Solepa
The last strokes of the bell for evening service had scarce died away when I heard a footstep on the pebbly path, and old Pâkía, staff in hand and pipe dangling from his pendulous ear-lobe, walked quietly up the steps and sat down cross-legged on the verandah. All my own people had gone to church and the house was very quiet.
"Good evening, Pâkía," I said in English, "how are you, old man?"
A smile lit up the brown, old, wrinkled face as he heard my voice—for I was lying down in the sitting-room, smoking my after-supper pipe—as he answered in the island dialect that he was well, but that his house was in darkness and he, being lonely, had come over to sit with me awhile.
"That is well, Pâkía, for I too am lonely, and who so good as thee to talk with when the mind is heavy and the days are long, and no sail cometh up from the sea-rim? Come, sit here within the doorway, for the night wind is chill; and fill thy pipe."
He came inside as I rose and turned up the lamp so that its light shone full on his bald, bronzed head
and deeply tatooed arms and shoulders. Laying down his polished staff of temana wood, he came over to me, placed his hand on my arm, patted it gently, and then his kindly old eyes sought mine.