76 THE BIG CANOE

As she walked slowly along the shingle, looking at
the dead fish and crabs and starfish deposited with
masses of kelp and seaweed high upon the beach, she
came upon the body of a man, a white man, lying
half in, half out of the water. She had dragged him
up on the sand above the reach of the tide and had
worked over him skilfully as she had often seen her
people work over those who were nearly drowned,
until at last the stranger had opened his eyes and
stared at her, at the forest, at the ocean, as if he could
not understand what had happened.

Maada understood his bewilderment and pointed
to the beach, to the distant waters, endeavoring to
explain by signs what had happened. While he was
still staring, still mumbling unintelligible words, she
had darted swiftly away, had run back to the village
and told her father, the chief, about the white man.

Maada sobbed loudly and beat upon the moss with
her clenched hands when she thought of this thought-
less act. Why had she ever told her father? Why had
she not remembered that a great Haida chief had
made slaves of some white men he had captured?
Why had she not remembered that her father had
expressed a wish to own one of these white slaves
also! Alas! in her excitement she had not thought
about these things! She had been so anxious to bring
help to the poor man that she had thought of nothing
else—not until her father announced that the stranger
was to be kept in Quasset as a slave!