On the day of your arrival, this, I learn from my Shadow, is just what happened.

That night, Tu-Kila-Kila made his great feast, and offered up the two chief human sacrifices of the year, the free-will offering and the scapegoat of trespass.

They keep then a festival, which answers to our own New-Year's day in Europe.

Next morning, in accordance with custom, the King of the Rain and the Queen of the Clouds were to be publicly slain, in order that a new and more vigorous king and queen should be chosen in their place, who might make the crops grow better and the sky more clement.

In the midst of this horrid ceremony, you and mademoiselle, by pure chance, arrived.