I folded my arms and held my
head high, and they drew further away from me. The time was ripe to go.
'Grab him,' Chief George cries. Three or four of them came at me, but I
whirled, quick, made a couple of passes like to send them after Tilly,
and pointed up. Touch me? Not for the kingdoms of the earth. Chief
George harangued them, but he couldn't get them to lift a leg. Then he
made to take me himself; but I repeated the mummery and his grit went out
through his fingers.
"'Let your shamans work wonders the like of which I have done this
night,' I says. 'Let them call Killisnoo down out of the sky whither I
have sent her.' But the priests knew their limits. 'May your _klooches_
bear you sons as the spawn of the salmon,' I says, turning to go; 'and
may your totem pole stand long in the land, and the smoke of your camp
rise always.'
"But if the beggars could have seen me hitting the high places for the
sloop as soon as I was clear of them, they'd thought my own medicine had
got after me. Tilly'd kept warm by chopping the ice away, and was all
ready to cast off. Gawd! how we ran before it, the Taku howling after us
and the freezing seas sweeping over at every clip.
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