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-temple from the rear, where the big tree, which overshadowed it with its drooping branches, was most easily approachable. As he and Toko crept on, bending low, through that dense tropical scrub, in deathly silence, they were aware all the time of a low, crackling sound that rang ever some paces in the rear on their trail through the forest. It was Tu-Kila-Kila’s Eyes, following them stealthily from afar, footstep for footstep, through the dense undergrowth of bush, and the crisp fallen leaves and twigs that snapped light beneath their footfall. What hope of success with those watchful spies, keen as beagles and cruel as bloodhounds, following ever on their track? What chance of escape for Felix and Muriel, with the cannibal man-gods toils laid round on every side to insure their destruction?

Silently and cautiously the two men groped their way on through the dark gloom of the woods, in spite of their mute pursuers. The moonlight flickered down athwart the trackless soil as they went; the hum of insects innumerable droned deep along the underbrush. Now and then the startled scream of a night jar broke the monotony of the buzz that was worse than silence; owls boomed from the hollow trees, and fireflies darted dim through the open spaces. At last they emerged upon the cleared area of the temple. There Felix, without one moment’s hesitation, with a firm and resolute tread, stepped over the white coral line that marked the taboo of the great god’s precincts. That was a declaration of open war; he had crossed the Rubicon of Tu-Kila-Kila’s empire. Toko stood trembling on the far side; none might pass that mystic line unbidden and live, save the Korong alone who could succeed in breaking off the bough “with yellow leaves, resembling a mistletoe,” of which Methuselah, the parrot, had told Felix and Muriel, and so earn the right to fight for his life with the redoubted and redoubtable Tu-Kila-Kila.

As he stepped over the taboo-line, Felix was aware of many native eyes fixed stonily upon him from the surrounding precinct. Clearly they were awaiting him. Yet not a soul gave the alarm; that in itself would have been to break taboo. Every man or woman among the temple attendants within that charmed circle stood on gaze curiously. Close by, Ula, the favorite wife of the man-god, crouched low by the hut, with one finger on her treacherous lips, bending eagerly forward, in silent expectation of what next might happen. Once, and once only, she glanced at Toko with a mute sign of triumph; then she fixed her big eyes on Felix in tremulous anxiety; for to her as to him, life and death now hung absolutely on the issue of his enterprise. A little farther back the King of Fire and the King of Water, in full sacrificial robes, stood smiling sardonically. For them it was merely a question of one master more or less, one Tu-Kila-Kila in place of another. They had no special interest in the upshot of the contest, save in so far as they always hated most the man who for the moment held by his own strong arm the superior godship over them. Around, Tu-Kila-Kila’s Eyes kept watch and ward in sinister silence. Taboo was stronger than even the commands of the high god himself. When once a Korong had crossed that fatal line, unbidden and unwelcomed by Tu-Kila-Kila, he came as Tu-Kila-Kila’s foe and would-be successor; the duty of every guardian of the temple was then to see fair play between the god that was and the god that might be—the Tu-Kila-Kila of the hour and the Tu-Kila-Kila who might possibly supplant him.

“Let the great spirit itself choose which body it will inhabit,” the King of Fire murmured in a soft, low voice, glancing toward a dark spot at the foot of the big tree. The moonlight fell dim through the branches on the place where he looked. The glibbering bones of dead victims rattled lightly in the wind. Felix’s eyes followed the King of Fire’s, and saw, lying asleep upon the ground, Tu-Kila-Kila himself, with his spear and tomahawk.

He lay there, huddled up by the very roots of the tree, breathing deep and regularly. Right over his head projected the branch, in one part of whose boughs grew the fateful parasite. By the dim light of the moon, straggling through the dense foliage, Felix could see its yellow leaves distinctly. Beneath it hung a skeleton, suspended by invisible cords, head downward from the branches. It was the skeleton of a previous Korong who had tried in vain to reach the bough, and perished. Tu-Kila-Kila had made high feast on the victim’s flesh; his bones, now collected together and cunningly fastened with native rope, served at once as a warning and as a trap or pitfall for all who might rashly venture to follow him.

Felix stood for one moment, alone and awe-struck, a solitary civilized man, among those hideous surroundings. Above, the cold moon; all about, the grim, stolid, half-hostile natives; close by, that strange, serpentine, savage wife, guarding, cat-like, the sleep of her cannibal husband; behind, the watchful Eyes of Tu-Kila-Kila, waiting ever in the background, ready to raise a loud shout of alarm and warning the moment the fatal branch was actually broken, but mute, by their vows, till that moment was accomplished. Then a sudden wild impulse urged him on to the attempt. The banyan had dropped down rooting offsets to the ground, after the fashion of its kind, from its main branches. Felix seized one of these and swung himself lightly up, till he reached the very limb on which the sacred parasite itself was growing.

To get to the parasite, however, he must pass directly above Tu-Kila-Kila’s head, and over the point where that ghastly grinning skeleton was suspended, as by an unseen hair, from the fork that bore it.

He walked along, balancing himself, and clutching, as he went, at the neighboring boughs, while Tu-Kila-Kila, overcome with the kava, slept stolidly and heavily on beneath him. At last he was almost within grasp of the parasite. Could he lunge out and clutch it? One try—one effort! No, no; he almost lost footing and fell over in the attempt. He couldn’t keep his balance so. He must try farther on. Come what might, he must go past the skeleton.

The grisly mass swung again, clanking its bones as it swung, and groaned in the wind ominously. The breeze whistled audibly through its hollow skull and vacant eye-sockets. Tu-Kila-Kila tur............