The people will give you all your dues; then they will say, 'We are free; we have bought you with a price; we have brought your cocoanuts.

No sin attaches to us; we are righteous; we are righteous.' And then they will kill you, and Fire and Water will roast you and boil you." "But only if we go outside the taboo-line ?" Felix asked, anxiously.
"Only if you go outside the taboo-line," the Shadow replied, nodding a hasty assent.

"Inside it, till your term comes, even Tu-Kila-Kila himself, the very high god, whose meat we all are, dare never hurt you." "Till our term comes ?" Felix inquired, once more astonished and perplexed.

"What do you mean by that, my Shadow ?" But the Shadow was either bound by some superstitious fear, or else incapable of putting himself into Felix's point of view.

"Why, till you are full Korong," he answered, like one who speaks of some familiar fact, as who should say, till you are forty years old, or, till your beard grows white.