“I don’t know how we are to live now,” said Toko Kiemila to Olelbis. “Some one has taken your wife away. I cannot live without water much longer.”
Another man who lay inside the sweat-house at the west end, an old man, stood up and said,—
“I do not know what people are to do without water. I do not know how you, Olelbis, are to live without it. I cannot live unless I have water. I am very dry. Why do you not try to get water again? There is a man in Hlihli Pui Hlutton whose name is Kopus. You can see his house from here. He is a great Hlahi. He sings and dances every night. Let him come here to sing and dance. Perhaps he will be able to bring water back to us.”
The old man who said this was Hubit. He was suffering from thirst so much that he had tied a belt of sinews around his waist and tightened it till he was nearly cut in two.
Olelbis went to the top of the sweat-house and spoke to all the people.
“We must send for this Hlahi,” said he. “Let him come here to sing and bring water back to us. Some of you young men who walk fast must go for him to-morrow.”
That night they talked about the person who should go. One said to a second, “You walk fast; you ought to go.”
“I do not,” said the second; “but you walk fast. You are the person to go.”
And so they spoke one after another, till at last Lutchi said, “I cannot walk fast, but I will go.”
Early next morning he went out to the top of the sweat-house and said, “I am going!” and he shot away to the southeast.