He walked slowly in that direction. His head entirely disappeared within the canoe while his hammer lay outside of the canoe. Then he reached for it and took it with him under a bunch of ferns near by. After he (the boy) had looked at him for a while he stood up in the midst of his work and looked about for something. He cleared away the chips. [The boy] was looking at him stealthily.
He sat still and put his finger-nails between his teeth. By and by he said: “My grandson, come to me. News of you has come. News [[178]]has come, grandson, that they abandoned you because you ate the hair seal’s flipper, which your father sent home from the feast. If it is you, come to me.”
He went out quickly and stood there. And he handed his hammer to him. At once he stepped out to take it. That was Master Carpenter[10] making a canoe.
“Say! go and get four bent wooden wedges. Put two rings of cedar bark in the front part of the canoe and two in the stern. Then your canoes will come apart.” He was unable to make two canoes as he was trying to do, one inside the other, because his wedges were too straight.
He went to get the wedges, and while he was away the other had already put rings on the canoe. He brought them (the wedges) along. Then he told him to put them in the bow and the stern. Then he began hammering on them. After he had busied himself going back and forth from one to another for a while, lo! they started to separate. After doing so for a while, he hammered them apart. He thought: “I wonder where the salmon are for which he wants these.” He did not think about his younger brother. Then [the man] said to him: “Now, grandson, come with me. You shall marry my daughter.”
Now he went with him. Wā, the smoke they came in sight of was like a comb. That was his town. He went with him into the middle house, which belonged to Master Carpenter. Between the screens, in the rear of the house, sat a wonderful creature, as beautiful as a daughter of one of the supernatural beings. Then her father said to her, “Chief-woman,[11] my daughter, come and sit near your husband.” At once she arose and sat down near him.
After his father-in-law had given him something to eat repeatedly, evening came and she said to him, “Let us go out [to defecate].” “I do not know where they go out.” Then she said to him, “Why! do you not know where they go out?” She said to him, “I will go with you.” It was evening, and she went out with him. She went seaward with him, and they defecated. They came in and sat down. Straight across from the town a drum sounded.
His father-in-law treated him well. Every evening he went out with his wife, and the drum kept sounding there. He became tired of hearing it and once, after he had gone out and was seated with his wife, he questioned his wife, “Say! why is that drum always beating?” “They are trying to cure the town chief.” Then he said to his wife, “Come! let us go over and look.”
Then they came in, and she asked her father: “Father, do you own a small canoe?” “Yes, chief-woman, my daughter, one is lying down on the beach.” Then two youths carried the canoe down on their shoulders, but they (the man and his wife) walked. They got into it, and only the youths paddled, while he and his wife sat in the middle. [[179]]
They landed and pulled up the canoe. Then he and his wife went up and, when they saw him, the crowd of spectators standing in front of the house before the door opened up a passage for him, and he and his wife looked in.