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"But tell me, Nam-Bok," Koogah interrupted, for fear the tale would go no farther, "tell me the manner of these men in finding their way across the sea when there is no land by which to steer." "The sun points out the path." "But how?"
No man may mate with the off-shore wind and come back on the heels of the years." "I have come back," Nam-Bok answered simply. "Mayhap thou art a shadow, then, a passing shadow of the Nam-Bok that was. Shadows come back." "I am hungry. Shadows do not eat." But Opee-Kwan doubted, and brushed his hand across his brow in sore puzzlement.
Bone-scratching and skin-scraping were resumed, but he shut his lips tightly on the tongue that could not be believed. "This sch sch schooner," Koogah imperturbably asked; "it was made of a big tree?" "It was made of many trees," Nam-Bok snapped shortly. "It was very big."
Nam-Bok was perplexed, but hearkened to the voice of the head man. "If thou art Nam-Bok," Opee-Kwan was saying, "thou art a fearful and most wonderful liar; if thou art the shadow of Nam-Bok, then thou speakest of shadows, concerning which it is not good that living men have knowledge. This great village thou hast spoken of we deem the village of shadows.
We grow tired of this which we may not understand." "You do not understand?" Nam-Bok asked despairingly. "Nay, we do not understand," the men and women wailed back. "We cannot understand." Nam-Bok thought of a combined harvester, and of the machines wherein visions of living men were to be seen, and of the machines from which came the voices of men, and he knew his people could never understand.
But Koogah, shoving Nam-Bok clear of the beach, tore the shawl from her shoulders and flung it into the bidarka. "It is cold in the long nights," she wailed; "and the frost is prone to nip old bones." "The thing is a shadow," the bone-scratcher answered, "and shadows cannot keep thee warm." Nam-Bok stood up that his voice might carry. "O Bask-Wah-Wan, mother that bore me!" he called.
It would have made many knives." "Nay, it was not mine." "It was a find, and a find be lawful." "Not so; the white men had placed it there. And further, these bars were so long that no man could carry them away so long that as far as I could see there was no end to them." "Nam-Bok, that is very much iron," Opee-Kwan cautioned.
Those who were nearest drew away from him hurriedly, and a woman covered the face of a child at her breast so that his eye might not fall upon it. "But on the morning of the fourth day, O Nam-Bok," Koogah suggested; "on the morning of the fourth day when the sch sch schooner came after thee?" "I had little strength left in me and could not run away.
"There cannot be so many people in all the world," Opee-Kwan objected, for he was stunned and his mind could not grasp such magnitude of numbers. "What dost thou know of all the world and how large it is?" Nam-Bok demanded. "But there cannot be so many people in one place." "Who art thou to say what can be and what cannot be?" "It stands to reason there cannot be so many people in one place.
"I bore thee, Nam-Bok, and I gave thee suck when thou wast little," Bask-Wah-Wan whimpered, drawing closer; "and shadow though thou be, or no shadow, I will give thee to eat now." Nam-Bok made to come to her, but a growl of fear and menace warned him back. He said something in a strange tongue which sounded like "Goddam," and added, "No shadow am I, but a man."
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