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Updated: June 7, 2025
"Water," Tu-Kila-Kila said, with half-tipsy solemnity, "you are a god too. Your power is very great. But less than mine. Do, then, as I bid you. If any man touch my spirits, whom I have brought from my home in the sun in a fiery ship, before I bid him to-morrow, overturn his canoe, and drown him in lagoon or spring or ocean.
"So all the year round," he went on, "Tu-Kila-Kila, who loves his people, and sends them the earlier and the later rain in the wet season, and makes their yams and their taro grow, and causes his sun to shine upon them freely all the year round Tu-Kila-Kila, your god, sits shut up in his own house among the skeletons of those whom he has killed and eaten, or walks in his walled paddock, where his bread-fruit ripens and his plantains spring himself, and the ministers that his tribesmen have given him."
As he spoke, he drew his knife, and opened the blade, unostentatiously, but firmly. If the worst were really coming now, sooner than he expected, he would at least not forget his promise to Muriel. Tu-Kila-Kila smiled a hateful and ominous smile. "I am a great god," he said, calmly, striking an attitude as was his wont. "Hear how my people clap their hands in my honor! I order all things.
Tu-Kila-Kila stood up, turned toward the distant flame, and waved his hands round and round three times before him. "Let this be for you all a great taboo," he said, glancing once more toward his awe-struck followers. "Now the mysteries are over. Tu-Kila-Kila will sleep. He has eaten of human flesh. He has drunk of cocoanut rum and of new kava.
Tu-Kila-Kila raised in his hand a large stone axe of some polished green material, closely resembling jade, which lay on a block by the door, and tried its edge with his finger, in an abstracted manner. "Bind him!" he said, quietly, turning round to his votaries. And the men, each glad to have escaped his own fate, bound their comrade willingly with green ropes of plantain fibre.
Gradually, after several days, Felix's confidence was so far restored that he ventured to stroll beyond the line again; and he found himself, indeed, most popular among the people. In various ways he picked up gradually the idea that the islanders generally disliked Tu-Kila-Kila, and liked himself; and that they somehow regarded him as Tu-Kila-Kila's natural enemy.
"The great god relaxes his care of the world for a while. All goes on well. He leaves his sun to sleep and his stars to shine, and he retires to rest on the unworthy bosom of her, his mate, his meat, that is honored to love him." Tu-Kila-Kila was scarcely just then in a mood for dalliance.
Yet even as he did so, he was aware of that great cry a cry as of triumph still rending the air. Fire and Water had rushed forward, and were holding back Tu-Kila-Kila, now black in the face from rage, with all their might. Ula was smiling a malicious joy. The Eyes were all agog with interest and excitement. And from one and all that wild scream rose unanimous to the startled sky: "He has it!
Would it not pour into your soul the divine, abiding strength of your mighty mother, the eternal earth-spirit?" "A little," Tu-Kila-Kila said, yielding, "but not too much. Too much would stupefy me. When the spirits, that the kava-tree sucks up from the earth, are too strong within us, they overpower our own strength, so that even I, the high god even I can do nothing."
And the stranger would become Tu-Kila-Kila in turn, and I would be one of his wives; and Toko, who is his Shadow, would return again to the service of Tu-Kila-Kila's temple." But Fire, as she passed, was saying to Water, "We are getting tired in Boupari of Lavita, the son of Sami. If the luck of the island is not to change, it is high time, I think, we should have a new Tu-Kila-Kila."
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