face. "Ever did I say Nam-Bok would come back."

"Ay, it is Nam-Bok come back." This time it was Nam-Bok himself who
spoke, putting a leg over the side of the bidarka and standing with
one foot afloat and one ashore. Again his throat writhed and wrestled
as he grappled after forgotten words. And when the words came forth
they were strange of sound and a spluttering of the lips accompanied
the gutturals. "Greeting, O brothers," he said, "brothers of old time
before I went away with the off-shore wind."

He stepped out with both feet on the sand, and Opee-Kwan waved him
back.

"Thou art dead, Nam-Bok," he said.

Nam-Bok laughed. "I am fat."

"Dead men are not fat," Opee-Kwan confessed. "Thou hast fared well,
but it is strange. No man may mate with the off-shore wind and come
back on the heels of the years."

"I have come back," Nam-Bok answered simply.

"Mayhap thou art a shadow, then, a passing shadow of the Nam-Bok that
was. Shadows come back."

"I am hungry. Shadows do not eat."

But Opee-Kwan doubted, and brushed his hand across his brow in sore
puzzlement. Nam-Bok was likewise puzzled, and as he looked up and down