thunder and
all the spirits of the sea to overwhelm them."

There was a breathless silence as Secotan slowly moved forward and
raised his staff. Nashola, standing before the other boys, watched the
medicine man's face with eyes that never wavered. Even as the sorcerer
moved there came a low mutter of thunder across the gray, level floor
of the sea, and a distant streak of darker water showed the coming
wind.

"There is the storm! The very winds obey him!"

The cry went up from all the Indians, save only Nashola who stood
silent. The medicine man turned to look at him, then hesitated and
dropped his eyes.

"Why do you wait? Raise up a hurricane, O greatest of sorcerers,"
cried a man behind them.

"No," shouted Secotan suddenly. He flung down his staff and held up
his empty hands before his face. "I will raise no storm," he cried, "I
will call no spirits from the deep--because I cannot. The wind and
thunder answer no man's bidding--storms come and go at the will of the
Great Spirit alone. There is one soul here that I love, one being
whom, in all my life, I have had for a friend. In his eyes I will
stand for truth at last, although I had almost learned to believe in
my magic myself. I can do none of those things that you think. I am a
man without power, like every one of you!"

A roar of anger went up, a dull, savage, guttural sound that died away
almost at once into silence, a quiet more ominous than an outcry could
have been. Terrified by that strange apparition out yonder upon the
waters, the Indians saw themselves deserted by the one person to whom
they could look for courage and counsel. Only half understanding, they
knew, at least, that Nashola had been the means of their medicine
man's downfall. Frenzied hands seized them both and dragged them
headlong down toward the water. Visions of the savage tortures that
his people wreaked upon their enemies passed through the boy's mind,
but he did not struggle or cry out, although Secotan's set face,
beside him, turned gray under its coppery skin. Some one had found
Nashola's canoe, left long unused upon the beach, and had launched it
in the breakers.

"Let him go back to the sea that he loved, this boy who has never been
one of us. Let the man perish in the storm that is coming without his
call."

Relentless hands flung them into the frail boat and pushed it out
through the surf. Nashola crawled to the stern and took up the paddle;
a crash of thunder broke over