The Heathen

by Jack London

The Heathen first appeared in Everybody's Magazine in 1910, and then appeared again the following year when it was included in South Sea Tales (1911).

I met him first in a hurricane; and though we had gone through the hurricaneon the same schooner, it was not until the schooner had gone to pieces underus that I first laid eyes on him. Without doubt I had seen him with the restof the kanaka crew on board, but I had not consciously been aware of hisexistence, for the Petite Jeanne was rather overcrowded. In addition to hereight or ten kanaka seamen, her white captain, mate, and supercargo, and hersix cabin passengers, she sailed from Rangiroa with something like eighty-fivedeck passengers-- Paumotans and Tahitians, men, women, and children each witha trade box, to say nothing of sleeping mats, blankets, and clothes bundles.The pearling season in the Paumotus was over, and all hands were returning toTahiti. The six of us cabin passengers were pearl buyers. Two were Americans,one was Ah Choon (the whitest Chinese I have ever known), one was a German,one was a Polish Jew, and I completed the half dozen.It had been a prosperous season. Not one of us had cause for complaint, norone of the eighty-five deck passengers either. All had done well, and allwere looking forward to a rest-off and a good time in Papeete.Of course, the Petite Jeanne was overloaded. She was only seventy tons, andshe had no right to carry a tithe of the mob she had on board. Beneath herhatches she was crammed and jammed with pearl shell and copra. Even the traderoom was packed full with shell. It was a miracle that the sailors could workher. There was no moving about the decks. They simply climbed back and forthalong the rails.In the night time they walked upon the sleepers, who carpeted the deck, I'llswear, two deep. Oh! And there were pigs and chickens on deck, and sacks ofyams, while every conceivable place was festooned with strings of drinkingcocoanuts and bunches of bananas. On both sides, between the fore and mainshrouds, guys had been stretched, just low enough for the foreboom to swingclear; and from each of these guys at least fifty bunches of bananas weresuspended.It promised to be a messy passage, even if we did make it in the two or threedays that would have been required if the southeast trades had been blowingfresh. But they weren't blowing fresh. After the first five hours the tradedied away in a dozen or so gasping fans. The calm continued all that night andthe next day--one of those glaring, glassy, calms, when the very thought ofopening one's eyes to look at it is sufficient to cause a headache.The second day a man died--an Easter Islander, one of the best divers thatseason in the lagoon. Smallpox--that is what it was; though how smallpox couldcome on board, when there had been no known cases ashore when we leftRangiroa, is beyond me. There it was, though--smallpox, a man dead, and threeothers down on their backs.There was nothing to be done. We could not segregate the sick, nor could wecare for them. We were packed like sardines. There was nothing to do but rotand die--that is, there was nothing to do after the night that followed thefirst death. On that night, the mate, the supercargo, the Polish Jew, and fournative divers sneaked away in the large whale boat. They were never heard ofagain. In the morning the captain promptly scuttled the remaining boats, andthere we were.That day there were two deaths; the following day three; then it jumped toeight. It was curious to see how we took it. The natives, for instance, fellinto a condition of dumb, stolid fear. The captain--Oudouse, his name was, aFrenchman--became very nervous and voluble. He actually got the twitches. Hewas a large fleshy man, weighing at least two hundred pounds, and he quicklybecame a faithful representation of a quivering jelly-mountain of fat.The German, the two Americans, and myself bought up all the Scotch whiskey,and proceeded to stay drunk. The theory was beautiful--namely, if we keptourselves soaked in alcohol, every smallpox germ that came into contact withus would immediately be scorched to a cinder. And the theory worked, though Imust confess that neither Captain Oudouse nor Ah Choon were attacked by thedisease either. The Frenchman did not drink at all, while Ah Choon restrictedhimself to one drink daily.It was a pretty time. The sun, going into northern declination, was straightoverhead. There was no wind, except for frequent squalls, which blew fiercelyfor from five minutes to half an hour, and wound up by deluging us with rain.After each squall, the awful sun would come out, drawing clouds of steam fromthe soaked decks.The steam was not nice. It was the vapor of death, freighted with millions andmillions of germs. We always took another drink when we saw it going up fromthe dead and dying, and usually we took two or three more drinks, mixing themexceptionally stiff. Also, we made it a rule to take an additional severaleach time they hove the dead over to the sharks that swarmed about us.We had a week of it, and then the whiskey gave out. It is just as well, or Ishouldn't be alive now. It took a sober man to pull through what followed, asyou will agree when I mention the little fact that only two men did pullthrough. The other man was the heathen--at least, that was what I heardCaptain Oudouse call him at the moment I first became aware of the heathen'sexistence. But to come back.It was at the end of the week, with the whiskey gone, and the pearl buyerssober, that I happened to glance at the barometer that hung in the cabincompanionway. Its normal register in the Paumotus was 29.90, and it was quitecustomary to see it vacillate between 29.85 and 30.00, or even 30.05; but tosee it as I saw it, down to 29.62, was sufficient to sober the most drunkenpearl buyer that ever incinerated smallpox microbes in Scotch whiskey.I called Captain Oudouse's attention to it, only to be informed that he hadwatched it going down for several hours. There was little to do, but thatlittle he did very well, considering the circumstances. He took off the lightsails, shortened right down to storm canvas, spread life lines, and waited forthe wind. His mistake lay in what he did after the wind came. He hove to onthe port tack, which was the right thing to do south of the Equator, if--andthere was the rub--if one were not in the direct path of the hurricane.We were in the direct path. I could see that by the steady increase of thewind and the equally steady fall of the barometer. I wanted him to turn andrun with the wind on the port quarter until the barometer ceased falling, andthen to heave to. We argued till he was reduced to hysteria, but budge hewould not. The worst of it was that I could not get the rest of the pearlbuyers to back me up. Who was I, anyway, to know more about the sea and itsways than a properly qualified captain? was what was in their minds, I knew.Of course, the sea rose with the wind frightfully; and I shall never forgetthe first three seas the Petite Jeanne shipped. She had fallen off, as vesselsdo at times when hove to, and the first sea made a clean breach. The lifelines were only for the strong and well, and little good were they even forthem when the women and children, the bananas and cocoanuts, the pigs andtrade boxes, the sick and the dying, were swept along in a solid, screeching,groaning mass.The second sea filled the Petite Jeanne'S decks flush with the rails; and, asher stern sank down and her bow tossed skyward, all the miserable dunnage oflife and luggage poured aft. It was a human torrent. They came head first,feet first, sidewise, rolling over and over, twisting, squirming, writhing,and crumpling up. Now and again one caught a grip on a stanchion or a rope;but the weight of the bodies behind tore such grips loose.One man I noticed fetch up, head on and square on, with the starboard bitt.His head cracked like an egg. I saw what was coming, sprang on top of thecabin, and from there into the mainsail itself. Ah Choon and one of theAmericans tried to follow me, but I was one jump ahead of them. The Americanwas swept away and over the stern like a piece of chaff. Ah Choon caught aspoke of the wheel, and swung in behind it. But a strapping Raratonga vahine(woman)--she must have weighed two hundred and fifty--brought up against him,and got an arm around his neck. He clutched the kanaka steersman with hisother hand; and just at that moment the schooner flung down to starboard.The rush of bodies and sea that was coming along the port runway between thecabin and the rail turned abruptly and poured to starboard. Away theywent--vahine, Ah Choon, and steersman; and I swear I saw Ah Choon grin at mewith philosophic resignation as he cleared the rail and went under.The third sea--the biggest of the three--did not do so much damage. By thetime it arrived nearly everybody was in the rigging. On deck perhaps a dozengasping, half-drowned, and half-stunned wretches were rolling about orattempting to crawl into safety. They went by the board, as did the wreckageof the two remaining boats. The other pearl buyers and myself, between seas,managed to get about fifteen women and children into the cabin, and batteneddown. Little good it did the poor creatures in the end.Wind? Out of all my experience I could not have believed it possible for thewind to blow as it did. There is no describing it. How can one describe anightmare? It was the same way with that wind. It tore the clothes off ourbodies. I say tore them off, and I mean it. I am not asking you to believe it.I am merely telling something that I saw and felt. There are times when I donot believe it myself. I went through it, and that is enough. One could notface that wind and live. It was a monstrous thing, and the most monstrousthing about it was that it increased and continued to increase.Imagine countless millions and billions of tons of sand. Imagine this sandtearing along at ninety, a hundred, a hundred and twenty, or any other numberof miles per hour. Imagine, further, this sand to be invisible, impalpable,yet to retain all the weight and density of sand. Do all this, and you may geta vague inkling of what that wind was like.Perhaps sand is not the right comparison. Consider it mud, invisible,impalpable, but heavy as mud. Nay, it goes beyond that. Consider everymolecule of air to be a mudbank in itself. Then try to imagine themultitudinous impact of mudbanks. No; it is beyond me. Language may beadequate to express the ordinary conditions of life, but it cannot possiblyexpress any of the conditions of so enormous a blast of wind. It would havebeen better had I stuck by my original intention of not attempting adescription.I will say this much: The sea, which had risen at first, was beaten down bythat wind. 'more: it seemed as if the whole ocean had been sucked up in themaw of the hurricane, and hurled on through that portion of space whichpreviously had been occupied by the air.Of course, our canvas had gone long before. But Captain Oudouse had on thePetite Jeanne something I had never before seen on a South Sea schooner--a seaanchor. It was a conical canvas bag, the mouth of which was kept open by ahuge loop of iron. The sea anchor was bridled something like a kite, so thatit bit into the water as a kite bites into the air, but with a difference. Thesea anchor remained just under the surface of the ocean in a perpendicularposition. A long line, in turn, connected it with the schooner. As a result,the Petite Jeanne rode bow on to the wind and to what sea there was.The situation really would have been favorable had we not been in the path ofthe storm. True, the wind itself tore our canvas out of the gaskets, jerkedout our topmasts, and made a raffle of our running gear, but still we wouldhave come through nicely had we not been square in front of the advancingstorm center. That was what fixed us. I was in a state of stunned, numbed,paralyzed collapse from enduring the impact of the wind, and I think I wasjust about ready to give up and die when the center smote us. The blow wereceived was an absolute lull. There was not a breath of air. The effect onone was sickening.Remember that for hours we had been at terrific muscular tension, withstandingthe awful pressure of that wind. And then, suddenly, the pressure was removed.I know that I felt as though I was about to expand, to fly apart in alldirections. It seemed as if every atom composing my body was repelling everyother atom and was on the verge of rushing off irresistibly into space. Butthat lasted only for a moment. Destruction was upon us.In the absence of the wind and pressure the sea rose. It jumped, it leaped, itsoared straight toward the clouds. Remember, from every point of the compassthat inconceivable wind was blowing in toward the center of calm. The resultwas that the seas sprang up from every point of the compass. There was no windto check them. They popped up like corks released from the bottom of a pail ofwater. There was no system to them, no stability. They were hollow, maniacalseas. They were eighty feet high at the least. They were not seas at all. Theyresembled no sea a man had ever seen.They were splashes, monstrous splashes--that is all. Splashes that were eightyfeet high. Eighty! They were more than eighty. They went over our mastheads.They were spouts, explosions. They were drunken. They fell anywhere, anyhow.They jostled one another; they collided. They rushed together and collapsedupon one another, or fell apart like a thousand waterfalls all at once. It wasno ocean any man had ever dreamed of, that hurricane center. It was confusionthrice confounded. It was anarchy. It was a hell pit of sea water gone mad.The Petite Jeanne? I don't know. The heathen told me afterwards that he didnot know. She was literally torn apart, ripped wide open, beaten into a pulp,smashed into kindling wood, annihilated. When I came to I was in the water,swimming automatically, though I was about two-thirds drowned. How I got thereI had no recollection. I remembered seeing the Petite Jeanne fly to pieces atwhat must have been the instant that my own consciousness was buffeted out ofme. But there I was, with nothing to do but make the best of it, and in thatbest there was little promise. The wind was blowing again, the sea was muchsmaller and more regular, and I knew that I had passed through the center.Fortunately, there were no sharks about. The hurricane had dissipated theravenous horde that had surrounded the death ship and fed off the dead.It was about midday when the Petite Jeanne went to pieces, and it must havebeen two hours afterwards when I picked up with one of her hatch covers. Thickrain was driving at the time; and it was the merest chance that flung me andthe hatch cover together. A short length of line was trailing from the ropehandle; and I knew that I was good for a day, at least, if the sharks did notreturn. Three hours later, possibly a little longer, sticking close to thecover, and with closed eyes, concentrating my whole soul upon the task ofbreathing in enough air to keep me going and at the same time of avoidingbreathing in enough water to drown me, it seemed to me that I heard voices.The rain had ceased, and wind and sea were easing marvelously. Not twenty feetaway from me, on another hatch cover were Captain Oudouse and the heathen.They were fighting over the possession of the cover--at least, the Frenchmanwas. "Paien noir!" I heard him scream, and at the same time I saw him kick thekanaka.Now, Captain Oudouse had lost all his clothes, except his shoes, and they wereheavy brogans. It was a cruel blow, for it caught the heathen on the mouth andthe point of the chin, half stunning him. I looked for him to retaliate, buthe contented himself with swimming about forlornly a safe ten feet away.Whenever a fling of the sea threw him closer, the Frenchman, hanging on withhis hands, kicked out at him with both feet. Also, at the moment of deliveringeach kick, he called the kanaka a black heathen."For two centimes I'd come over there and drown you, you white beast!" Iyelled.The only reason I did not go was that I felt too tired. The very thought ofthe effort to swim over was nauseating. So I called to the kanaka to come tome, and proceeded to share the hatch cover with him. Otoo, he told me his namewas (pronounced o-to-o ); also, he told me that he was a native of Bora Bora,the most westerly of the Society Group. As I learned afterward, he had got thehatch cover first, and, after some time, encountering Captain Oudouse, hadoffered to share it with him, and had been kicked off for his pains.And that was how Otoo and I first came together. He was no fighter. He was allsweetness and gentleness, a love creature, though he stood nearly six feettall and was muscled like a gladiator. He was no fighter, but he was also nocoward. He had the heart of a lion; and in the years that followed I have seenhim run risks that I would never dream of taking. What I mean is that while hewas no fighter, and while he always avoided precipitating a row, he never ranaway from trouble when it started. And it was "Ware shoal!" when once Otoowent into action. I shall never forget what he did to Bill King. It occurredin German Samoa. Bill King was hailed the champion heavyweight of the AmericanNavy. He was a big brute of a man, a veritable gorilla, one of thosehard-hitting, rough-housing chaps, and clever with his fists as well. Hepicked the quarrel, and he kicked Otoo twice and struck him once before Otoofelt it to be necessary to fight. I don't think it lasted four minutes, at theend of which time Bill King was the unhappy possessor of four broken ribs, abroken forearm, and a dislocated shoulder blade. Otoo knew nothing ofscientific boxing. He was merely a manhandler; and Bill King was somethinglike three months in recovering from the bit of manhandling he received thatafternoon on Apia beach.But I am running ahead of my yarn. We shared the hatch cover between us. Wetook turn and turn about, one lying flat on the cover and resting, while theother, submerged to the neck, merely held on with his hands. For two days andnights, spell and spell, on the cover and in the water, we drifted over theocean. Towards the last I was delirious most of the time; and there weretimes, too, when I heard Otoo babbling and raving in his native tongue. Ourcontinuous immersion prevented us from dying of thirst, though the sea waterand the sunshine gave us the prettiest imaginable combination of salt pickleand sunburn.In the end, Otoo saved my life; for I came to lying on the beach twenty feetfrom the water, sheltered from the sun by a couple of cocoanut leaves. No onebut Otoo could have dragged me there and stuck up the leaves for shade. He waslying beside me. I went off again; and the next time I came round, it was cooland starry night, and Otoo was pressing a drinking cocoanut to my lips.We were the sole survivors of the Petite Jeanne. Captain Oudouse must havesuccumbed to exhaustion, for several days later his hatch cover drifted ashorewithout him. Otoo and I lived with the natives of the atoll for a week, whenwe were rescued by the French cruiser and taken to Tahiti. In the meantime,however, we had performed the ceremony of exchanging names. In the South Seassuch a ceremony binds two men closer together than blood brothership. Theinitiative had been mine; and Otoo was rapturously delighted when I suggestedit."It is well," he said, in Tahitian. "For we have been mates together for twodays on the lips of Death.""But death stuttered," I smiled."It was a brave deed you did, master," he replied, "and Death was not vileenough to speak.""Why do you 'master' me?" I demanded, with a show of hurt feelings. "We haveexchanged names. To you I am Otoo. To me you are Charley. And between you andme, forever and forever, you shall be Charley, and I shall be Otoo. It is theway of the custom. And when we die, if it does happen that we live againsomewhere beyond the stars and the sky, still shall you be Charley to me, andI Otoo to you.""Yes, master," he answered, his eyes luminous and soft with joy."There you go!" I cried indignantly."What does it matter what my lips utter?" he argued. "They are only my lips.But I shall think Otoo always. Whenever I think of myself, I shall think ofyou. Whenever men call me by name, I shall think of you. And beyond the skyand beyond the stars, always and forever, you shall be Otoo to me. Is it well,master?"I hid my smile, and answered that it was well.We parted at Papeete. I remained ashore to recuperate; and he went on in acutter to his own island, Bora Bora. Six weeks later he was back. I wassurprised, for he had told me of his wife, and said that he was returning toher, and would give over sailing on far voyages."Where do you go, master?" he asked, after our first greetings.I shrugged my shoulders. It was a hard question."All the world," was my answer--"all the world, all the sea, and all theislands that are in the sea.""I will go with you," he said simply. "My wife is dead."I never had a brother; but from what I have seen of other men's brothers, Idoubt if any man ever had a brother that was to him what Otoo was to me. Hewas brother and father and mother as well. And this I know: I lived astraighter and better man because of Otoo. I cared little for other men, but Ihad to live straight in Otoo's eyes. Because of him I dared not tarnishmyself. He made me his ideal, compounding me, I fear, chiefly out of his ownlove and worship and there were times when I stood close to the steep pitch ofhell, and would have taken the plunge had not the thought of Otoo restrainedme. His pride in me entered into me, until it became one of the major rules inmy personal code to do nothing that would diminish that pride of his.Naturally, I did not learn right away what his feelings were toward me. Henever criticized, never censured; and slowly the exalted place I held in hiseyes dawned upon me, and slowly I grew to comprehend the hurt I could inflictupon him by being anything less than my best.For seventeen years we were together; for seventeen years he was at myshoulder, watching while I slept, nursing me through fever and wounds--ay, andreceiving wounds in fighting for me. He signed on the same ships with me; andtogether we ranged the Pacific from Hawaii to Sydney Head, and from TorresStraits to the Galapagos. We blackbirded from the New Hebrides and the LineIslands over to the westward clear through the Louisades, New Britain, NewIreland, and New Hanover. We were wrecked three times--in the Gilberts, in theSanta Cruz group, and in the Fijis. And we traded and salved wherever a dollarpromised in the way of pearl and pearl shell, copra, beche-de-mer, hawkbillturtle shell, and stranded wrecks.It began in Papeete, immediately after his announcement that he was going withme over all the sea, and the islands in the midst thereof. There was a club inthose days in Papeete, where the pearlers, traders, captains, and riffraff ofSouth Sea adventurers forgathered. The play ran high, and the drink ran high;and I am very much afraid that I kept later hours than were becoming orproper. No matter what the hour was when I left the club, there was Otoowaiting to see me safely home.At first I smiled; next I chided him. Then I told him flatly that I stood inneed of no wet-nursing. After that I did not see him when I came out of theclub. Quite by accident, a week or so later, I discovered that he still saw mehome, lurking across the street among the shadows of the mango trees. Whatcould I do? I know what I did do.Insensibly I began to keep better hours. On wet and stormy nights, in thethick of the folly and the fun, the thought would persist in coming to me ofOtoo keeping his dreary vigil under the dripping mangoes. Truly, he made abetter man of me. Yet he was not strait-laced. And he knew nothing of commonChristian morality. All the people on Bora Bora were Christians; but he was aheathen, the only unbeliever on the island, a gross materialist, who believedthat when he died he was dead. He believed merely in fair play and squaredealing. Petty meanness, in his code, was almost as serious as wantonhomicide; and I do believe that he respected a murderer more than a man givento small practices.Concerning me, personally, he objected to my doing anything that was hurtfulto me. Gambling was all right. He was an ardent gambler himself. But latehours, he explained, were bad for one's health. He had seen men who did nottake care of themselves die of fever. He was no teetotaler, and welcomed astiff nip any time when it was wet work in the boats. On the other hand, hebelieved in liquor in moderation. He had seen many men killed or disgraced bysquare-face or Scotch.Otoo had my welfare always at heart. He thought ahead for me, weighed myplans, and took a greater interest in them than I did myself. At first, when Iwas unaware of this interest of his in my affairs, he had to divine myintentions, as, for instance, at Papeete, when I contemplated going partnerswith a knavish fellow-countryman on a guano venture. I did not know he was aknave. Nor did any white man in Papeete. Neither did Otoo know, but he saw howthick we were getting, and found out for me, and without my asking him. Nativesailors from the ends of the seas knock about on the beach in Tahiti; andOtoo, suspicious merely, went among them till he had gathered sufficient datato justify his suspicions. Oh, it was a nice history, that of Randolph Waters.I couldn't believe it when Otoo first narrated it; but when I sheeted it hometo Waters he gave in without a murmur, and got away on the first steamer toAukland.At first, I am free to confess, I couldn't help resenting Otoo's poking hisnose into my business. But I knew that he was wholly unselfish; and soon I hadto acknowledge his wisdom and discretion. He had his eyes open always to mymain chance, and he was both keen-sighted and far-sighted. In time he becamemy counselor, until he knew more of my business than I did myself. He reallyhad my interest at heart more than I did. 'mine was the magnificentcarelessness of youth, for I preferred romance to dollars, and adventure to acomfortable billet with all night in. So it was well that I had some one tolook out for me. I know that if it had not been for Otoo, I should not be heretoday.Of numerous instances, let me give one. I had had some experience inblackbirding before I went pearling in the Paumotus. Otoo and I were on thebeach in Samoa--we really were on the beach and hard aground--when my chancecame to go as recruiter on a blackbird brig. Otoo signed on before the mast;and for the next half-dozen years, in as many ships, we knocked about thewildest portions of Melanesia. Otoo saw to it that he always pulled stroke-oarin my boat. Our custom in recruiting labor was to land the recruiter on thebeach. The covering boat always lay on its oars several hundred feet offshore, while the recruiter's boat, also lying on its oars, kept afloat on theedge of the beach. When I landed with my trade goods, leaving my steeringsweep apeak, Otoo left his stroke position and came into the stern sheets,where a Winchester lay ready to hand under a flap of canvas. The boat's crewwas also armed, the Sniders concealed under canvas flaps that ran the lengthof the gunwales.While I was busy arguing and persuading the woolly-headed cannibals to comeand labor on the Queensland plantations Otoo kept watch. And often and oftenhis low voice warned me of suspicious actions and impending treachery.Sometimes it was the quick shot from his rifle, knocking a nigger over, thatwas the first warning I received. And in my rush to the boat his hand wasalways there to jerk me flying aboard. Once, I remember, on Santa Anna, theboat grounded just as the trouble began. The covering boat was dashing to ourassistance, but the several score of savages would have wiped us out before itarrived. Otoo took a flying leap ashore, dug both hands into the trade goods,and scattered tobacco, beads, tomahawks, knives, and calicoes in alldirections.This was too much for the woolly-heads. While they scrambled for thetreasures, the boat was shoved clear, and we were aboard and forty feet away.And I got thirty recruits off that very beach in the next four hours.The particular instance I have in mind was on Malaita, the most savage islandin the easterly Solomons. The natives had been remarkably friendly; and howwere we to know that the whole village had been taking up a collection forover two years with which to buy a white man's head? The beggars are allhead-hunters, and they especially esteem a white man's head. The fellow whocaptured the head would receive the whole collection. As I say, they appearedvery friendly; and on this day I was fully a hundred yards down the beach fromthe boat. Otoo had cautioned me; and, as usual when I did not heed him, I cameto grief.The first I knew, a cloud of spears sailed out of the mangrove swamp at me. Atleast a dozen were sticking into me. I started to run, but tripped over onethat was fast in my calf, and went down. The woolly-heads made a run for me,each with a long-handled, fantail tomahawk with which to hack off my head.They were so eager for the prize that they got in one another's way. In theconfusion, I avoided several hacks by throwing myself right and left on thesand.Then Otoo arrived--Otoo the manhandler. In some way he had got hold of a heavywar club, and at close quarters it was a far more efficient weapon than arifle. He was right in the thick of them, so that they could not spear him,while their tomahawks seemed worse than useless. He was fighting for me, andhe was in a true Berserker rage. The way he handled that club was amazing.Their skulls squashed like overripe oranges. It was not until he had driventhem back, picked me up in his arms, and started to run, that he received hisfirst wounds. He arrived in the boat with four spear thrusts, got hisWinchester, and with it got a man for every shot. Then we pulled aboard theschooner, and doctored up.Seventeen years we were together. He made me. I should today be a supercargo,a recruiter, or a memory, if it had not been for him."You spend your money, and you go out and get more," he said one day. "It iseasy to get money now. But when you get old, your money will be spent, and youwill not be able to go out and get more. I know, master. I have studied theway of white men. On the beaches are many old men who were young once, and whocould get money just like you. Now they are old, and they have nothing, andthey wait about for the young men like you to come ashore and buy drinks forthem."The black boy is a slave on the plantations. He gets twenty dollars a year.He works hard. The overseer does not work hard.He rides a horse and watches the black boy work. He gets twelve hundreddollars a year. I am a sailor on the schooner. I get fifteen dollars a month.That is because I am a good sailor. I work hard. The captain has a doubleawning, and drinks beer out of long bottles. I have never seen him haul a ropeor pull an oar. He gets one hundred and fifty dollars a month. I am a sailor.He is a navigator. 'master, I think it would be very good for you to knownavigation."Otoo spurred me on to it. He sailed with me as second mate on my firstschooner, and he was far prouder of my command than I was myself. Later on itwas:"The captain is well paid, master; but the ship is in his keeping, and he isnever free from the burden. It is the owner who is better paid--the owner whosits ashore with many servants and turns his money over.""True, but a schooner costs five thousand dollars--an old schooner at that," Iobjected. "I should be an old man before I saved five thousand dollars.""There be short ways for white men to make money," he went on, pointing ashoreat the cocoanut-fringed beach.We were in the Solomons at the time, picking up a cargo of ivory nuts alongthe east coast of Guadalcanar."Between this river mouth and the next it is two miles," he said."The flat land runs far back. It is worth nothing now. Next year--whoknows?--or the year after, men will pay much money for that land. Theanchorage is good. Big steamers can lie close up. You can buy the land fourmiles deep from the old chief for ten thousand sticks of tobacco, ten bottlesof square-face, and a Snider, which will cost you, maybe, one hundred dollars.Then you place the deed with the commissioner; and the next year, or the yearafter, you sell and become the owner of a ship."I followed his lead, and his words came true, though in three years, insteadof two. Next came the grasslands deal on Guadalcanar--twenty thousand acres,on a governmental nine hundred and ninety-nine years' lease at a nominal sum.I owned the lease for precisely ninety days, when I sold it to a company forhalf a fortune. Always it was Otoo who looked ahead and saw the opportunity.He was responsible for the salving of the Doncaster--bought in at auction fora hundred pounds, and clearing three thousand after every expense was paid. Heled me into the Savaii plantation and the cocoa venture on Upolu.We did not go seafaring so much as in the old days. I was too well off. Imarried, and my standard of living rose; but Otoo remained the same old-timeOtoo, moving about the house or trailing through the office, his wooden pipein his mouth, a shilling undershirt on his back, and a four-shilling lava-lavaabout his loins. I could not get him to spend money. There was no way ofrepaying him except with love, and God knows he got that in full measure fromall of us. The children worshipped him; and if he had been spoilable, my wifewould surely have been his undoing.The children! He really was the one who showed them the way of their feet inthe world practical. He began by teaching them to walk. He sat up with themwhen they were sick. One by one, when they were scarcely toddlers, he tookthem down to the lagoon, and made them into amphibians. He taught them morethan I ever knew of the habits of fish and the ways of catching them. In thebush it was the same thing. At seven, Tom knew more woodcraft than I everdreamed existed. At six, Mary went over the Sliding Rock without a quiver, andI have seen strong men balk at that feat. And when Frank had just turned sixhe could bring up shillings from the bottom in three fathoms."My people in Bora Bora do not like heathen--they are all Christians; and I donot like Bora Bora Christians," he said one day, when I, with the idea ofgetting him to spend some of the money that was rightfully his, had beentrying to persuade him to make a visit to his own island in one of ourschooners--a special voyage which I had hoped to make a record breaker in thematter of prodigal expense.I say one of our schooners, though legally at the time they belonged to me. Istruggled long with him to enter into partnership."We have been partners from the day the Petite Jeanne went down," he said atlast. "But if your heart so wishes, then shall we become partners by the law.I have no work to do, yet are my expenses large. I drink and eat and smoke inplenty--it costs much, I know. I do not pay for the playing of billiards, forI play on your table; but still the money goes. Fishing on the reef is only arich man's pleasure. It is shocking, the cost of hooks and cotton line. Yes;it is necessary that we be partners by the law. I need the money. I shall getit from the head clerk in the office."So the papers were made out and recorded. A year later I was compelled tocomplain."Charley," said I, "you are a wicked old fraud, a miserly skinflint, amiserable land crab. Behold, your share for the year in all our partnershiphas been thousands of dollars. The head clerk has given me this paper. It saysthat in the year you have drawn just eighty-seven dollars and twenty cents.""Is there any owing me?" he asked anxiously."I tell you thousands and thousands," I answered.His face brightened, as with an immense relief."It is well," he said. "See that the head clerk keeps good account of it. WhenI want it, I shall want it, and there must not be a cent missing."If there is,:" he added fiercely, after a pause, "it must come out of theclerk's wages."And all the time, as I afterwards learned, his will, drawn up by Carruthers,and making me sole beneficiary, lay in the American consul's safe.But the end came, as the end must come to all human associations.It occurred in the Solomons, where our wildest work had been done in the wildyoung days, and where we were once more-- principally on a holiday,incidentally to look after our holdings on Florida Island and to look over thepearling possibilities of the Mboli Pass. We were lying at Savo, having run into trade for curios.Now, Savo is alive with sharks. The custom of the woolly-heads of buryingtheir dead in the sea did not tend to discourage the sharks from making theadjacent waters a hangout. It was my luck to be coming aboard in a tiny,overloaded, native canoe, when the thing capsized. There were fourwoolly-heads and myself in it, or rather, hanging to it. The schooner was ahundred yards away.I was just hailing for a boat when one of the woolly-heads began to scream.Holding on to the end of the canoe, both he and that portion of the canoe weredragged under several times. Then he loosed his clutch and disappeared. Ashark had got him.The three remaining niggers tried to climb out of the water upon the bottom ofthe canoe. I yelled and cursed and struck at the nearest with my fist, but itwas no use. They were in a blind funk. The canoe could barely have supportedone of them. Under the three it upended and rolled sidewise, throwing themback into the water.I abandoned the canoe and started to swim toward the schooner, expecting to bepicked up by the boat before I got there. One of the niggers elected to comewith me, and we swam along silently, side by side, now and again putting ourfaces into the water and peering about for sharks. The screams of the man whostayed by the canoe informed us that he was taken. I was peering into thewater when I saw a big shark pass directly beneath me. He was fully sixteenfeet in length. I saw the whole thing. He got the woolly-head by the middle,and away he went, the poor devil, head, shoulders, and arms out of the waterall the time, screeching in a heart-rending way. He was carried along in thisfashion for several hundred feet, when he was dragged beneath the surface.I swam doggedly on, hoping that that was the last unattached shark. But therewas another. Whether it was one that had attacked the natives earlier, orwhether it was one that had made a good meal elsewhere, I do not know. At anyrate, he was not in such haste as the others. I could not swim so rapidly now,for a large part of my effort was devoted to keeping track of him. I waswatching him when he made his first attack. By good luck I got both hands onhis nose, and, though his momentum nearly shoved me under, I managed to keephim off. He veered clear, and began circling about again. A second time Iescaped him by the same manoeuvre. The third rush was a miss on both sides. Hesheered at the moment my hands should have landed on his nose, but hissandpaper hide (I had on a sleeveless undershirt) scraped the skin off one armfrom elbow to shoulder.By this time I was played out, and gave up hope. The schooner was still twohundred feet away. My face was in the water, and I was watching him manoeuvrefor another attempt, when I saw a brown body pass between us. It was Otoo."Swim for the schooner, master!" he said. And he spoke gayly, as though theaffair was a mere lark. "I know sharks. The shark is my brother."I obeyed, swimming slowly on, while Otoo swam about me, keeping always betweenme and the shark, foiling his rushes and encouraging me."The davit tackle carried away, and they are rigging the falls," he explained,a minute or so later, and then went under to head off another attack.By the time the schooner was thirty feet away I was about done for. I couldscarcely move. They were heaving lines at us from on board, but theycontinually fell short. The shark, finding that it was receiving no hurt, hadbecome bolder. Several times it nearly got me, but each time Otoo was therejust the moment before it was too late. Of course, Otoo could have savedhimself any time. But he stuck by me."Good-by, Charley! I'm finished!" I just managed to gasp.I knew that the end had come, and that the next moment I should throw up myhands and go down.But Otoo laughed in my face, saying:"I will show you a new trick. I will make that shark feel sick!"He dropped in behind me, where the shark was preparing to come at me."A little more to the left!" he next called out. "There is a line there on thewater. To the left, master--to the left!"I changed my course and struck out blindly. I was by that time barelyconscious. As my hand closed on the line I heard an exclamation from on board.I turned and looked. There was no sign of Otoo. The next instant he brokesurface. Both hands were off at the wrist, the stumps spouting blood."Otoo!" he called softly. And I could see in his gaze the love that thrilledin his voice.Then, and then only, at the very last of all our years, he called me by thatname."Good-by, Otoo!" he called.Then he was dragged under, and I was hauled aboard, where I fainted in thecaptain's arms.And so passed Otoo, who saved me and made me a man, and who saved me in theend. We met in the maw of a hurricane, and parted in the maw of a shark, withseventeen intervening years of comradeship, the like of which I dare to asserthas never befallen two men, the one brown and the other white. If Jehovah befrom His high place watching every sparrow fall, not least in His kingdomshall be Otoo, the one heathen of Bora Bora.

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