The Great Taboo, page 49 by Grant Allen
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rose on his elbow, the Shadow rose on a sudden, too, and confronted him curiously. The young man heard the rain; then he bowed down his face with an awed air, not visible, but audible, in the still darkness. "It has come!" he said, with superstitious terror. "It has come at last! my lord has brought it!"
After that, Felix lay awake for some hours, hearing the rain on the roof, and puzzled in his own head by a half-uncertain memory. What was it in his school reading that that ceremony with the water indefinitely reminded him of? Wasn't there some Greek or Roman superstition about shaking your head when water was poured upon it? What could that superstition be, and what light might it cast on that mysterious ceremony? He wished he could remember; but it was so long since he'd read it, and he never cared much at school for Greek or Roman antiquities.
Suddenly, in a lull of the rain, the whole context at once came back with a rush to him. He remembered now he had read it, some time or other, in some classical dictionary. It was a custom connected with Greek sacrifices. The officiating priest poured water or wine on the head of the sheep, bullock, or other victim. If the victim shook its head and knocked off the drops, that was a sign that it was fit for the sacrifice, and that the god accepted it. If the victim trembled visibly, that was a most favorable omen. If it stood quite still and didn't move its neck, then the god rejected it as unfit for his purpose. Couldn't that be the meaning of the ceremony performed on Muriel and himself in "Heaven" that morning? Were they merely intended as human sacrifices? Were they to be kept meanwhile and, as it were, fed up for the slaughter? It was too horrible to believe; yet it almost looked like it.
He wished he knew the meaning of that strange word, "Korong." Clearly, it contained the true key to the mystery.
Anyhow, he had always his trusty knife. If the worst came to the worst--those wretches should never harm his spotless Murie