Stood and gazed upon the Sea Gulls.
Long he gazed in deep abstraction,
Then he said, "They still are searching,
Still are calling to Ah-we-a.
Would you know the Tamal legend
Of Ah-we-a and the Sea Gulls?

Know you, then, that these blue waters
Were not always calm and peaceful.
Once the Sea King, grim and moody,
Held his court within this harbor--
Held his carnivals of beauty,
And his wild and stormy revels.

In the cove of Sausalito,
Where the houses of the paleface
Terrace on the wooded hillside
And the sailboats ride at anchor,
Lived a tribe of fisher people,
Building homes among the crannies
Of the rocks upon the bayshore,
Fishing in the harbor waters
From their light canoes of redwood--
Fishing boldly in defiance
Of the Sea King's fitful anger
At the raiding of his Kingdom
And the slaughter of his subjects.

Oft the Sea King, in reprisal,
Lashed the harbor with his west wind
Till the breakers leaped in frenzy,
Overturning boats and claiming
Many fishermen as victims.

Those who clung in desperation
To their boats and reached the mainland
Told the tale of their encounter
With the Sea King in the tempest.
Through the smother of the surges,
Through the driving rain and fog-banks,
Came the Sea King's boat upon them,
Drawn by floundering sea horses
With their manes of seafoam curling
From the prow and backward trailing.
Through the mist they saw it faintly,
As a ghostly apparition,
Riding down upon the billows--
Phantom ship, at times transparent,
White or gray--to ride them over;
Racing nearer, nearer, nearer,
Then dissolving into vapor;
Or, at times, it darted past them.
Giving glimpses through the fog-banks
Of the Furies at the paddles,
Bending, dipping, throwing surges
From their mighty magic paddles,
While the wake of foaming waters
Seethed and boiled in whirlpool currents.

Long the warfare had continued.
Fishermen must live by fishing,
And the Sea King claimed his victims
Through a strategy of cunning,
Seeking ever to beguile them
To the sea to work his vengeance.

When day dawned in rosy splendor
Calm and still the harbor waters
As a sea of purple satin,
Only wrinkled int