no brother, no cousin, no son, no grandson, and the charm must not
go to a lesser warrior than I. None of our tribe, nor of any tribe
on the coast, ever conquered me. The charm must go to one as
unconquerable as I have been. When I am dead send it across the
great salt chuck, to the victorious 'Frenchman'; they call him
Napoleon Bonaparte." They were his last words.

The older women wished to bury the charm with him, but the younger
women, inspired with the spirit of their generation, were determined
to send it over-seas. "In the grave it will be dead," they argued.
"Let it still live on. Let it help some other fighter to greatness
and victory."

As if to confirm their decision, the next day a small sealing-vessel
anchored in the Inlet. All the men aboard spoke Russian, save
two thin, dark, agile sailors, who kept aloof from the crew and
conversed in another language. These two came ashore with part of
the crew and talked in French with a wandering Hudson's Bay trapper,
who often lodged with the Squamish people. Thus the women, who yet
mourned over their dead warrior, knew these two strangers to be
from the land where the great "Frenchman" was fighting against
the world.

Here I interrupted the chief. "How came the Frenchmen in a Russian
sealer?" I asked.

"Captives," he replied. "Almost slaves, and hated by their captors,
as the majority always hate the few. So the women drew those two
Frenchmen apart from the rest and told them the story of the bone of
the sea-serpent, urging them to carry it back to their own country