AFTER THE STORM.
Next morning the day broke bright and calm, as if the tempest had been
but an evil dream of the night, now past forever. The birds sang loud;
the lizards came forth from their holes in the wall, and basked, green
and gold, in the warm, dry sunshine. But though the sky overhead was blue
and the air clear, as usually happen after these alarming tropical
cyclones and rainstorms, the memorials of the great wind that had raged
all night long among the forests of the island were neither few nor far
between. Everywhere the ground was strewn with leaves and branches and
huge stems of cocoa-palms. All nature was draggled. Many of the trees
were stripped clean of their foliage, as completely as oaks in an English
winter; on others, big strands of twisted fibres marked the scars and
joints where mighty boughs had been torn away by main force; while,
elsewhere, bare stumps alone remained to mark the former presence of some
noble dracæna or some gigantic banyan. Bread-fruits and cocoanuts lay
tossed in the wildest confusion on the ground; the banana and
plantain-patches were beaten level with the soil or buried deep in the
mud; many of the huts had given way entirely; abundant wreckage strewed
every corner of the island. It was an awful sight. Muriel shuddered to
herself to see how much the two that night had passed through.
What the outer fringing reef had suffered from the storm they hardly knew
as yet; but from the door of the hut Felix could see for himself how even
the calm waters of the inner lagoon had been lashed into wild fury by the
fierce swoop of the tempest. Round the entire atoll the solid
conglomerate coral floor was scooped under, broken up, chewed fine by the
waves, or thrown in vast fragments on the beach of the island. By the
eastern shore, in particular, just opposite their hut, Felix observed a
regular wall of many feet in height, piled up by the waves like the
familiar Chesil Beach near his old home in Dorsetshire. It was the
shelter of that temporary barrier alone, no doubt, that had preserved
their huts last night from the full fury of the gale, and that had
allowed the natives to congregate in such numbers prone on their faces in
the mud and rain, upon the unconsecrated ground outside their taboo-line.
But now not an islander was to be seen within ear-shot. All had gone away
to look after their ruined huts or their beaten-down plantain-patches,
leaving the cruel gods, who, as they thought, had wrought all the
mischief out of pure wantonness, to repent at leisure the harm done
during the night to their obedient votaries.
Felix was just about to cross the taboo-line and walk down to the shore
to examine the barrier, when Toko, his Shadow, laying his hand on his
shoulder with more genuine interest and affection than he had ever yet
shown, exclaimed, with some horror, "Oh, no! Not that! Don't dare to go
outside! It would be very dangerous for you. If my people were to catch
you on profane soil just now, there's no saying what harm they might do
to you."
"Why so?" Felix exclaimed, in surprise. "Last night, surely, they were
all prayers and promises and vows and entreaties."
The young man nodded his head in acquiescence. "Ah, yes; last night," he
answered. "That was very well then. Vows were sore needed. The storm was
raging, and you were within your taboo. How could they dare to touch you,
a mighty god of the tempest, at the very moment when you were rending
their banyan-trees and snapping their cocoanut stems with your mighty
arms like so many little chicken-bones? Even Tu-Kila-Kila himself, I
expect, the very high god, lay frightened in his temple, cowering by his
tree, annoyed at your wrath; he sent Fire and Water among the
worshippers, no doubt, to offer up vows and to appease your anger."
Then Felix remembered, as his Shadow spoke, that, as a matter of fact, he
had observed the men who usually wore the red and white feather cloaks
among the motley crowd of grovelling natives who lay flat on their faces
in the mud of the cleared space the night before, and prayed hard for
mercy. Only they were not wearing their robes of office at the moment, in
accordance with a well-known savage custom; they had come naked and in
disgrace, as befits all suppliants. They had left behind them the
insignia of their rank in their own shaken huts, and bowed down their
bare backs to the rain and the lightning.
"Yes, I saw them among the other islanders," Felix answered,
half-smiling, but prudently remaining within the taboo-line, as his
Shadow advised him.
Toko kept his hand still on his master's shoulder. "Oh, king," he said,
beseechingly, and with great solemnity, "I am doing wrong to warn you; I
am breaking a very great Taboo. I don't know what harm may come to me for
telling you. Perhaps Tu-Kila-Kila will burn me to ashes with one glance
of his eyes. He may know this minute what I'm saying here alone to you."
It is hard for a white man to meet scruples like this; but Felix was bold
enough to answer outright: "Tu-Kila-Kila knows nothing of the sort, and
can never find out. Take my word for it, Toko, nothing that you say to me
will ever reach Tu-Kila-Kila."
The Shadow looked at him doubtfully, and trembled as he spoke. "I like
you, Korong," he said, with a genuinely truthful ring in his voice. "You
seem to me so kind and good--so different from other gods, who are very
cruel. You never beat me. Nobody I ever served treated me as well or as
kindly as you have done. And for _your_ sake I will even dare to break
taboo--if you're quite, quite sure Tu-Kila-Kila will never discover it."
"I'm quite sure," Felix answered, with perfect confidence. "I know it for
certain. I swear a great oath to it."
"You swear by Tu-Kila-Kila himself?" the young savage asked, anxiously.
"I swear by Tu-Kila-Kila himself," Felix replied at once. "I swear,
without doubt. He can never know it."
"That is a great Taboo," the Shadow went on, meditatively, stroking
Felix's arm. "A very great Taboo indeed. A terrible medicine. And you
are a god; I can trust you. Well, then, you see, the secret is this:
you are Korong, but you are a stranger, and you don't understand the
ways of Boupari. If for three days after the end of this storm, which
Tu-Kila-Kila has sent Fire and Water to pray and vow against, you or the
Queen of the Clouds show yourselves outside your own taboo-line--why,
then, the people are clear of sin; whoever takes you may rend you alive;
they will tear you limb from limb and cut you into pieces."
"Why so?" Felix asked, aghast at this discovery. They seemed to live on a
perpetual volcano in this wonderful island; and a volcano ever breaking
out in fresh places. They could never get to the bottom of its horrible
superstitions.
"Because you ate the storm-apple," the Shadow answered, confidently.
"That was very wrong. You brought the tempest upon us yourselves by your
own trespass; therefore, by the custom of Boupari, which we learn in the
mysteries, you become full Korong for the sacrifice at once. That makes
the term for you. The people will give you all your dues; then they will
say, 'We are free; we have bought you with a price; we have brought your
cocoanuts. No sin attaches to us; we are righteous; we are righteous.'
And then they will kill you, and Fire and Water will roast you and boil
you."
"But only if we go outside the taboo-line?" Felix asked, anxiously.
"Only if you go outside the taboo-line," the Shadow replied, nodding a
hasty assent. "Inside it, till your term comes, even Tu-Kila-Kila
himself, the very high god, whose meat we all are, dare never hurt you."
"Till our term comes?" Felix inquired, once more astonished and
perplexed. "What do you mean by that, my Shadow?"
But the Shadow was either bound by some superstitious fear, or else
incapable of putting himself into Felix's point of view. "Why, till you
are full Korong," he answered, like one who speaks of some familiar fact,
as who should say, till you are forty years old, or, till your beard
grows white. "Of course, by and by, you will be full Korong. I cannot
help you then; but, till that time comes, I would like to do my best by
you. You have been very kind to me. I tell you much. More than this,
it would not be lawful for me to mention."
And that was the most that, by dexterous questioning, Felix could ever
manage to get out of his mysterious Shadow.
"At the end of three days we will be safe, though?" he inquired at last,
after all other questions failed to produce an answer.
"Oh, yes, at the end of three days the storm will have blown over," the
young man answered, easily. "All will then be well. You may venture out
once more. The rain will have dried over all the island. Fire and Water
will have no more power over you."
Felix went back to the hut to inform Muriel of this new peril thus
suddenly sprung upon them. Poor Muriel, now almost worn out with endless
terrors, received it calmly. "I'm growing accustomed to it all, Felix,"
she answered, resignedly. "If only I know that you will keep your
promise, and never let me fall alive into these wretches' hands, I shall
feel quite safe. Oh, Felix, do you know when you took me in your arms
like that last night, in spite of everything, I felt positively happy."
About ten o'clock they were suddenly roused by a sound of many natives,
coming in quick succession, single file, to the huts, and shouting aloud,
"Oh, King of the Rain, oh, Queen of the Clouds, come forth for our vows!
Receive your presents!"
Felix went forth to the door to look. With a warning look in his eyes,
his Shadow followed him. The natives were now coming up by dozens at a
time, bringing with them, in great arm-loads, fallen cocoanuts and
breadfruits, and branches of bananas, and large draggled clusters of
half-ripe plantains.
"Why, what are all these?" Felix exclaimed in surprise.
His Shadow looked up at him, as if amused at the absurd simplicity of the
question. "These are yours, of course," he said; "yours and the Queen's;
they are the windfalls you made. Did you not knock them all off the trees
for yourselves when you were coming down in such sheets from the sky last
evening?"
Felix wrung his hands in positive despair. It was clear, indeed, that to
the minds of the natives there was no distinguishing personally between
himself and Muriel, and the rain or the cyclone.
"Will they bring them all in?" he asked, gazing in alarm at the huge pile
of fruits the natives were making outside the huts.
"Yes, all," the Shadow answered; "they are vows; they are godsends; but
if you like, you can give some of them back. If you give much back, of
course it will make my people less angry with you."
Felix advanced near the line, holding his hand up before him to command
silence. As he did so, he was absolutely appalled himself at the perfect
storm of execration and abuse which his appearance excited. The foremost
natives, brandishing their clubs and stone-tipped spears, or shaking
their fists by the line, poured forth upon his devoted head at once all
the most frightful curses of the Polynesian vocabulary. "Oh, evil god,"
they cried aloud with angry faces, "oh, wicked spirit! you have a bad
heart. See what a wrong you have purposely done us. If your heart were
not bad, would you treat us like this? If you are indeed a god, come out
across the line, and let us try issues together. Don't skulk like a
coward in your hut and within your taboo, but come out and fight us. _We_
are not afraid, who are only men. Why are _you_ afraid of us?"
Felix tried to speak once more, but the din drowned his voice. As he
paused, the people set up their loud shouts again. "Oh, you wicked god!
You eat the storm-apple! You have wrought us much harm. You have spoiled
our harvest. How you came down in great sheets last night! It was
pitiful, pitiful! We would like to kill you. You might have taken our
bread-fruits and our bananas, if you would; we give you them freely; they
are yours; here, take them. We feed you well; we make you many offerings.
But why did you wish to have our huts also? Why did you beat down our
young plantations and break our canoes against the beach of the island?
That shows a bad heart! You are an evil god! You dare not defend
yourself. Come out and meet us."