ing always sneeringly, 'Haha,
hiaqua,--ha, ha, ha!'

"Whenever the miser essayed to move and continue his descent, a
whirlwind caught him and with much ado tossed him hither and
thither, leaving him at last flung and imprisoned in a pinching
crevice, or buried to the eyes in a snowdrift, or gnawed by
lacerating lava jaws. Sharp torture the old man was encountering,
but he held fast to his hiaqua.

"The blackness grew ever deeper and more crowded with perdition,
the din more impish, demoniac, and devilish; the laughter more
appalling; the miser more and more exhausted with vain buffeting.
He determined to propitiate exasperated Tamanous with a sacrifice.
He threw into the black cylinder storm his left-handful, five
strings of precious hiaqua."

"Somewhat long-winded is thy legend, Hamitchou, Great Medicine-Man
of the Squallyamish," quoth I. "Why didn't the old fool drop his
wampum--shell out, as one might say,--and make tracks?"

"Well, well!" continued Hamitchou, "when the miser had thrown away
his first handful of hiaqua, there was a momentary lull in
elemental war, and he heard the otters puffing around him
invisible. Then the storm, renewed, blacker, louder, harsher,
crueller than before, and over the dread undertone of the voice of
Tamanous, tamanous voices again screamed, 'Ha, ha, ha, hiaqua!'
and it seemed as if tamanous hands, or the paws of the demon
otters, clutched at the miser's right-handful and tore at his
shoulder and waist belts.

"So, while darkness and tempest still buffeted the hapless old man,
and thrust him away from his path, and while the roaring was
wickeder than the roars of tens and tens of bears when a-hungered
they pounce upon a plain of kamas, gradually wounded and terrified,
he flung away string after string of hiaqua, gaining never any
notice of such sacrifice, except an instant's lull of the cyclone
and a puff from the invisible otters.

"The last string he clung to long, and before he threw it to be
caught and whirled after its fellows, he tore off a single bunch of
fifty shells. But upon this, too, the storm laid its clutches. In
the final desperate struggle, the old man was wounded so sternly
that, when he had thrown into the formless chaos, instinct with
Tamanous, his last propitiatory offeri