Island of the Blue Dolphins ( chapter 1-19 )

Island of the Blue Dolphins opens with Karana's memory of the day the Aleut ship came to Ghalas-at. She and her brother Ramo spot the ship approaching the village. A group of the strangers lands on the shore, bringing with them Captain Orlov, a Russian who has come to the island to hunt otter. The chief of Karana's village, Chowig (who is Karana and Ramo's father), parleys with the Russian. Karana wonders to herself why her father reveals his secret name when introducing himself to Orlov. Every member of Karana's tribe has two names: one they use in everyday life and one that they keep secret. If their second name is overused it will lose its magic. Karana's name for every day use is Won-a-pa-lei, meaning "the Girl with the Long Black Hair."There is disagreement between Orlov and Chowig regarding a previous hunting trip that caused problems on Ghalas-at, though the details of those problems are not revealed. Chowig and Orlov finally agree that they will split the spoils of the hunting trip equally. Karana has been listening to their conversation from a spot on a cliff above the beach. Now, however, a rock falls from the cliff, ad Karana, startled, runs back to the village before she can hear any more.Before continuing her story, Karana describes the dimensions and geography of her island - the island of the blue dolphins. It is two leagues by one league, and shaped like a fish. The winds on the island are strong (except for the south wind), and because of this the hills are smooth and the trees small and twisted. Ghalas-at is east of the hills, the Aleuts set up their camp to he north.Chowig warns the people of Ghalas-at that although their agreement with the Aleuts will be profitable to the village, they must not try to befriend the visitors. Remembering the trouble hey cause so many years earlier (which has still not been specified), the villagers make sure they always have someone watching the Aleut camp. Around this time, the people of Ghalas-at experience a run of good fortune, discovering a school of large bass washed up upon the beach. The Aleuts come and ask for a share of the fish, but Chowig refuses them. Angry and disappointed, the Aleuts return to their camp. Karana ends the chapter by mentioning how her tribe's good fortune would soon bring trouble. The Aleuts have come to the island of the blue dolphins to hunt otter for their pelts, and Karana describes their hunting methods. She is angry with the Aleuts, for the otter they are hunting are her friends, and she fears the Aleuts will hunt them to extinction. Chowig comforts his daughter, saying that the Aleuts will surely leave soon, and that the otter will afterwards return. Already he has observed in the Aleuts signs that they are preparing to depart from the island. Other members of the village have noticed these signs as well. Chowig fears that the Aleuts will try to sneak away in the night without paying of rhte otter they took.The Aleuts break camp and prepare to leave the island. Seeing this, the people of Ghalas-at go down to meet them on the shore. The warriors go to the beach while the women wait in the brush along the cliff. Karana's father confronts Captain Orlov. Though Orlov offers a chest full of trinkets, Chowig insists that his people are owed three more, and will not let the Aleuts leave with the otter pelts until the villagers of Ghalas-at have been paid.The Aleuts make to leave despite Chowig's warning. Chowing steps in the way of one of the Aleuts carrying pelts back to the ship, and a skirmish breaks out. Many of the villagers are killed, and the Aleuts escape back to their ship, leaving the chest and a few of the remaining otter pelts on the beach. Karana's father is killed in the battle, and she and the other villagers agree that it was because Chowig told Orlov his secret name that he was unable to properly defend himself and was killed.In the aftermath of the battle, only fifteen men are left alive in the village where there was once forty-two. The villagers bury their dead once the storm that broke the day of the battle has ended. They burn the bodies of Aleuts left dead on the beach. People speak of leaving the island for a new one nearby (called Santa Catalina), but the tribal council decided that they should stay. The council chooses a new chief, Kimki, to take Chowig's place. Kimki decrees that, since so many of the village's men have been killed, women must do the jobs that were once left only to men. Karana and her sister Ulape are set to gather abalones (a type of shellfish). Ramo is given the job of guarding the abalones from gull and from the wild dogs of the island, which have become even more numerous since the village dogs that lost their masters have joined their ranks. The women are so good at their duties that soon they have gathered enough food for the winter. The men of Ghala-at, however, are disgruntled because women are doing the work of men. Soon Kimki decides that the labor will again be divided as it was before the Aleuts came. The villagers are constantly saddened by the memories of their friends and family that were killed by the Aleuts, and their sadness grows as the winter progresses. In the spring, Kimki decides to go east to prepare a place for the people of Ghalas-at in a country there that he once visited as a child. He goes alone, taking enough food with him for many days' journey, but the people wonder if he will ever return.The people of Ghalaas-at watch for some sign of Kimki, but none ever comes. Spring passes and comes again, but still Kimki does not return. Matasaip, who has been chosen as chief in Kimki's place, decides that the village must turn its attention to other problems - the Aleuts. The time of year that the Aleuts come is fast approaching, and the villagers must make plans to flee the island if they return. The people of Ghalas-at stock canoes with food and water and leave them at the bottom of a cliff, so that they can quickly escape if the Aleuts are sighted.One night, a cry goes through the village that the Aleuts have returned. The villagers file out of their homes and make for the canoes, but the man who gave the alarm returns, saying that the ship that is approaching the harbor has white sail, not the red sails of the Aleuts. Matasaip goes to investigate along with a few other men while the rest of the villagers continue toward the canoes. Soon, Nanko returns with a message from Matasaip. The villagers are anxious to hear what he has to say, but Nanko plays with them, pretending to be too tired to talk. Finally, he reveals that the ship on the bay hold white men sent by Kimki to take them away from Ghalas-at.The villagers scramble to pack for their journey. They had brought only the bare necessities when they thought they were fleeing the Aleuts, and so choose a few possessions to bring with them. Ulape draw a mark in blue clay across her face to signal that she in unmarried. A storm is gathering, and so they must be quick, lest the white men's ship run against the rocks. As they head toward the beach, Ramo realizes he has left his fishing spear at the village, but Karana knows there is not enough time to go back tells him he must leave it behind. When Karana reaches the beach, all of the men except Nanko and Matasaip have already boarded the ship. Karana has lost track of Ramo, but Nanko tells her the he was on the first canoe to the ship. Upon reaching the ship, Karana looks around for Ramo, but he is nowhere to be found. Nanko offers her his assurance that he is on the ship, but then Karana notices him back on the island, running along the cliff with his spear in his hand. Chief Matasaip explains to Karana that they cannot wait for Ramo, because if they do, the ship will be wrecked against the rocks. Then, though many people try to restrain her, Karana jumps off the boat into the water and swims back to shore.The storm has grown strong, and Karana and Ramo are forced to take shelter by some rocks until night falls. When they reach the village, they find wild dogs slinking around in the huts. Though the dogs have ransacked the village, Karana and Ramo are able to find enough food to make dinner. All night the dogs wait just outside the village, and at daybreak they return to their lair. The next day Karana and Ramo gather food for their meals, and at night the dogs come jus as before.The following day, Karana and Ramo go to the beach to gather food, and, looking out onto the sea, wonder if the white men's ship will ever return for them. Ramo decides that he will go and retrieve one of the canoes the villagers had left by the cliff, should they ever need to escape the Aleuts. When Karana tells him the canoes will be too heavy for him to handle, Ramo announces that he is now chief of Ghalas-at, since he is the son of Chowig (he now refers to himself as chief Tanyositlopai). When Karana awakes thenext morning, Ramo is gone. She realizes that he must have gotten up early to go for the canoe, and goes to the beach to wait for him. When Ramo does not arrive at the beach, Karana returns to the village. Ramo is not there either, so she heads towards the cliff where the canoes are stored. On her way there, she hears the barking of dogs off in the distance. When Karana reaches the spot the noise is coming from, she finds Ramo dead, surrounded by the pack of dogs. She carries Ramo back to the village, and the dogs follow her all the way. She chases them away with a club, and follows them back to their lair, three hills distant. Karana considers setting a fire and pushing it into the dogs' cave, but she does not have enough brush. Instead, she returns to the village and sits up all night by hr brother's body, vowing one day to kill the wild dogs. Many days pass after Ramo is killed, and on one foggy morning Karana decides to leave the village forever. She burns the houses down one by one, and sets out to the place where she has decided to wait for the white men's ship, west of Coral Cove. Here there is a rock upon which Karana can sleep and store food without fear of the wild dogs. Still, the dogs come every night and sit underneath the rock. Karana decides she needs weapons to protect herself from the dogs, but the laws of Ghalas-at forbid women from making weapons. Karana returns to her village to sift through the ashes in the hope of finding spearheads, but, finding nothing, begins to look elsewhere. Remembering the black chest brought by the Aleuts, she goes to the beach. After some searching, she discovers the chest buried in the sand. Opening it, she finds beautiful bracelets and earrings made from beads. Karana puts on the jewelry and admires herself, but soon remembers all of the suffering that was caused by these trinkets. She throws them into the sea. There are no spearheads in the chest. Karana does not think about weapons again for some time, but then the dogs begin to harass her again. After some deliberation, she decides that she must make weapons herself, since she cannot find any. She makes a small spear and a bow and arrows from wood she gathers about the island.Feeling secure with her new weapons, Karana settles into a daily routine. She waits for the ship, but summer passes, then winter, and it does not come.During the long days of summer, Karana sits on the cliff, scanning the horizon for ships. When the first storm of winter comes, she knows that no ship will come until spring. The winter storms blow onto the rock where Karana sleeps, and she is forced to move her bed to the foot of the rock. The dogs come the first night she sleeps there. She makes a fire to keep them back and kills three of them with her bow.During the storm, Karana decides to travel across the sea to look for her people. When the storm ends, she goes to the place by the cliff where her people left their canoes (the ones they would have used to escape the Aleuts if they came back). The food in the canoes is still good, and Karana brings some water from the spring. Taking the smallest of the canoes, she leaves the island of the blue dolphins. By dusk, her home has disappeared from sight. The sea is rough and Karana is afraid, but she uses the stars to find her way. During the night, she realizes her canoe is leaking, and plug the crack with fiber form her skirt. When dawn breaks, Karana sees she has drifted south of her planned course. She adjusts her heading, now using the sun to direct her. Soon she finds another leak, which she plugs in the same way as the last. Seeing that the planks of the canoe are weak, Karana knows that she must turn back. She is reluctant to do so, however, because the island to which she must return is so lonely and desolate. As water again starts to leak into the canoe, she turns and heads back. On her way, a swarm of dolphins begins to follow her boat. "Dolphins are a good omen," and though Karana is tired and despairing, the sight of the dolphins gives her the strength to continue. Another night passes, and Karana's canoe begins to leak, but as dawn breaks, she sees her island on the horizon. She reaches the island around noon and, forgetting the danger of the wild dogs, crawls onto the beach and falls asleep. Karana awakes and leaves the beach the next morning, and returns to her home. Looking out over the island, she is filled with happiness. Surprised at this feeling, since only a few days earlier she had decided she could not bear to live on Ghalas-at any more, Karana knows that she will stay on the island until a ship takes her away. Because she must wait until that day, Karana decides that she must build a house and a place to store food. She scouts two possible sites for her settlement. One is near the wild dogs' cave; the other is on the headland. A third site looks good as well, but it is near the old village, and Karana does not want to be reminded of the people who once lived there. Karana finally decides on the headland, where the sea elephants are very noisy. She begins to plan her new home, deciding that the first thing she needs is a fence to protect her food supply. It rains for the next two days, and on the third morning Karana heads toward the beach to gather materials for her new home. To construct her fence, Karana uses the ribs of two whales that washed ashore years before. She plants them in the ground and ties them together with kelp. The house takes longer to build, partially because there are so few trees on the island that grow straight or tall enough to make poles. A legend among the people of Ghalas-at says that the island was covered with tall trees at the beginning of the world, when the gods Tumaiyowt and Mukat ruled. "Tumaiyowit wished people to die. Mukat did not. Tumaiyowit angrily went down, down to anther world, taking his belongings with him, so people die because he did." After searching for a long time, Karana finds enough poles to build her house. Her house has four poles one each side, one wall of rock, and a roof of eight poles bound together with sinew and covered with female kelp. Karana feels secure in her new house. Although animals come at night, they cannot get through the fence. Once her house is finished, Karana fashions some utensils from rocks. She makes a basket from reeds and seals it with pitch so that it can hold water. She also widens some cracks in her rock wall to make shelves that will keep her food safe from gray mice. Since her basic needs are met, Karana turns her attention to the wild dogs. She knows she has to kill them or else they will kill her, just as they killed Ramo. She makes a heavier bow and better arrows, but runs into trouble making a spear. To finish her spear, Karana needs the tusk of a sea elephant, but does not know if she will be able to kill one; the task once took many men of her village to complete. Sea elephant tusks make the best spearheads on the island, however, and she is determined to get one. Karana spends the night thinking about the law of her people that says women should not make weapons, but in the morning she heads for the beach. She spends a few minutes looking at the sea elephants, then chooses her target: the smallest of the six males on the beach, a relatively young bull who Karana can tell does not have a family. She sneaks up behind the bull and readies her bow, but the sea elephant gets up and heads toward on of the cows belonging to another bull. Karana takes her shot, and although the arrow flies straight, it misses because the bull has changed direction. The young bull Karana targeted is tackled from the side by the bull hose cow he had threatened, and a fierce battle ensues. As the two sea elephants fight on the shore, Karana, attempting to move out of their way, injures her leg. The two bulls fight all day and into the night. As the sun sets, Karana's leg begins to hurt even more and she goes home. Karana is unable to leave her house for five days because of her leg, but is finally forced to leave when she runs out of water. She has to crawl to the spring, dragging her weapons behind her. On the way, the wild dogs begin to follow her. She is able to scare them away with her bow, and eventually reaches the spring, but by the time she gets there the dogs have surrounded her. Instead of trying to make it home, Karana crawls into a cave near the spring, where she stays for six days, only leaving to get more water, until her leg is healed and she can walk. Karana decides to make the cave into a second home where she can stay if she is again injured or sick. She knows her ancestors used the cave because it is filled with drawing, but she does not know what for. Karana makes shelves, baskets and a bed in the cave, just as she did in her house on the headland. After she has finished her new house in the cave, Karana returns to the beach, where she finds the corpse of the old sea elephant. From his teeth she makes four new spearheads. She makes two new spears from these and is finally ready to attack the wild dogs. The wild dogs on the island grew bolder after the battle with the Aleuts for two reasons. The first is that village dogs whose masters were killed joined the pack. The second is that a large, gray dog with yellow eyes had become the pack's leader. This dog is bigger than the rest, and a different color (most dogs on the island of the blue dolphins have brown eyes and fur). Karana believes that the gray dog is an Aleut dog left on the island after the battle. In her attack against the dogs, Karana first builds a fire outside the dogs' cave, then pushes it inside to fill the cave with smoke. The dogs run out a few at a time, but Karana saves her arrows for the leader of the pack. When he comes, Karana hits him in the chest with an arrow. She turns and kills two other dogs with her remaining arrows. When she turns back, the gray dog is gone. Karana searches for him, but only finds half of an arrow, gnawed through. It rains for the next two days. On the third day Karana finds the gray dog, barely alive. She prepares to shoot him but find she cannot; instead she carries him back to her house, where she removes the arrow in cleans his wound. She leaves him with some water and goes to gather food. When she returns, the dog is still alive and has drunk the water. Karana cleans his wound again and gives him some food. That night she sleeps on the rock, fearing that the dog might attack her.The following day Karana goes fishing, and when she returns to her house she gives the dog some fish. That night she sleeps on the rock again. The next four days she repeats this process, but on the fourth day the dog is not waiting at her fence as usual. To her surprise, Karana is somewhat disappointed, and begins to call out for the dog. When she enters her house, however, she finds the dog inside. That night she sleeps inside the house and decides to name the dog Rontu, which means Fox Eyes. The following day Karana goes fishing, and when she returns to her house she gives the dog some fish. That night she sleeps on the rock again. The next four days she repeats this process, but on the fourth day the dog is not waiting at her fence as usual. To her surprise, Karana is somewhat disappointed, and begins to call out for the dog. When she enters her house, however, she finds the dog inside. That night she sleeps inside the house and decides to name the dog Rontu, which means Fox Eyes. When the canoe is finally finished, Karana and Rontu take it for a test run around the island. They explore a cave near the headland (where Karna's house is). The cave is very dark, and while navigating it, Karana wonders whether this is the type of place where the angry Tumaiyowit (a god of her peoples' legend) had gone. Soon she discovers a rock ledge that would be a perfect place to store her canoe so that she could have it ready if she needed to escape the Aleuts. Karana is very excited about this discovery but Rontu is busy watching a devilfish (an octopus) in the water below. Karana raises her spear to kill the devilfish (which are very tasty), but it shoots out a cloud of ink and escapes. Karana decides to spend some of her time during the winter making a special type of spear she has seen people of her tribe use to catch devilfish. Karana happily stores her canoe for the winter thinking of the spring when she can bring it back to the cave. During the winter, Karana makes herself another dress and the spear she needs to catch the devilfish. When spring comes, she goes to Coral Cove to hunt. Rontu does not go with her. During the winter the wild dogs had come to her house several times, but the previous night, after they left, Rontu had stood by the fence and whined to be let out. Karana had let him go and he did not return. Now, fishing in the cove, Karana finds it difficult to keep her mind off of Rontu. When she has finished fishing for the day, Karana heads home with her catch. On her way home, she hears dogs fighting in the woods. She follows the sound to a meadow by a low sea cliff. There, she finds Rontu fighting with two other dogs, surrounded by the rest of the pack. Rontu is hurt, and twice Karana fits an arrow to her bow, but she never shoots. Rontu beats both of the other dogs, then runs off into the woods. When Karana returns home, Rontu is there waiting for her. He never leaves again, and the wild dogs never return to the headland. Birds and flowers are everywhere in spring on the island of the blue dolphins; a pair of birds nest in a tree near Karana's house. She takes two fledglings from their nest and makes a cage for them. When they grow too large for the cage, she clips their wings and lets them loose in the house. When their wings grow back, she clips them again and lets the birds loose in the yard. When they grow in a third time, Karana does not clip them, but the birds never fly away - at least not farther than the ravine. Karana names the larger of the two birds Tainor, after a young man she liked that was killed by the Aleuts; she names the smaller one Lurai, which is the name she would have liked instead of Karana. During the summer, Karana also makes herself a new skirt and a pair of sandals. She braids her hair (which was singed short as a sign of mourning after the Aleuts attacked but which has now grown long), and wears her new clothes when she walks on the beach. She makes wreaths for herself and for Rontu (though Rontu does not approve of being made to wear a wreath). When the white men do not return in the spring, Karana is not very dissapoined. Summer comes and Karana his till not been able to spear the giant devilfish. Eventually, she gives up and begins to hunt abalones for the winter. While she is gathering abalones in the coral reef, Karana spots the giant devilfish. Devilfish rarely go into the reef, so Karana is somewhat surprised. She takes aim with her spear, but her throw goes wide. The devilfish prays a cloud of ink, and only then does Karana realize that she actually hit the fish. Karana had attached a sinew line to the spear, and she has the other end tied around her waist. The devilfish is extraordinarily strong, and Karana fear the line will break. She battles the devilfish until she is finally able to wrestle it onto the shore. Once Karana has brought the devilfish onto the land, Rontu attacks it. The devilfish wraps its arms around Rontu, and the two battle on the shore. Karana attacks the devilfish with her spear, and together she and Rontu are able to subdue it. Battered, bruised, and bloodied, Rontu and Karana tread wearily home. Although Karana sees two more giant devilfish that summer, she does not try to spear them.