Page:Tlingit Myths and Texts.djvu/54

Always-crying-around-[the-bay] (Ỵīkag̣ā′xe). You can hear them crying almost any time when you are in camp. They never got back to their friends.

Many people once went to a certain camp to dry salmon. They did not know that a big devilfish lived under a steep cliff not very far from this place. In olden times, besides using hooks, they caught salmon by means of traps (cał), and when the trap was full, they would take out the fish and hang them on drying frames. When these people had many fish on the frames, they took off their covers so that the red color shone out on the ocean very distinctly.

A man and his two brothers living at this camp were fond of hunt ing, and one day, when very many salmon were on the frames, they started out. While they were gone the devilfish saw the glow on the water from the red salmon, threw his tentacles around the camp and swept every vestige of it into the sea. In those times a hunter washed in urine before going out hunting and was then sure to kill something, but on that day everything the hunters speared got away. When they returned to the camp, they saw many pieces of canoes drifting about the bay. Then they were very sad on account of the loss of their friends, but they did not know what had destroyed them.

After they had remained there for four days, they told the youngest to climb to the top of a high hill and watch them. Then the eldest told his other brother to cut four young spruce trees, and he sharp ened these, making two for himself and two for his brother. Early in the morning they loaded their canoe with rocks and prepared to meet the dangerous animal. They went out in front of the high cliff and began throwing rocks down there, the elder saying to his youngest brother, "Look down."

After a while they saw the large devilfish coming up right under them. Then they took the sharpened sticks and began to pierce its flesh. The youngest watched all that happened. When their canoe was broken up, they climbed on top of the devilfish and continued running the sticks into it until it died. When that happened it carried them down along with it.

Then the youngest brother started off to find some settlement, and when he came to one, the people set out at once to look for his brothers. Finally they discovered the place to which the devilfish had floated, along with the hunters and their canoe. But it did not get the salmon it had destroyed so many people for. Then the people gave a death feast and all cut their hair off short.