But when the savage hears the distant humming of the bull-roarer, at whatever distance, he knows that the mysteries of his god are in full swing, and he hurries forward in haste, leaving his work or his pleasure, and running, naked as he stands, to take his share in the worship, lest the anger of heaven should burst forth in devouring flames to consume him.  But the women, knowing themselves unworthy to face the dread presence of the high god in his wrath, rush wildly from the spot, and, flinging themselves down at full length, with their mouths to the dust, wait patiently till the voice of their deity is no longer audible.

And as the bull-roarer on Boupari rang out with wild echoes from the coral caverns in the central grove that evening, Tu-Kila-Kila, their god, rose slowly from his place, and stood out from his hut, a deity revealed, before his reverential worshippers.

As he rose, a hushed whisper ran wave-like through the dense throng of dusky forms that bent low, like corn beneath the wind, before him, “Tu-Kila-Kila rises!  He rises to speak!  Hush! for the voice of the mighty man-god!”

The god, looking around him superciliously with a cynical air of contempt, stood forward with a firm and elastic step before his silent worshippers.  He was a stalwart savage, in the very prime of life, tall, lithe, and active.  His figure was that of a man well used to command; but his face, though handsome, was visibly marked by every external sign of cruelty, lust, and extreme bloodthirstiness.  One might have said, merely to look at him, he was a being debased by all forms of brutal and hateful self-indulgence.  A baleful light burned in his keen gray eyes.  His lips were thick, full, purple, and wistful.

“My people may look upon me,” he said, in a strangely affable voice, standing forward and smiling with a curious half-cruel, half-compassionate smile upon his awe-struck followers.  “On every day of the sun’s course but this, none save the ministers dedicated to the service of Tu-Kila-Kila dare gaze unhurt upon his sacred person.  If any other did, the light from his holy eyes would wither them up, and the glow of his glorious countenance would scorch them to ashes.”  He raised his two hands, palm outward, in front of him.  “So all the year round,” he went on, “Tu-Kila-Kila, who loves his people, and sends them the earlier and the later rain in the wet season, and makes their yams and their taro grow, and causes his sun to shine upon them freely—­all the year round Tu-Kila-Kila, your god, sits shut up in his own house among the skeletons of those whom he has killed and eaten, or walks in his walled paddock, where his bread-fruit ripens and his plantains spring—­himself, and the ministers that his tribesmen have given him.”

At the sound of their mystic deity’s voice the savages, bending lower still till their foreheads touched the ground, repeated in chorus, to the clapping of hands, like some solemn litany:  “Tu-Kila-Kila speaks true.  Our lord is merciful.  He sends down his showers upon our crops and fields.  He causes his sun to shine brightly over us.  He makes our pigs and our slaves bring forth their increase.  Tu-Kila-Kila is good.  His people praise him.”