e gods, and know the world well--we two who see everything in
heaven or earth--there is no need for concealment--we may talk as plainly
as we will with one another. Come, tell me the truth! The new white man
has seen you?"

"He has seen me, yes, certainly," the Frenchman admitted, taking a keen
look deep into the savage's cunning eyes.

"Does he speak your language--the language of birds?" Tu-Kila-Kila asked
once more, with insinuating cunning. "I have heard that the sailing gods
are of many languages. Are you and he of one speech or two? Aliens, or
countrymen?"

"He speaks my language as he speaks Polynesian," the Frenchman replied,
keeping his eye firmly fixed on his doubtful guest, "but it is not his
own. He has a tongue apart--the tongue of an island not far from my
country, which we call England."

Tu-Kila-Kila drew nearer, and dropped his voice to a confidential
whisper. "Has he seen the Soul of all dead parrots?" he asked, with keen
interest in his voice. "The parrot that knows Tu-Kila-Kila's secret? That
one over there--the old, the very sacred one?"

M. Peyron gazed round his aviary carelessly. "Oh, that one," he answered,
with a casual glance at Methuselah, as though one parrot or another were
much the same to him. "Yes, I think he saw it. I pointed it out to him,
in fact, as the oldest and strangest of all my subjects."

Tu-Kila-Kila's countenance fell. "Did he hear it speak?" he asked, in
evident alarm. "Did it tell him the story of Tu-Kila-Kila's secret?"

"No, it didn't speak," the Frenchman answered. "It seldom does now. It is
very old. And if it did, I don't suppose the King of the Rain would have
understood one word of it. Look here, great god, allay your fears. You're
a terrible coward. I expect the real fact about the parrot is this: it is
the last of its own race; it speaks the language of some tribe of men who
once inhabited these islands, but are now extinct. No human being at
present alive, most probably, knows one word of that forgotten language."

"You think not?" Tu-Kila-Kila asked, a little relieved.

"I am the King of the Birds, and I know the voices of my subjects by
heart; I assure you it is as I say," M. Peyron answered, drawing himself
up solemnly.

Tu-Kila-Kila looked askance, with something very closely approaching a
wink in his left eye. "We two are both gods," he said, with a tinge of
irony in his tone. "We know what that means.... _I_ do not feel so
certain."

He stood c