The Great Taboo

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.