As soon as they were gone, Tu-Kila-Kila laid aside his umbrella with a positive sigh of relief.  Now his fellow-countrymen were well out of the way, his manner altered in a trice, as if by magic.  Barbarian as he was, he was quite astute enough to guess that Europeans cared nothing in their hearts for all his mumbo-jumbo.  He believed in it himself, but they did not, and their very unbelief made him respect and fear them.

“Now that we two are alone,” he said, glancing carelessly around him, “we two who are gods, and know the world well—­we two who see everything in heaven or earth—­there is no need for concealment—­we may talk as plainly as we will with one another.  Come, tell me the truth!  The new white man has seen you?”

“He has seen me, yes, certainly,” the Frenchman admitted, taking a keen look deep into the savage’s cunning eyes.

“Does he speak your language—­the language of birds?” Tu-Kila-Kila asked once more, with insinuating cunning.  “I have heard that the sailing gods are of many languages.  Are you and he of one speech or two?  Aliens, or countrymen?”

“He speaks my language as he speaks Polynesian,” the Frenchman replied, keeping his eye firmly fixed on his doubtful guest, “but it is not his own.  He has a tongue apart—­the tongue of an island not far from my country, which we call England.”

Tu-Kila-Kila drew nearer, and dropped his voice to a confidential whisper.  “Has he seen the Soul of all dead parrots?” he asked, with keen interest in his voice.  “The parrot that knows Tu-Kila-Kila’s secret?  That one over there—­the old, the very sacred one?”

M. Peyron gazed round his aviary carelessly.  “Oh, that one,” he answered, with a casual glance at Methuselah, as though one parrot or another were much the same to him.  “Yes, I think he saw it.  I pointed it out to him, in fact, as the oldest and strangest of all my subjects.”

Tu-Kila-Kila’s countenance fell.  “Did he hear it speak?” he asked, in evident alarm.  “Did it tell him the story of Tu-Kila-Kila’s secret?”

“No, it didn’t speak,” the Frenchman answered.  “It seldom does now.  It is very old.  And if it did, I don’t suppose the King of the Rain would have understood one word of it.  Look here, great god, allay your fears.  You’re a terrible coward.  I expect the real fact about the parrot is this:  it is the last of its own race; it speaks the language of some tribe of men who once inhabited these islands, but are now extinct.  No human being at present alive, most probably, knows one word of that forgotten language.”

“You think not?” Tu-Kila-Kila asked, a little relieved.

“I am the King of the Birds, and I know the voices of my subjects by heart; I assure you it is as I say,” M. Peyron answered, drawing himself up solemnly.

Tu-Kila-Kila looked askance, with something very closely approaching a wink in his left eye.  “We two are both gods,” he said, with a tinge of irony in his tone.  “We know what that means.... I do not feel so certain.”