ndmother was the only one
of them all who seemed oppressed with care. The boy, whose parents
were dead, was her special charge and was not, as he should be, like
other Indian lads. He was slim and swift and was as skillful as his
companions with the bow and spear, but he had a strange love for
running along the sea beach with the waves snatching at his bare,
brown legs, and he was really happy only when he was swimming in the
green water. The day he swam to the island and back again, paying no
heed to the shouts and warnings of his friends, and declaring, when he
landed, that he would have gone farther save that the tide had
turned--that day had brought his old grandmother's patience to an end.

"It is not fitting that one of our tribe should be so familiar with
the sea," she stormed at him. "We were not born to master that wild
salt water; the gods that rule us have said over and over again that
the woods and rivers are ours, but that we are to have no dealings
with the spirits of the sea. Since I cannot make you listen, you shall
talk to some one who will. You shall go to ask the medicine man if
what I say is not so."

Nashola had come, therefore, to ask his question, but he found that it
needed a bold heart to advance, without quaking, into that silent
presence and to speak out with Secotan's black eyes seeming to stare
him through and through.

"Is it true," he began, "that men of our tribe should have no trust in
the sea? My grandmother says that I should hate it and fear it, but I
do not. Must I learn to be afraid?"

Slowly the man nodded.

Most Indians grow old quickly, and are withered like dried-up apples
as soon as the later years come upon them. But Secotan, although his
hair was gray, had still the clear-cut face with its arched nose and
heavy brows of a younger man. Only his eyes, deep, piercing, and very
wise, seemed to show how long he had lived and how much he had
learned.

"Our fathers and their fathers before them have always known that we
must distrust the sea," he said at last. "No matter how blue and
smiling it may be it can never be our friend. We may swim near the
shore, we may even launch our canoes and journey, if the way be short,
from one harbor to another when the sky is clear and the winds are
asleep. But always we are to remember that the sea is our enemy and a
treacherous enemy in the end."

He turned away to stare at the hills again, but Nashola lingered, not
yet satisfied. It w