"Between this river mouth and the next it is two miles," he said.
"The flat land runs far back. It is worth nothing now. Next
year--who knows!--or the year after--men will pay much money for
that land. The anchorage is good. Big steamers can lie close up.
You can buy the land four miles deep from the old chief for ten
thousand sticks of tobacco, ten bottles of squareface, and a
Snider, which will cost you maybe one hundred dollars. Then you
place the deed with the commissioner, and the next year, or the
year after, you sell and become the owner of a ship."

I followed his lead, and his words came true, though in three
years instead of two. Next came the grass-lands deal on
Guadalcanar--twenty thousand acres on a governmental nine hundred
and ninety-nine years' lease at a nominal sum. I owned the lease
for precisely ninety days, when I sold it to the Moonlight Soap
crowd for half a fortune. Always it was Otoo who looked ahead and
saw the opportunity. He was responsible for the salving of the
Doncaster--bought in at auction for five hundred dollars and
clearing fifteen thousand after every expense was paid. He led me
into the Savaii plantation and the cocoa venture on Upolu.

We did not go seafaring so much as in the old days now. I was too
well off. I married and my standard of living rose; but Otoo
remained the same old-time Otoo, moving about the house or
trailing through the office, his wooden pipe in his mouth, a
shilling undershirt on his back, and a four-shilling lava-lava
about his loins. I could not get him to spend money. There was no
way of repaying him except with love, and God knows he got that
in full measure from all of us. The children worshiped him, and