"I should think that God would make them that way in the first place," grumbled the Sun.
"He could, you foolish creature," said Mother Nature, with a frown, "but if He made His people and His worlds perfect to begin with, there would be no need to create them at all. God is like a weaver, weaving a wonderful pattern. He finds joy in His work. If it were all finished as soon as it was begun, even God Himself would have no purpose. All things must grow slowly and beautifully, from the seed to the plant, from the plant to the tree, from the tree to the perfect fruit. You, Sun, are growing too. Some day, your heat will be gone, and you will grow old and die. You will be cold, and dark, without any light to shine with. Then it may be that the Great Mind that made you, will cause you to live again. Meanwhile, do each day what you have to do, and stop grumbling about things you do not understand."
CHAPTER XVIII
THE ISLAND MEN
There were twenty-two men and eight women in Tul-Ab's little party. The great log canoe had been crowded.
The place where they landed was a little harbour at the mouth of a small river, with high cliffs on either side of it, and a narrow beach at their feet. They managed to catch some fish in the bay without much trouble, and to find dry brushwood for fire, but there was no water to drink, except the little they had found in the hollows in the rocks, left there from the rainstorm of the night before. The shallow caves in which they slept were only holes in the rock.
When morning came, Tul-Ab and some of his men began to climb up the cliffs, in search of water, and a place to make a camp. They did not like the small caves along the shore; they wanted to be higher up, where they would be safe from attack, and where they could build brush huts of the kind they had always lived in.
They found a smooth grassy place at the top of the cliffs, from which they could look far out over the sea. There were no trees on the cliff top, but only some low bushes. A stream, however, came from the rocks higher up and crossing the little plateau, tumbled over the edge of the cliffs into the sea. All over the surface of the plateau were many flat rocks, some small, some very large and heavy. An easy path down the side of the cliff led to the beach below, where they had spent the night.