Ula smiled again, a well-satisfied smile. She was working her man up. “Tu-Kila-Kila is great,” she repeated, slowly. “All earth obeys him. All heaven fears him.”
The savage took her hand with a doubtful air. “And yet,” he said, toying with it, half irresolute, “when I went to the white-faced stranger’s hut this morning, he did not speak fair; he answered me insolently. His words were bold. He talked to me as one talks to a man, not to a great god. Ula, I wonder if he knows my secret?”
Ula started back in well-affected horror. “A white-faced stranger from the sun know your secret, O great king!” she cried, hiding her face in a square of cloth. “See me beat my breast! Impossible! Impossible! No one of your subjects would dare to tell him so great a taboo. It would be rank blasphemy. If they did, your anger would utterly consume them!”
“That is true,” Tu-Kila-Kila said, practically, “but I might not discover it. I am a very great god. My Eyes are everywhere. No corner of the world is hid from my gaze. All the concerns of heaven and earth are my care, And, therefore; sometimes, I overlook some detail.”
“No man alive would dare to tell the Great Taboo!” Ula repeated, confidently. “Why, even I myself, who am the most favored of your wives, and who am permitted to bask in the light of your presence—even I, Ula—I do not know it. How much less, then, the spirit from the sun, the sailing god, the white-faced stranger!”
Tu-Kila-Kila pursed up his brow and looked preternaturally wise, as the savage loves to do. “But the parrot,” he cried, “the Soul of all dead parrots! He knew the secret, they say:—I taught it him myself in an ancient day, many, many years ago—when no man now living was born, save only I—in another incarnation—and he may have told it. For the strangers, they say, speak the language of birds; and in the language of birds did I tell the Great Taboo to him.”
Ula pooh-poohed the mighty man-god’s fears. “No, no,” she cried, with confidence; “he can never have told them. If he had, would not your Eyes that watch ever for all that happens on heaven or earth, have straightway reported it to you? The parrot died without yielding up the tale. Were it otherwise, Toko, who loves and worships you, would surely have told me.”
The man-god puckered his brows slightly, as if he liked not the security. “Well, somehow, Ula,” he said, feeling her soft brown arms with his divine hand, slowly, “I have always had my doubts since that day the Soul of all dead parrots bit me. A vicious bird! What did he mean by his bite?” He lowered his voice and looked at her fixedly. “Did not his spilling my blood portend,” he asked, with a shudder of fear, “that through that ill-omened bird I, who was once Lavita, should cease to be Tu-Kila-Kila?”
Ula smiled contentedly again. To say the truth, that was precisely the interpretation she herself had put on that terrific omen. The parrot had spilled Tu-Kila-Kila’s sacred blood upon the soil of earth. According to her simple natural philosophy, that was a certain sign that through the parrot’s instrumentality Tu-Kila-Kila’s life would be forfeited to the great eternal earth-spirit. Or, rather, the earth-spirit would claim the blood of the man Lavita, in whose body it dwelt, and would itself migrate to some new earthly tabernacle.
But for all that, she dissembled. “Great god,” she cried, smiling, a benign smile, “you are tired! You are thirsty! Care for heaven and earth has wearied you out. You feel the fatigue of upholding the sun in heaven. Your arms must ache. Your thews must give under you. Drink of the soul-inspiring juice of the kava! My hands have prepared the divine cup. For Tu-Kila-Kila did I make it—fresh, pure, invigorating!”