ed trunk, of which he appeared to be in
some mysterious way the appointed guardian. His very power, it seemed,
was intimately bound up with the performance of that ceaseless and
irksome duty; he was a god in whose hands the lives of his people were
but as dust in the balance; but he remained so only on the onerous
condition of pacing to and fro, like a sentry, forever before the still
more holy and venerable object he was chosen to protect from attack or
injury. Had he failed in his task, had he slumbered at his post, all god
though he might be, his people themselves would have risen in a body and
torn him limb from limb before their ancestral fetich as a sacrilegious
pretender.

At certain times and seasons, however, as for example at all high
feasts and festivals, Tu-Kila-Kila had respite for a while from this
constant treadmill of mechanical divinity. Whenever the moon was at the
half-quarter, or the planets were in lucky conjunctions, or a red glow
lit up the sky by night, or the sacred sacrificial fires of human flesh
were lighted, then Tu-Kila-Kila could lay aside his tomahawk and spear,
and become for a while as the islanders, his fellows, were. At other
times, too, when he went out in state to visit the lesser deities of his
court, the King of Fire and the King of Water made a solemn taboo before
He left his home, which protected the sacred tree from aggression during
its guardian's absence. Then Tu-Kila-Kila, shaded by his divine umbrella,
and preceded by the noise of the holy tom-toms, could go like a monarch
over all parts of his realm, giving such orders as he pleased (within the
limits of custom) to his inferior officers. It was in this way that he
now paid his visit to M. Jules Peyron, King of the Birds. And he did so
for what to him were amply sufficient reasons.

It had not escaped Tu-Kila-Kila's keen eye, as he paced among the
skeletons in his yard that morning, that Felix Thurstan, the King of the
Rain, had taken his way openly toward the Frenchman's quarters. He felt
pretty sure, therefore, that Felix had by this time learned another white
man was living on the island; and he thought it an ominous fact that the
new-comer should make his way toward his fellow-European's hut on the
very first morning when the law of taboo rendered such a visit possible.
The savage is always by nature suspicious; and Tu-Kila-Kila had grounds
enough of his own for suspicion in this particular instance. The two
white men