And all the men of Boupari, naked and bleeding, bent low in response.  “Tu-Kila-Kila is great,” they chanted, as they clapped their hands.  “We thank him that he has chosen a fresh incarnation.  The sun will not fade in the heavens overhead, nor the bread-fruits wither and cease to bear fruit on earth.  Tu-Kila-Kila, our god, is great.  He springs ever young and fresh, like the herbs of the field.  He is a most high god.  We, his people, praise him.”

Four temple attendants brought sticks and leaves, while Felix stood still, half dazed with the newness of these strange preparations.  The King of Fire, with his torch, set light to the pile.  It blazed merrily on high.  “I, Fire, salute you,” he cried, bending over it toward Felix.

“Now cut up the body of Lavita, the son of Sami,” he went on, turning toward it contemptuously.  “I will cook it in my flame, that Tu-Kila-Kila the great may eat of it.”

Felix drew back with a face all aglow with horror and disgust.  “Don’t touch that body!” he cried, authoritatively, putting his foot down firm.  “Leave it alone at once.  I refuse to allow you.”  Then he turned to M. Peyron.  “The King of the Birds and I,” he said, with calm resolve, “we two will bury it.”

The King of Fire drew back at these strange words, nonplussed.  This was, indeed, an ill-omened break in the ceremony of initiation of a new Tu-Kila-Kila, to which he had never before in his life been accustomed.  He hardly knew how to comport himself under such singular circumstances.  It was as though the sovereign of England, on coronation-day, should refuse to be crowned, and intimate to the archbishop, in his full canonicals, a confirmed preference for the republican form of Government.  It was a contingency that law and custom in Boupari had neither, in their wisdom, foreseen nor provided for.

The King of Water whispered low in the new god’s ear.  “You must eat of his body, my lord,” he said.  “That is absolutely necessary.  Every one of us must eat of the flesh of the god; but you, above all, must eat his heart, his divine nature.  Otherwise you can never be full Tu-Kila-Kila.”

“I don’t care a straw for that,” Felix cried, now aroused to a full sense of the break in Methuselah’s story and trembling with apprehension.  “You may kill me if you like; we can die only once; but human flesh I can never taste; nor will I, while I live, allow you to touch this dead man’s body.  We will bury it ourselves, the King of the Birds and I. You may tell your people so.  That is my last word.”  He raised his voice to the customary ceremonial pitch.  “I, the new Tu-Kila-Kila,” he said, “have spoken it.”

The King of Fire and the King of Water, taken aback at his boldness, conferred together for some seconds privately.  The people meanwhile looked on and wondered.  What could this strange hitch in the divine proceedings mean?  Was the god himself recalcitrant?  Never in their lives had the oldest men among them known anything like it.