they stood with
their long hair falling down over their foreheads, and their hands held
up to their eyes that they might gaze the farther across the dim, dark
ocean. The borrowed light of their bonfire was moving, slowly moving over
the watery sea. Fire and water were mixing and mingling on friendly
terms. Impossible! Incredible! Marvellous! Miraculous! They prostrated
themselves in their terror at Tu-Kila-Kila's feet. "Oh, great god," they
cried, in awe-struck tones, "your power is too vast! Spare us, spare us,
spare us!"

As for Tu-Kila-Kila himself, he was not astonished at all. Strange as it
sounds to us, he really believed in his heart what he said. Profoundly
convinced of his own godhead, and abjectly superstitious as any of his
own votaries, he absolutely accepted as a fact his own suggestion, that
the light he saw was the reflection of that his men had kindled. The
interpretation he had put upon it seemed to him a perfectly natural and
just one. His worshippers, indeed, mere men that they were, might be
terrified at the sight; but why should he, a god, take any special notice
of it?

He accepted his own superiority as implicitly as our European nobles and
rulers accept theirs. He had no doubts himself, and he considered those
who had little better than criminals.

By and by, a smaller light detached itself by slow degrees from the
greater ones. The others stood still, and halted in mid-ocean. The lesser
light made as if it would come in the direction of Boupari. In point of
fact, the gig had put out in search of Felix and Muriel.

Tu-Kila-Kila interpreted the facts at once, however, in his own way.
"See," he said, pointing with his plump forefinger once more, and
encouraging with his words his terrified followers, "I am sending back a
light again from the sun to my island. I am doing my work well. I am
taking care of my people. Fear not for your future. In the light is yet
another victim. A man and a woman will come to Boupari from the sun, to
make up for the man and woman whom we eat in our feast to-night. Give me
plenty of victims, and you will have plenty of yam. Make haste, then;
kill, eat; let us feast Tu-Kila-Kila! To-morrow the man and woman I have
sent from the sun will come ashore on the reef, and reach Boupari."

At the words, he stepped forward and raised that heavy tomahawk. With
one blow each he brained the two bound and defenceless victims on the
altar-stone of his fathers. The rest, a Europea