Of course, Aunt Clara didn’t want him to do it. She immediately had visions of him starved to death. But there was a wonderful gleam in Uncle Teddy’s eyes when he looked at his nephew. He said very little about the proposed fast, either to encourage or discourage him; simply gave his consent.
Hinpoha regarded the Captain with wondering admiration. She also burned with the desire to do something hard, to prove that girls as well as boys can practise self-control. “Oh, Captain,” she said, “if you keep the fast I’ll keep the silence! I’ll not speak a word for three days.”
There was a ripple of exclamations at this, mixed with laughter, for Hinpoha’s fondness for conversation was well known. “Laugh all you want to,” she said, “but I’ll prove to you that I can do it.”
The Captain chose the spot for his retirement and on the first day after he was released from Chiefhood he paddled across to the mainland taking his blankets and water, but no food. Hinpoha stood on the bank as he departed, with a middy tie bound over her mouth. She had feared her ability to keep silence without it as a constant reminder.
When the Captain reached the place where he planned to spread his blankets he found an Indian bed of balsam branches fully two feet high. Who 132 could have made it? he wondered, and then he remembered that Hinpoha had gone off paddling by herself the afternoon before. She knew the place he had picked out. He threw himself down on the fragrant couch and began his long struggle for the victory of the spirit over the body. Every night at sunset Uncle Teddy went over to see if he was all right and bring him fresh water from the little sweet spring on Ellen’s Isle. The third day the Captain lay with his eyes closed most of the time and dozed, the sounds of the wood and the lake coming to him as from afar off. Sometimes he slept and once he dreamed he saw an Indian girl come across the lake in a canoe, walk up to where he lay and stand looking at him steadily for a long time. He half opened his eyes and it still seemed to him as if there were someone there, but the face and the figure were Hinpoha’s. He opened his eyes wider and looked again, but she had vanished, and he sank back to sleep.
Over at Ellen’s Isle Hinpoha was going through the most strenuous three days in her whole experience. If anyone thinks it is easy to refrain from talking when one has talked all her life, let her try it, and her respect for Hinpoha will be greatly increased. The others tried by every means at their command to make her talk, popping questions at her suddenly to take her off her guard, making statements in her presence which she knew were incorrect 133 and which she burned to correct, and in every way making the fulfillment of her vow a difficult task. She could not go off by herself and thus remove the temptation, for she had vowed to go about her daily tasks as usual. By the end of the third day she was nearly ready to burst, but through it all she managed to keep an unruffled temper and a pleasant expression–the outward signs of a soul at peace. There will be many readers who will maintain that Hinpoha won the greater victory, although the Captain’s exploit won him more glory among his friends. To go off and fast has the halo of romance about it; to cease from talking for three days sounds easy, and in the case of a woman is apt to provoke smiles and hints that she must have talked in her sleep to make up for it.
When Uncle Teddy went over on the third sunset he brought the Captain home with him in the canoe. He looked just as he did when he went; not a bit thinner. When they asked him how he could stand it he replied that he hadn’t felt hungry after the first day at all. A great feast had been prepared in his honor, and Hinpoha, released from her vow, shared the glory with him.
“Well, was anything revealed to you during your fast?” asked Aunt Clara. “Do you know how to make your fortune now?”
The Captain only smiled at all remarks like that and in reply to demands as to what had been revealed 134 simply replied, “Oh, several things.” And his glance rested on Hinpoha for a fraction of a second.
“What did you dream about?” asked Hinpoha.