Felix stood for one moment, alone and awe-struck, a solitary civilized man, among those hideous surroundings.  Above, the cold moon; all about, the grim, stolid, half-hostile natives; close by, that strange, serpentine, savage wife, guarding, cat-like, the sleep of her cannibal husband; behind, the watchful Eyes of Tu-Kila-Kila, waiting ever in the background, ready to raise a loud shout of alarm and warning the moment the fatal branch was actually broken, but mute, by their vows, till that moment was accomplished.  Then a sudden wild impulse urged him on to the attempt.  The banyan had dropped down rooting offsets to the ground, after the fashion of its kind, from its main branches.  Felix seized one of these and swung himself lightly up, till he reached the very limb on which the sacred parasite itself was growing.

To get to the parasite, however, he must pass directly above Tu-Kila-Kila’s head, and over the point where that ghastly grinning skeleton was suspended, as by an unseen hair, from the fork that bore it.

He walked along, balancing himself, and clutching, as he went, at the neighboring boughs, while Tu-Kila-Kila, overcome with the kava, slept stolidly and heavily on beneath him.  At last he was almost within grasp of the parasite.  Could he lunge out and clutch it?  One try—­one effort!  No, no; he almost lost footing and fell over in the attempt.  He couldn’t keep his balance so.  He must try farther on.  Come what might, he must go past the skeleton.

The grisly mass swung again, clanking its bones as it swung, and groaned in the wind ominously.  The breeze whistled audibly through its hollow skull and vacant eye-sockets.  Tu-Kila-Kila turned uneasily in his sleep below.  Felix saw there was not one instant of time to be lost now.  He passed on boldly; and as he passed, a dozen thin cords of paper mulberry, stretched every way in an invisible network among the boughs, too small to be seen in the dim moonlight, caught him with their toils and almost overthrew him.  They broke with his weight, and Felix himself, tumbling blindly, fell forward.  At the cost of a sprained wrist and a great jerk on his bruised fingers, he caught at a bough by his side, but wrenched it away suddenly.  It was touch and go.  At the very same moment, the skeleton fell heavily, and rattled on the ground beside Tu-Kila-Kila.

Before Felix could discover what had actually happened, a very great shout went up all round below, and made him stagger with excitement.  Tu-Kila-Kila was awake, and had started up, all intent, mad with wrath and kava.  Glaring about him wildly, and brandishing his great spear in his stalwart hands, he screamed aloud, in a perfect frenzy of passion and despair:  “Where is he, the Korong?  Bring him on, my meat!  Let me devour his heart!  Let me tear him to pieces.  Let me drink of his blood!  Let me kill him and eat him!”