“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.”