o those two plunged into the waters of the Narrows as the grey dawn
slipped up the eastern skies and all the forest awoke to the life of
a new, glad day. Presently he took her ashore, and smilingly she
crept away under the giant trees. "I must be alone," she said, "but
come to me at sunrise: you will not find me alone then." He smiled
also, and plunged back into the sea. He must swim, swim, swim
through this hour when his fatherhood was coming upon him. It was
the law that he must be clean, spotlessly clean, so that when his
child looked out upon the world it would have the chance to live its
own life clean. If he did not swim hour upon hour his child would
come to an unclean father. He must give his child a chance in life;
he must not hamper it by his own uncleanliness at its birth. It was
the tribal law--the law of vicarious purity.

As he swam joyously to and fro, a canoe bearing four men headed up
the Narrows. These men were giants in stature, and the stroke of
their paddles made huge eddies that boiled like the seething tides.

"Out from our course!" they cried as his lithe, copper-colored body
arose and fell with his splendid stroke. He laughed at them, giants
though they were, and answered that he could not cease his swimming
at their demand.

"But you shall cease!" they commanded. "We are the men [agents] of
the Sagalie Tyee [God], and we command you ashore out of our way!"
(I find in all these Coast Indian legends that the Deity is
represented by four men, usually paddling an immense canoe.)

He ceased swimming, and, lifting his head, defied them. "I shall
not stop, nor yet go ashore," he declared, striking out once more
to the middle of the channel.

"Do you dare disobey us," they cried--"we, the men of the Sagalie
Tyee? We can turn you into a fish, or a tree, or a stone for this;
do you dare disobey the Great Tyee?"

"I dare anything for the cleanliness and purity of my coming child.
I dare even the Sagalie Tyee Himself, but my child must be born to a
spotless life."

The four men were astounded. They consulted together, lighted their
pipes, and sat in council. Never had they, the men of the Sagalie
Tyee, been defied before. Now, for the sake of a little unborn
child, they were ignored, disobeyed, almost despised. The lithe
young copper-colored body still disported itself in the cool
waters; superstition held that should their canoe, or even their
paddle-blades, touch a human being,