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Updated: June 7, 2025
At last, after he had instructed it by slow degrees how to repeat this long sermon or poem which I have often heard it recite in a sing-song voice from beginning to end his time came, as they say, and he had to give way to another Tu-Kila-Kila; for the Bouparese have a proverb like our own about the king, 'The High God is dead; may the High God live forever! But before he gave up his Soul to his successor, and was eaten or buried, whichever is the custom, he handed over his pet to the King of the Birds, strictly charging all future bearers of that divine office to care for the parrot as they would care for a son or a daughter.
As she stole from the hut, Tu-Kila-Kila, looking ruefully at his wounded hand, and then at that light and supple retreating figure, muttered sulkily to himself, with a very bad grace, "the woman knows too much. She nearly wormed my secret out of me. She knows that Tu-Kila-Kila's life and soul are bound up in the tree. She knows that I bled, and that the parrot bit me.
You are new to the island, and do not yet understand these savages. It is so terrible a fate. So deadly. So certain. Compose your mind to hear the worst. And remember that the worst is very terrible." Felix's blood froze within him; but he answered bravely all the same, "I think I have guessed it myself already. The Korong are offered as human sacrifices to Tu-Kila-Kila."
"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.
The Frenchman had turned his back for a moment now, to fetch out a stool. Tu-Kila-Kila, casting a quick, suspicious eye to the right and left, took a step nearer. The parrot sat mumbling on its perch, inarticulately, putting its head on one side, and blinking its half-blinded eyes in the bright tropical sunshine. Tu-Kila-Kila paused irresolute before its face for a second.
Toko asked, all awestruck. It was terrible to him for a woman to meddle in such high matters. "I have come," Ula answered, laying her hand on his arm, and holding her face close to his with profound solemnity "I have come to say to the King of the Rain, 'Whatever you do, that do quickly. To-night I will engage to keep Tu-Kila-Kila in his temple. He shall see nothing. He shall hear nothing.
"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!"
Ever since his sacred blood had stained the dust of earth by the Frenchman's cottage and in his own temple, Tu-Kila-Kila, for all his bluster, had been deeply stirred and terrified in his inmost soul by that unlucky portent. A savage, even if he be a god, is always superstitious. Could it be that his own time was, indeed, drawing nigh?
"They are hateful in our sight, these cannibal ways. While we remain on the island, no human life shall be unjustly taken. Do you understand me?" Tu-Kila-Kila drew back, and gazed around him suspiciously. In all his experience no one had ever dared to address him like that. Assuredly, the stranger from the sun must be a very great god how great, he hardly dared to himself to realize.
The King of Fire bent low at the words. "Oh, Tu-Kila-Kila," he said, "it shall be done as you say. Till your messengers come, every man shall live at peace with all his neighbors." They stepped into the gig. Mali and Toko followed before M. Peyron as naturally as they had always followed their masters on the island before. "Who are these?" the captain asked, smiling.
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