Here I interrupted the chief.  “How came the Frenchmen in a Russian sealer?” I asked.

“Captives,” he replied.  “Almost slaves, and hated by their captors, as the majority always hate the few.  So the women drew those two Frenchmen apart from the rest and told them the story of the bone of the sea-serpent, urging them to carry it back to their own country and give it to the great ‘Frenchman’ who was as courageous and as brave as their dead leader.

“The Frenchmen hesitated; the talisman might affect them, they said; might jangle their own brains, so that on their return to Russia they would not have the sagacity to plan an escape to their own country; might disjoint their bodies, so that their feet and hands would be useless, and they would become as weak as children.  But the women assured them that the charm only worked its magical powers over a man’s enemies, that the ancient medicine-men had ‘bewitched’ it with this quality.  So the Frenchmen took it and promised that if it were in the power of man they would convey it to ‘the Emperor.’

“As the crew boarded the sealer, the women watching from the shore observed strange contortions seize many of the men; some fell on the deck; some crouched, shaking as with palsy; some writhed for a moment, then fell limp and seemingly boneless; only the two Frenchmen stood erect and strong and vital—­the Squamish talisman had already overcome their foes.  As the little sealer set sail up the gulf she was commanded by a crew of two Frenchmen—­men who had entered these waters as captives, who were leaving them as conquerors.  The palsied Russians were worse than useless, and what became of them the chief could not state; presumably they were flung overboard, and by some trick of a kindly fate the Frenchmen at last reached the coast of France.

“Tradition is so indefinite about their movements subsequent to sailing out of the Inlet that even the ever-romantic and vividly colored imaginations of the Squamish people have never supplied the details of this beautifully childish, yet strangely historical fairy-tale.  But the voices of the trumpets of war, the beat of drums throughout Europe heralded back to the wilds of the Pacific Coast forests the intelligence that the great Squamish ‘charm’ eventually reached the person of Napoleon; that from this time onward his career was one vast victory, that he won battle after battle, conquered nation after nation, and, but for the direst calamity that could befall a warrior, would eventually have been master of the world.”

“What was this calamity, Chief?” I asked, amazed at his knowledge of the great historical soldier and strategist.

The chief’s voice again lowered to a whisper—­his face was almost rigid with intentness as he replied: 

“He lost the Squamish charm—­lost it just before one great fight with the English people.”

I looked at him curiously; he had been telling me the oddest mixture of history and superstition, of intelligence and ignorance, the most whimsically absurd, yet impressive, tale I ever heard from Indian lips.