As they closed in upon him, with spears and tomahawks and clubs, Felix saw he had nothing left for it now but a hard fight for life to return to the taboo-line.  Holding the child in one arm, and striking wildly out with his knife with the other, he tried to hack his way back by main force to the shelter of the taboo-line in frantic lunges.  The distance was but a few feet, but the savages pressed round him, half frightened still, yet gnashing their teeth and distorting their faces with anger.  “He has broken the Taboo,” they cried in vehement tones.  “He has crossed the line willingly.  Kill him!  Kill him!  We are free from sin.  We have bought him with a price—­with many cocoanuts!”

At the sound of the struggle going on so close outside, Muriel rushed in frantic haste and terror from the hut.  Her face was pale, but her demeanor was resolute.  Before Mali could stop her, she, too, had crossed the sacred line of the coral mark, and had flung herself madly upon Felix’s assailants, to cover his retreat with her own frail body.

“Hold off!” she cried, in her horror, in English, but in accents even those savages could read.  “You shall not touch him!”

With a fierce effort Felix tore his way back, through the spears and clubs, toward the place of safety.  The savages wounded him on the way more than once with their jagged stone spear-tips, and blood flowed from his breast and arms in profusion.  But they didn’t dare even so to touch Muriel.  The sight of that pure white woman, rushing out in her weakness to protect her lover’s life from attack, seemed to strike them with some fresh access of superstitious awe.  One or two of themselves were wounded by Felix’s knife, for they were unaccustomed to steel, though they had a few blades made out of old European barrel-hoops.  For a minute or two the conflict was sharp and hotly contested.  Then at last Felix managed to fling the child across the line, to push Muriel with one hand at arm’s-length before him, and to rush himself within the sacred circle.

No sooner had he crossed it than the savages drew up around, undecided as yet, but in a threatening body.  Rank behind rank, their loose hair in their eyes, they stood like wild beasts balked of their prey, and yelled at him.  Some of them brandished their spears and their stone hatchets angrily in their victims’ faces.  Others contented themselves with howling aloud as before, and piling curses afresh on the heads of the unpopular storm-gods.  “Look at her,” they cried, in their wrath, pointing their skinny brown fingers angrily at Muriel.  “See, she weeps even now.  She would flood us with her rain.  She isn’t satisfied with all the harm she has poured down upon Boupari already.  She wants to drown us.”

And then a little knot drew up close to the line of taboo itself, and began to discuss in loud and serious tones a pressing question of savage theology and religious practice.

“They have crossed the line within the three days,” some of the foremost warriors exclaimed, in excited voices.  “They are no longer taboo.  We can do as we please with them.  We may cross the line now ourselves if we will, and tear them to pieces.  Come on!  Who follows?  Korong!  Korong!  Let us rend them!  Let us eat them!”