A MESSAGE FROM THE DEAD.
Early next morning, as Felix lay still in his hut, dozing, and just
vaguely conscious of a buzz of a mosquito close to his ear, he was
aroused by a sudden loud cry outside--a cry that called his native name
three times, running: "O King of the Rain, King of the Rain, King of the
Rain, awake! High time to be up! The King of the Birds sends you health
and greeting!"
Felix rose at once; and his Shadow, rising before him, and unbolting the
loose wooden fastener of the door, went out in haste to see who called
beyond the white taboo-line of their sacred precincts.
A native woman, tall, lithe, and handsome, stood there in the full light
of morning, beckoning. A strange glow of hatred gleamed in her large gray
eyes. Her shapely brown bosom heaved and panted heavily. Big beads
glistened moistly on her smooth, high brow. It was clear she had run all
the way in haste. She was deeply excited and full of eager anxiety.
"Why, what do you want here so early, Ula?" the Shadow asked, in
surprise--for it was indeed she. "How have you slipped away, as soon as
the sun is risen, from the sacred hut of Tu-Kila-Kila?"
Ula's gray eyes flashed angry fire as she answered. "He has beaten me
again," she cried, in revengeful tones; "see the weals on my back! See my
arms and shoulders! He has drawn blood from my wounds. He is the most
hateful of gods. I should love to kill him. Therefore I slipped away from
him with the early dawn and came to consult with his enemy, the King of
the Birds, because I heard the words that the Eyes of Tu-Kila-Kila, who
pervade the world, report to their master. The Eyes have told him that
the King of the Rain, the Queen of the Clouds, and the King of the Birds
are plotting together in secret against Tu-Kila-Kila. When I heard that,
I was glad; I went to the King of the Birds to warn him of his danger;
and the King of the Birds, concerned for your safety, has sent me in
haste to ask his brother gods to go at once to him."
In a minute Felix was up and had called out Mali from the neighboring
hut. "Tell Missy Queenie," he cried, "to come with me to see the
man-a-oui-oui! The man-a-oui-oui has sent me for us to come. She must
make great haste. He wants us immediately."
With a word and a sign to Toko, Ula glided away stealthily, with the
cat-like tread of the native Polynesian woman, back to her hated husband.
Felix went out to the door and heliographed with his bright metal plate,
turned on the Frenchman's hill, "What is it?"
In a moment the answer flashed back, word by word, "Come quick, if you
want to hear. Methuselah is reciting!"
A few seconds later Muriel emerged from her hut, and the two Europeans,
closely followed, as always, by their inseparable Shadows, took the
winding side-path that led through the jungle by a devious way, avoiding
the front of Tu-Kila-Kila's temple, to the Frenchman's cottage.
They found M. Peyron very much excited, partly by Ula's news of
Tu-Kila-Kila's attitude, but more still by Methuselah's agitated
condition. "The whole night through, my dear friends," he cried, seizing
their hands, "that bird has been chattering, chattering, chattering. _Oh,
mon Dieu, quel oiseau!_ It seems as though the words heard yesterday from
mademoiselle had struck some lost chord in the creature's memory. But he
is also very feeble. I can see that well. His garrulity is the garrulity
of old age in its last flickering moments. He mumbles and mutters.
He chuckles to himself. If you don't hear his message now and at once,
it's my solemn conviction you will never hear it."
He led them out to the aviary, where Methuselah, in effect, was sitting
on his perch, most tremulous and woebegone. His feathers shuddered
visibly; he could no longer preen himself. "Listen to what he says," the
Frenchman exclaimed, in a very serious voice. "It is your last, last
chance. If the secret is ever to be unravelled at all, by Methuselah's
aid, now is, without doubt, the proper moment to unravel it."
Muriel put out her hand and stroked the bird gently. "Pretty Poll," she
said, soothingly, in a sympathetic voice. "Pretty Poll! Poor Poll! Was he
ill! Was he suffering?"
At the sound of those familiar words, unheard so long till yesterday, the
parrot took her finger in his beak once more, and bit it with the
tenderness of his kind in their softer moments. Then he threw back his
head with a sort of mechanical twist, and screamed out at the top of his
voice, for the last time on earth, his mysterious message:
"Pretty Poll! Pretty Poll! God save the king! Confound the Duke of York!
Death to all arrant knaves and roundheads!
"In the nineteenth year of the reign of his most gracious majesty, King
Charles the Second, I, Nathaniel Cross, of the borough of Sunderland, in
the county of Doorham, in England, an able-bodied mariner, then sailing
the South Seas in the good bark Martyr Prince, of the Port of Great
Grimsby, whereof one Thomas Wells, gent., under God, was master, was, by
stress of weather, wrecked and cast away on the shores of this island,
called by its gentile inhabitants by the name of Boo Parry. In which
wreck, as it befell, Thomas Wells, gent., and his equipment were, by
divine disposition, killed and drowned, save and except three mariners,
whereof I am one, who in God's good providence swam safely through an
exceeding great flood of waves and landed at last on this island. There
my two companions, Owen Williams, of Swansea, in the parts of Wales, and
Lewis le Pickard, a French Hewgenott refugee, were at once, by the said
gentiles, cruelly entreated, and after great torture cooked and eaten at
the temple of their chief god, Too-Keela-Keela. But I, myself, having
through God's grace found favor in their eyes, was promoted to the post
which in their speech is called Korong, the nature of which this bird, my
mouthpiece, will hereafter, to your ears, more fully discover."
Having said so much, in a very jerky way, Methuselah paused, and blinked
his eyes wearily.
"What does he say?" the Frenchman began, eager to know the truth. But
Felix, fearful lest any interruption might break the thread of the bird's
discourse and cheat them of the sequel, held up a warning finger, and
then laid it on his lips in mute injunction. Methuselah threw back his
head at that and laughed aloud. "God save the king!" he cried again, in a
still feebler way, "and to hell with all papists!"
It was strange how they all hung on the words of that unconscious
messenger from a dead and gone age, who himself knew nothing of the
import of the words he was uttering. Methuselah laughed at their
earnestness, shook his head once or twice, and seemed to think to
himself. Then he remembered afresh the point he had broken off at.
"More fully discover. For seven years have I now lived on this island,
never having seen or h'ard Christian face or voice; and at the end of
that time, feeling my health feail, and being apprehensive lest any of my
fellow-countrymen should hereafter suffer the same fate as I have done, I
began to teach this parrot his message, a few words at a time, impressing
it duly and fully on his memory.
"Larn, then, O wayfarer, that the people of Boo Parry are most arrant
gentiles, heathens, and carribals. And this, as I discover, is the nature
and method of their vile faith. They hold that the gods are each and
several incarnate in some one particular human being. This human being
they worship and reverence with all ghostly respect as his incarnation.
And chiefly, above all, do they revere the great god Too-Keela-Keela,
whose representative (may the Lord in Heaven forgive me for the same) I
myself am at this present speaking. Having thus, for my sins, attained to
that impious honor.
"God save the king! Confound the Duke of York! To hell with all papists!
"It is the fashion of this people to hold that their gods must always be
strong and lusty. For they argue to themselves thus: that the continuance
of the rain must needs depend upon the vigor and subtlety of its Soul,
the rain-god. So the continuance and fruitfulness of the trees and plants
which yield them food must needs depend upon the health of the tree-god.
And the life of the world, and the light of the sun, and the well-being
of all things that in them are, must depend upon the strength and cunning
of the high god of all, Too-Keela-Keela. Hence they take great care and
woorship of their gods, surrounding them with many rules which they call
Taboo, and restricting them as to what they shall eat, and what drink,
and wherewithal they shall seemly clothe themselves. For they think that
if the King of the Rain at' anything that might cause the colick, or like
humor or distemper, the weather will thereafter be stormy and
tempestuous; but so long as the King of the Rain fares well and retains
his health, so long will the weather over their island of Boo Parry be
clear and prosperous.
"Furthermore, as I have larned from their theologians, being myself,
indeed, the greatest of their gods, it is evident that they may not let
any god die, lest that department of nature over which he presideth
should wither away and feail, as it were, with him. But reasonably no
care that mortal man can exercise will prevent the possibility of their
god--seeing he is but one of themselves--growing old and feeble and dying
at last. To prevent which calamity, these gentile folk have invented (as
I believe by the aid and device of Sathan) this horrid and most unnatural
practice. The man-god must be killed so soon as he showeth in body or
mind that his native powers are beginning to feail. And it is necessary
that he be killed, according to their faith, in this ensuing fashion.
"If the man-god were to die slowly by a death in the course of nature,
the ways of the world might be stopped altogether. Hence these savages
catch the soul of their god, as it were, ere it grow old and feeble, and
transfer it betimes, by a magic device, to a suitable successor. And
surely, they say, this suitable successor can be none other than him that
is able to take it from him. This, then, is their horrid counsel and
device--that each one of their gods should kill his antecessor. In doing
thus, he taketh the old god's life and soul, which thereupon migrates and
dwells within him. And by this tenure--may Heaven be merciful to me, a
sinner--do I, Nathaniel Cross, of the county of Doorham, now hold this
dignity of Too-Keela-Keela, having slain, therefor, in just quarrel, my
antecessor in the high godship."
As he reached these words Methuselah paused, and choked in his throat
slightly. The mere mechanical effort of continuing the speech he had
learned by heart two hundred years before, and repeated so often since
that it had become part of his being, was now almost too much for him.
The Frenchman was right. They were only just in time. A few days later,
and the secret would have died with the bird that preserved it.