Felix tried to speak once more, but the din drowned his voice.  As he paused, the people set up their loud shouts again.  “Oh, you wicked god!  You eat the storm-apple!  You have wrought us much harm.  You have spoiled our harvest.  How you came down in great sheets last night!  It was pitiful, pitiful!  We would like to kill you.  You might have taken our bread-fruits and our bananas, if you would; we give you them freely; they are yours; here, take them.  We feed you well; we make you many offerings.  But why did you wish to have our huts also?  Why did you beat down our young plantations and break our canoes against the beach of the island?  That shows a bad heart!  You are an evil god!  You dare not defend yourself.  Come out and meet us.”

CHAPTER XII.

A POINT OF THEOLOGY.

At last, with great difficulty, Felix managed to secure a certain momentary lull of silence.  The natives, clustering round the line till they almost touched it, listened with scowling brows, and brandished threatening spears, tipped with points of stone or shark’s teeth or turtle-bone, while he made his speech to them.  From time to time, one or another interrupted him, coaxing and wheedling him, as it were, to cross the line; but Felix never heeded them.  He was beginning to understand now how to treat this strange people.  He took no notice of their threats or their entreaties either.

By and by, partly by words and partly by gestures, he made them understand that they might take back and keep for themselves all the cocoanuts and bread-fruits they had brought as windfalls.  At this the people seemed a little appeased.  “His heart is not quite so bad as we thought,” they murmured among themselves; “but if he didn’t want them, what did he mean?  Why did he beat down our huts and our plantations?”

Then Felix tried to explain to them—­a somewhat dangerous task—­that neither he nor Muriel were really responsible for last night’s storm; but at that the people, with one accord, raised a great loud shout of unmixed derision.  “He is a god,” they cried, “and yet he is ashamed of his own acts and deeds, afraid of what we, mere men, will do to him!  Ha! ha!  Take care!  These are lies that he tells.  Listen to him!  Hear him!”

Meanwhile, more and more natives kept coming up with windfalls of fruit, or with objects they had vowed in their terror to dedicate during the night; and Felix all the time kept explaining at the top of his voice, to all as they came, that he wanted nothing, and that they could take all back again.  This curiously inconsistent action seemed to puzzle the wondering natives strangely.  Had he made the storm, then, they asked, and eaten the storm-apple, for no use to himself, but out of pure perverseness?  If he didn’t even want the windfalls and the objects vowed to him, why had he beaten down their crops and broken their houses?  They looked at him meaningly; but they dared not cross that great line of taboo.  It was their own superstition alone, in that moment of danger, that kept their hands off those defenceless white people.