lled the bow high up on
the sand. The man stood up and sent a questing glance along the line of
villagers. A rainbow sweater, dirty and the worse for wear, clung
loosely to his broad shoulders, and a red cotton handkerchief was
knotted in sailor fashion about his throat. A fisherman's tam-o'-shanter
on his close-clipped head, and dungaree trousers and heavy brogans
completed his outfit.

But he was none the less a striking personage to these simple
fisherfolk of the great Yukon Delta, who, all their lives, had stared
out on Bering Sea and in that time seen but two white men,--the census
enumerator and a lost Jesuit priest. They were a poor people, with
neither gold in the ground nor valuable furs in hand, so the whites had
passed them afar. Also, the Yukon, through the thousands of years, had
shoaled that portion of the sea with the detritus of Alaska till vessels
grounded out of sight of land. So the sodden coast, with its long inside
reaches and huge mud-land archipelagoes, was avoided by the ships of
men, and the fisherfolk knew not that such things were.

Koogah, the Bone-Scratcher, retreated backward in sudden haste, tripping
over his staff and falling to the ground. "Nam-Bok!" he cried, as he
scrambled wildly for footing. "Nam-Bok, who was blown off to sea, come
back!"

The men and women shrank away, and the children scuttled off between
their legs. Only Opee-Kwan was brave, as befitted the head man of the
village. He strode forward and gazed long and earnestly at the newcomer.

"It is Nam-Bok," he said at last, and at the conviction in his voice
the women wailed apprehensively and drew farther away.

The lips of the stranger moved indecisively, and his brown throat
writhed and wrestled with unspoken words.

"La, la, it is Nam-Bok," Bask-Wah-Wan croaked, peering up into his 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. "Greetings, 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 a