"We lost them there, for we could not eat the salt grass, and Scrag had
turned north by a mud slough where the waters were bitter, and red moss
grew on the roots of the willows. We ate for a quarter of the moon's
course before we went back around the hard land to see what had become
of Taku-Wakin. We fed as far as there was any browse between the sea and
the marsh, and at last we saw them come, across the salt pastures. They
were sleek as otters with the black slime of the sloughs, and there was
not a garment left on them which had not become water-soaked and
useless. Some of the women had made slips of sea-birds' skins and nets
of marsh grass for carrying their young. It was only by these things
that you could tell that they were Man. They came out where the hard
land thinned to a tusk, thrust far out into the white froth and the
thunder. We saw them naked on the rocks, and then with a great shout
join hands as they ran all together down the naked sand to worship the
sea. But Taku-Wakin walked by himself..."

"And did you stay there with him?" asked Oliver when he saw by the stir
in the audience that the story was quite finished.

"We went back that winter--One-Tusk and I; in time they all went," said
Arrumpa. "It was too cold by the sea in winter. And the land changed.
Even in Taku-Wakin's time it changed greatly. The earth shook and the
water ran out of the marsh into the sea again, and there was hard ground
most of the way to Two Rivers. Every year the tribes used to go down by
it to gather sea food."

The Indians nodded.

"It was so in our time," they said. "There were great heaps of shells by