He stood close by the parrot with itching fingers.  “It is very, very old,” he went on to himself, musingly.  “It can’t live long.  And then—­none but Boupari men will know the secret.”

As he spoke he darted a strange glance of hatred toward the unconscious bird, the innocent repository, as he firmly believed, of the secret that doomed him.  The Frenchman had turned his back for a moment now, to fetch out a stool.  Tu-Kila-Kila, casting a quick, suspicious eye to the right and left, took a step nearer.  The parrot sat mumbling on its perch, inarticulately, putting its head on one side, and blinking its half-blinded eyes in the bright tropical sunshine.  Tu-Kila-Kila paused irresolute before its face for a second.  If he only dared—­one wring of the neck—­one pinch of his finger and thumb almost!—­and all would be over.  But he dared not! he dared not!  Your savage is overawed by the blind terrors of taboo.  His predecessor, some elder Tu-Kila-Kila of forgotten days, had laid a great charm upon that parrot’s life.  Whoever hurt it was to die an awful death of unspeakable torment.  The King of the Birds had special charge to guard it.  If even the Cannibal God himself wrought it harm, who could tell what judgment might fall upon him forthwith, what terrible vengeance the dead Tu-Kila-Kila might wreak upon him in his ghostly anger?  And that dead Tu-Kila-Kila was his own Soul!  His own Soul might flare up within him in some mystic way and burn him to ashes.

And yet—­suppose this hateful new-comer, the King of the Rain, whom he had himself made Korong on purpose to get rid of him the more easily, and so had elevated into his own worst potential enemy—­suppose this new-comer, the King of the Rain, were by chance to speak that other dialect of the bird-language, which the King of the Birds himself knew not, but which the parrot had learned from his old master, the ancient Tu-Kila-Kila of other days, and in which the bird still recited the secret of the sacred tree and the Death of the Great God—­ah, then he might still have to fight hard for his divinity.  He gazed angrily at the bird.  Methuselah blinked, and put his head on one side, and looked craftily askance at him.  Tu-Kila-Kila hated it, that insolent creature.  Was he not a god, and should he be thus bearded in his own island by a mere Soul of dead birds, a poor, wretched parrot?  But the curse!  What might not that portend?  Ah, well, he would risk it.  Glancing around him once more to the right and left, to make sure that nobody was looking, the cunning savage put forth his hand stealthily, and tried with a friendly caress to seize the parrot.