But it was the mother of Samoa, who at a still earlier day had punctured him through and through in still another direction.  The middle cartilage of his nose was slightly pendent, peaked, and Gothic, and perforated with a hole; in which, like a Newfoundland dog carrying a cane, Samoa sported a trinket:  a well polished nail.

In other respects he was equally a coxcomb.  In his style of tattooing, for instance, which seemed rather incomplete; his marks embracing but a vertical half of his person, from crown to sole; the other side being free from the slightest stain.  Thus clapped together, as it were, he looked like a union of the unmatched moieties of two distinct beings; and your fancy was lost in conjecturing, where roamed the absent ones.  When he turned round upon you suddenly, you thought you saw some one else, not him whom you had been regarding before.

But there was one feature in Samoa beyond the reach of the innovations of art:—­his eye; which in civilized man or savage, ever shines in the head, just as it shone at birth.  Truly, our eyes are miraculous things.  But alas, that in so many instances, these divine organs should be mere lenses inserted into the socket, as glasses in spectacle rims.

But my Islander had a soul in his eye; looking out upon you there, like somebody in him.  What an eye, to be sure!  At times, brilliantly changeful as opal; in anger, glowing like steel at white heat.

Belisarius, be it remembered, had but very recently lost an arm.  But you would have thought he had been born without it; so Lord Nelson-like and cavalierly did he sport the honorable stump.

But no more of Samoa; only this:  that his name had been given him by a sea-captain; to whom it had been suggested by the native designation of the islands to which he belonged; the Saviian or Samoan group, otherwise known as the Navigator Islands.  The island of Upolua, one of that cluster, claiming the special honor of his birth, as Corsica does Napoleon’s, we shall occasionally hereafter speak of Samoa as the Upoluan; by which title he most loved to be called.

It is ever ungallant to pass over a lady.  But what shall be said of Annatoo?  As I live, I can make no pleasing portrait of the dame; for as in most ugly subjects, flattering would but make the matter worse.  Furthermore, unalleviated ugliness should ever go unpainted, as something unnecessary to duplicate.  But the only ugliness is that of the heart, seen through the face.  And though beauty be obvious, the only loveliness is invisible.

CHAPTER XXXI Rovings Alow And Aloft

Every one knows what a fascination there is in wandering up and down in a deserted old tenement in some warm, dreamy country; where the vacant halls seem echoing of silence, and the doors creak open like the footsteps of strangers; and into every window the old garden trees thrust their dark boughs, like the arms of night-burglars; and ever and anon the nails start from the wainscot; while behind it the mice rattle like dice.  Up and down in such old specter houses one loves to wander; and so much the more, if the place be haunted by some marvelous story.