The Great Taboo

COUNCIL OF WAR.

That same afternoon Muriel had a visitor.  M. Jules Peyron, formerly of the Collége de France, no longer a mere Polynesian god, but a French gentleman of the Boulevards in voice and manner, came to pay his respects, as in duty bound, to Mademoiselle Ellis.  M. Peyron had performed his toilet under trying circumstances, to the best of his ability.  The remnants of his European clothes, much patched and overhung with squares of native tappa cloth, were hidden as much as possible by a wide feather cloak, very savage in effect, but more seemly, at any rate, than the tattered garments in which Felix had first found him in his own garden parterre.  M. Peyron, however, was fully aware of the defects of his costume, and profoundly apologetic.  “It is with ten thousand regrets, mademoiselle,” he said, many times over, bowing low and simpering, “that I venture to appear in a lady’s salon—­for, after all, wherever a European lady goes, there her salon follows her—­in such a tenue as that in which I am now compelled to present myself. Mais que voulez-vous?  Nous ne sommes pas à Paris!” For to M. Peyron, as innocent in his way as Mali herself, the whole world divided itself into Paris and the Provinces.

Nevertheless, it was touching to both the new-comers to see the Frenchman’s delight at meeting once more with civilized beings.  “Figure to yourself, mademoiselle,” he said, with true French effusion—­“figure to yourself the joy and surprise with which I, this morning, receive monsieur, your friend, at my humble cottage!  For the first time after nine years on this hateful island, I see again a European face; I hear again the sound, the beautiful sound of that charming French language.  My emotion, believe me, was too profound for words.  When monsieur was gone, I retired to my hut, I sat down on the floor, I gave myself over to tears, tears of joy and gratitude, to think I should once more catch a glimpse of civilization!  This afternoon, I ask myself, can I venture to go out and pay my respects, thus attired, in these rags, to a European lady?  For a long time I doubt, I wonder, I hesitate.  In my quality of Frenchman, I would have wished to call in civilized costume upon a civilized household.  But what would you have?  Necessity knows no law.  I am compelled to envelope myself in my savage robe of office as a Polynesian god—­a robe of office which, for the rest, is not without an interest of its own for the scientific ethnologist.  It belongs to me especially as King of the Birds, and in it, in effect, is represented at least one feather of each kind or color from every part of the body of every species of bird that inhabits Boupari.  I thus sum up, pour ainsi dire, in my official costume all the birds of the island, as Tu-Kila-Kila, the very high god, sums up, in his quaint and curious dress, the land and the sea, the trees and the stones, earth and air, and fire and water.”

Familiarity with danger begets at last a certain callous indifference.  Muriel was surprised in her own mind to discover how easily they could chat with M. Peyron on such indifferent subjects, with that awful doom of an approaching death hanging over them so shortly.  But the fact was, terrors of every kind had so encompassed them round since their arrival on the island that the mere additional certainty of a date and mode of execution was rather a relief to their minds than otherwise.  It partook of the nature of a reprieve, not of a sentence.  Besides, this meeting with another speaker of a European tongue seemed to them so full of promise and hope that they almost forgot the terrors of their threatened end in their discussion of possible schemes for escape to freedom.  Even M. Peyron himself, who had spent nine long years of exile in the island, felt that the arrival of two new Europeans gave him some hope of effecting at last his own retreat from this unendurable position.  His talk was all of passing steamers.  If the Australasian had come near enough once to sight the island, he argued, then the homeward-bound vessel, en route for Honolulu, must have begun to take a new course considerably to the eastward of the old navigable channel.  If this were so, their obvious plan was to keep a watch, day and night, for another passing Australian liner, and whenever one hove in sight, to steal away to the shore, seize a stray canoe, overpower, if possible, their Shadows, or give them the slip, and make one bold stroke for freedom on the open ocean.

None of them could conceal from their own minds, to be sure, the extreme difficulty of carrying out this programme.  In the first place, it was a toss-up whether they ever sighted another steamer at all; for during the weeks they had already passed on the island, not a sign of one had appeared from any quarter.  Then, again, even supposing a steamer ever hove in sight, what likelihood that they could make out for her in an open canoe in time to attract attention before she had passed the island?  Tu-Kila-Kila would never willingly let them go; their Shadows would watch them with unceasing care; the whole body of natives would combine together to prevent their departure.  If they ran away at all, they must run for their lives; as soon as the islanders discovered they were gone, every war-canoe in the place would be manned at once with bloodthirsty savages, who would follow on their track with relentless persistence.

As for Muriel, less prepared for such dangerous adventures than the two men, she was rather inclined to attach a certain romantic importance (as a girl might do) to the story of the parrot and the possible disclosures which it could make if it could only communicate with them.  The mysterious element in the history of that unique bird attracted her fancy.  “The only one of its race now left alive,” she said, with slow reflectiveness.  “Like Dolly Pentreath, the last old woman who could speak Cornish!  I wonder how long parrots ever live?  Do you know at all, monsieur?  You are the King of the Birds—­you ought to be an authority on their habits and manners.”

The Frenchman smiled a gallant smile.  “Unhappily, mademoiselle,” he said, “though, as a medical student, I took up to a certain extent biological science in general at the Collége de France, I never paid any special or peculiar attention in Paris to birds in particular.  But it is the universal opinion of the natives (if that counts for much) that parrots live to a very great age; and this one old parrot of mine, whom I call Methuselah on account of his advanced years, is considered by them all to be a perfect patriarch.  In effect, when the oldest men now living on the island were little boys, they tell me that Methuselah was already a venerable and much-venerated parrot.  He must certainly have outlived all the rest of his race by at least the best part of three-quarters of a century.  For the islanders themselves not infrequently live, by unanimous consent, to be over a hundred.”

“I remember to have read somewhere,” Felix said, turning it over in his mind, “that when Humboldt was travelling in the wilds of South America he found one very old parrot in an Indian village, which, the Indians assured him, spoke the language of an extinct tribe, incomprehensible then by any living person.  If I recollect aright, Humboldt believed that particular bird must have lived to be nearly a hundred and fifty.”

“That is so, monsieur,” the Frenchman answered.  “I remember the case well, and have often recalled it.  I recollect our professor mentioning it one day in the course of his lectures.  And I have always mentally coupled that parrot of Humboldt’s with my own old friend and subject, Methuselah.  However, that only impresses upon one more fully the folly of hoping that we can learn anything worth knowing from him.  I have heard him recite his story many times over, though now he repeats it less frequently than he used formerly to do; and I feel convinced it is couched in some unknown and, no doubt, forgotten language.  It is a much more guttural and unpleasant tongue than any of the soft dialects now spoken in Polynesia.  It belonged, I am convinced, to that yet earlier and more savage race which the Polynesians must have displaced; and as such it is now, I feel certain, practically irrecoverable.”

“If they were more savage than the Polynesians,” Muriel said, with a profound sigh, “I’m sorry for anybody who fell into their clutches.”

“But what would not many philologists at home in England give,” Felix murmured, philosophically, “for a transcript of the words that parrot can speak—­perhaps a last relic of the very earliest and most primitive form of human language!”

At the very moment when these things were passing under the wattled roof of Muriel’s hut, it happened that on the taboo-space outside, Toko, the Shadow, stood talking for a moment with Ula, the fourteenth wife of the great Tu-Kila-Kila.

“I never see you now, Toko,” the beautiful Polynesian said, leaning almost across the white line of coral-sand which she dared not transgress.  “Times are dull at the temple since you came to be Shadow to the white-faced stranger.”

“It was for that that Tu-Kila-Kila sent me here,” the Shadow answered, with profound conviction.  “He is jealous, the great god.  He is bad.  He is cruel.  He wanted to get rid of me.  So he sent me away to the King of the Rain that I might not see you.”

Ula pouted, and held up her wounded finger before his eyes coquettishly.  “See what he did to me,” she said, with a mute appeal for sympathy—­though in that particular matter the truth was not in her.  “Your god was angry with me to-day because I hurt his hand, and he clutched me by the throat, and almost choked me.  He has a bad heart.  See how he bit me and drew blood.  Some of these days, I believe, he will kill me and eat me.”

The Shadow glanced around him suspiciously with an uneasy air.  Then he whispered low, in a voice half grudge, half terror, “If he does, he is a great god—­he can search all the world—­I fear him much, but Toko’s heart is warm.  Let Tu-Kila-Kila look out for vengeance.”

The woman glanced across at him open-eyed, with her enticing look.  “If the King of the Rain, who is Korong, knew all the secret,” she murmured, slowly, “he would soon be Tu-Kila-Kila himself; and you and I could then meet together freely.”

The Shadow started.  It was a terrible suggestion.  “You mean to say—­” he cried; then fear overcame him, and, crouching down where he sat, he gazed around him, terrified.  Who could say that the wind would not report his words to Tu-Kila-Kila?

Ula laughed at his fears.  “Pooh,” she answered, smiling.  “You are a man; and yet you are afraid of a little taboo.  I am a woman; and yet if I knew the secret as you do, I would break taboo as easily as I would break an egg-shell.  I would tell the white-faced stranger all—­if only it would bring you and me together forever.”

“It is a great risk, a very great risk,” the Shadow answered, trembling.  “Tu-Kila-Kila is a mighty god.  He may be listening this moment, and may pinch us to death by his spirits for our words, or burn us to ashes with a flash of his anger.”

The woman smiled an incredulous smile.  “If you had lived as near Tu-Kila-Kila as I have,” she answered, boldly, “you would think as little, perhaps, of his divinity as I do.”

For even in Polynesia, superstitious as it is, no hero is a god to his wives or his valets.