THE SECRET OF KORONG.
"You have lived here long?" Felix asked, with tremulous interest, as he
took a seat on the bench under the big tree, toward which his new host
politely motioned him. "You know the people well, and all their
superstitions?"
"_Hélas_, yes, monsieur," the Frenchman answered, with a sigh of regret.
"Eighteen years have I spent altogether in this beast of a Pacific; nine
as a convict in New Caledonia, and nine more as a god here; and, believe
me, I hardly know which is the harder post. Yours is the first White face
I have ever seen since my arrival in this cursed island."
"And how did you come here?" Felix asked, half breathless, for the very
magnitude of the stake at issue--no less a stake than Muriel's life--made
him hesitate to put point-blank the question he had most at heart for the
moment.
"Monsieur," the Frenchman answered, trying to cover his rags with
his native cape, "that explains itself easily. I was a medical student
in Paris in the days of the Commune. Ah! that beloved Paris--how far
away it seems now from Boupari! Like all other students I was
advanced--Republican, Socialist--what you will--a political enthusiast.
When the events took place--the events of '70--I espoused with
all my heart the cause of the people. You know the rest. The
bourgeoisie conquered. I was taken red-handed, as the Versaillais
said--my pistol in my grasp--an open revolutionist. They tried me by
court-martial--br'r'r--no delay--guilty, M. le President--hard labor to
perpetuity. They sent me with that brave Louise Michel and so many other
good comrades of the cause to New Caledonia. There, nine years of convict
life was more than enough for me. One day I found a canoe on the shore--a
little Kanaka canoe--you know the type--a mere shapeless dug-out. Hastily
I loaded it with food--yam, taro, bread-fruit--I pushed it off into the
sea--I embarked alone--I intrusted myself and all my fortunes to the Bon
Dieu and the wide Pacific. The Bon Dieu did not wholly justify my
confidence. It is a way he has--that inscrutable one. Six weeks I floated
hither and thither before varying winds. At last one evening I reached
this island. I floated ashore. And, _enfin, me voilà_!"
"Then you were a political prisoner only?" Felix said, politely.
M. Jules Peyron drew himself up with much dignity in his tattered
costume. "Do I look like a card-sharper, monsieur?" he asked simply, with
offended honor.
Felix hastened to reassure him of his perfect confidence. "On the
contrary, monsieur," he said, "the moment I heard you were a convict from
New Caledonia, I felt certain in my heart you could be nothing less than
one of those unfortunate and ill-treated Communards."
"Monsieur," the Frenchman said, seizing his hand a second time, "I
perceive that I have to do with a man of honor and a man of feeling.
Well, I landed on this island, and they made me a god. From that day to
this I have been anxious only to shuffle off my unwelcome divinity, and
return as a mere man to the shores of Europe. Better be a valet in Paris,
say I, than a deity of the best in Polynesia. It is a monotonous
existence here--no society, no life--and the _cuisine_--bah, execrable!
But till the other day, when your steamer passed, I have scarcely even
sighted a European ship. A boat came here once, worse luck, to put off
two girls (who didn't belong to Boupari), returned indentured laborers
from Queensland; but, unhappily, it was during my taboo--the Month of
Birds, as my jailers call it--and though I tried to go down to it or to
make signals of distress, the natives stood round my hut with their
spears in line, and prevented me by main force from signalling to them or
communicating with them. Even the other day, I never heard of your
arrival till a fortnight had elapsed, for I had been sick with fever, the
fever of the country, and as soon as my Shadow told me of your advent it
was my taboo again, and I was obliged to defer for myself the honor of
calling upon my new acquaintances. I am a god, of course, and can do
what I like; but while my taboo is on, _ma foi_, monsieur, I can hardly
call my life my own, I assure you."
"But your taboo is up to-day," Felix said, "so my Shadow tells me."
"Your Shadow is a well-informed young man," M. Peyron answered, with easy
French sprightliness. "As for my donkey of a valet, he never by any
chance knows or tells me anything. I had just sent him out--the pig--to
learn, if possible, your nationality and name, and what hours you
preferred, as I proposed later in the day to pay my respects to
mademoiselle, your friend, if she would deign to receive me."
"Miss Ellis would be charmed, I'm sure," Felix replied, smiling in spite
of himself at so much Parisian courtliness under so ragged an exterior.
"It is a great pleasure to us to find we are not really alone on this
barbarous island. But you were going to explain to me, I believe, the
exact nature of this peril in which we both stand--the precise
distinction between Korong and Tula?"
"Alas, monsieur," the Frenchman replied, drawing circles in the dust with
his stick with much discomposure, "I can only tell you I have been trying
to make out the secret of this distinction myself ever since the first
day I came to the island; but so reticent are all the natives about it,
and so deep is the taboo by which the mystery is guarded, that even now
I, who am myself Tula, can tell you but very little with certainty on the
subject. All I can say for sure is this--that gods called Tula retain
their godship in permanency for a very long time, although at the end
some violent fate, which I do not clearly understand, is destined to
befall them. That is my condition as King of the Birds--for no doubt
they have told you that I, Jules Peyron--Republican, Socialist,
Communist--have been elevated against my will to the honors of royalty.
That is my condition, and it matters but little to me, for I know not
when the end may come; and we can but die once; how or where, what
matters? Meanwhile, I have my distractions, my little _agréments_--my
gardens, my music, my birds, my native friends, my coquetries, my aviary.
As King of the Birds, I keep a small collection of my subjects in the
living form, not unworthy of a scientific eye. Monsieur is no
ornithologist? Ah, no, I thought not. Well, for me, it matters little; my
time is long. But for you and Mademoiselle, who are both Korong--" He
paused significantly.
"What happens, then, to those who are Korong?" Felix asked, with a lump
in his throat--not for himself, but for Muriel.
The Frenchman looked at him with a doubtful look. "Monsieur," he said,
after a pause, "I hardly know how to break the truth to you properly. You
are new to the island, and do not yet understand these savages. It is so
terrible a fate. So deadly. So certain. Compose your mind to hear the
worst. And remember that the worst is very terrible."
Felix's blood froze within him; but he answered bravely all the same, "I
think I have guessed it myself already. The Korong are offered as human
sacrifices to Tu-Kila-Kila."
"That is nearly so," his new friend replied, with a solemn nod of his
head. "Every Korong is bound to die when his time comes. Your time will
depend on the particular date when you were admitted to Heaven."
Felix reflected a moment. "It was on the 26th of last month," he
answered, shortly.
"Very well," M. Peyron replied, after a brief calculation. "You have
just six months in all to live from that date. They will offer you up by
Tu-Kila-Kila's hut the day the sun reaches the summer solstice."
"But why did they make us gods then?" Felix interposed, with tremulous
lips. "Why treat us with such honors meanwhile, if they mean in the end
to kill us?"
He received his sentence of death with greater calmness than the
Frenchman had expected. "Monsieur," the older arrival answered, with a
reflective air, "there comes in the mystery. If we could solve that, we
could find out also the way of escape for you. For there _is_ a way of
escape for every Korong: I know it well; I gather it from all the natives
say; it is a part of their mysteries; but what it may be, I have
hitherto, in spite of all my efforts, failed to discover. All I _do_ know
is this: Tu-Kila-Kila hates and dreads in his heart every Korong that is
elevated to Heaven, and would do anything, if he dared, to get rid of him
quietly. But he doesn't dare, because he is bound hand and foot himself,
too, by taboos innumerable. Taboo is the real god and king of Boupari.
All the island alike bows down to it and worships it."
"Have you ever known Korongs killed?" Felix asked once more, trembling.
"Yes, monsieur. Many of them, alas! And this is what happens. When the
Korong's time is come, as these creatures say, either on the summer or
winter solstice, he is bound with native ropes, and carried up so
pinioned to Tu-Kila-Kila's temple. In the time before this man was
Tu-Kila-Kila, I remember--"
"Stop," Felix cried. "I don't understand. Has there then been more than
one Tu-Kila-Kila?"
"Why, yes," the Frenchman answered. "Certainly, many. And there the
mystery comes in again. We have always among us one Tu-Kila-Kila or
another. He is a sort of pope, or grand lama, _voyez-vous?_ No sooner is
the last god dead than another god succeeds him and takes his name, or
rather his title. This young man who now holds the place was known
originally as Lavita, the son of Sami. But what is more curious still,
the islanders always treat the new god as if he were precisely the
self-same person as the old one. So far as I have been able to understand
their theology, they believe in a sort of transmigration of souls. The
soul of the Tu-Kila-Kila who is just dead passes into and animates the
body of the Tu-Kila-Kila who succeeds to the office. Thus they speak as
though Tu-Kila-Kila were a continuous existence; and the god of the
moment, himself, will even often refer to events which occurred to him,
as he says, a hundred years ago or more, but which he really knows, of
course, only by the persistent tradition of the islanders. They are a
very curious people, these Bouparese. But what would you have? Among
savages, one expects things to be as among savages."
Felix drew a quiet sigh. It was certain that on the island of Boupari
that expectation, at least, was never doomed to disappointment. "And when
a Korong is taken to Tu-Kila-Kila's temple," he asked, continuing the
subject of most immediate interest, "what happens next to him?"
"Monsieur," the Frenchman answered, "I hardly know whether I do right or
not to say the truth to you. Each Korong is a god for one season only;
when the year renews itself, as the savages believe, by a change of
season, then a new Korong must be chosen by Heaven to fill the place of
the old ones who are to be sacrificed. This they do in order that the
seasons may be ever fresh and vigorous. Especially is that the case with
the two meteorological gods, so to speak, the King of the Rain and the
Queen of the Clouds. Those, I understand, are the posts in their pantheon
which you and the lady who accompanies you occupy."
"You are right," Felix answered, with profoundly painful interest. "And
what, then, becomes of the king and queen who are sacrificed?"
"I will tell you," M. Peyron answered, dropping his voice still lower
into a sympathetic key. "But steel your mind for the worst beforehand. It
is sufficiently terrible. On the day of your arrival, this, I learn from
my Shadow, is just what happened. That night, Tu-Kila-Kila made his great
feast, and offered up the two chief human sacrifices of the year, the
free-will offering and the scapegoat of trespass. They keep then a
festival, which answers to our own New-Year's day in Europe. Next
morning, in accordance with custom, the King of the Rain and the Queen of
the Clouds were to be publicly slain, in order that a new and more
vigorous king and queen should be chosen in their place, who might make
the crops grow better and the sky more clement. In the midst of this
horrid ceremony, you and mademoiselle, by pure chance, arrived. You were
immediately selected by Tu-Kila-Kila, for some reason of his own, which I
do not sufficiently understand, but which is, nevertheless, obvious to
all the initiated, as the next representatives of the rain-giving gods.
You were presented to Heaven on their little platform raised about the
ground, and Heaven accepted you. Then you were envisaged with the
attributes of divinity; the care of the rain and the clouds was made over
to you; and immediately after, as soon as you were gone, the old king and
queen were laid on an altar near Tu-Kila-Kila's home, and slain with
tomahawks. Their flesh was next hacked from their bodies with knives,
cooked, and eaten; their bones were thrown into the sea, the mother of
all waters, as the natives call it. And that is the fate, I fear the
inevitable fate, that will befall you and mademoiselle at these wretches'
hands about the commencement of a fresh season."
Felix knew the worst now, and bent his head in silence. His worst fears
were confirmed; but, after all, even this knowledge was better than so
much uncertainty.
And now that he knew when "his time was up," as the natives phrased it,
he would know when to redeem his promise to Muriel.