“What do you mean by Korong?” Felix asked, with some trepidation.

The Shadow merely looked back at him with a sort of blank surprise that anybody should be ignorant of so simple a conception.  “Why, Korong is Korong,” he answered, aghast.  “You are Korong yourself.  The Queen of the Clouds is Korong, too.  You are both Korong; that is why they all treat you with such respect and reverence.”

And that was as much as Felix could elicit by his subtlest questions from his taciturn Shadow.

In fact, it was clear that in the open, at least, the Shadow was averse to being observed in familiar conversation with Felix.  During the heat of the day, however, when they sat alone within the hut, he was much more communicative.  Then he launched forth pretty freely into talk about the island and its life, which would no doubt have largely enlightened Felix, had it not been for two drawbacks to their means of inter-communication.  In the first place, the Boupari dialect, though agreeing in all essentials with the Polynesian of Fiji, nevertheless contained a great many words and colloquial expressions unknown to the Fijians; this being particularly the case, as Felix soon remarked, in the whole vocabulary of religious rites and ceremonies.  And in the second place, the Shadow was so rigidly bound by his own narrow and insular set of ideas, that he couldn’t understand the difficulty Felix felt in throwing himself into them.  Over and over again, when Felix asked him to explain some word or custom, he would repeat, with naive impatience, “Why, Korong is Korong,” or “Tula is just Tula; even a child must surely know what Tula is; much more yourself, who are indeed Korong, and who have come from the sun to bring fresh fire to us.”

In the adjoining hut, Muriel, who was now beginning in some small degree to get rid of her most pressing fear for the immediate future, and whom the obvious reality of the taboo had reassured for the moment, sat with Mali, her own particular Shadow, unravelling the mystery of the girl’s knowledge of English.

Mali, indeed, like the other Shadow, showed every disposition to indulge in abundant conversation, as soon as she found herself well within the hut, alone with her mistress, and secluded from the prying eyes of all the other islanders.

“Don’t you be afraid, missy,” she said, with genuine kindliness in her tone, as soon as the gifts of yam and bread-fruit had all been duly housed and garnered.  “No harm come to you.  You Korong, you know.  You very great Taboo.  Tu-Kila-Kila send King of Fire and King of Water to make taboo over you, so nobody hurt you.”

Muriel burst into tears at the sound of her own language from those dusky lips, and exclaimed through her sobs, clinging to the girl’s hand for comfort as she spoke, “Why, how did you ever come to speak English?—­tell me.”