And Bask-Wah-Wan sopped a particularly offensive chunk of salmon into the oil and passed it fondly and dripping to her son.
In despair, 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, what of the thirst that was upon me.
But the sea was no longer angry, and the soft south wind was blowing, and as I looked about me I saw a sight that made me think I was indeed mad."
Nam-Bok paused to pick away a sliver of salmon lodged between his teeth, and the men and women, with idle hands and heads craned forward, waited.
"It was a canoe, a big canoe.
If all the canoes I have ever seen were made into one canoe, it would not be so large."
There were exclamations of doubt, and Koogah, whose years were many, shook his head.
"If each bidarka were as a grain of sand," Nam-Bok defiantly continued, "and if there were as many bidarkas as there be grains of sand in this beach, still would they not make so big a canoe as this I saw on the morning of the fourth day.
It was a very big canoe, and it was called a schooner.
I saw this thing of wonder, this great schooner, coming after me, and on it I saw men——"
"Hold, O Nam-Bok!" Opee-Kwan broke in.
"What manner of men were they?—big men?"
"Nay, mere men like you and me."
"Did the big canoe come fast?"
"Ay."
"The sides were tall, the men short." Opee-Kwan stated the premises with conviction.
"And did these men dip with long paddles?"
Nam-Bok grinned.
"There were no paddles," he said.
Mouths remained open, and a long silence dropped down.
Ope-Kwan borrowed Koogah's pipe for a couple of contemplative sucks.
One of the younger women giggled nervously and drew upon herself angry eyes.
"There were no paddles?" Opee-Kwan asked softly, returning the pipe.
"The south wind was behind," Nam-Bok explained.
"But the wind drift is slow."
"The schooner had wings—thus."
He sketched a diagram of masts and sails in the sand, and the men crowded around and studied it.
The wind was blowing briskly, and for more graphic elucidation he seized the corners of his mother's shawl and spread them out till it bellied like a sail.
Bask Wah-Wan scolded and struggled, but was blown down the breach for a score of feet and left breathless and stranded in a heap of driftwood.