We can't afford now to let him go all over it." Muriel stretched out her hand and soothed the bird gently as before.
"Having slain, therefore, my predecessor in the high godship," she suggested, in the same singsong voice as the parrot's.
To her immense relief, Methuselah took the hint with charming docility.
"In the high godship," he went on, mechanically, where he had stopped.
"And this here is the manner whereby I obtained it.

The Too-Keela-Keela from time to time doth generally appoint any castaway stranger that comes to the island to the post of Korong--that is to say, an annual god or victim.

For, as the year doth renew itself at each change of seasons, so do these carribals in their gentilisme believe and hold that the gods of the seasons--to wit, the King of the Rain, the Queen of the Clouds, the Lord of Green Leaves, the King of Fruits, and others--must needs be sleain and renewed at the diverse solstices.

Now, it so happened that I, on my arrival in the island, was appointed Korong, and promoted to the post of King of the Rain, having a native woman assigned me as Queen of the Clouds, with whom I might keep company.

This woman being, after her kind, enamored of me, and anxious to escape her own fate, to be sleain by my side, did betray to me that secret which they call in their tongue the Great Taboo, and which had been betrayed to herself in turn by a native man, her former lover.