His desperate memory yielded a few common Indian words. He
pointed automatically to himself and the stream. His white lips moved.
"I come--from--the river!"
A guttural cry, as if the whole assembly were clearing their throats,
went round the different circles. The nearest rocked themselves to
and fro and bent their feathered heads toward him. A hollow-cheeked,
decrepit old man arose and said, simply:--
"It is he! The great chief has come!"
*****
He was saved. More than that, he was re-created. For, by signs and
intimations he was quickly made aware that since the death of their
late chief, their medicine-men had prophesied that his perfect successor
should appear miraculously before them, borne noiselessly on the river
FROM THE SEA, in the plumes and insignia of his predecessor. This mere
coincidence of appearance and costume might not have been convincing to
the braves had not Elijah Martin's actual deficiencies contributed to
their unquestioned faith in him. Not only his inert possession of the
sweat-house and his apathetic attitude in their presence, but his utter
and complete unlikeness to the white frontiersmen of their knowledge and
tradition--creatures of fire and sword and malevolent activity--as well
as his manifest dissimilarity to themselves, settled their conviction
of his supernatural origin. His gentle, submissive voice, his yielding
will, his lazy helplessness, the absence of strange weapons and fierce
explosives in his possession, his unwonted sobriety--all proved him an
exception to his apparent race that was in itself miraculous.
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