"And do you for a moment think," he said with a strange, writhen smile, "dat all dis talk and domfoolery will a gruel murder undo, and the young man cut off in his brime restore? Weel those lips, so gold in death, stir, think you, in the box where we laid him? Will my dead wife's family be less bereaved because of two kegs of peef and three tins of biscuit, or Rosalie's family less disgraced because her uncle was triced through the streets like a big? No, Gaptain Branscombe, I'm only a poor paker, but I'd count myself a traidor to my family were I to dake a murderess for my pride!"
"Rosalie isn't a murderess," I said.
"I meant niece of a murderer," he returned.
I was too speechless with indignation to utter another word. In the course of sixty years on this planet I've seen many kinds of men, and I've learned to detect in some a certain look about the eyes—a curious light and a far-away dreaminess of expression—that seems always the sign or mark of an unflinching obstinacy. I remember that self-same look on Brand's face as we lay all flattened on the water tanks of the Moroa, and he blew the main deck off the ship together with three hundred human beings; and I guess the Christian martyrs had it, too, when lions tore them to pieces and bulls kited them on their horns in the Colosseum. Anyway, it was as plain as daylight that I had lost my time and money in bothering about Oppenstedt, and that I might as well give him up as the most incorrigible, stiff-necked, self-opinionated, blunder-headed ass and lunatic this side of Muggin.
I gave him a wide berth after this, and took the other side of the street when I saw him coming; while he, for his part, would have cheerfully run a mile for the chance of avoiding me. I had cares of my own, too, about this time, what with the loss of the Daisy Walker, and my libel suit with Grevsmuhl, and other things to think about than that of bringing twin souls together. So the days drifted on and months came and went, and it seemed all over for good between Rosalie and Silver Tongue. Then that labor captain turned up again, him I had had trouble with before, a black-eyed, fierce, handsome little fellow, who was hotter than ever after my girl. Rosalie was just in the humor to do something awful, for she was desperately unhappy, with spells of wild gayety between, and a recklessness about herself that frightened me more than I can tell. She laughed in my face when I warned her about the labor captain, and told me straight out she was only a half-caste and it didn't matter what became of her. And from the way she carried on and got herself talked about from one end of the beach to the other, it began to look as though she meant what she said. Altogether I felt pretty blue about her, and savage enough against Silver Tongue to have—Well, what on earth could I do? What could anybody do? Why had God ever made such a silly ass of a baker?
One day I got a note from Sasa French that took me up to Malifa at a tearing run. Scanlon, the half-caste policeman, was there, and when I had listened to his story I threw my hat in the air and shouted like a boy, and Sasa and I waltzed up and down the veranda to the petrifaction of two missionary ladies who happened to be passing in tow of some square-toes from the Home Society. Sasa and I plumped into a buggy, and with Scanlon on horseback pounding behind us we made all sail for Seumanutafa's. Bidding him follow, we then raced off to Mulinu'u, where, sure enough, we found a young man named Tautala in one of the houses, who brought out the music box and very soon satisfied me as to the truth of what Scanlon had said. Then at a slower pace, so that Tautala might keep up with us, we walked to To'oto'o's house and taxed him with the whole business!
At first he made some show of denying it, but what could he say with Scanlon and Tautala in risen witness against him? He tried to refuse to come with us (which would have spoiled everything), until Scanlon took a hand in the fray and let his imagination run riot about the law, which, as he was the official representative of it and wore a pewter star on his breast, soon settled To'oto'o's half-hearted objections. If anything else were wanted, it was the arrival at this juncture of Seumanutafa at the head of a dozen retainers, who added the finishing stroke to the little resistance To'oto'o had left. Then we all started off for the Southern Cross Bakery, and, as we walked slowly and naturally, attracted a good deal of attention; and as we told every one we met where we were going to, and why, we grew and grew until, as I looked down the procession, I couldn't see the end of it. The Chief Justice was sucked in. Likewise the President. Marquardt, the chief of police, joined us; Haggard, the land commissioner; some Mormon missionaries; two lay brothers from the school; a lot of passengers from the mail boat, with handkerchiefs stuck into their sweaty collars; Captain Hufnagel on horseback, with a small army of Guadalcanaar laborers; half the synod of the Wesleyan church in white lavalavas and hymn-books; a picnic party that had just returned (not wholly sober) from the Papase'ea; blue-jackets from the Sperber; blue-jackets from the Walleroo; three survivors of the British bark Windsor Castle, burned at sea; a German scientist in Jaeger costume, with blue spectacles and a butterfly net; six whole boatloads of an aumoenga party from Manu'a; a lot of political prisoners on parole; two lepers, and Charley Taylor!
It was well we had brought Marquardt with us, for he and his police caught the humor of the thing, and on reaching the bakery formed us up in a great hollow square with one side blank for Silver Tongue, who stood and gazed at us transfixed from the shade of his veranda. Then Seumanutafa, Sasa, Scanlon, Tautala, To'oto'o, and I broke ranks and marched up to him.
"Old man," I said, "if you were to think a year you'd never guess what brought us here to-day!"
"It's O's head again," he said, grinding his teeth and casting a vitriolic glance at To'oto'o, "and if there was any law or order in this Godforsaken land"—he looked daggers at the Chief Justice as he said this—"that fellar would have got short jift for murdering my fader-in-law's aunt's son!"