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Nothing stirred Julyman but the fear of "devil-men," and his queer native superstitions. "Him soften. Oh, yes," he said. "Wind him all go west. Him soft. Yes." The wind had been carrying "forty below zero" on its relentless bosom. Its ferocity still remained, but now it was tempered by a warmth wholly unaccounted for by the change in its direction.
But even in her excited joy the Indian calm remained uppermost. She drew nearer the child, and one of her soft brown hands rested caressingly on his shoulder. "Him not devil-men," she said, in a deep tone of exaltation. "Him Uncle Steve an' all fool 'Sleeper' men. They all come so as An-ina say." Then the smile in her eyes suddenly transformed her, and her joy could no longer be denied.
I learnt that Inyati's country lay far to the north-east, across the dreaded waterless stretches of the unknown Kalahari. He had fled from it years ago, his life forfeit to the priests or "devil-men" as he called them for some cause that he did not explain, or that my limited knowledge of his language did not permit of my understanding.
"Much darker, and there were no devil-men, because there just aren't any." "No. Course not," the boy agreed readily. "That's so. Well, Uncle Steve came a long, long way, and his dogs were tired, and his Indians were tired " "Wos thems like Julyman an' Oolak?" "Yes. That's who the Indians were. Uncle always has Julyman and Oolak. Well, he came to a valley where he found a little boy.
They told us then that there were twelve of them in the hulk, three of them being women, one of whom had been the captain's wife; but he had died soon after the vessel became entangled in the weed, and along with him more than half of the ship's company, having been attacked by giant devil-fish, as they were attempting to free the vessel from the weed, and afterwards they who were left had built the superstructure as a protection against the devil-fish, and the devil-men, as they termed them; for, until it had been built, there had been no safety about the decks, neither day nor night.
The demand was prompt and decided. "An-ina scared of devil-men?" Steve smilingly shook his head. "It's only stupid 'Sleeper' men scared of devil-men. Anyway there's no devil-men. Just wolves, and bears, that boy'll hunt and kill when he grows up." "But hers says ther's debble-men," the boy protested, his eyes wide with awe. Steve shook his head. "No," he said firmly. "Uncle Steve knows.
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