by Scott O'Dell
The canoe when I had finished was not so beautiful as it had been before, but I could now lift one end of it and drag it through the waves.
All the time I was working on the canoe, which was most of that summer, Rontu was with me. He was either sleeping in the shade of the canoe or running up and down the sandspit chasing the pelicans that roost there in great numbers because there are numerous fish nearby. He never caught any of the birds, yet he would keep trying until his tongue hung out of his mouth.
He had learned his name quickly and many words that meant something to him. Zalwit, for example, which is our word for pelican, and naip which means fish. I talked to him often, using these words and others and many that he did not understand, just as though I were talking to one of my people.
"Rontu," I would say after he had stolen a special fish I had-speared for my supper, "tell me why it is that you are such a handsome dog and yet such a thief."
He would put his head on one side and then the other, although he knew only two of the words, and look at me.
Or I would say, "It is a beautiful day. I have never seen the ocean so calm and the sky looks like a blue shell. How long do you think these days will last?"
Rontu would look up at me just the same, though he understood none of the words, acting as if he did.
Because of this I was not lonely. I did not know how lonely I had been until I had Rontu to talk to.
When the canoe was finished and the pitch had dried I wanted to find out how it went through the water and if the planks leaked, so we set off on a long voyage around the island. The voyage took all of one day, from dawn until night.
There are many sea caves on the Island of the Blue Dolphins and some of them are large and go far back into the cliffs. One of these was near the headland where my house stood.
The opening was narrow, not much wider than the canoe, but once we were inside, it spread out and was larger than my place on the headland.
The walls were black and smooth and slanted far up over my head. The water was almost as black, except where light came through the opening. Here it was a gold color and you could see fish swimming around. They were different from the fish on the reefs, having larger eyes and fins that drifted out from their bodies like kelp.
This place opened into another, which was smaller and so dark I could see nothing. It was very silent in there, with no sound of the waves on the shore and only the lapping of the water against the rocky walls. I thought of the god Tumaiyowit who had become angry at Mukat and gone down, down into another world, and I wondered if it were not to such a place as this that he had gone.
Far ahead was a spot of light no larger than my hand, so instead of turning back, which I felt like doing, I drifted toward it around many turnings and came at last to another room much like the first.
Along one side was a wide shelf of rock, which ran out to the sea through a narrow opening. The tide was full and yet the shelf was out of the water. It was a fine place to hide a canoe, which could be lifted out and stored there where no one could find it. The ledge joined the cliff just below my house. All I needed was a trail down to the cave and then the canoe would be close at hand.
"We have made a great discovery," I said to Rontu.
Rontu did not hear me. He was watching a devilfish, just beyond the opening of the cave. This fish has a small head with eyes that bulge and many arms. All day Rontu had been barking—at the cormorants, the gulls, the seals—at everything that moved. Now he was quiet, watching the black thing in the water.
I let the canoe drift along and knelt down out of sight until I could pick up my spear.
The devilfish was in front of us, swimming slowly near the surface, moving all his arms at once. Large devilfish are dangerous if you are in the sea, for their arms are as long as a man, and they can quickly wrap them around you. They also have a big mouth and a sharp beak where their arms join their head. This one was the largest I had ever seen.
Since Rontu was standing in front of me and I could not put the canoe into a better position, I had to lean out to use the spear. As I did so, the devilfish saw my movement and let loose in the water a black cloud of liquid which instantly hid him from view.
I knew that the devilfish would not be in the center of this cloud, that he had left it behind. I therefore did not aim my spear at it, but picked up the paddle and waited until he appeared. He was now twice the length of the canoe from me and though I paddled fast I could not overtake him.
"Rontu," I said, for he was watching the black cloud in the water, "you have much to learn about the devilfish."
Rontu did not look at me or bark. He put his head to one side and then the other, still puzzled, more so when the cloud disappeared and nothing was left except clear water.
Devilfish is the best food in the seas. The flesh is white and tender and very sweet. But they are difficult to catch without a special kind of spear, which I now decided to make during the winter when I would have much time.
I took the canoe to Coral Cove, not far from the cave, and pulled it up on the shore out of reach of the winter storms. There it would be safe until spring when I would hide it in the cave that Rontu and I had found. It was easy to paddle and did not leak. I was very happy.
17
STORMS CAME early with rain and between the rains fierce winds struck the island and filled the air with sand. During this time, I made myself another dress, but most of the days I spent fashioning a spear to catch the giant devilfish.
I had seen this spear made, as I had seen my father make bows and arrows, yet I knew little about it, no more than I had about the others. Still I remembered how it looked and how it was used. From these memories I made it after many errors and many hours of work, sitting on the floor while Rontu slept nearby and the storms beat upon the roof.
Four of the sea-elephant teeth were left, and though I broke all except one, this I worked down to a head with a barbed point. I then made a ring and fastened it to the end of the shaft, and into this ring fitted the head, which was tied to a long string made of braided sinew. When the spear was thrown and struck a devilfish, the head came loose from the shaft. The shaft floated on the water, but the pointed barb was held by the string which was tied to your wrist. This spear was especially good because it could be thrown from a distance.
On the first day of spring I went down to Coral Cove with my new spear. I knew it was spring because that morning at dawn the sky was filled with flocks of darting birds. They were small and black and came only at this time of year. They came out of the south and stayed for two suns, hunting food in the ravines, and then flew off in one great flight toward the north.
Rontu did not go with me to the beach because I had let him out of the fence and he had not returned. The wild dogs had been to the house many times that winter and he had paid no heed to them, but the night before, after they had come and gone, he had stood at the fence. He stood and whined and walked up and down. It worried me to see him act so strangely, and when he refused to eat I finally let him out.
Now I pushed the canoe into the water and drifted toward the reef where the devilfish lived. The water was so clear that it was like the air around me. Far down, the sea ferns moved as though a breeze were blowing there, and among them swam the devilfish trailing their long arms.
It was good to be on the sea after the winter storms, with the new spear in my hand, but all the morning as I hunted the giant devilfish I kept thinking of Rontu. I should have been happy, yet thinking of him I was not. Would he come back, I wondered, or had he gone to live with the wild dogs? Would he again be my enemy? If he were my enemy, I knew that I could never kill him, now that he had been my friend.
When the sun was high I hid the canoe in the cave we had found, for once more it was the time the Aleuts might return, and with the two small bass I had speared, though not the giant devilfish, I went up the cliff. I had planned to make a trail from the cave to my house, but had decided that it could be seen from a ship and by anyone stan
ding on the headland.
The climb was steep. As I reached the top, I paused for breath. The morning was quiet except for the noise of the little birds flying from bush to bush and the cries of the gulls who did not like these strangers. Then I heard the sound of dogs fighting. The sound came from far off, perhaps from the ravine, and taking my bow and arrows, I hurried in that direction.
I went down the path which led to the spring. There were tracks of the wild dogs around the spring, and among them I saw the large ones of Rontu. The tracks led away through the ravine which winds to the sea. I heard again the distant sound of fighting.
I went slowly through the ravine because of my bow and arrows.
At last I came to the place where it opens into a meadow right at the edge of a low sea cliff. Sometimes in the summers, a long time ago, my people had lived here. They gathered shellfish on the rocks and ate them here, leaving the shells which after many summers had formed a mound. Over this grass had grown, and a thick-leaved plant called gnapan.
On this mound, among the grasses and the plants, stood Rontu. He stood facing me, with his back to the sea cliff. In front of him in a half-circle were the wild dogs. At first I thought that the pack had driven him there against the cliff and were getting ready to attack him. But I soon saw that two dogs stood out from the rest of the pack, between it and Rontu, and that their muzzles were wet with blood.
One of these dogs was the leader who had taken Rontu's place when he had come to live with me. The other one, which was spotted, I had never seen. The battle was between Rontu and these two dogs. The rest were there to fall upon whichever was beaten.
So great was the noise made by the pack, they had not heard me as I came through the brush, nor did they see me now as I stood at the edge of the meadow. They sat on their haunches and barked, with their eyes fixed on the others. But I was sure that Rontu knew I was somewhere near, for he raised his head and smelled the air.
The two dogs were trotting back and forth along the foot of the mound, watching Rontu. The fight had probably started at the spring and they had stalked him to this place where he had chosen to fight.
The sea cliff was behind him and they could not reach him from that direction so they were trying to think of some other way. It would have been easier if one could have attacked him from the back and one from the front.
Rontu did not move from where he stood on top of the mound. Now and again he lowered his head to lick a wound on his leg, but whenever he did he always kept his eyes on the two dogs trotting up and down.
I could have shot them, for they were within reach of my bow, or driven off the pack, yet I stood in the brush and watched. This was a battle between them and Rontu. If I stopped it, they would surely fight again, perhaps at some other place less favorable to him.
Rontu again licked his wound and this time he did not watch the two dogs moving slowly past the mound. I thought it was a lure and so it proved to be, for suddenly they ran toward him. They came from opposite sides of the mound, ears laid back and teeth bared.
Rontu did not wait for the attack, but, leaping at the nearer one, turned his shoulder and with his head lowered caught the dog's foreleg. The pack was quiet. In the silence, I could hear the sound of the bone breaking, and the dog backed away on three legs.
The spotted dog had reached the top of the mound. Whirling away from the one he had crippled, Rontu faced him, but not in time to fend off the first heavy rush. Teeth slashed at his throat and, as he turned his body, struck him instead on the flank, and he went down.
At that moment, while he lay there on the grass with the dog circling warily and the pack moving slowly toward him, without knowing that I did so, I fitted an arrow to the bow. A good distance separated Rontu from his attacker and I could end the battle before he was wounded further or the pack fell upon him. Yet, as before, I did not send the arrow.
The spotted dog paused, and turned in his tracks, and again leaped, this time from behind.
Rontu was still lying in the grass with his paws under him and I thought he did not see that the other was upon him. But crouching there, he suddenly raised himself and at the same time fastened his teeth in the dog's throat.
Together they rolled off the mound, yet Rontu did not let go. The pack sat restless in the grass.
In a short time Rontu rose to his feet and left the spotted dog where it lay. He walked to the top of the mound and lifted his head and gave a long howl. I had never heard this sound before. It was the sound of many things that I did not understand.
He trotted past me and up the ravine. When I got to the house he was there waiting, as if he had not been away or nothing had happened.
In all the time he lived, Rontu never left again, and the wild dogs, which for some reason divided into two packs, after that never returned to the headland.
18
FLOWERS WERE plentiful that spring because of the winter's heavy rains. The dunes were covered with mats of sand flowers, which are red and have tiny eyes that are sometimes pink and sometimes white. Yuccas grew tall among the rocks of the ravine. Their heads were clustered with curly globes no larger than pebbles and the color of the sun when it rises. Lupines grew where the springs ran. From the sunny cliffs, in crevices where no one would think anything could grow, sprang the little red and yellow fountains of the comul bush.
Birds were plentiful, too. There were many hummers which can stand still in the air and look like bits of polished stone and have long tongues to sip honey with. There were blue jays, which are very quarrelsome birds, and black-and-white peckers that pecked holes in the yucca stalks and the poles of my roof, even in the whale bones of the fence. Red-winged blackbirds also came flying out of the south, and flocks of crows, and a bird with a yellow body and a scarlet head, which I had never seen before.
A pair of these birds made a nest in a stunted tree near my house. It was made from strings of the yucca bush and had a small opening at the top and hung down like a pouch. The mother laid two speckled eggs which she and her mate took turns sitting on. After the eggs hatched, I put shreds of abalone under the tree and these she fed her young.
The young birds were not like their mother and father, being gray and very ugly, but anyway, I took them from the nest and put them in a small cage that I made of reeds. So later in the spring, when all the birds except the crows left the island and flew off to the north, I had these two for friends.
They soon grew beautiful feathers like those of their parents and began to make the same sound, which was reep, reep. But it was soft and clear and much sweeter than the cries of the gulls or the crows or the talk of the pelicans which sounds like the quarreling of toothless old men.
Before summer came the cage was too small for my two birds, but instead of building a larger one, I cut the tips of their wings, one wing of each, so they could not fly away, and let them loose in the house. By the time their wings had grown out, they had learned to take food from my hand. They would jump down from the roof and perch on my arm and beg, making their reep, reep sound.
When their wings began to feather out, I cut them again. This time I let them loose in the yard, where they hopped around hunting food, perching on Rontu who by now had gotten used to them. The next time they feathered out, I did not trim their wings, but they never flew farther away than the ravine and would always come back at night to sleep and, no matter how much they had eaten, to ask for food.
One, because he was larger, I called Tainor. I named him after a young man I liked who had been killed by the Aleuts. The other was called Lurai, which was a name I wished I had been called instead of Karana.
During the time that I was taming the birds, I made another skirt. This one I also made of yucca fibers softened in water and braided into twine. I made it just like the others, with folds running lengthwise. It was open on both sides and hung to my knees. The belt I made of sealskin which could be tied in a knot. I also made a pair of sandals from sealskin for walking over the dunes when the sun w
as hot, or just to be dressed up when I wore my new skirt of yucca twine.
Often I would put on the skirt and the sandals and walk along the cliff with Rontu. Sometimes I made a wreath of flowers and fastened it in my hair. After the Aleuts had killed our men at Coral Cove, all the women of our tribe had singed their hair short as a sign of mourning. I had singed mine, too, with a faggot, but now it had grown long again and came to my waist. I parted it and let it fall down my back, except when I wore a wreath. Then I made braids and fastened them with long whalebone pins.
I also made a wreath for Rontu's neck, which he did not like. Together we would walk along the cliff looking at the sea, and though the white men's ship did not return that spring, it was a happy time. The air smelled of flowers and birds sang everywhere.
19
ANOTHER SUMMER had come and still I had not speared the giant devilfish that lived near the cave.
Every day during the spring, Rontu and I went to look for him. I would put the canoe in the water and paddle slowly through the cave, from one opening to the other, often several times. I saw many devilfish there where the black water is streaked with light, but not the giant one.
At last I gave up looking for him and began to gather abalones for winter. The red shells hold the sweetest meat and are best for drying, though the green ones and the black are also good. Because the red ones are the sweetest, starfish prey upon them.
This star-shaped creature places itself over the shell of an abalone. With its five arms spread out against the rock to which the abalone is fastened, it holds the shell with its suckers, and then begins to lift itself. The starfish pulls against the abalone shell, sometimes for days, holding on with its suckers and pushing up with its legs, until little by little the heavy shell comes loose from the body.
One morning we left the cave and paddled out to the reef which is joined to it.
For many days I had been gathering a few shellfish on the rocks at Coral Cove, but I had been watching the reef and waiting for the right time to harvest. This is when there are few starfish feeding, for they are as hard to pry loose from an abalone as an abalone is to pry from a rock.