"It is two years since I beat my cousin at the spear-throwing. It has always been the law that one trial is enough. The tribe cannot be always changing its war-chief. But I will put the law out of the question for once, for it is not well that the Sun-Folk should be under a war-chief who is weak of hand, or whom they think is weak of hand. The matter shall be retried. At sunrise to-morrow, as soon as there is full light, let Honk-Ah be ready with his spears and I will be ready with mine. And the man of us two who can throw farthest, and make his point go deepest, he shall be war-chief. I have said."
"It is good," assented Honk-Ah, who had got what he was playing up for, an early trial.
The deer-skin shook, the old chief and Pŭl-Yūn had returned to the tee-pee. The knot of mutineers moved slowly off conversing in muttered undertones.
"That is a point to me," said Honk-Ah. "He is fat, he is slow. He was sweating as he marched in, I saw it. And, he carried no spears. I know every assegai of mine by name, and they know me. To-morrow I win!"
THE SPEAR-THROWING
The scene with which the last chapter closed had come as a not unwelcome interruption to a family explanation which had been in progress within the deer-skin hangings of the old chief's tee-pee.
A mother-in-law may be a delightful person, or the reverse. The difficulties and temptations which beset her position are of no modern creation. Are there not ancient wheezes upon this topic in Greek anthologies? I doubt not that these hoary japes were in their day and generation rehashes of Mykenæan jibes still more venerable, for under given circumstances we humans act alike all the world over, and there is no valid reason for assuming that our behaviours and misbehaviours have varied to any great extent during the past hundred thousand years.