For many days he stayed on shore, for the ocean, which was usually at peace, was lashed into a great fury and the waves were dashing high on the beach.
It happened once that the winds blew hard over the Great Water and the man could not go out to catch fish because of the turbulent sea. But the boy would not talk about it when they spoke of it he was always silent.
And his foster-parents wondered greatly at this unusual power.
When he sat on the beach looking to the west the weather was always calm and there were strange bright gleams upon the water. Wherever he went there was a strange light. As he grew older the man and his wife noticed that his face took on a golden hue brighter than the colour of his copper bow. He brought home geese and ducks and brant and small sea birds, and gave them to his mother for food. At once he set out to hunt game, and day after day he came home bearing the products of his chase. One day the woman was wearing a copper bracelet on her arm and the child said to her, "I must have a bow made from the copper on your arm." So to please him she made him a tiny bow from the bracelet, and two tiny arrows. The baby grew very rapidly, and soon he was able to walk and move about where he pleased. When her husband came home from the sea, he, too, was very happy to find the baby there, for he knew that they would be lonely no more. She was well pleased with her discovery, and she carried the baby to her home and cared for him. She picked up the shell, and inside of it was a tiny boy, crying as hard as he could. She went closer to the sound and found that the cry came from a large sea-shell lying on the sand. As she sat there in thought she heard a strange cry coming from the sand dunes behind her. The woman wondered greatly at the words of the Kingfisher and the Sea-Gull. And the woman said, "Oh, white sea bird, I wish we had children like you to keep us company." And the Sea-gull said, "Look in the sea-shells look in the sea-shells," and flew away. Not far away a white Sea-gull was riding on the waves in the midst of her brood of little ones. The next evening the woman sat again upon the beach looking westward at the dull grey sky. And the woman said, "Oh, sea bird with the white collar, I wish we had children like you." And the Kingfisher said, "Look in the sea-shells look in the sea-shells," and flew away. In her loneliness the woman said to herself, "I wish we had children to keep me company." A Kingfisher, with his children, was diving for minnows not far away. The sky in the west was pale grey it was always dull and grey in that country, and when the sun had gone down there was no soft light. One evening at twilight when she was solitary because of her husband's absence on the ocean catching the deep-sea fish, she sat on the sand beach looking out across the water. They would be good company for me when I am alone and my husband is far away." So day after day she said to herself, "I wish we had children. She was not afraid, for she had a stout spirit, but it was very dismal in the evenings to look only at the grey leaden sky and to hear only the sound of the surf as it beat upon the beach. Often he was gone for many days and his wife was very lonely in his absence. The man spent his time in catching the deep-sea fish far out on the ocean, or in spearing salmon in the distant rivers. They had no children and they lived all by themselves far from other people on an island not far from the coast. Long ago there dwelt on the shores of the Great Water in the west a young man and his younger wife.
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