The Great Taboo Part 11

"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 G.o.d myself, not a fool, don't you see? You are a very great G.o.d, too; but I am the greater. No more of words between us two. It is as between G.o.ds. The fire! the fire!"

Tu-Kila-Kila replaced his mask. They proceeded from the hut to the open s.p.a.ce 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 G.o.ds in our island of Boupari. Each G.o.d, 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 G.o.ds 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 pa.s.sed 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 G.o.d. 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 a.s.sent. "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 rea.s.sure the new G.o.ds, who came from the sun, of their grat.i.tude 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 G.o.d," 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 G.o.d at the Abode of Birds without breaking taboo.

The Month of Turtles begins at sunrise. My family G.o.d 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 G.o.d, thus condemned by his own superst.i.tion 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 a.s.sume the offensive. Clearly, he was guarding the sacred grove itself with jealous care, and was as eager for its safety as for his own life and honor.

Felix pa.s.sed on, wondering what it all could mean, and turned with an inquiring glance to his trembling Shadow. As for Toko, he had held his face averted meanwhile, lest he should behold the great G.o.d, and be scorched to a cinder; but in answer to Felix's mute inquiry he murmured low: "Was Tu-Kila-Kila there? Were all things right? Was he on guard at his post by the tree already?"

"Yes," Felix replied, with that weird sense of mystery creeping over him now more profoundly than ever. "He was on guard by the tree and he looked at me angrily."

"Ah," the Shadow remarked, with a sigh of regret, "he keeps watch well.

It will be hard work to a.s.sail him. No G.o.d in Boupari ever held his place so tight. Who wishes to take Tu-Kila-Kila's divinity must get up early."

They went on in silence to the little volcanic knoll near the centre of the island. There, in the neat garden plot they had observed before, a man, in the last relics of a very tattered European costume, much covered with a short cape of native cloth, was tending his flowers and singing to himself merrily. His back was turned to them as they came up. Felix paused a moment, unseen, and caught the words the stranger was singing:

"Tres jolie, Peu polie, Possedant un gros magot; Fort en gueule, Pas begueule; Telle etait--"

The stranger looked up, and paused in the midst of his lines, open-mouthed. For a moment he stood and stared astonished. Then, raising his native cap with a graceful air, and bowing low, as he would have bowed to a lady on the Boulevard, he advanced to greet a brother European with the familiar words, in good educated French, "Monsieur, I salute you!"

To Felix, the sound of a civilized voice in the midst of so much strange and primitive barbarism, was like a sudden return to some forgotten world, so deeply and profoundly did it move and impress him. He grasped the sunburnt Frenchman's rugged hand in his. "Who are you?" he cried, in the very best Parisian he could muster up on the spur of the moment. "And how did you come here?"

"Monsieur," the Frenchman answered, no less profoundly moved than himself, "this is, indeed, wonderful! Do I hear once more that beautiful language spoken? Do I find myself once more in the presence of a civilized person? What fortune! What happiness! Ah, it is glorious, glorious."

For some seconds they stood and looked at one another in silence, grasping their hands hard again and again with intense emotion; then Felix repeated his question a second time: "Who are you, monsieur? and where do you come from?"

"Your name, surname, age, occupation?" the Frenchman repeated, bursting forth at last into national levity. "Ah, monsieur, what a joy to hear those well-known inquiries in my ear once more. I hasten to gratify your legitimate curiosity. Name: Peyron; Christian name: Jules; age: forty-one; occupation: convict, escaped from New Caledonia."

Under any other circ.u.mstances that last qualification might possibly have been held an undesirable one in a new acquaintance. But on the island of Boupari, among so many heathen cannibals, prejudices pale before community of blood; even a New Caledonian convict is at least a Christian European. Felix received the strange announcement without the faintest shock of surprise or disgust. He would gladly have shaken hands then and there with M. Jules Peyron, indeed, had he introduced himself in even less equivocal language as a forger, a pickpocket, or an escaped house-breaker.