Tu-Kila-Kila hesitated.  After all, it was only for a very short time that these strangers could thus beard him.  Their day would come soon.  They were but Korongs.  Meanwhile, it was best, no doubt, to effect a compromise.  “Agreed,” he answered, slowly.  “I will put down human sacrifices—­so long as you live among us.  And I will tell the people your taboo is not broken.  All shall be done as you will in this matter.  Now, come out before the crowd and light the fire from Heaven.”

“Remember,” Felix repeated, “if you break your word, my people will come down upon you, sooner or later, in their mighty fire-canoes, and will take vengeance for your crime, and destroy you utterly.”

Tu-Kila-Kila smiled a cunning smile.  “I know all that,” he answered.  “I am a god myself, not a fool, don’t you see?  You are a very great god, too; but I am the greater.  No more of words between us two.  It is as between gods.  The fire! the fire!”

Tu-Kila-Kila replaced his mask.  They proceeded from the hut to the open space within the taboo-line.  The people still lay all flat on their faces.  “Fire and Water,” Tu-Kila-Kila said, in a commanding tone, “come forward and screen me!”

The King of Fire and the King of Water unrolled a large square of native cloth, which they held up as a screen on two poles in front of their superior deity.  Tu-Kila-Kila sat down on the ground, hugging his knees, in the common squatting savage fashion, behind the veil thus readily formed for him.  “Taboo is removed,” he said, in loud, clear tones.  “My people may rise.  The light will not burn them.  They may look toward the place where Tu-Kila-Kila’s face is hidden from them.”

The people all rose with one accord, and gazed straight before them.

“The King of Fire will bring dry sticks,” Tu-Kila-Kila said, in his accustomed regal manner.

The King of Fire, sticking one pole of the screen into the ground securely, brought forward a bundle of sun-dried sticks and leaves from a basket beside him.

“The King of the Rain, who has put out all our hearths with his flood last night, will relight them again with new fire, fresh flame from the sun, rays of our disk, divine, mystic, wonderful,” Tu-Kila-Kila proclaimed, in his droning monotone.

Felix advanced as he spoke to the pile, and struck a match before the eyes of all the islanders.  As they saw it light, and then set fire to the wood, a loud cry went up once more, “Tu-Kila-Kila is great!  His words are true!  He has brought fire from the sun!  His ways are wonderful!”

Tu-Kila-Kila, from his point of vantage behind the curtain, strove to improve the occasion with a theological lesson.  “That is the way we have learned from our divine ancestors,” he said, slowly; “the rule of the gods in our island of Boupari.  Each god, as he grows old, reincarnates himself visibly.  Before he can grow feeble and die he immolates himself willingly on his own altar; and a younger and a stronger