VICTORY--AND AFTER?
The great god had wounded him. But not to the heart. Felix, as good luck
would have it, happened to be wearing buckled braces. He had worn them on
board, and, like the rest of his costume, had, of course, never since
been able to discard them. They stood him in good stead now. The buckle
caught the very point of the bone-tipped spear, and broke the force of
the blow, as the great god lunged forward. The wound was but a graze, and
Tu-Kila-Kila's light shaft snapped short in the middle.
Madder and wilder than ever, the savage pitched it away, yelling, rushed
forward with a fierce curse on his angry tongue, and flung himself, tooth
and nail, on his astonished opponent.
The suddenness of the onslaught almost took the Englishman's breath away.
By this time, however, Felix had pulled together his ideas and taken in
the situation. Tu-Kila-Kila was attacking him now with his heavy stone
axe. He must parry those deadly blows. He must be alert, but watchful. He
must put himself in a posture of defence at once. Above all, he must keep
cool and have his wits about him.
If he could but have drawn his knife, he would have stood a better chance
in that hand-to-hand conflict. But there was no time now for such tactics
as those. Besides, even in close fight with a bloodthirsty savage, an
English gentleman's sense of fair play never for one moment deserts him.
Felix felt, if they were to fight it out face to face for their lives,
they should fight at least on a perfect equality. Steel against stone was
a mean advantage. Parrying Tu-Kila-Kila's first desperate blow with the
haft of his own hatchet, he leaped aside half a second to gain breath and
strength. Then he rushed on, and dealt one deadly downstroke with the
ponderous weapon.
For a minute or two they closed, in perfectly savage single combat.
Fire and Water, observant and impartial, stood by like seconds to see
the god himself decide the issue, which of the two combatants should be
his living representative. The contest was brief but very hard-fought.
Tu-Kila-Kila, inspired with the last frenzy of despair, rushed wildly
on his opponent with hands and fists, and teeth and nails, dealing his
blows in blind fury, right and left, and seeking only to sell his life
as dearly as possible. In this last extremity, his very superstitions
told against him. Everything seemed to show his hour had come. The
parrot's bite--the omen of his own blood that stained the dust of
earth--Ula's treachery--the chance by which the Korong had learned the
Great Taboo--Felix's accidental or providential success in breaking off
the bough--the length of time he himself had held the divine honors--the
probability that the god would by this time begin to prefer a new and
stronger representative--all these things alike combined to fire the
drunk and maddened savage with the energy of despair. He fell upon his
enemy like a tiger upon an elephant. He fought with his tomahawk and his
feet and his whole lithe body; he foamed at the mouth with impotent rage;
he spent his force on the air in the extremity of his passion.
Felix, on the other hand, sobered by pain, and nerved by the fixed
consciousness that Muriel's safety now depended absolutely on his perfect
coolness, fought with the calm skill of a practised fencer. Happily he
had learned the gentle art of thrust and parry years before in England;
and though both weapon and opponent were here so different, the lesson of
quickness and calm watchfulness he had gained in that civilized school
stood him in good stead, even now, under such adverse circumstances.
Tu-Kila-Kila, getting spent, drew back for a second at last, and panted
for breath. That faint breathing-space of a moment's duration sealed his
fate. Seizing his chance with consummate skill, Felix closed upon the
breathless monster, and brought down the heavy stone hammer point blank
upon the centre of his crashing skull. The weapon drove home. It cleft a
great red gash in the cannibal's head. Tu-Kila-Kila reeled and fell.
There was an infinitesimal pause of silence and suspense. Then a great
shout went up from all round to heaven, "He has killed him! He has
killed him! We have a new-made god! Tu-Kila-Kila is dead! Long live
Tu-Kila-Kila!"
Felix drew back for a moment, panting and breathless, and wiped his wet
brow with his sleeve, his brain all whirling. At his feet, the savage lay
stretched, like a log. Felix gazed at the blood-bespattered face
remorsefully. It is an awful thing, even in a just quarrel, to feel that
you have really taken a human life! The responsibility is enough to
appall the bravest of us. He stooped down and examined the prostrate body
with solemn reverence. Blood was flowing in torrents from the wounded
head. But Tu-Kila-Kila was dead--stone-dead forever.
Hot tears of relief welled up into Felix's eyes. He touched the body
cautiously with a reverent hand. No life. No motion.
Just as he did so, the woman Ula came forward, bare-limbed and beautiful,
all triumph in her walk, a proud, insensitive savage. One second she
gazed at the great corpse disdainfully. Then she lifted her dainty foot,
and gave it a contemptuous kick. "The body of Lavita, the son of Sami,"
she said, with a gesture of hatred. "He had a bad heart. We will cook it
and eat it." Next turning to Felix, "Oh, Tu-Kila-Kila," she cried,
clapping her hands three times and bowing low to the ground, "you are a
very great god. We will serve you and salute you. Am not I, Ula, one of
your wives, your meat? Do with me as you will. Toko, you are henceforth
the great god's Shadow!"
Felix gazed at the beautiful, heartless creature, all horrified. Even on
Boupari, that cannibal island, he was hardly prepared for quite so low a
depth of savage insensibility. But all the people around, now a hundred
or more, standing naked before their new god, took up the shout in
concert. "The body of Lavita, the son of Sami," they cried. "A carrion
corpse! The god has deserted it. The great soul of the world has entered
the heart of the white-faced stranger from the disk of the sun; the King
of the Rain; the great Tu-Kila-Kila. We will cook and eat the body of
Lavita, the son of Sami. He was a bad man. He is a worn-out shell.
Nothing remains of him now. The great god has left him."
They clapped their hands in a set measure as they recited this hymn.
The King of Fire retreated into the temple. Ula stood by, and whispered
low with Toko. There was a ceremonial pause of some fifteen minutes.
Presently, from the inner recesses of the temple itself, a low noise
issued forth as of a rising wind. For some seconds it buzzed and hummed,
droningly. But at the very first note of that holy sound Ula dropped her
lover's hand, as one drops a red-hot coal, and darted wildly off at
full speed, like some frightened wild beast, into the thick jungle. Every
other woman near began to rush away with equally instantaneous signs of
haste and fear. The men, on the other hand, erect and naked, with their
hands on their foreheads, crossed the taboo-line at once. It was the
summons to all who had been initiated at the mysteries--the sacred
bull-roarer was calling the assembly of the men of Boupari.
For several minutes it buzzed and droned, that mystic implement, growing
louder and louder, till it roared like thunder. One after another, the
men of the island rushed in as if mad or in flight for their lives before
some fierce beast pursuing them. They ran up, panting, and dripping with
sweat; their hands clapped to their foreheads; their eyes starting wildly
from their staring sockets; torn and bleeding and lacerated by the thorns
and branches of the jungle, for each man ran straight across country from
the spot where he lay asleep, in the direction of the sound, and never
paused or drew breath, for dear life's sake, till he stood beside the
corpse of the dead Tu-Kila-Kila.
And every moment the cry pealed louder and louder still. "Lavita, the son
of Sami, is dead, praise Heaven! The King of the Rain has slain him, and
is now the true Tu-Kila-Kila!"
Felix bent irresolute over the fallen savage's bloodstained corpse. What
next was expected of him he hardly knew or cared. His one desire now was
to return to Muriel--to Muriel, whom he had rescued from something worse
than death at the hateful hands of that accursed creature who lay
breathless forever on the ground beside him.
Somebody came up just then, and seized his hand warmly. Felix looked up
with a start. It was their friend, the Frenchman. "Ah, my captain, you
have done well," M. Peyron cried, admiring him. "What courage! What
coolness! What pluck! What soldiership! I couldn't see all. But I was in
at the death! And oh, _mon Dieu_, how I admired and envied you!"
By this time the bull-roarer had ceased to bellow among the rocks. The
King of Fire stood forth. In his hands he held a length of bamboo-stick
with a lighted coal in it. "Bring wood and palm-leaves," he said, in a
tone of command. "Let me light myself up, that I may blaze before
Tu-Kila-Kila."
He turned and bowed thrice very low before Felix. "The accepted of
Heaven," he cried, holding his hands above him. "The very high god! The
King of all Things! He sends down his showers upon our crops and our
fields. He causes his sun to shine brightly over us. He makes our pigs
and our slaves bring forth their increase. All we are but his meat. We,
his people, praise him."
And all the men of Boupari, naked and bleeding, bent low in response.
"Tu-Kila-Kila is great," they chanted, as they clapped their hands. "We
thank him that he has chosen a fresh incarnation. The sun will not fade
in the heavens overhead, nor the bread-fruits wither and cease to bear
fruit on earth. Tu-Kila-Kila, our god, is great. He springs ever young
and fresh, like the herbs of the field. He is a most high god. We, his
people, praise him."
Four temple attendants brought sticks and leaves, while Felix stood
still, half dazed with the newness of these strange preparations. The
King of Fire, with his torch, set light to the pile. It blazed merrily on
high. "I, Fire, salute you," he cried, bending over it toward Felix.
"Now cut up the body of Lavita, the son of Sami," he went on, turning
toward it contemptuously. "I will cook it in my flame, that Tu-Kila-Kila
the great may eat of it."
Felix drew back with a face all aglow with horror and disgust. "Don't
touch that body!" he cried, authoritatively, putting his foot down firm.
"Leave it alone at once. I refuse to allow you." Then he turned to
M. Peyron. "The King of the Birds and I," he said, with calm resolve, "we
two will bury it."
The King of Fire drew back at these strange words, nonplussed. This
was, indeed, an ill-omened break in the ceremony of initiation of a new
Tu-Kila-Kila, to which he had never before in his life been accustomed.
He hardly knew how to comport himself under such singular circumstances.
It was as though the sovereign of England, on coronation-day, should
refuse to be crowned, and intimate to the archbishop, in his full
canonicals, a confirmed preference for the republican form of Government.
It was a contingency that law and custom in Boupari had neither, in their
wisdom, foreseen nor provided for.
The King of Water whispered low in the new god's ear. "You must eat of
his body, my lord," he said. "That is absolutely necessary. Every one of
us must eat of the flesh of the god; but you, above all, must eat his
heart, his divine nature. Otherwise you can never be full Tu-Kila-Kila."
"I don't care a straw for that," Felix cried, now aroused to a full sense
of the break in Methuselah's story and trembling with apprehension. "You
may kill me if you like; we can die only once; but human flesh I can
never taste; nor will I, while I live, allow you to touch this dead man's
body. We will bury it ourselves, the King of the Birds and I. You may
tell your people so. That is my last word." He raised his voice to the
customary ceremonial pitch. "I, the new Tu-Kila-Kila," he said, "have
spoken it."
The King of Fire and the King of Water, taken aback at his boldness,
conferred together for some seconds privately. The people meanwhile
looked on and wondered. What could this strange hitch in the divine
proceedings mean? Was the god himself recalcitrant? Never in their lives
had the oldest men among them known anything like it.
And as they whispered and debated, awe-struck but discordant, a shout
arose once more from the outer circle--a mighty shout of mingled
surprise, alarm, and terror. "Taboo! Taboo! Fence the mysteries. Beware!
Oh, great god, we warn you. The mysteries are in danger! Cut her down!
Kill her! A woman! A woman!"
At the words, Felix was aware of somebody bursting through the dense
crowd and rushing wildly toward him. Next moment, Muriel hung and sobbed
on his shoulder, while Mali, just behind her, stood crying and moaning.
Felix held the poor startled girl in his arms and soothed her. And
all around another great cry arose from five hundred lips: "Two women
have profaned the mysteries of the god. They are Tu-Kila-Kila's
trespass-offering. Let us kill them and eat them!"