Page:Cornelia Meigs--The windy hill.djvu/35

Rh happy only when he was swimming in the green water. The day he swam to the island and back again, paying no heed to the shouts and warnings of his friends, and declaring, when he landed, that he would have gone farther save that the tide had turned—that day had brought his old grandmother's patience to an end.

"It is not fitting that one of our tribe should be so familiar with the sea," she stormed at him. "We were not born to master that wild salt water; the gods that rule us have said over and over again that the woods and rivers are ours, but that we are to have no dealings with the spirits of the sea. Since I cannot make you listen, you shall talk to some one who will. You shall go to ask the medicine man if what I say is not so."

Nashola had come, therefore, to ask his question, but he found that it needed a bold heart to advance, without quaking, into that silent presence and to speak out with Secotan's black eyes seeming to stare him through and through.

"Is it true," he began, "that men of our tribe should have no trust in the sea? My grandmother says that I should hate it and fear it, but I do not. Must I learn to be afraid?"

Slowly the man nodded.

Most Indians grow old quickly, and are withered like dried-up apples as soon as the later years come upon them. But Secotan, although his hair was gray, had still the clear-cut face with its arched nose