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The Great Taboo

by Grant Allen · English · Gutenberg #13876 · 441,386 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Great Taboo

Author: Grant Allen


        
Release date: October 26, 2004 [eBook #13876]
                Most recently updated: October 28, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GREAT TABOO ***

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 gua

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