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Updated: May 7, 2025
Felix rose at once; and his Shadow, rising before him, and unbolting the loose wooden fastener of the door, went out in haste to see who called beyond the white taboo-line of their sacred precincts. A native woman, tall, lithe, and handsome, stood there in the full light of morning, beckoning. A strange glow of hatred gleamed in her large gray eyes.
But for your own dear sake, I must steel myself. I must do it." He kissed her many times over. He wiped away her tears. Then, with a gentle movement, he untwined her clasping arms. "You must let me go, my own darling," he said, "You must let me go, without crossing the border. If you pass beyond the taboo-line to-night, Heaven only knows what, perhaps, may happen to you.
"He has a bad heart! He destroyed our huts! He broke down our plantations! Kill him, kill him, kill him!" As they closed in upon him, with spears and tomahawks and clubs, Felix saw he had nothing left for it now but a hard fight for life to return to the taboo-line.
Hard by, the natives sat, keen as lynxes, in a great circle just outside the white taboo-line, where, with serried spears, they kept watch and ward over the persons of their doubtful gods or victims.
No sin attaches to us; we are righteous; we are righteous. And then they will kill you, and Fire and Water will roast you and boil you." "But only if we go outside the taboo-line?" Felix asked, anxiously. "Only if you go outside the taboo-line," the Shadow replied, nodding a hasty assent.
Felix was just about to cross the taboo-line and walk down to the shore to examine the barrier, when Toko, his Shadow, laying his hand on his shoulder with more genuine interest and affection than he had ever yet shown, exclaimed, with some horror, "Oh, no! Not that! Don't dare to go outside! It would be very dangerous for you.
So he invariably tried to make up by the solemnity of his manner and the loudness of his assertions for any trifling scepticism that might possibly exist in the mind of his follower. On this particular occasion, as he reached the Frenchman's plot, Tu-Kila-Kila stepped forward across the white taboo-line with a suspicious and peering eye.
As he stepped over the taboo-line, Felix was aware of many native eyes fixed stonily upon him from the surrounding precinct. Clearly they were awaiting him. Yet not a soul gave the alarm; that in itself would have been to break taboo. Every man or woman among the temple attendants within that charmed circle stood on gaze curiously.
The men, on the other hand, erect and naked, with their hands on their foreheads, crossed the taboo-line at once. It was the summons to all who had been initiated at the mysteries the sacred bull-roarer was calling the assembly of the men of Boupari. For several minutes it buzzed and droned, that mystic implement, growing louder and louder, till it roared like thunder.
Then a voice broke the stillness from beyond the taboo-line: "The Shadow of the King of the Rain speaks," it said, in very solemn, conventional accents. "Korong! Korong! The Great Taboo is broken. Fire and Water, hold him in whom dwells the god till my master comes. He has the Soul of all the spirits of the wood in his hands. He will fight for his right. Taboo! Taboo! I, Toko, have said it."
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