The cocoanuts and taro told the same doubtful tale. From the way they grew, even in that dim starlight, Felix recognized at once they had all been planted.
Still, he didn’t hesitate to do what he thought best for Muriel’s relief for all that. Collecting a few sticks and fragments of palm-branches from the jungle about, he piled them into a heap, and waited patiently for his matches to dry. As soon as they were ready—and the warmth of the stone made them quickly inflammable—he struck a match on the box, and proceeded to light his fire by Muriel’s side. As her clothes grew warmer, the poor girl opened her eyes at last, and, gazing around her, exclaimed, in blank terror, “Oh, Mr. Thurstan, where are we? What does all this mean? Where have we got to? On a desert island?”
“No, not on a desert island,” Felix answered, shortly; “I’m afraid it’s a great deal worse than that. To tell you the truth, I’m afraid it’s inhabited.”
At that moment, by the hot embers of the great sacrificial pyre on the central hill, two of the savage temple-attendants, calling their god’s attention to a sudden blaze of flame upon the fringing reef, pointed with their dark forefingers and called out in surprise, “See, see, a fire on the barrier! A fire! A fire! What can it mean? There are no men of our people over there to-night. Have war-canoes arrived? Has some enemy landed?”
Tu-Kila-Kila leaned back, drained his cocoanut cup of intoxicating kava, and surveyed the unwonted apparition on the reef long and carefully. “It is nothing,” he said at last, in his most deliberate manner, stroking his cheeks and chin contentedly with that plump round hand of his. “It is only the victims; the new victims I promised you. Korong! Korong! They have come ashore with their light from my home in the sun. They have brought fire afresh—holy fire to Boupari.”
Three or four of the savages leaped up in fierce joy, and bowed before him as he spoke, with eager faces. “Oh, Tu-Kila-Kila!” the eldest among them said, making a profound reverence, “shall we swim across to the reef and fetch them home to your house? Shall we take over our canoes and bring back your victims!”
The god motioned them back with one outstretched palm. His eyes were flushed and his look lazy. “Not to-night, my people,” he said; readjusting the garland of flowers round his neck, and giving a careless glance at the well-picked bones that a few hours before had been two trembling fellow creatures. “Tu-Kila-Kila has feasted his fill for this evening. Your god is full; his heart is happy. I have eaten human flesh; I have drunk of the juice of the kava. Am I not a great deity? Can I not do as I will? I frown, and the heavens thunder; I gnash my teeth, and the earth trembles. What is it to me if fresh victims come, or if they come not? Can I not make with a nod as many as I will of them?” He took up two fresh finger-bones, clean gnawed of their flesh, and knocked them together in a wild tune, carelessly. “If Tu-Kila-Kila chooses,” he went on, tapping his chest with conscious pride, “he can knock these bones together—so—and bid them live again. Is it not I who cause women and beasts to bring forth their young? Is it not I who give the turtles their increase? And is it not a small thing to me, therefore, whether the sea tosses up my victims from my home in the sun, or whether it does not? Let us leave them alone on the reef for to-night; to-morrow we will send over our canoes to fetch them.”
It was all pure brag, all pure guesswork; and yet, Tu-Kila-Kila himself profoundly believed it.
As he spoke, the light from Felix’s fire blazed out against the dark sky, stronger and clearer still; and through that cloudless tropical air the figure of a man, standing for one moment between the flames and the lagoon, became distinctly visible to the keen and practised eyes of the savages. “I see them? I see them; I see the victims!” the foremost worshipper exclaimed, rushing forward a little at the sight, and beside himself with superstitious awe and surprise at Tu-Kila-Kila’s presence. “Surely our god is great! He knows all things! He brings us meat from the setting sun, in ships of fire, in blazing canoes, across the golden road of the sun-bathed ocean!”
As for Tu-Kila-Kila himself, leaning on his elbow at ease, he gazed across at the unexpected sight with very languid interest. He was a god, and he liked to see things conducted with proper decorum. This crowing and crying over a couple of spirits—mere ordinary spirits come ashore from the sun in a fiery boat—struck his godship as little short of childish. “Let them be,” he answered, petulantly, crushing a blossom in his hand. “Let no man disturb them. They shall rest where they are till to-morrow morning. We have eaten; we have drunk; our soul is happy. The kava within us has made us like a god indeed. I shall give my ministers charge that no harm happen to them.”