The Great Taboo

While these things were happening on the sea close by, a very different scene indeed was being enacted meanwhile, beneath those waving palms, on the island of Boupari. It was st...

Tu-Kila-Kila went home that day in a very bad humor. The portent of the bitten finger had seriously disturbed him. For, strange as it sounds to us, he really believed himself in...

All that night through--their first lonely night on the island of Boupari--Felix sat up by his flickering fire, wide awake, half expecting and dreading some treacherous attack o...

As the last glimmering lights of the Australasian died away to seaward, Felix Thurstan knew in his despair there was nothing for it now but to strike out boldly, if he could, fo...

All night long, without intermission, the heavy tropical rain descended in torrents; at sunrise it ceased, and a bright blue vault of sky stood in a spotless dome over the islan...

Every day and all day long, save on a few rare occasions when special duties absolved him, the custom and religion of the islanders prescribed that their supreme incarnate deity...

The first intimation he received of the accident was that sudden sharp cry from the bo'sun's mate. Almost before he had fully taken it in, in all its meaning, another voice, far...

Human nature cannot always keep on the full stretch of excitement. It was wonderful to both Felix and Muriel how soon they settled down into a quiet routine of life on the islan...

Vaguely and indefinitely one terrible truth had been forced by slow degrees upon Felix's mind; whatever else Korong meant, it implied at least some fearful doom in store, sooner...

They rowed across the lagoon, a mysterious procession, almost in silence--the canoe with the two Europeans going first, the others following at a slight distance--and landed at...

And yet, when all was said and done, knowledge of Tu-Kila-Kila's secret didn't seem to bring Felix and Muriel much nearer a solution of their own great problems than they had be...

Throughout that day the natives brought them, from time to time, numerous presents of yam, bananas, and bread-fruit, neatly arranged in little palm-leaf baskets. A few of them b...

"You have lived here long?" Felix asked, with tremulous interest, as he took a seat on the bench under the big tree, toward which his new host politely motioned him. "You know t...

The great god had wounded him. But not to the heart. Felix, as good luck would have it, happened to be wearing buckled braces. He had worn them on board, and, like the rest of h...

A little way out from shore, amid loud screams and yells, the natives came up with it in their laden war-canoes. Shouting and gesticulating and brandishing their spears with the...

Felix wound his way painfully through the deep fern-brake of the jungle, by no regular path, so as to avoid exciting the alarm of the natives, and to take Tu-Kila-Kila's palace-...

All the hopes of the three Europeans were concentrated now on the bare off-chance of a passing steamer. M. Peyron in particular was fully convinced that, if the Australasian had...

Next morning the day broke bright and calm, as if the tempest had been but an evil dream of the night, now past forever. The birds sang loud; the lizards came forth from their h...

In a moment, Felix's mind was fully made up. There was no time to think; it was the hour for action. He saw how he must comport himself toward this strange wild people. Seating...

At last, with great difficulty, Felix managed to secure a certain momentary lull of silence. The natives, clustering round the line till they almost touched it, listened with sc...

Tu-Kila-Kila came up in his grandest panoply. The great umbrella, with the hanging cords, rose high over his head; the King of Fire and the King of Water, in their robes of stat...

In Tu-Kila-Kila's temple-hut, meanwhile, the jealous, revengeful god, enshrined among his skeletons, was having in his turn an anxious and doubtful time of it. Ever since his sa...

That same afternoon Muriel had a visitor. M. Jules Peyron, formerly of the Collége de France, no longer a mere Polynesian god, but a French gentleman of the Boulevards in voice...

"But you hinted at some hope, some chance of escape," Felix cried at last, looking up from the ground and mastering his emotion. "What now is that hope? Conceal nothing from me."

Early next morning, as Felix lay still in his hut, dozing, and just vaguely conscious of a buzz of a mosquito close to his ear, he was aroused by a sudden loud cry outside--a cr...

The rest of that day was a time of profound and intense anxiety. Felix and Muriel remained alone in their huts, absorbed in plans of escape, but messengers of many sorts from ch...

"Put a pillow under her head, and let her sleep," Felix said in a whisper. "Poor child, it would be cruel to send her alone to-night into her own quarters."

"This is only our second trip through this channel," the captain said, gazing across with a casual glance at the palm-trees that stood dark against the blue horizon. "We used to...

Naturally enough, it was some time before Felix and Muriel could recover from the shock of their deadly peril. Yet, strange to say, the natives at the end of three days seemed p...

For a minute or two Methuselah mumbled inarticulately to himself. Then, to their intense discomfiture, he began once more: "In the nineteenth year of the reign of his most graci...

They looked at one another again with a wild surmise. The voice was as the voice of some long past age. Could the parrot be speaking to them in the words of seventeenth-century...

Muriel, meanwhile, sat alone in her hut, frightened at Felix's unexpected disappearance so early in the morning, and anxiously awaiting her lover's return, for she made no prete...