"'What's up with him?' I ask her.
"She says somethin' in Mexican—or some language, anyway. But I see she don't know any more 'n me.—It's just like this. The current's gone out o' the wire.—Last I ever see of 'em, she's leadin' him off in the sunrise toward the box cars—leadin' him by the hand.—Now did you ever hear a funnier experience than that to happen to a man?"
"No," I said, "I never did."
"You had to pity him," he added.
"Yes," I agreed.—And I could think of her leading him by the hand.
I saw Signet again. It was on my first and last voyage to the Marquesas. Under the shadow of a mountain, on a stone platform facing the sea, sat Signet, quite nude save for a loin cloth, and with an unequivocal black beard falling down on his breast. There was a calmness about him.
"How did you come here?" I asked, at length.
"She wanted it," he said.
"She's a wonderful woman," he said to me, "a wonderful woman. She would do anything for me, Dole. Anything! We've got a kid."
I made shift to get in a question I had carried long in mind. "Somebody beat you out at Papeete, then, after all?"