He knew his Hawaiians from the outside
and the in, knew them better than themselves, their Polynesian
circumlocutions, faiths, customs, and mysteries.
And at seventy-one, after a morning in the saddle over the ranges
that began at four o'clock, he lay under the monkey-pods in his
customary and sacred siesta that no retainer dared to break, nor
would dare permit any equal of the great one to break. Only to the
King was such a right accorded, and, as the King had early learned,
to break Hardman Pool's siesta was to gain awake a very irritable
and grumpy Hardman Pool who would talk straight from the shoulder
and say unpleasant but true things that no king would care to hear.
The sun blazed down. The horses stamped remotely. The fading
trade-wind wisps sighed and rustled between longer intervals of
quiescence. The perfume grew heavier. The woman brought back the
babe, quiet again, to the rear of the house. The monkey-pods
folded their leaves and swooned to a siesta of their own in the
soft air above the sleeper. The girl, breathless as ever from the
enormous solemnity of her task, still brushed the flies away; and
the score of cowboys still intently and silently watched.
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