The Great Taboo

INTERCHANGE OF CIVILITIES.

All night long, without intermission, the heavy tropical rain descended in torrents; at sunrise it ceased, and a bright blue vault of sky stood in a spotless dome over the island of Boupari.

As soon as the sun was well risen, and the rain had ceased, one shy native girl after another came straggling up timidly to the white line that marked the taboo round Felix and Muriel’s huts.  They came with more baskets of fruit and eggs.  Humbly saluting three times as they drew near, they laid down their gifts modestly just outside the line, with many loud ejaculations of praise and gratitude to the gods in their own language.

“What do they say?” Muriel asked, in a dazed and frightened way, looking out of the hut door, and turning in wonder to Mali.

“They say, ‘Thank you, Queenie, for rain and fruits,’” Mali answered, unconcerned, bustling about in the hut.  “Missy want to wash him face and hands this morning?  Lady always wash every day over yonder in Queensland.”

Muriel nodded assent.  It was all so strange to her.  But Mali went to the door and beckoned carelessly to one of the native girls just outside, who drew near the line at the summons, with a somewhat frightened air, putting one finger to her mouth in coyly uncertain savage fashion.

“Fetch me water from the spring!” Mali said, authoritatively, in Polynesian.  Without a moment’s delay the girl darted off at the top of her speed, and soon returned with a large calabash full of fresh cool water, which she lay down respectfully by the taboo line, not daring to cross it.

“Why didn’t you get it yourself?” Muriel asked of her Shadow, rather relieved than otherwise that Mali hadn’t left her.  It was something in these dire straits to have somebody always near who could at least speak a little English.

Mali started back in surprise.  “Oh, that would never do,” she answered, catching a colloquial phrase she had often heard long before in Queensland.  “Me missy’s Shadow.  That great Taboo.  If me go away out of missy’s sight, very big sin—­very big danger.  Man-a-Boupari catch me and kill me like Jani, for no me stop and wait all the time on missy.”

It was clear that human life was held very cheap on the island of Boupari.

Muriel made her scanty toilet in the hut as well as she was able, with the calabash and water, aided by a rough shell comb which Mali had provided for her.  Then she breakfasted, not ill, off eggs and fruit, which Mali cooked with some rude native skill over the open-air fire without in the precincts.

After breakfast, Felix came in to inquire how she had passed the night in her new quarters.  Already Muriel felt how odd was the contrast between the quiet politeness of his manner as an English gentleman and the strange savage surroundings in which they both now found themselves.  Civilization is an attribute of communities; we necessarily leave it behind when we find ourselves isolated among barbarians or savages.  But culture is a purely personal and individual possession; we carry it with us wherever we go; and no circumstances of life can ever deprive us of it.

As they sat there talking, with a deep and abiding sense of awe at the change (Muriel more conscious than ever now of how deep was her interest in Felix Thurstan, who represented for her all that was dearest and best in England), a curious noise, as of a discordant drum or tom-tom, beaten in a sort of recurrent tune, was heard toward the hills; and at its very first sound both the Shadows, flinging themselves upon their faces with every sign of terror, endeavored to hide themselves under the native mats with which the bare little hut was roughly carpeted.

“What’s the matter?” Felix cried, in English, to Mali; for Muriel had already explained to him how the girl had picked up some knowledge of our tongue in Queensland.

Mali trembled in every limb, so that she could hardly speak.  “Tu-Kila-Kila come,” she answered, all breathless.  “No blackfellow look at him.  Burn blackfellow up.  You and Missy Korong.  All right for you.  Go out to meet him!”

“Tu-Kila-Kila is coming,” the young man-Shadow said, in Polynesian, almost in the same breath, and no less tremulously.  “We dare not look upon his face lest he burn us to ashes.  He is a very great Taboo.  His face is fire.  But you two are gods.  Step forth to receive him.”

Felix took Muriel’s hand in his, somewhat trembling himself, and led her forth on to the open space in front of the huts to meet the man-god.  She followed him like a child.  She was woman enough for that.  She had implicit trust in him.

As they emerged, a strange procession met their eyes unawares, coming down the zig-zag path that led from the hills to the shore of the lagoon, where their huts were situated.  At its head marched two men—­tall, straight, and supple—­wearing huge feather masks over their faces, and beating tom-toms, decorated with long strings of shiny cowries.  After them, in order, came a sort of hollow square of chiefs or warriors, surrounding with fan-palms a central object all shrouded from the view with the utmost precaution.  This central object was covered with a huge regal umbrella, from whose edge hung rows of small nautilus and other shells, so as to form a kind of screen, like the Japanese portières now so common in English doorways.  Two supporters held it up, one on either side, in long cloaks of feathers.  Under the umbrella, a man seemed to move; and as he approached, the natives, to right and left, fled precipitately to their huts, snatching up their naked little ones from the ground as they went, and crying aloud, “Taboo, Taboo!  He comes! he comes.  Tu-Kila-Kila!  Tu-Kila-Kila!”

The procession wound slowly on, unheeding these common creatures, till it reached the huts.  Then the chiefs who formed the hollow square fell back one by one, and the man under the umbrella, with his two supporters, came forward boldly.  Felix noticed that they crossed without scruple the thick white line of sand which all the other natives so carefully respected.  The man within the umbrella drew aside the curtain of hanging nautilus shells.  His face was covered with a thin mask of paper mulberry bark; but Felix knew he was the self-same person whom they had seen the day before in the central temple.

Tu-Kila-Kila’s air was more insolent and arrogant than even before.  He was clearly in high spirits.  “You have done well, O King of the Rain,” he said, turning gayly to Felix; “and you too, O Queen of the Clouds; you have done right bravely.  We have all acquitted ourselves as our people would wish.  We have made our showers to descend abundantly from heaven; we have caused the crops to grow; we have wetted the plantain bushes.  See; Tu-Kila-Kila, who is so great a god, has come from his own home on the hills to greet you.”

“It has certainly rained in the night,” Felix answered, dryly.

But Tu-Kila-Kila was not to be put off thus.  Adjusting his thin mask or veil of bark, so as to hide his face more thoroughly from the inferior god, he turned round once more to the chiefs, who even so hardly dared to look openly upon him.  Then he struck an attitude.  The man was clearly bursting with spiritual pride.  He knew himself to be a god, and was filled with the insolence of his supernatural power.  “See, my people,” he cried, holding up his hands, palm outward, in his accustomed god-like way; “I am indeed a great deity—­Lord of Heaven, Lord of Earth, Life of the World, Master of Time, Measurer of the Sun’s Course, Spirit of Growth, Creator of the Harvest, Master of Mortals, Bestower of Breath upon Men, Chief Pillar of Heaven!”

The warriors bowed down before their bloated master with unquestioning assent.  “Giver of Life to all the host of the gods,” they cried, “you are indeed a mighty one.  Weigher of the equipoise of Heaven and Earth, we acknowledge your might; we give you thanks eternally.”

Tu-Kila-Kila swelled with visible importance.  “Did I not tell you, my meat,” he exclaimed, “I would bring you new gods, great spirits from the sun, fetchers of fire from my bright home in the heavens?  And have they not come?  Are they not here to-day?  Have they not brought the precious gift of fresh fire with them?”

“Tu-Kila-Kila speaks true,” the chiefs echoed, submissively, with bent heads.

“Did I not make one of them King of the Rain?” Tu-Kila-Kila asked once more, stretching one hand toward the sky with theatrical magnificence.  “Did I not declare the other Queen of the Clouds in Heaven?  And have I not caused them to bring down showers this night upon our crops?  Has not the dry earth drunk?  Am I not the great god, the Saviour of Boupari?”

“Tu-Kila-Kila says well,” the chiefs responded, once more, in unanimous chorus.

Tu-Kila-Kila struck another attitude with childish self-satisfaction.  “I go into the hut to speak with my ministers,” he said, grandiloquently.  “Fire and Water, wait you here outside while I enter and speak with my friends from the sun, whom I have brought for the salvation of the crops to Boupari.”

The King of Fire and the King of Water, supporting the umbrella, bowed assent to his words.  Tu-Kila-Kila motioned Felix and Muriel into the nearest hut.  It was the one where the two Shadows lay crouching in terror among the native mats.  As the god tried to enter, the two cowering wretches set up a loud shout, “Taboo!  Taboo!  Mercy!  Mercy!  Mercy!” Tu-Kila-Kila retreated with a contemptuous smile.  “I want to see you alone,” he said, in Polynesian, to Felix.  “Is the other hut empty?  If not, go in and cut their throats who sit there, and make the place a solitude for Tu-Kila-Kila.”

“There is no one in the hut,” Felix answered, with a nod, concealing his disgust at the command as far as he was able.

“That is well,” Tu-Kila-Kila answered, and walked into it carelessly.  Felix followed him close and deemed it best to make Muriel enter also.

As soon-as they were alone, Tu-Kila-Kila’s manner altered greatly.  “Come, now,” he said, quite genially, yet with a curious under-current of hate in his steely gray eye; “we three are all gods.  We who are in heaven need have no secrets from one another.  Tell me the truth; did you really come to us direct from the sun, or are you sailing gods, dropped from a great canoe belonging to the warriors who seek laborers for the white men in the distant country?”

Felix told him briefly, in as few words as possible, the story of their arrival.

Tu-Kila-Kila listened with lively interest, then he said, very decisively, with great bravado, “It was I who made the big wave wash your sister overboard.  I sent it to your ship.  I wanted a Korong just now in Boupari.  It was I who brought you.”

“You are mistaken,” Felix said, simply, not thinking it worth while to contradict him further.  “It was a purely natural accident.”

“Well, tell me,” the savage god went on once more, eying him close and sharp, “they say you have brought fresh fire from the sun with you, and that you know how to make it burst out like lightning at will.  My people have seen it.  They tell me the wonder.  I wish to see it too.  We are all gods here; we need have no secrets.  Only, I didn’t want to let those common people outside see I asked you to show me.  Make fire leap forth.  I desire to behold it.”

Felix took out the match-box from his pocket, and struck a vesta carefully.  Tu-Kila-Kila looked on with profound interest.  “It is wonderful,” he said, taking the vesta in his own hand as it burned, and examining it closely.  “I have heard of this before, but I have never seen it.  You are indeed gods, you white men, you sailors of the sea.”  He glanced at Muriel.  “And the woman, too,” he said, with a horrible leer, “the woman is pretty.”

Felix took the measure of his man at once.  He opened his knife, and held it up threateningly.  “See here, fellow,” he said, in a low, slow tone, but with great decision, “if you dare to speak or look like that at that lady—­god or no god, I’ll drive this knife straight up to the handle in your heart, though your people kill me for it afterward ten thousand times over.  I am not afraid of you.  These savages may be afraid, and may think you are a god; but if you are, then I am a god ten thousand times stronger than you.  One more word—­one more look like that, I say—­and I plunge this knife remorselessly into you.”

Tu-Kila-Kila drew back, and smiled benignly.  Stalwart ruffian as he was, and absolute master of his own people’s lives, he was yet afraid in a way of the strange new-comer.  Vague stories of the men with white faces—­the “sailing gods”—­had reached him from time to time; and though only twice within his memory had European boats landed on his island, he yet knew enough of the race to know that they were at least very powerful deities—­more powerful with their weapons than even he was.  Besides, a man who could draw down fire from heaven with a piece of wax and a little metal box might surely wither him to ashes, if he would, as he stood before him.  The very fact that Felix bearded him thus openly to his face astonished and somewhat terrified the superstitious savage.  Everybody else on the island was afraid of him; then certainly a man who was not afraid must be the possessor of some most efficacious and magical medicine.  His one fear now was lest his followers should hear and discover his discomfiture.  He peered about him cautiously, with that careful gleam shining bright in his eye; then he said with a leer, in a very low voice, “We two need not quarrel.  We are both of us gods.  Neither of us is the stronger.  We are equal, that’s all.  Let us live like brothers, not like enemies, on the island.”

“I don’t want to be your brother,” Felix answered, unable to conceal his loathing any more.  “I hate and detest you.”

“What does he say?” Muriel asked, in an agony of fear at the savage’s black looks.  “Is he going to kill us?”

“No,” Felix answered, boldly.  “I think he’s afraid of us.  He’s going to do nothing.  You needn’t fear him.”

“Can she not speak?” the savage asked, pointing with his finger somewhat rudely toward Muriel.  “Has she no voice but this, the chatter of birds?  Does she not know the human language?”

“She can speak,” Felix replied, placing himself like a shield between Muriel and the astonished savage.  “She can speak the language of the people of our distant country—­a beautiful language which is as far superior to the speech of the brown men of Polynesia as the sun in the heavens is superior to the light of a candlenut.  But she can’t speak the wretched tongue of you Boupari cannibals.  I thank Heaven she can’t, for it saves her from understanding the hateful things your people would say of her.  Now go!  I have seen already enough of you.  I am not afraid.  Remember, I am as powerful a god as you.  I need not fear.  You cannot hurt me.”

A baleful light gleamed in the cannibal’s eye.  But he thought it best to temporize.  Powerful as he was on his island, there was one thing yet more powerful by far than he; and that was Taboo—­the custom and superstition handed down from his ancestors, These strangers were Korong; he dare not touch them, except in the way and manner and time appointed by custom.  If he did, god as he was, his people themselves would turn and rend him.  He was a god, but he was bound on every side by the strictest taboos.  He dare not himself offer violence to Felix.

So he turned with a smile and bided his time.  He knew it would come.  He could afford to laugh.  Then, going to the door, he said, with his grand affable manner to his chiefs around, “I have spoken with the gods, my ministers, within.  They have kissed my hands.  My rain has fallen.  All is well in the land.  Arise, let us go away hence to my temple.”

The savages put themselves in marching order at once.  “It is the voice of a god,” they said, reverently.  “Let us take back Tu-Kila-Kila to his temple home.  Let us escort the lord of the divine umbrella.  Wherever he is, there trees and plants put forth green leaves and flourish.  At his bidding flowers bloom and springs of water rise up in fountains.  His presence diffuses heavenly blessings.”

“I think,” Felix said, turning to poor, terrified Muriel, “I’ve sent the wretch away with a bee in his bonnet.”