"
"Another," said the girl, "of your heathen stories?"
"Rather a pretty one," he retorted. "It happened in a seaport, a good
many hundred miles up the coast. A poor girl lived there, with her
mother, in a hut. One night a great gale blew, so that everybody was
anxious. Three junks were out somewhere at sea, in that storm. The girl
lay there in the dark. Her sweetheart on board, it would be in a Western
story; but these were only her friends, and kin, and townsmen, that were
at stake. So she lay there in the hut, you see, and couldn't rest. And
then it seemed to her, in the dark, that she was swimming out through
the storm, out and out, and not in the least afraid. She had become
larger, and more powerful, somehow, than the rain, or the dark, or the
whole ocean; for when she came upon the junks tossing there, she took
one in each hand, the third in her mouth, and began to swim for home.
Just retrieved 'em, you know. But then across the storm she heard her
mother calling in the dark, and had to open her mouth to answer. So she
lost that junk."
"Well, then her spirit was back in the hut. But next day the two junks
came in; the third one, never.
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