But Otoo laughed in my face, saying:
"I will show you a new trick. I will make that shark damn sick."
He dropped in behind me, where the shark was preparing to come at
me.
"A little more to the left," he next called out. "There is a line
there on the water. To the left, master, to the left."
I changed my course and struck out blindly. I was by that time
barely conscious. As my hand closed on the line I heard an
exclamation from on board. I turned and looked. There was no sign
of Otoo. The next instant he broke surface. Both hands were off
at the wrist, the stumps spouting blood.
"Otoo," he called softly, and I could see in his gaze the love
that thrilled in his voice. Then, and then only, at the very last
of all our years, he called me by that name.
"Good by, Otoo," he called.
Then he was dragged under, and I was hauled aboard, where I
fainted in the captain's arms.
And so passed Otoo, who saved me and made me a man, and who saved
me in the end. We met in the maw of a hurricane and parted in the
maw of a shark, with seventeen intervening years of comradeship
the like of which I dare to assert have never befallen two men,
the one brown and the other white.
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