"Your Shadow will follow you. You are free as the rain that drops where
it will. You are as free as the clouds that roam through heaven. No man
will hinder you."
And in a moment the spearmen dropped their spears in concert, the crowd
fell back, and the villagers dispersed as if by magic, to their own
houses.
But Felix and Muriel were left alone beside their huts, guarded only in
silence by their two mystic Shadows.
CHAPTER VI.
FIRST DAYS IN BOUPARI.
Throughout that day the natives brought them, from time to time, numerous
presents of yam, bananas, and bread-fruit, neatly arranged in little
palm-leaf baskets. A few of them brought eggs as well, and one offering
even included a live chicken. But the people who brought them, and who
were mostly young girls just entering upon womanhood, did not venture to
cross the white line of coral-sand that surrounded the huts; they laid
down their presents, with many salaams, on the ground outside, and then
waited with a half-startled, half-reverent air for one or other of the
two Shadows to come out and fetch them. As soon as the baskets were
carried well within the marked line, the young girls exhibited every sign
of pleasure, and calling aloud, "Korong! Korong!"--that mysterious
Polynesian word of whose import Felix was ignorant--they retired once
more by tortuous paths through the surrounding jungle.
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