At certain times and seasons, however, as for example at all high feasts and festivals, Tu-Kila-Kila had respite for a while from this constant treadmill of mechanical divinity.  Whenever the moon was at the half-quarter, or the planets were in lucky conjunctions, or a red glow lit up the sky by night, or the sacred sacrificial fires of human flesh were lighted, then Tu-Kila-Kila could lay aside his tomahawk and spear, and become for a while as the islanders, his fellows, were.  At other times, too, when he went out in state to visit the lesser deities of his court, the King of Fire and the King of Water made a solemn taboo before He left his home, which protected the sacred tree from aggression during its guardian’s absence.  Then Tu-Kila-Kila, shaded by his divine umbrella, and preceded by the noise of the holy tom-toms, could go like a monarch over all parts of his realm, giving such orders as he pleased (within the limits of custom) to his inferior officers.  It was in this way that he now paid his visit to M. Jules Peyron, King of the Birds.  And he did so for what to him were amply sufficient reasons.

It had not escaped Tu-Kila-Kila’s keen eye, as he paced among the skeletons in his yard that morning, that Felix Thurstan, the King of the Rain, had taken his way openly toward the Frenchman’s quarters.  He felt pretty sure, therefore, that Felix had by this time learned another white man was living on the island; and he thought it an ominous fact that the new-comer should make his way toward his fellow-European’s hut on the very first morning when the law of taboo rendered such a visit possible.  The savage is always by nature suspicious; and Tu-Kila-Kila had grounds enough of his own for suspicion in this particular instance.  The two white men were surely brewing mischief together for the Lord of Heaven and Earth, the Illuminer of the Glowing Light of the Sun; he must make haste and see what plan they were concocting against the sacred tree and the person of its representative, the King of Plants and of the Host of Heaven.

But it isn’t so easy to make haste when all your movements are impeded and hampered by endless taboos and a minutely annoying ritual.  Before Tu-Kila-Kila could get himself under way, sacred umbrella, tom-toms, and all, it was necessary for the King of Fire and the King of Water to make taboo on an elaborate scale with their respective elements; and so by the time the high god had reached M. Jules Peyron’s garden, Felix Thurstan had already some time since returned to Muriel’s hut and his own quarters.

Tu-Kila-Kila approached the King of the Birds, amid loud clapping of hands, with considerable haughtiness.  To say the truth, there was no love lost between the cannibal god and his European subordinate.  The savage, puffed up as he was in his own conceit, had nevertheless always an uncomfortable sense that, in his heart of hearts, the impassive Frenchman had but a low opinion of him.  So he invariably tried to make up by the solemnity of his manner and the loudness of his assertions for any trifling scepticism that might possibly exist in the mind of his follower.