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Updated: June 28, 2025
"Witchcraft!" And at the dread word their voices hushed and each looked fearfully at each. "Ay," Hooniah affirmed, the latent malignancy of her nature flashing into a moment's exultation. "And word has been sent to Klok-No-Ton, and strong paddles. Truly shall he be here with the afternoon tide." The little groups broke up, and fear descended upon the village.
For he had ever a gentler way, and he had been known to drive forth two devils from a man who afterward begat seven healthy children. But Klok-No-Ton!
He saw a man stoop for a stone, and a second, and a bodily fear ran through him. "Harm not Scundoo, who is a master!" a woman cried out. "Better you return to your own village," a man advised menacingly. Klok-No-Ton turned on his heel and went down among them to the beach, a bitter rage at his heart, and in his head a just apprehension for his defenceless back. But no stones were cast.
Klok-No-Ton seemed to half swoon away, now that his work was done; but he waited, with closed eyes, listening for the great blood-cry to go up the great blood-cry, familiar to his ear from a thousand conjurations, when the tribespeople flung themselves like wolves upon the trembling victim.
But only was there silence, then a low tittering, from nowhere in particular, which spread and spread until a vast laughter welled up to the sky. "Wherefore?" he cried. "Na! Na!" the people laughed. "Thy medicine be ill, O Klok-No-Ton!" "It be known to all," La-lah stuttered.
They shuddered with dire foreboding at thought of him, and each one felt himself the centre of accusing eyes, and looked accusingly upon his fellows each one and all, save Sime, and Sime was a scoffer whose evil end was destined with a certitude his successes could not shake. "Hoh! Hoh!" he laughed. "Devils and Klok-No-Ton! than whom no greater devil can be found in Thlinket Land." "Thou fool!
Yet there was no response, save that in the lulls Scundoo's voice rose eerily in incantation. Klok-No-Ton raged about like a madman, but when he attempted to break in the door with a huge stone, murmurs arose from the men and women. And he, Klok-No-Ton, knew that he stood shorn of his strength and authority before an alien people.
Of all misfortune, witchcraft was the most appalling. With the intangible and unseen things only the shamans could cope, and neither man, woman, nor child could know, until the moment of ordeal, whether devils possessed their souls or not. And of all shamans, Klok-No-Ton, who dwelt in the next village, was the most terrible.
It is the word of Klok-No-Ton, devil-seeker and driver of devils!" He had been minded to assemble them at Hooniah's house, but it was necessary that all should be present, and he was doubtful of Sime's obedience and did not wish trouble. Sime was a good man to let alone, his judgment ran, and withal, a bad one for the health of any shaman.
He, perched upon his canoe, looked on in mockery; yet the ancestors whose seed he bore pressed heavily upon him, and he swore his strongest oaths that his courage might be cheered. Klok-No-Ton was horrible to behold. He had cast off his blanket and torn his clothes from him, so that he was quite naked, save for a girdle of eagle-claws about his thighs.
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