stiffly. He flung his arms about. He shouted with all his lungs.
And still the waters fell. By night the whole mountain was dry, and
Hurtali lay back and slept as he had not since the Flood. The next day,
Noah himself came out on the Ark roof to ask Hurtali if the Flood was
over and if he might safely let his creatures free.
[Illustration: Shem, Ham, and Japheth with their wives]
Hurtali stood upon the mountain-peak and overlooked the whole world. As
far as he could see were dry hills and green meadows, and the seas and
rivers were back again in their beds.
So, Noah went back into the Ark; and Hurtali with one sweep of his mighty
hand ripped off the whole roof from end to end. And from the Ark, in a
bright flutter, went up all the birds of the air into the sunlight. Red,
green, blue, white, and gold they glittered,—parrots and eagles, robins
and doves, hawks and geese, blue-jays and tanagers, crows and flamingoes,
all together in one feathery swarm, out into the blue sky.
Then Hurtali went to the end of the Ark, where all the animals were
gathered about the door, bleating aloud to heaven. With one tug he
snatched away the door; and, scurrying, scuffling, scratching, burrowing
under, scrambling over, the beasts burst out. Bears bounded, squirrels
frisked, pigs bolted, hyenas leaped, horses galloped, mice scampered,
camels loped, cats whisked, all in one wild stampede out of the Ark into
the free air. After them rushed Shem and Ham and Japheth with their
wives; and, last of all, Mr. and Mrs. Noah, who being quite old and
grown-up, tried to go as sedately as if they had been walking on dry land
every day.
[Illustration: Last of all, Mr. and Mrs. Noah]
Flinging up his arms to the high clouds, Hurtali went leaping across the
fair earth, taking the valleys at a bound, and racing over the mountains
as if they had not been.—All at once, he paused! The sky seemed suddenly
radiant with a soft brightness. Across a cloud, directly before him,
glowed an arch of lovely colors. It was more beautiful than anything
he had ever seen, and it made him feel happy and elated without quite
knowing why. Somehow it seemed to him that now his dear mountains and
valleys would always be safe and green as they had been before. And
so, bending his head, Hurtali ran out across the world, underneath the
Rainbow.
—_Based on an Oriental myth._
[Illustration]
VIII
The Wigwam Giants
Children, by this story we
Learn how kind the red men be;
Though the things related of them
Made it difficult to love them,
Here we see that, as with white men,
Some are amiable, polite men;
No one wicked and defiant
_Could_ have been a wigwam giant.
_Seymour Barnard._
VIII
The Wigwam Giants
[Illustration: He had a wife and ten children]
Once upon a time, in the not-so-very-long-ago, an Indian had his wigwam
on the shore of a cold north sea. The Indian’s name was Pulowech, and
he had a wife and ten children. But for all his big family, Pulowech
might have lived there as snugly and happily as you please, had it not
been for the unkind fact that, in that north country, it is very hard to
get enough to eat. Pulowech found it hard indeed, for no sooner was the
tenth child fed, than the first one was hungry again; and the bigger and
hungrier the children got, the less food there seemed to be.
This spring it was worse than ever. Not even a bear had shown its furry
nose within sight of the wigwam. As for the crops, there was hardly a
green shoot in all the field Pulowech’s wife had planted. There was
nothing left to do but to fish. And fish Pulowech did. Every morning long
before sunrise, his canoe was a far gray spot on the horizon. But alas
for all his hard work! the more he set his nets, the fewer fish he seemed
to catch; and he might trail his line in the water all day without so
much as a nibble.
Finally, in despair one day, Pulowech and his wife got into their canoe,
and set out for the far fishing-grounds, beyond any part of the sea where
they had been before. They paddled and paddled until they could no longer
see their wigwam or any land at all. Time after time they stopped and
let down their lines, but that day again there seemed to be no fish in
the sea. The squaw’s arm grew tired, but still they kept on, hoping to
find some magic spot where the fish would come crowding about the canoe,
eager to be caught.
Suddenly, up from the sea and down from the sky and around them from
every side, swept clouds of fog. In long, quick puffs it came, as if the
whole world had begun very quietly to steam. The air was full of it, and
as for the sea, it seemed to have vanished in an instant. Pulowech could
see the shine of the little waves as he dipped his paddle, but beyond was
only grayness. He began to paddle faster, first in one direction, then
in another; but no matter which way he turned, the fog seemed to pursue
them. There was no end to it at all.
By this time, Pulowech was quite lost. He could not make the smallest
guess where his wigwam lay or how to go to get back there. There was
nothing to do but to paddle fiercely on, deeper and deeper into the fog.
As for Pulowech’s poor, tired wife, she began to cry, which made things
very little better.
All at once she stopped paddling. “Listen!” she cried. “Thunder!”
Pulowech stopped too. Over the sea came long, continuous roars. There
was no pause in them, and they grew louder and louder, as if the thunder
were coming straight—straight—straight at them through the fog. There
was something very strange about it too. The nearer, the more deafening
it became, the more _alive_ it seemed, the more it sounded as if it were
_thundering in words_. There was another noise too, regular, but not so
loud, as if a thousand paddles at once were cutting steadily through the
water.
The fog grew dark ahead. Right upon them loomed the thundering monster.
Pulowech and his wife shouted with all their voices. The great shape
stopped. There above them in the fog towered a tremendous canoe as high
as a cliff, and filled with men who seemed to touch the sky.
The giants looked at Pulowech and laughed,—a roar that shook the waves
and made the little canoe bob up and down as on a stormy sea. “Ho! Ho!”
cried one at last. “And where are you going, my little brother?”
Pulowech took his hands from his ears. “I wish I knew,” he answered
bravely. “We are lost in the fog.”
At that the giants laughed ten times harder than ever. “Lost in the fog!”
they cried, and wiped their eyes, as if it were the best joke in the
world.
“Well, well, well!” said the leader at last, “if that is the case, why
don’t you come home with us? You will be well treated. That I can promise
you, for my father is the chief. And in spite of your great size, my
friends, I warrant there will be plenty of room.”
[Illustration: A tremendous canoe as high as a cliff, and filled with men
who seemed to touch the sky]
With that, two of the giants put the ends of their paddles under the
Indians’ canoe and lifted it into their own, as easily as if it had
been a chip. Then very carefully they handed it around from giant to
giant, as pleased over the little folk as boys would be who had found a
flying-squirrel. As for Pulowech and his wife, if they shook with fear
before, now they sat still and speechless at such gentleness from beings
so immense.
The giants again took up their paddles as big as trees. With a single
stroke, they sent the canoe a clean hundred yards through the water. As
for the fog, their eyes seemed to bore straight through it, as though it
had been so much air.
Then swiftly, with a tremendous grating, the canoe stopped. They had
beached it upon a wide sandy shore. One of the giants jumped out, and,
taking Pulowech’s canoe in his hand, ran shouting up the bank. There
ahead rose three wigwams as high as mountains. And from the largest came
the chief to meet them, a giant taller than all the rest.
“Well, well, my son!” he cried, “what have you there?”
“Oh, Father, only see,” called the young giant, in gasps that shook the
trees. “See—a little brother!—We found him—on the water—lost in the fog!”
And at this shouting came giants running from all sides, to see what the
noise might be about. They crowded about the chief’s son and peered into
the small canoe until the poor Indians, finding themselves surrounded by
great eyes like so many suns, sank down in terror.
“_Noo_, then,” cried the chief in anger, “you have scared the little
people!” And taking the Indians, canoe and all, he gently carried them to
his own wigwam.
Inside sat a pleasant-faced woman, no bigger than a good-sized hill.
“Look, wife,” said the chief. “See what I have brought you!”
The giantess was delighted. Very deftly she picked the Indians up with
her thumb and forefinger without crushing out their breath. She laid them
in the hollow of her hand as in a cradle, and rocked them to and fro,
softly thundering a lullaby, while with the end of her little finger she
tenderly stroked their hair.
As for the chief, he hung up the Indians’ canoe where it could not
be stepped on. Then he bent down to the Indians and told them in a
confidential whisper that could hardly have been heard a hundred miles
away, that he was their friend, and that his name was Oscoon.
“And now, wife,” he cried, “our little people must be hungry! Is there
enough in the house for them to eat?”
The good woman gave a housewifely chuckle, like the dry roar of a forest
fire, and looked into a great steaming pot. In the bottom were a dozen or
more whales. But remembering the small size of her guests, she picked out
a little one about forty feet long, and put it before them in a wooden
bowl. The poor Indians did their best, but by the time they had made a
little hole in the whale’s side, they were fast asleep from so much food.
Then it was that the giants were troubled, for they had no place to put
the little people for the night. For there was no part of the wigwam
where a giant might not step on them or roll over them in the dark.
Finally the giantess had a happy idea. She took down the Indians’ own
canoe and put some little skins in the bottom. Then very gently she laid
Pulowech in one end and his wife in the other, tucked them snugly in, and
swung the canoe up again at the top of the wigwam.
Days went by, and the giants delighted in nothing so much as in their
little people. For hours at a time Oscoon would sit quite still while his
small guests ran about his hand or explored the long gullies between his
fingers. As for the giantess, she never left the wigwam without bringing
them great handfuls of apples, which were to her, to be sure, no bigger
than so many currants. But when the giants went hunting, then it was
that Pulowech and his wife feasted. For always they brought back two or
three moose swinging in their hands like rabbits, and two or three dozen
caribou hanging in their belts, as an Indian would carry a string of
squirrels.
So it happened that Pulowech and his wife lived among the giants as happy
and as care-free as two children. From the first morning when they awoke,
high in their canoe-cradle, they seemed to have forgotten everything; not
only the fog and terror of the day before, but all their past life as
well. They had no memory of their home nor even of their hungry children
waiting for them in the wigwam beside the sea. It seemed to them that
they had always lived in this warm, happy Giantland where deer swarmed in
the forests, and fish in the sea.
Every day they ate a little out of their whale, and every night they went
peacefully to sleep in their high canoe. When they were neither eating
nor sleeping, they romped about like children. They slid down the back of
Oscoon’s hand as down a hillock; they played hide-and-seek in one of his
moccasins; and they ran about in the wigwam till the good giantess would
have to put them in one of her big baskets for fear they might be stepped
on.
But good times do not last forever, even in Giantland. One day, Oscoon
picked up his Indians with a grave face. “My little people,” said he,
“to-day the great Chenoo, the dreadful ice-giant of the North, is coming
to fight us. It will be a hard battle, but, most of all, I fear for you.
For no one less than a giant could hear the Chenoo’s war-scream and live.
We will wrap you up the best we can, and no matter what happens, you must
not uncover your ears until I come for you.”
[Illustration: Oscoon picked up his Indians with a grave face]
The Indians promised that they would do as he said, and entered into
all the plans for the battle as gleefully as though it had been a new
game. They tore little pieces of fur from a rabbit-skin and stuffed them
so tightly into their ears that they could scarcely hear Oscoon when
he whispered to them. Then the giantess bound up their heads with many
strips of deerskin, and, laying them in their canoe, fairly smothered
them with fold after fold of wrappings.
When she had finished, Oscoon took them, canoe and all, and put them in
the bottom of a great stone pot. Beside them he laid a ton or so of deer
meat and nine or ten bushels of apples, so that they should have enough
to eat in case the battle lasted over night. Then, over the pot he spread
a robe made of thousands of bearskins, which covered all the top.
After that, though Oscoon shouted with all his voice, the Indians could
not hear a sound. It was dark in the pot, and, under all their coverings,
rather warm. And so, since they could neither move nor hear each other if
they spoke, they sensibly fell asleep.
After a very long time, Pulowech opened his eyes. Everywhere was
blackness. For a moment, he thought that he must have gone blind. Then
faintly, far above somewhere, he made out a tiny crack of light, and
he remembered: they were in the stone pot, and the light was creeping
in at the edge of the bearskin. He touched his wife. She stirred and
rubbed her eyes. And there in the dark they shouted at each other,—and
the stillness was unbroken. Pulowech started up, and sank suddenly back
again, pulled down by the weight of his coverings. Then angrily he tried
to pull them off, and could not so much as lift one of them. For they
were made of hundreds of skins. There was nothing for it but to lie still.
A slow, familiar pain seized Pulowech’s insides. Greedily he remembered
the apples and the deer meat, and put out his hand. There they were,
close beside him. He clutched great handfuls of them, and ate eagerly. He
touched his wife and made her understand too. For some time, they forgot
the dark and even the silence. But gradually, as Pulowech began to care
less and less about eating, his head seemed to feel extraordinarily hot
and uncomfortable. His hands fumbled the wrappings and twitched at the
knots. If only he could get one of them off, it might be more bearable.
Then he remembered his promise to Oscoon. But surely, he thought, the
battle must be over by now. And even if it were not, what difference
would one deerskin, more or less, make to hearing the ice-giant’s scream?
Oscoon was too careful.
Nevertheless the promise held him. He took down his hands and lay for
some time quite still. A dreadful terror came over him: suppose the
battle _was_ over, and Oscoon had forgotten them. Worse still, suppose
Oscoon should never come at all; suppose he had been killed! Then they
might die there, for even if they could get free of their coverings, they
could never climb up the steep walls of the stone pot.
Pulowech’s wife moved. She began to pull fiercely at the bandages about
her ears. It was too much for Pulowech. He put up his hands again and
tore wildly at the deerskin strips. If Oscoon _was_ dead, he decided,
then they must talk together; they must plan some way of escape. They
must not be found there helpless by the dreadful Chenoo.
Suddenly, something swifter, keener, shriller than the sharpest spear
seemed to pierce through Pulowech. His hands dropped limp. His breath
went. His whole body seemed divided, and his ears shattered by the wild,
high, cruel sound of it. It was the Chenoo’s war-scream. Again it came,
lower and less intense, shooting through Pulowech’s numb body like pain
let loose; and then a third time, faint and far away, no longer cutting,
but chill as the wind from icebergs.
When Pulowech came to himself, he was startled by the light all about
him. Then dimly he made out the great face of the giantess bending over
him. He was no longer in the pot. He was lying beside his wife in the
hollow of the giantess’s hand, and she was rubbing them vigorously with
her little finger.
“There, there, my little people,” she said. “You’re all safe, so you
are. And the wicked Chenoo shall never scream again to hurt you. For he
is dead, so he is. Killed, by my Oscoon and our sons. There, there, my
little people, open your eyes.”
Pulowech blinked, and looked around the wigwam. All about sat the giants,
binding up their cuts, and picking out the pine-trees that were stuck in
their legs like splinters. For the fight had been in a forest, and the
poor giants were bothered with the trees, as men would be with thistles.
All at once the door-flap moved, and Oscoon’s youngest son fell down in
the doorway, quite dead. Now, in some families this would have caused a
commotion. But the giants went on talking of the battle as if nothing
unusual had happened. Finally Oscoon, who was smoking his pipe in a
corner, looked over at his boy upon the ground.
“Well, my son,” he said, “why are you lying there?”
“It is because I am dead, Father,” answered the young giant. “The Chenoo
has killed me.”
“If that is all,” said Oscoon, quietly, “get up at once. It is
supper-time.”
The young giant opened his eyes and sat up. He did not seem to be any the
worse for having been dead. And at supper, certainly, he ate none the
less for it.
So the days passed as before. The giants never tired of petting their
small guests. Every day the young giants would bring them new treasures,
and every day Oscoon would contrive some new game for them. The youngest
giant, who was quick with his hands, caught some small live deer, which
the giantess kept for them in a basket, as a boy might keep pet mice.
But in spite of these new playthings, Pulowech’s wife became less and
less lively. She did not play as she used to, and she would sit quietly
for hours at a time as if she were trying to think out something that
troubled her. Finally a thoughtfulness settled over Pulowech as well.
They gave up hide-and-seek entirely. Instead, they talked and talked
together, sometimes far into the night. Little by little they seemed to
be remembering something, and the more they remembered, the more worried
they grew.
The giantess became anxious. The little people got on more and more
slowly with their whale, and as for the deer meat, they no longer seemed
to care for it at all. The giantess racked her brains for some way to
tempt them. So, with long patience she made for Oscoon a tiny net which
would catch the sharks that wriggled through his whale-net like minnows.
And when he caught some, she broiled three fine ones for dinner. But the
Indians, who had been so pleased with new dishes before, seemed hardly to
notice the change.
At last, one day when Oscoon had taken them to the beach, he spoke to
them. “My little people,” he said, “it worries me to see you so quiet and
sad. Tell me what troubles you. For we will cheerfully do anything that
will make you happy again.”
“Oh, dear Oscoon!” cried Pulowech, “we could not be happier than in your
wigwam. It is something we partly remember that makes us sad. Ever since
we heard the ice-giant’s scream, it has seemed to us that we have not
always been in this Giantland. Once we seem to have lived in a different
country, where we were cold, and often hungry. But there our wigwam was,
and our children. It is they that worry us. For we do not know what they
can do without us. They must be hungry—” Pulowech caught his breath, and
his poor wife began to sob.
Now, Oscoon was a good giant if there ever was one, and it grieved his
big heart through and through to see his small friends so unhappy.
“Oh, my little people!” he cried, heaving a little himself, “I would
rather give you anything than to have you leave us. But you must go back
to your children—_right away_.”
And with that he sneezed so violently that the rocks were jounced around
in their places, and the Indians had to cling tight to his thumb for
fear of falling off. Then they all laughed,—which made them feel so much
better that everybody’s sobs got swallowed.
And so, grasping his little people, Oscoon ran leaping back to the
wigwam, calling the giantess at the top of his big lungs. “Oh, wife!
wife!” he bellowed, “our little people have a voyage to take. We must
give them the little dog, and some food to take along with them.”
When the giantess heard about the children at home, she kissed her little
Indians very hard indeed, and then she set all the young giants at work
piling up furs and dried meat for them to take home to their wigwam. And
so, as they all worked with a will, in about two minutes and a half there
were enough furs and meat stacked up to sink three or four hundred canoes
the size of Pulowech’s.
When Oscoon saw that, he took the Indians’ canoe down from the top of the
wigwam, and filled it as full as it could hold. Then he set Pulowech in
the stern, and his wife in the bow, and holding the canoe high over his
head, roared out to the whole camp that they were ready to start.
So they set out, Oscoon ahead, carrying his little people in their canoe
in one hand, and in the other a tiny, sharp-nosed gray dog. All the
giants followed in a great procession, leaping up and down and singing,
as though it were a very gala occasion indeed. When they came to the
shore, Oscoon gently slipped the canoe into the water, and gave Pulowech
the little gray dog.
“Paddle,” he said, “just as the little dog points. He will take you home.”
The little dog ran to the middle of the canoe, and stood with his paws
resting on the edge. He barked, and pointed with his nose straight out to
sea. Pulowech dipped his paddle, but he could scarcely see to steer for
the tears in his eyes.
“Good-by!” shouted the giants.
“Good-by!” called the Indians.
And Oscoon cried out, last of all: “Do not forget us, little people!
Come back to visit us, and send your children. Sometime we will send the
little dog for you.”
The Indians paddled, and the little dog pointed. They seemed to glide
over the smooth sea at a wonderful rate. In a few minutes, they were out
of sight of the giants, who stood on the beach, still waving and shouting
good-by. In no time at all, it seemed, they came straight to their own
home. There stood their wigwam just as it was the day they left it; and
as the canoe grazed the shore, their own children came running to meet
them, rosy and well.
The little dog jumped out of the canoe, barking and wagging his tail. He
ran about on the sand, and licked the children’s hands. Then he turned
and trotted home again over the top of the sea, as if it had been made of
hard ice. Pulowech caught up his two youngest children, and set them on
his shoulders. And so, carrying the giants’ gifts, they came into their
own wigwam.
After that, whenever Pulowech set his nets, they came up bursting with
fish. When he went hunting, his arrows brought down all the deer he could
possibly need. As for the children, they grew so tall and hearty that
the old wigwam would not begin to hold them, and they had to build a new
one—the biggest in all the country.
So Pulowech knew that the giants had not forgotten him. And his heart
was glad when, a year and a day after they had come home, the little dog
came again trotting over the water. The children ran to meet him, and he
bounded up to them and licked their hands, just as he had done before.
Pulowech smiled to himself, for he knew quite well why the little dog
was there. Then he launched one of his canoes (for now he had many), and
calling his two oldest children, told them to get in. The little dog
jumped in too, and pointed with his nose the way they were to go. The
children paddled safely over the smooth sea, and so they, too, went to
Giantland.
In three months the little dog brought them back again, with their canoe
full of furs and meat enough to keep them all warm and happy for years to
come.
So every year the little dog came, barking and wagging his tail, and
every year two of Pulowech’s family went to visit the giants. And none of
them were ever cold or hungry again,—of that you may be sure.
—_From a Micmac legend._