Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 38.djvu/253

Rh without fire or the means of making it. He remembers that he is forbidden to sleep, and, as he sits, expecting the coming of he knows not whom, his strained senses are awake to a chorus of unfamiliar sounds which bring him terror. The day comes, but brings no food, no water, no master. As the sun declines, and he sees ahead another terrifying vigil, he looks toward the door. Between him and food, fire, and home, hangs but a light mat, yet it makes his dungeon as secure as though forged of steel, for a tabu is on it. As the first night, so is the second; as yesterday, so goes to-day, only the hunger gnaws with a sharper tooth, the thirst parches the throat and mouth still more, and the nerves are set on edge through lack of sleep. The vigil of hunger, thirst, and sleepless eyes may last two, three, or four days; but when even savage endurance can bear up no longer, the master comes. He enters the house in all his glory of rushes and colored grass woven into a cone, and stands before the lad. Little wonder is it that, worn by his ordeal, he should fear this mysterious figure, which he has always been taught meant death to look upon. If his fears overcome him, he is initiated into the mystery of the club, which strikes but once, and there an end. But if he bears up bravely under the trial, the Duk-duk teaches him the sign of recognition, gives him a new name by which he shall hereafter be known, and bids him go to his own home, avoid his childish playmates, tell no one the lessons that have been imparted to him, but await the next visitation, when the Duk-duk will surely claim him, and if he passes the remaining trials will induct him into the mysteries.

The young man goes home, announces his new name, and by abundant food and rest recuperates from his recent privations. Meanwhile, the Duk-duk day is drawing nigh; the profane do not know when to expect it, but the initiated know it to be the day of the new moon, on which the mullet at dawn swim so near the surface of the water as to break it into ten thousand ripples. If, on this day, the fish swim deep at dawn, the ceremony must go over for another time, when these two phenomena occur together. If the fish swim high, the Duk-duk appears, the postulant makes the signal which has been taught him, his sponsors—the brethren of the wood and sea—answer for him, and lead him to the yard where he undergoes the final ordeal, and, succeeding, is carried along with the initiated to enter into the mysteries.

He is led to a path which is adorned with the marks of a stringent tabu, and here it is made known that this tabu is hereafter not binding upon him. By tortuous ways, winding in and out through the dense canebrake, the path leads to a large house screened from sight in every direction. Before the house and, indeed, all around it, is planted a stockade with one gate. Here