The Great Taboo

SUSPENSE.

In a moment, Felix’s mind was fully made up.  There was no time to think; it was the hour for action.  He saw how he must comport himself toward this strange wild people.  Seating Muriel gently on the ground, Mali beside her, and stepping forward himself, with Peyron’s hand in his, he beckoned to the vast and surging crowd to bespeak respectful silence.

A mighty hush fell at once upon the people.  The King of Fire and the King of Water stood back, obedient to his nod.  They waited for the upshot of this strange new development.

“Men of Boupari,” Felix began, speaking with a marvellous fluency in their own tongue, for the excitement itself supplied him with eloquence; “I have killed your late god in the prescribed way; I have plucked the sacred bough, and fought in single combat by the established rules of your own religion.  Fire and Water, you guardians of this holy island, is it not so?  You saw all things done, did you not, after the precepts of your ancestors?”

The King of Fire bowed low and answered:  “Tu-Kila-Kila speaks, indeed, the truth.  Water and I, with our own eyes, have seen it.”

“And now,” Felix went on, “I am myself, by your own laws, Tu-Kila-Kila.”

The King of Fire made a gesture of dissent.  “Oh, great god, pardon me,” he murmured, “if I say aught, now, to contradict you; but you are not a full Tu-Kila-Kila yet till you have eaten of the heart of the god, your predecessor.”

“Then where is now the spirit of Tu-Kila-Kila, the very high god, if I am not he?” Felix asked, abruptly, thus puzzling them with a hard problem in their own savage theology.

The King of Fire gave a start, and pondered.  This was a detail of his creed that had never before so much as occurred to him.  All faiths have their cruces.  “I do not well know,” he answered, “whether it is in the heart of Lavita, the son of Sami, or in your own body.  But I feel sure it must now be certainly somewhere, though just where our fathers have never told us.”

Felix recognized at once that he had gained a point.  “Then look to it well,” he said, austerely.  “Be careful how you act.  Do nothing rash.  For either the soul of the god is in the heart of Lavita, the son of Sami; and then, since I refuse to eat it, it will decay away, as Lavita’s body decays, and the world will shrivel up, and all things will perish, because the god is dead and crumbled to dust forever.  Or else it is in my body, who am god in his place; and then, if anybody does me harm or hurt, he will be an impious wretch, and will have broken taboo, and Heaven knows what evils and misfortunes may not, therefore, fall on each and all of you.”

A very old chief rose from the ranks outside.  His hair was white and his eyes bleared.  “Tu-Kila-Kila speaks well,” he cried, in a loud but mumbling voice.  “His words are wise.  He argues to the point.  He is very cunning.  I advise you, my people, to be careful how you anger the white-faced stranger, for you know what he is; he is cruel; he is powerful.  There was never any storm in my time—­and I am an old man—­so great in Boupari as the storm that rose when the King of the Rain ate the storm-apple.  Our yams and our taros even now are suffering from it.  He is a mighty strong god.  Beware how you tamper with him!”

He sat down, trembling.  A younger chief rose from a nearer rank, and said his say in turn.  “I do not agree with our father,” he cried, pointing to the chief who had just spoken.  “His word is evil; he is much mistaken.  I have another thought.  My thought is this.  Let us kill and eat the white-faced stranger at once, by wager of battle; and let whosoever fights and overcomes him receive his honors, and take to wife the fair woman, the Queen of the Clouds, the sun-faced Korong, whom he brought from the sun with him.”

“But who will then be Tu-Kila-Kila?” Felix asked, turning round upon him quickly.  Habituation to danger had made him unnaturally alert in such utmost extremities.

“Why, the man who slays you,” the young chief answered, pointedly, grasping his heavy tomahawk with profound expression.

“I think not,” Felix answered.  “Your reasoning is bad.  For if I am not Tu-Kila-Kila, how can any man become Tu-Kila-Kila by killing me?  And if I am Tu-Kila-Kila, how dare you, not being yourself Korong, and not having broken off the sacred bough, as I did, venture to attack me?  You wish to set aside all the customs of Boupari.  Are you not ashamed of such gross impiety?”

“Tu-Kila-Kila speaks well,” the King of Fire put in, for he had no cause to love the aggressive young chief, and he thought better of his chances in life as Felix’s minister.  “Besides, now I think of it, he must be Tu-Kila-Kila, because he has taken the life of the last great god, whom he slew with his hands; and therefore the life is now his—­he holds it.”

Felix was emboldened by this favorable opinion to strike out a fresh line in a further direction.  He stood forward once more, and beckoned again for silence.  “Yes, my people,” he said calmly, with slow articulation, “by the custom of your race and the creed you profess I am now indeed, and in every truth, the abode of your great god, Tu-Kila-Kila.  But, furthermore, I have a new revelation to make to you.  I am going to instruct you in a fresh way.  This creed that you hold is full of errors.  As Tu-Kila-Kila, I mean to take my own course, no islander hindering me.  If you try to depose me, what great gods have you now got left?  None, save only Fire and Water, my ministers.  King of the Rain there is none; for I, who was he, am now Tu-Kila-Kila.  Tu-Kila-Kila there is none, save only me; for the other, that was, I have fought and conquered.  The Queen of the Clouds is with me.  The King of the Birds is with me.  Consider, then, O friends, that if you kill us all, you will have nowhere to turn; you will be left quite godless.”

“It is true,” the people murmured, looking about them, half puzzled.  “He is wise.  He speaks well.  He is indeed a Tu-Kila-Kila.”

Felix pressed his advantage home at once.  “Now listen,” he said, lifting up one solemn forefinger.  “I come from a country very far away, where the customs are better by many yams than those of Boupari.  And now that I am indeed Tu-Kila-Kila—­your god, your master—­I will change and alter some of your customs that seem to me here and now most undesirable.  In the first place—­hear this!—­I will put down all cannibalism.  No man shall eat of human flesh on pain of death.  And to begin with, no man shall cook or eat the body of Lavita, the son of Sami.  On that I am determined—­I, Tu-Kila-Kila.  The King of the Birds and I, we will dig a pit, and we will bury in it the corpse of this man that was once your god, and whom his own wickedness compelled me to fight and slay, in order to prevent more cruelty and bloodshed.”

The young chief stood up, all red in his wrath, and interrupted him, brandishing a coral-stone hatchet.  “This is blasphemy,” he said.  “This is sheer rank blasphemy.  These are not good words.  They are very bad medicine.  The white-faced Korong is no true Tu-Kila-Kila.  His advice is evil—­and ill-luck would follow it.  He wishes to change the sacred customs of Boupari.  Now, that is not well.  My counsel is this:  let us eat him now, unless he changes his heart, and amends his ways, and partakes, as is right, of the body of Lavita, the son of Sami.”

The assembly swayed visibly, this way and that, some inclining to the conservative view of the rash young chief, and others to the cautious liberalism of the gray-haired warrior.  Felix noted their division, and spoke once more, this time still more authoritatively than ever.

“Furthermore,” he said, “my people, hear me.  As I came in a ship propelled by fire over the high waves of the sea, so I go away in one.  We watch for such a ship to pass by Boupari.  When it comes, the Queen of the Clouds—­upon whose life I place a great Taboo; let no man dare to touch her at his peril; if he does, I will rush upon him and kill him as I killed Lavita, the son of Sami.  When it comes, the Queen of the Clouds, the King of the Birds, and I, we will go away back in it to the land whence we came, and be quit of Boupari.  But we will not leave it fireless or godless.  When I return back home again to my own far land, I will send out messengers, very good men, who will tell you of a God more powerful by much than any you ever knew, and very righteous.  They will teach you great things you never dreamed of.  Therefore, I ask you now to disperse to your own homes, while the King of Birds and I bury the body of Lavita, the son of Sami.”

All this time Muriel had been seated on the ground, listening with profound interest, but scarcely understanding a word, though here and there, after her six months’ stay in the island, a single phrase was dimly intelligible to her.  But now, at this critical moment she rose, and, standing upright by Felix’s side in her spotless English purity among those assembled savages, she pointed just once with her uplifted finger to the calm vault of heaven, and then across the moonlit horizon of the sea, and last of all to the clustering huts and villages of Boupari.  “Tell them,” she said to Felix, with blanched lips, but without one sign of a tremor in her fearless voice, “I will pray for them to Heaven, when I go across the sea, and will think of the children that I loved to pat and play with, and will send out messengers from our home beyond the waves, to make them wiser and happier and better.”

Felix translated her simple message to them in its pure womanly goodness.  Even the natives were touched.  They whispered and hesitated.  Then after a time of much murmured debate, the King of Fire stood forward as a mediator.  “There is an oracle, O Korong,” he said, “not to prejudge the matter, which decides all these things—­a great conch-shell at a sacred grove in the neighboring island of Aloa Mauna.  It is the holiest oracle of all our holy religion.  We gods and men of Boupari have taken counsel together, and have come to a conclusion.  We will put forth a canoe and send men with blood on their faces to inquire at Aloa Mauna of the very great oracle.  Till then, you are neither Tu-Kila-Kila, nor not Tu-Kila-Kila.  It behooves us to be very careful how we deal with gods.  Our people will stand round your precinct in a row, and guard you with their spears.  You shall not cross the taboo line to them, nor they to you:  all shall be neutral.  Food shall be laid by the line, as always, morn, noon, and night; and your Shadows shall take it in; but you shall not come out.  Neither shall you bury the body of Lavita, the son of Sami.  Till the canoe comes back it shall lie in the sun and rot there.”

He clapped his hands twice.

In a moment a tom-tom began to beat from behind, and the people all crowded without the circle.  The King of Fire came forward ostentatiously and made taboo.  “If, any man cross this line,” he said in a droning sing-song, “till the canoe return from the great oracle of our faith on Aloa Mauna, I, Fire, will scorch him into cinder and ashes.  If any woman transgress, I will pitch her with palm oil, and light her up for a lamp on a moonless night to lighten this temple.”

The King of Water distributed shark’s-tooth spears.  At once a great serried wall hemmed in the Europeans all round, and they sat down to wait, the three whites together, for the upshot of the mission to Aloa Mauna.

And the dawn now gleamed red on the eastern horizon.