The Great Taboo | Page 6

the light from his holy eyes would wither them up, and the
glow of his glorious countenance would scorch them to ashes." He
raised his two hands, palm outward, in front of him. "So all the year
round," he went on, "Tu-Kila-Kila, who loves his people, and sends
them the earlier and the later rain in the wet season, and makes their
yams and their taro grow, and causes his sun to shine upon them
freely--all the year round Tu-Kila-Kila, your god, sits shut up in his
own house among the skeletons of those whom he has killed and eaten,
or walks in his walled paddock, where his bread-fruit ripens and his
plantains spring--himself, and the ministers that his tribesmen have
given him."
At the sound of their mystic deity's voice the savages, bending lower
still till their foreheads touched the ground, repeated in chorus, to the
clapping of hands, like some solemn litany: "Tu-Kila-Kila speaks true.
Our lord is merciful. He sends down his showers upon our crops and
fields. He causes his sun to shine brightly over us. He makes our pigs
and our slaves bring forth their increase. Tu-Kila-Kila is good. His
people praise him."
The god took another step forward, the divine mantle of red feathers
glowing in the sunset on his dusky shoulders, and smiled once more
that hateful gracious smile of his. He was standing near the open door
of his wattled hut, overshadowed by the huge spreading arms of a
gigantic banyan-tree. Through the open door of the hut it was possible
to catch just a passing glimpse of an awful sight within. On the beams
of the house, and on the boughs of the trees behind it, human skeletons,
half covered with dry flesh, hung in ghastly array, their skulls turned
downward. They were the skeletons of the victims Tu-Kila-Kila, their
prince, had slain and eaten; they were the trophies of the cannibal
man-god's hateful prowess.
Tu-Kila-Kila raised his right hand erect and spoke again. "I am a great
god," he said, slowly. "I am very powerful. I make the sun to shine, and
the yams to grow. I am the spirit of plants. Without me there would be
nothing for you all to eat or drink in Boupari. If I were to grow old and
die, the sun would fade away in the heavens overhead; the bread-fruit

trees would wither and cease to bear on earth; all fruits would come to
an end and die at once; all rivers would stop forthwith from running."
His worshippers bowed down in acquiescence with awestruck faces. "It
is true," they answered, in the same slow sing-song of assent as before.
"Tu-Kila-Kila is the greatest of gods. We owe to him everything. We
hang upon his favor."
Tu-Kila-Kila started back, laughed, and showed his pearly white teeth.
They were beautiful and regular, like the teeth of a tiger, a strong young
tiger. "But I need more sacrifices than all the other gods," he went on,
melodiously, like one who plays with consummate skill upon some
difficult instrument. "I am greedy; I am thirsty; I am a hungry god. You
must not stint me. I claim more human victims than all the other gods
beside. If you want your crops to grow, and your rivers to run, the
fields to yield you game, and the sea fish--this is what I ask: give me
victims, victims! That is our compact. Tu-Kila-Kila calls you."
The men bowed down once more and repeated humbly, "You shall
have victims as you will, great god; only give us yam and taro and
bread-fruit, and cause not your bright light, the sun, to grow dark in
heaven over us."
"Cut yourselves," Tu-Kila-Kila cried, in a peremptory voice, clapping
his hands thrice. "I am thirsting for blood. I want your free-will
offering."
As he spoke, every man, as by a set ritual, took from a little skin wallet
at his side a sharp flake of coral-stone, and, drawing it deliberately
across his breast in a deep red gash, caused the blood to flow out freely
over his chest and long grass waistband. Then, having done so, they
never strove for a moment to stanch the wound, but let the red drops
fall as they would on to the dust at their feet, without seeming even to
be conscious at all of the fact that they were flowing.
Tu-Kila-Kila smiled once more, a ghastly self-satisfied smile of
unquestioned power. "It is well," he went on. "My people love me.
They know my strength, how I can wither them up. They give me their

blood to drink freely. So I will be merciful to them. I will make my sun
shine and my rain drop from heaven. And instead of taking all, I will
choose one victim."