[30] "Our fathers and their fathers before them have always known that we must distrust the sea," he said at last. "No matter how blue and smiling it may be it can never be our friend. We may swim near the shore, we may even launch our canoes and journey, if the way be short, from one harbor to another when the sky is clear and the winds are asleep. But always we are to remember that the sea is our enemy and a treacherous enemy in the end." He turned away to stare at the hills again, but Nashola lingered, not yet satisfied. It was unheard-of boldness to question Secotan's words, yet the boy could not keep his hot protests to himself. "But is it not wrong to pretend to fear what we do not?" he objected. "Do the spirits of the water actually rise up and tell you that we must keep to the shore? I do not believe it, although my grandmother says so until my ears ring again." Secotan turned his head quickly, as though to hide the ghost of a smile. "The voices of the wind and the breakers and of the thunder all cry the same message," he declared, "and wise men have learned that it warns them to hug the land. You must heed your grandmother, even though her words are shrill and often repeated." He would say no more, so Nashola went away, [31]pondering his answer as he walked down the hill. After all, no harm had come to him from entering the medicine man's presence unbidden, as his comrades had all said. He answered their questions very shortly as they came crowding about him, and to the persistent queries of his grandmother he would say nothing at all. Yet the others noticed that his canoe lay unused in the shelter of a rock on the sandy beach where he had left it, and that he swam in the sea no more. [31] The days passed, the hot, quiet summer passing with them. One evening, as they all sat about the camp fire, one of the older warriors said quietly: "The time is near when our medicine man must go from us." "Why?" questioned Nashola's grandmother, while the boy turned quickly to hear. "He has not sat upon the hill nor before the door of his lodge for three days, and the venison and corn we have carried to him have lain untouched for all that time. One of us who ventured close heard a cry from within and groaning. It may be that he must die."
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