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“The word is with you, Persilope.”

He took the vessel from her, scattering its few remaining drops westward.

“To the sea!” he said; “down to the sea!”

“To the sea!” cried the Outliers, and laughed and girt themselves. Suddenly I found myself caught up into a kind of litter or swing made of broad bands of skin, in a position of great uneasiness to myself, between the shoulders of two men. The whole body of woodlanders set off rapidly, but in their former noiseless fashion, going seaward.

The moon was up and the tide far out when we issued upon the promontory called Cypress Point. There was little surf, and the glimmer of the tide ran like silvered serpents all along the rocks. With a shout the Outliers stripped and cut the molten water with their shining bodies; laughed and plunged and rose again, laughing and blowing the spray as long as the moon lasted. They were at it again with the earliest light, and I should have known they were gathering sea food without what one of the women told me, of a great occasion going forward at their home which lay far from here, and a great feast of all the tribe. When the tide allowed, they gathered fish and abalones, which the women carried to some secret place among the pines to cure and dry.