e, that I alone saw it. I
could not credit the testimony of my senses. It was too incredibly
horrible. Yet there it was, on his brow, on his ears. I had seen it,
the slight puff of the earlobes--oh, so imperceptibly slight. I watched
it for months. Then, next, hoping against hope, the darkening of the
skin above both eyebrows--oh, so faint, just like the dimmest touch of
sunburn. I should have thought it sunburn but that there was a shine to
it, such an invisible shine, like a little highlight seen for a moment
and gone the next. I tried to believe it was sunburn, only I could not.
I knew better. No one noticed it but me. No one ever noticed it except
Stephen Kaluna, and I did not know that till afterward. But I saw it
coming, the whole damnable, unnamable awfulness of it; but I refused to
think about the future. I was afraid. I could not. And of nights I
cried over it.

"He was my friend. We fished sharks on Niihau together. We hunted wild
cattle on Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa. We broke horses and branded steers on
the Carter Ranch. We hunted goats through Haleakala. He taught me
diving and surfing until I was nearly as clever as he, and he was
cleverer than the average Kanaka. I have seen him dive in fifteen
fathoms, and he could stay down two minutes. He was an amphibian and a
mountaineer. He could climb wherever a goat dared climb. He was afraid
of nothing. He was on the wrecked _Luga_, and he swam thirty miles in
thirty-six hours in a heavy sea. He could fight his way out through
breaking combers that would batter you and me to a jelly. He was a
great, glorious man-god. We went through the Revolution together. We
were both romantic loyalists. He was shot twice and sentenced to death.
But he was too great a man for the republicans to kill. He laughed at
them. Later, they gave him honour and made him Sheriff of Kona. He was
a simple man, a boy that never grew up. His was no intricate brain
pattern. He had no twists nor quirks in his mental processes. He went
straight to the point, and his points were always simple.

"And he was sanguine. Never have I known so confident a man, nor a man
so satisfied and happy. He did not ask anything from life. There was
nothing left to be desired. For him life had no arrears. He had been
paid in full, cash down, and in advance. What more could he possibly
desire than that magnificent body, that iron constitution, that immunity
from all ordinary i