“He is asking the tiki, the image of the god,” said Song, fearfully.
I confess I was aware of a depression approaching fear. It was dark in the banyan cell, and a torch of candlenuts threw a fitful glimmer on the tapa and the scabrous walls.
Soon above the indistinct voice of the taua was the sound of something in the branches of the banyan, of a flapping of wings, and a knocking.
“It is a bat,” I whispered to Song.
“It is the god coming to answer,” said he, cowering with real horror.
A dreadful thing it is not to believe in the supernatural when in ordinary surroundings, and yet to be subject to horrible misgivings when circumstances conjure up visions of terror.
The uncanny noises in the tree increased, and then the mammoth banyan shook as though an earthquake vibrated it. Song and I were now flat on the ground, and I repeated an invocation of my childhood:
“From the powers of Lucifer, O, Mary, deliver us!”
I said it over and over again, and it numbed my senses during the few minutes that the pandemonium continued.
When the taua emerged, Song turned his back upon him, and, taking my hand, reversed me, too.