What it could all mean he did not yet understand, though some inklings of an explanation occasionally occurred to him.

Oh, how he longed now for the Month of Birds to end, in order that he might pay his long-deferred visit to the mysterious Frenchman, from whose voice his Shadow had fled on that fateful evening with such sudden precipitancy.
The Frenchman, he judged, must have been long on the island, and could probably give him some satisfactory solution of this abstruse problem.
So he was glad, indeed, when one evening, some weeks later, his Shadow, observing the sky narrowly, remarked to him in a low voice, "New moon to-morrow! The Month of Birds will then be up.

In the morning you can go and see your brother god at the Abode of Birds without breaking taboo.
The Month of Turtles begins at sunrise.

My family god is a turtle, so I know the day for it." So great was Felix's impatience to settle this question, that almost before the sun was up next day he had set forth from his hut, accompanied as usual by his faithful Shadow.

Their way lay past Tu-Kila-Kila's temple.