people. 'This unclean monster can only
be overcome by cleanliness, this creature of greed can only be
overthrown by generosity. Let him go!' The chiefs and the medicine
men listened, then consented. 'Go,' they commanded, 'and fight this
thing with your strongest weapons--cleanliness and generosity.'

"The Tenas Tyee turned to his mother. 'I shall be gone four days,' he
told her, 'and I shall swim all that time. I have tried all my life to
be generous, but the people say I must be clean also to fight this
unclean thing. While I am gone put fresh furs on my bed every day,
even if I am not here to lie on them; if I know my bed, my body and my
heart are all clean I can overcome this serpent.'

"'Your bed shall have fresh furs every morning,' his mother said simply.

"The Tenas Tyee then stripped himself and, with no clothing save a
buckskin belt into which he thrust his hunting-knife, he flung his
lithe young body into the sea. But at the end of four days he did not
return. Sometimes his people could see him swimming far out in
mid-channel, endeavoring to find the exact centre of the serpent, where
lay its evil, selfish heart; but on the fifth morning they saw him rise
out of the sea, climb to the summit of Brockton Point and greet the
rising sun with outstretched arms. Weeks and months went by, still the
Tenas Tyee would swim daily searching for that heart of greed; and each
morning the sunrise glinted on his slender young copper-colored body as
he stood with outstretched arms at the tip of Brockton Point, greeting
the coming day and then plunging from the summit into the sea.

"And at his home on the north shore his mother dressed his bed with
fresh furs each morning. The seasons drifted by, winter followed
summer, summer followed winter. But it was four years before the Tenas
Tyee found the centre of the great salt-chuck oluk and plunged his
hunting-knife into its evil heart. In its death-agony it writhed
through the Narrows, leaving a trail of blackness on the waters. Its
huge body began to shrink, to shrivel; it became dwarfed and withered,
until nothing but the bones of its back remained, and they,
sea-bleached and lifeless, soon sank to the bed of the ocean leagues
off from the rim of land. But as the Tenas Tyee swam homeward and his
clean, young body crossed through the black stain left by the serpent,
the waters became clear and blue and sparkling. He had overcome even
the trail of the salt-chuck