They couldn't say why, themselves; they didn't know wherefore; yet this unexpected echo of their own tongue, in the mouth of that strange and mysterious bird, thrilled through them instinctively with a strange, unearthly tremor.

In some dim and unexplained way, they felt half unconsciously to themselves that this discovery was, perhaps, the first clue to the solution of the terrible secret whose meshes encompassed them.
M.Peyron looked on in mute astonishment.

He had heard the bird repeat that strange jargon so often that it had ceased to have even the possibility of a meaning for him.

It was the way of Methuselah--just his language that he talked; so harsh! so guttural! "Pretty Poll! Pretty Poll!" he had noticed the bird harp upon those quaint words again and again.

They were part, no doubt, of that old primitive and forgotten Pacific language the creature had learned in other days from some earlier bearer of the name and ghastly honors of Tu-Kila-Kila.