[Told by Walter McGregor of the Sea-lion-town people]
He was going along in his canoe with his two children and his wife. It
was low tide. After he had gone along for a while [he came to a place]
where devilfish stones lay. A great quantity of leavings from its (the
devilfish’s) food were piled up there. He got off to kill it. Then,
while he was punching it with a stick the devilfish came out.
Immediately it wound itself around him and pulled him into its hole.
And, after his wife and children had remained there for a while, the
rocks were covered with water, and they went away from him. Then the
woman went home. She expected never to get him back.
The [devilfish] woman took him to her father’s town. At that time he
heard them use bad words [556] to the hair seals. When day broke he
hunted about for food among the waves below the capes, they used to
say. He remained with her in her father’s town.
After many years had passed he remained in bed two mornings. At that
time the chief asked his daughter: “Why does your husband feel badly?”
Then she said to her father: “He says he is homesick for his mother and
his sister.” Then he was going to let him go home with his daughter.
Now he said: “Two canoes are lying at the end of the town. Have them
launched for yourselves.” At once they launched two canoes in front of
the house, and they began to put things, with which the inside of the
house was full, into them. Before they had taken even a little the
canoes were filled. Then she went in one and her husband in the other.
Although there were no paddlers the canoes went along.
He came to his father’s town long after they had ceased to think of
him. Hu hu hu hu hu, his father’s town moved at once. Then they carried
the things up into his father’s house. And then they sliced up the
things he brought in sacks. He traded with this property. He became a
great chief. It consisted in food of all kinds such as is found at low
tide.
At that time his children, who had grown large, came in to him. Then he
took a slice of food, cut it in two, and handed it to them, and they
went out with it, the woman also. Her husband lived more years among
human beings than he had among the devilfish people. With what he got
by trading with the food her husband potlatched five times.
After he had lived there for some time he one day came to feel badly
over something. Right where he sat, in the back part of his father’s
house, with his wife he began to melt. She stretched her arms down
between the planks. She pulled her head in after them. Her husband was
left sitting there. Afterward her husband also went in between the
planks. She went back to her father’s town. And they never saw them
again.
The hero of this story was a shaman.