His figure was the bulky one of the trained athlete, stocky and tremendously powerful, his hide that of an extreme blond burned by months of a tropic sun upon salt water. His hair was an aureole, yellow as a sunflower, a bush of it on a bullet-head. And, incredible almost—as if made of putty by a joker—his nose stuck out like the first joint of a thumb, the oddest nose ever on a man. His little eyes were blue and bright. Barefooted, bare-headed, in the sleeveless shirt and short trousers of a life-guard, with an embroidered V on the front of the upper garment, he was radiantly healthy and happy, a civilized being returned to nature's ways.
Though he did not recognize me, I knew him instantly for a trainer and beach-patrol of Southern California, a diver for planted shells at Catalina Island, whom I had first seen plunging from the rafters of a swimming-tank, and I remembered that he had flattened his nose by striking the bottom, and that a skilful surgeon had saved him its remnant.
He had with him a bundle in a towel, and setting it down on my paepae, introduced himself nonchalantly as Broken Bronck, “Late manager of the stable of native fighters of the Count de M—— of the island of Tahaa, near Tahiti.”
“I'm here to stay,” he said carelessly. “I have a few francs, and I hear they're pretty hospitable in the Markeesies. I came on the deck of the Saint François, and I've brung my things ashore.”
He undid the towel, and there rolled out another bathing-suit and a set of boxing gloves. These were his sole possessions, he said.
“I hear they're nutty on prizefighting like in Tahiti, and I'll teach 'em boxing,” he explained.
The Marquesan ladies who speedily assembled could not take their eyes from him. They asked me a score of questions about him, and were not surprised that I knew him, or even that I called the negro by name when he sauntered up. We must all be from the same valley, or at least from the same island, they thought, for were we not all Americans?
I kept Broken Bronck to luncheon, and gave him what few household furnishings I had not promised to Exploding Eggs or to Apporo, who with the promise of the Golden Bed about to be realized—for I announced my going—camped upon it, hardly believing that at last she was to own the coveted marvel. Some keepsakes I gave to Malicious Gossip, Mouth of God, Many Daughters, Water, Titihuti, and others, and drank a last shell of namu with these friends.
News of my packing reached far and wide. I had not estimated so optimistically the esteem in which they held me, these companions of many months, but they trooped from the farthest hills to say farewell. Good-byes even to the sons and daughters of cannibals are sorrowful. I had come to think much of these simple, savage neighbors. Some of them I shall never forget.
Mauitetai, a middle-aged woman with a kindly face, was long on my paepae. Her name would be in English My Darling Hope, and it well fitted her mood, for she was all aglow with wonder and joy at receiving a letter from her son, who three years before had gone upon a ship and disappeared from her ken. The letter had come upon the Saint François, and it brought My Darling Hope into intimate relations with me, for I uncovered to her that her wandering boy had become a resident of my own country, and revealed some of the mysteries of our polity.