en 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
new-comer.

"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. "Greeting, 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 am fat."

"Dead men are not fat," Opee-Kwan confessed. "Thou hast fared well,
but it is strange. No man may mate with the off-shore wind and come
back on the heels of the years."

"I have come back," Nam-Bok answered simply.

"Mayhap thou art a shadow, then, a passing shadow of the Nam-Bok that
was. Shadows come back."

"I am hungry. Shadows do not eat."

But Opee-Kwan doubted, and brushed his hand across his brow in sore
puzzlement. Nam-Bok was likewise puzzled, and as he looked up and down
the line found no welcome in the eyes of the fisherfolk. The men and
women whispered together. The children stole timidly back among their
elders, and bristling dogs fawned up to him and sniffed suspiciously.

"I bore thee, Nam-Bok, and I gave thee suck when thou wast little,"
Bask-Wah-Wan whimpered, drawing closer; "and shadow though thou be, or
no shadow, I will give thee to eat now."

Nam-Bok made to come to her, but a growl of fear and menace warned
him back. He said something in a strange tongue which sounded like
"Goddam," and added, "No shadow am I, but a man."

"Who may know concerning the things of mystery?" Opee-Kwan demanded,
half of himself and half of his tribespeople. "We are, and in a breath
we are not. If the man may become shadow, may not the shadow become
man? Nam-Bok was, but is not. This we know, but we do