Chapter 30

Hints For A Full Length Of Samoa

My original intention to touch at the Kingsmill Chain, or the
countries adjacent, was greatly strengthened by thus encountering
Samoa; and the more I had to do with my Belisarius, the more I was
pleased with him. Nor could I avoid congratulating myself, upon
having fallen in with a hero, who in various ways, could not fail of
proving exceedingly useful.

Like any man of mark, Samoa best speaks for himself; but we may as
well convey some idea of his person. Though manly enough, nay, an
obelisk in stature, the savage was far from being sentimentally
prepossessing. Be not alarmed; but he wore his knife in the lobe of
his dexter ear, which, by constant elongation almost drooped upon his
shoulder. A mode of sheathing it exceedingly handy, and far less
brigandish than the Highlander's dagger concealed in his leggins.

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