months in recovering from the bit of man-handling he received
that afternoon on Apia beach.

But I am running ahead of my yarn. We shared the hatch-cover
between us. We took turn and turn about, one lying flat on the
cover and resting, while the other, submerged to the neck, merely
held on with his hands. For three days and nights, spell and
spell, on the cover and in the water, we drifted over the ocean.
Toward the last I was delirious most of the time, and there were
times, too, when I heard Otoo babbling and raving in his native
tongue. Our continuous immersion prevented us from dying of
thirst, though the sea water and the sunshine gave us the
prettiest imaginable combination of salt pickle and sunburn. In
the end, Otoo saved MY life; for I came to, lying on the beach
twenty feet from the water, sheltered from the sun by a couple of
cocoanut leaves. No one but Otoo could have dragged me there and
stuck up the leaves for shade. He was lying beside me. I went off
again, and the next time I came around it was cool and starry
night and Otoo was pressing a drinking cocoanut to my lips.

We were the sole survivors of the Petite Jeanne. Captain Oudouse
must have succumbed to exhaustion, for several days later his
hatch-cover drifted ashore without him. Otoo and I lived with the
natives of the atoll for a week, when we were rescued by a French
cruiser and taken to Tahiti. In the meantime, however, we had
performed the ceremony of exchanging names. In the South Seas
such a ceremony binds two men closer together than
blood-brothership. The initiative had been mine, and Otoo was
rapturously delighted when I suggested it.