“God save the king!  Confound the Duke of York!  To hell with all papists!

“It is the fashion of this people to hold that their gods must always be strong and lusty.  For they argue to themselves thus:  that the continuance of the rain must needs depend upon the vigor and subtlety of its Soul, the rain-god.  So the continuance and fruitfulness of the trees and plants which yield them food must needs depend upon the health of the tree-god.  And the life of the world, and the light of the sun, and the well-being of all things that in them are, must depend upon the strength and cunning of the high god of all, Too-Keela-Keela.  Hence they take great care and woorship of their gods, surrounding them with many rules which they call Taboo, and restricting them as to what they shall eat, and what drink, and wherewithal they shall seemly clothe themselves.  For they think that if the King of the Rain at’ anything that might cause the colick, or like humor or distemper, the weather will thereafter be stormy and tempestuous; but so long as the King of the Rain fares well and retains his health, so long will the weather over their island of Boo Parry be clear and prosperous.

“Furthermore, as I have larned from their theologians, being myself, indeed, the greatest of their gods, it is evident that they may not let any god die, lest that department of nature over which he presideth should wither away and feail, as it were, with him.  But reasonably no care that mortal man can exercise will prevent the possibility of their god—­seeing he is but one of themselves—­growing old and feeble and dying at last.  To prevent which calamity, these gentile folk have invented (as I believe by the aid and device of Sathan) this horrid and most unnatural practice.  The man-god must be killed so soon as he showeth in body or mind that his native powers are beginning to feail.  And it is necessary that he be killed, according to their faith, in this ensuing fashion.

“If the man-god were to die slowly by a death in the course of nature, the ways of the world might be stopped altogether.  Hence these savages catch the soul of their god, as it were, ere it grow old and feeble, and transfer it betimes, by a magic device, to a suitable successor.  And surely, they say, this suitable successor can be none other than him that is able to take it from him.  This, then, is their horrid counsel and device—­that each one of their gods should kill his antecessor.  In doing thus, he taketh the old god’s life and soul, which thereupon migrates and dwells within him.  And by this tenure—­may Heaven be merciful to me, a sinner—­do I, Nathaniel Cross, of the county of Doorham, now hold this dignity of Too-Keela-Keela, having slain, therefor, in just quarrel, my antecessor in the high godship.”

As he reached these words Methuselah paused, and choked in his throat slightly.  The mere mechanical effort of continuing the speech he had learned by heart two hundred years before, and repeated so often since that it had become part of his being, was now almost too much for him.  The Frenchman was right.  They were only just in time.  A few days later, and the secret would have died with the bird that preserved it.