Ghost Sea: A Novel (Dugger/Nello Series) Read Online Free PDF Page A

work,” I said. And when he looked at me quizzically I added, “Not when you most need it.”
    He looked away; he knew when it was best to let things go.
    “From up the coast?” he queried.
    “Way up,” I said. “A couple hundred miles.”
    “You hear a lot of stories about up there: Desolation, wild islands, wild people. Unimaginable rites.”
    “Stories,” I said.
    “You know the place?”
    “Not well.”
    “But your first mate, Mr. Nello, was born there.”
    There wasn’t much old Hopkins didn’t know. I pulled in my limbs as if not to give anything more away.
    “End of the earth,” he went on. “Barely charted. Rocks and reefs, towering mountains with inlets like corkscrews, hundreds of miles of wild emptiness.”
    “And fog,” I said. “Even more than here.”
    “Kwakiutl,” he sighed.
    The rum didn’t do its work; in fact, I was getting jittery. But not Hopkins. He sat calmly and stared at me. He asked for a bit more rum, took a gulp, leaned forward, and said in a quiet, confiding tone, “Captain Dugger, you know what a potlatch is.”
    “Only so-so,” I said.
    “All summer long the Indians fish: salmon from the sea and streams, herring from the shallows. In the tidal flats they pick oysters, clams, sea urchins, mussels. They dry or smoke everything to preserve it for winter; even dry seaweed, berries, mint, everything in the summer, everything before the rains. Bakoos time, they call it. Then winter comes, and the rains come, and they pull back into the villages into their great cedar houses and it begins—Tsetseka, it means Magician. It all starts innocently enough, days of feasting, some mourning songs for those who died since spring, singing, joking, all very nice, very noble. But then day-by-day things turn ugly. They say that spirits come out of the sea, the woods, wild spirits; ‘Dog-Eaters.’ And worse.”
    His voice dropped. “There are rituals. Frenzied women are stuffed in cedar boxes and thrown on a bonfire. Alive. Others are hung from ropes by their skin. Everyone watches. Young men are dragged off into the woods for weeks and are left there alone; they come back wild animals—they attack their own people and…. They’re called Hamatsa. Cannibals. We’ve tried to put an end to all this.” I poured him some more rum.
    “How long would it take to get up there?” he asked.
    “With good winds, timing the currents in the passes, and not pushing your luck, maybe ten days.”
    “And back?”
    “Depends.”
    “On the winds?”
    “On whether they eat you or not.”
    Hopkins straightened up, annoyed. “This isn’t easy for anybody, you know,” he blurted. “I have great respect for these people, their traditions, their knowledge of their world. They’re generous, caring, they look after the sick, the old, each other, even strangers. They’re a noble people. But these potlatches, this savagery has to end.”
    He took a deep breath, calmed, and began again.
    “There was a law passed against these rituals over forty years ago. But to enforce it out there, my God! It’s the end of the earth! So they went on. Until last winter. An informant warned us in advance of the place, the time. A boat took in the Indian agent and police, ran aground twice, but went on and arrested the worst of them. Poor buggers. The fog thinned for an hour at midday so the boat got in…. Poor sods.”
    “I read about it,” I said. “You took everything they owned.”
    “Just the things used in the potlatch,” Hopkins objected. “Things used for the horrors; just the masks, things like that.”
    “Just the masks? They have no written language. Those masks are their history: deeds to property, records of marriages, stories of their creation, even their names. Christ! First you take their lands, now this. What the hell did you leave them?”
    Hopkins wasn’t prepared for that. He stared at me almost meanly but went on. “The Indian agent took the masks; that was within the law. Then he sold