“It is ‘Three Star,’ and a better than what they poison their bellies with down there,” I answered, sweeping my hand, as it were, over the yawning chasm of blackness and down to where the beach fires glinted far below—­tiny jets of flame which gave proportion and reality to the night.

Palitlum sighed and shook his head.  “Wherefore I am here with thee.”

And here he embraced the bottle and me in a look which told more eloquently than speech of his shameless thirst.

“Nay,” I said, snuggling the bottle in between my knees.  “Speak now of Ligoun.  Of the ‘Three Star’ we will hold speech hereafter.”

“There be plenty, and I am not wearied,” he pleaded brazenly.  “But the feel of it on my lips, and I will speak great words of Ligoun and his last days.”

“From the drinker it taketh away strength,” I mocked, “and to the man unweary it burdeneth him into sleep.”

“Thou art wise,” he rejoined, without anger and pridelessly.  “Like all of thy brothers, thou art wise.  Waking or sleeping, the ‘Three Star’ be with thee, yet never have I known thee to drink overlong or overmuch.  And the while you gather to you the gold that hides in our mountains and the fish that swim in our seas; and Palitlum, and the brothers of Palitlum, dig the gold for thee and net the fish, and are glad to be made glad when out of thy wisdom thou deemest it fit that the ‘Three Star’ should wet our lips.”

“I was minded to hear of Ligoun,” I said impatiently.  “The night grows short, and we have a sore journey to-morrow.”

I yawned and made as though to rise, but Palitlum betrayed a quick anxiety, and with abruptness began:—­

“It was Ligoun’s desire, in his old age, that peace should be among the tribes.  As a young man he had been first of the fighting men and chief over the war-chiefs of the Islands and the Passes.  All his days had been full of fighting.  More marks he boasted of bone and lead and iron than any other man.  Three wives he had, and for each wife two sons; and the sons, eldest born and last and all died by his side in battle.  Restless as the bald-face, he ranged wide and far—­north to Unalaska and the Shallow Sea; south to the Queen Charlottes, ay, even did he go with the Kakes, it is told, to far Puget Sound, and slay thy brothers in their sheltered houses.

“But, as I say, in his old age he looked for peace among the tribes.  Not that he was become afraid, or overfond of the corner by the fire and the well-filled pot.  For he slew with the shrewdness and blood-hunger of the fiercest, drew in his belly to famine with the youngest, and with the stoutest faced the bitter seas and stinging trail.  But because of his many deeds, and in punishment, a warship carried him away, even to thy country, O Hair-Face and Boston Man; and the years were many ere he came back, and I was grown to something more than a boy and something less than a young man.  And Ligoun, being childless in his old age, made much of me, and grown wise, gave me of his wisdom.