Among savages, guile is woman’s best protection. The wife who knows when to give way with hypocritical obedience, and when to coax or wheedle her yielding lord, runs the best chance in the end for her life. Her model is not the oak, but the willow. She must be able to watch for the rising signs of ill-humor in her master’s mind, and guard against them carefully. If she is wise, she keeps out of her husband’s way when his anger is aroused, but soothes and flatters him to the top of his bent when his temper is just slightly or momentarily ruffled.
“The Lord of Heaven and Earth is ill at ease,” Ula murmured, insinuatingly, as Tu-Kila-Kila winced once with the pain of his swollen finger. “What has happened today to the Increaser of Bread-Fruit? My lord is sad. His eye is downcast. Who has crossed my master’s will? Who has dared to anger him?”
Tu-Kila-Kila kept the wounded hand wrapped up in a soft leaf, like a woolly mullein. All the way home he had been obliged to conceal it, and disguise the pain he felt, lest Fire and Water should discover his secret. For he dared not let his people know that the Soul of all dead parrots had bitten his finger, and drawn blood from the sacred veins of the man-god. But he almost hesitated now whether or not he should confide in Ula. A god may surely trust his own wedded wives. And yet—such need to be careful—women are so treacherous! He suspected Ula sometimes of being a great deal too fond of that young man Toko, who used to be one of the temple attendants, and whom he had given as Shadow accordingly to the King of the Rain, so as to get rid of him altogether from among the crowd of his followers. So he kept his own counsel for the moment, and disguised his misfortune. “I have been to see the King of the Birds this morning,” he said, in a grumbling voice; “and I do not like him. That God is too insolent. For my part I hate these strangers, one and all. They have no respect for Tu-Kila-Kila like the men of Boupari. They are as bad as atheists. They fear not the gods, and the customs of our fathers are not in them.”
Ula crept nearer, with one lithe round arm laid caressingly close to her master’s neck. “Then why do you make them Korong?” she asked, with feminine curiosity, like some wife who seeks to worm out of her husband the secret of freemasonry. “Why do you not cook them and eat them at once, as soon as they arrive? They are very good food—so white and fine. That last new-comer, now—the Queen of the Clouds—why not eat her? She is plump and tender.”
“I like her,” Tu-Kila-Kila responded, in a gloating tone. “I like her every way. I would have brought her here to my temple and admitted her at once to be one of Tu-Kila-Kila’s wives—only that Fire and Water would not have permitted me. They have too many taboos, those awkward gods. I do not love them. But I make my strangers Korong for a very wise reason. You women are fools; you understand nothing; you do not know the mysteries. These things are a great deal too high and too deep for you. You could not comprehend them. But men know well why. They are wise; they have been initiated. Much more, then, do I, who am the very high god—who eat human flesh and drink blood like water—who cause the sun to shine and the fruits to grow—without whom the day in heaven would fade and die out, and the foundations of the earth would be shaken like a plantain leaf.”
Ula laid her soft brown hand soothingly on the great god’s arm just above the elbow. “Tell me,” she said, leaning forward toward him, and looking deep into his eyes with those great speaking gray orbs of hers; “tell me, O Sustainer of the Equipoise of Heaven; I know you are great; I know you are mighty; I know you are holy and wise and cruel; but why must you let these sailing gods who come from unknown lands beyond the place where the sun rises or sets—why must you let them so trouble and annoy you? Why do you not at once eat them up and be done with them? Is not their flesh sweet? Is not their blood red? Are they not a dainty well fit for the banquet of Tu-Kila-Kila?”
The savage looked at her for a moment and hesitated. A very beautiful woman this Ula, certainly. Not one of all his wives had larger brown limbs, or whiter teeth, or a deeper respect for his divine nature. He had almost a mind—it was only Ula? Why not break the silence enjoined upon gods toward women, and explain this matter to her? Not the great secret itself, of course—the secret on which hung the Death and Transmigration of Tu-Kila-Kila—oh, no; not that one. The savage was far too cunning in his generation to intrust that final terrible Taboo to the ears of a woman. But the reason why he made all strangers Korong. A woman might surely be trusted with that—especially Ula. She was so very handsome. And she was always so respectful to him.
“Well, the fact of it is,” he answered, laying his hand on her neck, that plump brown neck of hers, under the garland of dracæna leaves, and stroking it voluptuously, “the sailing gods who happen upon this island from time to time are made Korong—but hush! it is taboo.” He gazed around the hut suspiciously. “Are all the others away?” he asked, in a frightened tone. “Fire and Water would denounce me to all my people if once they found I had told a taboo to a woman. And as for you, they would take you, because you knew it, and would pull your flesh from your bones with hot stone pincers!”
Ula rose and looked about her at the door of the tent. She nodded thrice; then she glided back, serpentine, and threw herself gracefully, in a statuesque pose, on the native mat beside him. “Here, drink some more kava,” she cried, holding a bowl to his lips, and wheedling him with her eyes. “Kava is good; it is fit for gods. It makes them royally drunk, as becomes great deities. The spirits of our ancestors dwell in the bowl; when you drink of the kava they mount by degrees into your heart and head. They inspire brave words. They give you thoughts of heaven. Drink, my master, drink. The Ruler of the Sun in Heaven is thirsty.”
She lay propped on one elbow, with her face close to his; and offered him, with one brown, irresistible hand, the intoxicating liquor. Tu-Kila-Kila took the bowl, and drank a second time, for he had drunk of it once with his dinner already. It was seldom he allowed himself the luxury of a second draught of that very stupefying native intoxicant, for he knew too well the danger of insecurely guarding his sacred tree; but on this particular occasion, as on so many others in the collective life of humanity, “the woman tempted him,” and he acted as she told him. He drank it off deep. “Ha, ha! that is good!” he cried, smacking his lips. “That is a drink fit for a god. No woman can make kava like you, Ula.” He toyed with her arms and neck lazily once more. “You are the queen of my wives,” he went on, in a dreamy voice. “I like you so well, that, plump as you are, I really believe, Ula, I could never make up my mind to eat you.”