The second day of the feast, Kweetchel’s mind came back to him suddenly, and with it a great sense of fear and disaster. He heard from without the howls of the drinkers, the groans of the eaters, the weeping of the neglected children, the worrying of the dogs. He trembled with fear and weakness. He said to Kolite, “Bring me the hutch with the Thing inside. I must talk to that spirit.”
Kolite brought the carved hutch, and covered her eyes with her mantle of green-and-black goat’s hair while Kweetchel took out the compass. Kweetchel held the compass and turned it in his quivering hand; and the needle balanced, hesitated, and then hung true to the north.
Kweetchel crawled out of his house and stood and looked north.
A great white fog-belt hung low across the sea. Kweetchel saw three black specks break one after the other from this fog. They were a long way off, but he knew them for what they were,—canoes under twin-sails. He watched a moment more. Then, with a great cry, he ran staggering to the potlatch house. He burst through the totem poles and flung himself, naked and shouting, on the revellers within. As men of Kent or Essex might have burst into an English hall, crying, “The Norsemen, the Norsemen!” so Kweetchel came, crying, “The Haidas, the Haidas!”
The crapulous rabble huddled to the defence. They tried to launch the war-canoes to meet the sea-hawks on the sea. Only one got off, and Kweetchel, for all his weakness, in her. Women fled to the fir-forest, all except Kolite. She climbed to a high rock above the beach, and wrapped her fine woven mantle about her, and sat as still as a stone, her chin upon her knees, watching the hopeless fight.
The Haida war-canoes came down under full sail, swift and beautiful among the beautiful boats that men have ever made in the world.
The canoe from shore, with drunken courage and a scattering fire of old muskets, put out to intercept the leading Haida. The Haida swept on, silent, until scarcely twenty feet divided the two. Then her sails came down, shots were fired, spears and stone-headed axes flew. In a moment from the other boat rose a great cry of pain, fear and death. The Haida’s way carried her on. Her terrible sharp prow, with the great eyes glaring on either side, ground into the side of her adversary, which heeled over. The Haida was sixty feet long; she rode right over the smaller boat and beached on the sand leaving the living and the dying struggling in the water. The second canoe picked up a few of the former for slaves.
Then the slaughter commenced, of men too gorged to stand up, of men too drunk to steady a harpoon. Kolite did not stir while the sound of it, and then the smell of burning, went past her in a smoke.
Later, she heard feet running on the rock, the high rock whereon she sat. She covered her face with her mantle. A man came and stood by her, panting. He tore the mantle away. He said, “Who are you?”
As if she were dead, Kolite replied, “I was the wife of Kweetchel.”