I hid my smile, and answered that it was well.

We parted at Papeete.  I remained ashore to recuperate; and he went on in a cutter to his own island, Bora Bora.  Six weeks later he was back.  I was surprised, for he had told me of his wife, and said that he was returning to her, and would give over sailing on far voyages.

“Where do you go, master?” he asked after our first greetings.

I shrugged my shoulders.  It was a hard question.

“All the world,” was my answer—­“all the world, all the sea, and all the islands that are in the sea.”

“I will go with you,” he said simply.  “My wife is dead.”

I never had a brother; but from what I have seen of other men’s brothers, I doubt if any man ever had a brother that was to him what Otoo was to me.  He was brother and father and mother as well.  And this I know:  I lived a straighter and better man because of Otoo.  I cared little for other men, but I had to live straight in Otoo’s eyes.  Because of him I dared not tarnish myself.  He made me his ideal, compounding me, I fear, chiefly out of his own love and worship; and there were times when I stood close to the steep pitch of Hades, and would have taken the plunge had not the thought of Otoo restrained me.  His pride in me entered into me, until it became one of the major rules in my personal code to do nothing that would diminish that pride of his.

Naturally, I did not learn right away what his feelings were toward me.  He never criticised, never censured; and slowly the exalted place I held in his eyes dawned upon me, and slowly I grew to comprehend the hurt I could inflict upon him by being anything less than my best.

For seventeen years we were together; for seventeen years he was at my shoulder, watching while I slept, nursing me through fever and wounds—­ay, and receiving wounds in fighting for me.  He signed on the same ships with me; and together we ranged the Pacific from Hawaii to Sydney Head, and from Torres Straits to the Galapagos.  We blackbirded from the New Hebrides and the Line Islands over to the westward clear through the Louisades, New Britain, New Ireland, and New Hanover.  We were wrecked three times—­in the Gilberts, in the Santa Cruz group, and in the Fijis.  And we traded and salved wherever a dollar promised in the way of pearl and pearl-shell, copra, beche-de-mer, hawkbill turtle-shell, and stranded wrecks.

It began in Papeete, immediately after his announcement that he was going with me over all the sea, and the islands in the midst thereof.  There was a club in those days in Papeete, where the pearlers, traders, captains, and riffraff of South Sea adventurers foregathered.  The play ran high, and the drink ran high; and I am very much afraid that I kept later hours than were becoming or proper.  No matter what the hour was when I left the club, there was Otoo waiting to see me safely home.

At first I smiled; next I chided him.  Then I told him flatly that I stood in need of no wet-nursing.  After that I did not see him when I came out of the club.  Quite by accident, a week or so later, I discovered that he still saw me home, lurking across the street among the shadows of the mango-trees.  What could I do?  I know what I did do.