by Grant Allen
Felix regarded the venerable creature with a look of almost superstitious awe. “Facts are facts,” he answered shortly, shutting his mouth with a little snap. “Unless this bird has been deliberately taught historical details in an archaic diction — and a shipwrecked sailor is hardly likely to be antiquarian enough to conceive such an idea — he is undoubtedly a survival from the days of the Commonwealth or the Restoration. And you say he runs on with his tale for an hour at a time! Good heavens, what a thought! I wish we could manage to start him now. Does he begin it often?”
“Monsieur,” the Frenchman answered, “when I came here first, though Methuselah was already very old and feeble, he was not quite a dotard, and he used to recite it all every morning regularly. That was the hour, I suppose, at which the master, who first taught him this lengthy recitation, used originally to impress it upon him. In those days his sight and his memory were far more clear than now. But by degrees, since my arrival, he has grown dull and stupid. The natives tell me that fifty years ago, while he was already old, he was still bright and lively, and would recite the whole poem whenever anybody presented him with his greatest dainty, the claw of a moora-crab. Nowadays, however, when he can hardly eat, and hardly mumble, he is much less persistent and less coherent than formerly. To say the truth, I have discouraged him in his efforts, because his pertinacity annoyed me. So now he seldom gets through all his lesson at one bout, as he used to do at the beginning. The best way to get him on is for me to sing him one of my French songs. That seems to excite him, or to rouse him to rivalry. Then he will put his head on one side, listen critically for a while, smile a superior smile, and finally begin — jabber, jabber, jabber — trying to talk me down, as if I were a brother parrot.”
“Oh, do sing now!” Muriel cried, with intense persuasion in her voice. “I do so want to hear it.” She meant, of course, the parrot’s story.
But the Frenchman bowed, and laid his hand on his heart. “Ah, mademoiselle,” he said, “your wish is almost a royal command. And yet, do you know, it is so long since I have sung, except to please myself — my music is so rusty, old pieces you have heard — I have no accompaniment, no score — mais enfin, we are all so far from Paris!”
Muriel didn’t dare to undeceive him as to her meaning, lest he should refuse to sing in real earnest, and the chance of learning the parrot’s secret might slip by them irretrievably. “Oh, monsieur,” she cried, fitting herself to his humor at once, and speaking as ceremoniously as if she were assisting at a musical party in the Avenue Victor Hugo, “don’t decline, I beg of you, on those accounts. We are both most anxious to hear your song. Don’t disappoint us, pray. Please begin immediately.”
“Ah, mademoiselle,” the Frenchman said, “who could resist such an appeal? You are altogether too flattering.” And then, in the same cheery voice that Felix had heard on the first day he visited the King of Birds’ hut, M. Peyron began, in very decent style, to pour forth the merry sounds of his rollicking song:
“Quand on conspi-re, Quand sans frayeur On peut se di-re Conspirateur — Pour tout le mon-de Il faut avoir Perruque blon-de Et collet noir.”
He had hardly got as far as the end of the first stanza, however, when Methuselah, listening, with his ear cocked up most knowingly, to the Frenchman’s song, raised his head in opposition, and, sitting bolt upright on his perch, began to scream forth a voluble stream of words in one unbroken flood, so fast that Muriel could hardly follow them. The bird spoke in a thick and very harsh voice, and, what was more remarkable still, with a distinct and extremely peculiar North Country accent. “In the nineteenth year of the reign of his most gracious majesty, King Charles the Second,” he blurted out, viciously, with an angry look at the Frenchman, “I, Nathaniel Cross, of the borough of Sunderland, in the county of Doorham, in England, an able-bodied mariner, then sailing the South Seas in the good bark Martyr Prince, of the Port of Great Grimsby, whereof one Thomas Wells, gent., under God, was master—”
“Oh, hush, hush!” Muriel cried, unable to catch the parrot’s precious words through the emulous echo of the Frenchman’s music. “Whereof one Thomas Wells, gent., under God, was master — go on, Polly.”
“Perruque blonde Et collet noir,”
the Frenchman repeated, with a half-offended voice, finishing his stanza.
But just as he stopped, Methuselah stopped too, and, throwing back his head in the air with a triumphant look, stared hard at his vanquished and silenced opponent out of those blinking gray eyes of his. “I thought I’d be too much for you!” he seemed to say, wrathfully.
“Whereof one Thomas Wells, gent., under God, was master,” Muriel suggested again, all agog with excitement. “Go on, good bird! Go on, pretty Polly.”
But Methuselah was evidently put off the scent now by the unseasonable interruption. Instead of continuing, he threw back his head a second time with a triumphant air and laughed aloud boisterously. “Pretty Polly,” he cried. “Pretty Polly wants a nut. Tu-Kila-Kila maroo! Pretty Poll! Pretty Polly!”
“Sing again, for Heaven’s sake!” Felix exclaimed, in a profoundly agitated mood, explaining briefly to the Frenchman the full significance of the words Methuselah had just begun to utter.
The Frenchman struck up his tune afresh to give the bird a start; but all to no avail. Methuselah was evidently in no humor for talking just then. He listened with a callous, uncritical air, bringing his white eyelids down slowly and sleepily over his bleared gray eyes. Then he nodded his head slowly. “No use,” the Frenchman murmured, pursing his lips up gravely. “The bird won’t talk. It’s going off to sleep now. Methuselah gets visibly older every day, monsieur and mademoiselle. You are only just in time to catch his last accents.”
CHAPTER XXIII.
A MESSAGE FROM THE DEAD.
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 cry that called his native name three times, running: “O King of the Rain, King of the Rain, King of the Rain, awake! High time to be up! The King of the Birds sends you health and greeting!”
Felix rose at once; and his Shadow, rising before him, and unbolting the loose wooden fastener of the door, went out in haste to see who called beyond the white taboo-line of their sacred precincts.
A native woman, tall, lithe, and handsome, stood there in the full light of morning, beckoning. A strange glow of hatred gleamed in her large gray eyes. Her shapely brown bosom heaved and panted heavily. Big beads glistened moistly on her smooth, high brow. It was clear she had run all the way in haste. She was deeply excited and full of eager anxiety.
“Why, what do you want here so early, Ula?” the Shadow asked, in surprise — for it was indeed she. “How have you slipped away, as soon as the sun is risen, from the sacred hut of Tu-Kila-Kila?”
Ula’s gray eyes flashed angry fire as she answered. “He has beaten me again,” she cried, in revengeful tones; “see the weals on my back! See my arms and shoulders! He has drawn blood from my wounds. He is the most hateful of gods. I should love to kill him. Therefore I slipped away from him with the early dawn and came to consult with his enemy, the King of the Birds, because I heard the words that the Eyes of Tu-Kila-Kila, who pervade the world, report to their master. The Eyes have told him that the King of the Rain, the Queen of the Clouds, and the King of the Birds are plotting together in secret against Tu-Kila-Kila. When I heard that, I was glad; I went to the King of the Birds to warn him of his danger; and the King of the Birds, concerned for your safety, has sent me in haste to ask his brother gods to go at once to him.”
In a minute Felix was up and had called out Mali from the neighboring hut. “Tell Missy Queenie,” he cried, “to come with me to see the man-a-oui-oui! The man-a-oui-oui has sent me for us to come. She must make great haste. He wants us immediately.”
With a word and a sign to Toko, Ula glided away stealthily, with the cat-like tread of the native Polynesian woman, bac
k to her hated husband.
Felix went out to the door and heliographed with his bright metal plate, turned on the Frenchman’s hill, “What is it?”
In a moment the answer flashed back, word by word, “Come quick, if you want to hear. Methuselah is reciting!”
A few seconds later Muriel emerged from her hut, and the two Europeans, closely followed, as always, by their inseparable Shadows, took the winding side-path that led through the jungle by a devious way, avoiding the front of Tu-Kila-Kila’s temple, to the Frenchman’s cottage.
They found M. Peyron very much excited, partly by Ula’s news of Tu-Kila-Kila’s attitude, but more still by Methuselah’s agitated condition. “The whole night through, my dear friends,” he cried, seizing their hands, “that bird has been chattering, chattering, chattering. Oh, mon Dieu, quel oiseau! It seems as though the words heard yesterday from mademoiselle had struck some lost chord in the creature’s memory. But he is also very feeble. I can see that well. His garrulity is the garrulity of old age in its last flickering moments. He mumbles and mutters. He chuckles to himself. If you don’t hear his message now and at once, it’s my solemn conviction you will never hear it.”
He led them out to the aviary, where Methuselah, in effect, was sitting on his perch, most tremulous and woebegone. His feathers shuddered visibly; he could no longer preen himself. “Listen to what he says,” the Frenchman exclaimed, in a very serious voice. “It is your last, last chance. If the secret is ever to be unravelled at all, by Methuselah’s aid, now is, without doubt, the proper moment to unravel it.”
Muriel put out her hand and stroked the bird gently. “Pretty Poll,” she said, soothingly, in a sympathetic voice. “Pretty Poll! Poor Poll! Was he ill! Was he suffering?”
At the sound of those familiar words, unheard so long till yesterday, the parrot took her finger in his beak once more, and bit it with the tenderness of his kind in their softer moments. Then he threw back his head with a sort of mechanical twist, and screamed out at the top of his voice, for the last time on earth, his mysterious message:
“Pretty Poll! Pretty Poll! God save the king! Confound the Duke of York! Death to all arrant knaves and roundheads!
“In the nineteenth year of the reign of his most gracious majesty, King Charles the Second, I, Nathaniel Cross, of the borough of Sunderland, in the county of Doorham, in England, an able-bodied mariner, then sailing the South Seas in the good bark Martyr Prince, of the Port of Great Grimsby, whereof one Thomas Wells, gent., under God, was master, was, by stress of weather, wrecked and cast away on the shores of this island, called by its gentile inhabitants by the name of Boo Parry. In which wreck, as it befell, Thomas Wells, gent., and his equipment were, by divine disposition, killed and drowned, save and except three mariners, whereof I am one, who in God’s good providence swam safely through an exceeding great flood of waves and landed at last on this island. There my two companions, Owen Williams, of Swansea, in the parts of Wales, and Lewis le Pickard, a French Hewgenott refugee, were at once, by the said gentiles, cruelly entreated, and after great torture cooked and eaten at the temple of their chief god, Too-Keela-Keela. But I, myself, having through God’s grace found favor in their eyes, was promoted to the post which in their speech is called Korong, the nature of which this bird, my mouthpiece, will hereafter, to your ears, more fully discover.”
Having said so much, in a very jerky way, Methuselah paused, and blinked his eyes wearily.
“What does he say?” the Frenchman began, eager to know the truth. But Felix, fearful lest any interruption might break the thread of the bird’s discourse and cheat them of the sequel, held up a warning finger, and then laid it on his lips in mute injunction. Methuselah threw back his head at that and laughed aloud. “God save the king!” he cried again, in a still feebler way, “and to hell with all papists!”
It was strange how they all hung on the words of that unconscious messenger from a dead and gone age, who himself knew nothing of the import of the words he was uttering. Methuselah laughed at their earnestness, shook his head once or twice, and seemed to think to himself. Then he remembered afresh the point he had broken off at.
“More fully discover. For seven years have I now lived on this island, never having seen or h’ard Christian face or voice; and at the end of that time, feeling my health feail, and being apprehensive lest any of my fellow-countrymen should hereafter suffer the same fate as I have done, I began to teach this parrot his message, a few words at a time, impressing it duly and fully on his memory.
“Larn, then, O wayfarer, that the people of Boo Parry are most arrant gentiles, heathens, and carribals. And this, as I discover, is the nature and method of their vile faith. They hold that the gods are each and several incarnate in some one particular human being. This human being they worship and reverence with all ghostly respect as his incarnation. And chiefly, above all, do they revere the great god Too-Keela-Keela, whose representative (may the Lord in Heaven forgive me for the same) I myself am at this present speaking. Having thus, for my sins, attained to that impious honor.
“God save the king! Confound the Duke of York! To hell with all papists!
“It is the fashion of this people to hold that their gods must always be strong and lusty. For they argue to themselves thus: that the continuance of the rain must needs depend upon the vigor and subtlety of its Soul, the rain-god. So the continuance and fruitfulness of the trees and plants which yield them food must needs depend upon the health of the tree-god. And the life of the world, and the light of the sun, and the well-being of all things that in them are, must depend upon the strength and cunning of the high god of all, Too-Keela-Keela. Hence they take great care and woorship of their gods, surrounding them with many rules which they call Taboo, and restricting them as to what they shall eat, and what drink, and wherewithal they shall seemly clothe themselves. For they think that if the King of the Rain at’ anything that might cause the colick, or like humor or distemper, the weather will thereafter be stormy and tempestuous; but so long as the King of the Rain fares well and retains his health, so long will the weather over their island of Boo Parry be clear and prosperous.
“Furthermore, as I have larned from their theologians, being myself, indeed, the greatest of their gods, it is evident that they may not let any god die, lest that department of nature over which he presideth should wither away and feail, as it were, with him. But reasonably no care that mortal man can exercise will prevent the possibility of their god — seeing he is but one of themselves — growing old and feeble and dying at last. To prevent which calamity, these gentile folk have invented (as I believe by the aid and device of Sathan) this horrid and most unnatural practice. The man-god must be killed so soon as he showeth in body or mind that his native powers are beginning to feail. And it is necessary that he be killed, according to their faith, in this ensuing fashion.
“If the man-god were to die slowly by a death in the course of nature, the ways of the world might be stopped altogether. Hence these savages catch the soul of their god, as it were, ere it grow old and feeble, and transfer it betimes, by a magic device, to a suitable successor. And surely, they say, this suitable successor can be none other than him that is able to take it from him. This, then, is their horrid counsel and device — that each one of their gods should kill his antecessor. In doing thus, he taketh the old god’s life and soul, which thereupon migrates and dwells within him. And by this tenure — may Heaven be merciful to me, a sinner — do I, Nathaniel Cross, of the county of Doorham, now hold this dignity of Too-Keela-Keela, having slain, therefor, in just quarrel, my antecessor in the high godship.”
As he reached these words Methuselah paused, and choked in his throat slightly. The mere mechanical effort of continuing the speech he had learned by heart two hundred years before, and repeated so often since that it had become part of his being, was now almost too much for him. The Frenchman was right. They were only just in time. A few days later, and the secret would have died with the
bird that preserved it.
CHAPTER XXIV.
AN UNFINISHED TALE.
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 gracious majesty, King Charles the Second, I, Nathaniel Cross—”
“Oh, this will never do,” Felix cried. “We haven’t got yet to the secret at all. Muriel, do try to set him right. He must waste no breath. We can’t afford now to let him go all over it.”
Muriel stretched out her hand and soothed the bird gently as before. “Having slain, therefore, my predecessor in the high godship,” she suggested, in the same singsong voice as the parrot’s.
To her immense relief, Methuselah took the hint with charming docility.
“In the high godship,” he went on, mechanically, where he had stopped. “And this here is the manner whereby I obtained it. The Too-Keela-Keela from time to time doth generally appoint any castaway stranger that comes to the island to the post of Korong — that is to say, an annual god or victim. For, as the year doth renew itself at each change of seasons, so do these carribals in their gentilisme believe and hold that the gods of the seasons — to wit, the King of the Rain, the Queen of the Clouds, the Lord of Green Leaves, the King of Fruits, and others — must needs be sleain and renewed at the diverse solstices. Now, it so happened that I, on my arrival in the island, was appointed Korong, and promoted to the post of King of the Rain, having a native woman assigned me as Queen of the Clouds, with whom I might keep company. This woman being, after her kind, enamored of me, and anxious to escape her own fate, to be sleain by my side, did betray to me that secret which they call in their tongue the Great Taboo, and which had been betrayed to herself in turn by a native man, her former lover. For the men are instructed in these things in the mysteries when they coom of age, but not the women.
