Again, when it was evening and they were asleep, he went out. After he had been gone for a while he again brought in something under his blanket, put it into the ashes and stirred it up with them. He poked it out and laughed as he ate it. From the corner of the house the Half-rock one looked on. He got through, went back, and lay down in the cradle. On the next morning all the five villages talked about it. He heard them.
The inhabitants of four of the five towns had each lost one eye. Then the old woman reported what she had seen. “Behold what that chief’s daughter’s child does. Watch him. As soon as they sleep he stands up out of himself.” His grandfather then gave him a marten-skin blanket, and they put him into the cradle. At his grandfather’s word some one went out. “Come to sing a song for the chief’s daughter’s baby outsi-i-ide, outsi-i-ide.” As they sang for him one in the line, which extended along the entire village front, held him. By and by he let him fall, and they watched him as he went. Turning around to the right as he went, he struck the water.
And as he drifted about he cried without ceasing. By and by, wearied out with crying, he fell asleep. After he had slept a while something said: “Your mighty grandfather says he wants you to come into his house.” He turned around quickly and looked out from under his blanket, but saw nothing. Again, as he floated about, something repeated the same words. He looked quickly around toward it. He saw nothing. The next time he looked through the eyehole in his marten-skin. A pied-billed grebe came out from under the water, saying “Your mighty grandfather invites you in,” and dived immediately.
He then got up. He was floating against a kelp with two heads. He stepped upon it. Lo! he stepped upon a house pole of rock having two heads. He climbed down it. The sea was just as good as the world above.[7]
He then stood in front of a house. And some one called him in: “Enter, my son. Word has arrived that you come to borrow something from me.” He then went in. An old man, white as a sea gull, sat in the rear part of the house. He sent him for a box that hung in the corner, and, as soon as he had handed it to him, he successively pulled out five boxes. And out of the innermost box he handed him [[112]]two cylindrical objects, one covered with shining spots, the other black, saying “I am you. That [also] is you.” He referred to something blue and slim that was walking around on the screens whose ends point toward each other in the rear of the house. And he said to him: “Lay this round [speckled] thing in the water, and after you have laid this black one in the water, bite off a part of each and spit it upon the rest.”
But when he took them out he placed the black one in the water first and, biting off part of the speckled stone, spit it upon the rest, whereupon it bounded off. Because he did differently from the way he was told it came off. He now went back to the black one, bit a part of it off and spit it upon the rest, where it stuck. Then he bit off a part of the pebble with shiny points and spit it upon the rest. It stuck to it. These were to be trees, they say.[8]
When he put the second one into the water it stretched itself out. And the supernatural beings at once swam over to it from their places on the sea. In the same way Mainland[9] was finished and lay quite round on the water.
He floated first in front of this island (i.e., the Queen Charlotte islands), they say. And he shouted landward: “Gū′sga wag̣elai′dx̣ᴀn hā-ō-ō” (Tsimshian words meaning “Come along quickly”) [but he saw nothing]. Then [he shouted]: “Ha′lᴀ gudᴀñā′ñ łg̣ā′gîñ gwā′-ā-ā” (Haida equivalent of the preceding). Some one came toward the water. Then he went toward Mainland. He called to them to hurry, [saying] “Hurry up in your minds,” but he saw nothing. He spoke in the Tsimshian tongue. Then one with an old-fashioned cape and a paddle over his shoulder came seaward. This is how he started it that the Mainland people would be industrious.
Pushing off again toward this country, he disembarked near the south end of the island. On a ledge a certain person was walking. Toward the woods, too, among fallen trees, walked another. Then he knocked him who was walking along the shore into the water. Yet he floated, face up. When he again knocked him in the same thing was repeated. He was unable to drown him. This was because the Ninstints people were going to practise witchcraft. And he who was walking among the trees had his face cut by the limbs. He did not wipe it. This was Greatest-crazy-one (Qōnā′ñ-sg̣ā′na), they say.
He then turned seaward and started for the Heiltsuk coast (ʟdjîñ).[10] As he walked along he came to a spring salmon that was jumping about and said to it: “Spring-salmon, strike me over the heart.” Then it turned toward him. It struck him. Just as he recovered from his insensibility it went into the sea. Then he built a stone wall close to the sea and behind it made another. When he told it to do the same thing again the spring salmon hit him, and, while he was on the ground, after jumping along for a while, it knocked over the [[113]]nearer wall. But while it was yet moving along inside the farther wall he got up, hit it with a club, killed it, and took it up.[11]