STORIES 489

“Take care!” the girl cried out, “‘you will burn your tail.”

‘Much to her terror the old man became furiously angry and threatened
to bite her.

Her lover had been absent when this was taking place but on his return
she complained to him.

“What did you say that so angered father?” he asked.

“T told him his tail had almost caught fire,” she replied.

“You must never do that,” he answered, “it annoys him. Speak of
his tail as his quiver, his arrows are inside.”

The girl promised to remember, but she was badly frightened and
wanted to go home, fearing lest her lover’s father should devour her.
They would not consent to her return; so it was like being in a prison.

One day as she was walking on a level tract of beach near the house
the girl saw a huge mouth gaping before her from the sand. It was prob-
ably a skémtsk, lying motionless in wait for its prey. Bravely she cut a
stick, inserted it in the monster’s jaws to wedge them open, then went
- back to her lover’s house and told him that she had seen a strange sight,
a yawning mouth like a house. Off dashed her consort and his brothers
to investigate, the girl following. They plunged heedlessly down inside
the mouth, whereupon she kicked away the stick, thus preventing their
egress. The monster slowly shook himself, waddled to the sea and swam
away with his victims.

The girl returned to Wolf’s house where her lover’s father had been
left alone. She built a large fire in which she put a number of hot stones,
then suddenly shoved the old man into it and held him down until he was
burnt to death.

There was now nothing to prevent her return to her own home, so she
set out. She arrived without further adventures and was welcomed as
one back from the dead, a year having elapsed since she had disappeared.
Remembering the stores of smoked deer and mountain goat meat in Wolf’s
house, she guided her relatives to this and they brought back large quan-
tities of the food.

STUMP AND HIS WIFE®?

Once upon a time, there was a little girl secluded in a corner of her
-house for the year following puberty. She frequently put on one side the
food which her parents brought her, planning to wait until she needed it,
but her elder brother used to steal this for himself, thus adding hunger
to the discomfort of her confinement.

“What do you mean by stealing my food?” she asked him one day.

*For another version of this story, see Boas, p. 100.