She lay propped on one elbow, with her face close to his; and offered him, with one brown, irresistible hand, the intoxicating liquor.  Tu-Kila-Kila took the bowl, and drank a second time, for he had drunk of it once with his dinner already.  It was seldom he allowed himself the luxury of a second draught of that very stupefying native intoxicant, for he knew too well the danger of insecurely guarding his sacred tree; but on this particular occasion, as on so many others in the collective life of humanity, “the woman tempted him,” and he acted as she told him.  He drank it off deep.  “Ha, ha! that is good!” he cried, smacking his lips.  “That is a drink fit for a god.  No woman can make kava like you, Ula.”  He toyed with her arms and neck lazily once more.  “You are the queen of my wives,” he went on, in a dreamy voice.  “I like you so well, that, plump as you are, I really believe, Ula, I could never make up my mind to eat you.”

“My lord is very gracious,” Ula made answer, in a soft, low tone, pretending to caress him.  And for some minutes more she continued to make much of him in the fulsome strain of Polynesian flattery.

At last the kava had clearly got into Tu-Kila-Kila’s head.  Then Ula bent forward once more and again attacked him.  “Now I know you will tell me,” she said, coaxingly, “why you make them Korong.  As long as I live, I will never speak or hint of it to anybody anywhere.  And if I do—­why, the remedy is near.  I am your meat—­take me and eat me.”

Even cannibals are human; and at the touch of her soft hand, Tu-Kila-Kila gave way slowly.  “I made them Korong,” he answered, in rather thick accents, “because it is less dangerous for me to make them so than to choose for the post from among our own islanders.  Sooner or later, my day must come; but I can put it off best by making my enemies out of strangers who arrive upon our island, and not out of those of my own household.  All Boupari men who have been initiated know the terrible secret—­they know where lies the Death of Tu-Kila-Kila.  The strangers who come to us from the sun or the sea do not know it; and therefore my life is safest with them.  So I make them Korong whenever I can, to prolong my own days, and to guard my secret.”

“And the Death of Tu-Kila-Kila?” the woman whispered, very low, still soothing his arm with her hand and patting his cheek softly from time to time with a gentle, caressing motion.  “Tell me where does that live?  Who holds it in charge?  Where is Tu-Kila-Kila’s great spirit laid by in safety?  I know it is in the tree; but where and in what part of it?”

Tu-Kila-Kila drew back with a little cry of surprise.  “You know it is in the tree!” he cried.  “You know my soul is kept there!  Why, Ula, who told you that? and you a woman!  Bad medicine indeed!  Some man has been blabbing what he learned in the mysteries.  If this should reach the ears of the King of the Rain—­” he paused mysteriously.