Look now, ye faithless and witless! The mothers who love not their offspring And cherish them not through all danger, Must lose them anon, as the woodbird, Who sits not her nest, doth her broodlings! Fear not, but cleave fast to your children Though they strange-turn and frightful of seeming! 'Tis the magic of water, and wildness Of heart, and will pass (as men's laughter Doth pass when the joy-thought is sobered), As ye win your way forth from the waters. Thus spake they, and continued speaking; whereupon the people who were yet left, took heart, even the women, and stayed their thoughts, clinging stoutly to their little ones as they fared through the waters, what though the terror and hurt was sore. Thus passed they all safely over, and--even as had been said--as they won their way up from the waters and sat them down to rest on the farther shore below the mountains, lo! the little ones grew warm and right again. But never were the thoughts of womenkind beguiled wholly from that harrowing journey. Wherefore they be timid of deep places, startled (as is the voice of a vessel by any shrillness of sound) and witless-driven by the sight of reptile-creatures. Lo! and so their anxieties are like to press themselves on the unripe and forming children of their bowels. Wherefore, also, we guard their eyes from all weird-seeming things when they be with child. THE AWAITING OF THE LOST CLANS. Now, when the people were rested and the children righted, they arose and journeyed into the plain to the east of the two mountains and the great water between them. Thence they turned them northward to the sunrise slopes of the uppermost of the mountains. There they encamped, mourning for their lost children and awaiting the coming, perchance, of those who had fled away. THE STRAYING OF K‘YÄK´LU, AND HIS PLAINT TO THE WATER-FOWL.