Yet he never offered to desert his post by the
+      tree or to assume the offensive. Clearly, he was guarding the sacred grove
+      itself with jealous care, and was as eager for its safety as for his own
+      life and honor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix passed on, wondering what it all could mean, and turned with an
+      inquiring glance to his trembling Shadow. As for Toko, he had held his
+      face averted meanwhile, lest he should behold the great god, and be
+      scorched to a cinder; but in answer to Felix&rsquo;s mute inquiry he
+      murmured low: &ldquo;Was Tu-Kila-Kila there? Were all things right? Was he
+      on guard at his post by the tree already?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; Felix replied, with that weird sense of mystery
+      creeping over him now more profoundly than ever. &ldquo;He was on guard by
+      the tree and he looked at me angrily.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; the Shadow remarked, with a sigh of regret, &ldquo;he
+      keeps watch well. It will be hard work to assail him. No god in Boupari
+      ever held his place so tight. Who wishes to take Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s
+      divinity must get up early.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They went on in silence to the little volcanic knoll near the centre of
+      the island. There, in the neat garden plot they had observed before, a
+      man, in the last relics of a very tattered European costume, much covered
+      with a short cape of native cloth, was tending his flowers and singing to
+      himself merrily. His back was turned to them as they came up. Felix paused
+      a moment, unseen, and caught the words the stranger was singing:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+&ldquo;Très jolie,
+ Peu polie,
+ Possédant un gros magot;
+ Fort en gueule,
+ Pas bégueule;
+ Telle était&mdash;&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      The stranger looked up, and paused in the midst of his lines,
+      open-mouthed. For a moment he stood and stared astonished. Then, raising
+      his native cap with a graceful air, and bowing low, as he would have bowed
+      to a lady on the Boulevard, he advanced to greet a brother European with
+      the familiar words, in good educated French, &ldquo;Monsieur, I salute
+      you!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Felix, the sound of a civilized voice in the midst of so much strange
+      and primitive barbarism, was like a sudden return to some forgotten world,
+      so deeply and profoundly did it move and impress him. He grasped the
+      sunburnt Frenchman&rsquo;s rugged hand in his. &ldquo;Who are you?&rdquo;
+      he cried, in the very best Parisian he could muster up on the spur of the
+      moment. &ldquo;And how did you come here?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur,&rdquo; the Frenchman answered, no less profoundly moved
+      than himself, &ldquo;this is, indeed, wonderful! Do I hear once more that
+      beautiful language spoken? Do I find myself once more in the presence of a
+      civilized person? What fortune! What happiness! Ah, it is glorious,
+      glorious.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For some seconds they stood and looked at one another in silence, grasping
+      their hands hard again and again with intense emotion; then Felix repeated
+      his question a second time: &ldquo;Who are you, monsieur? and where do you
+      come from?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your name, surname, age, occupation?&rdquo; the Frenchman repeated,
+      bursting forth at last into national levity. &ldquo;Ah, monsieur, what a
+      joy to hear those well-known inquiries in my ear once more. I hasten to
+      gratify your legitimate curiosity. Name: Peyron; Christian name: Jules;
+      age: forty-one; occupation: convict, escaped from New Caledonia.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Under any other circumstances that last qualification might possibly have
+      been held an undesirable one in a new acquaintance. But on the island of
+      Boupari, among so many heathen cannibals, prejudices pale before community
+      of blood; even a New Caledonian convict is at least a Christian European.
+      Felix received the strange announcement without the faintest shock of
+      surprise or disgust. He would gladly have shaken hands then and there with
+      M. Jules Peyron, indeed, had he introduced himself in even less equivocal
+      language as a forger, a pickpocket, or an escaped house-breaker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you, monsieur?&rdquo; the ex-convict inquired, politely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix told him in a few words the history of their accident and their
+      arrival on the island.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Comment</i>?&rdquo; the Frenchman exclaimed, with surprise and
+      delight. &ldquo;A lady as well; a charming English lady! What an
+      acquisition to the society of Boupari! <i>Quelle chance! Quel bonheur!</i>
+      Monsieur, you are welcome, and mademoiselle too! And in what quality do
+      you live here? You are a god, I see; otherwise you would not have dared to
+      transgress my taboo, nor would this young man&mdash;your Shadow, I suppose&mdash;have
+      permitted you to do so. But which sort of god, pray? Korong&mdash;or Tula?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They call me Korong,&rdquo; Felix answered, all tremulous, feeling
+      himself now on the very verge of solving this profound mystery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And mademoiselle as well?&rdquo; the Frenchman exclaimed, in a tone
+      of dismay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And mademoiselle as well,&rdquo; Felix replied. &ldquo;At least, so
+      I make out. We are both Korong. I have many times heard the natives call
+      us so.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His new acquaintance seized his hand with every appearance of genuine
+      alarm and regret. &ldquo;My poor friend,&rdquo; he exclaimed, with a
+      horrified face, &ldquo;this is terrible, terrible! Tu-Kila-Kila is a very
+      hard man. What can we do to save your life and mademoiselle&rsquo;s! We
+      are powerless! Powerless! I have only that much to say. I condole with
+      you! I commiserate you!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, what does Korong mean?&rdquo; Felix asked, with blanched lips.
+      &ldquo;Is it then something so very terrible?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Terrible! Ah, terrible!&rdquo; the Frenchman answered, holding up
+      his hands in horror and alarm. &ldquo;I hardly know how we can avert your
+      fate. Step within my poor hut, or under the shade of my Tree of Liberty
+      here, and I will tell you all the little I know about it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0015" id="link2HCH0015"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XV. &mdash; THE SECRET OF KORONG.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have lived here long?&rdquo; Felix asked, with tremulous
+      interest, as he took a seat on the bench under the big tree, toward which
+      his new host politely motioned him. &ldquo;You know the people well, and
+      all their superstitions?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Hélas</i>, yes, monsieur,&rdquo; the Frenchman answered, with a
+      sigh of regret. &ldquo;Eighteen years have I spent altogether in this
+      beast of a Pacific; nine as a convict in New Caledonia, and nine more as a
+      god here; and, believe me, I hardly know which is the harder post. Yours
+      is the first White face I have ever seen since my arrival in this cursed
+      island.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And how did you come here?&rdquo; Felix asked, half breathless, for
+      the very magnitude of the stake at issue&mdash;no less a stake than Muriel&rsquo;s
+      life&mdash;made him hesitate to put point-blank the question he had most
+      at heart for the moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur,&rdquo; the Frenchman answered, trying to cover his rags
+      with his native cape, &ldquo;that explains itself easily. I was a medical
+      student in Paris in the days of the Commune. Ah! that beloved Paris&mdash;how
+      far away it seems now from Boupari! Like all other students I was advanced&mdash;Republican,
+      Socialist&mdash;what you will&mdash;a political enthusiast. When the
+      events took place&mdash;the events of &lsquo;70&mdash;I espoused with all
+      my heart the cause of the people. You know the rest. The bourgeoisie
+      conquered. I was taken red-handed, as the Versaillais said&mdash;my pistol
+      in my grasp&mdash;an open revolutionist. They tried me by court-martial&mdash;br&rsquo;r&rsquo;r&mdash;no
+      delay&mdash;guilty, M. le President&mdash;hard labor to perpetuity. They
+      sent me with that brave Louise Michel and so many other good comrades of
+      the cause to New Caledonia. There, nine years of convict life was more
+      than enough for me. One day I found a canoe on the shore&mdash;a little
+      Kanaka canoe&mdash;you know the type&mdash;a mere shapeless dug-out.
+      Hastily I loaded it with food&mdash;yam, taro, bread-fruit&mdash;I pushed
+      it off into the sea&mdash;I embarked alone&mdash;I intrusted myself and
+      all my fortunes to the Bon Dieu and the wide Pacific. The Bon Dieu did not
+      wholly justify my confidence. It is a way he has&mdash;that inscrutable
+      one. Six weeks I floated hither and thither before varying winds. At last
+      one evening I reached this island. I floated ashore. And, <i>enfin, me
+      voilà</i>!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you were a political prisoner only?&rdquo; Felix said,
+      politely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      M. Jules Peyron drew himself up with much dignity in his tattered costume.
+      &ldquo;Do I look like a card-sharper, monsieur?&rdquo; he asked simply,
+      with offended honor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix hastened to reassure him of his perfect confidence. &ldquo;On the
+      contrary, monsieur,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;the moment I heard you were a
+      convict from New Caledonia, I felt certain in my heart you could be
+      nothing less than one of those unfortunate and ill-treated Communards.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur,&rdquo; the Frenchman said, seizing his hand a second
+      time, &ldquo;I perceive that I have to do with a man of honor and a man of
+      feeling. Well, I landed on this island, and they made me a god. From that
+      day to this I have been anxious only to shuffle off my unwelcome divinity,
+      and return as a mere man to the shores of Europe. Better be a valet in
+      Paris, say I, than a deity of the best in Polynesia. It is a monotonous
+      existence here&mdash;no society, no life&mdash;and the <i>cuisine</i>&mdash;bah,
+      execrable! But till the other day, when your steamer passed, I have
+      scarcely even sighted a European ship. A boat came here once, worse luck,
+      to put off two girls (who didn&rsquo;t belong to Boupari), returned
+      indentured laborers from Queensland; but, unhappily, it was during my
+      taboo&mdash;the Month of Birds, as my jailers call it&mdash;and though I
+      tried to go down to it or to make signals of distress, the natives stood
+      round my hut with their spears in line, and prevented me by main force
+      from signalling to them or communicating with them. Even the other day, I
+      never heard of your arrival till a fortnight had elapsed, for I had been
+      sick with fever, the fever of the country, and as soon as my Shadow told
+      me of your advent it was my taboo again, and I was obliged to defer for
+      myself the honor of calling upon my new acquaintances. I am a god, of
+      course, and can do what I like; but while my taboo is on, <i>ma foi</i>,
+      monsieur, I can hardly call my life my own, I assure you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But your taboo is up to-day,&rdquo; Felix said, &ldquo;so my Shadow
+      tells me.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your Shadow is a well-informed young man,&rdquo; M. Peyron
+      answered, with easy French sprightliness. &ldquo;As for my donkey of a
+      valet, he never by any chance knows or tells me anything. I had just sent
+      him out&mdash;the pig&mdash;to learn, if possible, your nationality and
+      name, and what hours you preferred, as I proposed later in the day to pay
+      my respects to mademoiselle, your friend, if she would deign to receive
+      me.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Miss Ellis would be charmed, I&rsquo;m sure,&rdquo; Felix replied,
+      smiling in spite of himself at so much Parisian courtliness under so
+      ragged an exterior. &ldquo;It is a great pleasure to us to find we are not
+      really alone on this barbarous island. But you were going to explain to
+      me, I believe, the exact nature of this peril in which we both stand&mdash;the
+      precise distinction between Korong and Tula?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Alas, monsieur,&rdquo; the Frenchman replied, drawing circles in
+      the dust with his stick with much discomposure, &ldquo;I can only tell you
+      I have been trying to make out the secret of this distinction myself ever
+      since the first day I came to the island; but so reticent are all the
+      natives about it, and so deep is the taboo by which the mystery is
+      guarded, that even now I, who am myself Tula, can tell you but very little
+      with certainty on the subject. All I can say for sure is this&mdash;that
+      gods called Tula retain their godship in permanency for a very long time,
+      although at the end some violent fate, which I do not clearly understand,
+      is destined to befall them. That is my condition as King of the Birds&mdash;for
+      no doubt they have told you that I, Jules Peyron&mdash;Republican,
+      Socialist, Communist&mdash;have been elevated against my will to the
+      honors of royalty. That is my condition, and it matters but little to me,
+      for I know not when the end may come; and we can but die once; how or
+      where, what matters? Meanwhile, I have my distractions, my little <i>agréments</i>&mdash;my
+      gardens, my music, my birds, my native friends, my coquetries, my aviary.
+      As King of the Birds, I keep a small collection of my subjects in the
+      living form, not unworthy of a scientific eye. Monsieur is no
+      ornithologist? Ah, no, I thought not. Well, for me, it matters little; my
+      time is long. But for you and Mademoiselle, who are both Korong&mdash;&rdquo;
+      He paused significantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What happens, then, to those who are Korong?&rdquo; Felix asked,
+      with a lump in his throat&mdash;not for himself, but for Muriel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Frenchman looked at him with a doubtful look. &ldquo;Monsieur,&rdquo;
+      he said, after a pause, &ldquo;I hardly know how to break the truth to you
+      properly. You are new to the island, and do not yet understand these
+      savages. It is so terrible a fate. So deadly. So certain. Compose your
+      mind to hear the worst. And remember that the worst is very terrible.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix&rsquo;s blood froze within him; but he answered bravely all the
+      same, &ldquo;I think I have guessed it myself already. The Korong are
+      offered as human sacrifices to Tu-Kila-Kila.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is nearly so,&rdquo; his new friend replied, with a solemn nod
+      of his head. &ldquo;Every Korong is bound to die when his time comes. Your
+      time will depend on the particular date when you were admitted to Heaven.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix reflected a moment. &ldquo;It was on the 26th of last month,&rdquo;
+      he answered, shortly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well,&rdquo; M. Peyron replied, after a brief calculation.
+      &ldquo;You have just six months in all to live from that date. They will
+      offer you up by Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s hut the day the sun reaches the
+      summer solstice.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But why did they make us gods then?&rdquo; Felix interposed, with
+      tremulous lips. &ldquo;Why treat us with such honors meanwhile, if they
+      mean in the end to kill us?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He received his sentence of death with greater calmness than the Frenchman
+      had expected. &ldquo;Monsieur,&rdquo; the older arrival answered, with a
+      reflective air, &ldquo;there comes in the mystery. If we could solve that,
+      we could find out also the way of escape for you. For there <i>is</i> a
+      way of escape for every Korong: I know it well; I gather it from all the
+      natives say; it is a part of their mysteries; but what it may be, I have
+      hitherto, in spite of all my efforts, failed to discover. All I <i>do</i>
+      know is this: Tu-Kila-Kila hates and dreads in his heart every Korong that
+      is elevated to Heaven, and would do anything, if he dared, to get rid of
+      him quietly. But he doesn&rsquo;t dare, because he is bound hand and foot
+      himself, too, by taboos innumerable. Taboo is the real god and king of
+      Boupari. All the island alike bows down to it and worships it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you ever known Korongs killed?&rdquo; Felix asked once more,
+      trembling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, monsieur. Many of them, alas! And this is what happens. When
+      the Korong&rsquo;s time is come, as these creatures say, either on the
+      summer or winter solstice, he is bound with native ropes, and carried up
+      so pinioned to Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s temple. In the time before this man
+      was Tu-Kila-Kila, I remember&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stop,&rdquo; Felix cried. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t understand. Has
+      there then been more than one Tu-Kila-Kila?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, yes,&rdquo; the Frenchman answered. &ldquo;Certainly, many.
+      And there the mystery comes in again. We have always among us one
+      Tu-Kila-Kila or another. He is a sort of pope, or grand lama, <i>voyez-vous?</i>
+      No sooner is the last god dead than another god succeeds him and takes his
+      name, or rather his title. This young man who now holds the place was
+      known originally as Lavita, the son of Sami. But what is more curious
+      still, the islanders always treat the new god as if he were precisely the
+      self-same person as the old one. So far as I have been able to understand
+      their theology, they believe in a sort of transmigration of souls. The
+      soul of the Tu-Kila-Kila who is just dead passes into and animates the
+      body of the Tu-Kila-Kila who succeeds to the office. Thus they speak as
+      though Tu-Kila-Kila were a continuous existence; and the god of the
+      moment, himself, will even often refer to events which occurred to him, as
+      he says, a hundred years ago or more, but which he really knows, of
+      course, only by the persistent tradition of the islanders. They are a very
+      curious people, these Bouparese. But what would you have? Among savages,
+      one expects things to be as among savages.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix drew a quiet sigh. It was certain that on the island of Boupari that
+      expectation, at least, was never doomed to disappointment. &ldquo;And when
+      a Korong is taken to Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s temple,&rdquo; he asked,
+      continuing the subject of most immediate interest, &ldquo;what happens
+      next to him?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur,&rdquo; the Frenchman answered, &ldquo;I hardly know
+      whether I do right or not to say the truth to you. Each Korong is a god
+      for one season only; when the year renews itself, as the savages believe,
+      by a change of season, then a new Korong must be chosen by Heaven to fill
+      the place of the old ones who are to be sacrificed. This they do in order
+      that the seasons may be ever fresh and vigorous. Especially is that the
+      case with the two meteorological gods, so to speak, the King of the Rain
+      and the Queen of the Clouds. Those, I understand, are the posts in their
+      pantheon which you and the lady who accompanies you occupy.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are right,&rdquo; Felix answered, with profoundly painful
+      interest. &ldquo;And what, then, becomes of the king and queen who are
+      sacrificed?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will tell you,&rdquo; M. Peyron answered, dropping his voice
+      still lower into a sympathetic key. &ldquo;But steel your mind for the
+      worst beforehand. It is sufficiently terrible. On the day of your arrival,
+      this, I learn from my Shadow, is just what happened. That night,
+      Tu-Kila-Kila made his great feast, and offered up the two chief human
+      sacrifices of the year, the free-will offering and the scapegoat of
+      trespass. They keep then a festival, which answers to our own New-Year&rsquo;s
+      day in Europe. Next morning, in accordance with custom, the King of the
+      Rain and the Queen of the Clouds were to be publicly slain, in order that
+      a new and more vigorous king and queen should be chosen in their place,
+      who might make the crops grow better and the sky more clement. In the
+      midst of this horrid ceremony, you and mademoiselle, by pure chance,
+      arrived. You were immediately selected by Tu-Kila-Kila, for some reason of
+      his own, which I do not sufficiently understand, but which is,
+      nevertheless, obvious to all the initiated, as the next representatives of
+      the rain-giving gods. You were presented to Heaven on their little
+      platform raised about the ground, and Heaven accepted you. Then you were
+      envisaged with the attributes of divinity; the care of the rain and the
+      clouds was made over to you; and immediately after, as soon as you were
+      gone, the old king and queen were laid on an altar near Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s
+      home, and slain with tomahawks. Their flesh was next hacked from their
+      bodies with knives, cooked, and eaten; their bones were thrown into the
+      sea, the mother of all waters, as the natives call it. And that is the
+      fate, I fear the inevitable fate, that will befall you and mademoiselle at
+      these wretches&rsquo; hands about the commencement of a fresh season.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix knew the worst now, and bent his head in silence. His worst fears
+      were confirmed; but, after all, even this knowledge was better than so
+      much uncertainty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And now that he knew when &ldquo;his time was up,&rdquo; as the natives
+      phrased it, he would know when to redeem his promise to Muriel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0016" id="link2HCH0016"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XVI. &mdash; A VERY FAINT CLUE.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you hinted at some hope, some chance of escape,&rdquo; Felix
+      cried at last, looking up from the ground and mastering his emotion.
+      &ldquo;What now is that hope? Conceal nothing from me.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur,&rdquo; the Frenchman answered, shrugging his shoulders
+      with an expression of utter impotence, &ldquo;I have as good reasons for
+      wishing to find out all that as even you can have. <i>Your</i> secret is
+      <i>my</i> secret; but with all my pains and astuteness I have been unable
+      to discover it. The natives are reticent, very reticent indeed, about all
+      these matters. They fear taboo; and they fear Tu-Kila-Kila. The women, to
+      be sure, in a moment of expansion, might possibly tell one; but, then, the
+      women, unfortunately, are not admitted to the mysteries. They know no more
+      of all these things than we do. The most I have been able to gather for
+      certain is this&mdash;that on the discovery of the secret depend
+      Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s life and power. Every Boupari man knows this Great
+      Taboo; it is communicated to him in the assembly of adults when he gets
+      tattooed and reaches manhood. But no Boupari man ever communicates it to
+      strangers; and for that reason, perhaps, as I believe, Tu-Kila-Kila often
+      chooses for Korong, as far as possible, those persons who are cast by
+      chance upon the island. It has always been the custom, so far as I can
+      make out, to treat castaways or prisoners taken in war as gods, and then
+      at the end of their term to kill them ruthlessly. This plan is popular
+      with the people at large, because it saves themselves from the dangerous
+      honors of deification; but it also serves Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s purpose,
+      because it usually elevates to Heaven those innocent persons who are
+      unacquainted with that fatal secret which is, as the natives say,
+      Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s death&mdash;his word of dismissal.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then if only we could find out this secret&mdash;&rdquo; Felix
+      cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His new friend interrupted him. &ldquo;What hope is there of your finding
+      it out, monsieur,&rdquo; he exclaimed, &ldquo;you, who have only a few
+      months to live&mdash;when I, who have spent nine long years of exile on
+      the island, and seen two Tu-Kila-Kilas rise and fall, have been unable,
+      with my utmost pains, to discover it? <i>Tenez</i>; you have no idea yet
+      of the superstitions of these people, or the difficulties that lie in the
+      way of fathoming them. Come this way to my aviary; I will show you
+      something that will help you to realize the complexities of the situation.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He rose and led the way to another cleared space at the back of the hut,
+      where several birds of gaudy plumage were fastened to perches on sticks by
+      leathery lashes of dried shark&rsquo;s skin, tied just above their talons.
+      &ldquo;I am the King of the Birds, monsieur, you must remember,&rdquo; the
+      Frenchman said, fondling one of his screaming <i>protégés</i>. &ldquo;These
+      are a few of my subjects. But I do not keep them for mere curiosity. Each
+      of them is the Soul of the tribe to which it belongs. This, for example&mdash;my
+      Cluseret&mdash;is the Soul of all the gray parrots; that that you see
+      yonder&mdash;Badinguet, I call him&mdash;is the Soul of the hawks; this,
+      my Mimi, is the Soul of the little yellow-crested kingfisher. My task as
+      King of the Birds is to keep a representative of each of these always on
+      hand; in which endeavor I am faithfully aided by the whole population of
+      the island, who bring me eggs and nests and young birds in abundance. If
+      the Soul of the little yellow kingfisher now were to die, without a
+      successor being found ready at once to receive and embody it, then the
+      whole race of little yellow kingfishers would vanish altogether; and if I
+      myself, the King of the Birds, who am, as it were, the Soul and life of
+      all of them, were to die without a successor being at hand to receive my
+      spirit, then all the race of birds, with one accord, would become extinct
+      forthwith and forever.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He moved among his pets easily, like a king among his subjects. Most of
+      them seemed to know him and love his presence. Presently, he came to one
+      very old parrot, quite different from any Felix had ever seen on any trees
+      in the island; it was a parrot with a black crest and a red mark on its
+      throat, half blind with age, and tottering on its pedestal. This solemn
+      old bird sat apart from all the others, nodding its head oracularly in the
+      sunlight, and blinking now and again with its white eyelids in a curious
+      senile fashion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Frenchman turned to Felix with an air of profound mystery. &ldquo;This
+      bird,&rdquo; he said, solemnly stroking its head with his hand, while the
+      parrot turned round to him and bit at his finger with half-doddering
+      affection&mdash;&ldquo;this bird is the oldest of all my birds&mdash;-is
+      it not so, Methuselah?&mdash;and illustrates well in one of its aspects
+      the superstition of these people. Yes, my friend, you are the last of a
+      kind now otherwise extinct, are you not, <i>mon vieux?</i> No, no, there&mdash;gently!
+      Once upon a time, the natives tell me, dozens of these parrots existed in
+      the island; they flocked among the trees, and were held very sacred; but
+      they were hard to catch and difficult to keep, and the Kings of the Birds,
+      my predecessors, failed to secure an heir and coadjutor to this one. So as
+      the Soul of the species, which you see here before you, grew old and
+      feeble, the whole of the race to which it belonged grew old and feeble
+      with it. One by one they withered away and died, till at last this
+      solitary specimen alone remained to vouch for the former existence of the
+      race in the island. Now, the islanders say, nothing but the Soul itself is
+      left; and when the Soul dies, the red-throated parrots will be gone
+      forever. One of my predecessors paid with his life in awful tortures for
+      his remissness in not providing for the succession to the soulship. I tell
+      you these things in order that you may see whether they cast any light for
+      you upon your own position; and also because the oldest and wisest natives
+      say that this parrot alone, among beasts or birds or uninitiated things,
+      knows the secret on which depends the life of the Tu-Kila-Kila for the
+      time being.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can the parrot speak?&rdquo; Felix asked, with profound emotion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur, he can speak, and he speaks frequently. But not one word
+      of all he says is comprehensible either to me or to any other living
+      being. His tongue is that of a forgotten nation. The islanders understand
+      him no more than I do. He has a very long sermon or poem, which he knows
+      by heart, in some unknown language, and he repeats it often at full length
+      from time to time, especially when he has eaten well and feels full and
+      happy. The oldest natives tell a romantic legend about this strange
+      recitation of the good Methuselah&mdash;I call him Methuselah because of
+      his great age&mdash;but I do not really know whether their tale is true or
+      purely fanciful. You never can trust these Polynesian traditions.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is the legend?&rdquo; Felix asked, with intense interest.
+      &ldquo;In an island where we find ourselves so girt round by mystery
+      within mystery, and taboo within taboo, as this, every key is worth
+      trying. It is well for us at least to learn everything we can about the
+      ideas of the natives. Who knows what clue may supply us at last with the
+      missing link, which will enable us to break through this intolerable
+      servitude?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, the story they tell us is this,&rdquo; the Frenchman replied,
+      &ldquo;though I have gathered it only a hint at a time, from very old men,
+      who declared at the same moment that some religious fear&mdash;of which
+      they have many&mdash;prevented them from telling me any further about it.
+      It seems that a long time ago&mdash;how many years ago nobody knows, only
+      that it was in the time of the thirty-ninth Tu-Kila-Kila, before the reign
+      of Lavita, the son of Sami&mdash;a strange Korong was cast up upon this
+      island by the waves of the sea, much as you and I have been in the present
+      generation. By accident, says the story, or else, as others aver, through
+      the indiscretion of a native woman who fell in love with him, and who
+      worried the taboo out of her husband, the stranger became acquainted with
+      the secret of Tu-Kila-Kila. As the natives themselves put it, he learned
+      the Death of the High God, and where in the world his Soul was hidden.
+      Thereupon, in some mysterious way or other, he became Tu-Kila-Kila
+      himself, and ruled as High God for ten years or more here on this island.
+      Now, up to that time, the legend goes on, none but the men of the island
+      knew the secret; they learned it as soon as they were initiated in the
+      great mysteries, which occur before a boy is given a spear and admitted to
+      the rank of complete manhood. But sometimes a woman was told the secret
+      wrongfully by her husband or her lover; and one such woman, apparently,
+      told the strange Korong, and so enabled him to become Tu-Kila-Kila.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But where does the parrot come in?&rdquo; Felix asked, with still
+      profounder excitement than ever. Something within him seemed to tell him
+      instinctively he was now within touch of the special key that must sooner
+      or later unlock the mystery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; the Frenchman went on, still stroking the parrot
+      affectionately with his hand, and smoothing down the feathers on its
+      ruffled back, &ldquo;the strange Tu-Kila-Kila, who thus ruled in the
+      island, though he learned to speak Polynesian well, had a language of his
+      own, a language of the birds, which no man on earth could ever talk with
+      him. So, to beguile his time and to have someone who could converse with
+      him in his native dialect, he taught this parrot to speak his own tongue,
+      and spent most of his days in talking with it and fondling it. At last,
+      after he had instructed it by slow degrees how to repeat this long sermon
+      or poem&mdash;which I have often heard it recite in a sing-song voice from
+      beginning to end&mdash;his time came, as they say, and he had to give way
+      to another Tu-Kila-Kila; for the Bouparese have a proverb like our own
+      about the king, &lsquo;The High God is dead; may the High God live
+      forever!&rsquo; But before he gave up his Soul to his successor, and was
+      eaten or buried, whichever is the custom, he handed over his pet to the
+      King of the Birds, strictly charging all future bearers of that divine
+      office to care for the parrot as they would care for a son or a daughter.
+      And so the natives make much of the parrot to the present day, saying he
+      is greater than any, save a Korong or a god, for he is the Soul of a dead
+      race, summing it up in himself, and he knows the secret of the Death of
+      Tu-Kila-Kila.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you can&rsquo;t tell me what language he speaks?&rdquo; Felix
+      asked with a despairing gesture. It was terrible to stand thus within
+      measurable distance of the secret which might, perhaps, save Muriel&rsquo;s
+      life, and yet be perpetually balked by wheel within wheel of more than
+      Egyptian mystery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who can say?&rdquo; the Frenchman answered, shrugging his shoulders
+      helplessly. &ldquo;It isn&rsquo;t Polynesian; that I know well, for I
+      speak Bouparese now like a native of Boupari; and it isn&rsquo;t the only
+      other language spoken at the present day in the South Seas&mdash;the
+      Melanesian of New Caledonia&mdash;for that I learned well from the Kanakas
+      while I was serving my time as a convict among them. All we can say for
+      certain is that it may, perhaps, be some very ancient tongue. For parrots,
+      we know, are immensely long-lived. Some of them, it is said, exceed their
+      century. Is it not so, eh, my friend Methuselah?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0017" id="link2HCH0017"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XVII. &mdash; FACING THE WORST.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Muriel, meanwhile, sat alone in her hut, frightened at Felix&rsquo;s
+      unexpected disappearance so early in the morning, and anxiously awaiting
+      her lover&rsquo;s return, for she made no pretences now to herself that
+      she did not really love Felix. Though the two might never return to Europe
+      to be husband and wife, she did not doubt that before the eye of Heaven
+      they were already betrothed to one another as truly as though they had
+      plighted their troth in solemn fashion. Felix had risked his life for her,
+      and had brought all this misery upon himself in the attempt to save her.
+      Felix was now all the world that was left her. With Felix, she was happy,
+      even on this horrible island; without him, she was miserable and
+      terrified, no matter what happened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mali,&rdquo; she cried to her faithful attendant, as soon as she
+      found Felix was missing from his tent, &ldquo;what&rsquo;s become of Mr.
+      Thurstan? Where can he be gone, I wonder, this morning?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You no fear, Missy Queenie,&rdquo; Mali answered, with the childish
+      confidence of the native Polynesian. &ldquo;Mistah Thurstan, him gone to
+      see man-a-oui-oui, the King of the Birds. Month of Birds finish last
+      night; man-a-oui-oui no taboo any longer. King of the Birds keep very old
+      parrot, Boupari folk tell me; and old parrot very wise, know how to make
+      Tu-Kila-Kila. Mistah Thurstan, him gone to find man-a-oui-oui. Parrot tell
+      him plenty wise thing. Parrot wiser than Boupari people; know very good
+      medicine; wise like Queensland lady and gentleman.&rdquo; And Mali set
+      herself vigorously to work to wash the wooden platter on which she served
+      up her mistress&rsquo;s yam for breakfast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was curious to Muriel to see how readily Mali had slipped from savagery
+      to civilization in Queensland, and how easily she had slipped back again
+      from civilization to savagery in Boupari. In waiting on her mistress she
+      was just the ordinary trained native Australian servant; in every other
+      respect she was the simple unadulterated heathen Polynesian. She
+      recognized in Muriel a white lady of the English sort, and treated her
+      within the hut as white ladies were invariably treated in Queensland; but
+      she considered that at Boupari one must do as Boupari does, and it never
+      for a moment occurred to her simple mind to doubt the omnipotence of
+      Tu-Kila-Kila in his island realm any more than she had doubted the
+      omnipotence of the white man and his local religion in their proper place
+      (as she thought it) in Queensland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An hour or two passed before Felix returned. At last he arrived, very
+      white and pale, and Muriel saw at once by the mere look on his face that
+      he had learned some terrible news at the Frenchman&rsquo;s.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you found him?&rdquo; she cried, taking his hand in hers, but
+      hardly daring to ask the fatal question at once.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Felix, sitting down, as pale as a ghost, answered faintly, &ldquo;Yes,
+      Muriel, I found him!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And he told you everything?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Everything he knew, my poor child. Oh, Muriel, Muriel, don&rsquo;t
+      ask me what it is. It&rsquo;s too terrible to tell you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Muriel clasped her white hands together, held bloodless downward, and
+      looked at him fixedly. &ldquo;Mali, you can go,&rdquo; she said. And the
+      Shadow, rising up with childish confidence, glided from the hut, and left
+      them, for the first time since their arrival on the central island, alone
+      together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Muriel looked at him once more with the same deadly fixed look. &ldquo;With
+      you, Felix,&rdquo; she said, slowly, &ldquo;I can bear or dare anything. I
+      feel as if the bitterness of death were past long ago. I know it must
+      come. I only want to be quite sure when.... And besides, you must
+      remember, I have your promise.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix clasped his own hands despondently in return, and gazed across at
+      her from his seat a few feet off in unspeakable misery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Muriel,&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;I couldn&rsquo;t. I haven&rsquo;t
+      the heart. I daren&rsquo;t.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Muriel rose and laid her hand solemnly on his arm. &ldquo;You will!&rdquo;
+      she answered, boldly. &ldquo;You can! You must! I know I can trust your
+      promise for that. This moment, if you like. I would not shrink. But you
+      will never let me fall alive into the hands of those wretches. Felix, from
+      <i>your</i> hand I could stand anything. I&rsquo;m not afraid to die. I
+      love you too dearly.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix held her white little wrist in his grasp and sobbed like a child.
+      Her very bravery and confidence seemed to unman him, utterly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked at him once more. &ldquo;When?&rdquo; she asked, quietly, but
+      with lips as pale as death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In about four months from now,&rdquo; Felix answered, endeavoring
+      to be calm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And they will kill us both?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, both. I think so.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Together?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Together.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Muriel drew a deep sigh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you know the day beforehand?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. The Frenchman told me it. He has known others killed in the
+      self-same fashion.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then, Felix&mdash;-the night before it comes, you will promise me,
+      will you?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Muriel, Muriel, I could never dare to kill you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She laid her hand soothingly on his. She stroked him gently. &ldquo;You
+      are a man,&rdquo; she said, looking up into his eyes with confidence.
+      &ldquo;I trust you. I believe in you. I know you will never let these
+      savages hurt me.... Felix, in spite of everything, I&rsquo;ve been happier
+      since we came to this island together than ever I have been in my life
+      before. I&rsquo;ve had my wish. I didn&rsquo;t want to miss in life the
+      one thing that life has best worth giving. I haven&rsquo;t missed it now.
+      I know I haven&rsquo;t; for I love you, and you love me. After that, I can
+      die, and die gladly. If I die with <i>you</i>, that&rsquo;s all I ask.
+      These seven or eight terrible weeks have made me feel somehow unnaturally
+      calm. When I came here first I lived all the time in an agony of terror. I&rsquo;ve
+      got over the agony of terror now. I&rsquo;m quite resigned and happy. All
+      I ask is to be saved&mdash;by you&mdash;from the cruel hands of these
+      hateful cannibals.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix raised her white hand just once to his lips. It was the first time
+      he had ever ventured to kiss her. He kissed it fervently. She let it drop
+      as if dead by her side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now tell me all that happened,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m
+      strong enough to bear it. I feel such a woman now&mdash;so wise and calm.
+      These few weeks have made me grow from a girl into a woman all at once.
+      There&rsquo;s nothing I daren&rsquo;t hear, if you&rsquo;ll tell me it,
+      Felix.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix took up her hand again and held it in his, as he narrated the whole
+      story of his visit to the Frenchman. When Muriel had heard it, she said
+      once more, slowly, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think there&rsquo;s any hope in
+      all these wild plans of playing off superstition against superstition. To
+      my mind there are only two chances left for us now. One is to concoct with
+      the Frenchman some means of getting away by canoe from the island&mdash;I&rsquo;d
+      rather trust the sea than the tender mercy of these dreadful people; the
+      other is to keep a closer lookout than ever for the merest chance of a
+      passing steamer.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix drew a deep sigh. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid neither&rsquo;s much use,&rdquo;
+      he said. &ldquo;If we tried to get away, dogged as we are, day and night,
+      by our Shadows, the natives would follow us with their war-canoes in
+      battle array and hack us to pieces; for Peyron says that, regarding us as
+      gods, they think the rain would vanish from their island forever if once
+      they allowed us to get away alive and carry the luck with us. And as to
+      the steamers, we haven&rsquo;t seen a trace of one since we left the
+      Australasian. Probably it was only by the purest accident that even she
+      ever came so close in to Boupari.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At any rate,&rdquo; Muriel cried, still clasping his hand tight,
+      and letting the tears now trickle slowly down her pale white cheeks,
+      &ldquo;we can talk it all over some day with M. Peyron.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We can talk it over to-day,&rdquo; Felix answered, &ldquo;if it
+      comes to that; for Peyron means to step round, he says, a little later in
+      the afternoon, to pay his respects to the first white lady he has ever
+      seen since he left New Caledonia.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0018" id="link2HCH0018"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XVIII. &mdash; TU-KILA-KILA PLAYS A CARD.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Before the Frenchman could carry out his plan, however, he was himself the
+      recipient of the high honor of a visit from his superior god and chief,
+      Tu-Kila-Kila.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Every day and all day long, save on a few rare occasions when special
+      duties absolved him, the custom and religion of the islanders prescribed
+      that their supreme incarnate deity should keep watch and ward without
+      cessation over the great spreading banyan-tree that overshadowed with its
+      dark boughs his temple-palace. High god as he was held to be, and
+      all-powerful within the limits of his own strict taboos, Tu-Kila-Kila was
+      yet as rigidly bound within those iron laws of custom and religious usage
+      as the meanest and poorest of his subject worshippers. From sunrise to
+      sunset, and far on into the night, the Pillar of Heaven was compelled to
+      prowl up and down, with spear in hand and tomahawk at side, as Felix had
+      so often seen him, before the sacred trunk, of which he appeared to be in
+      some mysterious way the appointed guardian. His very power, it seemed, was
+      intimately bound up with the performance of that ceaseless and irksome
+      duty; he was a god in whose hands the lives of his people were but as dust
+      in the balance; but he remained so only on the onerous condition of pacing
+      to and fro, like a sentry, forever before the still more holy and
+      venerable object he was chosen to protect from attack or injury. Had he
+      failed in his task, had he slumbered at his post, all god though he might
+      be, his people themselves would have risen in a body and torn him limb
+      from limb before their ancestral fetich as a sacrilegious pretender.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At certain times and seasons, however, as for example at all high feasts
+      and festivals, Tu-Kila-Kila had respite for a while from this constant
+      treadmill of mechanical divinity. Whenever the moon was at the
+      half-quarter, or the planets were in lucky conjunctions, or a red glow lit
+      up the sky by night, or the sacred sacrificial fires of human flesh were
+      lighted, then Tu-Kila-Kila could lay aside his tomahawk and spear, and
+      become for a while as the islanders, his fellows, were. At other times,
+      too, when he went out in state to visit the lesser deities of his court,
+      the King of Fire and the King of Water made a solemn taboo before He left
+      his home, which protected the sacred tree from aggression during its
+      guardian&rsquo;s absence. Then Tu-Kila-Kila, shaded by his divine
+      umbrella, and preceded by the noise of the holy tom-toms, could go like a
+      monarch over all parts of his realm, giving such orders as he pleased
+      (within the limits of custom) to his inferior officers. It was in this way
+      that he now paid his visit to M. Jules Peyron, King of the Birds. And he
+      did so for what to him were amply sufficient reasons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It had not escaped Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s keen eye, as he paced among the
+      skeletons in his yard that morning, that Felix Thurstan, the King of the
+      Rain, had taken his way openly toward the Frenchman&rsquo;s quarters. He
+      felt pretty sure, therefore, that Felix had by this time learned another
+      white man was living on the island; and he thought it an ominous fact that
+      the new-comer should make his way toward his fellow-European&rsquo;s hut
+      on the very first morning when the law of taboo rendered such a visit
+      possible. The savage is always by nature suspicious; and Tu-Kila-Kila had
+      grounds enough of his own for suspicion in this particular instance. The
+      two white men were surely brewing mischief together for the Lord of Heaven
+      and Earth, the Illuminer of the Glowing Light of the Sun; he must make
+      haste and see what plan they were concocting against the sacred tree and
+      the person of its representative, the King of Plants and of the Host of
+      Heaven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it isn&rsquo;t so easy to make haste when all your movements are
+      impeded and hampered by endless taboos and a minutely annoying ritual.
+      Before Tu-Kila-Kila could get himself under way, sacred umbrella,
+      tom-toms, and all, it was necessary for the King of Fire and the King of
+      Water to make taboo on an elaborate scale with their respective elements;
+      and so by the time the high god had reached M. Jules Peyron&rsquo;s
+      garden, Felix Thurstan had already some time since returned to Muriel&rsquo;s
+      hut and his own quarters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila approached the King of the Birds, amid loud clapping of
+      hands, with considerable haughtiness. To say the truth, there was no love
+      lost between the cannibal god and his European subordinate. The savage,
+      puffed up as he was in his own conceit, had nevertheless always an
+      uncomfortable sense that, in his heart of hearts, the impassive Frenchman
+      had but a low opinion of him. So he invariably tried to make up by the
+      solemnity of his manner and the loudness of his assertions for any
+      trifling scepticism that might possibly exist in the mind of his follower.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On this particular occasion, as he reached the Frenchman&rsquo;s plot,
+      Tu-Kila-Kila stepped forward across the white taboo-line with a suspicious
+      and peering eye. &ldquo;The King of the Rain has been here,&rdquo; he
+      said, in a pompous tone, as the Frenchman rose and saluted him
+      ceremoniously. &ldquo;Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s eyes are sharp. They never
+      sleep. The sun is his sight. He beholds all things. You cannot hide aught
+      in heaven or earth from the knowledge of him that dwells in heaven. I look
+      down upon land and sea, and spy out all that takes place or is planned in
+      them. I am very holy and very cruel. I see all earth and I drink the blood
+      of all men. The King of the Rain has come this morning to visit the King
+      of the Birds. Where is he now? What has your divinity done with him?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He spoke from under the sheltering cover of his veiled umbrella. The
+      Frenchman looked back at him with as little love as Tu-Kila-Kila himself
+      would have displayed had his face been visible. &ldquo;Yes, you are a very
+      great god,&rdquo; he answered, in the conventional tone of Polynesian
+      adulation, with just a faint under-current of irony running through his
+      accent as he spoke. &ldquo;You say the truth. You do, indeed, know all
+      things. What need for me, then, to tell you, whose eye is the sun, that my
+      brother, the King of the Rain, has been here and gone again? You know it
+      yourself. Your eye has looked upon it. My brother was indeed with me. He
+      consulted me as to the showers I should need from his clouds for the
+      birds, my subjects.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And where is he gone now?&rdquo; Tu-Kila-Kila asked, without
+      attempting to conceal the displeasure in his tone, for he more than half
+      suspected the Frenchman of a sacrilegious and monstrous design of chaffing
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The King of the Birds bowed low once more. &ldquo;Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s
+      glance is keener than my hawk&rsquo;s,&rdquo; he answered, with the
+      accustomed Polynesian imagery. &ldquo;He sees over the land with a glance,
+      like my parrots, and over the sea with sharp sight, like my albatrosses.
+      He knows where my brother, the King of the Rain, has gone. For me, who am
+      the least among all the gods, I sit here on my perch and blink like a
+      crow. I do not know these things. They are too high and too deep for me.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila did not like the turn the conversation was taking. Before his
+      own attendants such hints, indeed, were almost dangerous. Once let the
+      savage begin to doubt, and the Moral Order goes with a crash immediately.
+      Besides, he must know what these white men had been talking about. &ldquo;Fire
+      and Water,&rdquo; he said in a loud voice, turning round to his two chief
+      satellites, &ldquo;go far down the path, and beat the tom-toms. Fence off
+      with flood and flame the airy height where the King of the Birds lives;
+      fence it off from all profane intrusion. I wish to confer in secret with
+      this god, my brother. When we gods talk together, it is not well that
+      others should hear our converse. Make a great Taboo. I, Tu-Kila-Kila,
+      myself have said it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fire and Water, bowing low, backed down the path, beating tom-toms as they
+      went, and left the savage and the Frenchman alone together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As soon as they were gone, Tu-Kila-Kila laid aside his umbrella with a
+      positive sigh of relief. Now his fellow-countrymen were well out of the
+      way, his manner altered in a trice, as if by magic. Barbarian as he was,
+      he was quite astute enough to guess that Europeans cared nothing in their
+      hearts for all his mumbo-jumbo. He believed in it himself, but they did
+      not, and their very unbelief made him respect and fear them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now that we two are alone,&rdquo; he said, glancing carelessly
+      around him, &ldquo;we two who are gods, and know the world well&mdash;we
+      two who see everything in heaven or earth&mdash;there is no need for
+      concealment&mdash;we may talk as plainly as we will with one another.
+      Come, tell me the truth! The new white man has seen you?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has seen me, yes, certainly,&rdquo; the Frenchman admitted,
+      taking a keen look deep into the savage&rsquo;s cunning eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does he speak your language&mdash;the language of birds?&rdquo;
+      Tu-Kila-Kila asked once more, with insinuating cunning. &ldquo;I have
+      heard that the sailing gods are of many languages. Are you and he of one
+      speech or two? Aliens, or countrymen?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He speaks my language as he speaks Polynesian,&rdquo; the Frenchman
+      replied, keeping his eye firmly fixed on his doubtful guest, &ldquo;but it
+      is not his own. He has a tongue apart&mdash;the tongue of an island not
+      far from my country, which we call England.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila drew nearer, and dropped his voice to a confidential whisper.
+      &ldquo;Has he seen the Soul of all dead parrots?&rdquo; he asked, with
+      keen interest in his voice. &ldquo;The parrot that knows Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s
+      secret? That one over there&mdash;the old, the very sacred one?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      M. Peyron gazed round his aviary carelessly. &ldquo;Oh, that one,&rdquo;
+      he answered, with a casual glance at Methuselah, as though one parrot or
+      another were much the same to him. &ldquo;Yes, I think he saw it. I
+      pointed it out to him, in fact, as the oldest and strangest of all my
+      subjects.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s countenance fell. &ldquo;Did he hear it speak?&rdquo;
+      he asked, in evident alarm. &ldquo;Did it tell him the story of
+      Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s secret?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, it didn&rsquo;t speak,&rdquo; the Frenchman answered. &ldquo;It
+      seldom does now. It is very old. And if it did, I don&rsquo;t suppose the
+      King of the Rain would have understood one word of it. Look here, great
+      god, allay your fears. You&rsquo;re a terrible coward. I expect the real
+      fact about the parrot is this: it is the last of its own race; it speaks
+      the language of some tribe of men who once inhabited these islands, but
+      are now extinct. No human being at present alive, most probably, knows one
+      word of that forgotten language.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You think not?&rdquo; Tu-Kila-Kila asked, a little relieved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am the King of the Birds, and I know the voices of my subjects by
+      heart; I assure you it is as I say,&rdquo; M. Peyron answered, drawing
+      himself up solemnly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila looked askance, with something very closely approaching a
+      wink in his left eye. &ldquo;We two are both gods,&rdquo; he said, with a
+      tinge of irony in his tone. &ldquo;We know what that means.... <i>I</i> do
+      not feel so certain.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stood close by the parrot with itching fingers. &ldquo;It is very, very
+      old,&rdquo; he went on to himself, musingly. &ldquo;It can&rsquo;t live
+      long. And then&mdash;none but Boupari men will know the secret.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he spoke he darted a strange glance of hatred toward the unconscious
+      bird, the innocent repository, as he firmly believed, of the secret that
+      doomed him. The Frenchman had turned his back for a moment now, to fetch
+      out a stool. Tu-Kila-Kila, casting a quick, suspicious eye to the right
+      and left, took a step nearer. The parrot sat mumbling on its perch,
+      inarticulately, putting its head on one side, and blinking its
+      half-blinded eyes in the bright tropical sunshine. Tu-Kila-Kila paused
+      irresolute before its face for a second. If he only dared&mdash;one wring
+      of the neck&mdash;one pinch of his finger and thumb almost!&mdash;and all
+      would be over. But he dared not! he dared not! Your savage is overawed by
+      the blind terrors of taboo. His predecessor, some elder Tu-Kila-Kila of
+      forgotten days, had laid a great charm upon that parrot&rsquo;s life.
+      Whoever hurt it was to die an awful death of unspeakable torment. The King
+      of the Birds had special charge to guard it. If even the Cannibal God
+      himself wrought it harm, who could tell what judgment might fall upon him
+      forthwith, what terrible vengeance the dead Tu-Kila-Kila might wreak upon
+      him in his ghostly anger? And that dead Tu-Kila-Kila was his own Soul! His
+      own Soul might flare up within him in some mystic way and burn him to
+      ashes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And yet&mdash;suppose this hateful new-comer, the King of the Rain, whom
+      he had himself made Korong on purpose to get rid of him the more easily,
+      and so had elevated into his own worst potential enemy&mdash;suppose this
+      new-comer, the King of the Rain, were by chance to speak that other
+      dialect of the bird-language, which the King of the Birds himself knew
+      not, but which the parrot had learned from his old master, the ancient
+      Tu-Kila-Kila of other days, and in which the bird still recited the secret
+      of the sacred tree and the Death of the Great God&mdash;ah, then he might
+      still have to fight hard for his divinity. He gazed angrily at the bird.
+      Methuselah blinked, and put his head on one side, and looked craftily
+      askance at him. Tu-Kila-Kila hated it, that insolent creature. Was he not
+      a god, and should he be thus bearded in his own island by a mere Soul of
+      dead birds, a poor, wretched parrot? But the curse! What might not that
+      portend? Ah, well, he would risk it. Glancing around him once more to the
+      right and left, to make sure that nobody was looking, the cunning savage
+      put forth his hand stealthily, and tried with a friendly caress to seize
+      the parrot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a moment, before he had time to know what was happening, Methuselah&mdash;sleepy
+      old dotard as he seemed&mdash;had woke up at once to a sense of danger.
+      Turning suddenly round upon the sleek, caressing hand, he darted his beak
+      with a vicious peck at his assailant, and bit the divine finger of the
+      Pillar of Heaven as carelessly as he would have bitten any child on
+      Boupari. Tu-Kila-Kila, thunder-struck, drew back his arm with a start of
+      surprise and a loud cry of pain. The bird had wounded him. He shook his
+      hand and stamped. Blood was dropping on the ground from the man-god&rsquo;s
+      finger. He hardly knew what strange evil this omen of harm might portend
+      for the world. The Soul of all dead parrots had carried out the curse, and
+      had drawn red drops from the sacred veins of Tu-Kila-Kila.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One must be a savage one&rsquo;s self, and superstitious at that, fully to
+      understand the awful significance of this deadly occurrence. To draw blood
+      from a god, and, above all, to let that blood fall upon the dust of the
+      ground, is the very worst luck&mdash;too awful for the human mind to
+      contemplate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the same moment, the parrot, awakened by the unexpected attack, threw
+      back its head on its perch, and, laughing loud and long to itself in its
+      own harsh way, began to pour forth a whole volley of oaths in a guttural
+      language, of which neither Tu-Kila-Kila nor the Frenchman understood one
+      syllable. And at the same moment, too, M. Peyron himself, recalled from
+      the door of his hut by Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s sharp cry of pain and by his
+      liege subject&rsquo;s voluble flow of loud speech and laughter, ran up all
+      agog to know what was the matter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila, with an effort, tried to hide in his robe his wounded
+      finger. But the Frenchman caught at the meaning of the whole scene at
+      once, and interposed himself hastily between the parrot and its assailant.
+      &ldquo;<i>Hé!</i> my Methuselah,&rdquo; he cried, in French, stroking the
+      exultant bird with his hand, and smoothing its ruffled feathers, &ldquo;did
+      he try to choke you, then? Did he try to get over you? That was a brave
+      bird! You did well, <i>mon ami</i>, to bite him!... No, no, Life of the
+      World, and Measurer of the Sun&rsquo;s Course,&rdquo; he went on, in
+      Polynesian, &ldquo;you shall not go near him. Keep your distance, I beg of
+      you. You may be a high god&mdash;though you were a scurvy wretch enough,
+      don&rsquo;t you recollect, when you were only Lavita, the son of Sami&mdash;but
+      I know your tricks. Hands off from my birds, say I. A curse is on the head
+      of the Soul of dead parrots. You tried to hurt him, and see how the curse
+      has worked itself out! The blood of the great god, the Pillar of Heaven,
+      has stained the gray dust of the island of Boupari.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila stood sucking his finger, and looking the very picture of the
+      most savage sheepishness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0019" id="link2HCH0019"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIX. &mdash; DOMESTIC BLISS.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila went home that day in a very bad humor. The portent of the
+      bitten finger had seriously disturbed him. For, strange as it sounds to
+      us, he really believed himself in his own divinity; and the bare thought
+      that the holy soil of earth should be dabbled and wet with the blood of a
+      god gave him no little uneasiness in his own mind on his way homeward.
+      Besides, what would his people think of it if they found it out? At all
+      hazards almost, he must strive to conceal this episode of the bite from
+      the men of Boupari. A god who gets wounded, and, worse still, gets wounded
+      in the very act of trying to break a great taboo laid on by himself in a
+      previous incarnation&mdash;such a god undoubtedly lays himself open to the
+      gravest misapprehensions on the part of his worshippers. Indeed, it was
+      not even certain whether his people, if they knew, would any longer regard
+      him as a god at all. The devotion of savages is profound, but it is far
+      from personal. When deities pass so readily from one body to another, you
+      must always keep a sharp lookout lest the great spirit should at any
+      minute have deserted his earthly tabernacle, and have taken up his abode
+      in a fresh representative. Honor the gods by all means; but make sure at
+      the same time what particular house they are just then inhabiting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the hour of siesta in Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s tent. For a short space
+      in the middle of the day, during the heat of the sun, while Fire and
+      Water, with their embers and their calabash, sat on guard in a porch by
+      the bamboo gate, Tu-Kila-Kila, Pillar of Heaven and Threshold of Earth,
+      had respite for a while from his daily task of guarding the sacred banyan,
+      and could take his ease after his meal in his own quarters. While that
+      precious hour of taboo lasted, no wandering dragon or spirit of the air
+      could hurt the holy tree, and no human assailant dare touch or approach
+      it. Even the disease-making gods, who walk in the pestilence, could not
+      blight or wither it. At all other times Tu-Kila-Kila mounted guard over
+      his tree with a jealousy that fairly astonished Felix Thurstan&rsquo;s
+      soul; for Felix Thurstan only dimly understood as yet how implicitly
+      Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s own life and office were bound up with the
+      inviolability of the banyan he protected.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Within the hut, during that playtime of siesta, while the lizards (who are
+      also gods) ran up and down the wall, and puffed their orange throats,
+      Tu-Kila-Kila lounged at his ease that afternoon, with one of his many
+      wives&mdash;a tall and beautiful Polynesian woman, lithe and supple, as is
+      the wont of her race, and as exquisitely formed in every limb and feature
+      as a sculptured Greek goddess. A graceful wreath of crimson hibiscus
+      adorned her shapely head, round which her long and glossy black hair was
+      coiled in great rings with artistic profusion. A festoon of blue flowers
+      and dark-red dracæna leaves hung like a chaplet over her olive-brown neck
+      and swelling bust. One breadth of native cloth did duty for an apron or
+      girdle round her waist and hips. All else was naked. Her plump brown arms
+      were set off by the green and crimson of the flowers that decked her.
+      Tu-Kila-Kila glanced at his slave with approving eyes. He always liked
+      Ula; she pleased him the best of all his women. And she knew his ways,
+      too: she never contradicted him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Among savages, guile is woman&rsquo;s best protection. The wife who knows
+      when to give way with hypocritical obedience, and when to coax or wheedle
+      her yielding lord, runs the best chance in the end for her life. Her model
+      is not the oak, but the willow. She must be able to watch for the rising
+      signs of ill-humor in her master&rsquo;s mind, and guard against them
+      carefully. If she is wise, she keeps out of her husband&rsquo;s way when
+      his anger is aroused, but soothes and flatters him to the top of his bent
+      when his temper is just slightly or momentarily ruffled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Lord of Heaven and Earth is ill at ease,&rdquo; Ula murmured,
+      insinuatingly, as Tu-Kila-Kila winced once with the pain of his swollen
+      finger. &ldquo;What has happened today to the Increaser of Bread-Fruit? My
+      lord is sad. His eye is downcast. Who has crossed my master&rsquo;s will?
+      Who has dared to anger him?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila kept the wounded hand wrapped up in a soft leaf, like a
+      woolly mullein. All the way home he had been obliged to conceal it, and
+      disguise the pain he felt, lest Fire and Water should discover his secret.
+      For he dared not let his people know that the Soul of all dead parrots had
+      bitten his finger, and drawn blood from the sacred veins of the man-god.
+      But he almost hesitated now whether or not he should confide in Ula. A god
+      may surely trust his own wedded wives. And yet&mdash;such need to be
+      careful&mdash;women are so treacherous! He suspected Ula sometimes of
+      being a great deal too fond of that young man Toko, who used to be one of
+      the temple attendants, and whom he had given as Shadow accordingly to the
+      King of the Rain, so as to get rid of him altogether from among the crowd
+      of his followers. So he kept his own counsel for the moment, and disguised
+      his misfortune. &ldquo;I have been to see the King of the Birds this
+      morning,&rdquo; he said, in a grumbling voice; &ldquo;and I do not like
+      him. That God is too insolent. For my part I hate these strangers, one and
+      all. They have no respect for Tu-Kila-Kila like the men of Boupari. They
+      are as bad as atheists. They fear not the gods, and the customs of our
+      fathers are not in them.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ula crept nearer, with one lithe round arm laid caressingly close to her
+      master&rsquo;s neck. &ldquo;Then why do you make them Korong?&rdquo; she
+      asked, with feminine curiosity, like some wife who seeks to worm out of
+      her husband the secret of freemasonry. &ldquo;Why do you not cook them and
+      eat them at once, as soon as they arrive? They are very good food&mdash;so
+      white and fine. That last new-comer, now&mdash;the Queen of the Clouds&mdash;why
+      not eat her? She is plump and tender.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I like her,&rdquo; Tu-Kila-Kila responded, in a gloating tone.
+      &ldquo;I like her every way. I would have brought her here to my temple
+      and admitted her at once to be one of Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s wives&mdash;only
+      that Fire and Water would not have permitted me. They have too many
+      taboos, those awkward gods. I do not love them. But I make my strangers
+      Korong for a very wise reason. You women are fools; you understand
+      nothing; you do not know the mysteries. These things are a great deal too
+      high and too deep for you. You could not comprehend them. But men know
+      well why. They are wise; they have been initiated. Much more, then, do I,
+      who am the very high god&mdash;who eat human flesh and drink blood like
+      water&mdash;who cause the sun to shine and the fruits to grow&mdash;without
+      whom the day in heaven would fade and die out, and the foundations of the
+      earth would be shaken like a plantain leaf.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ula laid her soft brown hand soothingly on the great god&rsquo;s arm just
+      above the elbow. &ldquo;Tell me,&rdquo; she said, leaning forward toward
+      him, and looking deep into his eyes with those great speaking gray orbs of
+      hers; &ldquo;tell me, O Sustainer of the Equipoise of Heaven; I know you
+      are great; I know you are mighty; I know you are holy and wise and cruel;
+      but why must you let these sailing gods who come from unknown lands beyond
+      the place where the sun rises or sets&mdash;why must you let them so
+      trouble and annoy you? Why do you not at once eat them up and be done with
+      them? Is not their flesh sweet? Is not their blood red? Are they not a
+      dainty well fit for the banquet of Tu-Kila-Kila?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The savage looked at her for a moment and hesitated. A very beautiful
+      woman this Ula, certainly. Not one of all his wives had larger brown
+      limbs, or whiter teeth, or a deeper respect for his divine nature. He had
+      almost a mind&mdash;it was only Ula? Why not break the silence enjoined
+      upon gods toward women, and explain this matter to her? Not the great
+      secret itself, of course&mdash;the secret on which hung the Death and
+      Transmigration of Tu-Kila-Kila&mdash;oh, no; not that one. The savage was
+      far too cunning in his generation to intrust that final terrible Taboo to
+      the ears of a woman. But the reason why he made all strangers Korong. A
+      woman might surely be trusted with that&mdash;especially Ula. She was so
+      very handsome. And she was always so respectful to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, the fact of it is,&rdquo; he answered, laying his hand on her
+      neck, that plump brown neck of hers, under the garland of dracæna leaves,
+      and stroking it voluptuously, &ldquo;the sailing gods who happen upon this
+      island from time to time are made Korong&mdash;but hush! it is taboo.&rdquo;
+      He gazed around the hut suspiciously. &ldquo;Are all the others away?&rdquo;
+      he asked, in a frightened tone. &ldquo;Fire and Water would denounce me to
+      all my people if once they found I had told a taboo to a woman. And as for
+      you, they would take you, because you knew it, and would pull your flesh
+      from your bones with hot stone pincers!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ula rose and looked about her at the door of the tent. She nodded thrice;
+      then she glided back, serpentine, and threw herself gracefully, in a
+      statuesque pose, on the native mat beside him. &ldquo;Here, drink some
+      more kava,&rdquo; she cried, holding a bowl to his lips, and wheedling him
+      with her eyes. &ldquo;Kava is good; it is fit for gods. It makes them
+      royally drunk, as becomes great deities. The spirits of our ancestors
+      dwell in the bowl; when you drink of the kava they mount by degrees into
+      your heart and head. They inspire brave words. They give you thoughts of
+      heaven. Drink, my master, drink. The Ruler of the Sun in Heaven is
+      thirsty.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She lay propped on one elbow, with her face close to his; and offered him,
+      with one brown, irresistible hand, the intoxicating liquor. Tu-Kila-Kila
+      took the bowl, and drank a second time, for he had drunk of it once with
+      his dinner already. It was seldom he allowed himself the luxury of a
+      second draught of that very stupefying native intoxicant, for he knew too
+      well the danger of insecurely guarding his sacred tree; but on this
+      particular occasion, as on so many others in the collective life of
+      humanity, &ldquo;the woman tempted him,&rdquo; and he acted as she told
+      him. He drank it off deep. &ldquo;Ha, ha! that is good!&rdquo; he cried,
+      smacking his lips. &ldquo;That is a drink fit for a god. No woman can make
+      kava like you, Ula.&rdquo; He toyed with her arms and neck lazily once
+      more. &ldquo;You are the queen of my wives,&rdquo; he went on, in a dreamy
+      voice. &ldquo;I like you so well, that, plump as you are, I really
+      believe, Ula, I could never make up my mind to eat you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My lord is very gracious,&rdquo; Ula made answer, in a soft, low
+      tone, pretending to caress him. And for some minutes more she continued to
+      make much of him in the fulsome strain of Polynesian flattery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last the kava had clearly got into Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s head. Then Ula
+      bent forward once more and again attacked him. &ldquo;Now I know you will
+      tell me,&rdquo; she said, coaxingly, &ldquo;why you make them Korong. As
+      long as I live, I will never speak or hint of it to anybody anywhere. And
+      if I do&mdash;why, the remedy is near. I am your meat&mdash;take me and
+      eat me.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even cannibals are human; and at the touch of her soft hand, Tu-Kila-Kila
+      gave way slowly. &ldquo;I made them Korong,&rdquo; he answered, in rather
+      thick accents, &ldquo;because it is less dangerous for me to make them so
+      than to choose for the post from among our own islanders. Sooner or later,
+      my day must come; but I can put it off best by making my enemies out of
+      strangers who arrive upon our island, and not out of those of my own
+      household. All Boupari men who have been initiated know the terrible
+      secret&mdash;they know where lies the Death of Tu-Kila-Kila. The strangers
+      who come to us from the sun or the sea do not know it; and therefore my
+      life is safest with them. So I make them Korong whenever I can, to prolong
+      my own days, and to guard my secret.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And the Death of Tu-Kila-Kila?&rdquo; the woman whispered, very
+      low, still soothing his arm with her hand and patting his cheek softly
+      from time to time with a gentle, caressing motion. &ldquo;Tell me where
+      does that live? Who holds it in charge? Where is Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s
+      great spirit laid by in safety? I know it is in the tree; but where and in
+      what part of it?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila drew back with a little cry of surprise. &ldquo;You know it
+      is in the tree!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;You know my soul is kept there!
+      Why, Ula, who told you that? and you a woman! Bad medicine indeed! Some
+      man has been blabbing what he learned in the mysteries. If this should
+      reach the ears of the King of the Rain&mdash;&rdquo; he paused
+      mysteriously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What? What?&rdquo; Ula cried, seizing his hand in hers, and
+      pressing it hard to her bosom in her anxiety and eagerness. &ldquo;Tell me
+      the secret! Tell me!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a sudden sharp howl of darting pain, Tu-Kila-Kila withdrew his hand.
+      She had squeezed the finger the parrot had bitten, and blood began once
+      more to flow from it freely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A wild impulse of revenge came over the savage. He caught her by the neck
+      with his other hand, pressed her throat hard, till she was black in the
+      face, kicked her several times with ferocious rage, and then flung her
+      away from him to the other side of the hut with a fierce and
+      untranslatable native imprecation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ula, shaken and hurt, darted away toward the door, with a face of abject
+      terror. For every reason on earth she was intensely alarmed. Were it
+      merely as a matter of purely earthly fear, she had ground enough for
+      fright in having so roused the hasty anger of that powerful and implacable
+      creature. He would kill her and eat her with far less compunction than an
+      English farmer would kill and eat one of his own barnyard chickens. But
+      besides that, it terrified her not a little in more mysterious ways to see
+      the blood of a god falling upon the earth so freely. She knew not what
+      awful results to herself and her race might follow from so terrible a
+      desecration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, to her utter astonishment, the great god himself, mad with rage as he
+      was, seemed none the less almost as profoundly frightened and surprised as
+      she herself was. &ldquo;What did you do that for?&rdquo; he cried, now
+      sufficiently recovered for thought and speech, wringing his hand with
+      pain, and then popping his finger hastily into his mouth to ease it.
+      &ldquo;You are a clumsy thing. And you want to destroy me, too, with your
+      foolish clumsiness.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked at her and scowled. He was very angry. But the savage woman is
+      nothing if not quick-witted and politic. In a flash of intuition, Ula saw
+      at once he was more frightened than hurt; he was afraid of the effect of
+      this strange revelation upon his own reputation for supreme godship. With
+      every mark and gesture of deprecatory servility the woman sidled back to
+      his side like a whipped dog. For a second she looked down on the floor at
+      the drops of blood; then, without one word of warning or one instant&rsquo;s
+      hesitation, she bit her own finger hard till blood flowed from it freely.
+      &ldquo;I will show this to Fire and Water,&rdquo; she said, holding it up
+      before his eyes all red and bleeding. &ldquo;I will say you were angry
+      with me and bit me for a punishment, as you often do. They will never find
+      out it was the blood of a god. Have no fear for their eyes. Let me look at
+      your finger.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila, half appeased by her clever quickness, held his hand out
+      sulkily, like a disobedient child. Ula examined it close. &ldquo;A bite,&rdquo;
+      she said, shortly. &ldquo;A bite from a bird! a peck from a parrot.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila jerked out a surly assent. &ldquo;Yes, the Soul of all dead
+      parrots,&rdquo; he answered, with an angry glare. &ldquo;It bit me this
+      morning at the King of the Birds&rsquo;. A vicious brute. But no one else
+      saw it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ula put the finger up to her own mouth, and sucked the wound gently. Her
+      medicine stanched it. Then she took a thin leaf of the paper mulberry,
+      soft, cool, and soothing, and bound it round the place with a strip of the
+      lace-like inner bark, as deftly as any hospital nurse in London would have
+      done it. These savage women are capital hands in sickness. Tu-Kila-Kila
+      sat and sulked meanwhile, like a disappointed child. When Ula had
+      finished, she nodded her head and glided softly away. She knew her chance
+      of learning the secret was gone for the moment, and she had too much of
+      the guile of the savage woman to spoil her chances by loitering about
+      unnecessarily while her lord was in his present ungracious humor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As she stole from the hut, Tu-Kila-Kila, looking ruefully at his wounded
+      hand, and then at that light and supple retreating figure, muttered
+      sulkily to himself, with a very bad grace, &ldquo;the woman knows too
+      much. She nearly wormed my secret out of me. She knows that Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s
+      life and soul are bound up in the tree. She knows that I bled, and that
+      the parrot bit me. If she blabs, as women will do, mischief may come of
+      it. I am a great god, a very great god&mdash;keen, bloodthirsty, cruel.
+      And I like that woman. But it would be wiser and safer, perhaps, after
+      all, to forego my affection and to make a great feast of her.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Ula, looking back with a smile and a nod, and holding up her own
+      bitten and bleeding hand with a farewell shake, as if to remind her divine
+      husband of her promise to show it to Fire and Water, murmured low to
+      herself as she went, &ldquo;He is a very great god; a very great god, no
+      doubt; but I hate him, I hate him! He would eat me to-morrow if I didn&rsquo;t
+      coax him and wheedle him and keep him in a good temper. You want to be
+      sharp, indeed, to be the wife of a god. I got off to-day with the skin of
+      my teeth. He might have turned and killed me. If only I could find out the
+      Great Taboo, I would tell it to the stranger, the King of the Rain; and
+      then, perhaps, Tu-Kila-Kila would die. And the stranger would become
+      Tu-Kila-Kila in turn, and I would be one of his wives; and Toko, who is
+      his Shadow, would return again to the service of Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s
+      temple.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Fire, as she passed, was saying to Water, &ldquo;We are getting tired
+      in Boupari of Lavita, the son of Sami. If the luck of the island is not to
+      change, it is high time, I think, we should have a new Tu-Kila-Kila.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0020" id="link2HCH0020"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XX. &mdash; COUNCIL OF WAR.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      That same afternoon Muriel had a visitor. M. Jules Peyron, formerly of the
+      Collége de France, no longer a mere Polynesian god, but a French gentleman
+      of the Boulevards in voice and manner, came to pay his respects, as in
+      duty bound, to Mademoiselle Ellis. M. Peyron had performed his toilet
+      under trying circumstances, to the best of his ability. The remnants of
+      his European clothes, much patched and overhung with squares of native
+      tappa cloth, were hidden as much as possible by a wide feather cloak, very
+      savage in effect, but more seemly, at any rate, than the tattered garments
+      in which Felix had first found him in his own garden parterre. M. Peyron,
+      however, was fully aware of the defects of his costume, and profoundly
+      apologetic. &ldquo;It is with ten thousand regrets, mademoiselle,&rdquo;
+      he said, many times over, bowing low and simpering, &ldquo;that I venture
+      to appear in a lady&rsquo;s <i>salon</i>&mdash;for, after all, wherever a
+      European lady goes, there her <i>salon</i> follows her&mdash;in such a <i>tenue</i>
+      as that in which I am now compelled to present myself. <i>Mais que
+      voulez-vous? Nous ne sommes pas à Paris</i>!&rdquo; For to M. Peyron, as
+      innocent in his way as Mali herself, the whole world divided itself into
+      Paris and the Provinces.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nevertheless, it was touching to both the new-comers to see the Frenchman&rsquo;s
+      delight at meeting once more with civilized beings. &ldquo;Figure to
+      yourself, mademoiselle,&rdquo; he said, with true French effusion&mdash;&ldquo;figure
+      to yourself the joy and surprise with which I, this morning, receive
+      monsieur, your friend, at my humble cottage! For the first time after nine
+      years on this hateful island, I see again a European face; I hear again
+      the sound, the beautiful sound of that charming French language. My
+      emotion, believe me, was too profound for words. When monsieur was gone, I
+      retired to my hut, I sat down on the floor, I gave myself over to tears,
+      tears of joy and gratitude, to think I should once more catch a glimpse of
+      civilization! This afternoon, I ask myself, can I venture to go out and
+      pay my respects, thus attired, in these rags, to a European lady? For a
+      long time I doubt, I wonder, I hesitate. In my quality of Frenchman, I
+      would have wished to call in civilized costume upon a civilized household.
+      But what would you have? Necessity knows no law. I am compelled to
+      envelope myself in my savage robe of office as a Polynesian god&mdash;a
+      robe of office which, for the rest, is not without an interest of its own
+      for the scientific ethnologist. It belongs to me especially as King of the
+      Birds, and in it, in effect, is represented at least one feather of each
+      kind or color from every part of the body of every species of bird that
+      inhabits Boupari. I thus sum up, <i>pour ainsi dire</i>, in my official
+      costume all the birds of the island, as Tu-Kila-Kila, the very high god,
+      sums up, in his quaint and curious dress, the land and the sea, the trees
+      and the stones, earth and air, and fire and water.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Familiarity with danger begets at last a certain callous indifference.
+      Muriel was surprised in her own mind to discover how easily they could
+      chat with M. Peyron on such indifferent subjects, with that awful doom of
+      an approaching death hanging over them so shortly. But the fact was,
+      terrors of every kind had so encompassed them round since their arrival on
+      the island that the mere additional certainty of a date and mode of
+      execution was rather a relief to their minds than otherwise. It partook of
+      the nature of a reprieve, not of a sentence. Besides, this meeting with
+      another speaker of a European tongue seemed to them so full of promise and
+      hope that they almost forgot the terrors of their threatened end in their
+      discussion of possible schemes for escape to freedom. Even M. Peyron
+      himself, who had spent nine long years of exile in the island, felt that
+      the arrival of two new Europeans gave him some hope of effecting at last
+      his own retreat from this unendurable position. His talk was all of
+      passing steamers. If the Australasian had come near enough once to sight
+      the island, he argued, then the homeward-bound vessel, <i>en route</i> for
+      Honolulu, must have begun to take a new course considerably to the
+      eastward of the old navigable channel. If this were so, their obvious plan
+      was to keep a watch, day and night, for another passing Australian liner,
+      and whenever one hove in sight, to steal away to the shore, seize a stray
+      canoe, overpower, if possible, their Shadows, or give them the slip, and
+      make one bold stroke for freedom on the open ocean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      None of them could conceal from their own minds, to be sure, the extreme
+      difficulty of carrying out this programme. In the first place, it was a
+      toss-up whether they ever sighted another steamer at all; for during the
+      weeks they had already passed on the island, not a sign of one had
+      appeared from any quarter. Then, again, even supposing a steamer ever hove
+      in sight, what likelihood that they could make out for her in an open
+      canoe in time to attract attention before she had passed the island?
+      Tu-Kila-Kila would never willingly let them go; their Shadows would watch
+      them with unceasing care; the whole body of natives would combine together
+      to prevent their departure. If they ran away at all, they must run for
+      their lives; as soon as the islanders discovered they were gone, every
+      war-canoe in the place would be manned at once with bloodthirsty savages,
+      who would follow on their track with relentless persistence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As for Muriel, less prepared for such dangerous adventures than the two
+      men, she was rather inclined to attach a certain romantic importance (as a
+      girl might do) to the story of the parrot and the possible disclosures
+      which it could make if it could only communicate with them. The mysterious
+      element in the history of that unique bird attracted her fancy. &ldquo;The
+      only one of its race now left alive,&rdquo; she said, with slow
+      reflectiveness. &ldquo;Like Dolly Pentreath, the last old woman who could
+      speak Cornish! I wonder how long parrots ever live? Do you know at all,
+      monsieur? You are the King of the Birds&mdash;you ought to be an authority
+      on their habits and manners.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Frenchman smiled a gallant smile. &ldquo;Unhappily, mademoiselle,&rdquo;
+      he said, &ldquo;though, as a medical student, I took up to a certain
+      extent biological science in general at the Collége de France, I never
+      paid any special or peculiar attention in Paris to birds in particular.
+      But it is the universal opinion of the natives (if that counts for much)
+      that parrots live to a very great age; and this one old parrot of mine,
+      whom I call Methuselah on account of his advanced years, is considered by
+      them all to be a perfect patriarch. In effect, when the oldest men now
+      living on the island were little boys, they tell me that Methuselah was
+      already a venerable and much-venerated parrot. He must certainly have
+      outlived all the rest of his race by at least the best part of
+      three-quarters of a century. For the islanders themselves not infrequently
+      live, by unanimous consent, to be over a hundred.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I remember to have read somewhere,&rdquo; Felix said, turning it
+      over in his mind, &ldquo;that when Humboldt was travelling in the wilds of
+      South America he found one very old parrot in an Indian village, which,
+      the Indians assured him, spoke the language of an extinct tribe,
+      incomprehensible then by any living person. If I recollect aright,
+      Humboldt believed that particular bird must have lived to be nearly a
+      hundred and fifty.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is so, monsieur,&rdquo; the Frenchman answered. &ldquo;I
+      remember the case well, and have often recalled it. I recollect our
+      professor mentioning it one day in the course of his lectures. And I have
+      always mentally coupled that parrot of Humboldt&rsquo;s with my own old
+      friend and subject, Methuselah. However, that only impresses upon one more
+      fully the folly of hoping that we can learn anything worth knowing from
+      him. I have heard him recite his story many times over, though now he
+      repeats it less frequently than he used formerly to do; and I feel
+      convinced it is couched in some unknown and, no doubt, forgotten language.
+      It is a much more guttural and unpleasant tongue than any of the soft
+      dialects now spoken in Polynesia. It belonged, I am convinced, to that yet
+      earlier and more savage race which the Polynesians must have displaced;
+      and as such it is now, I feel certain, practically irrecoverable.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If they were more savage than the Polynesians,&rdquo; Muriel said,
+      with a profound sigh, &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sorry for anybody who fell into
+      their clutches.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what would not many philologists at home in England give,&rdquo;
+      Felix murmured, philosophically, &ldquo;for a transcript of the words that
+      parrot can speak&mdash;perhaps a last relic of the very earliest and most
+      primitive form of human language!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the very moment when these things were passing under the wattled roof
+      of Muriel&rsquo;s hut, it happened that on the taboo-space outside, Toko,
+      the Shadow, stood talking for a moment with Ula, the fourteenth wife of
+      the great Tu-Kila-Kila.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I never see you now, Toko,&rdquo; the beautiful Polynesian said,
+      leaning almost across the white line of coral-sand which she dared not
+      transgress. &ldquo;Times are dull at the temple since you came to be
+      Shadow to the white-faced stranger.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was for that that Tu-Kila-Kila sent me here,&rdquo; the Shadow
+      answered, with profound conviction. &ldquo;He is jealous, the great god.
+      He is bad. He is cruel. He wanted to get rid of me. So he sent me away to
+      the King of the Rain that I might not see you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ula pouted, and held up her wounded finger before his eyes coquettishly.
+      &ldquo;See what he did to me,&rdquo; she said, with a mute appeal for
+      sympathy&mdash;though in that particular matter the truth was not in her.
+      &ldquo;Your god was angry with me to-day because I hurt his hand, and he
+      clutched me by the throat, and almost choked me. He has a bad heart. See
+      how he bit me and drew blood. Some of these days, I believe, he will kill
+      me and eat me.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Shadow glanced around him suspiciously with an uneasy air. Then he
+      whispered low, in a voice half grudge, half terror, &ldquo;If he does, he
+      is a great god&mdash;he can search all the world&mdash;I fear him much,
+      but Toko&rsquo;s heart is warm. Let Tu-Kila-Kila look out for vengeance.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The woman glanced across at him open-eyed, with her enticing look. &ldquo;If
+      the King of the Rain, who is Korong, knew all the secret,&rdquo; she
+      murmured, slowly, &ldquo;he would soon be Tu-Kila-Kila himself; and you
+      and I could then meet together freely.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Shadow started. It was a terrible suggestion. &ldquo;You mean to say&mdash;&rdquo;
+      he cried; then fear overcame him, and, crouching down where he sat, he
+      gazed around him, terrified. Who could say that the wind would not report
+      his words to Tu-Kila-Kila?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ula laughed at his fears. &ldquo;Pooh,&rdquo; she answered, smiling.
+      &ldquo;You are a man; and yet you are afraid of a little taboo. I am a
+      woman; and yet if I knew the secret as you do, I would break taboo as
+      easily as I would break an egg-shell. I would tell the white-faced
+      stranger all&mdash;if only it would bring you and me together forever.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is a great risk, a very great risk,&rdquo; the Shadow answered,
+      trembling. &ldquo;Tu-Kila-Kila is a mighty god. He may be listening this
+      moment, and may pinch us to death by his spirits for our words, or burn us
+      to ashes with a flash of his anger.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The woman smiled an incredulous smile. &ldquo;If you had lived as near
+      Tu-Kila-Kila as I have,&rdquo; she answered, boldly, &ldquo;you would
+      think as little, perhaps, of his divinity as I do.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For even in Polynesia, superstitious as it is, no hero is a god to his
+      wives or his valets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0021" id="link2HCH0021"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXI. &mdash; METHUSELAH GIVES SIGN.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      All the hopes of the three Europeans were concentrated now on the bare
+      off-chance of a passing steamer. M. Peyron in particular was fully
+      convinced that, if the Australasian had found the inner channel
+      practicable, other ships in future would follow her example. With this
+      idea firmly fixed in his head, he arranged with Felix that one or other of
+      them should keep watch alternately by night as far as possible; and he
+      also undertook that a canoe should constantly be in readiness to carry
+      them away to the supposititious ship, if occasion arose for it. Muriel
+      took counsel with Mali on the question of rousing the Frenchman if a
+      steamer appeared, and they were the first to sight it; and Mali, in whom
+      renewed intercourse with white people had restored to some extent the
+      civilized Queensland attitude of mind, readily enough promised to assist
+      in their scheme, provided she was herself taken with them, and so relieved
+      from the terrible vengeance which would otherwise overtake her. &ldquo;If
+      Boupari man catch me,&rdquo; she said, in her simple, graphic, Polynesian
+      way, &ldquo;Boupari man kill me, and lay me in leaves, and cook me very
+      nice, and make great feast of me, like him do with Jani.&rdquo; From that
+      untimely end both Felix and Muriel promised faithfully, as far as in them
+      lay, to protect her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To communicate with M. Peyron by daytime, without arousing the
+      ever-wakeful suspicion of the natives, Felix hit upon an excellent plan.
+      He burnished his metal matchbox to the very highest polish it was capable
+      of taking, and then heliographed by means of sun-flashes on the Morse
+      code. He had learned the code in Fiji in the course of his official
+      duties; and he taught the Frenchman now readily enough how to read and
+      reply with the other half of the box, torn off for the purpose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was three or four days, however, before the two English wanderers
+      ventured to return M. Peyron&rsquo;s visit. They didn&rsquo;t wish to
+      attract too greatly the attention of the islanders. Gradually, as their
+      stay on the island went on, they learned the truth that Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s
+      eyes, as he himself had boasted, were literally everywhere. For he had
+      spies of his own, told off in every direction, who dogged the steps of his
+      victims unseen. Sometimes, as Felix and Muriel walked unsuspecting through
+      the jungle paths, closely followed by their Shadows, a stealthy brown
+      figure, crouched low to the ground, would cross the road for a moment
+      behind them, and disappear again noiselessly into the dense mass of
+      underbrush. Then Mali or Toko, turning round, all hushed, with a terrified
+      look, would murmur low to themselves, or to one another, &ldquo;There goes
+      one of the Eyes of Tu-Kila-Kila!&rdquo; It was only by slow degrees that
+      this system of espionage grew clear to the strangers; but as soon as they
+      had learned its reality and ubiquity, they felt at once how undesirable it
+      would be for them to excite the terrible man-god&rsquo;s jealousy and
+      suspicion by being observed too often in close personal intercourse with
+      their fellow-exile and victim, the Frenchman. It was this that made them
+      have recourse to the device of the heliograph.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So three or four days passed before Muriel dared to approach M. Peyron&rsquo;s
+      cottage. When she did at last go there with Felix, it was in the early
+      morning, before the fierce tropical sun, that beat full on the island, had
+      begun to exert its midday force and power. The path that led there lay
+      through the thick and tangled mass of brushwood which covered the greater
+      part of the island with its dense vegetation; it was overhung by huge
+      tree-ferns and broad-leaved Southern bushes, and abutted at last on the
+      little wind-swept knoll where the King of the Birds had his appropriate
+      dwelling-place. The Frenchman received them with studied Parisian
+      hospitality. He had decorated his arbor with fresh flowers for the
+      occasion, and bright tropical fruits, with their own green leaves, did
+      duty for the coffee or the absinthe of his fatherland on his homemade
+      rustic table. Yet in spite of all the rudeness of the physical
+      surroundings, they felt themselves at home again with this one exiled
+      European; the faint flavor of civilization pervaded and permeated the
+      Frenchman&rsquo;s hut after the unmixed savagery to which they had now
+      been so long accustomed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Muriel&rsquo;s curiosity, however, centred most about the mysterious old
+      parrot, of whose strange legend so much had been said to her. After they
+      had sat for a little under the shade of the spreading banyan, to cool down
+      from their walk&mdash;for it was an oppressive morning&mdash;M. Peyron led
+      her round to his aviary at the back of the hut, and introduced her, by
+      their native names, to all his subjects. &ldquo;I am responsible for their
+      lives,&rdquo; he said, gravely, &ldquo;for their welfare, for their
+      happiness. If I were to let one of them grow old without a successor in
+      the field to follow him up and receive his soul&mdash;as in the case of my
+      friend Methuselah here, who was so neglected by my predecessors&mdash;the
+      whole species would die out for want of a spirit, and my own life would
+      atone for that of my people. There you have the central principle of the
+      theology of Boupari. Every race, every element, every power of nature, is
+      summed up for them in some particular person or thing; and on the life of
+      that person or thing depends, as they believe, the entire health of the
+      species, the sequence of events, the whole order and succession of natural
+      phenomena.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix approached the mysterious and venerable bird with somewhat
+      incautious fingers. &ldquo;It looks very old,&rdquo; he said, trying to
+      stroke its head and neck with a friendly gesture. &ldquo;You do well,
+      indeed, in calling it Methuselah.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he spoke, the bird, alarmed at the vague consciousness of a hand and
+      voice which it did not recognize and mindful of Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s
+      recent attack, made a vicious peck at the fingers outstretched to caress
+      it. &ldquo;Take care!&rdquo; the Frenchman cried, in a warning voice.
+      &ldquo;The patriarch&rsquo;s temper is no longer what it was sixty or
+      seventy years ago. He grows old and peevish. His humor is soured. He will
+      sing no longer the lively little scraps of Offenbach I have taught him. He
+      does nothing but sit still and mumble now in his own forgotten language.
+      And he&rsquo;s dreadfully cross&mdash;so crabbed&mdash;<i>mon Dieu</i>,
+      what a character! Why, the other day, as I told you, he bit Tu-Kila-Kila
+      himself, the high god of the island, with a good hard peck, when that
+      savage tried to touch him; you&rsquo;d have laughed to see his godship
+      sent off bleeding to his hut with a wounded finger! I will confess I was
+      by no means sorry at the sight myself. I do not love that god, nor he me;
+      and I was glad when Methuselah, on whom he is afraid to revenge himself
+      openly, gave him a nice smart bite for trying to interfere with him.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;s very snappish, to be sure,&rdquo; Felix said, with a
+      smile, trying once more to push forward one hand to stroke the bird
+      cautiously. But Methuselah resented all such unauthorized intrusions. He
+      was growing too old to put up with strangers. He made a second vicious
+      attempt to peck at the hand held out to soothe him, and screamed, as he
+      did so, in the usual discordant and unpleasant voice of an angry or
+      frightened parrot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, Felix,&rdquo; Muriel put in, taking him by the arm with a
+      girlish gesture&mdash;for even the terrors by which they were surrounded
+      hadn&rsquo;t wholly succeeded in killing out the woman within her&mdash;&ldquo;how
+      clumsy you are! You don&rsquo;t understand one bit how to manage parrots.
+      I had a parrot of my own at my aunt&rsquo;s in Australia, and I know their
+      ways and all about them. Just let me try him.&rdquo; She held out her soft
+      white hand toward the sulky bird with a fearless, caressing gesture.
+      &ldquo;Pretty Poll, pretty Poll!&rdquo; she said, in English, in the
+      conventional tone of address to their kind. &ldquo;Did the naughty man go
+      and frighten her then? Was she afraid of his hand? Did Polly want a lump
+      of sugar?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On a sudden the bird opened its eyes quickly with an awakened air, and
+      looked her back in the face, half blindly, half quizzingly. It preened its
+      wings for a second, and crooned with pleasure. Then it put forward its
+      neck, with its head on one side, took her dainty finger gently between its
+      beak and tongue, bit it for pure love with a soft, short pressure, and at
+      once allowed her to stroke its back and sides with a very pleased and
+      surprised expression. The success of her skill flattered Muriel. &ldquo;There!
+      it knows me!&rdquo; she cried, with childish delight; &ldquo;it
+      understands I&rsquo;m a friend! It takes to me at once! Pretty Poll!
+      Pretty Poll! Come, Poll, come and kiss me!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The bird drew back at the words, and steadied itself for a moment
+      knowingly on its perch. Then it held up its head, gazed around it with a
+      vacant air, as if suddenly awakened from a very long sleep, and, opening
+      its mouth, exclaimed in loud, clear, sharp, and distinct tones&mdash;and
+      in English&mdash;&ldquo;Pretty Poll! Pretty Poll! Polly wants a buss!
+      Polly wants a nice sweet bit of apple!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment M. Peyron couldn&rsquo;t imagine what had happened. Felix
+      looked at Muriel. Muriel looked at Felix. The Englishman held out both his
+      hands to her in a wild fervor of surprise. Muriel took them in her own,
+      and looked deep into his eyes, while tears rose suddenly and dropped down
+      her cheeks, one by one, unchecked. They couldn&rsquo;t say why,
+      themselves; they didn&rsquo;t know wherefore; yet this unexpected echo of
+      their own tongue, in the mouth of that strange and mysterious bird,
+      thrilled through them instinctively with a strange, unearthly tremor. In
+      some dim and unexplained way, they felt half unconsciously to themselves
+      that this discovery was, perhaps, the first clue to the solution of the
+      terrible secret whose meshes encompassed them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      M. Peyron looked on in mute astonishment. He had heard the bird repeat
+      that strange jargon so often that it had ceased to have even the
+      possibility of a meaning for him. It was the way of Methuselah&mdash;just
+      his language that he talked; so harsh! so guttural! &ldquo;Pretty Poll!
+      Pretty Poll!&rdquo; he had noticed the bird harp upon those quaint words
+      again and again. They were part, no doubt, of that old primitive and
+      forgotten Pacific language the creature had learned in other days from
+      some earlier bearer of the name and ghastly honors of Tu-Kila-Kila. Why
+      should these English seem so profoundly moved by them?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mademoiselle doesn&rsquo;t surely understand the barbarous dialect
+      which our Methuselah speaks!&rdquo; he exclaimed in surprise, glancing
+      half suspiciously from one to the other of these incomprehensible Britons.
+      Like most other Frenchmen, he had been brought up in total ignorance of
+      every European language except his own; and the words the parrot
+      pronounced, when delivered with the well-known additions of parrot
+      harshness and parrot volubility, seemed to him so inexpressibly barbaric
+      in their clicks and jerks that he hadn&rsquo;t yet arrived at the faintest
+      inkling of the truth as he observed their emotion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix seized his new friend&rsquo;s hand in his and wrung it warmly.
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you see what it is?&rdquo; he exclaimed, half beside
+      himself with this vague hope of some unknown solution. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t
+      you realize how the thing stands? Don&rsquo;t you guess the truth? This
+      isn&rsquo;t a Polynesian, dialect at all. It&rsquo;s our own mother
+      tongue. The bird speaks English!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;English!&rdquo; M. Peyron replied, with incredulous scorn. &ldquo;What!
+      Methuselah speak English! Oh, no, monsieur, impossible. <i>Vous vous
+      trompez, j&rsquo;en suis sûr</i>. I can never believe it. Those harsh,
+      inarticulate sounds to belong to the noble language of Shaxper and
+      Newtowne! <i>Ah, monsieur, incroyable! vous vous trompez; vous vous
+      trompez!</i>&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he spoke, the bird put its head on one side once more, and, looking out
+      of its half-blind old eyes with a crafty glance round the corner at
+      Muriel, observed again, in not very polite English, &ldquo;Pretty Poll!
+      Pretty Poll! Polly wants some fruit! Polly wants a nut! Polly wants to go
+      to bed!... God save the king! To hell with all papists!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur,&rdquo; Felix said, a certain solemn feeling of surprise
+      coming over him slowly at this last strange clause, &ldquo;it is perfectly
+      true. The bird speaks English. The bird that knows the secret of which we
+      are all in search&mdash;the bird that can tell us the truth about
+      Tu-Kila-Kila&mdash;can tell us in the tongue which mademoiselle and I
+      speak as our native language. And what is more&mdash;and more strange&mdash;gather
+      from his tone and the tenor of his remarks, he was taught, long since&mdash;a
+      century ago, or more&mdash;and by an English sailor!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Muriel held out a bit of banana on a sharp stick to the bird.
+      Methuselah-Polly took it gingerly off the end, like a well-behaved parrot?
+      &ldquo;God save the king!&rdquo; Muriel said, in a quiet voice, trying to
+      draw him on to speak a little further.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Methuselah twisted his eye sideways, first this way, then that, and
+      responded in a very clear tone, indeed, &ldquo;God save the king! Confound
+      the Duke of York! Long live Dr. Oates! And to hell with all papists!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0022" id="link2HCH0022"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXII. &mdash; TANTALIZING, VERY.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      They looked at one another again with a wild surmise. The voice was as the
+      voice of some long past age. Could the parrot be speaking to them in the
+      words of seventeenth-century English?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even M. Peyron, who at first had received the strange discovery with
+      incredulity, woke up before long to the importance of this sudden and
+      unexpected revelation. The Tu-Kila-Kila who had taught Methuselah that
+      long poem or sermon, which native tradition regarded as containing the
+      central secret of their creed or its mysteries, and which the cruel and
+      cunning Tu-Kila-Kila of to-day believed to be of immense importance to his
+      safety&mdash;that Tu-Kila-Kila of other days was, in all probability, no
+      other than an English sailor. Cast on these shores, perhaps, as they
+      themselves had been, by the mercy of the waves, he had managed to master
+      the language and religion of the savages among whom he found himself
+      thrown; he had risen to be the representative of the cannibal god; and,
+      during long months or years of tedious exile, he had beguiled his leisure
+      by imparting to the unconscious ears of a bird the weird secret of his
+      success, for the benefit of any others of his own race who might be
+      similarly treated by fortune in future. Strange and romantic as it all
+      sounded, they could hardly doubt now that this was the real explanation of
+      the bird&rsquo;s command of English words. One problem alone remained to
+      disturb their souls. Was the bird really in possession of any local secret
+      and mystery at all, or was this the whole burden of the message he had
+      brought down across the vast abyss of time&mdash;&ldquo;God save the king,
+      and to hell with all papists?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix turned to M. Peyron in a perfect tumult of suspense. &ldquo;What he
+      recites is long?&rdquo; he said, interrogatively, with profound interest.
+      &ldquo;You have heard him say much more than this at times? The words he
+      has just uttered are not those of the sermon or poem you mentioned?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      M. Peyron opened his hands expansively before him. &ldquo;Oh, <i>mon Dieu</i>,
+      no, monsieur,&rdquo; he answered, with effusion. &ldquo;You should hear
+      him recite it. He&rsquo;s never done. It is whole chapters&mdash;whole
+      chapters; a perfect Henriade in parrot-talk. When once he begins, there&rsquo;s
+      no possibility of checking or stopping him. On, on he goes. Farewell to
+      the rest; he insists on pouring it all forth to the very last sentence.
+      Gabble, gabble, gabble; chatter, chatter, chatter; pouf, pouf, pouf; boum,
+      boum, boum; he runs ahead eternally in one long discordant sing-song
+      monotone. The person who taught him must have taken entire months to teach
+      him, a phrase at a time, paragraph by paragraph. It is wonderful a bird&rsquo;s
+      memory could hold so much. But till now, taking it for granted he spoke
+      only some wild South Pacific dialect, I never paid much attention to
+      Methuselah&rsquo;s vagaries.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hush. He&rsquo;s going to speak,&rdquo; Muriel cried, holding up,
+      in alarm, one warning finger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the bird, his tongue-strings evidently loosened by the strange
+      recurrence after so many years of those familiar English sounds, &ldquo;Pretty
+      Poll! Pretty Poll!&rdquo; opened his mouth again in a loud chuckle of
+      delight, and cried, with persistent shrillness, &ldquo;God save the king!
+      A fig for all arrant knaves and roundheads!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A creepier feeling than ever came over the two English listeners at those
+      astounding words. &ldquo;Great heavens!&rdquo; Felix exclaimed to the
+      unsuspecting Frenchman, &ldquo;he speaks in the style of the Stuarts and
+      the Commonwealth!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Frenchman started. &ldquo;<i>Époque Louis Quatorze</i>!&rdquo; he
+      murmured, translating the date mentally into his own more familiar
+      chronology. &ldquo;Two centuries since! Oh, incredible! incredible!
+      Methuselah is old, but not quite so much of a patriarch as that. Even
+      Humboldt&rsquo;s parrot could hardly have lived for two hundred years in
+      the wilds of South America.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix regarded the venerable creature with a look of almost superstitious
+      awe. &ldquo;Facts are facts,&rdquo; he answered shortly, shutting his
+      mouth with a little snap. &ldquo;Unless this bird has been deliberately
+      taught historical details in an archaic diction&mdash;and a shipwrecked
+      sailor is hardly likely to be antiquarian enough to conceive such an idea&mdash;he
+      is undoubtedly a survival from the days of the Commonwealth or the
+      Restoration. And you say he runs on with his tale for an hour at a time!
+      Good heavens, what a thought! I wish we could manage to start him now.
+      Does he begin it often?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur,&rdquo; the Frenchman answered, &ldquo;when I came here
+      first, though Methuselah was already very old and feeble, he was not quite
+      a dotard, and he used to recite it all every morning regularly. That was
+      the hour, I suppose, at which the master, who first taught him this
+      lengthy recitation, used originally to impress it upon him. In those days
+      his sight and his memory were far more clear than now. But by degrees,
+      since my arrival, he has grown dull and stupid. The natives tell me that
+      fifty years ago, while he was already old, he was still bright and lively,
+      and would recite the whole poem whenever anybody presented him with his
+      greatest dainty, the claw of a moora-crab. Nowadays, however, when he can
+      hardly eat, and hardly mumble, he is much less persistent and less
+      coherent than formerly. To say the truth, I have discouraged him in his
+      efforts, because his pertinacity annoyed me. So now he seldom gets through
+      all his lesson at one bout, as he used to do at the beginning. The best
+      way to get him on is for me to sing him one of my French songs. That seems
+      to excite him, or to rouse him to rivalry. Then he will put his head on
+      one side, listen critically for a while, smile a superior smile, and
+      finally begin&mdash;jabber, jabber, jabber&mdash;trying to talk me down,
+      as if I were a brother parrot.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, do sing now!&rdquo; Muriel cried, with intense persuasion in
+      her voice. &ldquo;I do so want to hear it.&rdquo; She meant, of course,
+      the parrot&rsquo;s story.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the Frenchman bowed, and laid his hand on his heart. &ldquo;Ah,
+      mademoiselle,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;your wish is almost a royal command.
+      And yet, do you know, it is so long since I have sung, except to please
+      myself&mdash;my music is so rusty, old pieces you have heard&mdash;I have
+      no accompaniment, no score&mdash;<i>mais enfin</i>, we are all so far from
+      Paris!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Muriel didn&rsquo;t dare to undeceive him as to her meaning, lest he
+      should refuse to sing in real earnest, and the chance of learning the
+      parrot&rsquo;s secret might slip by them irretrievably. &ldquo;Oh,
+      monsieur,&rdquo; she cried, fitting herself to his humor at once, and
+      speaking as ceremoniously as if she were assisting at a musical party in
+      the Avenue Victor Hugo, &ldquo;don&rsquo;t decline, I beg of you, on those
+      accounts. We are both most anxious to hear your song. Don&rsquo;t
+      disappoint us, pray. Please begin immediately.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, mademoiselle,&rdquo; the Frenchman said, &ldquo;who could
+      resist such an appeal? You are altogether too flattering.&rdquo; And then,
+      in the same cheery voice that Felix had heard on the first day he visited
+      the King of Birds&rsquo; hut, M. Peyron began, in very decent style, to
+      pour forth the merry sounds of his rollicking song:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+&ldquo;Quand on conspi-re,
+    Quand sans frayeur
+ On peut se di-re
+    Conspirateur
+ Pour tout le mon-de
+    Il faut avoir
+ Perruque blon-de
+    Et collet noir.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      He had hardly got as far as the end of the first stanza, however, when
+      Methuselah, listening, with his ear cocked up most knowingly, to the
+      Frenchman&rsquo;s song, raised his head in opposition, and, sitting bolt
+      upright on his perch, began to scream forth a voluble stream of words in
+      one unbroken flood, so fast that Muriel could hardly follow them. The bird
+      spoke in a thick and very harsh voice, and, what was more remarkable
+      still, with a distinct and extremely peculiar North Country accent.
+      &ldquo;In the nineteenth year of the reign of his most gracious majesty,
+      King Charles the Second,&rdquo; he blurted out, viciously, with an angry
+      look at the Frenchman, &ldquo;I, Nathaniel Cross, of the borough of
+      Sunderland, in the county of Doorham, in England, an able-bodied mariner,
+      then sailing the South Seas in the good bark Martyr Prince, of the Port of
+      Great Grimsby, whereof one Thomas Wells, gent., under God, was master&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, hush, hush!&rdquo; Muriel cried, unable to catch the parrot&rsquo;s
+      precious words through the emulous echo of the Frenchman&rsquo;s music.
+      &ldquo;Whereof one Thomas Wells, gent., under God, was master&mdash;go on,
+      Polly.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+&ldquo;Perruque blonde
+   Et collet noir,&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      the Frenchman repeated, with a half-offended voice, finishing his stanza.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But just as he stopped, Methuselah stopped too, and, throwing back his
+      head in the air with a triumphant look, stared hard at his vanquished and
+      silenced opponent out of those blinking gray eyes of his. &ldquo;I thought
+      I&rsquo;d be too much for you!&rdquo; he seemed to say, wrathfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whereof one Thomas Wells, gent., under God, was master,&rdquo;
+      Muriel suggested again, all agog with excitement. &ldquo;Go on, good bird!
+      Go on, pretty Polly.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Methuselah was evidently put off the scent now by the unseasonable
+      interruption. Instead of continuing, he threw back his head a second time
+      with a triumphant air and laughed aloud boisterously. &ldquo;Pretty Polly,&rdquo;
+      he cried. &ldquo;Pretty Polly wants a nut. Tu-Kila-Kila maroo! Pretty
+      Poll! Pretty Polly!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sing again, for Heaven&rsquo;s sake!&rdquo; Felix exclaimed, in a
+      profoundly agitated mood, explaining briefly to the Frenchman the full
+      significance of the words Methuselah had just begun to utter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Frenchman struck up his tune afresh to give the bird a start; but all
+      to no avail. Methuselah was evidently in no humor for talking just then.
+      He listened with a callous, uncritical air, bringing his white eyelids
+      down slowly and sleepily over his bleared gray eyes. Then he nodded his
+      head slowly. &ldquo;No use,&rdquo; the Frenchman murmured, pursing his
+      lips up gravely. &ldquo;The bird won&rsquo;t talk. It&rsquo;s going off to
+      sleep now. Methuselah gets visibly older every day, monsieur and
+      mademoiselle. You are only just in time to catch his last accents.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0023" id="link2HCH0023"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXIII. &mdash; A MESSAGE FROM THE DEAD.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Early next morning, as Felix lay still in his hut, dozing, and just
+      vaguely conscious of a buzz of a mosquito close to his ear, he was aroused
+      by a sudden loud cry outside&mdash;a cry that called his native name three
+      times, running: &ldquo;O King of the Rain, King of the Rain, King of the
+      Rain, awake! High time to be up! The King of the Birds sends you health
+      and greeting!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix rose at once; and his Shadow, rising before him, and unbolting the
+      loose wooden fastener of the door, went out in haste to see who called
+      beyond the white taboo-line of their sacred precincts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A native woman, tall, lithe, and handsome, stood there in the full light
+      of morning, beckoning. A strange glow of hatred gleamed in her large gray
+      eyes. Her shapely brown bosom heaved and panted heavily. Big beads
+      glistened moistly on her smooth, high brow. It was clear she had run all
+      the way in haste. She was deeply excited and full of eager anxiety.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, what do you want here so early, Ula?&rdquo; the Shadow asked,
+      in surprise&mdash;for it was indeed she. &ldquo;How have you slipped away,
+      as soon as the sun is risen, from the sacred hut of Tu-Kila-Kila?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ula&rsquo;s gray eyes flashed angry fire as she answered. &ldquo;He has
+      beaten me again,&rdquo; she cried, in revengeful tones; &ldquo;see the
+      weals on my back! See my arms and shoulders! He has drawn blood from my
+      wounds. He is the most hateful of gods. I should love to kill him.
+      Therefore I slipped away from him with the early dawn and came to consult
+      with his enemy, the King of the Birds, because I heard the words that the
+      Eyes of Tu-Kila-Kila, who pervade the world, report to their master. The
+      Eyes have told him that the King of the Rain, the Queen of the Clouds, and
+      the King of the Birds are plotting together in secret against
+      Tu-Kila-Kila. When I heard that, I was glad; I went to the King of the
+      Birds to warn him of his danger; and the King of the Birds, concerned for
+      your safety, has sent me in haste to ask his brother gods to go at once to
+      him.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a minute Felix was up and had called out Mali from the neighboring hut.
+      &ldquo;Tell Missy Queenie,&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;to come with me to see
+      the man-a-oui-oui! The man-a-oui-oui has sent me for us to come. She must
+      make great haste. He wants us immediately.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a word and a sign to Toko, Ula glided away stealthily, with the
+      cat-like tread of the native Polynesian woman, back to her hated husband.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix went out to the door and heliographed with his bright metal plate,
+      turned on the Frenchman&rsquo;s hill, &ldquo;What is it?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a moment the answer flashed back, word by word, &ldquo;Come quick, if
+      you want to hear. Methuselah is reciting!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A few seconds later Muriel emerged from her hut, and the two Europeans,
+      closely followed, as always, by their inseparable Shadows, took the
+      winding side-path that led through the jungle by a devious way, avoiding
+      the front of Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s temple, to the Frenchman&rsquo;s
+      cottage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They found M. Peyron very much excited, partly by Ula&rsquo;s news of
+      Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s attitude, but more still by Methuselah&rsquo;s
+      agitated condition. &ldquo;The whole night through, my dear friends,&rdquo;
+      he cried, seizing their hands, &ldquo;that bird has been chattering,
+      chattering, chattering. <i>Oh, mon Dieu, quel oiseau!</i> It seems as
+      though the words heard yesterday from mademoiselle had struck some lost
+      chord in the creature&rsquo;s memory. But he is also very feeble. I can
+      see that well. His garrulity is the garrulity of old age in its last
+      flickering moments. He mumbles and mutters. He chuckles to himself. If you
+      don&rsquo;t hear his message now and at once, it&rsquo;s my solemn
+      conviction you will never hear it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He led them out to the aviary, where Methuselah, in effect, was sitting on
+      his perch, most tremulous and woebegone. His feathers shuddered visibly;
+      he could no longer preen himself. &ldquo;Listen to what he says,&rdquo;
+      the Frenchman exclaimed, in a very serious voice. &ldquo;It is your last,
+      last chance. If the secret is ever to be unravelled at all, by Methuselah&rsquo;s
+      aid, now is, without doubt, the proper moment to unravel it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Muriel put out her hand and stroked the bird gently. &ldquo;Pretty Poll,&rdquo;
+      she said, soothingly, in a sympathetic voice. &ldquo;Pretty Poll! Poor
+      Poll! Was he ill! Was he suffering?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the sound of those familiar words, unheard so long till yesterday, the
+      parrot took her finger in his beak once more, and bit it with the
+      tenderness of his kind in their softer moments. Then he threw back his
+      head with a sort of mechanical twist, and screamed out at the top of his
+      voice, for the last time on earth, his mysterious message:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pretty Poll! Pretty Poll! God save the king! Confound the Duke of
+      York! Death to all arrant knaves and roundheads!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the nineteenth year of the reign of his most gracious majesty,
+      King Charles the Second, I, Nathaniel Cross, of the borough of Sunderland,
+      in the county of Doorham, in England, an able-bodied mariner, then sailing
+      the South Seas in the good bark Martyr Prince, of the Port of Great
+      Grimsby, whereof one Thomas Wells, gent., under God, was master, was, by
+      stress of weather, wrecked and cast away on the shores of this island,
+      called by its gentile inhabitants by the name of Boo Parry. In which
+      wreck, as it befell, Thomas Wells, gent., and his equipment were, by
+      divine disposition, killed and drowned, save and except three mariners,
+      whereof I am one, who in God&rsquo;s good providence swam safely through
+      an exceeding great flood of waves and landed at last on this island. There
+      my two companions, Owen Williams, of Swansea, in the parts of Wales, and
+      Lewis le Pickard, a French Hewgenott refugee, were at once, by the said
+      gentiles, cruelly entreated, and after great torture cooked and eaten at
+      the temple of their chief god, Too-Keela-Keela. But I, myself, having
+      through God&rsquo;s grace found favor in their eyes, was promoted to the
+      post which in their speech is called Korong, the nature of which this
+      bird, my mouthpiece, will hereafter, to your ears, more fully discover.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Having said so much, in a very jerky way, Methuselah paused, and blinked
+      his eyes wearily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What does he say?&rdquo; the Frenchman began, eager to know the
+      truth. But Felix, fearful lest any interruption might break the thread of
+      the bird&rsquo;s discourse and cheat them of the sequel, held up a warning
+      finger, and then laid it on his lips in mute injunction. Methuselah threw
+      back his head at that and laughed aloud. &ldquo;God save the king!&rdquo;
+      he cried again, in a still feebler way, &ldquo;and to hell with all
+      papists!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was strange how they all hung on the words of that unconscious
+      messenger from a dead and gone age, who himself knew nothing of the import
+      of the words he was uttering. Methuselah laughed at their earnestness,
+      shook his head once or twice, and seemed to think to himself. Then he
+      remembered afresh the point he had broken off at.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;More fully discover. For seven years have I now lived on this
+      island, never having seen or h&rsquo;ard Christian face or voice; and at
+      the end of that time, feeling my health feail, and being apprehensive lest
+      any of my fellow-countrymen should hereafter suffer the same fate as I
+      have done, I began to teach this parrot his message, a few words at a
+      time, impressing it duly and fully on his memory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Larn, then, O wayfarer, that the people of Boo Parry are most
+      arrant gentiles, heathens, and carribals. And this, as I discover, is the
+      nature and method of their vile faith. They hold that the gods are each
+      and several incarnate in some one particular human being. This human being
+      they worship and reverence with all ghostly respect as his incarnation.
+      And chiefly, above all, do they revere the great god Too-Keela-Keela,
+      whose representative (may the Lord in Heaven forgive me for the same) I
+      myself am at this present speaking. Having thus, for my sins, attained to
+      that impious honor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God save the king! Confound the Duke of York! To hell with all
+      papists!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is the fashion of this people to hold that their gods must
+      always be strong and lusty. For they argue to themselves thus: that the
+      continuance of the rain must needs depend upon the vigor and subtlety of
+      its Soul, the rain-god. So the continuance and fruitfulness of the trees
+      and plants which yield them food must needs depend upon the health of the
+      tree-god. And the life of the world, and the light of the sun, and the
+      well-being of all things that in them are, must depend upon the strength
+      and cunning of the high god of all, Too-Keela-Keela. Hence they take great
+      care and woorship of their gods, surrounding them with many rules which
+      they call Taboo, and restricting them as to what they shall eat, and what
+      drink, and wherewithal they shall seemly clothe themselves. For they think
+      that if the King of the Rain at&rsquo; anything that might cause the
+      colick, or like humor or distemper, the weather will thereafter be stormy
+      and tempestuous; but so long as the King of the Rain fares well and
+      retains his health, so long will the weather over their island of Boo
+      Parry be clear and prosperous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Furthermore, as I have larned from their theologians, being myself,
+      indeed, the greatest of their gods, it is evident that they may not let
+      any god die, lest that department of nature over which he presideth should
+      wither away and feail, as it were, with him. But reasonably no care that
+      mortal man can exercise will prevent the possibility of their god&mdash;seeing
+      he is but one of themselves&mdash;growing old and feeble and dying at
+      last. To prevent which calamity, these gentile folk have invented (as I
+      believe by the aid and device of Sathan) this horrid and most unnatural
+      practice. The man-god must be killed so soon as he showeth in body or mind
+      that his native powers are beginning to feail. And it is necessary that he
+      be killed, according to their faith, in this ensuing fashion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If the man-god were to die slowly by a death in the course of
+      nature, the ways of the world might be stopped altogether. Hence these
+      savages catch the soul of their god, as it were, ere it grow old and
+      feeble, and transfer it betimes, by a magic device, to a suitable
+      successor. And surely, they say, this suitable successor can be none other
+      than him that is able to take it from him. This, then, is their horrid
+      counsel and device&mdash;that each one of their gods should kill his
+      antecessor. In doing thus, he taketh the old god&rsquo;s life and soul,
+      which thereupon migrates and dwells within him. And by this tenure&mdash;may
+      Heaven be merciful to me, a sinner&mdash;do I, Nathaniel Cross, of the
+      county of Doorham, now hold this dignity of Too-Keela-Keela, having slain,
+      therefor, in just quarrel, my antecessor in the high godship.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he reached these words Methuselah paused, and choked in his throat
+      slightly. The mere mechanical effort of continuing the speech he had
+      learned by heart two hundred years before, and repeated so often since
+      that it had become part of his being, was now almost too much for him. The
+      Frenchman was right. They were only just in time. A few days later, and
+      the secret would have died with the bird that preserved it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0024" id="link2HCH0024"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXIV. &mdash; AN UNFINISHED TALE.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      For a minute or two Methuselah mumbled inarticulately to himself. Then, to
+      their intense discomfiture, he began once more: &ldquo;In the nineteenth
+      year of the reign of his most gracious majesty, King Charles the Second,
+      I, Nathaniel Cross&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, this will never do,&rdquo; Felix cried. &ldquo;We haven&rsquo;t
+      got yet to the secret at all. Muriel, do try to set him right. He must
+      waste no breath. We can&rsquo;t afford now to let him go all over it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Muriel stretched out her hand and soothed the bird gently as before.
+      &ldquo;Having slain, therefore, my predecessor in the high godship,&rdquo;
+      she suggested, in the same singsong voice as the parrot&rsquo;s.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To her immense relief, Methuselah took the hint with charming docility.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the high godship,&rdquo; he went on, mechanically, where he had
+      stopped. &ldquo;And this here is the manner whereby I obtained it. The
+      Too-Keela-Keela from time to time doth generally appoint any castaway
+      stranger that comes to the island to the post of Korong&mdash;that is to
+      say, an annual god or victim. For, as the year doth renew itself at each
+      change of seasons, so do these carribals in their gentilisme believe and
+      hold that the gods of the seasons&mdash;to wit, the King of the Rain, the
+      Queen of the Clouds, the Lord of Green Leaves, the King of Fruits, and
+      others&mdash;must needs be sleain and renewed at the diverse solstices.
+      Now, it so happened that I, on my arrival in the island, was appointed
+      Korong, and promoted to the post of King of the Rain, having a native
+      woman assigned me as Queen of the Clouds, with whom I might keep company.
+      This woman being, after her kind, enamored of me, and anxious to escape
+      her own fate, to be sleain by my side, did betray to me that secret which
+      they call in their tongue the Great Taboo, and which had been betrayed to
+      herself in turn by a native man, her former lover. For the men are
+      instructed in these things in the mysteries when they coom of age, but not
+      the women.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And the Great Taboo is this: No man can becoom a Too-Keela-Keela
+      unless he first sleay the man in whom the high god is incarnate for the
+      moment. But in order that he may sleay him, he must also himself be a full
+      Korong, only those persons who are already gods being capable for the
+      highest post in their hierarchy; even as with ourselves, none but he that
+      is a deacon may become a priest, and none but he that is a priest may be
+      made a bishop. For this reason, then, the Too-Keela-Keela prefers to
+      advance a stranger to the post of Korong, seeing that such a person will
+      not have been initiated in the mysteries of the island, and therefore will
+      not be aware of those sundry steps which must needs be taken of him that
+      would inherit the godship.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Furthermore, even a Korong can only obtain the highest rank of
+      Too-Keela-Keela if he order all things according to the forms and
+      ceremonies of the Taboo parfectly. For these gentiles are very careful of
+      the levitical parts of their religion, deriving the same, as it seems to
+      me, from the polity of the Hebrews, the fame of whose tabernacle must sure
+      have gone forth through the ends of the woorld, and the knowledge of whose
+      temple must have been yet more wide dispersed by Solomon, his ships, when
+      they came into these parts to fetch gold from Ophir. And the ceremony is,
+      that before any man may sleay the &lsquo;arthly tenement of
+      Too-Keela-Keela and inherit his soul, which is in very truth, as they do
+      think the god himself, he must needs fight with the person in whom
+      Too-Keela-Keela doth then dwell, and for this reason: If the holder of the
+      soul can defend himself in fight, then it is clear that his strength is
+      not one whit decayed, nor is his vigor feailing; nor yet has his assailant
+      been able to take his soul from him. But if the Korong in open fight do
+      sleay the person in whom Too-Keela-Keela dwells, he becometh at once a
+      Too-Keela-Keela himself&mdash;that is to say, in their tongue, the Lord of
+      Lords, because he hath taken the life of him that preceded him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yet so intricate is the theology and practice of these loathsome
+      savages, that not even now have I explained it in full to you, O
+      shipwrecked mariner, for your aid and protection. For a Korong, though it
+      be a part of his privilege to contend, if he will, with Too-Keela-Keela
+      for the high godship and princedom of this isle, may only do so at certain
+      appointed times, places, and seasons. Above all things, it is necessary
+      that he should first find out the hiding-place of the soul of
+      Too-Keela-Keela. For though the Too-Keela-Keela for the time that is, be
+      animated by the god, yet, for greater security, he doth not keep his soul
+      in his own body, but, being above all things the god of fruitfulness and
+      generation, who causes women to bear children, and the plant called taro
+      to bring forth its increase, he keepeth his soul in the great sacred tree
+      behind his temple, which is thus the Father of All Trees, and the chiefest
+      abode of the great god Too-Keela-Keela.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nor does Too-Keela-Keela&rsquo;s soul abide equally in every part
+      of this aforesaid tree; but in a certain bough of it, resembling a
+      mistletoe, which hath yellow leaves, and, being broken off, groweth ever
+      green and yellow afresh; which is the central mystery of all their
+      Sathanic religion. For in this very bough&mdash;easy to be discerned by
+      the eye among the green leaves of the tree&mdash;&rdquo; the bird paused
+      and faltered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Muriel leaned forward in an agony of excitement. &ldquo;Among the green
+      leaves of the tree&mdash;&rdquo; she went on soothing him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her voice seemed to give the parrot a fresh impulse to speak. &ldquo;&mdash;Is
+      contained, as it were,&rdquo; he continued, feebly, &ldquo;the divine
+      essence itself, the soul and life of Too-Keela-Keela. Whoever, then, being
+      a full Korong, breaks this off, hath thus possessed himself of the very
+      god in person. This, however, he must do by exceeding stealth; for
+      Too-Keela-Keela, or rather the man that bears that name, being the
+      guardian and defender of the great god, walks ever up and down, by day and
+      by night, in exceeding great cunning, armed with a spear and with a
+      hatchet of stone, around the root of the tree, watching jealously over the
+      branch which is, as he believes, his own soul and being. I, therefore,
+      being warned of the Taboo by the woman that was my consort, did craftily,
+      near the appointed time for my own death, creep out of my hut, and my
+      consort, having induced one of the wives of Too-Keela-Keela to make him
+      drunken with too much of that intoxicating drink which they do call kava,
+      did proceed&mdash;did proceed&mdash;did proceed&mdash;In the nineteenth
+      year of the reign of his most gracious majesty, King Charles the Second&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Muriel bent forward once more in an agony of suspense. &ldquo;Oh, go on,
+      good Poll!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;Go on. Remember it. Did proceed to&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The single syllable helped Methuselah&rsquo;s memory. &ldquo;&mdash;Did
+      proceed to stealthily pluck the bough, and, having shown the same to Fire
+      and Water, the guardians of the Taboo, did boldly challenge to single
+      combat the bodily tenement of the god, with spear and hatchet, provided
+      for me in accordance with ancient custom by Fire and Water. In which
+      combat, Heaven mercifully befriending me against my enemy, I did coom out
+      conqueror; and was thereupon proclaimed Too-Keela-Keela myself, with
+      ceremonies too many and barbarous to mention, lest I raise your gorge at
+      them. But that which is most important to tell you for your own guidance
+      and safety, O mariner, is this&mdash;that being the sole and only end I
+      have in imparting this history to so strange a messenger&mdash;that after
+      you have by craft plucked the sacred branch, and by force of arms
+      over-cootn Too-Keela-Keela, it is by all means needful, whether you will
+      or not, that submitting to the hateful and gentile custom of this people&mdash;of
+      this people&mdash;Pretty Poll! Pretty Poll! God save&mdash;God save the
+      king! Death to the nineteenth year of the reign of all arrant knaves and
+      roundheads.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He dropped his head on his breast, and blinked his white eyelids more
+      feebly than ever. His strength was failing him fast. The Soul of all dead
+      parrots was wearing out. M. Peyron, who had stood by all this time, not
+      knowing in any way what might be the value of the bird&rsquo;s
+      disclosures, came forward and stroked poor Methuselah with his caressing
+      hand. But Methuselah was incapable now of any further effort. He opened
+      his blind eyes sleepily for the last, last time, and stared around him
+      with a blank stare at the fading universe. &ldquo;God save the king!&rdquo;
+      he screamed aloud with a terrible gasp, true to his colors still. &ldquo;God
+      save the king, and to hell with all papists!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he fell off his perch, stone dead, on the ground. They were never to
+      hear the conclusion of that strange, quaint message from a forgotten age
+      to our more sceptical century.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix looked at Muriel, and Muriel looked at Felix. They could hardly
+      contain themselves with awe and surprise. The parrot&rsquo;s words were so
+      human, its speech was so real to them, that they felt as though the
+      English Tu-Kila-Kila of two hundred years back had really and truly been
+      speaking to them from that perch; it was a human creature indeed that lay
+      dead before them. Felix raised the warm body from the ground with positive
+      reverence. &ldquo;We will bury it decently,&rdquo; he said in French,
+      turning to M. Peyron. &ldquo;He was a plucky bird, indeed, and he has
+      carried out his master&rsquo;s intentions nobly.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As they spoke, a little rustling in the jungle hard by attracted their
+      attention. Felix turned to look. A stealthy brown figure glided away in
+      silence through the tangled brushwood. M. Peyron started. &ldquo;We are
+      observed, monsieur,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;We must look out for squalls!
+      It is one of the Eyes of Tu-Kila-Kila!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let him do his worst!&rdquo; Felix answered. &ldquo;We know his
+      secret now, and can protect ourselves against him. Let us return to the
+      shade, monsieur, and talk this all over. Methuselah has indeed given us
+      something to-day very serious to think about.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0025" id="link2HCH0025"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXV. &mdash; TU-KILA-KILA STRIKES.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      And yet, when all was said and done, knowledge of Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s
+      secret didn&rsquo;t seem to bring Felix and Muriel much nearer a solution
+      of their own great problems than they had been from the beginning. In
+      spite of all Methuselah had told them, they were as far off as ever from
+      securing their escape, or even from the chance of sighting an English
+      steamer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This last was still the main hope and expectation of all three Europeans.
+      M. Peyron, who was a bit of a mathematician, had accurately calculated the
+      time, from what Felix told him, when the Australasian would pass again on
+      her next homeward voyage; and, when that time arrived, it was their united
+      intention to watch night and day for the faintest glimmer of her lights,
+      or the faintest wreath of her smoke on the far eastern horizon. They had
+      ventured to confide their design to all three of their Shadows; and the
+      Shadows, attached by the kindness to which they were so little accustomed
+      among their own people, had in every case agreed to assist them with the
+      canoe, if occasion served them. So for a time the two doomed victims
+      subsided into their accustomed calm of mingled hope and despair, waiting
+      patiently for the expected arrival of the much-longed-for Australasian.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If she took that course once, why not a second time? And if ever she hove
+      in sight, might they not hope, after all, to signal to her with their
+      rudely constructed heliograph, and stop her?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As for Methuselah&rsquo;s secret, there was only one way, Felix thought,
+      in which it could now prove of any use to them. When the actual day of
+      their doom drew nigh, he might, perhaps, be tempted to try the fate which
+      Nathaniel Cross, of Sunderland, had successfully courted. That might gain
+      them at least a little respite. Though even so he hardly knew what good it
+      could do him to be elevated for a while into the chief god of the island.
+      It might not even avail him to save Muriel&rsquo;s life; for he did not
+      doubt that when the awful day itself had actually come the natives would
+      do their best to kill her in spite of him, unless he anticipated them by
+      fulfilling his own terrible, yet merciful, promise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Week after week went by&mdash;month after month passed&mdash;and the date
+      when the Australasian might reasonably be expected to reappear drew nearer
+      and nearer. They waited and trembled. At last, a few days before the time
+      M. Peyron had calculated, as Felix was sitting under the big shady tree in
+      his garden one morning, while Muriel, now worn out with hope deferred, lay
+      within her hut alone with Mali, a sound of tom-toms and beaten palms was
+      heard on the hill-path. The natives around fell on their faces or fled. It
+      announced the speedy approach of Tu-Kila-Kila.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By this time both the castaways had grown comparatively accustomed to that
+      hideous noise, and to the hateful presence which it preceded and heralded.
+      A dozen temple attendants tripped on either side down the hillpath, to
+      guard him, clapping their hands in a barbaric measure as they went; Fire
+      and Water, in the midst, supported and flanked the divine umbrella. Felix
+      rose from his seat with very little ceremony, indeed, as the great god
+      crossed the white taboo-line of his precincts, followed only beyond the
+      limit by Fire and Water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila was in his most insolent vein. He glanced around with a
+      horrid light of triumph dancing visibly in his eyes. It was clear he had
+      come, intent upon some grand theatrical <i>coup</i>. He meant to take the
+      white-faced stranger by surprise this time. &ldquo;Good-morning, O King of
+      the Rain,&rdquo; he exclaimed, in a loud voice and with boisterous
+      familiarity. &ldquo;How do you like your outlook now? Things are getting
+      on. Things are getting on. The end of your rule is drawing very near, isn&rsquo;t
+      it? Before long I must make the seasons change. I must make my sun turn. I
+      must twist round my sky. And then, I shall need a new Korong instead of
+      you, O pale-faced one!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix looked back at him without moving a muscle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am well,&rdquo; he answered shortly, restraining his anger.
+      &ldquo;The year turns round whether you will or not. You are right that
+      the sun will soon begin to move southward on its path again. But many
+      things may happen to all of us meanwhile. <i>I</i> am not afraid of you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he spoke, he drew his knife, and opened the blade, unostentatiously,
+      but firmly. If the worst were really coming now, sooner than he expected,
+      he would at least not forget his promise to Muriel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila smiled a hateful and ominous smile. &ldquo;I am a great god,&rdquo;
+      he said, calmly, striking an attitude as was his wont. &ldquo;Hear how my
+      people clap their hands in my honor! I order all things. I dispose the
+      course of nature in heaven and earth. If I look at a cocoa-nut tree, it
+      dies; if I glance at a bread-fruit, it withers away. We will see before
+      long whether or not you are afraid of me. Meanwhile, O Korong, I have come
+      to claim my dues at your hands. Prepare for your fate. To-morrow the Queen
+      of the Clouds must be sealed my bride. Fetch her out, that I may speak
+      with her. I have come to tell her so.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a thunderbolt from a clear sky, and it fell with terrible effect on
+      Felix. For a moment the knife trembled in his grasp with an almost
+      irresistible impulse. He could hardly restrain himself, as he heard those
+      horrible, incredible words, and saw the loathsome smirk on the speaker&rsquo;s
+      face by which they were accompanied, from leaping then and there at the
+      savage&rsquo;s throat, and plunging his blade to the haft into the vile
+      creature&rsquo;s body. But by a violent effort he mastered his indignation
+      and wrath for the present. Planting himself full in front of Tu-Kila-Kila,
+      and blocking the way to the door of that sacred English girl&rsquo;s hut&mdash;oh,
+      how horrible it was to him even to think of her purity being contaminated
+      by the vile neighborhood, for one minute, of that loathsome monster! He
+      looked full into the wretch&rsquo;s face, and answered very distinctly, in
+      low, slow tones, &ldquo;If you dare to take one step toward the place
+      where that lady now rests, if you dare to move your foot one inch nearer,
+      if you dare to ask to see her face again, I will plunge the knife
+      hilt-deep into your vile heart, and kill you where you stand without one
+      second&rsquo;s deliberation. Now you hear my words and you know what I
+      mean. My weapon is keener and fiercer than any you Polynesians ever saw.
+      Repeat those words once more, and by all that&rsquo;s true and holy,
+      before they&rsquo;re out of your mouth I leap upon you and stab you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila drew back in sudden surprise. He was unaccustomed to be so
+      bearded in his own sacred island. &ldquo;Well, I shall claim her
+      to-morrow,&rdquo; he faltered out, taken aback by Felix&rsquo;s unexpected
+      energy. He paused for a second, then he went on more slowly: &ldquo;To-morrow
+      I will come with all my people to claim my bride. This afternoon they will
+      bring her mats of grass and necklets of nautilus shell to deck her for her
+      wedding, as becomes Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s chosen one. The young maids of
+      Boupari will adorn her for her lord, in the accustomed dress of
+      Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s wives. They will clap their hands; they will sing the
+      marriage song. Then early in the morning I will come to fetch her&mdash;and
+      woe to him who strives to prevent me!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix looked at him long, with a fixed and dogged look.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What has made you think of this devilry?&rdquo; he asked at last,
+      still grasping his knife hard, and half undecided whether or not to use
+      it. &ldquo;You have invented all these ideas. You have no claim, even in
+      the horrid customs of your savage country, to demand such a sacrifice.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila laughed loud, a laugh of triumphant and discordant merriment.
+      &ldquo;Ha, ha!&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;you do not understand our customs,
+      and will you teach <i>me</i>, the very high god, the guardian of the laws
+      and practices of Boupari? You know nothing; you are as a little child. I
+      am absolute wisdom. With every Korong, this is always our rule. Till the
+      moon is full, on the last month before we offer up the sacrifice, the
+      Queen of the Clouds dwells apart with her Shadow in her own new temple. So
+      our fathers decreed it. But at the full of the moon, when the day has
+      come, the usage is that Tu-Kila-Kila, the very high god, confers upon her
+      the honor of making her his bride. It is a mighty honor. The feast is
+      great. Blood flows like water. For seven days and nights, then, she lives
+      with Tu-Kila-Kila in his sacred abode, the threshold of Heaven; she eats
+      of human flesh; she tastes human blood; she drinks abundantly of the
+      divine kava. At the end of that time, in accordance with the custom of our
+      fathers, those great dead gods, Tu-Kila-Kila performs the high act of
+      sacrifice. He puts on his mask of the face of a shark, for he is holy and
+      cruel; he brings forth the Queen of the Clouds before the eyes of all his
+      people, attired in her wedding robes, and made drunk with kava. Then he
+      gashes her with knives; he offers her up to Heaven that accepted her; and
+      the King of the Rain he offers after her; and all the people eat of their
+      flesh, Korong! and drink of their blood, so that the body of gods and
+      goddesses may dwell within all of them. And when all is done, the high god
+      chooses a new king and queen at his will (for he is a mighty god), who
+      rule for six moons more, and then are offered up, at the end, in like
+      fashion.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he spoke, the ferocious light that gleamed in the savage&rsquo;s eye
+      made Felix positively mad with anger. But he answered nothing directly.
+      &ldquo;Is this so?&rdquo; he asked, turning for confirmation to Fire and
+      Water. &ldquo;Is it the custom of Boupari that Tu-Kila-Kila should wed the
+      Queen of the Clouds seven days before the date appointed for her
+      sacrifice?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The King of Fire and the King of Water, tried guardians of the etiquette
+      of Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s court, made answer at once with one accord,
+      &ldquo;It is so, O King of the Rain. Your lips have said it. Tu-Kila-Kila
+      speaks the solemn truth. He is a very great god. Such is the custom of
+      Boupari.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila laughed his triumph in harsh, savage outbursts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Felix drew back for a second, irresolute. At last he stood face to
+      face with the absolute need for immediate action. Now was almost the
+      moment when he must redeem his terrible promise to Muriel. And yet, even
+      so, there was still one chance of life, one respite left. The mystic
+      yellow bough on the sacred banyan! the Great Taboo! the wager of battle
+      with Tu-Kila-Kila! Quick as lightning it all came up in his excited brain.
+      Time after time, since he heard Methuselah&rsquo;s strange message from
+      the grave, had he passed Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s temple enclosure and looked
+      up with vague awe at that sacred parasite that grew so conspicuously in a
+      fork of the branches. It was easy to secure it, if no man guarded. There
+      still remained one night. In that one short night he must do his best&mdash;and
+      worst. If all then failed, he must die himself with Muriel!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For two seconds he hesitated. It was hateful even to temporize with so
+      hideous a proposition. But for Muriel&rsquo;s sake, for her dear life&rsquo;s
+      sake, he must meet these savages with guile for guile. &ldquo;If it be,
+      indeed, the custom of Boupari,&rdquo; he answered back, with pale and
+      trembling lips, &ldquo;and if I, one man, am powerless to prevent it, I
+      will give your message, myself, to the Queen of the Clouds, and you may
+      send, as you say, your wedding decorations. But come what will&mdash;mark
+      this&mdash;you shall not see her yourself to-day. You shall not speak to
+      her. There I draw a line&mdash;so, with my stick in the dust, if you try
+      to advance one step beyond, I stab you to the heart. Wait till to-morrow
+      to take your prey. Give me one more night. Great god as you are, if you
+      are wise, you will not drive an angry man to utter desperation.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila looked with a suspicious side glance at the gleaming steel
+      blade Felix still fingered tremulously. Though Boupari was one of those
+      rare and isolated small islands unvisited as yet by European trade, he
+      had, nevertheless, heard enough of the sailing gods to know that their
+      skill was deep and their weapons very dangerous. It would be foolish to
+      provoke this man to wrath too soon. To-morrow, when taboo was removed, and
+      all was free license, he would come when he willed and take his bride,
+      backed up by the full force of his assembled people. Meanwhile, why
+      provoke a brother god too far? After all, in a little more than a week
+      from now the pale-faced Korong would be eaten and digested!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well,&rdquo; he said, sulkily, but still with the sullen light
+      of revenge gleaming bright in his eye. &ldquo;Take my message to the
+      queen. You may be my herald. Tell her what honor is in store for her&mdash;to
+      be first the wife and then the meat of Tu-Kila-Kila! She is a very fair
+      woman. I like her well. I have longed for her for months. Tomorrow, at the
+      early dawn, by the break of day, I will come with all my people and take
+      her home by main force to me.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked at Felix and scowled, an angry scowl of revenge. Then, as he
+      turned and walked away, under cover of the great umbrella, with its
+      dangling pendants on either side, the temple attendants clapped their
+      hands in unison. Fire and Water marched slow and held the umbrella over
+      him. As he disappeared in the distance, and the sound of his tom-toms grew
+      dim on the hills, Toko, the Shadow, who had lain flat, trembling, on his
+      face in the hut while the god was speaking, came out and looked anxiously
+      and fearfully after him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The time is ripe,&rdquo; he said, in a very low voice to Felix.
+      &ldquo;A Korong may strike. All the people of Boupari murmur among
+      themselves. They say this fellow has held the spirit of Tu-Kila-Kila
+      within himself too long. He waxes insolent. They think it is high time the
+      great God of Heaven should find before long some other fleshly tabernacle.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0026" id="link2HCH0026"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXVI. &mdash; A RASH RESOLVE.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The rest of that day was a time of profound and intense anxiety. Felix and
+      Muriel remained alone in their huts, absorbed in plans of escape, but
+      messengers of many sorts from chiefs and gods kept continually coming to
+      them. The natives evidently regarded it as a period of preparation. The
+      Eyes of Tu-Kila-Kila surrounded their precinct; yet Felix couldn&rsquo;t
+      help noticing that they seemed in many ways less watchful than of old, and
+      that they whispered and conferred very much in a mysterious fashion with
+      the people of the village. More than once Toko shook his head, sagely,
+      &ldquo;If only any one dared break the Great Taboo,&rdquo; he said, with
+      some terror on his face, &ldquo;our people would be glad. It would greatly
+      please them. They are tired of this Tu-Kila-Kila. He has held the god in
+      his breast far, far too long. They would willingly see some other in place
+      of him.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before noon, the young girls of the village, bringing native mats and huge
+      strings of nautilus shells, trooped up to the hut, like bridesmaids, with
+      flowers in their hands, to deck Muriel for her approaching wedding. Before
+      them they carried quantities of red and brown tappa-cloth and very fine
+      net-work, the dowry to be presented by the royal bride to her divine
+      husband. Within the hut, they decked out the Queen of the Clouds with
+      garlands of flowers and necklets of shells, in solemn native fashion,
+      bewailing her fate all the time to a measured dirge in their own language.
+      Muriel could see that their sympathy, though partly conventional, was
+      largely real as well. Many of the young girls seized her hand convulsively
+      from time to time, and kissed it with genuine feeling. The gentle young
+      English woman had won their savage hearts by her purity and innocence.
+      &ldquo;Poor thing, poor thing,&rdquo; they said, stroking her hand
+      tenderly. &ldquo;She is too good for Korong! Too good for Tu-Kila-Kila! If
+      only we knew the Great Taboo like the men, we would tell her everything.
+      She is too good to die. We are sorry she is to be sacrificed!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But when all their preparations were finished, the chief among them raised
+      a calabash with a little scented oil in it, and poured a few drops
+      solemnly on Muriel&rsquo;s head. &ldquo;Oh, great god!&rdquo; she said, in
+      her own tongue, &ldquo;we offer this sacrifice, a goddess herself, to you.
+      We obey your words. You are very holy. We will each of us eat a portion of
+      her flesh at your feast. So give us good crops, strong health, many
+      children!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What does she say?&rdquo; Muriel asked, pale and awestruck, of
+      Mali.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mali translated the words with perfect <i>sang-froid</i>. At that awful
+      sound Muriel drew back, chill and cold to the marrow. How inconceivable
+      was the state of mind of these terrible people! They were really sorry for
+      her; they kissed her hand with fervor; and yet they deliberately and
+      solemnly proposed to eat her!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Toward evening the young girls at last retired, in regular order, to the
+      clapping of hands, and Felix was left alone with Muriel and the Shadows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Already he had explained to Muriel what he intended to do; and Muriel,
+      half dazed with terror and paralyzed by these awful preparations,
+      consented passively. &ldquo;But how if you never come back, Felix?&rdquo;
+      she cried at last, clinging to him passionately.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix looked at her with a fixed look. &ldquo;I have thought of that,&rdquo;
+      he said. &ldquo;M. Peyron, to whom I sent a message by flashes, has helped
+      me in my difficulty. This bowl has poison in it. Peyron sent it to me
+      to-day. He prepared it himself from the root of the kava bean. If by
+      sunrise to-morrow you have heard no news, drink it off at once. It will
+      instantly kill you. You shall <i>not</i> fall alive into that creature&rsquo;s
+      clutches.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By slow degrees the evening wore on, and night approached&mdash;the last
+      night that remained to them. Felix had decided to make his attempt about
+      one in the morning. The moon was nearly full now, and there would be
+      plenty of light. Supposing he succeeded, if they gained nothing else, they
+      would gain at least a day or two&rsquo;s respite.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As dusk set in, and they sat by the door of the hut, they were all
+      surprised to see Ula approach the precinct stealthily through the jungle,
+      accompanied by two of Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s Eyes, yet apparently on some
+      strange and friendly message. She beckoned imperiously with one finger to
+      Toko to cross the line. The Shadow rose, and without one word of
+      explanation went out to speak to her. The woman gave her message in short,
+      sharp sentences. &ldquo;We have found out all,&rdquo; she said, breathing
+      hard. &ldquo;Fire and Water have learned it. But Tu-Kila-Kila himself
+      knows nothing. We have found out that the King of the Rain has discovered
+      the secret of the Great Taboo. He heard it from the Soul of all dead
+      parrots. Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s Eyes saw, and learned, and understood. But
+      they said nothing to Tu-Kila-Kila. For my counsel was wise; I planned that
+      they should not, with Fire and Water. Fire and Water and all the people of
+      Boupari think, with me, the time has come that there should arise among us
+      a new Tu-Kila-Kila. This one let his blood fall out upon the dust of the
+      ground. His luck has gone. We have need of another.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then for what have you come?&rdquo; Toko asked, all awestruck. It
+      was terrible to him for a woman to meddle in such high matters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have come,&rdquo; Ula answered, laying her hand on his arm, and
+      holding her face close to his with profound solemnity&mdash;&ldquo;I have
+      come to say to the King of the Rain, &lsquo;Whatever you do, that do
+      quickly.&rsquo; To-night I will engage to keep Tu-Kila-Kila in his temple.
+      He shall see nothing. He shall hear nothing. I know not the Great Taboo;
+      but I know from him this much&mdash;that if by wile or guile I keep him
+      alone in his temple to-night, the King of the Rain may fight with him in
+      single combat; and if the King of the Rain conquers in the battle, he
+      becomes himself the home of the great deity.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She nodded thrice, with her hands on her forehead, and withdrew as
+      stealthily as she had come through the jungle. The Eyes of Tu-Kila-Kila,
+      falling into line, remained behind, and kept watch upon the huts with the
+      closest apparent scrutiny.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      More than ever they were hemmed in by mystery on mystery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Shadow went back and reported to Felix. Felix, turning it over in his
+      own mind, wondered and debated. Was this true, or a trap to lure him to
+      destruction?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the night wore on, and the hour drew nigh, Muriel sat beside her friend
+      and lover, in blank despair and agony. How could she ever allow him to
+      leave her now? How could she venture to remain alone with Mali in her hut
+      in this last extremity? It was awful to be so girt with mysterious
+      enemies. &ldquo;I must go with you, Felix! I must go, too!&rdquo; she
+      cried over and over again. &ldquo;I daren&rsquo;t remain behind with all
+      these awful men. And then, if he kills either of us, he will kill us at
+      least both together.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Felix knew he might do nothing of the sort. A more terrible chance was
+      still in reserve. He might spare Muriel. And against that awful
+      possibility he felt it his duty now to guard at all hazard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, Muriel,&rdquo; he said, kissing her, and holding her pale hand,
+      &ldquo;I must go alone. You can&rsquo;t come with me. If I return, we will
+      have gained at least a respite, till the Australasian may turn up. If I
+      don&rsquo;t, you will at any rate have strength of mind left to swallow
+      the poison, before Tu-Kila-Kila comes to claim you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hour after hour passed by slowly, and Felix and the Shadow watched the
+      stars at the door, to know when the hour for the attempt had arrived. The
+      eyes of Tu-Kila-Kila, peering silent from just beyond the line, saw them
+      watching all the time, but gave no sign or token of disapproval. With
+      heads bent low, and tangled hair about their faces, they stood like
+      statues, watching, watching sullenly. Were they only waiting till he
+      moved, Felix wondered; and would they then hasten off by short routes
+      through the jungle to warn their master of the impending conflict?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last the hour came when Felix felt sure there was the greatest chance
+      of Tu-Kila-Kila sleeping soundly in his hut, and forgetting the defence of
+      the sacred bough on the holy banyan-tree. He rose from his seat with a
+      gesture for silence, and moved forward to Muriel. The poor girl flung
+      herself, all tears, into his arms. &ldquo;Oh, Felix, Felix,&rdquo; she
+      cried, &ldquo;redeem your promise now! Kill us both here together, and
+      then, at least, I shall never be separated from you! It wouldn&rsquo;t be
+      wrong! It can&rsquo;t be wrong! We would surely be forgiven if we did it
+      only to escape falling into the hands of these terrible savages!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix clasped her to his bosom with a faltering heart. &ldquo;No, Muriel,&rdquo;
+      he said, slowly. &ldquo;Not yet. Not yet. I must leave no opening on earth
+      untried by which I can possibly or conceivably save you. It&rsquo;s as
+      hard for me to leave you here alone as for you to be left. But for your
+      own dear sake, I must steel myself. I must do it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He kissed her many times over. He wiped away her tears. Then, with a
+      gentle movement, he untwined her clasping arms. &ldquo;You must let me go,
+      my own darling,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;You must let me go, without
+      crossing the border. If you pass beyond the taboo-line to-night, Heaven
+      only knows what, perhaps, may happen to you. We must give these people no
+      handle of offence. Good-night, Muriel, my own heart&rsquo;s wife; and if I
+      never come back, then good-by forever.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She clung to his arm still. He disentangled himself, gently. The Shadow
+      rose at the same moment, and followed in silence to the open door. Muriel
+      rushed after them, wildly. &ldquo;Oh, Felix, Felix, come back,&rdquo; she
+      cried, bursting into wild floods of hot, fierce tears. &ldquo;Come back
+      and let me die with you! Let me die! Let me die with you!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix crossed the white line without one word of reply, and went forth
+      into the night, half unmanned by this effort. Muriel sank, where she
+      stood, into Mali&rsquo;s arms. The girl caught her and supported her. But
+      before she had fainted quite away, Muriel had time vaguely to see and note
+      one significant fact. The Eyes of Tu-Kila-Kila, who stood watching the
+      huts with lynx-like care, nodded twice to Toko, the Shadow, as he passed
+      between them; then they stealthily turned and dogged the two men&rsquo;s
+      footsteps afar off in the jungle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Muriel was left by herself in the hut, face to face with Mali.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let us pray, Mali,&rdquo; she cried, seizing her Shadow&rsquo;s
+      arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Mali, moved suddenly by some half-obliterated impulse, exclaimed in
+      concert, in a terrified voice, &ldquo;Let us pray to Methodist God in
+      heaven!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For her life, too, hung on the issue of that rash endeavor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0027" id="link2HCH0027"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXVII. &mdash; A STRANGE ALLY.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      In Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s temple-hut, meanwhile, the jealous, revengeful
+      god, enshrined among his skeletons, was having in his turn an anxious and
+      doubtful time of it. Ever since his sacred blood had stained the dust of
+      earth by the Frenchman&rsquo;s cottage and in his own temple,
+      Tu-Kila-Kila, for all his bluster, had been deeply stirred and terrified
+      in his inmost soul by that unlucky portent. A savage, even if he be a god,
+      is always superstitious. Could it be that his own time was, indeed,
+      drawing nigh? That he, who had remorselessly killed and eaten so many
+      hundreds of human victims, was himself to fall a prey to some more
+      successful competitor? Had the white-faced stranger, the King of the Rain,
+      really learned the secrets of the Great Taboo from the Soul of all dead
+      parrots? Did that mysterious bird speak the tongue of these new
+      fire-bearing Korongs, whose doom was fixed for the approaching solstice?
+      Tu-Kila-Kila wondered and doubted. His suspicions were keen, and deeply
+      aroused. Late that night he still lurked by the sacred banyan-tree, and
+      when at last he retired to his own inner temple, white with the grinning
+      skulls of the victims he had devoured, it was with strict injunctions to
+      Fire and Water, and to his Eyes that watched there, to bring him word at
+      once of any projected aggression on the part of the stranger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Within the temple-hut, however, Ula awaited him. That was a pleasant
+      change. The beautiful, supple, satin-skinned Polynesian looked more
+      beautiful and more treacherous than ever that fateful evening. Her great
+      brown limbs, smooth and glossy as pearl, were set off by a narrow girdle
+      or waistband of green and scarlet leaves, twined spirally around her.
+      Armlets of nautilus shell threw up the dainty plumpness of her soft, round
+      forearm. A garland hung festooned across one shapely shoulder; her bosom
+      was bare or but half hidden by the crimson hibiscus that nestled
+      voluptuously upon it. As Tu-Kila-Kila entered, she lifted her large eyes,
+      and, smiling, showed two even rows of pearly white teeth. &ldquo;My master
+      has come!&rdquo; she cried, holding up both lissome arms with a gesture to
+      welcome him. &ldquo;The great god relaxes his care of the world for a
+      while. All goes on well. He leaves his sun to sleep and his stars to
+      shine, and he retires to rest on the unworthy bosom of her, his mate, his
+      meat, that is honored to love him.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila was scarcely just then in a mood for dalliance. &ldquo;The
+      Queen of the Clouds comes hither to-morrow,&rdquo; he answered, casting a
+      somewhat contemptuous glance at Ula&rsquo;s more dusky and solid charms.
+      &ldquo;I go to seek her with the wedding gifts early in the morning. For a
+      week she shall be mine. And after that&mdash;&rdquo; he lifted his
+      tomahawk and brought it down on a huge block of wood significantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ula smiled once more, that deep, treacherous smile of hers, and showed her
+      white teeth even deeper than ever. &ldquo;If my lord, the great god, rises
+      so early to-morrow,&rdquo; she said, sidling up toward him voluptuously,
+      &ldquo;to seek one more bride for his sacred temple, all the more reason
+      he should take his rest and sleep soundly to-night. Is he not a god? Are
+      not his limbs tired? Does he not need divine silence and slumber?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila pouted. &ldquo;I could sleep more soundly,&rdquo; he said,
+      with a snort, &ldquo;if I knew what my enemy, the Korong, is doing. I have
+      set my Eyes to watch him, yet I do not feel secure. They are not to be
+      trusted. I shall be happier far when I have killed and eaten him.&rdquo;
+      He passed his hand across his bosom with a reflective air. You have a
+      great sense of security toward your enemy, no doubt, when you know that he
+      slumbers, well digested, within you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ula raised herself on her elbow, and gazed snake-like into his face,
+      &ldquo;My lord&rsquo;s Eyes are everywhere,&rdquo; she said, reverently,
+      with every mark of respect. &ldquo;He sees and knows all things. Who can
+      hide anything on earth from his face? Even when he is asleep, his Eyes
+      watch well for him. Then why should the great god, the Measurer of Heaven
+      and Earth, the King of Men, fear a white-faced stranger? To-morrow the
+      Queen of the Clouds will be yours, and the stranger will be abased: ha,
+      ha, he will grieve at it! To-night, Fire and Water keep guard and watch
+      over you. Whoever would hurt you must pass through Fire and Water before
+      he reach your door. Fire would burn, Water would drown. This is a Great
+      Taboo. No stranger dare face it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila lifted himself up in his thrasonic mood. &ldquo;If he did,&rdquo;
+      he cried, swelling himself, &ldquo;I would shrivel him to ashes with one
+      flash of my eyes. I would scorch him to a cinder with one stroke of my
+      lightning.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ula smiled again, a well-satisfied smile. She was working her man up.
+      &ldquo;Tu-Kila-Kila is great,&rdquo; she repeated, slowly. &ldquo;All
+      earth obeys him. All heaven fears him.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The savage took her hand with a doubtful air. &ldquo;And yet,&rdquo; he
+      said, toying with it, half irresolute, &ldquo;when I went to the
+      white-faced stranger&rsquo;s hut this morning, he did not speak fair; he
+      answered me insolently. His words were bold. He talked to me as one talks
+      to a man, not to a great god. Ula, I wonder if he knows my secret?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ula started back in well-affected horror. &ldquo;A white-faced stranger
+      from the sun know your secret, O great king!&rdquo; she cried, hiding her
+      face in a square of cloth. &ldquo;See me beat my breast! Impossible!
+      Impossible! No one of your subjects would dare to tell him so great a
+      taboo. It would be rank blasphemy. If they did, your anger would utterly
+      consume them!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is true,&rdquo; Tu-Kila-Kila said, practically, &ldquo;but I
+      might not discover it. I am a very great god. My Eyes are everywhere. No
+      corner of the world is hid from my gaze. All the concerns of heaven and
+      earth are my care, And, therefore; sometimes, I overlook some detail.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No man alive would dare to tell the Great Taboo!&rdquo; Ula
+      repeated, confidently. &ldquo;Why, even I myself, who am the most favored
+      of your wives, and who am permitted to bask in the light of your presence&mdash;even
+      I, Ula&mdash;I do not know it. How much less, then, the spirit from the
+      sun, the sailing god, the white-faced stranger!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila pursed up his brow and looked preternaturally wise, as the
+      savage loves to do. &ldquo;But the parrot,&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;the
+      Soul of all dead parrots! <i>He</i> knew the secret, they say:&mdash;I
+      taught it him myself in an ancient day, many, many years ago&mdash;when no
+      man now living was born, save only I&mdash;in another incarnation&mdash;and
+      <i>he</i> may have told it. For the strangers, they say, speak the
+      language of birds; and in the language of birds did I tell the Great Taboo
+      to him.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ula pooh-poohed the mighty man-god&rsquo;s fears. &ldquo;No, no,&rdquo;
+      she cried, with confidence; &ldquo;he can never have told them. If he had,
+      would not your Eyes that watch ever for all that happens on heaven or
+      earth, have straightway reported it to you? The parrot died without
+      yielding up the tale. Were it otherwise, Toko, who loves and worships you,
+      would surely have told me.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man-god puckered his brows slightly, as if he liked not the security.
+      &ldquo;Well, somehow, Ula,&rdquo; he said, feeling her soft brown arms
+      with his divine hand, slowly, &ldquo;I have always had my doubts since
+      that day the Soul of all dead parrots bit me. A vicious bird! What did he
+      mean by his bite?&rdquo; He lowered his voice and looked at her fixedly.
+      &ldquo;Did not his spilling my blood portend,&rdquo; he asked, with a
+      shudder of fear, &ldquo;that through that ill-omened bird I, who was once
+      Lavita, should cease to be Tu-Kila-Kila?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ula smiled contentedly again. To say the truth, that was precisely the
+      interpretation she herself had put on that terrific omen. The parrot had
+      spilled Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s sacred blood upon the soil of earth.
+      According to her simple natural philosophy, that was a certain sign that
+      through the parrot&rsquo;s instrumentality Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s life would
+      be forfeited to the great eternal earth-spirit. Or, rather, the
+      earth-spirit would claim the blood of the man Lavita, in whose body it
+      dwelt, and would itself migrate to some new earthly tabernacle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But for all that, she dissembled. &ldquo;Great god,&rdquo; she cried,
+      smiling, a benign smile, &ldquo;you are tired! You are thirsty! Care for
+      heaven and earth has wearied you out. You feel the fatigue of upholding
+      the sun in heaven. Your arms must ache. Your thews must give under you.
+      Drink of the soul-inspiring juice of the kava! My hands have prepared the
+      divine cup. For Tu-Kila-Kila did I make it&mdash;fresh, pure,
+      invigorating!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She held the bowl to his lips with an enticing smile. Tu-Kila-Kila
+      hesitated and glanced around him suspiciously. &ldquo;What if the
+      white-faced stranger should come to-night?&rdquo; he whispered, hoarsely.
+      &ldquo;He may have discovered the Great Taboo, after all. Who can tell the
+      ways of the world, how they come about? My people are so treacherous. Some
+      traitor may have betrayed it to him.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Impossible,&rdquo; the beautiful, snake-like woman answered, with a
+      strong gesture of natural dissent. &ldquo;And even if he came, would not
+      kava, the divine, inspiriting drink of the gods, in which dwell the
+      embodied souls of our fathers&mdash;would not kava make you more vigorous,
+      strong for the fight? Would it not course through your limbs like fire?
+      Would it not pour into your soul the divine, abiding strength of your
+      mighty mother, the eternal earth-spirit?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A little,&rdquo; Tu-Kila-Kila said, yielding, &ldquo;but not too
+      much. Too much would stupefy me. When the spirits, that the kava-tree
+      sucks up from the earth, are too strong within us, they overpower our own
+      strength, so that even I, the high god&mdash;even I can do nothing.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ula held the bowl to his lips, and enticed him to drink with her beautiful
+      eyes. &ldquo;A deep draught, O supporter of the sun in heaven,&rdquo; she
+      cried, pressing his arm tenderly. &ldquo;Am I not Ula? Did I not brew it
+      for you? Am I not the chief and most favored among your women? I will sit
+      at the door. I will watch all night. I will not close an eye. Not a
+      footfall on the ground but my ear shall hear it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do.&rdquo; Tu-Kila-Kila said, laconically. &ldquo;I fear Fire and
+      Water. Those gods love me not. Fain would they make me migrate into some
+      other body. But I myself like it not. This one suits me admirably. Ula,
+      that kava is stronger than you are used to make it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no,&rdquo; Ula cried, pressing it to his lips a second time,
+      passionately. &ldquo;You are a very great god. You are tired; it overcomes
+      you. And if you sleep, I will watch. Fire and Water dare not disobey your
+      commands. Are you not great? Your Eyes are everywhere. And I, even I, will
+      be as one of them.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The savage gulped down a few more mouthfuls of the intoxicating liquid.
+      Then he glanced up again suddenly with a quick, suspicious look. The
+      cunning of his race gave him wisdom in spite of the deadly strength of the
+      kava Ula had brewed too deep for him. With a sudden resolve, he rose and
+      staggered out. &ldquo;You are a serpent, woman!&rdquo; he cried angrily,
+      seeing the smile that lurked upon Ula&rsquo;s face. &ldquo;To-morrow I
+      will kill you. I will take the white woman for my bride, and she and I
+      will feast off your carrion body. You have tried to betray me, but you are
+      not cunning enough, not strong enough. No woman shall kill me. I am a very
+      great god. I will not yield. I will wait by the tree. This is a trap you
+      have set, but I do not fall into it. If the King of the Rain comes, I
+      shall be there to meet him.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He seized his spear and hatchet and walked forth, erect, without one sign
+      of drunkenness. Ula trembled to herself as she saw him go. She was playing
+      a deep game. Had she given him only just enough kava to strengthen and
+      inspire him?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0028" id="link2HCH0028"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXVIII. &mdash; WAGER OF BATTLE.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Felix wound his way painfully through the deep fern-brake of the jungle,
+      by no regular path, so as to avoid exciting the alarm of the natives, and
+      to take Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s palace-temple from the rear, where the big
+      tree, which overshadowed it with its drooping branches, was most easily
+      approachable. As he and Toko crept on, bending low, through that dense
+      tropical scrub, in deathly silence, they were aware all the time of a low,
+      crackling sound that rang ever some paces in the rear on their trail
+      through the forest. It was Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s Eyes, following them
+      stealthily from afar, footstep for footstep, through the dense undergrowth
+      of bush, and the crisp fallen leaves and twigs that snapped light beneath
+      their footfall. What hope of success with those watchful spies, keen as
+      beagles and cruel as bloodhounds, following ever on their track? What
+      chance of escape for Felix and Muriel, with the cannibal man-gods toils
+      laid round on every side to insure their destruction?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Silently and cautiously the two men groped their way on through the dark
+      gloom of the woods, in spite of their mute pursuers. The moonlight
+      flickered down athwart the trackless soil as they went; the hum of insects
+      innumerable droned deep along the underbrush. Now and then the startled
+      scream of a night jar broke the monotony of the buzz that was worse than
+      silence; owls boomed from the hollow trees, and fireflies darted dim
+      through the open spaces. At last they emerged upon the cleared area of the
+      temple. There Felix, without one moment&rsquo;s hesitation, with a firm
+      and resolute tread, stepped over the white coral line that marked the
+      taboo of the great god&rsquo;s precincts. That was a declaration of open
+      war; he had crossed the Rubicon of Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s empire. Toko stood
+      trembling on the far side; none might pass that mystic line unbidden and
+      live, save the Korong alone who could succeed in breaking off the bough
+      &ldquo;with yellow leaves, resembling a mistletoe,&rdquo; of which
+      Methuselah, the parrot, had told Felix and Muriel, and so earn the right
+      to fight for his life with the redoubted and redoubtable Tu-Kila-Kila.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he stepped over the taboo-line, Felix was aware of many native eyes
+      fixed stonily upon him from the surrounding precinct. Clearly they were
+      awaiting him. Yet not a soul gave the alarm; that in itself would have
+      been to break taboo. Every man or woman among the temple attendants within
+      that charmed circle stood on gaze curiously. Close by, Ula, the favorite
+      wife of the man-god, crouched low by the hut, with one finger on her
+      treacherous lips, bending eagerly forward, in silent expectation of what
+      next might happen. Once, and once only, she glanced at Toko with a mute
+      sign of triumph; then she fixed her big eyes on Felix in tremulous
+      anxiety; for to her as to him, life and death now hung absolutely on the
+      issue of his enterprise. A little farther back the King of Fire and the
+      King of Water, in full sacrificial robes, stood smiling sardonically. For
+      them it was merely a question of one master more or less, one Tu-Kila-Kila
+      in place of another. They had no special interest in the upshot of the
+      contest, save in so far as they always hated most the man who for the
+      moment held by his own strong arm the superior godship over them. Around,
+      Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s Eyes kept watch and ward in sinister silence. Taboo
+      was stronger than even the commands of the high god himself. When once a
+      Korong had crossed that fatal line, unbidden and unwelcomed by
+      Tu-Kila-Kila, he came as Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s foe and would-be successor;
+      the duty of every guardian of the temple was then to see fair play between
+      the god that was and the god that might be&mdash;the Tu-Kila-Kila of the
+      hour and the Tu-Kila-Kila who might possibly supplant him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let the great spirit itself choose which body it will inhabit,&rdquo;
+      the King of Fire murmured in a soft, low voice, glancing toward a dark
+      spot at the foot of the big tree. The moonlight fell dim through the
+      branches on the place where he looked. The glibbering bones of dead
+      victims rattled lightly in the wind. Felix&rsquo;s eyes followed the King
+      of Fire&rsquo;s, and saw, lying asleep upon the ground, Tu-Kila-Kila
+      himself, with his spear and tomahawk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He lay there, huddled up by the very roots of the tree, breathing deep and
+      regularly. Right over his head projected the branch, in one part of whose
+      boughs grew the fateful parasite. By the dim light of the moon, straggling
+      through the dense foliage, Felix could see its yellow leaves distinctly.
+      Beneath it hung a skeleton, suspended by invisible cords, head downward
+      from the branches. It was the skeleton of a previous Korong who had tried
+      in vain to reach the bough, and perished. Tu-Kila-Kila had made high feast
+      on the victim&rsquo;s flesh; his bones, now collected together and
+      cunningly fastened with native rope, served at once as a warning and as a
+      trap or pitfall for all who might rashly venture to follow him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix stood for one moment, alone and awe-struck, a solitary civilized
+      man, among those hideous surroundings. Above, the cold moon; all about,
+      the grim, stolid, half-hostile natives; close by, that strange,
+      serpentine, savage wife, guarding, cat-like, the sleep of her cannibal
+      husband; behind, the watchful Eyes of Tu-Kila-Kila, waiting ever in the
+      background, ready to raise a loud shout of alarm and warning the moment
+      the fatal branch was actually broken, but mute, by their vows, till that
+      moment was accomplished. Then a sudden wild impulse urged him on to the
+      attempt. The banyan had dropped down rooting offsets to the ground, after
+      the fashion of its kind, from its main branches. Felix seized one of these
+      and swung himself lightly up, till he reached the very limb on which the
+      sacred parasite itself was growing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To get to the parasite, however, he must pass directly above Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s
+      head, and over the point where that ghastly grinning skeleton was
+      suspended, as by an unseen hair, from the fork that bore it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He walked along, balancing himself, and clutching, as he went, at the
+      neighboring boughs, while Tu-Kila-Kila, overcome with the kava, slept
+      stolidly and heavily on beneath him. At last he was almost within grasp of
+      the parasite. Could he lunge out and clutch it? One try&mdash;one effort!
+      No, no; he almost lost footing and fell over in the attempt. He couldn&rsquo;t
+      keep his balance so. He must try farther on. Come what might, he must go
+      past the skeleton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The grisly mass swung again, clanking its bones as it swung, and groaned
+      in the wind ominously. The breeze whistled audibly through its hollow
+      skull and vacant eye-sockets. Tu-Kila-Kila turned uneasily in his sleep
+      below. Felix saw there was not one instant of time to be lost now. He
+      passed on boldly; and as he passed, a dozen thin cords of paper mulberry,
+      stretched every way in an invisible network among the boughs, too small to
+      be seen in the dim moonlight, caught him with their toils and almost
+      overthrew him. They broke with his weight, and Felix himself, tumbling
+      blindly, fell forward. At the cost of a sprained wrist and a great jerk on
+      his bruised fingers, he caught at a bough by his side, but wrenched it
+      away suddenly. It was touch and go. At the very same moment, the skeleton
+      fell heavily, and rattled on the ground beside Tu-Kila-Kila.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before Felix could discover what had actually happened, a very great shout
+      went up all round below, and made him stagger with excitement.
+      Tu-Kila-Kila was awake, and had started up, all intent, mad with wrath and
+      kava. Glaring about him wildly, and brandishing his great spear in his
+      stalwart hands, he screamed aloud, in a perfect frenzy of passion and
+      despair: &ldquo;Where is he, the Korong? Bring him on, my meat! Let me
+      devour his heart! Let me tear him to pieces. Let me drink of his blood!
+      Let me kill him and eat him!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sick and desperate at the accident, Felix, in turn, clinging hard to his
+      bough with one hand, gazed wildly about him to look for the parasite. But
+      it had gone as if by magic. He glanced around in despair, vaguely
+      conscious that nothing was left for it now but to drop to the ground and
+      let himself be killed at leisure by that frantic savage. Yet even as he
+      did so, he was aware of that great cry&mdash;a cry as of triumph&mdash;still
+      rending the air. Fire and Water had rushed forward, and were holding back
+      Tu-Kila-Kila, now black in the face from rage, with all their might. Ula
+      was smiling a malicious joy. The Eyes were all agog with interest and
+      excitement. And from one and all that wild scream rose unanimous to the
+      startled sky: &ldquo;He has it! He has it! The Soul of the Tree! The
+      Spirit of the World! The great god&rsquo;s abode. Hold off your hands,
+      Lavita, son of Sami! Your trial has come. He has it! He has it!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix looked about him with a whirling brain. His eye fell suddenly.
+      There, in his own hand, lay the fateful bough. In his efforts to steady
+      himself, he had clutched at it by pure accident, and broken it off
+      unawares with the force of his clutching. As fortune would have it, he
+      grasped it still. His senses reeled. He was almost dead with excitement,
+      suspense, and uncertainty, mingled with pain of his wrenched wrist. But
+      for Muriel&rsquo;s sake he pulled himself together. Gazing down and trying
+      hard to take it all in&mdash;that strange savage scene&mdash;he saw that
+      Tu-Kila-Kila was making frantic attempts to lunge at him with the spear,
+      while the King of Fire and the King of Water, stern and relentless, were
+      holding him off by main force, and striving their best to appease and
+      quiet him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was an awful pause. Then a voice broke the stillness from beyond the
+      taboo-line:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Shadow of the King of the Rain speaks,&rdquo; it said, in very
+      solemn, conventional accents. &ldquo;Korong! Korong! The Great Taboo is
+      broken. Fire and Water, hold him in whom dwells the god till my master
+      comes. He has the Soul of all the spirits of the wood in his hands. He
+      will fight for his right. Taboo! Taboo! I, Toko, have said it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He clapped his hands thrice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila made a wild effort to break away once more. But the King of
+      Fire, standing opposite him, spoke still louder and clearer. &ldquo;If you
+      touch the Korong before the line is drawn,&rdquo; he said, with a voice of
+      authority, &ldquo;you are no Tu-Kila-Kila, but an outcast and a criminal.
+      All the people will hold you with forked sticks, while the Korong burns
+      you alive slowly, limb by limb, with me, who am Fire, the fierce, the
+      consuming. I will scorch you and bake you till you are as a bamboo in the
+      flame. Taboo! Taboo! Taboo! I, Fire, have said it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The King of Water, with three attendants, forced Tu-Kila-Kila on one side
+      for a moment. Ula stood by and smiled pleased compliance. A temple slave,
+      trembling all over at this conflict of the gods, brought out a calabash
+      full of white coral-sand. The King of Water spat on it and blessed it. By
+      this time a dozen natives, at least, had assembled outside the taboo-line,
+      and stood eagerly watching the result of the combat. The temple slave made
+      a long white mark with the coral-sand on one side of the cleared area.
+      Then he handed the calabash solemnly to Toko. Toko crossed the sacred
+      precinct with a few inaudible words of muttered charm, to save the Taboo,
+      as prescribed in the mysteries. Then he drew a similar line on the ground
+      on his side, some twenty yards off. &ldquo;Descend, O my lord!&rdquo; he
+      cried to Felix; and Felix, still holding the bough tight in his hand,
+      swung himself blindly from the tree, and took his place by Toko.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Toe the line!&rdquo; Toko cried, and Felix toed it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bring up your god!&rdquo; the Shadow called out aloud to the King
+      of Water. And the King of Water, using no special ceremony with so great a
+      duty, dragged Tu-Kila-Kila helplessly along with him to the farther
+      taboo-line.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The King of Water brought a spear and tomahawk. He handed them to Felix.
+      &ldquo;With these weapons,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;fight, and merit heaven.
+      I hold the bough meanwhile&mdash;the victor takes it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The King of Fire stood out between the lists. &ldquo;Korongs and gods,&rdquo;
+      he said, &ldquo;the King of the Rain has plucked the sacred bough,
+      according to our fathers&rsquo; rites, and claims trial which of you two
+      shall henceforth hold the sacred soul of the world, the great
+      Tu-Kila-Kila. Wager of Battle decides the day. Keep toe to line. At the
+      end of my words, forth, forward, and fight for it. The great god knows his
+      own, and will choose his abode. Taboo, Taboo, Taboo! I, Fire, have spoken
+      it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Scarcely were the words well out of his mouth, when, with a wild whoop of
+      rage, Tu-Kila-Kila, who had the advantage of knowing the rules of the
+      game, so to speak, dashed madly forward, drunk with passion and kava, and
+      gave one lunge with his spear full tilt at the breast of the startled and
+      unprepared white man. His aim, though frantic, was not at fault. The spear
+      struck Felix high up on the left side. He felt a dull thud of pain; a
+      faint gurgle of blood. Even in the pale moonlight his eye told him at once
+      a red stream was trickling&mdash;out over his flannel shirt. He was
+      pricked, at least. The great god had wounded him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0029" id="link2HCH0029"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXIX. &mdash; VICTORY&mdash;AND AFTER?
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The great god had wounded him. But not to the heart. Felix, as good luck
+      would have it, happened to be wearing buckled braces. He had worn them on
+      board, and, like the rest of his costume, had, of course, never since been
+      able to discard them. They stood him in good stead now. The buckle caught
+      the very point of the bone-tipped spear, and broke the force of the blow,
+      as the great god lunged forward. The wound was but a graze, and
+      Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s light shaft snapped short in the middle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Madder and wilder than ever, the savage pitched it away, yelling, rushed
+      forward with a fierce curse on his angry tongue, and flung himself, tooth
+      and nail, on his astonished opponent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The suddenness of the onslaught almost took the Englishman&rsquo;s breath
+      away. By this time, however, Felix had pulled together his ideas and taken
+      in the situation. Tu-Kila-Kila was attacking him now with his heavy stone
+      axe. He must parry those deadly blows. He must be alert, but watchful. He
+      must put himself in a posture of defence at once. Above all, he must keep
+      cool and have his wits about him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If he could but have drawn his knife, he would have stood a better chance
+      in that hand-to-hand conflict. But there was no time now for such tactics
+      as those. Besides, even in close fight with a bloodthirsty savage, an
+      English gentleman&rsquo;s sense of fair play never for one moment deserts
+      him. Felix felt, if they were to fight it out face to face for their
+      lives, they should fight at least on a perfect equality. Steel against
+      stone was a mean advantage. Parrying Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s first desperate
+      blow with the haft of his own hatchet, he leaped aside half a second to
+      gain breath and strength. Then he rushed on, and dealt one deadly
+      downstroke with the ponderous weapon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a minute or two they closed, in perfectly savage single combat. Fire
+      and Water, observant and impartial, stood by like seconds to see the god
+      himself decide the issue, which of the two combatants should be his living
+      representative. The contest was brief but very hard-fought. Tu-Kila-Kila,
+      inspired with the last frenzy of despair, rushed wildly on his opponent
+      with hands and fists, and teeth and nails, dealing his blows in blind
+      fury, right and left, and seeking only to sell his life as dearly as
+      possible. In this last extremity, his very superstitions told against him.
+      Everything seemed to show his hour had come. The parrot&rsquo;s bite&mdash;the
+      omen of his own blood that stained the dust of earth&mdash;Ula&rsquo;s
+      treachery&mdash;the chance by which the Korong had learned the Great Taboo&mdash;Felix&rsquo;s
+      accidental or providential success in breaking off the bough&mdash;the
+      length of time he himself had held the divine honors&mdash;the probability
+      that the god would by this time begin to prefer a new and stronger
+      representative&mdash;all these things alike combined to fire the drunk and
+      maddened savage with the energy of despair. He fell upon his enemy like a
+      tiger upon an elephant. He fought with his tomahawk and his feet and his
+      whole lithe body; he foamed at the mouth with impotent rage; he spent his
+      force on the air in the extremity of his passion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix, on the other hand, sobered by pain, and nerved by the fixed
+      consciousness that Muriel&rsquo;s safety now depended absolutely on his
+      perfect coolness, fought with the calm skill of a practised fencer.
+      Happily he had learned the gentle art of thrust and parry years before in
+      England; and though both weapon and opponent were here so different, the
+      lesson of quickness and calm watchfulness he had gained in that civilized
+      school stood him in good stead, even now, under such adverse
+      circumstances. Tu-Kila-Kila, getting spent, drew back for a second at
+      last, and panted for breath. That faint breathing-space of a moment&rsquo;s
+      duration sealed his fate. Seizing his chance with consummate skill, Felix
+      closed upon the breathless monster, and brought down the heavy stone
+      hammer point blank upon the centre of his crashing skull. The weapon drove
+      home. It cleft a great red gash in the cannibal&rsquo;s head. Tu-Kila-Kila
+      reeled and fell. There was an infinitesimal pause of silence and suspense.
+      Then a great shout went up from all round to heaven, &ldquo;He has killed
+      him! He has killed him! We have a new-made god! Tu-Kila-Kila is dead! Long
+      live Tu-Kila-Kila!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix drew back for a moment, panting and breathless, and wiped his wet
+      brow with his sleeve, his brain all whirling. At his feet, the savage lay
+      stretched, like a log. Felix gazed at the blood-bespattered face
+      remorsefully. It is an awful thing, even in a just quarrel, to feel that
+      you have really taken a human life! The responsibility is enough to appall
+      the bravest of us. He stooped down and examined the prostrate body with
+      solemn reverence. Blood was flowing in torrents from the wounded head. But
+      Tu-Kila-Kila was dead&mdash;stone-dead forever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hot tears of relief welled up into Felix&rsquo;s eyes. He touched the body
+      cautiously with a reverent hand. No life. No motion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Just as he did so, the woman Ula came forward, bare-limbed and beautiful,
+      all triumph in her walk, a proud, insensitive savage. One second she gazed
+      at the great corpse disdainfully. Then she lifted her dainty foot, and
+      gave it a contemptuous kick. &ldquo;The body of Lavita, the son of Sami,&rdquo;
+      she said, with a gesture of hatred. &ldquo;He had a bad heart. We will
+      cook it and eat it.&rdquo; Next turning to Felix, &ldquo;Oh, Tu-Kila-Kila,&rdquo;
+      she cried, clapping her hands three times and bowing low to the ground,
+      &ldquo;you are a very great god. We will serve you and salute you. Am not
+      I, Ula, one of your wives, your meat? Do with me as you will. Toko, you
+      are henceforth the great god&rsquo;s Shadow!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix gazed at the beautiful, heartless creature, all horrified. Even on
+      Boupari, that cannibal island, he was hardly prepared for quite so low a
+      depth of savage insensibility. But all the people around, now a hundred or
+      more, standing naked before their new god, took up the shout in concert.
+      &ldquo;The body of Lavita, the son of Sami,&rdquo; they cried. &ldquo;A
+      carrion corpse! The god has deserted it. The great soul of the world has
+      entered the heart of the white-faced stranger from the disk of the sun;
+      the King of the Rain; the great Tu-Kila-Kila. We will cook and eat the
+      body of Lavita, the son of Sami. He was a bad man. He is a worn-out shell.
+      Nothing remains of him now. The great god has left him.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They clapped their hands in a set measure as they recited this hymn. The
+      King of Fire retreated into the temple. Ula stood by, and whispered low
+      with Toko. There was a ceremonial pause of some fifteen minutes.
+      Presently, from the inner recesses of the temple itself, a low noise
+      issued forth as of a rising wind. For some seconds it buzzed and hummed,
+      droningly. But at the very first note of that holy sound Ula dropped her
+      lover&rsquo;s hand, as one drops a red-hot coal, and darted wildly off at
+      full speed, like some frightened wild beast, into the thick jungle. Every
+      other woman near began to rush away with equally instantaneous signs of
+      haste and fear. The men, on the other hand, erect and naked, with their
+      hands on their foreheads, crossed the taboo-line at once. It was the
+      summons to all who had been initiated at the mysteries&mdash;the sacred
+      bull-roarer was calling the assembly of the men of Boupari.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For several minutes it buzzed and droned, that mystic implement, growing
+      louder and louder, till it roared like thunder. One after another, the men
+      of the island rushed in as if mad or in flight for their lives before some
+      fierce beast pursuing them. They ran up, panting, and dripping with sweat;
+      their hands clapped to their foreheads; their eyes starting wildly from
+      their staring sockets; torn and bleeding and lacerated by the thorns and
+      branches of the jungle, for each man ran straight across country from the
+      spot where he lay asleep, in the direction of the sound, and never paused
+      or drew breath, for dear life&rsquo;s sake, till he stood beside the
+      corpse of the dead Tu-Kila-Kila.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And every moment the cry pealed louder and louder still. &ldquo;Lavita,
+      the son of Sami, is dead, praise Heaven! The King of the Rain has slain
+      him, and is now the true Tu-Kila-Kila!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix bent irresolute over the fallen savage&rsquo;s bloodstained corpse.
+      What next was expected of him he hardly knew or cared. His one desire now
+      was to return to Muriel&mdash;to Muriel, whom he had rescued from
+      something worse than death at the hateful hands of that accursed creature
+      who lay breathless forever on the ground beside him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Somebody came up just then, and seized his hand warmly. Felix looked up
+      with a start. It was their friend, the Frenchman. &ldquo;Ah, my captain,
+      you have done well,&rdquo; M. Peyron cried, admiring him. &ldquo;What
+      courage! What coolness! What pluck! What soldiership! I couldn&rsquo;t see
+      all. But I was in at the death! And oh, <i>mon Dieu</i>, how I admired and
+      envied you!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By this time the bull-roarer had ceased to bellow among the rocks. The
+      King of Fire stood forth. In his hands he held a length of bamboo-stick
+      with a lighted coal in it. &ldquo;Bring wood and palm-leaves,&rdquo; he
+      said, in a tone of command. &ldquo;Let me light myself up, that I may
+      blaze before Tu-Kila-Kila.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned and bowed thrice very low before Felix. &ldquo;The accepted of
+      Heaven,&rdquo; he cried, holding his hands above him. &ldquo;The very high
+      god! The King of all Things! He sends down his showers upon our crops and
+      our fields. He causes his sun to shine brightly over us. He makes our pigs
+      and our slaves bring forth their increase. All we are but his meat. We,
+      his people, praise him.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And all the men of Boupari, naked and bleeding, bent low in response.
+      &ldquo;Tu-Kila-Kila is great,&rdquo; they chanted, as they clapped their
+      hands. &ldquo;We thank him that he has chosen a fresh incarnation. The sun
+      will not fade in the heavens overhead, nor the bread-fruits wither and
+      cease to bear fruit on earth. Tu-Kila-Kila, our god, is great. He springs
+      ever young and fresh, like the herbs of the field. He is a most high god.
+      We, his people, praise him.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Four temple attendants brought sticks and leaves, while Felix stood still,
+      half dazed with the newness of these strange preparations. The King of
+      Fire, with his torch, set light to the pile. It blazed merrily on high.
+      &ldquo;I, Fire, salute you,&rdquo; he cried, bending over it toward Felix.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now cut up the body of Lavita, the son of Sami,&rdquo; he went on,
+      turning toward it contemptuously. &ldquo;I will cook it in my flame, that
+      Tu-Kila-Kila the great may eat of it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix drew back with a face all aglow with horror and disgust. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t
+      touch that body!&rdquo; he cried, authoritatively, putting his foot down
+      firm. &ldquo;Leave it alone at once. I refuse to allow you.&rdquo; Then he
+      turned to M. Peyron. &ldquo;The King of the Birds and I,&rdquo; he said,
+      with calm resolve, &ldquo;we two will bury it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The King of Fire drew back at these strange words, nonplussed. This was,
+      indeed, an ill-omened break in the ceremony of initiation of a new
+      Tu-Kila-Kila, to which he had never before in his life been accustomed. He
+      hardly knew how to comport himself under such singular circumstances. It
+      was as though the sovereign of England, on coronation-day, should refuse
+      to be crowned, and intimate to the archbishop, in his full canonicals, a
+      confirmed preference for the republican form of Government. It was a
+      contingency that law and custom in Boupari had neither, in their wisdom,
+      foreseen nor provided for.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The King of Water whispered low in the new god&rsquo;s ear. &ldquo;You
+      must eat of his body, my lord,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;That is absolutely
+      necessary. Every one of us must eat of the flesh of the god; but you,
+      above all, must eat his heart, his divine nature. Otherwise you can never
+      be full Tu-Kila-Kila.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t care a straw for that,&rdquo; Felix cried, now
+      aroused to a full sense of the break in Methuselah&rsquo;s story and
+      trembling with apprehension. &ldquo;You may kill me if you like; we can
+      die only once; but human flesh I can never taste; nor will I, while I
+      live, allow you to touch this dead man&rsquo;s body. We will bury it
+      ourselves, the King of the Birds and I. You may tell your people so. That
+      is my last word.&rdquo; He raised his voice to the customary ceremonial
+      pitch. &ldquo;I, the new Tu-Kila-Kila,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;have spoken
+      it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The King of Fire and the King of Water, taken aback at his boldness,
+      conferred together for some seconds privately. The people meanwhile looked
+      on and wondered. What could this strange hitch in the divine proceedings
+      mean? Was the god himself recalcitrant? Never in their lives had the
+      oldest men among them known anything like it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And as they whispered and debated, awe-struck but discordant, a shout
+      arose once more from the outer circle&mdash;a mighty shout of mingled
+      surprise, alarm, and terror. &ldquo;Taboo! Taboo! Fence the mysteries.
+      Beware! Oh, great god, we warn you. The mysteries are in danger! Cut her
+      down! Kill her! A woman! A woman!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the words, Felix was aware of somebody bursting through the dense crowd
+      and rushing wildly toward him. Next moment, Muriel hung and sobbed on his
+      shoulder, while Mali, just behind her, stood crying and moaning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix held the poor startled girl in his arms and soothed her. And all
+      around another great cry arose from five hundred lips: &ldquo;Two women
+      have profaned the mysteries of the god. They are Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s
+      trespass-offering. Let us kill them and eat them!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0030" id="link2HCH0030"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXX. &mdash; SUSPENSE.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      In a moment, Felix&rsquo;s mind was fully made up. There was no time to
+      think; it was the hour for action. He saw how he must comport himself
+      toward this strange wild people. Seating Muriel gently on the ground, Mali
+      beside her, and stepping forward himself, with Peyron&rsquo;s hand in his,
+      he beckoned to the vast and surging crowd to bespeak respectful silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A mighty hush fell at once upon the people. The King of Fire and the King
+      of Water stood back, obedient to his nod. They waited for the upshot of
+      this strange new development.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Men of Boupari,&rdquo; Felix began, speaking with a marvellous
+      fluency in their own tongue, for the excitement itself supplied him with
+      eloquence; &ldquo;I have killed your late god in the prescribed way; I
+      have plucked the sacred bough, and fought in single combat by the
+      established rules of your own religion. Fire and Water, you guardians of
+      this holy island, is it not so? You saw all things done, did you not,
+      after the precepts of your ancestors?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The King of Fire bowed low and answered: &ldquo;Tu-Kila-Kila speaks,
+      indeed, the truth. Water and I, with our own eyes, have seen it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And now,&rdquo; Felix went on, &ldquo;I am myself, by your own
+      laws, Tu-Kila-Kila.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The King of Fire made a gesture of dissent. &ldquo;Oh, great god, pardon
+      me,&rdquo; he murmured, &ldquo;if I say aught, now, to contradict you; but
+      you are not a full Tu-Kila-Kila yet till you have eaten of the heart of
+      the god, your predecessor.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then where is now the spirit of Tu-Kila-Kila, the very high god, if
+      I am not he?&rdquo; Felix asked, abruptly, thus puzzling them with a hard
+      problem in their own savage theology.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The King of Fire gave a start, and pondered. This was a detail of his
+      creed that had never before so much as occurred to him. All faiths have
+      their <i>cruces</i>. &ldquo;I do not well know,&rdquo; he answered,
+      &ldquo;whether it is in the heart of Lavita, the son of Sami, or in your
+      own body. But I feel sure it must now be certainly somewhere, though just
+      where our fathers have never told us.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix recognized at once that he had gained a point. &ldquo;Then look to
+      it well,&rdquo; he said, austerely. &ldquo;Be careful how you act. Do
+      nothing rash. For either the soul of the god is in the heart of Lavita,
+      the son of Sami; and then, since I refuse to eat it, it will decay away,
+      as Lavita&rsquo;s body decays, and the world will shrivel up, and all
+      things will perish, because the god is dead and crumbled to dust forever.
+      Or else it is in my body, who am god in his place; and then, if anybody
+      does me harm or hurt, he will be an impious wretch, and will have broken
+      taboo, and Heaven knows what evils and misfortunes may not, therefore,
+      fall on each and all of you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A very old chief rose from the ranks outside. His hair was white and his
+      eyes bleared. &ldquo;Tu-Kila-Kila speaks well,&rdquo; he cried, in a loud
+      but mumbling voice. &ldquo;His words are wise. He argues to the point. He
+      is very cunning. I advise you, my people, to be careful how you anger the
+      white-faced stranger, for you know what he is; he is cruel; he is
+      powerful. There was never any storm in my time&mdash;and I am an old man&mdash;so
+      great in Boupari as the storm that rose when the King of the Rain ate the
+      storm-apple. Our yams and our taros even now are suffering from it. He is
+      a mighty strong god. Beware how you tamper with him!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He sat down, trembling. A younger chief rose from a nearer rank, and said
+      his say in turn. &ldquo;I do not agree with our father,&rdquo; he cried,
+      pointing to the chief who had just spoken. &ldquo;His word is evil; he is
+      much mistaken. I have another thought. My thought is this. Let us kill and
+      eat the white-faced stranger at once, by wager of battle; and let
+      whosoever fights and overcomes him receive his honors, and take to wife
+      the fair woman, the Queen of the Clouds, the sun-faced Korong, whom he
+      brought from the sun with him.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But who will then be Tu-Kila-Kila?&rdquo; Felix asked, turning
+      round upon him quickly. Habituation to danger had made him unnaturally
+      alert in such utmost extremities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, the man who slays you,&rdquo; the young chief answered,
+      pointedly, grasping his heavy tomahawk with profound expression.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think not,&rdquo; Felix answered. &ldquo;Your reasoning is bad.
+      For if I am not Tu-Kila-Kila, how can any man become Tu-Kila-Kila by
+      killing me? And if I am Tu-Kila-Kila, how dare you, not being yourself
+      Korong, and not having broken off the sacred bough, as I did, venture to
+      attack me? You wish to set aside all the customs of Boupari. Are you not
+      ashamed of such gross impiety?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tu-Kila-Kila speaks well,&rdquo; the King of Fire put in, for he
+      had no cause to love the aggressive young chief, and he thought better of
+      his chances in life as Felix&rsquo;s minister. &ldquo;Besides, now I think
+      of it, he <i>must</i> be Tu-Kila-Kila, because he has taken the life of
+      the last great god, whom he slew with his hands; and therefore the life is
+      now his&mdash;he holds it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix was emboldened by this favorable opinion to strike out a fresh line
+      in a further direction. He stood forward once more, and beckoned again for
+      silence. &ldquo;Yes, my people,&rdquo; he said calmly, with slow
+      articulation, &ldquo;by the custom of your race and the creed you profess
+      I am now indeed, and in every truth, the abode of your great god,
+      Tu-Kila-Kila. But, furthermore, I have a new revelation to make to you. I
+      am going to instruct you in a fresh way. This creed that you hold is full
+      of errors. As Tu-Kila-Kila, I mean to take my own course, no islander
+      hindering me. If you try to depose me, what great gods have you now got
+      left? None, save only Fire and Water, my ministers. King of the Rain there
+      is none; for I, who was he, am now Tu-Kila-Kila. Tu-Kila-Kila there is
+      none, save only me; for the other, that was, I have fought and conquered.
+      The Queen of the Clouds is with me. The King of the Birds is with me.
+      Consider, then, O friends, that if you kill us all, you will have nowhere
+      to turn; you will be left quite godless.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is true,&rdquo; the people murmured, looking about them, half
+      puzzled. &ldquo;He is wise. He speaks well. He is indeed a Tu-Kila-Kila.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix pressed his advantage home at once. &ldquo;Now listen,&rdquo; he
+      said, lifting up one solemn forefinger. &ldquo;I come from a country very
+      far away, where the customs are better by many yams than those of Boupari.
+      And now that I am indeed Tu-Kila-Kila&mdash;your god, your master&mdash;I
+      will change and alter some of your customs that seem to me here and now
+      most undesirable. In the first place&mdash;hear this!&mdash;I will put
+      down all cannibalism. No man shall eat of human flesh on pain of death.
+      And to begin with, no man shall cook or eat the body of Lavita, the son of
+      Sami. On that I am determined&mdash;I, Tu-Kila-Kila. The King of the Birds
+      and I, we will dig a pit, and we will bury in it the corpse of this man
+      that was once your god, and whom his own wickedness compelled me to fight
+      and slay, in order to prevent more cruelty and bloodshed.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The young chief stood up, all red in his wrath, and interrupted him,
+      brandishing a coral-stone hatchet. &ldquo;This is blasphemy,&rdquo; he
+      said. &ldquo;This is sheer rank blasphemy. These are not good words. They
+      are very bad medicine. The white-faced Korong is no true Tu-Kila-Kila. His
+      advice is evil&mdash;and ill-luck would follow it. He wishes to change the
+      sacred customs of Boupari. Now, that is not well. My counsel is this: let
+      us eat him now, unless he changes his heart, and amends his ways, and
+      partakes, as is right, of the body of Lavita, the son of Sami.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The assembly swayed visibly, this way and that, some inclining to the
+      conservative view of the rash young chief, and others to the cautious
+      liberalism of the gray-haired warrior. Felix noted their division, and
+      spoke once more, this time still more authoritatively than ever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Furthermore,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;my people, hear me. As I came
+      in a ship propelled by fire over the high waves of the sea, so I go away
+      in one. We watch for such a ship to pass by Boupari. When it comes, the
+      Queen of the Clouds&mdash;upon whose life I place a great Taboo; let no
+      man dare to touch her at his peril; if he does, I will rush upon him and
+      kill him as I killed Lavita, the son of Sami. When it comes, the Queen of
+      the Clouds, the King of the Birds, and I, we will go away back in it to
+      the land whence we came, and be quit of Boupari. But we will not leave it
+      fireless or godless. When I return back home again to my own far land, I
+      will send out messengers, very good men, who will tell you of a God more
+      powerful by much than any you ever knew, and very righteous. They will
+      teach you great things you never dreamed of. Therefore, I ask you now to
+      disperse to your own homes, while the King of Birds and I bury the body of
+      Lavita, the son of Sami.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All this time Muriel had been seated on the ground, listening with
+      profound interest, but scarcely understanding a word, though here and
+      there, after her six months&rsquo; stay in the island, a single phrase was
+      dimly intelligible to her. But now, at this critical moment she rose, and,
+      standing upright by Felix&rsquo;s side in her spotless English purity
+      among those assembled savages, she pointed just once with her uplifted
+      finger to the calm vault of heaven, and then across the moonlit horizon of
+      the sea, and last of all to the clustering huts and villages of Boupari.
+      &ldquo;Tell them,&rdquo; she said to Felix, with blanched lips, but
+      without one sign of a tremor in her fearless voice, &ldquo;I will pray for
+      them to Heaven, when I go across the sea, and will think of the children
+      that I loved to pat and play with, and will send out messengers from our
+      home beyond the waves, to make them wiser and happier and better.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix translated her simple message to them in its pure womanly goodness.
+      Even the natives were touched. They whispered and hesitated. Then after a
+      time of much murmured debate, the King of Fire stood forward as a
+      mediator. &ldquo;There is an oracle, O Korong,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;not
+      to prejudge the matter, which decides all these things&mdash;a great
+      conch-shell at a sacred grove in the neighboring island of Aloa Mauna. It
+      is the holiest oracle of all our holy religion. We gods and men of Boupari
+      have taken counsel together, and have come to a conclusion. We will put
+      forth a canoe and send men with blood on their faces to inquire at Aloa
+      Mauna of the very great oracle. Till then, you are neither Tu-Kila-Kila,
+      nor not Tu-Kila-Kila. It behooves us to be very careful how we deal with
+      gods. Our people will stand round your precinct in a row, and guard you
+      with their spears. You shall not cross the taboo line to them, nor they to
+      you: all shall be neutral. Food shall be laid by the line, as always,
+      morn, noon, and night; and your Shadows shall take it in; but you shall
+      not come out. Neither shall you bury the body of Lavita, the son of Sami.
+      Till the canoe comes back it shall lie in the sun and rot there.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He clapped his hands twice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a moment a tom-tom began to beat from behind, and the people all
+      crowded without the circle. The King of Fire came forward ostentatiously
+      and made taboo. &ldquo;If, any man cross this line,&rdquo; he said in a
+      droning sing-song, &ldquo;till the canoe return from the great oracle of
+      our faith on Aloa Mauna, I, Fire, will scorch him into cinder and ashes.
+      If any woman transgress, I will pitch her with palm oil, and light her up
+      for a lamp on a moonless night to lighten this temple.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The King of Water distributed shark&rsquo;s-tooth spears. At once a great
+      serried wall hemmed in the Europeans all round, and they sat down to wait,
+      the three whites together, for the upshot of the mission to Aloa Mauna.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the dawn now gleamed red on the eastern horizon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0031" id="link2HCH0031"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXXI. &mdash; AT SEA: OFF BOUPARI.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Thirteen days out from Sydney, the good ship Australasian was nearing the
+      equator.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was four of the clock in the afternoon, and the captain (off duty)
+      paced the deck, puffing a cigar, and talking idly with a passenger on
+      former experiences.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Eight bells went on the quarter-deck; time to change watches.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is only our second trip through this channel,&rdquo; the
+      captain said, gazing across with a casual glance at the palm-trees that
+      stood dark against the blue horizon. &ldquo;We used to go a hundred miles
+      to eastward, here, to avoid the reefs. But last voyage I came through this
+      way quite safely&mdash;though we had a nasty accident on the road&mdash;unavoidable&mdash;unavoidable!
+      Big sea was running free over the sunken shoals; caught the ship aft
+      unawares, and stove in better than half a dozen portholes. Lady passenger
+      on deck happened to be leaning over the weather gunwale; big sea caught
+      her up on its crest in a jiffy, lifted her like a baby, and laid her down
+      again gently, just so, on the bed of the ocean. By George, sir, I was
+      annoyed. It was quite a romance, poor thing; quite a romance; we all felt
+      so put out about it the rest of that voyage. Young fellow on board, nephew
+      of Sir Theodore Thurstan, of the Colonial Office, was in love with Miss
+      Ellis&mdash;girl&rsquo;s name was Ellis&mdash;father&rsquo;s a parson
+      somewhere down in Somersetshire&mdash;and as soon as the big sea took her
+      up on its crest, what does Thurstan go and do, but he ups on the taffrail,
+      and, before you could say Jack Robinson, jumps over to save her.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But he didn&rsquo;t succeed?&rdquo; the passenger asked, with
+      languid interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Succeed, my dear sir? and with a sea running twelve feet high like
+      that? Why, it was pitch dark, and such a surf on that the gig could hardly
+      go through it.&rdquo; The captain smiled, and puffed away pensively.
+      &ldquo;Drowned,&rdquo; he said, after a brief pause, with complacent
+      composure. &ldquo;Drowned. Drowned. Drowned. Went to the bottom, both of
+      &rsquo;em. Davy Jones&rsquo;s locker. But unavoidable, quite. These
+      accidents <i>will</i> happen, even on the best-regulated liners. Why,
+      there was my brother Tom, in the Cunard service&mdash;same that boast they
+      never lost a passenger; there was my brother Tom, he was out one day off
+      the Newfoundland banks, heavy swell setting in from the nor&rsquo;-nor&rsquo;-east,
+      icebergs ahead, passengers battened down&mdash;Bless my soul, how that
+      light seems to come and go, don&rsquo;t it?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a reflected light, flashing from the island straight in the captain&rsquo;s
+      eyes, small and insignificant as to size, but strong for all that in the
+      full tropical sunshine, and glittering like a diamond from a vague
+      elevation near the centre of the island.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Seems to come and go in regular order,&rdquo; the passenger
+      observed, reflectively, withdrawing his cigar. &ldquo;Looks for all the
+      world just like naval signalling.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The captain paused, and shaded his eyes a moment. &ldquo;Hanged if that
+      isn&rsquo;t just what it <i>is</i>,&rdquo; he answered, slowly. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s
+      a rigged-up heliograph, and they&rsquo;re using the Morse code; dash my
+      eyes if they aren&rsquo;t. Well, this <i>is</i> civilization! What the
+      dickens can have come to the island of Boupari? There isn&rsquo;t a darned
+      European soul in the place, nor ever has been. Anchorage unsafe; no
+      harbor; bad reef; too small for missionaries to make a living, and natives
+      got nothing worth speaking of to trade in.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do they say?&rdquo; the passenger asked, with suddenly
+      quickened interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How the devil should I tell you yet, sir?&rdquo; the captain
+      retorted with choleric grumpiness. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you see I&rsquo;m
+      spelling it out, letter by letter? O, r, e, s, c, u, e, u, s, c, o, m, e,
+      w, e, l, l, a, r, m, e, d&mdash;Yes. yes, I twig it.&rdquo; And the
+      captain jotted it down in his note-book for some seconds, silently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Run up the flag there,&rdquo; he shouted, a moment later, rushing
+      hastily forward. &ldquo;Stop her at once, Walker. Easy, easy. Get ready
+      the gig. Well, upon my soul, there <i>is</i> a rum start anyway.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What does the message say?&rdquo; the passenger inquired, with
+      intense surprise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say? Well, there&rsquo;s what I make it out,&rdquo; the captain
+      answered, handing him the scrap of paper on which he had jotted down the
+      letters. &ldquo;I missed the beginning, but the end&rsquo;s all right.
+      Look alive there, boys, will you. Bring out the Winchester. Take
+      cutlasses, all hands. I&rsquo;ll go along myself in her.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The passenger took the piece of paper on which he read, &ldquo;and send a
+      boat to rescue us. Come well armed. Savages on guard. Thurstan, Ellis.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In less than three minutes the boat was lowered and manned, and the
+      captain, with the Winchester six-shooter by his side, seated grim in the
+      stern, took command of the tiller.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the island it was the first day of Felix and Muriel&rsquo;s
+      imprisonment in the dusty precinct of Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s temple. All the
+      morning through, they had sat under the shade of a smaller banyan in the
+      outer corner; for Muriel could neither enter the noisome hut nor go near
+      the great tree with the skeletons on its branches; nor could she sit where
+      the dead savage&rsquo;s body, still festering in the sun, attracted the
+      buzzing blue flies by thousands, to drink up the blood that lay thick on
+      the earth in a pool around it. Hard by, the natives sat, keen as lynxes,
+      in a great circle just outside the white taboo-line, where, with serried
+      spears, they kept watch and ward over the persons of their doubtful gods
+      or victims. M. Peyron, alone preserving his equanimity under these adverse
+      circumstances, hummed low to himself in very dubious tones; even he felt
+      his French gayety had somewhat forsaken him; this revolution in Boupari
+      failed to excite his Parisian ardor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      About one o&rsquo;clock in the day, however, looking casually seaward&mdash;what
+      was this that M. Peyron, to his great surprise, descried far away on the
+      dim southern horizon? A low black line, lying close to the water? No, no;
+      not a steamer!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Too prudent to excite the natives&rsquo; attention unnecessarily, the
+      cautious Frenchman whispered, in the most commonplace voice on earth to
+      Felix: &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t look at once; and when you do look, mind you don&rsquo;t
+      exhibit any agitation in your tone or manner. But what do you make that
+      out to be&mdash;that long black haze on the horizon to southward?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix looked, disregarding the friendly injunction, at once. At the same
+      moment, Muriel turned her eyes quickly in the self-same direction. Neither
+      made the faintest sign of outer emotion; but Muriel clenched her white
+      hands hard, till the nails dug into the palm, in her effort to restrain
+      herself, as she murmured very low, in an agitated voice, &ldquo;<i>Un
+      vapeur, un vapeur</i>!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So I think,&rdquo; M. Peyron answered, very low and calm. &ldquo;It
+      is, indeed, a steamer!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For three long hours those anxious souls waited and watched it draw nearer
+      and nearer. Slowly the natives, too, began to perceive the unaccustomed
+      object. As it drew abreast of the island, and the decisive moment arrived
+      for prompt action, Felix rose in his place once more and cried aloud,
+      &ldquo;My people, I told you a ship, propelled by fire, would come from
+      the far land across the sea to take us. The ship has come; you can see for
+      yourselves the thick black smoke that issues in huge puffs from the mouth
+      of the monster. Now, listen to me, and dare not to disobey me. My word is
+      law; let all men see to it. I am going to send a message of fire from the
+      sun to the great canoe that walks upon the water. If any man ventures to
+      stop me from doing it the people from the great canoe will land on this
+      isle and take vengeance for his act, and kill with the thunder which the
+      sailing gods carry ever about with them.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By this time the island was alive with commotion. Hundreds of natives,
+      with their long hair falling unkempt about their keen brown faces, were
+      gazing with open eyes at the big black ship that ploughed her way so fast
+      against wind and tide over the surface of the waters. Some of them shouted
+      and gesticulated with panic fear; others seemed half inclined to waste no
+      time on preparation or doubt, but to rush on at once, and immolate their
+      captives before a rescue was possible. But Felix, keeping ever his cool
+      head undisturbed, stood on the dusty mound by Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s house,
+      and taking in his hand the little mirror he had made from the match-box,
+      flashed the light from the sun full in their eyes for a moment, to the
+      astonishment and discomfiture of all those gaping savages. Then he
+      focussed it on the Australasian, across the surf and the waves, and with a
+      throbbing heart began to make his last faint bid for life and freedom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For four or five minutes he went flashing on, uncertain of the effect,
+      whether they saw or saw not. Then a cry from Muriel burst at once upon his
+      ears. She clasped her hands convulsively in an agony of joy. &ldquo;They
+      see us! They see us!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And sure enough, scarcely half a minute later, a British flag ran gayly up
+      the mainmast, and a boat seemed to drop down over the side of the vessel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As for the natives, they watched these proceedings with considerable
+      surprise and no little discomfiture&mdash;Fire and Water, in particular,
+      whispering together, much alarmed, with many superstitious nods and
+      taboos, in the corner of the enclosure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gradually, as the boat drew nearer and nearer, divided counsels prevailed
+      among the savages. With no certainly recognized Tu-Kila-Kila to marshal
+      their movements, each man stood in doubt from whom to take his orders. At
+      last, the King of Fire, in a hesitating voice, gave the word of command.
+      &ldquo;Half the warriors to the shore to repel the enemy; half to watch
+      round the taboo-line, lest the Korongs escape us! Let Breathless Fear, our
+      war-god, go before the face of our troops, invisible!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And, quick as thought, at his word, the warriors had paired off, two and
+      two, in long lines; some running hastily down to the beach, to man the
+      war-canoes, while others remained, with shark&rsquo;s tooth spears still
+      set in a looser circle, round the great temple-enclosure of Tu-Kila-Kila.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For Muriel, this suspense was positively terrible. To feel one was so
+      close to the hope of rescue, and yet to know that before that help
+      arrived, or even as it came up, those savages might any moment run their
+      ghastly spears through them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Felix made the best of his position still. &ldquo;Remember,&rdquo; he
+      cried, at the top of his voice, as the warriors started at a run for the
+      water&rsquo;s edge, &ldquo;your Tu-Kila-Kila tells you, these new-comers
+      are his friends. Whoever hurts them, does so at his peril. This is a great
+      Taboo. I bid you receive them. Beware for your lives. I, Tu-Kila-Kila the
+      Great, have said it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0032" id="link2HCH0032"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXXII. &mdash; THE DOWNFALL OF A PANTHEON.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The Australasian&rsquo;s gig entered the lagoon through the fringing reef
+      by its narrow seaward mouth, and rowed steadily for the landing place on
+      the main island.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A little way out from shore, amid loud screams and yells, the natives came
+      up with it in their laden war-canoes. Shouting and gesticulating and
+      brandishing their spears with the shark&rsquo;s tooth tips, they
+      endeavored to stop its progress landward by pure noise and bravado.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We must be careful what we do, boys,&rdquo; the captain observed,
+      in a quiet voice of seamanlike resolution to his armed companions. &ldquo;We
+      mustn&rsquo;t frighten the savages too much, or show too hostile a front,
+      for fear they should retaliate on our friends on the island.&rdquo; He
+      held up his hand, with the gold braid on the wrist, to command silence;
+      and the natives, gazing open-mouthed, looked and wondered at the gesture.
+      These sailing gods were certainly arrayed in most gorgeous vestments, and
+      their canoe, though devoid of a grinning figure-head, was provided with a
+      most admirable and well-uniformed equipment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A coral rock jutted high out of the sea to the left hard by. Its summit
+      was crowded with a basking population of sea-gulls and pelicans. The
+      captain gave the word to &ldquo;easy all.&rdquo; In a second the gig
+      stopped short, as those stout arms held her. He rose in his place and
+      lifted the six-shooter. Then he pointed it ostentatiously at the rock,
+      away from the native canoes, and held up his hand yet again for silence.
+      &ldquo;We&rsquo;ll give 'em a taste of what we can do, boys,&rdquo; he
+      said, &ldquo;just to show &rsquo;em, not to hurt &rsquo;em.&rdquo; At that
+      he drew the trigger twice. His first two chambers were loaded on purpose
+      with duck-shot cartridges. Twice the big gun roared; twice the fire
+      flashed red from its smoking mouth. As the smoke cleared away, the
+      natives, dumb with surprise, and perfectly cowed with terror, saw ten or a
+      dozen torn and bleeding birds float mangled upon the water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now for the dynamite!&rdquo; the captain said, cheerily, proceeding
+      to lower a small object overboard by a single wire, while he held up his
+      hand a third time to bespeak silence and attention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The natives looked again, with eyes starting from their heads. The captain
+      gave a little click, and pointed with his finger to a spot on the water&rsquo;s
+      top, a little way in front of him. Instantly, a loud report, and a column
+      of water spurted up into the air, some ten or twelve feet, in a boisterous
+      fountain. As it subsided again, a hundred or so of the bright-colored fish
+      that browse among the submerged, coral-groves of these still lagoons, rose
+      dead or dying to the seething, boiling surface.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The captain smiled. Instantly the natives set up a terrified shout.
+      &ldquo;It is even as he said,&rdquo; they cried. &ldquo;These gods are his
+      ministers! The white-faced Korong is a very great deity! He is indeed the
+      true Tu-Kila-Kila. These gods have come for him. They are very mighty.
+      Thunder and lightning and waterspouts are theirs. The waves do as they
+      bid. The sea obeys them. They are here to take away our Tu-Kila-Kila from
+      our midst. And what will then become of the island of Boupari? Will it not
+      sink in the waves of the sea and disappear? Will not the sun in heaven
+      grow dark, and the moon cease to shed its benign light on the earth, when
+      Tu-Kila-Kila the Great returns at last to his own far country?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That lot&rsquo;ll do for &rsquo;em, I expect,&rdquo; the captain
+      said cheerily, with a confident smile. &ldquo;Now forward all, boys. I
+      fancy we&rsquo;ve astonished the natives a trifle.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They rowed on steadily, but cautiously, toward the white bank of sand
+      which formed the usual landing-place, the captain holding the six-shooter
+      in readiness all the time, and keeping an eye firmly fixed on every
+      movement of the savages. But the warriors in the canoes, thoroughly cowed
+      and overawed by this singular exhibition of the strangers&rsquo; prowess,
+      paddled on in whispering silence, nearly abreast of the gig, but at a safe
+      distance, as they thought, and eyed the advancing Europeans with quiet
+      looks of unmixed suspicion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last, the adventurous young chief, who had advised killing Felix
+      off-hand on the island, mustered up courage to paddle his own canoe a
+      little nearer, and flung his spear madly in the direction of the gig. It
+      fell short by ten yards. He stood eying it angrily. But the captain,
+      grimly quiet, raising his Winchester to his shoulder without one second&rsquo;s
+      delay, and marking his man, fired at the young chief as he stood, still
+      half in the attitude of throwing, on the prow of his canoe, an easy aim
+      for fire-arms. The ball went clean through the savage&rsquo;s breast, and
+      then ricochetted three times on the water afar off. The young chief fell
+      stone dead into the sea like a log, and sank instantly to the bottom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a critical moment. The captain felt uncertain whether the natives
+      would close round them in force or not. It is always dangerous to fire a
+      shot at savages. But the Boupari men were too utterly awed to venture on
+      defence. &ldquo;He was Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s enemy,&rdquo; they cried, in
+      astonished tones. &ldquo;He raised his voice against the very high god.
+      Therefore, the very high god&rsquo;s friends have smitten him with their
+      lightning. Their thunderbolt went through him, and hit the water beyond.
+      How strong is their hand! They can kill from afar. They are mighty gods.
+      Let no man strive to fight against the friends of Tu-Kila-Kila.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sailors rowed on and reached the landing-place. There, half of them,
+      headed by the captain, disembarked in good order, with drawn cutlasses,
+      while the other half remained behind to guard the gig, under the third
+      officer. The natives also disembarked, a little way off, and, making
+      humble signs of submission with knee and arm, endeavored, by pantomime, to
+      express the idea of their willingness to guide the strangers to their
+      friends&rsquo; quarters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The captain waved them on with his hand. The natives, reassured, led the
+      way, at some distance ahead, along the paths through the jungle. The
+      captain had his finger on his six-shooter the while; every sailor grasped
+      his cutlass and kept his revolver ready for action. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t
+      half like the look of it,&rdquo; the captain observed, partly to himself.
+      &ldquo;They seem to be leading us into an ambuscade or something. Keep a
+      sharp lookout against surprise from the jungle, boys; and if any native
+      shows fight shoot him down instantly.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last they emerged upon a clear space in the front, where a great group
+      of savages stood in a circle, with serried spears, round a large wattled
+      hut that occupied the elevated centre of the clearing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a minute or two the action of the savages was uncertain. Half of the
+      defenders turned round to face the invaders angrily; the other half stood
+      irresolute, with their spears still held inward, guarding a white line of
+      sand with inflexible devotion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The warriors who had preceded them from the shore called aloud to their
+      friends by the temple in startled tones. The captain and sailors had no
+      idea what their words meant. But just then, from the midst of the circle,
+      an English voice cried out in haste, &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t fire! Do nothing
+      rash! We&rsquo;re safe. Don&rsquo;t be frightened. The natives are
+      disposed to parley and palaver. Take care how you act. They&rsquo;re
+      terribly afraid of you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Just outside the taboo-line the captain halted. The gray-headed old chief,
+      who had accompanied his fellows to the shore, spoke out in Polynesian.
+      &ldquo;Do not resist them,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;my people. If you do,
+      you will be blasted by their lightning like a bare bamboo in a mighty
+      cyclone. They carry thunder in their hands. They are mighty, mighty gods.
+      The white-faced Korong spoke no more than the truth. Let them do as they
+      will with us. We are but their meat. We are as dust beneath their sole,
+      and as driven mulberry-leaves before the breath of the tempest.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The defenders hesitated still a little. Then, suddenly losing heart, they
+      broke rank at last at a point close by where the captain of the
+      Australasian stood, one man after another falling aside slowly and
+      shamefacedly a pace or two. The captain, unhesitatingly, overstepped the
+      white taboo-line. Next instant, Felix and Muriel were grasping his hand
+      hard, and M. Peyron was bowing a polite Parisian reception.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Forthwith, the sailors crowded round them in a hollow square. Muriel and
+      Felix, half faint with relief from their long and anxious suspense,
+      staggered slowly down the seaward path between them. But there was no need
+      now for further show of defence. The islanders, pressing near and flinging
+      away their weapons, followed the procession close, with tears and
+      lamentations. As they went on, the women, rushing out of their huts while
+      the fugitives passed, tore their hair on their heads, and beat their
+      breasts in terror. The warriors who had come from the shore recounted,
+      with their own exaggerative additions, the miracle of the six-shooter and
+      the dynamite cartridge. Gradually they approached the landing-place on the
+      beach. There the third officer sat waiting in the gig to receive them. The
+      lamentations of the islanders now became positively poignant. &ldquo;Oh,
+      my father,&rdquo; they cried aloud, &ldquo;my brother, my revered one, you
+      are indeed the true Tu-Kila-Kila. Do not go away like this and desert us!
+      Oh, our mother, great queen, mighty goddess, stop with us! Take not away
+      your sun from the heavens, nor your rain from the crops. We acknowledge we
+      have sinned; we have done very wrong; but the chief sinner is dead; the
+      wrong-doer has paid; spare us who remain; spare us, great deity; do not
+      make the bright lights of heaven become dark over us. Stay with your
+      worshippers, and we will give you choice young girls to eat every day, we
+      will sacrifice the tenderest of our children to feed you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is an awful thing for any race or nation when its taboos fail all at
+      once, and die out entirely. To the men of Boupari, the Tu-Kila-Kila of the
+      moment represented both the Moral Order and the regular sequence of the
+      physical universe. Anarchy and chaos might rule when he was gone. The sun
+      might be quenched, and the people run riot. No wonder they shrank from the
+      fearful consequence that might next ensue. King and priest, god and
+      religion, all at one fell blow were to be taken away from them!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix turned round on the shore and spoke to them again. &ldquo;My people,&rdquo;
+      he said, in a kindly tone&mdash;for, after all, he pitied them&mdash;&ldquo;you
+      need have no fear. When I am gone, the sun will still shine and the trees
+      will still bear fruit every year as formerly. I will send the messengers I
+      promised from my own land to teach you. Until they come, I leave you this
+      as a great Taboo. Tu-Kila-Kila enjoins it. Shed no human blood; eat no
+      human flesh. Those who do will be punished when another fire-canoe comes
+      from the far land to bring my messengers.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The King of Fire bent low at the words. &ldquo;Oh, Tu-Kila-Kila,&rdquo; he
+      said, &ldquo;it shall be done as you say. Till your messengers come, every
+      man shall live at peace with all his neighbors.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They stepped into the gig. Mali and Toko followed before M. Peyron as
+      naturally as they had always followed their masters on the island before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who are these?&rdquo; the captain asked, smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Our Shadows,&rdquo; Felix answered. &ldquo;Let them come. I will
+      pay their passage when I reach San Francisco. They have been very faithful
+      to us, and they are afraid to remain, lest the islanders should kill them
+      for letting us go or for not accompanying us.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well,&rdquo; the captain answered. &ldquo;Forward all, there,
+      boys! Now, ahead for the ship. And thank God, we&rsquo;re well out of it!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the islanders still stood on the shore and wept, stretching their
+      hands in vain after the departing boat, and crying aloud in piteous tones,
+      &ldquo;Oh, my father, return! Oh, my mother, come back! Oh, very great
+      gods, do not fly and desert us!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seven weeks later Mr. and Mrs. Felix Thurstan, who had been married in the
+      cathedral at Honolulu the very morning the Australasian arrived there, sat
+      in an eminently respectable drawing-room in a London square, where Mrs.
+      Ellis, Muriel&rsquo;s aunt by marriage, was acting as their hostess.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But how dreadful it is to think, dear,&rdquo; Mrs. Ellis remarked
+      for the twentieth time since their arrival, with a deep-drawn sigh,
+      &ldquo;how dreadful to think that you and Felix should have been all those
+      months alone on the island together without being married!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Muriel looked up with a quiet smile toward Felix. &ldquo;I think, Aunt
+      Mary,&rdquo; she said, dreamily, &ldquo;if you&rsquo;d been there
+      yourself, and suffered all those fears, and passed through all those
+      horrors that we did together, you&rsquo;d have troubled your head very
+      little indeed about such conventionalities, as whether or not you happened
+      to be married.... Besides,&rdquo; she added, after a pause, with a fine
+      perception of the inexorable stringency of Mrs. Grundy&rsquo;s law,
+      &ldquo;we weren&rsquo;t quite without chaperons, either, don&rsquo;t you
+      know; for our Shadows, of course, were always with us.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whereat Felix smiled an equally quiet smile. &ldquo;And terrible as it all
+      was,&rdquo; he put in, &ldquo;I shall never regret it, because it made
+      Muriel know how profoundly I loved her, and it made me know how brave and
+      trustful and pure a woman could be under such awful conditions.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Mrs. Ellis sat still in her chair and smiled uncomfortably. It
+      affected her spirits. Taboos, after all, are much the same in England as
+      in Boupari.
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 6em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
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+</pre>
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+</html>
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Great Taboo, by Grant Allen
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Great Taboo
+
+Author: Grant Allen
+
+Release Date: October 26, 2004  [eBook #13876]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GREAT TABOO***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Mary Meehan and the Project Gutenberg Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+THE GREAT TABOO
+
+by
+
+GRANT ALLEN
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+I desire to express my profound indebtedness, for the central
+mythological idea embodied in this tale, to Mr. J.G. Frazer's admirable
+and epoch-making work, "The Golden Bough," whose main contention I have
+endeavored incidentally to popularize in my present story. I wish also to
+express my obligations in other ways to Mr. Andrew Lang's "Myth, Ritual,
+and Religion," Mr. H.O. Forbes's "Naturalist's Wanderings," and Mr.
+Julian Thomas's "Cannibals and Convicts." If I have omitted to mention
+any other author to whom I may have owed incidental hints, it will be
+some consolation to me to reflect that I shall at least have afforded an
+opportunity for legitimate sport to the amateurs of the new and popular
+British pastime of badger-baiting or plagiary-hunting. It may also save
+critics some moments' search if I say at once that, after careful
+consideration, I have been unable to discover any moral whatsoever in
+this humble narrative. I venture to believe that in so enlightened an age
+the majority of my readers will never miss it.
+
+G.A.
+
+THE NOOK, DORKING, October, 1890.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+IN MID PACIFIC.
+
+
+"Man overboard!"
+
+It rang in Felix Thurstan's ears like the sound of a bell. He gazed about
+him in dismay, wondering what had happened.
+
+The first intimation he received of the accident was that sudden sharp
+cry from the bo'sun's mate. Almost before he had fully taken it in, in
+all its meaning, another voice, farther aft, took up the cry once more in
+an altered form: "A lady! a lady! Somebody overboard! Great heavens, it
+is _her_! It's Miss Ellis! Miss Ellis!"
+
+Next instant Felix found himself, he knew not how, struggling in a wild
+grapple with the dark, black water. A woman was clinging to him--clinging
+for dear life. But he couldn't have told you himself that minute how it
+all took place. He was too stunned and dazzled.
+
+He looked around him on the seething sea in a sudden awakening, as it
+were, to life and consciousness. All about, the great water stretched
+dark and tumultuous. White breakers surged over him. Far ahead the
+steamer's lights gleamed red and green in long lines upon the ocean. At
+first they ran fast; then they slackened somewhat. She was surely slowing
+now; they must be reversing engines and trying to stop her. They would
+put out a boat. But what hope, what chance of rescue by night, in such a
+wild waste of waves as that? And Muriel Ellis was clinging to him for
+dear life all the while, with the despairing clutch of a half-drowned
+woman!
+
+The people on the Australasian, for their part, knew better what had
+occurred. There was bustle and confusion enough on deck and on the
+captain's bridge, to be sure: "Man overboard!"--three sharp rings at the
+engine bell:--"Stop her short!--reverse engines!--lower the gig!--look
+sharp, there, all of you!" Passengers hurried up breathless at the first
+alarm to know what was the matter. Sailors loosened and lowered the boat
+from the davits with extraordinary quickness. Officers stood by, giving
+orders in monosyllables with practised calm. All was hurry and turmoil,
+yet with a marvellous sense of order and prompt obedience as well. But,
+at any rate, the people on deck hadn't the swift swirl of the boisterous
+water, the hampering wet clothes, the pervading consciousness of personal
+danger, to make their brains reel, like Felix Thurstan's. They could ask
+one another with comparative composure what had happened on board; they
+could listen without terror to the story of the accident.
+
+It was the thirteenth day out from Sydney, and the Australasian was
+rapidly nearing the equator. Toward evening the wind had freshened, and
+the sea was running high against her weather side. But it was a fine
+starlit night, though the moon had not yet risen; and as the brief
+tropical twilight faded away by quick degrees in the west, the fringe of
+cocoanut palms on the reef that bounded the little island of Boupari
+showed out for a minute or two in dark relief, some miles to leeward,
+against the pale pink horizon. In spite of the heavy sea, many passengers
+lingered late on deck that night to see the last of that coral-girt
+shore, which was to be their final glimpse of land till they reached
+Honolulu, _en route_ for San Francisco.
+
+Bit by bit, however, the cocoanut palms, silhouetted with their graceful
+waving arms for a few brief minutes in black against the glowing
+background, merged slowly into the sky or sank below the horizon. All
+grew dark. One by one, as the trees disappeared, the passengers dropped
+off for whist in the saloon, or retired to the uneasy solitude of their
+own state-rooms. At last only two or three men were left smoking and
+chatting near the top of the companion ladder; while at the stern of the
+ship Muriel Ellis looked over toward the retreating island, and talked
+with a certain timid maidenly frankness to Felix Thurstan.
+
+There's nowhere on earth for getting really to know people in a very
+short time like the deck of a great Atlantic or Pacific liner. You're
+thrown together so much, and all day long, that you see more of your
+fellow-passengers' inner life and nature in a few brief weeks than you
+would ever be likely to see in a long twelvemonth of ordinary town or
+country acquaintanceship. And Muriel Ellis had seen a great deal in those
+thirteen days of Felix Thurstan; enough to make sure in her own heart
+that she really liked him--well--so much that she looked up with a pretty
+blush of self-consciousness every time he approached and lifted his hat
+to her. Muriel was an English rector's daughter, from a country village
+in Somersetshire; and she was now on her way back from a long year's
+visit, to recruit her health, to an aunt in Paramatta. She was travelling
+under the escort of an amiable old chaperon whom the aunt in question had
+picked up for her before leaving Sydney; but, as the amiable old
+chaperon, being but an indifferent sailor, spent most of her time in her
+own berth, closely attended by the obliging stewardess, Muriel had found
+her chaperonage interfere very little with opportunities of talk with
+that nice Mr. Thurstan. And now, as the last glow of sunset died out in
+the western sky, and the last palm-tree faded away against the colder
+green darkness of the tropical night, Muriel was leaning over the
+bulwarks in confidential mood, and watching the big waves advance or
+recede, and talking the sort of talk that such an hour seems to favor
+with the handsome young civil servant who stood on guard, as it were,
+beside her. For Felix Thurstan held a government appointment at Levuka,
+in Fiji, and was now on his way home, on leave of absence after six
+years' service in that new-made colony.
+
+"How delightful it would be to live on an island like that!" Muriel
+murmured, half to herself, as she gazed out wistfully in the direction of
+the disappearing coral reef. "With those beautiful palms waving always
+over one's head, and that delicious evening air blowing cool through
+their branches! It looks such a Paradise!"
+
+Felix smiled and glanced down at her, as he steadied himself with one
+hand against the bulwark, while the ship rolled over into the trough of
+the sea heavily. "Well, I don't know about that, Miss Ellis," he answered
+with a doubtful air, eying her close as he spoke with eyes of evident
+admiration. "One might be happy anywhere, of course--in suitable society;
+but if you'd lived as long among cocoanuts in Fiji as I have, I dare say
+the poetry of these calm palm-grove islands would be a little less real
+to you. Remember, though they look so beautiful and dreamy against the
+sky like that, at sunset especially (that was a heavy one, that time;
+I'm really afraid we must go down to the cabin soon; she'll be shipping
+seas before long if we stop on deck much later--and yet, it's so
+delightful stopping up here till the dusk comes on, isn't it?)--well,
+remember, I was saying, though they look so beautiful and dreamy and
+poetical--'Summer isles of Eden lying in dark purple spheres of sea,' and
+all that sort of thing--these islands are inhabited by the fiercest and
+most bloodthirsty cannibals known to travellers."
+
+"Cannibals!" Muriel repeated, looking up at him in surprise. "You don't
+mean to say that islands like these, standing right in the very track of
+European steamers, are still heathen and cannibal?"
+
+"Oh, dear, yes," Felix replied, holding his hand out as he spoke to catch
+his companion's arm gently, and steady her against the wave that was just
+going to strike the stern: "Excuse me; just so; the sea's rising fast,
+isn't it?--Oh, dear, yes; of course they are; they're all heathen and
+cannibals. You couldn't imagine to yourself the horrible bloodthirsty
+rites that may this very minute be taking place upon that idyllic-looking
+island, under the soft waving branches of those whispering palm-trees.
+Why, I knew a man in the Marquesas myself--a hideous old native, as ugly
+as you can fancy him--who was supposed to be a god, an incarnate god, and
+was worshipped accordingly with profound devotion by all the other
+islanders. You can't picture to yourself how awful their worship was. I
+daren't even repeat it to you; it was too, too horrible. He lived in a
+hut by himself among the deepest forest, and human victims used to be
+brought--well, there, it's too loathsome! Why, see; there's a great light
+on the island now; a big bonfire or something; don't you make it out? You
+can tell it by the red glare in the sky overhead." He paused a moment;
+then he added more slowly, "I shouldn't be surprised if at this very
+moment, while we're standing here in such perfect security on the deck of
+a Christian English vessel, some unspeakable and unthinkable heathen orgy
+mayn't be going on over there beside that sacrificial fire; and if some
+poor trembling native girl isn't being led just now, with blows and
+curses and awful savage ceremonies, her hands bound behind her back--Oh,
+look out, Miss Ellis!"
+
+He was only just in time to utter the warning words. He was only just in
+time to put one hand on each side of her slender waist, and hold her
+tight so, when the big wave which he saw coming struck full tilt against
+the vessel's flank, and broke in one white drenching sheet of foam
+against her stern and quarter-deck.
+
+The suddenness of the assault took Felix's breath away. For the first few
+seconds he was only aware that a heavy sea had been shipped, and had wet
+him through and through with its unexpected deluge. A moment later, he
+was dimly conscious that his companion had slipped from his grasp, and
+was nowhere visible. The violence of the shock, and the slimy nature of
+the sea water, had made him relax his hold without knowing it, in the
+tumult of the moment, and had at the same time caused Muriel to glide
+imperceptibly through his fingers, as he had often known an ill-caught
+cricket-ball do in his school-days. Then he saw he was on his hands and
+knees on the deck. The wave had knocked him down, and dashed him against
+the bulwark on the leeward side. As he picked himself up, wet, bruised,
+and shaken, he looked about for Muriel. A terrible dread seized upon his
+soul at once. Impossible! Impossible! she couldn't have been washed
+overboard!
+
+And even as he gazed about, and held his bruised elbow in his hand, and
+wondered to himself what it could all mean, that sudden loud cry arose
+beside him from the quarter-deck, "Man overboard! Man overboard!"
+followed a moment later by the answering cry, from the men who were
+smoking under the lee of the companion, "A lady! a lady! It's Miss Ellis!
+Miss Ellis!"
+
+He didn't take it all in. He didn't reflect. He didn't even know he was
+actually doing it. But he did it, all the same, with the simple,
+straightforward, instinctive sense of duty which makes civilized man act
+aright, all unconsciously, in any moment of supreme danger and
+difficulty. Leaping on to the taffrail without one instant's delay, and
+steadying himself for an indivisible fraction of time with his hand on
+the rope ladder, he peered out into the darkness with keen eyes for a
+glimpse of Muriel Ellis's head above the fierce black water; and espying
+it for one second, as she came up on a white crest, he plunged in before
+the vessel had time to roll back to windward, and struck boldly out in
+the direction where he saw that helpless object dashed about like a cork
+on the surface of the ocean.
+
+Only those who have known such accidents at sea can possibly picture to
+themselves the instantaneous haste with which all that followed took
+place upon that bustling quarter-deck. Almost at the first cry of "Man
+overboard!" the captain's bell rang sharp and quick, as if by magic, with
+three peremptory little calls in the engine-room below. The Australasian
+was going at full speed, but in a marvellously short time, as it seemed
+to all on board, the great ship had slowed down to a perfect standstill,
+and then had reversed her engines, so that she lay, just nose to the
+wind, awaiting further orders. In the meantime, almost as soon as the
+words were out of the bo'sun's lips, a sailor amidships had rushed to the
+safety belts hung up by the companion ladder, and had flung half a dozen
+of them, one after another, with hasty but well-aimed throws, far, far
+astern, in the direction where Felix had disappeared into the black
+water. The belts were painted white, and they showed for a few seconds,
+as they fell, like bright specks on the surface of the darkling sea; then
+they sunk slowly behind as the big ship, still not quite stopped,
+ploughed her way ahead with gigantic force into the great abyss of
+darkness in front of her.
+
+It seemed but a minute, too, to the watchers on board, before a party of
+sailors, summoned by the whistle with that marvellous readiness to meet
+any emergency which long experience of sudden danger has rendered
+habitual among seafaring men, had lowered the boat, and taken their seats
+on the thwarts, and seized their oars, and were getting under way on
+their hopeless quest of search, through the dim black night, for those
+two belated souls alone in the midst of the angry Pacific.
+
+It seemed but a minute or two, I say, to the watchers on board; but oh,
+what an eternity of time to Felix Thurstan, struggling there with his
+live burden in the seething water!
+
+He had dashed into the ocean, which was dark, but warm with tropical
+heat, and had succeeded, in spite of the heavy seas then running, in
+reaching Muriel, who clung to him now with all the fierce clinging of
+despair, and impeded his movement through that swirling water. More than
+that, he saw the white life-belts that the sailors flung toward him; they
+were well and aptly flung, in the inspiration of the moment, to allow for
+the sea itself carrying them on the crest of its waves toward the two
+drowning creatures. Felix saw them distinctly, and making a great lunge
+as they passed, in spite of Muriel's struggles, which sadly hampered his
+movements, he managed to clutch at no less than three before the great
+billow, rolling on, carried them off on its top forever away from him.
+Two of these he slipped hastily over Muriel's shoulders; the other he
+put, as best he might, round his own waist; and then, for the first time,
+still clinging close to his companion's arm, and buffeted about wildly by
+that running sea, he was able to look about him in alarm for a moment,
+and realize more or less what had actually happened.
+
+By this time the Australasian was a quarter of a mile away in front of
+them, and her lights were beginning to become stationary as she slowly
+slowed and reversed engines. Then, from the summit of a great wave, Felix
+was dimly aware of a boat being lowered--for he saw a separate light
+gleaming across the sea--a search was being made in the black night,
+alas, how hopelessly! The light hovered about for many, many minutes,
+revealed to him now here, now there, searching in vain to find him, as
+wave after wave raised him time and again on its irresistible summit. The
+men in the boat were doing their best, no doubt; but what chance of
+finding any one on a dark night like that, in an angry sea, and with no
+clue to guide them toward the two struggling castaways? Current and wind
+had things all their own way. As a matter of fact, the light never came
+near the castaways at all; and after half an hour's ineffectual search,
+which seemed to Felix a whole long lifetime, it returned slowly toward
+the steamer from which it came--and left those two alone on the dark
+Pacific.
+
+"There wasn't a chance of picking 'em up," the captain said, with
+philosophic calm, as the men clambered on board again, and the
+Australasian got under way once more for the port of Honolulu. "I knew
+there wasn't a chance; but in common humanity one was bound to make some
+show of trying to save 'em. He was a brave fellow to go after her, though
+it was no good of course. He couldn't even find her, at night, and with
+such a sea as that running."
+
+And even as he spoke, Felix Thurstan, rising once more on the crest of a
+much smaller billow--for somehow the waves were getting incredibly
+smaller as he drifted on to leeward--felt his heart sink within him as he
+observed to his dismay that the Australasian must be steaming ahead once
+more, by the movement of her lights, and that they two were indeed
+abandoned to their fate on the open surface of that vast and trackless
+ocean.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+THE TEMPLE OF THE DEITY.
+
+
+While these things were happening on the sea close by, a very different
+scene indeed was being enacted meanwhile, beneath those waving palms, on
+the island of Boupari. It was strange, to be sure, as Felix Thurstan had
+said, that such unspeakable heathen orgies should be taking place within
+sight of a passing Christian English steamer. But if only he had known or
+reflected to what sort of land he was trying now to struggle ashore with
+Muriel, he might well have doubted whether it were not better to let her
+perish where she was, in the pure clear ocean, rather than to submit an
+English girl to the possibility of undergoing such horrible heathen rites
+and ceremonies.
+
+For on the island of Boupari it was high feast with the worshippers of
+their god that night. The sun had turned on the Tropic of Capricorn at
+noon, and was making his way northward, toward the equator once more;
+and his votaries, as was their wont, had all come forth to do him honor
+in due season, and to pay their respects, in the inmost and sacredest
+grove on the island, to his incarnate representative, the living spirit
+of trees and fruits and vegetation, the very high god, the divine
+Tu-Kila-Kila!
+
+Early in the evening, as soon as the sun's rim had disappeared beneath
+the ocean, a strange noise boomed forth from the central shrine of
+Boupari. Those who heard it clapped their hands to their ears and ran
+hastily forward. It was a noise like distant rumbling thunder, or the
+whir of some great English mill or factory; and at its sound every woman
+on the island threw herself on the ground prostrate, with her face in the
+dust, and waited there reverently till the audible voice of the god had
+once more subsided. For no woman knew how that sound was produced. Only
+the grown men, initiated into the mysteries of the shrine when they came
+of age at the tattooing ceremony, were aware that the strange, buzzing,
+whirring noise was nothing more or less than the cry of the bull-roarer.
+
+A bull-roarer, as many English schoolboys know, is merely a piece of
+oblong wood, pointed at either end, and fastened by a leather thong at
+one corner. But when whirled round the head by practised priestly hands,
+it produces a low rumbling noise like the wheels of a distant carriage,
+growing gradually louder and clearer, from moment to moment, till at last
+it waxes itself into a frightful din, or bursts into perfect peals of
+imitation thunder. Then it decreases again once more, as gradually as it
+rose, becoming fainter and ever fainter, like thunder as it recedes, till
+the horrible bellowing, as of supernatural bulls, dies away in the end,
+by slow degrees, into low and soft and imperceptible murmurs.
+
+But when the savage hears the distant humming of the bull-roarer, at
+whatever distance, he knows that the mysteries of his god are in full
+swing, and he hurries forward in haste, leaving his work or his pleasure,
+and running, naked as he stands, to take his share in the worship, lest
+the anger of heaven should burst forth in devouring flames to consume
+him. But the women, knowing themselves unworthy to face the dread
+presence of the high god in his wrath, rush wildly from the spot, and,
+flinging themselves down at full length, with their mouths to the dust,
+wait patiently till the voice of their deity is no longer audible.
+
+And as the bull-roarer on Boupari rang out with wild echoes from the
+coral caverns in the central grove that evening, Tu-Kila-Kila, their god,
+rose slowly from his place, and stood out from his hut, a deity revealed,
+before his reverential worshippers.
+
+As he rose, a hushed whisper ran wave-like through the dense throng of
+dusky forms that bent low, like corn beneath the wind, before him,
+"Tu-Kila-Kila rises! He rises to speak! Hush! for the voice of the mighty
+man-god!"
+
+The god, looking around him superciliously with a cynical air of
+contempt, stood forward with a firm and elastic step before his silent
+worshippers. He was a stalwart savage, in the very prime of life, tall,
+lithe, and active. His figure was that of a man well used to command;
+but his face, though handsome, was visibly marked by every external sign
+of cruelty, lust, and extreme bloodthirstiness. One might have said,
+merely to look at him, he was a being debased by all forms of brutal and
+hateful self-indulgence. A baleful light burned in his keen gray eyes.
+His lips were thick, full, purple, and wistful.
+
+"My people may look upon me," he said, in a strangely affable
+voice, standing forward and smiling with a curious half-cruel,
+half-compassionate smile upon his awe-struck followers. "On every day
+of the sun's course but this, none save the ministers dedicated to the
+service of Tu-Kila-Kila dare gaze unhurt upon his sacred person. If
+any other did, the light from his holy eyes would wither them up, and
+the glow of his glorious countenance would scorch them to ashes." He
+raised his two hands, palm outward, in front of him. "So all the year
+round," he went on, "Tu-Kila-Kila, who loves his people, and sends
+them the earlier and the later rain in the wet season, and makes their
+yams and their taro grow, and causes his sun to shine upon them
+freely--all the year round Tu-Kila-Kila, your god, sits shut up in his
+own house among the skeletons of those whom he has killed and eaten, or
+walks in his walled paddock, where his bread-fruit ripens and his
+plantains spring--himself, and the ministers that his tribesmen have
+given him."
+
+At the sound of their mystic deity's voice the savages, bending lower
+still till their foreheads touched the ground, repeated in chorus, to the
+clapping of hands, like some solemn litany: "Tu-Kila-Kila speaks true.
+Our lord is merciful. He sends down his showers upon our crops and
+fields. He causes his sun to shine brightly over us. He makes our pigs
+and our slaves bring forth their increase. Tu-Kila-Kila is good. His
+people praise him."
+
+The god took another step forward, the divine mantle of red feathers
+glowing in the sunset on his dusky shoulders, and smiled once more that
+hateful gracious smile of his. He was standing near the open door of his
+wattled hut, overshadowed by the huge spreading arms of a gigantic
+banyan-tree. Through the open door of the hut it was possible to catch
+just a passing glimpse of an awful sight within. On the beams of the
+house, and on the boughs of the trees behind it, human skeletons, half
+covered with dry flesh, hung in ghastly array, their skulls turned
+downward. They were the skeletons of the victims Tu-Kila-Kila, their
+prince, had slain and eaten; they were the trophies of the cannibal
+man-god's hateful prowess.
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila raised his right hand erect and spoke again. "I am a great
+god," he said, slowly. "I am very powerful. I make the sun to shine, and
+the yams to grow. I am the spirit of plants. Without me there would be
+nothing for you all to eat or drink in Boupari. If I were to grow old and
+die, the sun would fade away in the heavens overhead; the bread-fruit
+trees would wither and cease to bear on earth; all fruits would come to
+an end and die at once; all rivers would stop forthwith from running."
+
+His worshippers bowed down in acquiescence with awestruck faces. "It is
+true," they answered, in the same slow sing-song of assent as before.
+"Tu-Kila-Kila is the greatest of gods. We owe to him everything. We hang
+upon his favor."
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila started back, laughed, and showed his pearly white teeth.
+They were beautiful and regular, like the teeth of a tiger, a strong
+young tiger. "But I need more sacrifices than all the other gods," he
+went on, melodiously, like one who plays with consummate skill upon some
+difficult instrument. "I am greedy; I am thirsty; I am a hungry god. You
+must not stint me. I claim more human victims than all the other gods
+beside. If you want your crops to grow, and your rivers to run, the
+fields to yield you game, and the sea fish--this is what I ask: give me
+victims, victims! That is our compact. Tu-Kila-Kila calls you."
+
+The men bowed down once more and repeated humbly, "You shall have victims
+as you will, great god; only give us yam and taro and bread-fruit, and
+cause not your bright light, the sun, to grow dark in heaven over us."
+
+"Cut yourselves," Tu-Kila-Kila cried, in a peremptory voice, clapping his
+hands thrice. "I am thirsting for blood. I want your free-will offering."
+
+As he spoke, every man, as by a set ritual, took from a little skin
+wallet at his side a sharp flake of coral-stone, and, drawing it
+deliberately across his breast in a deep red gash, caused the blood to
+flow out freely over his chest and long grass waistband. Then, having
+done so, they never strove for a moment to stanch the wound, but let
+the red drops fall as they would on to the dust at their feet, without
+seeming even to be conscious at all of the fact that they were flowing.
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila smiled once more, a ghastly self-satisfied smile of
+unquestioned power. "It is well," he went on. "My people love me. They
+know my strength, how I can wither them up. They give me their blood to
+drink freely. So I will be merciful to them. I will make my sun shine and
+my rain drop from heaven. And instead of taking _all_, I will choose one
+victim." He paused, and glanced along their line significantly.
+
+"Choose, Tu-Kila-Kila," the men answered, without a moment's hesitation.
+"We are all your meat. Choose which one you will take of us."
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila walked with a leisurely tread down the lines and surveyed
+the men critically. They were all drawn up in rows, one behind the other,
+according to tribes and families; and the god walked along each row,
+examining them with a curious and interested eye, as a farmer examines
+sheep fit for the market. Now and then, he felt a leg or an arm with his
+finger and thumb, and hesitated a second. It was an important matter,
+this choosing a victim. As he passed, a close observer might have noted
+that each man trembled visibly while the god's eye was upon him, and
+looked after him askance with a terrified sidelong gaze as he passed on
+to his neighbor. But not one savage gave any overt sign or token of his
+terror or his reluctance. On the contrary, as Tu-Kila-Kila passed along
+the line with lazy, cruel deliberateness, the men kept chanting aloud
+without one tremor in their voices, "We are all your meat. Choose which
+one you will take of us."
+
+On a sudden, Tu-Kila-Kila turned sharply round, and, darting a rapid
+glance toward a row he had already passed several minutes before, he
+exclaimed, with an air of unexpected inspiration, "Tu-Kila-Kila has
+chosen. He takes Maloa."
+
+The man upon whose shoulder the god laid his heavy hand as he spoke stood
+forth from the crowd without a moment's hesitation. If anger or fear was
+in his heart at all, it could not be detected in his voice or his
+features. He bowed his head with seeming satisfaction, and answered
+humbly, "What Tu-Kila-Kila says must need be done. This is a great honor.
+He is a mighty god. We poor men must obey him. We are proud to be taken
+up and made one with divinity."
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila raised in his hand a large stone axe of some polished green
+material, closely resembling jade, which lay on a block by the door, and
+tried its edge with his finger, in an abstracted manner. "Bind him!" he
+said, quietly, turning round to his votaries. And the men, each glad to
+have escaped his own fate, bound their comrade willingly with green ropes
+of plantain fibre.
+
+"Crown him with flowers!" Tu-Kila-Kila said; and a female attendant,
+absolved from the terror of the bull-roarer by the god's command, brought
+forward a great garland of crimson hibiscus, which she flung around the
+victim's neck and shoulders.
+
+"Lay his head on the sacred stone block of our fathers," Tu-Kila-Kila
+went on, in an easy tone of command, waving his hand gracefully. And the
+men, moving forward, laid their comrade, face downward, on a huge flat
+block of polished greenstone, which lay like an altar in front of the
+hut with the mouldering skeletons.
+
+"It is well," Tu-Kila-Kila murmured once more, half aloud. "You have
+given me the free-will offering. Now for the trespass! Where is the
+woman who dared to approach too near the temple-home of the divine
+Tu-Kila-Kila? Bring the criminal forward!"
+
+The men divided, and made a lane down their middle. Then one of them, a
+minister of the man-god's shrine, led up by the hand, all trembling and
+shrinking with supernatural terror in every muscle, a well-formed young
+girl of eighteen or twenty. Her naked bronze limbs were shapely and
+lissome; but her eyes were swollen and red with tears, and her face
+strongly distorted with awe for the man-god. When she stood at last
+before Tu-Kila-Kila's dreaded face, she flung herself on the ground in an
+agony of fear.
+
+"Oh, mercy, great God!" she cried, in a feeble voice. "I have sinned, I
+have sinned. Mercy, mercy!"
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila smiled as before, a smile of imperial pride. No ray of pity
+gleamed from those steel-gray eyes. "Does Tu-Kila-Kila show mercy?" he
+asked, in a mocking voice. "Does he pardon his suppliants? Does he
+forgive trespasses? Is he not a god, and must not his wrath be appeased?
+She, being a woman, and not a wife sealed to Tu-Kila-Kila, has dared to
+look from afar upon his sacred home. She has spied the mysteries.
+Therefore she must die. My people, bind her."
+
+In a second, without more ado, while the poor trembling girl writhed and
+groaned in her agony before their eyes, that mob of wild savages, let
+loose to torture and slay, fell upon her with hideous shouts, and bound
+her, as they had bound their comrade before, with coarse native ropes of
+twisted plantain fibre.
+
+"Lay her head on the stone," Tu-Kila-Kila said, grimly. And his votaries
+obeyed him.
+
+"Now light the sacred fire to make our feast, before I slay the victims,"
+the god said, in a gloating voice, running his finger again along the
+edge of his huge hatchet.
+
+As he spoke, two men, holding in their hands hollow bamboos with coals of
+fire concealed within, which they kept aglow meanwhile by waving them up
+and down rapidly in the air, laid these primitive matches to the base of
+a great pyramidal pile of wood and palm-leaves, ready prepared beforehand
+in the yard of the temple. In a second, the dry fuel, catching the sparks
+instantly, blazed up to heaven with a wild outburst of flame. Great red
+tongues of fire licked up the mouldering mass of leaves and twigs, and
+caught at once at the trunks of palm and li wood within. A huge
+conflagration reddened the sky at once like lightning. The effect was
+magical. The glow transfigured the whole island for miles. It was, in
+fact, the blaze that Felix Thurstan had noted and remarked upon as he
+stood that evening on the silent deck of the Australasian.
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila gazed at it with horrid childish glee. "A fine fire!" he
+said, gayly. "A fire worthy of a god. It will serve me well. Tu-Kila-Kila
+will have a good oven to roast his meal in."
+
+Then he turned toward the sea, and held up his hand once more for
+silence. As he did so, an answering light upon its surface attracted his
+eye for a moment's space. It was a bright red light, mixed with white and
+green ones; in point of fact, the Australasian was passing. Tu-Kila-Kila
+pointed toward it solemnly with his plump, brown fore-finger. "See," he
+said, drawing himself up and looking preternaturally wise; "your god is
+great. I am sending some of this fire across the sea to where my sun has
+set, to aid and reinforce it. That is to keep up the fire of the sun,
+lest ever at any time it should fade and fail you. While Tu-Kila-Kila
+lives the sun will burn bright. If Tu-Kila-Kila were to die it would be
+night forever."
+
+His votaries, following their god's fore-finger as it pointed, all turned
+to look in the direction he indicated with blank surprise and
+astonishment. Such a sight had never met their eyes before, for the
+Australasian was the very first steamer to take the eastward route,
+through the dangerous and tortuous Boupari Channel. So their awe and
+surprise at the unwonted sight knew no bounds. Fire on the ocean!
+Miraculous light on the waves! Their god must, indeed, be a mighty deity
+if he could send flames like that careering over the sea! Surely the sun
+was safe in the hands of a potentate who could thus visibly reinforce it
+with red light, and white! In their astonishment and awe, they stood with
+their long hair falling down over their foreheads, and their hands held
+up to their eyes that they might gaze the farther across the dim, dark
+ocean. The borrowed light of their bonfire was moving, slowly moving over
+the watery sea. Fire and water were mixing and mingling on friendly
+terms. Impossible! Incredible! Marvellous! Miraculous! They prostrated
+themselves in their terror at Tu-Kila-Kila's feet. "Oh, great god," they
+cried, in awe-struck tones, "your power is too vast! Spare us, spare us,
+spare us!"
+
+As for Tu-Kila-Kila himself, he was not astonished at all. Strange as it
+sounds to us, he really believed in his heart what he said. Profoundly
+convinced of his own godhead, and abjectly superstitious as any of his
+own votaries, he absolutely accepted as a fact his own suggestion, that
+the light he saw was the reflection of that his men had kindled. The
+interpretation he had put upon it seemed to him a perfectly natural and
+just one. His worshippers, indeed, mere men that they were, might be
+terrified at the sight; but why should he, a god, take any special notice
+of it?
+
+He accepted his own superiority as implicitly as our European nobles and
+rulers accept theirs. He had no doubts himself, and he considered those
+who had little better than criminals.
+
+By and by, a smaller light detached itself by slow degrees from the
+greater ones. The others stood still, and halted in mid-ocean. The lesser
+light made as if it would come in the direction of Boupari. In point of
+fact, the gig had put out in search of Felix and Muriel.
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila interpreted the facts at once, however, in his own way.
+"See," he said, pointing with his plump forefinger once more, and
+encouraging with his words his terrified followers, "I am sending back a
+light again from the sun to my island. I am doing my work well. I am
+taking care of my people. Fear not for your future. In the light is yet
+another victim. A man and a woman will come to Boupari from the sun, to
+make up for the man and woman whom we eat in our feast to-night. Give me
+plenty of victims, and you will have plenty of yam. Make haste, then;
+kill, eat; let us feast Tu-Kila-Kila! To-morrow the man and woman I have
+sent from the sun will come ashore on the reef, and reach Boupari."
+
+At the words, he stepped forward and raised that heavy tomahawk. With
+one blow each he brained the two bound and defenceless victims on the
+altar-stone of his fathers. The rest, a European hand shrinks from
+revealing. The orgy was too horrible even for description.
+
+And that was the land toward which, that moment, Felix Thurstan was
+struggling, with all his might, to carry Muriel Ellis, from the myriad
+clasping arms of a comparatively gentle and merciful ocean!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+LAND; BUT WHAT LAND?
+
+
+As the last glimmering lights of the Australasian died away to seaward,
+Felix Thurstan knew in his despair there was nothing for it now but to
+strike out boldly, if he could, for the shore of the island.
+
+By this time the breakers had subsided greatly. Not, indeed, that the sea
+itself was really going down. On the contrary, a brisk wind was rising
+sharper from the east, and the waves on the open Pacific were growing
+each moment higher and loppier. But the huge mountain of water that
+washed Muriel Ellis overboard was not a regular ordinary wave; it was
+that far more powerful and dangerous mass, a shoal-water breaker. The
+Australasian had passed at that instant over a submerged coral-bar, quite
+deep enough, indeed, to let her cross its top without the slightest
+danger of grazing, but still raised so high toward the surface as to
+produce a considerable constant ground-swell, which broke in windy
+weather into huge sheets of surf, like the one that had just struck and
+washed over the Australasian, carrying Muriel with it. The very same
+cause that produced the breakers, however, bore Felix on their summit
+rapidly landward; and once he had got well beyond the region of the bar
+that begot them, he found himself soon, to his intense relief, in
+comparatively calm shoal water.
+
+Muriel Ellis, for her part, was faint with terror and with the
+buffeting of the waves; but she still floated by his side, upheld by the
+life-belts. He had been able, by immense efforts, to keep unseparated
+from her amid the rending surf of the breakers. Now that they found
+themselves in easier waters for a while, Felix began to strike out
+vigorously through the darkness for the shore. Holding up his companion
+with one hand, and swimming with all his might in the direction where a
+vague white line of surf, lit up by the red glare-of some fire far
+inland, made him suspect the nearest land to lie, he almost thought he
+had succeeded at last, after a long hour of struggle, in feeling his
+feet, after all, on a firm coral bottom.
+
+At the very moment he did so, and touched the ground underneath, another
+great wave, curling resistlessly behind him, caught him up on its crest,
+whirled him heavenward like a cork, and then dashed him down once more, a
+passive burden, on some soft and yielding substance, which he conjectured
+at once to be a beach of finely powdered coral fragments. As he touched
+this beach for an instant, the undertow of that vast dashing breaker
+sucked him back with its ebb again, a helpless, breathless creature; and
+then the succeeding wave rolled him over like a ball, upon the beach as
+before, in quick succession. Four times the back-current sucked him under
+with its wild pull in the self-same way, and four times the return wave
+flung him up upon the beach again like a fragment of sea-weed. With
+frantic efforts Felix tried at first to cling still to Muriel--to save
+her from the irresistible force of that roaring surf--to snatch her from
+the open jaws of death by sheer struggling dint of thews and muscle. He
+might as well have tried to stem Niagara. The great waves, curling
+irresistibly in huge curves landward, caught either of them up by turns
+on their arched summits, and twisted them about remorselessly, raising
+them now aloft on their foaming crest, beating them back now prone in
+their hollow trough, and flinging them fiercely at last with pitiless
+energy against the soft beach of coral. If the beach had been hard, they
+must infallibly have been ground to powder or beaten to jelly by the
+colossal force of those gigantic blows. Fortunately it was yielding,
+smooth, and clay-like, and received them almost as a layer of moist
+plaster of Paris might have done, or they would have stood no chance at
+all for their lives in that desperate battle with the blind and frantic
+forces of unrelenting nature.
+
+No man who has not himself seen the surf break on one of these
+far-southern coral shores can form any idea in his own mind of the terror
+and horror of the situation. The water, as it reaches the beach, rears
+itself aloft for a second into a huge upright wall, which, advancing
+slowly, curls over at last in a hollow circle, and pounds down upon the
+sand or reef with all the crushing force of some enormous sledge-hammer.
+But after the fourth assault, Felix felt himself flung up high and dry by
+the wave, as one may sometimes see a bit of light reed or pith flung up
+some distance ahead by an advancing tide on the beach in England. In an
+instant he steadied himself and staggered to his feet. Torn and bruised
+as he was by the pummelling of the billows, he looked eagerly into the
+water in search of his companion. The next wave flung up Muriel, as the
+last had flung himself. He bent over her with a panting heart as she lay
+there, insensible, on the long white shore. Alive or dead? that was now
+the question.
+
+Raising her hastily in his arms, with her clothes all clinging wet and
+close about her, Felix carried her over the narrow strip of tidal beach,
+above high-water level, and laid her gently down on a soft green bank of
+short tropical herbage, close to the edge of the coral. Then he bent over
+her once more, and listened eagerly at her heart. It still beat with
+faint pulses--beat--beat--beat. Felix throbbed with joy. She was alive!
+alive! He was not quite alone, then, on that unknown island!
+
+And strange as it seemed, it was only a little more than two short hours
+since they had stood and looked out across the open sea over the bulwarks
+of the Australasian together!
+
+But Felix had no time to moralize just then. The moment was clearly
+one for action. Fortunately, he happened to carry three useful things
+in his pocket when he jumped overboard after Muriel. The first was a
+pocket-knife; the second was a flask with a little whiskey in it; and the
+third, perhaps the most important of all, a small metal box of wax vesta
+matches. Pouring a little whiskey into the cup of the flask, he held it
+eagerly to Muriel's lips. The fainting girl swallowed it automatically.
+Then Felix, stooping down, tried the matches against the box. They were
+unfortunately wet, but half an hour's exposure, he knew, on sun-warmed
+stones, in that hot, tropical air, would soon restore them again. So he
+opened the box and laid them carefully out on a flat white slab of coral.
+After that, he had time to consider exactly where they were, and what
+their chances in life, if any, might now amount to.
+
+Pitch dark as it was, he had no difficulty in deciding at once by the
+general look of things that they had reached a fringing reef, such as he
+was already familiar with in the Marquesas and elsewhere. The reef was no
+doubt circular, and it enclosed within itself a second or central island,
+divided from it by a shallow lagoon of calm, still water. He walked some
+yards inland. From where he now stood, on the summit of the ridge, he
+could look either way, and by the faint reflected light of the stars, or
+the glare of the great pyre that burned on the central island, he could
+see down on one side to the ocean, with its fierce white pounding surf,
+and on the other to the lagoon, reflecting the stars overhead, and
+motionless as a mill-pond. Between them lay the low raised ridge of
+coral, covered with tall stems of cocoanut palms, and interspersed here
+and there, as far as his eye could judge, with little rectangular clumps
+of plantain and taro.
+
+But what alarmed Felix most was the fire that blazed so brightly to
+heaven on the central island; for he knew too well that meant--there were
+_men_ on the place; the land was inhabited.
+
+The cocoanuts and taro told the same doubtful tale. From the way they
+grew, even in that dim starlight, Felix recognized at once they had all
+been planted.
+
+Still, he didn't hesitate to do what he thought best for Muriel's relief
+for all that. Collecting a few sticks and fragments of palm-branches from
+the jungle about, he piled them into a heap, and waited patiently for his
+matches to dry. As soon as they were ready--and the warmth of the stone
+made them quickly inflammable--he struck a match on the box, and
+proceeded to light his fire by Muriel's side. As her clothes grew warmer,
+the poor girl opened her eyes at last, and, gazing around her, exclaimed,
+in blank terror, "Oh, Mr. Thurstan, where are we? What does all this
+mean? Where have we got to? On a desert island?"
+
+"No, _not_ on a desert island," Felix answered, shortly; "I'm afraid it's
+a great deal worse than that. To tell you the truth, I'm afraid it's
+inhabited."
+
+At that moment, by the hot embers of the great sacrificial pyre on the
+central hill, two of the savage temple-attendants, calling their god's
+attention to a sudden blaze of flame upon the fringing reef, pointed with
+their dark forefingers and called out in surprise, "See, see, a fire on
+the barrier! A fire! A fire! What can it mean? There are no men of our
+people over there to-night. Have war-canoes arrived? Has some enemy
+landed?"
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila leaned back, drained his cocoanut cup of intoxicating kava,
+and surveyed the unwonted apparition on the reef long and carefully. "It
+is nothing," he said at last, in his most deliberate manner, stroking his
+cheeks and chin contentedly with that plump round hand of his. "It is
+only the victims; the new victims I promised you. Korong! Korong! They
+have come ashore with their light from my home in the sun. They have
+brought fire afresh--holy fire to Boupari."
+
+Three or four of the savages leaped up in fierce joy, and bowed before
+him as he spoke, with eager faces. "Oh, Tu-Kila-Kila!" the eldest among
+them said, making a profound reverence, "shall we swim across to the reef
+and fetch them home to your house? Shall we take over our canoes and
+bring back your victims!"
+
+The god motioned them back with one outstretched palm. His eyes were
+flushed and his look lazy. "Not to-night, my people," he said;
+readjusting the garland of flowers round his neck, and giving a careless
+glance at the well-picked bones that a few hours before had been two
+trembling fellow creatures. "Tu-Kila-Kila has feasted his fill for this
+evening. Your god is full; his heart is happy. I have eaten human flesh;
+I have drunk of the juice of the kava. Am I not a great deity? Can I not
+do as I will? I frown, and the heavens thunder; I gnash my teeth, and the
+earth trembles. What is it to me if fresh victims come, or if they come
+not? Can I not make with a nod as many as I will of them?" He took up two
+fresh finger-bones, clean gnawed of their flesh, and knocked them
+together in a wild tune, carelessly. "If Tu-Kila-Kila chooses," he went
+on, tapping his chest with conscious pride, "he can knock these bones
+together--so--and bid them live again. Is it not I who cause women and
+beasts to bring forth their young? Is it not I who give the turtles their
+increase? And is it not a small thing to me, therefore, whether the sea
+tosses up my victims from my home in the sun, or whether it does not? Let
+us leave them alone on the reef for to-night; to-morrow we will send over
+our canoes to fetch them."
+
+It was all pure brag, all pure guesswork; and yet, Tu-Kila-Kila himself
+profoundly believed it.
+
+As he spoke, the light from Felix's fire blazed out against the dark sky,
+stronger and clearer still; and through that cloudless tropical air the
+figure of a man, standing for one moment between the flames and the
+lagoon, became distinctly visible to the keen and practised eyes of the
+savages. "I see them? I see them; I see the victims!" the foremost
+worshipper exclaimed, rushing forward a little at the sight, and beside
+himself with superstitious awe and surprise at Tu-Kila-Kila's presence.
+"Surely our god is great! He knows all things! He brings us meat from
+the setting sun, in ships of fire, in blazing canoes, across the golden
+road of the sun-bathed ocean!"
+
+As for Tu-Kila-Kila himself, leaning on his elbow at ease, he gazed
+across at the unexpected sight with very languid interest. He was a god,
+and he liked to see things conducted with proper decorum. This crowing
+and crying over a couple of spirits--mere ordinary spirits come ashore
+from the sun in a fiery boat--struck his godship as little short of
+childish. "Let them be," he answered, petulantly, crushing a blossom in
+his hand. "Let no man disturb them. They shall rest where they are till
+to-morrow morning. We have eaten; we have drunk; our soul is happy. The
+kava within us has made us like a god indeed. I shall give my ministers
+charge that no harm happen to them."
+
+He drew a whistle from his side and whistled once. There was a moment's
+pause. Then Tu-Kila-Kila spoke in a loud voice again. "The King of Fire!"
+he exclaimed, in tones of princely authority.
+
+From within the hut there came forth slowly a second stalwart savage, big
+built and burly as the great god himself, clad in a long robe or cloak of
+yellow feathers, which shone bright with a strange metallic gleam in the
+ruddy light of the huge pile of li-wood.
+
+"The King of Fire is here, Tu-Kila-Kila," the lesser god made answer,
+bending his head slightly.
+
+"Fire," Tu-Kila-Kila said, like a monarch giving orders to his attendant
+minister, "if any man touch the newcomers on the reef before I cause my
+sun to rise to-morrow morning, scorch up his flesh with your flame, and
+consume his bones to ash and cinder. If any woman go near them before
+Tu-Kila-Kila bids, let her be rolled in palm-leaves, and smeared with
+oil, and light her up for a torch on a dark night to lighten our temple."
+
+The King of Fire bent his head in assent. "It is as Tu-Kila-Kila wills,"
+he answered, submissively.
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila whistled again, this time twice. "The King of Water!" he
+exclaimed, in the same loud tone of command as before.
+
+At the words, a man of about forty, tall and sinewy, clad in a short cape
+of white albatross feathers, and with a girdle of nautilus shells
+interspersed with red coral tied around his waist, came forth to the
+summons.
+
+"The King of Water is here," he said, bending his head, but not his knee,
+before the greater deity.
+
+"Water," Tu-Kila-Kila said, with half-tipsy solemnity, "you are a god
+too. Your power is very great. But less than mine. Do, then, as I bid
+you. If any man touch my spirits, whom I have brought from my home in the
+sun in a fiery ship, before I bid him to-morrow, overturn his canoe, and
+drown him in lagoon or spring or ocean. If any woman go near them without
+Tu-Kila-Kila's leave, bind her hand and foot with ropes of porpoise hide,
+and cast her out into the surf, and dash her with your waves, and pummel
+her to pieces."
+
+The King of Water bent his head a second time. "I am a great god," he
+answered, "before all others save you: but for you, Tu-Kila-Kila, I haste
+to do your bidding. If any man disobey you, my billows shall rise and
+overwhelm him in the sea. I am a great god. I claim each year many
+drowned victims."
+
+"But not so many as me," Tu-Kila-Kila interposed, his hand playing on his
+knife with a faint air of impatience.
+
+"But not so many as you," the minor god added, in haste, as if to appease
+his rising anger. "Fire and Water ever speed to do your bidding."
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila stood up, turned toward the distant flame, and waved his
+hands round and round three times before him. "Let this be for you all a
+great taboo," he said, glancing once more toward his awe-struck
+followers. "Now the mysteries are over. Tu-Kila-Kila will sleep. He has
+eaten of human flesh. He has drunk of cocoanut rum and of new kava. He
+has brought back his sun on its way in the heavens. He has sent it
+messengers of fire to reinforce its strength. He has fetched from it
+messengers in turn with fresh fire to Boupari, fire not lighted from any
+earthly flame; fire new, divine, scorching, unspeakable. To-morrow we
+will talk with the spirits he has brought. To-night we will sleep. Now
+all go to your homes; and tell your women of this great taboo, lest they
+speak to the spirits, and fall into the hands of Fire or of Water."
+
+The savages dropped on their faces before the eye of their god and lay
+quite still. They made a path as it were from the pyre to the temple door
+with their prostrate bodies. Tu-Kila-Kila, walking with unsteady steps
+over their half-naked forms, turned to his hut in a drunken booze. He
+walked over them with no more compunction or feeling than over so many
+logs. Why should he not, indeed? For he was a god, and they were his
+meat, his servants, his worshippers.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE GUESTS OF HEAVEN.
+
+
+All that night through--their first lonely night on the island of
+Boupari--Felix sat up by his flickering fire, wide awake, half expecting
+and dreading some treacherous attack of the unknown savages. From time to
+time he kept adding dry fuel to his smouldering pile; and he never ceased
+to keep a keen eye both on the lagoon and the reef, in case an assault
+should be made upon them suddenly by land or water. He knew the South
+Seas quite well enough already to have all the possibilities of
+misfortune floating vividly before his eyes. He realized at once from his
+own previous experience the full loneliness and terror of their unarmed
+condition.
+
+For Boupari was one of those rare remote islets where the very rumor of
+our European civilization has hardly yet penetrated.
+
+As for Muriel, though she was alarmed enough, of course, and intensely
+shaken by the sudden shock she had received, the whole surroundings were
+too wholly unlike any world she had ever yet known to enable her to take
+in at once the utter horror of the situation. She only knew they were
+alone, wet, bruised, and terribly battered; and the Australasian had gone
+on, leaving them there to their fate on an unknown island. That, for the
+moment, was more than enough for her of accumulated misfortune. She come
+to herself but slowly, and as her torn clothes dried by degrees before
+the fire and the heat of the tropical night, she was so far from fully
+realizing the dangers of their position that her first and principal fear
+for the moment was lest she might take cold from her wet things drying
+upon her. She ate a little of the plantain that Felix picked for her; and
+at times, toward morning, she dozed off into an uneasy sleep, from pure
+fatigue and excess of weariness. As she slept, Felix, bending over her,
+with the biggest blade of his knife open in case of attack, watched with
+profound emotion the rise and fall of her bosom, and hesitated with
+himself, if the worst should come to the worst, as to what he ought to do
+with her.
+
+It would be impossible to let a pure young English girl like that fall
+helplessly into the hands of such bloodthirsty wretches as he knew the
+islanders were almost certain to be. Who could tell what nameless
+indignities, what incredible tortures they might wantonly inflict upon
+her innocent soul? Was it right of him to have let her come ashore at
+all? Ought he not rather to have allowed the more merciful sea to take
+her life easily, without the chance or possibility of such additional
+horrors?
+
+And now--as she slept--so calm and pure and maidenly--what was his
+duty that minute, just there to her? He felt the blade of his knife
+with his finger cautiously, and almost doubted. If only she could tell
+what things might be in store for her, would she not, herself, prefer
+death, an honorable death, at the friendly hands of a tenderhearted
+fellow-countryman, to the unspeakable insults of these man-eating
+Polynesians? If only he had the courage to release her by one blow, as
+she lay there, from the coming ill! But he hadn't; he hadn't. Even on
+board the Australasian he had been vaguely aware that he was getting very
+fond of that pretty little Miss Ellis. And now that he sat there, after
+that desperate struggle for life with the pounding waves, mounting guard
+over her through the livelong night, his own heart told him plainly, in
+tones he could not disobey, he loved her too well to dare what he thought
+best in the end for her.
+
+Still, even so, he was brave enough to feel he must never let the very
+worst of all befall her. He bethought him, in his doubt and agony, of how
+his uncle, Major Thurstan, during the great Indian mutiny, had held his
+lonely bungalow, with his wife and daughter by his side, for three long
+hours against a howling mob of native insurgents; and how, when further
+resistance was hopeless, and that great black wave of angry humanity
+burst in upon them at last, the brave soldier had drawn his revolver,
+shot his wife and daughter with unerring aim, to prevent their falling
+alive into the hands of the natives, and then blown his own brains out
+with his last remaining cartridge. As his uncle had done at Jhansi,
+thirty years before, so he himself would do on that nameless Pacific
+island--for he didn't know even now on what shore he had landed. If the
+savages bore down upon them with hostile intent, and threatened Muriel,
+he would plunge his knife first into that innocent woman's heart; and
+then bury it deep in his own, and die beside her.
+
+So the long night wore on--Muriel pillowed on loose cocoanut husk, dozing
+now and again, and waking with a start to gaze round about her wildly,
+and realize once more in what plight she found herself; Felix crouching
+by her feet, and keeping watch with eager eyes and ears on every side for
+the least sign of a noiseless, naked footfall through the tangled growth
+of that dense tropical under-bush. Time after time he clapped his hand to
+his ear, shell-wise, and listened and peered, with knitted brow,
+suspecting some sudden swoop from an ambush in the jungle of creepers
+behind the little plantain patch. Time after time he grasped his knife
+hard, and puckered his eyebrows resolutely, and stood still with bated
+breath for a fierce, wild leap upon his fancied assailant. But the night
+wore away by degrees, a minute at a time, and no man came; and dawn began
+to brighten the sea-line to eastward.
+
+As the day dawned, Felix could see more clearly exactly where he was, and
+in what surroundings. Without, the ocean broke in huge curling billows on
+the shallow beach of the fringing reef with such stupendous force that
+Felix wondered how they could ever have lived through its pounding surf
+and its fiercely retreating undertow. Within, the lagoon spread its calm
+lake-like surface away to the white coral shore of the central atoll.
+Between these two waters, the greater and the less, a waving palisade of
+tall-stemmed palm-trees rose on a narrow ribbon of circular land that
+formed the fringing reef. All night through he had felt, with a strange
+eerie misgiving, the very foundations of the land thrill under his feet
+at every dull thud or boom of the surf on its restraining barrier. Now
+that he could see that thin belt of shore in its actual shape and size,
+he was not astonished at this constant shock; what surprised him rather
+was the fact that such a speck of land could hold its own at all against
+the ceaseless cannonade of that seemingly irresistible ocean.
+
+He stood up, hatless, in his battered tweed suit, and surveyed the scene
+of their present and future adventures. It took but a glance to show him
+that the whole ground-plan of the island was entirely circular. In the
+midst of all rose the central atoll itself, a tiny mountain-peak, just
+projecting with its hills and gorges to a few hundred feet above the
+surface of the ocean. Outside it came the lagoon, with its placid ring of
+glassy water surrounding the circular island, and separated from the sea
+by an equally circular belt of fringing reef, covered thick with waving
+stems of picturesque cocoanut. It was on the reef they had landed, and
+from it they now looked across the calm lagoon with doubtful eyes toward
+the central island.
+
+As soon as the sun rose, their doubts were quickly resolved into fears
+or certainties. Scarcely had its rim begun to show itself distinctly
+above the eastern horizon, when a great bustle and confusion was
+noticeable at once on the opposite shore. Brown-skinned savages were
+collecting in eager groups by a white patch of beach, and putting out
+rude but well-manned canoes into the calm waters of the lagoon. At sight
+of their naked arms and bustling gestures, Muriel's heart sank suddenly
+within her. "Oh, Mr. Thurstan," she cried, clinging to his arm in her
+terror, "what does it all mean? Are they going to hurt us? Are these
+savages coming over? Are they coming to kill us?"
+
+Felix grasped his trusty knife hard in his right hand, and swallowed a
+groan, as he looked tenderly down upon her. "Muriel," he said, forgetting
+in the excitement of the moment the little conventionalities and
+courtesies of civilized life, "if they are, trust me, you never shall
+fall alive into their cruel hands. Sooner than that--" he held up the
+knife significantly, with its open blade before her.
+
+The poor girl clung to him harder still, with a ghastly shudder. "Oh,
+it's terrible, terrible," she cried, turning deadly pale. Then, after a
+short pause, she added, "But I would rather have it so. Do as you say. I
+could bear it from you. Promise me _that_, rather than that those
+creatures should kill me."
+
+"I promise," Felix answered, clasping her hand hard, and paused, with the
+knife ever ready in his right, awaiting the approach of the half-naked
+savages.
+
+The boats glided fast across the lagoon, propelled by the paddles of the
+stalwart Polynesians who manned them, and crowded to the water's edge
+with groups of grinning and shouting warriors. They were dressed in
+aprons of dracaena leaves only, with necklets and armlets of sharks'
+teeth and cowrie shells. A dozen canoes at least were making toward the
+reef at full speed, all bristling with spears and alive with noisy and
+boisterous savages. Muriel shrank back terror-stricken at the sight, as
+they drew nearer and nearer. But Felix, holding his breath hard, grew
+somewhat less nervous as the men approached the reef. He had seen enough
+of Polynesian life before now to feel sure these people were not upon the
+war-path. Whatever their ultimate intentions toward the castaways might
+be, their immediate object seemed friendly and good-humored. The boats,
+though large, were not regular war-canoes; the men, instead of
+brandishing their spears, and lunging out with them over the edge in
+threatening attitudes, held them erect in their hands at rest, like
+standards; they were laughing and talking, not crying their war-cry. As
+they drew near the shore, one big canoe shot suddenly a length or so
+ahead of the rest; and its leader, standing on the grotesque carved
+figure that adorned its prow, held up both his hands open and empty
+before him, in sign of peace, while at the same time he shouted out a
+word or two three times in his own language, to reassure the castaways.
+
+Felix's eye glanced cautiously from boat to boat. "He says, 'We are
+friends,'" the young man remarked in an undertone to his terrified
+companion. "I can understand his dialect. Thank Heaven, it's very close
+to Fijian. I shall be able at least to palaver to these men. I don't
+think they mean just now to harm us. I believe we can trust them, at any
+rate for the present."
+
+The poor girl drew back, in still greater awe and alarm than ever. "Oh,
+are they going to land here?" she cried, still clinging closer with both
+hands to her one friend and protector.
+
+"Try not to look so frightened!" Felix exclaimed, with a warning glance.
+"Remember, much depends upon it; savages judge you greatly by what
+demeanor you happen to assume. If you're frightened, they know their
+power; if they see you're resolute, they suspect you have some
+supernatural means of protection. Try to meet them frankly, as if you
+were not afraid of them." Then, advancing slowly to the water's edge, he
+called out aloud, in a strong, clear voice, a few words which Muriel
+didn't understand, but which were really the Fijian for "We also are
+friendly. Our medicine is good. We mean no magic. We come to you from
+across the great water. We desire your peace. Receive us and protect us!"
+
+At the sound of words which he could readily understand, and which
+differed but little, indeed, from his own language, the leader on the
+foremost canoe, who seemed by his manner to be a great chief, turned
+round to his followers and cried out in tones of superstitious awe,
+"Tu-Kila-Kila spoke well. These are, indeed, what he told us. Korong!
+Korong! They are spirits who have come to us from the disk of the sun, to
+bring us light and pure, fresh fire. Stay back there, all of you. You are
+not holy enough to approach. I and my crew, who are sanctified by the
+mysteries, we alone will go forward to meet them."
+
+As he spoke, a sudden idea, suggested by his words, struck Felix's mind.
+Superstition is the great lever by which to move the savage intelligence.
+Gathering up a few dry leaves and fragments of stick on the shore, he
+laid them together in a pile, and awaited in silence the arrival of the
+foremost islanders. The first canoe advanced slowly and cautiously, the
+men in it eying these proceedings with evident suspicion; the rest hung
+back, with their spears in array, and their hands just ready to use them
+with effect should occasion demand it.
+
+The leader of the first canoe, coming close to the shore, jumped out upon
+the reef in shallow water. Half a dozen of his followers jumped after him
+without hesitation, and brandished their weapons round their heads as
+they advanced, in savage unison. But Felix, pretending hardly to notice
+these hostile demonstrations, stepped boldly up toward his little pile
+with great deliberation, though trembling inwardly, and proceeded before
+their eyes to take a match from his box, which he displayed
+ostentatiously, all glittering in the sun, to the foremost savage. The
+leader stood by and watched him close with eyes of silent wonder. Then
+Felix, kneeling down, struck the match on the box, and applied it, as it
+lighted, to the dry leaves beside him.
+
+A chorus of astonishment burst unanimously from the delighted natives as
+the dry leaves leaped all at once into a tongue of flame, and the little
+pile caught quickly from the fire in the vesta.
+
+The leader looked hard at the two white faces, and then at the fire on
+the beach, with evident approbation. "It is as Tu-Kila-Kila said," he
+exclaimed at last with profound awe. "They are spirits from the sun, and
+they carry with them pure fire in shining boxes."
+
+Then, advancing a pace and pointing toward the canoe, he motioned Felix
+and Muriel to take their seats within it with native savage politeness.
+"Tu-Kila-Kila has sent for you," he said, in his grandest aristocratic
+air, "for your chief is a gentleman. He wishes to receive you. He saw
+your message-fire on the reef last night, and he knew you had come. He
+has made you a very great Taboo. He has put you under protection of Fire
+and Water."
+
+The people in the boats, with one accord, shouted out in wild chorus, as
+if to confirm his words, "Taboo! Taboo! Tu-Kila-Kila has said it! Taboo!
+Taboo! Ware Fire! Ware Water!"
+
+Though the dialect in which they spoke differed somewhat from that in use
+in Fiji, Felix could still make out with care almost every word of what
+the chief had said to him; and the universal Polynesian expression,
+"Taboo," in particular, somewhat reassured him as to their friendly
+intentions. Among remote heathen islanders like these, he felt sure, the
+very word itself was far too sacred to be taken in vain. They would
+respect its inviolability. He turned round to Muriel. "We must go with
+them," he said, shortly. "It's our one chance left of life now. Don't be
+too terrified; there is still some hope. They say somebody they call
+Tu-Kila-Kila has tabooed us. No one will dare to hurt us against so great
+a Taboo; for Tu-Kila-Kila is evidently some very important king or chief.
+You must step into the boat. It can't be avoided. If any harm is
+threatened, be sure I won't forget my promise."
+
+Muriel shrank back in alarm, and clung still to his arm now as
+naturally as she would have clung to a brother's. "Oh, Mr. Thurstan,"
+she cried--"Felix, I don't know what to say; I _can't_ go with them."
+
+Felix put his arm gently round her girlish waist, and half lifted her
+into the boat in spite of her reluctance. "You must," he said, with great
+firmness. "You must do as I say. I will watch over you, and take care of
+you. If the worst comes, I have always my knife, and I won't forget. Now,
+friend," he went on, in Fijian, turning round to the chief, as he took
+his seat in the canoe fearlessly among all those dusky, half-clad
+figures, "we are ready to start. We do not fear. We wish to go. Take
+us to Tu-Kila-Kila."
+
+And all the savages around, shouting in their surprise and awe, exclaimed
+once more in concert, "Tu-Kila-Kila is great. We will take them, as he
+bids us, forthwith to heaven."
+
+"What do they say?" Muriel cried, clinging close to the white man's side
+in her speechless terror. "Do you understand their language?"
+
+"Well, I can't quite make it out," Felix answered, much puzzled; "that is
+to say, not every word of it. They say they'll take us somewhere, I don't
+quite know where; but in Fijian, the word would certainly mean to
+heaven."
+
+Muriel shuddered visibly. "You don't think," she said, with a tremulous
+tongue, "they mean to kill us?"
+
+"No, I don't _think_ so," Felix replied, not over-confidently. "They said
+we were Taboo. But with savages like these, of course, one can never in
+any case be quite certain."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+ENROLLED IN OLYMPUS.
+
+
+They rowed across the lagoon, a mysterious procession, almost in
+silence--the canoe with the two Europeans going first, the others
+following at a slight distance--and landed at last on the brink of the
+central island.
+
+Several of the Boupari people leaped ashore at once; then they helped
+Felix and Muriel from the frail bark with almost deferential care, and
+led the way before them up a steep white path, that zigzagged through the
+forest toward the centre of the island. As they went, a band of natives
+preceded them in regular line of march, shouting "Taboo, taboo!" at short
+intervals, especially as they neared any group of fan-palm cottages. The
+women whom they met fell on their knees at once, till the strange
+procession had passed them by; the men only bowed their heads thrice, and
+made a rapid movement on their breasts with their fingers, which reminded
+Muriel at once of the sign of the cross in Catholic countries.
+
+So on they wended their way in silence through the deep tropical jungle,
+along a pathway just wide enough for three to walk abreast, till they
+emerged suddenly upon a large cleared space, in whose midst grew a great
+banyan-tree, with arms that dropped and rooted themselves like buttresses
+in the soil beneath. Under the banyan-tree a raised platform stood upon
+posts of bamboo. The platform was covered with fine network in yellow and
+red; and two little stools occupied the middle, as if placed there on
+purpose and waiting for their occupants.
+
+The man who had headed the first canoe turned round to Felix and motioned
+him forward. "This is Heaven," he said glibly, in his own tongue.
+"Spirits, ascend it!"
+
+Felix, much wondering what the ceremony could mean, mounted the platform
+without a word, in obedience to the chief's command, closely followed by
+Muriel, who dared not leave him for a second.
+
+"Bring water!" the chief said, shortly, in a voice of authority to one
+of his followers.
+
+The man handed up a calabash with a little water in it. The chief took
+the rude vessel from his hands in a reverential manner, and poured a few
+drops of the contents on Felix's head; the water trickled down over his
+hair and forehead. Involuntarily, Felix shook his head a little at the
+unexpected wetting, and scattered the drops right and left on his neck
+and shoulders. The chief watched this performance attentively with
+profound satisfaction. Then he turned to his attendants.
+
+"The spirit shakes his head," he said, with a deeply convinced air. "All
+is well. Heaven has chosen him. Korong! Korong! He is accepted for his
+purpose. It is well! It is well! Let us try the other one."
+
+He raised the calabash once more, and poured a few drops in like manner
+on Muriel's dark hair. The poor girl, trembling in every limb, shook her
+head also in the same unintentional fashion. The chief regarded her with
+still more complacent eyes.
+
+"It is well," he observed once more to his companions, smiling. "She,
+too, gives the sign of acceptance. Korong! Korong! Heaven is well pleased
+with both. See how her body trembles!"
+
+At that moment a girl came forward with a little basket of fruits. The
+chief chose a banana with care from the basket, peeled it with his dusky
+hands, broke it slowly in two, and handed one half very solemnly to
+Felix.
+
+"Eat, King of the Rain," he said, as he presented it. "The offering of
+Heaven."
+
+Felix ate it at once, thinking it best under the circumstances not to
+demur at all to anything his strange hosts might choose to impose upon
+him.
+
+The chief handed the other half just as solemnly to Muriel. "Eat, Queen
+of the Clouds," he said, as he placed it in her fingers. "The offering of
+Heaven."
+
+Muriel hesitated. She didn't know what his words meant, and it seemed to
+her rather the offering of a very dirty and unwashed savage. The chief
+eyed her hard. "For God's sake eat it, my child; he tells you to eat it!"
+Felix exclaimed in haste. Muriel lifted it to her lips and swallowed it
+down with difficulty. The man's dusky hands didn't inspire confidence.
+
+But the chief seemed relieved when he had seen her swallow it. "All is
+well done," he said, turning again to his followers. "We have obeyed the
+words of Tu-Kila-Kila, and his orders that he gave us. We have offered
+the strangers, the spirits from the sun, as a free gift to Heaven, and
+Heaven has accepted them. We have given them fruits, the fruits of the
+earth, and they have duly eaten them. Korong! Korong! The King of the
+Rain and the Queen of the Clouds have indeed come among us. They are
+truly gods. We will take them now, as he bid us, to Tu-Kila-Kila."
+
+"What have they done to us?" Muriel asked aside, in a terrified undertone
+of Felix.
+
+"I can't quite make out," Felix answered in the selfsame voice. "They
+call us the King of the Rain and the Queen of the Clouds in their own
+language. I think they imagine we've come from the sun and that we're a
+sort of spirits."
+
+At the sound of these words the girl who held the basket of fruits gave a
+sudden start. It almost seemed to Muriel as if she understood them. But
+when Muriel looked again she gave no further sign. She merely held her
+peace, and tried to appear wholly undisconcerted.
+
+The chief beckoned them down from the platform with a wave of his hand.
+They rose and followed him. As they rose the people around them bowed low
+to the ground. Felix could see they were bowing to Muriel and himself,
+not merely to the chief. A doubt flitted strangely across his mind for a
+moment. What could it all mean? Did they take the two strangers, then,
+for supernatural beings? Had they enrolled them as gods? If so, it might
+serve as some little protection for them.
+
+The procession formed again, three and three, three and three, in solemn
+silence. Then the chief walked in front of them with measured steps, and
+Felix and Muriel followed behind, wondering. As they went, the cry rose
+louder and louder than before, "Taboo! Taboo!" People who met them fell
+on their faces at once, as the chief cried out in a loud tone, "The King
+of the Rain! The Queen of the Clouds! Korong! Korong! They are coming!
+They are coming!"
+
+At last they reached a second cleared space, standing in a large garden
+of manilla, loquat, poncians, and hibiscus-trees. It was entered by a
+gate, a tall gate of bamboo posts. At the gate all the followers fell
+back to right and left, awe-struck. Only the chief went calmly on. He
+beckoned to Felix and Muriel to follow him.
+
+They entered, half terrified. Felix still grasped his open knife in his
+hand, ready to strike at any moment that might be necessary. The chief
+led them forward toward a very large tree near the centre of the garden.
+At the foot of the tree stood a hut, somewhat bigger and better built
+than any they had yet seen; and in front of the trunk a stalwart savage,
+very powerfully built, but with a sinister look in his cruel and lustful
+eye, was pacing up and down, like a sentinel on guard, a long spear in
+his right hand, and a tomahawk in his left, held close by his side, all
+ready for action. As he prowled up and down he seemed to be peering
+warily about him on every side, as if each instant he expected to be set
+upon by an enemy. But as the chief approached, the people without set up
+once more the cry of "Taboo! Taboo!" and the stalwart savage by the tree,
+laying down his spear and letting his tomahawk fall free, dropped in a
+second the air of watchful alarm, and advanced with some courtesy to
+greet the new-comers.
+
+"We have found them, Tu-Kila-Kila," the chief said, presenting them to
+the god with a graceful wave of his hand. "We have found the spirits that
+you brought from the sun, with the fire in their hands, and the light in
+boxes. We have taken them to Heaven. Heaven has accepted them. We have
+offered them fruit, and they have eaten the banana. The King of the
+Rain--the Queen of the Clouds! Korong! Receive them!"
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila glanced at them with an approving glance, strangely
+compounded of pleasure and terror. "They are plump," he said shortly.
+"They are indeed Korong. My sun has sent me an acceptable present."
+
+"What is your will that we should do with them?" the chief asked in a
+deeply deferential tone.
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila looked hard at Muriel--such a hateful look that the knife
+trembled irresolute for a second in Felix's hand. "Give them two fresh
+huts," he said, in a lordly way. "Give them divine platters. Give them
+all that they need. Make everything right for them."
+
+The chief bowed, and retired with an awed air from the presence. Exactly
+as he passed a certain line on the ground, marked white with a row of
+coral-sand, Tu-Kila-Kila seized his spear and his tomahawk once more, and
+mounted guard, as before, at the foot of the great tree where they had
+seen him pacing. An instantaneous change seemed to Muriel to come over
+his demeanor at that moment. While he spoke with the chief she noticed
+he looked all cruelty, lust, and hateful self-indulgence. Now that he
+paced up and down warily in front of that sacred floor, peering around
+him with keen suspicion, he seemed rather the personification of
+watchfulness, fear, and a certain slavish bodily terror. Especially, she
+observed, he cast upon Felix, as he went, a glance of angry hate; and yet
+he did not attempt to hurt or molest him in any way, defenceless as they
+both were before those numerous savages.
+
+As they emerged from the enclosure, the girl with the fruit basket stood
+near the gate, looking outward from the wall, her face turned away from
+the awful home of Tu-Kila-Kila. At the moment when Muriel passed, to her
+immense astonishment the girl spoke to her. "Don't be afraid, missy," she
+said in English, in a rather low voice, without obtrusively approaching
+them. "Boupari man not going to hurt you. Me going to be your servant. Me
+name Mali. Me very good girl. Me take plenty care of you."
+
+The unexpected sound of her own language, in the midst of so much
+unmitigated savagery, took Muriel fairly by surprise. She looked hard at
+the girl, but thought it wisest to answer nothing. This particular young
+woman, indeed, was just as dark, and to all appearance just as much of a
+savage, as any of the rest of them. But she could speak English, at any
+rate! And she said she was to be Muriel's servant!
+
+The chief led them back to the shore, talking volubly all the way in
+Polynesia to Felix. His dialect differed so much from the Fijian that
+when he spoke first Felix could hardly follow him. But he gathered
+vaguely, nevertheless, that they were to be well housed and fed for the
+present at the public expense; and even that something which the chief
+clearly regarded as a very great honor was in store for them in the
+future. Whatever these people's particular superstition might be, it
+seemed pretty evident at least that it told in the strangers' favor.
+Felix almost began to hope they might manage to live there pretty
+tolerably for the next two or three weeks, and perhaps to signal in time
+to some passing Australian liner.
+
+The rest of that wonderful eventful day was wholly occupied with
+practical details. Before long, two adjacent huts were found for them,
+near the shore of the lagoon; and Felix noticed with pleasure, not only
+that the huts themselves were new and clean, but also that the chief took
+great care to place round both of them a single circular line of white
+coral-sand, like the one he had noticed at Tu-Kila-Kila's palace-temple.
+He felt sure this white line made the space within taboo. No native would
+dare without leave to cross it.
+
+When the line was well marked out round the two huts together, the chief
+went away for a while, leaving the Europeans within their broad white
+circle, guarded by an angry-looking band of natives with long spears at
+rest, all pointed inward. The natives themselves stood well without the
+ring, but the points of their spears almost reached the line, and it was
+clear they would not for the present permit the Europeans to leave the
+charmed circle.
+
+Presently, the chief returned again, followed by two other natives in
+official costumes. One of them was a tall and handsome young man, dressed
+in a long robe or cloak of yellow feathers. The other was stouter, and
+perhaps forty or thereabouts; he wore a short cape of white albatross
+plumes, with a girdle of shells at his waist, interspersed with red
+coral.
+
+"The King of Fire will make Taboo," the chief said, solemnly.
+
+The young man with the cloak of yellow feathers stepped forward and
+spoke, toeing the line with his left foot, and brandishing a lighted
+stick in his right hand. "Taboo! Taboo! Taboo!" he cried aloud, with
+emphasis. "If any man dare to transgress this line without leave, I burn
+him to ashes. If any woman, I scorch her to a cinder. Taboo to the King
+of the Rain and the Queen of the Clouds. Taboo! Taboo! Taboo! Korong! I
+say it."
+
+He stepped back into the ranks with an air of duty performed. The chief
+looked about him curiously a moment. "The King of Water will make Taboo,"
+he repeated after a pause, in the same deep tone of profound conviction.
+
+The stouter man in the short white cape stepped forward in his turn. He
+toed the line with his naked left foot; in his brown right hand he
+carried a calabash of water. "Taboo! Taboo! Taboo!" he exclaimed aloud,
+pouring out the water upon the ground symbolically. "If any man dare to
+transgress this line without leave, I drown him in his canoe. If any
+woman, I drag her alive into the spring as she fetches water. Taboo to
+the King of the Rain and the Queen of the Clouds. Taboo! Taboo! Taboo!
+Korong! I say it."
+
+"What does it all mean?" Muriel whispered, terrified.
+
+Felix explained to her, as far as he could, in a few hurried sentences.
+"There's only one word in it I don't understand," he added, hastily, "and
+that's Korong. It doesn't occur in Fiji. They keep saying we're Korong,
+whatever that may mean; and evidently they attach some very great
+importance to it."
+
+"Let the Shadows come forward," the chief said, looking up with an air of
+dignity.
+
+A good-looking young man, and the girl who said her name was Mali,
+stepped forth from the crowd, and fell on their knees before him.
+
+The chief laid his hand on the young man's shoulder and raised him up.
+"The Shadow of the King of the Rain," he cried, turning him three times
+round. "Follow him in all his incomings and his outgoings, and serve
+him faithfully! Taboo! Taboo! Pass within the sacred circle!"
+
+He clapped his hands. The young man crossed the line with a sort of
+reverent reluctance, and took his place within the ring, close up to
+Felix.
+
+The chief laid his hand on Mali's shoulder. "The Shadow of the Queen of
+the Clouds," he said, turning her three times round. "Follow her in all
+her incomings and outgoings, and serve her faithfully. Taboo! Taboo!
+Pass within the sacred circle!"
+
+Then he waved both hands to Felix. "Go where you will now," he said.
+"Your Shadow will follow you. You are free as the rain that drops where
+it will. You are as free as the clouds that roam through heaven. No man
+will hinder you."
+
+And in a moment the spearmen dropped their spears in concert, the crowd
+fell back, and the villagers dispersed as if by magic, to their own
+houses.
+
+But Felix and Muriel were left alone beside their huts, guarded only in
+silence by their two mystic Shadows.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+FIRST DAYS IN BOUPARI.
+
+
+Throughout that day the natives brought them, from time to time, numerous
+presents of yam, bananas, and bread-fruit, neatly arranged in little
+palm-leaf baskets. A few of them brought eggs as well, and one offering
+even included a live chicken. But the people who brought them, and who
+were mostly young girls just entering upon womanhood, did not venture to
+cross the white line of coral-sand that surrounded the huts; they laid
+down their presents, with many salaams, on the ground outside, and then
+waited with a half-startled, half-reverent air for one or other of the
+two Shadows to come out and fetch them. As soon as the baskets were
+carried well within the marked line, the young girls exhibited every sign
+of pleasure, and calling aloud, "Korong! Korong!"--that mysterious
+Polynesian word of whose import Felix was ignorant--they retired once
+more by tortuous paths through the surrounding jungle.
+
+"Why do they bring us presents?" Felix asked at last of his Shadow, after
+this curious pantomime had been performed some three or four times. "Are
+they always going to keep us in such plenty?"
+
+The Shadow looked back at him with an air of considerable surprise. "They
+bring presents, of course," he said, in his own tongue, "because they are
+badly in want of rain. We have had much drought of late in Boupari; we
+need water from heaven. The banana-bushes wither; the flowers on the
+bread-fruit tree do not swell to breadfruit; the yams are thirsty.
+Therefore the fathers send their daughters with presents, maidens of the
+villages, all marriageable girls, to ask for rainfall. But they will
+always provide for you, and also for the Queen, however you behave; for
+you are both Korong. Tu-Kila-Kila has said so, and Heaven has accepted
+you."
+
+"What do you mean by Korong?" Felix asked, with some trepidation.
+
+The Shadow merely looked back at him with a sort of blank surprise that
+anybody should be ignorant of so simple a conception. "Why, Korong is
+Korong," he answered, aghast. "You are Korong yourself. The Queen of the
+Clouds is Korong, too. You are both Korong; that is why they all treat
+you with such respect and reverence."
+
+And that was as much as Felix could elicit by his subtlest questions from
+his taciturn Shadow.
+
+In fact, it was clear that in the open, at least, the Shadow was averse
+to being observed in familiar conversation with Felix. During the heat of
+the day, however, when they sat alone within the hut, he was much more
+communicative. Then he launched forth pretty freely into talk about the
+island and its life, which would no doubt have largely enlightened Felix,
+had it not been for two drawbacks to their means of inter-communication.
+In the first place, the Boupari dialect, though agreeing in all
+essentials with the Polynesian of Fiji, nevertheless contained a great
+many words and colloquial expressions unknown to the Fijians; this being
+particularly the case, as Felix soon remarked, in the whole vocabulary of
+religious rites and ceremonies. And in the second place, the Shadow was
+so rigidly bound by his own narrow and insular set of ideas, that he
+couldn't understand the difficulty Felix felt in throwing himself into
+them. Over and over again, when Felix asked him to explain some word or
+custom, he would repeat, with naive impatience, "Why, Korong is Korong,"
+or "Tula is just Tula; even a child must surely know what Tula is; much
+more yourself, who are indeed Korong, and who have come from the sun to
+bring fresh fire to us."
+
+In the adjoining hut, Muriel, who was now beginning in some small degree
+to get rid of her most pressing fear for the immediate future, and whom
+the obvious reality of the taboo had reassured for the moment, sat with
+Mali, her own particular Shadow, unravelling the mystery of the girl's
+knowledge of English.
+
+Mali, indeed, like the other Shadow, showed every disposition to indulge
+in abundant conversation, as soon as she found herself well within the
+hut, alone with her mistress, and secluded from the prying eyes of all
+the other islanders.
+
+"Don't you be afraid, missy," she said, with genuine kindliness in her
+tone, as soon as the gifts of yam and bread-fruit had all been duly
+housed and garnered. "No harm come to you. You Korong, you know. You very
+great Taboo. Tu-Kila-Kila send King of Fire and King of Water to make
+taboo over you, so nobody hurt you."
+
+Muriel burst into tears at the sound of her own language from those dusky
+lips, and exclaimed through her sobs, clinging to the girl's hand for
+comfort as she spoke, "Why, how did you ever come to speak English?--tell
+me."
+
+Mali looked up at her with a half-astonished air. "Oh, I servant in
+Queensland, of course, missy," she answered, with great composure. "Labor
+vessel come to my island, far away, four, five years ago, steal boy,
+steal woman. My papa just kill my mamma, because he angry with her, so no
+want daughters. So my papa sell me and my sister for plenty rum, plenty
+tobacco, to gentlemen in labor vessel. Gentlemen in labor vessel take
+Jani and me away, away, to Queensland. Big sea; long voyage. We stop
+there three yam--three years--do service; then great chief in Queensland
+send us back to my island. My island too faraway; gentleman on ship not
+find it out; so he land us in little boat on Boupari. Boupari people make
+temple slave of us." And that was all; to her quite a commonplace,
+everyday history.
+
+"I see," Muriel cried. "Then you've been for three years in Australia!
+And there you learned English. Why, what did you do there?"
+
+Mali looked back at her with the same matter-of-fact air of composure as
+before. "Oh, me nurse at first," she said, shortly. "Then after, me
+housemaid, live three year in gentleman's house, good gentleman that buy
+me. Take care of little girl; clean rooms; do everything. Me know how to
+make English lady quite comfortable. Me tell that to chief; that make him
+say, 'Mali, you be Queenie's Shadow.'"
+
+To Muriel in her loneliness even such companionship as that was indeed a
+consolation. "Oh, I'm so glad you told him," she cried. "If we have to
+stop here long, before a ship takes us off, it'll be so nice to have you
+here all the time with me. You won't go away from me ever, will you?
+You'll always stop with me!"
+
+The girl's surprise showed more profoundly than ever. "Me can't go
+away," she answered, with emphasis. "Me your Shadow. That great Taboo.
+Tu-Kila-Kila great god. If me go away, Tu-Kila-Kila kill me and eat me."
+
+Muriel started back in horror. "But, Mali," she said, looking hard at the
+girl's pleasant brown face, "if you were three years in Australia, you're
+a Christian, surely!"
+
+The girl nodded her head in passive acquiescence. "Me Christian in
+Australia," she answered. "Of course me Christian. All folks make
+Christian when him go to Queensland. That what for me call Mali, and my
+sister Jani. We have other names on my own island; but when we go to
+Queensland, gentleman baptize us, call us Mali and Jani. Me Methodist in
+Queensland. Methodist very good. But Methodist god no live in Boupari.
+Not any good be Methodist here any longer. Tu-Kila-Kila god here. Him
+very powerful."
+
+"What! Not that dreadful creature that they took us to see this morning!"
+Muriel exclaimed, in horror. "Oh, Mali, you can't mean to say they think
+he's a _god_, that awful man there!"
+
+Mali nodded her assent with profound conviction. "Yes, yes; him god," she
+repeated, confidently. "Him very powerful. My sister Jani go too near him
+temple, against taboo--because her not belong-a Tu-Kila-Kila temple; and
+last night, when it great feast, plenty men catch Jani, and tie him up in
+rope; and Tu-Kila-Kila kill him, and plenty Boupari men help Tu-Kila-Kila
+eat up Jani."
+
+She said it in the same simple, matter-of-fact way as she had said that
+she was a nurse for three years in Queensland. To her it was a common
+incident of everyday life. Such accidents _will_ happen, if you break
+taboo and go too near forbidden temples.
+
+But Muriel drew back, and let the pleasant-looking brown girl's hand drop
+suddenly. "You can't mean it," she cried. "You can't mean he's a god!
+Such a wicked man as that! Oh, his very look's too horrible."
+
+Mali drew back in her turn with a somewhat terrified air, and peeped
+suspiciously around her, as if to make sure whether any one was
+listening. "Oh, hush," she said, anxiously. "Don't must talk like that.
+If Tu-Kila-Kila hear, him scorch us up to ashes. Him very great god!
+Him good! Him powerful!"
+
+"How can he be good if he does such awful things?" Muriel exclaimed,
+energetically.
+
+Mali peered around her once more with terrified eyes in the same uneasy
+way. "Take care," she said again. "Him god! Him powerful! Him can do no
+wrong. Him King of the Trees! Him King of Heaven! On Boupari island,
+Methodist god not much; no god so great like Tu-Kila-Kila."
+
+"But a _man_ can't be a god!" Muriel exclaimed, contemptuously. "He's
+nothing but a man! a savage! A cannibal!"
+
+Mali looked back at her in wondering surprise. "Not in Queensland," she
+answered, calmly--to her, all the world naturally divided itself into
+Queensland and Polynesia--"no god in Queensland. Governor, him very great
+chief; but him no god like Tu-Kila-Kila. Methodist god in sky, him only
+god that live in Queensland. But no use worship Methodist god over here
+in Boupari. Him no live here. Tu-Kila-Kila live here. All god here make
+out of man. Live in man. Korong! What for you say a man can't be a god!
+You god yourself! White gentleman there, god! Korong, Korong. Chief put
+you in Heaven, so make you a god. People pray to you now. People bring
+you presents."
+
+"You don't mean to say," Muriel cried, "they bring me these things
+because they think me a goddess?"
+
+Mali nodded a grave assent. "Same like people give money in church in
+Queensland," she answered, promptly. "Ask you make rain, make plenty
+crop, make bread-fruit grow, make banana, make plantain. You Korong now.
+While your time last, Queenie, people give you plenty of present."
+
+"While my time last?" Muriel repeated, with a curious sense of discomfort
+creeping over her slowly.
+
+The girl nodded an easy assent. "Yes, while your time last," she
+answered, laying a small bundle of palm-leaves at Muriel's back by way of
+a cushion. "For now you Korong. By and by, Korong pass to somebody else.
+This year, you Korong. So people worship you."
+
+But nothing that Muriel could say would induce the girl further to
+explain her meaning. She shook her head and looked very wise. "When a god
+come into somebody," she said, nodding toward Muriel in a mysterious way,
+"then him god himself; him Korong. When the god go away from him, him
+Korong no longer; somebody else Korong. Queenie Korong now; so people
+worship him. While him time last, people plenty kind to him."
+
+The day passed away, and night came on. As it approached, heavy clouds
+drifted up from eastward. Mali busied herself with laying out a rough bed
+in the hut for Muriel, and making her a pillow of soft moss and the
+curious lichen-like material that hangs parasitic from the trees, and is
+commonly known as "old man's beard." As both Mali and Felix assured her
+confidently no harm would come to her within so strict a Taboo, Muriel,
+worn out with fatigue and terror, lay down at last and slept soundly on
+this native substitute for a bedstead. She slept without dreaming, while
+Mali lay at her feet, ready at a moment's call. It was all so strange;
+and yet she was too utterly wearied to do otherwise than sleep, in spite
+of her strange and terrible surroundings.
+
+Felix slept, too, for some hours, but woke with a start in the night. It
+was raining heavily. He could hear the loud patter of a fierce tropical
+shower on the roof of his hut. His Shadow, at his feet, slept still
+unmoved; but when Felix rose on his elbow, the Shadow rose on a sudden,
+too, and confronted him curiously. The young man heard the rain; then he
+bowed down his face with an awed air, not visible, but audible, in the
+still darkness. "It has come!" he said, with superstitious terror. "It
+has come at last! my lord has brought it!"
+
+After that, Felix lay awake for some hours, hearing the rain on the roof,
+and puzzled in his own head by a half-uncertain memory. What was it in
+his school reading that that ceremony with the water indefinitely
+reminded him of? Wasn't there some Greek or Roman superstition about
+shaking your head when water was poured upon it? What could that
+superstition be, and what light might it cast on that mysterious
+ceremony? He wished he could remember; but it was so long since he'd read
+it, and he never cared much at school for Greek or Roman antiquities.
+
+Suddenly, in a lull of the rain, the whole context at once came back with
+a rush to him. He remembered now he had read it, some time or other, in
+some classical dictionary. It was a custom connected with Greek
+sacrifices. The officiating priest poured water or wine on the head of
+the sheep, bullock, or other victim. If the victim shook its head and
+knocked off the drops, that was a sign that it was fit for the sacrifice,
+and that the god accepted it. If the victim trembled visibly, that was a
+most favorable omen. If it stood quite still and didn't move its neck,
+then the god rejected it as unfit for his purpose. Couldn't _that_ be the
+meaning of the ceremony performed on Muriel and himself in "Heaven" that
+morning? Were they merely intended as human sacrifices? Were they to be
+kept meanwhile and, as it were, fed up for the slaughter? It was too
+horrible to believe; yet it almost looked like it.
+
+He wished he knew the meaning of that strange word, "Korong." Clearly, it
+contained the true key to the mystery.
+
+Anyhow, he had always his trusty knife. If the worst came to the
+worst--those wretches should never harm his spotless Muriel.
+
+For he loved her to-night; he would watch over and protect her. He would
+save her at least from the deadliest of insults.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+INTERCHANGE OF CIVILITIES.
+
+
+All night long, without intermission, the heavy tropical rain descended
+in torrents; at sunrise it ceased, and a bright blue vault of sky stood
+in a spotless dome over the island of Boupari.
+
+As soon as the sun was well risen, and the rain had ceased, one shy
+native girl after another came straggling up timidly to the white line
+that marked the taboo round Felix and Muriel's huts. They came with more
+baskets of fruit and eggs. Humbly saluting three times as they drew near,
+they laid down their gifts modestly just outside the line, with many loud
+ejaculations of praise and gratitude to the gods in their own language.
+
+"What do they say?" Muriel asked, in a dazed and frightened way, looking
+out of the hut door, and turning in wonder to Mali.
+
+"They say, 'Thank you, Queenie, for rain and fruits,'" Mali answered,
+unconcerned, bustling about in the hut. "Missy want to wash him face and
+hands this morning? Lady always wash every day over yonder in
+Queensland."
+
+Muriel nodded assent. It was all so strange to her. But Mali went to the
+door and beckoned carelessly to one of the native girls just outside, who
+drew near the line at the summons, with a somewhat frightened air,
+putting one finger to her mouth in coyly uncertain savage fashion.
+
+"Fetch me water from the spring!" Mali said, authoritatively, in
+Polynesian. Without a moment's delay the girl darted off at the top of
+her speed, and soon returned with a large calabash full of fresh cool
+water, which she lay down respectfully by the taboo line, not daring to
+cross it.
+
+"Why didn't you get it yourself?" Muriel asked of her Shadow, rather
+relieved than otherwise that Mali hadn't left her. It was something in
+these dire straits to have somebody always near who could at least speak
+a little English.
+
+Mali started back in surprise. "Oh, that would never do," she answered,
+catching a colloquial phrase she had often heard long before in
+Queensland. "Me missy's Shadow. That great Taboo. If me go away out of
+missy's sight, very big sin--very big danger. Man-a-Boupari catch me and
+kill me like Jani, for no me stop and wait all the time on missy."
+
+It was clear that human life was held very cheap on the island of
+Boupari.
+
+Muriel made her scanty toilet in the hut as well as she was able, with
+the calabash and water, aided by a rough shell comb which Mali had
+provided for her. Then she breakfasted, not ill, off eggs and fruit,
+which Mali cooked with some rude native skill over the open-air fire
+without in the precincts.
+
+After breakfast, Felix came in to inquire how she had passed the night in
+her new quarters. Already Muriel felt how odd was the contrast between
+the quiet politeness of his manner as an English gentleman and the
+strange savage surroundings in which they both now found themselves.
+Civilization is an attribute of communities; we necessarily leave it
+behind when we find ourselves isolated among barbarians or savages. But
+culture is a purely personal and individual possession; we carry it with
+us wherever we go; and no circumstances of life can ever deprive us of
+it.
+
+As they sat there talking, with a deep and abiding sense of awe at the
+change (Muriel more conscious than ever now of how deep was her interest
+in Felix Thurstan, who represented for her all that was dearest and best
+in England), a curious noise, as of a discordant drum or tom-tom, beaten
+in a sort of recurrent tune, was heard toward the hills; and at its very
+first sound both the Shadows, flinging themselves upon their faces with
+every sign of terror, endeavored to hide themselves under the native mats
+with which the bare little hut was roughly carpeted.
+
+"What's the matter?" Felix cried, in English, to Mali; for Muriel had
+already explained to him how the girl had picked up some knowledge of our
+tongue in Queensland.
+
+Mali trembled in every limb, so that she could hardly speak.
+"Tu-Kila-Kila come," she answered, all breathless. "No blackfellow look
+at him. Burn blackfellow up. You and Missy Korong. All right for you. Go
+out to meet him!"
+
+"Tu-Kila-Kila is coming," the young man-Shadow said, in Polynesian,
+almost in the same breath, and no less tremulously. "We dare not look
+upon his face lest he burn us to ashes. He is a very great Taboo. His
+face is fire. But you two are gods. Step forth to receive him."
+
+Felix took Muriel's hand in his, somewhat trembling himself, and led her
+forth on to the open space in front of the huts to meet the man-god. She
+followed him like a child. She was woman enough for that. She had
+implicit trust in him.
+
+As they emerged, a strange procession met their eyes unawares, coming
+down the zig-zag path that led from the hills to the shore of the lagoon,
+where their huts were situated. At its head marched two men--tall,
+straight, and supple--wearing huge feather masks over their faces, and
+beating tom-toms, decorated with long strings of shiny cowries. After
+them, in order, came a sort of hollow square of chiefs or warriors,
+surrounding with fan-palms a central object all shrouded from the view
+with the utmost precaution. This central object was covered with a huge
+regal umbrella, from whose edge hung rows of small nautilus and other
+shells, so as to form a kind of screen, like the Japanese portieres now
+so common in English doorways. Two supporters held it up, one on either
+side, in long cloaks of feathers. Under the umbrella, a man seemed to
+move; and as he approached, the natives, to right and left, fled
+precipitately to their huts, snatching up their naked little ones from
+the ground as they went, and crying aloud, "Taboo, Taboo! He comes! he
+comes. Tu-Kila-Kila! Tu-Kila-Kila!"
+
+The procession wound slowly on, unheeding these common creatures, till it
+reached the huts. Then the chiefs who formed the hollow square fell back
+one by one, and the man under the umbrella, with his two supporters, came
+forward boldly. Felix noticed that they crossed without scruple the thick
+white line of sand which all the other natives so carefully respected.
+The man within the umbrella drew aside the curtain of hanging nautilus
+shells. His face was covered with a thin mask of paper mulberry bark; but
+Felix knew he was the self-same person whom they had seen the day before
+in the central temple.
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila's air was more insolent and arrogant than even before. He
+was clearly in high spirits. "You have done well, O King of the Rain," he
+said, turning gayly to Felix; "and you too, O Queen of the Clouds; you
+have done right bravely. We have all acquitted ourselves as our people
+would wish. We have made our showers to descend abundantly from heaven;
+we have caused the crops to grow; we have wetted the plantain bushes.
+See; Tu-Kila-Kila, who is so great a god, has come from his own home on
+the hills to greet you."
+
+"It has certainly rained in the night," Felix answered, dryly.
+
+But Tu-Kila-Kila was not to be put off thus. Adjusting his thin mask or
+veil of bark, so as to hide his face more thoroughly from the inferior
+god, he turned round once more to the chiefs, who even so hardly dared to
+look openly upon him. Then he struck an attitude. The man was clearly
+bursting with spiritual pride. He knew himself to be a god, and was
+filled with the insolence of his supernatural power. "See, my people," he
+cried, holding up his hands, palm outward, in his accustomed god-like
+way; "I am indeed a great deity--Lord of Heaven, Lord of Earth, Life of
+the World, Master of Time, Measurer of the Sun's Course, Spirit of
+Growth, Creator of the Harvest, Master of Mortals, Bestower of Breath
+upon Men, Chief Pillar of Heaven!"
+
+The warriors bowed down before their bloated master with unquestioning
+assent. "Giver of Life to all the host of the gods," they cried, "you are
+indeed a mighty one. Weigher of the equipoise of Heaven and Earth, we
+acknowledge your might; we give you thanks eternally."
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila swelled with visible importance. "Did I not tell you, my
+meat," he exclaimed, "I would bring you new gods, great spirits from the
+sun, fetchers of fire from my bright home in the heavens? And have they
+not come? Are they not here to-day? Have they not brought the precious
+gift of fresh fire with them?"
+
+"Tu-Kila-Kila speaks true," the chiefs echoed, submissively, with bent
+heads.
+
+"Did I not make one of them King of the Rain?" Tu-Kila-Kila asked once
+more, stretching one hand toward the sky with theatrical magnificence.
+"Did I not declare the other Queen of the Clouds in Heaven? And have I
+not caused them to bring down showers this night upon our crops? Has not
+the dry earth drunk? Am I not the great god, the Saviour of Boupari?"
+
+"Tu-Kila-Kila says well," the chiefs responded, once more, in unanimous
+chorus.
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila struck another attitude with childish self-satisfaction.
+"I go into the hut to speak with my ministers," he said, grandiloquently.
+"Fire and Water, wait you here outside while I enter and speak with my
+friends from the sun, whom I have brought for the salvation of the crops
+to Boupari."
+
+The King of Fire and the King of Water, supporting the umbrella, bowed
+assent to his words. Tu-Kila-Kila motioned Felix and Muriel into the
+nearest hut. It was the one where the two Shadows lay crouching in terror
+among the native mats. As the god tried to enter, the two cowering
+wretches set up a loud shout, "Taboo! Taboo! Mercy! Mercy! Mercy!"
+Tu-Kila-Kila retreated with a contemptuous smile. "I want to see you
+alone," he said, in Polynesian, to Felix. "Is the other hut empty? If
+not, go in and cut their throats who sit there, and make the place a
+solitude for Tu-Kila-Kila."
+
+"There is no one in the hut," Felix answered, with a nod, concealing his
+disgust at the command as far as he was able.
+
+"That is well," Tu-Kila-Kila answered, and walked into it carelessly.
+Felix followed him close and deemed it best to make Muriel enter also.
+
+As soon-as they were alone, Tu-Kila-Kila's manner altered greatly. "Come,
+now," he said, quite genially, yet with a curious under-current of hate
+in his steely gray eye; "we three are all gods. We who are in heaven need
+have no secrets from one another. Tell me the truth; did you really come
+to us direct from the sun, or are you sailing gods, dropped from a great
+canoe belonging to the warriors who seek laborers for the white men in
+the distant country?"
+
+Felix told him briefly, in as few words as possible, the story of their
+arrival.
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila listened with lively interest, then he said, very
+decisively, with great bravado, "It was _I_ who made the big wave wash
+your sister overboard. I sent it to your ship. I wanted a Korong just now
+in Boupari. It was _I_ who brought you."
+
+"You are mistaken," Felix said, simply, not thinking it worth while to
+contradict him further. "It was a purely natural accident."
+
+"Well, tell me," the savage god went on once more, eying him close and
+sharp, "they say you have brought fresh fire from the sun with you, and
+that you know how to make it burst out like lightning at will. My people
+have seen it. They tell me the wonder. I wish to see it too. We are all
+gods here; we need have no secrets. Only, I didn't want to let those
+common people outside see I asked you to show me. Make fire leap forth. I
+desire to behold it."
+
+Felix took out the match-box from his pocket, and struck a vesta
+carefully. Tu-Kila-Kila looked on with profound interest. "It is
+wonderful," he said, taking the vesta in his own hand as it burned, and
+examining it closely. "I have heard of this before, but I have never seen
+it. You are indeed gods, you white men, you sailors of the sea." He
+glanced at Muriel. "And the woman, too," he said, with a horrible leer,
+"the woman is pretty."
+
+Felix took the measure of his man at once. He opened his knife, and held
+it up threateningly. "See here, fellow," he said, in a low, slow tone,
+but with great decision, "if you dare to speak or look like that at that
+lady--god or no god, I'll drive this knife straight up to the handle in
+your heart, though your people kill me for it afterward ten thousand
+times over. I am not afraid of you. These savages may be afraid, and may
+think you are a god; but if you are, then I am a god ten thousand times
+stronger than you. One more word--one more look like that, I say--and
+I plunge this knife remorselessly into you."
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila drew back, and smiled benignly. Stalwart ruffian as he was,
+and absolute master of his own people's lives, he was yet afraid in a way
+of the strange new-comer. Vague stories of the men with white faces--the
+"sailing gods"--had reached him from time to time; and though only twice
+within his memory had European boats landed on his island, he yet knew
+enough of the race to know that they were at least very powerful
+deities--more powerful with their weapons than even he was. Besides, a
+man who could draw down fire from heaven with a piece of wax and a little
+metal box might surely wither him to ashes, if he would, as he stood
+before him. The very fact that Felix bearded him thus openly to his face
+astonished and somewhat terrified the superstitious savage. Everybody
+else on the island was afraid of him; then certainly a man who was not
+afraid must be the possessor of some most efficacious and magical
+medicine. His one fear now was lest his followers should hear and
+discover his discomfiture. He peered about him cautiously, with that
+careful gleam shining bright in his eye; then he said with a leer, in a
+very low voice, "We two need not quarrel. We are both of us gods. Neither
+of us is the stronger. We are equal, that's all. Let us live like
+brothers, not like enemies, on the island."
+
+"I don't want to be your brother," Felix answered, unable to conceal his
+loathing any more. "I hate and detest you."
+
+"What does he say?" Muriel asked, in an agony of fear at the savage's
+black looks. "Is he going to kill us?"
+
+"No," Felix answered, boldly. "I think he's afraid of us. He's going to
+do nothing. You needn't fear him."
+
+"Can she not speak?" the savage asked, pointing with his finger somewhat
+rudely toward Muriel. "Has she no voice but this, the chatter of birds?
+Does she not know the human language?"
+
+"She can speak," Felix replied, placing himself like a shield between
+Muriel and the astonished savage. "She can speak the language of the
+people of our distant country--a beautiful language which is as far
+superior to the speech of the brown men of Polynesia as the sun in the
+heavens is superior to the light of a candlenut. But she can't speak the
+wretched tongue of you Boupari cannibals. I thank Heaven she can't, for
+it saves her from understanding the hateful things your people would say
+of her. Now go! I have seen already enough of you. I am not afraid.
+Remember, I am as powerful a god as you. I need not fear. You cannot hurt
+me."
+
+A baleful light gleamed in the cannibal's eye. But he thought it best to
+temporize. Powerful as he was on his island, there was one thing yet more
+powerful by far than he; and that was Taboo--the custom and superstition
+handed down from his ancestors, These strangers were Korong; he dare not
+touch them, except in the way and manner and time appointed by custom. If
+he did, god as he was, his people themselves would turn and rend him. He
+was a god, but he was bound on every side by the strictest taboos. He
+dare not himself offer violence to Felix.
+
+So he turned with a smile and bided his time. He knew it would come. He
+could afford to laugh. Then, going to the door, he said, with his grand
+affable manner to his chiefs around, "I have spoken with the gods, my
+ministers, within. They have kissed my hands. My rain has fallen. All is
+well in the land. Arise, let us go away hence to my temple."
+
+The savages put themselves in marching order at once. "It is the voice of
+a god," they said, reverently. "Let us take back Tu-Kila-Kila to his
+temple home. Let us escort the lord of the divine umbrella. Wherever he
+is, there trees and plants put forth green leaves and flourish. At his
+bidding flowers bloom and springs of water rise up in fountains. His
+presence diffuses heavenly blessings."
+
+"I think," Felix said, turning to poor, terrified Muriel, "I've sent the
+wretch away with a bee in his bonnet."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+THE CUSTOMS OF BOUPARI.
+
+
+Human nature cannot always keep on the full stretch of excitement. It was
+wonderful to both Felix and Muriel how soon they settled down into a
+quiet routine of life on the island of Boupari. A week passed away--two
+weeks--three weeks--and the chances of release seemed to grow slenderer
+and slenderer. All they could do now was to wait for the stray accident
+of a passing ship, and then try, if possible, to signal it, or to put out
+to it in a canoe, if the natives would allow them.
+
+Meanwhile, their lives for the moment seemed fairly safe. Though for the
+first few days they lived in constant alarm, this feeling, after a time,
+gave way to one of comparative security. The strange institution of Taboo
+protected them more efficiently in their wattled huts than the whole
+police force of London could have done in a Belgravian mansion. There
+thieves break through and steal, in spite of bolts and bars and
+metropolitan constables; but at Boupari no native, however daring or
+however wicked, would ever venture to transgress the narrow line of white
+coral sand which protected the castaways like an intangible wall from all
+outer interference. Within this impalpable ring-fence they were
+absolutely safe from all rude intrusion, save that of the two Shadows,
+who waited upon them, day and night, with unfailing willingness.
+
+In other respects, considering the circumstances, their life was an easy
+one. The natives brought them freely of their simple store--yam, taro,
+bread-fruit, and cocoanut, with plenty of fish, crabs, and lobsters, as
+well as eggs by the basketful, and even sometimes chickens. They required
+no pay beyond a nod and a smile, and went away happy at those slender
+recognitions. Felix discovered, in fact, that they had got into a region
+where the arid generalizations of political economy do not apply; where
+Adam Smith is unread, and Mill neglected; where the medium of exchange is
+an unknown quantity, and where supply and demand readjust themselves
+continuously by simpler and more generous principles than the familiar
+European one of "the higgling of the market."
+
+The people, too, though utter savages, were not in their own way
+altogether unpleasing. It was their customs and superstitions, rather
+than themselves, that were so cruel and horrible. Personally, they seemed
+for the most part simple-minded and good natured creatures. At first,
+indeed, Muriel was afraid to venture for a step beyond the precincts of
+their own huts; and it was long before she could make up her mind to go
+alone through the jungle paths with Mali, unaccompanied by Felix. But by
+degrees she learned that she could walk by herself (of course, with the
+inevitable Shadow ever by her side) over the whole island, and meet
+everywhere with nothing from men, women, and children but the utmost
+respect and gracious courtesy. The young lads, as she passed, would stand
+aside from the path, with downcast eyes, and let her go by with all the
+politeness of chivalrous English gentlemen. The old men would raise their
+eyes, but cross their hands on their breasts, and stand motionless for a
+few minutes till she got almost out of sight. The women would bring their
+pretty brown babies for the fair English lady to admire or to pat on the
+head; and when Muriel now and again stooped down to caress some fat
+little naked child, lolling in the dust outside the hut, with true
+tropical laziness, the mothers would run up at the sight with delight and
+joy, and throw themselves down in ecstacies of gratitude for the notice
+she had taken of their favored little ones. "The gods of Heaven," they
+would say, with every sign of pleasure, "have looked graciously upon our
+Unaloa."
+
+At first Felix and Muriel were mainly struck with the politeness and
+deference which the natives displayed toward them. But after a time Felix
+at least began to observe, behind it all, that a certain amount of
+affection, and even of something like commiseration as well, seemed to be
+mingled with the respect and reverence showered upon them by their hosts.
+The women, especially, were often evidently touched by Muriel's innocence
+and beauty. As she walked past their huts with her light, girlish tread,
+they would come forth shyly, bowing many times as they approached, and
+offer her a long spray of the flowering hibiscus, or a pretty garland of
+crimson ti-leaves, saying at the same time, many times over, in their own
+tongue, "Receive it, Korong; receive it, Queen of the Clouds! You are
+good. You are kind. You are a daughter of the Sun. We are glad you have
+come to us."
+
+A young girl soon makes herself at home anywhere; and Muriel, protected
+alike by her native innocence and by the invisible cloak of Polynesian
+taboo, quickly learned to understand and to sympathize with these poor
+dusky mothers. One morning, some weeks after their arrival, she passed
+down the main street of the village, accompanied by Felix and their two
+attendants, and reached the _marae_--the open forum or place of public
+assembly--which stood in its midst; a circular platform, surrounded by
+bread-fruit trees, under whose broad, cool shade the people were sitting
+in little groups and talking together. They were dressed in the regular
+old-time festive costume of Polynesia; for Boupari, being a small and
+remote island, too insignificant to be visited by European ships,
+retained still all its aboriginal heathen manners and customs. The sight
+was, indeed, a curious and picturesque one. The girls, large-limbed,
+soft-skinned, and with delicately rounded figures, sat on the ground,
+laughing and talking, with their knees crossed under them; their wrists
+were encinctured with girdles of dark-red dracaena leaves, their swelling
+bosoms half concealed, half accentuated by hanging necklets of flowers.
+Their beautiful brown arms and shoulders were bare throughout; their
+long, black hair was gracefully twined and knotted with bright scarlet
+flowers. The men, strong and stalwart, sat behind on short stools or
+lounged on the buttressed roots of the bread-fruit trees, clad like the
+women in narrow waist-belts of the long red dracaena leaves, with necklets
+of sharks' teeth, pendent chain of pearly shells, a warrior's cap on
+their well-shaped heads, and an armlet of native beans, arranged below
+the shoulder, around their powerful arms. Altogether, it was a striking
+and beautiful picture. Muriel, now almost released from her early sense
+of fear, stood still to look at it.
+
+The men and girls were laughing and chatting merrily together. Most of
+them were engaged in holding up before them fine mats; and a row of
+mulberry cloth, spread along on the ground, led to a hut near one side of
+the _marae_. Toward this the eyes of the spectators were turned. "What is
+it, Mali?" Muriel whispered, her woman's instinct leading her at once to
+expect that something special was going on in the way of local
+festivities.
+
+And Mali answered at once, with many nods and smiles, "All right, Missy
+Queenie. Him a wedding, a marriage."
+
+The words had hardly escaped her lips when a very pretty young girl,
+half smothered in flowers, and decked out in beads and fancy shells,
+emerged slowly from the hut, and took her way with stately tread along
+the path carpeted with native cloth. She was girt round the waist with
+rich-colored mats, which formed a long train, like a court dress,
+trailing on the ground five or six feet behind her.
+
+"That's the bride, I suppose," Muriel whispered, now really
+interested--for what woman on earth, wherever she may be, can resist
+the seductive delights of a wedding?
+
+"Yes, her a bride," Mali answered; "and ladies what follow, them her
+bridesmaids."
+
+At the word, six other girls, similarly dressed, though without the
+train, and demure as nuns, emerged from the hut in slow order, two and
+two, behind her.
+
+Muriel and Felix moved forward with natural curiosity toward the scene.
+The natives, now ranged in a row along the path, with mats turned inward,
+made way for them gladly. All seem pleased that Heaven should thus
+auspiciously honor the occasion; and the bride herself, as well as the
+bridegroom, who, decked in shells and teeth, advanced from the opposite
+side along the path to meet her, looked up with grateful smiles at the
+two Europeans. Muriel, in return, smiled her most gracious and girlish
+recognition. As the bride drew near, she couldn't refrain from bending
+forward a little to look at the girl's really graceful costume. As she
+did so, the skirt of her own European dress brushed for a second against
+the bride's train, trailed carelessly many yards on the ground behind
+her.
+
+Almost before they could know what had happened, a wild commotion arose,
+as if by magic, in the crowd around them. Loud cries of "Taboo! Taboo!"
+mixed with inarticulate screams, burst on every side from the assembled
+natives. In the twinkling of an eye they were surrounded by an angry,
+threatening throng, who didn't dare to draw near, but, standing a yard or
+two off, drew stone knives freely and shook their fists, scowling, in the
+strangers' faces. The change was appalling in its electric suddenness.
+Muriel drew back horrified, in an agony of alarm. "Oh, what have I done!"
+she cried, piteously, clinging to Felix for support. "Why on earth are
+they angry with us?"
+
+"I don't know," Felix answered, taken aback himself. "I can't say exactly
+in what you've transgressed. But you must, unconsciously, in some way
+have offended their prejudices. I hope it's not much. At any rate they're
+clearly afraid to touch us."
+
+"Missy Queenie break taboo," Mali explained at once, with Polynesian
+frankness. "That make people angry. So him want to kill you. Missy
+Queenie touch bride with end of her dress. Korong may smile on
+bride--that very good luck; but Korong taboo; no must touch him."
+
+The crowd gathered around them, still very threatening in attitude, yet
+clearly afraid to approach within arm's-length of the strangers. Muriel
+was much frightened at their noise and at their frantic gestures. "Come
+away," she cried, catching Felix by the arm once more. "Oh, what are they
+going to do to us? Will they kill us for this? I'm so horribly afraid!
+Oh, why did I ever do it!"
+
+The poor little bride, meanwhile, left alone on the carpet, and unnoticed
+by everybody, sank suddenly down on the mats where she stood, buried her
+face in her hands, and began to sob as if her heart would break.
+Evidently, something very untoward of some sort had happened to the dusky
+lady on her wedding morning.
+
+The final touch was too much for poor Muriel's overwrought nerves. She,
+too, gave way in a tempest of sobs, and, subsiding on one of the native
+stools hard by, burst into tears herself with half-hysterical violence.
+
+Instantly, as she did so, the whole assembly seemed to change its mind
+again as if by contagious magic. A loud shout of "She cries; the Queen of
+the Clouds cries!" went up from all the assembled mob to heaven. "It is a
+good omen," Toko, the Shadow, whispered in Polynesian to Felix, seeing
+his puzzled look. "We shall have plenty of rain now; the clouds will
+break; our crops will flourish." Almost before she understood it, Muriel
+was surrounded by an eager and friendly crowd, still afraid to draw near,
+but evidently anxious to see and to comfort and console her. Many of the
+women eagerly held forward their native mats, which Mali took from them,
+and, pressing them for a second against Muriel's eyes, handed them back
+with just a suspicion of wet tears left glistening in the corner. The
+happy recipients leaped and shouted with joy. "No more drought!" they
+cried merrily, with loud shouts and gesticulations. "The Queen of the
+Clouds is good: she will weep well from heaven upon my yam and taro
+plots!"
+
+Muriel looked up, all dazed, and saw, to her intense surprise, the crowd
+was now nothing but affection and sympathy. Slowly they gathered in
+closer and closer, till they almost touched the hem of her robe; then the
+men stood by respectfully, laying their fingers on whatever she had
+wetted with her tears, while the women and girls took her hand in theirs
+and pressed it sympathetically. Mali explained their meaning with ready
+interpretation. "No cry too much, them say," she observed, nodding her
+head sagely. "Not good for Missy Queenie to cry too much. Them say, kind
+lady, be comforted."
+
+There was genuine good-nature in the way they consoled her; and Felix was
+touched by the tenderness of those savage hearts; but the additional
+explanation, given him in Polynesian by his own Shadow, tended somewhat
+to detract from the disinterestedness of their sympathy. "They say, 'It
+is good for the Queen of the Clouds to weep,'" Toko said, with frank
+bluntness; "'but not too much--for fear the rain should wash away all our
+yam and taro plants.'"
+
+By this time the little bride had roused herself from her stupor, and,
+smiling away as if nothing had happened, said a few words in a very low
+voice to Felix's Shadow. The Shadow turned most respectfully to his
+master, and, touching his sleeve-link, which was of bright gold, said, in
+a very doubtful voice, "She asks you, oh king, will you allow her, just
+for to-day, to wear this ornament?"
+
+Felix unbuttoned the shining bauble at once, and was about to hand it to
+the bride with polite gallantry. "She may wear it forever, for the matter
+of that, if she likes," he said, good-humoredly. "I make her a present
+of it."
+
+But the bride drew back as before in speechless terror, as he held out
+his hand, and seemed just on the point of bursting out into tears again
+at this untoward incident. The Shadow intervened with fortunate
+perception of the cause of the misunderstanding. "Korong must not touch
+or give anything to a bride," he said, quietly; "not with his own hand.
+He must not lay his finger on her; that would be unlucky. But he may hand
+it by his Shadow." Then he turned to his fellow-tribesmen. "These gods,"
+he said, in an explanatory voice, like one bespeaking forgiveness,
+"though they are divine, and Korong, and very powerful--see, they have
+come from the sun, and they are but strangers in Boupari--they do not yet
+know the ways of our island. They have not eaten of human flesh. They do
+not understand Taboo. But they will soon be wiser. They mean very well,
+but they do not know. Behold, he gives her this divine shining ornament
+from the sun as a present!" And, taking it in his hand, he held it up for
+a moment to public admiration. Then he passed on the trinket
+ostentatiously to the bride, who, smiling and delighted, hung it low on
+her breast among her other decorations.
+
+The whole party seemed so surprised and gratified at this proof of
+condescension on the part of the divine stranger that they crowded round
+Felix once more, praising and thanking him volubly. Muriel, anxious to
+remove the bad impression she had created by touching the bride's dress,
+hastily withdrew her own little brooch and offered it in turn to the
+Shadow as an additional present. But Toko, shaking his head vigorously,
+pointed with his forefinger many times to Mali. "Toko say him no can take
+it," Mali explained hastily, in her broken English. "Him no your Shadow;
+me your Shadow; me do everything for you; me give it to the lady." And,
+taking the brooch in her hand, she passed it over in turn amid loud cries
+of delight and shouts of approval.
+
+Thereupon, the ceremony began all over again. They seemed by their
+intervention to have interrupted some set formula. At its close the women
+crowded around Muriel and took her hand in theirs, kissing it many times
+over, with tears in their eyes, and betraying an immense amount of
+genuine feeling. One phrase in Polynesian they repeated again and again;
+a phrase that made Felix's cheek turn white, as he leaned over the poor
+English girl with a profound emotion.
+
+"What does it mean that they say?" Muriel asked at last, perceiving it
+was all one phrase, many times repeated.
+
+Felix was about to give some evasive explanation, when Mali interposed
+with her simple, unthinking translation. "Them say, Missy Queenie very
+good and kind. Make them sad to think. Make them cry to see her. Make
+them cry to see Missy Queenie Korong. Too good. Too pretty."
+
+"Why so?" Muriel exclaimed, drawing back with some faint presentiment of
+unspeakable horror.
+
+Felix tried to stop her; but the girl would not be stopped. "Because,
+when Korong time up," she answered, blurting it out, "Korong must--"
+
+Felix clapped his hand to her mouth in wild haste, and silenced her. He
+knew the worst now. He had divined the truth. But Muriel, at least, must
+be spared that knowledge.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+SOWING THE WIND.
+
+Vaguely and indefinitely one terrible truth had been forced by slow
+degrees upon Felix's mind; whatever else Korong meant, it implied at
+least some fearful doom in store, sooner or later, for the persons who
+bore it. How awful that doom might be, he could hardly imagine; but he
+must devote himself henceforth to the task of discovering what its nature
+was, and, if possible, of averting it.
+
+Yet how to reconcile this impending terror with the other obvious facts
+of the situation? the fact that they were considered divine beings and
+treated like gods; and the fact that the whole population seemed really
+to regard them with a devotion and kindliness closely bordering on
+religious reverence? If Korongs were gods, why should the people want to
+kill them? If they meant to kill them, why pay them meanwhile such
+respect and affection?
+
+One point at least was now, however, quite clear to Felix. While the
+natives, especially the women, displayed toward both of them in their
+personal aspect a sort of regretful sympathy, he could not help noticing
+at the same time that the men, at any rate, regarded them also largely
+in an impersonal light, as a sort of generalized abstraction of the
+powers of nature--an embodied form of the rain and the weather. The
+islanders were anxious to keep their white guests well supplied, well
+fed, and in perfect health, not so much for the strangers' sakes as for
+their own advantage; they evidently considered that if anything went
+wrong with either of their two new gods, corresponding misfortunes might
+happen to their crops and the produce of their bread-fruit groves. Some
+mysterious sympathy was held to subsist between the persons of the
+castaways and the state of the weather. The natives effusively thanked
+them after welcome rain, and looked askance at them, scowling, after long
+dry spells. It was for this, no doubt, that they took such pains to
+provide them with attentive Shadows, and to gird round their movements
+with taboos of excessive stringency. Nothing that the new-comers said or
+did was indifferent, it seemed, to the welfare of the community; plenty
+and prosperity depended upon the passing state of Muriel's health, and
+famine or drought might be brought about at any moment by the slightest
+imprudence in Felix's diet.
+
+How stringent these taboos really were Felix learned by slow degrees
+alone to realize. From the very beginning he had observed, to be sure,
+that they might only eat and drink the food provided for them; that they
+were supplied with a clean and fresh-built hut, as well as with brand-new
+cocoanut cups, spoons, and platters; that no litter of any sort was
+allowed to accumulate near their enclosure; and that their Shadows never
+left them, or went out of their sight, by day or by night, for a single
+moment. Now, however, he began to perceive also that the Shadows were
+there for that very purpose, to watch over them, as it were, like guards,
+on behalf of the community; to see that they ate or drank no tabooed
+object; to keep them from heedlessly transgressing any unwritten law of
+the creed of Boupari; and to be answerable for their good behavior
+generally. They were partly servants, it was true, and partly sureties;
+but they were partly also keepers, and keepers who kept a close and
+constant watch upon the persons of their prisoners. Once or twice Felix,
+growing tired for the moment of this continual surveillance, had tried to
+give Toko the slip, and to stroll away from his hut, unattended, for a
+walk through the island, in the early morning, before his Shadow had
+waked; but on each such occasion he found to his surprise that, as he
+opened the hut door, the Shadow rose at once and confronted him angrily,
+with an inquiring eye; and in time he perceived that a thin string was
+fastened to the bottom of the door, the other end of which was tied to
+the Shadow's ankle; and this string could not be cut without letting fall
+a sort of latch or bar which closed the door outside, only to be raised
+again by some external person.
+
+Clearly, it was intended that the Korong should have no chance of escape
+without the knowledge of the Shadow, who, as Felix afterward learned,
+would have paid with his own body by a cruel death for the Korong's
+disappearance.
+
+He might as well have tried to escape his own shadow as to escape the one
+the islanders had tacked on to him.
+
+All Felix's energies were now devoted to the arduous task of discovering
+what Korong really meant, and what possibility he might have of saving
+Muriel from the mysterious fate that seemed to be held in store for them.
+
+One evening, about six weeks after their arrival in the island, the young
+Englishman was strolling by himself (after the sun sank low in heaven)
+along a pretty tangled hill-side path, overhung with lianas and rope-like
+tropical creepers, while his faithful Shadow lingered a step or two
+behind, keeping a sharp lookout meanwhile on all his movements.
+
+Near the top of a little crag of volcanic rock, in the center of the
+hills, he came suddenly upon a hut with a cleared space around it,
+somewhat neater in appearance than any of the native cottages he had yet
+seen, and surrounded by a broad white belt of coral sand, exactly like
+that which ringed round and protected their own enclosure. But what
+specially attracted Felix's attention was the fact that the space outside
+this circle had been cleared into a regular flower-garden, quite European
+in the definiteness and orderliness of its quaint arrangement.
+
+"Why, who lives here?" Felix asked in Polynesian, turning round in
+surprise to his respectful Shadow.
+
+The Shadow waved his hand vaguely in an expansive way toward the sky, as
+he answered, with a certain air of awe, often observable in his speech
+when taboos were in question, "The King of Birds. A very great god. He
+speaks the bird language."
+
+"Who is he?" Felix inquired, taken aback, wondering vaguely to himself
+whether here, perchance, he might have lighted upon some stray and
+shipwrecked compatriot.
+
+"He comes from the sun like yourselves," the Shadow answered, all
+deference, but with obvious reserve. "He is a very great god. I may not
+speak much of him. But he is not Korong. He is greater than that, and
+less. He is Tula, the same as Tu-Kila-Kila."
+
+"Is he as powerful as Tu-Kila-Kila?" Felix asked, with intense interest.
+
+"Oh, no, he's not nearly so powerful as that," the Shadow answered, half
+terrified at the bare suggestion. "No god in heaven or earth is like
+Tu-Kila-Kila. This one is only king of the birds, which is a little
+province, while Tu-Kila-Kila is king of heaven and earth, of plants
+and animals, of gods and men, of all things created. At his nod the sky
+shakes and the rocks tremble. But still, this god is Tula, like
+Tu-Kila-Kila. He is not for a year. He goes on forever, till some other
+supplants him."
+
+"You say he comes from the sun," Felix put in, devoured with curiosity.
+"And he speaks the bird language? What do you mean by that? Does he speak
+like the Queen of the Clouds and myself when we talk together?"
+
+"Oh, dear, no," the Shadow answered, in a very confident tone. "He
+doesn't speak the least bit in the world like that. He speaks shriller
+and higher, and still more bird-like. It is chatter, chatter, chatter,
+like the parrots in a tree; tirra, tirra, tirra; tarra, tarra, tarra; la,
+la, la; lo, lo, lo; lu, lu, lu; li la. And he sings to himself all the
+time. He sings this way--"
+
+And then the Shadow, with that wonderful power of accurate mimicry which
+is so strong in all natural human beings, began to trill out at once,
+with a very good Parisian accent, a few lines from a well-known song in
+"La Fille de Madame Angot:"
+
+"Quand on conspi-re,
+   Quand sans frayeur
+ On pent se di-re
+   Conspirateur,
+ Pour tout le mon-de
+   Il faut avoir
+ Perruque blon-de
+   Et collet noir--
+ Perruque blon-de
+   Et collet noir."
+
+"That's how the King of the Birds sings," the Shadow said, as he
+finished, throwing back his head, and laughing with all his might at his
+own imitation. "So funny, isn't it? It's exactly like the song of the
+pink-crested parrot."
+
+"Why, Toko, it's French," Felix exclaimed, using the Fijian word for a
+Frenchman, which the Shadow, of course, on his remote island, had never
+before heard. "How on earth did he come here?"
+
+"I can't tell you," Toko answered, waving his arms seaward. "He came from
+the sun, like yourselves. But not in a sun-boat. It had no fire. He came
+in a canoe, all by himself. And Mali says"--here the Shadow lowered his
+voice to a most mysterious whisper--"he's a man-a-oui-oui."
+
+Felix quivered with excitement. "Man-a-oui-oui" is the universal name
+over semi-civilized Polynesia for a Frenchman. Felix seized upon it with
+avidity. "A man-a-oui-oui!" he cried, delighted. "How strange! How
+wonderful! I must go in at once to his hut and see him!"
+
+He had lifted his foot and was just going to cross the white line of
+coral-sand, when his Shadow, catching him suddenly and stoutly round the
+waist, pulled him back from the enclosure with every sign of horror,
+alarm, and astonishment. "No, you can't go," he cried, grappling with him
+with all his force, yet using him very tenderly for all that, as becomes
+a god. "Taboo! Taboo there!"
+
+"But I am a god myself," Felix cried, insisting upon his privileges. If
+you have to submit to the disadvantages of taboo, you may as well claim
+its advantages as well. "The King of Fire and the King of Water crossed
+my taboo line. Why shouldn't I cross equally the King of the Birds',
+then?"
+
+"So you might--as a rule," the Shadow answered with promptitude. "You are
+both gods. Your taboos do not cross. You may visit each other. You may
+transgress one another's lines without danger of falling dead on the
+ground as common men would do if they broke taboo-lines. But this is the
+Month of Birds. The king is in retreat. No man may see him except his own
+Shadow, the Little Cockatoo, who brings him his food and drink. Do you
+see that hawk's head, stuck upon the post by the door at the side. That
+is his Special Taboo. He keeps it for this month. Even gods must respect
+that sign, for a reason which it would be very bad medicine to mention.
+While the Month of Birds lasts, no man may look upon the king or hear
+him. If they did, they would die, and the carrion birds would eat them.
+Come away. This is dangerous."
+
+Scarcely were the words well out of his mouth when from the recesses of
+the hut a rollicking French voice was heard, trilling out merrily:
+
+"Quand on con-spi-re,
+   Quand, sans frayeur--"
+
+Without waiting for more, the Shadow seized Felix's arm in an agony of
+terror. "Come away!" he cried, hurriedly, "come away! What will become
+of us? This is horrible, horrible! We have broken taboo. We have heard
+the god's voice. The sky will fall on us. If his Shadow were to find it
+out and tell my people, my people would tear us limb from limb. Quick,
+quick! Hide away! Let us run fast through the forest before any man
+discover it."
+
+The Shadow's voice rang deep with alarm. Felix felt he dare not trifle
+with this superstition. Profound as was his curiosity about the
+mysterious Frenchman, he was compelled to bottle up his eagerness and
+anxiety for the moment, and patiently wait till the Month of Birds had
+run its course, and taken its inconvenient taboo along with it. These
+limitations were terrible. Yet he counted much upon the information the
+Frenchman could give him. The man had been some time on the island, it
+was clear, and doubtless he understood its ways thoroughly; he might
+cast some light at last upon the Korong mystery.
+
+So he went back through the woods with a heart somewhat lighter.
+
+Not far from their own huts he met Muriel and Mali.
+
+As they walked home together, Felix told his companion in a very few
+words the strange discovery about the Frenchman, and the impenetrable
+taboo by which he was at present surrounded. Muriel drew a deep sigh.
+"Oh, Felix," she said--for they were naturally by this time very much at
+home with one another, "did you ever know anything so dreadful as the
+mystery of these taboos? It seems as if we should never get really to the
+bottom of them. Mali's always springing some new one upon me. I don't
+believe we shall ever be able to leave the island--we're so hedged round
+with taboos. Even if we were to see a ship to-day, I don't believe they'd
+allow us to signal it."
+
+There was a red sunset; a lurid, tropical, red-and-green sunset. It boded
+mischief.
+
+They were passing by some huts at the moment, and over the stockade of
+one of them a tree was hanging with small yellow fruits, which Felix knew
+well in Fiji as wholesome and agreeable. He broke off a small branch as
+he passed; and offered a couple thoughtlessly to Muriel. She took them in
+her fingers, and tasted them gingerly. "They're not so bad," she said,
+taking another from the bough. "They're very much like gooseberries."
+
+At the same moment, Felix popped one into his own mouth, and swallowed it
+without thinking.
+
+Almost before they knew what had happened, with the same extraordinary
+rapidity as in the case of the wedding, the people in the cottages ran
+out, with every sign of fear and apprehension, and, seizing the branch
+from Felix's hands, began upbraiding the two Shadows for their want
+of attention.
+
+"We couldn't help it," Toko exclaimed, with every appearance of guilt and
+horror on his face. "They were much too sharp for us. Their hearts are
+black. How could we two interfere? These gods are so quick! They had
+picked and eaten them before we ever saw them."
+
+One of the men raised his hand with a threatening air--but against the
+Shadow, not against the sacred person of Felix. "He will be ill," he
+said, angrily, pointing toward the white man; "and she will, too. Their
+hearts are indeed black. They have sown the seed of the wind. They have
+both of them eaten of it. They will both be ill. You deserve to die! And
+what will come now to our trees and plantations?"
+
+The crowd gathered round them, cursing low and horribly. The two
+terrified Europeans slunk off to their huts, unaware of their exact
+crime, and closely followed by a scowling but despondent mob of natives.
+As they crossed their sacred boundary, Muriel cried, with a sudden
+outburst of tears, "Oh, Felix, what on earth shall we ever do to get
+rid of this terrible, unendurable godship!"
+
+The natives without set up a great shout of horror. "See, see! she
+cries!" they exclaimed, in indescribable panic. "She has eaten the
+storm-fruit, and already she cries! Oh, clouds, restrain yourselves! Oh,
+great queen, mercy! Whatever will become of us and our poor huts
+and gardens!"
+
+And for hours they crouched around, beating their breasts and shrieking.
+
+That evening, Muriel sat up late in Felix's hut, with Mali by her side,
+too frightened to go back into her own alone before those angry people.
+And all the time, just beyond the barrier line, they could hear, above
+the whistle of the wind around the hut, the droning voices of dozens of
+natives, cowering low on the ground; they seemed to be going through some
+litany or chant, as if to deprecate the result of this imprudent action.
+
+"What are they doing outside?" Felix asked of his Shadow at last, after a
+peculiarly long wail of misery.
+
+And the Shadow made answer, in very solemn tones, "They are trying to
+propitiate your mightiness, and to avert the omen, lest the rain should
+fall, and the wind should blow, and the storm-cloud should burst over the
+island to destroy them."
+
+Then Felix remembered suddenly of himself that the season when this
+storm-fruit, or storm-apple, as they called it, was ripe in Fiji, was
+also the season when the great Pacific cyclones most often swept over the
+land in full fury--storms unexampled on any other sea, like that famous
+one which wrecked so many European men-of-war a few years since in the
+harbor of Samoa.
+
+And without, the wail came louder and clearer still! "If you sow the
+bread-fruit seed, you will reap the breadfruit. If you sow the wind, you
+will reap the whirlwind. They have eaten the storm-fruit. Oh, great king,
+save us!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+REAPING THE WHIRLWIND.
+
+
+Toward midnight Muriel began to doze lightly from pure fatigue.
+
+"Put a pillow under her head, and let her sleep," Felix said in a
+whisper. "Poor child, it would be cruel to send her alone to-night into
+her own quarters."
+
+And Mali slipped a pillow of mulberry paper under her mistress's head,
+and laid it on her own lap, and bent down to watch her.
+
+But outside, beyond the line, the natives murmured loud their discontent.
+"The Queen of the Clouds stays in the King of the Rain's hut to-night,"
+they muttered, angrily. "She will not listen to us. Before morning, be
+sure, the Tempest will be born of their meeting to destroy us."
+
+About two o'clock there came a lull in the wind, which had been rising
+steadily ever since that lurid sunset. Felix looked out of the hut door.
+The moon was full. It was almost as clear as day with the bright tropical
+moonlight, silvery in the open, pale green in the shadow. The people were
+still squatting in great rings round the hut, just outside the taboo
+line, and beating gongs, and sticks and human bones, to keep time to the
+lilt of their lugubrious litany.
+
+The air felt unusually heavy and oppressive. Felix raised his eyes to the
+sky, and saw whisps of light cloud drifting in rapid flight over the
+scudding moon. Below, an ominous fog bank gathered steadily westward.
+Then one clap of thunder rent the sky. After it came a deadly silence.
+The moon was veiled. All was dark as pitch. The natives themselves fell
+on their faces and prayed with mute lips. Three minutes later, the
+cyclone had burst upon them in all its frenzy.
+
+Such a hurricane Felix had never before experienced. Its energy was
+awful. Round the palm-trees the wind played a frantic and capricious
+devil's dance. It pirouetted about the atoll in the mad glee of
+unconsciousness. Here and there it cleared lanes, hundreds of yards in
+length, among the forest-trees and the cocoanut plantations. The noise of
+snapping and falling trunks rang thick on the air. At times the cyclone
+would swoop down from above upon the swaying stem of some tall and
+stately palm that bent like grass before the wind, break it off short
+with a roar at the bottom, and lay it low at once upon the ground, with a
+crash like thunder. In other places, little playful whirlwinds seemed to
+descend from the sky in the very midst of the dense brushwood, where they
+cleared circular patches, strewn thick under foot with trunks and
+branches in their titanic sport, and yet left unhurt all about the
+surrounding forest. Then again a special cyclone of gigantic proportions
+would advance, as it were, in a single column against one stem of a
+clump, whirl round it spirally like a lightning flash, and, deserting it
+for another, leave it still standing, but turned and twisted like a screw
+by the irresistible force of its invisible fingers. The storm-god, said
+Toko, was dancing with the palm-trees. The sight was awful. Such
+destructive energy Felix had never even imagined before. No wonder the
+savages all round beheld in it the personal wrath of some mighty spirit.
+
+For in spite of the black clouds they could _see_ it all--both the
+Europeans and the islanders. The intense darkness of the night was
+lighted up for them every minute by an almost incessant blaze of sheet
+and forked lightning. The roar of the thunder mingled with the roar of
+the tempest, each in turn overtopping and drowning the other. The hut
+where Felix and Muriel sheltered themselves shook before the storm; the
+very ground of the island trembled and quivered--like the timbers of a
+great ship before a mighty sea--at each onset of the breakers upon the
+surrounding fringe-reef. And side by side with it all, to crown their
+misery, wild torrents of rain, descending in waterspouts, as it seemed,
+or dashed in great sheets against the roof of their frail tenement,
+poured fitfully on with fierce tropical energy.
+
+In the midst of the hut Muriel crouched and prayed with bloodless lips to
+Heaven. This was too, too terrible. It seemed incredible to her that on
+top of all they had been called upon to suffer of fear and suspense at
+the hands of the savages, the very dumb forces of nature themselves
+should thus be stirred up to open war against them. Her faith in
+Providence was sorely tried. Dumb forces, indeed! Why, they roared with
+more terrible voices than any wild beast on earth could possibly compass.
+The thunder and the wind were howling each other down in emulous din, and
+the very hiss of the lightning could be distinctly heard, like some huge
+snake, at times above the creaking and snapping of the trees before the
+gale in the surrounding forest.
+
+Muriel crouched there long, in the mute misery of utter despair. At her
+feet Mali crouched too, as frightened as herself, but muttering aloud
+from time to time, in a reproachful voice, "I tell Missy Queenie what
+going to happen. I warn her not. I tell her she must not eat that very
+bad storm-apple. But Missy Queenie no listen. Her take her own way, then
+storm come down upon us."
+
+And Felix's Shadow, in his own tongue, exclaimed more than once in the
+self-same tone, half terror, half expostulation, "See now what comes from
+breaking taboo? You eat the storm-fruit. The storm-fruit suits ill with
+the King of the Rain and the Queen of the Clouds. The heavens have broken
+loose. The sea has boiled. See what wind and what flood you are bringing
+upon us."
+
+By and by, above even the fierce roar of the mingled thunder and cyclone,
+a wild orgy of noise burst upon them all from without the hut. It was a
+sound as of numberless drums and tom-toms, all beaten in unison with the
+mad energy of fear; a hideous sound, suggestive of some hateful heathen
+devil-worship. Muriel clapped her hands to her ears in horror. "Oh,
+what's that?" she cried to Felix, at this new addition to their endless
+alarms. "Are the savages out there rising in a body? Have they come to
+murder us?"
+
+"Perhaps," Felix said, smoothing her hair with his hand, as a mother
+might soothe her terrified child, "perhaps they're angry with us for
+having caused this storm, as they think, by our foolish action. I believe
+they all set it down to our having unluckily eaten that unfortunate
+fruit. I'll go out to the door myself and speak to them."
+
+Muriel clung to his arm with a passionate clinging.
+
+"Oh, Felix," she cried, "no! Don't leave me here alone. My darling, I
+love you. You're all the world there is left to me now, Felix. Don't go
+out to those wretches and leave me here alone. They'll murder you!
+they'll murder you! Don't go out, I implore you. If they mean to kill us,
+let them kill us both together, in one another's arms. Oh, Felix, I am
+yours, and you are mine, my darling!"
+
+It was the first time either of them had acknowledged the fact; but
+there, before the face of that awful convulsion of nature, all the little
+deceptions and veils of life seemed rent asunder forever as by a flash of
+lightning. They stood face to face with each other's souls, and forgot
+all else in the agony of the moment. Felix clasped the trembling girl in
+his arms like a lover. The two Shadows looked on and shook with silent
+terror. If the King of the Rain thus embraced the Queen of the Clouds
+before their very eyes, amid so awful a storm, what unspeakable effects
+might not follow at once from it! But they had too much respect for those
+supernatural creatures to attempt to interfere with their action at such
+a moment. They accepted their masters almost as passively as they
+accepted the wind and the thunder, which they believed to arise from
+them.
+
+Felix laid his poor Muriel tenderly down on the mud floor again. "I
+_must_ go out, my child," he said. "For the very love of _you_, I must
+play the man, and find out what these savages mean by their drumming."
+
+He crept to the door of the hut (for no man could walk upright before
+that awful storm), and peered out into the darkness once more, awaiting
+one of the frequent flashes of lightning. He had not long to wait. In a
+moment the sky was all ablaze again from end to end, and continued so
+for many seconds consecutively. By the light of the continuous zigzags
+of fire, Felix could see for himself that hundreds and hundreds of
+natives--men, women, and children, naked, or nearly so, with their hair
+loose and wet about their cheeks--lay flat on their faces, many courses
+deep, just outside the taboo line. The wind swept over them with
+extraordinary force, and the tropical rain descended in great floods upon
+their bare backs and shoulders. But the savages, as if entranced, seemed
+to take no heed of all these earthly things. They lay grovelling in the
+mud before some unseen power; and beating their tom-toms in unison, with
+barbaric concord, they cried aloud once more as Felix appeared, in a
+weird litany that overtopped the tumultuous noise of the tempest, "Oh,
+Storm-God, hear us! Oh, great spirit, deliver us! King of the Rain and
+Queen of the Clouds, befriend us! Be angry no more! Hide your wrath from
+your people! Take away your hurricane, and we will bring you many gifts.
+Eat no longer of the storm-apple--the seed of the wind--and we will feed
+you with yam and turtle, and much choice bread-fruit. Great king, we are
+yours; you shall choose which you will of our children for your meat and
+drink; you shall sup on our blood. But take your storm away; do not
+utterly drown and submerge our island!"
+
+As they spoke they crawled nearer and nearer, with gliding serpentine
+motion, till their heads almost touched the white line of coral. But not
+a man of them all went one inch beyond it. They stopped there and gazed
+at him. Felix signed to them with his hand, and pointed vaguely to the
+sky, as much as to say _he_ was not responsible. At the gesture the whole
+assembly burst into one loud shout of gratitude. "He has heard us, he has
+heard us!" they exclaimed, with a perfect wail of joy. "He will not
+utterly destroy us. He will take away his storm. He will bring the sun
+and the moon back to us."
+
+Felix returned into the hut, somewhat reassured so far as the attitude of
+the savages went. "Don't be afraid of them, Muriel," he cried, taking her
+passionately once more in a tender embrace. "They daren't cross the
+taboo. They won't come near; they're too frightened themselves to dream
+of hurting us."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+AFTER THE STORM.
+
+
+Next morning the day broke bright and calm, as if the tempest had been
+but an evil dream of the night, now past forever. The birds sang loud;
+the lizards came forth from their holes in the wall, and basked, green
+and gold, in the warm, dry sunshine. But though the sky overhead was blue
+and the air clear, as usually happen after these alarming tropical
+cyclones and rainstorms, the memorials of the great wind that had raged
+all night long among the forests of the island were neither few nor far
+between. Everywhere the ground was strewn with leaves and branches and
+huge stems of cocoa-palms. All nature was draggled. Many of the trees
+were stripped clean of their foliage, as completely as oaks in an English
+winter; on others, big strands of twisted fibres marked the scars and
+joints where mighty boughs had been torn away by main force; while,
+elsewhere, bare stumps alone remained to mark the former presence of some
+noble dracaena or some gigantic banyan. Bread-fruits and cocoanuts lay
+tossed in the wildest confusion on the ground; the banana and
+plantain-patches were beaten level with the soil or buried deep in the
+mud; many of the huts had given way entirely; abundant wreckage strewed
+every corner of the island. It was an awful sight. Muriel shuddered to
+herself to see how much the two that night had passed through.
+
+What the outer fringing reef had suffered from the storm they hardly knew
+as yet; but from the door of the hut Felix could see for himself how even
+the calm waters of the inner lagoon had been lashed into wild fury by the
+fierce swoop of the tempest. Round the entire atoll the solid
+conglomerate coral floor was scooped under, broken up, chewed fine by the
+waves, or thrown in vast fragments on the beach of the island. By the
+eastern shore, in particular, just opposite their hut, Felix observed a
+regular wall of many feet in height, piled up by the waves like the
+familiar Chesil Beach near his old home in Dorsetshire. It was the
+shelter of that temporary barrier alone, no doubt, that had preserved
+their huts last night from the full fury of the gale, and that had
+allowed the natives to congregate in such numbers prone on their faces in
+the mud and rain, upon the unconsecrated ground outside their taboo-line.
+
+But now not an islander was to be seen within ear-shot. All had gone away
+to look after their ruined huts or their beaten-down plantain-patches,
+leaving the cruel gods, who, as they thought, had wrought all the
+mischief out of pure wantonness, to repent at leisure the harm done
+during the night to their obedient votaries.
+
+Felix was just about to cross the taboo-line and walk down to the shore
+to examine the barrier, when Toko, his Shadow, laying his hand on his
+shoulder with more genuine interest and affection than he had ever yet
+shown, exclaimed, with some horror, "Oh, no! Not that! Don't dare to go
+outside! It would be very dangerous for you. If my people were to catch
+you on profane soil just now, there's no saying what harm they might do
+to you."
+
+"Why so?" Felix exclaimed, in surprise. "Last night, surely, they were
+all prayers and promises and vows and entreaties."
+
+The young man nodded his head in acquiescence. "Ah, yes; last night," he
+answered. "That was very well then. Vows were sore needed. The storm was
+raging, and you were within your taboo. How could they dare to touch you,
+a mighty god of the tempest, at the very moment when you were rending
+their banyan-trees and snapping their cocoanut stems with your mighty
+arms like so many little chicken-bones? Even Tu-Kila-Kila himself, I
+expect, the very high god, lay frightened in his temple, cowering by his
+tree, annoyed at your wrath; he sent Fire and Water among the
+worshippers, no doubt, to offer up vows and to appease your anger."
+
+Then Felix remembered, as his Shadow spoke, that, as a matter of fact, he
+had observed the men who usually wore the red and white feather cloaks
+among the motley crowd of grovelling natives who lay flat on their faces
+in the mud of the cleared space the night before, and prayed hard for
+mercy. Only they were not wearing their robes of office at the moment, in
+accordance with a well-known savage custom; they had come naked and in
+disgrace, as befits all suppliants. They had left behind them the
+insignia of their rank in their own shaken huts, and bowed down their
+bare backs to the rain and the lightning.
+
+"Yes, I saw them among the other islanders," Felix answered,
+half-smiling, but prudently remaining within the taboo-line, as his
+Shadow advised him.
+
+Toko kept his hand still on his master's shoulder. "Oh, king," he said,
+beseechingly, and with great solemnity, "I am doing wrong to warn you; I
+am breaking a very great Taboo. I don't know what harm may come to me for
+telling you. Perhaps Tu-Kila-Kila will burn me to ashes with one glance
+of his eyes. He may know this minute what I'm saying here alone to you."
+
+It is hard for a white man to meet scruples like this; but Felix was bold
+enough to answer outright: "Tu-Kila-Kila knows nothing of the sort, and
+can never find out. Take my word for it, Toko, nothing that you say to me
+will ever reach Tu-Kila-Kila."
+
+The Shadow looked at him doubtfully, and trembled as he spoke. "I like
+you, Korong," he said, with a genuinely truthful ring in his voice. "You
+seem to me so kind and good--so different from other gods, who are very
+cruel. You never beat me. Nobody I ever served treated me as well or as
+kindly as you have done. And for _your_ sake I will even dare to break
+taboo--if you're quite, quite sure Tu-Kila-Kila will never discover it."
+
+"I'm quite sure," Felix answered, with perfect confidence. "I know it for
+certain. I swear a great oath to it."
+
+"You swear by Tu-Kila-Kila himself?" the young savage asked, anxiously.
+
+"I swear by Tu-Kila-Kila himself," Felix replied at once. "I swear,
+without doubt. He can never know it."
+
+"That is a great Taboo," the Shadow went on, meditatively, stroking
+Felix's arm. "A very great Taboo indeed. A terrible medicine. And you
+are a god; I can trust you. Well, then, you see, the secret is this:
+you are Korong, but you are a stranger, and you don't understand the
+ways of Boupari. If for three days after the end of this storm, which
+Tu-Kila-Kila has sent Fire and Water to pray and vow against, you or the
+Queen of the Clouds show yourselves outside your own taboo-line--why,
+then, the people are clear of sin; whoever takes you may rend you alive;
+they will tear you limb from limb and cut you into pieces."
+
+"Why so?" Felix asked, aghast at this discovery. They seemed to live on a
+perpetual volcano in this wonderful island; and a volcano ever breaking
+out in fresh places. They could never get to the bottom of its horrible
+superstitions.
+
+"Because you ate the storm-apple," the Shadow answered, confidently.
+"That was very wrong. You brought the tempest upon us yourselves by your
+own trespass; therefore, by the custom of Boupari, which we learn in the
+mysteries, you become full Korong for the sacrifice at once. That makes
+the term for you. The people will give you all your dues; then they will
+say, 'We are free; we have bought you with a price; we have brought your
+cocoanuts. No sin attaches to us; we are righteous; we are righteous.'
+And then they will kill you, and Fire and Water will roast you and boil
+you."
+
+"But only if we go outside the taboo-line?" Felix asked, anxiously.
+
+"Only if you go outside the taboo-line," the Shadow replied, nodding a
+hasty assent. "Inside it, till your term comes, even Tu-Kila-Kila
+himself, the very high god, whose meat we all are, dare never hurt you."
+
+"Till our term comes?" Felix inquired, once more astonished and
+perplexed. "What do you mean by that, my Shadow?"
+
+But the Shadow was either bound by some superstitious fear, or else
+incapable of putting himself into Felix's point of view. "Why, till you
+are full Korong," he answered, like one who speaks of some familiar fact,
+as who should say, till you are forty years old, or, till your beard
+grows white. "Of course, by and by, you will be full Korong. I cannot
+help you then; but, till that time comes, I would like to do my best by
+you. You have been very kind to me. I tell you much. More than this,
+it would not be lawful for me to mention."
+
+And that was the most that, by dexterous questioning, Felix could ever
+manage to get out of his mysterious Shadow.
+
+"At the end of three days we will be safe, though?" he inquired at last,
+after all other questions failed to produce an answer.
+
+"Oh, yes, at the end of three days the storm will have blown over," the
+young man answered, easily. "All will then be well. You may venture out
+once more. The rain will have dried over all the island. Fire and Water
+will have no more power over you."
+
+Felix went back to the hut to inform Muriel of this new peril thus
+suddenly sprung upon them. Poor Muriel, now almost worn out with endless
+terrors, received it calmly. "I'm growing accustomed to it all, Felix,"
+she answered, resignedly. "If only I know that you will keep your
+promise, and never let me fall alive into these wretches' hands, I shall
+feel quite safe. Oh, Felix, do you know when you took me in your arms
+like that last night, in spite of everything, I felt positively happy."
+
+About ten o'clock they were suddenly roused by a sound of many natives,
+coming in quick succession, single file, to the huts, and shouting aloud,
+"Oh, King of the Rain, oh, Queen of the Clouds, come forth for our vows!
+Receive your presents!"
+
+Felix went forth to the door to look. With a warning look in his eyes,
+his Shadow followed him. The natives were now coming up by dozens at a
+time, bringing with them, in great arm-loads, fallen cocoanuts and
+breadfruits, and branches of bananas, and large draggled clusters of
+half-ripe plantains.
+
+"Why, what are all these?" Felix exclaimed in surprise.
+
+His Shadow looked up at him, as if amused at the absurd simplicity of the
+question. "These are yours, of course," he said; "yours and the Queen's;
+they are the windfalls you made. Did you not knock them all off the trees
+for yourselves when you were coming down in such sheets from the sky last
+evening?"
+
+Felix wrung his hands in positive despair. It was clear, indeed, that to
+the minds of the natives there was no distinguishing personally between
+himself and Muriel, and the rain or the cyclone.
+
+"Will they bring them all in?" he asked, gazing in alarm at the huge pile
+of fruits the natives were making outside the huts.
+
+"Yes, all," the Shadow answered; "they are vows; they are godsends; but
+if you like, you can give some of them back. If you give much back, of
+course it will make my people less angry with you."
+
+Felix advanced near the line, holding his hand up before him to command
+silence. As he did so, he was absolutely appalled himself at the perfect
+storm of execration and abuse which his appearance excited. The foremost
+natives, brandishing their clubs and stone-tipped spears, or shaking
+their fists by the line, poured forth upon his devoted head at once all
+the most frightful curses of the Polynesian vocabulary. "Oh, evil god,"
+they cried aloud with angry faces, "oh, wicked spirit! you have a bad
+heart. See what a wrong you have purposely done us. If your heart were
+not bad, would you treat us like this? If you are indeed a god, come out
+across the line, and let us try issues together. Don't skulk like a
+coward in your hut and within your taboo, but come out and fight us. _We_
+are not afraid, who are only men. Why are _you_ afraid of us?"
+
+Felix tried to speak once more, but the din drowned his voice. As he
+paused, the people set up their loud shouts again. "Oh, you wicked god!
+You eat the storm-apple! You have wrought us much harm. You have spoiled
+our harvest. How you came down in great sheets last night! It was
+pitiful, pitiful! We would like to kill you. You might have taken our
+bread-fruits and our bananas, if you would; we give you them freely; they
+are yours; here, take them. We feed you well; we make you many offerings.
+But why did you wish to have our huts also? Why did you beat down our
+young plantations and break our canoes against the beach of the island?
+That shows a bad heart! You are an evil god! You dare not defend
+yourself. Come out and meet us."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+A POINT OF THEOLOGY.
+
+
+At last, with great difficulty, Felix managed to secure a certain
+momentary lull of silence. The natives, clustering round the line till
+they almost touched it, listened with scowling brows, and brandished
+threatening spears, tipped with points of stone or shark's teeth or
+turtle-bone, while he made his speech to them. From time to time, one or
+another interrupted him, coaxing and wheedling him, as it were, to cross
+the line; but Felix never heeded them. He was beginning to understand now
+how to treat this strange people. He took no notice of their threats or
+their entreaties either.
+
+By and by, partly by words and partly by gestures, he made them
+understand that they might take back and keep for themselves all the
+cocoanuts and bread-fruits they had brought as windfalls. At this the
+people seemed a little appeased. "His heart is not quite so bad as we
+thought," they murmured among themselves; "but if he didn't want them,
+what did he mean? Why did he beat down our huts and our plantations?"
+
+Then Felix tried to explain to them--a somewhat dangerous task--that
+neither he nor Muriel were really responsible for last night's storm; but
+at that the people, with one accord, raised a great loud shout of unmixed
+derision. "He is a god," they cried, "and yet he is ashamed of his own
+acts and deeds, afraid of what we, mere men, will do to him! Ha! ha! Take
+care! These are lies that he tells. Listen to him! Hear him!"
+
+Meanwhile, more and more natives kept coming up with windfalls of fruit,
+or with objects they had vowed in their terror to dedicate during the
+night; and Felix all the time kept explaining at the top of his voice, to
+all as they came, that he wanted nothing, and that they could take all
+back again. This curiously inconsistent action seemed to puzzle the
+wondering natives strangely. Had he made the storm, then, they asked, and
+eaten the storm-apple, for no use to himself, but out of pure
+perverseness? If he didn't even want the windfalls and the objects vowed
+to him, why had he beaten down their crops and broken their houses? They
+looked at him meaningly; but they dared not cross that great line of
+taboo. It was their own superstition alone, in that moment of danger,
+that kept their hands off those defenceless white people.
+
+At last a happy idea seemed to strike the crowd. "What he wants is a
+child?" they cried, effusively. "He thirsts for blood! Let us kill and
+roast him a proper victim!"
+
+Felix's horror at this appalling proposition knew no bounds. "If you do,"
+he cried, turning their own superstition against them in this last hour
+of need, "I will raise up a storm worse even than last night's! You do it
+at your peril! I want no victim. The people of my country eat not of
+human flesh. It is a thing detestable, horrible, hateful to God and man.
+With us, all human life alike is sacred. We spill no blood. If you dare
+to do as you say, I will raise such a storm over your heads to-night as
+will submerge and drown the whole of your island."
+
+The natives listened to him with profound interest. "We must spill no
+blood!" they repeated, looking aghast at one another. "Hear what the King
+says! We must not cut the victim's throat. We must bind a child with
+cords and roast it alive for him!"
+
+Felix hardly knew what to do or say at this atrocious proposal. "If you
+roast it alive," he cried, "you deserve to be all scorched up with
+lightning. Take care what you do! Spare the child's life! I will have no
+victim. Beware how you anger me!"
+
+But the savage no sooner says than he does. With him deliberation is
+unknown, and impulse everything. In a moment the natives had gathered in
+a circle a little way off, and began drawing lots. Several children,
+seized hurriedly up among the crowd, were huddled like so many sheep in
+the centre. Felix looked on from his enclosure, half petrified with
+horror. The lot fell upon a pretty little girl of five years old. Without
+one word of warning, without one sign of remorse, before Felix's very
+eyes, they began to bind the struggling and terrified child just outside
+the circle.
+
+The white man could stand this horrid barbarity no longer. At the risk of
+his life--at the risk of Muriel's--he must rush out to prevent them. They
+should never dare to kill that helpless child before his very eyes. Come
+what might--though even Muriel should suffer for it--he felt he _must_
+rescue that trembling little creature. Drawing his trusty knife, and
+opening the big blade ostentatiously before their eyes, he made a sudden
+dart like a wild beast across the line, and pounced down upon the party
+that guarded the victim.
+
+Was it a ruse to make him cross the line, alone, or did they really mean
+it? He hardly knew; but he had no time to debate the abstract question.
+Bursting into their midst, he seized the child with a rush in his
+circling arms, and tried to hurry back with it within the protecting
+taboo-line.
+
+Quick as lightning he was surrounded and almost cut down by a furious and
+frantic mob of half-naked savages. "Kill him! Tear him to pieces!" they
+cried in their rage. "He has a bad heart! He destroyed our huts! He broke
+down our plantations! Kill him, kill him, kill him!"
+
+As they closed in upon him, with spears and tomahawks and clubs, Felix
+saw he had nothing left for it now but a hard fight for life to return to
+the taboo-line. Holding the child in one arm, and striking wildly out
+with his knife with the other, he tried to hack his way back by main
+force to the shelter of the taboo-line in frantic lunges. The distance
+was but a few feet, but the savages pressed round him, half frightened
+still, yet gnashing their teeth and distorting their faces with anger.
+"He has broken the Taboo," they cried in vehement tones. "He has crossed
+the line willingly. Kill him! Kill him! We are free from sin. We have
+bought him with a price--with many cocoanuts!"
+
+At the sound of the struggle going on so close outside, Muriel rushed in
+frantic haste and terror from the hut. Her face was pale, but her
+demeanor was resolute. Before Mali could stop her, she, too, had crossed
+the sacred line of the coral mark, and had flung herself madly upon
+Felix's assailants, to cover his retreat with her own frail body.
+
+"Hold off!" she cried, in her horror, in English, but in accents even
+those savages could read. "You shall not touch him!"
+
+With a fierce effort Felix tore his way back, through the spears and
+clubs, toward the place of safety. The savages wounded him on the way
+more than once with their jagged stone spear-tips, and blood flowed from
+his breast and arms in profusion. But they didn't dare even so to touch
+Muriel. The sight of that pure white woman, rushing out in her weakness
+to protect her lover's life from attack, seemed to strike them with some
+fresh access of superstitious awe. One or two of themselves were wounded
+by Felix's knife, for they were unaccustomed to steel, though they had a
+few blades made out of old European barrel-hoops. For a minute or two the
+conflict was sharp and hotly contested. Then at last Felix managed to
+fling the child across the line, to push Muriel with one hand at
+arm's-length before him, and to rush himself within the sacred circle.
+
+No sooner had he crossed it than the savages drew up around, undecided as
+yet, but in a threatening body. Rank behind rank, their loose hair in
+their eyes, they stood like wild beasts balked of their prey, and yelled
+at him. Some of them brandished their spears and their stone hatchets
+angrily in their victims' faces. Others contented themselves with howling
+aloud as before, and piling curses afresh on the heads of the unpopular
+storm-gods. "Look at her," they cried, in their wrath, pointing their
+skinny brown fingers angrily at Muriel. "See, she weeps even now. She
+would flood us with her rain. She isn't satisfied with all the harm she
+has poured down upon Boupari already. She wants to drown us."
+
+And then a little knot drew up close to the line of taboo itself, and
+began to discuss in loud and serious tones a pressing question of savage
+theology and religious practice.
+
+"They have crossed the line within the three days," some of the foremost
+warriors exclaimed, in excited voices. "They are no longer taboo. We can
+do as we please with them. We may cross the line now ourselves if we
+will, and tear them to pieces. Come on! Who follows? Korong! Korong! Let
+us rend them! Let us eat them!"
+
+But though they spoke so bravely they hung back themselves, fearful
+of passing that mysterious barrier. Others of the crowd answered them
+back, warmly: "No, no; not so. Be careful what you do. Anger not the
+gods. Don't ruin Boupari. If the Taboo is not indeed broken, then how
+dare we break it? They are gods. Fear their vengeance. They are,
+indeed, terrible. See what happened to us when they merely ate of the
+storm-apple! What might not happen if we were to break taboo without due
+cause and kill them?"
+
+One old, gray-bearded warrior, in particular, held his countrymen back.
+"Mind how you trifle with gods," the old chief said, in a tone of solemn
+warning. "Mind how you provoke them. They are very mighty. When I was
+young, our people killed three sailing gods who came ashore in a small
+canoe, built of thin split logs; and within a month an awful earthquake
+devastated Boupari, and fire burst forth from a mouth in the ground, and
+the people knew that the spirits of the sailing gods were very angry.
+Wait, therefore, till Tu-Kila-Kila himself comes, and then ask of him,
+and of Fire and Water. As Tu-Kila-Kila bids you, that do you do. Is he
+not our great god, the king of us all, and the guardian of the customs of
+the island of Boupari?"
+
+"Is Tu-Kila-Kila coming?" some of the warriors asked, with bated breath.
+
+"How should he not come?" the old chief asked, drawing himself up very
+erect. "Know you not the mysteries? The rain has put out all the fires in
+Boupari. The King of Fire himself, even his hearth is cold. He tried his
+best in the storm to keep his sacred embers still smouldering; but the
+King of the Rain was stronger than he was, and put it out at last in
+spite of his endeavors. Be careful, therefore, how you deal with the King
+of the Rain, who comes down among lightnings, and is so very powerful."
+
+"And Tu-Kila-Kila comes to fetch fresh fire?" one of the nearest savages
+asked, with profound awe.
+
+"He comes to fetch fresh fire, new fire from the sun," the old man
+answered, with awe in his voice. "These foreign gods, are they not
+strangers from the sun? They have brought the divine seeds of fire,
+growing in a shining box that reflects the sunlight. They need no
+rubbing-sticks and no drill to kindle fresh flame. They touch the seed
+on the box, and, lo, like a miracle, fire bursts forth from the wood
+spontaneous. Tu-Kila-Kila comes, to behold this miracle."
+
+The warriors hung back with doubtful eyes for a moment. Then they spoke
+with one accord, "Tu-Kila-Kila shall decide. Tu-Kila-Kila! Tu-Kila-Kila!
+If the great god says the Taboo holds good, we will not hurt or offend
+the strangers. But if the great god says the Taboo is broken, and we are
+all without sin--then, Korong! Korong! we will kill them! We will eat
+them!"
+
+As the two parties thus stood glaring at one another, across that narrow
+imaginary wall, another cry went up to heaven at the distant sound of a
+peculiar tom-tom. "Tu-Kila-Kila comes!" they shouted. "Our great god
+approaches! Women, begone! Men, hide your eyes! Fly, fly from the
+brightness of his face, which is as the sun in glory! Tu-Kila-Kila comes!
+Fly far, all profane ones!"
+
+And in a moment the women had disappeared into space, and the men lay
+flat on the moist ground with low groans of surprise, and hid their faces
+in their hands in abject terror.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+AS BETWEEN GODS.
+
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila came up in his grandest panoply. The great umbrella, with
+the hanging cords, rose high over his head; the King of Fire and the King
+of Water, in their robes of state, marched slowly by his side; a whole
+group of slaves and temple attendants, clapping hands in unison, followed
+obedient at his sacred heels. But as soon as he reached the open space in
+front of the huts and began to speak, Felix could easily see, in spite of
+his own agitation and the excitement of the moment, that the implacable
+god himself was profoundly frightened. Last night's storm had, indeed,
+been terrible; but Tu-Kila-Kila mentally coupled it with Felix's attitude
+toward himself at their last interview, and really believed in his own
+heart he had met, after all, with a stronger god, more powerful than
+himself, who could make the clouds burst forth in fire and the earth
+tremble. The savage swaggered a good deal, to be sure, as is often the
+fashion with savages when frightened; but Felix could see between the
+lines, that he swaggered only on the familiar principle of whistling to
+keep your courage up, and that in his heart of hearts he was most
+unspeakably terrified.
+
+"You did not do well, O King of the Rain, last night," he said, after an
+interchange of civilities, as becomes great gods. "You have put out even
+the sacred flame on the holy hearth of the King of Fire. You have a bad
+heart. Why do you use us so?"
+
+"Why do you let your people offer human sacrifices?" Felix answered,
+boldly, taking advantage of his position. "They are hateful in our sight,
+these cannibal ways. While we remain on the island, no human life shall
+be unjustly taken. Do you understand me?"
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila drew back, and gazed around him suspiciously. In all his
+experience no one had ever dared to address him like that. Assuredly, the
+stranger from the sun must be a very great god--how great, he hardly
+dared to himself to realize. He shrugged his shoulders. "When we mighty
+deities of the first order speak together, face to face," he said, with
+an uneasy air, "it is not well that the mere common herd of men should
+overhear our profound deliberations. Let us go inside your hut. Let us
+confer in private."
+
+They entered the hut alone, Muriel still clinging to Felix's arm, in
+speechless terror. Then Felix at once began to explain the situation. As
+he spoke, a baleful light gleamed in Tu-Kila-Kila's eye. The great god
+removed his mulberry-paper mask. He was evidently delighted at the turn
+things had taken. If only he dared--but there; he dared not. "Fire and
+Water would never allow it," he murmured softly to himself. "They know
+the taboos as well as I do." It was clear to Felix that the savage would
+gladly have sacrificed him if he dared, and that he made no bones about
+letting him know it; but the custom of the islanders bound him as tightly
+as it bound themselves, and he was afraid to transgress it.
+
+"Now listen," Felix said, at last, after a long palaver, looking in the
+savage's face with a resolute air: "Tu-Kila-Kila, we are not afraid of
+you. We are not afraid of all your people. I went out alone just now to
+rescue that child, and, as you see, I succeeded in rescuing it. Your
+people have wounded me--look at the blood on my arms and chest--but I
+don't mind for wounds. I mean you to do as I say, and to make your people
+do so, too. Understand, the nation to which I belong is very powerful.
+You have heard of the sailing gods who go over the sea in canoes of fire,
+as swift as the wind, and whose weapons are hollow tubes, that belch
+forth great bolts of lightning and thunder? Very well, I am one of them.
+If ever you harm a hair of our heads, those sailing gods will before long
+send one of their mighty fire-canoes, and bring to bear upon your island
+their thunder and lightning, and destroy your huts, and punish you for
+the wrong you have ventured to do us. So now you know. Remember that you
+act exactly as I tell you."
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila was evidently overawed by the white man's resolute voice and
+manner. He had heard before of the sailing gods (as the Polynesians of
+the old school still call the Europeans); and though but one or two stray
+individuals among them had ever reached his remote island (mostly as
+castaways), he was quite well enough acquainted with their might and
+power to be deeply impressed by Felix's exhortation. So he tried to
+temporize. "Very well," he made answer, with his jauntiest air, assuming
+a tone of friendly good-fellowship toward his brother-god. "I will bear
+it in mind. I will try to humor you. While your time lasts, no man shall
+hurt you. But if I promise you that, you must do a good turn for me
+instead. You must come out before the people and give me a new fire from
+the sun, that you carry in a shining box about with you. The King of Fire
+has allowed his sacred flame to go out in deference to your flood; for
+last night, you know, you came down heavily. Never in my life have I
+known you come down heavier. The King of Fire acknowledges himself
+beaten. So give us light now before the people, that they may know we are
+gods, and may fear to disobey us."
+
+"Only on one condition," Felix answered, sternly; for he felt he had
+Tu-Kila-Kila more or less in his power now, and that he could drive a
+bargain with him. Why, he wasn't sure; but he saw Tu-Kila-Kila attached a
+profound importance to having the sacred fire relighted, as he thought,
+direct from heaven.
+
+"What condition is that?" Tu-Kila-Kila asked, glancing about him
+suspiciously.
+
+"Why, that you give up in future human sacrifices."
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila gave a start. Then he reflected for a moment. Evidently, the
+condition seemed to him a very hard one. "Do you want all the victims for
+yourself and her, then?" he asked, with a casual nod aside toward Muriel.
+
+Felix drew back, with horror depicted on every line of his face. "Heaven
+forbid!" he answered, fervently. "We want no bloodshed, no human victims.
+We ask you to give up these horrid practices, because they shock and
+revolt us. If you would have your fire lighted, you must promise us to
+put down cannibalism altogether henceforth in your island."
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila hesitated. After all, it was only for a very short time that
+these strangers could thus beard him. Their day would come soon. They
+were but Korongs. Meanwhile, it was best, no doubt, to effect a
+compromise. "Agreed," he answered, slowly. "I will put down human
+sacrifices--so long as you live among us. And I will tell the people your
+taboo is not broken. All shall be done as you will in this matter. Now,
+come out before the crowd and light the fire from Heaven."
+
+"Remember," Felix repeated, "if you break your word, my people will come
+down upon you, sooner or later, in their mighty fire-canoes, and will
+take vengeance for your crime, and destroy you utterly."
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila smiled a cunning smile. "I know all that," he answered. "I
+am a god myself, not a fool, don't you see? You are a very great god,
+too; but I am the greater. No more of words between us two. It is as
+between gods. The fire! the fire!"
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila replaced his mask. They proceeded from the hut to the open
+space within the taboo-line. The people still lay all flat on their
+faces. "Fire and Water," Tu-Kila-Kila said, in a commanding tone, "come
+forward and screen me!"
+
+The King of Fire and the King of Water unrolled a large square of native
+cloth, which they held up as a screen on two poles in front of their
+superior deity. Tu-Kila-Kila sat down on the ground, hugging his knees,
+in the common squatting savage fashion, behind the veil thus readily
+formed for him. "Taboo is removed," he said, in loud, clear tones. "My
+people may rise. The light will not burn them. They may look toward the
+place where Tu-Kila-Kila's face is hidden from them."
+
+The people all rose with one accord, and gazed straight before them.
+
+"The King of Fire will bring dry sticks," Tu-Kila-Kila said, in his
+accustomed regal manner.
+
+The King of Fire, sticking one pole of the screen into the ground
+securely, brought forward a bundle of sun-dried sticks and leaves from a
+basket beside him.
+
+"The King of the Rain, who has put out all our hearths with his flood
+last night, will relight them again with new fire, fresh flame from the
+sun, rays of our disk, divine, mystic, wonderful," Tu-Kila-Kila
+proclaimed, in his droning monotone.
+
+Felix advanced as he spoke to the pile, and struck a match before the
+eyes of all the islanders. As they saw it light, and then set fire to the
+wood, a loud cry went up once more, "Tu-Kila-Kila is great! His words are
+true! He has brought fire from the sun! His ways are wonderful!"
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila, from his point of vantage behind the curtain, strove to
+improve the occasion with a theological lesson. "That is the way we have
+learned from our divine ancestors," he said, slowly; "the rule of the
+gods in our island of Boupari. Each god, as he grows old, reincarnates
+himself visibly. Before he can grow feeble and die he immolates himself
+willingly on his own altar; and a younger and a stronger than he receives
+his spirit. Thus the gods are always young and always with you. Behold
+myself, Tu-Kila-Kila! Am I not from old times? Am I not very ancient?
+Have I not passed through many bodies? Do I not spring ever fresh from my
+own ashes? Do I not eat perpetually the flesh of new victims? Even so
+with fire. The flames of our island were becoming impure. The King of
+Fire saw his cinders flickering. So I gave my word. The King of the Rain
+descended in floods upon them. He put them all out. And now he rekindles
+them. They burn up brighter and fresher than ever. They burn to cook my
+meat, the limbs of my victims. Take heed that you do the King of the Rain
+no harm as long as he remains within his sacred circle. He is a very
+great god. He is fierce; he is cruel. His taboo is not broken. Beware!
+Beware! Disobey at your peril. I, Tu-Kila-Kila, have spoken."
+
+As he spoke, it seemed to Felix that these strange mystic words about
+each god springing fresh from his own ashes must contain the solution of
+that dread problem they were trying in vain to read. That, perhaps, was
+the secret of Korong. If only they could ever manage to understand it!
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila beat his tom-tom twice. In a second all the people fell flat
+on their faces again. Tu-Kila-Kila rose; the kings of Fire and Water held
+the umbrella over him. The attendants on either side clapped hands in
+time to the sacred tom-tom. With proud, slow tread, the god retraced his
+steps to his own palace-temple; and Muriel and Felix were left alone at
+last in their dusty enclosure.
+
+"Tu-Kila-Kila hates me," Felix said, later in the day, to his attentive
+Shadow.
+
+"Of course," the young man answered, with a tone of natural assent. "To
+be sure he hates you. How could he do otherwise? You are Korong. You may
+any day be his enemy."
+
+"But he's afraid of me, too," Felix went on. "He would have liked to let
+the people tear me in pieces. Yet he dared not risk it. He seems to dread
+offending me."
+
+"Of course," the Shadow replied, as readily as before. "He is very much
+afraid of you. You are Korong. You may any day supplant him. He would
+like to get rid of you, if he could see his way. But till your time comes
+he dare not touch you."
+
+"When will my time come?" Felix asked, with that dim apprehension of some
+horrible end coming over him yet again in all its vague weirdness.
+
+The Shadow shook his head. "That," he answered, "it is not lawful for me
+so much as to mention. I tell you too far. You will know soon enough.
+Wait, and be patient."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+"MR. THURSTAN, I PRESUME."
+
+
+Naturally enough, it was some time before Felix and Muriel could recover
+from the shock of their deadly peril. Yet, strange to say, the natives at
+the end of three days seemed positively to have forgotten all about it.
+Their loves and their hates were as shortlived as children's. As soon as
+the period of seclusion was over, their attentions to the two strangers
+redoubled in intensity. They were evidently most anxious, after this
+brief disagreement, to reassure the new gods, who came from the sun, of
+their gratitude and devotion. The men who had wounded Felix, in
+particular, now came daily in the morning with exceptional gifts of fish,
+fruit, and flowers; they would bring a crab from the sea, or a joint of
+turtle-meat. "Forgive us, O king," they cried, prostrating themselves
+humbly. "We did not mean to hurt you; we thought your time had really
+come. You are a Korong. We would not offend you. Do not refuse us your
+showers because of our sin. We are very penitent. We will do what you ask
+of us. Your look is poison. See, here is wood; here are leaves and fire;
+we are but your meat; choose and cook which you will of us!"
+
+It was useless Felix's trying to explain to them that he wanted no
+victims, and no propitiation. The more he protested, the more they
+brought gifts. "He is a very great god," they exclaimed. "He wants
+nothing from us. What can we give him that will be an acceptable gift?
+Shall we offer him ourselves, our wives, our children?"
+
+As for the women, when they saw how thoroughly frightened of them Muriel
+now was, they couldn't find means to express their regret and devotion.
+Mothers brought their little children, whom she had patted on the head,
+and offered them, just outside the line, as presents for her acceptance.
+They explained to her Shadow that they never meant to hurt her, and that,
+if only she would venture without the line, as of old, all should be
+well, and they would love and adore her. Mali translated to her mistress
+these speeches and prayers. "Them say, 'You come back, Queenie,'" she
+explained in her broken Queensland English. "'Boupari women love you very
+much. Boupari women glad you come. You kind; you beautiful! All Boupari
+men and women very much pleased with you and the gentleman, because you
+give back him cocoanut and fruit that you pick in the storm, and because
+you bring down fresh fire from heaven.'"
+
+Gradually, after several days, Felix's confidence was so far restored
+that he ventured to stroll beyond the line again; and he found himself,
+indeed, most popular among the people. In various ways he picked up
+gradually the idea that the islanders generally disliked Tu-Kila-Kila,
+and liked himself; and that they somehow regarded him as Tu-Kila-Kila's
+natural enemy. What it could all mean he did not yet understand, though
+some inklings of an explanation occasionally occurred to him. Oh, how he
+longed now for the Month of Birds to end, in order that he might pay his
+long-deferred visit to the mysterious Frenchman, from whose voice his
+Shadow had fled on that fateful evening with such sudden precipitancy.
+The Frenchman, he judged, must have been long on the island, and could
+probably give him some satisfactory solution of this abstruse problem.
+
+So he was glad, indeed, when one evening, some weeks later, his Shadow,
+observing the sky narrowly, remarked to him in a low voice, "New moon
+to-morrow! The Month of Birds will then be up. In the morning you can go
+and see your brother god at the Abode of Birds without breaking taboo.
+The Month of Turtles begins at sunrise. My family god is a turtle, so I
+know the day for it."
+
+So great was Felix's impatience to settle this question, that almost
+before the sun was up next day he had set forth from his hut, accompanied
+as usual by his faithful Shadow. Their way lay past Tu-Kila-Kila's
+temple. As they went by the entrance with the bamboo posts, Felix
+happened to glance aside through the gate to the sacred enclosure. Early
+as it was, Tu-Kila-Kila was afoot already; and, to Felix's great
+surprise, was pacing up and down, with that stealthy, wary look upon his
+cunning face that Muriel had so particularly noted on the day of their
+first arrival. His spear stood in his hand, and his tomahawk hung by his
+left side; he peered about him suspiciously, with a cautious glance, as
+he walked round and round the sacred tree he guarded so continually.
+There was something weird and awful in the sight of that savage god, thus
+condemned by his own superstition and the custom of his people to tramp
+ceaselessly up and down before the sacred banyan.
+
+At sight of Felix, however, a sudden burst of frenzy seemed to possess at
+once all Tu-Kila-Kila's limbs. He brandished his spear violently, and set
+himself spasmodically in a posture of defence. His brow grew black, and
+his eyes darted out eternal hate and suspicion. It was evident he
+expected an instant attack, and was prepared with all his might and main
+to resist aggression. Yet he never offered to desert his post by the tree
+or to assume the offensive. Clearly, he was guarding the sacred grove
+itself with jealous care, and was as eager for its safety as for his own
+life and honor.
+
+Felix passed on, wondering what it all could mean, and turned with an
+inquiring glance to his trembling Shadow. As for Toko, he had held his
+face averted meanwhile, lest he should behold the great god, and be
+scorched to a cinder; but in answer to Felix's mute inquiry he murmured
+low: "Was Tu-Kila-Kila there? Were all things right? Was he on guard at
+his post by the tree already?"
+
+"Yes," Felix replied, with that weird sense of mystery creeping over him
+now more profoundly than ever. "He was on guard by the tree and he looked
+at me angrily."
+
+"Ah," the Shadow remarked, with a sigh of regret, "he keeps watch well.
+It will be hard work to assail him. No god in Boupari ever held his place
+so tight. Who wishes to take Tu-Kila-Kila's divinity must get up early."
+
+They went on in silence to the little volcanic knoll near the centre of
+the island. There, in the neat garden plot they had observed before, a
+man, in the last relics of a very tattered European costume, much covered
+with a short cape of native cloth, was tending his flowers and singing to
+himself merrily. His back was turned to them as they came up. Felix
+paused a moment, unseen, and caught the words the stranger was singing:
+
+"Tres jolie,
+ Peu polie,
+ Possedant un gros magot;
+ Fort en gueule,
+ Pas begueule;
+ Telle etait--"
+
+The stranger looked up, and paused in the midst of his lines,
+open-mouthed. For a moment he stood and stared astonished. Then, raising
+his native cap with a graceful air, and bowing low, as he would have
+bowed to a lady on the Boulevard, he advanced to greet a brother European
+with the familiar words, in good educated French, "Monsieur, I salute
+you!"
+
+To Felix, the sound of a civilized voice in the midst of so much strange
+and primitive barbarism, was like a sudden return to some forgotten
+world, so deeply and profoundly did it move and impress him. He grasped
+the sunburnt Frenchman's rugged hand in his. "Who are you?" he cried, in
+the very best Parisian he could muster up on the spur of the moment. "And
+how did you come here?"
+
+"Monsieur," the Frenchman answered, no less profoundly moved than
+himself, "this is, indeed, wonderful! Do I hear once more that beautiful
+language spoken? Do I find myself once more in the presence of a
+civilized person? What fortune! What happiness! Ah, it is glorious,
+glorious."
+
+For some seconds they stood and looked at one another in silence,
+grasping their hands hard again and again with intense emotion; then
+Felix repeated his question a second time: "Who are you, monsieur? and
+where do you come from?"
+
+"Your name, surname, age, occupation?" the Frenchman repeated, bursting
+forth at last into national levity. "Ah, monsieur, what a joy to hear
+those well-known inquiries in my ear once more. I hasten to gratify
+your legitimate curiosity. Name: Peyron; Christian name: Jules; age:
+forty-one; occupation: convict, escaped from New Caledonia."
+
+Under any other circumstances that last qualification might possibly have
+been held an undesirable one in a new acquaintance. But on the island of
+Boupari, among so many heathen cannibals, prejudices pale before
+community of blood; even a New Caledonian convict is at least a Christian
+European. Felix received the strange announcement without the faintest
+shock of surprise or disgust. He would gladly have shaken hands then and
+there with M. Jules Peyron, indeed, had he introduced himself in even
+less equivocal language as a forger, a pickpocket, or an escaped
+house-breaker.
+
+"And you, monsieur?" the ex-convict inquired, politely.
+
+Felix told him in a few words the history of their accident and their
+arrival on the island.
+
+"_Comment_?" the Frenchman exclaimed, with surprise and delight. "A lady
+as well; a charming English lady! What an acquisition to the society of
+Boupari! _Quelle chance! Quel bonheur!_ Monsieur, you are welcome, and
+mademoiselle too! And in what quality do you live here? You are a god, I
+see; otherwise you would not have dared to transgress my taboo, nor would
+this young man--your Shadow, I suppose--have permitted you to do so. But
+which sort of god, pray? Korong--or Tula?"
+
+"They call me Korong," Felix answered, all tremulous, feeling himself now
+on the very verge of solving this profound mystery.
+
+"And mademoiselle as well?" the Frenchman exclaimed, in a tone of dismay.
+
+"And mademoiselle as well," Felix replied. "At least, so I make out. We
+are both Korong. I have many times heard the natives call us so."
+
+His new acquaintance seized his hand with every appearance of genuine
+alarm and regret. "My poor friend," he exclaimed, with a horrified face,
+"this is terrible, terrible! Tu-Kila-Kila is a very hard man. What can
+we do to save your life and mademoiselle's! We are powerless! Powerless!
+I have only that much to say. I condole with you! I commiserate you!"
+
+"Why, what does Korong mean?" Felix asked, with blanched lips. "Is it
+then something so very terrible?"
+
+"Terrible! Ah, terrible!" the Frenchman answered, holding up his hands in
+horror and alarm. "I hardly know how we can avert your fate. Step within
+my poor hut, or under the shade of my Tree of Liberty here, and I will
+tell you all the little I know about it."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+THE SECRET OF KORONG.
+
+
+"You have lived here long?" Felix asked, with tremulous interest, as he
+took a seat on the bench under the big tree, toward which his new host
+politely motioned him. "You know the people well, and all their
+superstitions?"
+
+"_Helas_, yes, monsieur," the Frenchman answered, with a sigh of regret.
+"Eighteen years have I spent altogether in this beast of a Pacific; nine
+as a convict in New Caledonia, and nine more as a god here; and, believe
+me, I hardly know which is the harder post. Yours is the first White face
+I have ever seen since my arrival in this cursed island."
+
+"And how did you come here?" Felix asked, half breathless, for the very
+magnitude of the stake at issue--no less a stake than Muriel's life--made
+him hesitate to put point-blank the question he had most at heart for the
+moment.
+
+"Monsieur," the Frenchman answered, trying to cover his rags with
+his native cape, "that explains itself easily. I was a medical student
+in Paris in the days of the Commune. Ah! that beloved Paris--how far
+away it seems now from Boupari! Like all other students I was
+advanced--Republican, Socialist--what you will--a political enthusiast.
+When the events took place--the events of '70--I espoused with
+all my heart the cause of the people. You know the rest. The
+bourgeoisie conquered. I was taken red-handed, as the Versaillais
+said--my pistol in my grasp--an open revolutionist. They tried me by
+court-martial--br'r'r--no delay--guilty, M. le President--hard labor to
+perpetuity. They sent me with that brave Louise Michel and so many other
+good comrades of the cause to New Caledonia. There, nine years of convict
+life was more than enough for me. One day I found a canoe on the shore--a
+little Kanaka canoe--you know the type--a mere shapeless dug-out. Hastily
+I loaded it with food--yam, taro, bread-fruit--I pushed it off into the
+sea--I embarked alone--I intrusted myself and all my fortunes to the Bon
+Dieu and the wide Pacific. The Bon Dieu did not wholly justify my
+confidence. It is a way he has--that inscrutable one. Six weeks I floated
+hither and thither before varying winds. At last one evening I reached
+this island. I floated ashore. And, _enfin, me voila_!"
+
+"Then you were a political prisoner only?" Felix said, politely.
+
+M. Jules Peyron drew himself up with much dignity in his tattered
+costume. "Do I look like a card-sharper, monsieur?" he asked simply, with
+offended honor.
+
+Felix hastened to reassure him of his perfect confidence. "On the
+contrary, monsieur," he said, "the moment I heard you were a convict from
+New Caledonia, I felt certain in my heart you could be nothing less than
+one of those unfortunate and ill-treated Communards."
+
+"Monsieur," the Frenchman said, seizing his hand a second time, "I
+perceive that I have to do with a man of honor and a man of feeling.
+Well, I landed on this island, and they made me a god. From that day to
+this I have been anxious only to shuffle off my unwelcome divinity, and
+return as a mere man to the shores of Europe. Better be a valet in Paris,
+say I, than a deity of the best in Polynesia. It is a monotonous
+existence here--no society, no life--and the _cuisine_--bah, execrable!
+But till the other day, when your steamer passed, I have scarcely even
+sighted a European ship. A boat came here once, worse luck, to put off
+two girls (who didn't belong to Boupari), returned indentured laborers
+from Queensland; but, unhappily, it was during my taboo--the Month of
+Birds, as my jailers call it--and though I tried to go down to it or to
+make signals of distress, the natives stood round my hut with their
+spears in line, and prevented me by main force from signalling to them or
+communicating with them. Even the other day, I never heard of your
+arrival till a fortnight had elapsed, for I had been sick with fever, the
+fever of the country, and as soon as my Shadow told me of your advent it
+was my taboo again, and I was obliged to defer for myself the honor of
+calling upon my new acquaintances. I am a god, of course, and can do
+what I like; but while my taboo is on, _ma foi_, monsieur, I can hardly
+call my life my own, I assure you."
+
+"But your taboo is up to-day," Felix said, "so my Shadow tells me."
+
+"Your Shadow is a well-informed young man," M. Peyron answered, with easy
+French sprightliness. "As for my donkey of a valet, he never by any
+chance knows or tells me anything. I had just sent him out--the pig--to
+learn, if possible, your nationality and name, and what hours you
+preferred, as I proposed later in the day to pay my respects to
+mademoiselle, your friend, if she would deign to receive me."
+
+"Miss Ellis would be charmed, I'm sure," Felix replied, smiling in spite
+of himself at so much Parisian courtliness under so ragged an exterior.
+"It is a great pleasure to us to find we are not really alone on this
+barbarous island. But you were going to explain to me, I believe, the
+exact nature of this peril in which we both stand--the precise
+distinction between Korong and Tula?"
+
+"Alas, monsieur," the Frenchman replied, drawing circles in the dust with
+his stick with much discomposure, "I can only tell you I have been trying
+to make out the secret of this distinction myself ever since the first
+day I came to the island; but so reticent are all the natives about it,
+and so deep is the taboo by which the mystery is guarded, that even now
+I, who am myself Tula, can tell you but very little with certainty on the
+subject. All I can say for sure is this--that gods called Tula retain
+their godship in permanency for a very long time, although at the end
+some violent fate, which I do not clearly understand, is destined to
+befall them. That is my condition as King of the Birds--for no doubt
+they have told you that I, Jules Peyron--Republican, Socialist,
+Communist--have been elevated against my will to the honors of royalty.
+That is my condition, and it matters but little to me, for I know not
+when the end may come; and we can but die once; how or where, what
+matters? Meanwhile, I have my distractions, my little _agrements_--my
+gardens, my music, my birds, my native friends, my coquetries, my aviary.
+As King of the Birds, I keep a small collection of my subjects in the
+living form, not unworthy of a scientific eye. Monsieur is no
+ornithologist? Ah, no, I thought not. Well, for me, it matters little; my
+time is long. But for you and Mademoiselle, who are both Korong--" He
+paused significantly.
+
+"What happens, then, to those who are Korong?" Felix asked, with a lump
+in his throat--not for himself, but for Muriel.
+
+The Frenchman looked at him with a doubtful look. "Monsieur," he said,
+after a pause, "I hardly know how to break the truth to you properly. You
+are new to the island, and do not yet understand these savages. It is so
+terrible a fate. So deadly. So certain. Compose your mind to hear the
+worst. And remember that the worst is very terrible."
+
+Felix's blood froze within him; but he answered bravely all the same, "I
+think I have guessed it myself already. The Korong are offered as human
+sacrifices to Tu-Kila-Kila."
+
+"That is nearly so," his new friend replied, with a solemn nod of his
+head. "Every Korong is bound to die when his time comes. Your time will
+depend on the particular date when you were admitted to Heaven."
+
+Felix reflected a moment. "It was on the 26th of last month," he
+answered, shortly.
+
+"Very well," M. Peyron replied, after a brief calculation. "You have
+just six months in all to live from that date. They will offer you up by
+Tu-Kila-Kila's hut the day the sun reaches the summer solstice."
+
+"But why did they make us gods then?" Felix interposed, with tremulous
+lips. "Why treat us with such honors meanwhile, if they mean in the end
+to kill us?"
+
+He received his sentence of death with greater calmness than the
+Frenchman had expected. "Monsieur," the older arrival answered, with a
+reflective air, "there comes in the mystery. If we could solve that, we
+could find out also the way of escape for you. For there _is_ a way of
+escape for every Korong: I know it well; I gather it from all the natives
+say; it is a part of their mysteries; but what it may be, I have
+hitherto, in spite of all my efforts, failed to discover. All I _do_ know
+is this: Tu-Kila-Kila hates and dreads in his heart every Korong that is
+elevated to Heaven, and would do anything, if he dared, to get rid of him
+quietly. But he doesn't dare, because he is bound hand and foot himself,
+too, by taboos innumerable. Taboo is the real god and king of Boupari.
+All the island alike bows down to it and worships it."
+
+"Have you ever known Korongs killed?" Felix asked once more, trembling.
+
+"Yes, monsieur. Many of them, alas! And this is what happens. When the
+Korong's time is come, as these creatures say, either on the summer or
+winter solstice, he is bound with native ropes, and carried up so
+pinioned to Tu-Kila-Kila's temple. In the time before this man was
+Tu-Kila-Kila, I remember--"
+
+"Stop," Felix cried. "I don't understand. Has there then been more than
+one Tu-Kila-Kila?"
+
+"Why, yes," the Frenchman answered. "Certainly, many. And there the
+mystery comes in again. We have always among us one Tu-Kila-Kila or
+another. He is a sort of pope, or grand lama, _voyez-vous?_ No sooner is
+the last god dead than another god succeeds him and takes his name, or
+rather his title. This young man who now holds the place was known
+originally as Lavita, the son of Sami. But what is more curious still,
+the islanders always treat the new god as if he were precisely the
+self-same person as the old one. So far as I have been able to understand
+their theology, they believe in a sort of transmigration of souls. The
+soul of the Tu-Kila-Kila who is just dead passes into and animates the
+body of the Tu-Kila-Kila who succeeds to the office. Thus they speak as
+though Tu-Kila-Kila were a continuous existence; and the god of the
+moment, himself, will even often refer to events which occurred to him,
+as he says, a hundred years ago or more, but which he really knows, of
+course, only by the persistent tradition of the islanders. They are a
+very curious people, these Bouparese. But what would you have? Among
+savages, one expects things to be as among savages."
+
+Felix drew a quiet sigh. It was certain that on the island of Boupari
+that expectation, at least, was never doomed to disappointment. "And when
+a Korong is taken to Tu-Kila-Kila's temple," he asked, continuing the
+subject of most immediate interest, "what happens next to him?"
+
+"Monsieur," the Frenchman answered, "I hardly know whether I do right or
+not to say the truth to you. Each Korong is a god for one season only;
+when the year renews itself, as the savages believe, by a change of
+season, then a new Korong must be chosen by Heaven to fill the place of
+the old ones who are to be sacrificed. This they do in order that the
+seasons may be ever fresh and vigorous. Especially is that the case with
+the two meteorological gods, so to speak, the King of the Rain and the
+Queen of the Clouds. Those, I understand, are the posts in their pantheon
+which you and the lady who accompanies you occupy."
+
+"You are right," Felix answered, with profoundly painful interest. "And
+what, then, becomes of the king and queen who are sacrificed?"
+
+"I will tell you," M. Peyron answered, dropping his voice still lower
+into a sympathetic key. "But steel your mind for the worst beforehand. It
+is sufficiently terrible. On the day of your arrival, this, I learn from
+my Shadow, is just what happened. That night, Tu-Kila-Kila made his great
+feast, and offered up the two chief human sacrifices of the year, the
+free-will offering and the scapegoat of trespass. They keep then a
+festival, which answers to our own New-Year's day in Europe. Next
+morning, in accordance with custom, the King of the Rain and the Queen of
+the Clouds were to be publicly slain, in order that a new and more
+vigorous king and queen should be chosen in their place, who might make
+the crops grow better and the sky more clement. In the midst of this
+horrid ceremony, you and mademoiselle, by pure chance, arrived. You were
+immediately selected by Tu-Kila-Kila, for some reason of his own, which I
+do not sufficiently understand, but which is, nevertheless, obvious to
+all the initiated, as the next representatives of the rain-giving gods.
+You were presented to Heaven on their little platform raised about the
+ground, and Heaven accepted you. Then you were envisaged with the
+attributes of divinity; the care of the rain and the clouds was made over
+to you; and immediately after, as soon as you were gone, the old king and
+queen were laid on an altar near Tu-Kila-Kila's home, and slain with
+tomahawks. Their flesh was next hacked from their bodies with knives,
+cooked, and eaten; their bones were thrown into the sea, the mother of
+all waters, as the natives call it. And that is the fate, I fear the
+inevitable fate, that will befall you and mademoiselle at these wretches'
+hands about the commencement of a fresh season."
+
+Felix knew the worst now, and bent his head in silence. His worst fears
+were confirmed; but, after all, even this knowledge was better than so
+much uncertainty.
+
+And now that he knew when "his time was up," as the natives phrased it,
+he would know when to redeem his promise to Muriel.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+A VERY FAINT CLUE.
+
+
+"But you hinted at some hope, some chance of escape," Felix cried at
+last, looking up from the ground and mastering his emotion. "What now is
+that hope? Conceal nothing from me."
+
+"Monsieur," the Frenchman answered, shrugging his shoulders with an
+expression of utter impotence, "I have as good reasons for wishing to
+find out all that as even you can have. _Your_ secret is _my_ secret;
+but with all my pains and astuteness I have been unable to discover
+it. The natives are reticent, very reticent indeed, about all these
+matters. They fear taboo; and they fear Tu-Kila-Kila. The women, to
+be sure, in a moment of expansion, might possibly tell one; but, then,
+the women, unfortunately, are not admitted to the mysteries. They know
+no more of all these things than we do. The most I have been able to
+gather for certain is this--that on the discovery of the secret depend
+Tu-Kila-Kila's life and power. Every Boupari man knows this Great Taboo;
+it is communicated to him in the assembly of adults when he gets tattooed
+and reaches manhood. But no Boupari man ever communicates it to
+strangers; and for that reason, perhaps, as I believe, Tu-Kila-Kila often
+chooses for Korong, as far as possible, those persons who are cast by
+chance upon the island. It has always been the custom, so far as I can
+make out, to treat castaways or prisoners taken in war as gods, and then
+at the end of their term to kill them ruthlessly. This plan is popular
+with the people at large, because it saves themselves from the dangerous
+honors of deification; but it also serves Tu-Kila-Kila's purpose, because
+it usually elevates to Heaven those innocent persons who are unacquainted
+with that fatal secret which is, as the natives say, Tu-Kila-Kila's
+death--his word of dismissal."
+
+"Then if only we could find out this secret--" Felix cried.
+
+His new friend interrupted him. "What hope is there of your finding
+it out, monsieur," he exclaimed, "you, who have only a few months to
+live--when I, who have spent nine long years of exile on the island, and
+seen two Tu-Kila-Kilas rise and fall, have been unable, with my utmost
+pains, to discover it? _Tenez_; you have no idea yet of the superstitions
+of these people, or the difficulties that lie in the way of fathoming
+them. Come this way to my aviary; I will show you something that will
+help you to realize the complexities of the situation."
+
+He rose and led the way to another cleared space at the back of the hut,
+where several birds of gaudy plumage were fastened to perches on sticks
+by leathery lashes of dried shark's skin, tied just above their talons.
+"I am the King of the Birds, monsieur, you must remember," the Frenchman
+said, fondling one of his screaming _proteges_. "These are a few of my
+subjects. But I do not keep them for mere curiosity. Each of them is the
+Soul of the tribe to which it belongs. This, for example--my Cluseret--is
+the Soul of all the gray parrots; that that you see yonder--Badinguet,
+I call him--is the Soul of the hawks; this, my Mimi, is the Soul of the
+little yellow-crested kingfisher. My task as King of the Birds is to keep
+a representative of each of these always on hand; in which endeavor I
+am faithfully aided by the whole population of the island, who bring me
+eggs and nests and young birds in abundance. If the Soul of the little
+yellow kingfisher now were to die, without a successor being found ready
+at once to receive and embody it, then the whole race of little yellow
+kingfishers would vanish altogether; and if I myself, the King of the
+Birds, who am, as it were, the Soul and life of all of them, were to die
+without a successor being at hand to receive my spirit, then all the race
+of birds, with one accord, would become extinct forthwith and forever."
+
+He moved among his pets easily, like a king among his subjects. Most of
+them seemed to know him and love his presence. Presently, he came to one
+very old parrot, quite different from any Felix had ever seen on any
+trees in the island; it was a parrot with a black crest and a red mark on
+its throat, half blind with age, and tottering on its pedestal. This
+solemn old bird sat apart from all the others, nodding its head
+oracularly in the sunlight, and blinking now and again with its white
+eyelids in a curious senile fashion.
+
+The Frenchman turned to Felix with an air of profound mystery. "This
+bird," he said, solemnly stroking its head with his hand, while the
+parrot turned round to him and bit at his finger with half-doddering
+affection--"this bird is the oldest of all my birds---is it not so,
+Methuselah?--and illustrates well in one of its aspects the superstition
+of these people. Yes, my friend, you are the last of a kind now otherwise
+extinct, are you not, _mon vieux?_ No, no, there--gently! Once upon a
+time, the natives tell me, dozens of these parrots existed in the island;
+they flocked among the trees, and were held very sacred; but they were
+hard to catch and difficult to keep, and the Kings of the Birds, my
+predecessors, failed to secure an heir and coadjutor to this one. So as
+the Soul of the species, which you see here before you, grew old and
+feeble, the whole of the race to which it belonged grew old and feeble
+with it. One by one they withered away and died, till at last this
+solitary specimen alone remained to vouch for the former existence of the
+race in the island. Now, the islanders say, nothing but the Soul itself
+is left; and when the Soul dies, the red-throated parrots will be gone
+forever. One of my predecessors paid with his life in awful tortures for
+his remissness in not providing for the succession to the soulship. I
+tell you these things in order that you may see whether they cast any
+light for you upon your own position; and also because the oldest and
+wisest natives say that this parrot alone, among beasts or birds or
+uninitiated things, knows the secret on which depends the life of the
+Tu-Kila-Kila for the time being."
+
+"Can the parrot speak?" Felix asked, with profound emotion.
+
+"Monsieur, he can speak, and he speaks frequently. But not one word of
+all he says is comprehensible either to me or to any other living being.
+His tongue is that of a forgotten nation. The islanders understand him no
+more than I do. He has a very long sermon or poem, which he knows by
+heart, in some unknown language, and he repeats it often at full length
+from time to time, especially when he has eaten well and feels full and
+happy. The oldest natives tell a romantic legend about this strange
+recitation of the good Methuselah--I call him Methuselah because of his
+great age--but I do not really know whether their tale is true or purely
+fanciful. You never can trust these Polynesian traditions."
+
+"What is the legend?" Felix asked, with intense interest. "In an island
+where we find ourselves so girt round by mystery within mystery, and
+taboo within taboo, as this, every key is worth trying. It is well for us
+at least to learn everything we can about the ideas of the natives. Who
+knows what clue may supply us at last with the missing link, which will
+enable us to break through this intolerable servitude?"
+
+"Well, the story they tell us is this," the Frenchman replied,
+"though I have gathered it only a hint at a time, from very old men, who
+declared at the same moment that some religious fear--of which they have
+many--prevented them from telling me any further about it. It seems that
+a long time ago--how many years ago nobody knows, only that it was in the
+time of the thirty-ninth Tu-Kila-Kila, before the reign of Lavita, the
+son of Sami--a strange Korong was cast up upon this island by the waves
+of the sea, much as you and I have been in the present generation. By
+accident, says the story, or else, as others aver, through the
+indiscretion of a native woman who fell in love with him, and who worried
+the taboo out of her husband, the stranger became acquainted with the
+secret of Tu-Kila-Kila. As the natives themselves put it, he learned the
+Death of the High God, and where in the world his Soul was hidden.
+Thereupon, in some mysterious way or other, he became Tu-Kila-Kila
+himself, and ruled as High God for ten years or more here on this island.
+Now, up to that time, the legend goes on, none but the men of the island
+knew the secret; they learned it as soon as they were initiated in the
+great mysteries, which occur before a boy is given a spear and admitted
+to the rank of complete manhood. But sometimes a woman was told the
+secret wrongfully by her husband or her lover; and one such woman,
+apparently, told the strange Korong, and so enabled him to become
+Tu-Kila-Kila."
+
+"But where does the parrot come in?" Felix asked, with still profounder
+excitement than ever. Something within him seemed to tell him
+instinctively he was now within touch of the special key that must sooner
+or later unlock the mystery.
+
+"Well," the Frenchman went on, still stroking the parrot affectionately
+with his hand, and smoothing down the feathers on its ruffled back, "the
+strange Tu-Kila-Kila, who thus ruled in the island, though he learned to
+speak Polynesian well, had a language of his own, a language of the
+birds, which no man on earth could ever talk with him. So, to beguile his
+time and to have someone who could converse with him in his native
+dialect, he taught this parrot to speak his own tongue, and spent most of
+his days in talking with it and fondling it. At last, after he had
+instructed it by slow degrees how to repeat this long sermon or
+poem--which I have often heard it recite in a sing-song voice from
+beginning to end--his time came, as they say, and he had to give way to
+another Tu-Kila-Kila; for the Bouparese have a proverb like our own about
+the king, 'The High God is dead; may the High God live forever!' But
+before he gave up his Soul to his successor, and was eaten or buried,
+whichever is the custom, he handed over his pet to the King of the Birds,
+strictly charging all future bearers of that divine office to care for
+the parrot as they would care for a son or a daughter. And so the natives
+make much of the parrot to the present day, saying he is greater than
+any, save a Korong or a god, for he is the Soul of a dead race, summing
+it up in himself, and he knows the secret of the Death of Tu-Kila-Kila."
+
+"But you can't tell me what language he speaks?" Felix asked with a
+despairing gesture. It was terrible to stand thus within measurable
+distance of the secret which might, perhaps, save Muriel's life, and yet
+be perpetually balked by wheel within wheel of more than Egyptian
+mystery.
+
+"Who can say?" the Frenchman answered, shrugging his shoulders
+helplessly. "It isn't Polynesian; that I know well, for I speak
+Bouparese now like a native of Boupari; and it isn't the only other
+language spoken at the present day in the South Seas--the Melanesian of
+New Caledonia--for that I learned well from the Kanakas while I was
+serving my time as a convict among them. All we can say for certain is
+that it may, perhaps, be some very ancient tongue. For parrots, we know,
+are immensely long-lived. Some of them, it is said, exceed their century.
+Is it not so, eh, my friend Methuselah?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+FACING THE WORST.
+
+
+Muriel, meanwhile, sat alone in her hut, frightened at Felix's unexpected
+disappearance so early in the morning, and anxiously awaiting her lover's
+return, for she made no pretences now to herself that she did not really
+love Felix. Though the two might never return to Europe to be husband and
+wife, she did not doubt that before the eye of Heaven they were already
+betrothed to one another as truly as though they had plighted their troth
+in solemn fashion. Felix had risked his life for her, and had brought all
+this misery upon himself in the attempt to save her. Felix was now all
+the world that was left her. With Felix, she was happy, even on this
+horrible island; without him, she was miserable and terrified, no matter
+what happened.
+
+"Mali," she cried to her faithful attendant, as soon as she found Felix
+was missing from his tent, "what's become of Mr. Thurstan? Where can he
+be gone, I wonder, this morning?"
+
+"You no fear, Missy Queenie," Mali answered, with the childish
+confidence of the native Polynesian. "Mistah Thurstan, him gone to see
+man-a-oui-oui, the King of the Birds. Month of Birds finish last night;
+man-a-oui-oui no taboo any longer. King of the Birds keep very old
+parrot, Boupari folk tell me; and old parrot very wise, know how to make
+Tu-Kila-Kila. Mistah Thurstan, him gone to find man-a-oui-oui. Parrot
+tell him plenty wise thing. Parrot wiser than Boupari people; know very
+good medicine; wise like Queensland lady and gentleman." And Mali set
+herself vigorously to work to wash the wooden platter on which she served
+up her mistress's yam for breakfast.
+
+It was curious to Muriel to see how readily Mali had slipped from
+savagery to civilization in Queensland, and how easily she had slipped
+back again from civilization to savagery in Boupari. In waiting on her
+mistress she was just the ordinary trained native Australian servant; in
+every other respect she was the simple unadulterated heathen Polynesian.
+She recognized in Muriel a white lady of the English sort, and treated
+her within the hut as white ladies were invariably treated in Queensland;
+but she considered that at Boupari one must do as Boupari does, and it
+never for a moment occurred to her simple mind to doubt the omnipotence
+of Tu-Kila-Kila in his island realm any more than she had doubted the
+omnipotence of the white man and his local religion in their proper place
+(as she thought it) in Queensland.
+
+An hour or two passed before Felix returned. At last he arrived, very
+white and pale, and Muriel saw at once by the mere look on his face that
+he had learned some terrible news at the Frenchman's.
+
+"Well, you found him?" she cried, taking his hand in hers, but hardly
+daring to ask the fatal question at once.
+
+And Felix, sitting down, as pale as a ghost, answered faintly, "Yes,
+Muriel, I found him!"
+
+"And he told you everything?"
+
+"Everything he knew, my poor child. Oh, Muriel, Muriel, don't ask me what
+it is. It's too terrible to tell you."
+
+Muriel clasped her white hands together, held bloodless downward, and
+looked at him fixedly. "Mali, you can go," she said. And the Shadow,
+rising up with childish confidence, glided from the hut, and left them,
+for the first time since their arrival on the central island, alone
+together.
+
+Muriel looked at him once more with the same deadly fixed look. "With
+you, Felix," she said, slowly, "I can bear or dare anything. I feel as if
+the bitterness of death were past long ago. I know it must come. I only
+want to be quite sure when.... And besides, you must remember, I have
+your promise."
+
+Felix clasped his own hands despondently in return, and gazed across at
+her from his seat a few feet off in unspeakable misery.
+
+"Muriel," he cried, "I couldn't. I haven't the heart. I daren't."
+
+Muriel rose and laid her hand solemnly on his arm. "You will!" she
+answered, boldly. "You can! You must! I know I can trust your promise for
+that. This moment, if you like. I would not shrink. But you will never
+let me fall alive into the hands of those wretches. Felix, from _your_
+hand I could stand anything. I'm not afraid to die. I love you too
+dearly."
+
+Felix held her white little wrist in his grasp and sobbed like a child.
+Her very bravery and confidence seemed to unman him, utterly.
+
+She looked at him once more. "When?" she asked, quietly, but with lips as
+pale as death.
+
+"In about four months from now," Felix answered, endeavoring to be calm.
+
+"And they will kill us both?"
+
+"Yes, both. I think so."
+
+"Together?"
+
+"Together."
+
+Muriel drew a deep sigh.
+
+"Will you know the day beforehand?" she asked.
+
+"Yes. The Frenchman told me it. He has known others killed in the
+self-same fashion."
+
+"Then, Felix---the night before it comes, you will promise me, will you?"
+
+"Muriel, Muriel, I could never dare to kill you."
+
+She laid her hand soothingly on his. She stroked him gently. "You are
+a man," she said, looking up into his eyes with confidence. "I trust
+you. I believe in you. I know you will never let these savages hurt
+me.... Felix, in spite of everything, I've been happier since we came to
+this island together than ever I have been in my life before. I've had my
+wish. I didn't want to miss in life the one thing that life has best
+worth giving. I haven't missed it now. I know I haven't; for I love you,
+and you love me. After that, I can die, and die gladly. If I die with
+_you_, that's all I ask. These seven or eight terrible weeks have made me
+feel somehow unnaturally calm. When I came here first I lived all the
+time in an agony of terror. I've got over the agony of terror now. I'm
+quite resigned and happy. All I ask is to be saved--by you--from the
+cruel hands of these hateful cannibals."
+
+Felix raised her white hand just once to his lips. It was the first time
+he had ever ventured to kiss her. He kissed it fervently. She let it drop
+as if dead by her side.
+
+"Now tell me all that happened," she said. "I'm strong enough to bear it.
+I feel such a woman now--so wise and calm. These few weeks have made me
+grow from a girl into a woman all at once. There's nothing I daren't
+hear, if you'll tell me it, Felix."
+
+Felix took up her hand again and held it in his, as he narrated the whole
+story of his visit to the Frenchman. When Muriel had heard it, she said
+once more, slowly, "I don't think there's any hope in all these wild
+plans of playing off superstition against superstition. To my mind there
+are only two chances left for us now. One is to concoct with the
+Frenchman some means of getting away by canoe from the island--I'd rather
+trust the sea than the tender mercy of these dreadful people; the other
+is to keep a closer lookout than ever for the merest chance of a passing
+steamer."
+
+Felix drew a deep sigh. "I'm afraid neither's much use," he said. "If we
+tried to get away, dogged as we are, day and night, by our Shadows, the
+natives would follow us with their war-canoes in battle array and hack us
+to pieces; for Peyron says that, regarding us as gods, they think the
+rain would vanish from their island forever if once they allowed us to
+get away alive and carry the luck with us. And as to the steamers, we
+haven't seen a trace of one since we left the Australasian. Probably it
+was only by the purest accident that even she ever came so close in to
+Boupari."
+
+"At any rate," Muriel cried, still clasping his hand tight, and letting
+the tears now trickle slowly down her pale white cheeks, "we can talk it
+all over some day with M. Peyron."
+
+"We can talk it over to-day," Felix answered, "if it comes to that; for
+Peyron means to step round, he says, a little later in the afternoon, to
+pay his respects to the first white lady he has ever seen since he left
+New Caledonia."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+TU-KILA-KILA PLAYS A CARD.
+
+
+Before the Frenchman could carry out his plan, however, he was himself
+the recipient of the high honor of a visit from his superior god and
+chief, Tu-Kila-Kila.
+
+Every day and all day long, save on a few rare occasions when special
+duties absolved him, the custom and religion of the islanders prescribed
+that their supreme incarnate deity should keep watch and ward without
+cessation over the great spreading banyan-tree that overshadowed with
+its dark boughs his temple-palace. High god as he was held to be, and
+all-powerful within the limits of his own strict taboos, Tu-Kila-Kila was
+yet as rigidly bound within those iron laws of custom and religious usage
+as the meanest and poorest of his subject worshippers. From sunrise to
+sunset, and far on into the night, the Pillar of Heaven was compelled to
+prowl up and down, with spear in hand and tomahawk at side, as Felix had
+so often seen him, before the sacred trunk, of which he appeared to be in
+some mysterious way the appointed guardian. His very power, it seemed,
+was intimately bound up with the performance of that ceaseless and
+irksome duty; he was a god in whose hands the lives of his people were
+but as dust in the balance; but he remained so only on the onerous
+condition of pacing to and fro, like a sentry, forever before the still
+more holy and venerable object he was chosen to protect from attack or
+injury. Had he failed in his task, had he slumbered at his post, all god
+though he might be, his people themselves would have risen in a body and
+torn him limb from limb before their ancestral fetich as a sacrilegious
+pretender.
+
+At certain times and seasons, however, as for example at all high
+feasts and festivals, Tu-Kila-Kila had respite for a while from this
+constant treadmill of mechanical divinity. Whenever the moon was at the
+half-quarter, or the planets were in lucky conjunctions, or a red glow
+lit up the sky by night, or the sacred sacrificial fires of human flesh
+were lighted, then Tu-Kila-Kila could lay aside his tomahawk and spear,
+and become for a while as the islanders, his fellows, were. At other
+times, too, when he went out in state to visit the lesser deities of his
+court, the King of Fire and the King of Water made a solemn taboo before
+He left his home, which protected the sacred tree from aggression during
+its guardian's absence. Then Tu-Kila-Kila, shaded by his divine umbrella,
+and preceded by the noise of the holy tom-toms, could go like a monarch
+over all parts of his realm, giving such orders as he pleased (within the
+limits of custom) to his inferior officers. It was in this way that he
+now paid his visit to M. Jules Peyron, King of the Birds. And he did so
+for what to him were amply sufficient reasons.
+
+It had not escaped Tu-Kila-Kila's keen eye, as he paced among the
+skeletons in his yard that morning, that Felix Thurstan, the King of the
+Rain, had taken his way openly toward the Frenchman's quarters. He felt
+pretty sure, therefore, that Felix had by this time learned another white
+man was living on the island; and he thought it an ominous fact that the
+new-comer should make his way toward his fellow-European's hut on the
+very first morning when the law of taboo rendered such a visit possible.
+The savage is always by nature suspicious; and Tu-Kila-Kila had grounds
+enough of his own for suspicion in this particular instance. The two
+white men were surely brewing mischief together for the Lord of Heaven
+and Earth, the Illuminer of the Glowing Light of the Sun; he must make
+haste and see what plan they were concocting against the sacred tree and
+the person of its representative, the King of Plants and of the Host of
+Heaven.
+
+But it isn't so easy to make haste when all your movements are impeded
+and hampered by endless taboos and a minutely annoying ritual. Before
+Tu-Kila-Kila could get himself under way, sacred umbrella, tom-toms, and
+all, it was necessary for the King of Fire and the King of Water to make
+taboo on an elaborate scale with their respective elements; and so by the
+time the high god had reached M. Jules Peyron's garden, Felix Thurstan
+had already some time since returned to Muriel's hut and his own
+quarters.
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila approached the King of the Birds, amid loud clapping of
+hands, with considerable haughtiness. To say the truth, there was no love
+lost between the cannibal god and his European subordinate. The savage,
+puffed up as he was in his own conceit, had nevertheless always an
+uncomfortable sense that, in his heart of hearts, the impassive Frenchman
+had but a low opinion of him. So he invariably tried to make up by the
+solemnity of his manner and the loudness of his assertions for any
+trifling scepticism that might possibly exist in the mind of his
+follower.
+
+On this particular occasion, as he reached the Frenchman's plot,
+Tu-Kila-Kila stepped forward across the white taboo-line with a
+suspicious and peering eye. "The King of the Rain has been here," he
+said, in a pompous tone, as the Frenchman rose and saluted him
+ceremoniously. "Tu-Kila-Kila's eyes are sharp. They never sleep. The sun
+is his sight. He beholds all things. You cannot hide aught in heaven or
+earth from the knowledge of him that dwells in heaven. I look down upon
+land and sea, and spy out all that takes place or is planned in them. I
+am very holy and very cruel. I see all earth and I drink the blood of all
+men. The King of the Rain has come this morning to visit the King of the
+Birds. Where is he now? What has your divinity done with him?"
+
+He spoke from under the sheltering cover of his veiled umbrella. The
+Frenchman looked back at him with as little love as Tu-Kila-Kila himself
+would have displayed had his face been visible. "Yes, you are a very
+great god," he answered, in the conventional tone of Polynesian
+adulation, with just a faint under-current of irony running through his
+accent as he spoke. "You say the truth. You do, indeed, know all things.
+What need for me, then, to tell you, whose eye is the sun, that my
+brother, the King of the Rain, has been here and gone again? You know it
+yourself. Your eye has looked upon it. My brother was indeed with me. He
+consulted me as to the showers I should need from his clouds for the
+birds, my subjects."
+
+"And where is he gone now?" Tu-Kila-Kila asked, without attempting to
+conceal the displeasure in his tone, for he more than half suspected the
+Frenchman of a sacrilegious and monstrous design of chaffing him.
+
+The King of the Birds bowed low once more. "Tu-Kila-Kila's glance is
+keener than my hawk's," he answered, with the accustomed Polynesian
+imagery. "He sees over the land with a glance, like my parrots, and over
+the sea with sharp sight, like my albatrosses. He knows where my brother,
+the King of the Rain, has gone. For me, who am the least among all the
+gods, I sit here on my perch and blink like a crow. I do not know these
+things. They are too high and too deep for me."
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila did not like the turn the conversation was taking. Before
+his own attendants such hints, indeed, were almost dangerous. Once let
+the savage begin to doubt, and the Moral Order goes with a crash
+immediately. Besides, he must know what these white men had been talking
+about. "Fire and Water," he said in a loud voice, turning round to his
+two chief satellites, "go far down the path, and beat the tom-toms. Fence
+off with flood and flame the airy height where the King of the Birds
+lives; fence it off from all profane intrusion. I wish to confer in
+secret with this god, my brother. When we gods talk together, it is not
+well that others should hear our converse. Make a great Taboo. I,
+Tu-Kila-Kila, myself have said it."
+
+Fire and Water, bowing low, backed down the path, beating tom-toms as
+they went, and left the savage and the Frenchman alone together.
+
+As soon as they were gone, Tu-Kila-Kila laid aside his umbrella with a
+positive sigh of relief. Now his fellow-countrymen were well out of the
+way, his manner altered in a trice, as if by magic. Barbarian as he was,
+he was quite astute enough to guess that Europeans cared nothing in their
+hearts for all his mumbo-jumbo. He believed in it himself, but they did
+not, and their very unbelief made him respect and fear them.
+
+"Now that we two are alone," he said, glancing carelessly around him, "we
+two who are gods, and know the world well--we two who see everything in
+heaven or earth--there is no need for concealment--we may talk as plainly
+as we will with one another. Come, tell me the truth! The new white man
+has seen you?"
+
+"He has seen me, yes, certainly," the Frenchman admitted, taking a keen
+look deep into the savage's cunning eyes.
+
+"Does he speak your language--the language of birds?" Tu-Kila-Kila asked
+once more, with insinuating cunning. "I have heard that the sailing gods
+are of many languages. Are you and he of one speech or two? Aliens, or
+countrymen?"
+
+"He speaks my language as he speaks Polynesian," the Frenchman replied,
+keeping his eye firmly fixed on his doubtful guest, "but it is not his
+own. He has a tongue apart--the tongue of an island not far from my
+country, which we call England."
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila drew nearer, and dropped his voice to a confidential
+whisper. "Has he seen the Soul of all dead parrots?" he asked, with keen
+interest in his voice. "The parrot that knows Tu-Kila-Kila's secret? That
+one over there--the old, the very sacred one?"
+
+M. Peyron gazed round his aviary carelessly. "Oh, that one," he answered,
+with a casual glance at Methuselah, as though one parrot or another were
+much the same to him. "Yes, I think he saw it. I pointed it out to him,
+in fact, as the oldest and strangest of all my subjects."
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila's countenance fell. "Did he hear it speak?" he asked, in
+evident alarm. "Did it tell him the story of Tu-Kila-Kila's secret?"
+
+"No, it didn't speak," the Frenchman answered. "It seldom does now. It is
+very old. And if it did, I don't suppose the King of the Rain would have
+understood one word of it. Look here, great god, allay your fears. You're
+a terrible coward. I expect the real fact about the parrot is this: it is
+the last of its own race; it speaks the language of some tribe of men who
+once inhabited these islands, but are now extinct. No human being at
+present alive, most probably, knows one word of that forgotten language."
+
+"You think not?" Tu-Kila-Kila asked, a little relieved.
+
+"I am the King of the Birds, and I know the voices of my subjects by
+heart; I assure you it is as I say," M. Peyron answered, drawing himself
+up solemnly.
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila looked askance, with something very closely approaching a
+wink in his left eye. "We two are both gods," he said, with a tinge of
+irony in his tone. "We know what that means.... _I_ do not feel so
+certain."
+
+He stood close by the parrot with itching fingers. "It is very,
+very old," he went on to himself, musingly. "It can't live long. And
+then--none but Boupari men will know the secret."
+
+As he spoke he darted a strange glance of hatred toward the unconscious
+bird, the innocent repository, as he firmly believed, of the secret
+that doomed him. The Frenchman had turned his back for a moment now,
+to fetch out a stool. Tu-Kila-Kila, casting a quick, suspicious eye to
+the right and left, took a step nearer. The parrot sat mumbling on its
+perch, inarticulately, putting its head on one side, and blinking its
+half-blinded eyes in the bright tropical sunshine. Tu-Kila-Kila paused
+irresolute before its face for a second. If he only dared--one wring of
+the neck--one pinch of his finger and thumb almost!--and all would be
+over. But he dared not! he dared not! Your savage is overawed by the
+blind terrors of taboo. His predecessor, some elder Tu-Kila-Kila of
+forgotten days, had laid a great charm upon that parrot's life. Whoever
+hurt it was to die an awful death of unspeakable torment. The King of the
+Birds had special charge to guard it. If even the Cannibal God himself
+wrought it harm, who could tell what judgment might fall upon him
+forthwith, what terrible vengeance the dead Tu-Kila-Kila might wreak
+upon him in his ghostly anger? And that dead Tu-Kila-Kila was his own
+Soul! His own Soul might flare up within him in some mystic way and burn
+him to ashes.
+
+And yet--suppose this hateful new-comer, the King of the Rain, whom
+he had himself made Korong on purpose to get rid of him the more easily,
+and so had elevated into his own worst potential enemy--suppose this
+new-comer, the King of the Rain, were by chance to speak that other
+dialect of the bird-language, which the King of the Birds himself knew
+not, but which the parrot had learned from his old master, the ancient
+Tu-Kila-Kila of other days, and in which the bird still recited the
+secret of the sacred tree and the Death of the Great God--ah, then he
+might still have to fight hard for his divinity. He gazed angrily at
+the bird. Methuselah blinked, and put his head on one side, and looked
+craftily askance at him. Tu-Kila-Kila hated it, that insolent creature.
+Was he not a god, and should he be thus bearded in his own island by a
+mere Soul of dead birds, a poor, wretched parrot? But the curse! What
+might not that portend? Ah, well, he would risk it. Glancing around him
+once more to the right and left, to make sure that nobody was looking,
+the cunning savage put forth his hand stealthily, and tried with a
+friendly caress to seize the parrot.
+
+In a moment, before he had time to know what was happening,
+Methuselah--sleepy old dotard as he seemed--had woke up at once to a
+sense of danger. Turning suddenly round upon the sleek, caressing hand,
+he darted his beak with a vicious peck at his assailant, and bit the
+divine finger of the Pillar of Heaven as carelessly as he would have
+bitten any child on Boupari. Tu-Kila-Kila, thunder-struck, drew back his
+arm with a start of surprise and a loud cry of pain. The bird had wounded
+him. He shook his hand and stamped. Blood was dropping on the ground from
+the man-god's finger. He hardly knew what strange evil this omen of harm
+might portend for the world. The Soul of all dead parrots had carried out
+the curse, and had drawn red drops from the sacred veins of Tu-Kila-Kila.
+
+One must be a savage one's self, and superstitious at that, fully to
+understand the awful significance of this deadly occurrence. To draw
+blood from a god, and, above all, to let that blood fall upon the dust of
+the ground, is the very worst luck--too awful for the human mind to
+contemplate.
+
+At the same moment, the parrot, awakened by the unexpected attack, threw
+back its head on its perch, and, laughing loud and long to itself in its
+own harsh way, began to pour forth a whole volley of oaths in a guttural
+language, of which neither Tu-Kila-Kila nor the Frenchman understood one
+syllable. And at the same moment, too, M. Peyron himself, recalled from
+the door of his hut by Tu-Kila-Kila's sharp cry of pain and by his liege
+subject's voluble flow of loud speech and laughter, ran up all agog to
+know what was the matter.
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila, with an effort, tried to hide in his robe his wounded
+finger. But the Frenchman caught at the meaning of the whole scene at
+once, and interposed himself hastily between the parrot and its
+assailant. "_He!_ my Methuselah," he cried, in French, stroking the
+exultant bird with his hand, and smoothing its ruffled feathers, "did he
+try to choke you, then? Did he try to get over you? That was a brave
+bird! You did well, _mon ami_, to bite him!... No, no, Life of the World,
+and Measurer of the Sun's Course," he went on, in Polynesian, "you shall
+not go near him. Keep your distance, I beg of you. You may be a high
+god--though you were a scurvy wretch enough, don't you recollect, when
+you were only Lavita, the son of Sami--but I know your tricks. Hands off
+from my birds, say I. A curse is on the head of the Soul of dead parrots.
+You tried to hurt him, and see how the curse has worked itself out! The
+blood of the great god, the Pillar of Heaven, has stained the gray dust
+of the island of Boupari."
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila stood sucking his finger, and looking the very picture of
+the most savage sheepishness.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+DOMESTIC BLISS.
+
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila went home that day in a very bad humor. The portent of the
+bitten finger had seriously disturbed him. For, strange as it sounds to
+us, he really believed himself in his own divinity; and the bare thought
+that the holy soil of earth should be dabbled and wet with the blood of a
+god gave him no little uneasiness in his own mind on his way homeward.
+Besides, what would his people think of it if they found it out? At all
+hazards almost, he must strive to conceal this episode of the bite from
+the men of Boupari. A god who gets wounded, and, worse still, gets
+wounded in the very act of trying to break a great taboo laid on by
+himself in a previous incarnation--such a god undoubtedly lays himself
+open to the gravest misapprehensions on the part of his worshippers.
+Indeed, it was not even certain whether his people, if they knew, would
+any longer regard him as a god at all. The devotion of savages is
+profound, but it is far from personal. When deities pass so readily from
+one body to another, you must always keep a sharp lookout lest the great
+spirit should at any minute have deserted his earthly tabernacle, and
+have taken up his abode in a fresh representative. Honor the gods by all
+means; but make sure at the same time what particular house they are just
+then inhabiting.
+
+It was the hour of siesta in Tu-Kila-Kila's tent. For a short space in
+the middle of the day, during the heat of the sun, while Fire and Water,
+with their embers and their calabash, sat on guard in a porch by the
+bamboo gate, Tu-Kila-Kila, Pillar of Heaven and Threshold of Earth, had
+respite for a while from his daily task of guarding the sacred banyan,
+and could take his ease after his meal in his own quarters. While that
+precious hour of taboo lasted, no wandering dragon or spirit of the air
+could hurt the holy tree, and no human assailant dare touch or approach
+it. Even the disease-making gods, who walk in the pestilence, could not
+blight or wither it. At all other times Tu-Kila-Kila mounted guard over
+his tree with a jealousy that fairly astonished Felix Thurstan's soul;
+for Felix Thurstan only dimly understood as yet how implicitly
+Tu-Kila-Kila's own life and office were bound up with the inviolability
+of the banyan he protected.
+
+Within the hut, during that playtime of siesta, while the lizards (who
+are also gods) ran up and down the wall, and puffed their orange throats,
+Tu-Kila-Kila lounged at his ease that afternoon, with one of his many
+wives--a tall and beautiful Polynesian woman, lithe and supple, as is the
+wont of her race, and as exquisitely formed in every limb and feature as
+a sculptured Greek goddess. A graceful wreath of crimson hibiscus adorned
+her shapely head, round which her long and glossy black hair was coiled
+in great rings with artistic profusion. A festoon of blue flowers and
+dark-red dracaena leaves hung like a chaplet over her olive-brown neck and
+swelling bust. One breadth of native cloth did duty for an apron or
+girdle round her waist and hips. All else was naked. Her plump brown arms
+were set off by the green and crimson of the flowers that decked her.
+Tu-Kila-Kila glanced at his slave with approving eyes. He always liked
+Ula; she pleased him the best of all his women. And she knew his ways,
+too: she never contradicted him.
+
+Among savages, guile is woman's best protection. The wife who knows when
+to give way with hypocritical obedience, and when to coax or wheedle her
+yielding lord, runs the best chance in the end for her life. Her model is
+not the oak, but the willow. She must be able to watch for the rising
+signs of ill-humor in her master's mind, and guard against them
+carefully. If she is wise, she keeps out of her husband's way when his
+anger is aroused, but soothes and flatters him to the top of his bent
+when his temper is just slightly or momentarily ruffled.
+
+"The Lord of Heaven and Earth is ill at ease," Ula murmured,
+insinuatingly, as Tu-Kila-Kila winced once with the pain of his swollen
+finger. "What has happened today to the Increaser of Bread-Fruit? My lord
+is sad. His eye is downcast. Who has crossed my master's will? Who
+has dared to anger him?"
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila kept the wounded hand wrapped up in a soft leaf, like a
+woolly mullein. All the way home he had been obliged to conceal it, and
+disguise the pain he felt, lest Fire and Water should discover his
+secret. For he dared not let his people know that the Soul of all dead
+parrots had bitten his finger, and drawn blood from the sacred veins of
+the man-god. But he almost hesitated now whether or not he should confide
+in Ula. A god may surely trust his own wedded wives. And yet--such need
+to be careful--women are so treacherous! He suspected Ula sometimes of
+being a great deal too fond of that young man Toko, who used to be one of
+the temple attendants, and whom he had given as Shadow accordingly to the
+King of the Rain, so as to get rid of him altogether from among the crowd
+of his followers. So he kept his own counsel for the moment, and
+disguised his misfortune. "I have been to see the King of the Birds this
+morning," he said, in a grumbling voice; "and I do not like him. That
+God is too insolent. For my part I hate these strangers, one and all.
+They have no respect for Tu-Kila-Kila like the men of Boupari. They are
+as bad as atheists. They fear not the gods, and the customs of our
+fathers are not in them."
+
+Ula crept nearer, with one lithe round arm laid caressingly close to her
+master's neck. "Then why do you make them Korong?" she asked, with
+feminine curiosity, like some wife who seeks to worm out of her husband
+the secret of freemasonry. "Why do you not cook them and eat them at
+once, as soon as they arrive? They are very good food--so white and fine.
+That last new-comer, now--the Queen of the Clouds--why not eat her? She
+is plump and tender."
+
+"I like her," Tu-Kila-Kila responded, in a gloating tone. "I like her
+every way. I would have brought her here to my temple and admitted her at
+once to be one of Tu-Kila-Kila's wives--only that Fire and Water would
+not have permitted me. They have too many taboos, those awkward gods. I
+do not love them. But I make my strangers Korong for a very wise reason.
+You women are fools; you understand nothing; you do not know the
+mysteries. These things are a great deal too high and too deep for you.
+You could not comprehend them. But men know well why. They are wise; they
+have been initiated. Much more, then, do I, who am the very high god--who
+eat human flesh and drink blood like water--who cause the sun to shine
+and the fruits to grow--without whom the day in heaven would fade and die
+out, and the foundations of the earth would be shaken like a plantain
+leaf."
+
+Ula laid her soft brown hand soothingly on the great god's arm just above
+the elbow. "Tell me," she said, leaning forward toward him, and looking
+deep into his eyes with those great speaking gray orbs of hers; "tell
+me, O Sustainer of the Equipoise of Heaven; I know you are great; I know
+you are mighty; I know you are holy and wise and cruel; but why must you
+let these sailing gods who come from unknown lands beyond the place
+where the sun rises or sets--why must you let them so trouble and annoy
+you? Why do you not at once eat them up and be done with them? Is not
+their flesh sweet? Is not their blood red? Are they not a dainty well fit
+for the banquet of Tu-Kila-Kila?"
+
+The savage looked at her for a moment and hesitated. A very beautiful
+woman this Ula, certainly. Not one of all his wives had larger brown
+limbs, or whiter teeth, or a deeper respect for his divine nature. He had
+almost a mind--it was only Ula? Why not break the silence enjoined upon
+gods toward women, and explain this matter to her? Not the great secret
+itself, of course--the secret on which hung the Death and Transmigration
+of Tu-Kila-Kila--oh, no; not that one. The savage was far too cunning
+in his generation to intrust that final terrible Taboo to the ears of a
+woman. But the reason why he made all strangers Korong. A woman might
+surely be trusted with that--especially Ula. She was so very handsome.
+And she was always so respectful to him.
+
+"Well, the fact of it is," he answered, laying his hand on her neck, that
+plump brown neck of hers, under the garland of dracaena leaves, and
+stroking it voluptuously, "the sailing gods who happen upon this island
+from time to time are made Korong--but hush! it is taboo." He gazed
+around the hut suspiciously. "Are all the others away?" he asked, in a
+frightened tone. "Fire and Water would denounce me to all my people if
+once they found I had told a taboo to a woman. And as for you, they would
+take you, because you knew it, and would pull your flesh from your bones
+with hot stone pincers!"
+
+Ula rose and looked about her at the door of the tent. She nodded thrice;
+then she glided back, serpentine, and threw herself gracefully, in a
+statuesque pose, on the native mat beside him. "Here, drink some more
+kava," she cried, holding a bowl to his lips, and wheedling him with her
+eyes. "Kava is good; it is fit for gods. It makes them royally drunk, as
+becomes great deities. The spirits of our ancestors dwell in the bowl;
+when you drink of the kava they mount by degrees into your heart and
+head. They inspire brave words. They give you thoughts of heaven. Drink,
+my master, drink. The Ruler of the Sun in Heaven is thirsty."
+
+She lay propped on one elbow, with her face close to his; and offered
+him, with one brown, irresistible hand, the intoxicating liquor.
+Tu-Kila-Kila took the bowl, and drank a second time, for he had drunk of
+it once with his dinner already. It was seldom he allowed himself the
+luxury of a second draught of that very stupefying native intoxicant, for
+he knew too well the danger of insecurely guarding his sacred tree; but
+on this particular occasion, as on so many others in the collective life
+of humanity, "the woman tempted him," and he acted as she told him. He
+drank it off deep. "Ha, ha! that is good!" he cried, smacking his lips.
+"That is a drink fit for a god. No woman can make kava like you, Ula." He
+toyed with her arms and neck lazily once more. "You are the queen of my
+wives," he went on, in a dreamy voice. "I like you so well, that, plump
+as you are, I really believe, Ula, I could never make up my mind to eat
+you."
+
+"My lord is very gracious," Ula made answer, in a soft, low tone,
+pretending to caress him. And for some minutes more she continued to make
+much of him in the fulsome strain of Polynesian flattery.
+
+At last the kava had clearly got into Tu-Kila-Kila's head. Then Ula bent
+forward once more and again attacked him. "Now I know you will tell me,"
+she said, coaxingly, "why you make them Korong. As long as I live, I will
+never speak or hint of it to anybody anywhere. And if I do--why, the
+remedy is near. I am your meat--take me and eat me."
+
+Even cannibals are human; and at the touch of her soft hand, Tu-Kila-Kila
+gave way slowly. "I made them Korong," he answered, in rather thick
+accents, "because it is less dangerous for me to make them so than to
+choose for the post from among our own islanders. Sooner or later, my day
+must come; but I can put it off best by making my enemies out of
+strangers who arrive upon our island, and not out of those of my own
+household. All Boupari men who have been initiated know the terrible
+secret--they know where lies the Death of Tu-Kila-Kila. The strangers who
+come to us from the sun or the sea do not know it; and therefore my life
+is safest with them. So I make them Korong whenever I can, to prolong my
+own days, and to guard my secret."
+
+"And the Death of Tu-Kila-Kila?" the woman whispered, very low, still
+soothing his arm with her hand and patting his cheek softly from time to
+time with a gentle, caressing motion. "Tell me where does that live? Who
+holds it in charge? Where is Tu-Kila-Kila's great spirit laid by in
+safety? I know it is in the tree; but where and in what part of it?"
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila drew back with a little cry of surprise. "You know it is in
+the tree!" he cried. "You know my soul is kept there! Why, Ula, who told
+you that? and you a woman! Bad medicine indeed! Some man has been
+blabbing what he learned in the mysteries. If this should reach the ears
+of the King of the Rain--" he paused mysteriously.
+
+"What? What?" Ula cried, seizing his hand in hers, and pressing it hard
+to her bosom in her anxiety and eagerness. "Tell me the secret! Tell me!"
+
+With a sudden sharp howl of darting pain, Tu-Kila-Kila withdrew his hand.
+She had squeezed the finger the parrot had bitten, and blood began once
+more to flow from it freely.
+
+A wild impulse of revenge came over the savage. He caught her by the
+neck with his other hand, pressed her throat hard, till she was black in
+the face, kicked her several times with ferocious rage, and then flung
+her away from him to the other side of the hut with a fierce and
+untranslatable native imprecation.
+
+Ula, shaken and hurt, darted away toward the door, with a face of abject
+terror. For every reason on earth she was intensely alarmed. Were it
+merely as a matter of purely earthly fear, she had ground enough for
+fright in having so roused the hasty anger of that powerful and
+implacable creature. He would kill her and eat her with far less
+compunction than an English farmer would kill and eat one of his own
+barnyard chickens. But besides that, it terrified her not a little in
+more mysterious ways to see the blood of a god falling upon the earth so
+freely. She knew not what awful results to herself and her race might
+follow from so terrible a desecration.
+
+But, to her utter astonishment, the great god himself, mad with rage as
+he was, seemed none the less almost as profoundly frightened and
+surprised as she herself was. "What did you do that for?" he cried, now
+sufficiently recovered for thought and speech, wringing his hand with
+pain, and then popping his finger hastily into his mouth to ease it. "You
+are a clumsy thing. And you want to destroy me, too, with your foolish
+clumsiness."
+
+He looked at her and scowled. He was very angry. But the savage woman is
+nothing if not quick-witted and politic. In a flash of intuition, Ula saw
+at once he was more frightened than hurt; he was afraid of the effect of
+this strange revelation upon his own reputation for supreme godship. With
+every mark and gesture of deprecatory servility the woman sidled back to
+his side like a whipped dog. For a second she looked down on the floor
+at the drops of blood; then, without one word of warning or one instant's
+hesitation, she bit her own finger hard till blood flowed from it freely.
+"I will show this to Fire and Water," she said, holding it up before his
+eyes all red and bleeding. "I will say you were angry with me and bit me
+for a punishment, as you often do. They will never find out it was the
+blood of a god. Have no fear for their eyes. Let me look at your finger."
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila, half appeased by her clever quickness, held his hand out
+sulkily, like a disobedient child. Ula examined it close. "A bite," she
+said, shortly. "A bite from a bird! a peck from a parrot."
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila jerked out a surly assent. "Yes, the Soul of all dead
+parrots," he answered, with an angry glare. "It bit me this morning at
+the King of the Birds'. A vicious brute. But no one else saw it."
+
+Ula put the finger up to her own mouth, and sucked the wound gently.
+Her medicine stanched it. Then she took a thin leaf of the paper
+mulberry, soft, cool, and soothing, and bound it round the place with a
+strip of the lace-like inner bark, as deftly as any hospital nurse in
+London would have done it. These savage women are capital hands in
+sickness. Tu-Kila-Kila sat and sulked meanwhile, like a disappointed
+child. When Ula had finished, she nodded her head and glided softly away.
+She knew her chance of learning the secret was gone for the moment, and
+she had too much of the guile of the savage woman to spoil her chances by
+loitering about unnecessarily while her lord was in his present
+ungracious humor.
+
+As she stole from the hut, Tu-Kila-Kila, looking ruefully at his wounded
+hand, and then at that light and supple retreating figure, muttered
+sulkily to himself, with a very bad grace, "the woman knows too much. She
+nearly wormed my secret out of me. She knows that Tu-Kila-Kila's life and
+soul are bound up in the tree. She knows that I bled, and that the parrot
+bit me. If she blabs, as women will do, mischief may come of it. I am a
+great god, a very great god--keen, bloodthirsty, cruel. And I like that
+woman. But it would be wiser and safer, perhaps, after all, to forego my
+affection and to make a great feast of her."
+
+And Ula, looking back with a smile and a nod, and holding up her own
+bitten and bleeding hand with a farewell shake, as if to remind her
+divine husband of her promise to show it to Fire and Water, murmured low
+to herself as she went, "He is a very great god; a very great god, no
+doubt; but I hate him, I hate him! He would eat me to-morrow if I didn't
+coax him and wheedle him and keep him in a good temper. You want to be
+sharp, indeed, to be the wife of a god. I got off to-day with the skin of
+my teeth. He might have turned and killed me. If only I could find out
+the Great Taboo, I would tell it to the stranger, the King of the Rain;
+and then, perhaps, Tu-Kila-Kila would die. And the stranger would become
+Tu-Kila-Kila in turn, and I would be one of his wives; and Toko, who is
+his Shadow, would return again to the service of Tu-Kila-Kila's temple."
+
+But Fire, as she passed, was saying to Water, "We are getting tired in
+Boupari of Lavita, the son of Sami. If the luck of the island is not to
+change, it is high time, I think, we should have a new Tu-Kila-Kila."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+COUNCIL OF WAR.
+
+
+That same afternoon Muriel had a visitor. M. Jules Peyron, formerly of
+the College de France, no longer a mere Polynesian god, but a French
+gentleman of the Boulevards in voice and manner, came to pay his
+respects, as in duty bound, to Mademoiselle Ellis. M. Peyron had
+performed his toilet under trying circumstances, to the best of his
+ability. The remnants of his European clothes, much patched and overhung
+with squares of native tappa cloth, were hidden as much as possible by a
+wide feather cloak, very savage in effect, but more seemly, at any rate,
+than the tattered garments in which Felix had first found him in his own
+garden parterre. M. Peyron, however, was fully aware of the defects of
+his costume, and profoundly apologetic. "It is with ten thousand regrets,
+mademoiselle," he said, many times over, bowing low and simpering, "that
+I venture to appear in a lady's _salon_--for, after all, wherever a
+European lady goes, there her _salon_ follows her--in such a _tenue_
+as that in which I am now compelled to present myself. _Mais que
+voulez-vous? Nous ne sommes pas a Paris_!" For to M. Peyron, as innocent
+in his way as Mali herself, the whole world divided itself into Paris and
+the Provinces.
+
+Nevertheless, it was touching to both the new-comers to see the
+Frenchman's delight at meeting once more with civilized beings. "Figure
+to yourself, mademoiselle," he said, with true French effusion--"figure
+to yourself the joy and surprise with which I, this morning, receive
+monsieur, your friend, at my humble cottage! For the first time after
+nine years on this hateful island, I see again a European face; I hear
+again the sound, the beautiful sound of that charming French language. My
+emotion, believe me, was too profound for words. When monsieur was gone,
+I retired to my hut, I sat down on the floor, I gave myself over to
+tears, tears of joy and gratitude, to think I should once more catch a
+glimpse of civilization! This afternoon, I ask myself, can I venture
+to go out and pay my respects, thus attired, in these rags, to a European
+lady? For a long time I doubt, I wonder, I hesitate. In my quality of
+Frenchman, I would have wished to call in civilized costume upon a
+civilized household. But what would you have? Necessity knows no law. I
+am compelled to envelope myself in my savage robe of office as a
+Polynesian god--a robe of office which, for the rest, is not without an
+interest of its own for the scientific ethnologist. It belongs to me
+especially as King of the Birds, and in it, in effect, is represented
+at least one feather of each kind or color from every part of the body
+of every species of bird that inhabits Boupari. I thus sum up, _pour
+ainsi dire_, in my official costume all the birds of the island, as
+Tu-Kila-Kila, the very high god, sums up, in his quaint and curious
+dress, the land and the sea, the trees and the stones, earth and air, and
+fire and water."
+
+Familiarity with danger begets at last a certain callous indifference.
+Muriel was surprised in her own mind to discover how easily they could
+chat with M. Peyron on such indifferent subjects, with that awful doom of
+an approaching death hanging over them so shortly. But the fact was,
+terrors of every kind had so encompassed them round since their arrival
+on the island that the mere additional certainty of a date and mode of
+execution was rather a relief to their minds than otherwise. It partook
+of the nature of a reprieve, not of a sentence. Besides, this meeting
+with another speaker of a European tongue seemed to them so full of
+promise and hope that they almost forgot the terrors of their threatened
+end in their discussion of possible schemes for escape to freedom. Even
+M. Peyron himself, who had spent nine long years of exile in the island,
+felt that the arrival of two new Europeans gave him some hope of
+effecting at last his own retreat from this unendurable position. His
+talk was all of passing steamers. If the Australasian had come near
+enough once to sight the island, he argued, then the homeward-bound
+vessel, _en route_ for Honolulu, must have begun to take a new course
+considerably to the eastward of the old navigable channel. If this were
+so, their obvious plan was to keep a watch, day and night, for another
+passing Australian liner, and whenever one hove in sight, to steal away
+to the shore, seize a stray canoe, overpower, if possible, their Shadows,
+or give them the slip, and make one bold stroke for freedom on the open
+ocean.
+
+None of them could conceal from their own minds, to be sure, the extreme
+difficulty of carrying out this programme. In the first place, it was a
+toss-up whether they ever sighted another steamer at all; for during the
+weeks they had already passed on the island, not a sign of one had
+appeared from any quarter. Then, again, even supposing a steamer ever
+hove in sight, what likelihood that they could make out for her in an
+open canoe in time to attract attention before she had passed the island?
+Tu-Kila-Kila would never willingly let them go; their Shadows would watch
+them with unceasing care; the whole body of natives would combine
+together to prevent their departure. If they ran away at all, they must
+run for their lives; as soon as the islanders discovered they were gone,
+every war-canoe in the place would be manned at once with bloodthirsty
+savages, who would follow on their track with relentless persistence.
+
+As for Muriel, less prepared for such dangerous adventures than the two
+men, she was rather inclined to attach a certain romantic importance (as
+a girl might do) to the story of the parrot and the possible disclosures
+which it could make if it could only communicate with them. The
+mysterious element in the history of that unique bird attracted her
+fancy. "The only one of its race now left alive," she said, with slow
+reflectiveness. "Like Dolly Pentreath, the last old woman who could speak
+Cornish! I wonder how long parrots ever live? Do you know at all,
+monsieur? You are the King of the Birds--you ought to be an authority on
+their habits and manners."
+
+The Frenchman smiled a gallant smile. "Unhappily, mademoiselle," he said,
+"though, as a medical student, I took up to a certain extent biological
+science in general at the College de France, I never paid any special or
+peculiar attention in Paris to birds in particular. But it is the
+universal opinion of the natives (if that counts for much) that parrots
+live to a very great age; and this one old parrot of mine, whom I call
+Methuselah on account of his advanced years, is considered by them all to
+be a perfect patriarch. In effect, when the oldest men now living on the
+island were little boys, they tell me that Methuselah was already a
+venerable and much-venerated parrot. He must certainly have outlived all
+the rest of his race by at least the best part of three-quarters of a
+century. For the islanders themselves not infrequently live, by unanimous
+consent, to be over a hundred."
+
+"I remember to have read somewhere," Felix said, turning it over in his
+mind, "that when Humboldt was travelling in the wilds of South America he
+found one very old parrot in an Indian village, which, the Indians
+assured him, spoke the language of an extinct tribe, incomprehensible
+then by any living person. If I recollect aright, Humboldt believed that
+particular bird must have lived to be nearly a hundred and fifty."
+
+"That is so, monsieur," the Frenchman answered. "I remember the case
+well, and have often recalled it. I recollect our professor mentioning it
+one day in the course of his lectures. And I have always mentally coupled
+that parrot of Humboldt's with my own old friend and subject, Methuselah.
+However, that only impresses upon one more fully the folly of hoping that
+we can learn anything worth knowing from him. I have heard him recite his
+story many times over, though now he repeats it less frequently than he
+used formerly to do; and I feel convinced it is couched in some unknown
+and, no doubt, forgotten language. It is a much more guttural and
+unpleasant tongue than any of the soft dialects now spoken in Polynesia.
+It belonged, I am convinced, to that yet earlier and more savage race
+which the Polynesians must have displaced; and as such it is now, I feel
+certain, practically irrecoverable."
+
+"If they were more savage than the Polynesians," Muriel said, with a
+profound sigh, "I'm sorry for anybody who fell into their clutches."
+
+"But what would not many philologists at home in England give," Felix
+murmured, philosophically, "for a transcript of the words that parrot can
+speak--perhaps a last relic of the very earliest and most primitive form
+of human language!"
+
+At the very moment when these things were passing under the wattled roof
+of Muriel's hut, it happened that on the taboo-space outside, Toko, the
+Shadow, stood talking for a moment with Ula, the fourteenth wife of the
+great Tu-Kila-Kila.
+
+"I never see you now, Toko," the beautiful Polynesian said, leaning
+almost across the white line of coral-sand which she dared not
+transgress. "Times are dull at the temple since you came to be Shadow to
+the white-faced stranger."
+
+"It was for that that Tu-Kila-Kila sent me here," the Shadow answered,
+with profound conviction. "He is jealous, the great god. He is bad. He is
+cruel. He wanted to get rid of me. So he sent me away to the King of the
+Rain that I might not see you."
+
+Ula pouted, and held up her wounded finger before his eyes
+coquettishly. "See what he did to me," she said, with a mute appeal
+for sympathy--though in that particular matter the truth was not in
+her. "Your god was angry with me to-day because I hurt his hand, and
+he clutched me by the throat, and almost choked me. He has a bad heart.
+See how he bit me and drew blood. Some of these days, I believe, he will
+kill me and eat me."
+
+The Shadow glanced around him suspiciously with an uneasy air. Then he
+whispered low, in a voice half grudge, half terror, "If he does, he is a
+great god--he can search all the world--I fear him much, but Toko's heart
+is warm. Let Tu-Kila-Kila look out for vengeance."
+
+The woman glanced across at him open-eyed, with her enticing look. "If
+the King of the Rain, who is Korong, knew all the secret," she murmured,
+slowly, "he would soon be Tu-Kila-Kila himself; and you and I could then
+meet together freely."
+
+The Shadow started. It was a terrible suggestion. "You mean to say--" he
+cried; then fear overcame him, and, crouching down where he sat, he gazed
+around him, terrified. Who could say that the wind would not report his
+words to Tu-Kila-Kila?
+
+Ula laughed at his fears. "Pooh," she answered, smiling. "You are a man;
+and yet you are afraid of a little taboo. I am a woman; and yet if I knew
+the secret as you do, I would break taboo as easily as I would break an
+egg-shell. I would tell the white-faced stranger all--if only it would
+bring you and me together forever."
+
+"It is a great risk, a very great risk," the Shadow answered, trembling.
+"Tu-Kila-Kila is a mighty god. He may be listening this moment, and may
+pinch us to death by his spirits for our words, or burn us to ashes with
+a flash of his anger."
+
+The woman smiled an incredulous smile. "If you had lived as near
+Tu-Kila-Kila as I have," she answered, boldly, "you would think as
+little, perhaps, of his divinity as I do."
+
+For even in Polynesia, superstitious as it is, no hero is a god to his
+wives or his valets.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+METHUSELAH GIVES SIGN.
+
+
+All the hopes of the three Europeans were concentrated now on the bare
+off-chance of a passing steamer. M. Peyron in particular was fully
+convinced that, if the Australasian had found the inner channel
+practicable, other ships in future would follow her example. With this
+idea firmly fixed in his head, he arranged with Felix that one or other
+of them should keep watch alternately by night as far as possible; and he
+also undertook that a canoe should constantly be in readiness to carry
+them away to the supposititious ship, if occasion arose for it. Muriel
+took counsel with Mali on the question of rousing the Frenchman if a
+steamer appeared, and they were the first to sight it; and Mali, in whom
+renewed intercourse with white people had restored to some extent the
+civilized Queensland attitude of mind, readily enough promised to assist
+in their scheme, provided she was herself taken with them, and so
+relieved from the terrible vengeance which would otherwise overtake her.
+"If Boupari man catch me," she said, in her simple, graphic, Polynesian
+way, "Boupari man kill me, and lay me in leaves, and cook me very nice,
+and make great feast of me, like him do with Jani." From that untimely
+end both Felix and Muriel promised faithfully, as far as in them lay, to
+protect her.
+
+To communicate with M. Peyron by daytime, without arousing the
+ever-wakeful suspicion of the natives, Felix hit upon an excellent plan.
+He burnished his metal matchbox to the very highest polish it was capable
+of taking, and then heliographed by means of sun-flashes on the Morse
+code. He had learned the code in Fiji in the course of his official
+duties; and he taught the Frenchman now readily enough how to read and
+reply with the other half of the box, torn off for the purpose.
+
+It was three or four days, however, before the two English wanderers
+ventured to return M. Peyron's visit. They didn't wish to attract too
+greatly the attention of the islanders. Gradually, as their stay on the
+island went on, they learned the truth that Tu-Kila-Kila's eyes, as he
+himself had boasted, were literally everywhere. For he had spies of his
+own, told off in every direction, who dogged the steps of his victims
+unseen. Sometimes, as Felix and Muriel walked unsuspecting through the
+jungle paths, closely followed by their Shadows, a stealthy brown figure,
+crouched low to the ground, would cross the road for a moment behind
+them, and disappear again noiselessly into the dense mass of underbrush.
+Then Mali or Toko, turning round, all hushed, with a terrified look,
+would murmur low to themselves, or to one another, "There goes one of
+the Eyes of Tu-Kila-Kila!" It was only by slow degrees that this system
+of espionage grew clear to the strangers; but as soon as they had learned
+its reality and ubiquity, they felt at once how undesirable it would be
+for them to excite the terrible man-god's jealousy and suspicion by being
+observed too often in close personal intercourse with their fellow-exile
+and victim, the Frenchman. It was this that made them have recourse to
+the device of the heliograph.
+
+So three or four days passed before Muriel dared to approach M. Peyron's
+cottage. When she did at last go there with Felix, it was in the early
+morning, before the fierce tropical sun, that beat full on the island,
+had begun to exert its midday force and power. The path that led there
+lay through the thick and tangled mass of brushwood which covered the
+greater part of the island with its dense vegetation; it was overhung by
+huge tree-ferns and broad-leaved Southern bushes, and abutted at last on
+the little wind-swept knoll where the King of the Birds had his
+appropriate dwelling-place. The Frenchman received them with studied
+Parisian hospitality. He had decorated his arbor with fresh flowers for
+the occasion, and bright tropical fruits, with their own green leaves,
+did duty for the coffee or the absinthe of his fatherland on his homemade
+rustic table. Yet in spite of all the rudeness of the physical
+surroundings, they felt themselves at home again with this one exiled
+European; the faint flavor of civilization pervaded and permeated the
+Frenchman's hut after the unmixed savagery to which they had now been so
+long accustomed.
+
+Muriel's curiosity, however, centred most about the mysterious old
+parrot, of whose strange legend so much had been said to her. After they
+had sat for a little under the shade of the spreading banyan, to cool
+down from their walk--for it was an oppressive morning--M. Peyron led her
+round to his aviary at the back of the hut, and introduced her, by their
+native names, to all his subjects. "I am responsible for their lives," he
+said, gravely, "for their welfare, for their happiness. If I were to let
+one of them grow old without a successor in the field to follow him up
+and receive his soul--as in the case of my friend Methuselah here, who
+was so neglected by my predecessors--the whole species would die out for
+want of a spirit, and my own life would atone for that of my people.
+There you have the central principle of the theology of Boupari. Every
+race, every element, every power of nature, is summed up for them in some
+particular person or thing; and on the life of that person or thing
+depends, as they believe, the entire health of the species, the sequence
+of events, the whole order and succession of natural phenomena."
+
+Felix approached the mysterious and venerable bird with somewhat
+incautious fingers. "It looks very old," he said, trying to stroke its
+head and neck with a friendly gesture. "You do well, indeed, in calling
+it Methuselah."
+
+As he spoke, the bird, alarmed at the vague consciousness of a hand and
+voice which it did not recognize and mindful of Tu-Kila-Kila's recent
+attack, made a vicious peck at the fingers outstretched to caress it.
+"Take care!" the Frenchman cried, in a warning voice. "The patriarch's
+temper is no longer what it was sixty or seventy years ago. He grows old
+and peevish. His humor is soured. He will sing no longer the lively
+little scraps of Offenbach I have taught him. He does nothing but sit
+still and mumble now in his own forgotten language. And he's dreadfully
+cross--so crabbed--_mon Dieu_, what a character! Why, the other day, as I
+told you, he bit Tu-Kila-Kila himself, the high god of the island, with a
+good hard peck, when that savage tried to touch him; you'd have laughed
+to see his godship sent off bleeding to his hut with a wounded finger! I
+will confess I was by no means sorry at the sight myself. I do not love
+that god, nor he me; and I was glad when Methuselah, on whom he is afraid
+to revenge himself openly, gave him a nice smart bite for trying to
+interfere with him."
+
+"He's very snappish, to be sure," Felix said, with a smile, trying once
+more to push forward one hand to stroke the bird cautiously. But
+Methuselah resented all such unauthorized intrusions. He was growing too
+old to put up with strangers. He made a second vicious attempt to peck at
+the hand held out to soothe him, and screamed, as he did so, in the usual
+discordant and unpleasant voice of an angry or frightened parrot.
+
+"Why, Felix," Muriel put in, taking him by the arm with a girlish
+gesture--for even the terrors by which they were surrounded hadn't wholly
+succeeded in killing out the woman within her--"how clumsy you are! You
+don't understand one bit how to manage parrots. I had a parrot of my own
+at my aunt's in Australia, and I know their ways and all about them. Just
+let me try him." She held out her soft white hand toward the sulky bird
+with a fearless, caressing gesture. "Pretty Poll, pretty Poll!" she said,
+in English, in the conventional tone of address to their kind. "Did the
+naughty man go and frighten her then? Was she afraid of his hand? Did
+Polly want a lump of sugar?"
+
+On a sudden the bird opened its eyes quickly with an awakened air, and
+looked her back in the face, half blindly, half quizzingly. It preened
+its wings for a second, and crooned with pleasure. Then it put forward
+its neck, with its head on one side, took her dainty finger gently
+between its beak and tongue, bit it for pure love with a soft, short
+pressure, and at once allowed her to stroke its back and sides with a
+very pleased and surprised expression. The success of her skill flattered
+Muriel. "There! it knows me!" she cried, with childish delight; "it
+understands I'm a friend! It takes to me at once! Pretty Poll! Pretty
+Poll! Come, Poll, come and kiss me!"
+
+The bird drew back at the words, and steadied itself for a moment
+knowingly on its perch. Then it held up its head, gazed around it with a
+vacant air, as if suddenly awakened from a very long sleep, and, opening
+its mouth, exclaimed in loud, clear, sharp, and distinct tones--and in
+English--"Pretty Poll! Pretty Poll! Polly wants a buss! Polly wants a
+nice sweet bit of apple!"
+
+For a moment M. Peyron couldn't imagine what had happened. Felix looked
+at Muriel. Muriel looked at Felix. The Englishman held out both his hands
+to her in a wild fervor of surprise. Muriel took them in her own, and
+looked deep into his eyes, while tears rose suddenly and dropped down her
+cheeks, one by one, unchecked. They couldn't say why, themselves; they
+didn't know wherefore; yet this unexpected echo of their own tongue, in
+the mouth of that strange and mysterious bird, thrilled through them
+instinctively with a strange, unearthly tremor. In some dim and
+unexplained way, they felt half unconsciously to themselves that this
+discovery was, perhaps, the first clue to the solution of the terrible
+secret whose meshes encompassed them.
+
+M. Peyron looked on in mute astonishment. He had heard the bird repeat
+that strange jargon so often that it had ceased to have even the
+possibility of a meaning for him. It was the way of Methuselah--just his
+language that he talked; so harsh! so guttural! "Pretty Poll! Pretty
+Poll!" he had noticed the bird harp upon those quaint words again and
+again. They were part, no doubt, of that old primitive and forgotten
+Pacific language the creature had learned in other days from some earlier
+bearer of the name and ghastly honors of Tu-Kila-Kila. Why should these
+English seem so profoundly moved by them?
+
+"Mademoiselle doesn't surely understand the barbarous dialect which our
+Methuselah speaks!" he exclaimed in surprise, glancing half suspiciously
+from one to the other of these incomprehensible Britons. Like most other
+Frenchmen, he had been brought up in total ignorance of every European
+language except his own; and the words the parrot pronounced, when
+delivered with the well-known additions of parrot harshness and parrot
+volubility, seemed to him so inexpressibly barbaric in their clicks and
+jerks that he hadn't yet arrived at the faintest inkling of the truth as
+he observed their emotion.
+
+Felix seized his new friend's hand in his and wrung it warmly. "Don't you
+see what it is?" he exclaimed, half beside himself with this vague hope
+of some unknown solution. "Don't you realize how the thing stands?
+Don't you guess the truth? This isn't a Polynesian, dialect at all. It's
+our own mother tongue. The bird speaks English!"
+
+"English!" M. Peyron replied, with incredulous scorn. "What! Methuselah
+speak English! Oh, no, monsieur, impossible. _Vous vous trompez, j'en
+suis sur_. I can never believe it. Those harsh, inarticulate sounds to
+belong to the noble language of Shaxper and Newtowne! _Ah, monsieur,
+incroyable! vous vous trompez; vous vous trompez!_"
+
+As he spoke, the bird put its head on one side once more, and, looking
+out of its half-blind old eyes with a crafty glance round the corner at
+Muriel, observed again, in not very polite English, "Pretty Poll! Pretty
+Poll! Polly wants some fruit! Polly wants a nut! Polly wants to go to
+bed!... God save the king! To hell with all papists!"
+
+"Monsieur," Felix said, a certain solemn feeling of surprise coming over
+him slowly at this last strange clause, "it is perfectly true. The bird
+speaks English. The bird that knows the secret of which we are all in
+search--the bird that can tell us the truth about Tu-Kila-Kila--can tell
+us in the tongue which mademoiselle and I speak as our native language.
+And what is more--and more strange--gather from his tone and the tenor of
+his remarks, he was taught, long since--a century ago, or more--and by an
+English sailor!"
+
+Muriel held out a bit of banana on a sharp stick to the bird.
+Methuselah-Polly took it gingerly off the end, like a well-behaved
+parrot? "God save the king!" Muriel said, in a quiet voice, trying to
+draw him on to speak a little further.
+
+Methuselah twisted his eye sideways, first this way, then that, and
+responded in a very clear tone, indeed, "God save the king! Confound the
+Duke of York! Long live Dr. Oates! And to hell with all papists!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+TANTALIZING, VERY.
+
+
+They looked at one another again with a wild surmise. The voice was as
+the voice of some long past age. Could the parrot be speaking to them in
+the words of seventeenth-century English?
+
+Even M. Peyron, who at first had received the strange discovery with
+incredulity, woke up before long to the importance of this sudden and
+unexpected revelation. The Tu-Kila-Kila who had taught Methuselah that
+long poem or sermon, which native tradition regarded as containing the
+central secret of their creed or its mysteries, and which the cruel and
+cunning Tu-Kila-Kila of to-day believed to be of immense importance to
+his safety--that Tu-Kila-Kila of other days was, in all probability, no
+other than an English sailor. Cast on these shores, perhaps, as they
+themselves had been, by the mercy of the waves, he had managed to master
+the language and religion of the savages among whom he found himself
+thrown; he had risen to be the representative of the cannibal god; and,
+during long months or years of tedious exile, he had beguiled his leisure
+by imparting to the unconscious ears of a bird the weird secret of his
+success, for the benefit of any others of his own race who might be
+similarly treated by fortune in future. Strange and romantic as it all
+sounded, they could hardly doubt now that this was the real explanation
+of the bird's command of English words. One problem alone remained to
+disturb their souls. Was the bird really in possession of any local
+secret and mystery at all, or was this the whole burden of the message he
+had brought down across the vast abyss of time--"God save the king, and
+to hell with all papists?"
+
+Felix turned to M. Peyron in a perfect tumult of suspense. "What he
+recites is long?" he said, interrogatively, with profound interest. "You
+have heard him say much more than this at times? The words he has just
+uttered are not those of the sermon or poem you mentioned?"
+
+M. Peyron opened his hands expansively before him. "Oh, _mon Dieu_, no,
+monsieur," he answered, with effusion. "You should hear him recite it.
+He's never done. It is whole chapters--whole chapters; a perfect Henriade
+in parrot-talk. When once he begins, there's no possibility of checking
+or stopping him. On, on he goes. Farewell to the rest; he insists on
+pouring it all forth to the very last sentence. Gabble, gabble, gabble;
+chatter, chatter, chatter; pouf, pouf, pouf; boum, boum, boum; he runs
+ahead eternally in one long discordant sing-song monotone. The person who
+taught him must have taken entire months to teach him, a phrase at a
+time, paragraph by paragraph. It is wonderful a bird's memory could hold
+so much. But till now, taking it for granted he spoke only some wild
+South Pacific dialect, I never paid much attention to Methuselah's
+vagaries."
+
+"Hush. He's going to speak," Muriel cried, holding up, in alarm, one
+warning finger.
+
+And the bird, his tongue-strings evidently loosened by the strange
+recurrence after so many years of those familiar English sounds, "Pretty
+Poll! Pretty Poll!" opened his mouth again in a loud chuckle of delight,
+and cried, with persistent shrillness, "God save the king! A fig for
+all arrant knaves and roundheads!"
+
+A creepier feeling than ever came over the two English listeners at those
+astounding words. "Great heavens!" Felix exclaimed to the unsuspecting
+Frenchman, "he speaks in the style of the Stuarts and the Commonwealth!"
+
+The Frenchman started. "_Epoque Louis Quatorze_!" he murmured,
+translating the date mentally into his own more familiar chronology. "Two
+centuries since! Oh, incredible! incredible! Methuselah is old, but not
+quite so much of a patriarch as that. Even Humboldt's parrot could hardly
+have lived for two hundred years in the wilds of South America."
+
+Felix regarded the venerable creature with a look of almost superstitious
+awe. "Facts are facts," he answered shortly, shutting his mouth with a
+little snap. "Unless this bird has been deliberately taught historical
+details in an archaic diction--and a shipwrecked sailor is hardly likely
+to be antiquarian enough to conceive such an idea--he is undoubtedly a
+survival from the days of the Commonwealth or the Restoration. And you
+say he runs on with his tale for an hour at a time! Good heavens, what
+a thought! I wish we could manage to start him now. Does he begin it
+often?"
+
+"Monsieur," the Frenchman answered, "when I came here first, though
+Methuselah was already very old and feeble, he was not quite a dotard,
+and he used to recite it all every morning regularly. That was the hour,
+I suppose, at which the master, who first taught him this lengthy
+recitation, used originally to impress it upon him. In those days his
+sight and his memory were far more clear than now. But by degrees, since
+my arrival, he has grown dull and stupid. The natives tell me that fifty
+years ago, while he was already old, he was still bright and lively, and
+would recite the whole poem whenever anybody presented him with his
+greatest dainty, the claw of a moora-crab. Nowadays, however, when he can
+hardly eat, and hardly mumble, he is much less persistent and less
+coherent than formerly. To say the truth, I have discouraged him in his
+efforts, because his pertinacity annoyed me. So now he seldom gets
+through all his lesson at one bout, as he used to do at the beginning.
+The best way to get him on is for me to sing him one of my French songs.
+That seems to excite him, or to rouse him to rivalry. Then he will put
+his head on one side, listen critically for a while, smile a superior
+smile, and finally begin--jabber, jabber, jabber--trying to talk me down,
+as if I were a brother parrot."
+
+"Oh, do sing now!" Muriel cried, with intense persuasion in her voice.
+"I do so want to hear it." She meant, of course, the parrot's story.
+
+But the Frenchman bowed, and laid his hand on his heart. "Ah,
+mademoiselle," he said, "your wish is almost a royal command. And yet, do
+you know, it is so long since I have sung, except to please myself--my
+music is so rusty, old pieces you have heard--I have no accompaniment,
+no score--_mais enfin_, we are all so far from Paris!"
+
+Muriel didn't dare to undeceive him as to her meaning, lest he should
+refuse to sing in real earnest, and the chance of learning the parrot's
+secret might slip by them irretrievably. "Oh, monsieur," she cried,
+fitting herself to his humor at once, and speaking as ceremoniously as if
+she were assisting at a musical party in the Avenue Victor Hugo, "don't
+decline, I beg of you, on those accounts. We are both most anxious to
+hear your song. Don't disappoint us, pray. Please begin immediately."
+
+"Ah, mademoiselle," the Frenchman said, "who could resist such an appeal?
+You are altogether too flattering." And then, in the same cheery voice
+that Felix had heard on the first day he visited the King of Birds' hut,
+M. Peyron began, in very decent style, to pour forth the merry sounds of
+his rollicking song:
+
+"Quand on conspi-re,
+    Quand sans frayeur
+ On peut se di-re
+    Conspirateur--
+ Pour tout le mon-de
+    Il faut avoir
+ Perruque blon-de
+    Et collet noir."
+
+He had hardly got as far as the end of the first stanza, however, when
+Methuselah, listening, with his ear cocked up most knowingly, to the
+Frenchman's song, raised his head in opposition, and, sitting bolt
+upright on his perch, began to scream forth a voluble stream of words in
+one unbroken flood, so fast that Muriel could hardly follow them. The
+bird spoke in a thick and very harsh voice, and, what was more remarkable
+still, with a distinct and extremely peculiar North Country accent. "In
+the nineteenth year of the reign of his most gracious majesty, King
+Charles the Second," he blurted out, viciously, with an angry look at the
+Frenchman, "I, Nathaniel Cross, of the borough of Sunderland, in the
+county of Doorham, in England, an able-bodied mariner, then sailing the
+South Seas in the good bark Martyr Prince, of the Port of Great Grimsby,
+whereof one Thomas Wells, gent., under God, was master--"
+
+"Oh, hush, hush!" Muriel cried, unable to catch the parrot's precious
+words through the emulous echo of the Frenchman's music. "Whereof one
+Thomas Wells, gent., under God, was master--go on, Polly."
+
+"Perruque blonde
+   Et collet noir,"
+
+the Frenchman repeated, with a half-offended voice, finishing his stanza.
+
+But just as he stopped, Methuselah stopped too, and, throwing back his
+head in the air with a triumphant look, stared hard at his vanquished and
+silenced opponent out of those blinking gray eyes of his. "I thought I'd
+be too much for you!" he seemed to say, wrathfully.
+
+"Whereof one Thomas Wells, gent., under God, was master," Muriel
+suggested again, all agog with excitement. "Go on, good bird! Go on,
+pretty Polly."
+
+But Methuselah was evidently put off the scent now by the unseasonable
+interruption. Instead of continuing, he threw back his head a second time
+with a triumphant air and laughed aloud boisterously. "Pretty Polly," he
+cried. "Pretty Polly wants a nut. Tu-Kila-Kila maroo! Pretty Poll! Pretty
+Polly!"
+
+"Sing again, for Heaven's sake!" Felix exclaimed, in a profoundly
+agitated mood, explaining briefly to the Frenchman the full significance
+of the words Methuselah had just begun to utter.
+
+The Frenchman struck up his tune afresh to give the bird a start; but all
+to no avail. Methuselah was evidently in no humor for talking just then.
+He listened with a callous, uncritical air, bringing his white eyelids
+down slowly and sleepily over his bleared gray eyes. Then he nodded his
+head slowly. "No use," the Frenchman murmured, pursing his lips up
+gravely. "The bird won't talk. It's going off to sleep now. Methuselah
+gets visibly older every day, monsieur and mademoiselle. You are only
+just in time to catch his last accents."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+A MESSAGE FROM THE DEAD.
+
+
+Early next morning, as Felix lay still in his hut, dozing, and just
+vaguely conscious of a buzz of a mosquito close to his ear, he was
+aroused by a sudden loud cry outside--a cry that called his native name
+three times, running: "O King of the Rain, King of the Rain, King of the
+Rain, awake! High time to be up! The King of the Birds sends you health
+and greeting!"
+
+Felix rose at once; and his Shadow, rising before him, and unbolting the
+loose wooden fastener of the door, went out in haste to see who called
+beyond the white taboo-line of their sacred precincts.
+
+A native woman, tall, lithe, and handsome, stood there in the full light
+of morning, beckoning. A strange glow of hatred gleamed in her large gray
+eyes. Her shapely brown bosom heaved and panted heavily. Big beads
+glistened moistly on her smooth, high brow. It was clear she had run all
+the way in haste. She was deeply excited and full of eager anxiety.
+
+"Why, what do you want here so early, Ula?" the Shadow asked, in
+surprise--for it was indeed she. "How have you slipped away, as soon as
+the sun is risen, from the sacred hut of Tu-Kila-Kila?"
+
+Ula's gray eyes flashed angry fire as she answered. "He has beaten me
+again," she cried, in revengeful tones; "see the weals on my back! See my
+arms and shoulders! He has drawn blood from my wounds. He is the most
+hateful of gods. I should love to kill him. Therefore I slipped away from
+him with the early dawn and came to consult with his enemy, the King of
+the Birds, because I heard the words that the Eyes of Tu-Kila-Kila, who
+pervade the world, report to their master. The Eyes have told him that
+the King of the Rain, the Queen of the Clouds, and the King of the Birds
+are plotting together in secret against Tu-Kila-Kila. When I heard that,
+I was glad; I went to the King of the Birds to warn him of his danger;
+and the King of the Birds, concerned for your safety, has sent me in
+haste to ask his brother gods to go at once to him."
+
+In a minute Felix was up and had called out Mali from the neighboring
+hut. "Tell Missy Queenie," he cried, "to come with me to see the
+man-a-oui-oui! The man-a-oui-oui has sent me for us to come. She must
+make great haste. He wants us immediately."
+
+With a word and a sign to Toko, Ula glided away stealthily, with the
+cat-like tread of the native Polynesian woman, back to her hated husband.
+
+Felix went out to the door and heliographed with his bright metal plate,
+turned on the Frenchman's hill, "What is it?"
+
+In a moment the answer flashed back, word by word, "Come quick, if you
+want to hear. Methuselah is reciting!"
+
+A few seconds later Muriel emerged from her hut, and the two Europeans,
+closely followed, as always, by their inseparable Shadows, took the
+winding side-path that led through the jungle by a devious way, avoiding
+the front of Tu-Kila-Kila's temple, to the Frenchman's cottage.
+
+They found M. Peyron very much excited, partly by Ula's news of
+Tu-Kila-Kila's attitude, but more still by Methuselah's agitated
+condition. "The whole night through, my dear friends," he cried, seizing
+their hands, "that bird has been chattering, chattering, chattering. _Oh,
+mon Dieu, quel oiseau!_ It seems as though the words heard yesterday from
+mademoiselle had struck some lost chord in the creature's memory. But he
+is also very feeble. I can see that well. His garrulity is the garrulity
+of old age in its last flickering moments. He mumbles and mutters.
+He chuckles to himself. If you don't hear his message now and at once,
+it's my solemn conviction you will never hear it."
+
+He led them out to the aviary, where Methuselah, in effect, was sitting
+on his perch, most tremulous and woebegone. His feathers shuddered
+visibly; he could no longer preen himself. "Listen to what he says," the
+Frenchman exclaimed, in a very serious voice. "It is your last, last
+chance. If the secret is ever to be unravelled at all, by Methuselah's
+aid, now is, without doubt, the proper moment to unravel it."
+
+Muriel put out her hand and stroked the bird gently. "Pretty Poll," she
+said, soothingly, in a sympathetic voice. "Pretty Poll! Poor Poll! Was he
+ill! Was he suffering?"
+
+At the sound of those familiar words, unheard so long till yesterday, the
+parrot took her finger in his beak once more, and bit it with the
+tenderness of his kind in their softer moments. Then he threw back his
+head with a sort of mechanical twist, and screamed out at the top of his
+voice, for the last time on earth, his mysterious message:
+
+"Pretty Poll! Pretty Poll! God save the king! Confound the Duke of York!
+Death to all arrant knaves and roundheads!
+
+"In the nineteenth year of the reign of his most gracious majesty, King
+Charles the Second, I, Nathaniel Cross, of the borough of Sunderland, in
+the county of Doorham, in England, an able-bodied mariner, then sailing
+the South Seas in the good bark Martyr Prince, of the Port of Great
+Grimsby, whereof one Thomas Wells, gent., under God, was master, was, by
+stress of weather, wrecked and cast away on the shores of this island,
+called by its gentile inhabitants by the name of Boo Parry. In which
+wreck, as it befell, Thomas Wells, gent., and his equipment were, by
+divine disposition, killed and drowned, save and except three mariners,
+whereof I am one, who in God's good providence swam safely through an
+exceeding great flood of waves and landed at last on this island. There
+my two companions, Owen Williams, of Swansea, in the parts of Wales, and
+Lewis le Pickard, a French Hewgenott refugee, were at once, by the said
+gentiles, cruelly entreated, and after great torture cooked and eaten at
+the temple of their chief god, Too-Keela-Keela. But I, myself, having
+through God's grace found favor in their eyes, was promoted to the post
+which in their speech is called Korong, the nature of which this bird, my
+mouthpiece, will hereafter, to your ears, more fully discover."
+
+Having said so much, in a very jerky way, Methuselah paused, and blinked
+his eyes wearily.
+
+"What does he say?" the Frenchman began, eager to know the truth. But
+Felix, fearful lest any interruption might break the thread of the bird's
+discourse and cheat them of the sequel, held up a warning finger, and
+then laid it on his lips in mute injunction. Methuselah threw back his
+head at that and laughed aloud. "God save the king!" he cried again, in a
+still feebler way, "and to hell with all papists!"
+
+It was strange how they all hung on the words of that unconscious
+messenger from a dead and gone age, who himself knew nothing of the
+import of the words he was uttering. Methuselah laughed at their
+earnestness, shook his head once or twice, and seemed to think to
+himself. Then he remembered afresh the point he had broken off at.
+
+"More fully discover. For seven years have I now lived on this island,
+never having seen or h'ard Christian face or voice; and at the end of
+that time, feeling my health feail, and being apprehensive lest any of my
+fellow-countrymen should hereafter suffer the same fate as I have done, I
+began to teach this parrot his message, a few words at a time, impressing
+it duly and fully on his memory.
+
+"Larn, then, O wayfarer, that the people of Boo Parry are most arrant
+gentiles, heathens, and carribals. And this, as I discover, is the nature
+and method of their vile faith. They hold that the gods are each and
+several incarnate in some one particular human being. This human being
+they worship and reverence with all ghostly respect as his incarnation.
+And chiefly, above all, do they revere the great god Too-Keela-Keela,
+whose representative (may the Lord in Heaven forgive me for the same) I
+myself am at this present speaking. Having thus, for my sins, attained to
+that impious honor.
+
+"God save the king! Confound the Duke of York! To hell with all papists!
+
+"It is the fashion of this people to hold that their gods must always be
+strong and lusty. For they argue to themselves thus: that the continuance
+of the rain must needs depend upon the vigor and subtlety of its Soul,
+the rain-god. So the continuance and fruitfulness of the trees and plants
+which yield them food must needs depend upon the health of the tree-god.
+And the life of the world, and the light of the sun, and the well-being
+of all things that in them are, must depend upon the strength and cunning
+of the high god of all, Too-Keela-Keela. Hence they take great care and
+woorship of their gods, surrounding them with many rules which they call
+Taboo, and restricting them as to what they shall eat, and what drink,
+and wherewithal they shall seemly clothe themselves. For they think that
+if the King of the Rain at' anything that might cause the colick, or like
+humor or distemper, the weather will thereafter be stormy and
+tempestuous; but so long as the King of the Rain fares well and retains
+his health, so long will the weather over their island of Boo Parry be
+clear and prosperous.
+
+"Furthermore, as I have larned from their theologians, being myself,
+indeed, the greatest of their gods, it is evident that they may not let
+any god die, lest that department of nature over which he presideth
+should wither away and feail, as it were, with him. But reasonably no
+care that mortal man can exercise will prevent the possibility of their
+god--seeing he is but one of themselves--growing old and feeble and dying
+at last. To prevent which calamity, these gentile folk have invented (as
+I believe by the aid and device of Sathan) this horrid and most unnatural
+practice. The man-god must be killed so soon as he showeth in body or
+mind that his native powers are beginning to feail. And it is necessary
+that he be killed, according to their faith, in this ensuing fashion.
+
+"If the man-god were to die slowly by a death in the course of nature,
+the ways of the world might be stopped altogether. Hence these savages
+catch the soul of their god, as it were, ere it grow old and feeble, and
+transfer it betimes, by a magic device, to a suitable successor. And
+surely, they say, this suitable successor can be none other than him that
+is able to take it from him. This, then, is their horrid counsel and
+device--that each one of their gods should kill his antecessor. In doing
+thus, he taketh the old god's life and soul, which thereupon migrates and
+dwells within him. And by this tenure--may Heaven be merciful to me, a
+sinner--do I, Nathaniel Cross, of the county of Doorham, now hold this
+dignity of Too-Keela-Keela, having slain, therefor, in just quarrel, my
+antecessor in the high godship."
+
+As he reached these words Methuselah paused, and choked in his throat
+slightly. The mere mechanical effort of continuing the speech he had
+learned by heart two hundred years before, and repeated so often since
+that it had become part of his being, was now almost too much for him.
+The Frenchman was right. They were only just in time. A few days later,
+and the secret would have died with the bird that preserved it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+AN UNFINISHED TALE.
+
+
+For a minute or two Methuselah mumbled inarticulately to himself. Then,
+to their intense discomfiture, he began once more: "In the nineteenth
+year of the reign of his most gracious majesty, King Charles the Second,
+I, Nathaniel Cross--"
+
+"Oh, this will never do," Felix cried. "We haven't got yet to the secret
+at all. Muriel, do try to set him right. He must waste no breath. We
+can't afford now to let him go all over it."
+
+Muriel stretched out her hand and soothed the bird gently as before.
+"Having slain, therefore, my predecessor in the high godship," she
+suggested, in the same singsong voice as the parrot's.
+
+To her immense relief, Methuselah took the hint with charming docility.
+
+"In the high godship," he went on, mechanically, where he had stopped.
+"And this here is the manner whereby I obtained it. The Too-Keela-Keela
+from time to time doth generally appoint any castaway stranger that comes
+to the island to the post of Korong--that is to say, an annual god or
+victim. For, as the year doth renew itself at each change of seasons, so
+do these carribals in their gentilisme believe and hold that the gods of
+the seasons--to wit, the King of the Rain, the Queen of the Clouds, the
+Lord of Green Leaves, the King of Fruits, and others--must needs be
+sleain and renewed at the diverse solstices. Now, it so happened that I,
+on my arrival in the island, was appointed Korong, and promoted to the
+post of King of the Rain, having a native woman assigned me as Queen of
+the Clouds, with whom I might keep company. This woman being, after her
+kind, enamored of me, and anxious to escape her own fate, to be sleain by
+my side, did betray to me that secret which they call in their tongue the
+Great Taboo, and which had been betrayed to herself in turn by a native
+man, her former lover. For the men are instructed in these things in the
+mysteries when they coom of age, but not the women.
+
+"And the Great Taboo is this: No man can becoom a Too-Keela-Keela unless
+he first sleay the man in whom the high god is incarnate for the moment.
+But in order that he may sleay him, he must also himself be a full
+Korong, only those persons who are already gods being capable for the
+highest post in their hierarchy; even as with ourselves, none but he that
+is a deacon may become a priest, and none but he that is a priest may be
+made a bishop. For this reason, then, the Too-Keela-Keela prefers to
+advance a stranger to the post of Korong, seeing that such a person will
+not have been initiated in the mysteries of the island, and therefore
+will not be aware of those sundry steps which must needs be taken of him
+that would inherit the godship.
+
+"Furthermore, even a Korong can only obtain the highest rank of
+Too-Keela-Keela if he order all things according to the forms and
+ceremonies of the Taboo parfectly. For these gentiles are very careful of
+the levitical parts of their religion, deriving the same, as it seems to
+me, from the polity of the Hebrews, the fame of whose tabernacle must
+sure have gone forth through the ends of the woorld, and the knowledge of
+whose temple must have been yet more wide dispersed by Solomon, his
+ships, when they came into these parts to fetch gold from Ophir. And the
+ceremony is, that before any man may sleay the 'arthly tenement of
+Too-Keela-Keela and inherit his soul, which is in very truth, as they do
+think the god himself, he must needs fight with the person in whom
+Too-Keela-Keela doth then dwell, and for this reason: If the holder of
+the soul can defend himself in fight, then it is clear that his strength
+is not one whit decayed, nor is his vigor feailing; nor yet has his
+assailant been able to take his soul from him. But if the Korong in open
+fight do sleay the person in whom Too-Keela-Keela dwells, he becometh at
+once a Too-Keela-Keela himself--that is to say, in their tongue, the Lord
+of Lords, because he hath taken the life of him that preceded him.
+
+"Yet so intricate is the theology and practice of these loathsome
+savages, that not even now have I explained it in full to you, O
+shipwrecked mariner, for your aid and protection. For a Korong, though it
+be a part of his privilege to contend, if he will, with Too-Keela-Keela
+for the high godship and princedom of this isle, may only do so at
+certain appointed times, places, and seasons. Above all things, it is
+necessary that he should first find out the hiding-place of the soul of
+Too-Keela-Keela. For though the Too-Keela-Keela for the time that is, be
+animated by the god, yet, for greater security, he doth not keep his soul
+in his own body, but, being above all things the god of fruitfulness and
+generation, who causes women to bear children, and the plant called taro
+to bring forth its increase, he keepeth his soul in the great sacred tree
+behind his temple, which is thus the Father of All Trees, and the
+chiefest abode of the great god Too-Keela-Keela.
+
+"Nor does Too-Keela-Keela's soul abide equally in every part of this
+aforesaid tree; but in a certain bough of it, resembling a mistletoe,
+which hath yellow leaves, and, being broken off, groweth ever green and
+yellow afresh; which is the central mystery of all their Sathanic
+religion. For in this very bough--easy to be discerned by the eye among
+the green leaves of the tree--" the bird paused and faltered.
+
+Muriel leaned forward in an agony of excitement. "Among the green leaves
+of the tree--" she went on soothing him.
+
+Her voice seemed to give the parrot a fresh impulse to speak. "--Is
+contained, as it were," he continued, feebly, "the divine essence itself,
+the soul and life of Too-Keela-Keela. Whoever, then, being a full Korong,
+breaks this off, hath thus possessed himself of the very god in person.
+This, however, he must do by exceeding stealth; for Too-Keela-Keela,
+or rather the man that bears that name, being the guardian and defender
+of the great god, walks ever up and down, by day and by night, in
+exceeding great cunning, armed with a spear and with a hatchet of stone,
+around the root of the tree, watching jealously over the branch which is,
+as he believes, his own soul and being. I, therefore, being warned of the
+Taboo by the woman that was my consort, did craftily, near the appointed
+time for my own death, creep out of my hut, and my consort, having
+induced one of the wives of Too-Keela-Keela to make him drunken with too
+much of that intoxicating drink which they do call kava, did proceed--did
+proceed--did proceed--In the nineteenth year of the reign of his most
+gracious majesty, King Charles the Second--"
+
+Muriel bent forward once more in an agony of suspense. "Oh, go on, good
+Poll!" she cried. "Go on. Remember it. Did proceed to--"
+
+The single syllable helped Methuselah's memory. "--Did proceed to
+stealthily pluck the bough, and, having shown the same to Fire and Water,
+the guardians of the Taboo, did boldly challenge to single combat the
+bodily tenement of the god, with spear and hatchet, provided for me in
+accordance with ancient custom by Fire and Water. In which combat,
+Heaven mercifully befriending me against my enemy, I did coom out
+conqueror; and was thereupon proclaimed Too-Keela-Keela myself, with
+ceremonies too many and barbarous to mention, lest I raise your gorge at
+them. But that which is most important to tell you for your own guidance
+and safety, O mariner, is this--that being the sole and only end I have
+in imparting this history to so strange a messenger--that after you have
+by craft plucked the sacred branch, and by force of arms over-cootn
+Too-Keela-Keela, it is by all means needful, whether you will or not,
+that submitting to the hateful and gentile custom of this people--of this
+people--Pretty Poll! Pretty Poll! God save--God save the king! Death
+to the nineteenth year of the reign of all arrant knaves and roundheads."
+
+He dropped his head on his breast, and blinked his white eyelids more
+feebly than ever. His strength was failing him fast. The Soul of all dead
+parrots was wearing out. M. Peyron, who had stood by all this time, not
+knowing in any way what might be the value of the bird's disclosures,
+came forward and stroked poor Methuselah with his caressing hand. But
+Methuselah was incapable now of any further effort. He opened his blind
+eyes sleepily for the last, last time, and stared around him with a blank
+stare at the fading universe. "God save the king!" he screamed aloud with
+a terrible gasp, true to his colors still. "God save the king, and to
+hell with all papists!"
+
+Then he fell off his perch, stone dead, on the ground. They were never to
+hear the conclusion of that strange, quaint message from a forgotten age
+to our more sceptical century.
+
+Felix looked at Muriel, and Muriel looked at Felix. They could hardly
+contain themselves with awe and surprise. The parrot's words were so
+human, its speech was so real to them, that they felt as though the
+English Tu-Kila-Kila of two hundred years back had really and truly
+been speaking to them from that perch; it was a human creature indeed
+that lay dead before them. Felix raised the warm body from the ground
+with positive reverence. "We will bury it decently," he said in French,
+turning to M. Peyron. "He was a plucky bird, indeed, and he has carried
+out his master's intentions nobly."
+
+As they spoke, a little rustling in the jungle hard by attracted their
+attention. Felix turned to look. A stealthy brown figure glided away in
+silence through the tangled brushwood. M. Peyron started. "We are
+observed, monsieur," he said. "We must look out for squalls! It is one
+of the Eyes of Tu-Kila-Kila!"
+
+"Let him do his worst!" Felix answered. "We know his secret now, and can
+protect ourselves against him. Let us return to the shade, monsieur, and
+talk this all over. Methuselah has indeed given us something to-day very
+serious to think about."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+TU-KILA-KILA STRIKES.
+
+
+And yet, when all was said and done, knowledge of Tu-Kila-Kila's secret
+didn't seem to bring Felix and Muriel much nearer a solution of their own
+great problems than they had been from the beginning. In spite of all
+Methuselah had told them, they were as far off as ever from securing
+their escape, or even from the chance of sighting an English steamer.
+
+This last was still the main hope and expectation of all three Europeans.
+M. Peyron, who was a bit of a mathematician, had accurately calculated
+the time, from what Felix told him, when the Australasian would pass
+again on her next homeward voyage; and, when that time arrived, it was
+their united intention to watch night and day for the faintest glimmer
+of her lights, or the faintest wreath of her smoke on the far eastern
+horizon. They had ventured to confide their design to all three of
+their Shadows; and the Shadows, attached by the kindness to which they
+were so little accustomed among their own people, had in every case
+agreed to assist them with the canoe, if occasion served them. So for a
+time the two doomed victims subsided into their accustomed calm of
+mingled hope and despair, waiting patiently for the expected arrival of
+the much-longed-for Australasian.
+
+If she took that course once, why not a second time? And if ever she hove
+in sight, might they not hope, after all, to signal to her with their
+rudely constructed heliograph, and stop her?
+
+As for Methuselah's secret, there was only one way, Felix thought, in
+which it could now prove of any use to them. When the actual day of their
+doom drew nigh, he might, perhaps, be tempted to try the fate which
+Nathaniel Cross, of Sunderland, had successfully courted. That might gain
+them at least a little respite. Though even so he hardly knew what good
+it could do him to be elevated for a while into the chief god of the
+island. It might not even avail him to save Muriel's life; for he did not
+doubt that when the awful day itself had actually come the natives would
+do their best to kill her in spite of him, unless he anticipated them by
+fulfilling his own terrible, yet merciful, promise.
+
+Week after week went by--month after month passed--and the date when the
+Australasian might reasonably be expected to reappear drew nearer and
+nearer. They waited and trembled. At last, a few days before the time
+M. Peyron had calculated, as Felix was sitting under the big shady tree
+in his garden one morning, while Muriel, now worn out with hope deferred,
+lay within her hut alone with Mali, a sound of tom-toms and beaten palms
+was heard on the hill-path. The natives around fell on their faces or
+fled. It announced the speedy approach of Tu-Kila-Kila.
+
+By this time both the castaways had grown comparatively accustomed to
+that hideous noise, and to the hateful presence which it preceded and
+heralded. A dozen temple attendants tripped on either side down the
+hillpath, to guard him, clapping their hands in a barbaric measure as
+they went; Fire and Water, in the midst, supported and flanked the divine
+umbrella. Felix rose from his seat with very little ceremony, indeed, as
+the great god crossed the white taboo-line of his precincts, followed
+only beyond the limit by Fire and Water.
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila was in his most insolent vein. He glanced around with a
+horrid light of triumph dancing visibly in his eyes. It was clear he had
+come, intent upon some grand theatrical _coup_. He meant to take the
+white-faced stranger by surprise this time. "Good-morning, O King of the
+Rain," he exclaimed, in a loud voice and with boisterous familiarity.
+"How do you like your outlook now? Things are getting on. Things are
+getting on. The end of your rule is drawing very near, isn't it? Before
+long I must make the seasons change. I must make my sun turn. I must
+twist round my sky. And then, I shall need a new Korong instead of you, O
+pale-faced one!"
+
+Felix looked back at him without moving a muscle.
+
+"I am well," he answered shortly, restraining his anger. "The year turns
+round whether you will or not. You are right that the sun will soon begin
+to move southward on its path again. But many things may happen to all of
+us meanwhile. _I_ am not afraid of you."
+
+As he spoke, he drew his knife, and opened the blade, unostentatiously,
+but firmly. If the worst were really coming now, sooner than he expected,
+he would at least not forget his promise to Muriel.
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila smiled a hateful and ominous smile. "I am a great god," he
+said, calmly, striking an attitude as was his wont. "Hear how my people
+clap their hands in my honor! I order all things. I dispose the course of
+nature in heaven and earth. If I look at a cocoa-nut tree, it dies; if I
+glance at a bread-fruit, it withers away. We will see before long whether
+or not you are afraid of me. Meanwhile, O Korong, I have come to claim my
+dues at your hands. Prepare for your fate. To-morrow the Queen of the
+Clouds must be sealed my bride. Fetch her out, that I may speak with her.
+I have come to tell her so."
+
+It was a thunderbolt from a clear sky, and it fell with terrible effect
+on Felix. For a moment the knife trembled in his grasp with an almost
+irresistible impulse. He could hardly restrain himself, as he heard those
+horrible, incredible words, and saw the loathsome smirk on the speaker's
+face by which they were accompanied, from leaping then and there at the
+savage's throat, and plunging his blade to the haft into the vile
+creature's body. But by a violent effort he mastered his indignation and
+wrath for the present. Planting himself full in front of Tu-Kila-Kila,
+and blocking the way to the door of that sacred English girl's hut--oh,
+how horrible it was to him even to think of her purity being contaminated
+by the vile neighborhood, for one minute, of that loathsome monster! He
+looked full into the wretch's face, and answered very distinctly, in low,
+slow tones, "If you dare to take one step toward the place where that
+lady now rests, if you dare to move your foot one inch nearer, if you
+dare to ask to see her face again, I will plunge the knife hilt-deep into
+your vile heart, and kill you where you stand without one second's
+deliberation. Now you hear my words and you know what I mean. My weapon
+is keener and fiercer than any you Polynesians ever saw. Repeat those
+words once more, and by all that's true and holy, before they're out of
+your mouth I leap upon you and stab you."
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila drew back in sudden surprise. He was unaccustomed to be so
+bearded in his own sacred island. "Well, I shall claim her to-morrow," he
+faltered out, taken aback by Felix's unexpected energy. He paused for a
+second, then he went on more slowly: "To-morrow I will come with all my
+people to claim my bride. This afternoon they will bring her mats of
+grass and necklets of nautilus shell to deck her for her wedding, as
+becomes Tu-Kila-Kila's chosen one. The young maids of Boupari will adorn
+her for her lord, in the accustomed dress of Tu-Kila-Kila's wives. They
+will clap their hands; they will sing the marriage song. Then early in
+the morning I will come to fetch her--and woe to him who strives to
+prevent me!"
+
+Felix looked at him long, with a fixed and dogged look.
+
+"What has made you think of this devilry?" he asked at last, still
+grasping his knife hard, and half undecided whether or not to use it.
+"You have invented all these ideas. You have no claim, even in the horrid
+customs of your savage country, to demand such a sacrifice."
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila laughed loud, a laugh of triumphant and discordant
+merriment. "Ha, ha!" he cried, "you do not understand our customs, and
+will you teach _me_, the very high god, the guardian of the laws and
+practices of Boupari? You know nothing; you are as a little child. I am
+absolute wisdom. With every Korong, this is always our rule. Till the
+moon is full, on the last month before we offer up the sacrifice, the
+Queen of the Clouds dwells apart with her Shadow in her own new temple.
+So our fathers decreed it. But at the full of the moon, when the day has
+come, the usage is that Tu-Kila-Kila, the very high god, confers upon her
+the honor of making her his bride. It is a mighty honor. The feast is
+great. Blood flows like water. For seven days and nights, then, she lives
+with Tu-Kila-Kila in his sacred abode, the threshold of Heaven; she eats
+of human flesh; she tastes human blood; she drinks abundantly of the
+divine kava. At the end of that time, in accordance with the custom of
+our fathers, those great dead gods, Tu-Kila-Kila performs the high act of
+sacrifice. He puts on his mask of the face of a shark, for he is holy and
+cruel; he brings forth the Queen of the Clouds before the eyes of all his
+people, attired in her wedding robes, and made drunk with kava. Then he
+gashes her with knives; he offers her up to Heaven that accepted her; and
+the King of the Rain he offers after her; and all the people eat of their
+flesh, Korong! and drink of their blood, so that the body of gods and
+goddesses may dwell within all of them. And when all is done, the high
+god chooses a new king and queen at his will (for he is a mighty god),
+who rule for six moons more, and then are offered up, at the end, in like
+fashion."
+
+As he spoke, the ferocious light that gleamed in the savage's eye made
+Felix positively mad with anger. But he answered nothing directly. "Is
+this so?" he asked, turning for confirmation to Fire and Water. "Is it
+the custom of Boupari that Tu-Kila-Kila should wed the Queen of the
+Clouds seven days before the date appointed for her sacrifice?"
+
+The King of Fire and the King of Water, tried guardians of the etiquette
+of Tu-Kila-Kila's court, made answer at once with one accord, "It is so,
+O King of the Rain. Your lips have said it. Tu-Kila-Kila speaks the
+solemn truth. He is a very great god. Such is the custom of Boupari."
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila laughed his triumph in harsh, savage outbursts.
+
+But Felix drew back for a second, irresolute. At last he stood face to
+face with the absolute need for immediate action. Now was almost the
+moment when he must redeem his terrible promise to Muriel. And yet, even
+so, there was still one chance of life, one respite left. The mystic
+yellow bough on the sacred banyan! the Great Taboo! the wager of battle
+with Tu-Kila-Kila! Quick as lightning it all came up in his excited
+brain. Time after time, since he heard Methuselah's strange message
+from the grave, had he passed Tu-Kila-Kila's temple enclosure and
+looked up with vague awe at that sacred parasite that grew so
+conspicuously in a fork of the branches. It was easy to secure it, if no
+man guarded. There still remained one night. In that one short night he
+must do his best--and worst. If all then failed, he must die himself with
+Muriel!
+
+For two seconds he hesitated. It was hateful even to temporize with so
+hideous a proposition. But for Muriel's sake, for her dear life's sake,
+he must meet these savages with guile for guile. "If it be, indeed, the
+custom of Boupari," he answered back, with pale and trembling lips, "and
+if I, one man, am powerless to prevent it, I will give your message,
+myself, to the Queen of the Clouds, and you may send, as you say, your
+wedding decorations. But come what will--mark this--you shall not see her
+yourself to-day. You shall not speak to her. There I draw a line--so,
+with my stick in the dust, if you try to advance one step beyond, I stab
+you to the heart. Wait till to-morrow to take your prey. Give me one more
+night. Great god as you are, if you are wise, you will not drive an angry
+man to utter desperation."
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila looked with a suspicious side glance at the gleaming steel
+blade Felix still fingered tremulously. Though Boupari was one of those
+rare and isolated small islands unvisited as yet by European trade, he
+had, nevertheless, heard enough of the sailing gods to know that their
+skill was deep and their weapons very dangerous. It would be foolish to
+provoke this man to wrath too soon. To-morrow, when taboo was removed,
+and all was free license, he would come when he willed and take his
+bride, backed up by the full force of his assembled people. Meanwhile,
+why provoke a brother god too far? After all, in a little more than a
+week from now the pale-faced Korong would be eaten and digested!
+
+"Very well," he said, sulkily, but still with the sullen light of revenge
+gleaming bright in his eye. "Take my message to the queen. You may be my
+herald. Tell her what honor is in store for her--to be first the wife and
+then the meat of Tu-Kila-Kila! She is a very fair woman. I like her well.
+I have longed for her for months. Tomorrow, at the early dawn, by the
+break of day, I will come with all my people and take her home by main
+force to me."
+
+He looked at Felix and scowled, an angry scowl of revenge. Then, as he
+turned and walked away, under cover of the great umbrella, with its
+dangling pendants on either side, the temple attendants clapped their
+hands in unison. Fire and Water marched slow and held the umbrella over
+him. As he disappeared in the distance, and the sound of his tom-toms
+grew dim on the hills, Toko, the Shadow, who had lain flat, trembling, on
+his face in the hut while the god was speaking, came out and looked
+anxiously and fearfully after him.
+
+"The time is ripe," he said, in a very low voice to Felix. "A Korong may
+strike. All the people of Boupari murmur among themselves. They say this
+fellow has held the spirit of Tu-Kila-Kila within himself too long. He
+waxes insolent. They think it is high time the great God of Heaven should
+find before long some other fleshly tabernacle."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+A RASH RESOLVE.
+
+
+The rest of that day was a time of profound and intense anxiety. Felix
+and Muriel remained alone in their huts, absorbed in plans of escape, but
+messengers of many sorts from chiefs and gods kept continually coming to
+them. The natives evidently regarded it as a period of preparation. The
+Eyes of Tu-Kila-Kila surrounded their precinct; yet Felix couldn't help
+noticing that they seemed in many ways less watchful than of old, and
+that they whispered and conferred very much in a mysterious fashion with
+the people of the village. More than once Toko shook his head, sagely,
+"If only any one dared break the Great Taboo," he said, with some terror
+on his face, "our people would be glad. It would greatly please them.
+They are tired of this Tu-Kila-Kila. He has held the god in his breast
+far, far too long. They would willingly see some other in place of him."
+
+Before noon, the young girls of the village, bringing native mats and
+huge strings of nautilus shells, trooped up to the hut, like bridesmaids,
+with flowers in their hands, to deck Muriel for her approaching wedding.
+Before them they carried quantities of red and brown tappa-cloth and
+very fine net-work, the dowry to be presented by the royal bride to her
+divine husband. Within the hut, they decked out the Queen of the Clouds
+with garlands of flowers and necklets of shells, in solemn native
+fashion, bewailing her fate all the time to a measured dirge in their
+own language. Muriel could see that their sympathy, though partly
+conventional, was largely real as well. Many of the young girls seized
+her hand convulsively from time to time, and kissed it with genuine
+feeling. The gentle young English woman had won their savage hearts
+by her purity and innocence. "Poor thing, poor thing," they said,
+stroking her hand tenderly. "She is too good for Korong! Too good for
+Tu-Kila-Kila! If only we knew the Great Taboo like the men, we would tell
+her everything. She is too good to die. We are sorry she is to be
+sacrificed!"
+
+But when all their preparations were finished, the chief among them
+raised a calabash with a little scented oil in it, and poured a few drops
+solemnly on Muriel's head. "Oh, great god!" she said, in her own tongue,
+"we offer this sacrifice, a goddess herself, to you. We obey your words.
+You are very holy. We will each of us eat a portion of her flesh at your
+feast. So give us good crops, strong health, many children!"
+
+"What does she say?" Muriel asked, pale and awestruck, of Mali.
+
+Mali translated the words with perfect _sang-froid_. At that awful sound
+Muriel drew back, chill and cold to the marrow. How inconceivable was the
+state of mind of these terrible people! They were really sorry for her;
+they kissed her hand with fervor; and yet they deliberately and solemnly
+proposed to eat her!
+
+Toward evening the young girls at last retired, in regular order, to the
+clapping of hands, and Felix was left alone with Muriel and the Shadows.
+
+Already he had explained to Muriel what he intended to do; and Muriel,
+half dazed with terror and paralyzed by these awful preparations,
+consented passively. "But how if you never come back, Felix?" she cried
+at last, clinging to him passionately.
+
+Felix looked at her with a fixed look. "I have thought of that," he said.
+"M. Peyron, to whom I sent a message by flashes, has helped me in my
+difficulty. This bowl has poison in it. Peyron sent it to me to-day. He
+prepared it himself from the root of the kava bean. If by sunrise
+to-morrow you have heard no news, drink it off at once. It will instantly
+kill you. You shall _not_ fall alive into that creature's clutches."
+
+By slow degrees the evening wore on, and night approached--the last night
+that remained to them. Felix had decided to make his attempt about one in
+the morning. The moon was nearly full now, and there would be plenty
+of light. Supposing he succeeded, if they gained nothing else, they would
+gain at least a day or two's respite.
+
+As dusk set in, and they sat by the door of the hut, they were all
+surprised to see Ula approach the precinct stealthily through the
+jungle, accompanied by two of Tu-Kila-Kila's Eyes, yet apparently on some
+strange and friendly message. She beckoned imperiously with one finger to
+Toko to cross the line. The Shadow rose, and without one word of
+explanation went out to speak to her. The woman gave her message in
+short, sharp sentences. "We have found out all," she said, breathing
+hard. "Fire and Water have learned it. But Tu-Kila-Kila himself knows
+nothing. We have found out that the King of the Rain has discovered the
+secret of the Great Taboo. He heard it from the Soul of all dead parrots.
+Tu-Kila-Kila's Eyes saw, and learned, and understood. But they said
+nothing to Tu-Kila-Kila. For my counsel was wise; I planned that they
+should not, with Fire and Water. Fire and Water and all the people of
+Boupari think, with me, the time has come that there should arise among
+us a new Tu-Kila-Kila. This one let his blood fall out upon the dust of
+the ground. His luck has gone. We have need of another."
+
+"Then for what have you come?" Toko asked, all awestruck. It was terrible
+to him for a woman to meddle in such high matters.
+
+"I have come," Ula answered, laying her hand on his arm, and holding her
+face close to his with profound solemnity--"I have come to say to the
+King of the Rain, 'Whatever you do, that do quickly.' To-night I will
+engage to keep Tu-Kila-Kila in his temple. He shall see nothing. He
+shall hear nothing. I know not the Great Taboo; but I know from him this
+much--that if by wile or guile I keep him alone in his temple to-night,
+the King of the Rain may fight with him in single combat; and if the King
+of the Rain conquers in the battle, he becomes himself the home of the
+great deity."
+
+She nodded thrice, with her hands on her forehead, and withdrew as
+stealthily as she had come through the jungle. The Eyes of Tu-Kila-Kila,
+falling into line, remained behind, and kept watch upon the huts with the
+closest apparent scrutiny.
+
+More than ever they were hemmed in by mystery on mystery.
+
+The Shadow went back and reported to Felix. Felix, turning it over in his
+own mind, wondered and debated. Was this true, or a trap to lure him to
+destruction?
+
+As the night wore on, and the hour drew nigh, Muriel sat beside her
+friend and lover, in blank despair and agony. How could she ever allow
+him to leave her now? How could she venture to remain alone with Mali in
+her hut in this last extremity? It was awful to be so girt with
+mysterious enemies. "I must go with you, Felix! I must go, too!" she
+cried over and over again. "I daren't remain behind with all these awful
+men. And then, if he kills either of us, he will kill us at least both
+together."
+
+But Felix knew he might do nothing of the sort. A more terrible chance
+was still in reserve. He might spare Muriel. And against that awful
+possibility he felt it his duty now to guard at all hazard.
+
+"No, Muriel," he said, kissing her, and holding her pale hand, "I must go
+alone. You can't come with me. If I return, we will have gained at least
+a respite, till the Australasian may turn up. If I don't, you will at any
+rate have strength of mind left to swallow the poison, before
+Tu-Kila-Kila comes to claim you."
+
+Hour after hour passed by slowly, and Felix and the Shadow watched the
+stars at the door, to know when the hour for the attempt had arrived. The
+eyes of Tu-Kila-Kila, peering silent from just beyond the line, saw them
+watching all the time, but gave no sign or token of disapproval. With
+heads bent low, and tangled hair about their faces, they stood like
+statues, watching, watching sullenly. Were they only waiting till he
+moved, Felix wondered; and would they then hasten off by short routes
+through the jungle to warn their master of the impending conflict?
+
+At last the hour came when Felix felt sure there was the greatest chance
+of Tu-Kila-Kila sleeping soundly in his hut, and forgetting the defence
+of the sacred bough on the holy banyan-tree. He rose from his seat with a
+gesture for silence, and moved forward to Muriel. The poor girl flung
+herself, all tears, into his arms. "Oh, Felix, Felix," she cried, "redeem
+your promise now! Kill us both here together, and then, at least, I shall
+never be separated from you! It wouldn't be wrong! It can't be wrong! We
+would surely be forgiven if we did it only to escape falling into the
+hands of these terrible savages!"
+
+Felix clasped her to his bosom with a faltering heart. "No, Muriel," he
+said, slowly. "Not yet. Not yet. I must leave no opening on earth untried
+by which I can possibly or conceivably save you. It's as hard for me
+to leave you here alone as for you to be left. But for your own dear
+sake, I must steel myself. I must do it."
+
+He kissed her many times over. He wiped away her tears. Then, with a
+gentle movement, he untwined her clasping arms. "You must let me go, my
+own darling," he said, "You must let me go, without crossing the border.
+If you pass beyond the taboo-line to-night, Heaven only knows what,
+perhaps, may happen to you. We must give these people no handle of
+offence. Good-night, Muriel, my own heart's wife; and if I never come
+back, then good-by forever."
+
+She clung to his arm still. He disentangled himself, gently. The Shadow
+rose at the same moment, and followed in silence to the open door. Muriel
+rushed after them, wildly. "Oh, Felix, Felix, come back," she cried,
+bursting into wild floods of hot, fierce tears. "Come back and let me die
+with you! Let me die! Let me die with you!"
+
+Felix crossed the white line without one word of reply, and went forth
+into the night, half unmanned by this effort. Muriel sank, where she
+stood, into Mali's arms. The girl caught her and supported her. But
+before she had fainted quite away, Muriel had time vaguely to see and
+note one significant fact. The Eyes of Tu-Kila-Kila, who stood watching
+the huts with lynx-like care, nodded twice to Toko, the Shadow, as he
+passed between them; then they stealthily turned and dogged the two men's
+footsteps afar off in the jungle.
+
+Muriel was left by herself in the hut, face to face with Mali.
+
+"Let us pray, Mali," she cried, seizing her Shadow's arm.
+
+And Mali, moved suddenly by some half-obliterated impulse, exclaimed in
+concert, in a terrified voice, "Let us pray to Methodist God in heaven!"
+
+For her life, too, hung on the issue of that rash endeavor.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+A STRANGE ALLY.
+
+
+In Tu-Kila-Kila's temple-hut, meanwhile, the jealous, revengeful god,
+enshrined among his skeletons, was having in his turn an anxious and
+doubtful time of it. Ever since his sacred blood had stained the dust of
+earth by the Frenchman's cottage and in his own temple, Tu-Kila-Kila,
+for all his bluster, had been deeply stirred and terrified in his inmost
+soul by that unlucky portent. A savage, even if he be a god, is always
+superstitious. Could it be that his own time was, indeed, drawing nigh?
+That he, who had remorselessly killed and eaten so many hundreds of human
+victims, was himself to fall a prey to some more successful competitor?
+Had the white-faced stranger, the King of the Rain, really learned the
+secrets of the Great Taboo from the Soul of all dead parrots? Did that
+mysterious bird speak the tongue of these new fire-bearing Korongs,
+whose doom was fixed for the approaching solstice? Tu-Kila-Kila wondered
+and doubted. His suspicions were keen, and deeply aroused. Late that
+night he still lurked by the sacred banyan-tree, and when at last he
+retired to his own inner temple, white with the grinning skulls of the
+victims he had devoured, it was with strict injunctions to Fire and
+Water, and to his Eyes that watched there, to bring him word at once of
+any projected aggression on the part of the stranger.
+
+Within the temple-hut, however, Ula awaited him. That was a pleasant
+change. The beautiful, supple, satin-skinned Polynesian looked more
+beautiful and more treacherous than ever that fateful evening. Her great
+brown limbs, smooth and glossy as pearl, were set off by a narrow girdle
+or waistband of green and scarlet leaves, twined spirally around her.
+Armlets of nautilus shell threw up the dainty plumpness of her soft,
+round forearm. A garland hung festooned across one shapely shoulder;
+her bosom was bare or but half hidden by the crimson hibiscus that
+nestled voluptuously upon it. As Tu-Kila-Kila entered, she lifted her
+large eyes, and, smiling, showed two even rows of pearly white teeth. "My
+master has come!" she cried, holding up both lissome arms with a gesture
+to welcome him. "The great god relaxes his care of the world for a while.
+All goes on well. He leaves his sun to sleep and his stars to shine, and
+he retires to rest on the unworthy bosom of her, his mate, his meat, that
+is honored to love him."
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila was scarcely just then in a mood for dalliance. "The Queen
+of the Clouds comes hither to-morrow," he answered, casting a somewhat
+contemptuous glance at Ula's more dusky and solid charms. "I go to
+seek her with the wedding gifts early in the morning. For a week she
+shall be mine. And after that--" he lifted his tomahawk and brought it
+down on a huge block of wood significantly.
+
+Ula smiled once more, that deep, treacherous smile of hers, and showed
+her white teeth even deeper than ever. "If my lord, the great god, rises
+so early to-morrow," she said, sidling up toward him voluptuously, "to
+seek one more bride for his sacred temple, all the more reason he should
+take his rest and sleep soundly to-night. Is he not a god? Are not his
+limbs tired? Does he not need divine silence and slumber?"
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila pouted. "I could sleep more soundly," he said, with a snort,
+"if I knew what my enemy, the Korong, is doing. I have set my Eyes to
+watch him, yet I do not feel secure. They are not to be trusted. I shall
+be happier far when I have killed and eaten him." He passed his hand
+across his bosom with a reflective air. You have a great sense of
+security toward your enemy, no doubt, when you know that he slumbers,
+well digested, within you.
+
+Ula raised herself on her elbow, and gazed snake-like into his face, "My
+lord's Eyes are everywhere," she said, reverently, with every mark of
+respect. "He sees and knows all things. Who can hide anything on earth
+from his face? Even when he is asleep, his Eyes watch well for him. Then
+why should the great god, the Measurer of Heaven and Earth, the King of
+Men, fear a white-faced stranger? To-morrow the Queen of the Clouds will
+be yours, and the stranger will be abased: ha, ha, he will grieve at it!
+To-night, Fire and Water keep guard and watch over you. Whoever would
+hurt you must pass through Fire and Water before he reach your door. Fire
+would burn, Water would drown. This is a Great Taboo. No stranger dare
+face it."
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila lifted himself up in his thrasonic mood. "If he did," he
+cried, swelling himself, "I would shrivel him to ashes with one flash of
+my eyes. I would scorch him to a cinder with one stroke of my lightning."
+
+Ula smiled again, a well-satisfied smile. She was working her man up.
+"Tu-Kila-Kila is great," she repeated, slowly. "All earth obeys him. All
+heaven fears him."
+
+The savage took her hand with a doubtful air. "And yet," he said, toying
+with it, half irresolute, "when I went to the white-faced stranger's hut
+this morning, he did not speak fair; he answered me insolently. His words
+were bold. He talked to me as one talks to a man, not to a great god.
+Ula, I wonder if he knows my secret?"
+
+Ula started back in well-affected horror. "A white-faced stranger from
+the sun know your secret, O great king!" she cried, hiding her face in a
+square of cloth. "See me beat my breast! Impossible! Impossible! No
+one of your subjects would dare to tell him so great a taboo. It would be
+rank blasphemy. If they did, your anger would utterly consume them!"
+
+"That is true," Tu-Kila-Kila said, practically, "but I might not discover
+it. I am a very great god. My Eyes are everywhere. No corner of the world
+is hid from my gaze. All the concerns of heaven and earth are my care,
+And, therefore; sometimes, I overlook some detail."
+
+"No man alive would dare to tell the Great Taboo!" Ula repeated,
+confidently. "Why, even I myself, who am the most favored of your
+wives, and who am permitted to bask in the light of your presence--even
+I, Ula--I do not know it. How much less, then, the spirit from the sun,
+the sailing god, the white-faced stranger!"
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila pursed up his brow and looked preternaturally wise, as the
+savage loves to do. "But the parrot," he cried, "the Soul of all dead
+parrots! _He_ knew the secret, they say:--I taught it him myself in an
+ancient day, many, many years ago--when no man now living was born, save
+only I--in another incarnation--and _he_ may have told it. For the
+strangers, they say, speak the language of birds; and in the language of
+birds did I tell the Great Taboo to him."
+
+Ula pooh-poohed the mighty man-god's fears. "No, no," she cried, with
+confidence; "he can never have told them. If he had, would not your Eyes
+that watch ever for all that happens on heaven or earth, have straightway
+reported it to you? The parrot died without yielding up the tale. Were it
+otherwise, Toko, who loves and worships you, would surely have told me."
+
+The man-god puckered his brows slightly, as if he liked not the security.
+"Well, somehow, Ula," he said, feeling her soft brown arms with his
+divine hand, slowly, "I have always had my doubts since that day the Soul
+of all dead parrots bit me. A vicious bird! What did he mean by his
+bite?" He lowered his voice and looked at her fixedly. "Did not his
+spilling my blood portend," he asked, with a shudder of fear, "that
+through that ill-omened bird I, who was once Lavita, should cease to be
+Tu-Kila-Kila?"
+
+Ula smiled contentedly again. To say the truth, that was precisely the
+interpretation she herself had put on that terrific omen. The parrot had
+spilled Tu-Kila-Kila's sacred blood upon the soil of earth. According to
+her simple natural philosophy, that was a certain sign that through the
+parrot's instrumentality Tu-Kila-Kila's life would be forfeited to the
+great eternal earth-spirit. Or, rather, the earth-spirit would claim the
+blood of the man Lavita, in whose body it dwelt, and would itself migrate
+to some new earthly tabernacle.
+
+But for all that, she dissembled. "Great god," she cried, smiling, a
+benign smile, "you are tired! You are thirsty! Care for heaven and
+earth has wearied you out. You feel the fatigue of upholding the sun in
+heaven. Your arms must ache. Your thews must give under you. Drink of the
+soul-inspiring juice of the kava! My hands have prepared the divine cup.
+For Tu-Kila-Kila did I make it--fresh, pure, invigorating!"
+
+She held the bowl to his lips with an enticing smile. Tu-Kila-Kila
+hesitated and glanced around him suspiciously. "What if the white-faced
+stranger should come to-night?" he whispered, hoarsely. "He may have
+discovered the Great Taboo, after all. Who can tell the ways of the
+world, how they come about? My people are so treacherous. Some traitor
+may have betrayed it to him."
+
+"Impossible," the beautiful, snake-like woman answered, with a strong
+gesture of natural dissent. "And even if he came, would not kava, the
+divine, inspiriting drink of the gods, in which dwell the embodied souls
+of our fathers--would not kava make you more vigorous, strong for the
+fight? Would it not course through your limbs like fire? Would it not
+pour into your soul the divine, abiding strength of your mighty mother,
+the eternal earth-spirit?"
+
+"A little," Tu-Kila-Kila said, yielding, "but not too much. Too much
+would stupefy me. When the spirits, that the kava-tree sucks up from the
+earth, are too strong within us, they overpower our own strength, so that
+even I, the high god--even I can do nothing."
+
+Ula held the bowl to his lips, and enticed him to drink with her
+beautiful eyes. "A deep draught, O supporter of the sun in heaven," she
+cried, pressing his arm tenderly. "Am I not Ula? Did I not brew it for
+you? Am I not the chief and most favored among your women? I will sit at
+the door. I will watch all night. I will not close an eye. Not a footfall
+on the ground but my ear shall hear it."
+
+"Do." Tu-Kila-Kila said, laconically. "I fear Fire and Water. Those gods
+love me not. Fain would they make me migrate into some other body. But I
+myself like it not. This one suits me admirably. Ula, that kava is
+stronger than you are used to make it."
+
+"No, no," Ula cried, pressing it to his lips a second time, passionately.
+"You are a very great god. You are tired; it overcomes you. And if you
+sleep, I will watch. Fire and Water dare not disobey your commands. Are
+you not great? Your Eyes are everywhere. And I, even I, will be as one of
+them."
+
+The savage gulped down a few more mouthfuls of the intoxicating liquid.
+Then he glanced up again suddenly with a quick, suspicious look. The
+cunning of his race gave him wisdom in spite of the deadly strength of
+the kava Ula had brewed too deep for him. With a sudden resolve, he rose
+and staggered out. "You are a serpent, woman!" he cried angrily, seeing
+the smile that lurked upon Ula's face. "To-morrow I will kill you. I will
+take the white woman for my bride, and she and I will feast off your
+carrion body. You have tried to betray me, but you are not cunning
+enough, not strong enough. No woman shall kill me. I am a very great god.
+I will not yield. I will wait by the tree. This is a trap you have set,
+but I do not fall into it. If the King of the Rain comes, I shall be
+there to meet him."
+
+He seized his spear and hatchet and walked forth, erect, without one sign
+of drunkenness. Ula trembled to herself as she saw him go. She was
+playing a deep game. Had she given him only just enough kava to
+strengthen and inspire him?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+WAGER OF BATTLE.
+
+
+Felix wound his way painfully through the deep fern-brake of the jungle,
+by no regular path, so as to avoid exciting the alarm of the natives, and
+to take Tu-Kila-Kila's palace-temple from the rear, where the big tree,
+which overshadowed it with its drooping branches, was most easily
+approachable. As he and Toko crept on, bending low, through that dense
+tropical scrub, in deathly silence, they were aware all the time of a
+low, crackling sound that rang ever some paces in the rear on their trail
+through the forest. It was Tu-Kila-Kila's Eyes, following them stealthily
+from afar, footstep for footstep, through the dense undergrowth of bush,
+and the crisp fallen leaves and twigs that snapped light beneath their
+footfall. What hope of success with those watchful spies, keen as beagles
+and cruel as bloodhounds, following ever on their track? What chance of
+escape for Felix and Muriel, with the cannibal man-gods toils laid round
+on every side to insure their destruction?
+
+Silently and cautiously the two men groped their way on through the dark
+gloom of the woods, in spite of their mute pursuers. The moonlight
+flickered down athwart the trackless soil as they went; the hum of
+insects innumerable droned deep along the underbrush. Now and then the
+startled scream of a night jar broke the monotony of the buzz that was
+worse than silence; owls boomed from the hollow trees, and fireflies
+darted dim through the open spaces. At last they emerged upon the cleared
+area of the temple. There Felix, without one moment's hesitation, with a
+firm and resolute tread, stepped over the white coral line that marked
+the taboo of the great god's precincts. That was a declaration of open
+war; he had crossed the Rubicon of Tu-Kila-Kila's empire. Toko stood
+trembling on the far side; none might pass that mystic line unbidden and
+live, save the Korong alone who could succeed in breaking off the bough
+"with yellow leaves, resembling a mistletoe," of which Methuselah, the
+parrot, had told Felix and Muriel, and so earn the right to fight for his
+life with the redoubted and redoubtable Tu-Kila-Kila.
+
+As he stepped over the taboo-line, Felix was aware of many native eyes
+fixed stonily upon him from the surrounding precinct. Clearly they were
+awaiting him. Yet not a soul gave the alarm; that in itself would have
+been to break taboo. Every man or woman among the temple attendants
+within that charmed circle stood on gaze curiously. Close by, Ula, the
+favorite wife of the man-god, crouched low by the hut, with one finger
+on her treacherous lips, bending eagerly forward, in silent expectation
+of what next might happen. Once, and once only, she glanced at Toko
+with a mute sign of triumph; then she fixed her big eyes on Felix in
+tremulous anxiety; for to her as to him, life and death now hung
+absolutely on the issue of his enterprise. A little farther back the King
+of Fire and the King of Water, in full sacrificial robes, stood smiling
+sardonically. For them it was merely a question of one master more or
+less, one Tu-Kila-Kila in place of another. They had no special interest
+in the upshot of the contest, save in so far as they always hated most
+the man who for the moment held by his own strong arm the superior
+godship over them. Around, Tu-Kila-Kila's Eyes kept watch and ward in
+sinister silence. Taboo was stronger than even the commands of the high
+god himself. When once a Korong had crossed that fatal line, unbidden and
+unwelcomed by Tu-Kila-Kila, he came as Tu-Kila-Kila's foe and would-be
+successor; the duty of every guardian of the temple was then to see fair
+play between the god that was and the god that might be--the Tu-Kila-Kila
+of the hour and the Tu-Kila-Kila who might possibly supplant him.
+
+"Let the great spirit itself choose which body it will inhabit," the King
+of Fire murmured in a soft, low voice, glancing toward a dark spot at the
+foot of the big tree. The moonlight fell dim through the branches on the
+place where he looked. The glibbering bones of dead victims rattled
+lightly in the wind. Felix's eyes followed the King of Fire's, and saw,
+lying asleep upon the ground, Tu-Kila-Kila himself, with his spear and
+tomahawk.
+
+He lay there, huddled up by the very roots of the tree, breathing deep
+and regularly. Right over his head projected the branch, in one part of
+whose boughs grew the fateful parasite. By the dim light of the moon,
+straggling through the dense foliage, Felix could see its yellow leaves
+distinctly. Beneath it hung a skeleton, suspended by invisible cords,
+head downward from the branches. It was the skeleton of a previous Korong
+who had tried in vain to reach the bough, and perished. Tu-Kila-Kila had
+made high feast on the victim's flesh; his bones, now collected together
+and cunningly fastened with native rope, served at once as a warning and
+as a trap or pitfall for all who might rashly venture to follow him.
+
+Felix stood for one moment, alone and awe-struck, a solitary civilized
+man, among those hideous surroundings. Above, the cold moon; all about,
+the grim, stolid, half-hostile natives; close by, that strange,
+serpentine, savage wife, guarding, cat-like, the sleep of her cannibal
+husband; behind, the watchful Eyes of Tu-Kila-Kila, waiting ever in the
+background, ready to raise a loud shout of alarm and warning the moment
+the fatal branch was actually broken, but mute, by their vows, till that
+moment was accomplished. Then a sudden wild impulse urged him on to the
+attempt. The banyan had dropped down rooting offsets to the ground, after
+the fashion of its kind, from its main branches. Felix seized one of
+these and swung himself lightly up, till he reached the very limb on
+which the sacred parasite itself was growing.
+
+To get to the parasite, however, he must pass directly above
+Tu-Kila-Kila's head, and over the point where that ghastly grinning
+skeleton was suspended, as by an unseen hair, from the fork that bore it.
+
+He walked along, balancing himself, and clutching, as he went, at the
+neighboring boughs, while Tu-Kila-Kila, overcome with the kava, slept
+stolidly and heavily on beneath him. At last he was almost within grasp
+of the parasite. Could he lunge out and clutch it? One try--one effort!
+No, no; he almost lost footing and fell over in the attempt. He couldn't
+keep his balance so. He must try farther on. Come what might, he must go
+past the skeleton.
+
+The grisly mass swung again, clanking its bones as it swung, and groaned
+in the wind ominously. The breeze whistled audibly through its hollow
+skull and vacant eye-sockets. Tu-Kila-Kila turned uneasily in his sleep
+below. Felix saw there was not one instant of time to be lost now. He
+passed on boldly; and as he passed, a dozen thin cords of paper mulberry,
+stretched every way in an invisible network among the boughs, too small
+to be seen in the dim moonlight, caught him with their toils and almost
+overthrew him. They broke with his weight, and Felix himself, tumbling
+blindly, fell forward. At the cost of a sprained wrist and a great jerk
+on his bruised fingers, he caught at a bough by his side, but wrenched it
+away suddenly. It was touch and go. At the very same moment, the skeleton
+fell heavily, and rattled on the ground beside Tu-Kila-Kila.
+
+Before Felix could discover what had actually happened, a very great
+shout went up all round below, and made him stagger with excitement.
+Tu-Kila-Kila was awake, and had started up, all intent, mad with wrath
+and kava. Glaring about him wildly, and brandishing his great spear in
+his stalwart hands, he screamed aloud, in a perfect frenzy of passion and
+despair: "Where is he, the Korong? Bring him on, my meat! Let me devour
+his heart! Let me tear him to pieces. Let me drink of his blood! Let me
+kill him and eat him!"
+
+Sick and desperate at the accident, Felix, in turn, clinging hard to his
+bough with one hand, gazed wildly about him to look for the parasite. But
+it had gone as if by magic. He glanced around in despair, vaguely
+conscious that nothing was left for it now but to drop to the ground
+and let himself be killed at leisure by that frantic savage. Yet even as
+he did so, he was aware of that great cry--a cry as of triumph--still
+rending the air. Fire and Water had rushed forward, and were holding back
+Tu-Kila-Kila, now black in the face from rage, with all their might. Ula
+was smiling a malicious joy. The Eyes were all agog with interest and
+excitement. And from one and all that wild scream rose unanimous to the
+startled sky: "He has it! He has it! The Soul of the Tree! The Spirit of
+the World! The great god's abode. Hold off your hands, Lavita, son of
+Sami! Your trial has come. He has it! He has it!"
+
+Felix looked about him with a whirling brain. His eye fell suddenly.
+There, in his own hand, lay the fateful bough. In his efforts to steady
+himself, he had clutched at it by pure accident, and broken it off
+unawares with the force of his clutching. As fortune would have it, he
+grasped it still. His senses reeled. He was almost dead with excitement,
+suspense, and uncertainty, mingled with pain of his wrenched wrist. But
+for Muriel's sake he pulled himself together. Gazing down and trying hard
+to take it all in--that strange savage scene--he saw that Tu-Kila-Kila
+was making frantic attempts to lunge at him with the spear, while the
+King of Fire and the King of Water, stern and relentless, were holding
+him off by main force, and striving their best to appease and quiet him.
+
+There was an awful pause. Then a voice broke the stillness from beyond
+the taboo-line:
+
+"The Shadow of the King of the Rain speaks," it said, in very solemn,
+conventional accents. "Korong! Korong! The Great Taboo is broken. Fire
+and Water, hold him in whom dwells the god till my master comes. He has
+the Soul of all the spirits of the wood in his hands. He will fight for
+his right. Taboo! Taboo! I, Toko, have said it."
+
+He clapped his hands thrice.
+
+Tu-Kila-Kila made a wild effort to break away once more. But the King of
+Fire, standing opposite him, spoke still louder and clearer. "If you
+touch the Korong before the line is drawn," he said, with a voice of
+authority, "you are no Tu-Kila-Kila, but an outcast and a criminal. All
+the people will hold you with forked sticks, while the Korong burns you
+alive slowly, limb by limb, with me, who am Fire, the fierce, the
+consuming. I will scorch you and bake you till you are as a bamboo in the
+flame. Taboo! Taboo! Taboo! I, Fire, have said it."
+
+The King of Water, with three attendants, forced Tu-Kila-Kila on one
+side for a moment. Ula stood by and smiled pleased compliance. A temple
+slave, trembling all over at this conflict of the gods, brought out a
+calabash full of white coral-sand. The King of Water spat on it and
+blessed it. By this time a dozen natives, at least, had assembled outside
+the taboo-line, and stood eagerly watching the result of the combat. The
+temple slave made a long white mark with the coral-sand on one side of
+the cleared area. Then he handed the calabash solemnly to Toko. Toko
+crossed the sacred precinct with a few inaudible words of muttered charm,
+to save the Taboo, as prescribed in the mysteries. Then he drew a similar
+line on the ground on his side, some twenty yards off. "Descend, O my
+lord!" he cried to Felix; and Felix, still holding the bough tight in his
+hand, swung himself blindly from the tree, and took his place by Toko.
+
+"Toe the line!" Toko cried, and Felix toed it.
+
+"Bring up your god!" the Shadow called out aloud to the King of Water.
+And the King of Water, using no special ceremony with so great a duty,
+dragged Tu-Kila-Kila helplessly along with him to the farther taboo-line.
+
+The King of Water brought a spear and tomahawk. He handed them to Felix.
+"With these weapons," he said, "fight, and merit heaven. I hold the bough
+meanwhile--the victor takes it."
+
+The King of Fire stood out between the lists. "Korongs and gods," he
+said, "the King of the Rain has plucked the sacred bough, according to
+our fathers' rites, and claims trial which of you two shall henceforth
+hold the sacred soul of the world, the great Tu-Kila-Kila. Wager of
+Battle decides the day. Keep toe to line. At the end of my words, forth,
+forward, and fight for it. The great god knows his own, and will choose
+his abode. Taboo, Taboo, Taboo! I, Fire, have spoken it."
+
+Scarcely were the words well out of his mouth, when, with a wild whoop of
+rage, Tu-Kila-Kila, who had the advantage of knowing the rules of the
+game, so to speak, dashed madly forward, drunk with passion and kava, and
+gave one lunge with his spear full tilt at the breast of the startled and
+unprepared white man. His aim, though frantic, was not at fault. The
+spear struck Felix high up on the left side. He felt a dull thud of pain;
+a faint gurgle of blood. Even in the pale moonlight his eye told him at
+once a red stream was trickling--out over his flannel shirt. He was
+pricked, at least. The great god had wounded him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+VICTORY--AND AFTER?
+
+
+The great god had wounded him. But not to the heart. Felix, as good luck
+would have it, happened to be wearing buckled braces. He had worn them on
+board, and, like the rest of his costume, had, of course, never since
+been able to discard them. They stood him in good stead now. The buckle
+caught the very point of the bone-tipped spear, and broke the force of
+the blow, as the great god lunged forward. The wound was but a graze, and
+Tu-Kila-Kila's light shaft snapped short in the middle.
+
+Madder and wilder than ever, the savage pitched it away, yelling, rushed
+forward with a fierce curse on his angry tongue, and flung himself, tooth
+and nail, on his astonished opponent.
+
+The suddenness of the onslaught almost took the Englishman's breath away.
+By this time, however, Felix had pulled together his ideas and taken in
+the situation. Tu-Kila-Kila was attacking him now with his heavy stone
+axe. He must parry those deadly blows. He must be alert, but watchful. He
+must put himself in a posture of defence at once. Above all, he must keep
+cool and have his wits about him.
+
+If he could but have drawn his knife, he would have stood a better chance
+in that hand-to-hand conflict. But there was no time now for such tactics
+as those. Besides, even in close fight with a bloodthirsty savage, an
+English gentleman's sense of fair play never for one moment deserts him.
+Felix felt, if they were to fight it out face to face for their lives,
+they should fight at least on a perfect equality. Steel against stone was
+a mean advantage. Parrying Tu-Kila-Kila's first desperate blow with the
+haft of his own hatchet, he leaped aside half a second to gain breath and
+strength. Then he rushed on, and dealt one deadly downstroke with the
+ponderous weapon.
+
+For a minute or two they closed, in perfectly savage single combat.
+Fire and Water, observant and impartial, stood by like seconds to see
+the god himself decide the issue, which of the two combatants should be
+his living representative. The contest was brief but very hard-fought.
+Tu-Kila-Kila, inspired with the last frenzy of despair, rushed wildly
+on his opponent with hands and fists, and teeth and nails, dealing his
+blows in blind fury, right and left, and seeking only to sell his life
+as dearly as possible. In this last extremity, his very superstitions
+told against him. Everything seemed to show his hour had come. The
+parrot's bite--the omen of his own blood that stained the dust of
+earth--Ula's treachery--the chance by which the Korong had learned the
+Great Taboo--Felix's accidental or providential success in breaking off
+the bough--the length of time he himself had held the divine honors--the
+probability that the god would by this time begin to prefer a new and
+stronger representative--all these things alike combined to fire the
+drunk and maddened savage with the energy of despair. He fell upon his
+enemy like a tiger upon an elephant. He fought with his tomahawk and his
+feet and his whole lithe body; he foamed at the mouth with impotent rage;
+he spent his force on the air in the extremity of his passion.
+
+Felix, on the other hand, sobered by pain, and nerved by the fixed
+consciousness that Muriel's safety now depended absolutely on his perfect
+coolness, fought with the calm skill of a practised fencer. Happily he
+had learned the gentle art of thrust and parry years before in England;
+and though both weapon and opponent were here so different, the lesson of
+quickness and calm watchfulness he had gained in that civilized school
+stood him in good stead, even now, under such adverse circumstances.
+Tu-Kila-Kila, getting spent, drew back for a second at last, and panted
+for breath. That faint breathing-space of a moment's duration sealed his
+fate. Seizing his chance with consummate skill, Felix closed upon the
+breathless monster, and brought down the heavy stone hammer point blank
+upon the centre of his crashing skull. The weapon drove home. It cleft a
+great red gash in the cannibal's head. Tu-Kila-Kila reeled and fell.
+There was an infinitesimal pause of silence and suspense. Then a great
+shout went up from all round to heaven, "He has killed him! He has
+killed him! We have a new-made god! Tu-Kila-Kila is dead! Long live
+Tu-Kila-Kila!"
+
+Felix drew back for a moment, panting and breathless, and wiped his wet
+brow with his sleeve, his brain all whirling. At his feet, the savage lay
+stretched, like a log. Felix gazed at the blood-bespattered face
+remorsefully. It is an awful thing, even in a just quarrel, to feel that
+you have really taken a human life! The responsibility is enough to
+appall the bravest of us. He stooped down and examined the prostrate body
+with solemn reverence. Blood was flowing in torrents from the wounded
+head. But Tu-Kila-Kila was dead--stone-dead forever.
+
+Hot tears of relief welled up into Felix's eyes. He touched the body
+cautiously with a reverent hand. No life. No motion.
+
+Just as he did so, the woman Ula came forward, bare-limbed and beautiful,
+all triumph in her walk, a proud, insensitive savage. One second she
+gazed at the great corpse disdainfully. Then she lifted her dainty foot,
+and gave it a contemptuous kick. "The body of Lavita, the son of Sami,"
+she said, with a gesture of hatred. "He had a bad heart. We will cook it
+and eat it." Next turning to Felix, "Oh, Tu-Kila-Kila," she cried,
+clapping her hands three times and bowing low to the ground, "you are a
+very great god. We will serve you and salute you. Am not I, Ula, one of
+your wives, your meat? Do with me as you will. Toko, you are henceforth
+the great god's Shadow!"
+
+Felix gazed at the beautiful, heartless creature, all horrified. Even on
+Boupari, that cannibal island, he was hardly prepared for quite so low a
+depth of savage insensibility. But all the people around, now a hundred
+or more, standing naked before their new god, took up the shout in
+concert. "The body of Lavita, the son of Sami," they cried. "A carrion
+corpse! The god has deserted it. The great soul of the world has entered
+the heart of the white-faced stranger from the disk of the sun; the King
+of the Rain; the great Tu-Kila-Kila. We will cook and eat the body of
+Lavita, the son of Sami. He was a bad man. He is a worn-out shell.
+Nothing remains of him now. The great god has left him."
+
+They clapped their hands in a set measure as they recited this hymn.
+The King of Fire retreated into the temple. Ula stood by, and whispered
+low with Toko. There was a ceremonial pause of some fifteen minutes.
+Presently, from the inner recesses of the temple itself, a low noise
+issued forth as of a rising wind. For some seconds it buzzed and hummed,
+droningly. But at the very first note of that holy sound Ula dropped her
+lover's hand, as one drops a red-hot coal, and darted wildly off at
+full speed, like some frightened wild beast, into the thick jungle. Every
+other woman near began to rush away with equally instantaneous signs of
+haste and fear. The men, on the other hand, erect and naked, with their
+hands on their foreheads, crossed the taboo-line at once. It was the
+summons to all who had been initiated at the mysteries--the sacred
+bull-roarer was calling the assembly of the men of Boupari.
+
+For several minutes it buzzed and droned, that mystic implement, growing
+louder and louder, till it roared like thunder. One after another, the
+men of the island rushed in as if mad or in flight for their lives before
+some fierce beast pursuing them. They ran up, panting, and dripping with
+sweat; their hands clapped to their foreheads; their eyes starting wildly
+from their staring sockets; torn and bleeding and lacerated by the thorns
+and branches of the jungle, for each man ran straight across country from
+the spot where he lay asleep, in the direction of the sound, and never
+paused or drew breath, for dear life's sake, till he stood beside the
+corpse of the dead Tu-Kila-Kila.
+
+And every moment the cry pealed louder and louder still. "Lavita, the son
+of Sami, is dead, praise Heaven! The King of the Rain has slain him, and
+is now the true Tu-Kila-Kila!"
+
+Felix bent irresolute over the fallen savage's bloodstained corpse. What
+next was expected of him he hardly knew or cared. His one desire now was
+to return to Muriel--to Muriel, whom he had rescued from something worse
+than death at the hateful hands of that accursed creature who lay
+breathless forever on the ground beside him.
+
+Somebody came up just then, and seized his hand warmly. Felix looked up
+with a start. It was their friend, the Frenchman. "Ah, my captain, you
+have done well," M. Peyron cried, admiring him. "What courage! What
+coolness! What pluck! What soldiership! I couldn't see all. But I was in
+at the death! And oh, _mon Dieu_, how I admired and envied you!"
+
+By this time the bull-roarer had ceased to bellow among the rocks. The
+King of Fire stood forth. In his hands he held a length of bamboo-stick
+with a lighted coal in it. "Bring wood and palm-leaves," he said, in a
+tone of command. "Let me light myself up, that I may blaze before
+Tu-Kila-Kila."
+
+He turned and bowed thrice very low before Felix. "The accepted of
+Heaven," he cried, holding his hands above him. "The very high god! The
+King of all Things! He sends down his showers upon our crops and our
+fields. He causes his sun to shine brightly over us. He makes our pigs
+and our slaves bring forth their increase. All we are but his meat. We,
+his people, praise him."
+
+And all the men of Boupari, naked and bleeding, bent low in response.
+"Tu-Kila-Kila is great," they chanted, as they clapped their hands. "We
+thank him that he has chosen a fresh incarnation. The sun will not fade
+in the heavens overhead, nor the bread-fruits wither and cease to bear
+fruit on earth. Tu-Kila-Kila, our god, is great. He springs ever young
+and fresh, like the herbs of the field. He is a most high god. We, his
+people, praise him."
+
+Four temple attendants brought sticks and leaves, while Felix stood
+still, half dazed with the newness of these strange preparations. The
+King of Fire, with his torch, set light to the pile. It blazed merrily on
+high. "I, Fire, salute you," he cried, bending over it toward Felix.
+
+"Now cut up the body of Lavita, the son of Sami," he went on, turning
+toward it contemptuously. "I will cook it in my flame, that Tu-Kila-Kila
+the great may eat of it."
+
+Felix drew back with a face all aglow with horror and disgust. "Don't
+touch that body!" he cried, authoritatively, putting his foot down firm.
+"Leave it alone at once. I refuse to allow you." Then he turned to
+M. Peyron. "The King of the Birds and I," he said, with calm resolve, "we
+two will bury it."
+
+The King of Fire drew back at these strange words, nonplussed. This
+was, indeed, an ill-omened break in the ceremony of initiation of a new
+Tu-Kila-Kila, to which he had never before in his life been accustomed.
+He hardly knew how to comport himself under such singular circumstances.
+It was as though the sovereign of England, on coronation-day, should
+refuse to be crowned, and intimate to the archbishop, in his full
+canonicals, a confirmed preference for the republican form of Government.
+It was a contingency that law and custom in Boupari had neither, in their
+wisdom, foreseen nor provided for.
+
+The King of Water whispered low in the new god's ear. "You must eat of
+his body, my lord," he said. "That is absolutely necessary. Every one of
+us must eat of the flesh of the god; but you, above all, must eat his
+heart, his divine nature. Otherwise you can never be full Tu-Kila-Kila."
+
+"I don't care a straw for that," Felix cried, now aroused to a full sense
+of the break in Methuselah's story and trembling with apprehension. "You
+may kill me if you like; we can die only once; but human flesh I can
+never taste; nor will I, while I live, allow you to touch this dead man's
+body. We will bury it ourselves, the King of the Birds and I. You may
+tell your people so. That is my last word." He raised his voice to the
+customary ceremonial pitch. "I, the new Tu-Kila-Kila," he said, "have
+spoken it."
+
+The King of Fire and the King of Water, taken aback at his boldness,
+conferred together for some seconds privately. The people meanwhile
+looked on and wondered. What could this strange hitch in the divine
+proceedings mean? Was the god himself recalcitrant? Never in their lives
+had the oldest men among them known anything like it.
+
+And as they whispered and debated, awe-struck but discordant, a shout
+arose once more from the outer circle--a mighty shout of mingled
+surprise, alarm, and terror. "Taboo! Taboo! Fence the mysteries. Beware!
+Oh, great god, we warn you. The mysteries are in danger! Cut her down!
+Kill her! A woman! A woman!"
+
+At the words, Felix was aware of somebody bursting through the dense
+crowd and rushing wildly toward him. Next moment, Muriel hung and sobbed
+on his shoulder, while Mali, just behind her, stood crying and moaning.
+
+Felix held the poor startled girl in his arms and soothed her. And
+all around another great cry arose from five hundred lips: "Two women
+have profaned the mysteries of the god. They are Tu-Kila-Kila's
+trespass-offering. Let us kill them and eat them!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+
+SUSPENSE.
+
+
+In a moment, Felix's mind was fully made up. There was no time to think;
+it was the hour for action. He saw how he must comport himself toward
+this strange wild people. Seating Muriel gently on the ground, Mali
+beside her, and stepping forward himself, with Peyron's hand in his, he
+beckoned to the vast and surging crowd to bespeak respectful silence.
+
+A mighty hush fell at once upon the people. The King of Fire and the King
+of Water stood back, obedient to his nod. They waited for the upshot of
+this strange new development.
+
+"Men of Boupari," Felix began, speaking with a marvellous fluency in
+their own tongue, for the excitement itself supplied him with eloquence;
+"I have killed your late god in the prescribed way; I have plucked the
+sacred bough, and fought in single combat by the established rules of
+your own religion. Fire and Water, you guardians of this holy island, is
+it not so? You saw all things done, did you not, after the precepts of
+your ancestors?"
+
+The King of Fire bowed low and answered: "Tu-Kila-Kila speaks, indeed,
+the truth. Water and I, with our own eyes, have seen it."
+
+"And now," Felix went on, "I am myself, by your own laws, Tu-Kila-Kila."
+
+The King of Fire made a gesture of dissent. "Oh, great god, pardon me,"
+he murmured, "if I say aught, now, to contradict you; but you are not a
+full Tu-Kila-Kila yet till you have eaten of the heart of the god, your
+predecessor."
+
+"Then where is now the spirit of Tu-Kila-Kila, the very high god, if I am
+not he?" Felix asked, abruptly, thus puzzling them with a hard problem in
+their own savage theology.
+
+The King of Fire gave a start, and pondered. This was a detail of his
+creed that had never before so much as occurred to him. All faiths have
+their _cruces_. "I do not well know," he answered, "whether it is in the
+heart of Lavita, the son of Sami, or in your own body. But I feel sure it
+must now be certainly somewhere, though just where our fathers have never
+told us."
+
+Felix recognized at once that he had gained a point. "Then look to it
+well," he said, austerely. "Be careful how you act. Do nothing rash. For
+either the soul of the god is in the heart of Lavita, the son of Sami;
+and then, since I refuse to eat it, it will decay away, as Lavita's body
+decays, and the world will shrivel up, and all things will perish,
+because the god is dead and crumbled to dust forever. Or else it is in my
+body, who am god in his place; and then, if anybody does me harm or hurt,
+he will be an impious wretch, and will have broken taboo, and Heaven
+knows what evils and misfortunes may not, therefore, fall on each and all
+of you."
+
+A very old chief rose from the ranks outside. His hair was white and
+his eyes bleared. "Tu-Kila-Kila speaks well," he cried, in a loud but
+mumbling voice. "His words are wise. He argues to the point. He is very
+cunning. I advise you, my people, to be careful how you anger the
+white-faced stranger, for you know what he is; he is cruel; he is
+powerful. There was never any storm in my time--and I am an old man--so
+great in Boupari as the storm that rose when the King of the Rain ate the
+storm-apple. Our yams and our taros even now are suffering from it. He is
+a mighty strong god. Beware how you tamper with him!"
+
+He sat down, trembling. A younger chief rose from a nearer rank, and
+said his say in turn. "I do not agree with our father," he cried,
+pointing to the chief who had just spoken. "His word is evil; he is much
+mistaken. I have another thought. My thought is this. Let us kill and eat
+the white-faced stranger at once, by wager of battle; and let whosoever
+fights and overcomes him receive his honors, and take to wife the fair
+woman, the Queen of the Clouds, the sun-faced Korong, whom he brought
+from the sun with him."
+
+"But who will then be Tu-Kila-Kila?" Felix asked, turning round upon him
+quickly. Habituation to danger had made him unnaturally alert in such
+utmost extremities.
+
+"Why, the man who slays you," the young chief answered, pointedly,
+grasping his heavy tomahawk with profound expression.
+
+"I think not," Felix answered. "Your reasoning is bad. For if I am not
+Tu-Kila-Kila, how can any man become Tu-Kila-Kila by killing me? And if I
+am Tu-Kila-Kila, how dare you, not being yourself Korong, and not having
+broken off the sacred bough, as I did, venture to attack me? You wish to
+set aside all the customs of Boupari. Are you not ashamed of such gross
+impiety?"
+
+"Tu-Kila-Kila speaks well," the King of Fire put in, for he had no cause
+to love the aggressive young chief, and he thought better of his chances
+in life as Felix's minister. "Besides, now I think of it, he _must_ be
+Tu-Kila-Kila, because he has taken the life of the last great god, whom
+he slew with his hands; and therefore the life is now his--he holds it."
+
+Felix was emboldened by this favorable opinion to strike out a fresh line
+in a further direction. He stood forward once more, and beckoned again
+for silence. "Yes, my people," he said calmly, with slow articulation,
+"by the custom of your race and the creed you profess I am now indeed,
+and in every truth, the abode of your great god, Tu-Kila-Kila. But,
+furthermore, I have a new revelation to make to you. I am going to
+instruct you in a fresh way. This creed that you hold is full of errors.
+As Tu-Kila-Kila, I mean to take my own course, no islander hindering me.
+If you try to depose me, what great gods have you now got left? None,
+save only Fire and Water, my ministers. King of the Rain there is none;
+for I, who was he, am now Tu-Kila-Kila. Tu-Kila-Kila there is none, save
+only me; for the other, that was, I have fought and conquered. The Queen
+of the Clouds is with me. The King of the Birds is with me. Consider,
+then, O friends, that if you kill us all, you will have nowhere to turn;
+you will be left quite godless."
+
+"It is true," the people murmured, looking about them, half puzzled. "He
+is wise. He speaks well. He is indeed a Tu-Kila-Kila."
+
+Felix pressed his advantage home at once. "Now listen," he said, lifting
+up one solemn forefinger. "I come from a country very far away, where the
+customs are better by many yams than those of Boupari. And now that I am
+indeed Tu-Kila-Kila--your god, your master--I will change and alter some
+of your customs that seem to me here and now most undesirable. In the
+first place--hear this!--I will put down all cannibalism. No man shall
+eat of human flesh on pain of death. And to begin with, no man shall cook
+or eat the body of Lavita, the son of Sami. On that I am determined--I,
+Tu-Kila-Kila. The King of the Birds and I, we will dig a pit, and we will
+bury in it the corpse of this man that was once your god, and whom his
+own wickedness compelled me to fight and slay, in order to prevent more
+cruelty and bloodshed."
+
+The young chief stood up, all red in his wrath, and interrupted him,
+brandishing a coral-stone hatchet. "This is blasphemy," he said. "This is
+sheer rank blasphemy. These are not good words. They are very bad
+medicine. The white-faced Korong is no true Tu-Kila-Kila. His advice
+is evil--and ill-luck would follow it. He wishes to change the sacred
+customs of Boupari. Now, that is not well. My counsel is this: let us eat
+him now, unless he changes his heart, and amends his ways, and partakes,
+as is right, of the body of Lavita, the son of Sami."
+
+The assembly swayed visibly, this way and that, some inclining to the
+conservative view of the rash young chief, and others to the cautious
+liberalism of the gray-haired warrior. Felix noted their division, and
+spoke once more, this time still more authoritatively than ever.
+
+"Furthermore," he said, "my people, hear me. As I came in a ship
+propelled by fire over the high waves of the sea, so I go away in one. We
+watch for such a ship to pass by Boupari. When it comes, the Queen of the
+Clouds--upon whose life I place a great Taboo; let no man dare to touch
+her at his peril; if he does, I will rush upon him and kill him as I
+killed Lavita, the son of Sami. When it comes, the Queen of the Clouds,
+the King of the Birds, and I, we will go away back in it to the land
+whence we came, and be quit of Boupari. But we will not leave it fireless
+or godless. When I return back home again to my own far land, I will send
+out messengers, very good men, who will tell you of a God more powerful
+by much than any you ever knew, and very righteous. They will teach you
+great things you never dreamed of. Therefore, I ask you now to disperse
+to your own homes, while the King of Birds and I bury the body of Lavita,
+the son of Sami."
+
+All this time Muriel had been seated on the ground, listening with
+profound interest, but scarcely understanding a word, though here and
+there, after her six months' stay in the island, a single phrase was
+dimly intelligible to her. But now, at this critical moment she rose,
+and, standing upright by Felix's side in her spotless English purity
+among those assembled savages, she pointed just once with her uplifted
+finger to the calm vault of heaven, and then across the moonlit horizon
+of the sea, and last of all to the clustering huts and villages of
+Boupari. "Tell them," she said to Felix, with blanched lips, but without
+one sign of a tremor in her fearless voice, "I will pray for them to
+Heaven, when I go across the sea, and will think of the children that I
+loved to pat and play with, and will send out messengers from our home
+beyond the waves, to make them wiser and happier and better."
+
+Felix translated her simple message to them in its pure womanly
+goodness. Even the natives were touched. They whispered and hesitated.
+Then after a time of much murmured debate, the King of Fire stood forward
+as a mediator. "There is an oracle, O Korong," he said, "not to prejudge
+the matter, which decides all these things--a great conch-shell at a
+sacred grove in the neighboring island of Aloa Mauna. It is the holiest
+oracle of all our holy religion. We gods and men of Boupari have taken
+counsel together, and have come to a conclusion. We will put forth a
+canoe and send men with blood on their faces to inquire at Aloa Mauna of
+the very great oracle. Till then, you are neither Tu-Kila-Kila, nor not
+Tu-Kila-Kila. It behooves us to be very careful how we deal with gods.
+Our people will stand round your precinct in a row, and guard you with
+their spears. You shall not cross the taboo line to them, nor they to
+you: all shall be neutral. Food shall be laid by the line, as always,
+morn, noon, and night; and your Shadows shall take it in; but you shall
+not come out. Neither shall you bury the body of Lavita, the son of Sami.
+Till the canoe comes back it shall lie in the sun and rot there."
+
+He clapped his hands twice.
+
+In a moment a tom-tom began to beat from behind, and the people all
+crowded without the circle. The King of Fire came forward ostentatiously
+and made taboo. "If, any man cross this line," he said in a droning
+sing-song, "till the canoe return from the great oracle of our faith on
+Aloa Mauna, I, Fire, will scorch him into cinder and ashes. If any woman
+transgress, I will pitch her with palm oil, and light her up for a lamp
+on a moonless night to lighten this temple."
+
+The King of Water distributed shark's-tooth spears. At once a great
+serried wall hemmed in the Europeans all round, and they sat down to
+wait, the three whites together, for the upshot of the mission to Aloa
+Mauna.
+
+And the dawn now gleamed red on the eastern horizon.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+AT SEA: OFF BOUPARI.
+
+
+Thirteen days out from Sydney, the good ship Australasian was nearing the
+equator.
+
+It was four of the clock in the afternoon, and the captain (off duty)
+paced the deck, puffing a cigar, and talking idly with a passenger on
+former experiences.
+
+Eight bells went on the quarter-deck; time to change watches.
+
+"This is only our second trip through this channel," the captain
+said, gazing across with a casual glance at the palm-trees that
+stood dark against the blue horizon. "We used to go a hundred miles
+to eastward, here, to avoid the reefs. But last voyage I came
+through this way quite safely--though we had a nasty accident on the
+road--unavoidable--unavoidable! Big sea was running free over the
+sunken shoals; caught the ship aft unawares, and stove in better than
+half a dozen portholes. Lady passenger on deck happened to be leaning
+over the weather gunwale; big sea caught her up on its crest in a jiffy,
+lifted her like a baby, and laid her down again gently, just so, on the
+bed of the ocean. By George, sir, I was annoyed. It was quite a romance,
+poor thing; quite a romance; we all felt so put out about it the rest
+of that voyage. Young fellow on board, nephew of Sir Theodore Thurstan,
+of the Colonial Office, was in love with Miss Ellis--girl's name was
+Ellis--father's a parson somewhere down in Somersetshire--and as soon as
+the big sea took her up on its crest, what does Thurstan go and do, but
+he ups on the taffrail, and, before you could say Jack Robinson, jumps
+over to save her."
+
+"But he didn't succeed?" the passenger asked, with languid interest.
+
+"Succeed, my dear sir? and with a sea running twelve feet high like that?
+Why, it was pitch dark, and such a surf on that the gig could hardly go
+through it." The captain smiled, and puffed away pensively. "Drowned,"
+he said, after a brief pause, with complacent composure. "Drowned.
+Drowned. Drowned. Went to the bottom, both of 'em. Davy Jones's locker.
+But unavoidable, quite. These accidents _will_ happen, even on the
+best-regulated liners. Why, there was my brother Tom, in the Cunard
+service--same that boast they never lost a passenger; there was my
+brother Tom, he was out one day off the Newfoundland banks, heavy swell
+setting in from the nor'-nor'-east, icebergs ahead, passengers battened
+down--Bless my soul, how that light seems to come and go, don't it?"
+
+It was a reflected light, flashing from the island straight in the
+captain's eyes, small and insignificant as to size, but strong for all
+that in the full tropical sunshine, and glittering like a diamond from a
+vague elevation near the centre of the island.
+
+"Seems to come and go in regular order," the passenger observed,
+reflectively, withdrawing his cigar. "Looks for all the world just like
+naval signalling."
+
+The captain paused, and shaded his eyes a moment. "Hanged if that isn't
+just what it _is_," he answered, slowly. "It's a rigged-up heliograph,
+and they're using the Morse code; dash my eyes if they aren't. Well, this
+_is_ civilization! What the dickens can have come to the island of
+Boupari? There isn't a darned European soul in the place, nor ever has
+been. Anchorage unsafe; no harbor; bad reef; too small for missionaries
+to make a living, and natives got nothing worth speaking of to trade in."
+
+"What do they say?" the passenger asked, with suddenly quickened
+interest.
+
+"How the devil should I tell you yet, sir?" the captain retorted with
+choleric grumpiness. "Don't you see I'm spelling it out, letter by
+letter? O, r, e, s, c, u, e, u, s, c, o, m, e, w, e, l, l, a, r, m, e,
+d--Yes. yes, I twig it." And the captain jotted it down in his note-book
+for some seconds, silently.
+
+"Run up the flag there," he shouted, a moment later, rushing hastily
+forward. "Stop her at once, Walker. Easy, easy. Get ready the gig. Well,
+upon my soul, there _is_ a rum start anyway."
+
+"What does the message say?" the passenger inquired, with intense
+surprise.
+
+"Say? Well, there's what I make it out," the captain answered, handing
+him the scrap of paper on which he had jotted down the letters. "I missed
+the beginning, but the end's all right. Look alive there, boys, will you.
+Bring out the Winchester. Take cutlasses, all hands. I'll go along myself
+in her."
+
+The passenger took the piece of paper on which he read, "and send a boat
+to rescue us. Come well armed. Savages on guard. Thurstan, Ellis."
+
+In less than three minutes the boat was lowered and manned, and the
+captain, with the Winchester six-shooter by his side, seated grim in the
+stern, took command of the tiller.
+
+On the island it was the first day of Felix and Muriel's imprisonment in
+the dusty precinct of Tu-Kila-Kila's temple. All the morning through,
+they had sat under the shade of a smaller banyan in the outer corner; for
+Muriel could neither enter the noisome hut nor go near the great tree
+with the skeletons on its branches; nor could she sit where the dead
+savage's body, still festering in the sun, attracted the buzzing blue
+flies by thousands, to drink up the blood that lay thick on the earth in
+a pool around it. Hard by, the natives sat, keen as lynxes, in a great
+circle just outside the white taboo-line, where, with serried spears,
+they kept watch and ward over the persons of their doubtful gods or
+victims. M. Peyron, alone preserving his equanimity under these adverse
+circumstances, hummed low to himself in very dubious tones; even he
+felt his French gayety had somewhat forsaken him; this revolution in
+Boupari failed to excite his Parisian ardor.
+
+About one o'clock in the day, however, looking casually seaward--what was
+this that M. Peyron, to his great surprise, descried far away on the dim
+southern horizon? A low black line, lying close to the water? No, no; not
+a steamer!
+
+Too prudent to excite the natives' attention unnecessarily, the
+cautious Frenchman whispered, in the most commonplace voice on earth to
+Felix: "Don't look at once; and when you do look, mind you don't exhibit
+any agitation in your tone or manner. But what do you make that out to
+be--that long black haze on the horizon to southward?"
+
+Felix looked, disregarding the friendly injunction, at once. At the same
+moment, Muriel turned her eyes quickly in the self-same direction.
+Neither made the faintest sign of outer emotion; but Muriel clenched her
+white hands hard, till the nails dug into the palm, in her effort to
+restrain herself, as she murmured very low, in an agitated voice, "_Un
+vapeur, un vapeur_!"
+
+"So I think," M. Peyron answered, very low and calm. "It is, indeed, a
+steamer!"
+
+For three long hours those anxious souls waited and watched it draw
+nearer and nearer. Slowly the natives, too, began to perceive the
+unaccustomed object. As it drew abreast of the island, and the decisive
+moment arrived for prompt action, Felix rose in his place once more
+and cried aloud, "My people, I told you a ship, propelled by fire, would
+come from the far land across the sea to take us. The ship has come; you
+can see for yourselves the thick black smoke that issues in huge puffs
+from the mouth of the monster. Now, listen to me, and dare not to disobey
+me. My word is law; let all men see to it. I am going to send a message
+of fire from the sun to the great canoe that walks upon the water. If any
+man ventures to stop me from doing it the people from the great canoe
+will land on this isle and take vengeance for his act, and kill with the
+thunder which the sailing gods carry ever about with them."
+
+By this time the island was alive with commotion. Hundreds of natives,
+with their long hair falling unkempt about their keen brown faces,
+were gazing with open eyes at the big black ship that ploughed her way
+so fast against wind and tide over the surface of the waters. Some of
+them shouted and gesticulated with panic fear; others seemed half
+inclined to waste no time on preparation or doubt, but to rush on at
+once, and immolate their captives before a rescue was possible. But
+Felix, keeping ever his cool head undisturbed, stood on the dusty mound
+by Tu-Kila-Kila's house, and taking in his hand the little mirror he had
+made from the match-box, flashed the light from the sun full in their
+eyes for a moment, to the astonishment and discomfiture of all those
+gaping savages. Then he focussed it on the Australasian, across the surf
+and the waves, and with a throbbing heart began to make his last faint
+bid for life and freedom.
+
+For four or five minutes he went flashing on, uncertain of the effect,
+whether they saw or saw not. Then a cry from Muriel burst at once upon
+his ears. She clasped her hands convulsively in an agony of joy. "They
+see us! They see us!"
+
+And sure enough, scarcely half a minute later, a British flag ran gayly
+up the mainmast, and a boat seemed to drop down over the side of the
+vessel.
+
+As for the natives, they watched these proceedings with considerable
+surprise and no little discomfiture--Fire and Water, in particular,
+whispering together, much alarmed, with many superstitious nods and
+taboos, in the corner of the enclosure.
+
+Gradually, as the boat drew nearer and nearer, divided counsels prevailed
+among the savages. With no certainly recognized Tu-Kila-Kila to marshal
+their movements, each man stood in doubt from whom to take his orders. At
+last, the King of Fire, in a hesitating voice, gave the word of command.
+"Half the warriors to the shore to repel the enemy; half to watch round
+the taboo-line, lest the Korongs escape us! Let Breathless Fear, our
+war-god, go before the face of our troops, invisible!"
+
+And, quick as thought, at his word, the warriors had paired off, two and
+two, in long lines; some running hastily down to the beach, to man the
+war-canoes, while others remained, with shark's tooth spears still set in
+a looser circle, round the great temple-enclosure of Tu-Kila-Kila.
+
+For Muriel, this suspense was positively terrible. To feel one was so
+close to the hope of rescue, and yet to know that before that help
+arrived, or even as it came up, those savages might any moment run their
+ghastly spears through them.
+
+But Felix made the best of his position still. "Remember," he cried, at
+the top of his voice, as the warriors started at a run for the water's
+edge, "your Tu-Kila-Kila tells you, these new-comers are his friends.
+Whoever hurts them, does so at his peril. This is a great Taboo. I bid
+you receive them. Beware for your lives. I, Tu-Kila-Kila the Great, have
+said it."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII.
+
+THE DOWNFALL OF A PANTHEON.
+
+
+The Australasian's gig entered the lagoon through the fringing reef by
+its narrow seaward mouth, and rowed steadily for the landing place on the
+main island.
+
+A little way out from shore, amid loud screams and yells, the natives
+came up with it in their laden war-canoes. Shouting and gesticulating and
+brandishing their spears with the shark's tooth tips, they endeavored to
+stop its progress landward by pure noise and bravado.
+
+"We must be careful what we do, boys," the captain observed, in a quiet
+voice of seamanlike resolution to his armed companions. "We mustn't
+frighten the savages too much, or show too hostile a front, for fear they
+should retaliate on our friends on the island." He held up his hand, with
+the gold braid on the wrist, to command silence; and the natives, gazing
+open-mouthed, looked and wondered at the gesture. These sailing gods were
+certainly arrayed in most gorgeous vestments, and their canoe, though
+devoid of a grinning figure-head, was provided with a most admirable and
+well-uniformed equipment.
+
+A coral rock jutted high out of the sea to the left hard by. Its summit
+was crowded with a basking population of sea-gulls and pelicans. The
+captain gave the word to "easy all." In a second the gig stopped short,
+as those stout arms held her. He rose in his place and lifted the
+six-shooter. Then he pointed it ostentatiously at the rock, away from the
+native canoes, and held up his hand yet again for silence. "We'll give
+'em a taste of what we can do, boys," he said, "just to show 'em, not to
+hurt 'em." At that he drew the trigger twice. His first two chambers were
+loaded on purpose with duck-shot cartridges. Twice the big gun roared;
+twice the fire flashed red from its smoking mouth. As the smoke cleared
+away, the natives, dumb with surprise, and perfectly cowed with terror,
+saw ten or a dozen torn and bleeding birds float mangled upon the water.
+
+"Now for the dynamite!" the captain said, cheerily, proceeding to lower a
+small object overboard by a single wire, while he held up his hand a
+third time to bespeak silence and attention.
+
+The natives looked again, with eyes starting from their heads. The
+captain gave a little click, and pointed with his finger to a spot on
+the water's top, a little way in front of him. Instantly, a loud report,
+and a column of water spurted up into the air, some ten or twelve feet,
+in a boisterous fountain. As it subsided again, a hundred or so of the
+bright-colored fish that browse among the submerged, coral-groves of
+these still lagoons, rose dead or dying to the seething, boiling surface.
+
+The captain smiled. Instantly the natives set up a terrified shout.
+"It is even as he said," they cried. "These gods are his ministers!
+The white-faced Korong is a very great deity! He is indeed the true
+Tu-Kila-Kila. These gods have come for him. They are very mighty. Thunder
+and lightning and waterspouts are theirs. The waves do as they bid. The
+sea obeys them. They are here to take away our Tu-Kila-Kila from our
+midst. And what will then become of the island of Boupari? Will it not
+sink in the waves of the sea and disappear? Will not the sun in heaven
+grow dark, and the moon cease to shed its benign light on the earth, when
+Tu-Kila-Kila the Great returns at last to his own far country?"
+
+"That lot'll do for 'em, I expect," the captain said cheerily, with a
+confident smile. "Now forward all, boys. I fancy we've astonished the
+natives a trifle."
+
+They rowed on steadily, but cautiously, toward the white bank of sand
+which formed the usual landing-place, the captain holding the six-shooter
+in readiness all the time, and keeping an eye firmly fixed on every
+movement of the savages. But the warriors in the canoes, thoroughly cowed
+and overawed by this singular exhibition of the strangers' prowess,
+paddled on in whispering silence, nearly abreast of the gig, but at a
+safe distance, as they thought, and eyed the advancing Europeans with
+quiet looks of unmixed suspicion.
+
+At last, the adventurous young chief, who had advised killing Felix
+off-hand on the island, mustered up courage to paddle his own canoe a
+little nearer, and flung his spear madly in the direction of the gig. It
+fell short by ten yards. He stood eying it angrily. But the captain,
+grimly quiet, raising his Winchester to his shoulder without one second's
+delay, and marking his man, fired at the young chief as he stood, still
+half in the attitude of throwing, on the prow of his canoe, an easy aim
+for fire-arms. The ball went clean through the savage's breast, and then
+ricochetted three times on the water afar off. The young chief fell stone
+dead into the sea like a log, and sank instantly to the bottom.
+
+It was a critical moment. The captain felt uncertain whether the natives
+would close round them in force or not. It is always dangerous to fire a
+shot at savages. But the Boupari men were too utterly awed to venture on
+defence. "He was Tu-Kila-Kila's enemy," they cried, in astonished tones.
+"He raised his voice against the very high god. Therefore, the very high
+god's friends have smitten him with their lightning. Their thunderbolt
+went through him, and hit the water beyond. How strong is their hand!
+They can kill from afar. They are mighty gods. Let no man strive to fight
+against the friends of Tu-Kila-Kila."
+
+The sailors rowed on and reached the landing-place. There, half of them,
+headed by the captain, disembarked in good order, with drawn cutlasses,
+while the other half remained behind to guard the gig, under the third
+officer. The natives also disembarked, a little way off, and, making
+humble signs of submission with knee and arm, endeavored, by pantomime,
+to express the idea of their willingness to guide the strangers to their
+friends' quarters.
+
+The captain waved them on with his hand. The natives, reassured, led the
+way, at some distance ahead, along the paths through the jungle. The
+captain had his finger on his six-shooter the while; every sailor grasped
+his cutlass and kept his revolver ready for action. "I don't half like
+the look of it," the captain observed, partly to himself. "They seem to
+be leading us into an ambuscade or something. Keep a sharp lookout
+against surprise from the jungle, boys; and if any native shows fight
+shoot him down instantly."
+
+At last they emerged upon a clear space in the front, where a great group
+of savages stood in a circle, with serried spears, round a large wattled
+hut that occupied the elevated centre of the clearing.
+
+For a minute or two the action of the savages was uncertain. Half of the
+defenders turned round to face the invaders angrily; the other half stood
+irresolute, with their spears still held inward, guarding a white line of
+sand with inflexible devotion.
+
+The warriors who had preceded them from the shore called aloud to their
+friends by the temple in startled tones. The captain and sailors had no
+idea what their words meant. But just then, from the midst of the circle,
+an English voice cried out in haste, "Don't fire! Do nothing rash! We're
+safe. Don't be frightened. The natives are disposed to parley and
+palaver. Take care how you act. They're terribly afraid of you."
+
+Just outside the taboo-line the captain halted. The gray-headed old
+chief, who had accompanied his fellows to the shore, spoke out in
+Polynesian. "Do not resist them," he said, "my people. If you do, you
+will be blasted by their lightning like a bare bamboo in a mighty
+cyclone. They carry thunder in their hands. They are mighty, mighty gods.
+The white-faced Korong spoke no more than the truth. Let them do as they
+will with us. We are but their meat. We are as dust beneath their sole,
+and as driven mulberry-leaves before the breath of the tempest."
+
+The defenders hesitated still a little. Then, suddenly losing heart, they
+broke rank at last at a point close by where the captain of the
+Australasian stood, one man after another falling aside slowly and
+shamefacedly a pace or two. The captain, unhesitatingly, overstepped the
+white taboo-line. Next instant, Felix and Muriel were grasping his hand
+hard, and M. Peyron was bowing a polite Parisian reception.
+
+Forthwith, the sailors crowded round them in a hollow square. Muriel and
+Felix, half faint with relief from their long and anxious suspense,
+staggered slowly down the seaward path between them. But there was no
+need now for further show of defence. The islanders, pressing near and
+flinging away their weapons, followed the procession close, with tears
+and lamentations. As they went on, the women, rushing out of their huts
+while the fugitives passed, tore their hair on their heads, and beat
+their breasts in terror. The warriors who had come from the shore
+recounted, with their own exaggerative additions, the miracle of the
+six-shooter and the dynamite cartridge. Gradually they approached the
+landing-place on the beach. There the third officer sat waiting in the
+gig to receive them. The lamentations of the islanders now became
+positively poignant. "Oh, my father," they cried aloud, "my brother, my
+revered one, you are indeed the true Tu-Kila-Kila. Do not go away like
+this and desert us! Oh, our mother, great queen, mighty goddess, stop
+with us! Take not away your sun from the heavens, nor your rain from the
+crops. We acknowledge we have sinned; we have done very wrong; but the
+chief sinner is dead; the wrong-doer has paid; spare us who remain; spare
+us, great deity; do not make the bright lights of heaven become dark over
+us. Stay with your worshippers, and we will give you choice young girls
+to eat every day, we will sacrifice the tenderest of our children to feed
+you."
+
+It is an awful thing for any race or nation when its taboos fail all at
+once, and die out entirely. To the men of Boupari, the Tu-Kila-Kila of
+the moment represented both the Moral Order and the regular sequence of
+the physical universe. Anarchy and chaos might rule when he was gone. The
+sun might be quenched, and the people run riot. No wonder they shrank
+from the fearful consequence that might next ensue. King and priest, god
+and religion, all at one fell blow were to be taken away from them!
+
+Felix turned round on the shore and spoke to them again. "My people," he
+said, in a kindly tone--for, after all, he pitied them--"you need have no
+fear. When I am gone, the sun will still shine and the trees will still
+bear fruit every year as formerly. I will send the messengers I promised
+from my own land to teach you. Until they come, I leave you this as a
+great Taboo. Tu-Kila-Kila enjoins it. Shed no human blood; eat no human
+flesh. Those who do will be punished when another fire-canoe comes from
+the far land to bring my messengers."
+
+The King of Fire bent low at the words. "Oh, Tu-Kila-Kila," he said, "it
+shall be done as you say. Till your messengers come, every man shall live
+at peace with all his neighbors."
+
+They stepped into the gig. Mali and Toko followed before M. Peyron as
+naturally as they had always followed their masters on the island before.
+
+"Who are these?" the captain asked, smiling.
+
+"Our Shadows," Felix answered. "Let them come. I will pay their passage
+when I reach San Francisco. They have been very faithful to us, and they
+are afraid to remain, lest the islanders should kill them for letting us
+go or for not accompanying us."
+
+"Very well," the captain answered. "Forward all, there, boys! Now, ahead
+for the ship. And thank God, we're well out of it!"
+
+But the islanders still stood on the shore and wept, stretching their
+hands in vain after the departing boat, and crying aloud in piteous
+tones, "Oh, my father, return! Oh, my mother, come back! Oh, very great
+gods, do not fly and desert us!"
+
+Seven weeks later Mr. and Mrs. Felix Thurstan, who had been married in
+the cathedral at Honolulu the very morning the Australasian arrived
+there, sat in an eminently respectable drawing-room in a London square,
+where Mrs. Ellis, Muriel's aunt by marriage, was acting as their hostess.
+
+"But how dreadful it is to think, dear," Mrs. Ellis remarked for the
+twentieth time since their arrival, with a deep-drawn sigh, "how dreadful
+to think that you and Felix should have been all those months alone on
+the island together without being married!"
+
+Muriel looked up with a quiet smile toward Felix. "I think, Aunt Mary,"
+she said, dreamily, "if you'd been there yourself, and suffered all those
+fears, and passed through all those horrors that we did together, you'd
+have troubled your head very little indeed about such conventionalities,
+as whether or not you happened to be married.... Besides," she added,
+after a pause, with a fine perception of the inexorable stringency of
+Mrs. Grundy's law, "we weren't quite without chaperons, either, don't you
+know; for our Shadows, of course, were always with us."
+
+Whereat Felix smiled an equally quiet smile. "And terrible as it all
+was," he put in, "I shall never regret it, because it made Muriel know
+how profoundly I loved her, and it made me know how brave and trustful
+and pure a woman could be under such awful conditions."
+
+But Mrs. Ellis sat still in her chair and smiled uncomfortably. It
+affected her spirits. Taboos, after all, are much the same in England as
+in Boupari.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GREAT TABOO***
+
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diff --git a/old/13876.zip b/old/13876.zip
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+   "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" >
+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
+  <head>
+    <meta content="pg2html (binary v0.17)" name="linkgenerator" />
+    <title>
+      The Great Taboo, by Grant Allen
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .75em; margin-bottom: .75em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 5%; text-align: justify; font-size: 80%; font-style: italic;}
+    blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    .xx-small {font-size: 60%;}
+    .x-small {font-size: 75%;}
+    .small {font-size: 85%;}
+    .large {font-size: 115%;}
+    .x-large {font-size: 130%;}
+    .indent5   { margin-left: 5%;}
+    .indent10  { margin-left: 10%;}
+    .indent15  { margin-left: 15%;}
+    .indent20  { margin-left: 20%;}
+    .indent25  { margin-left: 25%;}
+    .indent30  { margin-left: 30%;}
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+    .indent40  { margin-left: 40%;}
+    div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
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+                font-variant: normal; font-style: normal;
+                text-align: right; background-color: #FFFACD;
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+               text-indent: 0; font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;
+               font-weight: bold; color: black; background: #eeeeee; border:        solid 1px;}
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+  </head>
+  <body>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Great Taboo, by Grant Allen
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Great Taboo
+
+Author: Grant Allen
+
+Release Date: October 26, 2004  [eBook #13876]
+Last Updated: September 10, 2018
+
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GREAT TABOO***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Mary Meehan and the Project Gutenberg Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+HTML file produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <div style="height: 8em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h1>
+      THE GREAT TABOO
+    </h1>
+    <h2>
+      By Grant Allen
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <b>CONTENTS</b>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_PREF"> PREFACE </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0001"> CHAPTER I. &mdash; IN MID PACIFIC. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0002"> CHAPTER II. &mdash; THE TEMPLE OF THE DEITY. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0003"> CHAPTER III. &mdash; LAND; BUT WHAT LAND? </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0004"> CHAPTER IV. &mdash; THE GUESTS OF HEAVEN. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0005"> CHAPTER V. &mdash; ENROLLED IN OLYMPUS. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0006"> CHAPTER VI. &mdash; FIRST DAYS IN BOUPARI.
+      </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0007"> CHAPTER VII. &mdash; INTERCHANGE OF CIVILITIES.
+      </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0008"> CHAPTER VIII. &mdash; THE CUSTOMS OF BOUPARI.
+      </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0009"> CHAPTER IX. &mdash; SOWING THE WIND. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0010"> CHAPTER X. &mdash; REAPING THE WHIRLWIND. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0011"> CHAPTER XI. &mdash; AFTER THE STORM. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0012"> CHAPTER XII. &mdash; A POINT OF THEOLOGY. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0013"> CHAPTER XIII. &mdash; AS BETWEEN GODS. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0014"> CHAPTER XIV. &mdash; &ldquo;MR. THURSTAN, I
+      PRESUME.&rdquo; </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0015"> CHAPTER XV. &mdash; THE SECRET OF KORONG. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0016"> CHAPTER XVI. &mdash; A VERY FAINT CLUE. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0017"> CHAPTER XVII. &mdash; FACING THE WORST. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0018"> CHAPTER XVIII. &mdash; TU-KILA-KILA PLAYS A CARD.
+      </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0019"> CHAPTER XIX. &mdash; DOMESTIC BLISS. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0020"> CHAPTER XX. &mdash; COUNCIL OF WAR. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0021"> CHAPTER XXI. &mdash; METHUSELAH GIVES SIGN. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0022"> CHAPTER XXII. &mdash; TANTALIZING, VERY. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0023"> CHAPTER XXIII. &mdash; A MESSAGE FROM THE DEAD.
+      </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0024"> CHAPTER XXIV. &mdash; AN UNFINISHED TALE. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0025"> CHAPTER XXV. &mdash; TU-KILA-KILA STRIKES. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0026"> CHAPTER XXVI. &mdash; A RASH RESOLVE. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0027"> CHAPTER XXVII. &mdash; A STRANGE ALLY. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0028"> CHAPTER XXVIII. &mdash; WAGER OF BATTLE. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0029"> CHAPTER XXIX. &mdash; VICTORY&mdash;AND AFTER?
+      </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0030"> CHAPTER XXX. &mdash; SUSPENSE. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0031"> CHAPTER XXXI. &mdash; AT SEA: OFF BOUPARI.
+      </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0032"> CHAPTER XXXII. &mdash; THE DOWNFALL OF A
+      PANTHEON. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_PREF" id="link2H_PREF"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PREFACE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I desire to express my profound indebtedness, for the central mythological
+      idea embodied in this tale, to Mr. J.G. Frazer&rsquo;s admirable and
+      epoch-making work, &ldquo;The Golden Bough,&rdquo; whose main contention I
+      have endeavored incidentally to popularize in my present story. I wish
+      also to express my obligations in other ways to Mr. Andrew Lang&rsquo;s
+      &ldquo;Myth, Ritual, and Religion,&rdquo; Mr. H.O. Forbes&rsquo;s &ldquo;Naturalist&rsquo;s
+      Wanderings,&rdquo; and Mr. Julian Thomas&rsquo;s &ldquo;Cannibals and
+      Convicts.&rdquo; If I have omitted to mention any other author to whom I
+      may have owed incidental hints, it will be some consolation to me to
+      reflect that I shall at least have afforded an opportunity for legitimate
+      sport to the amateurs of the new and popular British pastime of
+      badger-baiting or plagiary-hunting. It may also save critics some moments&rsquo;
+      search if I say at once that, after careful consideration, I have been
+      unable to discover any moral whatsoever in this humble narrative. I
+      venture to believe that in so enlightened an age the majority of my
+      readers will never miss it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      G.A.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NOOK, DORKING, October, 1890.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0001" id="link2HCH0001"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER I. &mdash; IN MID PACIFIC.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Man overboard!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It rang in Felix Thurstan&rsquo;s ears like the sound of a bell. He gazed
+      about him in dismay, wondering what had happened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first intimation he received of the accident was that sudden sharp cry
+      from the bo&rsquo;sun&rsquo;s mate. Almost before he had fully taken it
+      in, in all its meaning, another voice, farther aft, took up the cry once
+      more in an altered form: &ldquo;A lady! a lady! Somebody overboard! Great
+      heavens, it is <i>her</i>! It&rsquo;s Miss Ellis! Miss Ellis!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next instant Felix found himself, he knew not how, struggling in a wild
+      grapple with the dark, black water. A woman was clinging to him&mdash;clinging
+      for dear life. But he couldn&rsquo;t have told you himself that minute how
+      it all took place. He was too stunned and dazzled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked around him on the seething sea in a sudden awakening, as it
+      were, to life and consciousness. All about, the great water stretched dark
+      and tumultuous. White breakers surged over him. Far ahead the steamer&rsquo;s
+      lights gleamed red and green in long lines upon the ocean. At first they
+      ran fast; then they slackened somewhat. She was surely slowing now; they
+      must be reversing engines and trying to stop her. They would put out a
+      boat. But what hope, what chance of rescue by night, in such a wild waste
+      of waves as that? And Muriel Ellis was clinging to him for dear life all
+      the while, with the despairing clutch of a half-drowned woman!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The people on the Australasian, for their part, knew better what had
+      occurred. There was bustle and confusion enough on deck and on the captain&rsquo;s
+      bridge, to be sure: &ldquo;Man overboard!&rdquo;&mdash;three sharp rings
+      at the engine bell:&mdash;&ldquo;Stop her short!&mdash;reverse engines!&mdash;lower
+      the gig!&mdash;look sharp, there, all of you!&rdquo; Passengers hurried up
+      breathless at the first alarm to know what was the matter. Sailors
+      loosened and lowered the boat from the davits with extraordinary
+      quickness. Officers stood by, giving orders in monosyllables with
+      practised calm. All was hurry and turmoil, yet with a marvellous sense of
+      order and prompt obedience as well. But, at any rate, the people on deck
+      hadn&rsquo;t the swift swirl of the boisterous water, the hampering wet
+      clothes, the pervading consciousness of personal danger, to make their
+      brains reel, like Felix Thurstan&rsquo;s. They could ask one another with
+      comparative composure what had happened on board; they could listen
+      without terror to the story of the accident.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the thirteenth day out from Sydney, and the Australasian was
+      rapidly nearing the equator. Toward evening the wind had freshened, and
+      the sea was running high against her weather side. But it was a fine
+      starlit night, though the moon had not yet risen; and as the brief
+      tropical twilight faded away by quick degrees in the west, the fringe of
+      cocoanut palms on the reef that bounded the little island of Boupari
+      showed out for a minute or two in dark relief, some miles to leeward,
+      against the pale pink horizon. In spite of the heavy sea, many passengers
+      lingered late on deck that night to see the last of that coral-girt shore,
+      which was to be their final glimpse of land till they reached Honolulu, <i>en
+      route</i> for San Francisco.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bit by bit, however, the cocoanut palms, silhouetted with their graceful
+      waving arms for a few brief minutes in black against the glowing
+      background, merged slowly into the sky or sank below the horizon. All grew
+      dark. One by one, as the trees disappeared, the passengers dropped off for
+      whist in the saloon, or retired to the uneasy solitude of their own
+      state-rooms. At last only two or three men were left smoking and chatting
+      near the top of the companion ladder; while at the stern of the ship
+      Muriel Ellis looked over toward the retreating island, and talked with a
+      certain timid maidenly frankness to Felix Thurstan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There&rsquo;s nowhere on earth for getting really to know people in a very
+      short time like the deck of a great Atlantic or Pacific liner. You&rsquo;re
+      thrown together so much, and all day long, that you see more of your
+      fellow-passengers&rsquo; inner life and nature in a few brief weeks than
+      you would ever be likely to see in a long twelvemonth of ordinary town or
+      country acquaintanceship. And Muriel Ellis had seen a great deal in those
+      thirteen days of Felix Thurstan; enough to make sure in her own heart that
+      she really liked him&mdash;well&mdash;so much that she looked up with a
+      pretty blush of self-consciousness every time he approached and lifted his
+      hat to her. Muriel was an English rector&rsquo;s daughter, from a country
+      village in Somersetshire; and she was now on her way back from a long year&rsquo;s
+      visit, to recruit her health, to an aunt in Paramatta. She was travelling
+      under the escort of an amiable old chaperon whom the aunt in question had
+      picked up for her before leaving Sydney; but, as the amiable old chaperon,
+      being but an indifferent sailor, spent most of her time in her own berth,
+      closely attended by the obliging stewardess, Muriel had found her
+      chaperonage interfere very little with opportunities of talk with that
+      nice Mr. Thurstan. And now, as the last glow of sunset died out in the
+      western sky, and the last palm-tree faded away against the colder green
+      darkness of the tropical night, Muriel was leaning over the bulwarks in
+      confidential mood, and watching the big waves advance or recede, and
+      talking the sort of talk that such an hour seems to favor with the
+      handsome young civil servant who stood on guard, as it were, beside her.
+      For Felix Thurstan held a government appointment at Levuka, in Fiji, and
+      was now on his way home, on leave of absence after six years&rsquo;
+      service in that new-made colony.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How delightful it would be to live on an island like that!&rdquo;
+      Muriel murmured, half to herself, as she gazed out wistfully in the
+      direction of the disappearing coral reef. &ldquo;With those beautiful
+      palms waving always over one&rsquo;s head, and that delicious evening air
+      blowing cool through their branches! It looks such a Paradise!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix smiled and glanced down at her, as he steadied himself with one hand
+      against the bulwark, while the ship rolled over into the trough of the sea
+      heavily. &ldquo;Well, I don&rsquo;t know about that, Miss Ellis,&rdquo; he
+      answered with a doubtful air, eying her close as he spoke with eyes of
+      evident admiration. &ldquo;One might be happy anywhere, of course&mdash;in
+      suitable society; but if you&rsquo;d lived as long among cocoanuts in Fiji
+      as I have, I dare say the poetry of these calm palm-grove islands would be
+      a little less real to you. Remember, though they look so beautiful and
+      dreamy against the sky like that, at sunset especially (that was a heavy
+      one, that time; I&rsquo;m really afraid we must go down to the cabin soon;
+      she&rsquo;ll be shipping seas before long if we stop on deck much later&mdash;and
+      yet, it&rsquo;s so delightful stopping up here till the dusk comes on, isn&rsquo;t
+      it?)&mdash;well, remember, I was saying, though they look so beautiful and
+      dreamy and poetical&mdash;&lsquo;Summer isles of Eden lying in dark purple
+      spheres of sea,&rsquo; and all that sort of thing&mdash;these islands are
+      inhabited by the fiercest and most bloodthirsty cannibals known to
+      travellers.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cannibals!&rdquo; Muriel repeated, looking up at him in surprise.
+      &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t mean to say that islands like these, standing right
+      in the very track of European steamers, are still heathen and cannibal?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, dear, yes,&rdquo; Felix replied, holding his hand out as he
+      spoke to catch his companion&rsquo;s arm gently, and steady her against
+      the wave that was just going to strike the stern: &ldquo;Excuse me; just
+      so; the sea&rsquo;s rising fast, isn&rsquo;t it?&mdash;Oh, dear, yes; of
+      course they are; they&rsquo;re all heathen and cannibals. You couldn&rsquo;t
+      imagine to yourself the horrible bloodthirsty rites that may this very
+      minute be taking place upon that idyllic-looking island, under the soft
+      waving branches of those whispering palm-trees. Why, I knew a man in the
+      Marquesas myself&mdash;a hideous old native, as ugly as you can fancy him&mdash;who
+      was supposed to be a god, an incarnate god, and was worshipped accordingly
+      with profound devotion by all the other islanders. You can&rsquo;t picture
+      to yourself how awful their worship was. I daren&rsquo;t even repeat it to
+      you; it was too, too horrible. He lived in a hut by himself among the
+      deepest forest, and human victims used to be brought&mdash;well, there, it&rsquo;s
+      too loathsome! Why, see; there&rsquo;s a great light on the island now; a
+      big bonfire or something; don&rsquo;t you make it out? You can tell it by
+      the red glare in the sky overhead.&rdquo; He paused a moment; then he
+      added more slowly, &ldquo;I shouldn&rsquo;t be surprised if at this very
+      moment, while we&rsquo;re standing here in such perfect security on the
+      deck of a Christian English vessel, some unspeakable and unthinkable
+      heathen orgy mayn&rsquo;t be going on over there beside that sacrificial
+      fire; and if some poor trembling native girl isn&rsquo;t being led just
+      now, with blows and curses and awful savage ceremonies, her hands bound
+      behind her back&mdash;Oh, look out, Miss Ellis!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was only just in time to utter the warning words. He was only just in
+      time to put one hand on each side of her slender waist, and hold her tight
+      so, when the big wave which he saw coming struck full tilt against the
+      vessel&rsquo;s flank, and broke in one white drenching sheet of foam
+      against her stern and quarter-deck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The suddenness of the assault took Felix&rsquo;s breath away. For the
+      first few seconds he was only aware that a heavy sea had been shipped, and
+      had wet him through and through with its unexpected deluge. A moment
+      later, he was dimly conscious that his companion had slipped from his
+      grasp, and was nowhere visible. The violence of the shock, and the slimy
+      nature of the sea water, had made him relax his hold without knowing it,
+      in the tumult of the moment, and had at the same time caused Muriel to
+      glide imperceptibly through his fingers, as he had often known an
+      ill-caught cricket-ball do in his school-days. Then he saw he was on his
+      hands and knees on the deck. The wave had knocked him down, and dashed him
+      against the bulwark on the leeward side. As he picked himself up, wet,
+      bruised, and shaken, he looked about for Muriel. A terrible dread seized
+      upon his soul at once. Impossible! Impossible! she couldn&rsquo;t have
+      been washed overboard!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And even as he gazed about, and held his bruised elbow in his hand, and
+      wondered to himself what it could all mean, that sudden loud cry arose
+      beside him from the quarter-deck, &ldquo;Man overboard! Man overboard!&rdquo;
+      followed a moment later by the answering cry, from the men who were
+      smoking under the lee of the companion, &ldquo;A lady! a lady! It&rsquo;s
+      Miss Ellis! Miss Ellis!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He didn&rsquo;t take it all in. He didn&rsquo;t reflect. He didn&rsquo;t
+      even know he was actually doing it. But he did it, all the same, with the
+      simple, straightforward, instinctive sense of duty which makes civilized
+      man act aright, all unconsciously, in any moment of supreme danger and
+      difficulty. Leaping on to the taffrail without one instant&rsquo;s delay,
+      and steadying himself for an indivisible fraction of time with his hand on
+      the rope ladder, he peered out into the darkness with keen eyes for a
+      glimpse of Muriel Ellis&rsquo;s head above the fierce black water; and
+      espying it for one second, as she came up on a white crest, he plunged in
+      before the vessel had time to roll back to windward, and struck boldly out
+      in the direction where he saw that helpless object dashed about like a
+      cork on the surface of the ocean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Only those who have known such accidents at sea can possibly picture to
+      themselves the instantaneous haste with which all that followed took place
+      upon that bustling quarter-deck. Almost at the first cry of &ldquo;Man
+      overboard!&rdquo; the captain&rsquo;s bell rang sharp and quick, as if by
+      magic, with three peremptory little calls in the engine-room below. The
+      Australasian was going at full speed, but in a marvellously short time, as
+      it seemed to all on board, the great ship had slowed down to a perfect
+      standstill, and then had reversed her engines, so that she lay, just nose
+      to the wind, awaiting further orders. In the meantime, almost as soon as
+      the words were out of the bo&rsquo;sun&rsquo;s lips, a sailor amidships
+      had rushed to the safety belts hung up by the companion ladder, and had
+      flung half a dozen of them, one after another, with hasty but well-aimed
+      throws, far, far astern, in the direction where Felix had disappeared into
+      the black water. The belts were painted white, and they showed for a few
+      seconds, as they fell, like bright specks on the surface of the darkling
+      sea; then they sunk slowly behind as the big ship, still not quite
+      stopped, ploughed her way ahead with gigantic force into the great abyss
+      of darkness in front of her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It seemed but a minute, too, to the watchers on board, before a party of
+      sailors, summoned by the whistle with that marvellous readiness to meet
+      any emergency which long experience of sudden danger has rendered habitual
+      among seafaring men, had lowered the boat, and taken their seats on the
+      thwarts, and seized their oars, and were getting under way on their
+      hopeless quest of search, through the dim black night, for those two
+      belated souls alone in the midst of the angry Pacific.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It seemed but a minute or two, I say, to the watchers on board; but oh,
+      what an eternity of time to Felix Thurstan, struggling there with his live
+      burden in the seething water!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had dashed into the ocean, which was dark, but warm with tropical heat,
+      and had succeeded, in spite of the heavy seas then running, in reaching
+      Muriel, who clung to him now with all the fierce clinging of despair, and
+      impeded his movement through that swirling water. More than that, he saw
+      the white life-belts that the sailors flung toward him; they were well and
+      aptly flung, in the inspiration of the moment, to allow for the sea itself
+      carrying them on the crest of its waves toward the two drowning creatures.
+      Felix saw them distinctly, and making a great lunge as they passed, in
+      spite of Muriel&rsquo;s struggles, which sadly hampered his movements, he
+      managed to clutch at no less than three before the great billow, rolling
+      on, carried them off on its top forever away from him. Two of these he
+      slipped hastily over Muriel&rsquo;s shoulders; the other he put, as best
+      he might, round his own waist; and then, for the first time, still
+      clinging close to his companion&rsquo;s arm, and buffeted about wildly by
+      that running sea, he was able to look about him in alarm for a moment, and
+      realize more or less what had actually happened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By this time the Australasian was a quarter of a mile away in front of
+      them, and her lights were beginning to become stationary as she slowly
+      slowed and reversed engines. Then, from the summit of a great wave, Felix
+      was dimly aware of a boat being lowered&mdash;for he saw a separate light
+      gleaming across the sea&mdash;a search was being made in the black night,
+      alas, how hopelessly! The light hovered about for many, many minutes,
+      revealed to him now here, now there, searching in vain to find him, as
+      wave after wave raised him time and again on its irresistible summit. The
+      men in the boat were doing their best, no doubt; but what chance of
+      finding any one on a dark night like that, in an angry sea, and with no
+      clue to guide them toward the two struggling castaways? Current and wind
+      had things all their own way. As a matter of fact, the light never came
+      near the castaways at all; and after half an hour&rsquo;s ineffectual
+      search, which seemed to Felix a whole long lifetime, it returned slowly
+      toward the steamer from which it came&mdash;and left those two alone on
+      the dark Pacific.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There wasn&rsquo;t a chance of picking &rsquo;em up,&rdquo; the
+      captain said, with philosophic calm, as the men clambered on board again,
+      and the Australasian got under way once more for the port of Honolulu.
+      &ldquo;I knew there wasn&rsquo;t a chance; but in common humanity one was
+      bound to make some show of trying to save &rsquo;em. He was a brave fellow
+      to go after her, though it was no good of course. He couldn&rsquo;t even
+      find her, at night, and with such a sea as that running.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And even as he spoke, Felix Thurstan, rising once more on the crest of a
+      much smaller billow&mdash;for somehow the waves were getting incredibly
+      smaller as he drifted on to leeward&mdash;felt his heart sink within him
+      as he observed to his dismay that the Australasian must be steaming ahead
+      once more, by the movement of her lights, and that they two were indeed
+      abandoned to their fate on the open surface of that vast and trackless
+      ocean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER II. &mdash; THE TEMPLE OF THE DEITY.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      While these things were happening on the sea close by, a very different
+      scene indeed was being enacted meanwhile, beneath those waving palms, on
+      the island of Boupari. It was strange, to be sure, as Felix Thurstan had
+      said, that such unspeakable heathen orgies should be taking place within
+      sight of a passing Christian English steamer. But if only he had known or
+      reflected to what sort of land he was trying now to struggle ashore with
+      Muriel, he might well have doubted whether it were not better to let her
+      perish where she was, in the pure clear ocean, rather than to submit an
+      English girl to the possibility of undergoing such horrible heathen rites
+      and ceremonies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For on the island of Boupari it was high feast with the worshippers of
+      their god that night. The sun had turned on the Tropic of Capricorn at
+      noon, and was making his way northward, toward the equator once more; and
+      his votaries, as was their wont, had all come forth to do him honor in due
+      season, and to pay their respects, in the inmost and sacredest grove on
+      the island, to his incarnate representative, the living spirit of trees
+      and fruits and vegetation, the very high god, the divine Tu-Kila-Kila!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Early in the evening, as soon as the sun&rsquo;s rim had disappeared
+      beneath the ocean, a strange noise boomed forth from the central shrine of
+      Boupari. Those who heard it clapped their hands to their ears and ran
+      hastily forward. It was a noise like distant rumbling thunder, or the whir
+      of some great English mill or factory; and at its sound every woman on the
+      island threw herself on the ground prostrate, with her face in the dust,
+      and waited there reverently till the audible voice of the god had once
+      more subsided. For no woman knew how that sound was produced. Only the
+      grown men, initiated into the mysteries of the shrine when they came of
+      age at the tattooing ceremony, were aware that the strange, buzzing,
+      whirring noise was nothing more or less than the cry of the bull-roarer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A bull-roarer, as many English schoolboys know, is merely a piece of
+      oblong wood, pointed at either end, and fastened by a leather thong at one
+      corner. But when whirled round the head by practised priestly hands, it
+      produces a low rumbling noise like the wheels of a distant carriage,
+      growing gradually louder and clearer, from moment to moment, till at last
+      it waxes itself into a frightful din, or bursts into perfect peals of
+      imitation thunder. Then it decreases again once more, as gradually as it
+      rose, becoming fainter and ever fainter, like thunder as it recedes, till
+      the horrible bellowing, as of supernatural bulls, dies away in the end, by
+      slow degrees, into low and soft and imperceptible murmurs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But when the savage hears the distant humming of the bull-roarer, at
+      whatever distance, he knows that the mysteries of his god are in full
+      swing, and he hurries forward in haste, leaving his work or his pleasure,
+      and running, naked as he stands, to take his share in the worship, lest
+      the anger of heaven should burst forth in devouring flames to consume him.
+      But the women, knowing themselves unworthy to face the dread presence of
+      the high god in his wrath, rush wildly from the spot, and, flinging
+      themselves down at full length, with their mouths to the dust, wait
+      patiently till the voice of their deity is no longer audible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And as the bull-roarer on Boupari rang out with wild echoes from the coral
+      caverns in the central grove that evening, Tu-Kila-Kila, their god, rose
+      slowly from his place, and stood out from his hut, a deity revealed,
+      before his reverential worshippers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he rose, a hushed whisper ran wave-like through the dense throng of
+      dusky forms that bent low, like corn beneath the wind, before him, &ldquo;Tu-Kila-Kila
+      rises! He rises to speak! Hush! for the voice of the mighty man-god!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The god, looking around him superciliously with a cynical air of contempt,
+      stood forward with a firm and elastic step before his silent worshippers.
+      He was a stalwart savage, in the very prime of life, tall, lithe, and
+      active. His figure was that of a man well used to command; but his face,
+      though handsome, was visibly marked by every external sign of cruelty,
+      lust, and extreme bloodthirstiness. One might have said, merely to look at
+      him, he was a being debased by all forms of brutal and hateful
+      self-indulgence. A baleful light burned in his keen gray eyes. His lips
+      were thick, full, purple, and wistful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My people may look upon me,&rdquo; he said, in a strangely affable
+      voice, standing forward and smiling with a curious half-cruel,
+      half-compassionate smile upon his awe-struck followers. &ldquo;On every
+      day of the sun&rsquo;s course but this, none save the ministers dedicated
+      to the service of Tu-Kila-Kila dare gaze unhurt upon his sacred person. If
+      any other did, the light from his holy eyes would wither them up, and the
+      glow of his glorious countenance would scorch them to ashes.&rdquo; He
+      raised his two hands, palm outward, in front of him. &ldquo;So all the
+      year round,&rdquo; he went on, &ldquo;Tu-Kila-Kila, who loves his people,
+      and sends them the earlier and the later rain in the wet season, and makes
+      their yams and their taro grow, and causes his sun to shine upon them
+      freely&mdash;all the year round Tu-Kila-Kila, your god, sits shut up in
+      his own house among the skeletons of those whom he has killed and eaten,
+      or walks in his walled paddock, where his bread-fruit ripens and his
+      plantains spring&mdash;himself, and the ministers that his tribesmen have
+      given him.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the sound of their mystic deity&rsquo;s voice the savages, bending
+      lower still till their foreheads touched the ground, repeated in chorus,
+      to the clapping of hands, like some solemn litany: &ldquo;Tu-Kila-Kila
+      speaks true. Our lord is merciful. He sends down his showers upon our
+      crops and fields. He causes his sun to shine brightly over us. He makes
+      our pigs and our slaves bring forth their increase. Tu-Kila-Kila is good.
+      His people praise him.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The god took another step forward, the divine mantle of red feathers
+      glowing in the sunset on his dusky shoulders, and smiled once more that
+      hateful gracious smile of his. He was standing near the open door of his
+      wattled hut, overshadowed by the huge spreading arms of a gigantic
+      banyan-tree. Through the open door of the hut it was possible to catch
+      just a passing glimpse of an awful sight within. On the beams of the
+      house, and on the boughs of the trees behind it, human skeletons, half
+      covered with dry flesh, hung in ghastly array, their skulls turned
+      downward. They were the skeletons of the victims Tu-Kila-Kila, their
+      prince, had slain and eaten; they were the trophies of the cannibal
+      man-god&rsquo;s hateful prowess.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila raised his right hand erect and spoke again. &ldquo;I am a
+      great god,&rdquo; he said, slowly. &ldquo;I am very powerful. I make the
+      sun to shine, and the yams to grow. I am the spirit of plants. Without me
+      there would be nothing for you all to eat or drink in Boupari. If I were
+      to grow old and die, the sun would fade away in the heavens overhead; the
+      bread-fruit trees would wither and cease to bear on earth; all fruits
+      would come to an end and die at once; all rivers would stop forthwith from
+      running.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His worshippers bowed down in acquiescence with awestruck faces. &ldquo;It
+      is true,&rdquo; they answered, in the same slow sing-song of assent as
+      before. &ldquo;Tu-Kila-Kila is the greatest of gods. We owe to him
+      everything. We hang upon his favor.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila started back, laughed, and showed his pearly white teeth.
+      They were beautiful and regular, like the teeth of a tiger, a strong young
+      tiger. &ldquo;But I need more sacrifices than all the other gods,&rdquo;
+      he went on, melodiously, like one who plays with consummate skill upon
+      some difficult instrument. &ldquo;I am greedy; I am thirsty; I am a hungry
+      god. You must not stint me. I claim more human victims than all the other
+      gods beside. If you want your crops to grow, and your rivers to run, the
+      fields to yield you game, and the sea fish&mdash;this is what I ask: give
+      me victims, victims! That is our compact. Tu-Kila-Kila calls you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The men bowed down once more and repeated humbly, &ldquo;You shall have
+      victims as you will, great god; only give us yam and taro and bread-fruit,
+      and cause not your bright light, the sun, to grow dark in heaven over us.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cut yourselves,&rdquo; Tu-Kila-Kila cried, in a peremptory voice,
+      clapping his hands thrice. &ldquo;I am thirsting for blood. I want your
+      free-will offering.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he spoke, every man, as by a set ritual, took from a little skin wallet
+      at his side a sharp flake of coral-stone, and, drawing it deliberately
+      across his breast in a deep red gash, caused the blood to flow out freely
+      over his chest and long grass waistband. Then, having done so, they never
+      strove for a moment to stanch the wound, but let the red drops fall as
+      they would on to the dust at their feet, without seeming even to be
+      conscious at all of the fact that they were flowing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila smiled once more, a ghastly self-satisfied smile of
+      unquestioned power. &ldquo;It is well,&rdquo; he went on. &ldquo;My people
+      love me. They know my strength, how I can wither them up. They give me
+      their blood to drink freely. So I will be merciful to them. I will make my
+      sun shine and my rain drop from heaven. And instead of taking <i>all</i>,
+      I will choose one victim.&rdquo; He paused, and glanced along their line
+      significantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Choose, Tu-Kila-Kila,&rdquo; the men answered, without a moment&rsquo;s
+      hesitation. &ldquo;We are all your meat. Choose which one you will take of
+      us.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila walked with a leisurely tread down the lines and surveyed the
+      men critically. They were all drawn up in rows, one behind the other,
+      according to tribes and families; and the god walked along each row,
+      examining them with a curious and interested eye, as a farmer examines
+      sheep fit for the market. Now and then, he felt a leg or an arm with his
+      finger and thumb, and hesitated a second. It was an important matter, this
+      choosing a victim. As he passed, a close observer might have noted that
+      each man trembled visibly while the god&rsquo;s eye was upon him, and
+      looked after him askance with a terrified sidelong gaze as he passed on to
+      his neighbor. But not one savage gave any overt sign or token of his
+      terror or his reluctance. On the contrary, as Tu-Kila-Kila passed along
+      the line with lazy, cruel deliberateness, the men kept chanting aloud
+      without one tremor in their voices, &ldquo;We are all your meat. Choose
+      which one you will take of us.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On a sudden, Tu-Kila-Kila turned sharply round, and, darting a rapid
+      glance toward a row he had already passed several minutes before, he
+      exclaimed, with an air of unexpected inspiration, &ldquo;Tu-Kila-Kila has
+      chosen. He takes Maloa.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man upon whose shoulder the god laid his heavy hand as he spoke stood
+      forth from the crowd without a moment&rsquo;s hesitation. If anger or fear
+      was in his heart at all, it could not be detected in his voice or his
+      features. He bowed his head with seeming satisfaction, and answered
+      humbly, &ldquo;What Tu-Kila-Kila says must need be done. This is a great
+      honor. He is a mighty god. We poor men must obey him. We are proud to be
+      taken up and made one with divinity.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila raised in his hand a large stone axe of some polished green
+      material, closely resembling jade, which lay on a block by the door, and
+      tried its edge with his finger, in an abstracted manner. &ldquo;Bind him!&rdquo;
+      he said, quietly, turning round to his votaries. And the men, each glad to
+      have escaped his own fate, bound their comrade willingly with green ropes
+      of plantain fibre.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Crown him with flowers!&rdquo; Tu-Kila-Kila said; and a female
+      attendant, absolved from the terror of the bull-roarer by the god&rsquo;s
+      command, brought forward a great garland of crimson hibiscus, which she
+      flung around the victim&rsquo;s neck and shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lay his head on the sacred stone block of our fathers,&rdquo;
+      Tu-Kila-Kila went on, in an easy tone of command, waving his hand
+      gracefully. And the men, moving forward, laid their comrade, face
+      downward, on a huge flat block of polished greenstone, which lay like an
+      altar in front of the hut with the mouldering skeletons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is well,&rdquo; Tu-Kila-Kila murmured once more, half aloud.
+      &ldquo;You have given me the free-will offering. Now for the trespass!
+      Where is the woman who dared to approach too near the temple-home of the
+      divine Tu-Kila-Kila? Bring the criminal forward!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The men divided, and made a lane down their middle. Then one of them, a
+      minister of the man-god&rsquo;s shrine, led up by the hand, all trembling
+      and shrinking with supernatural terror in every muscle, a well-formed
+      young girl of eighteen or twenty. Her naked bronze limbs were shapely and
+      lissome; but her eyes were swollen and red with tears, and her face
+      strongly distorted with awe for the man-god. When she stood at last before
+      Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s dreaded face, she flung herself on the ground in an
+      agony of fear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, mercy, great God!&rdquo; she cried, in a feeble voice. &ldquo;I
+      have sinned, I have sinned. Mercy, mercy!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila smiled as before, a smile of imperial pride. No ray of pity
+      gleamed from those steel-gray eyes. &ldquo;Does Tu-Kila-Kila show mercy?&rdquo;
+      he asked, in a mocking voice. &ldquo;Does he pardon his suppliants? Does
+      he forgive trespasses? Is he not a god, and must not his wrath be
+      appeased? She, being a woman, and not a wife sealed to Tu-Kila-Kila, has
+      dared to look from afar upon his sacred home. She has spied the mysteries.
+      Therefore she must die. My people, bind her.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a second, without more ado, while the poor trembling girl writhed and
+      groaned in her agony before their eyes, that mob of wild savages, let
+      loose to torture and slay, fell upon her with hideous shouts, and bound
+      her, as they had bound their comrade before, with coarse native ropes of
+      twisted plantain fibre.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lay her head on the stone,&rdquo; Tu-Kila-Kila said, grimly. And
+      his votaries obeyed him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now light the sacred fire to make our feast, before I slay the
+      victims,&rdquo; the god said, in a gloating voice, running his finger
+      again along the edge of his huge hatchet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he spoke, two men, holding in their hands hollow bamboos with coals of
+      fire concealed within, which they kept aglow meanwhile by waving them up
+      and down rapidly in the air, laid these primitive matches to the base of a
+      great pyramidal pile of wood and palm-leaves, ready prepared beforehand in
+      the yard of the temple. In a second, the dry fuel, catching the sparks
+      instantly, blazed up to heaven with a wild outburst of flame. Great red
+      tongues of fire licked up the mouldering mass of leaves and twigs, and
+      caught at once at the trunks of palm and li wood within. A huge
+      conflagration reddened the sky at once like lightning. The effect was
+      magical. The glow transfigured the whole island for miles. It was, in
+      fact, the blaze that Felix Thurstan had noted and remarked upon as he
+      stood that evening on the silent deck of the Australasian.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila gazed at it with horrid childish glee. &ldquo;A fine fire!&rdquo;
+      he said, gayly. &ldquo;A fire worthy of a god. It will serve me well.
+      Tu-Kila-Kila will have a good oven to roast his meal in.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he turned toward the sea, and held up his hand once more for silence.
+      As he did so, an answering light upon its surface attracted his eye for a
+      moment&rsquo;s space. It was a bright red light, mixed with white and
+      green ones; in point of fact, the Australasian was passing. Tu-Kila-Kila
+      pointed toward it solemnly with his plump, brown fore-finger. &ldquo;See,&rdquo;
+      he said, drawing himself up and looking preternaturally wise; &ldquo;your
+      god is great. I am sending some of this fire across the sea to where my
+      sun has set, to aid and reinforce it. That is to keep up the fire of the
+      sun, lest ever at any time it should fade and fail you. While Tu-Kila-Kila
+      lives the sun will burn bright. If Tu-Kila-Kila were to die it would be
+      night forever.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His votaries, following their god&rsquo;s fore-finger as it pointed, all
+      turned to look in the direction he indicated with blank surprise and
+      astonishment. Such a sight had never met their eyes before, for the
+      Australasian was the very first steamer to take the eastward route,
+      through the dangerous and tortuous Boupari Channel. So their awe and
+      surprise at the unwonted sight knew no bounds. Fire on the ocean!
+      Miraculous light on the waves! Their god must, indeed, be a mighty deity
+      if he could send flames like that careering over the sea! Surely the sun
+      was safe in the hands of a potentate who could thus visibly reinforce it
+      with red light, and white! In their astonishment and awe, they stood with
+      their long hair falling down over their foreheads, and their hands held up
+      to their eyes that they might gaze the farther across the dim, dark ocean.
+      The borrowed light of their bonfire was moving, slowly moving over the
+      watery sea. Fire and water were mixing and mingling on friendly terms.
+      Impossible! Incredible! Marvellous! Miraculous! They prostrated themselves
+      in their terror at Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s feet. &ldquo;Oh, great god,&rdquo;
+      they cried, in awe-struck tones, &ldquo;your power is too vast! Spare us,
+      spare us, spare us!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As for Tu-Kila-Kila himself, he was not astonished at all. Strange as it
+      sounds to us, he really believed in his heart what he said. Profoundly
+      convinced of his own godhead, and abjectly superstitious as any of his own
+      votaries, he absolutely accepted as a fact his own suggestion, that the
+      light he saw was the reflection of that his men had kindled. The
+      interpretation he had put upon it seemed to him a perfectly natural and
+      just one. His worshippers, indeed, mere men that they were, might be
+      terrified at the sight; but why should he, a god, take any special notice
+      of it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He accepted his own superiority as implicitly as our European nobles and
+      rulers accept theirs. He had no doubts himself, and he considered those
+      who had little better than criminals.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By and by, a smaller light detached itself by slow degrees from the
+      greater ones. The others stood still, and halted in mid-ocean. The lesser
+      light made as if it would come in the direction of Boupari. In point of
+      fact, the gig had put out in search of Felix and Muriel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila interpreted the facts at once, however, in his own way.
+      &ldquo;See,&rdquo; he said, pointing with his plump forefinger once more,
+      and encouraging with his words his terrified followers, &ldquo;I am
+      sending back a light again from the sun to my island. I am doing my work
+      well. I am taking care of my people. Fear not for your future. In the
+      light is yet another victim. A man and a woman will come to Boupari from
+      the sun, to make up for the man and woman whom we eat in our feast
+      to-night. Give me plenty of victims, and you will have plenty of yam. Make
+      haste, then; kill, eat; let us feast Tu-Kila-Kila! To-morrow the man and
+      woman I have sent from the sun will come ashore on the reef, and reach
+      Boupari.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the words, he stepped forward and raised that heavy tomahawk. With one
+      blow each he brained the two bound and defenceless victims on the
+      altar-stone of his fathers. The rest, a European hand shrinks from
+      revealing. The orgy was too horrible even for description.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And that was the land toward which, that moment, Felix Thurstan was
+      struggling, with all his might, to carry Muriel Ellis, from the myriad
+      clasping arms of a comparatively gentle and merciful ocean!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER III. &mdash; LAND; BUT WHAT LAND?
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      As the last glimmering lights of the Australasian died away to seaward,
+      Felix Thurstan knew in his despair there was nothing for it now but to
+      strike out boldly, if he could, for the shore of the island.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By this time the breakers had subsided greatly. Not, indeed, that the sea
+      itself was really going down. On the contrary, a brisk wind was rising
+      sharper from the east, and the waves on the open Pacific were growing each
+      moment higher and loppier. But the huge mountain of water that washed
+      Muriel Ellis overboard was not a regular ordinary wave; it was that far
+      more powerful and dangerous mass, a shoal-water breaker. The Australasian
+      had passed at that instant over a submerged coral-bar, quite deep enough,
+      indeed, to let her cross its top without the slightest danger of grazing,
+      but still raised so high toward the surface as to produce a considerable
+      constant ground-swell, which broke in windy weather into huge sheets of
+      surf, like the one that had just struck and washed over the Australasian,
+      carrying Muriel with it. The very same cause that produced the breakers,
+      however, bore Felix on their summit rapidly landward; and once he had got
+      well beyond the region of the bar that begot them, he found himself soon,
+      to his intense relief, in comparatively calm shoal water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Muriel Ellis, for her part, was faint with terror and with the buffeting
+      of the waves; but she still floated by his side, upheld by the life-belts.
+      He had been able, by immense efforts, to keep unseparated from her amid
+      the rending surf of the breakers. Now that they found themselves in easier
+      waters for a while, Felix began to strike out vigorously through the
+      darkness for the shore. Holding up his companion with one hand, and
+      swimming with all his might in the direction where a vague white line of
+      surf, lit up by the red glare-of some fire far inland, made him suspect
+      the nearest land to lie, he almost thought he had succeeded at last, after
+      a long hour of struggle, in feeling his feet, after all, on a firm coral
+      bottom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the very moment he did so, and touched the ground underneath, another
+      great wave, curling resistlessly behind him, caught him up on its crest,
+      whirled him heavenward like a cork, and then dashed him down once more, a
+      passive burden, on some soft and yielding substance, which he conjectured
+      at once to be a beach of finely powdered coral fragments. As he touched
+      this beach for an instant, the undertow of that vast dashing breaker
+      sucked him back with its ebb again, a helpless, breathless creature; and
+      then the succeeding wave rolled him over like a ball, upon the beach as
+      before, in quick succession. Four times the back-current sucked him under
+      with its wild pull in the self-same way, and four times the return wave
+      flung him up upon the beach again like a fragment of sea-weed. With
+      frantic efforts Felix tried at first to cling still to Muriel&mdash;to
+      save her from the irresistible force of that roaring surf&mdash;to snatch
+      her from the open jaws of death by sheer struggling dint of thews and
+      muscle. He might as well have tried to stem Niagara. The great waves,
+      curling irresistibly in huge curves landward, caught either of them up by
+      turns on their arched summits, and twisted them about remorselessly,
+      raising them now aloft on their foaming crest, beating them back now prone
+      in their hollow trough, and flinging them fiercely at last with pitiless
+      energy against the soft beach of coral. If the beach had been hard, they
+      must infallibly have been ground to powder or beaten to jelly by the
+      colossal force of those gigantic blows. Fortunately it was yielding,
+      smooth, and clay-like, and received them almost as a layer of moist
+      plaster of Paris might have done, or they would have stood no chance at
+      all for their lives in that desperate battle with the blind and frantic
+      forces of unrelenting nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No man who has not himself seen the surf break on one of these
+      far-southern coral shores can form any idea in his own mind of the terror
+      and horror of the situation. The water, as it reaches the beach, rears
+      itself aloft for a second into a huge upright wall, which, advancing
+      slowly, curls over at last in a hollow circle, and pounds down upon the
+      sand or reef with all the crushing force of some enormous sledge-hammer.
+      But after the fourth assault, Felix felt himself flung up high and dry by
+      the wave, as one may sometimes see a bit of light reed or pith flung up
+      some distance ahead by an advancing tide on the beach in England. In an
+      instant he steadied himself and staggered to his feet. Torn and bruised as
+      he was by the pummelling of the billows, he looked eagerly into the water
+      in search of his companion. The next wave flung up Muriel, as the last had
+      flung himself. He bent over her with a panting heart as she lay there,
+      insensible, on the long white shore. Alive or dead? that was now the
+      question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Raising her hastily in his arms, with her clothes all clinging wet and
+      close about her, Felix carried her over the narrow strip of tidal beach,
+      above high-water level, and laid her gently down on a soft green bank of
+      short tropical herbage, close to the edge of the coral. Then he bent over
+      her once more, and listened eagerly at her heart. It still beat with faint
+      pulses&mdash;beat&mdash;beat&mdash;beat. Felix throbbed with joy. She was
+      alive! alive! He was not quite alone, then, on that unknown island!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And strange as it seemed, it was only a little more than two short hours
+      since they had stood and looked out across the open sea over the bulwarks
+      of the Australasian together!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Felix had no time to moralize just then. The moment was clearly one
+      for action. Fortunately, he happened to carry three useful things in his
+      pocket when he jumped overboard after Muriel. The first was a
+      pocket-knife; the second was a flask with a little whiskey in it; and the
+      third, perhaps the most important of all, a small metal box of wax vesta
+      matches. Pouring a little whiskey into the cup of the flask, he held it
+      eagerly to Muriel&rsquo;s lips. The fainting girl swallowed it
+      automatically. Then Felix, stooping down, tried the matches against the
+      box. They were unfortunately wet, but half an hour&rsquo;s exposure, he
+      knew, on sun-warmed stones, in that hot, tropical air, would soon restore
+      them again. So he opened the box and laid them carefully out on a flat
+      white slab of coral. After that, he had time to consider exactly where
+      they were, and what their chances in life, if any, might now amount to.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pitch dark as it was, he had no difficulty in deciding at once by the
+      general look of things that they had reached a fringing reef, such as he
+      was already familiar with in the Marquesas and elsewhere. The reef was no
+      doubt circular, and it enclosed within itself a second or central island,
+      divided from it by a shallow lagoon of calm, still water. He walked some
+      yards inland. From where he now stood, on the summit of the ridge, he
+      could look either way, and by the faint reflected light of the stars, or
+      the glare of the great pyre that burned on the central island, he could
+      see down on one side to the ocean, with its fierce white pounding surf,
+      and on the other to the lagoon, reflecting the stars overhead, and
+      motionless as a mill-pond. Between them lay the low raised ridge of coral,
+      covered with tall stems of cocoanut palms, and interspersed here and
+      there, as far as his eye could judge, with little rectangular clumps of
+      plantain and taro.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But what alarmed Felix most was the fire that blazed so brightly to heaven
+      on the central island; for he knew too well that meant&mdash;there were <i>men</i>
+      on the place; the land was inhabited.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The cocoanuts and taro told the same doubtful tale. From the way they
+      grew, even in that dim starlight, Felix recognized at once they had all
+      been planted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Still, he didn&rsquo;t hesitate to do what he thought best for Muriel&rsquo;s
+      relief for all that. Collecting a few sticks and fragments of
+      palm-branches from the jungle about, he piled them into a heap, and waited
+      patiently for his matches to dry. As soon as they were ready&mdash;and the
+      warmth of the stone made them quickly inflammable&mdash;he struck a match
+      on the box, and proceeded to light his fire by Muriel&rsquo;s side. As her
+      clothes grew warmer, the poor girl opened her eyes at last, and, gazing
+      around her, exclaimed, in blank terror, &ldquo;Oh, Mr. Thurstan, where are
+      we? What does all this mean? Where have we got to? On a desert island?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, <i>not</i> on a desert island,&rdquo; Felix answered, shortly;
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid it&rsquo;s a great deal worse than that. To tell
+      you the truth, I&rsquo;m afraid it&rsquo;s inhabited.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At that moment, by the hot embers of the great sacrificial pyre on the
+      central hill, two of the savage temple-attendants, calling their god&rsquo;s
+      attention to a sudden blaze of flame upon the fringing reef, pointed with
+      their dark forefingers and called out in surprise, &ldquo;See, see, a fire
+      on the barrier! A fire! A fire! What can it mean? There are no men of our
+      people over there to-night. Have war-canoes arrived? Has some enemy
+      landed?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila leaned back, drained his cocoanut cup of intoxicating kava,
+      and surveyed the unwonted apparition on the reef long and carefully.
+      &ldquo;It is nothing,&rdquo; he said at last, in his most deliberate
+      manner, stroking his cheeks and chin contentedly with that plump round
+      hand of his. &ldquo;It is only the victims; the new victims I promised
+      you. Korong! Korong! They have come ashore with their light from my home
+      in the sun. They have brought fire afresh&mdash;holy fire to Boupari.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Three or four of the savages leaped up in fierce joy, and bowed before him
+      as he spoke, with eager faces. &ldquo;Oh, Tu-Kila-Kila!&rdquo; the eldest
+      among them said, making a profound reverence, &ldquo;shall we swim across
+      to the reef and fetch them home to your house? Shall we take over our
+      canoes and bring back your victims!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The god motioned them back with one outstretched palm. His eyes were
+      flushed and his look lazy. &ldquo;Not to-night, my people,&rdquo; he said;
+      readjusting the garland of flowers round his neck, and giving a careless
+      glance at the well-picked bones that a few hours before had been two
+      trembling fellow creatures. &ldquo;Tu-Kila-Kila has feasted his fill for
+      this evening. Your god is full; his heart is happy. I have eaten human
+      flesh; I have drunk of the juice of the kava. Am I not a great deity? Can
+      I not do as I will? I frown, and the heavens thunder; I gnash my teeth,
+      and the earth trembles. What is it to me if fresh victims come, or if they
+      come not? Can I not make with a nod as many as I will of them?&rdquo; He
+      took up two fresh finger-bones, clean gnawed of their flesh, and knocked
+      them together in a wild tune, carelessly. &ldquo;If Tu-Kila-Kila chooses,&rdquo;
+      he went on, tapping his chest with conscious pride, &ldquo;he can knock
+      these bones together&mdash;so&mdash;and bid them live again. Is it not I
+      who cause women and beasts to bring forth their young? Is it not I who
+      give the turtles their increase? And is it not a small thing to me,
+      therefore, whether the sea tosses up my victims from my home in the sun,
+      or whether it does not? Let us leave them alone on the reef for to-night;
+      to-morrow we will send over our canoes to fetch them.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was all pure brag, all pure guesswork; and yet, Tu-Kila-Kila himself
+      profoundly believed it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he spoke, the light from Felix&rsquo;s fire blazed out against the dark
+      sky, stronger and clearer still; and through that cloudless tropical air
+      the figure of a man, standing for one moment between the flames and the
+      lagoon, became distinctly visible to the keen and practised eyes of the
+      savages. &ldquo;I see them? I see them; I see the victims!&rdquo; the
+      foremost worshipper exclaimed, rushing forward a little at the sight, and
+      beside himself with superstitious awe and surprise at Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s
+      presence. &ldquo;Surely our god is great! He knows all things! He brings
+      us meat from the setting sun, in ships of fire, in blazing canoes, across
+      the golden road of the sun-bathed ocean!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As for Tu-Kila-Kila himself, leaning on his elbow at ease, he gazed across
+      at the unexpected sight with very languid interest. He was a god, and he
+      liked to see things conducted with proper decorum. This crowing and crying
+      over a couple of spirits&mdash;mere ordinary spirits come ashore from the
+      sun in a fiery boat&mdash;struck his godship as little short of childish.
+      &ldquo;Let them be,&rdquo; he answered, petulantly, crushing a blossom in
+      his hand. &ldquo;Let no man disturb them. They shall rest where they are
+      till to-morrow morning. We have eaten; we have drunk; our soul is happy.
+      The kava within us has made us like a god indeed. I shall give my
+      ministers charge that no harm happen to them.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He drew a whistle from his side and whistled once. There was a moment&rsquo;s
+      pause. Then Tu-Kila-Kila spoke in a loud voice again. &ldquo;The King of
+      Fire!&rdquo; he exclaimed, in tones of princely authority.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From within the hut there came forth slowly a second stalwart savage, big
+      built and burly as the great god himself, clad in a long robe or cloak of
+      yellow feathers, which shone bright with a strange metallic gleam in the
+      ruddy light of the huge pile of li-wood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The King of Fire is here, Tu-Kila-Kila,&rdquo; the lesser god made
+      answer, bending his head slightly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fire,&rdquo; Tu-Kila-Kila said, like a monarch giving orders to his
+      attendant minister, &ldquo;if any man touch the newcomers on the reef
+      before I cause my sun to rise to-morrow morning, scorch up his flesh with
+      your flame, and consume his bones to ash and cinder. If any woman go near
+      them before Tu-Kila-Kila bids, let her be rolled in palm-leaves, and
+      smeared with oil, and light her up for a torch on a dark night to lighten
+      our temple.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The King of Fire bent his head in assent. &ldquo;It is as Tu-Kila-Kila
+      wills,&rdquo; he answered, submissively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila whistled again, this time twice. &ldquo;The King of Water!&rdquo;
+      he exclaimed, in the same loud tone of command as before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the words, a man of about forty, tall and sinewy, clad in a short cape
+      of white albatross feathers, and with a girdle of nautilus shells
+      interspersed with red coral tied around his waist, came forth to the
+      summons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The King of Water is here,&rdquo; he said, bending his head, but
+      not his knee, before the greater deity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Water,&rdquo; Tu-Kila-Kila said, with half-tipsy solemnity, &ldquo;you
+      are a god too. Your power is very great. But less than mine. Do, then, as
+      I bid you. If any man touch my spirits, whom I have brought from my home
+      in the sun in a fiery ship, before I bid him to-morrow, overturn his
+      canoe, and drown him in lagoon or spring or ocean. If any woman go near
+      them without Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s leave, bind her hand and foot with ropes
+      of porpoise hide, and cast her out into the surf, and dash her with your
+      waves, and pummel her to pieces.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The King of Water bent his head a second time. &ldquo;I am a great god,&rdquo;
+      he answered, &ldquo;before all others save you: but for you, Tu-Kila-Kila,
+      I haste to do your bidding. If any man disobey you, my billows shall rise
+      and overwhelm him in the sea. I am a great god. I claim each year many
+      drowned victims.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But not so many as me,&rdquo; Tu-Kila-Kila interposed, his hand
+      playing on his knife with a faint air of impatience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But not so many as you,&rdquo; the minor god added, in haste, as if
+      to appease his rising anger. &ldquo;Fire and Water ever speed to do your
+      bidding.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila stood up, turned toward the distant flame, and waved his
+      hands round and round three times before him. &ldquo;Let this be for you
+      all a great taboo,&rdquo; he said, glancing once more toward his
+      awe-struck followers. &ldquo;Now the mysteries are over. Tu-Kila-Kila will
+      sleep. He has eaten of human flesh. He has drunk of cocoanut rum and of
+      new kava. He has brought back his sun on its way in the heavens. He has
+      sent it messengers of fire to reinforce its strength. He has fetched from
+      it messengers in turn with fresh fire to Boupari, fire not lighted from
+      any earthly flame; fire new, divine, scorching, unspeakable. To-morrow we
+      will talk with the spirits he has brought. To-night we will sleep. Now all
+      go to your homes; and tell your women of this great taboo, lest they speak
+      to the spirits, and fall into the hands of Fire or of Water.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The savages dropped on their faces before the eye of their god and lay
+      quite still. They made a path as it were from the pyre to the temple door
+      with their prostrate bodies. Tu-Kila-Kila, walking with unsteady steps
+      over their half-naked forms, turned to his hut in a drunken booze. He
+      walked over them with no more compunction or feeling than over so many
+      logs. Why should he not, indeed? For he was a god, and they were his meat,
+      his servants, his worshippers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IV. &mdash; THE GUESTS OF HEAVEN.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      All that night through&mdash;their first lonely night on the island of
+      Boupari&mdash;Felix sat up by his flickering fire, wide awake, half
+      expecting and dreading some treacherous attack of the unknown savages.
+      From time to time he kept adding dry fuel to his smouldering pile; and he
+      never ceased to keep a keen eye both on the lagoon and the reef, in case
+      an assault should be made upon them suddenly by land or water. He knew the
+      South Seas quite well enough already to have all the possibilities of
+      misfortune floating vividly before his eyes. He realized at once from his
+      own previous experience the full loneliness and terror of their unarmed
+      condition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For Boupari was one of those rare remote islets where the very rumor of
+      our European civilization has hardly yet penetrated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As for Muriel, though she was alarmed enough, of course, and intensely
+      shaken by the sudden shock she had received, the whole surroundings were
+      too wholly unlike any world she had ever yet known to enable her to take
+      in at once the utter horror of the situation. She only knew they were
+      alone, wet, bruised, and terribly battered; and the Australasian had gone
+      on, leaving them there to their fate on an unknown island. That, for the
+      moment, was more than enough for her of accumulated misfortune. She come
+      to herself but slowly, and as her torn clothes dried by degrees before the
+      fire and the heat of the tropical night, she was so far from fully
+      realizing the dangers of their position that her first and principal fear
+      for the moment was lest she might take cold from her wet things drying
+      upon her. She ate a little of the plantain that Felix picked for her; and
+      at times, toward morning, she dozed off into an uneasy sleep, from pure
+      fatigue and excess of weariness. As she slept, Felix, bending over her,
+      with the biggest blade of his knife open in case of attack, watched with
+      profound emotion the rise and fall of her bosom, and hesitated with
+      himself, if the worst should come to the worst, as to what he ought to do
+      with her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It would be impossible to let a pure young English girl like that fall
+      helplessly into the hands of such bloodthirsty wretches as he knew the
+      islanders were almost certain to be. Who could tell what nameless
+      indignities, what incredible tortures they might wantonly inflict upon her
+      innocent soul? Was it right of him to have let her come ashore at all?
+      Ought he not rather to have allowed the more merciful sea to take her life
+      easily, without the chance or possibility of such additional horrors?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And now&mdash;as she slept&mdash;so calm and pure and maidenly&mdash;what
+      was his duty that minute, just there to her? He felt the blade of his
+      knife with his finger cautiously, and almost doubted. If only she could
+      tell what things might be in store for her, would she not, herself, prefer
+      death, an honorable death, at the friendly hands of a tenderhearted
+      fellow-countryman, to the unspeakable insults of these man-eating
+      Polynesians? If only he had the courage to release her by one blow, as she
+      lay there, from the coming ill! But he hadn&rsquo;t; he hadn&rsquo;t. Even
+      on board the Australasian he had been vaguely aware that he was getting
+      very fond of that pretty little Miss Ellis. And now that he sat there,
+      after that desperate struggle for life with the pounding waves, mounting
+      guard over her through the livelong night, his own heart told him plainly,
+      in tones he could not disobey, he loved her too well to dare what he
+      thought best in the end for her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Still, even so, he was brave enough to feel he must never let the very
+      worst of all befall her. He bethought him, in his doubt and agony, of how
+      his uncle, Major Thurstan, during the great Indian mutiny, had held his
+      lonely bungalow, with his wife and daughter by his side, for three long
+      hours against a howling mob of native insurgents; and how, when further
+      resistance was hopeless, and that great black wave of angry humanity burst
+      in upon them at last, the brave soldier had drawn his revolver, shot his
+      wife and daughter with unerring aim, to prevent their falling alive into
+      the hands of the natives, and then blown his own brains out with his last
+      remaining cartridge. As his uncle had done at Jhansi, thirty years before,
+      so he himself would do on that nameless Pacific island&mdash;for he didn&rsquo;t
+      know even now on what shore he had landed. If the savages bore down upon
+      them with hostile intent, and threatened Muriel, he would plunge his knife
+      first into that innocent woman&rsquo;s heart; and then bury it deep in his
+      own, and die beside her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So the long night wore on&mdash;Muriel pillowed on loose cocoanut husk,
+      dozing now and again, and waking with a start to gaze round about her
+      wildly, and realize once more in what plight she found herself; Felix
+      crouching by her feet, and keeping watch with eager eyes and ears on every
+      side for the least sign of a noiseless, naked footfall through the tangled
+      growth of that dense tropical under-bush. Time after time he clapped his
+      hand to his ear, shell-wise, and listened and peered, with knitted brow,
+      suspecting some sudden swoop from an ambush in the jungle of creepers
+      behind the little plantain patch. Time after time he grasped his knife
+      hard, and puckered his eyebrows resolutely, and stood still with bated
+      breath for a fierce, wild leap upon his fancied assailant. But the night
+      wore away by degrees, a minute at a time, and no man came; and dawn began
+      to brighten the sea-line to eastward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the day dawned, Felix could see more clearly exactly where he was, and
+      in what surroundings. Without, the ocean broke in huge curling billows on
+      the shallow beach of the fringing reef with such stupendous force that
+      Felix wondered how they could ever have lived through its pounding surf
+      and its fiercely retreating undertow. Within, the lagoon spread its calm
+      lake-like surface away to the white coral shore of the central atoll.
+      Between these two waters, the greater and the less, a waving palisade of
+      tall-stemmed palm-trees rose on a narrow ribbon of circular land that
+      formed the fringing reef. All night through he had felt, with a strange
+      eerie misgiving, the very foundations of the land thrill under his feet at
+      every dull thud or boom of the surf on its restraining barrier. Now that
+      he could see that thin belt of shore in its actual shape and size, he was
+      not astonished at this constant shock; what surprised him rather was the
+      fact that such a speck of land could hold its own at all against the
+      ceaseless cannonade of that seemingly irresistible ocean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stood up, hatless, in his battered tweed suit, and surveyed the scene
+      of their present and future adventures. It took but a glance to show him
+      that the whole ground-plan of the island was entirely circular. In the
+      midst of all rose the central atoll itself, a tiny mountain-peak, just
+      projecting with its hills and gorges to a few hundred feet above the
+      surface of the ocean. Outside it came the lagoon, with its placid ring of
+      glassy water surrounding the circular island, and separated from the sea
+      by an equally circular belt of fringing reef, covered thick with waving
+      stems of picturesque cocoanut. It was on the reef they had landed, and
+      from it they now looked across the calm lagoon with doubtful eyes toward
+      the central island.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As soon as the sun rose, their doubts were quickly resolved into fears or
+      certainties. Scarcely had its rim begun to show itself distinctly above
+      the eastern horizon, when a great bustle and confusion was noticeable at
+      once on the opposite shore. Brown-skinned savages were collecting in eager
+      groups by a white patch of beach, and putting out rude but well-manned
+      canoes into the calm waters of the lagoon. At sight of their naked arms
+      and bustling gestures, Muriel&rsquo;s heart sank suddenly within her.
+      &ldquo;Oh, Mr. Thurstan,&rdquo; she cried, clinging to his arm in her
+      terror, &ldquo;what does it all mean? Are they going to hurt us? Are these
+      savages coming over? Are they coming to kill us?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix grasped his trusty knife hard in his right hand, and swallowed a
+      groan, as he looked tenderly down upon her. &ldquo;Muriel,&rdquo; he said,
+      forgetting in the excitement of the moment the little conventionalities
+      and courtesies of civilized life, &ldquo;if they are, trust me, you never
+      shall fall alive into their cruel hands. Sooner than that&mdash;&rdquo; he
+      held up the knife significantly, with its open blade before her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The poor girl clung to him harder still, with a ghastly shudder. &ldquo;Oh,
+      it&rsquo;s terrible, terrible,&rdquo; she cried, turning deadly pale.
+      Then, after a short pause, she added, &ldquo;But I would rather have it
+      so. Do as you say. I could bear it from you. Promise me <i>that</i>,
+      rather than that those creatures should kill me.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I promise,&rdquo; Felix answered, clasping her hand hard, and
+      paused, with the knife ever ready in his right, awaiting the approach of
+      the half-naked savages.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The boats glided fast across the lagoon, propelled by the paddles of the
+      stalwart Polynesians who manned them, and crowded to the water&rsquo;s
+      edge with groups of grinning and shouting warriors. They were dressed in
+      aprons of dracæna leaves only, with necklets and armlets of sharks&rsquo;
+      teeth and cowrie shells. A dozen canoes at least were making toward the
+      reef at full speed, all bristling with spears and alive with noisy and
+      boisterous savages. Muriel shrank back terror-stricken at the sight, as
+      they drew nearer and nearer. But Felix, holding his breath hard, grew
+      somewhat less nervous as the men approached the reef. He had seen enough
+      of Polynesian life before now to feel sure these people were not upon the
+      war-path. Whatever their ultimate intentions toward the castaways might
+      be, their immediate object seemed friendly and good-humored. The boats,
+      though large, were not regular war-canoes; the men, instead of brandishing
+      their spears, and lunging out with them over the edge in threatening
+      attitudes, held them erect in their hands at rest, like standards; they
+      were laughing and talking, not crying their war-cry. As they drew near the
+      shore, one big canoe shot suddenly a length or so ahead of the rest; and
+      its leader, standing on the grotesque carved figure that adorned its prow,
+      held up both his hands open and empty before him, in sign of peace, while
+      at the same time he shouted out a word or two three times in his own
+      language, to reassure the castaways.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix&rsquo;s eye glanced cautiously from boat to boat. &ldquo;He says,
+      &lsquo;We are friends,&rsquo;&rdquo; the young man remarked in an
+      undertone to his terrified companion. &ldquo;I can understand his dialect.
+      Thank Heaven, it&rsquo;s very close to Fijian. I shall be able at least to
+      palaver to these men. I don&rsquo;t think they mean just now to harm us. I
+      believe we can trust them, at any rate for the present.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The poor girl drew back, in still greater awe and alarm than ever. &ldquo;Oh,
+      are they going to land here?&rdquo; she cried, still clinging closer with
+      both hands to her one friend and protector.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Try not to look so frightened!&rdquo; Felix exclaimed, with a
+      warning glance. &ldquo;Remember, much depends upon it; savages judge you
+      greatly by what demeanor you happen to assume. If you&rsquo;re frightened,
+      they know their power; if they see you&rsquo;re resolute, they suspect you
+      have some supernatural means of protection. Try to meet them frankly, as
+      if you were not afraid of them.&rdquo; Then, advancing slowly to the water&rsquo;s
+      edge, he called out aloud, in a strong, clear voice, a few words which
+      Muriel didn&rsquo;t understand, but which were really the Fijian for
+      &ldquo;We also are friendly. Our medicine is good. We mean no magic. We
+      come to you from across the great water. We desire your peace. Receive us
+      and protect us!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the sound of words which he could readily understand, and which
+      differed but little, indeed, from his own language, the leader on the
+      foremost canoe, who seemed by his manner to be a great chief, turned round
+      to his followers and cried out in tones of superstitious awe, &ldquo;Tu-Kila-Kila
+      spoke well. These are, indeed, what he told us. Korong! Korong! They are
+      spirits who have come to us from the disk of the sun, to bring us light
+      and pure, fresh fire. Stay back there, all of you. You are not holy enough
+      to approach. I and my crew, who are sanctified by the mysteries, we alone
+      will go forward to meet them.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he spoke, a sudden idea, suggested by his words, struck Felix&rsquo;s
+      mind. Superstition is the great lever by which to move the savage
+      intelligence. Gathering up a few dry leaves and fragments of stick on the
+      shore, he laid them together in a pile, and awaited in silence the arrival
+      of the foremost islanders. The first canoe advanced slowly and cautiously,
+      the men in it eying these proceedings with evident suspicion; the rest
+      hung back, with their spears in array, and their hands just ready to use
+      them with effect should occasion demand it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The leader of the first canoe, coming close to the shore, jumped out upon
+      the reef in shallow water. Half a dozen of his followers jumped after him
+      without hesitation, and brandished their weapons round their heads as they
+      advanced, in savage unison. But Felix, pretending hardly to notice these
+      hostile demonstrations, stepped boldly up toward his little pile with
+      great deliberation, though trembling inwardly, and proceeded before their
+      eyes to take a match from his box, which he displayed ostentatiously, all
+      glittering in the sun, to the foremost savage. The leader stood by and
+      watched him close with eyes of silent wonder. Then Felix, kneeling down,
+      struck the match on the box, and applied it, as it lighted, to the dry
+      leaves beside him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A chorus of astonishment burst unanimously from the delighted natives as
+      the dry leaves leaped all at once into a tongue of flame, and the little
+      pile caught quickly from the fire in the vesta.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The leader looked hard at the two white faces, and then at the fire on the
+      beach, with evident approbation. &ldquo;It is as Tu-Kila-Kila said,&rdquo;
+      he exclaimed at last with profound awe. &ldquo;They are spirits from the
+      sun, and they carry with them pure fire in shining boxes.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, advancing a pace and pointing toward the canoe, he motioned Felix
+      and Muriel to take their seats within it with native savage politeness.
+      &ldquo;Tu-Kila-Kila has sent for you,&rdquo; he said, in his grandest
+      aristocratic air, &ldquo;for your chief is a gentleman. He wishes to
+      receive you. He saw your message-fire on the reef last night, and he knew
+      you had come. He has made you a very great Taboo. He has put you under
+      protection of Fire and Water.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The people in the boats, with one accord, shouted out in wild chorus, as
+      if to confirm his words, &ldquo;Taboo! Taboo! Tu-Kila-Kila has said it!
+      Taboo! Taboo! Ware Fire! Ware Water!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Though the dialect in which they spoke differed somewhat from that in use
+      in Fiji, Felix could still make out with care almost every word of what
+      the chief had said to him; and the universal Polynesian expression,
+      &ldquo;Taboo,&rdquo; in particular, somewhat reassured him as to their
+      friendly intentions. Among remote heathen islanders like these, he felt
+      sure, the very word itself was far too sacred to be taken in vain. They
+      would respect its inviolability. He turned round to Muriel. &ldquo;We must
+      go with them,&rdquo; he said, shortly. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s our one chance
+      left of life now. Don&rsquo;t be too terrified; there is still some hope.
+      They say somebody they call Tu-Kila-Kila has tabooed us. No one will dare
+      to hurt us against so great a Taboo; for Tu-Kila-Kila is evidently some
+      very important king or chief. You must step into the boat. It can&rsquo;t
+      be avoided. If any harm is threatened, be sure I won&rsquo;t forget my
+      promise.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Muriel shrank back in alarm, and clung still to his arm now as naturally
+      as she would have clung to a brother&rsquo;s. &ldquo;Oh, Mr. Thurstan,&rdquo;
+      she cried&mdash;&ldquo;Felix, I don&rsquo;t know what to say; I <i>can&rsquo;t</i>
+      go with them.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix put his arm gently round her girlish waist, and half lifted her into
+      the boat in spite of her reluctance. &ldquo;You must,&rdquo; he said, with
+      great firmness. &ldquo;You must do as I say. I will watch over you, and
+      take care of you. If the worst comes, I have always my knife, and I won&rsquo;t
+      forget. Now, friend,&rdquo; he went on, in Fijian, turning round to the
+      chief, as he took his seat in the canoe fearlessly among all those dusky,
+      half-clad figures, &ldquo;we are ready to start. We do not fear. We wish
+      to go. Take us to Tu-Kila-Kila.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And all the savages around, shouting in their surprise and awe, exclaimed
+      once more in concert, &ldquo;Tu-Kila-Kila is great. We will take them, as
+      he bids us, forthwith to heaven.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do they say?&rdquo; Muriel cried, clinging close to the white
+      man&rsquo;s side in her speechless terror. &ldquo;Do you understand their
+      language?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I can&rsquo;t quite make it out,&rdquo; Felix answered, much
+      puzzled; &ldquo;that is to say, not every word of it. They say they&rsquo;ll
+      take us somewhere, I don&rsquo;t quite know where; but in Fijian, the word
+      would certainly mean to heaven.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Muriel shuddered visibly. &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t think,&rdquo; she said,
+      with a tremulous tongue, &ldquo;they mean to kill us?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I don&rsquo;t <i>think</i> so,&rdquo; Felix replied, not
+      over-confidently. &ldquo;They said we were Taboo. But with savages like
+      these, of course, one can never in any case be quite certain.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER V. &mdash; ENROLLED IN OLYMPUS.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      They rowed across the lagoon, a mysterious procession, almost in silence&mdash;the
+      canoe with the two Europeans going first, the others following at a slight
+      distance&mdash;and landed at last on the brink of the central island.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Several of the Boupari people leaped ashore at once; then they helped
+      Felix and Muriel from the frail bark with almost deferential care, and led
+      the way before them up a steep white path, that zigzagged through the
+      forest toward the centre of the island. As they went, a band of natives
+      preceded them in regular line of march, shouting &ldquo;Taboo, taboo!&rdquo;
+      at short intervals, especially as they neared any group of fan-palm
+      cottages. The women whom they met fell on their knees at once, till the
+      strange procession had passed them by; the men only bowed their heads
+      thrice, and made a rapid movement on their breasts with their fingers,
+      which reminded Muriel at once of the sign of the cross in Catholic
+      countries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So on they wended their way in silence through the deep tropical jungle,
+      along a pathway just wide enough for three to walk abreast, till they
+      emerged suddenly upon a large cleared space, in whose midst grew a great
+      banyan-tree, with arms that dropped and rooted themselves like buttresses
+      in the soil beneath. Under the banyan-tree a raised platform stood upon
+      posts of bamboo. The platform was covered with fine network in yellow and
+      red; and two little stools occupied the middle, as if placed there on
+      purpose and waiting for their occupants.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man who had headed the first canoe turned round to Felix and motioned
+      him forward. &ldquo;This is Heaven,&rdquo; he said glibly, in his own
+      tongue. &ldquo;Spirits, ascend it!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix, much wondering what the ceremony could mean, mounted the platform
+      without a word, in obedience to the chief&rsquo;s command, closely
+      followed by Muriel, who dared not leave him for a second.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bring water!&rdquo; the chief said, shortly, in a voice of
+      authority to one of his followers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man handed up a calabash with a little water in it. The chief took the
+      rude vessel from his hands in a reverential manner, and poured a few drops
+      of the contents on Felix&rsquo;s head; the water trickled down over his
+      hair and forehead. Involuntarily, Felix shook his head a little at the
+      unexpected wetting, and scattered the drops right and left on his neck and
+      shoulders. The chief watched this performance attentively with profound
+      satisfaction. Then he turned to his attendants.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The spirit shakes his head,&rdquo; he said, with a deeply convinced
+      air. &ldquo;All is well. Heaven has chosen him. Korong! Korong! He is
+      accepted for his purpose. It is well! It is well! Let us try the other
+      one.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He raised the calabash once more, and poured a few drops in like manner on
+      Muriel&rsquo;s dark hair. The poor girl, trembling in every limb, shook
+      her head also in the same unintentional fashion. The chief regarded her
+      with still more complacent eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is well,&rdquo; he observed once more to his companions,
+      smiling. &ldquo;She, too, gives the sign of acceptance. Korong! Korong!
+      Heaven is well pleased with both. See how her body trembles!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At that moment a girl came forward with a little basket of fruits. The
+      chief chose a banana with care from the basket, peeled it with his dusky
+      hands, broke it slowly in two, and handed one half very solemnly to Felix.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eat, King of the Rain,&rdquo; he said, as he presented it. &ldquo;The
+      offering of Heaven.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix ate it at once, thinking it best under the circumstances not to
+      demur at all to anything his strange hosts might choose to impose upon
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The chief handed the other half just as solemnly to Muriel. &ldquo;Eat,
+      Queen of the Clouds,&rdquo; he said, as he placed it in her fingers.
+      &ldquo;The offering of Heaven.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Muriel hesitated. She didn&rsquo;t know what his words meant, and it
+      seemed to her rather the offering of a very dirty and unwashed savage. The
+      chief eyed her hard. &ldquo;For God&rsquo;s sake eat it, my child; he
+      tells you to eat it!&rdquo; Felix exclaimed in haste. Muriel lifted it to
+      her lips and swallowed it down with difficulty. The man&rsquo;s dusky
+      hands didn&rsquo;t inspire confidence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the chief seemed relieved when he had seen her swallow it. &ldquo;All
+      is well done,&rdquo; he said, turning again to his followers. &ldquo;We
+      have obeyed the words of Tu-Kila-Kila, and his orders that he gave us. We
+      have offered the strangers, the spirits from the sun, as a free gift to
+      Heaven, and Heaven has accepted them. We have given them fruits, the
+      fruits of the earth, and they have duly eaten them. Korong! Korong! The
+      King of the Rain and the Queen of the Clouds have indeed come among us.
+      They are truly gods. We will take them now, as he bid us, to Tu-Kila-Kila.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What have they done to us?&rdquo; Muriel asked aside, in a
+      terrified undertone of Felix.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t quite make out,&rdquo; Felix answered in the selfsame
+      voice. &ldquo;They call us the King of the Rain and the Queen of the
+      Clouds in their own language. I think they imagine we&rsquo;ve come from
+      the sun and that we&rsquo;re a sort of spirits.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the sound of these words the girl who held the basket of fruits gave a
+      sudden start. It almost seemed to Muriel as if she understood them. But
+      when Muriel looked again she gave no further sign. She merely held her
+      peace, and tried to appear wholly undisconcerted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The chief beckoned them down from the platform with a wave of his hand.
+      They rose and followed him. As they rose the people around them bowed low
+      to the ground. Felix could see they were bowing to Muriel and himself, not
+      merely to the chief. A doubt flitted strangely across his mind for a
+      moment. What could it all mean? Did they take the two strangers, then, for
+      supernatural beings? Had they enrolled them as gods? If so, it might serve
+      as some little protection for them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The procession formed again, three and three, three and three, in solemn
+      silence. Then the chief walked in front of them with measured steps, and
+      Felix and Muriel followed behind, wondering. As they went, the cry rose
+      louder and louder than before, &ldquo;Taboo! Taboo!&rdquo; People who met
+      them fell on their faces at once, as the chief cried out in a loud tone,
+      &ldquo;The King of the Rain! The Queen of the Clouds! Korong! Korong! They
+      are coming! They are coming!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last they reached a second cleared space, standing in a large garden of
+      manilla, loquat, poncians, and hibiscus-trees. It was entered by a gate, a
+      tall gate of bamboo posts. At the gate all the followers fell back to
+      right and left, awe-struck. Only the chief went calmly on. He beckoned to
+      Felix and Muriel to follow him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They entered, half terrified. Felix still grasped his open knife in his
+      hand, ready to strike at any moment that might be necessary. The chief led
+      them forward toward a very large tree near the centre of the garden. At
+      the foot of the tree stood a hut, somewhat bigger and better built than
+      any they had yet seen; and in front of the trunk a stalwart savage, very
+      powerfully built, but with a sinister look in his cruel and lustful eye,
+      was pacing up and down, like a sentinel on guard, a long spear in his
+      right hand, and a tomahawk in his left, held close by his side, all ready
+      for action. As he prowled up and down he seemed to be peering warily about
+      him on every side, as if each instant he expected to be set upon by an
+      enemy. But as the chief approached, the people without set up once more
+      the cry of &ldquo;Taboo! Taboo!&rdquo; and the stalwart savage by the
+      tree, laying down his spear and letting his tomahawk fall free, dropped in
+      a second the air of watchful alarm, and advanced with some courtesy to
+      greet the new-comers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We have found them, Tu-Kila-Kila,&rdquo; the chief said, presenting
+      them to the god with a graceful wave of his hand. &ldquo;We have found the
+      spirits that you brought from the sun, with the fire in their hands, and
+      the light in boxes. We have taken them to Heaven. Heaven has accepted
+      them. We have offered them fruit, and they have eaten the banana. The King
+      of the Rain&mdash;the Queen of the Clouds! Korong! Receive them!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila glanced at them with an approving glance, strangely
+      compounded of pleasure and terror. &ldquo;They are plump,&rdquo; he said
+      shortly. &ldquo;They are indeed Korong. My sun has sent me an acceptable
+      present.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is your will that we should do with them?&rdquo; the chief
+      asked in a deeply deferential tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila looked hard at Muriel&mdash;such a hateful look that the
+      knife trembled irresolute for a second in Felix&rsquo;s hand. &ldquo;Give
+      them two fresh huts,&rdquo; he said, in a lordly way. &ldquo;Give them
+      divine platters. Give them all that they need. Make everything right for
+      them.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The chief bowed, and retired with an awed air from the presence. Exactly
+      as he passed a certain line on the ground, marked white with a row of
+      coral-sand, Tu-Kila-Kila seized his spear and his tomahawk once more, and
+      mounted guard, as before, at the foot of the great tree where they had
+      seen him pacing. An instantaneous change seemed to Muriel to come over his
+      demeanor at that moment. While he spoke with the chief she noticed he
+      looked all cruelty, lust, and hateful self-indulgence. Now that he paced
+      up and down warily in front of that sacred floor, peering around him with
+      keen suspicion, he seemed rather the personification of watchfulness,
+      fear, and a certain slavish bodily terror. Especially, she observed, he
+      cast upon Felix, as he went, a glance of angry hate; and yet he did not
+      attempt to hurt or molest him in any way, defenceless as they both were
+      before those numerous savages.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As they emerged from the enclosure, the girl with the fruit basket stood
+      near the gate, looking outward from the wall, her face turned away from
+      the awful home of Tu-Kila-Kila. At the moment when Muriel passed, to her
+      immense astonishment the girl spoke to her. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t be afraid,
+      missy,&rdquo; she said in English, in a rather low voice, without
+      obtrusively approaching them. &ldquo;Boupari man not going to hurt you. Me
+      going to be your servant. Me name Mali. Me very good girl. Me take plenty
+      care of you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The unexpected sound of her own language, in the midst of so much
+      unmitigated savagery, took Muriel fairly by surprise. She looked hard at
+      the girl, but thought it wisest to answer nothing. This particular young
+      woman, indeed, was just as dark, and to all appearance just as much of a
+      savage, as any of the rest of them. But she could speak English, at any
+      rate! And she said she was to be Muriel&rsquo;s servant!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The chief led them back to the shore, talking volubly all the way in
+      Polynesia to Felix. His dialect differed so much from the Fijian that when
+      he spoke first Felix could hardly follow him. But he gathered vaguely,
+      nevertheless, that they were to be well housed and fed for the present at
+      the public expense; and even that something which the chief clearly
+      regarded as a very great honor was in store for them in the future.
+      Whatever these people&rsquo;s particular superstition might be, it seemed
+      pretty evident at least that it told in the strangers&rsquo; favor. Felix
+      almost began to hope they might manage to live there pretty tolerably for
+      the next two or three weeks, and perhaps to signal in time to some passing
+      Australian liner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The rest of that wonderful eventful day was wholly occupied with practical
+      details. Before long, two adjacent huts were found for them, near the
+      shore of the lagoon; and Felix noticed with pleasure, not only that the
+      huts themselves were new and clean, but also that the chief took great
+      care to place round both of them a single circular line of white
+      coral-sand, like the one he had noticed at Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s
+      palace-temple. He felt sure this white line made the space within taboo.
+      No native would dare without leave to cross it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the line was well marked out round the two huts together, the chief
+      went away for a while, leaving the Europeans within their broad white
+      circle, guarded by an angry-looking band of natives with long spears at
+      rest, all pointed inward. The natives themselves stood well without the
+      ring, but the points of their spears almost reached the line, and it was
+      clear they would not for the present permit the Europeans to leave the
+      charmed circle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently, the chief returned again, followed by two other natives in
+      official costumes. One of them was a tall and handsome young man, dressed
+      in a long robe or cloak of yellow feathers. The other was stouter, and
+      perhaps forty or thereabouts; he wore a short cape of white albatross
+      plumes, with a girdle of shells at his waist, interspersed with red coral.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The King of Fire will make Taboo,&rdquo; the chief said, solemnly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The young man with the cloak of yellow feathers stepped forward and spoke,
+      toeing the line with his left foot, and brandishing a lighted stick in his
+      right hand. &ldquo;Taboo! Taboo! Taboo!&rdquo; he cried aloud, with
+      emphasis. &ldquo;If any man dare to transgress this line without leave, I
+      burn him to ashes. If any woman, I scorch her to a cinder. Taboo to the
+      King of the Rain and the Queen of the Clouds. Taboo! Taboo! Taboo! Korong!
+      I say it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stepped back into the ranks with an air of duty performed. The chief
+      looked about him curiously a moment. &ldquo;The King of Water will make
+      Taboo,&rdquo; he repeated after a pause, in the same deep tone of profound
+      conviction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The stouter man in the short white cape stepped forward in his turn. He
+      toed the line with his naked left foot; in his brown right hand he carried
+      a calabash of water. &ldquo;Taboo! Taboo! Taboo!&rdquo; he exclaimed
+      aloud, pouring out the water upon the ground symbolically. &ldquo;If any
+      man dare to transgress this line without leave, I drown him in his canoe.
+      If any woman, I drag her alive into the spring as she fetches water. Taboo
+      to the King of the Rain and the Queen of the Clouds. Taboo! Taboo! Taboo!
+      Korong! I say it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What does it all mean?&rdquo; Muriel whispered, terrified.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix explained to her, as far as he could, in a few hurried sentences.
+      &ldquo;There&rsquo;s only one word in it I don&rsquo;t understand,&rdquo;
+      he added, hastily, &ldquo;and that&rsquo;s Korong. It doesn&rsquo;t occur
+      in Fiji. They keep saying we&rsquo;re Korong, whatever that may mean; and
+      evidently they attach some very great importance to it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let the Shadows come forward,&rdquo; the chief said, looking up
+      with an air of dignity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A good-looking young man, and the girl who said her name was Mali, stepped
+      forth from the crowd, and fell on their knees before him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The chief laid his hand on the young man&rsquo;s shoulder and raised him
+      up. &ldquo;The Shadow of the King of the Rain,&rdquo; he cried, turning
+      him three times round. &ldquo;Follow him in all his incomings and his
+      outgoings, and serve him faithfully! Taboo! Taboo! Pass within the sacred
+      circle!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He clapped his hands. The young man crossed the line with a sort of
+      reverent reluctance, and took his place within the ring, close up to
+      Felix.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The chief laid his hand on Mali&rsquo;s shoulder. &ldquo;The Shadow of the
+      Queen of the Clouds,&rdquo; he said, turning her three times round.
+      &ldquo;Follow her in all her incomings and outgoings, and serve her
+      faithfully. Taboo! Taboo! Pass within the sacred circle!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he waved both hands to Felix. &ldquo;Go where you will now,&rdquo; he
+      said. &ldquo;Your Shadow will follow you. You are free as the rain that
+      drops where it will. You are as free as the clouds that roam through
+      heaven. No man will hinder you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And in a moment the spearmen dropped their spears in concert, the crowd
+      fell back, and the villagers dispersed as if by magic, to their own
+      houses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Felix and Muriel were left alone beside their huts, guarded only in
+      silence by their two mystic Shadows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0006" id="link2HCH0006"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VI. &mdash; FIRST DAYS IN BOUPARI.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Throughout that day the natives brought them, from time to time, numerous
+      presents of yam, bananas, and bread-fruit, neatly arranged in little
+      palm-leaf baskets. A few of them brought eggs as well, and one offering
+      even included a live chicken. But the people who brought them, and who
+      were mostly young girls just entering upon womanhood, did not venture to
+      cross the white line of coral-sand that surrounded the huts; they laid
+      down their presents, with many salaams, on the ground outside, and then
+      waited with a half-startled, half-reverent air for one or other of the two
+      Shadows to come out and fetch them. As soon as the baskets were carried
+      well within the marked line, the young girls exhibited every sign of
+      pleasure, and calling aloud, &ldquo;Korong! Korong!&rdquo;&mdash;that
+      mysterious Polynesian word of whose import Felix was ignorant&mdash;they
+      retired once more by tortuous paths through the surrounding jungle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why do they bring us presents?&rdquo; Felix asked at last of his
+      Shadow, after this curious pantomime had been performed some three or four
+      times. &ldquo;Are they always going to keep us in such plenty?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Shadow looked back at him with an air of considerable surprise.
+      &ldquo;They bring presents, of course,&rdquo; he said, in his own tongue,
+      &ldquo;because they are badly in want of rain. We have had much drought of
+      late in Boupari; we need water from heaven. The banana-bushes wither; the
+      flowers on the bread-fruit tree do not swell to breadfruit; the yams are
+      thirsty. Therefore the fathers send their daughters with presents, maidens
+      of the villages, all marriageable girls, to ask for rainfall. But they
+      will always provide for you, and also for the Queen, however you behave;
+      for you are both Korong. Tu-Kila-Kila has said so, and Heaven has accepted
+      you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean by Korong?&rdquo; Felix asked, with some
+      trepidation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Shadow merely looked back at him with a sort of blank surprise that
+      anybody should be ignorant of so simple a conception. &ldquo;Why, Korong
+      is Korong,&rdquo; he answered, aghast. &ldquo;You are Korong yourself. The
+      Queen of the Clouds is Korong, too. You are both Korong; that is why they
+      all treat you with such respect and reverence.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And that was as much as Felix could elicit by his subtlest questions from
+      his taciturn Shadow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In fact, it was clear that in the open, at least, the Shadow was averse to
+      being observed in familiar conversation with Felix. During the heat of the
+      day, however, when they sat alone within the hut, he was much more
+      communicative. Then he launched forth pretty freely into talk about the
+      island and its life, which would no doubt have largely enlightened Felix,
+      had it not been for two drawbacks to their means of inter-communication.
+      In the first place, the Boupari dialect, though agreeing in all essentials
+      with the Polynesian of Fiji, nevertheless contained a great many words and
+      colloquial expressions unknown to the Fijians; this being particularly the
+      case, as Felix soon remarked, in the whole vocabulary of religious rites
+      and ceremonies. And in the second place, the Shadow was so rigidly bound
+      by his own narrow and insular set of ideas, that he couldn&rsquo;t
+      understand the difficulty Felix felt in throwing himself into them. Over
+      and over again, when Felix asked him to explain some word or custom, he
+      would repeat, with naïve impatience, &ldquo;Why, Korong is Korong,&rdquo;
+      or &ldquo;Tula is just Tula; even a child must surely know what Tula is;
+      much more yourself, who are indeed Korong, and who have come from the sun
+      to bring fresh fire to us.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the adjoining hut, Muriel, who was now beginning in some small degree
+      to get rid of her most pressing fear for the immediate future, and whom
+      the obvious reality of the taboo had reassured for the moment, sat with
+      Mali, her own particular Shadow, unravelling the mystery of the girl&rsquo;s
+      knowledge of English.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mali, indeed, like the other Shadow, showed every disposition to indulge
+      in abundant conversation, as soon as she found herself well within the
+      hut, alone with her mistress, and secluded from the prying eyes of all the
+      other islanders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you be afraid, missy,&rdquo; she said, with genuine
+      kindliness in her tone, as soon as the gifts of yam and bread-fruit had
+      all been duly housed and garnered. &ldquo;No harm come to you. You Korong,
+      you know. You very great Taboo. Tu-Kila-Kila send King of Fire and King of
+      Water to make taboo over you, so nobody hurt you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Muriel burst into tears at the sound of her own language from those dusky
+      lips, and exclaimed through her sobs, clinging to the girl&rsquo;s hand
+      for comfort as she spoke, &ldquo;Why, how did you ever come to speak
+      English?&mdash;tell me.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mali looked up at her with a half-astonished air. &ldquo;Oh, I servant in
+      Queensland, of course, missy,&rdquo; she answered, with great composure.
+      &ldquo;Labor vessel come to my island, far away, four, five years ago,
+      steal boy, steal woman. My papa just kill my mamma, because he angry with
+      her, so no want daughters. So my papa sell me and my sister for plenty
+      rum, plenty tobacco, to gentlemen in labor vessel. Gentlemen in labor
+      vessel take Jani and me away, away, to Queensland. Big sea; long voyage.
+      We stop there three yam&mdash;three years&mdash;do service; then great
+      chief in Queensland send us back to my island. My island too faraway;
+      gentleman on ship not find it out; so he land us in little boat on
+      Boupari. Boupari people make temple slave of us.&rdquo; And that was all;
+      to her quite a commonplace, everyday history.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see,&rdquo; Muriel cried. &ldquo;Then you&rsquo;ve been for three
+      years in Australia! And there you learned English. Why, what did you do
+      there?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mali looked back at her with the same matter-of-fact air of composure as
+      before. &ldquo;Oh, me nurse at first,&rdquo; she said, shortly. &ldquo;Then
+      after, me housemaid, live three year in gentleman&rsquo;s house, good
+      gentleman that buy me. Take care of little girl; clean rooms; do
+      everything. Me know how to make English lady quite comfortable. Me tell
+      that to chief; that make him say, &lsquo;Mali, you be Queenie&rsquo;s
+      Shadow.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Muriel in her loneliness even such companionship as that was indeed a
+      consolation. &ldquo;Oh, I&rsquo;m so glad you told him,&rdquo; she cried.
+      &ldquo;If we have to stop here long, before a ship takes us off, it&rsquo;ll
+      be so nice to have you here all the time with me. You won&rsquo;t go away
+      from me ever, will you? You&rsquo;ll always stop with me!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl&rsquo;s surprise showed more profoundly than ever. &ldquo;Me can&rsquo;t
+      go away,&rdquo; she answered, with emphasis. &ldquo;Me your Shadow. That
+      great Taboo. Tu-Kila-Kila great god. If me go away, Tu-Kila-Kila kill me
+      and eat me.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Muriel started back in horror. &ldquo;But, Mali,&rdquo; she said, looking
+      hard at the girl&rsquo;s pleasant brown face, &ldquo;if you were three
+      years in Australia, you&rsquo;re a Christian, surely!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl nodded her head in passive acquiescence. &ldquo;Me Christian in
+      Australia,&rdquo; she answered. &ldquo;Of course me Christian. All folks
+      make Christian when him go to Queensland. That what for me call Mali, and
+      my sister Jani. We have other names on my own island; but when we go to
+      Queensland, gentleman baptize us, call us Mali and Jani. Me Methodist in
+      Queensland. Methodist very good. But Methodist god no live in Boupari. Not
+      any good be Methodist here any longer. Tu-Kila-Kila god here. Him very
+      powerful.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What! Not that dreadful creature that they took us to see this
+      morning!&rdquo; Muriel exclaimed, in horror. &ldquo;Oh, Mali, you can&rsquo;t
+      mean to say they think he&rsquo;s a <i>god</i>, that awful man there!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mali nodded her assent with profound conviction. &ldquo;Yes, yes; him god,&rdquo;
+      she repeated, confidently. &ldquo;Him very powerful. My sister Jani go too
+      near him temple, against taboo&mdash;because her not belong-a Tu-Kila-Kila
+      temple; and last night, when it great feast, plenty men catch Jani, and
+      tie him up in rope; and Tu-Kila-Kila kill him, and plenty Boupari men help
+      Tu-Kila-Kila eat up Jani.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She said it in the same simple, matter-of-fact way as she had said that
+      she was a nurse for three years in Queensland. To her it was a common
+      incident of everyday life. Such accidents <i>will</i> happen, if you break
+      taboo and go too near forbidden temples.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Muriel drew back, and let the pleasant-looking brown girl&rsquo;s hand
+      drop suddenly. &ldquo;You can&rsquo;t mean it,&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;You
+      can&rsquo;t mean he&rsquo;s a god! Such a wicked man as that! Oh, his very
+      look&rsquo;s too horrible.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mali drew back in her turn with a somewhat terrified air, and peeped
+      suspiciously around her, as if to make sure whether any one was listening.
+      &ldquo;Oh, hush,&rdquo; she said, anxiously. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t must talk
+      like that. If Tu-Kila-Kila hear, him scorch us up to ashes. Him very great
+      god! Him good! Him powerful!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How can he be good if he does such awful things?&rdquo; Muriel
+      exclaimed, energetically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mali peered around her once more with terrified eyes in the same uneasy
+      way. &ldquo;Take care,&rdquo; she said again. &ldquo;Him god! Him
+      powerful! Him can do no wrong. Him King of the Trees! Him King of Heaven!
+      On Boupari island, Methodist god not much; no god so great like
+      Tu-Kila-Kila.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But a <i>man</i> can&rsquo;t be a god!&rdquo; Muriel exclaimed,
+      contemptuously. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s nothing but a man! a savage! A cannibal!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mali looked back at her in wondering surprise. &ldquo;Not in Queensland,&rdquo;
+      she answered, calmly&mdash;to her, all the world naturally divided itself
+      into Queensland and Polynesia&mdash;&ldquo;no god in Queensland. Governor,
+      him very great chief; but him no god like Tu-Kila-Kila. Methodist god in
+      sky, him only god that live in Queensland. But no use worship Methodist
+      god over here in Boupari. Him no live here. Tu-Kila-Kila live here. All
+      god here make out of man. Live in man. Korong! What for you say a man can&rsquo;t
+      be a god! You god yourself! White gentleman there, god! Korong, Korong.
+      Chief put you in Heaven, so make you a god. People pray to you now. People
+      bring you presents.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t mean to say,&rdquo; Muriel cried, &ldquo;they bring
+      me these things because they think me a goddess?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mali nodded a grave assent. &ldquo;Same like people give money in church
+      in Queensland,&rdquo; she answered, promptly. &ldquo;Ask you make rain,
+      make plenty crop, make bread-fruit grow, make banana, make plantain. You
+      Korong now. While your time last, Queenie, people give you plenty of
+      present.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;While my time last?&rdquo; Muriel repeated, with a curious sense of
+      discomfort creeping over her slowly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl nodded an easy assent. &ldquo;Yes, while your time last,&rdquo;
+      she answered, laying a small bundle of palm-leaves at Muriel&rsquo;s back
+      by way of a cushion. &ldquo;For now you Korong. By and by, Korong pass to
+      somebody else. This year, you Korong. So people worship you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But nothing that Muriel could say would induce the girl further to explain
+      her meaning. She shook her head and looked very wise. &ldquo;When a god
+      come into somebody,&rdquo; she said, nodding toward Muriel in a mysterious
+      way, &ldquo;then him god himself; him Korong. When the god go away from
+      him, him Korong no longer; somebody else Korong. Queenie Korong now; so
+      people worship him. While him time last, people plenty kind to him.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The day passed away, and night came on. As it approached, heavy clouds
+      drifted up from eastward. Mali busied herself with laying out a rough bed
+      in the hut for Muriel, and making her a pillow of soft moss and the
+      curious lichen-like material that hangs parasitic from the trees, and is
+      commonly known as &ldquo;old man&rsquo;s beard.&rdquo; As both Mali and
+      Felix assured her confidently no harm would come to her within so strict a
+      Taboo, Muriel, worn out with fatigue and terror, lay down at last and
+      slept soundly on this native substitute for a bedstead. She slept without
+      dreaming, while Mali lay at her feet, ready at a moment&rsquo;s call. It
+      was all so strange; and yet she was too utterly wearied to do otherwise
+      than sleep, in spite of her strange and terrible surroundings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix slept, too, for some hours, but woke with a start in the night. It
+      was raining heavily. He could hear the loud patter of a fierce tropical
+      shower on the roof of his hut. His Shadow, at his feet, slept still
+      unmoved; but when Felix rose on his elbow, the Shadow rose on a sudden,
+      too, and confronted him curiously. The young man heard the rain; then he
+      bowed down his face with an awed air, not visible, but audible, in the
+      still darkness. &ldquo;It has come!&rdquo; he said, with superstitious
+      terror. &ldquo;It has come at last! my lord has brought it!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After that, Felix lay awake for some hours, hearing the rain on the roof,
+      and puzzled in his own head by a half-uncertain memory. What was it in his
+      school reading that that ceremony with the water indefinitely reminded him
+      of? Wasn&rsquo;t there some Greek or Roman superstition about shaking your
+      head when water was poured upon it? What could that superstition be, and
+      what light might it cast on that mysterious ceremony? He wished he could
+      remember; but it was so long since he&rsquo;d read it, and he never cared
+      much at school for Greek or Roman antiquities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly, in a lull of the rain, the whole context at once came back with
+      a rush to him. He remembered now he had read it, some time or other, in
+      some classical dictionary. It was a custom connected with Greek
+      sacrifices. The officiating priest poured water or wine on the head of the
+      sheep, bullock, or other victim. If the victim shook its head and knocked
+      off the drops, that was a sign that it was fit for the sacrifice, and that
+      the god accepted it. If the victim trembled visibly, that was a most
+      favorable omen. If it stood quite still and didn&rsquo;t move its neck,
+      then the god rejected it as unfit for his purpose. Couldn&rsquo;t <i>that</i>
+      be the meaning of the ceremony performed on Muriel and himself in &ldquo;Heaven&rdquo;
+      that morning? Were they merely intended as human sacrifices? Were they to
+      be kept meanwhile and, as it were, fed up for the slaughter? It was too
+      horrible to believe; yet it almost looked like it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He wished he knew the meaning of that strange word, &ldquo;Korong.&rdquo;
+      Clearly, it contained the true key to the mystery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Anyhow, he had always his trusty knife. If the worst came to the worst&mdash;those
+      wretches should never harm his spotless Muriel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For he loved her to-night; he would watch over and protect her. He would
+      save her at least from the deadliest of insults.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0007" id="link2HCH0007"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VII. &mdash; INTERCHANGE OF CIVILITIES.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      All night long, without intermission, the heavy tropical rain descended in
+      torrents; at sunrise it ceased, and a bright blue vault of sky stood in a
+      spotless dome over the island of Boupari.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As soon as the sun was well risen, and the rain had ceased, one shy native
+      girl after another came straggling up timidly to the white line that
+      marked the taboo round Felix and Muriel&rsquo;s huts. They came with more
+      baskets of fruit and eggs. Humbly saluting three times as they drew near,
+      they laid down their gifts modestly just outside the line, with many loud
+      ejaculations of praise and gratitude to the gods in their own language.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do they say?&rdquo; Muriel asked, in a dazed and frightened
+      way, looking out of the hut door, and turning in wonder to Mali.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They say, &lsquo;Thank you, Queenie, for rain and fruits,&rsquo;&rdquo;
+      Mali answered, unconcerned, bustling about in the hut. &ldquo;Missy want
+      to wash him face and hands this morning? Lady always wash every day over
+      yonder in Queensland.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Muriel nodded assent. It was all so strange to her. But Mali went to the
+      door and beckoned carelessly to one of the native girls just outside, who
+      drew near the line at the summons, with a somewhat frightened air, putting
+      one finger to her mouth in coyly uncertain savage fashion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fetch me water from the spring!&rdquo; Mali said, authoritatively,
+      in Polynesian. Without a moment&rsquo;s delay the girl darted off at the
+      top of her speed, and soon returned with a large calabash full of fresh
+      cool water, which she lay down respectfully by the taboo line, not daring
+      to cross it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why didn&rsquo;t you get it yourself?&rdquo; Muriel asked of her
+      Shadow, rather relieved than otherwise that Mali hadn&rsquo;t left her. It
+      was something in these dire straits to have somebody always near who could
+      at least speak a little English.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mali started back in surprise. &ldquo;Oh, that would never do,&rdquo; she
+      answered, catching a colloquial phrase she had often heard long before in
+      Queensland. &ldquo;Me missy&rsquo;s Shadow. That great Taboo. If me go
+      away out of missy&rsquo;s sight, very big sin&mdash;very big danger.
+      Man-a-Boupari catch me and kill me like Jani, for no me stop and wait all
+      the time on missy.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was clear that human life was held very cheap on the island of Boupari.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Muriel made her scanty toilet in the hut as well as she was able, with the
+      calabash and water, aided by a rough shell comb which Mali had provided
+      for her. Then she breakfasted, not ill, off eggs and fruit, which Mali
+      cooked with some rude native skill over the open-air fire without in the
+      precincts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After breakfast, Felix came in to inquire how she had passed the night in
+      her new quarters. Already Muriel felt how odd was the contrast between the
+      quiet politeness of his manner as an English gentleman and the strange
+      savage surroundings in which they both now found themselves. Civilization
+      is an attribute of communities; we necessarily leave it behind when we
+      find ourselves isolated among barbarians or savages. But culture is a
+      purely personal and individual possession; we carry it with us wherever we
+      go; and no circumstances of life can ever deprive us of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As they sat there talking, with a deep and abiding sense of awe at the
+      change (Muriel more conscious than ever now of how deep was her interest
+      in Felix Thurstan, who represented for her all that was dearest and best
+      in England), a curious noise, as of a discordant drum or tom-tom, beaten
+      in a sort of recurrent tune, was heard toward the hills; and at its very
+      first sound both the Shadows, flinging themselves upon their faces with
+      every sign of terror, endeavored to hide themselves under the native mats
+      with which the bare little hut was roughly carpeted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What&rsquo;s the matter?&rdquo; Felix cried, in English, to Mali;
+      for Muriel had already explained to him how the girl had picked up some
+      knowledge of our tongue in Queensland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mali trembled in every limb, so that she could hardly speak. &ldquo;Tu-Kila-Kila
+      come,&rdquo; she answered, all breathless. &ldquo;No blackfellow look at
+      him. Burn blackfellow up. You and Missy Korong. All right for you. Go out
+      to meet him!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tu-Kila-Kila is coming,&rdquo; the young man-Shadow said, in
+      Polynesian, almost in the same breath, and no less tremulously. &ldquo;We
+      dare not look upon his face lest he burn us to ashes. He is a very great
+      Taboo. His face is fire. But you two are gods. Step forth to receive him.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix took Muriel&rsquo;s hand in his, somewhat trembling himself, and led
+      her forth on to the open space in front of the huts to meet the man-god.
+      She followed him like a child. She was woman enough for that. She had
+      implicit trust in him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As they emerged, a strange procession met their eyes unawares, coming down
+      the zig-zag path that led from the hills to the shore of the lagoon, where
+      their huts were situated. At its head marched two men&mdash;tall,
+      straight, and supple&mdash;wearing huge feather masks over their faces,
+      and beating tom-toms, decorated with long strings of shiny cowries. After
+      them, in order, came a sort of hollow square of chiefs or warriors,
+      surrounding with fan-palms a central object all shrouded from the view
+      with the utmost precaution. This central object was covered with a huge
+      regal umbrella, from whose edge hung rows of small nautilus and other
+      shells, so as to form a kind of screen, like the Japanese portières now so
+      common in English doorways. Two supporters held it up, one on either side,
+      in long cloaks of feathers. Under the umbrella, a man seemed to move; and
+      as he approached, the natives, to right and left, fled precipitately to
+      their huts, snatching up their naked little ones from the ground as they
+      went, and crying aloud, &ldquo;Taboo, Taboo! He comes! he comes.
+      Tu-Kila-Kila! Tu-Kila-Kila!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The procession wound slowly on, unheeding these common creatures, till it
+      reached the huts. Then the chiefs who formed the hollow square fell back
+      one by one, and the man under the umbrella, with his two supporters, came
+      forward boldly. Felix noticed that they crossed without scruple the thick
+      white line of sand which all the other natives so carefully respected. The
+      man within the umbrella drew aside the curtain of hanging nautilus shells.
+      His face was covered with a thin mask of paper mulberry bark; but Felix
+      knew he was the self-same person whom they had seen the day before in the
+      central temple.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s air was more insolent and arrogant than even before.
+      He was clearly in high spirits. &ldquo;You have done well, O King of the
+      Rain,&rdquo; he said, turning gayly to Felix; &ldquo;and you too, O Queen
+      of the Clouds; you have done right bravely. We have all acquitted
+      ourselves as our people would wish. We have made our showers to descend
+      abundantly from heaven; we have caused the crops to grow; we have wetted
+      the plantain bushes. See; Tu-Kila-Kila, who is so great a god, has come
+      from his own home on the hills to greet you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It has certainly rained in the night,&rdquo; Felix answered, dryly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Tu-Kila-Kila was not to be put off thus. Adjusting his thin mask or
+      veil of bark, so as to hide his face more thoroughly from the inferior
+      god, he turned round once more to the chiefs, who even so hardly dared to
+      look openly upon him. Then he struck an attitude. The man was clearly
+      bursting with spiritual pride. He knew himself to be a god, and was filled
+      with the insolence of his supernatural power. &ldquo;See, my people,&rdquo;
+      he cried, holding up his hands, palm outward, in his accustomed god-like
+      way; &ldquo;I am indeed a great deity&mdash;Lord of Heaven, Lord of Earth,
+      Life of the World, Master of Time, Measurer of the Sun&rsquo;s Course,
+      Spirit of Growth, Creator of the Harvest, Master of Mortals, Bestower of
+      Breath upon Men, Chief Pillar of Heaven!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The warriors bowed down before their bloated master with unquestioning
+      assent. &ldquo;Giver of Life to all the host of the gods,&rdquo; they
+      cried, &ldquo;you are indeed a mighty one. Weigher of the equipoise of
+      Heaven and Earth, we acknowledge your might; we give you thanks eternally.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila swelled with visible importance. &ldquo;Did I not tell you,
+      my meat,&rdquo; he exclaimed, &ldquo;I would bring you new gods, great
+      spirits from the sun, fetchers of fire from my bright home in the heavens?
+      And have they not come? Are they not here to-day? Have they not brought
+      the precious gift of fresh fire with them?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tu-Kila-Kila speaks true,&rdquo; the chiefs echoed, submissively,
+      with bent heads.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did I not make one of them King of the Rain?&rdquo; Tu-Kila-Kila
+      asked once more, stretching one hand toward the sky with theatrical
+      magnificence. &ldquo;Did I not declare the other Queen of the Clouds in
+      Heaven? And have I not caused them to bring down showers this night upon
+      our crops? Has not the dry earth drunk? Am I not the great god, the
+      Saviour of Boupari?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tu-Kila-Kila says well,&rdquo; the chiefs responded, once more, in
+      unanimous chorus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila struck another attitude with childish self-satisfaction.
+      &ldquo;I go into the hut to speak with my ministers,&rdquo; he said,
+      grandiloquently. &ldquo;Fire and Water, wait you here outside while I
+      enter and speak with my friends from the sun, whom I have brought for the
+      salvation of the crops to Boupari.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The King of Fire and the King of Water, supporting the umbrella, bowed
+      assent to his words. Tu-Kila-Kila motioned Felix and Muriel into the
+      nearest hut. It was the one where the two Shadows lay crouching in terror
+      among the native mats. As the god tried to enter, the two cowering
+      wretches set up a loud shout, &ldquo;Taboo! Taboo! Mercy! Mercy! Mercy!&rdquo;
+      Tu-Kila-Kila retreated with a contemptuous smile. &ldquo;I want to see you
+      alone,&rdquo; he said, in Polynesian, to Felix. &ldquo;Is the other hut
+      empty? If not, go in and cut their throats who sit there, and make the
+      place a solitude for Tu-Kila-Kila.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is no one in the hut,&rdquo; Felix answered, with a nod,
+      concealing his disgust at the command as far as he was able.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is well,&rdquo; Tu-Kila-Kila answered, and walked into it
+      carelessly. Felix followed him close and deemed it best to make Muriel
+      enter also.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As soon-as they were alone, Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s manner altered greatly.
+      &ldquo;Come, now,&rdquo; he said, quite genially, yet with a curious
+      under-current of hate in his steely gray eye; &ldquo;we three are all
+      gods. We who are in heaven need have no secrets from one another. Tell me
+      the truth; did you really come to us direct from the sun, or are you
+      sailing gods, dropped from a great canoe belonging to the warriors who
+      seek laborers for the white men in the distant country?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix told him briefly, in as few words as possible, the story of their
+      arrival.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila listened with lively interest, then he said, very decisively,
+      with great bravado, &ldquo;It was <i>I</i> who made the big wave wash your
+      sister overboard. I sent it to your ship. I wanted a Korong just now in
+      Boupari. It was <i>I</i> who brought you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are mistaken,&rdquo; Felix said, simply, not thinking it worth
+      while to contradict him further. &ldquo;It was a purely natural accident.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, tell me,&rdquo; the savage god went on once more, eying him
+      close and sharp, &ldquo;they say you have brought fresh fire from the sun
+      with you, and that you know how to make it burst out like lightning at
+      will. My people have seen it. They tell me the wonder. I wish to see it
+      too. We are all gods here; we need have no secrets. Only, I didn&rsquo;t
+      want to let those common people outside see I asked you to show me. Make
+      fire leap forth. I desire to behold it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix took out the match-box from his pocket, and struck a vesta
+      carefully. Tu-Kila-Kila looked on with profound interest. &ldquo;It is
+      wonderful,&rdquo; he said, taking the vesta in his own hand as it burned,
+      and examining it closely. &ldquo;I have heard of this before, but I have
+      never seen it. You are indeed gods, you white men, you sailors of the sea.&rdquo;
+      He glanced at Muriel. &ldquo;And the woman, too,&rdquo; he said, with a
+      horrible leer, &ldquo;the woman is pretty.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix took the measure of his man at once. He opened his knife, and held
+      it up threateningly. &ldquo;See here, fellow,&rdquo; he said, in a low,
+      slow tone, but with great decision, &ldquo;if you dare to speak or look
+      like that at that lady&mdash;god or no god, I&rsquo;ll drive this knife
+      straight up to the handle in your heart, though your people kill me for it
+      afterward ten thousand times over. I am not afraid of you. These savages
+      may be afraid, and may think you are a god; but if you are, then I am a
+      god ten thousand times stronger than you. One more word&mdash;one more
+      look like that, I say&mdash;and I plunge this knife remorselessly into
+      you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila drew back, and smiled benignly. Stalwart ruffian as he was,
+      and absolute master of his own people&rsquo;s lives, he was yet afraid in
+      a way of the strange new-comer. Vague stories of the men with white faces&mdash;the
+      &ldquo;sailing gods&rdquo;&mdash;had reached him from time to time; and
+      though only twice within his memory had European boats landed on his
+      island, he yet knew enough of the race to know that they were at least
+      very powerful deities&mdash;more powerful with their weapons than even he
+      was. Besides, a man who could draw down fire from heaven with a piece of
+      wax and a little metal box might surely wither him to ashes, if he would,
+      as he stood before him. The very fact that Felix bearded him thus openly
+      to his face astonished and somewhat terrified the superstitious savage.
+      Everybody else on the island was afraid of him; then certainly a man who
+      was not afraid must be the possessor of some most efficacious and magical
+      medicine. His one fear now was lest his followers should hear and discover
+      his discomfiture. He peered about him cautiously, with that careful gleam
+      shining bright in his eye; then he said with a leer, in a very low voice,
+      &ldquo;We two need not quarrel. We are both of us gods. Neither of us is
+      the stronger. We are equal, that&rsquo;s all. Let us live like brothers,
+      not like enemies, on the island.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want to be your brother,&rdquo; Felix answered,
+      unable to conceal his loathing any more. &ldquo;I hate and detest you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What does he say?&rdquo; Muriel asked, in an agony of fear at the
+      savage&rsquo;s black looks. &ldquo;Is he going to kill us?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; Felix answered, boldly. &ldquo;I think he&rsquo;s afraid
+      of us. He&rsquo;s going to do nothing. You needn&rsquo;t fear him.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can she not speak?&rdquo; the savage asked, pointing with his
+      finger somewhat rudely toward Muriel. &ldquo;Has she no voice but this,
+      the chatter of birds? Does she not know the human language?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She can speak,&rdquo; Felix replied, placing himself like a shield
+      between Muriel and the astonished savage. &ldquo;She can speak the
+      language of the people of our distant country&mdash;a beautiful language
+      which is as far superior to the speech of the brown men of Polynesia as
+      the sun in the heavens is superior to the light of a candlenut. But she
+      can&rsquo;t speak the wretched tongue of you Boupari cannibals. I thank
+      Heaven she can&rsquo;t, for it saves her from understanding the hateful
+      things your people would say of her. Now go! I have seen already enough of
+      you. I am not afraid. Remember, I am as powerful a god as you. I need not
+      fear. You cannot hurt me.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A baleful light gleamed in the cannibal&rsquo;s eye. But he thought it
+      best to temporize. Powerful as he was on his island, there was one thing
+      yet more powerful by far than he; and that was Taboo&mdash;the custom and
+      superstition handed down from his ancestors, These strangers were Korong;
+      he dare not touch them, except in the way and manner and time appointed by
+      custom. If he did, god as he was, his people themselves would turn and
+      rend him. He was a god, but he was bound on every side by the strictest
+      taboos. He dare not himself offer violence to Felix.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So he turned with a smile and bided his time. He knew it would come. He
+      could afford to laugh. Then, going to the door, he said, with his grand
+      affable manner to his chiefs around, &ldquo;I have spoken with the gods,
+      my ministers, within. They have kissed my hands. My rain has fallen. All
+      is well in the land. Arise, let us go away hence to my temple.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The savages put themselves in marching order at once. &ldquo;It is the
+      voice of a god,&rdquo; they said, reverently. &ldquo;Let us take back
+      Tu-Kila-Kila to his temple home. Let us escort the lord of the divine
+      umbrella. Wherever he is, there trees and plants put forth green leaves
+      and flourish. At his bidding flowers bloom and springs of water rise up in
+      fountains. His presence diffuses heavenly blessings.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think,&rdquo; Felix said, turning to poor, terrified Muriel,
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve sent the wretch away with a bee in his bonnet.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0008" id="link2HCH0008"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VIII. &mdash; THE CUSTOMS OF BOUPARI.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Human nature cannot always keep on the full stretch of excitement. It was
+      wonderful to both Felix and Muriel how soon they settled down into a quiet
+      routine of life on the island of Boupari. A week passed away&mdash;two
+      weeks&mdash;three weeks&mdash;and the chances of release seemed to grow
+      slenderer and slenderer. All they could do now was to wait for the stray
+      accident of a passing ship, and then try, if possible, to signal it, or to
+      put out to it in a canoe, if the natives would allow them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile, their lives for the moment seemed fairly safe. Though for the
+      first few days they lived in constant alarm, this feeling, after a time,
+      gave way to one of comparative security. The strange institution of Taboo
+      protected them more efficiently in their wattled huts than the whole
+      police force of London could have done in a Belgravian mansion. There
+      thieves break through and steal, in spite of bolts and bars and
+      metropolitan constables; but at Boupari no native, however daring or
+      however wicked, would ever venture to transgress the narrow line of white
+      coral sand which protected the castaways like an intangible wall from all
+      outer interference. Within this impalpable ring-fence they were absolutely
+      safe from all rude intrusion, save that of the two Shadows, who waited
+      upon them, day and night, with unfailing willingness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In other respects, considering the circumstances, their life was an easy
+      one. The natives brought them freely of their simple store&mdash;yam,
+      taro, bread-fruit, and cocoanut, with plenty of fish, crabs, and lobsters,
+      as well as eggs by the basketful, and even sometimes chickens. They
+      required no pay beyond a nod and a smile, and went away happy at those
+      slender recognitions. Felix discovered, in fact, that they had got into a
+      region where the arid generalizations of political economy do not apply;
+      where Adam Smith is unread, and Mill neglected; where the medium of
+      exchange is an unknown quantity, and where supply and demand readjust
+      themselves continuously by simpler and more generous principles than the
+      familiar European one of &ldquo;the higgling of the market.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The people, too, though utter savages, were not in their own way
+      altogether unpleasing. It was their customs and superstitions, rather than
+      themselves, that were so cruel and horrible. Personally, they seemed for
+      the most part simple-minded and good natured creatures. At first, indeed,
+      Muriel was afraid to venture for a step beyond the precincts of their own
+      huts; and it was long before she could make up her mind to go alone
+      through the jungle paths with Mali, unaccompanied by Felix. But by degrees
+      she learned that she could walk by herself (of course, with the inevitable
+      Shadow ever by her side) over the whole island, and meet everywhere with
+      nothing from men, women, and children but the utmost respect and gracious
+      courtesy. The young lads, as she passed, would stand aside from the path,
+      with downcast eyes, and let her go by with all the politeness of
+      chivalrous English gentlemen. The old men would raise their eyes, but
+      cross their hands on their breasts, and stand motionless for a few minutes
+      till she got almost out of sight. The women would bring their pretty brown
+      babies for the fair English lady to admire or to pat on the head; and when
+      Muriel now and again stooped down to caress some fat little naked child,
+      lolling in the dust outside the hut, with true tropical laziness, the
+      mothers would run up at the sight with delight and joy, and throw
+      themselves down in ecstacies of gratitude for the notice she had taken of
+      their favored little ones. &ldquo;The gods of Heaven,&rdquo; they would
+      say, with every sign of pleasure, &ldquo;have looked graciously upon our
+      Unaloa.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At first Felix and Muriel were mainly struck with the politeness and
+      deference which the natives displayed toward them. But after a time Felix
+      at least began to observe, behind it all, that a certain amount of
+      affection, and even of something like commiseration as well, seemed to be
+      mingled with the respect and reverence showered upon them by their hosts.
+      The women, especially, were often evidently touched by Muriel&rsquo;s
+      innocence and beauty. As she walked past their huts with her light,
+      girlish tread, they would come forth shyly, bowing many times as they
+      approached, and offer her a long spray of the flowering hibiscus, or a
+      pretty garland of crimson ti-leaves, saying at the same time, many times
+      over, in their own tongue, &ldquo;Receive it, Korong; receive it, Queen of
+      the Clouds! You are good. You are kind. You are a daughter of the Sun. We
+      are glad you have come to us.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A young girl soon makes herself at home anywhere; and Muriel, protected
+      alike by her native innocence and by the invisible cloak of Polynesian
+      taboo, quickly learned to understand and to sympathize with these poor
+      dusky mothers. One morning, some weeks after their arrival, she passed
+      down the main street of the village, accompanied by Felix and their two
+      attendants, and reached the <i>marae</i>&mdash;the open forum or place of
+      public assembly&mdash;which stood in its midst; a circular platform,
+      surrounded by bread-fruit trees, under whose broad, cool shade the people
+      were sitting in little groups and talking together. They were dressed in
+      the regular old-time festive costume of Polynesia; for Boupari, being a
+      small and remote island, too insignificant to be visited by European
+      ships, retained still all its aboriginal heathen manners and customs. The
+      sight was, indeed, a curious and picturesque one. The girls, large-limbed,
+      soft-skinned, and with delicately rounded figures, sat on the ground,
+      laughing and talking, with their knees crossed under them; their wrists
+      were encinctured with girdles of dark-red dracæna leaves, their swelling
+      bosoms half concealed, half accentuated by hanging necklets of flowers.
+      Their beautiful brown arms and shoulders were bare throughout; their long,
+      black hair was gracefully twined and knotted with bright scarlet flowers.
+      The men, strong and stalwart, sat behind on short stools or lounged on the
+      buttressed roots of the bread-fruit trees, clad like the women in narrow
+      waist-belts of the long red dracæna leaves, with necklets of sharks&rsquo;
+      teeth, pendent chain of pearly shells, a warrior&rsquo;s cap on their
+      well-shaped heads, and an armlet of native beans, arranged below the
+      shoulder, around their powerful arms. Altogether, it was a striking and
+      beautiful picture. Muriel, now almost released from her early sense of
+      fear, stood still to look at it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The men and girls were laughing and chatting merrily together. Most of
+      them were engaged in holding up before them fine mats; and a row of
+      mulberry cloth, spread along on the ground, led to a hut near one side of
+      the <i>marae</i>. Toward this the eyes of the spectators were turned.
+      &ldquo;What is it, Mali?&rdquo; Muriel whispered, her woman&rsquo;s
+      instinct leading her at once to expect that something special was going on
+      in the way of local festivities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Mali answered at once, with many nods and smiles, &ldquo;All right,
+      Missy Queenie. Him a wedding, a marriage.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The words had hardly escaped her lips when a very pretty young girl, half
+      smothered in flowers, and decked out in beads and fancy shells, emerged
+      slowly from the hut, and took her way with stately tread along the path
+      carpeted with native cloth. She was girt round the waist with rich-colored
+      mats, which formed a long train, like a court dress, trailing on the
+      ground five or six feet behind her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s the bride, I suppose,&rdquo; Muriel whispered, now
+      really interested&mdash;for what woman on earth, wherever she may be, can
+      resist the seductive delights of a wedding?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, her a bride,&rdquo; Mali answered; &ldquo;and ladies what
+      follow, them her bridesmaids.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the word, six other girls, similarly dressed, though without the train,
+      and demure as nuns, emerged from the hut in slow order, two and two,
+      behind her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Muriel and Felix moved forward with natural curiosity toward the scene.
+      The natives, now ranged in a row along the path, with mats turned inward,
+      made way for them gladly. All seem pleased that Heaven should thus
+      auspiciously honor the occasion; and the bride herself, as well as the
+      bridegroom, who, decked in shells and teeth, advanced from the opposite
+      side along the path to meet her, looked up with grateful smiles at the two
+      Europeans. Muriel, in return, smiled her most gracious and girlish
+      recognition. As the bride drew near, she couldn&rsquo;t refrain from
+      bending forward a little to look at the girl&rsquo;s really graceful
+      costume. As she did so, the skirt of her own European dress brushed for a
+      second against the bride&rsquo;s train, trailed carelessly many yards on
+      the ground behind her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Almost before they could know what had happened, a wild commotion arose,
+      as if by magic, in the crowd around them. Loud cries of &ldquo;Taboo!
+      Taboo!&rdquo; mixed with inarticulate screams, burst on every side from
+      the assembled natives. In the twinkling of an eye they were surrounded by
+      an angry, threatening throng, who didn&rsquo;t dare to draw near, but,
+      standing a yard or two off, drew stone knives freely and shook their
+      fists, scowling, in the strangers&rsquo; faces. The change was appalling
+      in its electric suddenness. Muriel drew back horrified, in an agony of
+      alarm. &ldquo;Oh, what have I done!&rdquo; she cried, piteously, clinging
+      to Felix for support. &ldquo;Why on earth are they angry with us?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know,&rdquo; Felix answered, taken aback himself.
+      &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t say exactly in what you&rsquo;ve transgressed. But
+      you must, unconsciously, in some way have offended their prejudices. I
+      hope it&rsquo;s not much. At any rate they&rsquo;re clearly afraid to
+      touch us.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Missy Queenie break taboo,&rdquo; Mali explained at once, with
+      Polynesian frankness. &ldquo;That make people angry. So him want to kill
+      you. Missy Queenie touch bride with end of her dress. Korong may smile on
+      bride&mdash;that very good luck; but Korong taboo; no must touch him.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The crowd gathered around them, still very threatening in attitude, yet
+      clearly afraid to approach within arm&rsquo;s-length of the strangers.
+      Muriel was much frightened at their noise and at their frantic gestures.
+      &ldquo;Come away,&rdquo; she cried, catching Felix by the arm once more.
+      &ldquo;Oh, what are they going to do to us? Will they kill us for this? I&rsquo;m
+      so horribly afraid! Oh, why did I ever do it!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The poor little bride, meanwhile, left alone on the carpet, and unnoticed
+      by everybody, sank suddenly down on the mats where she stood, buried her
+      face in her hands, and began to sob as if her heart would break.
+      Evidently, something very untoward of some sort had happened to the dusky
+      lady on her wedding morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The final touch was too much for poor Muriel&rsquo;s overwrought nerves.
+      She, too, gave way in a tempest of sobs, and, subsiding on one of the
+      native stools hard by, burst into tears herself with half-hysterical
+      violence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Instantly, as she did so, the whole assembly seemed to change its mind
+      again as if by contagious magic. A loud shout of &ldquo;She cries; the
+      Queen of the Clouds cries!&rdquo; went up from all the assembled mob to
+      heaven. &ldquo;It is a good omen,&rdquo; Toko, the Shadow, whispered in
+      Polynesian to Felix, seeing his puzzled look. &ldquo;We shall have plenty
+      of rain now; the clouds will break; our crops will flourish.&rdquo; Almost
+      before she understood it, Muriel was surrounded by an eager and friendly
+      crowd, still afraid to draw near, but evidently anxious to see and to
+      comfort and console her. Many of the women eagerly held forward their
+      native mats, which Mali took from them, and, pressing them for a second
+      against Muriel&rsquo;s eyes, handed them back with just a suspicion of wet
+      tears left glistening in the corner. The happy recipients leaped and
+      shouted with joy. &ldquo;No more drought!&rdquo; they cried merrily, with
+      loud shouts and gesticulations. &ldquo;The Queen of the Clouds is good:
+      she will weep well from heaven upon my yam and taro plots!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Muriel looked up, all dazed, and saw, to her intense surprise, the crowd
+      was now nothing but affection and sympathy. Slowly they gathered in closer
+      and closer, till they almost touched the hem of her robe; then the men
+      stood by respectfully, laying their fingers on whatever she had wetted
+      with her tears, while the women and girls took her hand in theirs and
+      pressed it sympathetically. Mali explained their meaning with ready
+      interpretation. &ldquo;No cry too much, them say,&rdquo; she observed,
+      nodding her head sagely. &ldquo;Not good for Missy Queenie to cry too
+      much. Them say, kind lady, be comforted.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was genuine good-nature in the way they consoled her; and Felix was
+      touched by the tenderness of those savage hearts; but the additional
+      explanation, given him in Polynesian by his own Shadow, tended somewhat to
+      detract from the disinterestedness of their sympathy. &ldquo;They say,
+      &lsquo;It is good for the Queen of the Clouds to weep,&rsquo;&rdquo; Toko
+      said, with frank bluntness; &ldquo;&lsquo;but not too much&mdash;for fear
+      the rain should wash away all our yam and taro plants.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By this time the little bride had roused herself from her stupor, and,
+      smiling away as if nothing had happened, said a few words in a very low
+      voice to Felix&rsquo;s Shadow. The Shadow turned most respectfully to his
+      master, and, touching his sleeve-link, which was of bright gold, said, in
+      a very doubtful voice, &ldquo;She asks you, oh king, will you allow her,
+      just for to-day, to wear this ornament?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix unbuttoned the shining bauble at once, and was about to hand it to
+      the bride with polite gallantry. &ldquo;She may wear it forever, for the
+      matter of that, if she likes,&rdquo; he said, good-humoredly. &ldquo;I
+      make her a present of it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the bride drew back as before in speechless terror, as he held out his
+      hand, and seemed just on the point of bursting out into tears again at
+      this untoward incident. The Shadow intervened with fortunate perception of
+      the cause of the misunderstanding. &ldquo;Korong must not touch or give
+      anything to a bride,&rdquo; he said, quietly; &ldquo;not with his own
+      hand. He must not lay his finger on her; that would be unlucky. But he may
+      hand it by his Shadow.&rdquo; Then he turned to his fellow-tribesmen.
+      &ldquo;These gods,&rdquo; he said, in an explanatory voice, like one
+      bespeaking forgiveness, &ldquo;though they are divine, and Korong, and
+      very powerful&mdash;see, they have come from the sun, and they are but
+      strangers in Boupari&mdash;they do not yet know the ways of our island.
+      They have not eaten of human flesh. They do not understand Taboo. But they
+      will soon be wiser. They mean very well, but they do not know. Behold, he
+      gives her this divine shining ornament from the sun as a present!&rdquo;
+      And, taking it in his hand, he held it up for a moment to public
+      admiration. Then he passed on the trinket ostentatiously to the bride,
+      who, smiling and delighted, hung it low on her breast among her other
+      decorations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The whole party seemed so surprised and gratified at this proof of
+      condescension on the part of the divine stranger that they crowded round
+      Felix once more, praising and thanking him volubly. Muriel, anxious to
+      remove the bad impression she had created by touching the bride&rsquo;s
+      dress, hastily withdrew her own little brooch and offered it in turn to
+      the Shadow as an additional present. But Toko, shaking his head
+      vigorously, pointed with his forefinger many times to Mali. &ldquo;Toko
+      say him no can take it,&rdquo; Mali explained hastily, in her broken
+      English. &ldquo;Him no your Shadow; me your Shadow; me do everything for
+      you; me give it to the lady.&rdquo; And, taking the brooch in her hand,
+      she passed it over in turn amid loud cries of delight and shouts of
+      approval.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thereupon, the ceremony began all over again. They seemed by their
+      intervention to have interrupted some set formula. At its close the women
+      crowded around Muriel and took her hand in theirs, kissing it many times
+      over, with tears in their eyes, and betraying an immense amount of genuine
+      feeling. One phrase in Polynesian they repeated again and again; a phrase
+      that made Felix&rsquo;s cheek turn white, as he leaned over the poor
+      English girl with a profound emotion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What does it mean that they say?&rdquo; Muriel asked at last,
+      perceiving it was all one phrase, many times repeated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix was about to give some evasive explanation, when Mali interposed
+      with her simple, unthinking translation. &ldquo;Them say, Missy Queenie
+      very good and kind. Make them sad to think. Make them cry to see her. Make
+      them cry to see Missy Queenie Korong. Too good. Too pretty.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why so?&rdquo; Muriel exclaimed, drawing back with some faint
+      presentiment of unspeakable horror.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix tried to stop her; but the girl would not be stopped. &ldquo;Because,
+      when Korong time up,&rdquo; she answered, blurting it out, &ldquo;Korong
+      must&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix clapped his hand to her mouth in wild haste, and silenced her. He
+      knew the worst now. He had divined the truth. But Muriel, at least, must
+      be spared that knowledge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0009" id="link2HCH0009"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IX. &mdash; SOWING THE WIND.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Vaguely and indefinitely one terrible truth had been forced by slow
+      degrees upon Felix&rsquo;s mind; whatever else Korong meant, it implied at
+      least some fearful doom in store, sooner or later, for the persons who
+      bore it. How awful that doom might be, he could hardly imagine; but he
+      must devote himself henceforth to the task of discovering what its nature
+      was, and, if possible, of averting it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet how to reconcile this impending terror with the other obvious facts of
+      the situation? the fact that they were considered divine beings and
+      treated like gods; and the fact that the whole population seemed really to
+      regard them with a devotion and kindliness closely bordering on religious
+      reverence? If Korongs were gods, why should the people want to kill them?
+      If they meant to kill them, why pay them meanwhile such respect and
+      affection?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One point at least was now, however, quite clear to Felix. While the
+      natives, especially the women, displayed toward both of them in their
+      personal aspect a sort of regretful sympathy, he could not help noticing
+      at the same time that the men, at any rate, regarded them also largely in
+      an impersonal light, as a sort of generalized abstraction of the powers of
+      nature&mdash;an embodied form of the rain and the weather. The islanders
+      were anxious to keep their white guests well supplied, well fed, and in
+      perfect health, not so much for the strangers&rsquo; sakes as for their
+      own advantage; they evidently considered that if anything went wrong with
+      either of their two new gods, corresponding misfortunes might happen to
+      their crops and the produce of their bread-fruit groves. Some mysterious
+      sympathy was held to subsist between the persons of the castaways and the
+      state of the weather. The natives effusively thanked them after welcome
+      rain, and looked askance at them, scowling, after long dry spells. It was
+      for this, no doubt, that they took such pains to provide them with
+      attentive Shadows, and to gird round their movements with taboos of
+      excessive stringency. Nothing that the new-comers said or did was
+      indifferent, it seemed, to the welfare of the community; plenty and
+      prosperity depended upon the passing state of Muriel&rsquo;s health, and
+      famine or drought might be brought about at any moment by the slightest
+      imprudence in Felix&rsquo;s diet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How stringent these taboos really were Felix learned by slow degrees alone
+      to realize. From the very beginning he had observed, to be sure, that they
+      might only eat and drink the food provided for them; that they were
+      supplied with a clean and fresh-built hut, as well as with brand-new
+      cocoanut cups, spoons, and platters; that no litter of any sort was
+      allowed to accumulate near their enclosure; and that their Shadows never
+      left them, or went out of their sight, by day or by night, for a single
+      moment. Now, however, he began to perceive also that the Shadows were
+      there for that very purpose, to watch over them, as it were, like guards,
+      on behalf of the community; to see that they ate or drank no tabooed
+      object; to keep them from heedlessly transgressing any unwritten law of
+      the creed of Boupari; and to be answerable for their good behavior
+      generally. They were partly servants, it was true, and partly sureties;
+      but they were partly also keepers, and keepers who kept a close and
+      constant watch upon the persons of their prisoners. Once or twice Felix,
+      growing tired for the moment of this continual surveillance, had tried to
+      give Toko the slip, and to stroll away from his hut, unattended, for a
+      walk through the island, in the early morning, before his Shadow had
+      waked; but on each such occasion he found to his surprise that, as he
+      opened the hut door, the Shadow rose at once and confronted him angrily,
+      with an inquiring eye; and in time he perceived that a thin string was
+      fastened to the bottom of the door, the other end of which was tied to the
+      Shadow&rsquo;s ankle; and this string could not be cut without letting
+      fall a sort of latch or bar which closed the door outside, only to be
+      raised again by some external person.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Clearly, it was intended that the Korong should have no chance of escape
+      without the knowledge of the Shadow, who, as Felix afterward learned,
+      would have paid with his own body by a cruel death for the Korong&rsquo;s
+      disappearance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He might as well have tried to escape his own shadow as to escape the one
+      the islanders had tacked on to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All Felix&rsquo;s energies were now devoted to the arduous task of
+      discovering what Korong really meant, and what possibility he might have
+      of saving Muriel from the mysterious fate that seemed to be held in store
+      for them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One evening, about six weeks after their arrival in the island, the young
+      Englishman was strolling by himself (after the sun sank low in heaven)
+      along a pretty tangled hill-side path, overhung with lianas and rope-like
+      tropical creepers, while his faithful Shadow lingered a step or two
+      behind, keeping a sharp lookout meanwhile on all his movements.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Near the top of a little crag of volcanic rock, in the center of the
+      hills, he came suddenly upon a hut with a cleared space around it,
+      somewhat neater in appearance than any of the native cottages he had yet
+      seen, and surrounded by a broad white belt of coral sand, exactly like
+      that which ringed round and protected their own enclosure. But what
+      specially attracted Felix&rsquo;s attention was the fact that the space
+      outside this circle had been cleared into a regular flower-garden, quite
+      European in the definiteness and orderliness of its quaint arrangement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, who lives here?&rdquo; Felix asked in Polynesian, turning
+      round in surprise to his respectful Shadow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Shadow waved his hand vaguely in an expansive way toward the sky, as
+      he answered, with a certain air of awe, often observable in his speech
+      when taboos were in question, &ldquo;The King of Birds. A very great god.
+      He speaks the bird language.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who is he?&rdquo; Felix inquired, taken aback, wondering vaguely to
+      himself whether here, perchance, he might have lighted upon some stray and
+      shipwrecked compatriot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He comes from the sun like yourselves,&rdquo; the Shadow answered,
+      all deference, but with obvious reserve. &ldquo;He is a very great god. I
+      may not speak much of him. But he is not Korong. He is greater than that,
+      and less. He is Tula, the same as Tu-Kila-Kila.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is he as powerful as Tu-Kila-Kila?&rdquo; Felix asked, with intense
+      interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no, he&rsquo;s not nearly so powerful as that,&rdquo; the
+      Shadow answered, half terrified at the bare suggestion. &ldquo;No god in
+      heaven or earth is like Tu-Kila-Kila. This one is only king of the birds,
+      which is a little province, while Tu-Kila-Kila is king of heaven and
+      earth, of plants and animals, of gods and men, of all things created. At
+      his nod the sky shakes and the rocks tremble. But still, this god is Tula,
+      like Tu-Kila-Kila. He is not for a year. He goes on forever, till some
+      other supplants him.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You say he comes from the sun,&rdquo; Felix put in, devoured with
+      curiosity. &ldquo;And he speaks the bird language? What do you mean by
+      that? Does he speak like the Queen of the Clouds and myself when we talk
+      together?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, dear, no,&rdquo; the Shadow answered, in a very confident tone.
+      &ldquo;He doesn&rsquo;t speak the least bit in the world like that. He
+      speaks shriller and higher, and still more bird-like. It is chatter,
+      chatter, chatter, like the parrots in a tree; tirra, tirra, tirra; tarra,
+      tarra, tarra; la, la, la; lo, lo, lo; lu, lu, lu; li la. And he sings to
+      himself all the time. He sings this way&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then the Shadow, with that wonderful power of accurate mimicry which
+      is so strong in all natural human beings, began to trill out at once, with
+      a very good Parisian accent, a few lines from a well-known song in &ldquo;La
+      Fille de Madame Angot:&rdquo;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+&ldquo;Quand on conspi-re,
+   Quand sans frayeur
+ On pent se di-re
+   Conspirateur,
+ Pour tout le mon-de
+   Il faut avoir
+ Perruque blon-de
+   Et collet noir
+ Perruque blon-de
+   Et collet noir.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s how the King of the Birds sings,&rdquo; the Shadow
+      said, as he finished, throwing back his head, and laughing with all his
+      might at his own imitation. &ldquo;So funny, isn&rsquo;t it? It&rsquo;s
+      exactly like the song of the pink-crested parrot.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, Toko, it&rsquo;s French,&rdquo; Felix exclaimed, using the
+      Fijian word for a Frenchman, which the Shadow, of course, on his remote
+      island, had never before heard. &ldquo;How on earth did he come here?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t tell you,&rdquo; Toko answered, waving his arms
+      seaward. &ldquo;He came from the sun, like yourselves. But not in a
+      sun-boat. It had no fire. He came in a canoe, all by himself. And Mali
+      says&rdquo;&mdash;here the Shadow lowered his voice to a most mysterious
+      whisper&mdash;&ldquo;he&rsquo;s a man-a-oui-oui.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix quivered with excitement. &ldquo;Man-a-oui-oui&rdquo; is the
+      universal name over semi-civilized Polynesia for a Frenchman. Felix seized
+      upon it with avidity. &ldquo;A man-a-oui-oui!&rdquo; he cried, delighted.
+      &ldquo;How strange! How wonderful! I must go in at once to his hut and see
+      him!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had lifted his foot and was just going to cross the white line of
+      coral-sand, when his Shadow, catching him suddenly and stoutly round the
+      waist, pulled him back from the enclosure with every sign of horror,
+      alarm, and astonishment. &ldquo;No, you can&rsquo;t go,&rdquo; he cried,
+      grappling with him with all his force, yet using him very tenderly for all
+      that, as becomes a god. &ldquo;Taboo! Taboo there!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I am a god myself,&rdquo; Felix cried, insisting upon his
+      privileges. If you have to submit to the disadvantages of taboo, you may
+      as well claim its advantages as well. &ldquo;The King of Fire and the King
+      of Water crossed my taboo line. Why shouldn&rsquo;t I cross equally the
+      King of the Birds&rsquo;, then?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So you might&mdash;as a rule,&rdquo; the Shadow answered with
+      promptitude. &ldquo;You are both gods. Your taboos do not cross. You may
+      visit each other. You may transgress one another&rsquo;s lines without
+      danger of falling dead on the ground as common men would do if they broke
+      taboo-lines. But this is the Month of Birds. The king is in retreat. No
+      man may see him except his own Shadow, the Little Cockatoo, who brings him
+      his food and drink. Do you see that hawk&rsquo;s head, stuck upon the post
+      by the door at the side. That is his Special Taboo. He keeps it for this
+      month. Even gods must respect that sign, for a reason which it would be
+      very bad medicine to mention. While the Month of Birds lasts, no man may
+      look upon the king or hear him. If they did, they would die, and the
+      carrion birds would eat them. Come away. This is dangerous.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Scarcely were the words well out of his mouth when from the recesses of
+      the hut a rollicking French voice was heard, trilling out merrily:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+&ldquo;Quand on con-spi-re,
+   Quand, sans frayeur&mdash;&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      Without waiting for more, the Shadow seized Felix&rsquo;s arm in an agony
+      of terror. &ldquo;Come away!&rdquo; he cried, hurriedly, &ldquo;come away!
+      What will become of us? This is horrible, horrible! We have broken taboo.
+      We have heard the god&rsquo;s voice. The sky will fall on us. If his
+      Shadow were to find it out and tell my people, my people would tear us
+      limb from limb. Quick, quick! Hide away! Let us run fast through the
+      forest before any man discover it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Shadow&rsquo;s voice rang deep with alarm. Felix felt he dare not
+      trifle with this superstition. Profound as was his curiosity about the
+      mysterious Frenchman, he was compelled to bottle up his eagerness and
+      anxiety for the moment, and patiently wait till the Month of Birds had run
+      its course, and taken its inconvenient taboo along with it. These
+      limitations were terrible. Yet he counted much upon the information the
+      Frenchman could give him. The man had been some time on the island, it was
+      clear, and doubtless he understood its ways thoroughly; he might cast some
+      light at last upon the Korong mystery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So he went back through the woods with a heart somewhat lighter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not far from their own huts he met Muriel and Mali.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As they walked home together, Felix told his companion in a very few words
+      the strange discovery about the Frenchman, and the impenetrable taboo by
+      which he was at present surrounded. Muriel drew a deep sigh. &ldquo;Oh,
+      Felix,&rdquo; she said&mdash;for they were naturally by this time very
+      much at home with one another, &ldquo;did you ever know anything so
+      dreadful as the mystery of these taboos? It seems as if we should never
+      get really to the bottom of them. Mali&rsquo;s always springing some new
+      one upon me. I don&rsquo;t believe we shall ever be able to leave the
+      island&mdash;we&rsquo;re so hedged round with taboos. Even if we were to
+      see a ship to-day, I don&rsquo;t believe they&rsquo;d allow us to signal
+      it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a red sunset; a lurid, tropical, red-and-green sunset. It boded
+      mischief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were passing by some huts at the moment, and over the stockade of one
+      of them a tree was hanging with small yellow fruits, which Felix knew well
+      in Fiji as wholesome and agreeable. He broke off a small branch as he
+      passed; and offered a couple thoughtlessly to Muriel. She took them in her
+      fingers, and tasted them gingerly. &ldquo;They&rsquo;re not so bad,&rdquo;
+      she said, taking another from the bough. &ldquo;They&rsquo;re very much
+      like gooseberries.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the same moment, Felix popped one into his own mouth, and swallowed it
+      without thinking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Almost before they knew what had happened, with the same extraordinary
+      rapidity as in the case of the wedding, the people in the cottages ran
+      out, with every sign of fear and apprehension, and, seizing the branch
+      from Felix&rsquo;s hands, began upbraiding the two Shadows for their want
+      of attention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We couldn&rsquo;t help it,&rdquo; Toko exclaimed, with every
+      appearance of guilt and horror on his face. &ldquo;They were much too
+      sharp for us. Their hearts are black. How could we two interfere? These
+      gods are so quick! They had picked and eaten them before we ever saw them.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One of the men raised his hand with a threatening air&mdash;but against
+      the Shadow, not against the sacred person of Felix. &ldquo;He will be ill,&rdquo;
+      he said, angrily, pointing toward the white man; &ldquo;and she will, too.
+      Their hearts are indeed black. They have sown the seed of the wind. They
+      have both of them eaten of it. They will both be ill. You deserve to die!
+      And what will come now to our trees and plantations?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The crowd gathered round them, cursing low and horribly. The two terrified
+      Europeans slunk off to their huts, unaware of their exact crime, and
+      closely followed by a scowling but despondent mob of natives. As they
+      crossed their sacred boundary, Muriel cried, with a sudden outburst of
+      tears, &ldquo;Oh, Felix, what on earth shall we ever do to get rid of this
+      terrible, unendurable godship!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The natives without set up a great shout of horror. &ldquo;See, see! she
+      cries!&rdquo; they exclaimed, in indescribable panic. &ldquo;She has eaten
+      the storm-fruit, and already she cries! Oh, clouds, restrain yourselves!
+      Oh, great queen, mercy! Whatever will become of us and our poor huts and
+      gardens!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And for hours they crouched around, beating their breasts and shrieking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That evening, Muriel sat up late in Felix&rsquo;s hut, with Mali by her
+      side, too frightened to go back into her own alone before those angry
+      people. And all the time, just beyond the barrier line, they could hear,
+      above the whistle of the wind around the hut, the droning voices of dozens
+      of natives, cowering low on the ground; they seemed to be going through
+      some litany or chant, as if to deprecate the result of this imprudent
+      action.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are they doing outside?&rdquo; Felix asked of his Shadow at
+      last, after a peculiarly long wail of misery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the Shadow made answer, in very solemn tones, &ldquo;They are trying
+      to propitiate your mightiness, and to avert the omen, lest the rain should
+      fall, and the wind should blow, and the storm-cloud should burst over the
+      island to destroy them.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Felix remembered suddenly of himself that the season when this
+      storm-fruit, or storm-apple, as they called it, was ripe in Fiji, was also
+      the season when the great Pacific cyclones most often swept over the land
+      in full fury&mdash;storms unexampled on any other sea, like that famous
+      one which wrecked so many European men-of-war a few years since in the
+      harbor of Samoa.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And without, the wail came louder and clearer still! &ldquo;If you sow the
+      bread-fruit seed, you will reap the breadfruit. If you sow the wind, you
+      will reap the whirlwind. They have eaten the storm-fruit. Oh, great king,
+      save us!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0010" id="link2HCH0010"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER X. &mdash; REAPING THE WHIRLWIND.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Toward midnight Muriel began to doze lightly from pure fatigue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Put a pillow under her head, and let her sleep,&rdquo; Felix said
+      in a whisper. &ldquo;Poor child, it would be cruel to send her alone
+      to-night into her own quarters.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Mali slipped a pillow of mulberry paper under her mistress&rsquo;s
+      head, and laid it on her own lap, and bent down to watch her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But outside, beyond the line, the natives murmured loud their discontent.
+      &ldquo;The Queen of the Clouds stays in the King of the Rain&rsquo;s hut
+      to-night,&rdquo; they muttered, angrily. &ldquo;She will not listen to us.
+      Before morning, be sure, the Tempest will be born of their meeting to
+      destroy us.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      About two o&rsquo;clock there came a lull in the wind, which had been
+      rising steadily ever since that lurid sunset. Felix looked out of the hut
+      door. The moon was full. It was almost as clear as day with the bright
+      tropical moonlight, silvery in the open, pale green in the shadow. The
+      people were still squatting in great rings round the hut, just outside the
+      taboo line, and beating gongs, and sticks and human bones, to keep time to
+      the lilt of their lugubrious litany.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The air felt unusually heavy and oppressive. Felix raised his eyes to the
+      sky, and saw whisps of light cloud drifting in rapid flight over the
+      scudding moon. Below, an ominous fog bank gathered steadily westward. Then
+      one clap of thunder rent the sky. After it came a deadly silence. The moon
+      was veiled. All was dark as pitch. The natives themselves fell on their
+      faces and prayed with mute lips. Three minutes later, the cyclone had
+      burst upon them in all its frenzy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such a hurricane Felix had never before experienced. Its energy was awful.
+      Round the palm-trees the wind played a frantic and capricious devil&rsquo;s
+      dance. It pirouetted about the atoll in the mad glee of unconsciousness.
+      Here and there it cleared lanes, hundreds of yards in length, among the
+      forest-trees and the cocoanut plantations. The noise of snapping and
+      falling trunks rang thick on the air. At times the cyclone would swoop
+      down from above upon the swaying stem of some tall and stately palm that
+      bent like grass before the wind, break it off short with a roar at the
+      bottom, and lay it low at once upon the ground, with a crash like thunder.
+      In other places, little playful whirlwinds seemed to descend from the sky
+      in the very midst of the dense brushwood, where they cleared circular
+      patches, strewn thick under foot with trunks and branches in their titanic
+      sport, and yet left unhurt all about the surrounding forest. Then again a
+      special cyclone of gigantic proportions would advance, as it were, in a
+      single column against one stem of a clump, whirl round it spirally like a
+      lightning flash, and, deserting it for another, leave it still standing,
+      but turned and twisted like a screw by the irresistible force of its
+      invisible fingers. The storm-god, said Toko, was dancing with the
+      palm-trees. The sight was awful. Such destructive energy Felix had never
+      even imagined before. No wonder the savages all round beheld in it the
+      personal wrath of some mighty spirit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For in spite of the black clouds they could <i>see</i> it all&mdash;both
+      the Europeans and the islanders. The intense darkness of the night was
+      lighted up for them every minute by an almost incessant blaze of sheet and
+      forked lightning. The roar of the thunder mingled with the roar of the
+      tempest, each in turn overtopping and drowning the other. The hut where
+      Felix and Muriel sheltered themselves shook before the storm; the very
+      ground of the island trembled and quivered&mdash;like the timbers of a
+      great ship before a mighty sea&mdash;at each onset of the breakers upon
+      the surrounding fringe-reef. And side by side with it all, to crown their
+      misery, wild torrents of rain, descending in waterspouts, as it seemed, or
+      dashed in great sheets against the roof of their frail tenement, poured
+      fitfully on with fierce tropical energy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the midst of the hut Muriel crouched and prayed with bloodless lips to
+      Heaven. This was too, too terrible. It seemed incredible to her that on
+      top of all they had been called upon to suffer of fear and suspense at the
+      hands of the savages, the very dumb forces of nature themselves should
+      thus be stirred up to open war against them. Her faith in Providence was
+      sorely tried. Dumb forces, indeed! Why, they roared with more terrible
+      voices than any wild beast on earth could possibly compass. The thunder
+      and the wind were howling each other down in emulous din, and the very
+      hiss of the lightning could be distinctly heard, like some huge snake, at
+      times above the creaking and snapping of the trees before the gale in the
+      surrounding forest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Muriel crouched there long, in the mute misery of utter despair. At her
+      feet Mali crouched too, as frightened as herself, but muttering aloud from
+      time to time, in a reproachful voice, &ldquo;I tell Missy Queenie what
+      going to happen. I warn her not. I tell her she must not eat that very bad
+      storm-apple. But Missy Queenie no listen. Her take her own way, then storm
+      come down upon us.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Felix&rsquo;s Shadow, in his own tongue, exclaimed more than once in
+      the self-same tone, half terror, half expostulation, &ldquo;See now what
+      comes from breaking taboo? You eat the storm-fruit. The storm-fruit suits
+      ill with the King of the Rain and the Queen of the Clouds. The heavens
+      have broken loose. The sea has boiled. See what wind and what flood you
+      are bringing upon us.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By and by, above even the fierce roar of the mingled thunder and cyclone,
+      a wild orgy of noise burst upon them all from without the hut. It was a
+      sound as of numberless drums and tom-toms, all beaten in unison with the
+      mad energy of fear; a hideous sound, suggestive of some hateful heathen
+      devil-worship. Muriel clapped her hands to her ears in horror. &ldquo;Oh,
+      what&rsquo;s that?&rdquo; she cried to Felix, at this new addition to
+      their endless alarms. &ldquo;Are the savages out there rising in a body?
+      Have they come to murder us?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps,&rdquo; Felix said, smoothing her hair with his hand, as a
+      mother might soothe her terrified child, &ldquo;perhaps they&rsquo;re
+      angry with us for having caused this storm, as they think, by our foolish
+      action. I believe they all set it down to our having unluckily eaten that
+      unfortunate fruit. I&rsquo;ll go out to the door myself and speak to them.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Muriel clung to his arm with a passionate clinging.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Felix,&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;no! Don&rsquo;t leave me here
+      alone. My darling, I love you. You&rsquo;re all the world there is left to
+      me now, Felix. Don&rsquo;t go out to those wretches and leave me here
+      alone. They&rsquo;ll murder you! they&rsquo;ll murder you! Don&rsquo;t go
+      out, I implore you. If they mean to kill us, let them kill us both
+      together, in one another&rsquo;s arms. Oh, Felix, I am yours, and you are
+      mine, my darling!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the first time either of them had acknowledged the fact; but there,
+      before the face of that awful convulsion of nature, all the little
+      deceptions and veils of life seemed rent asunder forever as by a flash of
+      lightning. They stood face to face with each other&rsquo;s souls, and
+      forgot all else in the agony of the moment. Felix clasped the trembling
+      girl in his arms like a lover. The two Shadows looked on and shook with
+      silent terror. If the King of the Rain thus embraced the Queen of the
+      Clouds before their very eyes, amid so awful a storm, what unspeakable
+      effects might not follow at once from it! But they had too much respect
+      for those supernatural creatures to attempt to interfere with their action
+      at such a moment. They accepted their masters almost as passively as they
+      accepted the wind and the thunder, which they believed to arise from them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix laid his poor Muriel tenderly down on the mud floor again. &ldquo;I
+      <i>must</i> go out, my child,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;For the very love of
+      <i>you</i>, I must play the man, and find out what these savages mean by
+      their drumming.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He crept to the door of the hut (for no man could walk upright before that
+      awful storm), and peered out into the darkness once more, awaiting one of
+      the frequent flashes of lightning. He had not long to wait. In a moment
+      the sky was all ablaze again from end to end, and continued so for many
+      seconds consecutively. By the light of the continuous zigzags of fire,
+      Felix could see for himself that hundreds and hundreds of natives&mdash;men,
+      women, and children, naked, or nearly so, with their hair loose and wet
+      about their cheeks&mdash;lay flat on their faces, many courses deep, just
+      outside the taboo line. The wind swept over them with extraordinary force,
+      and the tropical rain descended in great floods upon their bare backs and
+      shoulders. But the savages, as if entranced, seemed to take no heed of all
+      these earthly things. They lay grovelling in the mud before some unseen
+      power; and beating their tom-toms in unison, with barbaric concord, they
+      cried aloud once more as Felix appeared, in a weird litany that overtopped
+      the tumultuous noise of the tempest, &ldquo;Oh, Storm-God, hear us! Oh,
+      great spirit, deliver us! King of the Rain and Queen of the Clouds,
+      befriend us! Be angry no more! Hide your wrath from your people! Take away
+      your hurricane, and we will bring you many gifts. Eat no longer of the
+      storm-apple&mdash;the seed of the wind&mdash;and we will feed you with yam
+      and turtle, and much choice bread-fruit. Great king, we are yours; you
+      shall choose which you will of our children for your meat and drink; you
+      shall sup on our blood. But take your storm away; do not utterly drown and
+      submerge our island!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As they spoke they crawled nearer and nearer, with gliding serpentine
+      motion, till their heads almost touched the white line of coral. But not a
+      man of them all went one inch beyond it. They stopped there and gazed at
+      him. Felix signed to them with his hand, and pointed vaguely to the sky,
+      as much as to say <i>he</i> was not responsible. At the gesture the whole
+      assembly burst into one loud shout of gratitude. &ldquo;He has heard us,
+      he has heard us!&rdquo; they exclaimed, with a perfect wail of joy.
+      &ldquo;He will not utterly destroy us. He will take away his storm. He
+      will bring the sun and the moon back to us.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix returned into the hut, somewhat reassured so far as the attitude of
+      the savages went. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t be afraid of them, Muriel,&rdquo; he
+      cried, taking her passionately once more in a tender embrace. &ldquo;They
+      daren&rsquo;t cross the taboo. They won&rsquo;t come near; they&rsquo;re
+      too frightened themselves to dream of hurting us.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0011" id="link2HCH0011"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XI. &mdash; AFTER THE STORM.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Next morning the day broke bright and calm, as if the tempest had been but
+      an evil dream of the night, now past forever. The birds sang loud; the
+      lizards came forth from their holes in the wall, and basked, green and
+      gold, in the warm, dry sunshine. But though the sky overhead was blue and
+      the air clear, as usually happen after these alarming tropical cyclones
+      and rainstorms, the memorials of the great wind that had raged all night
+      long among the forests of the island were neither few nor far between.
+      Everywhere the ground was strewn with leaves and branches and huge stems
+      of cocoa-palms. All nature was draggled. Many of the trees were stripped
+      clean of their foliage, as completely as oaks in an English winter; on
+      others, big strands of twisted fibres marked the scars and joints where
+      mighty boughs had been torn away by main force; while, elsewhere, bare
+      stumps alone remained to mark the former presence of some noble dracæna or
+      some gigantic banyan. Bread-fruits and cocoanuts lay tossed in the wildest
+      confusion on the ground; the banana and plantain-patches were beaten level
+      with the soil or buried deep in the mud; many of the huts had given way
+      entirely; abundant wreckage strewed every corner of the island. It was an
+      awful sight. Muriel shuddered to herself to see how much the two that
+      night had passed through.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What the outer fringing reef had suffered from the storm they hardly knew
+      as yet; but from the door of the hut Felix could see for himself how even
+      the calm waters of the inner lagoon had been lashed into wild fury by the
+      fierce swoop of the tempest. Round the entire atoll the solid conglomerate
+      coral floor was scooped under, broken up, chewed fine by the waves, or
+      thrown in vast fragments on the beach of the island. By the eastern shore,
+      in particular, just opposite their hut, Felix observed a regular wall of
+      many feet in height, piled up by the waves like the familiar Chesil Beach
+      near his old home in Dorsetshire. It was the shelter of that temporary
+      barrier alone, no doubt, that had preserved their huts last night from the
+      full fury of the gale, and that had allowed the natives to congregate in
+      such numbers prone on their faces in the mud and rain, upon the
+      unconsecrated ground outside their taboo-line.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But now not an islander was to be seen within ear-shot. All had gone away
+      to look after their ruined huts or their beaten-down plantain-patches,
+      leaving the cruel gods, who, as they thought, had wrought all the mischief
+      out of pure wantonness, to repent at leisure the harm done during the
+      night to their obedient votaries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix was just about to cross the taboo-line and walk down to the shore to
+      examine the barrier, when Toko, his Shadow, laying his hand on his
+      shoulder with more genuine interest and affection than he had ever yet
+      shown, exclaimed, with some horror, &ldquo;Oh, no! Not that! Don&rsquo;t
+      dare to go outside! It would be very dangerous for you. If my people were
+      to catch you on profane soil just now, there&rsquo;s no saying what harm
+      they might do to you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why so?&rdquo; Felix exclaimed, in surprise. &ldquo;Last night,
+      surely, they were all prayers and promises and vows and entreaties.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The young man nodded his head in acquiescence. &ldquo;Ah, yes; last night,&rdquo;
+      he answered. &ldquo;That was very well then. Vows were sore needed. The
+      storm was raging, and you were within your taboo. How could they dare to
+      touch you, a mighty god of the tempest, at the very moment when you were
+      rending their banyan-trees and snapping their cocoanut stems with your
+      mighty arms like so many little chicken-bones? Even Tu-Kila-Kila himself,
+      I expect, the very high god, lay frightened in his temple, cowering by his
+      tree, annoyed at your wrath; he sent Fire and Water among the worshippers,
+      no doubt, to offer up vows and to appease your anger.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Felix remembered, as his Shadow spoke, that, as a matter of fact, he
+      had observed the men who usually wore the red and white feather cloaks
+      among the motley crowd of grovelling natives who lay flat on their faces
+      in the mud of the cleared space the night before, and prayed hard for
+      mercy. Only they were not wearing their robes of office at the moment, in
+      accordance with a well-known savage custom; they had come naked and in
+      disgrace, as befits all suppliants. They had left behind them the insignia
+      of their rank in their own shaken huts, and bowed down their bare backs to
+      the rain and the lightning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I saw them among the other islanders,&rdquo; Felix answered,
+      half-smiling, but prudently remaining within the taboo-line, as his Shadow
+      advised him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Toko kept his hand still on his master&rsquo;s shoulder. &ldquo;Oh, king,&rdquo;
+      he said, beseechingly, and with great solemnity, &ldquo;I am doing wrong
+      to warn you; I am breaking a very great Taboo. I don&rsquo;t know what
+      harm may come to me for telling you. Perhaps Tu-Kila-Kila will burn me to
+      ashes with one glance of his eyes. He may know this minute what I&rsquo;m
+      saying here alone to you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is hard for a white man to meet scruples like this; but Felix was bold
+      enough to answer outright: &ldquo;Tu-Kila-Kila knows nothing of the sort,
+      and can never find out. Take my word for it, Toko, nothing that you say to
+      me will ever reach Tu-Kila-Kila.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Shadow looked at him doubtfully, and trembled as he spoke. &ldquo;I
+      like you, Korong,&rdquo; he said, with a genuinely truthful ring in his
+      voice. &ldquo;You seem to me so kind and good&mdash;so different from
+      other gods, who are very cruel. You never beat me. Nobody I ever served
+      treated me as well or as kindly as you have done. And for <i>your</i> sake
+      I will even dare to break taboo&mdash;if you&rsquo;re quite, quite sure
+      Tu-Kila-Kila will never discover it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m quite sure,&rdquo; Felix answered, with perfect
+      confidence. &ldquo;I know it for certain. I swear a great oath to it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You swear by Tu-Kila-Kila himself?&rdquo; the young savage asked,
+      anxiously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I swear by Tu-Kila-Kila himself,&rdquo; Felix replied at once.
+      &ldquo;I swear, without doubt. He can never know it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is a great Taboo,&rdquo; the Shadow went on, meditatively,
+      stroking Felix&rsquo;s arm. &ldquo;A very great Taboo indeed. A terrible
+      medicine. And you are a god; I can trust you. Well, then, you see, the
+      secret is this: you are Korong, but you are a stranger, and you don&rsquo;t
+      understand the ways of Boupari. If for three days after the end of this
+      storm, which Tu-Kila-Kila has sent Fire and Water to pray and vow against,
+      you or the Queen of the Clouds show yourselves outside your own taboo-line&mdash;why,
+      then, the people are clear of sin; whoever takes you may rend you alive;
+      they will tear you limb from limb and cut you into pieces.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why so?&rdquo; Felix asked, aghast at this discovery. They seemed
+      to live on a perpetual volcano in this wonderful island; and a volcano
+      ever breaking out in fresh places. They could never get to the bottom of
+      its horrible superstitions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because you ate the storm-apple,&rdquo; the Shadow answered,
+      confidently. &ldquo;That was very wrong. You brought the tempest upon us
+      yourselves by your own trespass; therefore, by the custom of Boupari,
+      which we learn in the mysteries, you become full Korong for the sacrifice
+      at once. That makes the term for you. The people will give you all your
+      dues; then they will say, &lsquo;We are free; we have bought you with a
+      price; we have brought your cocoanuts. No sin attaches to us; we are
+      righteous; we are righteous.&rsquo; And then they will kill you, and Fire
+      and Water will roast you and boil you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But only if we go outside the taboo-line?&rdquo; Felix asked,
+      anxiously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only if you go outside the taboo-line,&rdquo; the Shadow replied,
+      nodding a hasty assent. &ldquo;Inside it, till your term comes, even
+      Tu-Kila-Kila himself, the very high god, whose meat we all are, dare never
+      hurt you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Till our term comes?&rdquo; Felix inquired, once more astonished
+      and perplexed. &ldquo;What do you mean by that, my Shadow?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the Shadow was either bound by some superstitious fear, or else
+      incapable of putting himself into Felix&rsquo;s point of view. &ldquo;Why,
+      till you are full Korong,&rdquo; he answered, like one who speaks of some
+      familiar fact, as who should say, till you are forty years old, or, till
+      your beard grows white. &ldquo;Of course, by and by, you will be full
+      Korong. I cannot help you then; but, till that time comes, I would like to
+      do my best by you. You have been very kind to me. I tell you much. More
+      than this, it would not be lawful for me to mention.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And that was the most that, by dexterous questioning, Felix could ever
+      manage to get out of his mysterious Shadow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At the end of three days we will be safe, though?&rdquo; he
+      inquired at last, after all other questions failed to produce an answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes, at the end of three days the storm will have blown over,&rdquo;
+      the young man answered, easily. &ldquo;All will then be well. You may
+      venture out once more. The rain will have dried over all the island. Fire
+      and Water will have no more power over you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix went back to the hut to inform Muriel of this new peril thus
+      suddenly sprung upon them. Poor Muriel, now almost worn out with endless
+      terrors, received it calmly. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m growing accustomed to it
+      all, Felix,&rdquo; she answered, resignedly. &ldquo;If only I know that
+      you will keep your promise, and never let me fall alive into these
+      wretches&rsquo; hands, I shall feel quite safe. Oh, Felix, do you know
+      when you took me in your arms like that last night, in spite of
+      everything, I felt positively happy.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      About ten o&rsquo;clock they were suddenly roused by a sound of many
+      natives, coming in quick succession, single file, to the huts, and
+      shouting aloud, &ldquo;Oh, King of the Rain, oh, Queen of the Clouds, come
+      forth for our vows! Receive your presents!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix went forth to the door to look. With a warning look in his eyes, his
+      Shadow followed him. The natives were now coming up by dozens at a time,
+      bringing with them, in great arm-loads, fallen cocoanuts and breadfruits,
+      and branches of bananas, and large draggled clusters of half-ripe
+      plantains.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, what are all these?&rdquo; Felix exclaimed in surprise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His Shadow looked up at him, as if amused at the absurd simplicity of the
+      question. &ldquo;These are yours, of course,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;yours
+      and the Queen&rsquo;s; they are the windfalls you made. Did you not knock
+      them all off the trees for yourselves when you were coming down in such
+      sheets from the sky last evening?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix wrung his hands in positive despair. It was clear, indeed, that to
+      the minds of the natives there was no distinguishing personally between
+      himself and Muriel, and the rain or the cyclone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will they bring them all in?&rdquo; he asked, gazing in alarm at
+      the huge pile of fruits the natives were making outside the huts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, all,&rdquo; the Shadow answered; &ldquo;they are vows; they
+      are godsends; but if you like, you can give some of them back. If you give
+      much back, of course it will make my people less angry with you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix advanced near the line, holding his hand up before him to command
+      silence. As he did so, he was absolutely appalled himself at the perfect
+      storm of execration and abuse which his appearance excited. The foremost
+      natives, brandishing their clubs and stone-tipped spears, or shaking their
+      fists by the line, poured forth upon his devoted head at once all the most
+      frightful curses of the Polynesian vocabulary. &ldquo;Oh, evil god,&rdquo;
+      they cried aloud with angry faces, &ldquo;oh, wicked spirit! you have a
+      bad heart. See what a wrong you have purposely done us. If your heart were
+      not bad, would you treat us like this? If you are indeed a god, come out
+      across the line, and let us try issues together. Don&rsquo;t skulk like a
+      coward in your hut and within your taboo, but come out and fight us. <i>We</i>
+      are not afraid, who are only men. Why are <i>you</i> afraid of us?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix tried to speak once more, but the din drowned his voice. As he
+      paused, the people set up their loud shouts again. &ldquo;Oh, you wicked
+      god! You eat the storm-apple! You have wrought us much harm. You have
+      spoiled our harvest. How you came down in great sheets last night! It was
+      pitiful, pitiful! We would like to kill you. You might have taken our
+      bread-fruits and our bananas, if you would; we give you them freely; they
+      are yours; here, take them. We feed you well; we make you many offerings.
+      But why did you wish to have our huts also? Why did you beat down our
+      young plantations and break our canoes against the beach of the island?
+      That shows a bad heart! You are an evil god! You dare not defend yourself.
+      Come out and meet us.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0012" id="link2HCH0012"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XII. &mdash; A POINT OF THEOLOGY.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      At last, with great difficulty, Felix managed to secure a certain
+      momentary lull of silence. The natives, clustering round the line till
+      they almost touched it, listened with scowling brows, and brandished
+      threatening spears, tipped with points of stone or shark&rsquo;s teeth or
+      turtle-bone, while he made his speech to them. From time to time, one or
+      another interrupted him, coaxing and wheedling him, as it were, to cross
+      the line; but Felix never heeded them. He was beginning to understand now
+      how to treat this strange people. He took no notice of their threats or
+      their entreaties either.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By and by, partly by words and partly by gestures, he made them understand
+      that they might take back and keep for themselves all the cocoanuts and
+      bread-fruits they had brought as windfalls. At this the people seemed a
+      little appeased. &ldquo;His heart is not quite so bad as we thought,&rdquo;
+      they murmured among themselves; &ldquo;but if he didn&rsquo;t want them,
+      what did he mean? Why did he beat down our huts and our plantations?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Felix tried to explain to them&mdash;a somewhat dangerous task&mdash;that
+      neither he nor Muriel were really responsible for last night&rsquo;s
+      storm; but at that the people, with one accord, raised a great loud shout
+      of unmixed derision. &ldquo;He is a god,&rdquo; they cried, &ldquo;and yet
+      he is ashamed of his own acts and deeds, afraid of what we, mere men, will
+      do to him! Ha! ha! Take care! These are lies that he tells. Listen to him!
+      Hear him!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile, more and more natives kept coming up with windfalls of fruit,
+      or with objects they had vowed in their terror to dedicate during the
+      night; and Felix all the time kept explaining at the top of his voice, to
+      all as they came, that he wanted nothing, and that they could take all
+      back again. This curiously inconsistent action seemed to puzzle the
+      wondering natives strangely. Had he made the storm, then, they asked, and
+      eaten the storm-apple, for no use to himself, but out of pure
+      perverseness? If he didn&rsquo;t even want the windfalls and the objects
+      vowed to him, why had he beaten down their crops and broken their houses?
+      They looked at him meaningly; but they dared not cross that great line of
+      taboo. It was their own superstition alone, in that moment of danger, that
+      kept their hands off those defenceless white people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last a happy idea seemed to strike the crowd. &ldquo;What he wants is a
+      child?&rdquo; they cried, effusively. &ldquo;He thirsts for blood! Let us
+      kill and roast him a proper victim!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix&rsquo;s horror at this appalling proposition knew no bounds. &ldquo;If
+      you do,&rdquo; he cried, turning their own superstition against them in
+      this last hour of need, &ldquo;I will raise up a storm worse even than
+      last night&rsquo;s! You do it at your peril! I want no victim. The people
+      of my country eat not of human flesh. It is a thing detestable, horrible,
+      hateful to God and man. With us, all human life alike is sacred. We spill
+      no blood. If you dare to do as you say, I will raise such a storm over
+      your heads to-night as will submerge and drown the whole of your island.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The natives listened to him with profound interest. &ldquo;We must spill
+      no blood!&rdquo; they repeated, looking aghast at one another. &ldquo;Hear
+      what the King says! We must not cut the victim&rsquo;s throat. We must
+      bind a child with cords and roast it alive for him!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix hardly knew what to do or say at this atrocious proposal. &ldquo;If
+      you roast it alive,&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;you deserve to be all scorched
+      up with lightning. Take care what you do! Spare the child&rsquo;s life! I
+      will have no victim. Beware how you anger me!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the savage no sooner says than he does. With him deliberation is
+      unknown, and impulse everything. In a moment the natives had gathered in a
+      circle a little way off, and began drawing lots. Several children, seized
+      hurriedly up among the crowd, were huddled like so many sheep in the
+      centre. Felix looked on from his enclosure, half petrified with horror.
+      The lot fell upon a pretty little girl of five years old. Without one word
+      of warning, without one sign of remorse, before Felix&rsquo;s very eyes,
+      they began to bind the struggling and terrified child just outside the
+      circle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The white man could stand this horrid barbarity no longer. At the risk of
+      his life&mdash;at the risk of Muriel&rsquo;s&mdash;he must rush out to
+      prevent them. They should never dare to kill that helpless child before
+      his very eyes. Come what might&mdash;though even Muriel should suffer for
+      it&mdash;he felt he <i>must</i> rescue that trembling little creature.
+      Drawing his trusty knife, and opening the big blade ostentatiously before
+      their eyes, he made a sudden dart like a wild beast across the line, and
+      pounced down upon the party that guarded the victim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Was it a ruse to make him cross the line, alone, or did they really mean
+      it? He hardly knew; but he had no time to debate the abstract question.
+      Bursting into their midst, he seized the child with a rush in his circling
+      arms, and tried to hurry back with it within the protecting taboo-line.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Quick as lightning he was surrounded and almost cut down by a furious and
+      frantic mob of half-naked savages. &ldquo;Kill him! Tear him to pieces!&rdquo;
+      they cried in their rage. &ldquo;He has a bad heart! He destroyed our
+      huts! He broke down our plantations! Kill him, kill him, kill him!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As they closed in upon him, with spears and tomahawks and clubs, Felix saw
+      he had nothing left for it now but a hard fight for life to return to the
+      taboo-line. Holding the child in one arm, and striking wildly out with his
+      knife with the other, he tried to hack his way back by main force to the
+      shelter of the taboo-line in frantic lunges. The distance was but a few
+      feet, but the savages pressed round him, half frightened still, yet
+      gnashing their teeth and distorting their faces with anger. &ldquo;He has
+      broken the Taboo,&rdquo; they cried in vehement tones. &ldquo;He has
+      crossed the line willingly. Kill him! Kill him! We are free from sin. We
+      have bought him with a price&mdash;with many cocoanuts!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the sound of the struggle going on so close outside, Muriel rushed in
+      frantic haste and terror from the hut. Her face was pale, but her demeanor
+      was resolute. Before Mali could stop her, she, too, had crossed the sacred
+      line of the coral mark, and had flung herself madly upon Felix&rsquo;s
+      assailants, to cover his retreat with her own frail body.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hold off!&rdquo; she cried, in her horror, in English, but in
+      accents even those savages could read. &ldquo;You shall not touch him!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a fierce effort Felix tore his way back, through the spears and
+      clubs, toward the place of safety. The savages wounded him on the way more
+      than once with their jagged stone spear-tips, and blood flowed from his
+      breast and arms in profusion. But they didn&rsquo;t dare even so to touch
+      Muriel. The sight of that pure white woman, rushing out in her weakness to
+      protect her lover&rsquo;s life from attack, seemed to strike them with
+      some fresh access of superstitious awe. One or two of themselves were
+      wounded by Felix&rsquo;s knife, for they were unaccustomed to steel,
+      though they had a few blades made out of old European barrel-hoops. For a
+      minute or two the conflict was sharp and hotly contested. Then at last
+      Felix managed to fling the child across the line, to push Muriel with one
+      hand at arm&rsquo;s-length before him, and to rush himself within the
+      sacred circle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No sooner had he crossed it than the savages drew up around, undecided as
+      yet, but in a threatening body. Rank behind rank, their loose hair in
+      their eyes, they stood like wild beasts balked of their prey, and yelled
+      at him. Some of them brandished their spears and their stone hatchets
+      angrily in their victims&rsquo; faces. Others contented themselves with
+      howling aloud as before, and piling curses afresh on the heads of the
+      unpopular storm-gods. &ldquo;Look at her,&rdquo; they cried, in their
+      wrath, pointing their skinny brown fingers angrily at Muriel. &ldquo;See,
+      she weeps even now. She would flood us with her rain. She isn&rsquo;t
+      satisfied with all the harm she has poured down upon Boupari already. She
+      wants to drown us.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then a little knot drew up close to the line of taboo itself, and
+      began to discuss in loud and serious tones a pressing question of savage
+      theology and religious practice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They have crossed the line within the three days,&rdquo; some of
+      the foremost warriors exclaimed, in excited voices. &ldquo;They are no
+      longer taboo. We can do as we please with them. We may cross the line now
+      ourselves if we will, and tear them to pieces. Come on! Who follows?
+      Korong! Korong! Let us rend them! Let us eat them!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But though they spoke so bravely they hung back themselves, fearful of
+      passing that mysterious barrier. Others of the crowd answered them back,
+      warmly: &ldquo;No, no; not so. Be careful what you do. Anger not the gods.
+      Don&rsquo;t ruin Boupari. If the Taboo is not indeed broken, then how dare
+      we break it? They are gods. Fear their vengeance. They are, indeed,
+      terrible. See what happened to us when they merely ate of the storm-apple!
+      What might not happen if we were to break taboo without due cause and kill
+      them?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One old, gray-bearded warrior, in particular, held his countrymen back.
+      &ldquo;Mind how you trifle with gods,&rdquo; the old chief said, in a tone
+      of solemn warning. &ldquo;Mind how you provoke them. They are very mighty.
+      When I was young, our people killed three sailing gods who came ashore in
+      a small canoe, built of thin split logs; and within a month an awful
+      earthquake devastated Boupari, and fire burst forth from a mouth in the
+      ground, and the people knew that the spirits of the sailing gods were very
+      angry. Wait, therefore, till Tu-Kila-Kila himself comes, and then ask of
+      him, and of Fire and Water. As Tu-Kila-Kila bids you, that do you do. Is
+      he not our great god, the king of us all, and the guardian of the customs
+      of the island of Boupari?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is Tu-Kila-Kila coming?&rdquo; some of the warriors asked, with
+      bated breath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How should he not come?&rdquo; the old chief asked, drawing himself
+      up very erect. &ldquo;Know you not the mysteries? The rain has put out all
+      the fires in Boupari. The King of Fire himself, even his hearth is cold.
+      He tried his best in the storm to keep his sacred embers still
+      smouldering; but the King of the Rain was stronger than he was, and put it
+      out at last in spite of his endeavors. Be careful, therefore, how you deal
+      with the King of the Rain, who comes down among lightnings, and is so very
+      powerful.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And Tu-Kila-Kila comes to fetch fresh fire?&rdquo; one of the
+      nearest savages asked, with profound awe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He comes to fetch fresh fire, new fire from the sun,&rdquo; the old
+      man answered, with awe in his voice. &ldquo;These foreign gods, are they
+      not strangers from the sun? They have brought the divine seeds of fire,
+      growing in a shining box that reflects the sunlight. They need no
+      rubbing-sticks and no drill to kindle fresh flame. They touch the seed on
+      the box, and, lo, like a miracle, fire bursts forth from the wood
+      spontaneous. Tu-Kila-Kila comes, to behold this miracle.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The warriors hung back with doubtful eyes for a moment. Then they spoke
+      with one accord, &ldquo;Tu-Kila-Kila shall decide. Tu-Kila-Kila!
+      Tu-Kila-Kila! If the great god says the Taboo holds good, we will not hurt
+      or offend the strangers. But if the great god says the Taboo is broken,
+      and we are all without sin&mdash;then, Korong! Korong! we will kill them!
+      We will eat them!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the two parties thus stood glaring at one another, across that narrow
+      imaginary wall, another cry went up to heaven at the distant sound of a
+      peculiar tom-tom. &ldquo;Tu-Kila-Kila comes!&rdquo; they shouted. &ldquo;Our
+      great god approaches! Women, begone! Men, hide your eyes! Fly, fly from
+      the brightness of his face, which is as the sun in glory! Tu-Kila-Kila
+      comes! Fly far, all profane ones!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And in a moment the women had disappeared into space, and the men lay flat
+      on the moist ground with low groans of surprise, and hid their faces in
+      their hands in abject terror.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0013" id="link2HCH0013"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIII. &mdash; AS BETWEEN GODS.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila came up in his grandest panoply. The great umbrella, with the
+      hanging cords, rose high over his head; the King of Fire and the King of
+      Water, in their robes of state, marched slowly by his side; a whole group
+      of slaves and temple attendants, clapping hands in unison, followed
+      obedient at his sacred heels. But as soon as he reached the open space in
+      front of the huts and began to speak, Felix could easily see, in spite of
+      his own agitation and the excitement of the moment, that the implacable
+      god himself was profoundly frightened. Last night&rsquo;s storm had,
+      indeed, been terrible; but Tu-Kila-Kila mentally coupled it with Felix&rsquo;s
+      attitude toward himself at their last interview, and really believed in
+      his own heart he had met, after all, with a stronger god, more powerful
+      than himself, who could make the clouds burst forth in fire and the earth
+      tremble. The savage swaggered a good deal, to be sure, as is often the
+      fashion with savages when frightened; but Felix could see between the
+      lines, that he swaggered only on the familiar principle of whistling to
+      keep your courage up, and that in his heart of hearts he was most
+      unspeakably terrified.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You did not do well, O King of the Rain, last night,&rdquo; he
+      said, after an interchange of civilities, as becomes great gods. &ldquo;You
+      have put out even the sacred flame on the holy hearth of the King of Fire.
+      You have a bad heart. Why do you use us so?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why do you let your people offer human sacrifices?&rdquo; Felix
+      answered, boldly, taking advantage of his position. &ldquo;They are
+      hateful in our sight, these cannibal ways. While we remain on the island,
+      no human life shall be unjustly taken. Do you understand me?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila drew back, and gazed around him suspiciously. In all his
+      experience no one had ever dared to address him like that. Assuredly, the
+      stranger from the sun must be a very great god&mdash;how great, he hardly
+      dared to himself to realize. He shrugged his shoulders. &ldquo;When we
+      mighty deities of the first order speak together, face to face,&rdquo; he
+      said, with an uneasy air, &ldquo;it is not well that the mere common herd
+      of men should overhear our profound deliberations. Let us go inside your
+      hut. Let us confer in private.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They entered the hut alone, Muriel still clinging to Felix&rsquo;s arm, in
+      speechless terror. Then Felix at once began to explain the situation. As
+      he spoke, a baleful light gleamed in Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s eye. The great
+      god removed his mulberry-paper mask. He was evidently delighted at the
+      turn things had taken. If only he dared&mdash;but there; he dared not.
+      &ldquo;Fire and Water would never allow it,&rdquo; he murmured softly to
+      himself. &ldquo;They know the taboos as well as I do.&rdquo; It was clear
+      to Felix that the savage would gladly have sacrificed him if he dared, and
+      that he made no bones about letting him know it; but the custom of the
+      islanders bound him as tightly as it bound themselves, and he was afraid
+      to transgress it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now listen,&rdquo; Felix said, at last, after a long palaver,
+      looking in the savage&rsquo;s face with a resolute air: &ldquo;Tu-Kila-Kila,
+      we are not afraid of you. We are not afraid of all your people. I went out
+      alone just now to rescue that child, and, as you see, I succeeded in
+      rescuing it. Your people have wounded me&mdash;look at the blood on my
+      arms and chest&mdash;but I don&rsquo;t mind for wounds. I mean you to do
+      as I say, and to make your people do so, too. Understand, the nation to
+      which I belong is very powerful. You have heard of the sailing gods who go
+      over the sea in canoes of fire, as swift as the wind, and whose weapons
+      are hollow tubes, that belch forth great bolts of lightning and thunder?
+      Very well, I am one of them. If ever you harm a hair of our heads, those
+      sailing gods will before long send one of their mighty fire-canoes, and
+      bring to bear upon your island their thunder and lightning, and destroy
+      your huts, and punish you for the wrong you have ventured to do us. So now
+      you know. Remember that you act exactly as I tell you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila was evidently overawed by the white man&rsquo;s resolute
+      voice and manner. He had heard before of the sailing gods (as the
+      Polynesians of the old school still call the Europeans); and though but
+      one or two stray individuals among them had ever reached his remote island
+      (mostly as castaways), he was quite well enough acquainted with their
+      might and power to be deeply impressed by Felix&rsquo;s exhortation. So he
+      tried to temporize. &ldquo;Very well,&rdquo; he made answer, with his
+      jauntiest air, assuming a tone of friendly good-fellowship toward his
+      brother-god. &ldquo;I will bear it in mind. I will try to humor you. While
+      your time lasts, no man shall hurt you. But if I promise you that, you
+      must do a good turn for me instead. You must come out before the people
+      and give me a new fire from the sun, that you carry in a shining box about
+      with you. The King of Fire has allowed his sacred flame to go out in
+      deference to your flood; for last night, you know, you came down heavily.
+      Never in my life have I known you come down heavier. The King of Fire
+      acknowledges himself beaten. So give us light now before the people, that
+      they may know we are gods, and may fear to disobey us.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only on one condition,&rdquo; Felix answered, sternly; for he felt
+      he had Tu-Kila-Kila more or less in his power now, and that he could drive
+      a bargain with him. Why, he wasn&rsquo;t sure; but he saw Tu-Kila-Kila
+      attached a profound importance to having the sacred fire relighted, as he
+      thought, direct from heaven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What condition is that?&rdquo; Tu-Kila-Kila asked, glancing about
+      him suspiciously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, that you give up in future human sacrifices.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila gave a start. Then he reflected for a moment. Evidently, the
+      condition seemed to him a very hard one. &ldquo;Do you want all the
+      victims for yourself and her, then?&rdquo; he asked, with a casual nod
+      aside toward Muriel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix drew back, with horror depicted on every line of his face. &ldquo;Heaven
+      forbid!&rdquo; he answered, fervently. &ldquo;We want no bloodshed, no
+      human victims. We ask you to give up these horrid practices, because they
+      shock and revolt us. If you would have your fire lighted, you must promise
+      us to put down cannibalism altogether henceforth in your island.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila hesitated. After all, it was only for a very short time that
+      these strangers could thus beard him. Their day would come soon. They were
+      but Korongs. Meanwhile, it was best, no doubt, to effect a compromise.
+      &ldquo;Agreed,&rdquo; he answered, slowly. &ldquo;I will put down human
+      sacrifices&mdash;so long as you live among us. And I will tell the people
+      your taboo is not broken. All shall be done as you will in this matter.
+      Now, come out before the crowd and light the fire from Heaven.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Remember,&rdquo; Felix repeated, &ldquo;if you break your word, my
+      people will come down upon you, sooner or later, in their mighty
+      fire-canoes, and will take vengeance for your crime, and destroy you
+      utterly.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila smiled a cunning smile. &ldquo;I know all that,&rdquo; he
+      answered. &ldquo;I am a god myself, not a fool, don&rsquo;t you see? You
+      are a very great god, too; but I am the greater. No more of words between
+      us two. It is as between gods. The fire! the fire!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila replaced his mask. They proceeded from the hut to the open
+      space within the taboo-line. The people still lay all flat on their faces.
+      &ldquo;Fire and Water,&rdquo; Tu-Kila-Kila said, in a commanding tone,
+      &ldquo;come forward and screen me!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The King of Fire and the King of Water unrolled a large square of native
+      cloth, which they held up as a screen on two poles in front of their
+      superior deity. Tu-Kila-Kila sat down on the ground, hugging his knees, in
+      the common squatting savage fashion, behind the veil thus readily formed
+      for him. &ldquo;Taboo is removed,&rdquo; he said, in loud, clear tones.
+      &ldquo;My people may rise. The light will not burn them. They may look
+      toward the place where Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s face is hidden from them.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The people all rose with one accord, and gazed straight before them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The King of Fire will bring dry sticks,&rdquo; Tu-Kila-Kila said,
+      in his accustomed regal manner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The King of Fire, sticking one pole of the screen into the ground
+      securely, brought forward a bundle of sun-dried sticks and leaves from a
+      basket beside him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The King of the Rain, who has put out all our hearths with his
+      flood last night, will relight them again with new fire, fresh flame from
+      the sun, rays of our disk, divine, mystic, wonderful,&rdquo; Tu-Kila-Kila
+      proclaimed, in his droning monotone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix advanced as he spoke to the pile, and struck a match before the eyes
+      of all the islanders. As they saw it light, and then set fire to the wood,
+      a loud cry went up once more, &ldquo;Tu-Kila-Kila is great! His words are
+      true! He has brought fire from the sun! His ways are wonderful!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila, from his point of vantage behind the curtain, strove to
+      improve the occasion with a theological lesson. &ldquo;That is the way we
+      have learned from our divine ancestors,&rdquo; he said, slowly; &ldquo;the
+      rule of the gods in our island of Boupari. Each god, as he grows old,
+      reincarnates himself visibly. Before he can grow feeble and die he
+      immolates himself willingly on his own altar; and a younger and a stronger
+      than he receives his spirit. Thus the gods are always young and always
+      with you. Behold myself, Tu-Kila-Kila! Am I not from old times? Am I not
+      very ancient? Have I not passed through many bodies? Do I not spring ever
+      fresh from my own ashes? Do I not eat perpetually the flesh of new
+      victims? Even so with fire. The flames of our island were becoming impure.
+      The King of Fire saw his cinders flickering. So I gave my word. The King
+      of the Rain descended in floods upon them. He put them all out. And now he
+      rekindles them. They burn up brighter and fresher than ever. They burn to
+      cook my meat, the limbs of my victims. Take heed that you do the King of
+      the Rain no harm as long as he remains within his sacred circle. He is a
+      very great god. He is fierce; he is cruel. His taboo is not broken.
+      Beware! Beware! Disobey at your peril. I, Tu-Kila-Kila, have spoken.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he spoke, it seemed to Felix that these strange mystic words about each
+      god springing fresh from his own ashes must contain the solution of that
+      dread problem they were trying in vain to read. That, perhaps, was the
+      secret of Korong. If only they could ever manage to understand it!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila beat his tom-tom twice. In a second all the people fell flat
+      on their faces again. Tu-Kila-Kila rose; the kings of Fire and Water held
+      the umbrella over him. The attendants on either side clapped hands in time
+      to the sacred tom-tom. With proud, slow tread, the god retraced his steps
+      to his own palace-temple; and Muriel and Felix were left alone at last in
+      their dusty enclosure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tu-Kila-Kila hates me,&rdquo; Felix said, later in the day, to his
+      attentive Shadow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; the young man answered, with a tone of natural
+      assent. &ldquo;To be sure he hates you. How could he do otherwise? You are
+      Korong. You may any day be his enemy.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But he&rsquo;s afraid of me, too,&rdquo; Felix went on. &ldquo;He
+      would have liked to let the people tear me in pieces. Yet he dared not
+      risk it. He seems to dread offending me.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; the Shadow replied, as readily as before. &ldquo;He
+      is very much afraid of you. You are Korong. You may any day supplant him.
+      He would like to get rid of you, if he could see his way. But till your
+      time comes he dare not touch you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When will my time come?&rdquo; Felix asked, with that dim
+      apprehension of some horrible end coming over him yet again in all its
+      vague weirdness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Shadow shook his head. &ldquo;That,&rdquo; he answered, &ldquo;it is
+      not lawful for me so much as to mention. I tell you too far. You will know
+      soon enough. Wait, and be patient.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0014" id="link2HCH0014"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIV. &mdash; &ldquo;MR. THURSTAN, I PRESUME.&rdquo;
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Naturally enough, it was some time before Felix and Muriel could recover
+      from the shock of their deadly peril. Yet, strange to say, the natives at
+      the end of three days seemed positively to have forgotten all about it.
+      Their loves and their hates were as shortlived as children&rsquo;s. As
+      soon as the period of seclusion was over, their attentions to the two
+      strangers redoubled in intensity. They were evidently most anxious, after
+      this brief disagreement, to reassure the new gods, who came from the sun,
+      of their gratitude and devotion. The men who had wounded Felix, in
+      particular, now came daily in the morning with exceptional gifts of fish,
+      fruit, and flowers; they would bring a crab from the sea, or a joint of
+      turtle-meat. &ldquo;Forgive us, O king,&rdquo; they cried, prostrating
+      themselves humbly. &ldquo;We did not mean to hurt you; we thought your
+      time had really come. You are a Korong. We would not offend you. Do not
+      refuse us your showers because of our sin. We are very penitent. We will
+      do what you ask of us. Your look is poison. See, here is wood; here are
+      leaves and fire; we are but your meat; choose and cook which you will of
+      us!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was useless Felix&rsquo;s trying to explain to them that he wanted no
+      victims, and no propitiation. The more he protested, the more they brought
+      gifts. &ldquo;He is a very great god,&rdquo; they exclaimed. &ldquo;He
+      wants nothing from us. What can we give him that will be an acceptable
+      gift? Shall we offer him ourselves, our wives, our children?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As for the women, when they saw how thoroughly frightened of them Muriel
+      now was, they couldn&rsquo;t find means to express their regret and
+      devotion. Mothers brought their little children, whom she had patted on
+      the head, and offered them, just outside the line, as presents for her
+      acceptance. They explained to her Shadow that they never meant to hurt
+      her, and that, if only she would venture without the line, as of old, all
+      should be well, and they would love and adore her. Mali translated to her
+      mistress these speeches and prayers. &ldquo;Them say, &lsquo;You come
+      back, Queenie,&rsquo;&rdquo; she explained in her broken Queensland
+      English. &ldquo;&lsquo;Boupari women love you very much. Boupari women
+      glad you come. You kind; you beautiful! All Boupari men and women very
+      much pleased with you and the gentleman, because you give back him
+      cocoanut and fruit that you pick in the storm, and because you bring down
+      fresh fire from heaven.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gradually, after several days, Felix&rsquo;s confidence was so far
+      restored that he ventured to stroll beyond the line again; and he found
+      himself, indeed, most popular among the people. In various ways he picked
+      up gradually the idea that the islanders generally disliked Tu-Kila-Kila,
+      and liked himself; and that they somehow regarded him as Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s
+      natural enemy. What it could all mean he did not yet understand, though
+      some inklings of an explanation occasionally occurred to him. Oh, how he
+      longed now for the Month of Birds to end, in order that he might pay his
+      long-deferred visit to the mysterious Frenchman, from whose voice his
+      Shadow had fled on that fateful evening with such sudden precipitancy. The
+      Frenchman, he judged, must have been long on the island, and could
+      probably give him some satisfactory solution of this abstruse problem.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So he was glad, indeed, when one evening, some weeks later, his Shadow,
+      observing the sky narrowly, remarked to him in a low voice, &ldquo;New
+      moon to-morrow! The Month of Birds will then be up. In the morning you can
+      go and see your brother god at the Abode of Birds without breaking taboo.
+      The Month of Turtles begins at sunrise. My family god is a turtle, so I
+      know the day for it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So great was Felix&rsquo;s impatience to settle this question, that almost
+      before the sun was up next day he had set forth from his hut, accompanied
+      as usual by his faithful Shadow. Their way lay past Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s
+      temple. As they went by the entrance with the bamboo posts, Felix happened
+      to glance aside through the gate to the sacred enclosure. Early as it was,
+      Tu-Kila-Kila was afoot already; and, to Felix&rsquo;s great surprise, was
+      pacing up and down, with that stealthy, wary look upon his cunning face
+      that Muriel had so particularly noted on the day of their first arrival.
+      His spear stood in his hand, and his tomahawk hung by his left side; he
+      peered about him suspiciously, with a cautious glance, as he walked round
+      and round the sacred tree he guarded so continually. There was something
+      weird and awful in the sight of that savage god, thus condemned by his own
+      superstition and the custom of his people to tramp ceaselessly up and down
+      before the sacred banyan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At sight of Felix, however, a sudden burst of frenzy seemed to possess at
+      once all Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s limbs. He brandished his spear violently,
+      and set himself spasmodically in a posture of defence. His brow grew
+      black, and his eyes darted out eternal hate and suspicion. It was evident
+      he expected an instant attack, and was prepared with all his might and
+      main to resist aggression. Yet he never offered to desert his post by the
+      tree or to assume the offensive. Clearly, he was guarding the sacred grove
+      itself with jealous care, and was as eager for its safety as for his own
+      life and honor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix passed on, wondering what it all could mean, and turned with an
+      inquiring glance to his trembling Shadow. As for Toko, he had held his
+      face averted meanwhile, lest he should behold the great god, and be
+      scorched to a cinder; but in answer to Felix&rsquo;s mute inquiry he
+      murmured low: &ldquo;Was Tu-Kila-Kila there? Were all things right? Was he
+      on guard at his post by the tree already?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; Felix replied, with that weird sense of mystery
+      creeping over him now more profoundly than ever. &ldquo;He was on guard by
+      the tree and he looked at me angrily.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; the Shadow remarked, with a sigh of regret, &ldquo;he
+      keeps watch well. It will be hard work to assail him. No god in Boupari
+      ever held his place so tight. Who wishes to take Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s
+      divinity must get up early.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They went on in silence to the little volcanic knoll near the centre of
+      the island. There, in the neat garden plot they had observed before, a
+      man, in the last relics of a very tattered European costume, much covered
+      with a short cape of native cloth, was tending his flowers and singing to
+      himself merrily. His back was turned to them as they came up. Felix paused
+      a moment, unseen, and caught the words the stranger was singing:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+&ldquo;Très jolie,
+ Peu polie,
+ Possédant un gros magot;
+ Fort en gueule,
+ Pas bégueule;
+ Telle était&mdash;&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      The stranger looked up, and paused in the midst of his lines,
+      open-mouthed. For a moment he stood and stared astonished. Then, raising
+      his native cap with a graceful air, and bowing low, as he would have bowed
+      to a lady on the Boulevard, he advanced to greet a brother European with
+      the familiar words, in good educated French, &ldquo;Monsieur, I salute
+      you!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Felix, the sound of a civilized voice in the midst of so much strange
+      and primitive barbarism, was like a sudden return to some forgotten world,
+      so deeply and profoundly did it move and impress him. He grasped the
+      sunburnt Frenchman&rsquo;s rugged hand in his. &ldquo;Who are you?&rdquo;
+      he cried, in the very best Parisian he could muster up on the spur of the
+      moment. &ldquo;And how did you come here?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur,&rdquo; the Frenchman answered, no less profoundly moved
+      than himself, &ldquo;this is, indeed, wonderful! Do I hear once more that
+      beautiful language spoken? Do I find myself once more in the presence of a
+      civilized person? What fortune! What happiness! Ah, it is glorious,
+      glorious.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For some seconds they stood and looked at one another in silence, grasping
+      their hands hard again and again with intense emotion; then Felix repeated
+      his question a second time: &ldquo;Who are you, monsieur? and where do you
+      come from?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your name, surname, age, occupation?&rdquo; the Frenchman repeated,
+      bursting forth at last into national levity. &ldquo;Ah, monsieur, what a
+      joy to hear those well-known inquiries in my ear once more. I hasten to
+      gratify your legitimate curiosity. Name: Peyron; Christian name: Jules;
+      age: forty-one; occupation: convict, escaped from New Caledonia.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Under any other circumstances that last qualification might possibly have
+      been held an undesirable one in a new acquaintance. But on the island of
+      Boupari, among so many heathen cannibals, prejudices pale before community
+      of blood; even a New Caledonian convict is at least a Christian European.
+      Felix received the strange announcement without the faintest shock of
+      surprise or disgust. He would gladly have shaken hands then and there with
+      M. Jules Peyron, indeed, had he introduced himself in even less equivocal
+      language as a forger, a pickpocket, or an escaped house-breaker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you, monsieur?&rdquo; the ex-convict inquired, politely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix told him in a few words the history of their accident and their
+      arrival on the island.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Comment</i>?&rdquo; the Frenchman exclaimed, with surprise and
+      delight. &ldquo;A lady as well; a charming English lady! What an
+      acquisition to the society of Boupari! <i>Quelle chance! Quel bonheur!</i>
+      Monsieur, you are welcome, and mademoiselle too! And in what quality do
+      you live here? You are a god, I see; otherwise you would not have dared to
+      transgress my taboo, nor would this young man&mdash;your Shadow, I suppose&mdash;have
+      permitted you to do so. But which sort of god, pray? Korong&mdash;or Tula?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They call me Korong,&rdquo; Felix answered, all tremulous, feeling
+      himself now on the very verge of solving this profound mystery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And mademoiselle as well?&rdquo; the Frenchman exclaimed, in a tone
+      of dismay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And mademoiselle as well,&rdquo; Felix replied. &ldquo;At least, so
+      I make out. We are both Korong. I have many times heard the natives call
+      us so.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His new acquaintance seized his hand with every appearance of genuine
+      alarm and regret. &ldquo;My poor friend,&rdquo; he exclaimed, with a
+      horrified face, &ldquo;this is terrible, terrible! Tu-Kila-Kila is a very
+      hard man. What can we do to save your life and mademoiselle&rsquo;s! We
+      are powerless! Powerless! I have only that much to say. I condole with
+      you! I commiserate you!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, what does Korong mean?&rdquo; Felix asked, with blanched lips.
+      &ldquo;Is it then something so very terrible?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Terrible! Ah, terrible!&rdquo; the Frenchman answered, holding up
+      his hands in horror and alarm. &ldquo;I hardly know how we can avert your
+      fate. Step within my poor hut, or under the shade of my Tree of Liberty
+      here, and I will tell you all the little I know about it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0015" id="link2HCH0015"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XV. &mdash; THE SECRET OF KORONG.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have lived here long?&rdquo; Felix asked, with tremulous
+      interest, as he took a seat on the bench under the big tree, toward which
+      his new host politely motioned him. &ldquo;You know the people well, and
+      all their superstitions?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Hélas</i>, yes, monsieur,&rdquo; the Frenchman answered, with a
+      sigh of regret. &ldquo;Eighteen years have I spent altogether in this
+      beast of a Pacific; nine as a convict in New Caledonia, and nine more as a
+      god here; and, believe me, I hardly know which is the harder post. Yours
+      is the first White face I have ever seen since my arrival in this cursed
+      island.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And how did you come here?&rdquo; Felix asked, half breathless, for
+      the very magnitude of the stake at issue&mdash;no less a stake than Muriel&rsquo;s
+      life&mdash;made him hesitate to put point-blank the question he had most
+      at heart for the moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur,&rdquo; the Frenchman answered, trying to cover his rags
+      with his native cape, &ldquo;that explains itself easily. I was a medical
+      student in Paris in the days of the Commune. Ah! that beloved Paris&mdash;how
+      far away it seems now from Boupari! Like all other students I was advanced&mdash;Republican,
+      Socialist&mdash;what you will&mdash;a political enthusiast. When the
+      events took place&mdash;the events of &lsquo;70&mdash;I espoused with all
+      my heart the cause of the people. You know the rest. The bourgeoisie
+      conquered. I was taken red-handed, as the Versaillais said&mdash;my pistol
+      in my grasp&mdash;an open revolutionist. They tried me by court-martial&mdash;br&rsquo;r&rsquo;r&mdash;no
+      delay&mdash;guilty, M. le President&mdash;hard labor to perpetuity. They
+      sent me with that brave Louise Michel and so many other good comrades of
+      the cause to New Caledonia. There, nine years of convict life was more
+      than enough for me. One day I found a canoe on the shore&mdash;a little
+      Kanaka canoe&mdash;you know the type&mdash;a mere shapeless dug-out.
+      Hastily I loaded it with food&mdash;yam, taro, bread-fruit&mdash;I pushed
+      it off into the sea&mdash;I embarked alone&mdash;I intrusted myself and
+      all my fortunes to the Bon Dieu and the wide Pacific. The Bon Dieu did not
+      wholly justify my confidence. It is a way he has&mdash;that inscrutable
+      one. Six weeks I floated hither and thither before varying winds. At last
+      one evening I reached this island. I floated ashore. And, <i>enfin, me
+      voilà</i>!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you were a political prisoner only?&rdquo; Felix said,
+      politely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      M. Jules Peyron drew himself up with much dignity in his tattered costume.
+      &ldquo;Do I look like a card-sharper, monsieur?&rdquo; he asked simply,
+      with offended honor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix hastened to reassure him of his perfect confidence. &ldquo;On the
+      contrary, monsieur,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;the moment I heard you were a
+      convict from New Caledonia, I felt certain in my heart you could be
+      nothing less than one of those unfortunate and ill-treated Communards.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur,&rdquo; the Frenchman said, seizing his hand a second
+      time, &ldquo;I perceive that I have to do with a man of honor and a man of
+      feeling. Well, I landed on this island, and they made me a god. From that
+      day to this I have been anxious only to shuffle off my unwelcome divinity,
+      and return as a mere man to the shores of Europe. Better be a valet in
+      Paris, say I, than a deity of the best in Polynesia. It is a monotonous
+      existence here&mdash;no society, no life&mdash;and the <i>cuisine</i>&mdash;bah,
+      execrable! But till the other day, when your steamer passed, I have
+      scarcely even sighted a European ship. A boat came here once, worse luck,
+      to put off two girls (who didn&rsquo;t belong to Boupari), returned
+      indentured laborers from Queensland; but, unhappily, it was during my
+      taboo&mdash;the Month of Birds, as my jailers call it&mdash;and though I
+      tried to go down to it or to make signals of distress, the natives stood
+      round my hut with their spears in line, and prevented me by main force
+      from signalling to them or communicating with them. Even the other day, I
+      never heard of your arrival till a fortnight had elapsed, for I had been
+      sick with fever, the fever of the country, and as soon as my Shadow told
+      me of your advent it was my taboo again, and I was obliged to defer for
+      myself the honor of calling upon my new acquaintances. I am a god, of
+      course, and can do what I like; but while my taboo is on, <i>ma foi</i>,
+      monsieur, I can hardly call my life my own, I assure you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But your taboo is up to-day,&rdquo; Felix said, &ldquo;so my Shadow
+      tells me.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your Shadow is a well-informed young man,&rdquo; M. Peyron
+      answered, with easy French sprightliness. &ldquo;As for my donkey of a
+      valet, he never by any chance knows or tells me anything. I had just sent
+      him out&mdash;the pig&mdash;to learn, if possible, your nationality and
+      name, and what hours you preferred, as I proposed later in the day to pay
+      my respects to mademoiselle, your friend, if she would deign to receive
+      me.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Miss Ellis would be charmed, I&rsquo;m sure,&rdquo; Felix replied,
+      smiling in spite of himself at so much Parisian courtliness under so
+      ragged an exterior. &ldquo;It is a great pleasure to us to find we are not
+      really alone on this barbarous island. But you were going to explain to
+      me, I believe, the exact nature of this peril in which we both stand&mdash;the
+      precise distinction between Korong and Tula?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Alas, monsieur,&rdquo; the Frenchman replied, drawing circles in
+      the dust with his stick with much discomposure, &ldquo;I can only tell you
+      I have been trying to make out the secret of this distinction myself ever
+      since the first day I came to the island; but so reticent are all the
+      natives about it, and so deep is the taboo by which the mystery is
+      guarded, that even now I, who am myself Tula, can tell you but very little
+      with certainty on the subject. All I can say for sure is this&mdash;that
+      gods called Tula retain their godship in permanency for a very long time,
+      although at the end some violent fate, which I do not clearly understand,
+      is destined to befall them. That is my condition as King of the Birds&mdash;for
+      no doubt they have told you that I, Jules Peyron&mdash;Republican,
+      Socialist, Communist&mdash;have been elevated against my will to the
+      honors of royalty. That is my condition, and it matters but little to me,
+      for I know not when the end may come; and we can but die once; how or
+      where, what matters? Meanwhile, I have my distractions, my little <i>agréments</i>&mdash;my
+      gardens, my music, my birds, my native friends, my coquetries, my aviary.
+      As King of the Birds, I keep a small collection of my subjects in the
+      living form, not unworthy of a scientific eye. Monsieur is no
+      ornithologist? Ah, no, I thought not. Well, for me, it matters little; my
+      time is long. But for you and Mademoiselle, who are both Korong&mdash;&rdquo;
+      He paused significantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What happens, then, to those who are Korong?&rdquo; Felix asked,
+      with a lump in his throat&mdash;not for himself, but for Muriel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Frenchman looked at him with a doubtful look. &ldquo;Monsieur,&rdquo;
+      he said, after a pause, &ldquo;I hardly know how to break the truth to you
+      properly. You are new to the island, and do not yet understand these
+      savages. It is so terrible a fate. So deadly. So certain. Compose your
+      mind to hear the worst. And remember that the worst is very terrible.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix&rsquo;s blood froze within him; but he answered bravely all the
+      same, &ldquo;I think I have guessed it myself already. The Korong are
+      offered as human sacrifices to Tu-Kila-Kila.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is nearly so,&rdquo; his new friend replied, with a solemn nod
+      of his head. &ldquo;Every Korong is bound to die when his time comes. Your
+      time will depend on the particular date when you were admitted to Heaven.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix reflected a moment. &ldquo;It was on the 26th of last month,&rdquo;
+      he answered, shortly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well,&rdquo; M. Peyron replied, after a brief calculation.
+      &ldquo;You have just six months in all to live from that date. They will
+      offer you up by Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s hut the day the sun reaches the
+      summer solstice.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But why did they make us gods then?&rdquo; Felix interposed, with
+      tremulous lips. &ldquo;Why treat us with such honors meanwhile, if they
+      mean in the end to kill us?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He received his sentence of death with greater calmness than the Frenchman
+      had expected. &ldquo;Monsieur,&rdquo; the older arrival answered, with a
+      reflective air, &ldquo;there comes in the mystery. If we could solve that,
+      we could find out also the way of escape for you. For there <i>is</i> a
+      way of escape for every Korong: I know it well; I gather it from all the
+      natives say; it is a part of their mysteries; but what it may be, I have
+      hitherto, in spite of all my efforts, failed to discover. All I <i>do</i>
+      know is this: Tu-Kila-Kila hates and dreads in his heart every Korong that
+      is elevated to Heaven, and would do anything, if he dared, to get rid of
+      him quietly. But he doesn&rsquo;t dare, because he is bound hand and foot
+      himself, too, by taboos innumerable. Taboo is the real god and king of
+      Boupari. All the island alike bows down to it and worships it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you ever known Korongs killed?&rdquo; Felix asked once more,
+      trembling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, monsieur. Many of them, alas! And this is what happens. When
+      the Korong&rsquo;s time is come, as these creatures say, either on the
+      summer or winter solstice, he is bound with native ropes, and carried up
+      so pinioned to Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s temple. In the time before this man
+      was Tu-Kila-Kila, I remember&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stop,&rdquo; Felix cried. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t understand. Has
+      there then been more than one Tu-Kila-Kila?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, yes,&rdquo; the Frenchman answered. &ldquo;Certainly, many.
+      And there the mystery comes in again. We have always among us one
+      Tu-Kila-Kila or another. He is a sort of pope, or grand lama, <i>voyez-vous?</i>
+      No sooner is the last god dead than another god succeeds him and takes his
+      name, or rather his title. This young man who now holds the place was
+      known originally as Lavita, the son of Sami. But what is more curious
+      still, the islanders always treat the new god as if he were precisely the
+      self-same person as the old one. So far as I have been able to understand
+      their theology, they believe in a sort of transmigration of souls. The
+      soul of the Tu-Kila-Kila who is just dead passes into and animates the
+      body of the Tu-Kila-Kila who succeeds to the office. Thus they speak as
+      though Tu-Kila-Kila were a continuous existence; and the god of the
+      moment, himself, will even often refer to events which occurred to him, as
+      he says, a hundred years ago or more, but which he really knows, of
+      course, only by the persistent tradition of the islanders. They are a very
+      curious people, these Bouparese. But what would you have? Among savages,
+      one expects things to be as among savages.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix drew a quiet sigh. It was certain that on the island of Boupari that
+      expectation, at least, was never doomed to disappointment. &ldquo;And when
+      a Korong is taken to Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s temple,&rdquo; he asked,
+      continuing the subject of most immediate interest, &ldquo;what happens
+      next to him?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur,&rdquo; the Frenchman answered, &ldquo;I hardly know
+      whether I do right or not to say the truth to you. Each Korong is a god
+      for one season only; when the year renews itself, as the savages believe,
+      by a change of season, then a new Korong must be chosen by Heaven to fill
+      the place of the old ones who are to be sacrificed. This they do in order
+      that the seasons may be ever fresh and vigorous. Especially is that the
+      case with the two meteorological gods, so to speak, the King of the Rain
+      and the Queen of the Clouds. Those, I understand, are the posts in their
+      pantheon which you and the lady who accompanies you occupy.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are right,&rdquo; Felix answered, with profoundly painful
+      interest. &ldquo;And what, then, becomes of the king and queen who are
+      sacrificed?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will tell you,&rdquo; M. Peyron answered, dropping his voice
+      still lower into a sympathetic key. &ldquo;But steel your mind for the
+      worst beforehand. It is sufficiently terrible. On the day of your arrival,
+      this, I learn from my Shadow, is just what happened. That night,
+      Tu-Kila-Kila made his great feast, and offered up the two chief human
+      sacrifices of the year, the free-will offering and the scapegoat of
+      trespass. They keep then a festival, which answers to our own New-Year&rsquo;s
+      day in Europe. Next morning, in accordance with custom, the King of the
+      Rain and the Queen of the Clouds were to be publicly slain, in order that
+      a new and more vigorous king and queen should be chosen in their place,
+      who might make the crops grow better and the sky more clement. In the
+      midst of this horrid ceremony, you and mademoiselle, by pure chance,
+      arrived. You were immediately selected by Tu-Kila-Kila, for some reason of
+      his own, which I do not sufficiently understand, but which is,
+      nevertheless, obvious to all the initiated, as the next representatives of
+      the rain-giving gods. You were presented to Heaven on their little
+      platform raised about the ground, and Heaven accepted you. Then you were
+      envisaged with the attributes of divinity; the care of the rain and the
+      clouds was made over to you; and immediately after, as soon as you were
+      gone, the old king and queen were laid on an altar near Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s
+      home, and slain with tomahawks. Their flesh was next hacked from their
+      bodies with knives, cooked, and eaten; their bones were thrown into the
+      sea, the mother of all waters, as the natives call it. And that is the
+      fate, I fear the inevitable fate, that will befall you and mademoiselle at
+      these wretches&rsquo; hands about the commencement of a fresh season.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix knew the worst now, and bent his head in silence. His worst fears
+      were confirmed; but, after all, even this knowledge was better than so
+      much uncertainty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And now that he knew when &ldquo;his time was up,&rdquo; as the natives
+      phrased it, he would know when to redeem his promise to Muriel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0016" id="link2HCH0016"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XVI. &mdash; A VERY FAINT CLUE.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you hinted at some hope, some chance of escape,&rdquo; Felix
+      cried at last, looking up from the ground and mastering his emotion.
+      &ldquo;What now is that hope? Conceal nothing from me.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur,&rdquo; the Frenchman answered, shrugging his shoulders
+      with an expression of utter impotence, &ldquo;I have as good reasons for
+      wishing to find out all that as even you can have. <i>Your</i> secret is
+      <i>my</i> secret; but with all my pains and astuteness I have been unable
+      to discover it. The natives are reticent, very reticent indeed, about all
+      these matters. They fear taboo; and they fear Tu-Kila-Kila. The women, to
+      be sure, in a moment of expansion, might possibly tell one; but, then, the
+      women, unfortunately, are not admitted to the mysteries. They know no more
+      of all these things than we do. The most I have been able to gather for
+      certain is this&mdash;that on the discovery of the secret depend
+      Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s life and power. Every Boupari man knows this Great
+      Taboo; it is communicated to him in the assembly of adults when he gets
+      tattooed and reaches manhood. But no Boupari man ever communicates it to
+      strangers; and for that reason, perhaps, as I believe, Tu-Kila-Kila often
+      chooses for Korong, as far as possible, those persons who are cast by
+      chance upon the island. It has always been the custom, so far as I can
+      make out, to treat castaways or prisoners taken in war as gods, and then
+      at the end of their term to kill them ruthlessly. This plan is popular
+      with the people at large, because it saves themselves from the dangerous
+      honors of deification; but it also serves Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s purpose,
+      because it usually elevates to Heaven those innocent persons who are
+      unacquainted with that fatal secret which is, as the natives say,
+      Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s death&mdash;his word of dismissal.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then if only we could find out this secret&mdash;&rdquo; Felix
+      cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His new friend interrupted him. &ldquo;What hope is there of your finding
+      it out, monsieur,&rdquo; he exclaimed, &ldquo;you, who have only a few
+      months to live&mdash;when I, who have spent nine long years of exile on
+      the island, and seen two Tu-Kila-Kilas rise and fall, have been unable,
+      with my utmost pains, to discover it? <i>Tenez</i>; you have no idea yet
+      of the superstitions of these people, or the difficulties that lie in the
+      way of fathoming them. Come this way to my aviary; I will show you
+      something that will help you to realize the complexities of the situation.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He rose and led the way to another cleared space at the back of the hut,
+      where several birds of gaudy plumage were fastened to perches on sticks by
+      leathery lashes of dried shark&rsquo;s skin, tied just above their talons.
+      &ldquo;I am the King of the Birds, monsieur, you must remember,&rdquo; the
+      Frenchman said, fondling one of his screaming <i>protégés</i>. &ldquo;These
+      are a few of my subjects. But I do not keep them for mere curiosity. Each
+      of them is the Soul of the tribe to which it belongs. This, for example&mdash;my
+      Cluseret&mdash;is the Soul of all the gray parrots; that that you see
+      yonder&mdash;Badinguet, I call him&mdash;is the Soul of the hawks; this,
+      my Mimi, is the Soul of the little yellow-crested kingfisher. My task as
+      King of the Birds is to keep a representative of each of these always on
+      hand; in which endeavor I am faithfully aided by the whole population of
+      the island, who bring me eggs and nests and young birds in abundance. If
+      the Soul of the little yellow kingfisher now were to die, without a
+      successor being found ready at once to receive and embody it, then the
+      whole race of little yellow kingfishers would vanish altogether; and if I
+      myself, the King of the Birds, who am, as it were, the Soul and life of
+      all of them, were to die without a successor being at hand to receive my
+      spirit, then all the race of birds, with one accord, would become extinct
+      forthwith and forever.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He moved among his pets easily, like a king among his subjects. Most of
+      them seemed to know him and love his presence. Presently, he came to one
+      very old parrot, quite different from any Felix had ever seen on any trees
+      in the island; it was a parrot with a black crest and a red mark on its
+      throat, half blind with age, and tottering on its pedestal. This solemn
+      old bird sat apart from all the others, nodding its head oracularly in the
+      sunlight, and blinking now and again with its white eyelids in a curious
+      senile fashion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Frenchman turned to Felix with an air of profound mystery. &ldquo;This
+      bird,&rdquo; he said, solemnly stroking its head with his hand, while the
+      parrot turned round to him and bit at his finger with half-doddering
+      affection&mdash;&ldquo;this bird is the oldest of all my birds&mdash;-is
+      it not so, Methuselah?&mdash;and illustrates well in one of its aspects
+      the superstition of these people. Yes, my friend, you are the last of a
+      kind now otherwise extinct, are you not, <i>mon vieux?</i> No, no, there&mdash;gently!
+      Once upon a time, the natives tell me, dozens of these parrots existed in
+      the island; they flocked among the trees, and were held very sacred; but
+      they were hard to catch and difficult to keep, and the Kings of the Birds,
+      my predecessors, failed to secure an heir and coadjutor to this one. So as
+      the Soul of the species, which you see here before you, grew old and
+      feeble, the whole of the race to which it belonged grew old and feeble
+      with it. One by one they withered away and died, till at last this
+      solitary specimen alone remained to vouch for the former existence of the
+      race in the island. Now, the islanders say, nothing but the Soul itself is
+      left; and when the Soul dies, the red-throated parrots will be gone
+      forever. One of my predecessors paid with his life in awful tortures for
+      his remissness in not providing for the succession to the soulship. I tell
+      you these things in order that you may see whether they cast any light for
+      you upon your own position; and also because the oldest and wisest natives
+      say that this parrot alone, among beasts or birds or uninitiated things,
+      knows the secret on which depends the life of the Tu-Kila-Kila for the
+      time being.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can the parrot speak?&rdquo; Felix asked, with profound emotion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur, he can speak, and he speaks frequently. But not one word
+      of all he says is comprehensible either to me or to any other living
+      being. His tongue is that of a forgotten nation. The islanders understand
+      him no more than I do. He has a very long sermon or poem, which he knows
+      by heart, in some unknown language, and he repeats it often at full length
+      from time to time, especially when he has eaten well and feels full and
+      happy. The oldest natives tell a romantic legend about this strange
+      recitation of the good Methuselah&mdash;I call him Methuselah because of
+      his great age&mdash;but I do not really know whether their tale is true or
+      purely fanciful. You never can trust these Polynesian traditions.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is the legend?&rdquo; Felix asked, with intense interest.
+      &ldquo;In an island where we find ourselves so girt round by mystery
+      within mystery, and taboo within taboo, as this, every key is worth
+      trying. It is well for us at least to learn everything we can about the
+      ideas of the natives. Who knows what clue may supply us at last with the
+      missing link, which will enable us to break through this intolerable
+      servitude?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, the story they tell us is this,&rdquo; the Frenchman replied,
+      &ldquo;though I have gathered it only a hint at a time, from very old men,
+      who declared at the same moment that some religious fear&mdash;of which
+      they have many&mdash;prevented them from telling me any further about it.
+      It seems that a long time ago&mdash;how many years ago nobody knows, only
+      that it was in the time of the thirty-ninth Tu-Kila-Kila, before the reign
+      of Lavita, the son of Sami&mdash;a strange Korong was cast up upon this
+      island by the waves of the sea, much as you and I have been in the present
+      generation. By accident, says the story, or else, as others aver, through
+      the indiscretion of a native woman who fell in love with him, and who
+      worried the taboo out of her husband, the stranger became acquainted with
+      the secret of Tu-Kila-Kila. As the natives themselves put it, he learned
+      the Death of the High God, and where in the world his Soul was hidden.
+      Thereupon, in some mysterious way or other, he became Tu-Kila-Kila
+      himself, and ruled as High God for ten years or more here on this island.
+      Now, up to that time, the legend goes on, none but the men of the island
+      knew the secret; they learned it as soon as they were initiated in the
+      great mysteries, which occur before a boy is given a spear and admitted to
+      the rank of complete manhood. But sometimes a woman was told the secret
+      wrongfully by her husband or her lover; and one such woman, apparently,
+      told the strange Korong, and so enabled him to become Tu-Kila-Kila.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But where does the parrot come in?&rdquo; Felix asked, with still
+      profounder excitement than ever. Something within him seemed to tell him
+      instinctively he was now within touch of the special key that must sooner
+      or later unlock the mystery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; the Frenchman went on, still stroking the parrot
+      affectionately with his hand, and smoothing down the feathers on its
+      ruffled back, &ldquo;the strange Tu-Kila-Kila, who thus ruled in the
+      island, though he learned to speak Polynesian well, had a language of his
+      own, a language of the birds, which no man on earth could ever talk with
+      him. So, to beguile his time and to have someone who could converse with
+      him in his native dialect, he taught this parrot to speak his own tongue,
+      and spent most of his days in talking with it and fondling it. At last,
+      after he had instructed it by slow degrees how to repeat this long sermon
+      or poem&mdash;which I have often heard it recite in a sing-song voice from
+      beginning to end&mdash;his time came, as they say, and he had to give way
+      to another Tu-Kila-Kila; for the Bouparese have a proverb like our own
+      about the king, &lsquo;The High God is dead; may the High God live
+      forever!&rsquo; But before he gave up his Soul to his successor, and was
+      eaten or buried, whichever is the custom, he handed over his pet to the
+      King of the Birds, strictly charging all future bearers of that divine
+      office to care for the parrot as they would care for a son or a daughter.
+      And so the natives make much of the parrot to the present day, saying he
+      is greater than any, save a Korong or a god, for he is the Soul of a dead
+      race, summing it up in himself, and he knows the secret of the Death of
+      Tu-Kila-Kila.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you can&rsquo;t tell me what language he speaks?&rdquo; Felix
+      asked with a despairing gesture. It was terrible to stand thus within
+      measurable distance of the secret which might, perhaps, save Muriel&rsquo;s
+      life, and yet be perpetually balked by wheel within wheel of more than
+      Egyptian mystery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who can say?&rdquo; the Frenchman answered, shrugging his shoulders
+      helplessly. &ldquo;It isn&rsquo;t Polynesian; that I know well, for I
+      speak Bouparese now like a native of Boupari; and it isn&rsquo;t the only
+      other language spoken at the present day in the South Seas&mdash;the
+      Melanesian of New Caledonia&mdash;for that I learned well from the Kanakas
+      while I was serving my time as a convict among them. All we can say for
+      certain is that it may, perhaps, be some very ancient tongue. For parrots,
+      we know, are immensely long-lived. Some of them, it is said, exceed their
+      century. Is it not so, eh, my friend Methuselah?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0017" id="link2HCH0017"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XVII. &mdash; FACING THE WORST.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Muriel, meanwhile, sat alone in her hut, frightened at Felix&rsquo;s
+      unexpected disappearance so early in the morning, and anxiously awaiting
+      her lover&rsquo;s return, for she made no pretences now to herself that
+      she did not really love Felix. Though the two might never return to Europe
+      to be husband and wife, she did not doubt that before the eye of Heaven
+      they were already betrothed to one another as truly as though they had
+      plighted their troth in solemn fashion. Felix had risked his life for her,
+      and had brought all this misery upon himself in the attempt to save her.
+      Felix was now all the world that was left her. With Felix, she was happy,
+      even on this horrible island; without him, she was miserable and
+      terrified, no matter what happened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mali,&rdquo; she cried to her faithful attendant, as soon as she
+      found Felix was missing from his tent, &ldquo;what&rsquo;s become of Mr.
+      Thurstan? Where can he be gone, I wonder, this morning?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You no fear, Missy Queenie,&rdquo; Mali answered, with the childish
+      confidence of the native Polynesian. &ldquo;Mistah Thurstan, him gone to
+      see man-a-oui-oui, the King of the Birds. Month of Birds finish last
+      night; man-a-oui-oui no taboo any longer. King of the Birds keep very old
+      parrot, Boupari folk tell me; and old parrot very wise, know how to make
+      Tu-Kila-Kila. Mistah Thurstan, him gone to find man-a-oui-oui. Parrot tell
+      him plenty wise thing. Parrot wiser than Boupari people; know very good
+      medicine; wise like Queensland lady and gentleman.&rdquo; And Mali set
+      herself vigorously to work to wash the wooden platter on which she served
+      up her mistress&rsquo;s yam for breakfast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was curious to Muriel to see how readily Mali had slipped from savagery
+      to civilization in Queensland, and how easily she had slipped back again
+      from civilization to savagery in Boupari. In waiting on her mistress she
+      was just the ordinary trained native Australian servant; in every other
+      respect she was the simple unadulterated heathen Polynesian. She
+      recognized in Muriel a white lady of the English sort, and treated her
+      within the hut as white ladies were invariably treated in Queensland; but
+      she considered that at Boupari one must do as Boupari does, and it never
+      for a moment occurred to her simple mind to doubt the omnipotence of
+      Tu-Kila-Kila in his island realm any more than she had doubted the
+      omnipotence of the white man and his local religion in their proper place
+      (as she thought it) in Queensland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An hour or two passed before Felix returned. At last he arrived, very
+      white and pale, and Muriel saw at once by the mere look on his face that
+      he had learned some terrible news at the Frenchman&rsquo;s.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you found him?&rdquo; she cried, taking his hand in hers, but
+      hardly daring to ask the fatal question at once.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Felix, sitting down, as pale as a ghost, answered faintly, &ldquo;Yes,
+      Muriel, I found him!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And he told you everything?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Everything he knew, my poor child. Oh, Muriel, Muriel, don&rsquo;t
+      ask me what it is. It&rsquo;s too terrible to tell you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Muriel clasped her white hands together, held bloodless downward, and
+      looked at him fixedly. &ldquo;Mali, you can go,&rdquo; she said. And the
+      Shadow, rising up with childish confidence, glided from the hut, and left
+      them, for the first time since their arrival on the central island, alone
+      together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Muriel looked at him once more with the same deadly fixed look. &ldquo;With
+      you, Felix,&rdquo; she said, slowly, &ldquo;I can bear or dare anything. I
+      feel as if the bitterness of death were past long ago. I know it must
+      come. I only want to be quite sure when.... And besides, you must
+      remember, I have your promise.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix clasped his own hands despondently in return, and gazed across at
+      her from his seat a few feet off in unspeakable misery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Muriel,&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;I couldn&rsquo;t. I haven&rsquo;t
+      the heart. I daren&rsquo;t.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Muriel rose and laid her hand solemnly on his arm. &ldquo;You will!&rdquo;
+      she answered, boldly. &ldquo;You can! You must! I know I can trust your
+      promise for that. This moment, if you like. I would not shrink. But you
+      will never let me fall alive into the hands of those wretches. Felix, from
+      <i>your</i> hand I could stand anything. I&rsquo;m not afraid to die. I
+      love you too dearly.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix held her white little wrist in his grasp and sobbed like a child.
+      Her very bravery and confidence seemed to unman him, utterly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked at him once more. &ldquo;When?&rdquo; she asked, quietly, but
+      with lips as pale as death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In about four months from now,&rdquo; Felix answered, endeavoring
+      to be calm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And they will kill us both?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, both. I think so.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Together?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Together.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Muriel drew a deep sigh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you know the day beforehand?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. The Frenchman told me it. He has known others killed in the
+      self-same fashion.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then, Felix&mdash;-the night before it comes, you will promise me,
+      will you?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Muriel, Muriel, I could never dare to kill you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She laid her hand soothingly on his. She stroked him gently. &ldquo;You
+      are a man,&rdquo; she said, looking up into his eyes with confidence.
+      &ldquo;I trust you. I believe in you. I know you will never let these
+      savages hurt me.... Felix, in spite of everything, I&rsquo;ve been happier
+      since we came to this island together than ever I have been in my life
+      before. I&rsquo;ve had my wish. I didn&rsquo;t want to miss in life the
+      one thing that life has best worth giving. I haven&rsquo;t missed it now.
+      I know I haven&rsquo;t; for I love you, and you love me. After that, I can
+      die, and die gladly. If I die with <i>you</i>, that&rsquo;s all I ask.
+      These seven or eight terrible weeks have made me feel somehow unnaturally
+      calm. When I came here first I lived all the time in an agony of terror. I&rsquo;ve
+      got over the agony of terror now. I&rsquo;m quite resigned and happy. All
+      I ask is to be saved&mdash;by you&mdash;from the cruel hands of these
+      hateful cannibals.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix raised her white hand just once to his lips. It was the first time
+      he had ever ventured to kiss her. He kissed it fervently. She let it drop
+      as if dead by her side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now tell me all that happened,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m
+      strong enough to bear it. I feel such a woman now&mdash;so wise and calm.
+      These few weeks have made me grow from a girl into a woman all at once.
+      There&rsquo;s nothing I daren&rsquo;t hear, if you&rsquo;ll tell me it,
+      Felix.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix took up her hand again and held it in his, as he narrated the whole
+      story of his visit to the Frenchman. When Muriel had heard it, she said
+      once more, slowly, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think there&rsquo;s any hope in
+      all these wild plans of playing off superstition against superstition. To
+      my mind there are only two chances left for us now. One is to concoct with
+      the Frenchman some means of getting away by canoe from the island&mdash;I&rsquo;d
+      rather trust the sea than the tender mercy of these dreadful people; the
+      other is to keep a closer lookout than ever for the merest chance of a
+      passing steamer.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix drew a deep sigh. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid neither&rsquo;s much use,&rdquo;
+      he said. &ldquo;If we tried to get away, dogged as we are, day and night,
+      by our Shadows, the natives would follow us with their war-canoes in
+      battle array and hack us to pieces; for Peyron says that, regarding us as
+      gods, they think the rain would vanish from their island forever if once
+      they allowed us to get away alive and carry the luck with us. And as to
+      the steamers, we haven&rsquo;t seen a trace of one since we left the
+      Australasian. Probably it was only by the purest accident that even she
+      ever came so close in to Boupari.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At any rate,&rdquo; Muriel cried, still clasping his hand tight,
+      and letting the tears now trickle slowly down her pale white cheeks,
+      &ldquo;we can talk it all over some day with M. Peyron.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We can talk it over to-day,&rdquo; Felix answered, &ldquo;if it
+      comes to that; for Peyron means to step round, he says, a little later in
+      the afternoon, to pay his respects to the first white lady he has ever
+      seen since he left New Caledonia.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0018" id="link2HCH0018"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XVIII. &mdash; TU-KILA-KILA PLAYS A CARD.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Before the Frenchman could carry out his plan, however, he was himself the
+      recipient of the high honor of a visit from his superior god and chief,
+      Tu-Kila-Kila.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Every day and all day long, save on a few rare occasions when special
+      duties absolved him, the custom and religion of the islanders prescribed
+      that their supreme incarnate deity should keep watch and ward without
+      cessation over the great spreading banyan-tree that overshadowed with its
+      dark boughs his temple-palace. High god as he was held to be, and
+      all-powerful within the limits of his own strict taboos, Tu-Kila-Kila was
+      yet as rigidly bound within those iron laws of custom and religious usage
+      as the meanest and poorest of his subject worshippers. From sunrise to
+      sunset, and far on into the night, the Pillar of Heaven was compelled to
+      prowl up and down, with spear in hand and tomahawk at side, as Felix had
+      so often seen him, before the sacred trunk, of which he appeared to be in
+      some mysterious way the appointed guardian. His very power, it seemed, was
+      intimately bound up with the performance of that ceaseless and irksome
+      duty; he was a god in whose hands the lives of his people were but as dust
+      in the balance; but he remained so only on the onerous condition of pacing
+      to and fro, like a sentry, forever before the still more holy and
+      venerable object he was chosen to protect from attack or injury. Had he
+      failed in his task, had he slumbered at his post, all god though he might
+      be, his people themselves would have risen in a body and torn him limb
+      from limb before their ancestral fetich as a sacrilegious pretender.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At certain times and seasons, however, as for example at all high feasts
+      and festivals, Tu-Kila-Kila had respite for a while from this constant
+      treadmill of mechanical divinity. Whenever the moon was at the
+      half-quarter, or the planets were in lucky conjunctions, or a red glow lit
+      up the sky by night, or the sacred sacrificial fires of human flesh were
+      lighted, then Tu-Kila-Kila could lay aside his tomahawk and spear, and
+      become for a while as the islanders, his fellows, were. At other times,
+      too, when he went out in state to visit the lesser deities of his court,
+      the King of Fire and the King of Water made a solemn taboo before He left
+      his home, which protected the sacred tree from aggression during its
+      guardian&rsquo;s absence. Then Tu-Kila-Kila, shaded by his divine
+      umbrella, and preceded by the noise of the holy tom-toms, could go like a
+      monarch over all parts of his realm, giving such orders as he pleased
+      (within the limits of custom) to his inferior officers. It was in this way
+      that he now paid his visit to M. Jules Peyron, King of the Birds. And he
+      did so for what to him were amply sufficient reasons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It had not escaped Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s keen eye, as he paced among the
+      skeletons in his yard that morning, that Felix Thurstan, the King of the
+      Rain, had taken his way openly toward the Frenchman&rsquo;s quarters. He
+      felt pretty sure, therefore, that Felix had by this time learned another
+      white man was living on the island; and he thought it an ominous fact that
+      the new-comer should make his way toward his fellow-European&rsquo;s hut
+      on the very first morning when the law of taboo rendered such a visit
+      possible. The savage is always by nature suspicious; and Tu-Kila-Kila had
+      grounds enough of his own for suspicion in this particular instance. The
+      two white men were surely brewing mischief together for the Lord of Heaven
+      and Earth, the Illuminer of the Glowing Light of the Sun; he must make
+      haste and see what plan they were concocting against the sacred tree and
+      the person of its representative, the King of Plants and of the Host of
+      Heaven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it isn&rsquo;t so easy to make haste when all your movements are
+      impeded and hampered by endless taboos and a minutely annoying ritual.
+      Before Tu-Kila-Kila could get himself under way, sacred umbrella,
+      tom-toms, and all, it was necessary for the King of Fire and the King of
+      Water to make taboo on an elaborate scale with their respective elements;
+      and so by the time the high god had reached M. Jules Peyron&rsquo;s
+      garden, Felix Thurstan had already some time since returned to Muriel&rsquo;s
+      hut and his own quarters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila approached the King of the Birds, amid loud clapping of
+      hands, with considerable haughtiness. To say the truth, there was no love
+      lost between the cannibal god and his European subordinate. The savage,
+      puffed up as he was in his own conceit, had nevertheless always an
+      uncomfortable sense that, in his heart of hearts, the impassive Frenchman
+      had but a low opinion of him. So he invariably tried to make up by the
+      solemnity of his manner and the loudness of his assertions for any
+      trifling scepticism that might possibly exist in the mind of his follower.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On this particular occasion, as he reached the Frenchman&rsquo;s plot,
+      Tu-Kila-Kila stepped forward across the white taboo-line with a suspicious
+      and peering eye. &ldquo;The King of the Rain has been here,&rdquo; he
+      said, in a pompous tone, as the Frenchman rose and saluted him
+      ceremoniously. &ldquo;Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s eyes are sharp. They never
+      sleep. The sun is his sight. He beholds all things. You cannot hide aught
+      in heaven or earth from the knowledge of him that dwells in heaven. I look
+      down upon land and sea, and spy out all that takes place or is planned in
+      them. I am very holy and very cruel. I see all earth and I drink the blood
+      of all men. The King of the Rain has come this morning to visit the King
+      of the Birds. Where is he now? What has your divinity done with him?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He spoke from under the sheltering cover of his veiled umbrella. The
+      Frenchman looked back at him with as little love as Tu-Kila-Kila himself
+      would have displayed had his face been visible. &ldquo;Yes, you are a very
+      great god,&rdquo; he answered, in the conventional tone of Polynesian
+      adulation, with just a faint under-current of irony running through his
+      accent as he spoke. &ldquo;You say the truth. You do, indeed, know all
+      things. What need for me, then, to tell you, whose eye is the sun, that my
+      brother, the King of the Rain, has been here and gone again? You know it
+      yourself. Your eye has looked upon it. My brother was indeed with me. He
+      consulted me as to the showers I should need from his clouds for the
+      birds, my subjects.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And where is he gone now?&rdquo; Tu-Kila-Kila asked, without
+      attempting to conceal the displeasure in his tone, for he more than half
+      suspected the Frenchman of a sacrilegious and monstrous design of chaffing
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The King of the Birds bowed low once more. &ldquo;Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s
+      glance is keener than my hawk&rsquo;s,&rdquo; he answered, with the
+      accustomed Polynesian imagery. &ldquo;He sees over the land with a glance,
+      like my parrots, and over the sea with sharp sight, like my albatrosses.
+      He knows where my brother, the King of the Rain, has gone. For me, who am
+      the least among all the gods, I sit here on my perch and blink like a
+      crow. I do not know these things. They are too high and too deep for me.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila did not like the turn the conversation was taking. Before his
+      own attendants such hints, indeed, were almost dangerous. Once let the
+      savage begin to doubt, and the Moral Order goes with a crash immediately.
+      Besides, he must know what these white men had been talking about. &ldquo;Fire
+      and Water,&rdquo; he said in a loud voice, turning round to his two chief
+      satellites, &ldquo;go far down the path, and beat the tom-toms. Fence off
+      with flood and flame the airy height where the King of the Birds lives;
+      fence it off from all profane intrusion. I wish to confer in secret with
+      this god, my brother. When we gods talk together, it is not well that
+      others should hear our converse. Make a great Taboo. I, Tu-Kila-Kila,
+      myself have said it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fire and Water, bowing low, backed down the path, beating tom-toms as they
+      went, and left the savage and the Frenchman alone together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As soon as they were gone, Tu-Kila-Kila laid aside his umbrella with a
+      positive sigh of relief. Now his fellow-countrymen were well out of the
+      way, his manner altered in a trice, as if by magic. Barbarian as he was,
+      he was quite astute enough to guess that Europeans cared nothing in their
+      hearts for all his mumbo-jumbo. He believed in it himself, but they did
+      not, and their very unbelief made him respect and fear them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now that we two are alone,&rdquo; he said, glancing carelessly
+      around him, &ldquo;we two who are gods, and know the world well&mdash;we
+      two who see everything in heaven or earth&mdash;there is no need for
+      concealment&mdash;we may talk as plainly as we will with one another.
+      Come, tell me the truth! The new white man has seen you?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has seen me, yes, certainly,&rdquo; the Frenchman admitted,
+      taking a keen look deep into the savage&rsquo;s cunning eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does he speak your language&mdash;the language of birds?&rdquo;
+      Tu-Kila-Kila asked once more, with insinuating cunning. &ldquo;I have
+      heard that the sailing gods are of many languages. Are you and he of one
+      speech or two? Aliens, or countrymen?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He speaks my language as he speaks Polynesian,&rdquo; the Frenchman
+      replied, keeping his eye firmly fixed on his doubtful guest, &ldquo;but it
+      is not his own. He has a tongue apart&mdash;the tongue of an island not
+      far from my country, which we call England.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila drew nearer, and dropped his voice to a confidential whisper.
+      &ldquo;Has he seen the Soul of all dead parrots?&rdquo; he asked, with
+      keen interest in his voice. &ldquo;The parrot that knows Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s
+      secret? That one over there&mdash;the old, the very sacred one?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      M. Peyron gazed round his aviary carelessly. &ldquo;Oh, that one,&rdquo;
+      he answered, with a casual glance at Methuselah, as though one parrot or
+      another were much the same to him. &ldquo;Yes, I think he saw it. I
+      pointed it out to him, in fact, as the oldest and strangest of all my
+      subjects.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s countenance fell. &ldquo;Did he hear it speak?&rdquo;
+      he asked, in evident alarm. &ldquo;Did it tell him the story of
+      Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s secret?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, it didn&rsquo;t speak,&rdquo; the Frenchman answered. &ldquo;It
+      seldom does now. It is very old. And if it did, I don&rsquo;t suppose the
+      King of the Rain would have understood one word of it. Look here, great
+      god, allay your fears. You&rsquo;re a terrible coward. I expect the real
+      fact about the parrot is this: it is the last of its own race; it speaks
+      the language of some tribe of men who once inhabited these islands, but
+      are now extinct. No human being at present alive, most probably, knows one
+      word of that forgotten language.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You think not?&rdquo; Tu-Kila-Kila asked, a little relieved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am the King of the Birds, and I know the voices of my subjects by
+      heart; I assure you it is as I say,&rdquo; M. Peyron answered, drawing
+      himself up solemnly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila looked askance, with something very closely approaching a
+      wink in his left eye. &ldquo;We two are both gods,&rdquo; he said, with a
+      tinge of irony in his tone. &ldquo;We know what that means.... <i>I</i> do
+      not feel so certain.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stood close by the parrot with itching fingers. &ldquo;It is very, very
+      old,&rdquo; he went on to himself, musingly. &ldquo;It can&rsquo;t live
+      long. And then&mdash;none but Boupari men will know the secret.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he spoke he darted a strange glance of hatred toward the unconscious
+      bird, the innocent repository, as he firmly believed, of the secret that
+      doomed him. The Frenchman had turned his back for a moment now, to fetch
+      out a stool. Tu-Kila-Kila, casting a quick, suspicious eye to the right
+      and left, took a step nearer. The parrot sat mumbling on its perch,
+      inarticulately, putting its head on one side, and blinking its
+      half-blinded eyes in the bright tropical sunshine. Tu-Kila-Kila paused
+      irresolute before its face for a second. If he only dared&mdash;one wring
+      of the neck&mdash;one pinch of his finger and thumb almost!&mdash;and all
+      would be over. But he dared not! he dared not! Your savage is overawed by
+      the blind terrors of taboo. His predecessor, some elder Tu-Kila-Kila of
+      forgotten days, had laid a great charm upon that parrot&rsquo;s life.
+      Whoever hurt it was to die an awful death of unspeakable torment. The King
+      of the Birds had special charge to guard it. If even the Cannibal God
+      himself wrought it harm, who could tell what judgment might fall upon him
+      forthwith, what terrible vengeance the dead Tu-Kila-Kila might wreak upon
+      him in his ghostly anger? And that dead Tu-Kila-Kila was his own Soul! His
+      own Soul might flare up within him in some mystic way and burn him to
+      ashes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And yet&mdash;suppose this hateful new-comer, the King of the Rain, whom
+      he had himself made Korong on purpose to get rid of him the more easily,
+      and so had elevated into his own worst potential enemy&mdash;suppose this
+      new-comer, the King of the Rain, were by chance to speak that other
+      dialect of the bird-language, which the King of the Birds himself knew
+      not, but which the parrot had learned from his old master, the ancient
+      Tu-Kila-Kila of other days, and in which the bird still recited the secret
+      of the sacred tree and the Death of the Great God&mdash;ah, then he might
+      still have to fight hard for his divinity. He gazed angrily at the bird.
+      Methuselah blinked, and put his head on one side, and looked craftily
+      askance at him. Tu-Kila-Kila hated it, that insolent creature. Was he not
+      a god, and should he be thus bearded in his own island by a mere Soul of
+      dead birds, a poor, wretched parrot? But the curse! What might not that
+      portend? Ah, well, he would risk it. Glancing around him once more to the
+      right and left, to make sure that nobody was looking, the cunning savage
+      put forth his hand stealthily, and tried with a friendly caress to seize
+      the parrot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a moment, before he had time to know what was happening, Methuselah&mdash;sleepy
+      old dotard as he seemed&mdash;had woke up at once to a sense of danger.
+      Turning suddenly round upon the sleek, caressing hand, he darted his beak
+      with a vicious peck at his assailant, and bit the divine finger of the
+      Pillar of Heaven as carelessly as he would have bitten any child on
+      Boupari. Tu-Kila-Kila, thunder-struck, drew back his arm with a start of
+      surprise and a loud cry of pain. The bird had wounded him. He shook his
+      hand and stamped. Blood was dropping on the ground from the man-god&rsquo;s
+      finger. He hardly knew what strange evil this omen of harm might portend
+      for the world. The Soul of all dead parrots had carried out the curse, and
+      had drawn red drops from the sacred veins of Tu-Kila-Kila.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One must be a savage one&rsquo;s self, and superstitious at that, fully to
+      understand the awful significance of this deadly occurrence. To draw blood
+      from a god, and, above all, to let that blood fall upon the dust of the
+      ground, is the very worst luck&mdash;too awful for the human mind to
+      contemplate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the same moment, the parrot, awakened by the unexpected attack, threw
+      back its head on its perch, and, laughing loud and long to itself in its
+      own harsh way, began to pour forth a whole volley of oaths in a guttural
+      language, of which neither Tu-Kila-Kila nor the Frenchman understood one
+      syllable. And at the same moment, too, M. Peyron himself, recalled from
+      the door of his hut by Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s sharp cry of pain and by his
+      liege subject&rsquo;s voluble flow of loud speech and laughter, ran up all
+      agog to know what was the matter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila, with an effort, tried to hide in his robe his wounded
+      finger. But the Frenchman caught at the meaning of the whole scene at
+      once, and interposed himself hastily between the parrot and its assailant.
+      &ldquo;<i>Hé!</i> my Methuselah,&rdquo; he cried, in French, stroking the
+      exultant bird with his hand, and smoothing its ruffled feathers, &ldquo;did
+      he try to choke you, then? Did he try to get over you? That was a brave
+      bird! You did well, <i>mon ami</i>, to bite him!... No, no, Life of the
+      World, and Measurer of the Sun&rsquo;s Course,&rdquo; he went on, in
+      Polynesian, &ldquo;you shall not go near him. Keep your distance, I beg of
+      you. You may be a high god&mdash;though you were a scurvy wretch enough,
+      don&rsquo;t you recollect, when you were only Lavita, the son of Sami&mdash;but
+      I know your tricks. Hands off from my birds, say I. A curse is on the head
+      of the Soul of dead parrots. You tried to hurt him, and see how the curse
+      has worked itself out! The blood of the great god, the Pillar of Heaven,
+      has stained the gray dust of the island of Boupari.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila stood sucking his finger, and looking the very picture of the
+      most savage sheepishness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0019" id="link2HCH0019"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIX. &mdash; DOMESTIC BLISS.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila went home that day in a very bad humor. The portent of the
+      bitten finger had seriously disturbed him. For, strange as it sounds to
+      us, he really believed himself in his own divinity; and the bare thought
+      that the holy soil of earth should be dabbled and wet with the blood of a
+      god gave him no little uneasiness in his own mind on his way homeward.
+      Besides, what would his people think of it if they found it out? At all
+      hazards almost, he must strive to conceal this episode of the bite from
+      the men of Boupari. A god who gets wounded, and, worse still, gets wounded
+      in the very act of trying to break a great taboo laid on by himself in a
+      previous incarnation&mdash;such a god undoubtedly lays himself open to the
+      gravest misapprehensions on the part of his worshippers. Indeed, it was
+      not even certain whether his people, if they knew, would any longer regard
+      him as a god at all. The devotion of savages is profound, but it is far
+      from personal. When deities pass so readily from one body to another, you
+      must always keep a sharp lookout lest the great spirit should at any
+      minute have deserted his earthly tabernacle, and have taken up his abode
+      in a fresh representative. Honor the gods by all means; but make sure at
+      the same time what particular house they are just then inhabiting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the hour of siesta in Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s tent. For a short space
+      in the middle of the day, during the heat of the sun, while Fire and
+      Water, with their embers and their calabash, sat on guard in a porch by
+      the bamboo gate, Tu-Kila-Kila, Pillar of Heaven and Threshold of Earth,
+      had respite for a while from his daily task of guarding the sacred banyan,
+      and could take his ease after his meal in his own quarters. While that
+      precious hour of taboo lasted, no wandering dragon or spirit of the air
+      could hurt the holy tree, and no human assailant dare touch or approach
+      it. Even the disease-making gods, who walk in the pestilence, could not
+      blight or wither it. At all other times Tu-Kila-Kila mounted guard over
+      his tree with a jealousy that fairly astonished Felix Thurstan&rsquo;s
+      soul; for Felix Thurstan only dimly understood as yet how implicitly
+      Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s own life and office were bound up with the
+      inviolability of the banyan he protected.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Within the hut, during that playtime of siesta, while the lizards (who are
+      also gods) ran up and down the wall, and puffed their orange throats,
+      Tu-Kila-Kila lounged at his ease that afternoon, with one of his many
+      wives&mdash;a tall and beautiful Polynesian woman, lithe and supple, as is
+      the wont of her race, and as exquisitely formed in every limb and feature
+      as a sculptured Greek goddess. A graceful wreath of crimson hibiscus
+      adorned her shapely head, round which her long and glossy black hair was
+      coiled in great rings with artistic profusion. A festoon of blue flowers
+      and dark-red dracæna leaves hung like a chaplet over her olive-brown neck
+      and swelling bust. One breadth of native cloth did duty for an apron or
+      girdle round her waist and hips. All else was naked. Her plump brown arms
+      were set off by the green and crimson of the flowers that decked her.
+      Tu-Kila-Kila glanced at his slave with approving eyes. He always liked
+      Ula; she pleased him the best of all his women. And she knew his ways,
+      too: she never contradicted him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Among savages, guile is woman&rsquo;s best protection. The wife who knows
+      when to give way with hypocritical obedience, and when to coax or wheedle
+      her yielding lord, runs the best chance in the end for her life. Her model
+      is not the oak, but the willow. She must be able to watch for the rising
+      signs of ill-humor in her master&rsquo;s mind, and guard against them
+      carefully. If she is wise, she keeps out of her husband&rsquo;s way when
+      his anger is aroused, but soothes and flatters him to the top of his bent
+      when his temper is just slightly or momentarily ruffled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Lord of Heaven and Earth is ill at ease,&rdquo; Ula murmured,
+      insinuatingly, as Tu-Kila-Kila winced once with the pain of his swollen
+      finger. &ldquo;What has happened today to the Increaser of Bread-Fruit? My
+      lord is sad. His eye is downcast. Who has crossed my master&rsquo;s will?
+      Who has dared to anger him?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila kept the wounded hand wrapped up in a soft leaf, like a
+      woolly mullein. All the way home he had been obliged to conceal it, and
+      disguise the pain he felt, lest Fire and Water should discover his secret.
+      For he dared not let his people know that the Soul of all dead parrots had
+      bitten his finger, and drawn blood from the sacred veins of the man-god.
+      But he almost hesitated now whether or not he should confide in Ula. A god
+      may surely trust his own wedded wives. And yet&mdash;such need to be
+      careful&mdash;women are so treacherous! He suspected Ula sometimes of
+      being a great deal too fond of that young man Toko, who used to be one of
+      the temple attendants, and whom he had given as Shadow accordingly to the
+      King of the Rain, so as to get rid of him altogether from among the crowd
+      of his followers. So he kept his own counsel for the moment, and disguised
+      his misfortune. &ldquo;I have been to see the King of the Birds this
+      morning,&rdquo; he said, in a grumbling voice; &ldquo;and I do not like
+      him. That God is too insolent. For my part I hate these strangers, one and
+      all. They have no respect for Tu-Kila-Kila like the men of Boupari. They
+      are as bad as atheists. They fear not the gods, and the customs of our
+      fathers are not in them.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ula crept nearer, with one lithe round arm laid caressingly close to her
+      master&rsquo;s neck. &ldquo;Then why do you make them Korong?&rdquo; she
+      asked, with feminine curiosity, like some wife who seeks to worm out of
+      her husband the secret of freemasonry. &ldquo;Why do you not cook them and
+      eat them at once, as soon as they arrive? They are very good food&mdash;so
+      white and fine. That last new-comer, now&mdash;the Queen of the Clouds&mdash;why
+      not eat her? She is plump and tender.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I like her,&rdquo; Tu-Kila-Kila responded, in a gloating tone.
+      &ldquo;I like her every way. I would have brought her here to my temple
+      and admitted her at once to be one of Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s wives&mdash;only
+      that Fire and Water would not have permitted me. They have too many
+      taboos, those awkward gods. I do not love them. But I make my strangers
+      Korong for a very wise reason. You women are fools; you understand
+      nothing; you do not know the mysteries. These things are a great deal too
+      high and too deep for you. You could not comprehend them. But men know
+      well why. They are wise; they have been initiated. Much more, then, do I,
+      who am the very high god&mdash;who eat human flesh and drink blood like
+      water&mdash;who cause the sun to shine and the fruits to grow&mdash;without
+      whom the day in heaven would fade and die out, and the foundations of the
+      earth would be shaken like a plantain leaf.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ula laid her soft brown hand soothingly on the great god&rsquo;s arm just
+      above the elbow. &ldquo;Tell me,&rdquo; she said, leaning forward toward
+      him, and looking deep into his eyes with those great speaking gray orbs of
+      hers; &ldquo;tell me, O Sustainer of the Equipoise of Heaven; I know you
+      are great; I know you are mighty; I know you are holy and wise and cruel;
+      but why must you let these sailing gods who come from unknown lands beyond
+      the place where the sun rises or sets&mdash;why must you let them so
+      trouble and annoy you? Why do you not at once eat them up and be done with
+      them? Is not their flesh sweet? Is not their blood red? Are they not a
+      dainty well fit for the banquet of Tu-Kila-Kila?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The savage looked at her for a moment and hesitated. A very beautiful
+      woman this Ula, certainly. Not one of all his wives had larger brown
+      limbs, or whiter teeth, or a deeper respect for his divine nature. He had
+      almost a mind&mdash;it was only Ula? Why not break the silence enjoined
+      upon gods toward women, and explain this matter to her? Not the great
+      secret itself, of course&mdash;the secret on which hung the Death and
+      Transmigration of Tu-Kila-Kila&mdash;oh, no; not that one. The savage was
+      far too cunning in his generation to intrust that final terrible Taboo to
+      the ears of a woman. But the reason why he made all strangers Korong. A
+      woman might surely be trusted with that&mdash;especially Ula. She was so
+      very handsome. And she was always so respectful to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, the fact of it is,&rdquo; he answered, laying his hand on her
+      neck, that plump brown neck of hers, under the garland of dracæna leaves,
+      and stroking it voluptuously, &ldquo;the sailing gods who happen upon this
+      island from time to time are made Korong&mdash;but hush! it is taboo.&rdquo;
+      He gazed around the hut suspiciously. &ldquo;Are all the others away?&rdquo;
+      he asked, in a frightened tone. &ldquo;Fire and Water would denounce me to
+      all my people if once they found I had told a taboo to a woman. And as for
+      you, they would take you, because you knew it, and would pull your flesh
+      from your bones with hot stone pincers!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ula rose and looked about her at the door of the tent. She nodded thrice;
+      then she glided back, serpentine, and threw herself gracefully, in a
+      statuesque pose, on the native mat beside him. &ldquo;Here, drink some
+      more kava,&rdquo; she cried, holding a bowl to his lips, and wheedling him
+      with her eyes. &ldquo;Kava is good; it is fit for gods. It makes them
+      royally drunk, as becomes great deities. The spirits of our ancestors
+      dwell in the bowl; when you drink of the kava they mount by degrees into
+      your heart and head. They inspire brave words. They give you thoughts of
+      heaven. Drink, my master, drink. The Ruler of the Sun in Heaven is
+      thirsty.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She lay propped on one elbow, with her face close to his; and offered him,
+      with one brown, irresistible hand, the intoxicating liquor. Tu-Kila-Kila
+      took the bowl, and drank a second time, for he had drunk of it once with
+      his dinner already. It was seldom he allowed himself the luxury of a
+      second draught of that very stupefying native intoxicant, for he knew too
+      well the danger of insecurely guarding his sacred tree; but on this
+      particular occasion, as on so many others in the collective life of
+      humanity, &ldquo;the woman tempted him,&rdquo; and he acted as she told
+      him. He drank it off deep. &ldquo;Ha, ha! that is good!&rdquo; he cried,
+      smacking his lips. &ldquo;That is a drink fit for a god. No woman can make
+      kava like you, Ula.&rdquo; He toyed with her arms and neck lazily once
+      more. &ldquo;You are the queen of my wives,&rdquo; he went on, in a dreamy
+      voice. &ldquo;I like you so well, that, plump as you are, I really
+      believe, Ula, I could never make up my mind to eat you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My lord is very gracious,&rdquo; Ula made answer, in a soft, low
+      tone, pretending to caress him. And for some minutes more she continued to
+      make much of him in the fulsome strain of Polynesian flattery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last the kava had clearly got into Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s head. Then Ula
+      bent forward once more and again attacked him. &ldquo;Now I know you will
+      tell me,&rdquo; she said, coaxingly, &ldquo;why you make them Korong. As
+      long as I live, I will never speak or hint of it to anybody anywhere. And
+      if I do&mdash;why, the remedy is near. I am your meat&mdash;take me and
+      eat me.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even cannibals are human; and at the touch of her soft hand, Tu-Kila-Kila
+      gave way slowly. &ldquo;I made them Korong,&rdquo; he answered, in rather
+      thick accents, &ldquo;because it is less dangerous for me to make them so
+      than to choose for the post from among our own islanders. Sooner or later,
+      my day must come; but I can put it off best by making my enemies out of
+      strangers who arrive upon our island, and not out of those of my own
+      household. All Boupari men who have been initiated know the terrible
+      secret&mdash;they know where lies the Death of Tu-Kila-Kila. The strangers
+      who come to us from the sun or the sea do not know it; and therefore my
+      life is safest with them. So I make them Korong whenever I can, to prolong
+      my own days, and to guard my secret.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And the Death of Tu-Kila-Kila?&rdquo; the woman whispered, very
+      low, still soothing his arm with her hand and patting his cheek softly
+      from time to time with a gentle, caressing motion. &ldquo;Tell me where
+      does that live? Who holds it in charge? Where is Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s
+      great spirit laid by in safety? I know it is in the tree; but where and in
+      what part of it?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila drew back with a little cry of surprise. &ldquo;You know it
+      is in the tree!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;You know my soul is kept there!
+      Why, Ula, who told you that? and you a woman! Bad medicine indeed! Some
+      man has been blabbing what he learned in the mysteries. If this should
+      reach the ears of the King of the Rain&mdash;&rdquo; he paused
+      mysteriously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What? What?&rdquo; Ula cried, seizing his hand in hers, and
+      pressing it hard to her bosom in her anxiety and eagerness. &ldquo;Tell me
+      the secret! Tell me!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a sudden sharp howl of darting pain, Tu-Kila-Kila withdrew his hand.
+      She had squeezed the finger the parrot had bitten, and blood began once
+      more to flow from it freely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A wild impulse of revenge came over the savage. He caught her by the neck
+      with his other hand, pressed her throat hard, till she was black in the
+      face, kicked her several times with ferocious rage, and then flung her
+      away from him to the other side of the hut with a fierce and
+      untranslatable native imprecation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ula, shaken and hurt, darted away toward the door, with a face of abject
+      terror. For every reason on earth she was intensely alarmed. Were it
+      merely as a matter of purely earthly fear, she had ground enough for
+      fright in having so roused the hasty anger of that powerful and implacable
+      creature. He would kill her and eat her with far less compunction than an
+      English farmer would kill and eat one of his own barnyard chickens. But
+      besides that, it terrified her not a little in more mysterious ways to see
+      the blood of a god falling upon the earth so freely. She knew not what
+      awful results to herself and her race might follow from so terrible a
+      desecration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, to her utter astonishment, the great god himself, mad with rage as he
+      was, seemed none the less almost as profoundly frightened and surprised as
+      she herself was. &ldquo;What did you do that for?&rdquo; he cried, now
+      sufficiently recovered for thought and speech, wringing his hand with
+      pain, and then popping his finger hastily into his mouth to ease it.
+      &ldquo;You are a clumsy thing. And you want to destroy me, too, with your
+      foolish clumsiness.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked at her and scowled. He was very angry. But the savage woman is
+      nothing if not quick-witted and politic. In a flash of intuition, Ula saw
+      at once he was more frightened than hurt; he was afraid of the effect of
+      this strange revelation upon his own reputation for supreme godship. With
+      every mark and gesture of deprecatory servility the woman sidled back to
+      his side like a whipped dog. For a second she looked down on the floor at
+      the drops of blood; then, without one word of warning or one instant&rsquo;s
+      hesitation, she bit her own finger hard till blood flowed from it freely.
+      &ldquo;I will show this to Fire and Water,&rdquo; she said, holding it up
+      before his eyes all red and bleeding. &ldquo;I will say you were angry
+      with me and bit me for a punishment, as you often do. They will never find
+      out it was the blood of a god. Have no fear for their eyes. Let me look at
+      your finger.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila, half appeased by her clever quickness, held his hand out
+      sulkily, like a disobedient child. Ula examined it close. &ldquo;A bite,&rdquo;
+      she said, shortly. &ldquo;A bite from a bird! a peck from a parrot.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila jerked out a surly assent. &ldquo;Yes, the Soul of all dead
+      parrots,&rdquo; he answered, with an angry glare. &ldquo;It bit me this
+      morning at the King of the Birds&rsquo;. A vicious brute. But no one else
+      saw it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ula put the finger up to her own mouth, and sucked the wound gently. Her
+      medicine stanched it. Then she took a thin leaf of the paper mulberry,
+      soft, cool, and soothing, and bound it round the place with a strip of the
+      lace-like inner bark, as deftly as any hospital nurse in London would have
+      done it. These savage women are capital hands in sickness. Tu-Kila-Kila
+      sat and sulked meanwhile, like a disappointed child. When Ula had
+      finished, she nodded her head and glided softly away. She knew her chance
+      of learning the secret was gone for the moment, and she had too much of
+      the guile of the savage woman to spoil her chances by loitering about
+      unnecessarily while her lord was in his present ungracious humor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As she stole from the hut, Tu-Kila-Kila, looking ruefully at his wounded
+      hand, and then at that light and supple retreating figure, muttered
+      sulkily to himself, with a very bad grace, &ldquo;the woman knows too
+      much. She nearly wormed my secret out of me. She knows that Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s
+      life and soul are bound up in the tree. She knows that I bled, and that
+      the parrot bit me. If she blabs, as women will do, mischief may come of
+      it. I am a great god, a very great god&mdash;keen, bloodthirsty, cruel.
+      And I like that woman. But it would be wiser and safer, perhaps, after
+      all, to forego my affection and to make a great feast of her.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Ula, looking back with a smile and a nod, and holding up her own
+      bitten and bleeding hand with a farewell shake, as if to remind her divine
+      husband of her promise to show it to Fire and Water, murmured low to
+      herself as she went, &ldquo;He is a very great god; a very great god, no
+      doubt; but I hate him, I hate him! He would eat me to-morrow if I didn&rsquo;t
+      coax him and wheedle him and keep him in a good temper. You want to be
+      sharp, indeed, to be the wife of a god. I got off to-day with the skin of
+      my teeth. He might have turned and killed me. If only I could find out the
+      Great Taboo, I would tell it to the stranger, the King of the Rain; and
+      then, perhaps, Tu-Kila-Kila would die. And the stranger would become
+      Tu-Kila-Kila in turn, and I would be one of his wives; and Toko, who is
+      his Shadow, would return again to the service of Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s
+      temple.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Fire, as she passed, was saying to Water, &ldquo;We are getting tired
+      in Boupari of Lavita, the son of Sami. If the luck of the island is not to
+      change, it is high time, I think, we should have a new Tu-Kila-Kila.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0020" id="link2HCH0020"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XX. &mdash; COUNCIL OF WAR.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      That same afternoon Muriel had a visitor. M. Jules Peyron, formerly of the
+      Collége de France, no longer a mere Polynesian god, but a French gentleman
+      of the Boulevards in voice and manner, came to pay his respects, as in
+      duty bound, to Mademoiselle Ellis. M. Peyron had performed his toilet
+      under trying circumstances, to the best of his ability. The remnants of
+      his European clothes, much patched and overhung with squares of native
+      tappa cloth, were hidden as much as possible by a wide feather cloak, very
+      savage in effect, but more seemly, at any rate, than the tattered garments
+      in which Felix had first found him in his own garden parterre. M. Peyron,
+      however, was fully aware of the defects of his costume, and profoundly
+      apologetic. &ldquo;It is with ten thousand regrets, mademoiselle,&rdquo;
+      he said, many times over, bowing low and simpering, &ldquo;that I venture
+      to appear in a lady&rsquo;s <i>salon</i>&mdash;for, after all, wherever a
+      European lady goes, there her <i>salon</i> follows her&mdash;in such a <i>tenue</i>
+      as that in which I am now compelled to present myself. <i>Mais que
+      voulez-vous? Nous ne sommes pas à Paris</i>!&rdquo; For to M. Peyron, as
+      innocent in his way as Mali herself, the whole world divided itself into
+      Paris and the Provinces.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nevertheless, it was touching to both the new-comers to see the Frenchman&rsquo;s
+      delight at meeting once more with civilized beings. &ldquo;Figure to
+      yourself, mademoiselle,&rdquo; he said, with true French effusion&mdash;&ldquo;figure
+      to yourself the joy and surprise with which I, this morning, receive
+      monsieur, your friend, at my humble cottage! For the first time after nine
+      years on this hateful island, I see again a European face; I hear again
+      the sound, the beautiful sound of that charming French language. My
+      emotion, believe me, was too profound for words. When monsieur was gone, I
+      retired to my hut, I sat down on the floor, I gave myself over to tears,
+      tears of joy and gratitude, to think I should once more catch a glimpse of
+      civilization! This afternoon, I ask myself, can I venture to go out and
+      pay my respects, thus attired, in these rags, to a European lady? For a
+      long time I doubt, I wonder, I hesitate. In my quality of Frenchman, I
+      would have wished to call in civilized costume upon a civilized household.
+      But what would you have? Necessity knows no law. I am compelled to
+      envelope myself in my savage robe of office as a Polynesian god&mdash;a
+      robe of office which, for the rest, is not without an interest of its own
+      for the scientific ethnologist. It belongs to me especially as King of the
+      Birds, and in it, in effect, is represented at least one feather of each
+      kind or color from every part of the body of every species of bird that
+      inhabits Boupari. I thus sum up, <i>pour ainsi dire</i>, in my official
+      costume all the birds of the island, as Tu-Kila-Kila, the very high god,
+      sums up, in his quaint and curious dress, the land and the sea, the trees
+      and the stones, earth and air, and fire and water.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Familiarity with danger begets at last a certain callous indifference.
+      Muriel was surprised in her own mind to discover how easily they could
+      chat with M. Peyron on such indifferent subjects, with that awful doom of
+      an approaching death hanging over them so shortly. But the fact was,
+      terrors of every kind had so encompassed them round since their arrival on
+      the island that the mere additional certainty of a date and mode of
+      execution was rather a relief to their minds than otherwise. It partook of
+      the nature of a reprieve, not of a sentence. Besides, this meeting with
+      another speaker of a European tongue seemed to them so full of promise and
+      hope that they almost forgot the terrors of their threatened end in their
+      discussion of possible schemes for escape to freedom. Even M. Peyron
+      himself, who had spent nine long years of exile in the island, felt that
+      the arrival of two new Europeans gave him some hope of effecting at last
+      his own retreat from this unendurable position. His talk was all of
+      passing steamers. If the Australasian had come near enough once to sight
+      the island, he argued, then the homeward-bound vessel, <i>en route</i> for
+      Honolulu, must have begun to take a new course considerably to the
+      eastward of the old navigable channel. If this were so, their obvious plan
+      was to keep a watch, day and night, for another passing Australian liner,
+      and whenever one hove in sight, to steal away to the shore, seize a stray
+      canoe, overpower, if possible, their Shadows, or give them the slip, and
+      make one bold stroke for freedom on the open ocean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      None of them could conceal from their own minds, to be sure, the extreme
+      difficulty of carrying out this programme. In the first place, it was a
+      toss-up whether they ever sighted another steamer at all; for during the
+      weeks they had already passed on the island, not a sign of one had
+      appeared from any quarter. Then, again, even supposing a steamer ever hove
+      in sight, what likelihood that they could make out for her in an open
+      canoe in time to attract attention before she had passed the island?
+      Tu-Kila-Kila would never willingly let them go; their Shadows would watch
+      them with unceasing care; the whole body of natives would combine together
+      to prevent their departure. If they ran away at all, they must run for
+      their lives; as soon as the islanders discovered they were gone, every
+      war-canoe in the place would be manned at once with bloodthirsty savages,
+      who would follow on their track with relentless persistence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As for Muriel, less prepared for such dangerous adventures than the two
+      men, she was rather inclined to attach a certain romantic importance (as a
+      girl might do) to the story of the parrot and the possible disclosures
+      which it could make if it could only communicate with them. The mysterious
+      element in the history of that unique bird attracted her fancy. &ldquo;The
+      only one of its race now left alive,&rdquo; she said, with slow
+      reflectiveness. &ldquo;Like Dolly Pentreath, the last old woman who could
+      speak Cornish! I wonder how long parrots ever live? Do you know at all,
+      monsieur? You are the King of the Birds&mdash;you ought to be an authority
+      on their habits and manners.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Frenchman smiled a gallant smile. &ldquo;Unhappily, mademoiselle,&rdquo;
+      he said, &ldquo;though, as a medical student, I took up to a certain
+      extent biological science in general at the Collége de France, I never
+      paid any special or peculiar attention in Paris to birds in particular.
+      But it is the universal opinion of the natives (if that counts for much)
+      that parrots live to a very great age; and this one old parrot of mine,
+      whom I call Methuselah on account of his advanced years, is considered by
+      them all to be a perfect patriarch. In effect, when the oldest men now
+      living on the island were little boys, they tell me that Methuselah was
+      already a venerable and much-venerated parrot. He must certainly have
+      outlived all the rest of his race by at least the best part of
+      three-quarters of a century. For the islanders themselves not infrequently
+      live, by unanimous consent, to be over a hundred.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I remember to have read somewhere,&rdquo; Felix said, turning it
+      over in his mind, &ldquo;that when Humboldt was travelling in the wilds of
+      South America he found one very old parrot in an Indian village, which,
+      the Indians assured him, spoke the language of an extinct tribe,
+      incomprehensible then by any living person. If I recollect aright,
+      Humboldt believed that particular bird must have lived to be nearly a
+      hundred and fifty.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is so, monsieur,&rdquo; the Frenchman answered. &ldquo;I
+      remember the case well, and have often recalled it. I recollect our
+      professor mentioning it one day in the course of his lectures. And I have
+      always mentally coupled that parrot of Humboldt&rsquo;s with my own old
+      friend and subject, Methuselah. However, that only impresses upon one more
+      fully the folly of hoping that we can learn anything worth knowing from
+      him. I have heard him recite his story many times over, though now he
+      repeats it less frequently than he used formerly to do; and I feel
+      convinced it is couched in some unknown and, no doubt, forgotten language.
+      It is a much more guttural and unpleasant tongue than any of the soft
+      dialects now spoken in Polynesia. It belonged, I am convinced, to that yet
+      earlier and more savage race which the Polynesians must have displaced;
+      and as such it is now, I feel certain, practically irrecoverable.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If they were more savage than the Polynesians,&rdquo; Muriel said,
+      with a profound sigh, &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sorry for anybody who fell into
+      their clutches.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what would not many philologists at home in England give,&rdquo;
+      Felix murmured, philosophically, &ldquo;for a transcript of the words that
+      parrot can speak&mdash;perhaps a last relic of the very earliest and most
+      primitive form of human language!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the very moment when these things were passing under the wattled roof
+      of Muriel&rsquo;s hut, it happened that on the taboo-space outside, Toko,
+      the Shadow, stood talking for a moment with Ula, the fourteenth wife of
+      the great Tu-Kila-Kila.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I never see you now, Toko,&rdquo; the beautiful Polynesian said,
+      leaning almost across the white line of coral-sand which she dared not
+      transgress. &ldquo;Times are dull at the temple since you came to be
+      Shadow to the white-faced stranger.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was for that that Tu-Kila-Kila sent me here,&rdquo; the Shadow
+      answered, with profound conviction. &ldquo;He is jealous, the great god.
+      He is bad. He is cruel. He wanted to get rid of me. So he sent me away to
+      the King of the Rain that I might not see you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ula pouted, and held up her wounded finger before his eyes coquettishly.
+      &ldquo;See what he did to me,&rdquo; she said, with a mute appeal for
+      sympathy&mdash;though in that particular matter the truth was not in her.
+      &ldquo;Your god was angry with me to-day because I hurt his hand, and he
+      clutched me by the throat, and almost choked me. He has a bad heart. See
+      how he bit me and drew blood. Some of these days, I believe, he will kill
+      me and eat me.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Shadow glanced around him suspiciously with an uneasy air. Then he
+      whispered low, in a voice half grudge, half terror, &ldquo;If he does, he
+      is a great god&mdash;he can search all the world&mdash;I fear him much,
+      but Toko&rsquo;s heart is warm. Let Tu-Kila-Kila look out for vengeance.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The woman glanced across at him open-eyed, with her enticing look. &ldquo;If
+      the King of the Rain, who is Korong, knew all the secret,&rdquo; she
+      murmured, slowly, &ldquo;he would soon be Tu-Kila-Kila himself; and you
+      and I could then meet together freely.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Shadow started. It was a terrible suggestion. &ldquo;You mean to say&mdash;&rdquo;
+      he cried; then fear overcame him, and, crouching down where he sat, he
+      gazed around him, terrified. Who could say that the wind would not report
+      his words to Tu-Kila-Kila?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ula laughed at his fears. &ldquo;Pooh,&rdquo; she answered, smiling.
+      &ldquo;You are a man; and yet you are afraid of a little taboo. I am a
+      woman; and yet if I knew the secret as you do, I would break taboo as
+      easily as I would break an egg-shell. I would tell the white-faced
+      stranger all&mdash;if only it would bring you and me together forever.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is a great risk, a very great risk,&rdquo; the Shadow answered,
+      trembling. &ldquo;Tu-Kila-Kila is a mighty god. He may be listening this
+      moment, and may pinch us to death by his spirits for our words, or burn us
+      to ashes with a flash of his anger.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The woman smiled an incredulous smile. &ldquo;If you had lived as near
+      Tu-Kila-Kila as I have,&rdquo; she answered, boldly, &ldquo;you would
+      think as little, perhaps, of his divinity as I do.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For even in Polynesia, superstitious as it is, no hero is a god to his
+      wives or his valets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0021" id="link2HCH0021"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXI. &mdash; METHUSELAH GIVES SIGN.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      All the hopes of the three Europeans were concentrated now on the bare
+      off-chance of a passing steamer. M. Peyron in particular was fully
+      convinced that, if the Australasian had found the inner channel
+      practicable, other ships in future would follow her example. With this
+      idea firmly fixed in his head, he arranged with Felix that one or other of
+      them should keep watch alternately by night as far as possible; and he
+      also undertook that a canoe should constantly be in readiness to carry
+      them away to the supposititious ship, if occasion arose for it. Muriel
+      took counsel with Mali on the question of rousing the Frenchman if a
+      steamer appeared, and they were the first to sight it; and Mali, in whom
+      renewed intercourse with white people had restored to some extent the
+      civilized Queensland attitude of mind, readily enough promised to assist
+      in their scheme, provided she was herself taken with them, and so relieved
+      from the terrible vengeance which would otherwise overtake her. &ldquo;If
+      Boupari man catch me,&rdquo; she said, in her simple, graphic, Polynesian
+      way, &ldquo;Boupari man kill me, and lay me in leaves, and cook me very
+      nice, and make great feast of me, like him do with Jani.&rdquo; From that
+      untimely end both Felix and Muriel promised faithfully, as far as in them
+      lay, to protect her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To communicate with M. Peyron by daytime, without arousing the
+      ever-wakeful suspicion of the natives, Felix hit upon an excellent plan.
+      He burnished his metal matchbox to the very highest polish it was capable
+      of taking, and then heliographed by means of sun-flashes on the Morse
+      code. He had learned the code in Fiji in the course of his official
+      duties; and he taught the Frenchman now readily enough how to read and
+      reply with the other half of the box, torn off for the purpose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was three or four days, however, before the two English wanderers
+      ventured to return M. Peyron&rsquo;s visit. They didn&rsquo;t wish to
+      attract too greatly the attention of the islanders. Gradually, as their
+      stay on the island went on, they learned the truth that Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s
+      eyes, as he himself had boasted, were literally everywhere. For he had
+      spies of his own, told off in every direction, who dogged the steps of his
+      victims unseen. Sometimes, as Felix and Muriel walked unsuspecting through
+      the jungle paths, closely followed by their Shadows, a stealthy brown
+      figure, crouched low to the ground, would cross the road for a moment
+      behind them, and disappear again noiselessly into the dense mass of
+      underbrush. Then Mali or Toko, turning round, all hushed, with a terrified
+      look, would murmur low to themselves, or to one another, &ldquo;There goes
+      one of the Eyes of Tu-Kila-Kila!&rdquo; It was only by slow degrees that
+      this system of espionage grew clear to the strangers; but as soon as they
+      had learned its reality and ubiquity, they felt at once how undesirable it
+      would be for them to excite the terrible man-god&rsquo;s jealousy and
+      suspicion by being observed too often in close personal intercourse with
+      their fellow-exile and victim, the Frenchman. It was this that made them
+      have recourse to the device of the heliograph.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So three or four days passed before Muriel dared to approach M. Peyron&rsquo;s
+      cottage. When she did at last go there with Felix, it was in the early
+      morning, before the fierce tropical sun, that beat full on the island, had
+      begun to exert its midday force and power. The path that led there lay
+      through the thick and tangled mass of brushwood which covered the greater
+      part of the island with its dense vegetation; it was overhung by huge
+      tree-ferns and broad-leaved Southern bushes, and abutted at last on the
+      little wind-swept knoll where the King of the Birds had his appropriate
+      dwelling-place. The Frenchman received them with studied Parisian
+      hospitality. He had decorated his arbor with fresh flowers for the
+      occasion, and bright tropical fruits, with their own green leaves, did
+      duty for the coffee or the absinthe of his fatherland on his homemade
+      rustic table. Yet in spite of all the rudeness of the physical
+      surroundings, they felt themselves at home again with this one exiled
+      European; the faint flavor of civilization pervaded and permeated the
+      Frenchman&rsquo;s hut after the unmixed savagery to which they had now
+      been so long accustomed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Muriel&rsquo;s curiosity, however, centred most about the mysterious old
+      parrot, of whose strange legend so much had been said to her. After they
+      had sat for a little under the shade of the spreading banyan, to cool down
+      from their walk&mdash;for it was an oppressive morning&mdash;M. Peyron led
+      her round to his aviary at the back of the hut, and introduced her, by
+      their native names, to all his subjects. &ldquo;I am responsible for their
+      lives,&rdquo; he said, gravely, &ldquo;for their welfare, for their
+      happiness. If I were to let one of them grow old without a successor in
+      the field to follow him up and receive his soul&mdash;as in the case of my
+      friend Methuselah here, who was so neglected by my predecessors&mdash;the
+      whole species would die out for want of a spirit, and my own life would
+      atone for that of my people. There you have the central principle of the
+      theology of Boupari. Every race, every element, every power of nature, is
+      summed up for them in some particular person or thing; and on the life of
+      that person or thing depends, as they believe, the entire health of the
+      species, the sequence of events, the whole order and succession of natural
+      phenomena.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix approached the mysterious and venerable bird with somewhat
+      incautious fingers. &ldquo;It looks very old,&rdquo; he said, trying to
+      stroke its head and neck with a friendly gesture. &ldquo;You do well,
+      indeed, in calling it Methuselah.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he spoke, the bird, alarmed at the vague consciousness of a hand and
+      voice which it did not recognize and mindful of Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s
+      recent attack, made a vicious peck at the fingers outstretched to caress
+      it. &ldquo;Take care!&rdquo; the Frenchman cried, in a warning voice.
+      &ldquo;The patriarch&rsquo;s temper is no longer what it was sixty or
+      seventy years ago. He grows old and peevish. His humor is soured. He will
+      sing no longer the lively little scraps of Offenbach I have taught him. He
+      does nothing but sit still and mumble now in his own forgotten language.
+      And he&rsquo;s dreadfully cross&mdash;so crabbed&mdash;<i>mon Dieu</i>,
+      what a character! Why, the other day, as I told you, he bit Tu-Kila-Kila
+      himself, the high god of the island, with a good hard peck, when that
+      savage tried to touch him; you&rsquo;d have laughed to see his godship
+      sent off bleeding to his hut with a wounded finger! I will confess I was
+      by no means sorry at the sight myself. I do not love that god, nor he me;
+      and I was glad when Methuselah, on whom he is afraid to revenge himself
+      openly, gave him a nice smart bite for trying to interfere with him.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;s very snappish, to be sure,&rdquo; Felix said, with a
+      smile, trying once more to push forward one hand to stroke the bird
+      cautiously. But Methuselah resented all such unauthorized intrusions. He
+      was growing too old to put up with strangers. He made a second vicious
+      attempt to peck at the hand held out to soothe him, and screamed, as he
+      did so, in the usual discordant and unpleasant voice of an angry or
+      frightened parrot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, Felix,&rdquo; Muriel put in, taking him by the arm with a
+      girlish gesture&mdash;for even the terrors by which they were surrounded
+      hadn&rsquo;t wholly succeeded in killing out the woman within her&mdash;&ldquo;how
+      clumsy you are! You don&rsquo;t understand one bit how to manage parrots.
+      I had a parrot of my own at my aunt&rsquo;s in Australia, and I know their
+      ways and all about them. Just let me try him.&rdquo; She held out her soft
+      white hand toward the sulky bird with a fearless, caressing gesture.
+      &ldquo;Pretty Poll, pretty Poll!&rdquo; she said, in English, in the
+      conventional tone of address to their kind. &ldquo;Did the naughty man go
+      and frighten her then? Was she afraid of his hand? Did Polly want a lump
+      of sugar?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On a sudden the bird opened its eyes quickly with an awakened air, and
+      looked her back in the face, half blindly, half quizzingly. It preened its
+      wings for a second, and crooned with pleasure. Then it put forward its
+      neck, with its head on one side, took her dainty finger gently between its
+      beak and tongue, bit it for pure love with a soft, short pressure, and at
+      once allowed her to stroke its back and sides with a very pleased and
+      surprised expression. The success of her skill flattered Muriel. &ldquo;There!
+      it knows me!&rdquo; she cried, with childish delight; &ldquo;it
+      understands I&rsquo;m a friend! It takes to me at once! Pretty Poll!
+      Pretty Poll! Come, Poll, come and kiss me!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The bird drew back at the words, and steadied itself for a moment
+      knowingly on its perch. Then it held up its head, gazed around it with a
+      vacant air, as if suddenly awakened from a very long sleep, and, opening
+      its mouth, exclaimed in loud, clear, sharp, and distinct tones&mdash;and
+      in English&mdash;&ldquo;Pretty Poll! Pretty Poll! Polly wants a buss!
+      Polly wants a nice sweet bit of apple!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment M. Peyron couldn&rsquo;t imagine what had happened. Felix
+      looked at Muriel. Muriel looked at Felix. The Englishman held out both his
+      hands to her in a wild fervor of surprise. Muriel took them in her own,
+      and looked deep into his eyes, while tears rose suddenly and dropped down
+      her cheeks, one by one, unchecked. They couldn&rsquo;t say why,
+      themselves; they didn&rsquo;t know wherefore; yet this unexpected echo of
+      their own tongue, in the mouth of that strange and mysterious bird,
+      thrilled through them instinctively with a strange, unearthly tremor. In
+      some dim and unexplained way, they felt half unconsciously to themselves
+      that this discovery was, perhaps, the first clue to the solution of the
+      terrible secret whose meshes encompassed them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      M. Peyron looked on in mute astonishment. He had heard the bird repeat
+      that strange jargon so often that it had ceased to have even the
+      possibility of a meaning for him. It was the way of Methuselah&mdash;just
+      his language that he talked; so harsh! so guttural! &ldquo;Pretty Poll!
+      Pretty Poll!&rdquo; he had noticed the bird harp upon those quaint words
+      again and again. They were part, no doubt, of that old primitive and
+      forgotten Pacific language the creature had learned in other days from
+      some earlier bearer of the name and ghastly honors of Tu-Kila-Kila. Why
+      should these English seem so profoundly moved by them?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mademoiselle doesn&rsquo;t surely understand the barbarous dialect
+      which our Methuselah speaks!&rdquo; he exclaimed in surprise, glancing
+      half suspiciously from one to the other of these incomprehensible Britons.
+      Like most other Frenchmen, he had been brought up in total ignorance of
+      every European language except his own; and the words the parrot
+      pronounced, when delivered with the well-known additions of parrot
+      harshness and parrot volubility, seemed to him so inexpressibly barbaric
+      in their clicks and jerks that he hadn&rsquo;t yet arrived at the faintest
+      inkling of the truth as he observed their emotion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix seized his new friend&rsquo;s hand in his and wrung it warmly.
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you see what it is?&rdquo; he exclaimed, half beside
+      himself with this vague hope of some unknown solution. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t
+      you realize how the thing stands? Don&rsquo;t you guess the truth? This
+      isn&rsquo;t a Polynesian, dialect at all. It&rsquo;s our own mother
+      tongue. The bird speaks English!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;English!&rdquo; M. Peyron replied, with incredulous scorn. &ldquo;What!
+      Methuselah speak English! Oh, no, monsieur, impossible. <i>Vous vous
+      trompez, j&rsquo;en suis sûr</i>. I can never believe it. Those harsh,
+      inarticulate sounds to belong to the noble language of Shaxper and
+      Newtowne! <i>Ah, monsieur, incroyable! vous vous trompez; vous vous
+      trompez!</i>&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he spoke, the bird put its head on one side once more, and, looking out
+      of its half-blind old eyes with a crafty glance round the corner at
+      Muriel, observed again, in not very polite English, &ldquo;Pretty Poll!
+      Pretty Poll! Polly wants some fruit! Polly wants a nut! Polly wants to go
+      to bed!... God save the king! To hell with all papists!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur,&rdquo; Felix said, a certain solemn feeling of surprise
+      coming over him slowly at this last strange clause, &ldquo;it is perfectly
+      true. The bird speaks English. The bird that knows the secret of which we
+      are all in search&mdash;the bird that can tell us the truth about
+      Tu-Kila-Kila&mdash;can tell us in the tongue which mademoiselle and I
+      speak as our native language. And what is more&mdash;and more strange&mdash;gather
+      from his tone and the tenor of his remarks, he was taught, long since&mdash;a
+      century ago, or more&mdash;and by an English sailor!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Muriel held out a bit of banana on a sharp stick to the bird.
+      Methuselah-Polly took it gingerly off the end, like a well-behaved parrot?
+      &ldquo;God save the king!&rdquo; Muriel said, in a quiet voice, trying to
+      draw him on to speak a little further.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Methuselah twisted his eye sideways, first this way, then that, and
+      responded in a very clear tone, indeed, &ldquo;God save the king! Confound
+      the Duke of York! Long live Dr. Oates! And to hell with all papists!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0022" id="link2HCH0022"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXII. &mdash; TANTALIZING, VERY.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      They looked at one another again with a wild surmise. The voice was as the
+      voice of some long past age. Could the parrot be speaking to them in the
+      words of seventeenth-century English?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even M. Peyron, who at first had received the strange discovery with
+      incredulity, woke up before long to the importance of this sudden and
+      unexpected revelation. The Tu-Kila-Kila who had taught Methuselah that
+      long poem or sermon, which native tradition regarded as containing the
+      central secret of their creed or its mysteries, and which the cruel and
+      cunning Tu-Kila-Kila of to-day believed to be of immense importance to his
+      safety&mdash;that Tu-Kila-Kila of other days was, in all probability, no
+      other than an English sailor. Cast on these shores, perhaps, as they
+      themselves had been, by the mercy of the waves, he had managed to master
+      the language and religion of the savages among whom he found himself
+      thrown; he had risen to be the representative of the cannibal god; and,
+      during long months or years of tedious exile, he had beguiled his leisure
+      by imparting to the unconscious ears of a bird the weird secret of his
+      success, for the benefit of any others of his own race who might be
+      similarly treated by fortune in future. Strange and romantic as it all
+      sounded, they could hardly doubt now that this was the real explanation of
+      the bird&rsquo;s command of English words. One problem alone remained to
+      disturb their souls. Was the bird really in possession of any local secret
+      and mystery at all, or was this the whole burden of the message he had
+      brought down across the vast abyss of time&mdash;&ldquo;God save the king,
+      and to hell with all papists?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix turned to M. Peyron in a perfect tumult of suspense. &ldquo;What he
+      recites is long?&rdquo; he said, interrogatively, with profound interest.
+      &ldquo;You have heard him say much more than this at times? The words he
+      has just uttered are not those of the sermon or poem you mentioned?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      M. Peyron opened his hands expansively before him. &ldquo;Oh, <i>mon Dieu</i>,
+      no, monsieur,&rdquo; he answered, with effusion. &ldquo;You should hear
+      him recite it. He&rsquo;s never done. It is whole chapters&mdash;whole
+      chapters; a perfect Henriade in parrot-talk. When once he begins, there&rsquo;s
+      no possibility of checking or stopping him. On, on he goes. Farewell to
+      the rest; he insists on pouring it all forth to the very last sentence.
+      Gabble, gabble, gabble; chatter, chatter, chatter; pouf, pouf, pouf; boum,
+      boum, boum; he runs ahead eternally in one long discordant sing-song
+      monotone. The person who taught him must have taken entire months to teach
+      him, a phrase at a time, paragraph by paragraph. It is wonderful a bird&rsquo;s
+      memory could hold so much. But till now, taking it for granted he spoke
+      only some wild South Pacific dialect, I never paid much attention to
+      Methuselah&rsquo;s vagaries.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hush. He&rsquo;s going to speak,&rdquo; Muriel cried, holding up,
+      in alarm, one warning finger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the bird, his tongue-strings evidently loosened by the strange
+      recurrence after so many years of those familiar English sounds, &ldquo;Pretty
+      Poll! Pretty Poll!&rdquo; opened his mouth again in a loud chuckle of
+      delight, and cried, with persistent shrillness, &ldquo;God save the king!
+      A fig for all arrant knaves and roundheads!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A creepier feeling than ever came over the two English listeners at those
+      astounding words. &ldquo;Great heavens!&rdquo; Felix exclaimed to the
+      unsuspecting Frenchman, &ldquo;he speaks in the style of the Stuarts and
+      the Commonwealth!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Frenchman started. &ldquo;<i>Époque Louis Quatorze</i>!&rdquo; he
+      murmured, translating the date mentally into his own more familiar
+      chronology. &ldquo;Two centuries since! Oh, incredible! incredible!
+      Methuselah is old, but not quite so much of a patriarch as that. Even
+      Humboldt&rsquo;s parrot could hardly have lived for two hundred years in
+      the wilds of South America.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix regarded the venerable creature with a look of almost superstitious
+      awe. &ldquo;Facts are facts,&rdquo; he answered shortly, shutting his
+      mouth with a little snap. &ldquo;Unless this bird has been deliberately
+      taught historical details in an archaic diction&mdash;and a shipwrecked
+      sailor is hardly likely to be antiquarian enough to conceive such an idea&mdash;he
+      is undoubtedly a survival from the days of the Commonwealth or the
+      Restoration. And you say he runs on with his tale for an hour at a time!
+      Good heavens, what a thought! I wish we could manage to start him now.
+      Does he begin it often?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur,&rdquo; the Frenchman answered, &ldquo;when I came here
+      first, though Methuselah was already very old and feeble, he was not quite
+      a dotard, and he used to recite it all every morning regularly. That was
+      the hour, I suppose, at which the master, who first taught him this
+      lengthy recitation, used originally to impress it upon him. In those days
+      his sight and his memory were far more clear than now. But by degrees,
+      since my arrival, he has grown dull and stupid. The natives tell me that
+      fifty years ago, while he was already old, he was still bright and lively,
+      and would recite the whole poem whenever anybody presented him with his
+      greatest dainty, the claw of a moora-crab. Nowadays, however, when he can
+      hardly eat, and hardly mumble, he is much less persistent and less
+      coherent than formerly. To say the truth, I have discouraged him in his
+      efforts, because his pertinacity annoyed me. So now he seldom gets through
+      all his lesson at one bout, as he used to do at the beginning. The best
+      way to get him on is for me to sing him one of my French songs. That seems
+      to excite him, or to rouse him to rivalry. Then he will put his head on
+      one side, listen critically for a while, smile a superior smile, and
+      finally begin&mdash;jabber, jabber, jabber&mdash;trying to talk me down,
+      as if I were a brother parrot.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, do sing now!&rdquo; Muriel cried, with intense persuasion in
+      her voice. &ldquo;I do so want to hear it.&rdquo; She meant, of course,
+      the parrot&rsquo;s story.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the Frenchman bowed, and laid his hand on his heart. &ldquo;Ah,
+      mademoiselle,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;your wish is almost a royal command.
+      And yet, do you know, it is so long since I have sung, except to please
+      myself&mdash;my music is so rusty, old pieces you have heard&mdash;I have
+      no accompaniment, no score&mdash;<i>mais enfin</i>, we are all so far from
+      Paris!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Muriel didn&rsquo;t dare to undeceive him as to her meaning, lest he
+      should refuse to sing in real earnest, and the chance of learning the
+      parrot&rsquo;s secret might slip by them irretrievably. &ldquo;Oh,
+      monsieur,&rdquo; she cried, fitting herself to his humor at once, and
+      speaking as ceremoniously as if she were assisting at a musical party in
+      the Avenue Victor Hugo, &ldquo;don&rsquo;t decline, I beg of you, on those
+      accounts. We are both most anxious to hear your song. Don&rsquo;t
+      disappoint us, pray. Please begin immediately.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, mademoiselle,&rdquo; the Frenchman said, &ldquo;who could
+      resist such an appeal? You are altogether too flattering.&rdquo; And then,
+      in the same cheery voice that Felix had heard on the first day he visited
+      the King of Birds&rsquo; hut, M. Peyron began, in very decent style, to
+      pour forth the merry sounds of his rollicking song:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+&ldquo;Quand on conspi-re,
+    Quand sans frayeur
+ On peut se di-re
+    Conspirateur
+ Pour tout le mon-de
+    Il faut avoir
+ Perruque blon-de
+    Et collet noir.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      He had hardly got as far as the end of the first stanza, however, when
+      Methuselah, listening, with his ear cocked up most knowingly, to the
+      Frenchman&rsquo;s song, raised his head in opposition, and, sitting bolt
+      upright on his perch, began to scream forth a voluble stream of words in
+      one unbroken flood, so fast that Muriel could hardly follow them. The bird
+      spoke in a thick and very harsh voice, and, what was more remarkable
+      still, with a distinct and extremely peculiar North Country accent.
+      &ldquo;In the nineteenth year of the reign of his most gracious majesty,
+      King Charles the Second,&rdquo; he blurted out, viciously, with an angry
+      look at the Frenchman, &ldquo;I, Nathaniel Cross, of the borough of
+      Sunderland, in the county of Doorham, in England, an able-bodied mariner,
+      then sailing the South Seas in the good bark Martyr Prince, of the Port of
+      Great Grimsby, whereof one Thomas Wells, gent., under God, was master&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, hush, hush!&rdquo; Muriel cried, unable to catch the parrot&rsquo;s
+      precious words through the emulous echo of the Frenchman&rsquo;s music.
+      &ldquo;Whereof one Thomas Wells, gent., under God, was master&mdash;go on,
+      Polly.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+&ldquo;Perruque blonde
+   Et collet noir,&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      the Frenchman repeated, with a half-offended voice, finishing his stanza.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But just as he stopped, Methuselah stopped too, and, throwing back his
+      head in the air with a triumphant look, stared hard at his vanquished and
+      silenced opponent out of those blinking gray eyes of his. &ldquo;I thought
+      I&rsquo;d be too much for you!&rdquo; he seemed to say, wrathfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whereof one Thomas Wells, gent., under God, was master,&rdquo;
+      Muriel suggested again, all agog with excitement. &ldquo;Go on, good bird!
+      Go on, pretty Polly.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Methuselah was evidently put off the scent now by the unseasonable
+      interruption. Instead of continuing, he threw back his head a second time
+      with a triumphant air and laughed aloud boisterously. &ldquo;Pretty Polly,&rdquo;
+      he cried. &ldquo;Pretty Polly wants a nut. Tu-Kila-Kila maroo! Pretty
+      Poll! Pretty Polly!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sing again, for Heaven&rsquo;s sake!&rdquo; Felix exclaimed, in a
+      profoundly agitated mood, explaining briefly to the Frenchman the full
+      significance of the words Methuselah had just begun to utter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Frenchman struck up his tune afresh to give the bird a start; but all
+      to no avail. Methuselah was evidently in no humor for talking just then.
+      He listened with a callous, uncritical air, bringing his white eyelids
+      down slowly and sleepily over his bleared gray eyes. Then he nodded his
+      head slowly. &ldquo;No use,&rdquo; the Frenchman murmured, pursing his
+      lips up gravely. &ldquo;The bird won&rsquo;t talk. It&rsquo;s going off to
+      sleep now. Methuselah gets visibly older every day, monsieur and
+      mademoiselle. You are only just in time to catch his last accents.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0023" id="link2HCH0023"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXIII. &mdash; A MESSAGE FROM THE DEAD.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Early next morning, as Felix lay still in his hut, dozing, and just
+      vaguely conscious of a buzz of a mosquito close to his ear, he was aroused
+      by a sudden loud cry outside&mdash;a cry that called his native name three
+      times, running: &ldquo;O King of the Rain, King of the Rain, King of the
+      Rain, awake! High time to be up! The King of the Birds sends you health
+      and greeting!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix rose at once; and his Shadow, rising before him, and unbolting the
+      loose wooden fastener of the door, went out in haste to see who called
+      beyond the white taboo-line of their sacred precincts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A native woman, tall, lithe, and handsome, stood there in the full light
+      of morning, beckoning. A strange glow of hatred gleamed in her large gray
+      eyes. Her shapely brown bosom heaved and panted heavily. Big beads
+      glistened moistly on her smooth, high brow. It was clear she had run all
+      the way in haste. She was deeply excited and full of eager anxiety.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, what do you want here so early, Ula?&rdquo; the Shadow asked,
+      in surprise&mdash;for it was indeed she. &ldquo;How have you slipped away,
+      as soon as the sun is risen, from the sacred hut of Tu-Kila-Kila?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ula&rsquo;s gray eyes flashed angry fire as she answered. &ldquo;He has
+      beaten me again,&rdquo; she cried, in revengeful tones; &ldquo;see the
+      weals on my back! See my arms and shoulders! He has drawn blood from my
+      wounds. He is the most hateful of gods. I should love to kill him.
+      Therefore I slipped away from him with the early dawn and came to consult
+      with his enemy, the King of the Birds, because I heard the words that the
+      Eyes of Tu-Kila-Kila, who pervade the world, report to their master. The
+      Eyes have told him that the King of the Rain, the Queen of the Clouds, and
+      the King of the Birds are plotting together in secret against
+      Tu-Kila-Kila. When I heard that, I was glad; I went to the King of the
+      Birds to warn him of his danger; and the King of the Birds, concerned for
+      your safety, has sent me in haste to ask his brother gods to go at once to
+      him.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a minute Felix was up and had called out Mali from the neighboring hut.
+      &ldquo;Tell Missy Queenie,&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;to come with me to see
+      the man-a-oui-oui! The man-a-oui-oui has sent me for us to come. She must
+      make great haste. He wants us immediately.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a word and a sign to Toko, Ula glided away stealthily, with the
+      cat-like tread of the native Polynesian woman, back to her hated husband.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix went out to the door and heliographed with his bright metal plate,
+      turned on the Frenchman&rsquo;s hill, &ldquo;What is it?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a moment the answer flashed back, word by word, &ldquo;Come quick, if
+      you want to hear. Methuselah is reciting!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A few seconds later Muriel emerged from her hut, and the two Europeans,
+      closely followed, as always, by their inseparable Shadows, took the
+      winding side-path that led through the jungle by a devious way, avoiding
+      the front of Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s temple, to the Frenchman&rsquo;s
+      cottage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They found M. Peyron very much excited, partly by Ula&rsquo;s news of
+      Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s attitude, but more still by Methuselah&rsquo;s
+      agitated condition. &ldquo;The whole night through, my dear friends,&rdquo;
+      he cried, seizing their hands, &ldquo;that bird has been chattering,
+      chattering, chattering. <i>Oh, mon Dieu, quel oiseau!</i> It seems as
+      though the words heard yesterday from mademoiselle had struck some lost
+      chord in the creature&rsquo;s memory. But he is also very feeble. I can
+      see that well. His garrulity is the garrulity of old age in its last
+      flickering moments. He mumbles and mutters. He chuckles to himself. If you
+      don&rsquo;t hear his message now and at once, it&rsquo;s my solemn
+      conviction you will never hear it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He led them out to the aviary, where Methuselah, in effect, was sitting on
+      his perch, most tremulous and woebegone. His feathers shuddered visibly;
+      he could no longer preen himself. &ldquo;Listen to what he says,&rdquo;
+      the Frenchman exclaimed, in a very serious voice. &ldquo;It is your last,
+      last chance. If the secret is ever to be unravelled at all, by Methuselah&rsquo;s
+      aid, now is, without doubt, the proper moment to unravel it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Muriel put out her hand and stroked the bird gently. &ldquo;Pretty Poll,&rdquo;
+      she said, soothingly, in a sympathetic voice. &ldquo;Pretty Poll! Poor
+      Poll! Was he ill! Was he suffering?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the sound of those familiar words, unheard so long till yesterday, the
+      parrot took her finger in his beak once more, and bit it with the
+      tenderness of his kind in their softer moments. Then he threw back his
+      head with a sort of mechanical twist, and screamed out at the top of his
+      voice, for the last time on earth, his mysterious message:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pretty Poll! Pretty Poll! God save the king! Confound the Duke of
+      York! Death to all arrant knaves and roundheads!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the nineteenth year of the reign of his most gracious majesty,
+      King Charles the Second, I, Nathaniel Cross, of the borough of Sunderland,
+      in the county of Doorham, in England, an able-bodied mariner, then sailing
+      the South Seas in the good bark Martyr Prince, of the Port of Great
+      Grimsby, whereof one Thomas Wells, gent., under God, was master, was, by
+      stress of weather, wrecked and cast away on the shores of this island,
+      called by its gentile inhabitants by the name of Boo Parry. In which
+      wreck, as it befell, Thomas Wells, gent., and his equipment were, by
+      divine disposition, killed and drowned, save and except three mariners,
+      whereof I am one, who in God&rsquo;s good providence swam safely through
+      an exceeding great flood of waves and landed at last on this island. There
+      my two companions, Owen Williams, of Swansea, in the parts of Wales, and
+      Lewis le Pickard, a French Hewgenott refugee, were at once, by the said
+      gentiles, cruelly entreated, and after great torture cooked and eaten at
+      the temple of their chief god, Too-Keela-Keela. But I, myself, having
+      through God&rsquo;s grace found favor in their eyes, was promoted to the
+      post which in their speech is called Korong, the nature of which this
+      bird, my mouthpiece, will hereafter, to your ears, more fully discover.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Having said so much, in a very jerky way, Methuselah paused, and blinked
+      his eyes wearily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What does he say?&rdquo; the Frenchman began, eager to know the
+      truth. But Felix, fearful lest any interruption might break the thread of
+      the bird&rsquo;s discourse and cheat them of the sequel, held up a warning
+      finger, and then laid it on his lips in mute injunction. Methuselah threw
+      back his head at that and laughed aloud. &ldquo;God save the king!&rdquo;
+      he cried again, in a still feebler way, &ldquo;and to hell with all
+      papists!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was strange how they all hung on the words of that unconscious
+      messenger from a dead and gone age, who himself knew nothing of the import
+      of the words he was uttering. Methuselah laughed at their earnestness,
+      shook his head once or twice, and seemed to think to himself. Then he
+      remembered afresh the point he had broken off at.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;More fully discover. For seven years have I now lived on this
+      island, never having seen or h&rsquo;ard Christian face or voice; and at
+      the end of that time, feeling my health feail, and being apprehensive lest
+      any of my fellow-countrymen should hereafter suffer the same fate as I
+      have done, I began to teach this parrot his message, a few words at a
+      time, impressing it duly and fully on his memory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Larn, then, O wayfarer, that the people of Boo Parry are most
+      arrant gentiles, heathens, and carribals. And this, as I discover, is the
+      nature and method of their vile faith. They hold that the gods are each
+      and several incarnate in some one particular human being. This human being
+      they worship and reverence with all ghostly respect as his incarnation.
+      And chiefly, above all, do they revere the great god Too-Keela-Keela,
+      whose representative (may the Lord in Heaven forgive me for the same) I
+      myself am at this present speaking. Having thus, for my sins, attained to
+      that impious honor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God save the king! Confound the Duke of York! To hell with all
+      papists!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is the fashion of this people to hold that their gods must
+      always be strong and lusty. For they argue to themselves thus: that the
+      continuance of the rain must needs depend upon the vigor and subtlety of
+      its Soul, the rain-god. So the continuance and fruitfulness of the trees
+      and plants which yield them food must needs depend upon the health of the
+      tree-god. And the life of the world, and the light of the sun, and the
+      well-being of all things that in them are, must depend upon the strength
+      and cunning of the high god of all, Too-Keela-Keela. Hence they take great
+      care and woorship of their gods, surrounding them with many rules which
+      they call Taboo, and restricting them as to what they shall eat, and what
+      drink, and wherewithal they shall seemly clothe themselves. For they think
+      that if the King of the Rain at&rsquo; anything that might cause the
+      colick, or like humor or distemper, the weather will thereafter be stormy
+      and tempestuous; but so long as the King of the Rain fares well and
+      retains his health, so long will the weather over their island of Boo
+      Parry be clear and prosperous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Furthermore, as I have larned from their theologians, being myself,
+      indeed, the greatest of their gods, it is evident that they may not let
+      any god die, lest that department of nature over which he presideth should
+      wither away and feail, as it were, with him. But reasonably no care that
+      mortal man can exercise will prevent the possibility of their god&mdash;seeing
+      he is but one of themselves&mdash;growing old and feeble and dying at
+      last. To prevent which calamity, these gentile folk have invented (as I
+      believe by the aid and device of Sathan) this horrid and most unnatural
+      practice. The man-god must be killed so soon as he showeth in body or mind
+      that his native powers are beginning to feail. And it is necessary that he
+      be killed, according to their faith, in this ensuing fashion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If the man-god were to die slowly by a death in the course of
+      nature, the ways of the world might be stopped altogether. Hence these
+      savages catch the soul of their god, as it were, ere it grow old and
+      feeble, and transfer it betimes, by a magic device, to a suitable
+      successor. And surely, they say, this suitable successor can be none other
+      than him that is able to take it from him. This, then, is their horrid
+      counsel and device&mdash;that each one of their gods should kill his
+      antecessor. In doing thus, he taketh the old god&rsquo;s life and soul,
+      which thereupon migrates and dwells within him. And by this tenure&mdash;may
+      Heaven be merciful to me, a sinner&mdash;do I, Nathaniel Cross, of the
+      county of Doorham, now hold this dignity of Too-Keela-Keela, having slain,
+      therefor, in just quarrel, my antecessor in the high godship.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he reached these words Methuselah paused, and choked in his throat
+      slightly. The mere mechanical effort of continuing the speech he had
+      learned by heart two hundred years before, and repeated so often since
+      that it had become part of his being, was now almost too much for him. The
+      Frenchman was right. They were only just in time. A few days later, and
+      the secret would have died with the bird that preserved it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0024" id="link2HCH0024"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXIV. &mdash; AN UNFINISHED TALE.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      For a minute or two Methuselah mumbled inarticulately to himself. Then, to
+      their intense discomfiture, he began once more: &ldquo;In the nineteenth
+      year of the reign of his most gracious majesty, King Charles the Second,
+      I, Nathaniel Cross&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, this will never do,&rdquo; Felix cried. &ldquo;We haven&rsquo;t
+      got yet to the secret at all. Muriel, do try to set him right. He must
+      waste no breath. We can&rsquo;t afford now to let him go all over it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Muriel stretched out her hand and soothed the bird gently as before.
+      &ldquo;Having slain, therefore, my predecessor in the high godship,&rdquo;
+      she suggested, in the same singsong voice as the parrot&rsquo;s.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To her immense relief, Methuselah took the hint with charming docility.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the high godship,&rdquo; he went on, mechanically, where he had
+      stopped. &ldquo;And this here is the manner whereby I obtained it. The
+      Too-Keela-Keela from time to time doth generally appoint any castaway
+      stranger that comes to the island to the post of Korong&mdash;that is to
+      say, an annual god or victim. For, as the year doth renew itself at each
+      change of seasons, so do these carribals in their gentilisme believe and
+      hold that the gods of the seasons&mdash;to wit, the King of the Rain, the
+      Queen of the Clouds, the Lord of Green Leaves, the King of Fruits, and
+      others&mdash;must needs be sleain and renewed at the diverse solstices.
+      Now, it so happened that I, on my arrival in the island, was appointed
+      Korong, and promoted to the post of King of the Rain, having a native
+      woman assigned me as Queen of the Clouds, with whom I might keep company.
+      This woman being, after her kind, enamored of me, and anxious to escape
+      her own fate, to be sleain by my side, did betray to me that secret which
+      they call in their tongue the Great Taboo, and which had been betrayed to
+      herself in turn by a native man, her former lover. For the men are
+      instructed in these things in the mysteries when they coom of age, but not
+      the women.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And the Great Taboo is this: No man can becoom a Too-Keela-Keela
+      unless he first sleay the man in whom the high god is incarnate for the
+      moment. But in order that he may sleay him, he must also himself be a full
+      Korong, only those persons who are already gods being capable for the
+      highest post in their hierarchy; even as with ourselves, none but he that
+      is a deacon may become a priest, and none but he that is a priest may be
+      made a bishop. For this reason, then, the Too-Keela-Keela prefers to
+      advance a stranger to the post of Korong, seeing that such a person will
+      not have been initiated in the mysteries of the island, and therefore will
+      not be aware of those sundry steps which must needs be taken of him that
+      would inherit the godship.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Furthermore, even a Korong can only obtain the highest rank of
+      Too-Keela-Keela if he order all things according to the forms and
+      ceremonies of the Taboo parfectly. For these gentiles are very careful of
+      the levitical parts of their religion, deriving the same, as it seems to
+      me, from the polity of the Hebrews, the fame of whose tabernacle must sure
+      have gone forth through the ends of the woorld, and the knowledge of whose
+      temple must have been yet more wide dispersed by Solomon, his ships, when
+      they came into these parts to fetch gold from Ophir. And the ceremony is,
+      that before any man may sleay the &lsquo;arthly tenement of
+      Too-Keela-Keela and inherit his soul, which is in very truth, as they do
+      think the god himself, he must needs fight with the person in whom
+      Too-Keela-Keela doth then dwell, and for this reason: If the holder of the
+      soul can defend himself in fight, then it is clear that his strength is
+      not one whit decayed, nor is his vigor feailing; nor yet has his assailant
+      been able to take his soul from him. But if the Korong in open fight do
+      sleay the person in whom Too-Keela-Keela dwells, he becometh at once a
+      Too-Keela-Keela himself&mdash;that is to say, in their tongue, the Lord of
+      Lords, because he hath taken the life of him that preceded him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yet so intricate is the theology and practice of these loathsome
+      savages, that not even now have I explained it in full to you, O
+      shipwrecked mariner, for your aid and protection. For a Korong, though it
+      be a part of his privilege to contend, if he will, with Too-Keela-Keela
+      for the high godship and princedom of this isle, may only do so at certain
+      appointed times, places, and seasons. Above all things, it is necessary
+      that he should first find out the hiding-place of the soul of
+      Too-Keela-Keela. For though the Too-Keela-Keela for the time that is, be
+      animated by the god, yet, for greater security, he doth not keep his soul
+      in his own body, but, being above all things the god of fruitfulness and
+      generation, who causes women to bear children, and the plant called taro
+      to bring forth its increase, he keepeth his soul in the great sacred tree
+      behind his temple, which is thus the Father of All Trees, and the chiefest
+      abode of the great god Too-Keela-Keela.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nor does Too-Keela-Keela&rsquo;s soul abide equally in every part
+      of this aforesaid tree; but in a certain bough of it, resembling a
+      mistletoe, which hath yellow leaves, and, being broken off, groweth ever
+      green and yellow afresh; which is the central mystery of all their
+      Sathanic religion. For in this very bough&mdash;easy to be discerned by
+      the eye among the green leaves of the tree&mdash;&rdquo; the bird paused
+      and faltered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Muriel leaned forward in an agony of excitement. &ldquo;Among the green
+      leaves of the tree&mdash;&rdquo; she went on soothing him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her voice seemed to give the parrot a fresh impulse to speak. &ldquo;&mdash;Is
+      contained, as it were,&rdquo; he continued, feebly, &ldquo;the divine
+      essence itself, the soul and life of Too-Keela-Keela. Whoever, then, being
+      a full Korong, breaks this off, hath thus possessed himself of the very
+      god in person. This, however, he must do by exceeding stealth; for
+      Too-Keela-Keela, or rather the man that bears that name, being the
+      guardian and defender of the great god, walks ever up and down, by day and
+      by night, in exceeding great cunning, armed with a spear and with a
+      hatchet of stone, around the root of the tree, watching jealously over the
+      branch which is, as he believes, his own soul and being. I, therefore,
+      being warned of the Taboo by the woman that was my consort, did craftily,
+      near the appointed time for my own death, creep out of my hut, and my
+      consort, having induced one of the wives of Too-Keela-Keela to make him
+      drunken with too much of that intoxicating drink which they do call kava,
+      did proceed&mdash;did proceed&mdash;did proceed&mdash;In the nineteenth
+      year of the reign of his most gracious majesty, King Charles the Second&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Muriel bent forward once more in an agony of suspense. &ldquo;Oh, go on,
+      good Poll!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;Go on. Remember it. Did proceed to&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The single syllable helped Methuselah&rsquo;s memory. &ldquo;&mdash;Did
+      proceed to stealthily pluck the bough, and, having shown the same to Fire
+      and Water, the guardians of the Taboo, did boldly challenge to single
+      combat the bodily tenement of the god, with spear and hatchet, provided
+      for me in accordance with ancient custom by Fire and Water. In which
+      combat, Heaven mercifully befriending me against my enemy, I did coom out
+      conqueror; and was thereupon proclaimed Too-Keela-Keela myself, with
+      ceremonies too many and barbarous to mention, lest I raise your gorge at
+      them. But that which is most important to tell you for your own guidance
+      and safety, O mariner, is this&mdash;that being the sole and only end I
+      have in imparting this history to so strange a messenger&mdash;that after
+      you have by craft plucked the sacred branch, and by force of arms
+      over-cootn Too-Keela-Keela, it is by all means needful, whether you will
+      or not, that submitting to the hateful and gentile custom of this people&mdash;of
+      this people&mdash;Pretty Poll! Pretty Poll! God save&mdash;God save the
+      king! Death to the nineteenth year of the reign of all arrant knaves and
+      roundheads.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He dropped his head on his breast, and blinked his white eyelids more
+      feebly than ever. His strength was failing him fast. The Soul of all dead
+      parrots was wearing out. M. Peyron, who had stood by all this time, not
+      knowing in any way what might be the value of the bird&rsquo;s
+      disclosures, came forward and stroked poor Methuselah with his caressing
+      hand. But Methuselah was incapable now of any further effort. He opened
+      his blind eyes sleepily for the last, last time, and stared around him
+      with a blank stare at the fading universe. &ldquo;God save the king!&rdquo;
+      he screamed aloud with a terrible gasp, true to his colors still. &ldquo;God
+      save the king, and to hell with all papists!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he fell off his perch, stone dead, on the ground. They were never to
+      hear the conclusion of that strange, quaint message from a forgotten age
+      to our more sceptical century.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix looked at Muriel, and Muriel looked at Felix. They could hardly
+      contain themselves with awe and surprise. The parrot&rsquo;s words were so
+      human, its speech was so real to them, that they felt as though the
+      English Tu-Kila-Kila of two hundred years back had really and truly been
+      speaking to them from that perch; it was a human creature indeed that lay
+      dead before them. Felix raised the warm body from the ground with positive
+      reverence. &ldquo;We will bury it decently,&rdquo; he said in French,
+      turning to M. Peyron. &ldquo;He was a plucky bird, indeed, and he has
+      carried out his master&rsquo;s intentions nobly.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As they spoke, a little rustling in the jungle hard by attracted their
+      attention. Felix turned to look. A stealthy brown figure glided away in
+      silence through the tangled brushwood. M. Peyron started. &ldquo;We are
+      observed, monsieur,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;We must look out for squalls!
+      It is one of the Eyes of Tu-Kila-Kila!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let him do his worst!&rdquo; Felix answered. &ldquo;We know his
+      secret now, and can protect ourselves against him. Let us return to the
+      shade, monsieur, and talk this all over. Methuselah has indeed given us
+      something to-day very serious to think about.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0025" id="link2HCH0025"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXV. &mdash; TU-KILA-KILA STRIKES.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      And yet, when all was said and done, knowledge of Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s
+      secret didn&rsquo;t seem to bring Felix and Muriel much nearer a solution
+      of their own great problems than they had been from the beginning. In
+      spite of all Methuselah had told them, they were as far off as ever from
+      securing their escape, or even from the chance of sighting an English
+      steamer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This last was still the main hope and expectation of all three Europeans.
+      M. Peyron, who was a bit of a mathematician, had accurately calculated the
+      time, from what Felix told him, when the Australasian would pass again on
+      her next homeward voyage; and, when that time arrived, it was their united
+      intention to watch night and day for the faintest glimmer of her lights,
+      or the faintest wreath of her smoke on the far eastern horizon. They had
+      ventured to confide their design to all three of their Shadows; and the
+      Shadows, attached by the kindness to which they were so little accustomed
+      among their own people, had in every case agreed to assist them with the
+      canoe, if occasion served them. So for a time the two doomed victims
+      subsided into their accustomed calm of mingled hope and despair, waiting
+      patiently for the expected arrival of the much-longed-for Australasian.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If she took that course once, why not a second time? And if ever she hove
+      in sight, might they not hope, after all, to signal to her with their
+      rudely constructed heliograph, and stop her?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As for Methuselah&rsquo;s secret, there was only one way, Felix thought,
+      in which it could now prove of any use to them. When the actual day of
+      their doom drew nigh, he might, perhaps, be tempted to try the fate which
+      Nathaniel Cross, of Sunderland, had successfully courted. That might gain
+      them at least a little respite. Though even so he hardly knew what good it
+      could do him to be elevated for a while into the chief god of the island.
+      It might not even avail him to save Muriel&rsquo;s life; for he did not
+      doubt that when the awful day itself had actually come the natives would
+      do their best to kill her in spite of him, unless he anticipated them by
+      fulfilling his own terrible, yet merciful, promise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Week after week went by&mdash;month after month passed&mdash;and the date
+      when the Australasian might reasonably be expected to reappear drew nearer
+      and nearer. They waited and trembled. At last, a few days before the time
+      M. Peyron had calculated, as Felix was sitting under the big shady tree in
+      his garden one morning, while Muriel, now worn out with hope deferred, lay
+      within her hut alone with Mali, a sound of tom-toms and beaten palms was
+      heard on the hill-path. The natives around fell on their faces or fled. It
+      announced the speedy approach of Tu-Kila-Kila.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By this time both the castaways had grown comparatively accustomed to that
+      hideous noise, and to the hateful presence which it preceded and heralded.
+      A dozen temple attendants tripped on either side down the hillpath, to
+      guard him, clapping their hands in a barbaric measure as they went; Fire
+      and Water, in the midst, supported and flanked the divine umbrella. Felix
+      rose from his seat with very little ceremony, indeed, as the great god
+      crossed the white taboo-line of his precincts, followed only beyond the
+      limit by Fire and Water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila was in his most insolent vein. He glanced around with a
+      horrid light of triumph dancing visibly in his eyes. It was clear he had
+      come, intent upon some grand theatrical <i>coup</i>. He meant to take the
+      white-faced stranger by surprise this time. &ldquo;Good-morning, O King of
+      the Rain,&rdquo; he exclaimed, in a loud voice and with boisterous
+      familiarity. &ldquo;How do you like your outlook now? Things are getting
+      on. Things are getting on. The end of your rule is drawing very near, isn&rsquo;t
+      it? Before long I must make the seasons change. I must make my sun turn. I
+      must twist round my sky. And then, I shall need a new Korong instead of
+      you, O pale-faced one!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix looked back at him without moving a muscle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am well,&rdquo; he answered shortly, restraining his anger.
+      &ldquo;The year turns round whether you will or not. You are right that
+      the sun will soon begin to move southward on its path again. But many
+      things may happen to all of us meanwhile. <i>I</i> am not afraid of you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he spoke, he drew his knife, and opened the blade, unostentatiously,
+      but firmly. If the worst were really coming now, sooner than he expected,
+      he would at least not forget his promise to Muriel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila smiled a hateful and ominous smile. &ldquo;I am a great god,&rdquo;
+      he said, calmly, striking an attitude as was his wont. &ldquo;Hear how my
+      people clap their hands in my honor! I order all things. I dispose the
+      course of nature in heaven and earth. If I look at a cocoa-nut tree, it
+      dies; if I glance at a bread-fruit, it withers away. We will see before
+      long whether or not you are afraid of me. Meanwhile, O Korong, I have come
+      to claim my dues at your hands. Prepare for your fate. To-morrow the Queen
+      of the Clouds must be sealed my bride. Fetch her out, that I may speak
+      with her. I have come to tell her so.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a thunderbolt from a clear sky, and it fell with terrible effect on
+      Felix. For a moment the knife trembled in his grasp with an almost
+      irresistible impulse. He could hardly restrain himself, as he heard those
+      horrible, incredible words, and saw the loathsome smirk on the speaker&rsquo;s
+      face by which they were accompanied, from leaping then and there at the
+      savage&rsquo;s throat, and plunging his blade to the haft into the vile
+      creature&rsquo;s body. But by a violent effort he mastered his indignation
+      and wrath for the present. Planting himself full in front of Tu-Kila-Kila,
+      and blocking the way to the door of that sacred English girl&rsquo;s hut&mdash;oh,
+      how horrible it was to him even to think of her purity being contaminated
+      by the vile neighborhood, for one minute, of that loathsome monster! He
+      looked full into the wretch&rsquo;s face, and answered very distinctly, in
+      low, slow tones, &ldquo;If you dare to take one step toward the place
+      where that lady now rests, if you dare to move your foot one inch nearer,
+      if you dare to ask to see her face again, I will plunge the knife
+      hilt-deep into your vile heart, and kill you where you stand without one
+      second&rsquo;s deliberation. Now you hear my words and you know what I
+      mean. My weapon is keener and fiercer than any you Polynesians ever saw.
+      Repeat those words once more, and by all that&rsquo;s true and holy,
+      before they&rsquo;re out of your mouth I leap upon you and stab you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila drew back in sudden surprise. He was unaccustomed to be so
+      bearded in his own sacred island. &ldquo;Well, I shall claim her
+      to-morrow,&rdquo; he faltered out, taken aback by Felix&rsquo;s unexpected
+      energy. He paused for a second, then he went on more slowly: &ldquo;To-morrow
+      I will come with all my people to claim my bride. This afternoon they will
+      bring her mats of grass and necklets of nautilus shell to deck her for her
+      wedding, as becomes Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s chosen one. The young maids of
+      Boupari will adorn her for her lord, in the accustomed dress of
+      Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s wives. They will clap their hands; they will sing the
+      marriage song. Then early in the morning I will come to fetch her&mdash;and
+      woe to him who strives to prevent me!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix looked at him long, with a fixed and dogged look.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What has made you think of this devilry?&rdquo; he asked at last,
+      still grasping his knife hard, and half undecided whether or not to use
+      it. &ldquo;You have invented all these ideas. You have no claim, even in
+      the horrid customs of your savage country, to demand such a sacrifice.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila laughed loud, a laugh of triumphant and discordant merriment.
+      &ldquo;Ha, ha!&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;you do not understand our customs,
+      and will you teach <i>me</i>, the very high god, the guardian of the laws
+      and practices of Boupari? You know nothing; you are as a little child. I
+      am absolute wisdom. With every Korong, this is always our rule. Till the
+      moon is full, on the last month before we offer up the sacrifice, the
+      Queen of the Clouds dwells apart with her Shadow in her own new temple. So
+      our fathers decreed it. But at the full of the moon, when the day has
+      come, the usage is that Tu-Kila-Kila, the very high god, confers upon her
+      the honor of making her his bride. It is a mighty honor. The feast is
+      great. Blood flows like water. For seven days and nights, then, she lives
+      with Tu-Kila-Kila in his sacred abode, the threshold of Heaven; she eats
+      of human flesh; she tastes human blood; she drinks abundantly of the
+      divine kava. At the end of that time, in accordance with the custom of our
+      fathers, those great dead gods, Tu-Kila-Kila performs the high act of
+      sacrifice. He puts on his mask of the face of a shark, for he is holy and
+      cruel; he brings forth the Queen of the Clouds before the eyes of all his
+      people, attired in her wedding robes, and made drunk with kava. Then he
+      gashes her with knives; he offers her up to Heaven that accepted her; and
+      the King of the Rain he offers after her; and all the people eat of their
+      flesh, Korong! and drink of their blood, so that the body of gods and
+      goddesses may dwell within all of them. And when all is done, the high god
+      chooses a new king and queen at his will (for he is a mighty god), who
+      rule for six moons more, and then are offered up, at the end, in like
+      fashion.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he spoke, the ferocious light that gleamed in the savage&rsquo;s eye
+      made Felix positively mad with anger. But he answered nothing directly.
+      &ldquo;Is this so?&rdquo; he asked, turning for confirmation to Fire and
+      Water. &ldquo;Is it the custom of Boupari that Tu-Kila-Kila should wed the
+      Queen of the Clouds seven days before the date appointed for her
+      sacrifice?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The King of Fire and the King of Water, tried guardians of the etiquette
+      of Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s court, made answer at once with one accord,
+      &ldquo;It is so, O King of the Rain. Your lips have said it. Tu-Kila-Kila
+      speaks the solemn truth. He is a very great god. Such is the custom of
+      Boupari.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila laughed his triumph in harsh, savage outbursts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Felix drew back for a second, irresolute. At last he stood face to
+      face with the absolute need for immediate action. Now was almost the
+      moment when he must redeem his terrible promise to Muriel. And yet, even
+      so, there was still one chance of life, one respite left. The mystic
+      yellow bough on the sacred banyan! the Great Taboo! the wager of battle
+      with Tu-Kila-Kila! Quick as lightning it all came up in his excited brain.
+      Time after time, since he heard Methuselah&rsquo;s strange message from
+      the grave, had he passed Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s temple enclosure and looked
+      up with vague awe at that sacred parasite that grew so conspicuously in a
+      fork of the branches. It was easy to secure it, if no man guarded. There
+      still remained one night. In that one short night he must do his best&mdash;and
+      worst. If all then failed, he must die himself with Muriel!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For two seconds he hesitated. It was hateful even to temporize with so
+      hideous a proposition. But for Muriel&rsquo;s sake, for her dear life&rsquo;s
+      sake, he must meet these savages with guile for guile. &ldquo;If it be,
+      indeed, the custom of Boupari,&rdquo; he answered back, with pale and
+      trembling lips, &ldquo;and if I, one man, am powerless to prevent it, I
+      will give your message, myself, to the Queen of the Clouds, and you may
+      send, as you say, your wedding decorations. But come what will&mdash;mark
+      this&mdash;you shall not see her yourself to-day. You shall not speak to
+      her. There I draw a line&mdash;so, with my stick in the dust, if you try
+      to advance one step beyond, I stab you to the heart. Wait till to-morrow
+      to take your prey. Give me one more night. Great god as you are, if you
+      are wise, you will not drive an angry man to utter desperation.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila looked with a suspicious side glance at the gleaming steel
+      blade Felix still fingered tremulously. Though Boupari was one of those
+      rare and isolated small islands unvisited as yet by European trade, he
+      had, nevertheless, heard enough of the sailing gods to know that their
+      skill was deep and their weapons very dangerous. It would be foolish to
+      provoke this man to wrath too soon. To-morrow, when taboo was removed, and
+      all was free license, he would come when he willed and take his bride,
+      backed up by the full force of his assembled people. Meanwhile, why
+      provoke a brother god too far? After all, in a little more than a week
+      from now the pale-faced Korong would be eaten and digested!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well,&rdquo; he said, sulkily, but still with the sullen light
+      of revenge gleaming bright in his eye. &ldquo;Take my message to the
+      queen. You may be my herald. Tell her what honor is in store for her&mdash;to
+      be first the wife and then the meat of Tu-Kila-Kila! She is a very fair
+      woman. I like her well. I have longed for her for months. Tomorrow, at the
+      early dawn, by the break of day, I will come with all my people and take
+      her home by main force to me.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked at Felix and scowled, an angry scowl of revenge. Then, as he
+      turned and walked away, under cover of the great umbrella, with its
+      dangling pendants on either side, the temple attendants clapped their
+      hands in unison. Fire and Water marched slow and held the umbrella over
+      him. As he disappeared in the distance, and the sound of his tom-toms grew
+      dim on the hills, Toko, the Shadow, who had lain flat, trembling, on his
+      face in the hut while the god was speaking, came out and looked anxiously
+      and fearfully after him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The time is ripe,&rdquo; he said, in a very low voice to Felix.
+      &ldquo;A Korong may strike. All the people of Boupari murmur among
+      themselves. They say this fellow has held the spirit of Tu-Kila-Kila
+      within himself too long. He waxes insolent. They think it is high time the
+      great God of Heaven should find before long some other fleshly tabernacle.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0026" id="link2HCH0026"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXVI. &mdash; A RASH RESOLVE.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The rest of that day was a time of profound and intense anxiety. Felix and
+      Muriel remained alone in their huts, absorbed in plans of escape, but
+      messengers of many sorts from chiefs and gods kept continually coming to
+      them. The natives evidently regarded it as a period of preparation. The
+      Eyes of Tu-Kila-Kila surrounded their precinct; yet Felix couldn&rsquo;t
+      help noticing that they seemed in many ways less watchful than of old, and
+      that they whispered and conferred very much in a mysterious fashion with
+      the people of the village. More than once Toko shook his head, sagely,
+      &ldquo;If only any one dared break the Great Taboo,&rdquo; he said, with
+      some terror on his face, &ldquo;our people would be glad. It would greatly
+      please them. They are tired of this Tu-Kila-Kila. He has held the god in
+      his breast far, far too long. They would willingly see some other in place
+      of him.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before noon, the young girls of the village, bringing native mats and huge
+      strings of nautilus shells, trooped up to the hut, like bridesmaids, with
+      flowers in their hands, to deck Muriel for her approaching wedding. Before
+      them they carried quantities of red and brown tappa-cloth and very fine
+      net-work, the dowry to be presented by the royal bride to her divine
+      husband. Within the hut, they decked out the Queen of the Clouds with
+      garlands of flowers and necklets of shells, in solemn native fashion,
+      bewailing her fate all the time to a measured dirge in their own language.
+      Muriel could see that their sympathy, though partly conventional, was
+      largely real as well. Many of the young girls seized her hand convulsively
+      from time to time, and kissed it with genuine feeling. The gentle young
+      English woman had won their savage hearts by her purity and innocence.
+      &ldquo;Poor thing, poor thing,&rdquo; they said, stroking her hand
+      tenderly. &ldquo;She is too good for Korong! Too good for Tu-Kila-Kila! If
+      only we knew the Great Taboo like the men, we would tell her everything.
+      She is too good to die. We are sorry she is to be sacrificed!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But when all their preparations were finished, the chief among them raised
+      a calabash with a little scented oil in it, and poured a few drops
+      solemnly on Muriel&rsquo;s head. &ldquo;Oh, great god!&rdquo; she said, in
+      her own tongue, &ldquo;we offer this sacrifice, a goddess herself, to you.
+      We obey your words. You are very holy. We will each of us eat a portion of
+      her flesh at your feast. So give us good crops, strong health, many
+      children!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What does she say?&rdquo; Muriel asked, pale and awestruck, of
+      Mali.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mali translated the words with perfect <i>sang-froid</i>. At that awful
+      sound Muriel drew back, chill and cold to the marrow. How inconceivable
+      was the state of mind of these terrible people! They were really sorry for
+      her; they kissed her hand with fervor; and yet they deliberately and
+      solemnly proposed to eat her!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Toward evening the young girls at last retired, in regular order, to the
+      clapping of hands, and Felix was left alone with Muriel and the Shadows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Already he had explained to Muriel what he intended to do; and Muriel,
+      half dazed with terror and paralyzed by these awful preparations,
+      consented passively. &ldquo;But how if you never come back, Felix?&rdquo;
+      she cried at last, clinging to him passionately.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix looked at her with a fixed look. &ldquo;I have thought of that,&rdquo;
+      he said. &ldquo;M. Peyron, to whom I sent a message by flashes, has helped
+      me in my difficulty. This bowl has poison in it. Peyron sent it to me
+      to-day. He prepared it himself from the root of the kava bean. If by
+      sunrise to-morrow you have heard no news, drink it off at once. It will
+      instantly kill you. You shall <i>not</i> fall alive into that creature&rsquo;s
+      clutches.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By slow degrees the evening wore on, and night approached&mdash;the last
+      night that remained to them. Felix had decided to make his attempt about
+      one in the morning. The moon was nearly full now, and there would be
+      plenty of light. Supposing he succeeded, if they gained nothing else, they
+      would gain at least a day or two&rsquo;s respite.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As dusk set in, and they sat by the door of the hut, they were all
+      surprised to see Ula approach the precinct stealthily through the jungle,
+      accompanied by two of Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s Eyes, yet apparently on some
+      strange and friendly message. She beckoned imperiously with one finger to
+      Toko to cross the line. The Shadow rose, and without one word of
+      explanation went out to speak to her. The woman gave her message in short,
+      sharp sentences. &ldquo;We have found out all,&rdquo; she said, breathing
+      hard. &ldquo;Fire and Water have learned it. But Tu-Kila-Kila himself
+      knows nothing. We have found out that the King of the Rain has discovered
+      the secret of the Great Taboo. He heard it from the Soul of all dead
+      parrots. Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s Eyes saw, and learned, and understood. But
+      they said nothing to Tu-Kila-Kila. For my counsel was wise; I planned that
+      they should not, with Fire and Water. Fire and Water and all the people of
+      Boupari think, with me, the time has come that there should arise among us
+      a new Tu-Kila-Kila. This one let his blood fall out upon the dust of the
+      ground. His luck has gone. We have need of another.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then for what have you come?&rdquo; Toko asked, all awestruck. It
+      was terrible to him for a woman to meddle in such high matters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have come,&rdquo; Ula answered, laying her hand on his arm, and
+      holding her face close to his with profound solemnity&mdash;&ldquo;I have
+      come to say to the King of the Rain, &lsquo;Whatever you do, that do
+      quickly.&rsquo; To-night I will engage to keep Tu-Kila-Kila in his temple.
+      He shall see nothing. He shall hear nothing. I know not the Great Taboo;
+      but I know from him this much&mdash;that if by wile or guile I keep him
+      alone in his temple to-night, the King of the Rain may fight with him in
+      single combat; and if the King of the Rain conquers in the battle, he
+      becomes himself the home of the great deity.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She nodded thrice, with her hands on her forehead, and withdrew as
+      stealthily as she had come through the jungle. The Eyes of Tu-Kila-Kila,
+      falling into line, remained behind, and kept watch upon the huts with the
+      closest apparent scrutiny.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      More than ever they were hemmed in by mystery on mystery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Shadow went back and reported to Felix. Felix, turning it over in his
+      own mind, wondered and debated. Was this true, or a trap to lure him to
+      destruction?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the night wore on, and the hour drew nigh, Muriel sat beside her friend
+      and lover, in blank despair and agony. How could she ever allow him to
+      leave her now? How could she venture to remain alone with Mali in her hut
+      in this last extremity? It was awful to be so girt with mysterious
+      enemies. &ldquo;I must go with you, Felix! I must go, too!&rdquo; she
+      cried over and over again. &ldquo;I daren&rsquo;t remain behind with all
+      these awful men. And then, if he kills either of us, he will kill us at
+      least both together.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Felix knew he might do nothing of the sort. A more terrible chance was
+      still in reserve. He might spare Muriel. And against that awful
+      possibility he felt it his duty now to guard at all hazard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, Muriel,&rdquo; he said, kissing her, and holding her pale hand,
+      &ldquo;I must go alone. You can&rsquo;t come with me. If I return, we will
+      have gained at least a respite, till the Australasian may turn up. If I
+      don&rsquo;t, you will at any rate have strength of mind left to swallow
+      the poison, before Tu-Kila-Kila comes to claim you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hour after hour passed by slowly, and Felix and the Shadow watched the
+      stars at the door, to know when the hour for the attempt had arrived. The
+      eyes of Tu-Kila-Kila, peering silent from just beyond the line, saw them
+      watching all the time, but gave no sign or token of disapproval. With
+      heads bent low, and tangled hair about their faces, they stood like
+      statues, watching, watching sullenly. Were they only waiting till he
+      moved, Felix wondered; and would they then hasten off by short routes
+      through the jungle to warn their master of the impending conflict?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last the hour came when Felix felt sure there was the greatest chance
+      of Tu-Kila-Kila sleeping soundly in his hut, and forgetting the defence of
+      the sacred bough on the holy banyan-tree. He rose from his seat with a
+      gesture for silence, and moved forward to Muriel. The poor girl flung
+      herself, all tears, into his arms. &ldquo;Oh, Felix, Felix,&rdquo; she
+      cried, &ldquo;redeem your promise now! Kill us both here together, and
+      then, at least, I shall never be separated from you! It wouldn&rsquo;t be
+      wrong! It can&rsquo;t be wrong! We would surely be forgiven if we did it
+      only to escape falling into the hands of these terrible savages!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix clasped her to his bosom with a faltering heart. &ldquo;No, Muriel,&rdquo;
+      he said, slowly. &ldquo;Not yet. Not yet. I must leave no opening on earth
+      untried by which I can possibly or conceivably save you. It&rsquo;s as
+      hard for me to leave you here alone as for you to be left. But for your
+      own dear sake, I must steel myself. I must do it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He kissed her many times over. He wiped away her tears. Then, with a
+      gentle movement, he untwined her clasping arms. &ldquo;You must let me go,
+      my own darling,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;You must let me go, without
+      crossing the border. If you pass beyond the taboo-line to-night, Heaven
+      only knows what, perhaps, may happen to you. We must give these people no
+      handle of offence. Good-night, Muriel, my own heart&rsquo;s wife; and if I
+      never come back, then good-by forever.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She clung to his arm still. He disentangled himself, gently. The Shadow
+      rose at the same moment, and followed in silence to the open door. Muriel
+      rushed after them, wildly. &ldquo;Oh, Felix, Felix, come back,&rdquo; she
+      cried, bursting into wild floods of hot, fierce tears. &ldquo;Come back
+      and let me die with you! Let me die! Let me die with you!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix crossed the white line without one word of reply, and went forth
+      into the night, half unmanned by this effort. Muriel sank, where she
+      stood, into Mali&rsquo;s arms. The girl caught her and supported her. But
+      before she had fainted quite away, Muriel had time vaguely to see and note
+      one significant fact. The Eyes of Tu-Kila-Kila, who stood watching the
+      huts with lynx-like care, nodded twice to Toko, the Shadow, as he passed
+      between them; then they stealthily turned and dogged the two men&rsquo;s
+      footsteps afar off in the jungle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Muriel was left by herself in the hut, face to face with Mali.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let us pray, Mali,&rdquo; she cried, seizing her Shadow&rsquo;s
+      arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Mali, moved suddenly by some half-obliterated impulse, exclaimed in
+      concert, in a terrified voice, &ldquo;Let us pray to Methodist God in
+      heaven!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For her life, too, hung on the issue of that rash endeavor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0027" id="link2HCH0027"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXVII. &mdash; A STRANGE ALLY.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      In Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s temple-hut, meanwhile, the jealous, revengeful
+      god, enshrined among his skeletons, was having in his turn an anxious and
+      doubtful time of it. Ever since his sacred blood had stained the dust of
+      earth by the Frenchman&rsquo;s cottage and in his own temple,
+      Tu-Kila-Kila, for all his bluster, had been deeply stirred and terrified
+      in his inmost soul by that unlucky portent. A savage, even if he be a god,
+      is always superstitious. Could it be that his own time was, indeed,
+      drawing nigh? That he, who had remorselessly killed and eaten so many
+      hundreds of human victims, was himself to fall a prey to some more
+      successful competitor? Had the white-faced stranger, the King of the Rain,
+      really learned the secrets of the Great Taboo from the Soul of all dead
+      parrots? Did that mysterious bird speak the tongue of these new
+      fire-bearing Korongs, whose doom was fixed for the approaching solstice?
+      Tu-Kila-Kila wondered and doubted. His suspicions were keen, and deeply
+      aroused. Late that night he still lurked by the sacred banyan-tree, and
+      when at last he retired to his own inner temple, white with the grinning
+      skulls of the victims he had devoured, it was with strict injunctions to
+      Fire and Water, and to his Eyes that watched there, to bring him word at
+      once of any projected aggression on the part of the stranger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Within the temple-hut, however, Ula awaited him. That was a pleasant
+      change. The beautiful, supple, satin-skinned Polynesian looked more
+      beautiful and more treacherous than ever that fateful evening. Her great
+      brown limbs, smooth and glossy as pearl, were set off by a narrow girdle
+      or waistband of green and scarlet leaves, twined spirally around her.
+      Armlets of nautilus shell threw up the dainty plumpness of her soft, round
+      forearm. A garland hung festooned across one shapely shoulder; her bosom
+      was bare or but half hidden by the crimson hibiscus that nestled
+      voluptuously upon it. As Tu-Kila-Kila entered, she lifted her large eyes,
+      and, smiling, showed two even rows of pearly white teeth. &ldquo;My master
+      has come!&rdquo; she cried, holding up both lissome arms with a gesture to
+      welcome him. &ldquo;The great god relaxes his care of the world for a
+      while. All goes on well. He leaves his sun to sleep and his stars to
+      shine, and he retires to rest on the unworthy bosom of her, his mate, his
+      meat, that is honored to love him.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila was scarcely just then in a mood for dalliance. &ldquo;The
+      Queen of the Clouds comes hither to-morrow,&rdquo; he answered, casting a
+      somewhat contemptuous glance at Ula&rsquo;s more dusky and solid charms.
+      &ldquo;I go to seek her with the wedding gifts early in the morning. For a
+      week she shall be mine. And after that&mdash;&rdquo; he lifted his
+      tomahawk and brought it down on a huge block of wood significantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ula smiled once more, that deep, treacherous smile of hers, and showed her
+      white teeth even deeper than ever. &ldquo;If my lord, the great god, rises
+      so early to-morrow,&rdquo; she said, sidling up toward him voluptuously,
+      &ldquo;to seek one more bride for his sacred temple, all the more reason
+      he should take his rest and sleep soundly to-night. Is he not a god? Are
+      not his limbs tired? Does he not need divine silence and slumber?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila pouted. &ldquo;I could sleep more soundly,&rdquo; he said,
+      with a snort, &ldquo;if I knew what my enemy, the Korong, is doing. I have
+      set my Eyes to watch him, yet I do not feel secure. They are not to be
+      trusted. I shall be happier far when I have killed and eaten him.&rdquo;
+      He passed his hand across his bosom with a reflective air. You have a
+      great sense of security toward your enemy, no doubt, when you know that he
+      slumbers, well digested, within you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ula raised herself on her elbow, and gazed snake-like into his face,
+      &ldquo;My lord&rsquo;s Eyes are everywhere,&rdquo; she said, reverently,
+      with every mark of respect. &ldquo;He sees and knows all things. Who can
+      hide anything on earth from his face? Even when he is asleep, his Eyes
+      watch well for him. Then why should the great god, the Measurer of Heaven
+      and Earth, the King of Men, fear a white-faced stranger? To-morrow the
+      Queen of the Clouds will be yours, and the stranger will be abased: ha,
+      ha, he will grieve at it! To-night, Fire and Water keep guard and watch
+      over you. Whoever would hurt you must pass through Fire and Water before
+      he reach your door. Fire would burn, Water would drown. This is a Great
+      Taboo. No stranger dare face it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila lifted himself up in his thrasonic mood. &ldquo;If he did,&rdquo;
+      he cried, swelling himself, &ldquo;I would shrivel him to ashes with one
+      flash of my eyes. I would scorch him to a cinder with one stroke of my
+      lightning.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ula smiled again, a well-satisfied smile. She was working her man up.
+      &ldquo;Tu-Kila-Kila is great,&rdquo; she repeated, slowly. &ldquo;All
+      earth obeys him. All heaven fears him.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The savage took her hand with a doubtful air. &ldquo;And yet,&rdquo; he
+      said, toying with it, half irresolute, &ldquo;when I went to the
+      white-faced stranger&rsquo;s hut this morning, he did not speak fair; he
+      answered me insolently. His words were bold. He talked to me as one talks
+      to a man, not to a great god. Ula, I wonder if he knows my secret?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ula started back in well-affected horror. &ldquo;A white-faced stranger
+      from the sun know your secret, O great king!&rdquo; she cried, hiding her
+      face in a square of cloth. &ldquo;See me beat my breast! Impossible!
+      Impossible! No one of your subjects would dare to tell him so great a
+      taboo. It would be rank blasphemy. If they did, your anger would utterly
+      consume them!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is true,&rdquo; Tu-Kila-Kila said, practically, &ldquo;but I
+      might not discover it. I am a very great god. My Eyes are everywhere. No
+      corner of the world is hid from my gaze. All the concerns of heaven and
+      earth are my care, And, therefore; sometimes, I overlook some detail.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No man alive would dare to tell the Great Taboo!&rdquo; Ula
+      repeated, confidently. &ldquo;Why, even I myself, who am the most favored
+      of your wives, and who am permitted to bask in the light of your presence&mdash;even
+      I, Ula&mdash;I do not know it. How much less, then, the spirit from the
+      sun, the sailing god, the white-faced stranger!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila pursed up his brow and looked preternaturally wise, as the
+      savage loves to do. &ldquo;But the parrot,&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;the
+      Soul of all dead parrots! <i>He</i> knew the secret, they say:&mdash;I
+      taught it him myself in an ancient day, many, many years ago&mdash;when no
+      man now living was born, save only I&mdash;in another incarnation&mdash;and
+      <i>he</i> may have told it. For the strangers, they say, speak the
+      language of birds; and in the language of birds did I tell the Great Taboo
+      to him.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ula pooh-poohed the mighty man-god&rsquo;s fears. &ldquo;No, no,&rdquo;
+      she cried, with confidence; &ldquo;he can never have told them. If he had,
+      would not your Eyes that watch ever for all that happens on heaven or
+      earth, have straightway reported it to you? The parrot died without
+      yielding up the tale. Were it otherwise, Toko, who loves and worships you,
+      would surely have told me.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man-god puckered his brows slightly, as if he liked not the security.
+      &ldquo;Well, somehow, Ula,&rdquo; he said, feeling her soft brown arms
+      with his divine hand, slowly, &ldquo;I have always had my doubts since
+      that day the Soul of all dead parrots bit me. A vicious bird! What did he
+      mean by his bite?&rdquo; He lowered his voice and looked at her fixedly.
+      &ldquo;Did not his spilling my blood portend,&rdquo; he asked, with a
+      shudder of fear, &ldquo;that through that ill-omened bird I, who was once
+      Lavita, should cease to be Tu-Kila-Kila?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ula smiled contentedly again. To say the truth, that was precisely the
+      interpretation she herself had put on that terrific omen. The parrot had
+      spilled Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s sacred blood upon the soil of earth.
+      According to her simple natural philosophy, that was a certain sign that
+      through the parrot&rsquo;s instrumentality Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s life would
+      be forfeited to the great eternal earth-spirit. Or, rather, the
+      earth-spirit would claim the blood of the man Lavita, in whose body it
+      dwelt, and would itself migrate to some new earthly tabernacle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But for all that, she dissembled. &ldquo;Great god,&rdquo; she cried,
+      smiling, a benign smile, &ldquo;you are tired! You are thirsty! Care for
+      heaven and earth has wearied you out. You feel the fatigue of upholding
+      the sun in heaven. Your arms must ache. Your thews must give under you.
+      Drink of the soul-inspiring juice of the kava! My hands have prepared the
+      divine cup. For Tu-Kila-Kila did I make it&mdash;fresh, pure,
+      invigorating!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She held the bowl to his lips with an enticing smile. Tu-Kila-Kila
+      hesitated and glanced around him suspiciously. &ldquo;What if the
+      white-faced stranger should come to-night?&rdquo; he whispered, hoarsely.
+      &ldquo;He may have discovered the Great Taboo, after all. Who can tell the
+      ways of the world, how they come about? My people are so treacherous. Some
+      traitor may have betrayed it to him.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Impossible,&rdquo; the beautiful, snake-like woman answered, with a
+      strong gesture of natural dissent. &ldquo;And even if he came, would not
+      kava, the divine, inspiriting drink of the gods, in which dwell the
+      embodied souls of our fathers&mdash;would not kava make you more vigorous,
+      strong for the fight? Would it not course through your limbs like fire?
+      Would it not pour into your soul the divine, abiding strength of your
+      mighty mother, the eternal earth-spirit?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A little,&rdquo; Tu-Kila-Kila said, yielding, &ldquo;but not too
+      much. Too much would stupefy me. When the spirits, that the kava-tree
+      sucks up from the earth, are too strong within us, they overpower our own
+      strength, so that even I, the high god&mdash;even I can do nothing.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ula held the bowl to his lips, and enticed him to drink with her beautiful
+      eyes. &ldquo;A deep draught, O supporter of the sun in heaven,&rdquo; she
+      cried, pressing his arm tenderly. &ldquo;Am I not Ula? Did I not brew it
+      for you? Am I not the chief and most favored among your women? I will sit
+      at the door. I will watch all night. I will not close an eye. Not a
+      footfall on the ground but my ear shall hear it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do.&rdquo; Tu-Kila-Kila said, laconically. &ldquo;I fear Fire and
+      Water. Those gods love me not. Fain would they make me migrate into some
+      other body. But I myself like it not. This one suits me admirably. Ula,
+      that kava is stronger than you are used to make it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no,&rdquo; Ula cried, pressing it to his lips a second time,
+      passionately. &ldquo;You are a very great god. You are tired; it overcomes
+      you. And if you sleep, I will watch. Fire and Water dare not disobey your
+      commands. Are you not great? Your Eyes are everywhere. And I, even I, will
+      be as one of them.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The savage gulped down a few more mouthfuls of the intoxicating liquid.
+      Then he glanced up again suddenly with a quick, suspicious look. The
+      cunning of his race gave him wisdom in spite of the deadly strength of the
+      kava Ula had brewed too deep for him. With a sudden resolve, he rose and
+      staggered out. &ldquo;You are a serpent, woman!&rdquo; he cried angrily,
+      seeing the smile that lurked upon Ula&rsquo;s face. &ldquo;To-morrow I
+      will kill you. I will take the white woman for my bride, and she and I
+      will feast off your carrion body. You have tried to betray me, but you are
+      not cunning enough, not strong enough. No woman shall kill me. I am a very
+      great god. I will not yield. I will wait by the tree. This is a trap you
+      have set, but I do not fall into it. If the King of the Rain comes, I
+      shall be there to meet him.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He seized his spear and hatchet and walked forth, erect, without one sign
+      of drunkenness. Ula trembled to herself as she saw him go. She was playing
+      a deep game. Had she given him only just enough kava to strengthen and
+      inspire him?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0028" id="link2HCH0028"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXVIII. &mdash; WAGER OF BATTLE.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Felix wound his way painfully through the deep fern-brake of the jungle,
+      by no regular path, so as to avoid exciting the alarm of the natives, and
+      to take Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s palace-temple from the rear, where the big
+      tree, which overshadowed it with its drooping branches, was most easily
+      approachable. As he and Toko crept on, bending low, through that dense
+      tropical scrub, in deathly silence, they were aware all the time of a low,
+      crackling sound that rang ever some paces in the rear on their trail
+      through the forest. It was Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s Eyes, following them
+      stealthily from afar, footstep for footstep, through the dense undergrowth
+      of bush, and the crisp fallen leaves and twigs that snapped light beneath
+      their footfall. What hope of success with those watchful spies, keen as
+      beagles and cruel as bloodhounds, following ever on their track? What
+      chance of escape for Felix and Muriel, with the cannibal man-gods toils
+      laid round on every side to insure their destruction?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Silently and cautiously the two men groped their way on through the dark
+      gloom of the woods, in spite of their mute pursuers. The moonlight
+      flickered down athwart the trackless soil as they went; the hum of insects
+      innumerable droned deep along the underbrush. Now and then the startled
+      scream of a night jar broke the monotony of the buzz that was worse than
+      silence; owls boomed from the hollow trees, and fireflies darted dim
+      through the open spaces. At last they emerged upon the cleared area of the
+      temple. There Felix, without one moment&rsquo;s hesitation, with a firm
+      and resolute tread, stepped over the white coral line that marked the
+      taboo of the great god&rsquo;s precincts. That was a declaration of open
+      war; he had crossed the Rubicon of Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s empire. Toko stood
+      trembling on the far side; none might pass that mystic line unbidden and
+      live, save the Korong alone who could succeed in breaking off the bough
+      &ldquo;with yellow leaves, resembling a mistletoe,&rdquo; of which
+      Methuselah, the parrot, had told Felix and Muriel, and so earn the right
+      to fight for his life with the redoubted and redoubtable Tu-Kila-Kila.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he stepped over the taboo-line, Felix was aware of many native eyes
+      fixed stonily upon him from the surrounding precinct. Clearly they were
+      awaiting him. Yet not a soul gave the alarm; that in itself would have
+      been to break taboo. Every man or woman among the temple attendants within
+      that charmed circle stood on gaze curiously. Close by, Ula, the favorite
+      wife of the man-god, crouched low by the hut, with one finger on her
+      treacherous lips, bending eagerly forward, in silent expectation of what
+      next might happen. Once, and once only, she glanced at Toko with a mute
+      sign of triumph; then she fixed her big eyes on Felix in tremulous
+      anxiety; for to her as to him, life and death now hung absolutely on the
+      issue of his enterprise. A little farther back the King of Fire and the
+      King of Water, in full sacrificial robes, stood smiling sardonically. For
+      them it was merely a question of one master more or less, one Tu-Kila-Kila
+      in place of another. They had no special interest in the upshot of the
+      contest, save in so far as they always hated most the man who for the
+      moment held by his own strong arm the superior godship over them. Around,
+      Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s Eyes kept watch and ward in sinister silence. Taboo
+      was stronger than even the commands of the high god himself. When once a
+      Korong had crossed that fatal line, unbidden and unwelcomed by
+      Tu-Kila-Kila, he came as Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s foe and would-be successor;
+      the duty of every guardian of the temple was then to see fair play between
+      the god that was and the god that might be&mdash;the Tu-Kila-Kila of the
+      hour and the Tu-Kila-Kila who might possibly supplant him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let the great spirit itself choose which body it will inhabit,&rdquo;
+      the King of Fire murmured in a soft, low voice, glancing toward a dark
+      spot at the foot of the big tree. The moonlight fell dim through the
+      branches on the place where he looked. The glibbering bones of dead
+      victims rattled lightly in the wind. Felix&rsquo;s eyes followed the King
+      of Fire&rsquo;s, and saw, lying asleep upon the ground, Tu-Kila-Kila
+      himself, with his spear and tomahawk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He lay there, huddled up by the very roots of the tree, breathing deep and
+      regularly. Right over his head projected the branch, in one part of whose
+      boughs grew the fateful parasite. By the dim light of the moon, straggling
+      through the dense foliage, Felix could see its yellow leaves distinctly.
+      Beneath it hung a skeleton, suspended by invisible cords, head downward
+      from the branches. It was the skeleton of a previous Korong who had tried
+      in vain to reach the bough, and perished. Tu-Kila-Kila had made high feast
+      on the victim&rsquo;s flesh; his bones, now collected together and
+      cunningly fastened with native rope, served at once as a warning and as a
+      trap or pitfall for all who might rashly venture to follow him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix stood for one moment, alone and awe-struck, a solitary civilized
+      man, among those hideous surroundings. Above, the cold moon; all about,
+      the grim, stolid, half-hostile natives; close by, that strange,
+      serpentine, savage wife, guarding, cat-like, the sleep of her cannibal
+      husband; behind, the watchful Eyes of Tu-Kila-Kila, waiting ever in the
+      background, ready to raise a loud shout of alarm and warning the moment
+      the fatal branch was actually broken, but mute, by their vows, till that
+      moment was accomplished. Then a sudden wild impulse urged him on to the
+      attempt. The banyan had dropped down rooting offsets to the ground, after
+      the fashion of its kind, from its main branches. Felix seized one of these
+      and swung himself lightly up, till he reached the very limb on which the
+      sacred parasite itself was growing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To get to the parasite, however, he must pass directly above Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s
+      head, and over the point where that ghastly grinning skeleton was
+      suspended, as by an unseen hair, from the fork that bore it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He walked along, balancing himself, and clutching, as he went, at the
+      neighboring boughs, while Tu-Kila-Kila, overcome with the kava, slept
+      stolidly and heavily on beneath him. At last he was almost within grasp of
+      the parasite. Could he lunge out and clutch it? One try&mdash;one effort!
+      No, no; he almost lost footing and fell over in the attempt. He couldn&rsquo;t
+      keep his balance so. He must try farther on. Come what might, he must go
+      past the skeleton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The grisly mass swung again, clanking its bones as it swung, and groaned
+      in the wind ominously. The breeze whistled audibly through its hollow
+      skull and vacant eye-sockets. Tu-Kila-Kila turned uneasily in his sleep
+      below. Felix saw there was not one instant of time to be lost now. He
+      passed on boldly; and as he passed, a dozen thin cords of paper mulberry,
+      stretched every way in an invisible network among the boughs, too small to
+      be seen in the dim moonlight, caught him with their toils and almost
+      overthrew him. They broke with his weight, and Felix himself, tumbling
+      blindly, fell forward. At the cost of a sprained wrist and a great jerk on
+      his bruised fingers, he caught at a bough by his side, but wrenched it
+      away suddenly. It was touch and go. At the very same moment, the skeleton
+      fell heavily, and rattled on the ground beside Tu-Kila-Kila.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before Felix could discover what had actually happened, a very great shout
+      went up all round below, and made him stagger with excitement.
+      Tu-Kila-Kila was awake, and had started up, all intent, mad with wrath and
+      kava. Glaring about him wildly, and brandishing his great spear in his
+      stalwart hands, he screamed aloud, in a perfect frenzy of passion and
+      despair: &ldquo;Where is he, the Korong? Bring him on, my meat! Let me
+      devour his heart! Let me tear him to pieces. Let me drink of his blood!
+      Let me kill him and eat him!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sick and desperate at the accident, Felix, in turn, clinging hard to his
+      bough with one hand, gazed wildly about him to look for the parasite. But
+      it had gone as if by magic. He glanced around in despair, vaguely
+      conscious that nothing was left for it now but to drop to the ground and
+      let himself be killed at leisure by that frantic savage. Yet even as he
+      did so, he was aware of that great cry&mdash;a cry as of triumph&mdash;still
+      rending the air. Fire and Water had rushed forward, and were holding back
+      Tu-Kila-Kila, now black in the face from rage, with all their might. Ula
+      was smiling a malicious joy. The Eyes were all agog with interest and
+      excitement. And from one and all that wild scream rose unanimous to the
+      startled sky: &ldquo;He has it! He has it! The Soul of the Tree! The
+      Spirit of the World! The great god&rsquo;s abode. Hold off your hands,
+      Lavita, son of Sami! Your trial has come. He has it! He has it!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix looked about him with a whirling brain. His eye fell suddenly.
+      There, in his own hand, lay the fateful bough. In his efforts to steady
+      himself, he had clutched at it by pure accident, and broken it off
+      unawares with the force of his clutching. As fortune would have it, he
+      grasped it still. His senses reeled. He was almost dead with excitement,
+      suspense, and uncertainty, mingled with pain of his wrenched wrist. But
+      for Muriel&rsquo;s sake he pulled himself together. Gazing down and trying
+      hard to take it all in&mdash;that strange savage scene&mdash;he saw that
+      Tu-Kila-Kila was making frantic attempts to lunge at him with the spear,
+      while the King of Fire and the King of Water, stern and relentless, were
+      holding him off by main force, and striving their best to appease and
+      quiet him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was an awful pause. Then a voice broke the stillness from beyond the
+      taboo-line:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Shadow of the King of the Rain speaks,&rdquo; it said, in very
+      solemn, conventional accents. &ldquo;Korong! Korong! The Great Taboo is
+      broken. Fire and Water, hold him in whom dwells the god till my master
+      comes. He has the Soul of all the spirits of the wood in his hands. He
+      will fight for his right. Taboo! Taboo! I, Toko, have said it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He clapped his hands thrice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tu-Kila-Kila made a wild effort to break away once more. But the King of
+      Fire, standing opposite him, spoke still louder and clearer. &ldquo;If you
+      touch the Korong before the line is drawn,&rdquo; he said, with a voice of
+      authority, &ldquo;you are no Tu-Kila-Kila, but an outcast and a criminal.
+      All the people will hold you with forked sticks, while the Korong burns
+      you alive slowly, limb by limb, with me, who am Fire, the fierce, the
+      consuming. I will scorch you and bake you till you are as a bamboo in the
+      flame. Taboo! Taboo! Taboo! I, Fire, have said it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The King of Water, with three attendants, forced Tu-Kila-Kila on one side
+      for a moment. Ula stood by and smiled pleased compliance. A temple slave,
+      trembling all over at this conflict of the gods, brought out a calabash
+      full of white coral-sand. The King of Water spat on it and blessed it. By
+      this time a dozen natives, at least, had assembled outside the taboo-line,
+      and stood eagerly watching the result of the combat. The temple slave made
+      a long white mark with the coral-sand on one side of the cleared area.
+      Then he handed the calabash solemnly to Toko. Toko crossed the sacred
+      precinct with a few inaudible words of muttered charm, to save the Taboo,
+      as prescribed in the mysteries. Then he drew a similar line on the ground
+      on his side, some twenty yards off. &ldquo;Descend, O my lord!&rdquo; he
+      cried to Felix; and Felix, still holding the bough tight in his hand,
+      swung himself blindly from the tree, and took his place by Toko.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Toe the line!&rdquo; Toko cried, and Felix toed it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bring up your god!&rdquo; the Shadow called out aloud to the King
+      of Water. And the King of Water, using no special ceremony with so great a
+      duty, dragged Tu-Kila-Kila helplessly along with him to the farther
+      taboo-line.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The King of Water brought a spear and tomahawk. He handed them to Felix.
+      &ldquo;With these weapons,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;fight, and merit heaven.
+      I hold the bough meanwhile&mdash;the victor takes it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The King of Fire stood out between the lists. &ldquo;Korongs and gods,&rdquo;
+      he said, &ldquo;the King of the Rain has plucked the sacred bough,
+      according to our fathers&rsquo; rites, and claims trial which of you two
+      shall henceforth hold the sacred soul of the world, the great
+      Tu-Kila-Kila. Wager of Battle decides the day. Keep toe to line. At the
+      end of my words, forth, forward, and fight for it. The great god knows his
+      own, and will choose his abode. Taboo, Taboo, Taboo! I, Fire, have spoken
+      it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Scarcely were the words well out of his mouth, when, with a wild whoop of
+      rage, Tu-Kila-Kila, who had the advantage of knowing the rules of the
+      game, so to speak, dashed madly forward, drunk with passion and kava, and
+      gave one lunge with his spear full tilt at the breast of the startled and
+      unprepared white man. His aim, though frantic, was not at fault. The spear
+      struck Felix high up on the left side. He felt a dull thud of pain; a
+      faint gurgle of blood. Even in the pale moonlight his eye told him at once
+      a red stream was trickling&mdash;out over his flannel shirt. He was
+      pricked, at least. The great god had wounded him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0029" id="link2HCH0029"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXIX. &mdash; VICTORY&mdash;AND AFTER?
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The great god had wounded him. But not to the heart. Felix, as good luck
+      would have it, happened to be wearing buckled braces. He had worn them on
+      board, and, like the rest of his costume, had, of course, never since been
+      able to discard them. They stood him in good stead now. The buckle caught
+      the very point of the bone-tipped spear, and broke the force of the blow,
+      as the great god lunged forward. The wound was but a graze, and
+      Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s light shaft snapped short in the middle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Madder and wilder than ever, the savage pitched it away, yelling, rushed
+      forward with a fierce curse on his angry tongue, and flung himself, tooth
+      and nail, on his astonished opponent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The suddenness of the onslaught almost took the Englishman&rsquo;s breath
+      away. By this time, however, Felix had pulled together his ideas and taken
+      in the situation. Tu-Kila-Kila was attacking him now with his heavy stone
+      axe. He must parry those deadly blows. He must be alert, but watchful. He
+      must put himself in a posture of defence at once. Above all, he must keep
+      cool and have his wits about him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If he could but have drawn his knife, he would have stood a better chance
+      in that hand-to-hand conflict. But there was no time now for such tactics
+      as those. Besides, even in close fight with a bloodthirsty savage, an
+      English gentleman&rsquo;s sense of fair play never for one moment deserts
+      him. Felix felt, if they were to fight it out face to face for their
+      lives, they should fight at least on a perfect equality. Steel against
+      stone was a mean advantage. Parrying Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s first desperate
+      blow with the haft of his own hatchet, he leaped aside half a second to
+      gain breath and strength. Then he rushed on, and dealt one deadly
+      downstroke with the ponderous weapon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a minute or two they closed, in perfectly savage single combat. Fire
+      and Water, observant and impartial, stood by like seconds to see the god
+      himself decide the issue, which of the two combatants should be his living
+      representative. The contest was brief but very hard-fought. Tu-Kila-Kila,
+      inspired with the last frenzy of despair, rushed wildly on his opponent
+      with hands and fists, and teeth and nails, dealing his blows in blind
+      fury, right and left, and seeking only to sell his life as dearly as
+      possible. In this last extremity, his very superstitions told against him.
+      Everything seemed to show his hour had come. The parrot&rsquo;s bite&mdash;the
+      omen of his own blood that stained the dust of earth&mdash;Ula&rsquo;s
+      treachery&mdash;the chance by which the Korong had learned the Great Taboo&mdash;Felix&rsquo;s
+      accidental or providential success in breaking off the bough&mdash;the
+      length of time he himself had held the divine honors&mdash;the probability
+      that the god would by this time begin to prefer a new and stronger
+      representative&mdash;all these things alike combined to fire the drunk and
+      maddened savage with the energy of despair. He fell upon his enemy like a
+      tiger upon an elephant. He fought with his tomahawk and his feet and his
+      whole lithe body; he foamed at the mouth with impotent rage; he spent his
+      force on the air in the extremity of his passion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix, on the other hand, sobered by pain, and nerved by the fixed
+      consciousness that Muriel&rsquo;s safety now depended absolutely on his
+      perfect coolness, fought with the calm skill of a practised fencer.
+      Happily he had learned the gentle art of thrust and parry years before in
+      England; and though both weapon and opponent were here so different, the
+      lesson of quickness and calm watchfulness he had gained in that civilized
+      school stood him in good stead, even now, under such adverse
+      circumstances. Tu-Kila-Kila, getting spent, drew back for a second at
+      last, and panted for breath. That faint breathing-space of a moment&rsquo;s
+      duration sealed his fate. Seizing his chance with consummate skill, Felix
+      closed upon the breathless monster, and brought down the heavy stone
+      hammer point blank upon the centre of his crashing skull. The weapon drove
+      home. It cleft a great red gash in the cannibal&rsquo;s head. Tu-Kila-Kila
+      reeled and fell. There was an infinitesimal pause of silence and suspense.
+      Then a great shout went up from all round to heaven, &ldquo;He has killed
+      him! He has killed him! We have a new-made god! Tu-Kila-Kila is dead! Long
+      live Tu-Kila-Kila!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix drew back for a moment, panting and breathless, and wiped his wet
+      brow with his sleeve, his brain all whirling. At his feet, the savage lay
+      stretched, like a log. Felix gazed at the blood-bespattered face
+      remorsefully. It is an awful thing, even in a just quarrel, to feel that
+      you have really taken a human life! The responsibility is enough to appall
+      the bravest of us. He stooped down and examined the prostrate body with
+      solemn reverence. Blood was flowing in torrents from the wounded head. But
+      Tu-Kila-Kila was dead&mdash;stone-dead forever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hot tears of relief welled up into Felix&rsquo;s eyes. He touched the body
+      cautiously with a reverent hand. No life. No motion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Just as he did so, the woman Ula came forward, bare-limbed and beautiful,
+      all triumph in her walk, a proud, insensitive savage. One second she gazed
+      at the great corpse disdainfully. Then she lifted her dainty foot, and
+      gave it a contemptuous kick. &ldquo;The body of Lavita, the son of Sami,&rdquo;
+      she said, with a gesture of hatred. &ldquo;He had a bad heart. We will
+      cook it and eat it.&rdquo; Next turning to Felix, &ldquo;Oh, Tu-Kila-Kila,&rdquo;
+      she cried, clapping her hands three times and bowing low to the ground,
+      &ldquo;you are a very great god. We will serve you and salute you. Am not
+      I, Ula, one of your wives, your meat? Do with me as you will. Toko, you
+      are henceforth the great god&rsquo;s Shadow!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix gazed at the beautiful, heartless creature, all horrified. Even on
+      Boupari, that cannibal island, he was hardly prepared for quite so low a
+      depth of savage insensibility. But all the people around, now a hundred or
+      more, standing naked before their new god, took up the shout in concert.
+      &ldquo;The body of Lavita, the son of Sami,&rdquo; they cried. &ldquo;A
+      carrion corpse! The god has deserted it. The great soul of the world has
+      entered the heart of the white-faced stranger from the disk of the sun;
+      the King of the Rain; the great Tu-Kila-Kila. We will cook and eat the
+      body of Lavita, the son of Sami. He was a bad man. He is a worn-out shell.
+      Nothing remains of him now. The great god has left him.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They clapped their hands in a set measure as they recited this hymn. The
+      King of Fire retreated into the temple. Ula stood by, and whispered low
+      with Toko. There was a ceremonial pause of some fifteen minutes.
+      Presently, from the inner recesses of the temple itself, a low noise
+      issued forth as of a rising wind. For some seconds it buzzed and hummed,
+      droningly. But at the very first note of that holy sound Ula dropped her
+      lover&rsquo;s hand, as one drops a red-hot coal, and darted wildly off at
+      full speed, like some frightened wild beast, into the thick jungle. Every
+      other woman near began to rush away with equally instantaneous signs of
+      haste and fear. The men, on the other hand, erect and naked, with their
+      hands on their foreheads, crossed the taboo-line at once. It was the
+      summons to all who had been initiated at the mysteries&mdash;the sacred
+      bull-roarer was calling the assembly of the men of Boupari.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For several minutes it buzzed and droned, that mystic implement, growing
+      louder and louder, till it roared like thunder. One after another, the men
+      of the island rushed in as if mad or in flight for their lives before some
+      fierce beast pursuing them. They ran up, panting, and dripping with sweat;
+      their hands clapped to their foreheads; their eyes starting wildly from
+      their staring sockets; torn and bleeding and lacerated by the thorns and
+      branches of the jungle, for each man ran straight across country from the
+      spot where he lay asleep, in the direction of the sound, and never paused
+      or drew breath, for dear life&rsquo;s sake, till he stood beside the
+      corpse of the dead Tu-Kila-Kila.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And every moment the cry pealed louder and louder still. &ldquo;Lavita,
+      the son of Sami, is dead, praise Heaven! The King of the Rain has slain
+      him, and is now the true Tu-Kila-Kila!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix bent irresolute over the fallen savage&rsquo;s bloodstained corpse.
+      What next was expected of him he hardly knew or cared. His one desire now
+      was to return to Muriel&mdash;to Muriel, whom he had rescued from
+      something worse than death at the hateful hands of that accursed creature
+      who lay breathless forever on the ground beside him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Somebody came up just then, and seized his hand warmly. Felix looked up
+      with a start. It was their friend, the Frenchman. &ldquo;Ah, my captain,
+      you have done well,&rdquo; M. Peyron cried, admiring him. &ldquo;What
+      courage! What coolness! What pluck! What soldiership! I couldn&rsquo;t see
+      all. But I was in at the death! And oh, <i>mon Dieu</i>, how I admired and
+      envied you!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By this time the bull-roarer had ceased to bellow among the rocks. The
+      King of Fire stood forth. In his hands he held a length of bamboo-stick
+      with a lighted coal in it. &ldquo;Bring wood and palm-leaves,&rdquo; he
+      said, in a tone of command. &ldquo;Let me light myself up, that I may
+      blaze before Tu-Kila-Kila.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned and bowed thrice very low before Felix. &ldquo;The accepted of
+      Heaven,&rdquo; he cried, holding his hands above him. &ldquo;The very high
+      god! The King of all Things! He sends down his showers upon our crops and
+      our fields. He causes his sun to shine brightly over us. He makes our pigs
+      and our slaves bring forth their increase. All we are but his meat. We,
+      his people, praise him.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And all the men of Boupari, naked and bleeding, bent low in response.
+      &ldquo;Tu-Kila-Kila is great,&rdquo; they chanted, as they clapped their
+      hands. &ldquo;We thank him that he has chosen a fresh incarnation. The sun
+      will not fade in the heavens overhead, nor the bread-fruits wither and
+      cease to bear fruit on earth. Tu-Kila-Kila, our god, is great. He springs
+      ever young and fresh, like the herbs of the field. He is a most high god.
+      We, his people, praise him.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Four temple attendants brought sticks and leaves, while Felix stood still,
+      half dazed with the newness of these strange preparations. The King of
+      Fire, with his torch, set light to the pile. It blazed merrily on high.
+      &ldquo;I, Fire, salute you,&rdquo; he cried, bending over it toward Felix.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now cut up the body of Lavita, the son of Sami,&rdquo; he went on,
+      turning toward it contemptuously. &ldquo;I will cook it in my flame, that
+      Tu-Kila-Kila the great may eat of it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix drew back with a face all aglow with horror and disgust. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t
+      touch that body!&rdquo; he cried, authoritatively, putting his foot down
+      firm. &ldquo;Leave it alone at once. I refuse to allow you.&rdquo; Then he
+      turned to M. Peyron. &ldquo;The King of the Birds and I,&rdquo; he said,
+      with calm resolve, &ldquo;we two will bury it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The King of Fire drew back at these strange words, nonplussed. This was,
+      indeed, an ill-omened break in the ceremony of initiation of a new
+      Tu-Kila-Kila, to which he had never before in his life been accustomed. He
+      hardly knew how to comport himself under such singular circumstances. It
+      was as though the sovereign of England, on coronation-day, should refuse
+      to be crowned, and intimate to the archbishop, in his full canonicals, a
+      confirmed preference for the republican form of Government. It was a
+      contingency that law and custom in Boupari had neither, in their wisdom,
+      foreseen nor provided for.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The King of Water whispered low in the new god&rsquo;s ear. &ldquo;You
+      must eat of his body, my lord,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;That is absolutely
+      necessary. Every one of us must eat of the flesh of the god; but you,
+      above all, must eat his heart, his divine nature. Otherwise you can never
+      be full Tu-Kila-Kila.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t care a straw for that,&rdquo; Felix cried, now
+      aroused to a full sense of the break in Methuselah&rsquo;s story and
+      trembling with apprehension. &ldquo;You may kill me if you like; we can
+      die only once; but human flesh I can never taste; nor will I, while I
+      live, allow you to touch this dead man&rsquo;s body. We will bury it
+      ourselves, the King of the Birds and I. You may tell your people so. That
+      is my last word.&rdquo; He raised his voice to the customary ceremonial
+      pitch. &ldquo;I, the new Tu-Kila-Kila,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;have spoken
+      it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The King of Fire and the King of Water, taken aback at his boldness,
+      conferred together for some seconds privately. The people meanwhile looked
+      on and wondered. What could this strange hitch in the divine proceedings
+      mean? Was the god himself recalcitrant? Never in their lives had the
+      oldest men among them known anything like it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And as they whispered and debated, awe-struck but discordant, a shout
+      arose once more from the outer circle&mdash;a mighty shout of mingled
+      surprise, alarm, and terror. &ldquo;Taboo! Taboo! Fence the mysteries.
+      Beware! Oh, great god, we warn you. The mysteries are in danger! Cut her
+      down! Kill her! A woman! A woman!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the words, Felix was aware of somebody bursting through the dense crowd
+      and rushing wildly toward him. Next moment, Muriel hung and sobbed on his
+      shoulder, while Mali, just behind her, stood crying and moaning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix held the poor startled girl in his arms and soothed her. And all
+      around another great cry arose from five hundred lips: &ldquo;Two women
+      have profaned the mysteries of the god. They are Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s
+      trespass-offering. Let us kill them and eat them!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0030" id="link2HCH0030"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXX. &mdash; SUSPENSE.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      In a moment, Felix&rsquo;s mind was fully made up. There was no time to
+      think; it was the hour for action. He saw how he must comport himself
+      toward this strange wild people. Seating Muriel gently on the ground, Mali
+      beside her, and stepping forward himself, with Peyron&rsquo;s hand in his,
+      he beckoned to the vast and surging crowd to bespeak respectful silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A mighty hush fell at once upon the people. The King of Fire and the King
+      of Water stood back, obedient to his nod. They waited for the upshot of
+      this strange new development.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Men of Boupari,&rdquo; Felix began, speaking with a marvellous
+      fluency in their own tongue, for the excitement itself supplied him with
+      eloquence; &ldquo;I have killed your late god in the prescribed way; I
+      have plucked the sacred bough, and fought in single combat by the
+      established rules of your own religion. Fire and Water, you guardians of
+      this holy island, is it not so? You saw all things done, did you not,
+      after the precepts of your ancestors?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The King of Fire bowed low and answered: &ldquo;Tu-Kila-Kila speaks,
+      indeed, the truth. Water and I, with our own eyes, have seen it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And now,&rdquo; Felix went on, &ldquo;I am myself, by your own
+      laws, Tu-Kila-Kila.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The King of Fire made a gesture of dissent. &ldquo;Oh, great god, pardon
+      me,&rdquo; he murmured, &ldquo;if I say aught, now, to contradict you; but
+      you are not a full Tu-Kila-Kila yet till you have eaten of the heart of
+      the god, your predecessor.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then where is now the spirit of Tu-Kila-Kila, the very high god, if
+      I am not he?&rdquo; Felix asked, abruptly, thus puzzling them with a hard
+      problem in their own savage theology.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The King of Fire gave a start, and pondered. This was a detail of his
+      creed that had never before so much as occurred to him. All faiths have
+      their <i>cruces</i>. &ldquo;I do not well know,&rdquo; he answered,
+      &ldquo;whether it is in the heart of Lavita, the son of Sami, or in your
+      own body. But I feel sure it must now be certainly somewhere, though just
+      where our fathers have never told us.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix recognized at once that he had gained a point. &ldquo;Then look to
+      it well,&rdquo; he said, austerely. &ldquo;Be careful how you act. Do
+      nothing rash. For either the soul of the god is in the heart of Lavita,
+      the son of Sami; and then, since I refuse to eat it, it will decay away,
+      as Lavita&rsquo;s body decays, and the world will shrivel up, and all
+      things will perish, because the god is dead and crumbled to dust forever.
+      Or else it is in my body, who am god in his place; and then, if anybody
+      does me harm or hurt, he will be an impious wretch, and will have broken
+      taboo, and Heaven knows what evils and misfortunes may not, therefore,
+      fall on each and all of you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A very old chief rose from the ranks outside. His hair was white and his
+      eyes bleared. &ldquo;Tu-Kila-Kila speaks well,&rdquo; he cried, in a loud
+      but mumbling voice. &ldquo;His words are wise. He argues to the point. He
+      is very cunning. I advise you, my people, to be careful how you anger the
+      white-faced stranger, for you know what he is; he is cruel; he is
+      powerful. There was never any storm in my time&mdash;and I am an old man&mdash;so
+      great in Boupari as the storm that rose when the King of the Rain ate the
+      storm-apple. Our yams and our taros even now are suffering from it. He is
+      a mighty strong god. Beware how you tamper with him!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He sat down, trembling. A younger chief rose from a nearer rank, and said
+      his say in turn. &ldquo;I do not agree with our father,&rdquo; he cried,
+      pointing to the chief who had just spoken. &ldquo;His word is evil; he is
+      much mistaken. I have another thought. My thought is this. Let us kill and
+      eat the white-faced stranger at once, by wager of battle; and let
+      whosoever fights and overcomes him receive his honors, and take to wife
+      the fair woman, the Queen of the Clouds, the sun-faced Korong, whom he
+      brought from the sun with him.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But who will then be Tu-Kila-Kila?&rdquo; Felix asked, turning
+      round upon him quickly. Habituation to danger had made him unnaturally
+      alert in such utmost extremities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, the man who slays you,&rdquo; the young chief answered,
+      pointedly, grasping his heavy tomahawk with profound expression.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think not,&rdquo; Felix answered. &ldquo;Your reasoning is bad.
+      For if I am not Tu-Kila-Kila, how can any man become Tu-Kila-Kila by
+      killing me? And if I am Tu-Kila-Kila, how dare you, not being yourself
+      Korong, and not having broken off the sacred bough, as I did, venture to
+      attack me? You wish to set aside all the customs of Boupari. Are you not
+      ashamed of such gross impiety?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tu-Kila-Kila speaks well,&rdquo; the King of Fire put in, for he
+      had no cause to love the aggressive young chief, and he thought better of
+      his chances in life as Felix&rsquo;s minister. &ldquo;Besides, now I think
+      of it, he <i>must</i> be Tu-Kila-Kila, because he has taken the life of
+      the last great god, whom he slew with his hands; and therefore the life is
+      now his&mdash;he holds it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix was emboldened by this favorable opinion to strike out a fresh line
+      in a further direction. He stood forward once more, and beckoned again for
+      silence. &ldquo;Yes, my people,&rdquo; he said calmly, with slow
+      articulation, &ldquo;by the custom of your race and the creed you profess
+      I am now indeed, and in every truth, the abode of your great god,
+      Tu-Kila-Kila. But, furthermore, I have a new revelation to make to you. I
+      am going to instruct you in a fresh way. This creed that you hold is full
+      of errors. As Tu-Kila-Kila, I mean to take my own course, no islander
+      hindering me. If you try to depose me, what great gods have you now got
+      left? None, save only Fire and Water, my ministers. King of the Rain there
+      is none; for I, who was he, am now Tu-Kila-Kila. Tu-Kila-Kila there is
+      none, save only me; for the other, that was, I have fought and conquered.
+      The Queen of the Clouds is with me. The King of the Birds is with me.
+      Consider, then, O friends, that if you kill us all, you will have nowhere
+      to turn; you will be left quite godless.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is true,&rdquo; the people murmured, looking about them, half
+      puzzled. &ldquo;He is wise. He speaks well. He is indeed a Tu-Kila-Kila.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix pressed his advantage home at once. &ldquo;Now listen,&rdquo; he
+      said, lifting up one solemn forefinger. &ldquo;I come from a country very
+      far away, where the customs are better by many yams than those of Boupari.
+      And now that I am indeed Tu-Kila-Kila&mdash;your god, your master&mdash;I
+      will change and alter some of your customs that seem to me here and now
+      most undesirable. In the first place&mdash;hear this!&mdash;I will put
+      down all cannibalism. No man shall eat of human flesh on pain of death.
+      And to begin with, no man shall cook or eat the body of Lavita, the son of
+      Sami. On that I am determined&mdash;I, Tu-Kila-Kila. The King of the Birds
+      and I, we will dig a pit, and we will bury in it the corpse of this man
+      that was once your god, and whom his own wickedness compelled me to fight
+      and slay, in order to prevent more cruelty and bloodshed.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The young chief stood up, all red in his wrath, and interrupted him,
+      brandishing a coral-stone hatchet. &ldquo;This is blasphemy,&rdquo; he
+      said. &ldquo;This is sheer rank blasphemy. These are not good words. They
+      are very bad medicine. The white-faced Korong is no true Tu-Kila-Kila. His
+      advice is evil&mdash;and ill-luck would follow it. He wishes to change the
+      sacred customs of Boupari. Now, that is not well. My counsel is this: let
+      us eat him now, unless he changes his heart, and amends his ways, and
+      partakes, as is right, of the body of Lavita, the son of Sami.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The assembly swayed visibly, this way and that, some inclining to the
+      conservative view of the rash young chief, and others to the cautious
+      liberalism of the gray-haired warrior. Felix noted their division, and
+      spoke once more, this time still more authoritatively than ever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Furthermore,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;my people, hear me. As I came
+      in a ship propelled by fire over the high waves of the sea, so I go away
+      in one. We watch for such a ship to pass by Boupari. When it comes, the
+      Queen of the Clouds&mdash;upon whose life I place a great Taboo; let no
+      man dare to touch her at his peril; if he does, I will rush upon him and
+      kill him as I killed Lavita, the son of Sami. When it comes, the Queen of
+      the Clouds, the King of the Birds, and I, we will go away back in it to
+      the land whence we came, and be quit of Boupari. But we will not leave it
+      fireless or godless. When I return back home again to my own far land, I
+      will send out messengers, very good men, who will tell you of a God more
+      powerful by much than any you ever knew, and very righteous. They will
+      teach you great things you never dreamed of. Therefore, I ask you now to
+      disperse to your own homes, while the King of Birds and I bury the body of
+      Lavita, the son of Sami.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All this time Muriel had been seated on the ground, listening with
+      profound interest, but scarcely understanding a word, though here and
+      there, after her six months&rsquo; stay in the island, a single phrase was
+      dimly intelligible to her. But now, at this critical moment she rose, and,
+      standing upright by Felix&rsquo;s side in her spotless English purity
+      among those assembled savages, she pointed just once with her uplifted
+      finger to the calm vault of heaven, and then across the moonlit horizon of
+      the sea, and last of all to the clustering huts and villages of Boupari.
+      &ldquo;Tell them,&rdquo; she said to Felix, with blanched lips, but
+      without one sign of a tremor in her fearless voice, &ldquo;I will pray for
+      them to Heaven, when I go across the sea, and will think of the children
+      that I loved to pat and play with, and will send out messengers from our
+      home beyond the waves, to make them wiser and happier and better.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix translated her simple message to them in its pure womanly goodness.
+      Even the natives were touched. They whispered and hesitated. Then after a
+      time of much murmured debate, the King of Fire stood forward as a
+      mediator. &ldquo;There is an oracle, O Korong,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;not
+      to prejudge the matter, which decides all these things&mdash;a great
+      conch-shell at a sacred grove in the neighboring island of Aloa Mauna. It
+      is the holiest oracle of all our holy religion. We gods and men of Boupari
+      have taken counsel together, and have come to a conclusion. We will put
+      forth a canoe and send men with blood on their faces to inquire at Aloa
+      Mauna of the very great oracle. Till then, you are neither Tu-Kila-Kila,
+      nor not Tu-Kila-Kila. It behooves us to be very careful how we deal with
+      gods. Our people will stand round your precinct in a row, and guard you
+      with their spears. You shall not cross the taboo line to them, nor they to
+      you: all shall be neutral. Food shall be laid by the line, as always,
+      morn, noon, and night; and your Shadows shall take it in; but you shall
+      not come out. Neither shall you bury the body of Lavita, the son of Sami.
+      Till the canoe comes back it shall lie in the sun and rot there.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He clapped his hands twice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a moment a tom-tom began to beat from behind, and the people all
+      crowded without the circle. The King of Fire came forward ostentatiously
+      and made taboo. &ldquo;If, any man cross this line,&rdquo; he said in a
+      droning sing-song, &ldquo;till the canoe return from the great oracle of
+      our faith on Aloa Mauna, I, Fire, will scorch him into cinder and ashes.
+      If any woman transgress, I will pitch her with palm oil, and light her up
+      for a lamp on a moonless night to lighten this temple.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The King of Water distributed shark&rsquo;s-tooth spears. At once a great
+      serried wall hemmed in the Europeans all round, and they sat down to wait,
+      the three whites together, for the upshot of the mission to Aloa Mauna.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the dawn now gleamed red on the eastern horizon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0031" id="link2HCH0031"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXXI. &mdash; AT SEA: OFF BOUPARI.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Thirteen days out from Sydney, the good ship Australasian was nearing the
+      equator.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was four of the clock in the afternoon, and the captain (off duty)
+      paced the deck, puffing a cigar, and talking idly with a passenger on
+      former experiences.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Eight bells went on the quarter-deck; time to change watches.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is only our second trip through this channel,&rdquo; the
+      captain said, gazing across with a casual glance at the palm-trees that
+      stood dark against the blue horizon. &ldquo;We used to go a hundred miles
+      to eastward, here, to avoid the reefs. But last voyage I came through this
+      way quite safely&mdash;though we had a nasty accident on the road&mdash;unavoidable&mdash;unavoidable!
+      Big sea was running free over the sunken shoals; caught the ship aft
+      unawares, and stove in better than half a dozen portholes. Lady passenger
+      on deck happened to be leaning over the weather gunwale; big sea caught
+      her up on its crest in a jiffy, lifted her like a baby, and laid her down
+      again gently, just so, on the bed of the ocean. By George, sir, I was
+      annoyed. It was quite a romance, poor thing; quite a romance; we all felt
+      so put out about it the rest of that voyage. Young fellow on board, nephew
+      of Sir Theodore Thurstan, of the Colonial Office, was in love with Miss
+      Ellis&mdash;girl&rsquo;s name was Ellis&mdash;father&rsquo;s a parson
+      somewhere down in Somersetshire&mdash;and as soon as the big sea took her
+      up on its crest, what does Thurstan go and do, but he ups on the taffrail,
+      and, before you could say Jack Robinson, jumps over to save her.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But he didn&rsquo;t succeed?&rdquo; the passenger asked, with
+      languid interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Succeed, my dear sir? and with a sea running twelve feet high like
+      that? Why, it was pitch dark, and such a surf on that the gig could hardly
+      go through it.&rdquo; The captain smiled, and puffed away pensively.
+      &ldquo;Drowned,&rdquo; he said, after a brief pause, with complacent
+      composure. &ldquo;Drowned. Drowned. Drowned. Went to the bottom, both of
+      &rsquo;em. Davy Jones&rsquo;s locker. But unavoidable, quite. These
+      accidents <i>will</i> happen, even on the best-regulated liners. Why,
+      there was my brother Tom, in the Cunard service&mdash;same that boast they
+      never lost a passenger; there was my brother Tom, he was out one day off
+      the Newfoundland banks, heavy swell setting in from the nor&rsquo;-nor&rsquo;-east,
+      icebergs ahead, passengers battened down&mdash;Bless my soul, how that
+      light seems to come and go, don&rsquo;t it?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a reflected light, flashing from the island straight in the captain&rsquo;s
+      eyes, small and insignificant as to size, but strong for all that in the
+      full tropical sunshine, and glittering like a diamond from a vague
+      elevation near the centre of the island.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Seems to come and go in regular order,&rdquo; the passenger
+      observed, reflectively, withdrawing his cigar. &ldquo;Looks for all the
+      world just like naval signalling.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The captain paused, and shaded his eyes a moment. &ldquo;Hanged if that
+      isn&rsquo;t just what it <i>is</i>,&rdquo; he answered, slowly. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s
+      a rigged-up heliograph, and they&rsquo;re using the Morse code; dash my
+      eyes if they aren&rsquo;t. Well, this <i>is</i> civilization! What the
+      dickens can have come to the island of Boupari? There isn&rsquo;t a darned
+      European soul in the place, nor ever has been. Anchorage unsafe; no
+      harbor; bad reef; too small for missionaries to make a living, and natives
+      got nothing worth speaking of to trade in.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do they say?&rdquo; the passenger asked, with suddenly
+      quickened interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How the devil should I tell you yet, sir?&rdquo; the captain
+      retorted with choleric grumpiness. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you see I&rsquo;m
+      spelling it out, letter by letter? O, r, e, s, c, u, e, u, s, c, o, m, e,
+      w, e, l, l, a, r, m, e, d&mdash;Yes. yes, I twig it.&rdquo; And the
+      captain jotted it down in his note-book for some seconds, silently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Run up the flag there,&rdquo; he shouted, a moment later, rushing
+      hastily forward. &ldquo;Stop her at once, Walker. Easy, easy. Get ready
+      the gig. Well, upon my soul, there <i>is</i> a rum start anyway.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What does the message say?&rdquo; the passenger inquired, with
+      intense surprise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say? Well, there&rsquo;s what I make it out,&rdquo; the captain
+      answered, handing him the scrap of paper on which he had jotted down the
+      letters. &ldquo;I missed the beginning, but the end&rsquo;s all right.
+      Look alive there, boys, will you. Bring out the Winchester. Take
+      cutlasses, all hands. I&rsquo;ll go along myself in her.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The passenger took the piece of paper on which he read, &ldquo;and send a
+      boat to rescue us. Come well armed. Savages on guard. Thurstan, Ellis.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In less than three minutes the boat was lowered and manned, and the
+      captain, with the Winchester six-shooter by his side, seated grim in the
+      stern, took command of the tiller.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the island it was the first day of Felix and Muriel&rsquo;s
+      imprisonment in the dusty precinct of Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s temple. All the
+      morning through, they had sat under the shade of a smaller banyan in the
+      outer corner; for Muriel could neither enter the noisome hut nor go near
+      the great tree with the skeletons on its branches; nor could she sit where
+      the dead savage&rsquo;s body, still festering in the sun, attracted the
+      buzzing blue flies by thousands, to drink up the blood that lay thick on
+      the earth in a pool around it. Hard by, the natives sat, keen as lynxes,
+      in a great circle just outside the white taboo-line, where, with serried
+      spears, they kept watch and ward over the persons of their doubtful gods
+      or victims. M. Peyron, alone preserving his equanimity under these adverse
+      circumstances, hummed low to himself in very dubious tones; even he felt
+      his French gayety had somewhat forsaken him; this revolution in Boupari
+      failed to excite his Parisian ardor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      About one o&rsquo;clock in the day, however, looking casually seaward&mdash;what
+      was this that M. Peyron, to his great surprise, descried far away on the
+      dim southern horizon? A low black line, lying close to the water? No, no;
+      not a steamer!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Too prudent to excite the natives&rsquo; attention unnecessarily, the
+      cautious Frenchman whispered, in the most commonplace voice on earth to
+      Felix: &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t look at once; and when you do look, mind you don&rsquo;t
+      exhibit any agitation in your tone or manner. But what do you make that
+      out to be&mdash;that long black haze on the horizon to southward?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix looked, disregarding the friendly injunction, at once. At the same
+      moment, Muriel turned her eyes quickly in the self-same direction. Neither
+      made the faintest sign of outer emotion; but Muriel clenched her white
+      hands hard, till the nails dug into the palm, in her effort to restrain
+      herself, as she murmured very low, in an agitated voice, &ldquo;<i>Un
+      vapeur, un vapeur</i>!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So I think,&rdquo; M. Peyron answered, very low and calm. &ldquo;It
+      is, indeed, a steamer!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For three long hours those anxious souls waited and watched it draw nearer
+      and nearer. Slowly the natives, too, began to perceive the unaccustomed
+      object. As it drew abreast of the island, and the decisive moment arrived
+      for prompt action, Felix rose in his place once more and cried aloud,
+      &ldquo;My people, I told you a ship, propelled by fire, would come from
+      the far land across the sea to take us. The ship has come; you can see for
+      yourselves the thick black smoke that issues in huge puffs from the mouth
+      of the monster. Now, listen to me, and dare not to disobey me. My word is
+      law; let all men see to it. I am going to send a message of fire from the
+      sun to the great canoe that walks upon the water. If any man ventures to
+      stop me from doing it the people from the great canoe will land on this
+      isle and take vengeance for his act, and kill with the thunder which the
+      sailing gods carry ever about with them.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By this time the island was alive with commotion. Hundreds of natives,
+      with their long hair falling unkempt about their keen brown faces, were
+      gazing with open eyes at the big black ship that ploughed her way so fast
+      against wind and tide over the surface of the waters. Some of them shouted
+      and gesticulated with panic fear; others seemed half inclined to waste no
+      time on preparation or doubt, but to rush on at once, and immolate their
+      captives before a rescue was possible. But Felix, keeping ever his cool
+      head undisturbed, stood on the dusty mound by Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s house,
+      and taking in his hand the little mirror he had made from the match-box,
+      flashed the light from the sun full in their eyes for a moment, to the
+      astonishment and discomfiture of all those gaping savages. Then he
+      focussed it on the Australasian, across the surf and the waves, and with a
+      throbbing heart began to make his last faint bid for life and freedom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For four or five minutes he went flashing on, uncertain of the effect,
+      whether they saw or saw not. Then a cry from Muriel burst at once upon his
+      ears. She clasped her hands convulsively in an agony of joy. &ldquo;They
+      see us! They see us!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And sure enough, scarcely half a minute later, a British flag ran gayly up
+      the mainmast, and a boat seemed to drop down over the side of the vessel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As for the natives, they watched these proceedings with considerable
+      surprise and no little discomfiture&mdash;Fire and Water, in particular,
+      whispering together, much alarmed, with many superstitious nods and
+      taboos, in the corner of the enclosure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gradually, as the boat drew nearer and nearer, divided counsels prevailed
+      among the savages. With no certainly recognized Tu-Kila-Kila to marshal
+      their movements, each man stood in doubt from whom to take his orders. At
+      last, the King of Fire, in a hesitating voice, gave the word of command.
+      &ldquo;Half the warriors to the shore to repel the enemy; half to watch
+      round the taboo-line, lest the Korongs escape us! Let Breathless Fear, our
+      war-god, go before the face of our troops, invisible!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And, quick as thought, at his word, the warriors had paired off, two and
+      two, in long lines; some running hastily down to the beach, to man the
+      war-canoes, while others remained, with shark&rsquo;s tooth spears still
+      set in a looser circle, round the great temple-enclosure of Tu-Kila-Kila.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For Muriel, this suspense was positively terrible. To feel one was so
+      close to the hope of rescue, and yet to know that before that help
+      arrived, or even as it came up, those savages might any moment run their
+      ghastly spears through them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Felix made the best of his position still. &ldquo;Remember,&rdquo; he
+      cried, at the top of his voice, as the warriors started at a run for the
+      water&rsquo;s edge, &ldquo;your Tu-Kila-Kila tells you, these new-comers
+      are his friends. Whoever hurts them, does so at his peril. This is a great
+      Taboo. I bid you receive them. Beware for your lives. I, Tu-Kila-Kila the
+      Great, have said it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0032" id="link2HCH0032"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXXII. &mdash; THE DOWNFALL OF A PANTHEON.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The Australasian&rsquo;s gig entered the lagoon through the fringing reef
+      by its narrow seaward mouth, and rowed steadily for the landing place on
+      the main island.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A little way out from shore, amid loud screams and yells, the natives came
+      up with it in their laden war-canoes. Shouting and gesticulating and
+      brandishing their spears with the shark&rsquo;s tooth tips, they
+      endeavored to stop its progress landward by pure noise and bravado.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We must be careful what we do, boys,&rdquo; the captain observed,
+      in a quiet voice of seamanlike resolution to his armed companions. &ldquo;We
+      mustn&rsquo;t frighten the savages too much, or show too hostile a front,
+      for fear they should retaliate on our friends on the island.&rdquo; He
+      held up his hand, with the gold braid on the wrist, to command silence;
+      and the natives, gazing open-mouthed, looked and wondered at the gesture.
+      These sailing gods were certainly arrayed in most gorgeous vestments, and
+      their canoe, though devoid of a grinning figure-head, was provided with a
+      most admirable and well-uniformed equipment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A coral rock jutted high out of the sea to the left hard by. Its summit
+      was crowded with a basking population of sea-gulls and pelicans. The
+      captain gave the word to &ldquo;easy all.&rdquo; In a second the gig
+      stopped short, as those stout arms held her. He rose in his place and
+      lifted the six-shooter. Then he pointed it ostentatiously at the rock,
+      away from the native canoes, and held up his hand yet again for silence.
+      &ldquo;We&rsquo;ll give 'em a taste of what we can do, boys,&rdquo; he
+      said, &ldquo;just to show &rsquo;em, not to hurt &rsquo;em.&rdquo; At that
+      he drew the trigger twice. His first two chambers were loaded on purpose
+      with duck-shot cartridges. Twice the big gun roared; twice the fire
+      flashed red from its smoking mouth. As the smoke cleared away, the
+      natives, dumb with surprise, and perfectly cowed with terror, saw ten or a
+      dozen torn and bleeding birds float mangled upon the water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now for the dynamite!&rdquo; the captain said, cheerily, proceeding
+      to lower a small object overboard by a single wire, while he held up his
+      hand a third time to bespeak silence and attention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The natives looked again, with eyes starting from their heads. The captain
+      gave a little click, and pointed with his finger to a spot on the water&rsquo;s
+      top, a little way in front of him. Instantly, a loud report, and a column
+      of water spurted up into the air, some ten or twelve feet, in a boisterous
+      fountain. As it subsided again, a hundred or so of the bright-colored fish
+      that browse among the submerged, coral-groves of these still lagoons, rose
+      dead or dying to the seething, boiling surface.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The captain smiled. Instantly the natives set up a terrified shout.
+      &ldquo;It is even as he said,&rdquo; they cried. &ldquo;These gods are his
+      ministers! The white-faced Korong is a very great deity! He is indeed the
+      true Tu-Kila-Kila. These gods have come for him. They are very mighty.
+      Thunder and lightning and waterspouts are theirs. The waves do as they
+      bid. The sea obeys them. They are here to take away our Tu-Kila-Kila from
+      our midst. And what will then become of the island of Boupari? Will it not
+      sink in the waves of the sea and disappear? Will not the sun in heaven
+      grow dark, and the moon cease to shed its benign light on the earth, when
+      Tu-Kila-Kila the Great returns at last to his own far country?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That lot&rsquo;ll do for &rsquo;em, I expect,&rdquo; the captain
+      said cheerily, with a confident smile. &ldquo;Now forward all, boys. I
+      fancy we&rsquo;ve astonished the natives a trifle.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They rowed on steadily, but cautiously, toward the white bank of sand
+      which formed the usual landing-place, the captain holding the six-shooter
+      in readiness all the time, and keeping an eye firmly fixed on every
+      movement of the savages. But the warriors in the canoes, thoroughly cowed
+      and overawed by this singular exhibition of the strangers&rsquo; prowess,
+      paddled on in whispering silence, nearly abreast of the gig, but at a safe
+      distance, as they thought, and eyed the advancing Europeans with quiet
+      looks of unmixed suspicion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last, the adventurous young chief, who had advised killing Felix
+      off-hand on the island, mustered up courage to paddle his own canoe a
+      little nearer, and flung his spear madly in the direction of the gig. It
+      fell short by ten yards. He stood eying it angrily. But the captain,
+      grimly quiet, raising his Winchester to his shoulder without one second&rsquo;s
+      delay, and marking his man, fired at the young chief as he stood, still
+      half in the attitude of throwing, on the prow of his canoe, an easy aim
+      for fire-arms. The ball went clean through the savage&rsquo;s breast, and
+      then ricochetted three times on the water afar off. The young chief fell
+      stone dead into the sea like a log, and sank instantly to the bottom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a critical moment. The captain felt uncertain whether the natives
+      would close round them in force or not. It is always dangerous to fire a
+      shot at savages. But the Boupari men were too utterly awed to venture on
+      defence. &ldquo;He was Tu-Kila-Kila&rsquo;s enemy,&rdquo; they cried, in
+      astonished tones. &ldquo;He raised his voice against the very high god.
+      Therefore, the very high god&rsquo;s friends have smitten him with their
+      lightning. Their thunderbolt went through him, and hit the water beyond.
+      How strong is their hand! They can kill from afar. They are mighty gods.
+      Let no man strive to fight against the friends of Tu-Kila-Kila.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sailors rowed on and reached the landing-place. There, half of them,
+      headed by the captain, disembarked in good order, with drawn cutlasses,
+      while the other half remained behind to guard the gig, under the third
+      officer. The natives also disembarked, a little way off, and, making
+      humble signs of submission with knee and arm, endeavored, by pantomime, to
+      express the idea of their willingness to guide the strangers to their
+      friends&rsquo; quarters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The captain waved them on with his hand. The natives, reassured, led the
+      way, at some distance ahead, along the paths through the jungle. The
+      captain had his finger on his six-shooter the while; every sailor grasped
+      his cutlass and kept his revolver ready for action. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t
+      half like the look of it,&rdquo; the captain observed, partly to himself.
+      &ldquo;They seem to be leading us into an ambuscade or something. Keep a
+      sharp lookout against surprise from the jungle, boys; and if any native
+      shows fight shoot him down instantly.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last they emerged upon a clear space in the front, where a great group
+      of savages stood in a circle, with serried spears, round a large wattled
+      hut that occupied the elevated centre of the clearing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a minute or two the action of the savages was uncertain. Half of the
+      defenders turned round to face the invaders angrily; the other half stood
+      irresolute, with their spears still held inward, guarding a white line of
+      sand with inflexible devotion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The warriors who had preceded them from the shore called aloud to their
+      friends by the temple in startled tones. The captain and sailors had no
+      idea what their words meant. But just then, from the midst of the circle,
+      an English voice cried out in haste, &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t fire! Do nothing
+      rash! We&rsquo;re safe. Don&rsquo;t be frightened. The natives are
+      disposed to parley and palaver. Take care how you act. They&rsquo;re
+      terribly afraid of you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Just outside the taboo-line the captain halted. The gray-headed old chief,
+      who had accompanied his fellows to the shore, spoke out in Polynesian.
+      &ldquo;Do not resist them,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;my people. If you do,
+      you will be blasted by their lightning like a bare bamboo in a mighty
+      cyclone. They carry thunder in their hands. They are mighty, mighty gods.
+      The white-faced Korong spoke no more than the truth. Let them do as they
+      will with us. We are but their meat. We are as dust beneath their sole,
+      and as driven mulberry-leaves before the breath of the tempest.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The defenders hesitated still a little. Then, suddenly losing heart, they
+      broke rank at last at a point close by where the captain of the
+      Australasian stood, one man after another falling aside slowly and
+      shamefacedly a pace or two. The captain, unhesitatingly, overstepped the
+      white taboo-line. Next instant, Felix and Muriel were grasping his hand
+      hard, and M. Peyron was bowing a polite Parisian reception.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Forthwith, the sailors crowded round them in a hollow square. Muriel and
+      Felix, half faint with relief from their long and anxious suspense,
+      staggered slowly down the seaward path between them. But there was no need
+      now for further show of defence. The islanders, pressing near and flinging
+      away their weapons, followed the procession close, with tears and
+      lamentations. As they went on, the women, rushing out of their huts while
+      the fugitives passed, tore their hair on their heads, and beat their
+      breasts in terror. The warriors who had come from the shore recounted,
+      with their own exaggerative additions, the miracle of the six-shooter and
+      the dynamite cartridge. Gradually they approached the landing-place on the
+      beach. There the third officer sat waiting in the gig to receive them. The
+      lamentations of the islanders now became positively poignant. &ldquo;Oh,
+      my father,&rdquo; they cried aloud, &ldquo;my brother, my revered one, you
+      are indeed the true Tu-Kila-Kila. Do not go away like this and desert us!
+      Oh, our mother, great queen, mighty goddess, stop with us! Take not away
+      your sun from the heavens, nor your rain from the crops. We acknowledge we
+      have sinned; we have done very wrong; but the chief sinner is dead; the
+      wrong-doer has paid; spare us who remain; spare us, great deity; do not
+      make the bright lights of heaven become dark over us. Stay with your
+      worshippers, and we will give you choice young girls to eat every day, we
+      will sacrifice the tenderest of our children to feed you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is an awful thing for any race or nation when its taboos fail all at
+      once, and die out entirely. To the men of Boupari, the Tu-Kila-Kila of the
+      moment represented both the Moral Order and the regular sequence of the
+      physical universe. Anarchy and chaos might rule when he was gone. The sun
+      might be quenched, and the people run riot. No wonder they shrank from the
+      fearful consequence that might next ensue. King and priest, god and
+      religion, all at one fell blow were to be taken away from them!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felix turned round on the shore and spoke to them again. &ldquo;My people,&rdquo;
+      he said, in a kindly tone&mdash;for, after all, he pitied them&mdash;&ldquo;you
+      need have no fear. When I am gone, the sun will still shine and the trees
+      will still bear fruit every year as formerly. I will send the messengers I
+      promised from my own land to teach you. Until they come, I leave you this
+      as a great Taboo. Tu-Kila-Kila enjoins it. Shed no human blood; eat no
+      human flesh. Those who do will be punished when another fire-canoe comes
+      from the far land to bring my messengers.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The King of Fire bent low at the words. &ldquo;Oh, Tu-Kila-Kila,&rdquo; he
+      said, &ldquo;it shall be done as you say. Till your messengers come, every
+      man shall live at peace with all his neighbors.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They stepped into the gig. Mali and Toko followed before M. Peyron as
+      naturally as they had always followed their masters on the island before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who are these?&rdquo; the captain asked, smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Our Shadows,&rdquo; Felix answered. &ldquo;Let them come. I will
+      pay their passage when I reach San Francisco. They have been very faithful
+      to us, and they are afraid to remain, lest the islanders should kill them
+      for letting us go or for not accompanying us.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well,&rdquo; the captain answered. &ldquo;Forward all, there,
+      boys! Now, ahead for the ship. And thank God, we&rsquo;re well out of it!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the islanders still stood on the shore and wept, stretching their
+      hands in vain after the departing boat, and crying aloud in piteous tones,
+      &ldquo;Oh, my father, return! Oh, my mother, come back! Oh, very great
+      gods, do not fly and desert us!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seven weeks later Mr. and Mrs. Felix Thurstan, who had been married in the
+      cathedral at Honolulu the very morning the Australasian arrived there, sat
+      in an eminently respectable drawing-room in a London square, where Mrs.
+      Ellis, Muriel&rsquo;s aunt by marriage, was acting as their hostess.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But how dreadful it is to think, dear,&rdquo; Mrs. Ellis remarked
+      for the twentieth time since their arrival, with a deep-drawn sigh,
+      &ldquo;how dreadful to think that you and Felix should have been all those
+      months alone on the island together without being married!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Muriel looked up with a quiet smile toward Felix. &ldquo;I think, Aunt
+      Mary,&rdquo; she said, dreamily, &ldquo;if you&rsquo;d been there
+      yourself, and suffered all those fears, and passed through all those
+      horrors that we did together, you&rsquo;d have troubled your head very
+      little indeed about such conventionalities, as whether or not you happened
+      to be married.... Besides,&rdquo; she added, after a pause, with a fine
+      perception of the inexorable stringency of Mrs. Grundy&rsquo;s law,
+      &ldquo;we weren&rsquo;t quite without chaperons, either, don&rsquo;t you
+      know; for our Shadows, of course, were always with us.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whereat Felix smiled an equally quiet smile. &ldquo;And terrible as it all
+      was,&rdquo; he put in, &ldquo;I shall never regret it, because it made
+      Muriel know how profoundly I loved her, and it made me know how brave and
+      trustful and pure a woman could be under such awful conditions.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Mrs. Ellis sat still in her chair and smiled uncomfortably. It
+      affected her spirits. Taboos, after all, are much the same in England as
+      in Boupari.
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 6em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
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+</pre>
+  </body>
+</html>