Island of the Blue Dolphins

26

That winter I did not go to the reef at all. I ate the things I had stored and left the house only to get water at the spring. It was a winter of strong winds and rain and wild seas that crashed against the cliffs, so I would not have gone out much even if Rontu had been there. During that time I made four snares from notched branches.

In the summer once, when I was on my way to the place where the sea elephants lived, I had seen a young dog that looked like Rontu. He was running with one of the packs of wild dogs, and though I caught only a glimpse of him, I was sure he was Rontu's son.

He was larger than the other dogs and had heavier fur and yellow eyes and he ran with a graceful stride like Rontu's. In the spring I planned to catch him with the snares I was making.

The wild dogs came to the headland often during the winter, now that Rontu was gone, and when the worst of the storms were over I set the snares outside the fence and baited them with fish. I caught several of the dogs the first time, but not the one with the yellow eyes, and since I was afraid to handle them, I was forced to let them free.

I made more snares and set these again, but while the wild dogs came close they would not touch the fish. I did catch a little red fox, which bit me when I took her out of the snare, yet she soon got over her wildness and would follow me around in the yard, begging for abalone. She was very much of a thief. When I was away from the house, she always found some way to get into the food, no matter how well I hid it, so I had to let her go back to the ravine. Often, though, she would come at night and scratch at the fence for food.

I could not catch the young dog with a snare, and I was about to give up trying to when I thought of the toluache weed which we sometimes used to catch fish in the tide pools. It was not really a poison, but if you put it in the water the fish would turn over on their backs and float.

I remembered this weed and dug some where it grew on the far side of the island. I broke it up into small pieces which I dropped in the spring where the wild dogs drank. I waited all day and at dusk the pack came down to the spring. They drank their fill of the water, but nothing happened to them, or not much. They frisked around for a while, as I watched them from the brush, and trotted away.

I then remembered xuchal, which some of the men of our tribe used and is made from ground-up sea-shells and wild tobacco. I made a big bowl of this, mixing it with water, and put it in the spring. I hid in the brush and waited. The dogs came at dusk. They sniffed the water and backed off and looked at each other, but at last began to drink. Soon afterwards they began to walk around in circles. Suddenly they all lay down and went to sleep.

There were nine of them lying there by the spring. In the dim light it was hard to tell the one I wanted to take home, but finally I found him. He was snoring as if he had just eaten a big meal. I picked him up and hurried along the cliff, being frightened all the way that he would wake up before I reached the headland.

I pulled him through the opening under the fence and tied him to it with a thong and left food beside him to eat and some fresh water. Before long he was on his feet, gnawing through the thong. He howled and ran about the yard while I cooked my supper. All night he howled, but at dawn when I went out of the house, he was asleep.

While he lay there by the fence sleeping, I thought of different names for him, trying first one and then another, saying them over to myself. At last, because he looked so much like his father, I called him Rontu-Aru, which means Son of Rontu.

In a short time he made friends with me. He was not so large as Rontu, but he had his father's thick coat and the same yellow eyes. Often when I watched him chasing gulls on the sandspit or on the reef barking at the otter, I forgot that he was not Rontu.

We had many happy times that summer, fishing and going to Tall Rock in our canoe, but more and more now I thought of Tutok and my sister Ulape. Sometimes I would hear their voices in the wind and often, when I was on the sea, in the waves that lapped softly against the canoe.