The Great Taboo

l began to doze light

lix said in a whisper. "Poor child, it would be crue

r under her mistress's head, and laid it o

louds stays in the King of the Rain's hut to-night," they muttered, angrily. "She will not li

s full. It was almost as clear as day with the bright tropical moonlight, silvery in the open, pale green in the shadow. The people were still squatting in

. Below, an ominous fog bank gathered steadily westward. Then one clap of thunder rent the sky. After it came a deadly silence. The moon was veiled. All was

palm that bent like grass before the wind, break it off short with a roar at the bottom, and lay it low at once upon the ground, with a crash like thunder. In other places, little playful whirlwinds seemed to descend from the sky in the very midst of the dense brushwood, where they cleared circular patches, strewn thick under foot with trunks and branches in their titanic sport, and yet left unhurt all about the surrounding forest. Then again a special cyclone of gigantic proportions wo

of the tempest, each in turn overtopping and drowning the other. The hut where Felix and Muriel sheltered themselves shook before the storm; the very ground of the island trembled and quivered-like the timbers of a great ship before a mighty sea-at each onset of the bre

ery dumb forces of nature themselves should thus be stirred up to open war against them. Her faith in Providence was sorely tried. Dumb forces, indeed! Why, they roared with more terrible voices than any wild beast on earth could possibly compass.

uttering aloud from time to time, in a reproachful voice, "I tell Missy Queenie what going to happen. I warn her not. I tell he

now what comes from breaking taboo? You eat the storm-fruit. The storm-fruit suits ill with the King of the Rain and the Qu

ums and tom-toms, all beaten in unison with the mad energy of fear; a hideous sound, suggestive of some hateful heathen devil-worship. Muriel clapped her hands to her ears

they're angry with us for having caused this storm, as they think, by our foolish action. I believe they all set

is arm with a pas

x. Don't go out to those wretches and leave me here alone. They'll murder you! they'll murder you! Don't go out, I implore you. If

all else in the agony of the moment. Felix clasped the trembling girl in his arms like a lover. The two Shadows looked on and shook with silent terror. If the King of the Rain thus embraced the Queen of the Clouds before their very eyes, amid so awful a storm, what unspeakable effects

must go out, my child," he said. "For the very love of you, I must p

on their faces, many courses deep, just outside the taboo line. The wind swept over them with extraordinary force, and the tropical rain descended in great floods upon their bare backs and shoulders. But the savages, as if entranced, seemed to take no heed of all these earthly things. They lay grovelling in the mud before some unseen power; and beating their tom-toms in unison, with barbaric concord, they cried aloud once more as Felix appeared, in a weird litany that overtopped the tumultuous noise of the tempest, "Oh, Storm-G

there and gazed at him. Felix signed to them with his hand, and pointed vaguely to the sky, as much as to say he was not responsible. At the gesture the whole assembly burst into one loud shout of

afraid of them, Muriel," he cried, taking her passionately once more in a tender embrace. "They dare