nd left, to make sure that nobody was looking,
the cunning savage put forth his hand stealthily, and tried with a
friendly caress to seize the parrot.

In a moment, before he had time to know what was happening,
Methuselah--sleepy old dotard as he seemed--had woke up at once to a
sense of danger. Turning suddenly round upon the sleek, caressing hand,
he darted his beak with a vicious peck at his assailant, and bit the
divine finger of the Pillar of Heaven as carelessly as he would have
bitten any child on Boupari. Tu-Kila-Kila, thunder-struck, drew back his
arm with a start of surprise and a loud cry of pain. The bird had wounded
him. He shook his hand and stamped. Blood was dropping on the ground from
the man-god's finger. He hardly knew what strange evil this omen of harm
might portend for the world. The Soul of all dead parrots had carried out
the curse, and had drawn red drops from the sacred veins of Tu-Kila-Kila.

One must be a savage one's self, and superstitious at that, fully to
understand the awful significance of this deadly occurrence. To draw
blood from a god, and, above all, to let that blood fall upon the dust of
the ground, is the very worst luck--too awful for the human mind to
contemplate.

At the same moment, the parrot, awakened by the unexpected attack, threw
back its head on its perch, and, laughing loud and long to itself in its
own harsh way, began to pour forth a whole volley of oaths in a guttural
language, of which neither Tu-Kila-Kila nor the Frenchman understood one
syllable. And at the same moment, too, M. Peyron himself, recalled from
the door of his hut by Tu-Kila-Kila's sharp cry of pain and by his liege
subject's voluble flow of loud speech and laughter, ran up all agog to
know what was the matter.

Tu-Kila-Kila, with an effort, tried to hide in his robe his wounded
finger. But the Frenchman caught at the meaning of the whole scene at
once, and interposed himself hastily between the parrot and its
assailant. "_He!_ my Methuselah," he cried, in French, stroking the
exultant bird with his hand, and smoothing its ruffled feathers, "did he
try to choke you, then? Did he try to get over you? That was a brave
bird! You did well, _mon ami_, to bite him!... No, no, Life of the World,
and Measurer of the Sun's Course," he went on, in Polynesian, "you shall
not go near him. Keep your distance, I beg of you. You may be a high
god--though you were a scurvy wretch enough, don't you recollect, whe