The ancient chuckled, and his wrinkled old face beamed as he untwisted a black and stumpy clay from his perforated and pendulous ear-lobe, which hung full down upon his shoulder, and, turning it upside down, tapped the palm of his left hand with it.
"See!" he said, with another wheezing, half-whispered, half-strangled laugh, "see and hear the emptiness thereof! Nothing has been in its belly since cockcrow. And until now have I hungered for a smoke. Twice did I think to come to thee to-day and ask thee for kaitalafu (credit) for five sticks of tobacco, but I said to my pipe, 'Nay, let us wait till night time.' For see, friend of my heart, there are ever greedy eyes which watch the coming and going of a poor old man; and had I gotten the good God-given tobacco from thee by daylight, friends would arise all around me as I passed through the village to my house. And then, lo, the five sticks would become but one!"
"Pâkia," I said in English, as I gave him a piece of tobacco and my knife, "you are a philosopher."
He stopped suddenly, and placing one hand on my knee, looked wistfully into my face, as an inquiring child looks into the eyes of its mother.
"Tell me, what is that?"
I tried to find a synonym. "It means that you are a tagata poto —a wise man."
The old, brown, bald head nodded, and the dark, merry eyes danced.
"Aye, aye. Old I may be, and useless, but I have lived—I have lived. And though when I am dead my children and grandchildren will make a tagi over me, I shall laugh, for I know that of one hundred tears, ninety and nine will be for the tobacco and the biscuit and the rice that with me will vanish!"
He filled and lit his pipe, and then, raising one skinny, tattooed arm, pointed to the moon.
"Hast such a moon as that in papalagi land?"