“This is not a story,” Great-Aunt Hawthorne used to say, “it is just something that happened.”

Mr. Denis Duchesne first saw the box one evening in the shop window, behind a bowl of Japanese silver fish and a windflower blossoming in a blue china jug. It was a little box, quite plain, and by the look of it had lain long a-soaking in the black bog-water. He bought it for a shilling and threepence three farthings, and took it home to keep fiddle-strings in. And no sooner had he taken the lid off than out shone a little green light and a spark.

“ ’Tis glow worms in the box,” cried Denis, clapping it down. The little light went out quick as a blown candle at the word, and something skittered over his fingers like a flittermouse.

And that was the last leprechaun ever came out of Ireland.

Denis himself had come out of France as a bit of a boy. He taught music and dancing, and was little enough thought of, for all he was grown a fine young man with a wild brown eye and a way of wearing his clothes that set the Mayor’s sons by the ears. He had the lower floor of an old narrow house on the river, and at high tide the bowsprits of the barges used to knock the sandy cat off his window-sill. It was a queer cat, and it always swam ashore with no more fuss than a duck. There was more than one queer thing about that house, what with the Widow Macmurchison on the first floor and old Berry under the roof. And now there it was with a leprechaun loose in it and they not knowing.

Denis hunted for the jumping glow-worm all over the room on his hands and knees, and the sandy cat sat and smiled at him under its whiskers. Trust a sandy cat for knowing the ups and downs of things.

“The devil’s in the box,” cried young Denis, for he had hit his head against the table, “or maybe one of those luminous flies the mayor saw in the Indies.” And with that he coiled up all his spare fiddle-strings as neat as you please and put them in the box. Then he blew out his candle and sat in the window, with the tide fingering on the wet gray stone under him and the stars coming out above. He would sit there for an hour singing songs that he hoped Dorothy Macmurchison on the first floor might give an ear to. He had no more thought of leprechauns in his brown head than he had of sorrow; that was little enough.

And all the time there was the leprechaun hopping upstairs, and he not knowing.

While young Denis was at “Believe me, if all those endearing young charms,” with French flourishes, and little Mistress Dorothy was sighing in the room above, the leprechaun went hopping upstairs. By this and that he came to old Berry’s door and opened it and went in, like a little green flame along the dusty floor.

Old Berry was wanting. He always lived in his little room under the roof, and went with the house when it changed hands. He spent most of his time making verse he could never finish, and sometimes he went out and gathered ferns and the red sheep-sorrel that grows among buttercups. He was too old to be surprised at anything, and when he saw the leprechaun he just said “Good evening to you, and my thanks for shutting the door behind you, for the draught’s cruel.”

“Good-evening to ye,” said the leprechaun, all at home and friendly, “good-evening to ye, and a pleasant star to sleep under. And what may ye be doing with your time now?”

“Making songs,” said old Berry, “but they won’t come out right nor end on the good word.”

“Won’t they, now?” answered the leprechaun. “There’s nothing I like better than songs, and I know a many. What might that song be about that’s under the heel of your hand this living moment?”

“Tears and dew,” said old Berry, rubbing his head, “two things that look much alike but someway taste different.”

“I know nought of the first, but of the last, what could be sweeter? And what’s the chune of your song?”

“It was a long time ago, and I’ve forgotten why, but this is the tune of it:

tears and dew, sir, you see.”

“Go on with your chune,” says the leprechaun.

“And it ends there,” said the old man, helpless, “which it shouldn’t, and it is in my mind that there is a fine bright word for it to end on, a word I’ve forgotten, and I can’t finish it.”

“I’m not here for long, but I’ll come back before I go and finish your chune for you,” and the leprechaun nodded very friendly and went out. What he did in the night Great-Aunt Hawthorne didn’t know. But while Denis was finishing breakfast in the morning, he came into the room with the sandy cat.

“Holy Saints!” said Denis, and sat with a spoon full of strawberry jam held half way to his mouth, and his mouth open.

“Whist with your staring,” cried the leprechaun, and he took Denis by the wrist very testy, and sent the spoon into his mouth with a clap. “I’ve but looked in for a minute to give you a hint with your affairs, and all you can do is to stare like a heifer in a fairy-ring.”

“Comment,” said Denis Duchesne, as well as he could for the spoon, “and what may you know of me and my affairs, for example?”

The leprechaun smiled, and the sandy cat smiled. “I saw your dreams go past me in the night,” said the leprechaun. “There were the silver dreams of youth, and the golden dreams that are dreams for ever, and there were dreams as red as the briar rose that grows under the green hill. And they were all of them beating and fluttering about the bright head of a girl. And a good girl she is, with a light foot on her and a skin like the new milk that creams at the lip of the pail on a frosty morning. But the Widow . . .” and the leprechaun winked.

“O, the Widow,” groaned Denis.

“Whist with your groaning.” The leprechaun began to waver and flicker like a little green flame before it goes out. “Take what’s given you and good may come of it. Denis, boy, take my word for it, you’ll find all your fiddle strings broken.”

And with that there was Denis, and nothing in front of him, but the sandy cat sitting with its tail round its paws, and the pot of strawberry jam.

Denis was in a great taking. The hair of his head stood up like gorse on a common, the way he tore at it, and he went all round and about the room hunting for the leprechaun. He thought he was mad, with the leprechaun and the talk of Dorothy and all. But by this and by that, and the sight of the sandy cat sleeping under the table, he quieted down and went to look at his fiddle. And there was every string, even the silver G, broken at the bridge.

Young Denis said, “The devil’s in everything,” and took out the broken strings and put in new ones from the bog-wood box. He had no more than tuned the fiddle than there was a knocking at the door. That was the quality come for the dancing lessons. And they knowing nothing about the leprechaun.

The first to come in was the mayor’s wife, a tall woman with a hard eye and a mouth so thin it puzzled Denis how his worship ever had the heart to kiss her. She had her three daughters, and they dropped three great round haughty curtseys to poor Denis bowing in the doorway with his fiddle under his arm and the jam spoon sticking out of his tail-coat pocket, where, in his hurry, he had thrust it. Then old Captain Vandeleur came in with his two nieces that he never let from under his eye, and they but plain girls, and they would have nothing to do with the Mayor’s daughters, but went past them in a rustle of lilac chintz and their noses in the air. Then there was the young man from the apothecary’s who was allowed in to open the door and practise his steps in the corner. And last there was the Widow Macmurchison, with a black front and an India shawl, watching young Denis with an eye like a fish’s, and Dorothy coming in behind her like the breath of the morning, and Denis’s heart kept time to the tune of her little feet on the floor.

But she went past him with her eyes hidden, and there was no more than a “Good-morning to you, Monsieur Duchesne,” and a “B’jour, Ma’amselle Dorothee,” and never a touch of her hand to put him in tune for his work. So it was with a long face that Denis tucked his fiddle under his chin. “Take your places for the new figure, mesdames, if you please,” he said, wearily.

When all the pretty feet were pointed and all the pretty eyes fixed on Denis, he counted: “One, two, three,” and began to play on his little fiddle. And at the first note it was as if a happy wind went through the room, and voices went with the wind.

“For the first note,” said Great-Aunt Hawthorne, “was memory, and the next love and the third laughter.” Never was such a tune. Denis played like a man in a dream, with flying fingers, but in truth the music came from the strings that had lain in the bog-wood box, whether he would or no. And presently the Widow Macmurchison clapped her hand to the India shawl, and “O, my heart,” she cried, “my heart and my youth!” Old Vandeleur put his hat under his chair at the word, and they went off footing it down the room like a pair possessed. The apothecary’s young man came out of the corner, his eyes all lost and shining, and he took the mayor’s youngest daughter and they danced too, light as the flame dances in the ling, she laughing low and the pride gone out of her face. The other girls were dancing together like wild-wood things, all a flutter of roses and ribbons, and their feet might have been shod with swallow’s wings. Their faces were bright and strange, and it was as if the music played in their hearts the tune of all happiness that had been, of all laughter that was to be. Never was such a tune.

For there was a more wonderful thing let loose in the room than ever the leprechaun was, and that was youth. The music was in their feet and the music was in their hearts. Little Mistress Dorothy danced up to Denis like a leaf in a warm wind, and her eyes were raised at last, and shone into his like stars in a merry heaven. She said no word, but she tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow and they danced off together. The measure they danced was different, and the music they heard was different, for there was grief in it and a shadow, as there is in all great things. The sweet wind and the voices seemed to follow them.

“Is there a light shining on dove’s wings?” said Dorothy in a dreaming voice.

“I see nothing but the light in your eyes.”

“Do you hear a beat of tears in the music?”

“I hear nothing but the beat of your heart,” said Denis as he played.

“Do you see a falling of leaves?”

“I see nothing but the flowering of the rose that folds the world,” and they danced on.

“That’s a work well finished,” said the leprechaun, who had been listening at the keyhole. And he hopped upstairs thoughtfully to old Berry’s room.

Old Berry was lying very quietly on his bed in the bright morning sunlight, with sheep-sorrel in his hand, and his age was heavy on him.

“I’ve brought the bright word for the song,” said the leprechaun, sitting like a little green flame on the bed-post, “the song of the tears and the dew.”

“Have you, now?” whispered the old man. “Then I take it very neighbourly of you, for I have never come to finish it. And what’s the bright word that will be the end of it?”

“I’ll finish your chune for you,” said the leprechaun,

Love’s the bright word.”

“A good word, a bright word for the end of a song,” said old Berry, and he fingered the sheep-sorrel and slept, with the leprechaun watching him. Soon the leprechaun slipped from the room, for there was that in it he might not abide. He went down the stairs like a little flame and the sandy cat followed him. The pair of them went down the gray street together in the morning, and it’s a hard question which was the wiser. But they went, and no more was seen of them.

And in the room on the ground floor, said Great-Aunt Hawthorne, they were at their dancing all day long.

“Why did you hit that white-headed kid?”

This was Loch’s first recorded remark in reference to Jimsy Lewis. The answer was not unreasonable.

“A kid like that is made to be hit.”

But there are other lights than that of reason. “Well you are not to hit him. That kid is my friend. When we are grown up, he is coming with me on adventures . . . .”

They grew up, with the tenacious vitality of the Scotch-Canadian, in spite of the adventures. At nineteen Loch was six-foot-one, slant-shouldered, silent as an Indian, and, according to his aunts in Caledoniaville, of an affectionate disposition. His people started him in a bank in the very-far West, and Jimsy went with him. But the bank was only “held up” twice, so Loch found it dull, and went. He took Jimsy. Then,—it happened some years ago,—he enlisted in Somebody’s Horse, and went to South Africa for the war. He took Jimsy. When I say that he took Jimsy, I mean it; he took him as a cyclone takes a barn-roof.

They and a man from Wolf Creek were separated from their troop, held a kopje for a week; were captured by an angry commando, escaped, and arrived in Kimberley in nice time for the siege. When the war was over, the man from Wolf Creek took up land in Natal to raise pineapples. Jimsy rather liked the idea of pineapples; but Loch was gathered in by the railway, and took Jimsy. When I say the railway, I mean the Great Railway, vision of a great man. Their work pushed them further and further north, into a new Africa, an enchanted Africa of high forest and grass-plain; of a vertical sun and frosty nights. They learned the blessing and the bitterness of work. They lived through that rainy season which came a month late, when the green jungle grew over the right-of-way, as it seemed, in a night; and the elephants tore down the telegraph wires, and the fever followed the rain; and the black men grew weary of cutting and carrying fuel, so they sat them down and died. Jimsy was clever at many things; he was given charge of a siding, a telegraph instrument, six account books, and two assistants, of sorts. Loch had no gift but that of handling men, which made him so much more valuable than Jimsy that he was presently put in charge at Gondoko. For one dry season they saw nothing of each other—Jimsy bullied his assistants, collected butterflies, and thought of Loch. Loch did not think nearly so much of Jimsy, he was too busy.

But every Saturday night he went into Gondoko and wired Jimsy—“Are you all right, kid?”

“All right, Loch.”

Then would follow gossip of the great line,—lions, a wash-out, a plague of witch-doctors. But the end was invariable as the beginning—“Let me know if you want me, kid, and I’ll come.”

“All right, Loch.”

“So long, Jimsy.”

“Good-night, Gondoko.”

Then Loch would stumble to his mud-and-iron hut and sleep in peace, a gun loaded with bird-shot under his head in case of leopards.

The second year of his sojourning, Loch had trouble with ju-jus,—more trouble than usual. He also had fever—worse than usual. But the ju-jus worried him most. No. 537, pulling out from a siding, had cut down a string stretched across the line, from which fluttered a red rag and two guinea-fowl feathers. As a result, the black people fled to their forests, and the wood-piles shrank to nothing. Fuel had to be brought from afar until the ju-ju was pacified, which took time. There is no space to tell how Loch managed this by setting up an opposition ju-ju, in whose constitution a home-made magic-lantern played a chief part. But he went into Gondoko one Saturday night with the happy knowledge that he had put the fear of all the devils into his section, and that the wood-piles at the rail-side grew like mushrooms.

It was the third week of the stormy season, and Loch was soaked in fever; the ju-ju war had tired him in body and soul. He looked at the sky, and as he looked the moon showed like a plunging white disk amid driving steam; he thought how often he had seen it so, above the northern lakes of his boyhood, when the first snow came down from the north and the wild-geese had flown south. But Huron’s cold surf was far from the station at Gondoko. And the glimmer of light shone only on the nameless uplands, the drenched scrub of the north; and southwards, welt on welt, league on league, the roll of the African forest like a sea.

His right-hand-man, an escaped convict, met him and touched his cap. “A call from Mr. Lewis, sir.”

Loch frowned. He had forgotten it was Saturday night, forgotten Jimsy, forgotten everything but his own overwhelming need of food and sleep. The ground rocked under his feet, and the ex-convict wavered like a smoke. “Did he leave any message?”

The ex-convict, who was also a deserter, saluted. “No sir. In fact, something’s wrong with the line. Probably helephants, sir. Williams took it, but nothing came through but the word ‘Lewis,’ sir, and the Gondoko call.”

“Thank you.” Loch went slowly to the iron shed, and sat down to the instrument. He called,—“Lewis, Lewis, Lewis,” in his clumsy fashion, now clumsier than usual, in that his fingers seemed to be as big and stiff as pincushions. He called for several minutes, waited, and called again. He was beginning to forget about the fever and the weariness.

The instrument clattered, stammered, hesitated. At last the answer—“Is that you, Gondoko?”

“Yes. Gondoko. Gondoko. Have you got that? Gondoko. Is that you, Jimsy? Jimsy, is that you?”

A space of meaningless clickerings and stutterings. Then suddenly, clear and sharp, “Loch, I want . . . .”

And then silence.

Loch sat for perhaps five minutes, patiently calling. But the silence was unbroken. He sat for another five minutes, thinking; and the burden of his thoughts was a little white-headed boy who used to follow him round the school play-ground, saying, “Loch, I want you, Loch.” Often the little boy was smitten for his pains, but no other boy dared smite him. Loch went out on the platform and shouted. The convict-deserter, who was presently known as Hatch, came running.

“Is there anything with steam up?”

“Number eight, she has steam up.” Hatch spoke proudly.

Number eight was a complex-compo-compound loco, collected from scrap heaps of half a continent, and put together at Gondoko.

“She’s to pull out, with sheet-iron for Banda, at midnight or thereabouts.”

“Uncouple, then,” said Loch, curtly, “I want her.”

“Mr. Lewis in trouble, sir?”

“I’m going to see.” Loch spoke more curtly than ever, but his men knew him.

Hatch spoke persuasively. “You’d better have me to fire for you, sir. I’m off duty, and there hasn’t been no variosity, sir, so to say, for a month.”

Loch nodded. “All right. And bring your twelve-bore.”

Hatch beamed and fled. There were outcries and footsteps. Loch spent another five minutes thinking of the little boy who had grown into a young man, and who might have been peacefully and safely raising pineapples in Natal. He started, as Number eight swung on the switch and pulled up beside him, groaning in all her rivets, Hatch swinging joyously on the rickety footplate.

“Clear line for four hours, sir,” said Hatch.

“We shan’t need so much,” answered Loch; and Hatch, seeing his face, said no more, but went through silent movements of whistling.

They crawled out of Gondoko, clattering and banging. The open line lay before them, straight as a ruler between walls of forest, varied only by the paths of the woodcutters. Outside the radius of number eight’s headlight was a swinging, uncertain darkness. Loch steadily put the throttle over. And Hatch whistled again.

Presently, he had no time even to whistle. He was stoking furiously.

Number eight roared up the line, rocking over the faulty rivetting like a ship on a wave. Her ill-assorted parts groaned and rattled as if they would fly apart. Loch, peering through the glass, saw nothing but the reeling glimmer of steel running liquidly towards him, heard nothing but a boy’s voice crying, “Loch, where are you, Loch? Loch, I want you . . . .” But Hatch had time to hear many things, for he knew and revered Number eight.

“ ’Ard on the old lady, this is,” he said to himself, brushing the sweat out of his eyes.

A squall drove down, blinding the glass, and sending a surf of mud into the cab. It ended in a roll of thunder like the roll of a war-drum, and lightning that splashed on the rails like a thrown egg. It showed the forest and the sky, violet-white picked out in jet. Then the darkness shut down again, so swiftly that Hatch winced as he had not from the lash. But Loch’s steady hand did not move on the throttle.

“ ’Ard on the old lady,” muttered Hatch again, mournfully. “I knew this was a bad bit o’ track, but she’s runnin’ as if her wheels was square.”

The rain ended, the thunder rolled into the distance. But still, at regular intervals, the world was dipped and drenched in the unbearable brilliance of the lightning. Hatch began nervously to time the flashes. He saw a vivid vision of little buildings, the iron roofs blazing like silver, streaming past, and of the black silhouettes of the men on the platform. He saw the dripping leaves flashing back the electricity like looking-glass. He saw a sinuous shadow that shrank and fled by the left driving wheel. “ ‘Passengers,’ ” he said, “ ‘is forbidden to cross the line except by the over’ead bridge,’ but this ain’t the London-and-South-Western, thank Gord.” He took a glance at the gauge, and stoked, stoked, stoked. His mouth was so tightly screwed into the form of whistling, it seemed unlikely ever to come unscrewed. It was quite stiff when he ventured to address Loch’s immovable back.

“Lions is out,” roared Hatch. “Or something.”

Loch caught the words and nodded over his shoulder. The grade was mounting, and number eight rattled and rocked worse than ever. They were both powdered white to the hair with woodash. Loch’s face looked gray in the lightning flash, his every nerve and sinew strained to snapping point, as he strove to fire the clamouring iron beneath him with the hurry of his own soul.

The wheels sang, monotonously, “I want you, Loch, I want you, Loch.” “I’m coming, Jimsy,” he answered. “I’m coming, Jimsy, as fast as I can.” And he did not know that he spoke aloud. The fever ran over him in waves, and at the crest of every wave was a picture,—a picture of Jimsy deserted and stricken with illness; a picture of Jimsy sitting cowed over the telegraph instrument, speared through the heart, as he had once seen a man sit; a picture of Jimsy injured, of Jimsy possibly poisoned, of Jimsy most impossibly drowned. He shut his eyes an instant, groaning; “I’m coming, Jimsy, I’m coming . . . .” And on the words came the crash.

It was a crash too great for the senses, a crash that struck at life itself, maiming and bruising it. Loch plunged downwards into rushing darkness, full of burning steel, steam, woodcoals, and flashes of fire and lightning. He seemed to have suddenly grown into something very small and light, which floated in the reeling dark for a long, long time. Then something sprang out of the dark and hit him. The last thing he saw was a blaze of white light and a tuft of grass, very clear and distinct, with a huge silver moth clinging in the heart of it.

He came to himself, in darkness, but it was a darkness blessedly cool and wet. Someone was kneeling over him, striking matches, and presently he saw that it was Hatch. The match-light flared pink for an instant, and showed the ex-convict’s face, black and grimy, save for two little white patches under the eyes, which were glaring at Loch, indignantly.

Loch sought for words, but couldn’t remember what he wanted to say for some time.

“Hatch, your face looks kind-of-lop-sided—”

“Thank you, sir.” Hatch’s voice was piercingly sarcastic. “Which it ain’t wonderful, sir, considering I fell on it. And my mouth full of sand and things. Probably beetles.”

Loch stretched out a hand, slowly, and gasped at the pain.

“What’s happened?”

“Wreck, sir.” The lightning glared in the south-west, and Hatch bent over him, very gently wiping his face with a lump of cotton-waste.

“Wreck?”

“Yes. Young tree across the line; probably lightning, as it was all afire. Number eight, sir,—” Hatch’s voice broke,—“there ain’t enough of her left to make a penny toy.”

Loch lay still, trying to steady himself. “Is the line clear?”

“As far as I can see—Darn it, I can’t stop your ’ead bleeding—-Number eight, she kicked the tree off, and then fell on top of it herself. We must have flew like birds.”

“And how long have I been lying here?”

“Probably forty minutes, but there’s no knowing. Just beyond Banda, we are, and we’ll have to walk back. And the woods is fair crawling with things. Probably ferocious.”

“My fault, Hatch . . . .”

“Shut your ’ead.” Hatch swabbed away with the cotton waste. “Why—why, my lad—I thought you was done for—” His voice broke again, and he pulled himself together. “Now, if you think you can get up,—with the help of my arm—”

Loch staggered to his feet. The night swung about him, pierced with fires of pain. He thought it was the earth that reeled, and did not know that Hatch was holding him erect by main strength. He took a few steps, and a little strength came back.

“That’s better, sir,” said Hatch, who had again taken refuge in sarcasm. “Keep it up, and we’ll be in Banda for lunch.”

“Banda?” said Loch. “O, but we’re not going back to Banda, Hatch. We’re going on.”

“Going on . . . .”

“Why, yes.—Can’t you tie that stuff round my head? Take the sleeve of my coat, then.”

“The sleeve’s wet, too. You’re pretty well cut about. I’ll rip out mine . . . . Did I understand you to say, sir, as we were going on to Mr. Lewis?”

“Yes. It’s not much further than Banda. I’ll be all right.”

Hatch opened his mouth, gasped, and was silent. The situation was beyond speech—even beyond swearing. Loch interpreted his silence.

“You needn’t come, Hatch,” he said, quietly.

Hatch found his voice. “Thank you, sir,” he replied, bitterly. “My neck is to be broke, and I’m to be insulted into the bargain. And well you know that I don’t care a darn for lions or niggers, but only for the ’orrible crawly things that drops on you. And probably stingers,” He carefully adjusted the bandage round Loch’s head. “Stingers. And probably down your back.”

Loch laughed, croakily. “Tie the other sleeve round your neck, and come on.”

He turned up the long track, wondering why ties were so hard to walk on, and why they seemed to be set at such irregular intervals. Two short steps and a long, two long steps and a short, a rest—“Loch, I want you. Loch, I want you.”—He heard nothing but that, saw nothing but the glimmer of the wet steel he must follow. And Hatch, after one wild gesture that took to witness the flashing sky, the wet woods, and the ruins of Number eight fuming by the right-of-way, limped after him, his mouth screwed into a dolorous whistle.

A fair young man, with nice blue eyes, was sitting at a table, pleasantly and peacefully sticking dead beetles on pins. The light of a shaded lamp shone on his quick fingers, on the jewelled wing cases of his prey, and out of the screened window before him, in a long beam. Now and then he murmured Latin words, and scribbled on little slips of paper.

A fox-terrier and a black boy lay asleep in one corner of the room.

Suddenly the black boy sprang up, and the dog began barking furiously. And there came into the room what might have been the blood-stained ghosts of two men.

“Loch!” cried Jimsy, and leaped forward.

But Loch held him off. “So you are all right?” he said thickly, “Sure you’re all right, Jimsy? I saw you—through the window.”

“Of course I’m all right, old man,” said Jimsy, staring blankly.

“But your message?”

“My message. Loch? Good heavens, I only wired to ask you to send me up a bit of glass for my new butterfly case. And the wire gave out half-way through. Loch, I say. . . . . Loch!”

Loch began to laugh with relief; it was a queer laugh that shook him from head to foot, and he held on to the table for support.

“But what’s happened?” begged Jimsy. “What have you been doing? Loch!”

“Nothing’s happened, kid,” said Loch, soothingly. “Only I thought you wanted me. And so I came—I came—as fast as I could.”

“Look out, sir,” cried Hatch, sharply. But the table was in the way and Jimsy was not quick enough to catch Loch. It was into Hatch’s arms that he fell.

Kweetchel was a young man when it happened and that was before the days when the red canoe and the Sitka Spruce had brought numbers of white men to his part of the world. Kweetchel had seen very few white men; and he had never seen a compass until he took one from the body of a dead sailor he found in a drifting boat.

He was out in the summer fog, fishing for halibut with bits of octopus-arm for bait, and the boat came sideways out of the fog, and rubbed gently against his dug-out, and he looked in and saw the dead sailor.

There was nothing on the white man but a twist of tobacco and the compass. While Kweetchel was wondering what he should do next, a sooty albatross screamed at him. His snam was an albatross, so Kweetchel took this to mean that he’d better have nothing to do with the boat or the dead man; he sent the boat off with a push and the fog shut down on it forever. But there seemed no harm in keeping the compass, which was in a bright brass case.

Kweetchel went ashore. He intended to give the compass to the girl he liked best—either Kolite or Oala. The trouble was he could not decide which he preferred. Oala’s silver labret was nearly twice the size of Kolite’s, but Kolite’s eyes were soft and bright as deep river-water and looked kindly on Kweetchel.

He sat down to think it out, the compass in his hands, and his heart beat—Kolite? Oalo? Kolite? Oalo?

Then glancing at the compass in his hand Kweetchel saw that the needle pointed straight at Kolite’s house.

This was not strange considering that Kolite’s house was north of Kweetchel as he sat on the beach among the draw-up dug-outs and the barbed cod’s heads and the fighting dogs. But of course he did not know this, and it came as a shock. “My holy snam!” said Kweetchel, or gutterals to that effect, “but there is a strong spirit in this little box!” He decided that he would keep the compass himself. But he went immediately and made arrangements to marry Kolite as soon as possible.

Kweetchel took Kolite to wife, and very soon forgot all about Oala. He was very happy. Kolite was an excellent housewife as far as oalachan oil and preserved seaweed went. Kweetchel attributed his comfort to the spirit in the brass compass. He made a beautiful hutch for it to live in, of well-grained male wood greased black, inlaid with studs of shell, and incised with albatross wings.

The days went over Kweetchel and Kolite, the silvery North Pacific sun, the nights, and the great burning moons. The west winds which had last touched the eyes of lovers in the peony gardens of Japan, now touched as softly the eyes of Kweetchel and Kolite.

A sub-chief gave a great potlatch. Kweetchel was a dandy, and he had himself tattooed for the occasion in a design of conventionalized compasses. But the wounds inflamed. And when the day of the feast came, Kweetchel was a sick man. He lay on his bed with a fever, talking wild spirit-words, and Kolite fanned him with a cedar-bark fan.

The second day of the feast, Kweetchel’s mind came back to him suddenly, and with it a great sense of fear and disaster. He heard from without the howls of the drinkers, the groans of the eaters, the weeping of the neglected children, the worrying of the dogs. He trembled with fear and weakness. He said to Kolite, “Bring me the hutch with the Thing inside. I must talk to that spirit.”

Kolite brought the carved hutch, and covered her eyes with her mantle of green-and-black goat’s hair while Kweetchel took out the compass. Kweetchel held the compass and turned it in his quivering hand; and the needle balanced, hesitated, and then hung true to the north.

Kweetchel crawled out of his house and stood and looked north.

A great white fog-belt hung low across the sea. Kweetchel saw three black specks break one after the other from this fog. They were a long way off, but he knew them for what they were,—canoes under twin-sails. He watched a moment more. Then, with a great cry, he ran staggering to the potlatch house. He burst through the totem poles and flung himself, naked and shouting, on the revellers within. As men of Kent or Essex might have burst into an English hall, crying, “The Norsemen, the Norsemen!” so Kweetchel came, crying, “The Haidas, the Haidas!”

The crapulous rabble huddled to the defence. They tried to launch the war-canoes to meet the sea-hawks on the sea. Only one got off, and Kweetchel, for all his weakness, in her. Women fled to the fir-forest, all except Kolite. She climbed to a high rock above the beach, and wrapped her fine woven mantle about her, and sat as still as a stone, her chin upon her knees, watching the hopeless fight.

The Haida war-canoes came down under full sail, swift and beautiful among the beautiful boats that men have ever made in the world.

The canoe from shore, with drunken courage and a scattering fire of old muskets, put out to intercept the leading Haida. The Haida swept on, silent, until scarcely twenty feet divided the two. Then her sails came down, shots were fired, spears and stone-headed axes flew. In a moment from the other boat rose a great cry of pain, fear and death. The Haida’s way carried her on. Her terrible sharp prow, with the great eyes glaring on either side, ground into the side of her adversary, which heeled over. The Haida was sixty feet long; she rode right over the smaller boat and beached on the sand leaving the living and the dying struggling in the water. The second canoe picked up a few of the former for slaves.

Then the slaughter commenced, of men too gorged to stand up, of men too drunk to steady a harpoon. Kolite did not stir while the sound of it, and then the smell of burning, went past her in a smoke.

Later, she heard feet running on the rock, the high rock whereon she sat. She covered her face with her mantle. A man came and stood by her, panting. He tore the mantle away. He said, “Who are you?”

As if she were dead, Kolite replied, “I was the wife of Kweetchel.”

He took her in his arms and carried her down to the boats. He was gentle with her. Love for her had entered his heart when he uncovered her face. And Kolite looked among the other prisoners to see if her husband was there. But he was not. Then she lay down and it was as if her life went from her. Kweetchel was dead, and she was the slave to the Haida chief, Annoish-Haung.

But Kweetchel was not dead.

In the brief fight with the Haida, he was wounded and pitched into the sea. Swimming as instinctively as a wounded seal, he travelled under water while his breath held. He came up, gasping and half-dead, in the lee of a reef that sheltered him from sight.

He clung here a long while, too much hurt to have any clear thought of what was happening. Later, he recovered enough to swim back to shore. This took all his strength. He crawled dripping above tide-mark, and dropped, lying all night with other men, more still and silent than he, under the light of the vast Pacific moon.

The moon set. The sun climbed. Kweetchel woke and stood up.

He looked at the dead. He looked at the ruins of the burning houses. He saw the crows gathering from the woods, and the fierce herring-gulls swooping inshore. He knew then what had happened.

He ran up and down the beach, calling, “Kolite, Kolite!” But none answered him.

He ran into the forest, calling “Kolite!” There was no reply.

He walked two and fro among the burning boards of cedar, crying on “Kolite!” A huge totem-pole, charred through at the base, fell with a crash, scattering him with flakes of painted wood. That was the only response. He made his way to the smouldering ruin of his own house and lay down in the hot black ash, waiting to die.

His hands, beating about as his sorrow hurt him, touched wood that was not burned, and closed on it. He drew from the ashes the hutch that the compass lived in. “Spirit of the bright box,” groaned Kweetchel, “where is Kolite?”

He took out the compass and held it in his hands. The needle shook, quivered, and hung true on the north. . .

Kweetchel, with something hardening in his breast like stone, bowed himself and wept in the ashes of his home.

Then he hung the compass round his neck on a leather string, provisioned his own dug-out with a keg of fresh water, some nice fresh sea-urchins, a little smoked salmon, fishlines, spears, and all things necessary to a long journey, and went off after Kolite.

Kweetchel’s account of what happened to him during the next two months is confused. He seems to have made his way right round Vancouver Island, however, and crossed to the mainland, where he hung about some inlet more-or-less opposite Clew Cumshewa, waiting for a chance to cross to the Queen Charlottes. He knew Kolite was here, because the compass had pointed the way. It troubled him that the compass no longer pointed to the Queen Charlottes, but he decided that it had been bewitched by the powerful Haida spirits.

In a week of calm weather he provisioned his little canoe again, and set out for the Islands. He landed on the southern shore of a tiny bay, notched into a bigger bay, which was notched into a fjord. Enormous cedar-forest grew to the water’s edge. Kweetchel hid his dug-out and lay down in the bushes, watching the unbroken forest on the opposite shore of the little bay, to which the compass needle now pointed. Rain dripped on him, made sweet with the layers of cedar through which it fell. He dared not light a fire. He waited for the event.

At the very edge of the night, something stirred in the cedar forest across the bay. He thought it was a deer; but there are no deer on the Haida’s Islands. Lifting his head, he looked. At the very point the needle had indicated, a woman parted the branches and stood by the water, carrying in her hand a torch like a timid star.

Kweetchel’s heart seemed to leap from his body. For it was Kolite.

Hunter as he was, he made no sound nor stir. He watched her as she bent and extinguished her little torch. Then, a shadow among the shadows of the forest, she slipped out of the bright robes she wore, the robes of a Haida chieftainess. She stood bare and softly dark as the young night sweet with rain; on arms and anklets broad bands of beaten silver gleamed like bars of the moon. She entered the water, holding a knife in her hand, and began to make prayer to the Spirit of the Sea.

“O Scanawa, Un-Una,” said Kolite, in very good Haida, “I entreat you to punish the men who killed my husband. I entreat you to rise, O Scanawa, Un-Una, Soul of Storms, and upset their canoes, and fill their nets with the dog-fish and the mother of the dog-fish, and drive the otter from their coasts, and bite holes in their baskets, and spoil their copper shields, and break their abalone shells. O Scanawa, Un-Una, hear me. I am a poor woman. I have nothing. I am nothing. I am the slave of Annoish-Haung. O Spirit of Storms, I give you all that I have. Hear me, Scanawa, Un-Una, and make Kweetchel alive again so that I no longer fear the emptiness of the night and the arms of Annoish-Haung.” And lifting the knife, Kolite shore from her head the long locks of black hair, and let them fall in the salt water. She wept as she cut them, and there was a faint phosphorescence in the water, so that she stood with a silver ring about her waist, and her hair floated like silver snakes, and each tear as it mingled with the brine was like a spark of pale fire.

Then Kweetchel could no longer be still. He leapt into the water and swam across the little bay. When Kolite saw him coming she ran ashore and crouched on the edge of the forest. Kweetchel rose out of the sea and came to her, and said, “I am come, Kolite.”

They had no words to fit what they felt. They sat near each other, they touched each other softly here and there, and smiled. Then Kweetchel said, “Come with me.” Kolite swam with him across the bay, they found his dug-out. In the dim night, in the sweet rain, they put out to sea.

Kolite said, “Let us go home.” But Kweetchel shook his head and paddled north, for that was the way the compass pointed.

An old woman had followed Kolite through the woods from the Haida town, had heard her prayer to Un-Una, had seen her meeting with Kweetchel. This old woman went back and told all that she had seen and heard to Annoish-Haung. And when in the morning light Kweetchel looked about the great silver disk of the sea, he saw, between him and the misty mountains of the Islands, four black specks beneath the rising cloud of dawn.

“He follows soon,” grunted Kweetchel between his teeth, and bent to the paddle. He had been paddling all night. He must paddle longer. The glittering silver swell lifted the dug-out, she climbed, sank, climbed again. The four canoes pursuing altered course, converging like black ducks upon a stricken fish. Kweetchel’s canoe had been seen.

“If we had a sail. . .” said Kweetchel stolidly.

Kolite stripped off her mantle of a Haida chieftainess, her fine-woven mantle of red and blue. She spread it upon spears. The wind filled it, she steadied it with her arms. The wind stung her body, she leaned back and laughed fiercely at Kweetchel, and he loved her as never before.

The canoe sped more swiftly, but the four big canoes of Annoish-Haung were swifter yet. Kweetchel looked back. Before they had been like low black ducks. Now they were like eagles, and the foam about their high prows was like the white feathers of an eagle’s neck. Kweetchel groaned, bending over the paddle.

“Shall we leap in the sea together?” asked Kolite, child of the seas, laughing fiercely.

“I am a well-born man and my ears are pierced,” panted Kweetchel. “I will die fighting Annoish-Haung.”

There were islands in the sea. “If we hid among the small channels in the fog,” whispered Kolite. But Kweetchel glanced at the compass and stolidly shook his head. The Thing still pointed north. North he went and Annoish Haung followed.

But now Kweetchel was spent with paddling. He glanced despairingly at the dim mountains of the Lak-Haida, at the canoes that hunted him down. His dark chest heaved, water ran down his face. Kolite left the sail and knelt beside him, and wiped the water from his face with her hands. They looked into each other’s eyes. Kolite tore from her arms the bracelets of beaten silver, stamped with the crest of Annoish-Haung, and threw them into the sea.

“O Scanawa, Un-Una,” she cried, “hear us.”

Then she shrieked like a gull and pointed.

Scanawa, Un-Una, Spirit of Storm, Soul of the Sea, had heard. Down from the tall mountains of Lak-Haida swept the squall. Between the small boat and the others two miles astern it drove a sudden wedge of hail and wind. The waves lifted. The air and the sea mingled together. Un-Una reached up and shook the canoes of Annoish-Haung and the souls of the men in them, Kolite seized the paddle, and Kweetchel reeled forward and stayed the sail. He looked up and saw an albatross riding the gale like a ship. Behind the Soul of the Sea fought for them. Kweetchel bowed his head. It is not given to all men to walk with the gods of the sea.

The squall broke away south. The sea about them was driving green and blue, flashing with foam. One staggering shape, water-logged and with torn sails reeled from the rim of the storm and came battling after them. Annoish-Haung still followed.

Under the bright sail, with Kolite bending at the paddle, the little canoe climbed the waves like a duck. Grimly behind her laboured the big canoe of the Haida. Annoish-Haung set his slaves to bail. She lightened each moment. Kweetchel took the paddle once more.

North through the bright ridged sea they struggled, following the compass needle. Islands of refuge, channels of escape, showed here and there among the low clouds. Kweetchel would not turn aside. North he headed. And Annoish-Haung followed fast.

Ahead of them, a great crag reared from the running surf about its base. It roared into an islet of honey-gold rock, grown with vivid green moss and all hollowed by the sea. An hour passed and they could see the sea-lions thick along the reefs as grubs along a leaf; they could hear the roaring of the honey-brown sea-gulls mingle with the roar of the foam.

Towards the crag Kweetchel headed. And Kolite thought, “It is ended.” For she thought he meant to dash upon the crag and die.

But Kweetchel, following where the needle pointed, saw due ahead a great cave in the rock, and in the surf before it a break.

He glanced back. The Haida was near, but she hesitated. He could see Annoish-Haung beating his slaves, who had no stomach for the surf. Kweetchel smiled at Kolite and headed for the break in the reefs.

Inevitable as life or death, the jaws of the reef opened before them. They were enclosed in streaming rocks, from which hung curtains of bronze kelp. From the ledges the sea-bulls reared to look, and right and left the cows dived in the flow.

Kweetchel yelled. The lions bellowed. The surf thundered about the narrow channel of green water. . .

They were through. A great sheet of foam shouldered them quietly into the cave.

Kweetchel looked about him. Rocks buttressed the entrance, and the reefs kept the waves from it. The pool in the cave was foam-red and shallow. He stepped out and drew the canoe behind one of the rock-buttresses. He lifted out Kolite. Clinging together, they looked about them with large scared eyes.

It was a very still place they had entered, though it hummed and shook to the thunder along the reefs. The air of the cave was calm, it seemed to be hung with strange green water-shadows and reflections of the deep. The pool that floored it was calm. The rock beneath the calm pool was covered with a rose-red encrustation, blotched with scarlet, hung with mauve and bronze weeds, and starred with living flowers as green as emerald. Huge crabs, noduled with purple and crimson, moved with the undulations of the sea. In one wall was a rose-pink recess, like a throne for a sea-spirit. Kweetchel lifted Kolite and set her in this shrine. Then he caught up a spear, loosed the knife in his belt, and turned to the entrance.

As he turned, he heard a cry of death. He looked out. The hands of the weary slaves had not been as true as his hand. He saw the Haida swing for the opening of the reef, and miss it. He saw, in a moment of time, her high prow crashed upon the rocks; she split from end to end, slid away, and sank. The slaves went down in the rush and smother of the foam. Only one man, gripping a spear in his mouth, leapt clear; hung to the kelp, heaved himself upward among the herd of sea-lions, and staggered towards the cave. It was Annoish-Haung.

Huge, dark and dripping from the sea, he splashed into the cave, and Kweetchel met him there.

They closed at once, stabbing with shortened spears. The water of the pool rocked, green and silver reflections flowed over the walls. The surf thundered outside, and the bulls of the sea-herd bellowed angrily after the man who had run among them.

Kweetchel kept his knife hidden in his left hand.

Great and fierce was Annoish-Haung among the great fierce Haidas; fair in colour, and delighting in war. Kweetchel was a head shorter, and swarthy, and had no more stomach for war than another man. But he had not followed Annoish-Haung nine weeks for nothing. Waiting his chance, he took many wounds. The froth on the churned pool was stained as pink as the walls. The crabs, pausing in their unceasing run, winnowed the water with horrid feathered jaws.

Annoish-Haung shouted his war-cry and drove again with his spear. Kweetchel avoided it, and the impetus of the stroke carried Annoish-Haung past him. Kweetchel wheeled. The Haida wheeled almost instantly and recovered. But Kweetchel had seized his chance. He leaned forward and slashed his knife across the forehead under the studded head-band.

It was only a shallow cut. But the blood blinded Annoish-Haung. He faltered. Before he could clear his eyes, Kweetchel had run in and slashed his knee. He dropped to the other. He flung his spear, but he could not see clearly. It flew wide. Kweetchel speared him through the heart. He fell forward on his face in the pool, and died. Kolite came from her rosy niche and took him by the hair, and together they carried him to the opening of the cave and heaved him into the surf.

They spent three fireless days on the rock, eating sea-urchins and dulse, while Kweetchel, like another before him frapped his ship; for the dugout had been scraped on the reef; and Kweetchel bound her together with strips of sea-lion hide, and braced her with splinters of Annoish-Haung’s canoe which the tide washed up. Then, suffering badly from thirst, they put off again.

“Now we can go home,” said Kolite, shivering in her mantle.

Kweetchel thought it about time. He looked at the Thing, but it still pointed implacably north. He dared not disobey a spirit that had done so much for him.

So he paddled stolidly north once more.

He paddled forty-eight hours in a rough sea against a north-wester. The dug-out made water badly. They were nearly dead when they fell in with a trading-schooner, and the captain took them on board. He could speak some Haida, and Kolite was able to tell him some of their story. At the end of it,—“Where do you want to go now?” he asked them.

“We want to go home,” said Kolite.

“But we have to go north,” said Kweetchel sadly, “because the Thing inside this shining box points us there.” And he showed the sacred compass to the captain.

The captain began to laugh. He laughed and laughed. Then, looking at their faces, he grew grave. He looked at the compass. He said gently, “but it points south.”

“North, Yetzhabada,” answered Kolite, resignedly.

“But south too,” insisted the white man.

Of course when one end of the needle pointed north, the other pointed south. Kweetchel had never happened to notice this before. It made him very happy. He could go off home with Kolite without fear of angering the masterful Thing in the bright box.

The captain took them south with him and eventually landed them near their old place, at a village of their own tribe. He tried on the voyage to explain the real nature of the compass to Kweetchel, but he never succeeded.

Kweetchel stayed with his own people. In time missionaries found him, and he stopped keeping slaves and eating dog, and became a Christian, and wore a second-hand Stetson. He himself told me this story years ago.

He was a very old man then. I thought he was dead since. But the other day I saw a little totem-pole in a store in Victoria. It was carved of yellow cedar, about two feet high, gaily painted; such as old Indians make to sell to the summer tourists on the Coast. As soon as I saw it, I knew Kweetchel had made it, for he had carved it with all the characters of his saga. He was there, and Kolite, and a sea-lion, and the big canoe and the little canoe, and an albatross, and a terrible representation of Un-Una, in a cave, swallowing up Annoish-Haung. On the very top was something. . . .

I went into the store. They wanted ten dollars for the pole, which was dear. “But, as you can see,” said the man, “it has a heap on it. But no one knows what that thing on the top is.”

I bought the pole, because I knew all about it and what the thing on the top was.

It was a mariner’s compass in a yellow box.