30 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [bull. 39 



After his nephews had stayed with him for some tine the man 

 said withui himself, ''I have no devilfish for bait," and the same 

 evening the young fellows were gone after it. Although it w^as high 

 tide many devilfish were found in front of his house. The young 

 otters called good weather bad and bad weather good. 



One day they went out w4th their uncle to fish, and, when he put 

 his line down with the buoy on it, the little otters all jumped into the 

 water. They went down on the line and put on the hook the big- 

 gest halibut they could find. After they had brought in the canoe 

 loaded twice their uncle had an abundance of provisions. 



In the evening the otters had worked so hard that they fell asleep 

 on the opposite side of the fire with their tails close to the blaze. 

 Then their uncle said to them, ''Your handy little tails are beginning to 

 burn." On account of those words all became angry and left him, 

 going back to their father. Then the man's sister came to him and 

 asked what he had said to his nephews. He said, ''I simply told 

 them that, their clothes were beginning to burn on them." So the 

 the otters' father tried to explain it, saying to them: "Your uncle 

 did not mean anything when he said your clothes were beginning to 

 burn. He wanted only to save your clothes. Now go back and stay 

 with him." So they got over their displeasure and went back. 



All that time the man was working upon his canoe. He said within 

 himself, "I wonder how my canoe can be gotten down." Next 

 morning his nephews went up, put their tails under it, and pulled it 

 down. When they got it to their uncle's house, he loaded the canoe 

 and started home with them, but quite near his town he missed them 

 out of the canoe. Then all the people there wondered where he could 

 have gotten a canoe load of such things as he had. He gave every- 

 thing to his friends. Then his wife said to the people, "Something 

 came to help us. We have seen my husband's sister who was 

 drowned long ago, and that is the way we got help." 



Afterward he went back to the place where he had received assist- 

 ance but saw nothing of those who had helped him. He hunted all 

 about the place from which his sister used to come but found nothing 

 except land-otter holes. He became discouraged and gave up 

 searching. 



7. THE LAND-OTTER SON 



There was a great famine at Sitka, and all the people went halibut 

 fishing. Then a certain man went with his wife to the mouth of 

 Redoubt bay. He had prepared barks some time before, and, when 

 they got to this place, they made a house out of them. They fished 

 there for a long time, but caught no more than one or two halibut a 

 week. By the end of two months they had little to live on except 

 shellfish and other things picked up at low tide. 



