"I don't think the sun could ever fade in Wrangel," laughed Ted. "They told me there it hadn't shone but fifteen days in three months. It rained all the time."
"Rain is nothing," said Kalitan. "It is when the Ice Spirit speaks in the North Wind's roar and in the crackling of the floes that we tremble. The glaciers are the children of the Mountain Spirit whom our fathers worshipped. He is angry, and lo! he hurls down icebergs in his wrath, he tosses them about, upon the streams he tosses the kyaks like feathers and washes the land with the waves of Sitth. When our people are buried in the ground instead of being burnt with the fire, they must go for ever to the place of Sitth, of everlasting cold, where never sun abides, nor rain, nor warmth."
Ted had listened spellbound to this poetic speech and gazed at Kalitan in open-mouthed amazement. A boy who could talk like that was a new and delightful playmate, and he said:
"Tell me more about things, Kalitan," but the Indian was silent, ashamed of having spoken.
"What do you do all day when you are at home?" persisted the American.
"In winter there is nothing to do but to hunt and fish," said Kalitan. "Sometimes we do not find much game, then we think of how, when a Thlinkit dies, he has plenty. If he has lived as a good tribesman, his kyak glides smoothly over the silver waters into the sunset, until, o'er gently flowing currents, it reaches the place of the mighty forest. A bad warrior's canoe passes dark whirlpools and terrible rapids until he reaches the place we speak not of, where reigns Sitth.
"In the summer-time we still hunt and fish. Many have learned to till the ground, and we gather berries and wood for the winter. The other side of the inlet, the tree-trunks drift from the Yukon and are stranded on the islands, so there is plenty for firewood. But upon our island the women gather a vine and dry it. They collect seaweed for food in the early spring, and dry it and press it into square cakes, which make good food after they have hung long in the sun. They make baskets and sell them to the white people. Often my uncle and I take them to Valdez, and once we brought back fifty dollars for those my mother made. There is always much to do."
"Don't you get terribly cold hunting in the winter?" asked Ted.
"Thlinkit boy not a baby," said Kalitan, a trifle scornfully. "We begin to be hardened when we are babies. When I was five years old, I left my father and went to my uncle to be taught. Every morning I bathed in the ocean, even if I had to break ice to find water, and then I rolled in the snow. After that my uncle brushed me with a switch bundle, and not lightly, for his arm is strong. I must not cry out, no matter if he hurt, for a chief's son must never show pain nor fear. That would give his people shame."