“Monsieur,” the Frenchman answered, “I hardly know whether I do right or not to say the truth to you. Each Korong is a god for one season only; when the year renews itself, as the savages believe, by a change of season, then a new Korong must be chosen by Heaven to fill the place of the old ones who are to be sacrificed. This they do in order that the seasons may be ever fresh and vigorous. Especially is that the case with the two meteorological gods, so to speak, the King of the Rain and the Queen of the Clouds. Those, I understand, are the posts in their pantheon which you and the lady who accompanies you occupy.”
“You are right,” Felix answered, with profoundly painful interest. “And what, then, becomes of the king and queen who are sacrificed?”
“I will tell you,” M. Peyron answered, dropping his voice still lower into a sympathetic key. “But steel your mind for the worst beforehand. It is sufficiently terrible. On the day of your arrival, this, I learn from my Shadow, is just what happened. That night, Tu-Kila-Kila made his great feast, and offered up the two chief human sacrifices of the year, the free-will offering and the scapegoat of trespass. They keep then a festival, which answers to our own New-Year’s day in Europe. Next morning, in accordance with custom, the King of the Rain and the Queen of the Clouds were to be publicly slain, in order that a new and more vigorous king and queen should be chosen in their place, who might make the crops grow better and the sky more clement. In the midst of this horrid ceremony, you and mademoiselle, by pure chance, arrived. You were immediately selected by Tu-Kila-Kila, for some reason of his own, which I do not sufficiently understand, but which is, nevertheless, obvious to all the initiated, as the next representatives of the rain-giving gods. You were presented to Heaven on their little platform raised about the ground, and Heaven accepted you. Then you were envisaged with the attributes of divinity; the care of the rain and the clouds was made over to you; and immediately after, as soon as you were gone, the old king and queen were laid on an altar near Tu-Kila-Kila’s home, and slain with tomahawks. Their flesh was next hacked from their bodies with knives, cooked, and eaten; their bones were thrown into the sea, the mother of all waters, as the natives call it. And that is the fate, I fear the inevitable fate, that will befall you and mademoiselle at these wretches’ hands about the commencement of a fresh season.”
Felix knew the worst now, and bent his head in silence. His worst fears were confirmed; but, after all, even this knowledge was better than so much uncertainty.
And now that he knew when “his time was up,” as the natives phrased it, he would know when to redeem his promise to Muriel.
CHAPTER XVI. — A VERY FAINT CLUE.
“But you hinted at some hope, some chance of escape,” Felix cried at last, looking up from the ground and mastering his emotion. “What now is that hope? Conceal nothing from me.”
“Monsieur,” the Frenchman answered, shrugging his shoulders with an expression of utter impotence, “I have as good reasons for wishing to find out all that as even you can have. Your secret is my secret; but with all my pains and astuteness I have been unable to discover it. The natives are reticent, very reticent indeed, about all these matters. They fear taboo; and they fear Tu-Kila-Kila. The women, to be sure, in a moment of expansion, might possibly tell one; but, then, the women, unfortunately, are not admitted to the mysteries. They know no more of all these things than we do. The most I have been able to gather for certain is this—that on the discovery of the secret depend Tu-Kila-Kila’s life and power. Every Boupari man knows this Great Taboo; it is communicated to him in the assembly of adults when he gets tattooed and reaches manhood. But no Boupari man ever communicates it to strangers; and for that reason, perhaps, as I believe, Tu-Kila-Kila often chooses for Korong, as far as possible, those persons who are cast by chance upon the island. It has always been the custom, so far as I can make out, to treat castaways or prisoners taken in war as gods, and then at the end of their term to kill them ruthlessly. This plan is popular with the people at large, because it saves themselves from the dangerous honors of deification; but it also serves Tu-Kila-Kila’s purpose, because it usually elevates to Heaven those innocent persons who are unacquainted with that fatal secret which is, as the natives say, Tu-Kila-Kila’s death—his word of dismissal.”