The Great Taboo

TU-KILA-KILA STRIKES.

And yet, when all was said and done, knowledge of Tu-Kila-Kila’s secret didn’t seem to bring Felix and Muriel much nearer a solution of their own great problems than they had been from the beginning.  In spite of all Methuselah had told them, they were as far off as ever from securing their escape, or even from the chance of sighting an English steamer.

This last was still the main hope and expectation of all three Europeans.  M. Peyron, who was a bit of a mathematician, had accurately calculated the time, from what Felix told him, when the Australasian would pass again on her next homeward voyage; and, when that time arrived, it was their united intention to watch night and day for the faintest glimmer of her lights, or the faintest wreath of her smoke on the far eastern horizon.  They had ventured to confide their design to all three of their Shadows; and the Shadows, attached by the kindness to which they were so little accustomed among their own people, had in every case agreed to assist them with the canoe, if occasion served them.  So for a time the two doomed victims subsided into their accustomed calm of mingled hope and despair, waiting patiently for the expected arrival of the much-longed-for Australasian.

If she took that course once, why not a second time?  And if ever she hove in sight, might they not hope, after all, to signal to her with their rudely constructed heliograph, and stop her?

As for Methuselah’s secret, there was only one way, Felix thought, in which it could now prove of any use to them.  When the actual day of their doom drew nigh, he might, perhaps, be tempted to try the fate which Nathaniel Cross, of Sunderland, had successfully courted.  That might gain them at least a little respite.  Though even so he hardly knew what good it could do him to be elevated for a while into the chief god of the island.  It might not even avail him to save Muriel’s life; for he did not doubt that when the awful day itself had actually come the natives would do their best to kill her in spite of him, unless he anticipated them by fulfilling his own terrible, yet merciful, promise.

Week after week went by—­month after month passed—­and the date when the Australasian might reasonably be expected to reappear drew nearer and nearer.  They waited and trembled.  At last, a few days before the time M. Peyron had calculated, as Felix was sitting under the big shady tree in his garden one morning, while Muriel, now worn out with hope deferred, lay within her hut alone with Mali, a sound of tom-toms and beaten palms was heard on the hill-path.  The natives around fell on their faces or fled.  It announced the speedy approach of Tu-Kila-Kila.

By this time both the castaways had grown comparatively accustomed to that hideous noise, and to the hateful presence which it preceded and heralded.  A dozen temple attendants tripped on either side down the hillpath, to guard him, clapping their hands in a barbaric measure as they went; Fire and Water, in the midst, supported and flanked the divine umbrella.  Felix rose from his seat with very little ceremony, indeed, as the great god crossed the white taboo-line of his precincts, followed only beyond the limit by Fire and Water.

Tu-Kila-Kila was in his most insolent vein.  He glanced around with a horrid light of triumph dancing visibly in his eyes.  It was clear he had come, intent upon some grand theatrical coup.  He meant to take the white-faced stranger by surprise this time.  “Good-morning, O King of the Rain,” he exclaimed, in a loud voice and with boisterous familiarity.  “How do you like your outlook now?  Things are getting on.  Things are getting on.  The end of your rule is drawing very near, isn’t it?  Before long I must make the seasons change.  I must make my sun turn.  I must twist round my sky.  And then, I shall need a new Korong instead of you, O pale-faced one!”

Felix looked back at him without moving a muscle.

“I am well,” he answered shortly, restraining his anger.  “The year turns round whether you will or not.  You are right that the sun will soon begin to move southward on its path again.  But many things may happen to all of us meanwhile. I am not afraid of you.”

As he spoke, he drew his knife, and opened the blade, unostentatiously, but firmly.  If the worst were really coming now, sooner than he expected, he would at least not forget his promise to Muriel.

Tu-Kila-Kila smiled a hateful and ominous smile.  “I am a great god,” he said, calmly, striking an attitude as was his wont.  “Hear how my people clap their hands in my honor!  I order all things.  I dispose the course of nature in heaven and earth.  If I look at a cocoa-nut tree, it dies; if I glance at a bread-fruit, it withers away.  We will see before long whether or not you are afraid of me.  Meanwhile, O Korong, I have come to claim my dues at your hands.  Prepare for your fate.  To-morrow the Queen of the Clouds must be sealed my bride.  Fetch her out, that I may speak with her.  I have come to tell her so.”

It was a thunderbolt from a clear sky, and it fell with terrible effect on Felix.  For a moment the knife trembled in his grasp with an almost irresistible impulse.  He could hardly restrain himself, as he heard those horrible, incredible words, and saw the loathsome smirk on the speaker’s face by which they were accompanied, from leaping then and there at the savage’s throat, and plunging his blade to the haft into the vile creature’s body.  But by a violent effort he mastered his indignation and wrath for the present.  Planting himself full in front of Tu-Kila-Kila, and blocking the way to the door of that sacred English girl’s hut—­oh, how horrible it was to him even to think of her purity being contaminated by the vile neighborhood, for one minute, of that loathsome monster!  He looked full into the wretch’s face, and answered very distinctly, in low, slow tones, “If you dare to take one step toward the place where that lady now rests, if you dare to move your foot one inch nearer, if you dare to ask to see her face again, I will plunge the knife hilt-deep into your vile heart, and kill you where you stand without one second’s deliberation.  Now you hear my words and you know what I mean.  My weapon is keener and fiercer than any you Polynesians ever saw.  Repeat those words once more, and by all that’s true and holy, before they’re out of your mouth I leap upon you and stab you.”

Tu-Kila-Kila drew back in sudden surprise.  He was unaccustomed to be so bearded in his own sacred island.  “Well, I shall claim her to-morrow,” he faltered out, taken aback by Felix’s unexpected energy.  He paused for a second, then he went on more slowly:  “To-morrow I will come with all my people to claim my bride.  This afternoon they will bring her mats of grass and necklets of nautilus shell to deck her for her wedding, as becomes Tu-Kila-Kila’s chosen one.  The young maids of Boupari will adorn her for her lord, in the accustomed dress of Tu-Kila-Kila’s wives.  They will clap their hands; they will sing the marriage song.  Then early in the morning I will come to fetch her—­and woe to him who strives to prevent me!”

Felix looked at him long, with a fixed and dogged look.

“What has made you think of this devilry?” he asked at last, still grasping his knife hard, and half undecided whether or not to use it.  “You have invented all these ideas.  You have no claim, even in the horrid customs of your savage country, to demand such a sacrifice.”

Tu-Kila-Kila laughed loud, a laugh of triumphant and discordant merriment.  “Ha, ha!” he cried, “you do not understand our customs, and will you teach me, the very high god, the guardian of the laws and practices of Boupari?  You know nothing; you are as a little child.  I am absolute wisdom.  With every Korong, this is always our rule.  Till the moon is full, on the last month before we offer up the sacrifice, the Queen of the Clouds dwells apart with her Shadow in her own new temple.  So our fathers decreed it.  But at the full of the moon, when the day has come, the usage is that Tu-Kila-Kila, the very high god, confers upon her the honor of making her his bride.  It is a mighty honor.  The feast is great.  Blood flows like water.  For seven days and nights, then, she lives with Tu-Kila-Kila in his sacred abode, the threshold of Heaven; she eats of human flesh; she tastes human blood; she drinks abundantly of the divine kava.  At the end of that time, in accordance with the custom of our fathers, those great dead gods, Tu-Kila-Kila performs the high act of sacrifice.  He puts on his mask of the face of a shark, for he is holy and cruel; he brings forth the Queen of the Clouds before the eyes of all his people, attired in her wedding robes, and made drunk with kava.  Then he gashes her with knives; he offers her up to Heaven that accepted her; and the King of the Rain he offers after her; and all the people eat of their flesh, Korong! and drink of their blood, so that the body of gods and goddesses may dwell within all of them.  And when all is done, the high god chooses a new king and queen at his will (for he is a mighty god), who rule for six moons more, and then are offered up, at the end, in like fashion.”

As he spoke, the ferocious light that gleamed in the savage’s eye made Felix positively mad with anger.  But he answered nothing directly.  “Is this so?” he asked, turning for confirmation to Fire and Water.  “Is it the custom of Boupari that Tu-Kila-Kila should wed the Queen of the Clouds seven days before the date appointed for her sacrifice?”

The King of Fire and the King of Water, tried guardians of the etiquette of Tu-Kila-Kila’s court, made answer at once with one accord, “It is so, O King of the Rain.  Your lips have said it.  Tu-Kila-Kila speaks the solemn truth.  He is a very great god.  Such is the custom of Boupari.”

Tu-Kila-Kila laughed his triumph in harsh, savage outbursts.

But Felix drew back for a second, irresolute.  At last he stood face to face with the absolute need for immediate action.  Now was almost the moment when he must redeem his terrible promise to Muriel.  And yet, even so, there was still one chance of life, one respite left.  The mystic yellow bough on the sacred banyan! the Great Taboo! the wager of battle with Tu-Kila-Kila!  Quick as lightning it all came up in his excited brain.  Time after time, since he heard Methuselah’s strange message from the grave, had he passed Tu-Kila-Kila’s temple enclosure and looked up with vague awe at that sacred parasite that grew so conspicuously in a fork of the branches.  It was easy to secure it, if no man guarded.  There still remained one night.  In that one short night he must do his best—­and worst.  If all then failed, he must die himself with Muriel!

For two seconds he hesitated.  It was hateful even to temporize with so hideous a proposition.  But for Muriel’s sake, for her dear life’s sake, he must meet these savages with guile for guile.  “If it be, indeed, the custom of Boupari,” he answered back, with pale and trembling lips, “and if I, one man, am powerless to prevent it, I will give your message, myself, to the Queen of the Clouds, and you may send, as you say, your wedding decorations.  But come what will—­mark this—­you shall not see her yourself to-day.  You shall not speak to her.  There I draw a line—­so, with my stick in the dust, if you try to advance one step beyond, I stab you to the heart.  Wait till to-morrow to take your prey.  Give me one more night.  Great god as you are, if you are wise, you will not drive an angry man to utter desperation.”

Tu-Kila-Kila looked with a suspicious side glance at the gleaming steel blade Felix still fingered tremulously.  Though Boupari was one of those rare and isolated small islands unvisited as yet by European trade, he had, nevertheless, heard enough of the sailing gods to know that their skill was deep and their weapons very dangerous.  It would be foolish to provoke this man to wrath too soon.  To-morrow, when taboo was removed, and all was free license, he would come when he willed and take his bride, backed up by the full force of his assembled people.  Meanwhile, why provoke a brother god too far?  After all, in a little more than a week from now the pale-faced Korong would be eaten and digested!

“Very well,” he said, sulkily, but still with the sullen light of revenge gleaming bright in his eye.  “Take my message to the queen.  You may be my herald.  Tell her what honor is in store for her—­to be first the wife and then the meat of Tu-Kila-Kila!  She is a very fair woman.  I like her well.  I have longed for her for months.  Tomorrow, at the early dawn, by the break of day, I will come with all my people and take her home by main force to me.”

He looked at Felix and scowled, an angry scowl of revenge.  Then, as he turned and walked away, under cover of the great umbrella, with its dangling pendants on either side, the temple attendants clapped their hands in unison.  Fire and Water marched slow and held the umbrella over him.  As he disappeared in the distance, and the sound of his tom-toms grew dim on the hills, Toko, the Shadow, who had lain flat, trembling, on his face in the hut while the god was speaking, came out and looked anxiously and fearfully after him.

“The time is ripe,” he said, in a very low voice to Felix.  “A Korong may strike.  All the people of Boupari murmur among themselves.  They say this fellow has held the spirit of Tu-Kila-Kila within himself too long.  He waxes insolent.  They think it is high time the great God of Heaven should find before long some other fleshly tabernacle.”