The steadily receding water soon reveals the cause of the excitement—an extra large eagle ray, a kind of flat-fish, in outline something like an immense butterfly, plus a long whip-like tail, near the root of which appears a sharply-pronged, bony excrescence which can inflict a severe wound. Wixi is an ugly fellow, and as he lies there in two or three inches of water, flopping spasmodically, lashing his tail viciously from side to side, the children plant their sticks firmly in the ground, making a sort of fence around him, while they stand back out of reach. But, the moment the monster subsides, all pound and punch with their sticks, screaming and carrying on like a pack of fighting dogs. Finally, the oldest of the children, a girl of ten or eleven, manages to insert her digging-stick in the creature’s eye. A few violent lashings, and the ray lies still.
The girl remains leaning on the stick, holding the great fish firmly transfixed. The other children fall over each other in a scramble to get near it. All seek to pierce the dead body with their sticks and to pull it away. But their implements are too weak and dull. Some grasp with their fingers at the slimy thing, but to no avail. The girl stands unmoved.
In their rage some of the children suddenly turn upon her. In an effort to defend herself, she lets go her stick, and at the same moment the big ray is pulled away, but not by any of the original claimants. During the tumult a boy of thirteen or fourteen had approached unnoticed from the larger group of clam gatherers, and had wound the tail of the ray two or three times around his hand. Now when the girl’s hold on the stick is released, he jerks the ray away and starts to run as fast as his legs can carry him toward his own people, the body of the big fish dragging behind him over the slippery mud.
There is a tremendous uproar. Some of the children attempt to follow, but they are soon outdistanced. The girl who killed the ray, finally realizing what has happened, bursts out: “You took my wixi! You took my wixi! You—wixi! You—!” Her voice chokes with sobs. But her epithet is taken up by a chorus of voices in both groups of clam diggers, those of Kawina and those of Akalan: “You wixi! You wixi!”
But the boy pays no heed. When he reaches the shore proper, he winds the ray’s tail a few more times around his hand, swings the immense body over his shoulders, and disappears among the marsh weeds in the direction of his home.
Wixi! Wixi! Thus the boy is nicknamed for life.
AT BREAKFAST
It is still early morning on San Francisco Bay. The tide is going out, and the sun, just topping the eastern hills, is reflected in the placid waters as in a great oval mirror. On the horizon beyond the expanse of the waters of the bay, the sunlight glitters on the snowy summit of Mt. Hamilton; to the left, looms the hazy outline of Mt. Diablo; and to the right, glorious in the clear sunlight, stands green-clad Mt. Tamalpais, guarding the entrance to the broad channel heading north into San Pablo Bay. The surface of the channel is slightly choppy, because here passes out to sea the collected volume of the great rivers that drain the interior mountains and valleys. The shore of the bay is low and marshy, lying in sweeping curves. Along these curves faint blue smokes rise at intervals against the shadowy background of the hills. These smokes mark settlements, of which there are along the entire bay shore about two hundred, strung like pearls on a necklace.
In one of the curving arms of the bay, smoke ascends from a grayish spot in the marshland, some three hundred yards back of the shore line. It is the village of Kawina. Four miles farther east, directly on the water front, lies the village of Akalan. Beyond that the shore line turns, and other settlements hug the shore at every point where a fresh water streamlet empties into the bay.
The clam diggers are straggling along the beach toward home. A number of young men from Akalan have gone to the head of the cove a few rods away. They are engaged in dragging a dozen or more curiously shaped bundles of dried tule-rushes down the muddy slope to the tide channel, which drains the extensive marshes ranging along the entire east base of the potrero. When the clam gatherers left home the channel was dry, but the tide already is fast returning and the breakfast bringers have to be assisted across.