As he stepped over the taboo-line, Felix was aware of many native eyes fixed stonily upon him from the surrounding precinct.  Clearly they were awaiting him.  Yet not a soul gave the alarm; that in itself would have been to break taboo.  Every man or woman among the temple attendants within that charmed circle stood on gaze curiously.  Close by, Ula, the favorite wife of the man-god, crouched low by the hut, with one finger on her treacherous lips, bending eagerly forward, in silent expectation of what next might happen.  Once, and once only, she glanced at Toko with a mute sign of triumph; then she fixed her big eyes on Felix in tremulous anxiety; for to her as to him, life and death now hung absolutely on the issue of his enterprise.  A little farther back the King of Fire and the King of Water, in full sacrificial robes, stood smiling sardonically.  For them it was merely a question of one master more or less, one Tu-Kila-Kila in place of another.  They had no special interest in the upshot of the contest, save in so far as they always hated most the man who for the moment held by his own strong arm the superior godship over them.  Around, Tu-Kila-Kila’s Eyes kept watch and ward in sinister silence.  Taboo was stronger than even the commands of the high god himself.  When once a Korong had crossed that fatal line, unbidden and unwelcomed by Tu-Kila-Kila, he came as Tu-Kila-Kila’s foe and would-be successor; the duty of every guardian of the temple was then to see fair play between the god that was and the god that might be—­the Tu-Kila-Kila of the hour and the Tu-Kila-Kila who might possibly supplant him.

“Let the great spirit itself choose which body it will inhabit,” the King of Fire murmured in a soft, low voice, glancing toward a dark spot at the foot of the big tree.  The moonlight fell dim through the branches on the place where he looked.  The glibbering bones of dead victims rattled lightly in the wind.  Felix’s eyes followed the King of Fire’s, and saw, lying asleep upon the ground, Tu-Kila-Kila himself, with his spear and tomahawk.

He lay there, huddled up by the very roots of the tree, breathing deep and regularly.  Right over his head projected the branch, in one part of whose boughs grew the fateful parasite.  By the dim light of the moon, straggling through the dense foliage, Felix could see its yellow leaves distinctly.  Beneath it hung a skeleton, suspended by invisible cords, head downward from the branches.  It was the skeleton of a previous Korong who had tried in vain to reach the bough, and perished.  Tu-Kila-Kila had made high feast on the victim’s flesh; his bones, now collected together and cunningly fastened with native rope, served at once as a warning and as a trap or pitfall for all who might rashly venture to follow him.