t his native skin, retired
shoreward with the parrakeet. An old chief, his head white with lime,
after a prolonged nose-rubbing with those on shore, marched out to the
boat, carrying an umbrella above his stately head. There were more
farewells in shallow water, more running to and fro; a brief
reappearance of the undecided parrakeet. The young men took their places
at the thwarts, the old chief settled the tiller on the rudder head, the
women, girls, and children crowded in wherever they could, and then,
amid shouts and cheers, the paddles dipped and the boat moved slowly
seaward.

Wilson watched it all with sullen envy. How was it that these brown
savages were free, and he barnacled to a slab-sided bark? Was he not a
white man, and their superior? Did he not look down at them from the
heights of the world's ruling race, kindly, tolerantly, contemptuously,
as one does on children? And yet who had the best of it, by God? Listen
to the dip of the paddles; hear the mellow chorus that times the
rowers' strokes; not a care on board, not a face that was not smiling!
His white superiority! They might have it! His lonely and toiling life!
What fool among them would exchange with him? His wages? Look at _them_!
They had none and wanted none; and as like as not they were putting to
sea without a dollar among the crowd. Civilization--hell! He would give
all his share of it for a place in that there boat, to drive a paddle
with the rest of them; to be, what he wished to God he had been born, a
durned Kanaka!

The whaleboat drew swiftly toward him as though to go beneath the bark
on her way to the pass. The paddles leaped to a rousing song and crashed
in unison on the slopping gunwales. Dip, swish, bang! and then the
accentuated thunder of forty voices, the men's hoarse and straining, the
women's rich, falsetto, and musical. In the stern the old chief swayed
with every rush of the boat, one sinewy hand clinched on the tiller, the
other enfolding a little child. In the bow a handsome boy stood erect
and graceful, throwing a rifle in the air and dancing to the song of his
comrades. Dip, swish, bang! On they came with an increasing roar, the
white water splashing under their bow.

Wilson dropped his brush and looked on with open mouth. Great Caesar! he
knew that old fellar in the stern. He had smoked pipes with him in the
Samoa house by the bridge. And that girl there, who was waving and
shaking her hand to him, that was little Fet