Great and fierce was Annoish-Haung among the great fierce Haidas; fair in colour, and delighting in war. Kweetchel was a head shorter, and swarthy, and had no more stomach for war than another man. But he had not followed Annoish-Haung nine weeks for nothing. Waiting his chance, he took many wounds. The froth on the churned pool was stained as pink as the walls. The crabs, pausing in their unceasing run, winnowed the water with horrid feathered jaws.
Annoish-Haung shouted his war-cry and drove again with his spear. Kweetchel avoided it, and the impetus of the stroke carried Annoish-Haung past him. Kweetchel wheeled. The Haida wheeled almost instantly and recovered. But Kweetchel had seized his chance. He leaned forward and slashed his knife across the forehead under the studded head-band.
It was only a shallow cut. But the blood blinded Annoish-Haung. He faltered. Before he could clear his eyes, Kweetchel had run in and slashed his knee. He dropped to the other. He flung his spear, but he could not see clearly. It flew wide. Kweetchel speared him through the heart. He fell forward on his face in the pool, and died. Kolite came from her rosy niche and took him by the hair, and together they carried him to the opening of the cave and heaved him into the surf.
They spent three fireless days on the rock, eating sea-urchins and dulse, while Kweetchel, like another before him frapped his ship; for the dugout had been scraped on the reef; and Kweetchel bound her together with strips of sea-lion hide, and braced her with splinters of Annoish-Haung’s canoe which the tide washed up. Then, suffering badly from thirst, they put off again.
“Now we can go home,” said Kolite, shivering in her mantle.
Kweetchel thought it about time. He looked at the Thing, but it still pointed implacably north. He dared not disobey a spirit that had done so much for him.
So he paddled stolidly north once more.
He paddled forty-eight hours in a rough sea against a north-wester. The dug-out made water badly. They were nearly dead when they fell in with a trading-schooner, and the captain took them on board. He could speak some Haida, and Kolite was able to tell him some of their story. At the end of it,—“Where do you want to go now?” he asked them.
“We want to go home,” said Kolite.
“But we have to go north,” said Kweetchel sadly, “because the Thing inside this shining box points us there.” And he showed the sacred compass to the captain.