er.

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