Tu-Kila-Kila glanced at them with an approving glance, strangely compounded of pleasure and terror.  “They are plump,” he said shortly.  “They are indeed Korong.  My sun has sent me an acceptable present.”

“What is your will that we should do with them?” the chief asked in a deeply deferential tone.

Tu-Kila-Kila looked hard at Muriel—­such a hateful look that the knife trembled irresolute for a second in Felix’s hand.  “Give them two fresh huts,” he said, in a lordly way.  “Give them divine platters.  Give them all that they need.  Make everything right for them.”

The chief bowed, and retired with an awed air from the presence.  Exactly as he passed a certain line on the ground, marked white with a row of coral-sand, Tu-Kila-Kila seized his spear and his tomahawk once more, and mounted guard, as before, at the foot of the great tree where they had seen him pacing.  An instantaneous change seemed to Muriel to come over his demeanor at that moment.  While he spoke with the chief she noticed he looked all cruelty, lust, and hateful self-indulgence.  Now that he paced up and down warily in front of that sacred floor, peering around him with keen suspicion, he seemed rather the personification of watchfulness, fear, and a certain slavish bodily terror.  Especially, she observed, he cast upon Felix, as he went, a glance of angry hate; and yet he did not attempt to hurt or molest him in any way, defenceless as they both were before those numerous savages.

As they emerged from the enclosure, the girl with the fruit basket stood near the gate, looking outward from the wall, her face turned away from the awful home of Tu-Kila-Kila.  At the moment when Muriel passed, to her immense astonishment the girl spoke to her.  “Don’t be afraid, missy,” she said in English, in a rather low voice, without obtrusively approaching them.  “Boupari man not going to hurt you.  Me going to be your servant.  Me name Mali.  Me very good girl.  Me take plenty care of you.”

The unexpected sound of her own language, in the midst of so much unmitigated savagery, took Muriel fairly by surprise.  She looked hard at the girl, but thought it wisest to answer nothing.  This particular young woman, indeed, was just as dark, and to all appearance just as much of a savage, as any of the rest of them.  But she could speak English, at any rate!  And she said she was to be Muriel’s servant!

The chief led them back to the shore, talking volubly all the way in Polynesia to Felix.  His dialect differed so much from the Fijian that when he spoke first Felix could hardly follow him.  But he gathered vaguely, nevertheless, that they were to be well housed and fed for the present at the public expense; and even that something which the chief clearly regarded as a very great honor was in store for them in the future.  Whatever these people’s particular superstition might be, it seemed pretty evident at least that it told in the strangers’ favor.  Felix almost began to hope they might manage to live there pretty tolerably for the next two or three weeks, and perhaps to signal in time to some passing Australian liner.