were surely brewing mischief together for the Lord of Heaven
and Earth, the Illuminer of the Glowing Light of the Sun; he must make
haste and see what plan they were concocting against the sacred tree and
the person of its representative, the King of Plants and of the Host of
Heaven.

But it isn't so easy to make haste when all your movements are impeded
and hampered by endless taboos and a minutely annoying ritual. Before
Tu-Kila-Kila could get himself under way, sacred umbrella, tom-toms, and
all, it was necessary for the King of Fire and the King of Water to make
taboo on an elaborate scale with their respective elements; and so by the
time the high god had reached M. Jules Peyron's garden, Felix Thurstan
had already some time since returned to Muriel's hut and his own
quarters.

Tu-Kila-Kila approached the King of the Birds, amid loud clapping of
hands, with considerable haughtiness. To say the truth, there was no love
lost between the cannibal god and his European subordinate. The savage,
puffed up as he was in his own conceit, had nevertheless always an
uncomfortable sense that, in his heart of hearts, the impassive Frenchman
had but a low opinion of him. So he invariably tried to make up by the
solemnity of his manner and the loudness of his assertions for any
trifling scepticism that might possibly exist in the mind of his
follower.

On this particular occasion, as he reached the Frenchman's plot,
Tu-Kila-Kila stepped forward across the white taboo-line with a
suspicious and peering eye. "The King of the Rain has been here," he
said, in a pompous tone, as the Frenchman rose and saluted him
ceremoniously. "Tu-Kila-Kila's eyes are sharp. They never sleep. The sun
is his sight. He beholds all things. You cannot hide aught in heaven or
earth from the knowledge of him that dwells in heaven. I look down upon
land and sea, and spy out all that takes place or is planned in them. I
am very holy and very cruel. I see all earth and I drink the blood of all
men. The King of the Rain has come this morning to visit the King of the
Birds. Where is he now? What has your divinity done with him?"

He spoke from under the sheltering cover of his veiled umbrella. The
Frenchman looked back at him with as little love as Tu-Kila-Kila himself
would have displayed had his face been visible. "Yes, you are a very
great god," he answered, in the conventional tone of Polynesian
adulation, with just a faint under-current of irony running