The women broke into a wailing chant, swaying backward and forward in abandonment, while one by one the men succumbed to the excitement till only Sime remained.  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.  Shrieking and yelling, his long black hair flying like a blot of night, he leaped frantically about the circle.  A certain rude rhythm characterized his frenzy, and when all were under its sway, swinging their bodies in accord with his and venting their cries in unison, he sat bolt upright, with arm outstretched and long, talon-like finger extended.  A low moaning, as of the dead, greeted this, and the people cowered with shaking knees as the dread finger passed them slowly by.  For death went with it, and life remained with those who watched it go; and being rejected, they watched with eager intentness.

Finally, with a tremendous cry, the fateful finger rested upon La-lah.  He shook like an aspen, seeing himself already dead, his household goods divided, and his widow married to his brother.  He strove to speak, to deny, but his tongue clove to his mouth and his throat was sanded with an intolerable thirst.  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.  “For eight weary months have I been gone afar with the Siwash sealers, and but this day am I come back to find the blankets of Hooniah gone ere I came!”

“It be true!” they cried with one accord.  “The blankets of Hooniah were gone ere he came!”

“And thou shalt be paid nothing for thy medicine which is of no avail,” announced Hooniah, on her feet once more and smarting from a sense of ridiculousness.

But Klok-No-Ton saw only the face of Scundoo and its wan, gray smile, heard only the faint far cricket’s rasping.  “I got it from the man La-lah, and often have I thought,” and, “It is a fair day and thy medicine be strong.”