"Crown him with flowers!" Tu-Kila-Kila said; and a female attendant,
absolved from the terror of the bull-roarer by the god's command, brought
forward a great garland of crimson hibiscus, which she flung around the
victim's neck and shoulders.
"Lay his head on the sacred stone block of our fathers," Tu-Kila-Kila
went on, in an easy tone of command, waving his hand gracefully. And the
men, moving forward, laid their comrade, face downward, on a huge flat
block of polished greenstone, which lay like an altar in front of the
hut with the mouldering skeletons.
"It is well," Tu-Kila-Kila murmured once more, half aloud. "You have
given me the free-will offering. Now for the trespass! Where is the
woman who dared to approach too near the temple-home of the divine
Tu-Kila-Kila? Bring the criminal forward!"
The men divided, and made a lane down their middle. Then one of them, a
minister of the man-god's shrine, led up by the hand, all trembling and
shrinking with supernatural terror in every muscle, a well-formed young
girl of eighteen or twenty. Her naked bronze limbs were shapely and
lissome; but her eyes were swollen and red with tears, and her face
strongly distorted with awe for the man-god. When she stood at last
before Tu-Kila-Kila's dreaded face, she flung herself on the ground in an
agony of fear.
"Oh, mercy, great God!" she cried, in a feeble voice.
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