SUSPENSE.
In a moment, Felix's mind was fully made up. There was no time to think;
it was the hour for action. He saw how he must comport himself toward
this strange wild people. Seating Muriel gently on the ground, Mali
beside her, and stepping forward himself, with Peyron's hand in his, he
beckoned to the vast and surging crowd to bespeak respectful silence.
A mighty hush fell at once upon the people. The King of Fire and the King
of Water stood back, obedient to his nod. They waited for the upshot of
this strange new development.
"Men of Boupari," Felix began, speaking with a marvellous fluency in
their own tongue, for the excitement itself supplied him with eloquence;
"I have killed your late god in the prescribed way; I have plucked the
sacred bough, and fought in single combat by the established rules of
your own religion. Fire and Water, you guardians of this holy island, is
it not so? You saw all things done, did you not, after the precepts of
your ancestors?"
The King of Fire bowed low and answered: "Tu-Kila-Kila speaks, indeed,
the truth. Water and I, with our own eyes, have seen it."
"And now," Felix went on, "I am myself, by your own laws, Tu-Kila-Kila."
The King of Fire made a gesture of dissent. "Oh, great god, pardon me,"
he murmured, "if I say aught, now, to contradict you; but you are not a
full Tu-Kila-Kila yet till you have eaten of the heart of the god, your
predecessor."
"Then where is now the spirit of Tu-Kila-Kila, the very high god, if I am
not he?" Felix asked, abruptly, thus puzzling them with a hard problem in
their own savage theology.
The King of Fire gave a start, and pondered. This was a detail of his
creed that had never before so much as occurred to him. All faiths have
their _cruces_. "I do not well know," he answered, "whether it is in the
heart of Lavita, the son of Sami, or in your own body. But I feel sure it
must now be certainly somewhere, though just where our fathers have never
told us."
Felix recognized at once that he had gained a point. "Then look to it
well," he said, austerely. "Be careful how you act. Do nothing rash. For
either the soul of the god is in the heart of Lavita, the son of Sami;
and then, since I refuse to eat it, it will decay away, as Lavita's body
decays, and the world will shrivel up, and all things will perish,
because the god is dead and crumbled to dust forever. Or else it is in my
body, who am god in his place; and then, if anybody does me harm or hurt,
he will be an impious wretch, and will have broken taboo, and Heaven
knows what evils and misfortunes may not, therefore, fall on each and all
of you."
A very old chief rose from the ranks outside. His hair was white and
his eyes bleared. "Tu-Kila-Kila speaks well," he cried, in a loud but
mumbling voice. "His words are wise. He argues to the point. He is very
cunning. I advise you, my people, to be careful how you anger the
white-faced stranger, for you know what he is; he is cruel; he is
powerful. There was never any storm in my time--and I am an old man--so
great in Boupari as the storm that rose when the King of the Rain ate the
storm-apple. Our yams and our taros even now are suffering from it. He is
a mighty strong god. Beware how you tamper with him!"
He sat down, trembling. A younger chief rose from a nearer rank, and
said his say in turn. "I do not agree with our father," he cried,
pointing to the chief who had just spoken. "His word is evil; he is much
mistaken. I have another thought. My thought is this. Let us kill and eat
the white-faced stranger at once, by wager of battle; and let whosoever
fights and overcomes him receive his honors, and take to wife the fair
woman, the Queen of the Clouds, the sun-faced Korong, whom he brought
from the sun with him."
"But who will then be Tu-Kila-Kila?" Felix asked, turning round upon him
quickly. Habituation to danger had made him unnaturally alert in such
utmost extremities.
"Why, the man who slays you," the young chief answered, pointedly,
grasping his heavy tomahawk with profound expression.
"I think not," Felix answered. "Your reasoning is bad. For if I am not
Tu-Kila-Kila, how can any man become Tu-Kila-Kila by killing me? And if I
am Tu-Kila-Kila, how dare you, not being yourself Korong, and not having
broken off the sacred bough, as I did, venture to attack me? You wish to
set aside all the customs of Boupari. Are you not ashamed of such gross
impiety?"
"Tu-Kila-Kila speaks well," the King of Fire put in, for he had no cause
to love the aggressive young chief, and he thought better of his chances
in life as Felix's minister. "Besides, now I think of it, he _must_ be
Tu-Kila-Kila, because he has taken the life of the last great god, whom
he slew with his hands; and therefore the life is now his--he holds it."
Felix was emboldened by this favorable opinion to strike out a fresh line
in a further direction. He stood forward once more, and beckoned again
for silence. "Yes, my people," he said calmly, with slow articulation,
"by the custom of your race and the creed you profess I am now indeed,
and in every truth, the abode of your great god, Tu-Kila-Kila. But,
furthermore, I have a new revelation to make to you. I am going to
instruct you in a fresh way. This creed that you hold is full of errors.
As Tu-Kila-Kila, I mean to take my own course, no islander hindering me.
If you try to depose me, what great gods have you now got left? None,
save only Fire and Water, my ministers. King of the Rain there is none;
for I, who was he, am now Tu-Kila-Kila. Tu-Kila-Kila there is none, save
only me; for the other, that was, I have fought and conquered. The Queen
of the Clouds is with me. The King of the Birds is with me. Consider,
then, O friends, that if you kill us all, you will have nowhere to turn;
you will be left quite godless."
"It is true," the people murmured, looking about them, half puzzled. "He
is wise. He speaks well. He is indeed a Tu-Kila-Kila."
Felix pressed his advantage home at once. "Now listen," he said, lifting
up one solemn forefinger. "I come from a country very far away, where the
customs are better by many yams than those of Boupari. And now that I am
indeed Tu-Kila-Kila--your god, your master--I will change and alter some
of your customs that seem to me here and now most undesirable. In the
first place--hear this!--I will put down all cannibalism. No man shall
eat of human flesh on pain of death. And to begin with, no man shall cook
or eat the body of Lavita, the son of Sami. On that I am determined--I,
Tu-Kila-Kila. The King of the Birds and I, we will dig a pit, and we will
bury in it the corpse of this man that was once your god, and whom his
own wickedness compelled me to fight and slay, in order to prevent more
cruelty and bloodshed."
The young chief stood up, all red in his wrath, and interrupted him,
brandishing a coral-stone hatchet. "This is blasphemy," he said. "This is
sheer rank blasphemy. These are not good words. They are very bad
medicine. The white-faced Korong is no true Tu-Kila-Kila. His advice
is evil--and ill-luck would follow it. He wishes to change the sacred
customs of Boupari. Now, that is not well. My counsel is this: let us eat
him now, unless he changes his heart, and amends his ways, and partakes,
as is right, of the body of Lavita, the son of Sami."
The assembly swayed visibly, this way and that, some inclining to the
conservative view of the rash young chief, and others to the cautious
liberalism of the gray-haired warrior. Felix noted their division, and
spoke once more, this time still more authoritatively than ever.
"Furthermore," he said, "my people, hear me. As I came in a ship
propelled by fire over the high waves of the sea, so I go away in one. We
watch for such a ship to pass by Boupari. When it comes, the Queen of the
Clouds--upon whose life I place a great Taboo; let no man dare to touch
her at his peril; if he does, I will rush upon him and kill him as I
killed Lavita, the son of Sami. When it comes, the Queen of the Clouds,
the King of the Birds, and I, we will go away back in it to the land
whence we came, and be quit of Boupari. But we will not leave it fireless
or godless. When I return back home again to my own far land, I will send
out messengers, very good men, who will tell you of a God more powerful
by much than any you ever knew, and very righteous. They will teach you
great things you never dreamed of. Therefore, I ask you now to disperse
to your own homes, while the King of Birds and I bury the body of Lavita,
the son of Sami."
All this time Muriel had been seated on the ground, listening with
profound interest, but scarcely understanding a word, though here and
there, after her six months' stay in the island, a single phrase was
dimly intelligible to her. But now, at this critical moment she rose,
and, standing upright by Felix's side in her spotless English purity
among those assembled savages, she pointed just once with her uplifted
finger to the calm vault of heaven, and then across the moonlit horizon
of the sea, and last of all to the clustering huts and villages of
Boupari. "Tell them," she said to Felix, with blanched lips, but without
one sign of a tremor in her fearless voice, "I will pray for them to
Heaven, when I go across the sea, and will think of the children that I
loved to pat and play with, and will send out messengers from our home
beyond the waves, to make them wiser and happier and better."
Felix translated her simple message to them in its pure womanly
goodness. Even the natives were touched. They whispered and hesitated.
Then after a time of much murmured debate, the King of Fire stood forward
as a mediator. "There is an oracle, O Korong," he said, "not to prejudge
the matter, which decides all these things--a great conch-shell at a
sacred grove in the neighboring island of Aloa Mauna. It is the holiest
oracle of all our holy religion. We gods and men of Boupari have taken
counsel together, and have come to a conclusion. We will put forth a
canoe and send men with blood on their faces to inquire at Aloa Mauna of
the very great oracle. Till then, you are neither Tu-Kila-Kila, nor not
Tu-Kila-Kila. It behooves us to be very careful how we deal with gods.
Our people will stand round your precinct in a row, and guard you with
their spears. You shall not cross the taboo line to them, nor they to
you: all shall be neutral. Food shall be laid by the line, as always,
morn, noon, and night; and your Shadows shall take it in; but you shall
not come out. Neither shall you bury the body of Lavita, the son of Sami.
Till the canoe comes back it shall lie in the sun and rot there."
He clapped his hands twice.
In a moment a tom-tom began to beat from behind, and the people all
crowded without the circle. The King of Fire came forward ostentatiously
and made taboo. "If, any man cross this line," he said in a droning
sing-song, "till the canoe return from the great oracle of our faith on
Aloa Mauna, I, Fire, will scorch him into cinder and ashes. If any woman
transgress, I will pitch her with palm oil, and light her up for a lamp
on a moonless night to lighten this temple."
The King of Water distributed shark's-tooth spears. At once a great
serried wall hemmed in the Europeans all round, and they sat down to
wait, the three whites together, for the upshot of the mission to Aloa
Mauna.
And the dawn now gleamed red on the eastern horizon.