The Great Taboo

Chapter XII. A Point of Theology.

At last, with great difficulty, Felix managed to secure a certain momentary lull of silence. The natives, clustering round the line till they almost touched it, listened with scowling brows, and brandished threatening spears, tipped with points of stone or shark's teeth or turtle-bone, while he made his speech to them. From time to time, one or another interrupted him, coaxing and wheedling him, as it were, to cross the line; but Felix never heeded them. He was beginning to understand now how to treat this strange people. He took no notice of their threats or their entreaties either.

By and by, partly by words and partly by gestures, he made them understand that they might take back and keep for themselves all the cocoanuts and bread-fruits they had brought as windfalls. At this the people seemed a little appeased. "His heart is not quite so bad as we thought," they murmured among themselves; "but if he didn't want them, what did he mean? Why did he beat down our huts and our plantations?"

Then Felix tried to explain to them--a somewhat dangerous task--that neither he nor Muriel were really responsible for last night's storm; but at that the people, with one accord, raised a great loud shout of unmixed derision. "He is a god," they cried, "and yet he is ashamed of his own acts and deeds, afraid of what we, mere men, will do to him! Ha! ha! Take care! These are lies that he tells. Listen to him! Hear him!"

Meanwhile, more and more natives kept coming up with windfalls of fruit, or with objects they had vowed in their terror to dedicate during the night; and Felix all the time kept explaining at the top of his voice, to all as they came, that he wanted nothing, and that they could take all back again. This curiously inconsistent action seemed to puzzle the wondering natives strangely. Had he made the storm, then, they asked, and eaten the storm-apple, for no use to himself, but out of pure perverseness? If he didn't even want the windfalls and the objects vowed to him, why had he beaten down their crops and broken their houses? They looked at him meaningly; but they dared not cross that great line of taboo. It was their own superstition alone, in that moment of danger, that kept their hands off those defenceless white people.

At last a happy idea seemed to strike the crowd. "What he wants is a child?" they cried, effusively. "He thirsts for blood! Let us kill and roast him a proper victim!"

Felix's horror at this appalling proposition knew no bounds. "If you do," he cried, turning their own superstition against them in this last hour of need, "I will raise up a storm worse even than last night's! You do it at your peril! I want no victim. The people of my country eat not of human flesh. It is a thing detestable, horrible, hateful to God and man. With us, all human life alike is sacred. We spill no blood. If you dare to do as you say, I will raise such a storm over your heads to-night as will submerge and drown the whole of your island."

The natives listened to him with profound interest. "We must spill no blood!" they repeated, looking aghast at one another. "Hear what the King says! We must not cut the victim's throat. We must bind a child with cords and roast it alive for him!"

Felix hardly knew what to do or say at this atrocious proposal. "If you roast it alive," he cried, "you deserve to be all scorched up with lightning. Take care what you do! Spare the child's life! I will have no victim. Beware how you anger me!"

But the savage no sooner says than he does. With him deliberation is unknown, and impulse everything. In a moment the natives had gathered in a circle a little way off, and began drawing lots. Several children, seized hurriedly up among the crowd, were huddled like so many sheep in the centre. Felix looked on from his enclosure, half petrified with horror. The lot fell upon a pretty little girl of five years old. Without one word of warning, without one sign of remorse, before Felix's very eyes, they began to bind the struggling and terrified child just outside the circle.

The white man could stand this horrid barbarity no longer. At the risk of his life--at the risk of Muriel's--he must rush out to prevent them. They should never dare to kill that helpless child before his very eyes. Come what might--though even Muriel should suffer for it--he felt he must rescue that trembling little creature. Drawing his trusty knife, and opening the big blade ostentatiously before their eyes, he made a sudden dart like a wild beast across the line, and pounced down upon the party that guarded the victim.

Was it a ruse to make him cross the line, alone, or did they really mean it? He hardly knew; but he had no time to debate the abstract question. Bursting into their midst, he seized the child with a rush in his circling arms, and tried to hurry back with it within the protecting taboo-line.

Quick as lightning he was surrounded and almost cut down by a furious and frantic mob of half-naked savages. "Kill him! Tear him to pieces!" they cried in their rage. "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. Holding the child in one arm, and striking wildly out with his knife with the other, he tried to hack his way back by main force to the shelter of the taboo-line in frantic lunges. The distance was but a few feet, but the savages pressed round him, half frightened still, yet gnashing their teeth and distorting their faces with anger. "He has broken the Taboo," they cried in vehement tones. "He has crossed the line willingly. Kill him! Kill him! We are free from sin. We have bought him with a price--with many cocoanuts!"

At the sound of the struggle going on so close outside, Muriel rushed in frantic haste and terror from the hut. Her face was pale, but her demeanor was resolute. Before Mali could stop her, she, too, had crossed the sacred line of the coral mark, and had flung herself madly upon Felix's assailants, to cover his retreat with her own frail body.

"Hold off!" she cried, in her horror, in English, but in accents even those savages could read. "You shall not touch him!"

With a fierce effort Felix tore his way back, through the spears and clubs, toward the place of safety. The savages wounded him on the way more than once with their jagged stone spear-tips, and blood flowed from his breast and arms in profusion. But they didn't dare even so to touch Muriel. The sight of that pure white woman, rushing out in her weakness to protect her lover's life from attack, seemed to strike them with some fresh access of superstitious awe. One or two of themselves were wounded by Felix's knife, for they were unaccustomed to steel, though they had a few blades made out of old European barrel-hoops. For a minute or two the conflict was sharp and hotly contested. Then at last Felix managed to fling the child across the line, to push Muriel with one hand at arm's-length before him, and to rush himself within the sacred circle.

No sooner had he crossed it than the savages drew up around, undecided as yet, but in a threatening body. Rank behind rank, their loose hair in their eyes, they stood like wild beasts balked of their prey, and yelled at him. Some of them brandished their spears and their stone hatchets angrily in their victims' faces. Others contented themselves with howling aloud as before, and piling curses afresh on the heads of the unpopular storm-gods. "Look at her," they cried, in their wrath, pointing their skinny brown fingers angrily at Muriel. "See, she weeps even now. She would flood us with her rain. She isn't satisfied with all the harm she has poured down upon Boupari already. She wants to drown us."

And then a little knot drew up close to the line of taboo itself, and began to discuss in loud and serious tones a pressing question of savage theology and religious practice.

"They have crossed the line within the three days," some of the foremost warriors exclaimed, in excited voices. "They are no longer taboo. We can do as we please with them. We may cross the line now ourselves if we will, and tear them to pieces. Come on! Who follows? Korong! Korong! Let us rend them! Let us eat them!"

But though they spoke so bravely they hung back themselves, fearful of passing that mysterious barrier. Others of the crowd answered them back, warmly: "No, no; not so. Be careful what you do. Anger not the gods. Don't ruin Boupari. If the Taboo is not indeed broken, then how dare we break it? They are gods. Fear their vengeance. They are, indeed, terrible. See what happened to us when they merely ate of the storm-apple! What might not happen if we were to break taboo without due cause and kill them?"

One old, gray-bearded warrior, in particular, held his countrymen back. "Mind how you trifle with gods," the old chief said, in a tone of solemn warning. "Mind how you provoke them. They are very mighty. When I was young, our people killed three sailing gods who came ashore in a small canoe, built of thin split logs; and within a month an awful earthquake devastated Boupari, and fire burst forth from a mouth in the ground, and the people knew that the spirits of the sailing gods were very angry. Wait, therefore, till Tu-Kila-Kila himself comes, and then ask of him, and of Fire and Water. As Tu-Kila-Kila bids you, that do you do. Is he not our great god, the king of us all, and the guardian of the customs of the island of Boupari?"

"Is Tu-Kila-Kila coming?" some of the warriors asked, with bated breath.

"How should he not come?" the old chief asked, drawing himself up very erect. "Know you not the mysteries? The rain has put out all the fires in Boupari. The King of Fire himself, even his hearth is cold. He tried his best in the storm to keep his sacred embers still smouldering; but the King of the Rain was stronger than he was, and put it out at last in spite of his endeavors. Be careful, therefore, how you deal with the King of the Rain, who comes down among lightnings, and is so very powerful."

"And Tu-Kila-Kila comes to fetch fresh fire?" one of the nearest savages asked, with profound awe.

"He comes to fetch fresh fire, new fire from the sun," the old man answered, with awe in his voice. "These foreign gods, are they not strangers from the sun? They have brought the divine seeds of fire, growing in a shining box that reflects the sunlight. They need no rubbing-sticks and no drill to k****e fresh flame. They touch the seed on the box, and, lo, like a miracle, fire bursts forth from the wood spontaneous. Tu-Kila-Kila comes, to behold this miracle."

The warriors hung back with doubtful eyes for a moment. Then they spoke with one accord, "Tu-Kila-Kila shall decide. Tu-Kila-Kila! Tu-Kila-Kila! If the great god says the Taboo holds good, we will not hurt or offend the strangers. But if the great god says the Taboo is broken, and we are all without sin--then, Korong! Korong! we will kill them! We will eat them!"

As the two parties thus stood glaring at one another, across that narrow imaginary wall, another cry went up to heaven at the distant sound of a peculiar tom-tom. "Tu-Kila-Kila comes!" they shouted. "Our great god approaches! Women, begone! Men, hide your eyes! Fly, fly from the brightness of his face, which is as the sun in glory! Tu-Kila-Kila comes! Fly far, all profane ones!"

And in a moment the women had disappeared into space, and the men lay flat on the moist ground with low groans of surprise, and hid their faces in their hands in abject terror.