Kweetchel was a young man when it happened and that was before the days when the red canoe and the Sitka Spruce had brought numbers of white men to his part of the world. Kweetchel had seen very few white men; and he had never seen a compass until he took one from the body of a dead sailor he found in a drifting boat.
He was out in the summer fog, fishing for halibut with bits of octopus-arm for bait, and the boat came sideways out of the fog, and rubbed gently against his dug-out, and he looked in and saw the dead sailor.
There was nothing on the white man but a twist of tobacco and the compass. While Kweetchel was wondering what he should do next, a sooty albatross screamed at him. His snam was an albatross, so Kweetchel took this to mean that he’d better have nothing to do with the boat or the dead man; he sent the boat off with a push and the fog shut down on it forever. But there seemed no harm in keeping the compass, which was in a bright brass case.
Kweetchel went ashore. He intended to give the compass to the girl he liked best—either Kolite or Oala. The trouble was he could not decide which he preferred. Oala’s silver labret was nearly twice the size of Kolite’s, but Kolite’s eyes were soft and bright as deep river-water and looked kindly on Kweetchel.
He sat down to think it out, the compass in his hands, and his heart beat—Kolite? Oalo? Kolite? Oalo?
Then glancing at the compass in his hand Kweetchel saw that the needle pointed straight at Kolite’s house.
This was not strange considering that Kolite’s house was north of Kweetchel as he sat on the beach among the draw-up dug-outs and the barbed cod’s heads and the fighting dogs. But of course he did not know this, and it came as a shock. “My holy snam!” said Kweetchel, or gutterals to that effect, “but there is a strong spirit in this little box!” He decided that he would keep the compass himself. But he went immediately and made arrangements to marry Kolite as soon as possible.
Kweetchel took Kolite to wife, and very soon forgot all about Oala. He was very happy. Kolite was an excellent housewife as far as oalachan oil and preserved seaweed went. Kweetchel attributed his comfort to the spirit in the brass compass. He made a beautiful hutch for it to live in, of well-grained male wood greased black, inlaid with studs of shell, and incised with albatross wings.
The days went over Kweetchel and Kolite, the silvery North Pacific sun, the nights, and the great burning moons. The west winds which had last touched the eyes of lovers in the peony gardens of Japan, now touched as softly the eyes of Kweetchel and Kolite.
A sub-chief gave a great potlatch. Kweetchel was a dandy, and he had himself tattooed for the occasion in a design of conventionalized compasses. But the wounds inflamed. And when the day of the feast came, Kweetchel was a sick man. He lay on his bed with a fever, talking wild spirit-words, and Kolite fanned him with a cedar-bark fan.