“‘I will drink no more,’ he cried. ‘My father is dead, and my brother. I am the chief of my tribe. I have land and houses and everything good in my own island, but, alas! I have this!’
“He pointed to the black shark upon his forehead, and then he shouted out harsh words in his own language. I left him, for he was like one from whom the spirit has gone, but who still lives. I thought of the strangeness of tribes. In ours he was a noble and honored man for that shark, and yet in his own as hateful as the barefaced man here. Man is, as the wind cloud, but a shifting vapor.
“Often, a hundred times, I saw him sitting by the pool and gazing into it as though to wash out by his glances the marks on his countenance. He was as deep in the mire of despair as the victim awaiting the oven. Nature’s mirror showed him why he could not leave for his land and his chieftaincy. And, American, for a woman, too. I saw him many times look at that tiki and read the words. Maybe he had fled from her in anger. Now he was great among his people, and she called him. Maybe. My own heart was heavy for him when he fixed his eyes on that still water.
“After weeks of melancholy he summoned me one day.
“‘Taua,’ he said, ‘is there no magic, no other ink, no bones, that will quit me of this?’
“He swept his hand over his face.
“‘I will give you my gun, my canoe, my coats, and I will send you by the ship barrels of rum and many things of wonder.’
“He took my hand, and the tears followed the lines of the tattooing down his cheeks.
“‘Tokihi,’ I replied, ‘no man in the Marquesas has ever wanted to take from his skin that which made him great to his race, yet there is a legend that wanders through my stomach. I will consult the lodge. It would be magic, and it may be tapu.’
“The next day I found him lying on his paepae, his face down. He was a leaf that slowly withers.