He had that indefinable, yet certain, air of superiority, of assured position and knowledge, that stamps a few men in the world—­a Yuan Shih Kai, Rabindranath Tagore, Sitting Bull, and Porfirio Diaz.  He wore only a pareu, and was tattooed from toenails to hair-roots.  A solid mass of coloring extended from his neck to the hip on the left side, as though he wore half of a blue shirt.  The tahuna who had done the work seemed to have drawn outlines and then blocked in the half of his torso.  But remembering that every pin-point of color had meant the thrust of a bone needle propelled by the blow of a mallet, I realized that Kahauiti had endured much for his decorations.  No iron or Victoria Cross could cost more suffering.

The bare half of his bosom, cooperish-red, contrasted with this cobalt, and his face was striped alternately with this natural color and with blue.  Two inches of the ama ink ran across the eyes from ear to ear, covering every inch of lid and eyebrow, and from this seeming bandage his eyes gleamed with quick and alert intelligence.  Other stripes crossed the face from temple to chin, the lowest joining the field of blue that stretched to his waist.

His beard, long, heavy, and snow-white, swept downward over the indigo flesh and was gathered into a knot on his massive chest.  It was the beard of a prophet or a seer, and when Kahauiti rose to his full height, six feet and a half, he was as majestic as a man in diadem and royal robes.  He had a giant form, like one of Buonarroti’s ancients, muscular and supple, graceful and erect.

When I was presented as a Menike who loved the Marquesans and who, having heard of Kahauiti, would drink of his fountain of recollections, the old man looked at me intently.  His eyes twinkled and he opened his mouth in a broad smile, showing all his teeth, sound and white.  His smile was kindly, disarming, of a real sweetness that conquered me immediately, so that, foolishly perhaps, I would have trusted him if he had suggested a stroll in the jungle.

He took my extended hand, but did not shake it.  So new is handshaking and so foreign to their ideas of greeting, that they merely touch fingers, with the pressure a rich man gives a poor relation, or a king, a commoner.  His affability was that of a monarch to a courtier, but when he began to talk he soon became simple and merry.

Motioning me to a seat on the mat before him, he squatted again in a dignified manner, and resumed his task of plaiting a rope of faufee bark, a rope an inch thick and perfectly made.

“Mouth of God, of the family of Sliced and Distributed and Man Whose Entrails Were Roasted On A Stick, has told me of the slaying of Tufetu, their ancestor,” I ventured, to steer our bark of conversation into the channel I sought.

At the names of the first three, Kahauiti smiled, but when Tufetu was mentioned, he broke into a roar.  I had evidently recalled proud memories.  On his haunches, he slid nearer to me.