The Great Taboo

"What have they done to us?" Muriel asked aside, in a terrified undertone of Felix.

"I can't quite make out," Felix answered in the selfsame voice. "They call us the King of the Rain and the Queen of the Clouds in their own language. I think they imagine we've come from the sun and that we're a sort of spirits."

At the sound of these words the girl who held the basket of fruits gave a sudden start. It almost seemed to Muriel as if she understood them. But when Muriel looked again she gave no further sign. She merely held her peace, and tried to appear wholly undisconcerted.

The chief beckoned them down from the platform with a wave of his hand. They rose and followed him. As they rose the people around them bowed low to the ground. Felix could see they were bowing to Muriel and himself, not merely to the chief. A doubt flitted strangely across his mind for a moment. What could it all mean? Did they take the two strangers, then, for supernatural beings? Had they enrolled them as gods? If so, it might serve as some little protection for them.

The procession formed again, three and three, three and three, in solemn silence. Then the chief walked in front of them with measured steps, and Felix and Muriel followed behind, wondering. As they went, the cry rose louder and louder than before, "Taboo! Taboo!" People who met them fell on their faces at once, as the chief cried out in a loud tone, "The King of the Rain! The Queen of the Clouds! Korong! Korong! They are coming! They are coming!"

At last they reached a second cleared space, standing in a large garden of manilla, loquat, poncians, and hibiscus-trees. It was entered by a gate, a tall gate of bamboo posts. At the gate all the followers fell back to right and left, awe-struck. Only the chief went calmly on. He beckoned to Felix and Muriel to follow him.

They entered, half terrified. Felix still grasped his open knife in his hand, ready to strike at any moment that might be necessary. The chief led them forward toward a very large tree near the centre of the garden. At the foot of the tree stood a hut, somewhat bigger and better built than any they had yet seen; and in front of the trunk a stalwart savage, very powerfully built, but with a sinister look in his cruel and lustful eye, was pacing up and down, like a sentinel on guard, a long spear in his right hand, and a tomahawk in his left, held close by his side, all ready for action. As he prowled up and down he seemed to be peering warily about him on every side, as if each instant he expected to be set upon by an enemy. But as the chief approached, the people without set up once more the cry of "Taboo! Taboo!" and the stalwart savage by the tree, laying down his spear and letting his tomahawk fall free, dropped in a second the air of watchful alarm, and advanced with some courtesy to greet the new-comers.

"We have found them, Tu-Kila-Kila," the chief said, presenting them to the god with a graceful wave of his hand. "We have found the spirits that you brought from the sun, with the fire in their hands, and the light in boxes. We have taken them to Heaven. Heaven has accepted them. We have offered them fruit, and they have eaten the banana. The King of the Rain—the Queen of the Clouds! Korong! Receive them!"

Tu-Kila-Kila glanced at them with an approving glance, strangely compounded of pleasure and terror. "They are plump," he said shortly. "They are indeed Korong. My sun has sent me an acceptable present."

"What is your will that we should do with them?" the chief asked in a deeply deferential tone.

Tu-Kila-Kila looked hard at Muriel—such a hateful look that the knife trembled irresolute for a second in Felix's hand. "Give them two fresh huts," he said, in a lordly way. "Give them divine platters. Give them all that they need. Make everything right for them."

The chief bowed, and retired with an awed air from the presence. Exactly as he passed a certain line on the ground, marked white with a row of coral-sand, Tu-Kila-Kila seized his spear and his tomahawk once more, and mounted guard, as before, at the foot of the great tree where they had seen him pacing. An instantaneous change seemed to Muriel to come over his demeanor at that moment. While he spoke with the chief she noticed he looked all cruelty, lust, and hateful self-indulgence. Now that he paced up and down warily in front of that sacred floor, peering around him with keen suspicion, he seemed rather the personification of watchfulness, fear, and a certain slavish bodily terror. Especially, she observed, he cast upon Felix, as he went, a glance of angry hate; and yet he did not attempt to hurt or molest him in any way, defenceless as they both were before those numerous savages.

As they emerged from the enclosure, the girl with the fruit basket stood near the gate, looking outward from the wall, her face turned away from the awful home of Tu-Kila-Kila. At the moment when Muriel passed, to her immense astonishment the girl spoke to her. "Don't be afraid, missy," she said in English, in a rather low voice, without obtrusively approaching them. "Boupari man not going to hurt you. Me going to be your servant. Me name Mali. Me very good girl. Me take plenty care of you."

The unexpected sound of her own language, in the midst of so much unmitigated savagery, took Muriel fairly by surprise. She looked hard at the girl, but thought it wisest to answer nothing. This particular young woman, indeed, was just as dark, and to all appearance just as much of a savage, as any of the rest of them. But she could speak English, at any rate! And she said she was to be Muriel's servant!

The chief led them back to the shore, talking volubly all the way in Polynesia to Felix. His dialect differed so much from the Fijian that when he spoke first Felix could hardly follow him. But he gathered vaguely, nevertheless, that they were to be well housed and fed for the present at the public expense; and even that something which the chief clearly regarded as a very great honor was in store for them in the future. Whatever these people's particular superstition might be, it seemed pretty evident at least that it told in the strangers' favor. Felix almost began to hope they might manage to live there pretty tolerably for the next two or three weeks, and perhaps to signal in time to some passing Australian liner.

The rest of that wonderful eventful day was wholly occupied with practical details. Before long, two adjacent huts were found for them, near the shore of the lagoon; and Felix noticed with pleasure, not only that the huts themselves were new and clean, but also that the chief took great care to place round both of them a single circular line of white coral-sand, like the one he had noticed at Tu-Kila-Kila's palace-temple. He felt sure this white line made the space within taboo. No native would dare without leave to cross it.

When the line was well marked out round the two huts together, the chief went away for a while, leaving the Europeans within their broad white circle, guarded by an angry-looking band of natives with long spears at rest, all pointed inward. The natives themselves stood well without the ring, but the points of their spears almost reached the line, and it was clear they would not for the present permit the Europeans to leave the charmed circle.

Presently, the chief returned again, followed by two other natives in official costumes. One of them was a tall and handsome young man, dressed in a long robe or cloak of yellow feathers. The other was stouter, and perhaps forty or thereabouts; he wore a short cape of white albatross plumes, with a girdle of shells at his waist, interspersed with red coral.

"The King of Fire will make Taboo," the chief said, solemnly.

The young man with the cloak of yellow feathers stepped forward and spoke, toeing the line with his left foot, and brandishing a lighted stick in his right hand. "Taboo! Taboo! Taboo!" he cried aloud, with emphasis. "If any man dare to transgress this line without leave, I burn him to ashes. If any woman, I scorch her to a cinder. Taboo to the King of the Rain and the Queen of the Clouds. Taboo! Taboo! Taboo! Korong! I say it."

He stepped back into the ranks with an air of duty performed. The chief looked about him curiously a moment. "The King of Water will make Taboo," he repeated after a pause, in the same deep tone of profound conviction.

The stouter man in the short white cape stepped forward in his turn. He toed the line with his naked left foot; in his brown right hand he carried a calabash of water. "Taboo! Taboo! Taboo!" he exclaimed aloud, pouring out the water upon the ground symbolically. "If any man dare to transgress this line without leave, I drown him in his canoe. If any woman, I drag her alive into the spring as she fetches water. Taboo to the King of the Rain and the Queen of the Clouds. Taboo! Taboo! Taboo! Korong! I say it."

"What does it all mean?" Muriel whispered, terrified.

Felix explained to her, as far as he could, in a few hurried sentences. "There's only one word in it I don't understand," he added, hastily, "and that's Korong. It doesn't occur in Fiji. They keep saying we're Korong, whatever that may mean; and evidently they attach some very great importance to it."

"Let the Shadows come forward," the chief said, looking up with an air of dignity.

A good-looking young man, and the girl who said her name was Mali, stepped forth from the crowd, and fell on their knees before him.

The chief laid his hand on the young man's shoulder and raised him up. "The Shadow of the King of the Rain," he cried, turning him three times round. "Follow him in all his incomings and his outgoings, and serve him faithfully! Taboo! Taboo! Pass within the sacred circle!"

He clapped his hands. The young man crossed the line with a sort of reverent reluctance, and took his place within the ring, close up to Felix.

The chief laid his hand on Mali's shoulder. "The Shadow of the Queen of the Clouds," he said, turning her three times round. "Follow her in all her incomings and outgoings, and serve her faithfully. Taboo! Taboo! Pass within the sacred circle!"

Then he waved both hands to Felix. "Go where you will now," he said. "Your Shadow will follow you. You are free as the rain that drops where it will. You are as free as the clouds that roam through heaven. No man will hinder you."

And in a moment the spearmen dropped their spears in concert, the crowd fell back, and the villagers dispersed as if by magic, to their own houses.

But Felix and Muriel were left alone beside their huts, guarded only in silence by their two mystic Shadows.

CHAPTER VI.

FIRST DAYS IN BOUPARI

Throughout that day the natives brought them, from time to time, numerous presents of yam, bananas, and bread-fruit, neatly arranged in little palm-leaf baskets. A few of them brought eggs as well, and one offering even included a live chicken. But the people who brought them, and who were mostly young girls just entering upon womanhood, did not venture to cross the white line of coral-sand that surrounded the huts; they laid down their presents, with many salaams, on the ground outside, and then waited with a half-startled, half-reverent air for one or other of the two Shadows to come out and fetch them. As soon as the baskets were carried well within the marked line, the young girls exhibited every sign of pleasure, and calling aloud, "Korong! Korong!"—that mysterious Polynesian word of whose import Felix was ignorant—they retired once more by tortuous paths through the surrounding jungle.

"Why do they bring us presents?" Felix asked at last of his Shadow, after this curious pantomime had been performed some three or four times. "Are they always going to keep us in such plenty?"

The Shadow looked back at him with an air of considerable surprise. "They bring presents, of course," he said, in his own tongue, "because they are badly in want of rain. We have had much drought of late in Boupari; we need water from heaven. The banana-bushes wither; the flowers on the bread-fruit tree do not swell to breadfruit; the yams are thirsty. Therefore the fathers send their daughters with presents, maidens of the villages, all marriageable girls, to ask for rainfall. But they will always provide for you, and also for the Queen, however you behave; for you are both Korong. Tu-Kila-Kila has said so, and Heaven has accepted you."

"What do you mean by Korong?" Felix asked, with some trepidation.

The Shadow merely looked back at him with a sort of blank surprise that anybody should be ignorant of so simple a conception. "Why, Korong is Korong," he answered, aghast. "You are Korong yourself. The Queen of the Clouds is Korong, too. You are both Korong; that is why they all treat you with such respect and reverence."

And that was as much as Felix could elicit by his subtlest questions from his taciturn Shadow.

In fact, it was clear that in the open, at least, the Shadow was averse to being observed in familiar conversation with Felix. During the heat of the day, however, when they sat alone within the hut, he was much more communicative. Then he launched forth pretty freely into talk about the island and its life, which would no doubt have largely enlightened Felix, had it not been for two drawbacks to their means of inter-communication. In the first place, the Boupari dialect, though agreeing in all essentials with the Polynesian of Fiji, nevertheless contained a great many words and colloquial expressions unknown to the Fijians; this being particularly the case, as Felix soon remarked, in the whole vocabulary of religious rites and ceremonies. And in the second place, the Shadow was so rigidly bound by his own narrow and insular set of ideas, that he couldn't understand the difficulty Felix felt in throwing himself into them. Over and over again, when Felix asked him to explain some word or custom, he would repeat, with naïve impatience, "Why, Korong is Korong," or "Tula is just Tula; even a child must surely know what Tula is; much more yourself, who are indeed Korong, and who have come from the sun to bring fresh fire to us."

In the adjoining hut, Muriel, who was now beginning in some small degree to get rid of her most pressing fear for the immediate future, and whom the obvious reality of the taboo had reassured for the moment, sat with Mali, her own particular Shadow, unravelling the mystery of the girl's knowledge of English.

Mali, indeed, like the other Shadow, showed every disposition to indulge in abundant conversation, as soon as she found herself well within the hut, alone with her mistress, and secluded from the prying eyes of all the other islanders.

"Don't you be afraid, missy," she said, with genuine kindliness in her tone, as soon as the gifts of yam and bread-fruit had all been duly housed and garnered. "No harm come to you. You Korong, you know. You very great Taboo. Tu-Kila-Kila send King of Fire and King of Water to make taboo over you, so nobody hurt you."

Muriel burst into tears at the sound of her own language from those dusky lips, and exclaimed through her sobs, clinging to the girl's hand for comfort as she spoke, "Why, how did you ever come to speak English?—tell me."

Mali looked up at her with a half-astonished air. "Oh, I servant in Queensland, of course, missy," she answered, with great composure. "Labor vessel come to my island, far away, four, five years ago, steal boy, steal woman. My papa just kill my mamma, because he angry with her, so no want daughters. So my papa sell me and my sister for plenty rum, plenty tobacco, to gentlemen in labor vessel. Gentlemen in labor vessel take Jani and me away, away, to Queensland. Big sea; long voyage. We stop there three yam—three years—do service; then great chief in Queensland send us back to my island. My island too faraway; gentleman on ship not find it out; so he land us in little boat on Boupari. Boupari people make temple slave of us." And that was all; to her quite a commonplace, everyday history.

"I see," Muriel cried. "Then you've been for three years in Australia! And there you learned English. Why, what did you do there?"

Mali looked back at her with the same matter-of-fact air of composure as before. "Oh, me nurse at first," she said, shortly. "Then after, me housemaid, live three year in gentleman's house, good gentleman that buy me. Take care of little girl; clean rooms; do everything. Me know how to make English lady quite comfortable. Me tell that to chief; that make him say, 'Mali, you be Queenie's Shadow.'"

To Muriel in her loneliness even such companionship as that was indeed a consolation. "Oh, I'm so glad you told him," she cried. "If we have to stop here long, before a ship takes us off, it'll be so nice to have you here all the time with me. You won't go away from me ever, will you? You'll always stop with me!"

The girl's surprise showed more profoundly than ever. "Me can't go away," she answered, with emphasis. "Me your Shadow. That great Taboo. Tu-Kila-Kila great god. If me go away, Tu-Kila-Kila kill me and eat me."

Muriel started back in horror. "But, Mali," she said, looking hard at the girl's pleasant brown face, "if you were three years in Australia, you're a Christian, surely!"

The girl nodded her head in passive acquiescence. "Me Christian in Australia," she answered. "Of course me Christian. All folks make Christian when him go to Queensland. That what for me call Mali, and my sister Jani. We have other names on my own island; but when we go to Queensland, gentleman baptize us, call us Mali and Jani. Me Methodist in Queensland. Methodist very good. But Methodist god no live in Boupari. Not any good be Methodist here any longer. Tu-Kila-Kila god here. Him very powerful."

"What! Not that dreadful creature that they took us to see this morning!" Muriel exclaimed, in horror. "Oh, Mali, you can't mean to say they think he's a god, that awful man there!"

Mali nodded her assent with profound conviction. "Yes, yes; him god," she repeated, confidently. "Him very powerful. My sister Jani go too near him temple, against taboo—because her not belong-a Tu-Kila-Kila temple; and last night, when it great feast, plenty men catch Jani, and tie him up in rope; and Tu-Kila-Kila kill him, and plenty Boupari men help Tu-Kila-Kila eat up Jani."

She said it in the same simple, matter-of-fact way as she had said that she was a nurse for three years in Queensland. To her it was a common incident of everyday life. Such accidents will happen, if you break taboo and go too near forbidden temples.

But Muriel drew back, and let the pleasant-looking brown girl's hand drop suddenly. "You can't mean it," she cried. "You can't mean he's a god! Such a wicked man as that! Oh, his very look's too horrible."

Mali drew back in her turn with a somewhat terrified air, and peeped suspiciously around her, as if to make sure whether any one was listening. "Oh, hush," she said, anxiously. "Don't must talk like that. If Tu-Kila-Kila hear, him scorch us up to ashes. Him very great god! Him good! Him powerful!"

"How can he be good if he does such awful things?" Muriel exclaimed, energetically.

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!"

Mali looked back at her in wondering surprise. "Not in Queensland," she answered, calmly—to her, all the world naturally divided itself into Queensland and Polynesia—"no god in Queensland. Governor, him very great chief; but him no god like Tu-Kila-Kila. Methodist god in sky, him only god that live in Queensland. But no use worship Methodist god over here in Boupari. Him no live here. Tu-Kila-Kila live here. All god here make out of man. Live in man. Korong! What for you say a man can't be a god! You god yourself! White gentleman there, god! Korong, Korong. Chief put you in Heaven, so make you a god. People pray to you now. People bring you presents."

"You don't mean to say," Muriel cried, "they bring me these things because they think me a goddess?"

Mali nodded a grave assent. "Same like people give money in church in Queensland," she answered, promptly. "Ask you make rain, make plenty crop, make bread-fruit grow, make banana, make plantain. You Korong now. While your time last, Queenie, people give you plenty of present."

"While my time last?" Muriel repeated, with a curious sense of discomfort creeping over her slowly.

The girl nodded an easy assent. "Yes, while your time last," she answered, laying a small bundle of palm-leaves at Muriel's back by way of a cushion. "For now you Korong. By and by, Korong pass to somebody else. This year, you Korong. So people worship you."

But nothing that Muriel could say would induce the girl further to explain her meaning. She shook her head and looked very wise. "When a god come into somebody," she said, nodding toward Muriel in a mysterious way, "then him god himself; him Korong. When the god go away from him, him Korong no longer; somebody else Korong. Queenie Korong now; so people worship him. While him time last, people plenty kind to him."

The day passed away, and night came on. As it approached, heavy clouds drifted up from eastward. Mali busied herself with laying out a rough bed in the hut for Muriel, and making her a pillow of soft moss and the curious lichen-like material that hangs parasitic from the trees, and is commonly known as "old man's beard." As both Mali and Felix assured her confidently no harm would come to her within so strict a Taboo, Muriel, worn out with fatigue and terror, lay down at last and slept soundly on this native substitute for a bedstead. She slept without dreaming, while Mali lay at her feet, ready at a moment's call. It was all so strange; and yet she was too utterly wearied to do otherwise than sleep, in spite of her strange and terrible surroundings.

Felix slept, too, for some hours, but woke with a start in the night. It was raining heavily. He could hear the loud patter of a fierce tropical shower on the roof of his hut. His Shadow, at his feet, slept still unmoved; but when Felix rose on his elbow, the Shadow rose on a sudden, too, and confronted him curiously. The young man heard the rain; then he bowed down his face with an awed air, not visible, but audible, in the still darkness. "It has come!" he said, with superstitious terror. "It has come at last! my lord has brought it!"

After that, Felix lay awake for some hours, hearing the rain on the roof, and puzzled in his own head by a half-uncertain memory. What was it in his school reading that that ceremony with the water indefinitely reminded him of? Wasn't there some Greek or Roman superstition about shaking your head when water was poured upon it? What could that superstition be, and what light might it cast on that mysterious ceremony? He wished he could remember; but it was so long since he'd read it, and he never cared much at school for Greek or Roman antiquities.

Suddenly, in a lull of the rain, the whole context at once came back with a rush to him. He remembered now he had read it, some time or other, in some classical dictionary. It was a custom connected with Greek sacrifices. The officiating priest poured water or wine on the head of the sheep, bullock, or other victim. If the victim shook its head and knocked off the drops, that was a sign that it was fit for the sacrifice, and that the god accepted it. If the victim trembled visibly, that was a most favorable omen. If it stood quite still and didn't move its neck, then the god rejected it as unfit for his purpose. Couldn't that be the meaning of the ceremony performed on Muriel and himself in "Heaven" that morning? Were they merely intended as human sacrifices? Were they to be kept meanwhile and, as it were, fed up for the slaughter? It was too horrible to believe; yet it almost looked like it.

He wished he knew the meaning of that strange word, "Korong." Clearly, it contained the true key to the mystery.

Anyhow, he had always his trusty knife. If the worst came to the worst—those wretches should never harm his spotless Muriel.

For he loved her to-night; he would watch over and protect her. He would save her at least from the deadliest of insults.