The Great Taboo

AT SEA:  OFF BOUPARI.

Thirteen days out from Sydney, the good ship Australasian was nearing the equator.

It was four of the clock in the afternoon, and the captain (off duty) paced the deck, puffing a cigar, and talking idly with a passenger on former experiences.

Eight bells went on the quarter-deck; time to change watches.

“This is only our second trip through this channel,” the captain said, gazing across with a casual glance at the palm-trees that stood dark against the blue horizon.  “We used to go a hundred miles to eastward, here, to avoid the reefs.  But last voyage I came through this way quite safely—­though we had a nasty accident on the road—­unavoidable—­unavoidable!  Big sea was running free over the sunken shoals; caught the ship aft unawares, and stove in better than half a dozen portholes.  Lady passenger on deck happened to be leaning over the weather gunwale; big sea caught her up on its crest in a jiffy, lifted her like a baby, and laid her down again gently, just so, on the bed of the ocean.  By George, sir, I was annoyed.  It was quite a romance, poor thing; quite a romance; we all felt so put out about it the rest of that voyage.  Young fellow on board, nephew of Sir Theodore Thurstan, of the Colonial Office, was in love with Miss Ellis—­girl’s name was Ellis—­father’s a parson somewhere down in Somersetshire—­and as soon as the big sea took her up on its crest, what does Thurstan go and do, but he ups on the taffrail, and, before you could say Jack Robinson, jumps over to save her.”

“But he didn’t succeed?” the passenger asked, with languid interest.

“Succeed, my dear sir? and with a sea running twelve feet high like that?  Why, it was pitch dark, and such a surf on that the gig could hardly go through it.”  The captain smiled, and puffed away pensively.  “Drowned,” he said, after a brief pause, with complacent composure.  “Drowned.  Drowned.  Drowned.  Went to the bottom, both of ’em.  Davy Jones’s locker.  But unavoidable, quite.  These accidents will happen, even on the best-regulated liners.  Why, there was my brother Tom, in the Cunard service—­same that boast they never lost a passenger; there was my brother Tom, he was out one day off the Newfoundland banks, heavy swell setting in from the nor’-nor’-east, icebergs ahead, passengers battened down—­Bless my soul, how that light seems to come and go, don’t it?”

It was a reflected light, flashing from the island straight in the captain’s eyes, small and insignificant as to size, but strong for all that in the full tropical sunshine, and glittering like a diamond from a vague elevation near the centre of the island.

“Seems to come and go in regular order,” the passenger observed, reflectively, withdrawing his cigar.  “Looks for all the world just like naval signalling.”

The captain paused, and shaded his eyes a moment.  “Hanged if that isn’t just what it is,” he answered, slowly.  “It’s a rigged-up heliograph, and they’re using the Morse code; dash my eyes if they aren’t.  Well, this is civilization!  What the dickens can have come to the island of Boupari?  There isn’t a darned European soul in the place, nor ever has been.  Anchorage unsafe; no harbor; bad reef; too small for missionaries to make a living, and natives got nothing worth speaking of to trade in.”

“What do they say?” the passenger asked, with suddenly quickened interest.

“How the devil should I tell you yet, sir?” the captain retorted with choleric grumpiness.  “Don’t you see I’m spelling it out, letter by letter?  O, r, e, s, c, u, e, u, s, c, o, m, e, w, e, l, l, a, r, m, e, d—­Yes. yes, I twig it.”  And the captain jotted it down in his note-book for some seconds, silently.

“Run up the flag there,” he shouted, a moment later, rushing hastily forward.  “Stop her at once, Walker.  Easy, easy.  Get ready the gig.  Well, upon my soul, there is a rum start anyway.”

“What does the message say?” the passenger inquired, with intense surprise.

“Say?  Well, there’s what I make it out,” the captain answered, handing him the scrap of paper on which he had jotted down the letters.  “I missed the beginning, but the end’s all right.  Look alive there, boys, will you.  Bring out the Winchester.  Take cutlasses, all hands.  I’ll go along myself in her.”

The passenger took the piece of paper on which he read, “and send a boat to rescue us.  Come well armed.  Savages on guard.  Thurstan, Ellis.”

In less than three minutes the boat was lowered and manned, and the captain, with the Winchester six-shooter by his side, seated grim in the stern, took command of the tiller.

On the island it was the first day of Felix and Muriel’s imprisonment in the dusty precinct of Tu-Kila-Kila’s temple.  All the morning through, they had sat under the shade of a smaller banyan in the outer corner; for Muriel could neither enter the noisome hut nor go near the great tree with the skeletons on its branches; nor could she sit where the dead savage’s body, still festering in the sun, attracted the buzzing blue flies by thousands, to drink up the blood that lay thick on the earth in a pool around it.  Hard by, the natives sat, keen as lynxes, in a great circle just outside the white taboo-line, where, with serried spears, they kept watch and ward over the persons of their doubtful gods or victims.  M. Peyron, alone preserving his equanimity under these adverse circumstances, hummed low to himself in very dubious tones; even he felt his French gayety had somewhat forsaken him; this revolution in Boupari failed to excite his Parisian ardor.

About one o’clock in the day, however, looking casually seaward—­what was this that M. Peyron, to his great surprise, descried far away on the dim southern horizon?  A low black line, lying close to the water?  No, no; not a steamer!

Too prudent to excite the natives’ attention unnecessarily, the cautious Frenchman whispered, in the most commonplace voice on earth to Felix:  “Don’t look at once; and when you do look, mind you don’t exhibit any agitation in your tone or manner.  But what do you make that out to be—­that long black haze on the horizon to southward?”

Felix looked, disregarding the friendly injunction, at once.  At the same moment, Muriel turned her eyes quickly in the self-same direction.  Neither made the faintest sign of outer emotion; but Muriel clenched her white hands hard, till the nails dug into the palm, in her effort to restrain herself, as she murmured very low, in an agitated voice, “Un vapeur, un vapeur!”

“So I think,” M. Peyron answered, very low and calm.  “It is, indeed, a steamer!”

For three long hours those anxious souls waited and watched it draw nearer and nearer.  Slowly the natives, too, began to perceive the unaccustomed object.  As it drew abreast of the island, and the decisive moment arrived for prompt action, Felix rose in his place once more and cried aloud, “My people, I told you a ship, propelled by fire, would come from the far land across the sea to take us.  The ship has come; you can see for yourselves the thick black smoke that issues in huge puffs from the mouth of the monster.  Now, listen to me, and dare not to disobey me.  My word is law; let all men see to it.  I am going to send a message of fire from the sun to the great canoe that walks upon the water.  If any man ventures to stop me from doing it the people from the great canoe will land on this isle and take vengeance for his act, and kill with the thunder which the sailing gods carry ever about with them.”

By this time the island was alive with commotion.  Hundreds of natives, with their long hair falling unkempt about their keen brown faces, were gazing with open eyes at the big black ship that ploughed her way so fast against wind and tide over the surface of the waters.  Some of them shouted and gesticulated with panic fear; others seemed half inclined to waste no time on preparation or doubt, but to rush on at once, and immolate their captives before a rescue was possible.  But Felix, keeping ever his cool head undisturbed, stood on the dusty mound by Tu-Kila-Kila’s house, and taking in his hand the little mirror he had made from the match-box, flashed the light from the sun full in their eyes for a moment, to the astonishment and discomfiture of all those gaping savages.  Then he focussed it on the Australasian, across the surf and the waves, and with a throbbing heart began to make his last faint bid for life and freedom.

For four or five minutes he went flashing on, uncertain of the effect, whether they saw or saw not.  Then a cry from Muriel burst at once upon his ears.  She clasped her hands convulsively in an agony of joy.  “They see us!  They see us!”

And sure enough, scarcely half a minute later, a British flag ran gayly up the mainmast, and a boat seemed to drop down over the side of the vessel.

As for the natives, they watched these proceedings with considerable surprise and no little discomfiture—­Fire and Water, in particular, whispering together, much alarmed, with many superstitious nods and taboos, in the corner of the enclosure.

Gradually, as the boat drew nearer and nearer, divided counsels prevailed among the savages.  With no certainly recognized Tu-Kila-Kila to marshal their movements, each man stood in doubt from whom to take his orders.  At last, the King of Fire, in a hesitating voice, gave the word of command.  “Half the warriors to the shore to repel the enemy; half to watch round the taboo-line, lest the Korongs escape us!  Let Breathless Fear, our war-god, go before the face of our troops, invisible!”

And, quick as thought, at his word, the warriors had paired off, two and two, in long lines; some running hastily down to the beach, to man the war-canoes, while others remained, with shark’s tooth spears still set in a looser circle, round the great temple-enclosure of Tu-Kila-Kila.

For Muriel, this suspense was positively terrible.  To feel one was so close to the hope of rescue, and yet to know that before that help arrived, or even as it came up, those savages might any moment run their ghastly spears through them.

But Felix made the best of his position still.  “Remember,” he cried, at the top of his voice, as the warriors started at a run for the water’s edge, “your Tu-Kila-Kila tells you, these new-comers are his friends.  Whoever hurts them, does so at his peril.  This is a great Taboo.  I bid you receive them.  Beware for your lives.  I, Tu-Kila-Kila the Great, have said it.”