s tongue clove to his mouth and his throat was
sanded with an intolerable thirst. Klok-No-Ton seemed to half swoon
away, now that his work was done; but he waited, with closed eyes,
listening for the great blood-cry to go up--the great blood-cry,
familiar to his ear from a thousand conjurations, when the
tribespeople flung themselves like wolves upon the trembling victim.
But only was there silence, then a low tittering, from nowhere in
particular, which spread and spread until a vast laughter welled up to
the sky.

"Wherefore?" he cried.

"Na! Na!" the people laughed. "Thy medicine be ill, O Klok-No-Ton!"

"It be known to all," La-lah stuttered. "For eight weary months have
I been gone afar with the Siwash sealers, and but this day am I come
back to find the blankets of Hooniah gone ere I came!"

"It be true!" they cried with one accord. "The blankets of Hooniah
were gone ere he came!"

"And thou shalt be paid nothing for thy medicine which is of no
avail," announced Hooniah, on her feet once more and smarting from a
sense of ridiculousness.

But Klok-No-Ton saw only the face of Scundoo and its wan, gray smile,
heard only the faint far cricket's rasping. "I got it from the man
La-lah, and often have I thought," and, "It is a fair day and thy
medicine be strong."

He brushed by Hooniah, and the circle instinctively gave way for
him to pass. Sime flung a jeer from the top of the canoe, the women
snickered in his face, cries of derision rose in his wake, but he took
no notice, pressing onward to the house of Scundoo. He hammered on the
door, beat it with his fists, and howled vile imprecations. Yet there
was no response, save that in the lulls Scundoo's voice rose eerily
in incantation. Klok-No-Ton raged about like a madman, but when he
attempted to break in the door with a huge stone, murmurs arose from
the men and women. And he, Klok-No-Ton, knew that he stood shorn of
his strength and authority before an alien people. He saw a man stoop
for a stone, and a second, and a bodily fear ran through him.

"Harm not Scundoo, who is a master!" a woman cried out.

"Better you return to your own village," a man advised menacingly.

Klok-No-Ton turned on his heel and went down among them to the beach,
a bitter rage at his heart, and in his head a just apprehension for
his defenceless back. But no stones were cast. The children swarmed
mockingly about his feet, and the air was wild with laughter and
derision, but that