Pund-jel, who was Maker of Men, sat in his high place one day and looked at the world. The blacks believed that in the very long ago he had made the first men and women out of clay; and from there they had spread over all the earth. Pund-jel had made them to be good and happy, and for a long while he had been satisfied with them. But now it was different, and he was angry.

All over the world he could see his black people. They had grown tall and strong, and he thought them beautiful. They were skilled in hunting, and fierce in battle: the women were clever at making rugs of skins, at cooking, at weaving curious mats and baskets of pliant rushes. The forests were full of game for them—-birds, beasts and reptiles, all good to eat: there were fish in the lakes and rivers, fat mud-eels in the creeks and swamps, and gum and manna to be found on every hill-side. The world was a good, green world, and there should have been only happiness. But the people themselves had grown wicked.

Pund-jel bent his brows with anger as he looked down upon them. Instead of being peaceful and content, his people had grown fierce and savage. They thought only of fighting and conquest, and were too lazy to work. The laws that he had made for them were as naught in their eyes. They said, "Oh, Pund-jel is very far away. He will never come down into our world to see what we do. Why should we obey him?" So they did just as they pleased, and all the world was evil because of their wickedness.

Pund-jel thought gravely as he looked down into his world, and all the sky was dark with the blackness of his frown.

"My people have grown too many," he said. "When they were few, each helped the other: there was no time for feuds or fighting, for all had to work together in order to live. Now all is changed. They are many and powerful, and they over-run the world, and each man hates his brother. It were better if I made them fewer, and scattered them far and wide. I will send my whirlwinds upon the earth."

So Pund-jel caused storms and fierce winds to arise often, and they swept across the world. In the flat lands there came suddenly whirlwinds of great force, that twisted and eddied through the plains, carrying men aloft in their choking embrace, and letting them fall, broken and dead, miles away from the places where they had lived. On the mountains great hurricanes blew shrieking from peak to peak, tearing up the largest trees by their roots, and tossing them down into the fern-strewn gullies far below. Huge boulders were loosened and went crashing down; and often a landslip followed them, when all the soil would be stripped from a hill-side and fall, thundering, carrying with it hundreds of people and leaving the bare rock behind it, like a scar upon the side of the mountain. Thunder and lightning came and shook the world with terror: mighty trees were riven and shattered, and fires swept through forest and plain, leaving blackness and desolation behind. Then came floods, that covered the low-lying parts of the earth, and made of the rivers roaring torrents, that ran madly to the sea. The world trembled in the terror of the wrath of Pund-jel.

And yet, men had grown so wise and cunning that not very many died. When the whirlwinds and hurricanes came, they crept into holes in the hill-sides, or sheltered themselves in deep gullies. They strengthened their houses, so that the wind should not blow them away. Sometimes they floated down the rivers in bark canoes; and a great number found refuge in caves. Those who were killed were the careless ones, who would not take th............