Glooscap the great chief, and other stories - ElectricCanadian.com

276 .GLOOSCAP AND OTHER STORIES
but when the pipe came to Glooscap, he filled
it full again, lighted it, and with one pull burned
all the tobacco into ashes, and blew all the smoke
through his nostrils at one puff.
Then the brothers were angry, and said again,
"This is indeed a great magician, but he shall
be tried before he goes, and that bitterly."
They tried again to smoke with him. They
closed the wigwam and hoped to smother him
in smoke. But Glooscap sat and smoked away
as though he were on a mountain top. At last
the brothers could bear the smoke no longer,
and they said,
"This is idle. Let us go and
have a game of ball."
The place where they were to play was on a
plain, and Glooscap saw that the ball with which
they played was a hideous skull. It was alive
and snapped at his heels when it rolled. If he
had been as other men, and had been bitten so,
it would have taken off his foot. But Glooscap
laughed and said,
"So this is the game you
play. Good! But let us each have a ball."
With that he stepped to a tree on the bank
of the river, and broke off the end of a bough.
At once this turned into a skull ten times more
terrible than the other.
The giants ran before this horrible ball; but
it pursued them, and they fled from the field.
Then the Great Chief stamped upon the sand,
and the waters arose and flooded the place,