The Great Taboo

WAGER OF BATTLE.

Felix wound his way painfully through the deep fern-brake of the jungle, by no regular path, so as to avoid exciting the alarm of the natives, and to take Tu-Kila-Kila’s palace-temple from the rear, where the big tree, which overshadowed it with its drooping branches, was most easily approachable.  As he and Toko crept on, bending low, through that dense tropical scrub, in deathly silence, they were aware all the time of a low, crackling sound that rang ever some paces in the rear on their trail through the forest.  It was Tu-Kila-Kila’s Eyes, following them stealthily from afar, footstep for footstep, through the dense undergrowth of bush, and the crisp fallen leaves and twigs that snapped light beneath their footfall.  What hope of success with those watchful spies, keen as beagles and cruel as bloodhounds, following ever on their track?  What chance of escape for Felix and Muriel, with the cannibal man-gods toils laid round on every side to insure their destruction?

Silently and cautiously the two men groped their way on through the dark gloom of the woods, in spite of their mute pursuers.  The moonlight flickered down athwart the trackless soil as they went; the hum of insects innumerable droned deep along the underbrush.  Now and then the startled scream of a night jar broke the monotony of the buzz that was worse than silence; owls boomed from the hollow trees, and fireflies darted dim through the open spaces.  At last they emerged upon the cleared area of the temple.  There Felix, without one moment’s hesitation, with a firm and resolute tread, stepped over the white coral line that marked the taboo of the great god’s precincts.  That was a declaration of open war; he had crossed the Rubicon of Tu-Kila-Kila’s empire.  Toko stood trembling on the far side; none might pass that mystic line unbidden and live, save the Korong alone who could succeed in breaking off the bough “with yellow leaves, resembling a mistletoe,” of which Methuselah, the parrot, had told Felix and Muriel, and so earn the right to fight for his life with the redoubted and redoubtable Tu-Kila-Kila.

As he stepped over the taboo-line, Felix was aware of many native eyes fixed stonily upon him from the surrounding precinct.  Clearly they were awaiting him.  Yet not a soul gave the alarm; that in itself would have been to break taboo.  Every man or woman among the temple attendants within that charmed circle stood on gaze curiously.  Close by, Ula, the favorite wife of the man-god, crouched low by the hut, with one finger on her treacherous lips, bending eagerly forward, in silent expectation of what next might happen.  Once, and once only, she glanced at Toko with a mute sign of triumph; then she fixed her big eyes on Felix in tremulous anxiety; for to her as to him, life and death now hung absolutely on the issue of his enterprise.  A little farther back the King of Fire and the King of Water, in full sacrificial robes, stood smiling sardonically.  For them it was merely a question of one master more or less, one Tu-Kila-Kila in place of another.  They had no special interest in the upshot of the contest, save in so far as they always hated most the man who for the moment held by his own strong arm the superior godship over them.  Around, Tu-Kila-Kila’s Eyes kept watch and ward in sinister silence.  Taboo was stronger than even the commands of the high god himself.  When once a Korong had crossed that fatal line, unbidden and unwelcomed by Tu-Kila-Kila, he came as Tu-Kila-Kila’s foe and would-be successor; the duty of every guardian of the temple was then to see fair play between the god that was and the god that might be—­the Tu-Kila-Kila of the hour and the Tu-Kila-Kila who might possibly supplant him.

“Let the great spirit itself choose which body it will inhabit,” the King of Fire murmured in a soft, low voice, glancing toward a dark spot at the foot of the big tree.  The moonlight fell dim through the branches on the place where he looked.  The glibbering bones of dead victims rattled lightly in the wind.  Felix’s eyes followed the King of Fire’s, and saw, lying asleep upon the ground, Tu-Kila-Kila himself, with his spear and tomahawk.

He lay there, huddled up by the very roots of the tree, breathing deep and regularly.  Right over his head projected the branch, in one part of whose boughs grew the fateful parasite.  By the dim light of the moon, straggling through the dense foliage, Felix could see its yellow leaves distinctly.  Beneath it hung a skeleton, suspended by invisible cords, head downward from the branches.  It was the skeleton of a previous Korong who had tried in vain to reach the bough, and perished.  Tu-Kila-Kila had made high feast on the victim’s flesh; his bones, now collected together and cunningly fastened with native rope, served at once as a warning and as a trap or pitfall for all who might rashly venture to follow him.

Felix stood for one moment, alone and awe-struck, a solitary civilized man, among those hideous surroundings.  Above, the cold moon; all about, the grim, stolid, half-hostile natives; close by, that strange, serpentine, savage wife, guarding, cat-like, the sleep of her cannibal husband; behind, the watchful Eyes of Tu-Kila-Kila, waiting ever in the background, ready to raise a loud shout of alarm and warning the moment the fatal branch was actually broken, but mute, by their vows, till that moment was accomplished.  Then a sudden wild impulse urged him on to the attempt.  The banyan had dropped down rooting offsets to the ground, after the fashion of its kind, from its main branches.  Felix seized one of these and swung himself lightly up, till he reached the very limb on which the sacred parasite itself was growing.

To get to the parasite, however, he must pass directly above Tu-Kila-Kila’s head, and over the point where that ghastly grinning skeleton was suspended, as by an unseen hair, from the fork that bore it.

He walked along, balancing himself, and clutching, as he went, at the neighboring boughs, while Tu-Kila-Kila, overcome with the kava, slept stolidly and heavily on beneath him.  At last he was almost within grasp of the parasite.  Could he lunge out and clutch it?  One try—­one effort!  No, no; he almost lost footing and fell over in the attempt.  He couldn’t keep his balance so.  He must try farther on.  Come what might, he must go past the skeleton.

The grisly mass swung again, clanking its bones as it swung, and groaned in the wind ominously.  The breeze whistled audibly through its hollow skull and vacant eye-sockets.  Tu-Kila-Kila turned uneasily in his sleep below.  Felix saw there was not one instant of time to be lost now.  He passed on boldly; and as he passed, a dozen thin cords of paper mulberry, stretched every way in an invisible network among the boughs, too small to be seen in the dim moonlight, caught him with their toils and almost overthrew him.  They broke with his weight, and Felix himself, tumbling blindly, fell forward.  At the cost of a sprained wrist and a great jerk on his bruised fingers, he caught at a bough by his side, but wrenched it away suddenly.  It was touch and go.  At the very same moment, the skeleton fell heavily, and rattled on the ground beside Tu-Kila-Kila.

Before Felix could discover what had actually happened, a very great shout went up all round below, and made him stagger with excitement.  Tu-Kila-Kila was awake, and had started up, all intent, mad with wrath and kava.  Glaring about him wildly, and brandishing his great spear in his stalwart hands, he screamed aloud, in a perfect frenzy of passion and despair:  “Where is he, the Korong?  Bring him on, my meat!  Let me devour his heart!  Let me tear him to pieces.  Let me drink of his blood!  Let me kill him and eat him!”

Sick and desperate at the accident, Felix, in turn, clinging hard to his bough with one hand, gazed wildly about him to look for the parasite.  But it had gone as if by magic.  He glanced around in despair, vaguely conscious that nothing was left for it now but to drop to the ground and let himself be killed at leisure by that frantic savage.  Yet even as he did so, he was aware of that great cry—­a cry as of triumph—­still rending the air.  Fire and Water had rushed forward, and were holding back Tu-Kila-Kila, now black in the face from rage, with all their might.  Ula was smiling a malicious joy.  The Eyes were all agog with interest and excitement.  And from one and all that wild scream rose unanimous to the startled sky:  “He has it!  He has it!  The Soul of the Tree!  The Spirit of the World!  The great god’s abode.  Hold off your hands, Lavita, son of Sami!  Your trial has come.  He has it!  He has it!”

Felix looked about him with a whirling brain.  His eye fell suddenly.  There, in his own hand, lay the fateful bough.  In his efforts to steady himself, he had clutched at it by pure accident, and broken it off unawares with the force of his clutching.  As fortune would have it, he grasped it still.  His senses reeled.  He was almost dead with excitement, suspense, and uncertainty, mingled with pain of his wrenched wrist.  But for Muriel’s sake he pulled himself together.  Gazing down and trying hard to take it all in—­that strange savage scene—­he saw that Tu-Kila-Kila was making frantic attempts to lunge at him with the spear, while the King of Fire and the King of Water, stern and relentless, were holding him off by main force, and striving their best to appease and quiet him.

There was an awful pause.  Then a voice broke the stillness from beyond the taboo-line: 

“The Shadow of the King of the Rain speaks,” it said, in very solemn, conventional accents.  “Korong!  Korong!  The Great Taboo is broken.  Fire and Water, hold him in whom dwells the god till my master comes.  He has the Soul of all the spirits of the wood in his hands.  He will fight for his right.  Taboo!  Taboo!  I, Toko, have said it.”

He clapped his hands thrice.

Tu-Kila-Kila made a wild effort to break away once more.  But the King of Fire, standing opposite him, spoke still louder and clearer.  “If you touch the Korong before the line is drawn,” he said, with a voice of authority, “you are no Tu-Kila-Kila, but an outcast and a criminal.  All the people will hold you with forked sticks, while the Korong burns you alive slowly, limb by limb, with me, who am Fire, the fierce, the consuming.  I will scorch you and bake you till you are as a bamboo in the flame.  Taboo!  Taboo!  Taboo!  I, Fire, have said it.”

The King of Water, with three attendants, forced Tu-Kila-Kila on one side for a moment.  Ula stood by and smiled pleased compliance.  A temple slave, trembling all over at this conflict of the gods, brought out a calabash full of white coral-sand.  The King of Water spat on it and blessed it.  By this time a dozen natives, at least, had assembled outside the taboo-line, and stood eagerly watching the result of the combat.  The temple slave made a long white mark with the coral-sand on one side of the cleared area.  Then he handed the calabash solemnly to Toko.  Toko crossed the sacred precinct with a few inaudible words of muttered charm, to save the Taboo, as prescribed in the mysteries.  Then he drew a similar line on the ground on his side, some twenty yards off.  “Descend, O my lord!” he cried to Felix; and Felix, still holding the bough tight in his hand, swung himself blindly from the tree, and took his place by Toko.

“Toe the line!” Toko cried, and Felix toed it.

“Bring up your god!” the Shadow called out aloud to the King of Water.  And the King of Water, using no special ceremony with so great a duty, dragged Tu-Kila-Kila helplessly along with him to the farther taboo-line.

The King of Water brought a spear and tomahawk.  He handed them to Felix.  “With these weapons,” he said, “fight, and merit heaven.  I hold the bough meanwhile—­the victor takes it.”

The King of Fire stood out between the lists.  “Korongs and gods,” he said, “the King of the Rain has plucked the sacred bough, according to our fathers’ rites, and claims trial which of you two shall henceforth hold the sacred soul of the world, the great Tu-Kila-Kila.  Wager of Battle decides the day.  Keep toe to line.  At the end of my words, forth, forward, and fight for it.  The great god knows his own, and will choose his abode.  Taboo, Taboo, Taboo!  I, Fire, have spoken it.”

Scarcely were the words well out of his mouth, when, with a wild whoop of rage, Tu-Kila-Kila, who had the advantage of knowing the rules of the game, so to speak, dashed madly forward, drunk with passion and kava, and gave one lunge with his spear full tilt at the breast of the startled and unprepared white man.  His aim, though frantic, was not at fault.  The spear struck Felix high up on the left side.  He felt a dull thud of pain; a faint gurgle of blood.  Even in the pale moonlight his eye told him at once a red stream was trickling—­out over his flannel shirt.  He was pricked, at least.  The great god had wounded him.