lose by the parrot with itching fingers. "It is very,
very old," he went on to himself, musingly. "It can't live long. And
then--none but Boupari men will know the secret."

As he spoke he darted a strange glance of hatred toward the unconscious
bird, the innocent repository, as he firmly believed, of the secret
that doomed him. The Frenchman had turned his back for a moment now,
to fetch out a stool. Tu-Kila-Kila, casting a quick, suspicious eye to
the right and left, took a step nearer. The parrot sat mumbling on its
perch, inarticulately, putting its head on one side, and blinking its
half-blinded eyes in the bright tropical sunshine. Tu-Kila-Kila paused
irresolute before its face for a second. If he only dared--one wring of
the neck--one pinch of his finger and thumb almost!--and all would be
over. But he dared not! he dared not! Your savage is overawed by the
blind terrors of taboo. His predecessor, some elder Tu-Kila-Kila of
forgotten days, had laid a great charm upon that parrot's life. Whoever
hurt it was to die an awful death of unspeakable torment. The King of the
Birds had special charge to guard it. If even the Cannibal God himself
wrought it harm, who could tell what judgment might fall upon him
forthwith, what terrible vengeance the dead Tu-Kila-Kila might wreak
upon him in his ghostly anger? And that dead Tu-Kila-Kila was his own
Soul! His own Soul might flare up within him in some mystic way and burn
him to ashes.

And yet--suppose this hateful new-comer, the King of the Rain, whom
he had himself made Korong on purpose to get rid of him the more easily,
and so had elevated into his own worst potential enemy--suppose this
new-comer, the King of the Rain, were by chance to speak that other
dialect of the bird-language, which the King of the Birds himself knew
not, but which the parrot had learned from his old master, the ancient
Tu-Kila-Kila of other days, and in which the bird still recited the
secret of the sacred tree and the Death of the Great God--ah, then he
might still have to fight hard for his divinity. He gazed angrily at
the bird. Methuselah blinked, and put his head on one side, and looked
craftily askance at him. Tu-Kila-Kila hated it, that insolent creature.
Was he not a god, and should he be thus bearded in his own island by a
mere Soul of dead birds, a poor, wretched parrot? But the curse! What
might not that portend? Ah, well, he would risk it. Glancing around him
once more to the right a