“In the nineteenth year of the reign of his most gracious majesty, King Charles the Second, I, Nathaniel Cross, of the borough of Sunderland, in the county of Doorham, in England, an able-bodied mariner, then sailing the South Seas in the good bark Martyr Prince, of the Port of Great Grimsby, whereof one Thomas Wells, gent., under God, was master, was, by stress of weather, wrecked and cast away on the shores of this island, called by its gentile inhabitants by the name of Boo Parry.  In which wreck, as it befell, Thomas Wells, gent., and his equipment were, by divine disposition, killed and drowned, save and except three mariners, whereof I am one, who in God’s good providence swam safely through an exceeding great flood of waves and landed at last on this island.  There my two companions, Owen Williams, of Swansea, in the parts of Wales, and Lewis le Pickard, a French Hewgenott refugee, were at once, by the said gentiles, cruelly entreated, and after great torture cooked and eaten at the temple of their chief god, Too-Keela-Keela.  But I, myself, having through God’s grace found favor in their eyes, was promoted to the post which in their speech is called Korong, the nature of which this bird, my mouthpiece, will hereafter, to your ears, more fully discover.”

Having said so much, in a very jerky way, Methuselah paused, and blinked his eyes wearily.

“What does he say?” the Frenchman began, eager to know the truth.  But Felix, fearful lest any interruption might break the thread of the bird’s discourse and cheat them of the sequel, held up a warning finger, and then laid it on his lips in mute injunction.  Methuselah threw back his head at that and laughed aloud.  “God save the king!” he cried again, in a still feebler way, “and to hell with all papists!”

It was strange how they all hung on the words of that unconscious messenger from a dead and gone age, who himself knew nothing of the import of the words he was uttering.  Methuselah laughed at their earnestness, shook his head once or twice, and seemed to think to himself.  Then he remembered afresh the point he had broken off at.

“More fully discover.  For seven years have I now lived on this island, never having seen or h’ard Christian face or voice; and at the end of that time, feeling my health feail, and being apprehensive lest any of my fellow-countrymen should hereafter suffer the same fate as I have done, I began to teach this parrot his message, a few words at a time, impressing it duly and fully on his memory.

“Larn, then, O wayfarer, that the people of Boo Parry are most arrant gentiles, heathens, and carribals.  And this, as I discover, is the nature and method of their vile faith.  They hold that the gods are each and several incarnate in some one particular human being.  This human being they worship and reverence with all ghostly respect as his incarnation.  And chiefly, above all, do they revere the great god Too-Keela-Keela, whose representative (may the Lord in Heaven forgive me for the same) I myself am at this present speaking.  Having thus, for my sins, attained to that impious honor.