natives (if that counts for much) that parrots
live to a very great age; and this one old parrot of mine, whom I call
Methuselah on account of his advanced years, is considered by them all to
be a perfect patriarch. In effect, when the oldest men now living on the
island were little boys, they tell me that Methuselah was already a
venerable and much-venerated parrot. He must certainly have outlived all
the rest of his race by at least the best part of three-quarters of a
century. For the islanders themselves not infrequently live, by unanimous
consent, to be over a hundred."

"I remember to have read somewhere," Felix said, turning it over in his
mind, "that when Humboldt was travelling in the wilds of South America he
found one very old parrot in an Indian village, which, the Indians
assured him, spoke the language of an extinct tribe, incomprehensible
then by any living person. If I recollect aright, Humboldt believed that
particular bird must have lived to be nearly a hundred and fifty."

"That is so, monsieur," the Frenchman answered. "I remember the case
well, and have often recalled it. I recollect our professor mentioning it
one day in the course of his lectures. And I have always mentally coupled
that parrot of Humboldt's with my own old friend and subject, Methuselah.
However, that only impresses upon one more fully the folly of hoping that
we can learn anything worth knowing from him. I have heard him recite his
story many times over, though now he repeats it less frequently than he
used formerly to do; and I feel convinced it is couched in some unknown
and, no doubt, forgotten language. It is a much more guttural and
unpleasant tongue than any of the soft dialects now spoken in Polynesia.
It belonged, I am convinced, to that yet earlier and more savage race
which the Polynesians must have displaced; and as such it is now, I feel
certain, practically irrecoverable."

"If they were more savage than the Polynesians," Muriel said, with a
profound sigh, "I'm sorry for anybody who fell into their clutches."

"But what would not many philologists at home in England give," Felix
murmured, philosophically, "for a transcript of the words that parrot can
speak--perhaps a last relic of the very earliest and most primitive form
of human language!"

At the very moment when these things were passing under the wattled roof
of Muriel's hut, it happened that on the taboo-space outside, Toko, the
Shadow, stood talking for a