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Updated: June 7, 2025
I tell you these things in order that you may see whether they cast any light for you upon your own position; and also because the oldest and wisest natives say that this parrot alone, among beasts or birds or uninitiated things, knows the secret on which depends the life of the Tu-Kila-Kila for the time being." "Can the parrot speak?" Felix asked, with profound emotion.
The warriors bowed down before their bloated master with unquestioning assent. "Giver of Life to all the host of the gods," they cried, "you are indeed a mighty one. Weigher of the equipoise of Heaven and Earth, we acknowledge your might; we give you thanks eternally." Tu-Kila-Kila swelled with visible importance.
They may look toward the place where Tu-Kila-Kila's face is hidden from them." The people all rose with one accord, and gazed straight before them. "The King of Fire will bring dry sticks," Tu-Kila-Kila said, in his accustomed regal manner. The King of Fire, sticking one pole of the screen into the ground securely, brought forward a bundle of sun-dried sticks and leaves from a basket beside him.
We will put forth a canoe and send men with blood on their faces to inquire at Aloa Mauna of the very great oracle. Till then, you are neither Tu-Kila-Kila, nor not Tu-Kila-Kila. It behooves us to be very careful how we deal with gods. Our people will stand round your precinct in a row, and guard you with their spears.
Mali peered around her once more with terrified eyes in the same uneasy way. "Take care," she said again. "Him god! Him powerful! Him can do no wrong. Him King of the Trees! Him King of Heaven! On Boupari island, Methodist god not much; no god so great like Tu-Kila-Kila." "But a man can't be a god!" Muriel exclaimed, contemptuously. "He's nothing but a man! a savage! A cannibal!"
"You must eat of his body, my lord," he said. "That is absolutely necessary. Every one of us must eat of the flesh of the god; but you, above all, must eat his heart, his divine nature. Otherwise you can never be full Tu-Kila-Kila." "I don't care a straw for that," Felix cried, now aroused to a full sense of the break in Methuselah's story and trembling with apprehension.
All I do know is this: Tu-Kila-Kila hates and dreads in his heart every Korong that is elevated to Heaven, and would do anything, if he dared, to get rid of him quietly. But he doesn't dare, because he is bound hand and foot himself, too, by taboos innumerable. Taboo is the real god and king of Boupari. All the island alike bows down to it and worships it." "Have you ever known Korongs killed?"
Sooner or later, my day must come; but I can put it off best by making my enemies out of strangers who arrive upon our island, and not out of those of my own household. All Boupari men who have been initiated know the terrible secret they know where lies the Death of Tu-Kila-Kila. The strangers who come to us from the sun or the sea do not know it; and therefore my life is safest with them.
Felix asked once more, trembling. "Yes, monsieur. Many of them, alas! And this is what happens. When the Korong's time is come, as these creatures say, either on the summer or winter solstice, he is bound with native ropes, and carried up so pinioned to Tu-Kila-Kila's temple. In the time before this man was Tu-Kila-Kila, I remember " "Stop," Felix cried. "I don't understand.
Toko stood trembling on the far side; none might pass that mystic line unbidden and live, save the Korong alone who could succeed in breaking off the bough "with yellow leaves, resembling a mistletoe," of which Methuselah, the parrot, had told Felix and Muriel, and so earn the right to fight for his life with the redoubted and redoubtable Tu-Kila-Kila.
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