STORIES 477

son, being human, easily reached the far shore. The salmon-boy and his
father, who had watched the attempted murder from the other bank, took
a canoe and fetched the lad back to their side of the river. All the salmon
people wanted to kill the evil merganser man, but Magwdnts’s son said:

“No. I will settle him myself, tomorrow.”

That night he slept again with his wife, who felt that she was preg-
nant, and the next morning the merganser man and his son-in-law again
went out to fish, but this time the latter insisted on taking his place in the
stern. In mid-stream he tilted the canoe so that his father-in-law fell out
and was drowned. He did so partly in revenge for the attempt upon his
own life, partly at the request of his wife, who said that her father was
always killing her husbands and destroying her marriages. Next day the
wife of the murdered man gave birth to a male child, and on the following
day the wife of Magwénts’s son bore twins, a boy and a girl. This was
possible because mergansers breed quickly. The twins were somewhat
different from the usual merganser or salmon children. Not long after-
wards Magwdzts’s son said to his comrade’s father:

“T want togohome. Neither my father nor my mother knows where
Iam. They must be grief-stricken.”

In fact both Magwdants and her husband were almost prostrated at
the loss of their son. The spring salmon chief told everybody to get
ready for a journey and in four days the preparations were complete. All
the fish accompanied Magwdnts’s son, in the van the sardines, then the
herring, the olachen and the rest, in the order of their arrival on the
British Columbia coast in the spring. The host travelled slowly, camping
at night, when they sang and danced, as if on a picnic, but never leaving
the land beneath the ocean. When near the mouth of the river the spring
salmon chief asked Magwdnts’s son to go ahead to tell his father of the
coming of the fish people who wanted presents in the shape of mountain
goat grease, eagle feathers, and soft cedar-bark, to use as sponges for
their babies. So Magwdnts’s son with his wife and two children went
ahead, in the shape of salmon, and entered his father’s fish-weir. The old
man was lying on the framework of the dam, weeping over the loss of his
son, when he felt four successive jars, indicating that four salmon had
entered his trap, but he was too listless to raise it. His son and the latter’s
family threw off their salmon form and became human.

“Please lift your trap,” Magwdnts’s son called out to his father. “My
children will catch cold.”

Recognizing his son’s voice, the father joyfully raised the trap, and
his delight was unbounded when he saw his son again, with a beautiful
wife and two handsome children. Magwdnts’s son asked his father to
strew the house with clean sand and to summon the neighbours. That