'i^wi^w^"'-' ',"■ "jiw ' • <^"'"" ^" ♦ THE GREAT TABOO a WORKS BY GRANT ALLEN. < roTcji 8~J0, i/,'f/i extra, Cs. each ; post Zvo, ilbatratcd boards, 2s. each. Strange Stories, \\ith a rrontispiece by Geokgk Du Mairiek. The Beckoning Hand. With a Frontispiece by 'I'ownm.ky Ckken. Cro-Mii Zvo, doth e.xira, ,.'■•• ^'d- each; post Sr,', illustrated hoards, ^s each. Philistia. The Devil's Die. Babylon ; A Romance. For Maimie's Sake. In all Shades. This Mortal Coil. The Tents of Shem. With a Fn.inispiece by 1",. V. JJrf.wtnali.. Crown Svo, cloth extra, 2,^. Cd. A New Novel. Three Vols., crown Svo. SPreparhig. Croxvn Svo, cloth extra, 6s. each. The Evolutionist at Large. Colin Clout's Calendar. Vignettes from Nature. /.OA'DOuV: CIIATTO c- W INDUS, PICCADILLY. THE GREAT TABOO r.Y GRANT ALLEN AUTHOR Ol-- IN At.l, SHADES," "STRANGE STORIES," "THE TENTS OF SHEM," ETC. E n u CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY 1890 P K E F A C E . I DESIKE to express my profound iiidebtediiuss, for tlie central mythological idea embodied in tliis tale, to My. J. (>. Frazer's admirable and epocli-makin<.'- work, " The Golden Bough," whose main contention I have endeavoured incidentally to popularize in my liresent story. I wish also to express my obligations in other ways to Mr. Andrew Lang's " Myth, Ilitual, and Tteligion," Mr. H. O. Forbes's "Naturalist's Wanderings," and Mr. Julian Thomas's " Cannibals and Convicts." If I have omitted to mention any (jther autlior to whom I may have owed incidental iiints, it will Ijc some consolation to me to reflect tliat I shall at least have afforded an opportunity for legitimate sport to the amateurs of the new and popular ]]ritish pastime of badger-baiting or plagiary- hunting. It may also save critics some moments' search if I say at once that, after careful considera- tion, I have been unable to discover any moral wliatsoever in this humble narrative. I venture to believe tliat in so enlightened an age the majority of my readers will never miss it. CJ. A. Tlli: N03K, DOHKING, October, ISOO. CONTENTS. (HAITHK I. In .^Iid Pacific J I. Tin: Ti:mi'Ll: of tiii: Deity HI. I-and: r.iT ^YHAT Land? IV. The (iLESTS of Heaven ... V. Enrolled in Olympus VI. TiKsT Days in IJoiPAiii ... \l\. Inteimiaxge of Civilities VIII. The Cu.sto.ms of Boltaiii IX. Sowing the Wind ... X. ItEAriNG THE WllIIJLWINlt.. . XI. Afteu THE Storm XII. A Point of TnEOLoiiv ... XIII. As BETWEEN Gods XIV. '• 3Ir. TiIURSTAN, 1 niESUME" XV. The Secret of Kokonq XVI. A vEitv Faint Clue XVII. Facing the Worst ... XVIII. Tu-KlLA-KlLA ILAYS A CakK XIX. Domestic Bliss XX. Council of War XXI. IMethuselah gives Sign XXII. Tantalizing, Very 1 AGB 1 11 21 .35 4G oG Go 7G 87 i)8 105 113 121 129 13G 145 152 157 1G8 180 IS7 lOG viii COXrENTS. ( HAITI i: XXIir. A Messagi; fko.m thk L)i,ai. XXIV. An T'nfinisiiei) Tai.i: ... I'.VilK 202 210 XXV. TL'-KiI.A-KiLA .STHIKES ... ... ••■ -l^' XXVI. A ItASlI IlESOLVE ... ... ••• -25 XXVI r. A Stkanci: Ally ... ... ... ••• 232 XXVIII. Waoeu uv B.uTLi: ... ... .•■ 2 to XXIX. Victory— AND AiteuV ... ... ... 2»'.> XXX. SusrENfii ... ... .-■ ••• '-.»/ XXXI. At Sea: Oil' liuLi'Aiti ... ... .•• 205 XXXII. The Downfall of a Pantheon ... 272 THE GREAT TAROO. CHArTEK I. IN' MID rACTFir. " Man overboard I " It rang in Felix Tlmistan's ears like the sound of ii bell. He gazed aliout liim in disniav, wondcrin'^ wliat bad happened. The first intimation he received of tlie 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, further aft, took up the cry once more in an altered form: "A lady! a lady! ►Somebody overboard ! Great heavens, it's 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 conscious- ly -r 2 THE GREAT TABOO. 1U3SS. All al)out, the great water stretched dark and tumultuous. White breakers surged over liim. Far ahead the steamer's lights gleamed red and green in long lines upon the ocean. At first they ran fast ; then they slackened somewliat. She was surely slowing now : they must be reversing engines and trying to stop her. They would put out a boat. But what hope, wliat chance of rescue by night, in sucli a wild waste of waves as that ? And Muriel Ellis was clinging to liiui for dear life all tlic while, witli the despairing clutcli of a half-drowned woman ! The people on the Austral((sui/i, for their jiarl, knew l)etter what had occurred. There was bustle and commotion en(jugh on deck and on the captain's bridge, to be sure: "Man overboard!" — three sharp rings at the engine l)ell : — " 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 extra- ordinary quickness. Officers stood l)y, giving orders in monosyllal)les 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 <■ aid listen without terror to the story of the accident. It was the thirteenth day out from Sydney, and JN MIT) PACIFIC. the Amtralamui was rapidly nearing the e(|uatur. Towards evening, the wind had freshened, and tlie sea was running]: hiink horizon. In s[)ite of the heavy sea, many passengers lingered late on deck that night to see the last of tliat coral-girt sliore, which was to lie their final glimpse of land till they readied Honolulu, fii route for San Francisco. Bit by bit, however, the coco-nut palms, silliouetted witli tlieir graceful waving arms for a few In'ief minutes in black against the glowing background, merged slowly into the sky or sank Itelow the horizon. All grew dark. One by one, as the trees disa})peared, the passengers dropped oft' for wliist in the saloon, or retired to the uneasv 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 tlie ship, Muriel Ellis looked over towards the retreatin<>' island, and talked with a certain timid maidenlv frankness to Felix Thurstan. Tliere's nowhere on earth for getting really to know people in a very short time like the deck of a great Atlantic or l*acific 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 4 THE GREAT TABOO. ])rief ^veek.s 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 tliose thirteen days of Felix Thnrstan ; enough to make sure in lier own heart that she really liked him — well — so much, that she looked up with a pretty blush of self-consciousnes? 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 wav ))[ick from a long year's visit, to recruit her hcaltli, to an aunt in Paramatta. She was travelling under the escort of an amiable old cliaperon whom the aunt in ([uestion had picked up for her before leaving Sydney ; but, as the amiable old cliaperon, being but an indifferent sailor, sjient most of her time in her (nvn l)erth, closely attended by the oljliging 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 con- fidential mood, and watching the big waves advance or recede, and talking the sort of talk that such an hour seems to favour, with tlie handsome young civil servant who stood on guard, as it were, beside her. For Felix Tluirstan 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 IN MID PACIFIC. S like that ! " Muriel murmured, half to herself, as she gazed or.t wistfully in the direction of the dis- appearing coral reef. *' With those beautiful palms waving always over one's head, and that delicious evening air blowincj 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, eyeing 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 coco-nuts in Fiji as I have, I dare say the poetry of these calm palm-grove islands would be a little less real to you. Iiemember, though they look so beauti- ful and dreamy against the sky like that, at sunset especially (that was a heavy one, that time ; I'm really afraid m'c must go down to the cabin soon ; she'll be shipping seas before long if we stop on deck nmch 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 ? " r G THE QltEAT TABOO. " Oh dear, yes," Felix replied, holding his hund out as he spoke to catch his companion's arm gently, and steady her against the wave that was just goinj. 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 lieatlion 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 tliose whispering palm-trees. AVliy, T knew a man in the Marquesas myself — a liideous 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 ! AVhy, see ; there's a great liglit on the island now ; a big l)onfire or something : don't you make it out i You can tell it by the red glare in the sky overliead." 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 unspeak- able 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 ! " IN MID PACIFIC. 7 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 lier slender waist, and hold her tiglit so, when the hig wave which he saw coming struck full tilt against the vessel's flank, and broke in one white drenching sheet of foam against lier stern and quarter-deck. The suddenness of the assai./c took Felix's breath away. For the first few seconds lie was only aware that a heavy sea had been shipped, and had wet him through and tlu'ough with its unexpected deluge. A moment later, he was dimly conscious that his com- jjanion 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 lie picked himself up, wet, bruised, and shaken, lie 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 answer- ing cry, iiom the men who were smoking under the 8 THE on EAT TABOO. 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 lie 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 taff-rail 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 dark- ness 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 Australa- sian 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 mean time, almost as soon as the words were out of the bo'sun's lips, a sailor amidships had rushed to 7.V MID PACIFIC. 9 the safety belts hang up by the companion ladder, and liad Hung lialf a dozen of tlieni, one after another, with hastv but well-aimed throws, far, far astern, in the direction wliere 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 (piite 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 Ijoard, 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 weigh on their hopeless cpiest of search, through the dim black night, for those two belated souls alone in the midst of the angry Tacific. 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 l)urden 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 towards him; they were well and aptly flung, in the inspiration of the .lit 10 THE GREAT TABOO, moment, to allow for tlie sea itself carrying them on tlio crest of its waves towards tlie two drowning crcaturi'S. Felix saw them distinctly, and making a great Innge as they passed, in spite of Muriel's struggles, which sadly hampered liis movements, he managed to clutch at no less than three before the great billow, rolling on, carried them off on its top for ever away from Inm. Two of these he slipped hastily (»\'er Muriel's shoulders ; the other, he put, as best he might, round his own waist ; and then, for the first lime, 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 towards the two struggling castaways ? Current and wind had things all their own way. As a matter of fact, the light never came near the cast- aways at all: and after half an hour's ineffectual search^ IN MID PACIFIC. 11 which seemed to Felix a whole long UrL'tiiiie, it returned slowly towards the steamer from which it came — and left th(jse two alone on the dark racilic. "Tliere wasn't a chance of ])icking 'em uj)," the Captain said, M'ith pliilosophic calm, as the men clambered on board a^^ain, and the Australasian got under weigh once more for the port of ]Ionolulu. "I knew there wasn't a chance; l)ut in common liumanity, one was V>ound to make some show of trying to save 'em. lie 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 tliat running." And even as he spoke, Felix Tliurstan, rising once more on the crest of a much smaller billow — for some- how, 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 liur lights, and that they two were indeed aban- doned to their fate on the open surface of that vast and trackless ocean. I CHAPTKU II. i 'i THE TEMPLE OF THE DEITV. I While these things were happening on the sea close % by, a very different scene indeed was being enacted I meanwhile, beneath those waving palms, on the island I of Boupari. It was strange, to be sure, as Felix I Thurstan had said, that such unspeakable heathen 12 THE GREAT TABOO. orgies should be taking place within sight of a passing Christian English steamer. But if only he had known or reiiected to what sort of land he was try- ing 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 possi- })ility of undergoing such horrible heathen rites and ceremonies. For on the island of Boupari, it was high feast with the worshippers of their god tliat 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 w\as their wont, had all come forth to do him honour in due season, and to pay their respects, in the inmost and sacredest grove of 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 liastily forward. It was a noise like distant rumbling tlmnder, or the wlurr of some great English mill or factory ; and at its sound, every woman on the island tlirew 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 cere- THE TEMPLE OF THE DEITY, V, niony, were awiire 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 wootl, pointed at either end, and fastened bv a leather thong at one corner. But when whirled round the head l)y practised priestly hands, it ])roduces a Inw rumbling n(»is;e like the wheels of a distant carriage, growing gi'adually louder and clearer, from moment to moment, till at last it waxes itself into a frightful din, or bursts int(j perfect peals of imitation thunder. Then it decreases again once more, as gradually as it rose, coming fainter and ever fainter, like thunder as it recedes, till the hor- rible bellowing, as of supernatural bulls, dies away in the end, bv slow degrees, into low and soft and imperceptible murmurs. ]5ut when the savage hears the distant humminirof tlie Bull-roarer, at whatever distance, he knows that the mysteries of his god are in full swing, and he ] lurries forward in haste, leaving his work or his ])leasure, and running naked as he stands, to take his sliare in the worship, lest the anger of heaven should l)urst forth in devouring flames to consume him. J)Ut 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 tlie coral caverns in the central It THE GREAT TABOO. {ijrovc that eveninj:;, Tii-Kila-Kila, tlicii* ^od, rose slowly from liis placo, and stood out from his hut, a d<'ity revealed, belbre 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, Ijefore him, " Tu-Kila-Kila rises! H(i rises to speak! Hush! for the voiee of the mighty man-god ! " The god, looking around iiim superciliously witii a cynical air of contem})t, stood forward with a firm and clastic stej) before his silent wors]ii])j>crs. Jlc was a stalwart savage, in tlie very prime of life, tall, lithe, and active. His figure was that of a man well used to connnand ; l)ut his face, thougli handsome, was visibly marked by every externnl sign of cruelty, lust, and extreme bloodthirstiness. One might have said, merelv to look at him, he was a l»ein«' debased 1>V all forms of brutal and hateful self-indulgence. A baleful light burned in his keen grey eyes. His lips were thick, full, purple, and wistful. "My people may look upon me," he said, in a strangely aifable voice, standing forward and smiling with a curious half-cruel, half-compassionate smile upon his awestruck followers. "On every day of the sun's course l)ut this, none save the ministers dedicated to the service of Tu-Kila-Kila dare uaze unhurt upon his sacred person. If any others 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 Till-: TEMPLE OF THE DEITY. 15 ^ i ])Oopl(*, and sends them the earlier and tlie hiter rain ill tlie wet season, and makes their yams and tlieir taro grow, and causes his sun to sliine upon tin in freely — all tlie year round Tu-Kihi-Kila, your god, sits sliut up in his own house among the skeletons of those wliom he has killed aiul eaten, or Malks in liis walh'd paddoek, wliere Ids hread-fruit rijxMis and Ins ]»lantains spring, — himself, .and the nnnisters lliat liis trihesmen liave given Inn;." At tlie sound of their mvstic deitv's voice llie savages, hcnding lower still till their foreheads loudied tlie ground, repeated in ''horns, to the cla}>[)iiig of hands, like some solemn litany: " Tu- Kilii-lvila speaks true. Oiir lord is merciful. He sends down his sliowers U])on our crops and fields. He causes his sun to shine l»rightly over us. He makes our jiigs and our slaves Itring forth their increase. Tu-lvila-Kila is good. His people praise liim." The g(jd took another step forward, the divine mantle of red feathers glowing in the sunset on liis dusky shoulders, and smiled once more that hateful gracious smile of liis. He was standing near the open door of his wattled hut, overshadowed l>v the huge spreading arms of a gigantic banyan tree. Through the open door of the hut it was ])ossible to catch just a passing glimpse of an awful sight within. On the beams of the house, and on the l)0ughs of the tic3e 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 : tliey IC THE a HEAT TABOO. were the trophies of the cannil-al man-god's hateful prowess. Tu-Kiha-Kihi 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 tlio spirit of plants. Without me there would l)e notliing for you all to eat or drink in Boupari. If I were to grow old and die, tlie sun would fade away in tlie heavens overhead; the l)read-fruit trees would witlier 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 Ijowed down in acquiescence with awestruck faces. " It is true," they answered, in the same slow sinut 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, " Yow sliall have victims as you will, great THE TEMPLE OF THE DEITY. 17 god ; only give us yam and tare and bread-fruit, and cause not your briglit light, the sun, to grow dark in heaven over us." "Cut yourselves," Tu-Kila-Kila cried in a pe- remptory voice, clapping his hands thrice. "I am tliirsting for blood. I want your free-will oftering." As he spoke, every man, as by a set ritual, took from a little skin wallet at his side a sharp Hake 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 staunch the wound, but let the red drops fall as tiiey would on to the dust at their feet, without seeming even to be conscious at all of the fact that tliey 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 IVom 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, with- out 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 X the lines and surveyed the men critically. They were all drawn up in rows, one behind the other, 1 according to tribes and families ; and the god walked '% (J I 18 THE GREAT TABOO. 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 lie passed on to his neighbour. 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 de- liberateness, 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 towards 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 needs be done. This is a great honour. 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 M THE TEMPLE OF THE DEITY. 19 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 liis 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 tlie 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 comn ind, waving his hand gracefully. And the men, moving forward, laid their comrade, face down- wards, 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 offer- ing. Now for tlie trespass ! Where is the woman who dared to approach too near the temple-home of ,^hc divine Tu-Kila-Kila ? Bring the criminal for- ward : " 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, per naked bronze limbs were shapely and lissome ; Wt her eyes were swollen and red with tears, and her 4ce strongly distorted with awe for the man-god. 20 THE GREAT TABOO. When she stood at last before Tu-Kila-Kila's dreaded face, she Hung herself on the ground in an agony of fear. " Oh, mercy, great god ! " she cried, in a feeble voice. "I have sinned, 1 have sinned. Mercy, mercy ! " Tu-Kila-Kila smiled as before, a smile of imperial pride. No ray of pity gleamed from those steel-grey eyes. " Does Tu-Kila-Kila show mercy ? " he asked, in a mocking voice. " Does lie pardon his suppliants ? Does he forgive trespasses? Is he not a god, and must not his wrath be appeased ? Slie, being a woman, and not a wife sealed to Tu-Kila-Kila, lias dared to look from afar upon his sacred home. She has spied the mysteries. Therefore she must die. My people, bind her." h\ 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 THE TEMPLE OF THE DE/TY. 21 to tlie l)ase uf ii great pyramidal pile of wood and palm-leaves, ready prepared bctbreliand in the yard of the temple. In a second, the dry fuel, catching the sparks instantly, blazed up to heaven with a wild outl)urst of llame. Great red tongues of lire licked up the mouldering mass of leaves and twigs, and caught at once at the trunks of palm and li-wood within. A hucre conflat^ration reddened the skv at once like lightning. The effect was magical. The glow transfigured the whole island for miles. It was in fact the blaze that Felix Tlmrstan 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 gaily. "A fire worthy of a god. It will serve me well. Tu-Kila-Kila will have a Gfood oven to roast his meal in." Then he turned toward the sea, and held up his hand once more for silence. As lie 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 towards it solemnly with his plump, brown fore- finger. "See," he said, drawing himself up and looking preternaturally wise; " your god is great. 1 am sending some of this fire across the sea to where Day sun has set, to aid and reinforce it. That is to keep up the fire of the sun, lest ever at any time it fdiould fade and fail you. While Tu-Kila-Kila lives, the sun will burn bright. If Tu-Kila-Kila were to «Ke it would be night for ever." 22 THE GREAT TABOO. His votaries, following their god's forefinger 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 tlms 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 ! In- credible ! Marvellous 1 Miraculous ! They prostrated themselves in their terror at Tu-Kila-Kila's feet. " Oh, great god," they cried, in awestruck 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. Profoundlv 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 inter- pretation he had put upon it seemed to him a perfectly - ■.■.«( THE TEMPLE OF THE DEITY. 23 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 fiict, the gig had pu^ out in search of Felix and Muriel. Tu-Kila-Kila interpreted the facts at once, how- ever, in his own way. " See," he said, pointing with his plump forefinger once more, and encouraging witli 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- 24 THE a BEAT TABOO. stone of his fathers. The rest, a European liand vsln-inks from revealing. The orgy was too horrible even for description. And that was the land towards 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 ! CHAFIER III. LAND : BUT WHAT LAND ? As the last glimmering lights of the Anstralasian 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, tliat 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 w^as 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 towards 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 LAND: BUT WHAT LAND f 25 struck iiiid wa.slied over the Australasian, currvinn Muriel ^vit]l it. Tlie very same cause tliat produced the breakers, however, bore Felix on their summit rapidly landward ; and once lie had got well beyond tlie region of the bar tliat b(\qot them, he found himself soon, to his intense relief, in comparatively calm shoal-water. Muriel Ellis, for her part, was faint with terror and witli the buffeting of the waves; but she still iloated 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 lireakers. Now that they found themselves in easier waters for a while, Felix began to strike out vigorously through tlie darkness for the shore. Holding up his com- panion with one hand, and swimming with all his mij^jht in the direction where a vaque 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 o long hour of struggle, in feeling his feet after all on a firm coral l)ottom. 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 con- jectured 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, 2G THE GREAT TABOO. breathless creature ; and then the succeeding wave rolled him over like a ball, upon the beach as before, in quick succession. Four times the backcurrent sucked him under with its wild pull in the selfsame way, and four times the return wave flung him up upon the beach again like a fragment of seaweed. 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. Tlie 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 tliem 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 beacli 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 LAND: HUT ]V/IAT LAXDf 27 wall, which, advancing slowly, curls over at last in a hollow circle, and pounds down upon the sand or roef with all the crushing force of some enormous sledge-hammer. But after the fourth assault, Felix felt himself flung up higli and dry hy 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 liimself 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 com- panion. The next wave flung up ^luriel, 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 ])ank of short tropical herbage close to the edge of tlie 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 28 THE riREAl TA/iOO. wlu.'ii liu juiiiped ovc'ilioard iiftcr ^ruricl. Tlu; first was a pocket-knife ; the second was a ilask with a little whiskey in it; and tlie tliird, perliaps the most important of all, a small metal l)ox 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 ex- posure, 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. ritch 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 else- where. The reef was no doubt circular, and it inclosed 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 over- head, and motionless as a mill-pond. Between them lay the low raised ridge of coral covered with tall stems of coco-nut palms, and interspersed here and LA ND : D V T WIIA T LAND f 20 there, as far as his eye couhl Judge, witli little rectangular clumps of plantain and taro. But wluit alarmed Felix most was the fire that hlazed so briglitly to heaven on the central ishuul : for he knew too well tluit meant — there were men on the place; the land was inhabited. The coco-nuts and taro told the same doubtful tale. From the way tliey grew, even in that dim starlight, Felix recognized at once they had all been planted. Still, he didn't hesitate to do what he thouglit l)est 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 w^armth of tlie stone nuide them quickly inilammalde — he struck a match on the box, and proceeded to light his fire l)y Muriel's side. xVs her clothes grew warmer, the poor girl opened her eyes at last, and gazing around her, exclaimed in blank terror, " Oh, Mr. Thurstan, when; are we ? Wliat does all this mean ? Where liave we got to i On a desert island ? " " Xo, not on a desert island," Felix answered shortly ; " Fm afraid it's a great deal worse than that. To tell you the truth, I'm afraid it's inhabited." At that moment, b} 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 ! 30 THE GREAT TABOO. 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 leant back, drained liis coco-nut 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. " 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 care- less 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 LAND: BUT WHAT LAND J 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 w^ild 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 a^ain. 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 fiames 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 worship- per exclaimed, rushing forward a little at the sight, and beside himself with superstitious awe and sur- prise at Tu-Kila-Kila's prescience. " Surely our god is great ! He knows all things ! lie brings us meat from the setting sun, in ships of fire, in blazing canoes, across the golden road of the sun-bathed ocean 1 " As for Tu-Kila-Kila himself, leaning on his elbow at ease, he gazed across at the unexpected sight with 32 THE ORE AT TABOO. 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 Idossom 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 lis has made us like a god indeed. I shall give my ministers charge that no harm liappen to them." He drew a wliistle 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 ! " lie 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 leathers, which shore 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 new-comers 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." LAND: BUT WHAT LAND 1 3.J The Kiii!]f of Fire bent liis head iu assent. '' It is as Tu-KUa-KUa wills," he answered submissivelv. Tii-Kila-Kila whistled ai^ain, 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 inter- spersed with red coral, tied around his waist, came forth to the summons. " The King of Water is here," he said, bending liis head, but not his knee, before the greater deity. " Water," Tu-Kila-Kila said, with half-tipsy solem- nity, ''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 roj^es 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 inter- posed, his hand playing on his knife with a faint air of impatience. D 34 THE OREAT TABOO. " 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 towards 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 towards his awe- struck followers. " Now the mysteries are over. Tu-Kila-Kila will sleep. He has eaten of human ilesh. He has drunk of coco-nut 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 rein- force 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. ( 35 ) CHArTER IV. THE GUESTS OF IIKAVEN'. All that night through — tlieir first lonely night on the island of Boupari — Felix sat np by liis ilickering tire, 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 he made npon them suddenly by hind (•r water. He knew the South Seas quite well enough already to have all the possibilities of mis- fortune floating vividly before his eyes. He realized at once from his own ])revious experience the full loneliness and terror of their unarmed condition. For Boupari was one of those rare remote islets where the very rumour 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 L>'one 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 came to herself but slowlv, and as her torn 36 THE GREAT TABOO. clothes dried by degrees before the lire and tlie iieat of tlie 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, towards morning, she dozed off into an uneasy sleep, from pure fatigue and excess of weari- ness. As she slept, Felix, bending over her, with the biggest blade of his knife open in case of attack, watched with profound emotion tb.e rise and fall ot 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 ? AVas 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, i)refer death, an honourable death, at the friendly hands of a tender-hearted fellow-countryman, to tlie unspeakable insults of THE GUESTS OF HEAVE 21 S7 tliese iiiaii-eating Polynesians ? If only lie had tlu- courage to release her by one blow, as she lay there, from the coming ill ! Uiit he hadn't : he hadn't. Even on board the Aui^trcdasian.ha had been vas^'uelv 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 be- thought 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 re- volver, shot wife and daughter with unerring aim, to prevent their falling alive into the hands of the natives, and then blown his own brains out v;ith his last remaininc: cartrick^e. As his uncle had done at Jliansi, thirty years before, so he himself would do on that nameless Pacilic 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 lirst into that innocent woman's heart ; and then bury it deep in his own, and die beside her. 38 THE GREAT TABOO. Su till' lung night wore uii — Muriel, [)il lowed on loose coco-nut husk, dozing now and again, and waking with a start, to gaze round about her wihlly, and realize once more in what plight she found her- self; Felix crouching by her feet, and keeping watch with eager eyes and ears on every side for the least sign of a noiseless, naked footfiill through the tangled growth of that dense tropical underbush. 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 l)reath for a fierce, wild leap upon his fancied as- sailant. I)Ut the night wore away by degrees, n 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 where exactly he w^as, and in what surroundings. Without, the ocean broke in huge curling billows on tlie shallow beach of the fringing reef with such stupendous force that Felix w^ondered how they could ever have lived through its pounding surf and its fiercely retreating undertow. Within, the lagoon spread its calm lake-like surface aw\ay to the white coral shore of the central atoll. Between these two waters, the greater and the less, a w^^ving 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 mis- giving the very foundations of the land thrill under TlfE QUESTS OF HEAVEN. 39 his feet Jit every dull thud or boom uf ihc surf on Its restrainiu.rr barrier. Now that he couhl see that thin belt of shore in its actual sliape and size he was not astonislied at this constant shock ; wliat surprised him rather was the fact tluit sucli a speck of land could hold its own at all against the cease- less 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 liim that the whole ground-plan of the island was entirely circular. In the midst of all rose the central atoll itselt, a tmy mountain peak, just projecting with its lulls and gorges to a few hundred feet above the surface of the ocean. Outside it came the la^roon with Its placid ring of glassy water surroundin ° the circular island, and separated from the sea by an equally circular belt of fringing reef, covered thick with waving stems of picturesque coco-nut. It was on the reef they had landed, and from it they now looked across the calm lagoon with doubtful eyes towards 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! 40 THE GREAT TABOO. Thurstan," slu' cried,' clinging t(» his arm in her terror, " what docs it all mean ? Are they going to hurt us ? Arc 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 signiti- cantly, with its open blade before her. The poor girl clung to him harder still, w'ith 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 tliaf, j-ather than that those creatures should kill me." "I p)romise," 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 tlieni, and crowded to tlie water's edge with groups of grinning and shouting warriors. They were dressed in aprons of dracaena leaves only, with necklets and armlets of shark's teeth and cowrie shells. A dozen canoes at least were making towards 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 thev THE GUESTS OF HE A VEX. 41 drew nearer and nearer. But Felix, holding his lireath liard, 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. AVhatever tlieir ultimate intentions towards the castaways might be, their immediate o])ject seemed friendly and good- humoured. The l)oats, though large, were not regular war-canoes; tlie men, instead of brandishing their spears, and lunging out with tliem over the edge in threatening attitudes, held them erect in their hands at rest like standards ; they were laughing and talk- ing, 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 tliat 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 langnag(>, to reassure the castaways. Felix's eye glanced cautiously from Ijoat tu boat " He says, ' We are friends,' " the young nuin re- marked 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 h^re?" she cried, still clinging close with both hands to her one friend and protector. 42 TIIK GRKAT TABOO. << M\ Try n-e. 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 lield the basket of fruits gave a sudden start. It almost seemed to Muriel as if she understood tliem. lint when Muriel looked again slie gave no furtlier sign. Slie merely held her peace, and tried to ap[)ear wholly undisconcerted. The eliief beckoned them down from the platform with a M^ave of his hand. Tiiey rose and Ibllowed him. As they rose the people around them bowed low to the ground. Felix could see tliev were bowiuf to Muriel and himself, not merely to the chief. A loubt ilitted strangely across his mind for a moment. , What could it all mean ] Did tliey take; the two strangers, then, for supernatural Iji'ings i Had they enrolled them as gods ? If so, it might serve as some little protection for them. The procession formed again, three and tliree, 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! E ( 60 THE GREAT TABOO. Taboo ! " I'cople who met them fell on their faces at once, as the chief cried out in a loud tone, " The King of the Kain ! the Queen of the Clouds ! Korong ! Korong ! They are coming ! They are coming ! " At last they reached a second cleared space, stand- ing in a large garden of manilla, lorpiat, 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-terrihed. Eclix still grasped his open knife in his hand, ready to strike at any moment that might be necessary. The chief led them forward towards a very large tree near the centre of the garden. At the foot of the tree stood a hut, some- what bigger and better built than any tliey had yet seen : and in front of the trunk a stalwart sava<]:e, very power^^uUy 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 riglit 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, tlie people with- out 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 ENllOLLEU jy OLYMPUS. 51 said, prcdoatiug tlieiu to the god with agraeclui wave of Ins hand. " We liave found tlie spirits that you brought from the sun, witli 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 liave eaten the banana Ihe King of tlie Kain-tlio Queen of the Clouds ' Korong ! Jieceivc them ' " Tu-Kiia-Kila glanced at them with an approving glance, strangely compounded of pleasure and terroi- Ihey are plump," he said sliortly. ^'Thev are indeed Korong. My sun has sent me an acceptal.h' in'esent." " What is your will that wc shoiiM do witi, the.n ?'' the chief asked iu a deeply deferential tone iii-Jvila-Ivila looked hard at Muriel-sueh a Irite fill h.ok that the knife trembled irresolute for i second in Felix's hand. "Give then, two fresi, liuts, he saul, in a lordly way. '■ Give them dixine l-latters. Give them all that thev uee.l. Make everything right for them." The chief bowed, and retired with an awed air roni the presence. Exactly as he passed a certain liue on the ground, marked white with a row of eoral-sand. T..-Kila-Kila seized his spear and his toinalmwk once more, and mounted guanl, as before at the foot of the great tree where they had seen him' piieing. An instantaneous change seemed to Muriel come over his demeanour at that moment While ho 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 52 THE GREAT TABOO. floor, peering iiroiiiul liim witli keen siisiticioii, 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 witli the fruit basket stood near the gate, looking outward from the wall, her face turned away from the awful home of Tu-Kila-KiLi. 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. ^le going to be your servant. Me name ]\Iali. ]\Ie very good girl. Me take plenty care of you." The unexpected sound of her own language in tlio nddst of so much unmitigated savagery took Muriel fairly l»y 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 Ije IMuriel's servant ! The chief led them back to the shore, talking volubly all the way in Polynesian to Felix. His dialect differed so much from the Fijian that wdien 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 ENROLLED IN OLYMPUS. 53 clearly regarded as a very great honour was in store for them in the future. Whatever these people's particular superstition niiglit be, it seemed pretty evident at least tliat it told in the strangers' favour. 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 witli practical details. Before long, two adjacent huts were found for them, near the shore ot the lagoon : and Felix noticed with pleasure, not only that the huts themselves were new and clean, l)ut also that the chief took great care to place round botli 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 tlie 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 rA THE an EAT taboo. stouter, and perhaps forty or thereabouts ; he wore a short cape of wliite albatross phnnes, witli 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 aslies. If any woman, I scorch her to a cinder. Taboo to the King of the Eain 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 trans- gress this line without leave, I drown him in his canoe. If any woman, I drag her alive into the spring as she fetches w\ater. Taboo to the King of the Eain and the Queen of the Clouds. Taboo ! Taboo ! Taboo ! Korong ! I say it." " What does it all mean ? " Muriel whispered terrified. ENROLLED IN OLYMPUS. 65 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, h)oking up with an air of dignity. A good-looking young man, and the girl wlio said her name was Mali, stepped forth from the crowd, and fell on tlieir 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 liain," 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, turn- ing her three times round. " Follow her in all her incomings and her outgoings, and serve her faith- fiilly. 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. Xo man will hinder you." sj'WW'^ 'H*'^ W'^r.'w W.I 60 77/ A' a HEAT TABOO. And ill II moiiiunt, tlie speiiniii'ii (1i'(i1)[)L'(1 tlieir spGurs ill concert, tlic crowd IcU Itack, and the villa<^'er8 dispersed as if by magic to their own lionses. But Felix and Muriel were left alone beside their huts, guarded only in silence by tlieir two mystic ►Sliadows. CITAPTKK \'l. riKST DAYS IN IJOUPAItl. TliU(jUi)llOUT that day the natives brought tliem 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 wonumliood, did not venture to cross the white line of coral-sand that surrounded the lints: they laid down their presents, M'ith 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 ! Xorong ! " — 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 FJIiST DAYS IN liOUVAlil. 57 liad been performed some three or four times. " Are they always going to keep us in sucli plenty ?" The Shadow looked back at him with an air of considerable surprise. " Tliey l,ring presents, cf courses" lie said in his own tongue, " because they are badly in want of rain. We have lia.l much •Irouglit of late in JJoupari ; wo need water iV,.ni Heaven. The l)anana-buslies wither; tlie iloweis on the bread-fruit tree do not swell to l)read-fruit ; the yams are tliirsty. Tlierefore the fathers send' their daughters with presents, maidens of the villa-es, all marriageable girls, to ask for rainfall. Ihit they will always provide for you, and also for the Queen liowever you behave; for you are both Korong. Tu-' Kila-Kila has said so, and Pleaven has accepted you." "What do you mean by Korong?" Felix asked, with some trei)idation. The Shadow merely looked back at him with a sort of Idank surprise that anybody should be Ignorant of so simple a conception. '' Why, Korong is Korong," he answered, aghast. " You are' Koron" yourself. The Queen of the Clouds is Korong, tor" 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 ciuestions from his taciturn Shadow. In fact, it was clear that in the open, at least, the Shadow was averse to being observed in fam'iliar conversation with Felix. During the heat of the day, however, when they sat alone within the hut, he was much more communicative. Then ho launched forth pretty freely into talk about the 58 THE GREAT TABOO. 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, tlie Boupari dialect, though agree- ing 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 vocabularv of religious rites and ceremonies. And in the second place, the Shadow was so rigidly bound by his own narrow and insular vset of ideas, that he couldn't understand the difficulty Felix felt in throwing himself into them. Over and over again, when Felix asked him to explain some word or custom, he would repeat, with naive impatience, '' Why, Korong is Korong," or, ** Tula is just Tula : even a child must surely know what Tula is ; much more yourself, who are indeed Korong, and who have come from the sun to bring fresh fire to us." In the adjoining hut, Muriel, who was now beginning in some small degree to get rid of her most pressing fear for the immediate future, and whom the obvious reality of the taboo had reassured for the moment, sat with Mali, her own particular Shadow, unravelling the mystery of the girl's know- ledge 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. FIRST DAYS IN BOUPAIU. nO "Don't you be afraid, missy," she said, with .ueimine kindliness in her tone, as soon as the gifts of yam and hread-fruit liad all been duly housed and j^Mvnered, " No harm come to you. You Korong, you know. You very ^^a-eat taboo. Tu-Kila-Kila send King of Fire and King of Water to make taboo over you, so nobody Imrl you." Muriel burst into tears at the sound of her own language from those dusky lips, and exclaimed tlu'ough her sol)S, clinging to the girl's hand foi- comfort as slie spoke, '' AVhy, how did you ever come to speak English, tell me ? " Mali looked up at her with a half ast(jnished air. " Oh, I servant in Queensland, of course, missy," she answered, witli great composure. " Labour vessel come to my island, far away, four, five years ago, steal boy, steal woman. My pa[)a just kill my mamma, because he an^rv with her, so no want daughters. 80 my papa sell me and my sister for plenty rum, plenty tobacco, to gentlemen in labour vessel. Gentlemen in labour vessel take Jani and me away, away, to Queensland. Big sea ; long voyage. We stop there three yam — three years — dut culture is a purely personal and individual possession ; we carry it with us wherever w^e 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 lier interest in Felix Tliurstan, who represented for her all that was dearest and Ijest in England), a curious noise, as of a discordant drum or tom-tom, beaten in a sort of 68 THE GREAT TABOO, recurrent tune, was heard towards the liills ; and at its very first sound Loth the Shadows, flinging them- selves upon their faces with every sign of terror, endeavoured 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 explain' 1 to him how the girl had picked up some knowledge of our tongue in Queensland. Mali trembled in every limb, so that she could liardly 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 trem- bling 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 zigzag 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. INTEnCIIANOE OF CIVILITIES. 69 decorated witli lung strings uf shiny cowries. After them, in order, came a sort of liollow square of chiefs or warriors, surrounding with fan-pahns a central ohject all shrouded from the view with the utmost precaution. This central object was covered with a liugc regal umbrella, from wliose edge hung rows of small nautilus and other shells, so as to form a kind ( »f screen, like the Japanese portieres now so common in English doorways. Two supporters held it up, one on either side, in long cloaks of feathers. Under the umbrella, a man seemed to move ; and as he approached, the natives to right and left, fled pre- cipitately to their huts, snatching up their naked little ones from the ground as they went, and crying aloud, " Taboo, taboo ! He comes I he comes ! Tu- Kila- Kila ! Tu-Kila-Kila ! " The procession wound slowly on, unheeding these common creatures, till it reached the huts. Then the cliiefs who formed the hollow square fell bock one by one, and the man under tlie umbrella, witii Ills 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 I 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, oh King of the Eain," he said, J# 70 THE GREAT TAliOO. turuiiig gaily to Felix; " uud you, too, uh Qiieeii <»!' the Clouds ; you have done right bravely. We have all ac(iuitted 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 drily. 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 tilled with the insolence of his supernatural power. " See, my people," he cried, holding up his hands, palm outward, in his accustomed god-like way ; " 1 am indeed a great deity — Lord of Heaven, Lord of Earth, Life of the AVorld, Master of Time, Measurer of the Sun's Course, Spirit of Growth, Creator of the Harvest, Master of ^lortals, 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. ISTFJiailANOK OF CIVILITIES, 71 '• i>id I not tell you, my muut," he oxuhiiinetl, " I would brill*,' you new gods, great spirits from the sun, fetchera of fire from my bright home in tlie heavens ? And have they not come ? Are tliey nut here to-day ? Have they not brought the precious gift of fresh fire with them ? " "Tu-Kila-Xila speaks true," the cliiefs eclioed submissively with l)ended heads. "Did 1 not make one of them King of tlie Uain ? " Tu-Kila-Kila asked once more, stretching one hand i toward tlie sky with theatrical magnificence. " Did I not declare the otlier Queen of the Clouds in Heaven ? And have 1 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 i once more in unanimous chorus. Tu-Kila-Kila struck another attitude with childish self-satisfaction. - I go into tho hut to speak with I 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, support- ing the umbrella, bowed assent to his words. Tu^ ■ Kila-Kila motioned Felix and Muriel into the nearest I 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 contemp- 72 THE QBE AT TABOO. tuous suiile. " I want to see yuii 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 grey eye ; " we three are all gods. We wiio 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 labourers for the white men in t\ni 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 / 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 / who brought you." "You are mistaken," Felix said simply, not think- ing it worth while to contradict him further. " It was a pure natural accident." "Well, tell me," the savage god went on once more, eyeing liim close and sharp, " they say you have brought fresh fire from the sun with you, and INTERCnANOE OF CIVILITIES. 73 that you know how to make it burst out like light- ning at will. My people have seen it. They tell me the wonder. I wisli to see it too. We are all gods here ; we need have no secrets. Only, I didn't want to let these common people outside see I asked you to show me. Make fire leap forth. I desire to behold it." Felix took out the match-ljox 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 horril)le 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 a god; bu* i^ you are, then I am a god ten thousand times stronger than you. One more word, — one more look like that, J say — and I plunge tliis knife remorselessly into you." Tu-Kila-Kila drew back, and smiled benignly. Stalwart rufllan 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 't 74 THE GREAT TABOO. with whitu faces — the " sailing f>ods " — 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 wdther 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 ' ertainly 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 lie 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." JNTERCITANGE OF CIVILITIES. 75 " Can aliu not .speuk ? " the savage asked, pointing with his finger somewhat rudely towards Muriel. "Has she no voice but this, the chatter of birds? Does she not know the human lanLifuaii-e ? " " 8he can speak," Felix replied, placing himself like a shield between Muriel and the astonished savage. " She can speak the language of the peo])le 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 understand- ing the hateful things your people would say of her. Now go 1 I have seen already enough of you. I am not afraid, liemember, I am as powei-ful a god as you. I need not fear. You cann(jt 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 an- cestors. These strangers were Korong ; ho dare not touch them, except in the way and manner and time appointed ])y 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 aflable 76 Tm: QREAT TABOO. iiitiiiiier tu liis eliit'fs aroiiiul, " 1 have spokuii with the gods, my ministers, within. They have kissed my hands. My rain has flillen. 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 VIIL THE CUSTOMS OF BOUPARI. Human nature cannot always keep on the full stretch of excitement. It was wonderful to botli 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 I THE CUSTOMS OF BOUFAIil. 77 in constant alarm, this feeling after a time gave way to one of comparative security. The strange institu- tion of tal)oo protected them more efficiently in their wattled huts tlian the whole police force of London could have done in a Ikdgravian mansion. Tliere thieves break through and steal, in spite of jjolts and bars, and metropolitan constables; ])ut 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. Witliin this impalpable ring-fence they were absolutely safe from all rude intrusion, save that of the two Sliadows wlio waited upon tliem, day and night, with unfailin- willingness. '^ In other respects, considering tlie circumstances their life was an easy one. The natives brou-lit tliem freely of their simple store-yam, taro, bread- fruit, and coco-nut, with plenty of fish, crabs, and lobsters, as well as eggs l)y the basketful, and even sometimes chickens. They required no pay l)eyond 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 generaliza- tions 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 con- tinuously by simpler and more generous principles than the familiar European one of ''the ]ii Korong. Too good. Too pretty." " Why so ? " Muriel exclaimed, drawing l)ack witli some faint presentiment of unspeakable horror. Felix tried to stop her; Init the girl would not be stopped. "Because, when Korong time up," slie 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 WIXD. Vaguely and indefinitely one terrible trutli liad 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 88 TT1E GREAT TABOO. tu kill thciii '. \i tlu'y iiii'iiiit to kill Llieiii, why pay tli(3iii jueanwliilc sudi respect and affection t One point at least was now, however, quite clear to Felix. While tlie natives, especially the women, displayed towards 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 con- sidered that if anything went wrong with either of their two new gods, corresponding misfortunes might ha])pen 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 tho 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 mo\'ements with taboos of excessive stringency. Nothing that the new-comers said or did was indifferent, it seemed, to the welfare of the comnmnity ; 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 learnt SOWISG THE WIND. 80 liv .slow de'fi'ees alone to realize. From the verv Iteginniii;^ lie had observed, to he sure, that tliev might only eat and drink tlie food provided for them ; tliat they were supplied with a clean and fresh- built hut, as well as with l)ran-nevv coco-nut cups, spoons, and platters ; tliat no litter of any sort was allowed to accumulate near their sacred inclosure ; and that their Sliadows never left them, or went out of their sight, l>y day or l)y night, for a single moment. Now, however, he l^egan 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 heeoupari ; and to he answerable for their good behaviour gene- rally. 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 incpiiring 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 00 THE GREAT TABOO. 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 afterwards learned, would have paid witli his own body by a cruel death for the Korong's disappearance. He might as well have tried to escape his own sliadow as to escape the one tlie islanders had tacked on to him. All Felix's energies were now devoted to the ar- (bious 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 wrecks after their arrival in the island, the young Englishman was stroll- ing by himself (after the sun sank low in heaven) along a jiretty tangled hillside path, overhung with li;nias and rope-like tropical creepers, while his faithful Shadow lingered a step or two behind, keeping a sharp look-out meanwhile on all his movements. Near the top of a little crag of volcanic rock, in the centre 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 inclosnre. But what specially attracted Felix's attention was the fact that the space outside this circle had been cleared into a SOWING THE WIND. 91 regular flower-garden, quite European in tlic ilefinito- ness and orderliness of its quaint arrangement. "Why, who lives liere ? " Felix asked in Polvne- sian, turning round in surprise to his respectful Shadow. The Shadow waved his hand vaguely in an ex- I)ansive way towards the sky, as he answered with a certain air of awe often observable in his speed i 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, won- dering vaguely to himself whether here, percliance, he might have lighted upon some stray and s]ii[)- wrecked 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 T' Felix asked with intense interest. " Oh no, he's not nearly so powerful as that," the Shadow answered, half terrified at the bare sugges- tion. " No god in Heaven or Earth is like Tu-Kila- Kila. This one is only King of the r,irds, Mhich is a little province, while Tu-Kila-Kila is King of Heaven and Earth, of Plants and Animals, of CJods 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 for ever, till some other supplants him." 92 TTTE GREAT TABOO. " Von s.iy lie coinos from tlu* ■^uii," Felix ])iit in, tlevoiirecl M'itli curiosity. "And he speaks the bird language ? AVhat do you moan by that ? Does lie speak like the Queen of the Clouds and myself when we talk together i " " Oh dear, no," the Shadow answered in a very confident tone. " He doesn't speak the least bit in the world like that. ITe speaks shriller and higher and still more bird-like. It is chatter, cliatter, chatter, like the parrots in a tree ; tirra, tirra, tirra ; tarra, tarra, tarra ; la, la, la ; lo, lo, lo ; hi, lu, lu ; li-la. And he sings to himself all the time. Ho sings this way " And then the Shadow, wdth that wonderful power of accurate mimicry which is so strong in all natural human beings, began to trill out at once, with a very ^ood Parisian accent, a few lines from a well-known song in "La Fille do Madame Angot," " QuanJ ou conspi-ro, Qutiml sans t'rayour On pout sc (li-ro Conapirateur, Pour tout Ic mon-(k> II faut avoir Perruquo blon-do Et collet noir— Perrnque blon-de Et cullot 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." sowjxa THE wisd. '.•;: "Why, Toko, it's Freiicli," Felix cxclaime.l, using the Fijian word for a Frenchman, wliicli 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, Maving his arms seaward. "IFe came from the sun, like your- selves. But not in a sun-hoat. It had no lire. IFe came in a canoe, all by himself. And Mali says " — here the Sliadow lowered his voice to a most mysterious whisper — " he's a man-a-oui-oui." Felix quivered with excitement. "jMan-a-oui-oui " is the universal name over semi-civilized Polynesia for a Frenchman. Felix seized ui)on it with avidity. "A man-a-oui-oui," he cried, delighted. ''JIuw strange ! How womU'rful ! I must go in at once tn his hut and see him ! " He had lifted his foot and was just going to cross tlie white line of coral-sand, when his Shadow, catching him suddenly and stoutly round tlie waist, iiulled him back from the enclosure with everv siun of horror, alarm, and astonishment. "Xo, you can't go," he cried, grappling with him with all his force, yet using him veiy tenderly for all that, as l)ecom('s a god. "Taboo! Taloo 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 AVater crossed mj/ taboo line. Why shouldn't I cross e(|ually the King of the Birds', then?" "So you might — as a rule," the Shadow answered — ■ m' <*• !)| THE GREAT TABOO. with promptitude. " You arc butli gods. Your taboos do not cross. You may visit each other. You may transgress one another's lines witliout danger of falling dead on the ground, as common men would do if they broke taljoo-lines. But tliis is the Month of lUrds. The King is in retreat. No man may see liini except his own Sliadow, tlie Little Cockatoo, who brings him his food and drink. Do you see that liawk's head, stuck upon the post by the door at the side. That is his Special Taboo. lie keeps it for his 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 cat them. Come away. This is dangerous." Scarcely were the words well out of his mouth when from the recesses of the hut a rollickin^T Frencli voice was heard trilling out merrily : " Quaud on con-spi-re, Quantl, sans frayeur " Without waiting for more, the Shadow seized Felix's arm in an agony of terror. " Come away," he cried hurriedly, " come away I 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 Sliadow 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 SOWIXa THE WIND. 0." felt he dure not tritle wiili this superstiLiun. Tro- foiind as was his curiusity abuut the mysterious Frencliman, he was compelled to bottle up his cajrer- ness and anxiety for the moment, and patiently wait till the Month of lUrds had run its course, and taken its inconvenient taboo along with it. These limita- tions were terrible. Yet he counted much upon the information the Frenchman could give him. The man had been some time on tlie island, it was clear, and doubtless he understood its wavs thorouy souk' huts at tlio uutiiient, aiul over tlie stockade of one of them a tree was liaiiging with small yellow fruits, wliieli Felix knew well in Fiji as wholesome and ngrceable. lie broke off a small branch as he passed, and offered a couple thoughtlessly to Muriel. She took them in her lingers, and tasted them gingerly. " They're not so bad," she said, taking another from the bough. " They're very nmch like gooseberries." At the same moment, Felix popped one into his own mouth, ami swallowed it without thiidving. 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 npbraiiiing the two Shadows for their want of attention. "AVe couldn't help it," Toko exclaimed, with every appearance of guilt and horror on his face. '• They were nmch too sharp for us. Their hearts are black. How could we two interfere ? These gods are so quick ! They had picked and eaten them ])efore we ever saw them." One of the men raised his hand with a threatening aii._l)ut against the Shadow, not against the sacred person of Felix. " He will be ill," he said angrily, pointing towards the white man ; '' and She will, too. Their hearts are indeed black. They have sown the seed of the wind. They have 1 'h 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 tliem, cursing low and SOWING THE WIND. !»7 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 eartli shall we ever do to get rid of this terrible, unendurable godship ? " The natives without set up a great shout of horror. '•Sec, see! she cries!" they exclaimed, in inde- scribable panic. " She has eaten the Storm-fruit, and already she cries ! Oh, clouds, restrain your- selves ! Oh, great Queen, mercy ! Whatever will ])ecome of us and our poor huts and gardens ! " And for hours they crouched around, beating their breasts and sliriekini:^. That evening, ]\Iuriel sat up late in Felix's liut, with jMali by her side, too frightened to go back into her own alone l)efore those angry peo[>le. And all the time, just beyond the barrier line, they could liear, above the whistle of the wind around tlie liut, 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." H 98 THE ORE AT TABOO. 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 harbour of Samoa. And without, tlie wail came louder and clearer still : " If you sow the bread-fruit-seed, you will reap the bread-fruit. 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. Towards 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." REAPING THE WHIRLWIND. 99 About two o'clock, there came a lull in the wind, which had beer, 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 briglit 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 lugu- brious litany. The air felt unusually heavy and oppressive. Felix raised his eyes to the sky, and saw wisps of light cloud drifting in rapid flight over tlie 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 liefore experienced. Its energy was awful. Kound 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 coco-nut 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 100 THE Git EAT TABOO. witli a roar at the Ijottom, and lay it low at once on the ground, with a crash like thunder. In other places, little playful wliirlwinds seemed to descend from the sky in the very midst of the dense brush- wood, where they cleared circular patches, strewn thick underfoot 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 nn'ghty spirit. For in spite of the black clouds they could sec 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, descend- REAPING THE WHIRLWIND. lOi % ing in water-spoiits, 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 thuy had been called upon t^^ 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 lonf;:, in the mute misery of utter despair. At her feet ]\Iali 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 Kain and the Queen of the Clouds. The heavens have broken loose. The 102 THE GREAT TABOO. 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 liands 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 ])ody ( 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 botii 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 acknow- ledged the fact; but there, before the face of that awful convulsion of nature, all the little deceptions yW REAPING THE WHIRLWIND. 10:5 and veils of life seemed rent asunder for ever as by a Hash of lightning. They stood face to face with each other's souls, and forj^ot all else in the acjonv 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 \'ery eyes, amid so awful a storm, what unspeakable effects might not follow at once from it ! But they liad too nmch 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 ^luriel tenderly down on the mud floor again. " I iimst go out, my child," he said. " For 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 Hashes of lightning. He had not long to wait. In a moment the sky was all ablaze a^^ain from end to end, and continued so for many seconds con- secutively. 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 fiat 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 fioods upon their bare — -.- .^ — .^- 104 THE on EAT TABOO. 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 b'viting their tom-toms in unison, with barbaric concord, they cried aloud once more as Felix appeared, in a weird litany that overtopped even the tumultuous noise of the tempest, " Oh, Storm- ( Jod, hear us ! Oh, great spirit, deliver us ! King of the l\ain and Queen of the Clouds, befriend us I Be angry no more 1 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-fi'uit. 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 AFTER THE STORM. 10 o SO far as the attitude of the sava.i^es 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. AFTEK THE STOKM. Mext morning, the day broke bright and calm, as if the tempest had been but an evil dream of the niglit, now past for ever. The birds sang loud ; tlie 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 happens after these alarming tropical cvclones and rain-storms, the memorials of the j^a-eat wind that had ra^ed all niojht Ion'' anions the forests of the island were neither few nor far between. Everywhere the ground was strewn with leaves and branches and huge stems of coco-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 dracoena or some gigantic banyan. Bread-fruits and coco-nuts lay tossed in the wildest confusion on the ground: the lOG THE GREAT TABOO. banana and plantain-patches were beaten level witli 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 they two tliat 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 iloor 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 huts, Felix observed a regular wall of many feet in height, piled up by the waves like the familiar Chesil Beach near his old liome 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 earshot. 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. !;■ AFTER THE STORM. 107 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 slioulder with 'more genuine interest and aflection 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 not do to you." " Why so ? " Felix exclaimed in surprise. " Last night, surely, they were 'all prayers and promises and vows and entreaties." The young ^nan nodded his head in acquiescence. "Ah yes; last night," he answered. "That was very well then. Yows 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 rend- ing their banyan-trees and snapping their coco-nut 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 ; lie sent Fire and Water among the worshippers, no doubt, to offer up vows and to appease your anger." Then Felix remembered, as his Shadow s^^oke, tliat, 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 •**•" 108 THE GREAT TABOO. the moiiieiit, in accorclaiice with a well-known savage custom : they had come naked and in disgrace, as befits all suppliants. Tliey had left behind them the insignia of their rank in their own shaken huts, anJ. bowed down their bare backs to the rain and the li'ditnin". o o "Yes, I saw them among the other islanders," l^'elix answered, half smiling, but prudently remain- ing 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. Perliaps Tu- Kila-Kila will burn me to ashes with one glance of his eyes. He may know this minute what I'm say- ing here alone to you." It is hard for a while man to meet scruples like this ; but Felix was bold enough to answer outriglit, " 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 to 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 AFTER THE STORM. 109 cMjiitldenco. " I know it for cortiuii. I swear a c,'roal oath to it." "You swear 1)V Tu-Kila-Kila liiinself" tlip young savage asked anxiously. " I swear by Tu-Kila-Kila liinisclf," Felix replied at once. " I swear, without doubt. lie can never know it." " Tliat 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 uiulerstand the ways of P>oupari. If for three days after tlio 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- liue, — why, then, the people are clear of sin : whoever tiikes 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 cndd never get to the l)ottoni f'f its horrible superstitions. " Because you eat 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 r»oupari, 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 ■ ■•■HtK <<■ 110 THE GREAT TABOO. they will say, * We are free ; we have bought you with a price ; we have brought your coco-nuts. No sin attaches to us ; we are righteous, we are righteous.' And then they will kill you, and Fire and AVater 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 liurt 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 bv some superstitious fear, or else incapable of putting him- self 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 can- not 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 ques- tioning, Felix could ever manage to get out of his mysterious Shadow. " At the end of three days we wdll be safe, though ? " he inquired at last, after all other questions failed to produce an answer. AFTER THE STOIiM. Ill " 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 wuU 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 accus- tomed to it all, Felix," she answered resignedly. " If only I know that you wiU 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 Kain, Oh, Queen of the Clouds, come forth for our vows ! Eeceive 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 coco- nuts and bread-fruits, 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 wind- falls you made. Did you not knock 112 THE GREAT TABOO. them all oil' 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 tlic natives were making outside the huts. " Yes, all," tlie Shadow answered ; " they are vows ; they are god-sends ; but if you like, you can give some of them Imck- If you give mucli back, of course it will make my people less angry with you." Felix advanced near the line, holding his hand up before liiui to conmiand 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 wliat a wrong you have purjjosely done us. If your heart were not bad, would you treat us like this I 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. Wc are not afraid, who are only men. Why are you afraid of us ? " Felix tried to speak once more, but the din A POINT OF THEOLOGY. 113 drowned his voice. As lie paused, the people set up their louds shouts n<'aiu. "Oh, vou wicked <-'od ! You eat the storm-apple ! You have wrought us much harm. You have spoilt our harvest. How you came down in great sheets last night ! It was pitiful, pitiful ! AVe would like to kill you. You might have taken our bread-fruits and our l)ananas, 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 liave 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 TIIEOLOCY. 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 tlie 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. I 114 THE GREAT TABOO. By-and-by, partly "by words and partly by gestures, lie made them understand that they might take back and keep for themselves all the coco-nuts and bread- fruits they had brought as wind-falls. At this, the people seemed a little appeased. " His heart is not quite so bad as we thouglit," 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 IMuriel 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, and 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 wind-falls of fruit, or with ol)jects they had vowed in their terror to dedicate during the night ; and Felix all the time kept explaining at tlie top of his voice, to all as thoy 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 wind-falls and the objects vowed to him, why had he beaten down their crops and broken their houses ? They looked at him meaningly : but thev dared not cross that fjreat line of taboo. It A POINT OF 'JIIEOLOGY. Ho \vas their own superstition alone, in that moment of danger, that kept their hands off tho.^e defenceless wliite people. At last, a happy idea seemed to strike tlie crowd. '' What he wants is a child ! " tliey cried effusively. " He thirsts for blood ! Let us kill and roast him a jtroper 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 (lod and man. AVith us, all human life alike is sacred. We spill no l)lood. If you dare to do as you say, I will raise such a storm over your heads to-night as will sub- merge 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. AVitli him, deliberation is unknown, and impulse every- thi?ig. In a moment, the natives had gathered in a circle a little way off, and began drawing lots 110 TIIK on EAT TABOO. Several children, seized hurriedly up among the crowd, were huddled like so many sheep in tlie 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 ouside the circle. The white man could stand this horrid barbarity no longer. At the risk of liis 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 7nust 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 tliat guarded the victim. Was it a ruse to make him cross the line, alone? or did they really mean it ? He hardly knew ; but lie had no time to debate the abstract question, l^ursting 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 I Kill him, kill him, kill him ! " As they closed in upon him, with spears and H n '# A POINT OF THEOLOGY. 117 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 triej 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 coco-nits ! " At the sound of the struggle going on so close outside, Muriel ruslied in frantic haste and terror from the hut. Her face was pale, but her demeanour 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 ! " Witli a fierce effort Felix tore his way back, through the spears and clubs, towards 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 118 THE GREAT TABOO. superstitions 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 bari-cl-lioops. For a minute or two the conflict was sharp, and hotly contested. Then at last Felix managed to fling tlie cliild across the line, to push Muriel with one hand at arm's length before him, and to rush himself within the sacred circle. Xo sooner had he crossed it than the savages drew up around, undecided as yet, but in a threatening body. IJank behind rank, their loose hair in their eyes, they stood like wild beasts baulked of their prey, and yelled at him. Some of them brandished their spears and their stone hatchets angrily in their victim's 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 A POINT OF THEOLOGY. 110 pieces. Come on ! Who follows ? Koronu ! 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 eat of the storm-apple ! What might not happen if we were to break taboo without due cause and kill them ? " One old grey-bearded warrior in particular held his countrymen back. " Mind how you trifle with gods," the old chief said, in a tone of solemn warn- ing. " 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 120 THE QBE AT TABOO. mysteries ? The rain lias put out all tlic fires in Boupari. The Kincj of Fire himself, even his heartli is cold. lie tried his hest in the storm to keep liis sacred embers still smoulderini;' ; hut the Xing of the llain was stronger than he was, and put it out at last in spite of his endeavours, lie careful, tliere- fore, how you deal with the King of the JJain, wlio comes down among lightnings, and is so very powerful." " And Tu-Kila-Kila comes to fetcli 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. " Tliese 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 beliold this miracle." The warriors hung back with doubtful eyes for a moment. Then they spoke witli 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 nor 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 ! AVe 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 AS BETWEEN GODS. 121 ])cciiliar tom-tom. "Tu-Kila-Kila comes!" tlicy shouted. "Our j^'rciit '^od ri])])roaclies ! WuiniMi, bcgoiu' ! Men, liide your eyes! Fly, fly from the ])rightness of his face, which is aa the sun in glory I Tu-Kila-Kila comes! Fly far, all prof.me ones !" And in a moment, the women had disappeared into space, and the men hiy Hat on the moist ground with low groans of surprise, and hid their faces in their hands in ahject 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 tem[)le 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 towards 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 122 Till': a BEAT TABOO. often the fa.sliiuii with saviai^es wlieii frightened; but Felix coulil see between tlie 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, uh King of the llain, 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 Firo. Y''ou have a l>ad heart. Why do you use us so ? " " Why do you let your people offer human sacri- fices ? " F'elix answered boldly, taking advantiige 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 under- stand 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 pro- found 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 A8 BETWEEN GODS. 123 Wiis cviik'iiLly delighted at the turn tiling's luul taken. It' only he dared — Ijut there; ho dared not. " I-'ire and Water wouhl never allow it," he murmured softly to himself. " They know the tal)oos as well as I do." It was clear to Felix that tlie sava