“Monsieur, he can speak, and he speaks frequently.  But not one word of all he says is comprehensible either to me or to any other living being.  His tongue is that of a forgotten nation.  The islanders understand him no more than I do.  He has a very long sermon or poem, which he knows by heart, in some unknown language, and he repeats it often at full length from time to time, especially when he has eaten well and feels full and happy.  The oldest natives tell a romantic legend about this strange recitation of the good Methuselah—­I call him Methuselah because of his great age—­but I do not really know whether their tale is true or purely fanciful.  You never can trust these Polynesian traditions.”

“What is the legend?” Felix asked, with intense interest.  “In an island where we find ourselves so girt round by mystery within mystery, and taboo within taboo, as this, every key is worth trying.  It is well for us at least to learn everything we can about the ideas of the natives.  Who knows what clue may supply us at last with the missing link, which will enable us to break through this intolerable servitude?”

“Well, the story they tell us is this,” the Frenchman replied, “though I have gathered it only a hint at a time, from very old men, who declared at the same moment that some religious fear—­of which they have many—­prevented them from telling me any further about it.  It seems that a long time ago—­how many years ago nobody knows, only that it was in the time of the thirty-ninth Tu-Kila-Kila, before the reign of Lavita, the son of Sami—­a strange Korong was cast up upon this island by the waves of the sea, much as you and I have been in the present generation.  By accident, says the story, or else, as others aver, through the indiscretion of a native woman who fell in love with him, and who worried the taboo out of her husband, the stranger became acquainted with the secret of Tu-Kila-Kila.  As the natives themselves put it, he learned the Death of the High God, and where in the world his Soul was hidden.  Thereupon, in some mysterious way or other, he became Tu-Kila-Kila himself, and ruled as High God for ten years or more here on this island.  Now, up to that time, the legend goes on, none but the men of the island knew the secret; they learned it as soon as they were initiated in the great mysteries, which occur before a boy is given a spear and admitted to the rank of complete manhood.  But sometimes a woman was told the secret wrongfully by her husband or her lover; and one such woman, apparently, told the strange Korong, and so enabled him to become Tu-Kila-Kila.”

“But where does the parrot come in?” Felix asked, with still profounder excitement than ever.  Something within him seemed to tell him instinctively he was now within touch of the special key that must sooner or later unlock the mystery.