Never was a match in Apia that gave a rosier promise of success. Silver Tongue, so called by the Samoans on account of his beautiful voice (but who in ordinary life answered to the homelier appellation of Oppenstedt), had been making a very good thing out of the Southern Cross Bakery, and was regarded throughout Apia as a man of responsibility and substance. He was a tall, spare German of about forty, who, like the most of us, had followed the sea before fate had brought him to the islands, there in years gone by to marry a Samoan maid and settle down. The little Samoan had died, leaving behind her nothing but a memory in Silver Tongue's heart, a tangled grave in the foreign cemetery, and a host of relations who lived in tumble-down quarters in the rear of the bakery. In one way and another these hungry mouths must have been a considerable drain on Silver Tongue's resources; and though they feebly responded to his bounty--one by driving a natty cart and delivering hot morning rolls, and another by pilfering firewood for the furnace--the account (if one had been made) was far from even. But to any objection to this Quixotic generosity Silver Tongue had a reply ever ready on his lips. "I lofe dem like my fader," he would say in his deep, fluty voice, and the conversation was seldom carried further. When it was--by some one ill advised enough to do so--Silver Tongue would flare up, and recall with flashing eyes and a face crimson with indignation the ten-year debt of gratitude he owed his dead wife's _ainga_.
Indeed, if Silver Tongue had a fault it was a certain moroseness and fierceness of temper, a readiness and even an apparent pleasure in taking offense, that made him somewhat of a solitary in our midst and threw him more than ever on the companionship of his own Kanakas; so that at night, when one had occasion to seek him out, he was usually to be found on the mats of his native house, smoking his pipe or playing _sweepy_ with his bulky father-in-law, Papalangi Mativa. I doubt if he had another intimate in Apia besides myself, and though I must confess we often disagreed, and once or twice approached the verge of estrangement, I was too much his friend and too mindful of the old days on the _Ransom_ to let such trifles come between us.