“What dialect does he speak?” I asked Father.
“One that you don’t know, so for once you won’t be able to hog the conversation—French!” I had never heard of a French dialect. I knew all the easy languages,—Samoan, Marquesan, Gilbertina, etc. but French was some savage language foreign to me. I wasn’t going to be left out of the greetings, so I hollered as loud as I could: “Hello you!”
The native was right under the stern. At the sound of my voice he looked up. I smiled down at him. “Hello again to you,” I said, and I smiled my best native trading smile. The native, who was a white Frenchman, stared up at me as if I were an apparition. He opened his lips as if to speak, his face flushed under its brown and he turned in the water as if struck by a bullet and swam back for the shore. Father called to him to stop. On he plunged back towards the island, and never once looked back.
“What in hell’s the matter with him?” asked Father of no one in particular.
“Female struck,” spoke up the mate. “These guys spend a lifetime on the islands alone and the sight of Joan with her exposed neck and shoulders and the curves around her hips set him nutty.”
“What was he afraid of me for?” I wanted to know. “I didn’t say anything except hello to him.”
“There’s a lot of things you got to learn about men, Skipper. I seen cases like this before. Sometimes the sight of a female drives them so crazy they kill themselves.”
At that time I couldn’t understand the mate’s explanation. Why should a man be afraid of me? Father sent the mate and three sailors ashore to make the dicker for the cargo. When they returned the mate asked to speak to Father alone. It was obvious that he did not intend for me to know what he had to tell.
I was determined to know, however, so Father took me down into the cabin and explained:
“A man isn’t complete without the love of a woman, some time in his life, Joan. A seagull can’t fly with one wing, and neither can human beings really live alone by themselves and be whole. That man was convicted of a crime in France when he was a young boy about nineteen. The French Government, instead of sendin’ him to Devil’s Island for life, gave him the choice of workin’ for a lifetime on this island. He lives worse than an animal in the foul atmosphere of bird manure. He eats nothin’ but bird eggs and raw fish, and him just catchin’ the sight of you made the man in him realize his aloneness.”