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Updated: July 10, 2025
All was now ready for their departure, and their native friends gathered from far and wide to take part in what was for them an event of mournful significance. Tusitala's widow was not permitted to go out to the waiting vessel in the ordinary boat, but was taken by the high chief Seumanutafa in the cutter that had been given him by the United States Government.
But the third one she opened, and, taking out the ring it held, slipped it on Betty's finger. "They are all like the one papa gave me," she said, "and have Tusitala's name inside to help me remember the Memory roads that Betty told us about." "It will remind me of more than that," said Betty gratefully, when she and the girls had expressed their thanks in a chorus of delighted exclamations.
Island memories were always dear to her, and when one day she heard that a ship had come into port manned with sailors from Samoa, she at once sent to the dock and invited them all to call on her. Soon the dark-skinned, picturesque troop, shy but proud of the attention shown them by Tusitala's widow, arrived.
I'm trying to dig a road like Tusitala's and I never would have thought of it, if it hadn't been for you." With that she turned hastily, and, running across the hall to her own room, shut the door behind her with a bang. The first week of July had come to an end, and with it came the end of the house party.
"Once Tusitala's friend, always Tusitala's friend," they said. With his customary energy he threw himself heart and soul for a time into the political troubles of the island, making himself the champion of the natives' cause. He wrote a series of letters to the papers at home stating his idea of the injustice shown the Samoans under their present government.
It was Amatua who saw to it that those who remained of the builders of the "Road of the Loving Hearts" and the chiefs who had cut the path up the mountain for Tusitala's funeral were included in the list of guests, and it was he who took personal charge of all the arrangements for the native ceremonies, which were conducted in the elaborate Samoan fashion as for a chief of the highest rank.
All that busy day between the demands that business made on him, and once even in the midst of dictating to his typewriter, his thoughts kept turning to that far-away island in the Southern seas, where Tusitala's road gleams white under the tropic sun.
Tusitala's birthday was always a special event to his island friends. The feast was served in native style; all seated about on the floor. Rather large gatherings they must have been, to judge from Mrs. Strong's account. Among the presents for Tusitala, besides flowers and wreaths, were fans, native baskets ... and cocoanut cups beautifully polished."
It was Tusitala's, and again he saw the road dug to last for ever, in the white light of the tropic skies. He sat with his head on his hand a moment, and then, slowly reaching for his check-book filled out a blank, signed it, and sealed it in an envelope.
If the master had cause to be displeased with any one of them, they were all summoned and reprimanded or fined. His stories delighted them. They were never tired of looking at the picture of Skerryvore Light and hearing about the rugged coasts of Tusitala's native island and of his father and grandfather who built lighthouses.
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