pair, when premonitory symptoms warned him that his stomach was
not so strong as of old, he filled his pipe and struck up a smoke. The
people fed on noisily and watched. Few of them could boast of intimate
acquaintance with the precious weed, though now and again small
quantities and abominable qualities were obtained in trade from the
Eskimos to the northward. Koogah, sitting next to him, indicated that
he was not averse to taking a draw, and between two mouthfuls,
with the oil thick on his lips, sucked away at the amber stem. And
thereupon Nam-Bok held his stomach with a shaky hand and declined the
proffered return. Koogah could keep the pipe, he said, for he had
intended so to honor him from the first. And the people licked their
fingers and approved of his liberality.

Opee-Kwan rose to his feet "And now, O Nam-Bok, the feast is ended,
and we would listen concerning the strange things you have seen."

The fisherfolk applauded with their hands, and gathering about them
their work, prepared to listen. The men were busy fashioning spears
and carving on ivory, while the women scraped the fat from the hides
of the hair seal and made them pliable or sewed muclucs with threads
of sinew. Nam-Bok's eyes roved over the scene, but there was not the
charm about it that his recollection had warranted him to expect.
During the years of his wandering he had looked forward to just this
scene, and now that it had come he was disappointed. It was a bare and
meagre life, he deemed, and not to be compared to the one to which he
had become used. Still, he would open their eyes a bit, and his own
eyes sparkled at the thought.

"Brothers," he began, with the smug complacency of a man about to
relate the big things he has done, "it was late summer of many summers
back, with much such weather as this promises to be, when I went away.
You all remember the day, when the gulls flew low, and the wind blew
strong from the land, and I could not hold my bidarka against it. I
tied the covering of the bidarka about me so that no water could get
in, and all of the night I fought with the storm. And in the morning
there was no land,--only the sea,--and the off-shore wind held me
close in its arms and bore me along. Three such nights whitened into
dawn and showed me no land, and the off-shore wind would not let me
go.

"And when the fourth day came, I was as a madman. I could not dip my
paddle for want of food; and my head went round and round, wha