They had no words to fit what they felt. They sat near each other, they touched each other softly here and there, and smiled. Then Kweetchel said, “Come with me.” Kolite swam with him across the bay, they found his dug-out. In the dim night, in the sweet rain, they put out to sea.
Kolite said, “Let us go home.” But Kweetchel shook his head and paddled north, for that was the way the compass pointed.
An old woman had followed Kolite through the woods from the Haida town, had heard her prayer to Un-Una, had seen her meeting with Kweetchel. This old woman went back and told all that she had seen and heard to Annoish-Haung. And when in the morning light Kweetchel looked about the great silver disk of the sea, he saw, between him and the misty mountains of the Islands, four black specks beneath the rising cloud of dawn.
“He follows soon,” grunted Kweetchel between his teeth, and bent to the paddle. He had been paddling all night. He must paddle longer. The glittering silver swell lifted the dug-out, she climbed, sank, climbed again. The four canoes pursuing altered course, converging like black ducks upon a stricken fish. Kweetchel’s canoe had been seen.
“If we had a sail. . .” said Kweetchel stolidly.
Kolite stripped off her mantle of a Haida chieftainess, her fine-woven mantle of red and blue. She spread it upon spears. The wind filled it, she steadied it with her arms. The wind stung her body, she leaned back and laughed fiercely at Kweetchel, and he loved her as never before.
The canoe sped more swiftly, but the four big canoes of Annoish-Haung were swifter yet. Kweetchel looked back. Before they had been like low black ducks. Now they were like eagles, and the foam about their high prows was like the white feathers of an eagle’s neck. Kweetchel groaned, bending over the paddle.
“Shall we leap in the sea together?” asked Kolite, child of the seas, laughing fiercely.
“I am a well-born man and my ears are pierced,” panted Kweetchel. “I will die fighting Annoish-Haung.”
There were islands in the sea. “If we hid among the small channels in the fog,” whispered Kolite. But Kweetchel glanced at the compass and stolidly shook his head. The Thing still pointed north. North he went and Annoish Haung followed.