ld not be believed.

"This sch--sch--schooner," Koogah imperturbably asked; "it was made of a
big tree?"

"It was made of many trees," Nam-Bok snapped shortly. "It was very big."

He lapsed into sullen silence again, and Opee-Kwan nudged Koogah, who
shook his head with slow amazement and murmured, "It is very strange."

Nam-Bok took the bait. "That is nothing," he said airily; "you should
see the _steamer._ As the grain of sand is to the bidarka, as the
bidarka is to the schooner, so the schooner is to the steamer. Further,
the steamer is made of iron. It is all iron."

"Nay, nay, Nam-Bok," cried the head man; "how can that be? Always iron
goes to the bottom. For behold, I received an iron knife in trade from
the head man of the next village, and yesterday the iron knife slipped
from my fingers and went down, down, into the sea. To all things there
be law. Never was there one thing outside the law. This we know. And,
moreover, we know that things of a kind have the one law, and that all
iron has the one law. So unsay thy words, Nam-Bok, that we may yet honor
thee."

"It is so," Nam-Bok persisted. "The steamer is all iron and does not
sink."

"Nay, nay; this cannot be."

"With my own eyes I saw it."

"It is not in the nature of things."

"But tell me, Nam-Bok," Koogah interrupted, for fear the tale would go
no farther, "tell me the manner of these men in finding their way across
the sea when there is no land by which to steer."

"The sun points out the path."

"But how?"

"At midday the head man of the schooner takes a thing through which his
eye looks at the sun, and then he makes the sun climb down out of the
sky to the edge of the earth."

"Now this be evil medicine!" cried Opee-Kwan, aghast at the sacrilege.
The men held up their hands in horror, and the women moaned. "This be
evil medicine. It is not good to misdirect the great sun which drives
away the night and gives us the seal, the salmon, and warm weather."

"What if it be evil medicine?" Nam-Bok demanded truculently. "I, too,
have looked through the thing at the sun and made the sun climb down out
of the sky."

Those who were nearest drew away from him hurriedly, and a woman covered
the face of a child at her breast so that his eye might not fall upon
it.

"But on the morning of the fourth day, O Nam-Bok," Koogah suggested; "on
the morning of the fourth day when the sch--sch--schooner came after
thee?"

"I had little strength left in m