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