He took out the compass and held it in his hands. The needle shook, quivered, and hung true on the north. . .
Kweetchel, with something hardening in his breast like stone, bowed himself and wept in the ashes of his home.
Then he hung the compass round his neck on a leather string, provisioned his own dug-out with a keg of fresh water, some nice fresh sea-urchins, a little smoked salmon, fishlines, spears, and all things necessary to a long journey, and went off after Kolite.
Kweetchel’s account of what happened to him during the next two months is confused. He seems to have made his way right round Vancouver Island, however, and crossed to the mainland, where he hung about some inlet more-or-less opposite Clew Cumshewa, waiting for a chance to cross to the Queen Charlottes. He knew Kolite was here, because the compass had pointed the way. It troubled him that the compass no longer pointed to the Queen Charlottes, but he decided that it had been bewitched by the powerful Haida spirits.
In a week of calm weather he provisioned his little canoe again, and set out for the Islands. He landed on the southern shore of a tiny bay, notched into a bigger bay, which was notched into a fjord. Enormous cedar-forest grew to the water’s edge. Kweetchel hid his dug-out and lay down in the bushes, watching the unbroken forest on the opposite shore of the little bay, to which the compass needle now pointed. Rain dripped on him, made sweet with the layers of cedar through which it fell. He dared not light a fire. He waited for the event.
At the very edge of the night, something stirred in the cedar forest across the bay. He thought it was a deer; but there are no deer on the Haida’s Islands. Lifting his head, he looked. At the very point the needle had indicated, a woman parted the branches and stood by the water, carrying in her hand a torch like a timid star.
Kweetchel’s heart seemed to leap from his body. For it was Kolite.
Hunter as he was, he made no sound nor stir. He watched her as she bent and extinguished her little torch. Then, a shadow among the shadows of the forest, she slipped out of the bright robes she wore, the robes of a Haida chieftainess. She stood bare and softly dark as the young night sweet with rain; on arms and anklets broad bands of beaten silver gleamed like bars of the moon. She entered the water, holding a knife in her hand, and began to make prayer to the Spirit of the Sea.
“O Scanawa, Un-Una,” said Kolite, in very good Haida, “I entreat you to punish the men who killed my husband. I entreat you to rise, O Scanawa, Un-Una, Soul of Storms, and upset their canoes, and fill their nets with the dog-fish and the mother of the dog-fish, and drive the otter from their coasts, and bite holes in their baskets, and spoil their copper shields, and break their abalone shells. O Scanawa, Un-Una, hear me. I am a poor woman. I have nothing. I am nothing. I am the slave of Annoish-Haung. O Spirit of Storms, I give you all that I have. Hear me, Scanawa, Un-Una, and make Kweetchel alive again so that I no longer fear the emptiness of the night and the arms of Annoish-Haung.” And lifting the knife, Kolite shore from her head the long locks of black hair, and let them fall in the salt water. She wept as she cut them, and there was a faint phosphorescence in the water, so that she stood with a silver ring about her waist, and her hair floated like silver snakes, and each tear as it mingled with the brine was like a spark of pale fire.
Then Kweetchel could no longer be still. He leapt into the water and swam across the little bay. When Kolite saw him coming she ran ashore and crouched on the edge of the forest. Kweetchel rose out of the sea and came to her, and said, “I am come, Kolite.”