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.