"
These words of Shalah did not make me proud, for things were too
serious for vanity. But they served to confirm in me my strange
exaltation. I felt as one dedicated to a mighty task.
"Tell me, what is the invasion which threatens the Tidewater?"
"The whole truth is not known to me; but from the speech of my
tribesmen, it seems that the Children of the West Wind, twelve moons
ago, struck their tents and resolved to seek a new country. There is a
restlessness comes upon all Indian peoples once in every five
generations. It fell upon my grandfather, and he travelled towards the
sunset, and now it has fallen upon the whole race of the Sun. As they
were on the eve of journeying there came to them a prophet, who told
them that God would lead them not towards the West, as was the
tradition of the elders, but eastwards to the sea and the dwellings of
the Palefaces."
"Is that the crazy white man we have heard of?"
"He is of your race, brother. What his spell is I know not, but it
works mightily among my people. They tell me that he hath bodily
converse with devils, and that God whispers His secrets to him in the
night-watches. His God hath told him--so runs the tale--that He hath
chosen the Children of the Sun for His peculiar people, and laid on
them the charge of sweeping the white men off the earth and reigning in
their stead from the hills to the Great Waters.
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