ollowed by their Shadows, a stealthy brown figure,
crouched low to the ground, would cross the road for a moment behind
them, and disappear again noiselessly into the dense mass of underbrush.
Then Mali or Toko, turning round, all hushed, with a terrified look,
would murmur low to themselves, or to one another, "There goes one of
the Eyes of Tu-Kila-Kila!" It was only by slow degrees that this system
of espionage grew clear to the strangers; but as soon as they had learned
its reality and ubiquity, they felt at once how undesirable it would be
for them to excite the terrible man-god's jealousy and suspicion by being
observed too often in close personal intercourse with their fellow-exile
and victim, the Frenchman. It was this that made them have recourse to
the device of the heliograph.

So three or four days passed before Muriel dared to approach M. Peyron's
cottage. When she did at last go there with Felix, it was in the early
morning, before the fierce tropical sun, that beat full on the island,
had begun to exert its midday force and power. The path that led there
lay through the thick and tangled mass of brushwood which covered the
greater part of the island with its dense vegetation; it was overhung by
huge tree-ferns and broad-leaved Southern bushes, and abutted at last on
the little wind-swept knoll where the King of the Birds had his
appropriate dwelling-place. The Frenchman received them with studied
Parisian hospitality. He had decorated his arbor with fresh flowers for
the occasion, and bright tropical fruits, with their own green leaves,
did duty for the coffee or the absinthe of his fatherland on his homemade
rustic table. Yet in spite of all the rudeness of the physical
surroundings, they felt themselves at home again with this one exiled
European; the faint flavor of civilization pervaded and permeated the
Frenchman's hut after the unmixed savagery to which they had now been so
long accustomed.

Muriel's curiosity, however, centred most about the mysterious old
parrot, of whose strange legend so much had been said to her. After they
had sat for a little under the shade of the spreading banyan, to cool
down from their walk--for it was an oppressive morning--M. Peyron led her
round to his aviary at the back of the hut, and introduced her, by their
native names, to all his subjects. "I am responsible for their lives," he
said, gravely, "for their welfare, for their happiness. If I were to let
one of them g