Among savages, guile is woman’s best protection.  The wife who knows when to give way with hypocritical obedience, and when to coax or wheedle her yielding lord, runs the best chance in the end for her life.  Her model is not the oak, but the willow.  She must be able to watch for the rising signs of ill-humor in her master’s mind, and guard against them carefully.  If she is wise, she keeps out of her husband’s way when his anger is aroused, but soothes and flatters him to the top of his bent when his temper is just slightly or momentarily ruffled.

“The Lord of Heaven and Earth is ill at ease,” Ula murmured, insinuatingly, as Tu-Kila-Kila winced once with the pain of his swollen finger.  “What has happened today to the Increaser of Bread-Fruit?  My lord is sad.  His eye is downcast.  Who has crossed my master’s will?  Who has dared to anger him?”

Tu-Kila-Kila kept the wounded hand wrapped up in a soft leaf, like a woolly mullein.  All the way home he had been obliged to conceal it, and disguise the pain he felt, lest Fire and Water should discover his secret.  For he dared not let his people know that the Soul of all dead parrots had bitten his finger, and drawn blood from the sacred veins of the man-god.  But he almost hesitated now whether or not he should confide in Ula.  A god may surely trust his own wedded wives.  And yet—­such need to be careful—­women are so treacherous!  He suspected Ula sometimes of being a great deal too fond of that young man Toko, who used to be one of the temple attendants, and whom he had given as Shadow accordingly to the King of the Rain, so as to get rid of him altogether from among the crowd of his followers.  So he kept his own counsel for the moment, and disguised his misfortune.  “I have been to see the King of the Birds this morning,” he said, in a grumbling voice; “and I do not like him.  That God is too insolent.  For my part I hate these strangers, one and all.  They have no respect for Tu-Kila-Kila like the men of Boupari.  They are as bad as atheists.  They fear not the gods, and the customs of our fathers are not in them.”

Ula crept nearer, with one lithe round arm laid caressingly close to her master’s neck.  “Then why do you make them Korong?” she asked, with feminine curiosity, like some wife who seeks to worm out of her husband the secret of freemasonry.  “Why do you not cook them and eat them at once, as soon as they arrive?  They are very good food—­so white and fine.  That last new-comer, now—­the Queen of the Clouds—­why not eat her?  She is plump and tender.”

“I like her,” Tu-Kila-Kila responded, in a gloating tone.  “I like her every way.  I would have brought her here to my temple and admitted her at once to be one of Tu-Kila-Kila’s wives—­only that Fire and Water would not have permitted me.  They have too many taboos, those awkward gods.  I do not love them.  But I make my strangers Korong for a very wise reason.  You women are fools; you understand nothing; you do not know the mysteries.