“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 of you. Whenever men call me by name, I shall think of you. And beyond the sky and 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 a cutter to his own island, Bora Bora. Six weeks later he was back. I was surprised, for he had told me of his wife, and said that he was returning to her, 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 the islands 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, I doubt if any man ever had a brother that was to him what Otoo was to me. He was brother and father and mother as well. And this I know: I lived a straighter and better man because of Otoo. I cared little for other men, but I had to live straight in Otoo's eyes. Because of him I dared not tarnish myself. He made me his ideal, compounding me, I fear, chiefly out of his own love and worship and there were times when I stood close to the steep pitch of hell, and would have taken the plunge had not the thought of Otoo restrained me. His pride in me entered into me, until it became one of the major rules in my personal code to do nothing that would diminish that pride of his.