“Who is he?” Felix inquired, taken aback, wondering vaguely to himself whether here, perchance, he might have lighted upon some stray and shipwrecked compatriot.

“He comes from the sun like yourselves,” the Shadow answered, all deference, but with obvious reserve.  “He is a very great god.  I may not speak much of him.  But he is not Korong.  He is greater than that, and less.  He is Tula, the same as Tu-Kila-Kila.”

“Is he as powerful as Tu-Kila-Kila?” Felix asked, with intense interest.

“Oh, no, he’s not nearly so powerful as that,” the Shadow answered, half terrified at the bare suggestion.  “No god in heaven or earth is like Tu-Kila-Kila.  This one is only king of the birds, which is a little province, while Tu-Kila-Kila is king of heaven and earth, of plants and animals, of gods and men, of all things created.  At his nod the sky shakes and the rocks tremble.  But still, this god is Tula, like Tu-Kila-Kila.  He is not for a year.  He goes on forever, till some other supplants him.”

“You say he comes from the sun,” Felix put in, devoured with curiosity.  “And he speaks the bird language?  What do you mean by that?  Does he speak like the Queen of the Clouds and myself when we talk together?”

“Oh, dear, no,” the Shadow answered, in a very confident tone.  “He doesn’t speak the least bit in the world like that.  He speaks shriller and higher, and still more bird-like.  It is chatter, chatter, chatter, like the parrots in a tree; tirra, tirra, tirra; tarra, tarra, tarra; la, la, la; lo, lo, lo; lu, lu, lu; li la.  And he sings to himself all the time.  He sings this way—­”

And then the Shadow, with that wonderful power of accurate mimicry which is so strong in all natural human beings, began to trill out at once, with a very good Parisian accent, a few lines from a well-known song in “La Fille de Madame Angot:” 

“Quand on conspi-re,
   Quand sans frayeur
 On pent se di-re
   Conspirateur,
 Pour tout le mon-de
   Il faut avoir
 Perruque blon-de
   Et collet noir—­
 Perruque blon-de
   Et collet noir.”

“That’s how the King of the Birds sings,” the Shadow said, as he finished, throwing back his head, and laughing with all his might at his own imitation.  “So funny, isn’t it?  It’s exactly like the song of the pink-crested parrot.”

“Why, Toko, it’s French,” Felix exclaimed, using the Fijian word for a Frenchman, which the Shadow, of course, on his remote island, had never before heard.  “How on earth did he come here?”

“I can’t tell you,” Toko answered, waving his arms seaward.  “He came from the sun, like yourselves.  But not in a sun-boat.  It had no fire.  He came in a canoe, all by himself.  And Mali says”—­here the Shadow lowered his voice to a most mysterious whisper—­“he’s a man-a-oui-oui.”

Felix quivered with excitement.  “Man-a-oui-oui” is the universal name over semi-civilized Polynesia for a Frenchman.  Felix seized upon it with avidity.  “A man-a-oui-oui!” he cried, delighted.  “How strange!  How wonderful!  I must go in at once to his hut and see him!”