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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Eternal Maiden, by T. Everett Harré
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Eternal Maiden
+
+
+Author: T. Everett Harré
+
+
+
+Release Date: June 20, 2005  [eBook #16093]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ETERNAL MAIDEN***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Al Haines
+
+
+
+THE ETERNAL MAIDEN
+
+A Novel
+
+by
+
+T. EVERETT HARRÉ
+
+Published by
+Mitchell Kennerley
+New York
+
+Press of J. J. Little & Ives Company
+East Twenty-fourth Street
+New York
+
+1913
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+TO
+
+EDGAR WILSON RIDDELL
+
+JANUARY 31, 1892--JULY 2, 1912
+
+
+IN MEMORY OF
+
+A LIFE'S SUPREME FRIENDSHIP
+
+
+
+
+THE ETERNAL MAIDEN
+
+PRELUDE
+
+_Long ages ago, darkness brooded over the frozen world and held in its
+thrall the unreleased waters of the glacial seas.  There was no animal
+life upon the land, and in the depth of the waters no living thing
+stirred.  Kokoyah, the water god, breathed not; Tornahhuchsuah, the
+earth spirit, who rules above the spirits of the wind and air, was
+veiled in slumber.  Men had risen like willows from the frozen earth;
+but, although they lived, they were as the dead.  They spake not,
+neither did they hunt, nor eat, nor did they die.  Then the Great
+Spirit, whose name is not known, placed upon earth a man, in his arms
+the strength to kill, in his heart the primal urge of love.  And in
+that flowerless arctic Eden, out of its bounteous compassion, the Great
+Spirit placed also a maiden, her face beautiful with the young
+virginity of the world, in her bosom implanted a yearning, not unmixed
+with fear, for love.  Gazing upon her, the youth's heart stirred, with
+desire, the maiden's with virginal terror.  The maiden fled, the youth
+followed.  Over the desolate icy mountains the fleet feet of the youth
+sped with the swiftness of the wind gods, over the silent white seas
+the maiden with the elusiveness of the air spirits.  In the heart of
+the youth throbbed the passion of love, indomitable, eternal, which the
+blasting breath of time should never kill.  In the maiden's bosom
+quaked a reasonless shame, an unconquerable terror.  Surrounded by her
+whirling cloud of hair, the maiden sprang, untiring, across the wild
+white world.  His strength failing, the youth pantingly followed.
+Thousands of years passed; the breathless pursuit continued; the
+maiden's nebulous hair became shot with streaks of golden fire, from
+her eyes beams of light streamed across the expanses over which she
+exultantly, fearfully bounded; the tremulous faltering youth's face
+paled until it shone silvery in the darkness, and the beads of
+perspiration on his forehead glowed with a strange lustre.  Reaching,
+in their mad race, the very edge of the earth, the maiden leaped,
+fiery, into space, and her hair becoming suddenly molten, she became
+the sun--the eternal maiden Sukh-eh-nukh, the beautiful, the
+all-desired.  Utterly exhausted, his wan arms yearningly outstretched,
+the youth swooned after her into the heavens, and was transformed into
+the moon--the ever-desiring, ever-sorrowing moon.  In the smile of
+Sukh-eh-nukh the seas melted.  Walrus and narwhals, seals and whales
+came into being on the bosom of Kokoyah; on the earth the snows
+disappeared, and the brow of Tornahhuchsuah was crowned with green
+grasses and starry flowers.  Men hunted game, women laughed for joy;
+they beat drums, they danced, they sang.  By the eternal, unrequited
+passion of the lovers in the skies, happiness and plenty came upon the
+earth.  But, with Light, came also Death.  Jealous of men's happiness,
+Perdlugssuaq, the Great Evil, brought sickness; he struck men on the
+hunt, on the seas, in the mountains.  He was ever feared.  He made the
+Great Dark terrible.  But when the night became bright with the
+love-lorn glamour of the moon, Perdlugssuaq was for the time forgotten;
+in their hearts men felt a vague, tender, and ineffable stirring--the
+lure of a passion stronger and stranger even than death.  They gazed
+upon the moon with instinctive, undefined pity.  So, as the years
+passed, and ages melted and remade the snows, the long day was golden
+with the Beauty that is ever desired, the Ideal never attained; the
+night was softly silver with the melancholy and eternal hope of the
+deathless love that eternally desires, eternally pursues, and is
+eternally denied._
+
+Thus runs the Eskimo legend.
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+"_Her cheeks were flushed delicately with the soft pink of the lichen
+flowers that bloom in the rare days of early summer.  Her eyes played
+with a light as elusive, as quick as the golden radiance on the seas._"
+
+
+Great excitement prevailed among the members of the tribe.  Along a
+mottled green-and-brown stretch of shore, which rolled undulatingly
+toward the icy fringe of the polar sea, more than twoscore hunters were
+engaged in unusual activity.  Some were lacing tight over the framework
+the taut skin of their kayaks.  Others sharpened harpoon points with
+bits of flint.  Tateraq busily cut long lashings from tanned walrus
+hides.  Maisanguaq deftly took these and pieced them together into long
+lines, which were rolled in coils lasso-fashion.  Arnaluk and a half
+dozen others sat on their haunches, between their knees great balls
+made of the entire hides of seals.  With cheeks extended they blew into
+these with gusto.  Filled with air, the hides became floats, which were
+attached to the leather lasso lines.  The lines in turn were fastened
+by Attalaq and Papik to harpoons, which were to be driven into the
+walrus, the natives' chief prey of the arctic sea.
+
+A babel of conversation swayed to and fro among this northernmost
+fringe of the human race.  Now and then it was drowned in the raucous,
+deafening shriek of auks which swarmed from nearby cliffs and soared in
+clouds over the shore.
+
+"_Aveq soah_!  Walrus!  Walrus!" shouted Papik, tossing up his arms and
+dancing, his brown face twisting with grotesque grimaces of joy.
+
+"_Aveq soah!  Aveq soah_!"  He leaped in frenzy.  He seized his harpoon
+in mimicry of striking, and darted it up and down in the air.  "Walrus!
+Walrus!" he cried, and his feverish contagion spread through the crowd.
+
+"_Aveq tedicksoah_!  A great many walrus," echoed Arnaluk.  "_Aveq
+tedicksoah_!  Walrus too many to count!"
+
+They stopped their work and gathered in a group, Papik before them, his
+arms pointing toward the sea.  His eyes glistened.
+
+To the south, _Im-nag-i-na_, the entrance to the polar sea, was hidden
+by grayish mists which, as they shifted across the sun, palpitated with
+running streaks of gold.  From the veiled distance the sound of a
+glacier exploding pealed over the waters like the muffled roar of
+artillery.  The sun, magnified into a great swimming disc by the rising
+vapors, poured a rich and colorful light over the sea--it was a light
+without warmth.  In the turquoise sky overhead, the moving clouds
+changed in hue from crimson to silver, and straggling flecks, like
+diaphanous ribbons, became stained with mottled dyes.  Against the
+horizon, the arctic armada of eternally moving icebergs drifted slowly
+southward and, like the spectral ships of the long dead Norsemen who
+had braved these regions, flaunted the semblance of silver-gleaming
+sails.  The sea rose in great green emerald swells, the wave crests
+broke in seething curls of silver foam, and in the troughs of
+descending waters glittered cascades of celestial jewels.  It was late
+summer--the hour, midnight.
+
+The keen eyes of the natives searched the seas.
+
+To the south of where the watchers were gathered, the glacial heels of
+the inland mountains step precipitously into the sea and rise to a
+height of several thousand feet.  At the base of these iron rocks,
+corroded with the rust of interminable ages, the fragments of great
+floes, like catapults, are tossed by the inrushing sea.  Above, in
+summertime, rises and falls constantly a black mist resembling shifting
+cloud smoke.  Millions of auks swarm from their moss-ensconced grottos;
+an oppressive clamor beats the air.  Along the ocean, where crevices of
+the descending iron-chiselled cliffs are fugitively green with ribbons
+of pale grass, downy-winged ducks purr, mating guillemots coo
+incessantly, and tremulous oogzooks chirrup joyously to their young.
+
+As the natives listened, a deep nasal bellowing from the far ocean
+trembled in the air.
+
+Not a man stirred.  The sound vibrated into silence.  The auks
+screamed.  Hawks shrilled.  From the far interior valleys came the
+echoed wolf-howling of Eskimo dogs.  There the mountain tops,
+perpetually covered with ice and snow, gleamed through the clouds with
+running colors of amaranth, green and mottled gold.  The air swam with
+frigid fire.  As the tribe stood in silence along the shore, a roar as
+of gatling guns pealed from the mist-hidden heights.  After a taut
+moment of silence, a frightened scream rose from every living thing on
+land and sea.  Yet the group of men only bent their heads.  Then, like
+an undertone in the chorus of animate life, their quick ears detected
+the long-drawn, hoarse call of walrus bulls.  The howls of the dogs
+from the distant mountain passes came nearer.  More distant receded the
+stertorous nasal bellow on the sea.
+
+The natives feverishly leaped to their tasks.  There was a note of
+anxiety in their voices.  Onto the forepart of the kayaks they placed
+their weapons, leather lines, floats and drags.  More than twoscore
+boats were drawn over the land-adhering ice to the edge of the sea.  A
+fierce chatter brought all the women to the doors of their seal-skin
+tents.  They looked seaward and shook their heads with dismay.
+
+"Many walrus--far away," the men shouted.
+
+"No, no," the timid women returned.  "Walrus too far
+away--_Perdlugssuaq will strike you there_!"
+
+Against the distant horizon mighty bergs loomed.  In swift eddies of
+water great floes swirled.  The walrus were too far away to be seen.
+Yet the opportunity of securing walrus was too rare to be missed; for
+unless food and fuel were soon secured, starvation during the coming
+winter confronted the tribe.  The previous winter had been one of
+unprecedented severity and had wiped out bears, and herds of caribou
+and musk oxen.  The summer season, which was now drawing to a close,
+had been destitute of every kind of game.  Musk oxen had been seldom
+found and then only in the far inland valleys.  Some blight of nature
+seemed to have exterminated even the animals of the sea.  The natives
+had lived mainly on the teeming bird life.  From the scrawny bodies of
+the arctic birds, however, neither food that could be preserved nor
+fuel to be burned in the lamps could be secured.  On musk oxen the
+tribes depend chiefly for hides and meat, and on walrus for both food
+and fuel.  The ammunition, brought by Danish traders the summer before,
+was exhausted, so in the hunt they had for many sleeps to rely solely
+upon their skill with their own primitive weapons.  For months the
+doughty hunters had gathered but few supplies.  The prospect of the
+coming winter was ominous indeed.  Wandering up and down the coast in
+their migrating excursions the tribes had scoured land and sea with but
+meagre results.  At the village from which they now heard the inspiring
+walrus calls, a dozen visiting tribesmen--most of them in search for
+wives as well as game--had gathered.  Joy filled them in the prospect
+of securing supplies--and possible success in love--at last.
+
+As they launched their kayaks, in impatient haste lest the walrus drift
+too far seaward, some one called:
+
+"Ootah!  Ootah!"
+
+They gazed anxiously about.  Ootah, the bravest and most distinguished
+of the hunters, was missing.  All the young men would gladly have
+started without Ootah, but the elders, who knew his skill and the might
+of his arm, were not willing.
+
+To the younger men there was an added zest in the hunt; each felt in
+the other a rival, and Ootah the one most to be feared.  A feverish
+anxiety, a burning desire to distinguish himself flushed the heart of
+each brave hunter.  For whoever brought back the most game, so they
+believed, stood the best chance of winning the hand of Annadoah.  Of
+all the unmarried maidens of the tribes, none cooked so well, none
+could sew so well as Annadoah, none was so skilled in the art of making
+_ahttees_ and _kamiks_ as Annadoah.  And, moreover, Annadoah was very
+fair.
+
+"Ootah! _aveq soah_!  Hasten thou!  The walrus are drifting to sea."
+
+Attalaq rushed up to the village and paused at the tent of Annadoah.
+
+"Ootah!" he called.
+
+A voice from within replied.
+
+"We start--the wind drifts--the walrus are carried to sea."
+
+"I come!" replied Ootah.
+
+The flap of the tent opened.  The sunlight poured upon the face of the
+young hunter.  He smiled radiantly, with the self-assertion of youth,
+the joy of life.
+
+Ootah was graced with unwonted beauty.  He was slight and agile of
+limb; his body was supple and lithe; his face was immobile, beardless,
+and with curving lips vividly red, a nose, small, with nostrils
+dilating sensitively, and eyebrows heavily lashed, it possessed
+something of the softness of a woman.  His glistening black hair, bound
+about his forehead by a narrow fillet of skins, fell riotously over his
+shoulders.  His eyes were large and dark and swam with an ardent light.
+
+He turned.
+
+"Thou wilt not place thy face to mine, Annadoah?  Yet I love thee,
+Annadoah.  My heart melts as streams in springtime, Annadoah.  My arms
+grow strong as the wind, and my hand swift as an arrow for love of
+thee, Annadoah.  The joy the sight of thee gives me is greater than
+that of food after starving in the long winter!  Yea, thou wilt be
+mine?  Surely for my heart bursts for love of thee, Annadoah."
+
+He leaned back, stretching his arms, but Annadoah shyly drew further
+inside her shelter.
+
+With a sigh he flung his leather line over his shoulder, seized his
+harpoons, and stepped from the tent.  His step was resilient and
+buoyant, his slim body moved with the grace of an arctic deer.  He
+looked back as he reached the icy shore.  Annadoah stood at the door of
+her tent.  Her parting laughter rang after him with the sweetness of
+buntings singing in spring.
+
+Ootah's heart leaped within him.  Annadoah possessed a beauty rare
+among her people.  From her father, one of the brave white men who had
+died with the Greely party years before at Cape Sabine, Annadoah had
+inherited a delicacy and beauty more common indeed with the unknown
+peoples of the south.  Her face was fresh and smooth, and of a pale
+golden hue.  Her cheeks were flushed delicately with the soft pink of
+the lichen flowers that bloom in the rare days of early summer.  Her
+eyes played with a light as elusive, as quick as the golden radiance on
+the seas.  Her dark silken hair straggled luxuriantly from under the
+loose hood of immaculate white fox fur which had fallen back from her
+head.  The soft skins of blue foxes and of young birds clothed her.
+From her sleeves her hands peeped; they were small, dainty, childlike.
+Almost childlike, too, was her face, so palely golden, so fresh, so
+lovely, so petite.  There were mingled in her the coyness of a child
+and the irresistible coquetry of a woman.
+
+She waved her hands joyously to the hunters leaving the shore.  They
+called back to her.  Some of the women frowned.  One shook her fist at
+Annadoah.
+
+Papik, lingering behind, approached Annadoah timidly.
+
+"Thou art beautiful, Annadoah; thou canst sew with great skill.  With
+the needles the white men brought thee, thou hast made garments such as
+no other maiden.  Papik would wed thee, Annadoah."
+
+"Thou art a good lad, Papik," Annadoah replied, laughing gaily.  "But
+thy fingers are very long--and long, indeed, thy nose!"
+
+Papik flushed, for to him this was a tragedy.
+
+"But with my fingers I speed the arrow with skill," he replied.
+
+"True, but the fate of him who shoots with a skill such as thine is
+unfortunate indeed; for soon the day will come when thou wilt not speed
+the arrow, when thy hands will be robbed of their cunning.  When
+_ookiah_ (winter) comes with his lashes of frost he will smite thy
+fingers--they will fall off.  Then how wilt thou get food for thy wife?
+_Ookiah_ will twist thy nose, and it will freeze.  Poor Papik!"
+
+Annadoah lay her hand gently on his arm, and a brief sorrow clouded her
+smiles.
+
+Papik bowed his head.  He understood the blight nature had set upon him
+and it made his heart cold.  Truly his fingers were long and his nose
+was long--and either was a misfortune to a tribesman.  He knew, as all
+the natives knew, that sooner or later during a long winter his fingers
+would inevitably freeze, then he would lose his skill with weapons;
+consequently he would not be able to provide for a wife.  His nose,
+too, in all probability would freeze; then he would be disfigured and
+the trials of life would be more complicated.
+
+From the inherited experience of ages the natives know that a hunter
+with short hands and feet is most likely to live long; a man's length
+of life can be pretty accurately gauged by the stubbiness of his nose.
+The degree of radiation of the human body is such that it can prevent
+freezing in this northern region only when the extremities are short;
+thus a man with long feet is almost for a certainty doomed to lose his
+toes, and the most fortunate is he whose feet and hands are short,
+whose nose is stubby and whose ears are small.  The exigencies of life
+place an economic value on the structure of a hunter's body, and the
+little Eskimo women--endowed with a crude social conscience which
+demands that a father shall live and remain efficient so as to care for
+his own children--are loath to marry one afflicted as was Papik.
+
+"But I care for thee, Annadoah," Papik protested.
+
+"And well do I know thou art a brave lad, but seek thou another maiden;
+thou dost not touch my heart, Papik, and thy fingers are very, very
+long."
+
+With native spontaneity, Papik laughed and turned shoreward.  As he
+passed the assembled maidens he paused momentarily and greeted them.
+He made a brief proposal of marriage to Ahningnetty, a fat maiden, and
+was met with laughter.
+
+"Go on, Long Fingers," one called.  "How wilt thou strike the bear when
+thy fingers are gone?  How wilt thou seek the musk ox when _ookiah_
+hath bitten off thy feet?"
+
+The maiden who spoke was extremely thin.
+
+"Ha, ha!" Papik returned.  "How wilt thou warm thy husband when the
+winter comes?  How wilt thou warm the little baby when thou art like
+the bear after a famished winter, thou maid of skin and bones!"
+
+"Long-nose!  Long-nose! may thy nose freeze!" she called.
+
+The other maidens laughed and gibed at her.  In anger she fled into her
+_tupik_, or tent.  Being very thin she, too, like Papik, suffered from
+the bar sinister of nature.  For, in selecting a wife, a native comes
+down to the practical consideration of choosing a maid who will likely
+grow fat, so that, during the long cold winters, her body will be a
+sort of human radiator to keep the husband and children warm.  So love,
+you see, in this region, is largely influenced by an instinctive
+knowledge of natural economies.
+
+As he launched his kayak, Ootah turned toward Annadoah.
+
+"Thou art the sun, Annadoah!" he called.
+
+"And thou the moon, Ootah," she replied.  "I shall await thee, Ootah!
+Bring thou back fat and blubber, Ootah, to warm thy fires, Ootah."  And
+she laughed gaily.  Then she turned her back to Ootah, bent her head
+coyly and did not turn around again.  To Ootah this was a good
+augury--for when a maiden turns her back upon a suitor she thinks
+favorably of him.  This is the custom.
+
+Ootah felt a new strength in his veins.  He felt himself master of all
+the prey in the sea.
+
+
+At the entrance of the tent of Sipsu, the _angakoq_, or native
+magician, stood Maisanguaq, one of the rivals for the hand of Annadoah.
+His face twisted with jealous rage as he heard Annadoah calling to the
+speeding Ootah.  His narrow eyes glittered vindictively.  Turning on
+his heel he entered Sipsu's dwelling place.
+
+Sipsu sat on the floor near his oil lamp.  When Maisanguaq entered he
+did not stir.  He was as still, as grotesque, as evil-looking as the
+tortured idols of the Chinese; like theirs his eyes were beadlike,
+expressionless, dull; such are the eyes of dead seal.  His face was
+brown and cracked like old leather, and was covered with a crust of
+dirt; his gray-streaked hair was matted and straggled over his face; it
+teemed with lice.  He held his knotty hands motionless over the flame
+of his lamp.  His nails were long and curled like sharp talons.  As
+Maisanguaq saw him he could not repress a shudder.
+
+Sipsu was feared, and as correspondingly hated, by the tribe.  They
+brought to him, it is true, offerings of musk ox meat and walrus
+blubber when members fell ill.  But that was the urge of necessity.  Of
+late years Sipsu's conjurations for recovery had resulted in few cures;
+his heart was not in them; but with greater vehemence did he enter upon
+seances of malediction.  With almost unerring exactness he prophesied
+many deaths.  For this the tribe did not love him.  Nor did Sipsu love
+the tribe; especially did he hate the youthful, and those who courted
+and were newly wed.  When Maisanguaq touched his shoulder, he turned
+with a growl.
+
+"Canst thou invoke the curse of death upon one who goes hunting upon
+the seas?"
+
+Through the rheum of years Sipsu's eyes gleamed.
+
+The aged, gnarled thing found voice.  It was hollow and thin.
+
+"Ha, thou art Maisanguaq," his toothless jaws chattered.  "Thou bearest
+no one good will.  Seldom dost thou smile.  For this I like thee."
+
+He laughed harshly.  Maisanguaq impatiently repeated his question:
+
+"Can Sipsu invoke the great curse?  Ha, what dost thou mean?  Art thou
+a fool?  Have not many died upon the word of Sipsu, Sipsu whose spirits
+never desert him!  Harken!  Did not Sipsu go unto the mountains in his
+youth?  Did he not hear the hill spirits speaking?  Did he not carry
+food to them, and wood and arrow points for weapons?  And in _ookiah_
+(winter) did they not strike?  Did they not kill one Otaq, who hated
+Sipsu?  Did Sipsu not go unto the lower land of the dead--did he not
+speak to those who freeze in the dark?  Yea, did Sipsu not learn how
+the world is kept up, and the souls of nature are bound together?  And
+hath he not the power to separate them, yea, as a man from his shadow?"
+
+"Thou evil-tongued wretch, well doth Maisanguaq believe thee!  Here--I
+promise thee meat.  I follow Ootah upon the chase.  There are walrus on
+the sea.  Invoke the curse of destruction upon Ootah--and I will give
+thee meat for the long winter."
+
+"Ootah--Ootah--yah--hah!  Ootah!"  Sipsu snapped the name viciously.
+"With joy shall I bring the great evil unto Ootah.  For hath he not
+despised my art, hath he not scoffed at my spirits!  But thou--what
+reason hast thou to desire his death?"
+
+"Ootah findeth favor with Annadoah," said Maisanguaq briefly.  "I would
+she never make his _kamiks_ (boots)."
+
+"Yea, and she shall not.  She shall not!" the old man shrieked in a
+sudden access of rage.  "So saith Sipsu, whose spirits never fail."
+
+Lying on the floor Sipsu closed his eyes and, moving his head up and
+down, called repeatedly:
+
+"_Quilaka Nauk_!  _Quilaka Nauk_!  Where are my spirits?  Where are my
+spirits?"
+
+Presently he rose, and swaying his body crooned:
+
+"_Tassa quilivagit_!  _Tassa quilivagit_!  My spirits are here--they
+are here!  _Tassa quilivagit_!"
+
+Grasping a drum made of animal tissue strung over a rib-bone he began
+to dance.  He beat a slow, uneasy measure on the drum.  His face
+grinned hideously.  His voice at times rose to a harsh shriek, then
+suddenly it trailed away until it seemed like the voice of one speaking
+very far off.  In a curious sort of intermittent crooning and shrieking
+ventriloquism he called down curses upon Ootah.  His dance increased;
+he beat the drum frenziedly.  His legs twisted under him, he described
+short running circles and jumped up and down in accesses of hysteria.
+His scraggy arms, with their tattered clothes, writhed in the air as he
+beat the drum above him.  His head began to nod from side to side; his
+eyes glowed like coals; his tongue hung from his mouth; foam gathered
+at his lips.
+
+"Ootah!  Ootah!  May his _kaneg_ (head) swell with the great fire!  May
+he see horrors that do not exist--what the wicked dead dream in their
+frigid hell!  May the wrath of the spirits descend upon him!  May the
+wrath of the spirits descend upon him!"
+
+Sipsu uttered short howls.  Maisanguaq joined in the incantation, and
+re-echoed the blighting curses.
+
+"May he suffer from _kangerdlugpoq_ (terrible body pains).  May they
+end not!  May he lie awake forever!  May he never sleep!  May his teeth
+chatter during the great dark!"
+
+Sipsu groaned.  He worked himself into an ecstasy of torture.  His form
+became a black whirling figure in the dim tent.
+
+"May Ootah's eyes close, may the lids swell; may they burn with fire."
+
+"May he never see the light of day--may he never aim the arrow--may his
+harpoons strike forever in the darkness!" Maisanguaq replied
+rancorously.  "May the wrath of the spirits descend upon him!"
+
+"May Ootah's tongue fasten to his mouth--may it be as the tongues of
+dead _ahmingmah_ (musk oxen)," chanted Sipsu.  "May he never speak--may
+Annadoah never hear his voice," chorused Maisanguaq.
+
+"May Ootah lose his _pungo_ (dogs); may they all die!"
+
+Maisanguaq, caught by the evil contagion, began to sway his body in
+rhythm to the weird dance.
+
+"May Ootah become a cripple!  May he break his bones!  May he lie
+helpless for years!  May his shadow leave him!  May he suffer with the
+greatest of all pains!"
+
+As he uttered this terrible curse, desiring that Ootah's shadow,
+wherein exists the soul, might depart from his still-living body, and
+thus cause the most excruciating bodily anguish, Sipsu sank exhausted
+to the ground.  He writhed in a paroxysm.
+
+"May Ootah die slowly; may his legs die, may his hands die--yea, may
+the spirits of his body be severed from one another as ice fields in
+the breaking; may the spirit of his hands, the spirit of his feet, the
+spirit of his lungs, the spirit of his head, the spirit of his heart
+wander apart--may they be torn asunder as the clouds in a storm!  May
+they wander apart forever seeking and may they never find themselves!
+May Ootah suffer as never suffered the unhappy dead!"
+
+And Maisanguaq's deep voice growled hatefully:
+
+"May Ootah's body lie unburied!  May he rot upon the earth!  May the
+ravens peck out his eyes!  May a murderer drink his blood!  May the
+wolves eat his heart!  May the spirit of the fog grow fat upon his
+entrails!  And may the spirits of his body scatter--as the clouds in
+the wild _anore_ (winds) scatter!  May his soul forever seek to find
+its kindred spirits unavailingly and suffer in _Sila_, (throughout the
+universe) forever!"
+
+From under a pile of skins Sipsu, his chant subsiding, brought forth a
+bundle.  Opening it, he revealed a collection of old bones; there were
+the bones of musk oxen, seals, walrus and smaller animals.
+
+"Yah-hah-hah!  I shall create a _tupilak_!" he crooned vindictively.
+"I shall create a _tupilak_!  And from the depths of the waters the
+_tupilak_ shall see Ootah.  Yah-hah-hah!  I shall create a _tupilak_,
+and from the hands of Sipsu it shall carry destruction to Ootah on the
+sea.  Yah-hah-hah!"  He laughed crazily.  Continuing his chant he
+constructed of the bones a crude likeness to an animal skeleton.  Over
+this he sprinkled a handful of dried turf.  Then, from beneath the
+cover of his bed he brought a stone pot and from it poured a sluggish
+red liquid over the strange object of his creation.  This was a mixture
+of clotted animal blood and water kept for such purposes of
+conjuration.  This done, he threw over the bones an aged sealskin.
+Then he rose to his feet, and in a low voice uttered the secret
+formulas whereby, in the depths of the sea, the result of his labor
+should take the form of an artificial walrus.
+
+Maisanguaq stood by, silent, evil exultation shining in his eyes.
+
+While the Sipsu was moaning his spell over the pile of bones,
+Maisanguaq turned and left the tent.  Out on the sea he saw the kayaks
+of his departing companions.
+
+"Good luck, Maisanguaq, have courage in the chase!  Remember Annadoah
+awaits you all!" Annadoah called blithely and coquettishly after him.
+
+Maisanguaq's lips tightened, his heart leaped, but well he knew that he
+meant nothing to the maiden, well he knew what little chance he had,
+and envy filled him, and bitter doubt, for he knew Ootah's prowess, his
+strength of limb, and braveness of heart.  However, he put out with
+quick powerful strokes, and with a sense of anticipated triumph, for he
+was confident that the magician by his necromancy had created in the
+depths of the sea a _tupilak_, or artificial walrus, which should
+attack Ootah.  He knew it might upset Ootah's kayak and cause him to be
+drowned.  The probabilities were, however, that it would permit itself
+to be harpooned, in which case its blighting curse would fall upon
+Ootah, who would lose all power and strength of limb, whose body would
+become bent and crippled and racked with the _kangerdlugpoq_, and who
+would die slowly, inch by inch.  Thus, Ootah would be helpless the rest
+of his days and as he died all the dreadful horrors of the curses would
+come upon him.  Thus would Maisanguaq be revenged.
+
+As the midnight sun dipped below the horizon, the sea became more
+deeply golden.  To the women watching along the shore, the multitude of
+kayaks became mere black specks.  They disappeared now and then behind
+the crests of leaping waves, and reappearing moved with the swiftness
+of birds along the horizon.
+
+At the entrance of her tent Annadoah stood, one hand shading her eyes
+as they pierced the radiant distance.  From the mountain passes behind
+the village echoed the joyous howls of approaching dogs.  Something
+stirred in the heart of Annadoah--something fluttered there like the
+wings of a frightened bird.
+
+
+Ootah's paddle touched the water with the softness of a feather, yet so
+quickly that the double blades emitted constant flashes of light
+intermittently on either side.  His arms moved with consummate ease.
+His kayak made a dark blurred line as it sped forward over the yellow
+waters.  Soon he had outdistanced the party.  Then his speed slackened,
+he glanced behind.
+
+The other kayaks darted after him like erratic bugs.  The land was a
+mere curve on the horizon; all about him the sea rose and fell, and
+from the shimmering mirror of every wave the sunlight shot backward in
+various directions.  A thousand golden searchlights seemed playing over
+the sea.  Now and then through the coppery mists an emerald green berg
+loomed titanically, and as it slowly bore down upon him, Ootah would
+gracefully manipulate one end of his paddle and shift his kayak about
+while the berg lurched toweringly onward.  As he gained distance from
+the land the ocean swelled with increasing volume.  His frail skin
+kayak was lifted high on the oily crests of waves, and as it descended
+with swift rushes, Ootah felt exultant thrills in his heart.  Far away
+he heard the resounding explosion of ice bergs colliding.  A low bellow
+arose from a floe immediately ahead.  Ootah's blood leaped, the spirit
+of the hunter throbbed in his veins, his nostrils sensitively quivered.
+With a slow silent movement of the paddle, he prevented his kayak from
+going too great a distance forward in order to await the others.
+Judging by the sound of the muffled bellowing, he assumed that the
+great animals were sunning themselves on the southern ridge of the
+floe.  His tactics were to paddle about to the north, land on the floe,
+and descend upon the walrus from the protection of the ridges of
+crushed ice which always abound on these rafts of the arctic sea.
+
+While he retarded the kayak and played with his paddle, Ootah became
+conscious of disquieting things in the world about him.
+
+In the heavens he saw low lying clouds moving slowly southward.  Higher
+above, clouds moved more swiftly in another direction.
+
+"The _quilanialeqisut_ (air spirits) are not at rest," murmured Ootah.
+"O spirits of the air, what disturbs your ease?"
+
+The clouds in the higher ether circled as if in an eddy of wind.
+Certainly the spirits were not at peace among themselves.
+
+"Spirits of the air," spake Ootah, "waft your caresses to Annadoah's
+cheeks.  Tell her Ootah waits to kill the walrus, that Ootah loves her
+and would make Annadoah his wife--_neuilacto_ Annadoah; tell Annadoah
+Ootah presses his nose to hers and calls her _Mamacadosa_ (of all
+things that which tastes the most delightful)."
+
+A gust swept the clouds from the zenith.  Still no breath of air
+touched the sea.
+
+To the lee a group of small icebergs passed.  They rocked and eddied,
+and from their glacial sides the light poured in changing colors.
+
+"O spirit of the light, carry thy bright message to the eyes of
+Annadoah, tell her Ootah has loved her for many, many moons."
+
+The bergs crashed into one another, and in the impact sank into the sea.
+
+Ootah bit his lips.  A vague misgiving was cold within his heart.
+
+A flock of gulls passed low over the waters.
+
+He called to them--that they should take his love to Annadoah.  They
+were to tell Annadoah that he would soon return, laden with food and
+fuel for the winter.  Their raucous cries mocked him.  He demanded what
+they meant.  "Ootah--Ootah," they seemed to call, "how foolish art
+thou, Ootah, how foolish art thou to love Annadoah.  For fickle is
+Annadoah--fickle, fickle the heart of the maiden Annadoah!"
+
+Ootah shrieked an enraged defiance.  His eyes sought the horizon.
+_Kokoyah_, the sea god, was breathing deeply, and in the mists which
+rose like fire-shot smoke before the sun, singular forms took shape.
+Ootah saw the magnified shadows of great dogs.  They seemed to be
+dashing along the horizon.  Then, with crushing strides, behind the
+adumbration a great sled, a titan figure gathered substance in the
+clouds.  It moved with terrific speed; it dominated the sky.  Its dress
+was not that of the northern tribes.  Ootah felt a resentful stirring,
+as, looking upward, in the clouds overhead, a white face, hard, fierce,
+scowling, with burning blue eyes, momentarily appeared.
+
+"A white warrior from the south," Ootah murmured.  "And he comes with
+swift tread.  What can it mean?"
+
+In common with many primitive peoples, Ootah possessed the soul of a
+poet--nature was vocal with him, and the disembodied beings of other
+worlds made themselves manifest and spoke in the light and in the
+clouds.  To him everything lived; the clouds were the habitation of
+spirits, the waves were alive, all the animals and fish possessed
+souls; the very winds were endowed with sex functions and loved and
+quarreled among themselves.  The interrelation of man and the forces of
+the universe were inseparably intimate and familiar; integral parts of
+one another, their destinies were bound together.  And to Ootah nature
+found much to gossip about in the affairs of men.
+
+Eagerly Ootah sought the clouds.  Along the horizon they resolved
+themselves into a phantasmagoria of Eskimo maidens and white men
+resembling the Danes who came each summer to gather riches of ivories
+and furs.  And the Eskimo maidens and white men danced together.  As
+these mirage-forms melted, Ootah glanced into the water by his side.
+Looking up from the ultramarine depths he saw something white.  For an
+instant it assumed the likeness of the face of Annadoah.  He saw her
+golden skin, her cheeks flushed with the pink of spring lichen
+blossoms, her lips red as the mountain poppies of late summer.  He
+started back and called aloud:
+
+"Annadoah!  Annadoah!"  For she had smiled, cruelly and disdainfully.
+Hoarse laughter answered him--the laughter of white men from the south.
+A flock of hawks passed over the water.  He was about to shout when he
+heard the sound of kayak paddles behind him.  He recalled himself and
+beckoned silence.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+"_The thought of Annadoah in the embrace of the big blond man, of her
+face pressed to his in the white men's strange kiss of abomination,
+aroused in Ootah a sense of violation. . . .  He heard Annadoah murmur
+tenderly, 'Thou art a great man, thou art strong; thy arms hurt me, thy
+hands make me ache.'_"
+
+
+Slowly, with silent paddles, the hunters moved over the limpid waters
+to the north of the floe.  On the far side they saw a horde of walrus
+bulls dozing in the sunlight.  Behind a ridge of ice they landed,
+drawing their kayaks after them.  With skin lassos, harpoons and
+floats, the party crouched low and crept toward the prey.  Thus they
+would be mistaken for other walrus by the unsuspecting animals.  Ootah
+was ahead.  Softly they all muttered the magic formulas to prevent
+themselves from being seen:
+
+"_Nunavdlo sermitdlo-akorngakut-tamarnuga_!"  In the rear, his eyes
+evilly alight, Maisanguaq followed.
+
+As they approached the herd they scattered.  Along the edge of the floe
+lay about twenty monstrous animals, steam rising from their nostrils as
+they snorted in their slumber.  There were a half dozen mother walrus
+with half-grown young about them.  Now and then they sleepily opened
+their eyes and made low maternal noises.
+
+Before the others realized what had happened, Ootah sprang toward a
+bull and delivered his harpoon.  It rose in the air and roared
+deafeningly.  Ootah struck a second time.  The animal floundered in a
+pool of blood, whipping the floe furiously with its huge tail.
+
+With a thunderous roar all the others leaped with one glide into the
+sea.  The floe rocked, the water churned like a boiling cauldron.  In a
+few minutes Ootah had despatched the beast.  Standing erect, he gazed
+in defiance at the clouds, at the distant gulls.  He forgot the omens,
+and laughed with joy.
+
+Not a moment was to be lost, however.  Springing into their kayaks, the
+Eskimos put to sea.  Now the battle began in earnest.  Attacking
+enraged walrus in these frail skin boats is probably the most dangerous
+form of hunting in the world.  At any moment an infuriated animal is
+liable to rise from the sea immediately beneath a kayak and upturn it.
+
+Forming a semi-circle on the water about the swimming herd, the
+fearless hunters sat in their tossing boats, each with one arm upraised
+ready to strike, and with the other manipulating the paddle.  Whenever
+a whiskered head rose above the water one of the hunters let a harpoon
+descend.  After each attack they waited breathlessly.
+
+Tateraq suddenly let his arm descend--his harpoon point struck home.
+He shouted with joy--for he, too, sought Annadoah.  Roaring with rage
+the lanced sea-horse dived into the deep.  The foaming water became red
+with blood, and a few snorting, bellowing heads appeared.  All about
+glared enraged, fiery eyes.  The animals plunged and tossed furiously
+in the water--the savor of blood maddened them.  They began a series of
+attacks upon the kayaks.
+
+Alive to their danger the men kept an alert watch.  As they saw a
+seething streak described on the surface of the water, as an animal
+raged toward them, they would skillfully shift their positions.  The
+animal would rush snortingly by.
+
+With dexterous movements of the paddle, Ootah playfully moved his kayak
+among the herd, in one hand his harpoon ready to strike.  A feverish
+desire to make the greatest kill possessed him.  Each time a hunter
+made an attack he felt a pang of anxiety.  Tense rivalry spurred the
+young hunters.
+
+In the midst of the battle Arnaluk struck a beast.  Ootah summoned all
+his skill, and dashed in succession after a number of appearing
+heads--he forgot his danger.  Before the others realized it, he had
+killed two.  Maisanguaq's harpoon went wild.  He jealously watched
+Ootah and struck without skill, carried away by chagrin and rage.  Eré
+made valiant attacks for he, too, thought of Annadoah, but the walrus
+invariably went skimming from under his blows.  Papik's harpoon glanced
+the backs of half a dozen.  Finally it landed.  He shouted with glee.
+The inflated floats attached to the harpoon lines bobbed crazily on the
+surface of the ensanguined waters as the animals tossed in their death
+struggles below.
+
+Two white tusks appeared near Ootah's kayak.  His arm cut the air--his
+harpoon sped into the water--an enraged bellow followed.  He withdrew
+the handle, free of its line and the attached metal point--the point,
+with the sinew, descended into the water.  It had struck home.
+
+Suddenly a cry went up.  One of the natives waved his arms frantically.
+A great monster had risen by his kayak and fastened one of its tusks in
+the skin covering the boat from gunwale to gunwale.  To strike it with
+the harpoon meant that it would plunge and capsize the frail craft.
+Crazy with excitement, the native began hissing and spitting in the
+beast's face.
+
+"Lift his head!" cried Ootah, paddling near.  "Lift--_tugaq_!--lift his
+tusk!"
+
+"Lift his head!" echoed the others.
+
+"_Aureti_!  _Aureti_!  Behave!  Behave!" the panic stricken man
+ludicrously shrieked at the animal.
+
+Ootah paddled his kayak to the side of his companion's and, leaning
+forward, with a quick movement, threw a lasso over the animal's nose
+and under one tusk.  With a terrific jerk of the body, he gave a
+backward pull--the walrus rose on the water, the kayak was freed of the
+tusk and slipped away.  With a roar the animal sank into the sea.  A
+number now rose angrily about Ootah's kayak.  They were bent upon a
+combined assault.
+
+Ootah warded off the attacking bulls on all sides with his harpoon.
+The air trembled with infuriated calls, the animals were insane with
+brute rage.  The other natives, alarmed, paddled to a safe distance and
+watched the unequal conflict.  While Ootah manipulated his harpoons,
+Maisanguaq, in the shelter of the floe, watched him with eager eyes.
+
+He saw Ootah, with almost superhuman dexterity, striking constantly.
+Repeatedly he had to renew the metal points on his weapon-handle.  One
+by one the animals gave up the attack and dispersed, until only an
+obdurate bull remained.  The battle between man and beast continued,
+finally Ootah let the harpoon fly with full strength.  It struck the
+animal near the heart.  Ootah uncoiled the free line attached to the
+harpoon point quickly--and the walrus, weighing probably three thousand
+pounds, plunged with the impetus of a bulk of iron into the sea.  Then
+a strange thing happened.
+
+The pan-shaped drag, attached to the extreme end of the long line
+securing the harpoon which Ootah had driven into the animal, became
+entangled in the lashings on the forepart of Ootah's kayak.  Leaning
+forward, Ootah tried to disentangle it.  He feared that the beast, in
+its struggle, might drag all his weapons and paraphernalia into the
+sea.  He felt it tugging at the line while he unknotted the tangle.
+While he was doing this Maisanguaq saw the beast rise to the surface of
+the water not far from Ootah and describe a quick circle about his
+kayak.  Before he realized it, the leather line had wrapped itself
+about his chest and under his arms.  It took but a minute for the
+animal to circle the boat--then it plunged.  Maisanguaq saw Ootah
+struggle to release himself; then he saw the kayak tilt as the hunter
+was drawn, by the mighty impetus of the plunging sea-horse, into the
+water.  He heard Ootah's cry--saw the blood red waters seethe as they
+closed over him.  In a brief interval the kayak righted itself--it was
+empty.
+
+A murmur of dismay rose from the others.  "The _tupilak_! the
+_tupilak_!" Maisanguaq exultantly murmured, his eyes alight.  "Happy
+_angakoq_!  Thou shalt have much of Ootah's meat!"
+
+Over the spot where Ootah sank the sun flamed.  The water seethed with
+the threshing of the animals beneath the sea.  Ootah's float finally
+rose.  The natives watched breathlessly for the reappearance of Ootah.
+The float bobbed up and down as the animal's death struggles beneath
+the water subsided.
+
+Maisanguaq, looking at the floats which marked the dead animals, called
+out:
+
+"Ootah hath won Annadoah--hah-hah-hah!  Hah!  Ootah hath won Annadoah
+only to lose her!  We shall take Ootah's catch to Annadoah, but Ootah
+sleeps.  Ootah hath gone to taste the water in the country of the dead!
+Hah-hah!"
+
+At that moment Maisanguaq nearly fell from his kayak.
+
+"Methinks thou wilt perhaps join the fishes first, friend Maisanguaq,"
+a familiar voice laughed joyously behind him.
+
+Maisanguaq's face became livid with dismay.  Had the _angakoq_ failed?
+And why?
+
+Turning, he saw Ootah, not far away, clambering from the water onto the
+floe.  He was unscathed by the mishap--the water even had not
+penetrated his skin garments.  A joyous cry arose from the hunters as
+they saw him running to and fro, working his arms to get up
+circulation.  Noting Maisanguaq's scowling face, Ootah twitted him:
+
+"Laugh, friend Maisanguaq," he said, "for winter comes and then thy
+teeth will chatter."  Maisanguaq scowled deeply--Ootah's blithesome
+remarks filled him with rancor.
+
+"Peace, Maisanguaq.  Methinks thou, too, lovest Annadoah," continued
+Ootah kindly.  "Therefor, I hear thee no spite!  For who cannot love
+Annadoah.  _Ka--ka!_  Come--come!"  Shaking the water from him, he bade
+the others tow his kayak to the floe.
+
+Ootah entered his kayak.  The struggles of the walrus had subsided, and
+only two skin floats bobbed feebly on top of the waves.  The hunters
+now strung series of kayaks together with strong leather ropes, three
+skin boats being attached in a catamaran.  Taking up the leather floats
+one by one, to the rear kayak of each series the hunters fastened the
+harpoon lines which secured the prey.  Thus the animals were to be
+towed slowly ashore.
+
+Altogether eight walrus had been secured; four of these had fallen to
+the skill of Ootah.  Ootah sang for joy.  Again he had achieved
+distinction on the hunt, and so, with all the better chances of
+success, he believed he might pursue his suit for the hand of Annadoah.
+With powerful, steady strokes of their paddles the hunters, in their
+processions of kayaks, towed the walrus through the sea shoreward.
+They joined unrestrainedly in Ootah's hunting chant.  Only Maisanguaq
+was silent.
+
+Now and then, unable to restrain his exuberant joy, Ootah sang his love
+to the clouds, the waves, the winds.
+
+"O winds, O happy winds, speed my message to Annadoah!" he called.
+"Tell her that I return with the food of the sea!  O spirits of the
+air, breathe to her that Ootah's heart hungers for her as starving
+_ahmingmah_ desire green grass in winter time.  O happy, happy waters,
+I return to Annadoah with food and fuel for winter--say Ootah
+_meuilacto_--would wed--Annadoah.  Tell her Ootah calls her
+_Mamacadosa_!"
+
+The others, although disappointed in being outwon, in spontaneous
+recognition of his superior feat, chimed a chorus of congratulations.
+Suddenly Maisanguaq gleefully pointed a significant finger to the sky.
+
+"Pst!" he said.
+
+A black guillemot, like an omen of evil, passed over Ootah's head.
+
+
+By all the immemorial customs of their people, because of the
+established pre-eminence of his prowess, Ootah should now find favor in
+the eyes of Annadoah.  Scarce seventeen summers had passed over
+Annadoah's head and of wooers she had a score.  The young hunters, not
+only of her own tribe, but of others far south, sought her hand.  The
+fame of her beauty and skill had travelled far.  None, it was said,
+equalled her dexterity in plaiting sinew thread; none cut and sewed
+garments as this maid with tender child's hands.  She made weapons, she
+brewed marvellous broths.  Since the death of her mother she had served
+the tribe with her skill.  Yet, as the summers passed, she remained
+carefree and to all suitors shook her head.  "Become a great chief,"
+she would say.  "Win in the games, bring back the musk oxen, then
+perhaps Annadoah will listen."  Each summer the young men pursued the
+hunt with the hope of becoming chief hunter among the tribesmen.  But
+for three summers Ootah had won signally above them all.  To the remote
+regions of their world the name of Ootah was whispered with awe.  Ootah
+carried off honors in the muscle-tapping and finger-pulling matches; he
+out-distanced all rivals in kayak races on the sea; he left everyone
+behind on perilous journeys to the inland mountains.  Of every living
+animal on land and sea he had killed, and in quantity of game he
+excelled them all.  Only of late had Annadoah listened with some degree
+of favor to his pleadings.  In the days of want he brought blubber to
+her for fuel, and provided her with meat.  And she was grateful.
+Perhaps her heart stirred, but she feared the quiet passion of Ootah,
+and by a perverse feminine instinct she resented a tenderness so gentle
+that it seemed almost womanly.  With winter approaching, and food
+scarce, it was inevitable that Annadoah should wed.  And now that Ootah
+in the quest of the walrus had made the greatest kill, none doubted
+that he should be chosen.
+
+As the kayaks approached the village an unexpected sight greeted the
+eyes of the hunters.
+
+Along the shore, the women of the tribe and strange men were dancing.
+
+Before the village tents they were gathered in groups.  While the elder
+women of the tribe beat a savage dance on membrane drums, the
+chubby-bodied maidens, dressed in fur trousers, swayed in the arms of
+the foreigners.
+
+As the boats approached the shore, the natives recognized the visitors.
+They were one of a half dozen parties of Danish traders who came north
+yearly from Uppernavik to gather the results of the season's hunt.
+Their visit meant an untold distribution of wealth among the tribe, for
+they brought needles, knives, axes, guns, ammunition, and in return
+secured a fortune in furs and ivory tusks.  They also doled out tea,
+biscuits, matches, tobacco, thread, and gaudy handkerchiefs beloved by
+the women.  Their coming had not been expected this season because of
+the dearth of game.
+
+The men in the boats shouted to one another joyously.  Only Ootah felt
+a heavy sinking at his heart.  He saw the big blond-bearded men
+chucking the little women under their chins.  Their method of kissing
+was strange and repugnant to him.  Accustomed only to the chaste
+touching of a maiden's face, the kiss of the white men he instinctively
+regarded as unnameably unclean.  He resented their freedom with the
+women.  But, children of the heart and brain, primitive, innocent, the
+women did not understand the white men's strange behavior.  And the
+husbands, not comprehending, did not care.  A gun, ammunition, a few
+boxes of matches--these constituted wealth in value exceeding a wife.
+
+Now and then Ootah saw some of the visitors raising flasks to their
+lips.  Then their hilarity rang out more boisterously.
+
+When they saw the kayaks approaching the shore the strangers shouted.
+The hunters replied.  Only Ootah remained silent.  Disapproving of the
+spectacle, his thoughts were busier elsewhere; his heart glowed.
+
+"Ho, ho, what there?" some called.
+
+"_Aveq soah_," Maisanguaq replied.
+
+"Jolly for you!" shouted a Newfoundland sailor, whom Ootah recognized
+as having been in the region with some sportsmen from far away America
+several years before.
+
+As they danced the visitors broke into the fragments of a wild sailor's
+chorus.
+
+When they had finished, the Newfoundlander, a tall, tough, red-faced
+whaler, drank again from his flask and strode to the shore.  His bulky
+body reeled unsteadily.
+
+"Come on up--bring 'er in--hurry up!  Gawd, but you'r' blazin' slow!"
+
+Ootah and his companions landed.  Tugging at the leather lines they
+drew the walrus one by one from the water to the ice.  In these
+monstrous palpitating black bodies were tons of food and fuel.  Without
+wasting time, they fell to their task and dressed the animals.
+Meanwhile sleds were brought from the tents and the masses of steaming
+meat and blubber were loaded.  While the natives were thus busily
+engaged, the half-drunken Newfoundlander strode about uttering great
+oaths.  The strangers' dogs, attracted by the meat, with shrill howling
+descended to the ice and surrounded the sled-loads of blubber.  Ootah
+seized an oar and beat them away.
+
+"What the hell d'ye mean," the Newfoundlander demanded.  "Youh'd beat
+our dogs?  Eh?  Get away, damn youh!"  He lifted his fist above Ootah.
+His face purpled, Ootah raised his lithe body, his muscles quivered
+like drawn rubber.  His black eyes flashed proud defiance.
+
+"Youh'd fight me, eh?--youh defy me, youh damn candle-suckin' heathen!"
+
+His hand descended.  Beyond, the drum beaters ceased, the dancers
+turned--a surprised cry went up.
+
+Ootah drew hack, his face flushed.  There was a red spot on his cheek
+where the white man's fist had struck.  He felt a sense of momentary
+terror.  The white men's methods of fighting were unfamiliar to the
+natives.  A blow from the fist is a thing unknown among them.  Ootah
+drew away--the bullying Newfoundlander followed.
+
+"Youh'd beat our dogs, eh?  Well, I'll show youh, youh oily,
+tallow-eatin' husky!"
+
+He called the dogs, and stooping to the treasured mass of blubber threw
+a great mass to the howling animals.
+
+"Ha! ha! ha! guess youh thought youh were smart, eh?"  A second team of
+dogs, released from their tethering, came wildly dashing shoreward.
+The whaler seized another mass of meat and flung it to the animals.
+
+Ootah felt a flush of fierce indignation rise within him.  His food for
+the winter, whereby he hoped to win Annadoah, that which might keep
+away the wolves of starvation, was being wantonly wasted.  He saw his
+companions cowering at the sight of the white man--he drew himself
+erect.  He saw the Newfoundlander turn and shout to his companions on
+the shore.  Ootah thought of the saying, "Strike thy enemy when his
+back is turned."  He seized a heavy harpoon handle, made of a great
+narwhal tusk, and swinging it high struck the Newfoundlander a terrific
+blow on the head.  He fell senseless to the earth, his face bleeding.
+Half stunned he tried to struggle to his feet, but Ootah leaped upon
+him, and, as was ethical in the native method of fighting, trampled him
+into insensibility.  The man lay unconscious, his face bleeding
+effusively.
+
+Without a word Ootah continued loading his share of the game onto his
+sleds.  Attracted by the attack, the other members of the trading party
+descended and surrounded the fallen man.
+
+"Nice trick, eh?" laughed one.  "Sam got his all right.  'Minds him
+right for being so damned fresh."  They surveyed Ootah.  "Slick little
+devil," one said, handing Ootah his gun.
+
+"Take it, son," he said, with maudlin magnanimity.  "You've got nerve!"
+
+Ootah smiled bashfully, and shook his head in quiet refusal.
+
+The half-drunken traders, laughing at what they considered a clever
+trick, carried their companion into one of the tents and poured brandy
+into his mouth.  Then they left him lying alone, half sodden, and
+returned to the shore.  Some watched the natives working, while others
+clasped the native maidens in their arms and danced.  Half afraid of
+the whites, flattered by their attentions, and extremely embarrassed,
+the little women jumped and danced in the visitors' arms.
+
+Papik finally drew his single sledge load of walrus toward his tent.
+He had been rejected repeatedly, but now--with a load of blubber--he
+knew he could not afford to miss the opportunity of seeking a wife.
+
+"Ahningnetty!  Ahningnetty!" he hailed a chubby maiden who, breaking
+from the arms of one of the white men, was seen running toward her
+shelter.
+
+"What wouldst thou, Papik?" she called.
+
+"Papik would speak with thee.  _Ookiah_ (winter) comes, and his teeth
+are sharp.  They will bite thee with pangs of hunger, and the meat
+Papik brings will make joyful Papik's wife."
+
+Ahningnetty, summoning some of the other maidens, surveyed Papik's load
+of blubber.
+
+"Truly, as he saith, there is little food, and happy will be Papik's
+wife," said one.
+
+"But when thy blubber is gone with what shalt thou provide her?" asked
+Ahningnetty.
+
+"Perchance the bears will come," Papik said.  "And skillful is Papik's
+hand with the lance."
+
+"But thy hand is long, Papik, and long fingers soon lose their skill."
+
+Ahningnetty dubiously shook her head.
+
+"But thou art chubby--yea," said Papik admiringly--"thou art fat as the
+mother bears after a fat summer, and thy body is warm; it giveth heat;
+Papik would give thee food, and thou shalt keep him warm during the
+long winter."
+
+The maiden smiled delightedly.  For, as Papik indicated, whereas a man
+may admire a slimmer beauty during the summer, when the long night
+comes a maiden fat and chubby is a wife to be prized.
+
+"But alas, thy nose is long, Papik," she said, shaking her head.
+
+And the others chorused:
+
+"Long nose, short life!  Long nose--short life!  Long nose--short
+life!"  In anger Papik struck the offending member, and drawing his
+sledge after him proceeded toward his tent.
+
+Assisted by a number of the natives, Ootah, smiling, exultant, drew
+five sled-loads of blubber up over the ice toward Annadoah's tent.
+With their comparatively meagre portions the others followed.  To
+Annadoah Ootah meant to show the spoils of his quest.  To her he
+desired to present the greater portion of the riches he had by his
+prowess secured.  Here was meat to serve them during the long winter,
+and in that region the catch was a priceless fortune.  Surely Annadoah
+could not refuse him now.  He had proved himself beyond question the
+chief hunter of the tribe.  His eyes filled, his temples excitedly
+throbbed.  He felt a greater joy than that the natives feel when the
+sun dawns after the long night.  In his heart pulsed the sweet song of
+spring's first ineffable bird.
+
+Not far from Annadoah's tent he paused.  About him the natives,
+wondering, admiring, had gathered.  He turned to them; he felt a
+strength, a dignity, an assertion he had never experienced before.  His
+voice rose in a happy, ingenuously proud chant of exultation:
+
+"From the bosom of _Nerrvik_, queen of the sea, have I not brought food
+for the long winter; yea, have I not for many moons sought to win in
+the chase that I might claim Annadoah?  Annadoah!  Annadoah!"
+
+"Yea, that thou mightest claim Annadoah!  Thou art the strongest hunter
+of the tribe," the natives rejoicingly chorused.
+
+"Did I not win in the muscle-tapping games?" he sang.  "Did I not speed
+the arrow as none other--did I not speed the arrows as the birds fly?"
+
+"Yea," they replied, "thou didst speed the arrow with the skill of the
+happy dead playing in the aurora--over the earth as the birds fly didst
+thou send the arrows.  Strong is thy arm, Ootah."
+
+Not far away some of the natives, joining in the chorus, began beating
+drums.  The white men hilariously drank from bottles and joined in the
+merry dances.
+
+"Did I not call the walrus and seal from the sea--as none other?  Have
+I not lured the caribou from their hidden lair?  Have I not enticed the
+birds, the foxes, and the bear by my calls--as none other of the
+tribes?"
+
+In succession Ootah uttered imitations of the calls of the walrus
+bulls, the female caribou, and cries of the various birds.
+
+"Have I not held converse with the animals of the land, the birds of
+the air, and shall I not one day perchance comb the hair of _Nerrvik_
+in the sea!"
+
+The drums beat more loudly; the dancers hopped and leaped.  The chorus
+replied:
+
+"Thou lurest the walrus and seal from the sea, thou enticest the
+caribou, _ahmingmah_ and birds unto thee!  Thou hast learned the
+language of nature, and the happy spirits are kind to thee!  Marvellous
+is thy power, Ootah."
+
+And in the chorus, deep, hoarse, sneeringly ironical rang the words of
+Maisanguaq:
+
+"Marvellous is thy power, Ootah," and his low bitter laughter followed.
+
+The white men began to sing as they danced with the chubby women.  In
+couples they rocked to and fro.
+
+"Have I not killed of all the birds of the air, the animals of the land
+and sea!  Have I not observed the customs of the august dead?  Have I
+done aught to bring misfortune to the tribe?"
+
+In spontaneous recognition of his pre-eminence the young men freely
+yielded Annadoah.  Only Maisanguaq felt bitter.
+
+Ootah summoned his helpers and the sleds of blubber were drawn to the
+immediate entrance of Annadoah's tent.  He seemed to step upon air.
+His heart bounded.
+
+"Annadoah!  Annadoah!" he called.  "Ootah waits thee.  Ootah hath
+brought thee treasure from the depths of the sea.  Strong is the arm
+and brave is the heart of Ootah when the arm strikes and the heart
+beats with the thought of thee."
+
+Seeing him there, the natives ceased dancing.  The white men, curious,
+drew near the tent.
+
+As he stood there, his head erect, proud, expectant, he became
+conscious of a sudden ominous silence on the part of his companions.
+Some distance away the women were whispering to one another, and above,
+in the sky, circled a black guillemot.
+
+"Annadoah," he softly called.
+
+Only the hawk replied.
+
+"Annadoah, I bring thee my love, as constant as my shadow!  I bring
+thee riches!  Ootah would give thy couch new furs and caress thee."
+
+From the brown, weather worn sealskin tent came the murmurous sound of
+voices.  Ootah heard the voice of Annadoah--and that of another.
+
+The black bird in the sky screamed.
+
+Not far distant in the tent of the _angakoq_ Ootah heard the low
+disquieting sound of a drum beaten in some malevolent incantation.
+
+His heart sank as heavily as a dead walrus sinks in the sea.
+
+Something stifled him.  Then the flap of the tent parted and Annadoah
+stepped forth, her head tossed haughtily, her beautiful eyes flashing.
+
+"Get hence," she said.  "Thou art a boy, thy tongue is that of a boy.
+Thou art soft--thou hast the heart of a woman."
+
+"Annadoah . . ."  Ootah's voice wailed.  The stretch of shore seemed to
+heave and writhe.  He put out his hands as if to ward off a blow.
+
+Behind Annadoah, at the door of the tent, the form of a man stooped.
+As he emerged, Ootah saw he was taller than Annadoah's tent.  His
+shoulders were broad and massive.  His face, bronzed by the burning
+sun, was like tanned leather, hard, wrinkled; his expression was as
+grim as graven stone.  His large blue eyes glittered with the coldness
+of flint.  His hair and long curling moustache were blond.  Ootah
+recognized "Olafaksoah"--Olaf, the great white trader--whom he had seen
+two seasons before at a southern village.  He was noted for his
+brutality and hard bargaining.
+
+"What's all the noise about?" he growled.  His voice was deep and gruff.
+
+Ootah staggered back.
+
+"Annadoah, Annadoah," he moaned softly, supporting himself on the
+upstander of his loaded sled.
+
+Olafaksoah strode forward with great steps, scowling.  He critically
+surveyed the loads of blubber and gleaming walrus tusks.
+
+"Good haul, boy--good haul!  Game's been pretty scarce all along the
+coast.  It's lucky we got here in time, eh, comrades?  What'll you
+take"--he turned to Ootah--"I don't know your name."  He spoke in
+broken Eskimo.
+
+"Ootah," Annadoah whispered, "that is his name.  Ha-ha, thou callest
+him a boy."
+
+Ootah winced.
+
+Olafaksoah, with heavy strides, passed down the line of sledges.
+Turning to his men, he called:
+
+"Bring the junk."
+
+A sled of matches, needles, tea, biscuits, knives, tin cups, a few
+hatchets, and several guns and cases of ammunition were brought.  While
+these were unloaded a half-dozen eager natives hastened into their
+tents and hurriedly brought out their portions of the preciously
+preserved skins and ivories of the meagre summer hunt.  Clamorous,
+insistent, they presented these to Olafaksoah.  They clustered around
+him so that he could not walk.  Ootah watched as the bargaining began.
+He saw Annadoah clinging near the white trader.  A number of the white
+men began dickering down the line with Arnaluk.
+
+"Load blubber--one tin cup--box black powder."
+
+Arnaluk shook his head.  Olafaksoah cuffed him with his fist.  The
+timid native did not have the courage to resent this brutality.
+
+"What d'ye want, you greedy savage--two boxes matches!"
+
+"Two boxes matches--one box shooting fire--one tin cup."
+
+Still he could not be persuaded to part with the precious meat.
+Olafaksoah swore and shook his fists.  Fearful of offending the
+stranger, the women joined in and shrieked at Arnaluk, urging him to
+consent.
+
+Unprotesting, he let them draw away his sled of blubber and tusks.  He
+had a tin cup, matches and cartridges--which he could not eat.
+
+"Rotten lot," Olafaksoah said to Papik, surveying his single catch of a
+young walrus.  Papik winced at this reproach.
+
+"Two boxes fire powder," said Olafaksoah.  Papik refused.  Olafaksoah
+browbeat him in a high voice.  Finally he kicked him.  "One case
+needles."  He called Papik's mother and chucked her under the chin.
+She smiled at him, awed, flattered, half afraid.  Papik parted with his
+load for a box of ammunition and a few needles.  Meanwhile the
+bartering went on for the hoarded wealth of the tribe.  Eager to
+precede one another, the natives rushed to and fro, bringing armfuls of
+ivories and furs from their tents.  In exchange for stuff of trifling
+value the white men secured, by their method of threatening bargaining,
+loads of blue and white fox skins, caribou hides, and walrus and
+narwhal tusks which the natives had previously preserved.  One man
+parted with five tusks, worth as many hundred dollars, for two gaudy
+handkerchiefs for his wife.  Another gave several exquisite fox skins
+for a plug of tobacco.  When they demanded more biscuits, tobacco or
+matches than were offered, Olafaksoah bullied them with threats.  Yet
+they hung about him, eager for the almost worthless barter, for the
+time being valuing a box of crackers and allotments of tea more than
+their substantial supply of walrus meat.  Finally the leader paused
+before Ootah's loaded sledges.
+
+"What'll you take--a gun, fire-powder?"
+
+Ootah shook his head.
+
+Olafaksoah had recourse to his stock-in-trade of oaths, and told his
+men to bring a gun, two hatchets, ammunition.
+
+Ootah was still obdurate.  The natives' voices arose murmurously, for
+they felt it was not well to offend the strangers.  During future
+seasons they might not come again, as they threatened, with ammunition
+and guns.  This the natives feared as a calamity.
+
+"Bring some crackers--tea," Olafaksoah paused.  Ootah watched Annadoah
+nestling near the "white trader."  He had forgotten all about the
+sledges of meat.  He did not hear Olafaksoah.  He still continued
+shaking his head.
+
+"I'll be liberal with you, son," Olafaksoah indulgently increased his
+offer.
+
+Six more boxes of ammunition, more tea and crackers were added to the
+pile.
+
+Ootah again mechanically shook his head.  Amid all of those about him,
+he saw only the face of Annadoah, golden as sunlight and pink as the
+lichen blossoms of spring.  Through her open _ahttee_, or fur garment,
+he saw her breasts as tender as those of eider-feathered birds.  The
+sight of her melted his heart, the streams of spring were loosened
+within him.  Yet, with an agonized pang, he observed her gaze adoringly
+and eagerly at the tall stranger's hard face; he saw her quiver at the
+sound of his harsh, gruff voice.  Olafaksoah's brutal masculinity for
+the time dominated the shrinking femininity of the girl.  Ootah saw
+Annadoah beseechingly, almost fawningly, touch the white chief's horny
+hand and nestle it close against her cheek.
+
+Olaf, the trader, was oblivious to this.
+
+"Greedy, eh?  Well, we need the meat!  If we're goin' to stay here to
+chance hunting our dogs got to be fed!"  More supplies were brought.
+Still Ootah did not speak.
+
+The white chief presently gazed hard at Ootah.  Then his eyes
+brightened with amused mirth.  He saw the despairing, yearning gaze of
+the youth toward the girl he had selected to favor.
+
+"Ha, ha, ha!" he laughed good-naturedly.  "I see.  I've keel-hauled
+your Romeo stunt, eh?  Want the stuff?"  He kicked the supplies
+interrogatively.
+
+Ootah sadly shook his head.  He dully heard the vulgar gibes of the
+white men and the mocking laughter of Maisanguaq.
+
+One of the natives began beating a drum.  Ootah giddily caught an
+evanescent vision of women dancing with reeling traders.  He heard
+Olafaksoah as he entered Annadoah's tent laughing heartily.
+
+The thought of Annadoah in the embrace of the big blond man, of her
+face pressed to his in the white men's strange kiss of abomination,
+aroused in Ootah a sense of violation, an instinctive repugnance akin
+to the horror a native feels for the dead.  All the ardent hopes of his
+life for many moons had centered upon his bringing the results of a
+successful hunt to Annadoah and asking her to share his igloo, to
+become his wife.  And now, in his hour of high victory, after everyone
+had acclaimed him, he was crushed.
+
+A fervid fever seemed to take fire in his forehead and flush his veins,
+yet his heart was colder than ice, his hands and feet were cold.  He
+felt as though someone were strangling him; he felt giddy, suddenly
+sick.  At that moment he was too stunned to realize fully the blighting
+tragedy which had annihilated his hopes.
+
+Nearby in her tent he heard Annadoah's voice, sweet as the song of
+buntings.
+
+"Olafaksoah, Olafaksoah," he heard her murmur tenderly, "thou art a
+great man.  Thou art strong.  Thy arms hurt me, thy hands make me
+ache."  Then Ootah heard the man's hard voice and Annadoah's repressed
+murmurs of mingled pain and delight.  The day became black about him.
+He felt that he must get away; a wild madness to run seized him.  He
+felt the impetus of the winds in his feet.  Turning on his heel, his
+face to the northwest, he fled.
+
+In the sky overhead the black guillemot screamed.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+"_Her lips are red--red as a wound in the throat of a deer._"
+
+
+For seven weeks Ootah lived in the mountains.  The violence of his
+bitterness and grief scared away the wild hawks in whose high nesting
+place he found shelter.  At the door of that icy cave above the clouds,
+he called upon the spirits of the mountains for vengeance.
+
+"_Ioh--ioh_!" he wailed.  "Spirits of the glaciers, lift your
+hands--strike!  Descend and smite Olafaksoah! carry him to the
+narwhals; let the whales feed upon his body.  May the soul of his
+hands, and the soul of his feet, and the soul of his heart, and the
+soul of his head struggle with one another.  May he never rest!
+_Ioh--ioh--ioh--ioh_!"
+
+The boom of sliding avalanches answered him.  The sound was like that
+of muffled thunder.  Wild cries arose from the mountain birds.  They
+sounded demoniacal in the taut air.
+
+Far below soared the black vultures of the arctic.  In a fit of anger
+Ootah shook his arms frantically at the shrieking birds.  For they
+seemed to mock him.
+
+"Spirits of the clouds," he wailed, "_Ioh--ioh--ioh-h_!  Ye that wander
+to the south!  Ye that fly to the north!  Ye that struggle hither and
+yon, from the east to the west.  Bear my curses to Annadoah.  Tell her
+that the heart of Ootah is bitter.  Tell her Ootah would that her voice
+become as harsh as the winds of _ookiah_ (winter).  Tell her Ootah
+would that her face become withered as frozen lands in winter.  Tell
+her Ootah would that her heart rot within her, that the wild beasts
+feed upon her breasts.  _Ioh-h--ioh-h-h_!  Sing unto her the curses of
+Ootah, and may she not rest!"
+
+Below him the clouds, burning with vivid fire, moved in the varying
+strata of air currents--to Ootah they were conveying his messages.  The
+sun, circling low about the horizon, shifted its rays, and within the
+nebulous cloud-masses in the valleys, fountains of prism light played.
+In this radiant phantasmagoria messages in turn came to Ootah.
+
+He saw the figuration of Annadoah's tent, and within, reclining upon
+her couch, the form of Annadoah.  At the mirage picture of the
+beauteous and beloved maiden his heart throbbed violently.  In the high
+altitude he found respiration difficult, and now he almost suffocated
+for lack of breath.  He felt a pang at his heart as he saw the white
+chief enter the tent.  The winds wailed sibilant and agonizing messages
+into the ears of Ootah:
+
+"Thou hast cursed Annadoah.  Foolish Ootah!  For thou lovest Annadoah!
+Yea, her voice is as sweet as the sound of melting streams in
+springtime.  Lo, she whispers into the ears of Olafaksoah: 'Thou art
+strong, Olafaksoah; Ootah hath the heart of a woman.  Thou hurtest me,
+Olafaksoah; thy arms bruise me, thy hands make me ache; but thou art
+strong, thou art great, Olafaksoah; the heart of Annadoah trembles for
+joy of thee.'  Thus saith Annadoah!"
+
+And in the winds Ootah heard Olafaksoah's coarse laughter.
+
+"_Ioh--ioh-h-h_!" Ootah moaned.
+
+"Thou wouldst that Annadoah's face be blighted as frozen land in
+winter," laughed the winds, mockingly.  "Thou dotard Ootah!  Thou
+lovest the face of Annadoah.  It is very fair.  It is golden as the
+radiant face of _Sukh-eh-nukh_.  Her eyes are as bright as stars in the
+winter night.  Oh-h-h, Ootah!  Into the eyes of Olafaksoah Annadoah
+gazes, yea, she faints with joy, thou silly Ootah!"
+
+"_Ioh--ioh-h-h_!" wailed Ootah.
+
+"Her lips are red, Ootah---red as a wound in the throat of a deer."
+
+And in the cloud vision Ootah saw the blond chief take the head of
+Annadoah between his two palms and press her lips fiercely upon his
+own.  Ootah's heart trembled as water.
+
+"_Ioh--io-h-h_!" he sobbed, and tears coursed from his eyes.
+
+The constant haunting thought of Annadoah's face pressed close to that
+of Olafaksoah somehow made his face burn and his bosom ache.
+
+"Ootah, Ootah, thou wouldst that Annadoah's heart might wither, yea, as
+a frozen bird in the blast of winter, foolish Ootah, who lovest
+Annadoah!  Soft beats the heart of Annadoah upon the bosom of
+Olafaksoah; yea, for very joy it flutters as a mating bird in summer
+time.  Thou wouldst that beasts might rend her little breasts--safe are
+they now in the embrace of the strong man from the south.  Ootah!
+Ootah!"
+
+Ootah wrung his hands.
+
+"Thy curses fall dead upon the ears of Annadoah, she who hears only the
+voice of Olafaksoah."
+
+In the winds Ootah heard the whisper of Olafaksoah in the dim tent.  He
+heard Annadoah's rapturously murmurous replies.
+
+"Olafaksoah shareth the igloo of Annadoah," whispered the winds
+suggestively.  And Ootah knew the Eskimo custom.
+
+Annadoah, by sharing her simple habitation with him, had by choice
+formally become the wife of Olafaksoah.  And according to the unwritten
+law of ages she was now as much his property as his dogs.  He might
+abuse her, and desert--and thus divorce--her whenever he chose.  She
+might, at his pleasure, be loaned as a wife to another, and in this she
+would have no word.  Or she might be given away, and dare not protest.
+Ootah felt that she was lost to him irretrievably.
+
+For hours Ootah stood at the mouth of his mountain eyrie in dumb agony.
+All that he suffered it is beyond me to tell you.  For days he crouched
+there, motionless, stark dumb, every fibre of him aching.
+
+
+In the valleys below, as the hours of the burning days and golden
+nights passed, the sunlight constantly shifted.  In the palpitating
+mists Ootah read of the days' doings at the camp.  He saw the white men
+bartering for the meagre remaining furs and ivories gathered by the
+tribe.  With the natives he saw them going on long fruitless hunts.
+Finally one day he witnessed them harpoon a half dozen walrus on the
+sea.  They laboriously towed the catch ashore and rejoiced over the
+unexpected wealth of oil and blubber.  But the white men claimed the
+entire prize, loaded their extra sledges, liberally fed their dogs, and
+doled out but a penurious allotment of meat and blubber to the tribe.
+
+But in all this Ootah had no concern.  Day by day the cloud-swimming
+valleys below blazed with crimson-shot conflagrations . . .  Ootah knew
+the dead were lighting their monstrous camp fires--but even in this he
+found no interest.  Daily he became fainter and fainter from lack of
+food, and daily, constantly, the winds whispered:
+
+"The mouth of Annadoah is very red--red as a wound in the throat of a
+deer . . ." and then sibilantly--"softly beats the heart of Annadoah
+against the bosom of Olafaksoah."  Then every fibre of him burned and
+ached.
+
+One day the radiant valley darkened . . .  Out of the sky, as if rising
+from worlds beyond the horizon, a cyclopean phantasm of clouds took
+form.  Rising higher and higher toward the zenith, ominous and
+sinister, it gathered substance and spread across the glowing heavens
+like a film of smoke . . .  It took upon itself the awful semblance of
+a mighty thing, half-beast, half-man.  As if to strike, it slowly
+lifted the likeness of a gigantic arm shrouded with tattered
+clouds . . .  The baleful shade shut off the sunlight from the
+earth . . .  Ootah's heart quailed . . .  Terror gripped him . . .  For
+he saw--what few men had ever beheld--the shadow of _Perdlugssuaq_, the
+Great Evil.  Finally he found voice.
+
+"O most dreadful of the _tornarssuit_ (spirits)," he called, grovelling
+on his knees, "smite me!  Smite me!"
+
+During the tragic days of his isolation the full realization of all
+that he had lost had come to Ootah.  He fed upon the memory of
+Annadoah's face.  He remembered how, with the vision of that face
+before him, he had excelled in the hunts and games, and for many moons
+had felt confident of winning her.  He dwelt for hours upon her
+stunning rejection, of how she clung to the white man; he visioned with
+heart corroding bitterness her days with Olafaksoah, and he burned with
+unnameable anguished pangs as he conjured her nights.  Now, the
+violence of his grief exhausted, he invoked death.
+
+Expectant, fearful, with closed eyes, he waited.
+
+In the valley a storm gathered, and the low whine of the winds Ootah
+believed to be the breath of the descending terror.  The air became
+unbearably colder as the dreaded creator of death, darkness and ice
+descended.  The taut suspense was terrible.  Finally Ootah reached the
+limits of human endurance--merciful unconsciousness blotted out the
+long agony.
+
+When he recovered the storm had passed.  Scores of birds, driven
+against the rocks by the terrible winds, lay dead at the entrance of
+the cave.  Surely the Great Evil had struck, but he lived.  Hunger
+stirred within him and he fell upon the birds.
+
+Later he sought game in the lower valleys.  He had lances and bows and
+arrows with him.  He found an inland vale, where a patch of green grass
+was exposed despite a recent fall of snow--there a herd of musk oxen
+grazed.  He drew his bow of bone and sinew.  One fell after the first
+quiver of his arrow.  His skill was marvellous.  He had struck a vital
+spot.  He finished his killing of the fallen animal with a lance.  He
+feasted upon the raw meat, and carried away with him up to his eyrie
+enough to last for many days.
+
+The sun meanwhile sank lower and lower; there were long hours of
+twilight; snow storms came; the cold increased.  Ootah felt the first
+whip of approaching winter.  Ootah's spirit melted.  Disquieting
+messages came in the cold winds and darkening clouds.  His heart beat
+quickly at what the frightened birds told him.  Olafaksoah, they said,
+struck Annadoah.  As she lay on the ground he kicked her.  In the
+snow-driven wind Ootah heard the echo of her heart-broken weeping.  He
+revoked the curses he had uttered; he cursed his own weakness whereby
+he had invoked harm to her.  Then in the winds Ootah heard the beat of
+drums.  In the clouds he saw the white men dancing with the Eskimo
+maidens.  Day after day they danced--day after day Annadoah wept.
+Olafaksoah had become wearied.  Disappointed in the failure to secure
+greater supplies, he vented his impatience upon Annadoah.  Cruelly he
+bruised her little hands, he mocked and jeered her when she pleaded
+with him.  In fits of anger he often struck her.  Finally, one day, in
+the cloud phantasmagoria, Ootah saw Olafaksoah reeling from the strange
+red-gold water the white men drank.  He entered Annadoah's tent.  She
+crouched, terrified, in a corner.  With him were three of his rough
+blond companions.  They staggered--and in the winds they sang.
+Olafaksoah pointed consentingly to Annadoah.  One of the men attempted
+to embrace her.  Then she rose defiantly and did what few Eskimo women
+ever dared.  She smote the man's leering face and, sobbing, sank on her
+knees before Olafaksoah.  He roared out things the Eskimos do not
+understand.  "_Goddlmighty_!" and more awful words.  His fist
+descended.  In the winds Ootah heard Annadoah scream and call his name.
+
+That day he descended from the mountains.
+
+
+Much that Ootah conjured in his mind, or imagined he saw in the clouds,
+really happened.  Whether he actually sensed these things by some
+wonderful power of clairvoyance, which the natives themselves
+believe--or whether he just accurately guessed what occurred, I do not
+know.  But of this I can tell:
+
+By that strange contradictoriness of the feminine--much the same all
+the world over--by that inherent, inborn desire of subjugation to the
+brutal and domineering in the male, Annadoah had given herself
+unreservedly to Olafaksoah.  At the sound of his firm step she
+trembled.  His hard, brutal embraces caused her heart to flutter with
+joy.  At first he told her he would take her with him to the south.
+Annadoah believed him.  Then he changed his mind, and said she must
+wait until the next season for him.  She silently acquiesced.  She
+called upon all her simple arts to please him.  Carefully she oiled her
+face and made the golden skin soft by rubbing it with the fur of
+animals; with a broken comb, left with her mother years before by a
+party of explorers, she combed her long, black and wonderful hair and
+elaborately arranged it behind her.  About her forehead she bound a
+narrow fillet of fine, furry hares' skin.  She donned new garments; her
+_ahttee_ was made of the delicate skins of birds, her hood of white fox
+hides.  To all this Olafaksoah seemed blind; at times, with coarse,
+half-maudlin tenderness, he caressed her, called her his "little girl"
+and promised to "come back next spring."  But Annadoah was useful to
+him otherwise.
+
+During the days when Olafaksoah and his men were hunting or gathering
+furs and ivory at nearby villages along the coast, Annadoah sewed skins
+into garments for Olafaksoah and his men.  Sometimes she went with
+Olafaksoah on his expeditions and employed her coquetry upon the
+susceptible men of the migrating tribes to secure bargains for him.
+For a box of matches she would cajole from her people ivories worth
+hundreds of dollars.  She persuaded them to rob themselves of the
+walrus meat and blubber they had gathered for winter and give them to
+her master in exchange for tin cups and ammunition, all of which would
+be useless when the night came on.  To Ootah she gave no thought until
+one day the white man struck her.  As he vented his rage at not
+securing more riches upon her during the ensuing days, her heart more
+and more instinctively turned to the youth "with the heart of a woman"
+whom she had rejected.  When Olafaksoah brought his companions to the
+tent her soul rose in rebellion.  In the camp there was an orgy.  None
+of the married men, who for a slight consideration were willing to
+permit their wives to dance with the traders, objected to the drunken
+carousal.  Ribald songs sounded strange in this region of the world.
+Yet after Olafaksoah had kicked her and left her lying in the tent,
+high above the sound of the sailors' doggerel songs, Annadoah
+frantically called aloud:
+
+"Ootah!  Ootah!"
+
+For a long time she lay in a stupor.  Her face was bleeding.  When she
+regained consciousness the white chief and his men had left.  They had
+taken with them all available furs, ivories and provisions in the
+village.
+
+At the door of her tent Annadoah stood, dry-eyed, her hair dishevelled.
+To the south she yearningly extended her arms.  Her heart still ached
+toward the man who had lied to her and deserted her.  She was left, a
+divorced woman, alone among her people, with no one to care for her
+during the long winter night.
+
+As she stood there the light of the descending sun, which was now far
+below the rim of the horizon, paled.  Driven by a frigid wind, howling
+raucously from the mountains, great snow clouds piled along the sky
+line.  Out at sea the tips of the waves became capped--leprous white
+arms seemed reaching hopelessly for help from the depths of the sea.
+The sky blackened.  The increasing gusts tore at the frail tents.  The
+wolf-dogs crouched low to the ground and whined.  A tremor of anxiety
+filled the hearts of the tribe.  Presently the clouds were torn to
+shreds and whipped furiously over the sky.  In the thickening grey
+gloom Annadoah watched the men of the tribe fastening their sleds and
+belongings to the earth . . . mere dark shadows.  Above her tent,
+tossed by the wind in its eddying flight, a raven screamed.
+
+Annadoah finally entered and threw herself upon the rocky floor of her
+dwelling.  As the furies were loosed outside her voice rose and fell
+with the wailing grief and wrath of the wind.  "Olafaksoah!
+Olafaksoah!"  But only the hoarse evil call of the black bird answered
+during lulls in the storm.  And Annadoah heard it, with a sinking of
+her cold heart, as the voice of fate.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+"_'Do the gulls that freeze to death in winter fly in springtime?' she
+asked, simply. . .  'The teeth of the wolves are in my heart' . . ._"
+
+
+Desolate and alone, Annadoah walked along a crevice in the
+land-adhering ice of the polar sea.
+
+The prolonged grey evening of the arctic was resolving into the long
+dark, and the Eskimo women, as is their custom at this time of the
+year, had gathered along the last lane of open water--which writhed
+like a sable snake over the ice--to celebrate that period of mourning
+which precedes the dreadful night, and to give their last messages and
+farewells to the unhappy and disconsolate souls of the drowned, who,
+when the ice closed, should for many moons be imprisoned in the sea.
+
+An unearthly twilight, not unlike that dim greenish luminescence which
+filters through emerald panes in the high nave of a great cathedral,
+lay upon the earth.  The forms of the mourning women were strangely
+magnified in the curious semi-luminance and, as their bodies moved to
+and fro in the throes of their grief, they might have been, for all
+they seemed, shadowy ghosts bemoaning their sins in some weird
+purgatory of the dead.
+
+In the northern sky a faint quivering streak of light, resembling the
+reflection of far away lightning, played--the first herald of the
+aurora.  To the south a gash of reddish orange, like the tip of a
+bloody-gleaming knife-blade, severed the thick purple clouds.  There
+was a faint reflected glimmer on the unfrozen southern sea.
+
+Snow had fallen on the land, igloos had been built.  Over the village
+and against the frozen promontories loomed a majestic yet fearful
+shadowy shape--that of a giant thing, swathed in purple, its arm
+uplifted threateningly--the spectre of suffering and famine.
+
+This wraith, brought into being by the gathering blackness in the
+gulches and crevices of the mountains, filled the hearts of the natives
+with unwonted foreboding.
+
+Profound silence prevailed.
+
+Already the sea for miles along the shore was frozen.  The open water
+lay at so great a distance from the land that the sound of the waves
+was stilled.  The birds had disappeared.  Even the voices of the
+sinister black guillemots and ravens were heard no more.
+
+Annadoah's sobs rose softly over the ice.
+
+"Spirit of my mother, thou who wast carried by the storm-winds into the
+sea!  Hear me!  Annadoah loved one Olafaksoah, a chief from the south;
+for him the heart of Annadoah became very great within her.  And now
+the heart of Annadoah aches.  For he hath gone to the south.  And not
+until the birds sing in spring will he return.  And Annadoah is left
+alone.  _Ookiah_ comes with the lash of wicked walrus thongs, and there
+is no blubber buried outside Annadoah's shelter.  Neither is there oil.
+And the couch of Annadoah is cold--so very cold.  Yea, listen, spirit
+of my mother, and bring Olafaksoah back, that he may bruise Annadoah's
+hands, that he may cast Annadoah to the ground and crush Annadoah if he
+wills with his feet!  Io-oh-h!"
+
+She moaned this in a curious sing-song sort of chant.  Over the ice the
+voices of the other women rose, and each, to her departed relatives and
+friends who had died in the sea, told about the important incidents of
+the year and the misgivings for the winter, in a varying crooning song.
+
+Annadoah passed Tongiguaq, who jumped and danced in a frenzy of grief.
+Tongiguaq had lost three children; two had been drowned, and a new-born
+baby, three months before, was born maimed.  According to the custom of
+the people, a fatherless defective child is doomed to death.  So
+rigorous is their struggle to survive, so limited the means of
+existence, that a tribe cannot bear the burden of a single unnecessary
+life.  So in keeping with this Lycurgean law, worked out by instinct
+after the stern experience of ages, a rope had been twisted about the
+neck of Tongiguaq's baby and it had been cast into the sea.
+
+All this the weeping woman told in her chant to the departed.  When she
+saw Annadoah approaching, she paused.
+
+"Here cometh the she-wolf that hath devoured the food of our tribe,"
+she wailed, intense bitterness in her voice.  "Yea, by her cajolery she
+persuaded our men to give unto the traders from the south our precious
+food.  And now we starve!  Yea, she hath robbed us.  She is as the
+breath of winter, as the blackness of the night."
+
+Along the line of wailing women Tongiguaq's reproach was suddenly taken
+up.  As Annadoah walked by them they did a strange thing.  The natives
+fear their dead--they never even mention their names.  For possessed of
+great power are the dead, and they can wreak, as befits their moods,
+unlimited good or ill.  Believing they could persuade the dead to array
+themselves against Annadoah, the women took up Tongiguaq's denunciation
+and reviled Annadoah in their weird chant to the departed.  Annadoah
+wrung her hands and wept.  Bitter and jealous because the white chief
+had selected her during his stay, their bosoms full of the harbored ill
+will and envy of years because she had been the most desired by the
+young men of the tribes, the women now invoked curses upon the deserted
+and unprotected girl through the medium of the incorporeal powers.
+
+The dread of it filled poor Annadoah's heart.  She quailed at the
+bitter execrations called upon her head.  Instinctively her hand
+reached through the opening of her _ahttee_ and she clutched at a piece
+of old half-decayed skin.  This was a remnant of her mother's father's
+clothing, a amulet given her as a child, when saliva from the maternal
+grandfather's mouth had been rubbed on her lips, and which she believed
+protected her from ill fortune.
+
+"Io-ooh! io-oh!" Annadoah moaned in pain.
+
+The women forgot their own tragedies.  They forgot the messages they
+were imparting to the dead.  Directly they might not be able to invoke
+any effective curse upon Annadoah; but well they knew, indeed, the
+awful power of the disembodied.  And to the dead in the cold shuddering
+sea they told how Annadoah had played with the men, how she had
+betrayed them to the white traders, cajoling them to rob themselves of
+food, and how, because of her, famine now confronted the tribe; they
+told of the long devotion of Ootah, the desired of all the maidens, and
+how Annadoah had rejected him.
+
+Possessed by a frantic contagion of released rage, their voices rose
+and fell in a frightful chanting malediction.  In the weird gloom their
+vague forms leaped about, their arms writhing like black things in the
+air as they called the names of their individual dead to hear.
+
+As their voices approached a crescendo they danced with increasing
+hysteria.  Some shrieked and fell to the ice groaning, their bodies
+twisting in  convulsions.  Others laughed madly--laughed at the
+dreadful horrors with which the dead would smite Annadoah.  Losing all
+control they were carried away by their delirious malevolence; their
+voices reached a high shrill pitch.  Their arms clawed the air.
+Through the dead curses were invoked upon Olafaksoah, the great trader,
+who had cowed them and robbed them.  They begged of the _tornarssuit_
+that he might be rended by wolves, that his body might rot unburied,
+and that the spirits of his limbs might be severed and be compelled to
+wander in restless torment forever.  They called anathemas upon his
+unborn children; and of their dead, who should be imprisoned in
+darkness in the depths of the sea, they furiously invoked upon
+Annadoah's offspring the curse of the long night . . .  Their voices
+shuddered over the ice as they demanded that most dreadful of all
+dreaded evils--that Annadoah's child might be born as blind to light
+and the joy of light as the dead in the sea.
+
+Annadoah crouched in frantic terror upon the ice.  From the Greenland
+highlands a moaning echo answered the women.  To Annadoah the hill
+spirits had joined in cursing her--all nature seemed to upbraid her.
+Tremblingly, with a last lingering hope, she crept on her knees to the
+edge of the lane of lapping black water.  She whispered a pathetic plea
+to _Nerrvik_, the gentle queen of the sea, whose hand had been severed
+by those she loved, and who felt great tenderness for men.  Annadoah
+listened.
+
+"Thou art cold of heart to him who loves thee, Annadoah," a voice
+seemed to whisper in the lapping waves.  "Thou art beautiful as the
+sun, but as _Sukh-eh-nukh_ shall thou be eternally sad.  Thou shalt
+lose because of thine own self the greatest of all treasures.  That is
+fate."
+
+Far out on the open ocean spectral fire-flecks flashed like mast-lights
+on swinging ships.  These mysterious jack o' lanterns of the arctic are
+caused by the crashing together of icebergs covered with phosphorescent
+algae.
+
+To Annadoah the dead were lighting their oil lamps for the long night.
+As she watched the weird illuminations a paralyzing fear of the vague
+unknown world beyond the gate of death filled her, and her blood ran
+cold.  She felt utterly crushed, utterly helpless, and utterly
+deserted, both in the affection of the living and that of the dead.
+She uttered a despairing cry and fell back in a cold faint.  The women
+drew about as if to leap upon her.
+
+A momentary wavering of the northern lights revealed her face grown sad
+and wan.  The women stood still, however, for approaching in the
+distance they heard a man's voice calling:
+
+  "Avatarpay--avatarpay,
+  akorgani--akorgani,
+  anagpungah . . ."
+
+Those mystic words, believed to give magic speed to the one who utters
+them, came in the well known tones of Ootah.  A joyous cry went up from
+the women.
+
+When Annadoah opened her eyes Ootah was bending over her.
+
+"I was held in the mountains, Annadoah.  The hill spirits were at war.
+The snow came, the storm spirits loosed the ice.  I fell into an abyss
+. . .  I lay asleep . . . for very long.  It seemed like many moons.  I
+could barely walk when I awoke.  I had no food.  I became very weak,
+but I uttered the _serrit_ (magic formula;), those words of the days
+when man's sap was stronger, and the good winds bore me hither."
+
+A mystical silver light had risen over the horizon, and in the soft
+glimmer Annadoah saw that the face of Ootah was haggard and drawn.  His
+voice was weak.
+
+"The sun hath gone," murmured Ootah.  "The long night comes.  Ootah
+heard thy cry and has come to care for thee, Annadoah."
+
+His voice was a caress.  His face sank dangerously near the face of the
+girl.  She panted into full consciousness and struggled to free
+herself.  Ootah helped her to her feet.
+
+"The winter comes . . . and famine," muttered Annadoah, hopelessly.
+She pointed to the gaunt, hollow-eyed shadow, empurpled-robed, against
+the frozen cliffs.  "My heart is cold--I am resigned to death."
+
+"But I have come to give furs for thy couch," murmured Ootah, a
+beseeching look in his eyes.  "Thou wilt need shelter--I shall build
+thee an igloo.  Thou wilt need food--I shall share all that I have with
+thee and seek more.  Thou wilt need oil for heat.  I shall get this for
+thee."
+
+Annadoah made a passionate gesture.  A curious perverse resentment for
+the youth's insistent devotion rose in her heart.
+
+"Nay," she said, warding him away.  "My shadow yearns only to the south
+. . . the far, far south."
+
+"Thy soul yearns to the south--forsooth, will I all the more cherish
+thee.  Thou art frail, and the teeth of _ookiah_ (winter) are sharp."
+
+"The teeth of _ookiah_ are not so sharp as the teeth in my heart,"
+sobbed Annadoah.
+
+Ootah felt a great pity for her--a pity and tenderness greater than his
+jealousy.
+
+"But I shall teach thee to forget, Annadoah."
+
+"I cannot forget.  Even as the ravens in their winter shelter dream of
+the summer sun, so my soul grows warm, in all my loneliness, in the
+memory of Olafaksoah."
+
+Ootah groaned with an access of misery.  Frenziedly he caught her hands
+and pressed them.  Annadoah struggled.  His words beat hotly in her
+ears:
+
+"But I want thee.  My blood burns at the thought of thee.  It is
+against the custom of the tribe that thou shouldst be alone.  Thou must
+take a husband."
+
+"No--no," she shook her head.
+
+"But some one must care for thee.  I love thee.  Thou wilt forget
+Olafaksoah.  Thy hurt will heal."
+
+Annadoah shook her head piteously.
+
+"Do the gulls that freeze to death in winter fly in springtime?" she
+asked, simply.
+
+Ootah did not reply.
+
+"He was strong," she murmured.  "His hands bruised me.  He was cruel.
+He hurt me.  Yet he gave my heart joy.  My heart is dying--dying as the
+birds die.  I feel the teeth of the wolves in my heart."
+
+Ootah pointed to the women.  The soft crooning of their voices reached
+him as they resumed the dismal dirge of their own woes.
+
+"They hate thee," he said.  He pointed to the constellation of the
+Great Bear which glittered faintly in the sky.  "Yonder _qiligtussat_
+(the barking dogs) would rend the gentle bear.  Thou rememberest the
+old men's tale.  A woman ran away from her family.  She was false at
+heart.  The good mother bear protected her and gave her food.  But
+yearning for her husband, she returned and to gain his favor betrayed
+the hiding place of the mother-bear and her young.  Then the husband
+drove out with sledges.  His dogs attacked the bear.  But they all
+became stars and went up into the sky.  Even as the bear was good to
+the false woman so hast thou made clothing for those yonder, and now
+they would as the dogs rend thee.  Thou needest a husband."
+
+"They would be bitter to thee," she argued.
+
+"Perchance, but I would protect thee.  I love thee."
+
+Annadoah shook her head.  "The teeth of the wolves are in my heart,"
+she said.  "And I no longer care."
+
+"Yonder _Nalagssartoq_ (he who waits and listens) bends to hear thy
+reply."  Ootah pointed to Venus, the brightest of the stars--to the
+Eskimos an old man who waits by a blow-hole in the heavenly icefloes
+and listens for the breathing of seals.  "Thou wilt come to Ootah, who
+loves thee?  Answer, Annadoah!  Ootah listens."
+
+He soothed her little hands.  A wondrous light burned in his eyes.
+Every fibre of his being yearned for her.  But Annadoah's hands were
+cold, her eyes were sullenly turned away.  In her heart a vague fear of
+him, a resentment of his very love, stirred.
+
+"My shadow yearns to the south," she repeated pathetically.  "I shall
+wait.  Perhaps he will come as he said when the spring hunting sings."
+In her heart she feared that he would not.
+
+Ootah in utter anguish dropped her hands.  Annadoah sadly turned away.
+Falling to his knees on the ice, he covered his face with his arms.
+The sound of his heartbroken sobbing was drowned in the funereal chant
+of the women as, in a long procession, they passed near him on their
+way to the shore.
+
+When he raised his head, the rim of the moon, a great quarter-disc of
+silver, peeped above the horizon.  A mystical melancholy light flooded
+the gloriously gleaming desolate white world.  The ice floes glistened
+as with the dust of diamonds.  The ice covered faces of the
+promontories glowed with the sheen of burnished metal.  The clouds
+became tremulous masses of argent phosphorescence.  Far away the
+women's chants subsided.  One by one they joined the men in their
+grotesque dances in the distant igloos.  Ootah was left alone.
+
+He gazed long upon the pearly lamp of heaven.  The subtle sorrow of
+this world of magical moonlight filled his soul.  Then the hopelessness
+and tragedy of all it symbolized were unfolded to him, and, extending
+his arms in a vague wild sympathy, in a vague wild despair, he moaned:
+
+"Desolate and lonely moon!  Oh, desolate and unhappy moon! . . .
+Desolate and unhappy is the heart of Ootah!"
+
+Far away, in her shelter, Annadoah heard the sobbing voice of Ootah.
+And nearer, in an igloo where the men beat drums and danced, she heard
+the voice of Maisanguaq laughing evilly.  Of late Maisanguaq had gibed
+her with her desertion; he was bitter toward her.  But nothing mattered
+to Annadoah.  She thought of the blond man in the south, and the
+pleading of Ootah.  As she heard his weeping, she shook her head sadly.
+She beat her breast and muttered over and over again:
+
+"Do the gulls that freeze to death in winter fly in springtime?"
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+"_What they heard was, to them all, the Voice of the Great
+Unknown, . . .  He who made the world, created the Eternal Maiden
+Sukh-eh-nukh, and placed all the stars in the skies . . .  Whose voice,
+far, far away, itself comes as the faintly remembered music of long
+bygone dreams preceding birth . . .  And now, out of the blue-black
+sky, great globes of swimming liquid fire floated constantly, and
+dispersing into feathery flakes of opal light, melted softly . . ._"
+
+
+Ootah began work on an igloo for Annadoah.  None of the tribesmen had
+offered to do this for her, and, as only the men develop the
+architectural skill required to construct a snow shelter, Annadoah,
+until Ootah's return, was forced to continue to live in her seal-skin
+tent, where she suffered bitterly from the cold.  His back aching,
+scarcely pausing to rest, Ootah constructed an icy dome of more than
+usual solidity.  This completed, he went many miles, through the
+darkness, to the south, where, in the shelter of certain rocks, he knew
+there was much soft moss.  Digging through the frozen blanket of ice he
+secured a quantity, and returning, made with it a soft bed for Annadoah
+over a tier of stones.  This he covered in turn with the soft skin of
+caribou.  Inside the immaculate house of snow he fashioned an interior
+tent of heavy skins to retain the heat of the oil lamps.  Of his own
+supplies of blubber and walrus meat, which he had secretly buried early
+in the hunting season and which had thus escaped the rapacity of the
+white men, he gave more than half to Annadoah.  He fixed her lamps with
+oil, and arranged them solicitously in positions where they would give
+most heat.  He placed supplies in the house, and buried the rest
+outside so that Annadoah might readily reach them.  Meanwhile Annadoah
+sat alone in her tent, her sad face buried in her hands, "her shadow
+yearning toward the south."  Many of the tribe, emerging from their
+igloos, had paused to taunt Ootah at his labors.
+
+"A-ha--a-ha!" they laughed.  "Thinkest thou that Annadoah will let thee
+share her igloo when the snow closes in?"  They laughed again.  Ootah
+seriously shook his head.
+
+"I would that Annadoah be protected from the storm," he said simply.
+
+"A-ha--ha!  No man buildeth a house wherein he may not have shelter; no
+man layeth a bed of soft moss whereon he doth not expect to lie.  Idiot
+Ootah, as well mayest thou expect the willows to sprout in the long
+night--Annadoah thinketh naught of thee.  Why seekest thou not a
+sensible maiden?"
+
+"He hath given Annadoah half of his meat and fuel," the women murmured
+complainingly among themselves.
+
+"He hath given her his skins; he hath thieved upon himself."
+
+"Why hath he not taken another to wife?  Verily men are few; women are
+many.  And all gaze favorably upon Ootah."
+
+"Yea, his arm is strong."
+
+"There is courage in his heart."
+
+"He feareth not the night."
+
+"He should press his face upon the face of one who is fair; his wife
+should bear children."
+
+When Annadoah passed from her tent into her new home the women scolded
+her bitterly.  The men goodnaturedly jeered Ootah.  Annadoah huddled
+near Ootah and gazed gratefully into his eyes.  In the thought that he
+was there to protect her the heart of Ootah pulsed with joy.
+Annadoah's heart was cold.  Annadoah sat inside the new little house of
+snow, the oil lights flickering fitfully.  In the dancing shadows
+Annadoah saw the semblance of the form of the blond chief.  Joylessly
+Ootah built his own home.
+
+And in their houses, in celebration of the fall of night, the natives
+continued their grotesque dances.  Beating membrane drums, and singing
+jerky chants, they danced frenziedly, forcing a false hilarity.  They
+felt the overwhelming approach of the dread spectre of famine.  In
+their dances some sobbed, others passed into uncontrollable hysteria.
+
+Ootah alone did not indulge in the fierce ceremonies.  His own igloo
+built, day after day, night after night, he sat alone.  His heart ached
+with the unrequited and eternal desire of all the loveless and lonely
+things of the world.  Outside, the moon increased in fulness and soared
+in a low circle about the sky.  The dogs crouched low on the ground,
+howling dismally.
+
+During the first days of the long night the natives held a series of
+dog fights inside the snow and stone houses.  Ordinarily Ootah would
+have attended these, for a dog fight is of keenest interest to a
+tribesman, and the Eskimos' most exciting form of sport.
+
+To a hunter with healthy blood in his veins the dog encounter affords
+the same thrills as other men, in more southern lands, find in bull
+fights, horse racing, card playing and other games of chance.  Two
+lovers, both desirous of a maiden, may hold a fight between their king
+dogs, each hoping that success may determine the girl's favor.  Pieces
+of blubber, animal skins, ivory carvings and less valuable objects are
+often bet by the contestants and the onlookers.
+
+By all logical assumptions, one might naturally suppose that the
+Eskimos--whose night is many months long--through many dark and
+rigorous ages, would have developed into a taciturn and moody people,
+just as the denizens of sunny climes are joyful, effervescent and
+pleasure loving.  However, this is not so.  Troublous as is their
+existence, they preserve until old age that playful joy of life, that
+carefree ignoring of danger, which we find in our children--which,
+alas, we lose too soon.  Each day brings to them its novel delights; in
+their monotonous foods they find a constant variety of pleasure; in
+their simple games of muscle-tapping, throwing of carved ivories, and
+fighting of dogs they experience the exultant and exuberant fun of our
+schoolboys.  Constant experience with jeopardous tasks has eliminated
+the human fear of danger, and even death, in its most tragic shapes, by
+long association has lost its terrors.  When the long night falls, and
+an ominous depression makes heavy the heart of the lover or fills with
+anxiety the heart of the father, they turn, with a delightful
+spontaneity, to play.
+
+Now great interest was aroused by the news that Papik was to fight his
+king dog with the magnificent brute owned by Attalaq.  Both Papik and
+Attalaq were paying evident attentions to Ahningnetty, the chubby and
+ever smiling maiden, who, while she showed a certain leaning toward
+Papik, had misgivings as to his eligibility as a husband because of his
+long fingers.
+
+Born of noted fighters, a dog attains the position of "king" or chief
+dog of a team by whipping all the dogs in the team of his particular
+master.  When he has asserted his supremacy over the dogs of his own
+team, he is successively set before the rulers of other teams.  And by
+a process of elimination of those which lose, the two final victors in
+a village are finally aligned against one another.
+
+In the series of fights held between the king dogs of the various
+teams, both Papik's and Attalaq's had come off with final honors.  The
+immediate contest between the two most distinguished canines in the
+village was an event of exciting importance, and to the women there was
+a romantic zest in it, for all believed that victory would determine
+Ahningnetty's favor.
+
+At the time of the event all who could do so crowded into Attalaq's
+stone house.  In the centre of a tense group of onlookers the two dogs
+were placed before each other.  They were handsome animals, with long
+keen noses, denoting an aristocracy of canine birth, and long shaggy
+coats, mottled brown and white, as soft as silk.  A long line of
+victories lay to the credit of each.
+
+A sharp howl announced the fight--the two lithe bodies leaped
+together--the air within the little circle became electric.  The dogs
+snapped, tumbled over each other.  Their sharp teeth sank into each
+other's shanks.  The natives cheered whenever a favorite secured an
+advantage.  Bets were made.  Papik's eyes gleamed as he alternately
+watched his dog and the face of Ahningnetty as she peered interestedly
+over the onlookers' shoulders.  Attalaq's countenance was grim--not a
+muscle moved.
+
+Finally Attalaq's dog, with a chagrined growl, unexpectedly rushed from
+the enclosure and crouched in a corner of the igloo.
+
+The natives effusively gathered about Papik, who bent over his dog with
+proud affection.  In the excitement Ahningnetty quickly left the igloo,
+and standing outside gazed meditatively at the stars.  They hung in the
+sky above like great pendulous jewels, palpitant with interior
+name--there were purple stars, and blue stars, and orange-colored
+stars; some resembled monstrous amethysts, some emeralds fierily green,
+some rubies spitting sparks vindictively red; others globular sheeny
+pearls, creamy of lustre but shot with faint gleams of rose; and
+fugitively sprinkling the firmament here and there were orbs that
+glistened like diamonds, wonderfully and purely white.  Saturn,
+distinct among all the heavenly bodies, throbbed with a van-colored
+changing glow like a bulbous opal, and about it, with a strange
+shimmer, visibly swirled its iridescent rings.
+
+"Thou standest alone--thou wouldst leave me?"  Papik, eager,
+triumphant, questioning, emerged from the stone entrance to the house
+and approached the girl.  The other natives, homeward bent, followed.
+
+The girl was silent.
+
+"Methought thou wouldst be glad----"
+
+"Thy dog is strong," the girl replied.
+
+"Dost thou love that dotard Attalaq?"
+
+"No," the maid replied.  "He is clumsy as the musk ox."
+
+They turned, walking toward the igloo occupied by Ahningnetty and her
+aged father.
+
+"Wilt thou not be Papik's wife?" Papik pleaded.  "My shelter is
+cold--little meat have I.  The white men robbed the tribe.  But
+perchance the bears come--then I shall kill them; valiant is my dog."
+He patted the animal's shaggy head.
+
+"But thy fingers, Papik--Papik!  No--no!"
+
+"But Papik loves thee," he protested; "his skin flushes with the
+thought of thee."
+
+"That thou didst also say to Annadoah, whom thou didst seek before me."
+
+Papik was silent; it was true that Ahningnetty was only a second choice.
+
+At that moment an ominous noise was heard on the sea.  The tide, in
+moving, caused the massive floe-ice to grate against that adhering to
+the shore.  To the simple natives, the noise indicated something more
+sinister.
+
+"Hearest that?" Ahningnetty asked.
+
+"Yea," replied Papik, "_Qulutaligssuaq_, the monster who lives in the
+sea, cometh with his hammers."
+
+"He cometh to steal the children.  In winter he is very hungry."
+
+"They say he frightens people to death when a baby which is fatherless
+screams."
+
+"And after he heats his ladles, the babies often die."
+
+Again the grating noise shuddered along the shore, and Ahningnetty,
+frightened, fled to her house.  Papik, pursuing his way, accosted Ootah.
+
+As they were speaking they saw Otaq and his wife emerge from their
+house.  Between them they carried a small stark body.  The woman was
+weeping piteously.  It was their child, which a brief while before had
+died.  The sea monster had again claimed its human toll.
+
+Papik and Ootah disappeared--Papik to his shelter, Ootah to Annadoah's
+igloo.  The parents, left alone, dug up stones and ice and buried the
+child.  Then beneath the stars they stood in silent grief.  Other
+natives, emerging from their houses and seeing them, understood and
+disappeared, for while relatives weep over their dead none dare disturb
+their mourning.  For five days, in commemoration of the death, the
+parents would visit the grave of their child, During this time no
+native dare cross the path leading from their igloo to the silent
+resting place, and while they stood beneath the stars all alien to
+their sorrow must remain within their houses.  Only the Great Spirit,
+who lives beyond the golden veils of the boreal lights, may hear the
+sobbing of a stricken human creature over the thing of which it has
+been bereft.
+
+In the course of ten sleeps--as days are called--the first moon of the
+long night sank below the horizon and the colorful stars fierily
+glittered over a world of black silence.  The cold increased to an
+intolerable bitterness.  Ootah, venturing from his igloo to dig up
+walrus meat, found the earth frozen so solid that it split his steel
+axe.
+
+It was not long before many white mounds appeared beneath the liquid
+stars.  The old and the very young, unable to endure the rigorous cold
+and dearth of food, passed into the mysterious unknown of which the
+long dark of earth is only the portal.  After the passing of the first
+moon the storms came; the sky blackened; the winds voiced the desolate
+woe of millions of aerial creatures.  Terrific snow storms kept the
+tribe within their shelters for days.  Often the winds tore away the
+membrane windows of their snow houses, and blasts of frigid cold
+dissipated the precious warmth within.  In the lee of circular walls of
+ice, right at the immediate entrance of the houses, the natives kept
+their dogs.  Inside they had only room for the mother dogs, which at
+this period brought into being litters of beautiful little puppies with
+which the Eskimo children played.  Outside, scores of splendid animals,
+which could not be sheltered, were frozen to death in great drifts.
+These, during the following days, were dug out and used as food both
+for men and the living animals.
+
+During a quiet period between storms, Ootah, venturing from his
+shelter, heard a shuffling noise near his igloo.  In the northern sky a
+creamy light palpitated, and in one of the quick flares he saw a bear
+nosing about the village.  He called his dogs and they soon surrounded
+the animal.  Fortunately the incandescent light of the aurora
+increased--now and then a ribbon of light, palpitant with every color
+of the rainbow, was flung across the sky.  Ootah lifted his harpoon
+lance--the sky was momentarily flooded with light--he struck.  In the
+next flare he saw the bear lying on the ice--his lance had pierced the
+brute's heart.  Attracted by the barking of Ootah's dogs, several
+tribesmen soon joined him in dressing the animal.  During their task,
+one suddenly beckoned silence, and whispered softly:
+
+"The Voice . . . the Voice . . ."  And they paused.
+
+A weird whistling sound sang eerily through the skies.  The air,
+electrified, seemed to snap and crackle.  It was the voice that comes
+with the aurora.
+
+The knives fell from the natives' hands.  The howling of the hungry
+dogs was stilled.  In hushed awe, in reverence, with vague wondering,
+they listened.  Ootah was on his knees.  An inspired light transfigured
+his face.  His pulses thrilled.  For what they heard was, to them all,
+the Voice of the Great Unknown, He whose power is greater than that of
+_Perdlugssuaq_, He who made the world, created the Eternal Maiden
+_Sukh-eh-nukh_, and placed all the stars in the skies, who, never
+coming Himself earthward, instead sends in the aurora His spirits with
+messages of hope and encouragement to men, and Whose Voice sometimes,
+far, far away, itself comes as the faintly remembered music of long
+by-gone dreams preceding birth . . .  Yea, it was the Voice . . . the
+Voice . . .
+
+And now, out of the black-blue sky, as if released from invisible
+hands, great globes of swimming liquid fire floated constantly, and
+dispersing into millions of feathery flakes of opal light, melted
+softly . . .  Along the lower heavens there was a fugitive flickering
+of a rich creamy light, as of the reflection of celestial fires far
+beyond the horizon.
+
+Speechless, Ootah viewed the flameous wonder, and, although he knew no
+prayer, he felt in his soul an instinctive love, a profound awe . . .
+In the silent sanctity of that auroral-shot and frigidly glorious
+region he seemed to feel the pulsing of an Unseen Presence--a presence
+of which he was a part, of which, with a glow, he felt the soul of her
+he loved was a part, to which all nature, everything that lives and
+breathes, was vitally linked . . .  He felt the drawing urge, the
+thrilling tingling impetus, as it were, of the terrific currents of
+vital spirit force that sweep vastly through the universe, keeping the
+earth and all the planets in their orbits . . .  He felt, what possibly
+the primitive and pure of heart feel most keenly . . . the presence of
+the Great Unknown, He who is the fountain source of love, and whose
+hands on the sable parchment of the northern skies perchance write, in
+irid traceries of fire, mystic messages of hope which none, of all
+humanity, during all the centuries, has ever learned entirely to
+understand.
+
+Not until the wonder lights were fading did the tribesmen take up the
+precious bear meat, and according to Ootah's instructions divide
+portions among the community.  His arm full of meat, Ootah joyously
+entered Annadoah's igloo.
+
+Annadoah, sad and lonely, sat by her lamp.  Her igloo was like that of
+all the others.  Inside, so as to retain the heat and carry off the
+water which dripped from the melting dome of snow, there was an
+interior tent of seal skin.  In a great pan of soapstone was a line of
+moss, which absorbed the walrus fat, and served as a wick for the lamp.
+This emitted a line of thin, reddish blue flame.  Over the light, and
+supported by a framework, was a large soapstone pot in which bits of
+walrus meat were simmering.  By the side of the pot a large piece of
+walrus blubber hung over a rod.  In the heat of the lamp this slowly
+exuded a thick oil which, falling into the pan below and saturating the
+moss wick, gave a constant and steady supply of fuel.
+
+Like the other women, Annadoah sat by her lamp day after day.  When she
+could endure hunger no longer she would eat ravenously of the meagre
+food in the pot.  Regular meals are unknown in the arctic--a native
+abstains from food as long as he can in days of famine, but when he
+eats he eats unstintedly.
+
+As Ootah entered the low enclosure Annadoah's eyes lighted.
+
+Ootah told her of the bear encounter, and, with the joy of children,
+they placed bits of the meat in the pot and sat by, delightedly
+inhaling the odor as it cooked.
+
+Several days later, while they were eating the last remainder of the
+meat, both heard an uproar outside.  They crept from the igloo and
+discovered most of the village assembled without.
+
+"Attalaq hath carried off Ahningnetty," one told them.
+
+"He broke into her father's house and seized her with violence!"
+
+Not far away they heard Ahningnetty's screams.
+
+"Attalaq is strong," said one.
+
+"Yea, as a boy did he not kill his brother?"  All remembered the brutal
+encounter of the two brothers years before, when, throwing him to the
+ground, Attalaq jumped on his brother's body and striking his head with
+stones beat him to death.  Attalaq was a type of the older warriors;
+unlike his more gentle tribesmen he possessed the atavistic savagery of
+his forebears of centuries ago when it was customary to abduct brides.
+
+An excited crowd gathered outside of Attalaq's house.  Soon Attalaq
+himself appeared.  He was exultant.
+
+"Ha!  Ha!" he laughed.  "Methinks that is the way to treat a woman!"
+Then with swollen-up gusto he told them all about it.  Tiring of being
+alone he determined to carry off Ahningnetty.  "A woman's mind is as
+the wind--it constantly changeth," he said.  "Women should be driven as
+the dogs."  Ahningnetty, still weeping, still protesting, came to the
+door.  Attalaq turned fiercely upon her and struck her in the face.
+Then he laughed again.  The girl screamed.
+
+"Well," he said, turning to her.  "I carried thee here--if thou wouldst
+return thou canst walk back.  Eh?"  The girl cowered away, but on her
+face there was the semblance of a pleased expression.  The other women
+regarded her with a tinge of envy.
+
+"'Tis not often in these days a lover careth sufficiently to carry a
+maid away," said an aged crone.
+
+"In the days of old there were men like Attalaq," said a younger woman,
+admiringly.
+
+"Where is Papik?" one asked.  He was not to be seen.
+
+"Dost thou not wish to return to thy father?" Annadoah asked
+Ahningnetty, approaching her.
+
+The girl shook her head.  Much as she had protested, she was
+unquestionably pleased by the forcible abduction.
+
+One of the gossips, desiring to impart the unpleasant news to Papik,
+had gone to his house.
+
+"Papik sits alone," she called, on her return.  "And when I told him
+Ahningnetty hath been carried away by Attalaq, he replied, ''Tis well!
+'Tis well!'  And then he showed me his hands--they were frozen--frozen!
+Verily, he would now be a sorry husband to provide for a wife."
+
+"Papik's fingers frozen!" took up the others.  "Unhappy Papik."
+
+"He sobs and weeps--he sobs and weeps," said the old woman.  "He saith
+the dreaded misfortune hath come, and the days of his skill on the hunt
+are over!"
+
+"Long fingers, short hunt; long nose--short life," remarked Maisanguaq,
+sententiously.
+
+Attalaq, happy in his conquest, was broad enough to be generous.  He
+declared that Papik should never want as long as he could shoot the
+arrow.  Generous-hearted, many of the others joined in and bits of
+blubber were soon offered the lonely Papik, as he sat, nursing his
+frozen members, in his house.  The mishap was tragic, for, his hands
+injured, he had lost not only his skill in the hunt but his ability to
+protect himself in case of accidents.  And from the experience of ages
+all knew that, sooner or later, he was doomed to a comparatively early
+death.
+
+During the first period of the night, and after Ootah's first capture,
+several prowling bears were shot.  The howl of occasional wolves was
+heard in the mountains; then all the bears disappeared, the hunger of
+the wolves was stilled.
+
+When the third moon rose not a thing stirred outside the igloos.  A
+glacial silence gripped the northern world.  In their shelters the
+natives clustered together, warming one another with their breathing
+and the heat of their bodies.  They lacked the courage even to speak.
+
+Day by day their supply of food had run low.  Day by day they decreased
+their portions; their cheeks sunk, hunger burned in their eyes.  To
+save the precious fuel they burned only one lamp in their houses; they
+were unable to sleep because of the intense cold.  Finally their food
+gave out.  From his store Ootah silently doled out allotments until
+starvation confronted him.  One by one the dogs were eaten.  And this
+caused a dull ache, for the men loved their dogs only a little less
+than they did their wives and children.  The quaking fear of the long
+hours slowly gave way to a dull lethargy.  In their igloos, where
+single lamps smoked, they sat, and to keep up their circulation and to
+prevent themselves from falling into a coma, they rocked their bodies
+like things only half alive.
+
+The black days and black nights slowly, tediously, achingly passed.
+One day was like another--one night seemed to mark no progress of time.
+Only the children, to whom parents gave the last bits of food, showed
+some animation.  They played listlessly with one another.  For toys
+they had crude carvings of soapstone--tiny soapstone lamps and pots
+with which they made pitiful mimicry of cooking.  The little girls
+played with crude dolls just as do little girls in more southern
+lands--but they were grotesque effigies, made of skin roughly sewn
+together.  The boys found brief zest in a game which was played by
+sticking ivory points in a piece of bone, hanging from the roof of the
+igloo, and which was perforated with holes.  Finally, as the night wore
+on, the children lost interest in their games, and with aching
+stomachs, lay silent by the fires.  Starvation steadily claimed its
+toll.  Death, slowly, surely, laid its grim and terrible hands upon
+that pitiful fringe of earth's humanity on the desolate star-litten
+roof of the world.  One by one a stark body would be carried from an
+igloo into the black, bitter cold silence without and buried under
+blocks of snow.  And above, intense and incandescent, the Pole
+Star--that unerring time mark of God's inevitable and unerring
+laws--burned like an all-seeing, sentient and pitiless eye of fire in
+the heavens.
+
+
+Annadoah lay upon her couch of furs.  Her face was thin, and white as
+the snows without.  The flame in her stone lamp was about to flicker
+into extinction.
+
+Ootah, entering the igloo, sprang quickly to her side.  Her breath came
+very faintly.  He seized her hands.  He breathed on her face.  He
+opened her ahttee and rubbed her little breasts.  He felt something
+very strange, and wonderful, stirring within him.  And with it a
+ghastly fear that the thing he loved was dying.
+
+Into the lamp he placed the last meagre bits of remaining blubber.
+Then he again set to chafing the tender little hands.  Cold and hunger
+had wrought havoc upon Annadoah.  Ootah's heart ached.
+
+Finally her eyelids stirred.  Her lips parted.  A smile brightened her
+face.  Ootah leaned forward, breathlessly.  Her lips framed an
+inaudible word:
+
+"Olafaksoah . . .  Olafaksoah . . ."  She opened her eyes.  The smile
+faded.  "Thou . . . ?" she said.
+
+"Yea, Annadoah, I have brought thee food," Ootah said.  It was his last.
+
+"I hunger," she breathed.  "It is very cold . . .  I was in the
+south . . . where the sun is warm . . . it is very cold here."
+
+Eagerly he pressed her hands.  She drifted again into a stupor and for
+a long while was silent.  Ootah's warm panting breath finally brought
+blood to her cheeks.
+
+"Thou art so big . . . and strong . . ." she smiled again.  "Thy arms
+hurt me . . . as the embrace of _nannook_ (the bear). . . ."  Her smile
+deepened . . . her breath came more quickly.  "Oh, oh, it is
+pleasant . . . here . . . in . . . the south."
+
+"Annadoah!"  Ootah's wail of hurt recalled her.
+
+Her eyes sought the igloo wonderingly.
+
+"Thou?" she repeated, dully.  "Yea, it is cold here.  I am hungry . . .
+Are there not _ahmingmah_ in the mountains, Ootah?  Didst thou not tell
+me there were _ahmingmah_ in the mountains . . . why do not the men of
+the tribe seek the musk oxen in the mountains?"
+
+With a sudden start Ootah remembered having told Annadoah of the herd
+he had found in the inland valley--it was strange, he thought, he had
+not remembered the herd before.  And it was stranger still that now she
+should remind him.  But the improbability of ever reaching the game,
+the obvious impossibility of such a journey at this time of winter, had
+prevented any such suggestion.
+
+"Many musk oxen are there in the mountains," he said, soothing her
+hands.  She drew them away.  "And thou art hungry . . ."
+
+"I am hungry," she replied, faintly.
+
+After he had given her the last bit of meat he left her igloo.  Above
+him the stars burned, the air was clear and still.  Not a thing moved,
+not a sound was heard--the earth was gripped in that unrelenting spell
+of wintry silence.  Above the imprisoned sea the January moon was
+rising and for ten sleeps--ten twenty-four hour days--it would circle
+about the horizon of the entire sky.  Already the sky above the sea was
+bright as a frosted globe of glass, and pearly fingers of light were
+stealing upward over the interior mountains.
+
+"She is hungry," Ootah repeated over and over again.  "And the tribe
+starves . . . and there may be _ahmingmah_ in the mountains."  Behind
+him they loomed, gigantic and precipitous.  That such a journey meant
+almost certain death he knew; but that did not deter him in the resolve
+to essay a feat no native had ever dared in many hundreds of years.
+
+
+The face of Sipsu, the _angakoq_, as I have said, resembled dried and
+wrinkled leather.  He had been an old man when the eldest of the tribe
+were children.  He had seen hard times, he had suffered from starvation
+during many winters; yet never even in his experience had the lashes of
+_ookiah_ struck so blastingly upon the tribe.  Yea, they had even lost
+their fear of the _tornarssuit_ and no longer brought propitiatory
+offerings of blubber to him.  Yet being wise with age, early in the
+summer he had buried sufficient supplies beneath the floor of his house
+to keep him from starving.  He scowled maliciously as he heard someone
+creeping through the underground entrance of his igloo.  Presently the
+cadaverous face of Maisanguaq appeared.
+
+The interior was heavy with the stench of oil.  The room hung with soot
+from the lamp.  A thin spiral thread of black smoke rose from the
+taper.  In the dim light the leering face of Sipsu appeared like the
+face of the great demon himself.  His small half-closed eyes blazed
+through their slits.
+
+"The spirits are wrathful.  The tribe is forgetful.  What wilt thou
+have?"
+
+Maisanguaq, with unconcealed hesitation, placed a bit of blubber before
+the magician.
+
+"The last I have," he mumbled.  Sipsu seized it avidly.
+
+"Ootah goeth to the mountains," Maisanguaq said, panting for breath.
+
+The old man sneered bitterly:
+
+"He cannot brave the spirits.  No man can live in the mountains.  The
+breath of the spirits is death."
+
+"Yea, he goeth.  He says that he knows where the _ahmingmah_ abound.
+The air is still; the moon rises for ten sleeps.  By then, so he saith,
+he can return with meat."
+
+"No man hath ever ventured there.  The shadow of _Perdlugssuaq_ is very
+dark."
+
+"Yea, may he smite Ootah!" exclaimed Maisanguaq.
+
+Sipsu laughed harshly.
+
+"Couldst thou cause the hill spirits to strike?" Maisanguaq asked
+eagerly.
+
+Sipsu faced Maisanguaq fiercely.
+
+"In my youth I went unto the mountains and I heard the hill spirits
+sing.  Thereupon I became a great magician.  They spoke to me; I was
+silent; thereafter, when I called they answered.  What wouldst thou?"
+
+Maisanguaq indicated the blubber.
+
+"I would thou call them now; that they release the glaciers, that Ootah
+may be carried to his death.  I hate Ootah, I would that he die."  He
+shook his fist.
+
+Sipsu's body quivered from head to foot.  "Ootah hath never consulted
+my familiar spirits," he rejoined bitterly.  "He despiseth them."
+
+Rising from his sitting posture Sipsu seized his drum and began moving
+his body.  He groaned with extreme pain.  By degrees his dance
+increased.  He improvised a monotonous spirit song.  His face grimaced
+demoniacally.  As his conjuration approached the climax, his voice rose
+to a series of shrieks.  He shuddered violently; he seemed to suffer
+agonies in his limbs.  Finally he fell to the floor in a writhing
+paroxysm.
+
+"_Pst_!"  Maisanguaq's eyes lighted.
+
+Outside he heard the sharp barking of dogs.  "_Huk_!  _Huk_!" Ootah's
+voice called.  Others joined in the clamor.  The entire tribe seemed to
+wake as from a sleep of the dead.
+
+"He starts for the mountains," said Maisanguaq.  "Thinkest thou the
+spirits will strike?"
+
+Sipsu opened his eyes--and glared wildly at Maisanguaq.
+
+"Speak," Maisanguaq demanded.  "Hast thou not the power?"
+
+"Did I not once go to the bottom of the sea to _Nerrvik_, she who rules
+over the sea creatures?  Hath she not only one hand, and is she not
+powerless to plait her hair?  Doth she not obey me?  For did I not
+plait her hair?  Did I not carry wood for weapons to the spirits of the
+mountains?  And have they not answered for nigh a thousand moons?"
+
+"Yet there is doubt in thy voice, Sipsu!"
+
+"Yea, to be truthful with thee, Maisanguaq, there is dispute among the
+spirits.  I cannot determine what they say."  He bent his head as if
+listening.  Then he asked:
+
+"Doth Ootah not go that Annadoah may have food?"
+
+Maisanguaq nodded assent.
+
+"And the tribe?"
+
+Maisanguaq again nodded.
+
+As though he suddenly heard some terrifying converse among his
+familiars the necromancer's face blanched.  He struggled to his feet.
+
+"Take thy food," he flung the blubber to Maisanguaq.  "I dare not take
+thy gift.  I am afraid."
+
+Maisanguaq sprang at the old man.  "Revoke not thy curse," he breathed,
+his fingers sinking into the _angakoq's_ throat.  "Will the hill
+spirits strike?"
+
+"Yea," the old man gasped, "but they say----"
+
+Maisanguaq's fingers loosened.  "What?" he demanded.
+
+"That there is . . . some other power . . . which is very
+strange--which----"
+
+"Yea, yea----"
+
+"Protecteth Ootah . . .  It concerneth . . . Annadoah.  I do not wish
+thy gift.  I fear the spirits.  The magic of Ootah--what it is . . .  I
+cannot tell thee . . .  But the spirits say . . . it . . .
+concerneth . . .  Annadoah.  And against it none of the _tornarssuit_
+can prevail."  Maisanguaq threw the old man fiercely to the floor and,
+disgusted, left the igloo.
+
+
+Outside, the entire tribe, with the exception of those dying of hunger,
+had gathered in groups.  Ootah lifted his whip.  His team of eight lean
+dogs howled.
+
+"_Tugto_!  _Tugto_!" he called.  The dogs leaped into the air--his sled
+shot forward.  Ootah strode forward.
+
+In his desperate adventure Ootah was joined by one of the younger
+members of the tribe, Koolotah by name, a lad barely eighteen years of
+age.  All the others had hung back.  Koolotah's mother was dying; a
+desperate desire to save her stirred in his heart as he lifted his whip
+in the signal to start.  The tribe cheered.
+
+"_Huk_!  _Huk_!" he shouted, and his lean dogs followed Ootah's team.
+
+"_Au-oo-au-oo_!" called the natives.
+
+"_Auoo-auoo_!" the voices of Ootah and Koolotah returned.
+
+Over the snow-covered stretch of level shoreland the moon poured a
+flood of silver incandescence.  In this magical light the forms of
+Ootah and his companion were magnified into the likeness of those of
+the giants that the old men said once lived in the highlands.  Their
+dogs were distended into creatures of the size of musk oxen.  Their
+whips exploded as they dashed past the straggling line of snow and
+stone houses; the snow crisply cracked and splintered under their feet.
+
+Then the village disappeared behind them.  The voices of their
+tribesmen trailed shudderingly into silence.
+
+The assembled tribe watched the teams diminishing in the distance.
+Presently someone whispered a terrible thing.
+
+"Sipsu hath cursed Ootah."
+
+A low ominous murmur passed from lip to lip among the gathered men and
+women.  In the distance a black speck in the moonlight marked the
+departing hunters.
+
+"Yea, he hath called upon the spirit of the mountains to destroy Ootah."
+
+A low groan followed this.
+
+"Methinks he hath prophesied too many deaths," said Arnaluk.
+
+"He hath declared that Koolotah's mother will die."
+
+"And Koolotah--did he not say two moons ago that Koolotah would depart
+on a long journey from which he should never return?"
+
+"And the wife of Kyutah--did she not perish after his evil prophesy?
+And Piuaitsoq--did not the spirit of the skin tents strike him when he
+lay asleep?  And did not yon evil wretch tell of it long before?"
+
+A dozen voices angrily rose in assent.
+
+"Verily he hath found hatred in his heart for Ootah.  For Ootah hath
+had no need of his powers.  Did not Ootah's mother sew into his cap the
+skin from the roof of a bear's mouth?  And hath he not become as strong
+as the bear?  Did not his father place in his _ahttee_ the feet of a
+hawk--and have not his own feet the swiftness of the wings of a bird?
+And doth not Sipsu hate him for his strength?  Yea, as he hateth all
+who are young, who are brave, and who find joy in their shadow."
+
+Their voices rose threateningly.  Maisanguaq, chagrined and bitter at
+the old man, leered among the crowd.
+
+"Hath he not lived too long," he whispered softly.  And the others
+suddenly shouted:
+
+"Let Sipsu die!"
+
+In a wild rush they bore down upon the _angakoq's_ igloo.  Screaming
+with rage they kicked in the sides.  The icy dome shattered about the
+startled old man.  They leaped upon him as hungry dogs upon a dying
+bear.  A dozen hands ferociously gripped his throat.  They moved to and
+fro in a mad struggle over the uneven ice.  They seized hold of one
+another in the blood-thirsty desire to lay their hands upon the old
+man.  He made no struggle.  Finally all drew away.  Amid the wreck of
+his igloo Sipsu lay, motionless, his face sneering evilly in the
+moonlight.  His dead lips seemed to frame a curse.
+
+They secured a rope of leather lashings and placed a noose about the
+old man's neck.  Then they dragged his body from the wrecked igloo.
+Weak from lack of food, they still forced themselves to dig up the
+frozen snow at a spot where they knew there were stones, for according
+to their belief they had to bury the old man--otherwise, his spirit
+would haunt them.  To this spot they brought the rotted skins of his
+bed, and on them placed the body, fearful lest they touch it.  By the
+body they placed the old man's lamp, stone dishes, membrane-drum and
+instruments of incantation.  Over the corpse they piled the ice
+encrusted stones, and over these in turn weighty masses of frozen snow.
+Then they turned in silence and entered their respective shelters.
+Thenceforth, until a child should be born to whom it could be given,
+the name of Sipsu might not pass their lips.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+"_As he looked upon the descending wraiths, Koolotah saw they had the
+spirit-semblance of gleaming faces, and that their eyes burned, through
+the enveloping cloud-veils, like fire . . .  'The dead--the dead . . .'
+he said, 'we have come into a land of the dead.' . . .
+
+"Then the glacial mountainside to which he clung trembled . . . the
+silver-swimming world of white dust-driven fire became suddenly
+black--and the earth seemed removed from under him . . ._"
+
+
+Leaving the low-lying shore, Ootah's path led up through a narrow gorge
+between two great cliffs.  Since he had returned from the mountains the
+path had been covered by many successive falls of snow.  At places the
+path sloped abruptly downward at a terrible angle, and the ice cracked
+and slid beneath the hardy hunters' feet.  With the agility of cats,
+the dogs fastened their claws into the ice and climbed upward.
+
+Constantly the two men had to hold to the jagged rocks to their right,
+otherwise, time after time, they would have slipped into the perilous
+abyss below.  Through the chasm the moon poured its liquid rays.  At
+certain points towering crags shut off the light--then Ootah and his
+companion had to feel their way slowly upward in the dark.  Finally
+Ootah's dogs, with a loud chorus of barking, leaped ahead.  Seizing an
+overhanging ledge of rock Ootah lifted himself to the top of the
+precipice.  Koolotah's team followed.
+
+For interminable miles a vast icy plateau stretched before them--a
+plain glistening with snow and reflecting like a burnished mirror the
+misty silveriness of the moon.  Over the glacial expanse an eerily
+greenish phosphorescence, which palpitated and shifted at times with
+vivid splashes of opal and deeper tones of burning blue, hung low.
+
+The upland was split with thousands of canyons that writhed over the
+white expanse like snakes in tortuous convulsions.  From these
+bottomless abysses arose a luminous amethystine vapor.  In the depths
+jutting icicles took fire and glowed through the lustrous mists like
+burning eyes.   Where the chasms joined with others or widened, ominous
+shapes, swathed in wind-blown blackish-purple robes, with extended
+arms, took form.  As Ootah and Koolotah dashed forward, great spaces of
+clear ice palpitated on all sides of them with interior opaline fires.
+
+Neither spoke.  Holding the rear framework of their sleds, they trusted
+to the instinct of their dogs.  Mile after mile swept under their feet.
+Their road often lay along the very edges of purple-black abysses.  The
+echoes of their sharp gliding sleds cutting the ice, of the very patter
+of their dogs' feet, were magnified in volume in the clear air, and it
+seemed as though, in the hollow depths on every side, ghostly teams
+were following.  Koolotah was white with fear.  But Ootah encouraged
+him onward.
+
+They paced off twenty miles.  They reached an altitude of more than a
+thousand feet above the sea.
+
+The great moon slowly circled about the sky; the scurrying clouds
+contorted like grotesque living things.
+
+The two hunters made precipitous descents over unexpected frozen
+slopes--at times it seemed as though they were about to be hurled to
+instantaneous death.  Yet Ootah steeled his heart.  His teeth chattered
+but he gritted them firmly.
+
+"Annadoah needeth food," he murmured, "and----"
+
+His eyes shone, a new pity not unmingled with a taint of bitterness
+filled his heart.  Annadoah must live; she must have food.  For a
+strange thing, he observed, had come upon her.  Her inexplicable moods,
+her brief moments of tenderness, her riotous griefs, and other
+prefigurements of maternity--these made her dearer to Ootah.  So he
+vigorously cracked his whip and urged the dogs.
+
+The chasms twisted with lifelike motion all around him.  Behind, as in
+a dream, Ootah heard the whip of Koolotah, and the barking of
+Koolotah's dogs.  For hours his feet moved swiftly and mechanically
+under him.  Once his foot slipped.  He swerved to the right.  A vast
+black mouth yawned hungrily to receive him; then it closed behind him.
+The leaping team of dogs had pulled him forward.  Luckily he maintained
+a tenacious hold to the rear upstander of his sled.
+
+Narrow chasms constantly cut their trail.  With sharp howls the dogs
+leaped over these, the sleds passed safely, and by instinct Ootah would
+bound forward.  Narrower than a man's stride in width, Ootah knew these
+slits in the glacial ice were hundreds of feet in depth, that a slip of
+the foot might plunge him to immediate death.  Now and then he lost his
+footing on the uneven ice; his heart leaped for fear, but he held
+grimly to the sledge and the lithe, lean but strong dog-bodies carried
+him to safety.  These faithful animals bounded over the glimmering ice
+field with amazing speed.  They snapped and barked with the joy of the
+race.  In the white moonlight the vapor of their breathing enveloped
+them like a silvery cloud.
+
+For hours the hunters continued the trail.  Their mighty purpose fought
+off fatigue.  The moon passed behind cumulous mountains of clouds along
+the horizon, and periods of darkness blotted the world from Ootah.
+Then they traveled in darkness.  A chill dampness rising from the
+gaping abysses that sundered the ice field told them of their danger;
+then Ootah's heart chilled, his teeth were set chattering; but he
+thought of Annadoah and the grim need of food, and he gripped the
+upstander of his sled more determinedly.  When the moon again unclosed
+its pearly sheen over the ice, the serpentine chasms moved their
+tortuous backs and writhed about them, the icy hummocks billowed, and
+the glittering ice-peaked horizon swam in a dizzy circle of diamonded
+light.
+
+As their trail ascended higher the penetrating cold dampness somewhat
+moderated.  In the taut air the sound of their whips was like that of
+splitting metal.  Shuddering and sepulchral echoes answered the barking
+of their dogs.  The faithful ghosts of the dogs of fallen hunters were
+following their departed masters in the amethystine mists of the
+canyons about them.  Ootah and Koolotah trembled with the thought of
+the dreadful nearness of the dead.  Believing other animals to be
+ahead, the dogs set up a wilder, shriller howling.  Then the echoes
+came back with more startling and terrifying proximity.  Ootah's flesh
+crept.  Finally, with an explosive sound, Koolotah let his whip fall.
+
+"_Aulate_--halt!" he called.
+
+They came to a dead standstill.
+
+"_Pst_!" he whispered.  He hit the snapping, whining dogs.  "_Pst_!"
+They crouched to the ground and whined mournfully.
+
+"Dost thou hear?" Koolotah asked in a hushed voice.  In the moonlight
+Ootah saw that the lad's face was as white as the face of the dead, and
+that in his eyes was a wild fear.  From the mountain ridges, which
+loomed beyond, came an ominous noise--resembling a low wind.  Ootah
+bent his head and listened to the sobbing monotone, then whispered:
+
+"The breathing of the spirits of the hills who sleep."
+
+"Perchance we waken them," Koolotah ventured.
+
+"That would be bad," Ootah replied.
+
+"I have left my mother forever," Koolotah wailed.
+
+"Be brave, lad; they need food; beseech the spirits of those who lived
+when men's sap was stronger, thy ancestors, for strength.  Come!"
+
+Koolotah raised his head--then uttered a low cry of alarm.  He drew
+back, fearfully, pointing with a trembling arm to the mountain pass
+ahead.
+
+Covered with glacial snow and ice the slopes of the first ridge of the
+interior mountains gleamed with frosted silver.  Over the white
+expanse, formed by the countless clefts and indentations of the slope,
+cyclopean shadows took form, and like eldritch figures joining their
+hands in a wild dance, loomed terrifyingly before the two men.  Their
+trail now ascended through a gorge which abruptly opened immediately
+before them.  Into this rugged chasm the argent moonlight poured, and
+from unseen caverns in the pass glowered monstrous phosphorescent green
+and ruby eyes.
+
+From the heights above fragments of clouds descended through the chasm.
+In the full moonlight they were transformed into tall aerial beings, of
+unearthly beauty.  They were swathed in luminous robes that fluttered
+gently upon the air, and like the birds they soared, with tremulous
+wings resembling films of silver.  They moved softly, with great
+majesty.  As he looked upon the descending wraiths, Koolotah saw they
+had the spirit-semblance of gleaming faces, and that their eyes burned,
+through the enveloping cloud-veils, like fire.  He drew back, afraid.
+
+"The dead . . ." he murmured . . .  "We have come unto the land of the
+dead."
+
+Both stood in silence, reverent, awed, half-afraid.
+
+Then Ootah snapped his whip.  He called to the dogs.
+
+"Let us go unto them . . .  Let us show that men are not afraid.
+_Huk_!  _Huk_!  _Huk_!  Come!"
+
+The dogs howled, the traces tightened, the sleds sped forward.  They
+entered the defile.  The trail twisted up the side of the abyss.  Less
+than three feet wide for long stretches, the dogs had to slacken and
+pass upward in line, one by one.  Covered with new ice it was
+dangerously slippery, and in climbing the men had to hold to jutting
+icicles for support.
+
+Ootah was ahead.  At times sheer walls of ice confronted him.  At
+certain places there had been drifts, at others glacial fragments had
+slipped from the mountain above.  Before these almost insuperable walls
+Ootah would pause and with his axe hew steps in the hard ice.
+
+They slowly toiled ahead for an hour.  Then a blank sloping ice wall,
+twice the height of Ootah, blocked the path.  He grasped his axe and
+began hewing a series of ascending steps.  He breathed with difficulty;
+the air in the high altitude made respiration difficult.  He was soon
+bathed in perspiration.  The moisture of his breath and beads of sweat
+froze about his face, covering him with an icy mask.  His eyelashes
+froze together.  He had to pause to melt the quickly congealing tears.
+He suffered unendurably.  Finally his axe split; the ice was harder
+than his steel.  He uttered an impatient exclamation.
+
+"Thy axe!" he called to Koolotah.
+
+Koolotah swung his axe in the air and over the dog team separating
+them.  Ootah leaped from his feet and caught the axe as it soared above
+him.  In a half hour the step-like trail was cut, and he clambered over
+the wall.  Digging their nails into the indentations, the dogs
+followed.  Then Koolotah and his team scaled the obstruction.
+
+Koolotah felt his heart choking him as it seemed to enlarge within;
+Ootah, in truth, was not entirely unafraid.  Both knew that a slip of
+the foot would plunge them to instant death.  As they ascended the
+trail, the gathering clouds surrounded them.  They could no longer see
+their dogs.  They could not even perceive the blackness of the chasm to
+their right.  Above and below they were enveloped in a silver mist.
+Only the reflected glitter of the moonlight on jutting icicles on the
+opposite indicated the depths so perilously near.  Through the mist
+Koolotah saw the green and crimson eyes of baleful creatures that
+might, at any moment, spring upon him.
+
+
+When they reached the inland valley they were both spent in strength.
+In sheer relief from the agonized suspense of the journey they sank on
+their sledges and lay palpitating for an hour or more.  But the cold
+froze their perspiring garments and they had to rise and exercise so as
+not to freeze to death.  Ootah knew that no time could be lost.  In the
+interior mountains the breathing of the hill spirits was becoming more
+uneasy.  And Ootah noted with anxiety the increasing moderation of the
+atmosphere.  That was not well.  When the cold relented the hill
+spirits released the glaciers.
+
+With frantic eagerness they explored the valley.  The green grass
+whereon Ootah had seen the splendid animals grazing months before was
+covered with ice.  There was no sign of the _ahmingmah_.  Ootah's heart
+sank.  He felt very much like weeping.
+
+Suddenly the dogs began to sniff the air and bark hungrily.
+
+"_Ahmingmah_!" Koolotah cried, joyfully.
+
+Ootah released the team--the dogs made a misty black streak in their
+dash over the ice.  The men followed.
+
+In the shelter of a cave they found five musk oxen.  They were huddled
+together and half numb with cold.  They roared dully as the howling
+dogs assaulted them, and rushed lumberingly from the cave into the
+moonlight.  Five great black hulks, with mighty manes of coarse hair,
+they ambled over the ice for a space of five hundred feet and then,
+surrounded by the dogs, assembled in a circle, their backs together,
+their heads facing the howling dogs.  Thus they were prepared to
+protect themselves from attack.
+
+The dogs, frantic with hunger, made fierce rushes at the animals.  Now
+and then, as the dogs dashed forward, one of the great beasts would
+charge, its head lowered, and the dogs would leap backward into the air
+and scatter.  Then turning, the animal would rush back to its
+companions as fast as its numbed legs could carry it.
+
+Through the white vapor of their breath, which half hid their great
+horned heads, Ootah could see the eyes of the musk-oxen--they were
+greenish and phosphorescent.  Occasionally the creatures roared
+sullenly, but the fight was less exciting than it would have been had
+they been less torpid from hunger and cold.
+
+Ootah called away the dogs, and raised his gun, one which Olafaksoah,
+in payment for the five sledloads of walrus blubber which he
+confiscated after Ootah's flight to the mountains, had left with a
+generous supply of ammunition with a companion.  Ootah now realized the
+value of the payment which he had scorned.
+
+There was a yellow flash in the moonlight--a mighty roar went up.  The
+dogs, with a cyclonic dash, swooped upon the fallen monster, snapping
+viciously at it as it roared in its death agony.  Frightened, the other
+four scattered--one rushed into the shelter of the cave, the other
+three, dispersing, soon became diminishing black specks in the
+moonlight.  The dogs would have followed, but Ootah called them back.
+One animal was even more than they could manage.
+
+With quick despatch they fell upon the animal with their knives.
+Neither spoke--they worked breathlessly.  With marvellous skill they
+peeled off the heavy skin, and with amazing dexterity carved great
+masses of bleeding meat clean from the bones.  When they had finished,
+only a great skeleton remained.  Outside the cave, eager, whining, the
+starving dogs obediently crouched.  When they had completed the task of
+dressing, Ootah lifted his hand and the canines, with howling avidity,
+fell upon the steaming mass of entrails.
+
+Upon the two sledges the hunters loaded and lashed securely their
+treasure of meat.  In the moonlight the hot steam rose from the
+tremulous masses and Ootah's nostrils dilated with eager, anticipatory
+delight.  The blood dripped upon the snow and Ootah's stomach ached.
+He had not dared to think of eating until now.  Their hands shaking
+with nervous hunger, the two fell upon the remaining meat.  They
+feasted with that savage hungry joy known only to human creatures who
+have faced starvation.  When they started on the return journey there
+was a new vibrant elasticity in their steps.
+
+Ootah snapped his whip and sang.
+
+And his heart sang, too, of Annadoah.
+
+Looking at the clouds, as they drifted through the valley, Ootah
+imagined he saw Annadoah lying upon her couch asleep, and in the faint
+light of an oil lamp he saw upon her face a pleased smile.
+
+"Of what doth Annadoah dream?" Ootah asked the winds.
+
+"Of springtime when the flowers bloom," the winds replied.
+
+"And Annadoah will move to a new skin tent with Ootah!" he said,
+joyously, exultantly.  "Ootah will bring food unto Annadoah and she
+will reward him with her love."
+
+"Foolish Ootah," moaned the wind, "love cannot be won with food,
+neither with _ahmingmah_ meat nor walrus blubber."  Ootah felt his
+heart sink; a vague and heavy misgiving filled him.  Being very simple,
+he had always thought that by securing wealth, in dogs and food, in
+guns and ammunition, and by achieving pre-eminence on the hunt, he
+should win Annadoah's confidence and love.  But now, upon the breath of
+the winds, by the voices of nature, doubt came into his heart.  The
+mistake of many men the world over, and of many wiser than he, he could
+not understand just why this was--this thing the winds said, and which
+his own heart correspondingly whispered.  With food he might possibly
+win Annadoah's consent to be his wife, yes, he knew that; but
+Annadoah's love--that was another thing.  Surely, he now realized, as
+he strode along, that by simply giving her food he could not expect to
+stir in her heart a response to that which throbbed in his.  But why?
+Singularly he never thought of the bravery of his seeking food on this
+perilous adventure, an act which, had he known it, had indeed touched
+the heart of the beautiful maiden.
+
+With the quick atmospheric change of the arctic--a phenomenon common to
+zones of extreme temperature--the wind steadily increased in velocity
+and warmth.  The shallow moon-shot clouds on the ice thickened and
+swept softly under the two travellers' feet.  Above their waists the
+air was clear--they saw each other distinctly in the moonlight.  Yet
+their dogs, hidden in the low-lying vapor, were invisible.  Great
+masses of clouds slowly piled along the horizon and the moon was often
+obscured.  Then the two walked in a darkness so thick it seemed
+palpable.
+
+"Hark!" Ootah called, during one of these spells.  "What is that?"  A
+shuddering sound split the air; the ice field on which they travelled
+vibrated with an ominous jar.  The echoes of splitting ice came like
+distant explosions.
+
+"Have we disturbed the spirits of the hills?" asked Koolotah, in a
+whisper.
+
+"No, no," answered Ootah, anxiously.  "_Huk_!  _Huk_!"  He snapped his
+whip and urged the dogs.  They had not gone twenty paces when from the
+interior heights of Greenland came a series of muffled explosions.
+Undoubtedly the hill spirits had wakened, and, angry, were hurling
+their terrible weapons.
+
+
+They reached, in due course, the top of a mountain ridge down part of
+the glassy slopes of which they had to make their way to the entrance
+of the cleft in which the trail they had so laboriously hewn lay.  The
+gorge yawned blackly some five hundred feet below.  In anticipation of
+their return with loaded sledges, Ootah, on the last reach of their
+upland climb, had chopped on the smooth snows of the mountainside a
+narrow path that ran backward and forward in the fashion of a gently
+inclining elongated spiral.  The mountain sloped at an angle of eighty
+degrees, but by descending cautiously along this circuitous trail a
+safe descent was possible.
+
+While Ootah and his companion stood on the peak, the moon passed behind
+a veil of clouds and Ootah felt two soft wraith-like hands pass over
+his face--cloud-hands which his simple mind believed were sentient
+things.  His heart for the moment seemed to stop.  Thus the kind
+spirits warn men of danger.
+
+At that instant a stinging sound smote the air.  The glacial side of
+the mountain trembled, and as the moon reappeared, on the icy slopes
+Ootah saw narrow black cracks zigzagging in various directions.  A
+cataclysmic rumbling sounded deep in the earth.
+
+When the echoes died away he turned to Koolotah.
+
+"Be brave of heart.  Let us go--there is no time to lose."
+
+"_Huk_!  _Huk_!  _Huk_!"  They urged the dogs gently.  Arranging
+themselves instinctively in single file, the traces slackening, the
+wonderful dogs, with feline caution, crept ahead.  Lowering their
+bodies, each behind his sledge, Ootah and Koolotah began moving
+stealthily downward.  With one hand each clung to the rough icy
+projections of the slope; with the other they held the rear upstander
+of their sleds to prevent them from sliding, with their precious loads
+of meat, down the mountainside.
+
+Half way down, Ootah uttered a cry.
+
+His quick ear detected a faint splitting noise, like the crack of young
+ice in forming, under his feet.  In an instant he realized their danger.
+
+At the time he had reached a hollow in the perilous slope.  The dogs
+ahead, with quick instinct, retreated and crouched at his feet in the
+sheltering cradle.
+
+Ootah saw Koolotah turn and look inquiringly upward.  The next moment,
+driven downward by the wind, a mass of clouds, glittering with bleached
+moonfire, rolled over the slopes and hid Koolotah.  Ootah only heard
+his voice.
+
+Then the glacial mountainside to which he clung trembled.  A terrific
+crash, like that of cannon, followed.  The very mountain seemed to
+shake.  For a brief awful spell everything was still--then, with an
+appalling thunder, the ice split and began to move.  The moon
+reappeared and Ootah--in a tense moment--saw chasms widening about him
+on the glistening slope.  He heard the deafening echoing explosions of
+splitting ice in the distance . . .  With fierce ferocity he
+instinctively fastened one bleeding hand to an icy projection above
+him, with the other he held with grimly desperate determination to the
+sled . . .  In the next dizzy instant he felt the icy floor beneath him
+lurch itself forward and downward . . .  before his very eyes he saw
+Koolotah and his team--not twenty feet below--wiped from existence by
+the descending glacier to which he clung and in the hollow crevice of
+which he found security . . .  In a second's space he caught a clear
+vision of tremendous masses of green and purple glaciers being ground
+to fine powder in their swift descent on all sides of him, . . .  he
+saw the feathery ice fragments catch fire in the moonlight, . . . he
+heard the elemental roar and grinding crash of ice mountains sundering
+in a titanic convulsion . . . then he lost hearing . . .  In that same
+sick bewildering moment of preternatural consciousness he thought
+wildly of Annadoah . . . he saw her appealing wan face amid the blur of
+white moonlight . . . he knew she needed food . . . and he felt an ache
+at his heart . . . he called upon the spirits of his ancestors.  Then
+the silvery swimming world of white dust-driven fire became suddenly
+black--and the earth seemed removed from under him.
+
+
+In the village the natives were awakened from their lethargic sleep by
+the far-away crash of the avalanche.  Their faces blanched as they
+thought of the hunters.  "The hill spirits have smitten!  _Ioh_!
+_Ioh_!" they moaned.  In her igloo Annadoah, who had waited with
+sleepless anxiety, wept alone.  Of all in the village only the heart of
+one, Maisanguaq, was glad.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+"_The utter tragedy of her devotion to the man who had deserted her,
+and the utter hopelessness of his own deep passion, blightingly,
+horribly forced itself upon him . . .  Ootah asked himself all the
+questions men ask in such a crisis . . . and he demanded with wild
+weeping their answer from the dead rejoicing in the auroral Valhalla.
+But there was no answer--as perhaps there may be no answer; or, if
+there is, that God fearing lest, in attaining the Great Desire, men
+should cease to endeavor; to serve and to labor has kept it locked
+where He and the dead live beyond the skies._"
+
+
+The moon dipped behind the horizon.  For five sleeps naught had been
+heard from Ootah and his companion.  Inetlia, the sister of Koolotah,
+followed in turn by some of the other women, visited the igloo of
+Annadoah.  Upon her couch of moss Annadoah lay, and over her a cover
+given by Ootah and lined with the feathers of birds.
+
+"'Twas thou who sent Ootah to the mountains," one complained.  "May the
+ravens peck thine eyes!" cried another.  Annadoah shook her head sadly
+and wept.
+
+"'Twas thou who chose Olafaksoah, the robber from the south, that thou
+mightest be his wife; and 'twas thou, his wife, who beguiled the men
+and robbed thy tribe.  Did we not give away our skins, and didst thou
+not make garments for Olafaksoah?  And do we not now shudder from the
+cold?  'Twas thou who put the madness into the head of Ootah, the
+strongest of the tribe.  Many are the maidens who are husbandless and
+yet Ootah pined for thee.  Why didst thou not choose Ootah?  Then he
+would have remained and prevented the thievery of the strangers, we
+should not have been robbed, and he would not have had to go far unto
+the mountains, where the spirits have struck him in their wrath?  Nay,
+nay, thou didst make the men of our tribe sick with thoughts of thee.
+They have quarrelled among themselves.  And before the white men came,
+did they not reproach us, their wives and their betrothed, with thy
+name and the vaunted skill of thee?  Thou art as the woman with an iron
+tail, she who killed men when they came to her, their skins flushed
+with love.  Thou destroyest men!  Thou didst send Ootah and Koolotah to
+the mountains!  And they have perished!  _Ioh-h_!  _Ioh-h_!"
+
+Entering her igloo two or three at a time they reproachfully recited in
+chiding chants to Annadoah the story of her life; how her worthy mother
+and august grand-parents had died, hoping she would choose a husband
+from the hunters, and how she had refused all who sought her; they
+told, with reiterant detail, how she had caused quarrels among the men,
+and sent many of the warriors in their competitive hunts to death; and
+how, finally, when Ootah, the bravest of the hunters, wanted to wed
+her, she had chosen a foreign man, who deserted her and left her a
+burden on the tribe.  Sometimes they shook her roughly.
+
+To the native women the brutality and virility of the men from the
+south exert a potent appeal; and the fact that Olafaksoah had chosen
+Annadoah many moons since still made their mouth taste bitter.  This
+jealousy rankling within them, they now with angry exultation took
+occasion to mock and abuse her.  The girl lay still and did not reply.
+Her heart indeed seemed like a bird lying dead in wintertime.
+
+Then one of three women who stood by Annadoah's couch leaned forward
+and whispered a terrible thing.  The others looked at the girl and
+fear, mingled with hatred, shone in their eyes.
+
+"Thou sayest this thing," said one, "how dost thou know?"
+
+And the other, pointing accusingly to the girl who lay before them, her
+face hidden in her arms, replied:
+
+"The night my baby died . . .  I heard her voice."
+
+They stood in silence, rigid, implacable, bitter.
+
+During the latter dark days a terrible calamity had made itself felt
+among the tribe.  This was the death of many of the newly born.
+Outside the igloos during the past months, as the babies had come, the
+number of tiny mounds had increased, and when the aurora flooded the
+skies heart-broken mothers could be seen weeping over these graves of
+snow.  It is not uncommon in this land for babies to die at birth or
+come prematurely; but the number of recent deaths and tragic accidents
+to expectant mothers was unprecedented.  This was undoubtedly due to
+the depleted vitality of the starving mothers--but to the natives there
+was some other, some unaccountable, some sinister, cause.  In their
+hearts they experienced, each time a new mound rose white in the
+moonlight, that tremulous terror of a people who instinctively fear
+extinction.  The grief of a mother was for a personal loss; to the
+tribe each death meant an even greater, more significant loss, a thing
+of more than personal consequence.
+
+And when, out of the dim regions of her brain, one of the women now
+conjured the terrible thing which she whispered concerning Annadoah, it
+was little wonder the other two regarded the girl as a thing hateful
+and accursed.
+
+"_She stealeth souls!_"
+
+Nothing more frightful could have been said.
+
+"Yea, the night my baby died I heard her voice," repeated Inetlia
+angrily.
+
+And the other, among the superstitious voices in her memory, found it
+not difficult to recall a similar thing:
+
+"Methinks I heard her sing the night my own little one came--too soon."
+
+And the third whispered:
+
+"She is as the hungry hill spirit who feasts upon the entrails of the
+dead.  Yea, she carrieth off the souls of the children.  _Ioh_!
+_Iooh_!"
+
+Their voices rose in a maniacal cry of terror and denunciation.
+
+Annadoah rose.  Clasping her hands, she demanded piteously:
+
+"Why . . . sayest ye this of me?"
+
+And they shrieked:
+
+"Thou stealest souls!  By the _angakoq_ shalt thou be accursed!"
+
+"No, no!  No, no!" the girl pleaded, falling on her knees and weeping.
+
+Although they suddenly ceased their reviling, hearing outside the
+barking of dogs, the women thereafter in secret often assembled
+together; there were ominous whisperings; and each time a child died
+visits were paid to the _angakoq_, and the unseen powers were invoked
+to bring misfortune to Annadoah.
+
+Outside the silenced women detected the barking of dogs approaching the
+village from the distance.  They heard the excited calls of tribesmen
+and the chatter of other women.  One by one they crept from the igloo.
+A strange light in her eyes, Annadoah followed.
+
+Over the mountains to the north a soft and wondrous light began to
+palpitate tremulously . . .  While the men of the tribe rushed to meet
+the oncoming team of dogs in the distance, the women stood and gazed
+with awe upon the increasing wonder in the skies . . .  The northern
+lights, seen nowhere else so splendidly in all the world, had begun the
+weaving of their glorious and eerie imagery.  A nebulous film of
+silvery light wavered with incredible swiftness over the heavens . . .
+The snow-blanketed land took instantaneous fire in the sudden
+flares . . .  In the torridly tropic heaven of the virtuous dead an
+Unknown God, so the tribes believe, makes fire--just as in the nether
+regions beneath the earth the Great Evil, who has revealed himself with
+a more terrible reality than the Great Benign, creates cold and forges
+ice.  In that land of the happy dead, disclosed in the aurora, there is
+never any night, nor is it ever cold.  So the souls there are always
+happy.  Sometimes in their revels they troop earthward to cheer the
+mortals who suffer from _Perdlugssuaq's_ frigid breath as it comes
+during winter from hell . . .  The women looked at one another.  The
+augury was good.
+
+"The spirits of the dead," one whispered, "are happy . . .  They are
+playing ball."
+
+Into their midst, surrounded by the glad cheering men of the tribe,
+Ootah staggered.  His face was cut and covered with black clotted
+blood.  His legs dragged with utter exhaustion.  His features were
+gaunt and marked by lines of frightful suffering.  His eyes were bright
+with the light of fever.  When he saw Annadoah a faint but very glad
+smile passed over his countenance; he made an effort to forget the
+anguished throes of pain in his limbs and the intermittent shudderings
+of cold and flushes of intense fever.  He tried to speak, but then
+shook his head sadly.  Instead, he pointed to the dilapidated sledge.
+Three of his dogs had perished--five had been saved.  The sled had been
+battered, but was lashed together.  Upon it, however, the precious load
+of meat was intact.  The subtle aroma of it sent a wave of gladness
+through the crowd.  They danced about Ootah, asking questions.  Ootah
+staggered backward and sank helpless against the sledge.  After a while
+he found voice.
+
+"I am very weak," he managed to say.
+
+Several of the women disappeared and soon returned with a bit of walrus
+blubber.  This, having undergone a process of fermentation in the
+earth, possessed the intoxicating qualities of alcohol.  It is used by
+the natives for purposes of stimulation in such cases and in their
+celebrations.  Ootah with difficulty ate this.
+
+He felt stronger, and rose.
+
+"Thou art ill," said Annadoah, approaching him, and gently touching his
+wounded face.  "Enter, Annadoah will care for thee."
+
+Her face was perilously near him; it was very wan and beautiful in the
+auroral light--Ootah felt his heart beat wildly.  But it was pity, not
+love, that shone softly from Annadoah's eyes.
+
+"Thy igloo is cold, thy lamp unlighted," Annadoah insisted.  "Come!
+The others will prepare thy couch and light thy lamps.  Until then my
+bed is thine.  It is warm within."
+
+With difficulty Ootah bent low and followed Annadoah through the
+underground entrance of her igloo.  His dogs, which the men had
+unhitched, and as many as could enter the small enclosure, followed.
+The stench of the oil lamp at first almost suffocated him.  He sank to
+Annadoah's couch from sheer weakness, and his dogs, licking his face
+and hands, crept about him.
+
+Meanwhile Annadoah began melting snow over her lamp.  The others plied
+Ootah with questions.  Did he go far into the mountains?  Were there
+many _ahmingmah_?  Did Koolotah perish?  Was he in the mountains when
+the spirits struck?  To all of this he could only move his head in
+response.  While he sipped the warm water gratefully, Annadoah cut away
+his leather boots and bathed his injuries.  His flesh was torn and one
+ankle was sprained--by a miracle not a bone had been broken in the
+fall.  With unguents left years before by white men, Annadoah treated
+his many cuts and bruises and bound them securely with clean leather.
+After he lay back on the couch she bathed his face, and rubbed into the
+wounds salves which her father had given to her mother and which for
+years had been preciously preserved.
+
+Ootah lay with his eyes closed; he seemed to float in the auroral skies
+without, in the very happy land of the dead.  He forgot the pain in his
+limbs, the furnace in his forehead.  He felt only the soothing touch of
+Annadoah's dear hands, and her breath at times very near, fanning his
+face; he heard her voice murmuring to the onlooking natives.  Not
+satisfied with these ministrations, in which they really had little
+faith, the others presently brought a young _angakoq_, one better loved
+than the dead Sipsu.  For being young he had not prophesied many deaths.
+
+All moved away as the magician began beating his membrane drum over
+Ootah's body.  Working himself into frenzy, he called upon his familiar
+spirits.  For, according to their belief, illness, and the suffering
+resultant from wounds, are actually caused by the spirits of the
+various members of the body falling out of harmony.  Then the _angakoq_
+must persuade his friends in the other world to restore peace among the
+spirits of the human hands, feet, head, or whatever limbs may be
+affected.  The soul, or great spirit, they say resides in one's shadow,
+and sometimes this falls out of agreement with the minor spirits of the
+body.  Then one is in bad shape, indeed.
+
+For half an hour the chant and dance continued.  Meanwhile Ootah opened
+his eyes and often smiled at Annadoah.  He was better, he told them,
+and motioned the _angakoq_ to go.  He bade Annadoah sit beside him.  He
+felt unquestionably better.
+
+"You have asked me whether I went far over the mountains?  Yea, we
+travelled many sleeps, yet we scarcely rested.  The world was white
+about us.  The spirits carried us over dark places in the hills,
+wherein _Perdlugssuaq_ makes his home.  But he did not strike.  We were
+borne over abysses.  The spirits of one's ancestors are often kind.  We
+went through the world of the fog, she who was the wife of that hill
+spirit who carried the dead from their graves and ate them.  Yea, she
+passed beneath our feet.  We came to the high mountains.  We passed
+upward where the eyes of strange beasts glared upon us.  I was afraid.
+But I called upon my father.  Then the spirits of the great dead came
+down upon us.  They wove _kamiks_ and _ahttees_ of fire.  Their eyes
+burned as the great light of the stars.  They did not regard us.  We
+came unto the _ahmingmah_ . . .  But upon our return the hill spirits
+who live in the caves wakened and struck with their great harpoons.
+They shook the mountains.  Then the good ancestors carried me through
+_sila_--the world of the air--yea, my dogs, my sledge, and the
+_ahmingmah_ meat.  I had called upon those who went before me.  I woke
+at the bottom of the mountain, three of my dogs were crushed, my sledge
+was broken . . .  I lay there a while . . .  I slept again . . .
+often . . .  Then I lashed the sled, ate a little of the _ahmingmah_
+meat, and came . . . hither . . .  How . . .  Ootah knows not . . .  It
+was hard at times . . .  I could hardly walk . . . the ice moved about
+me . . . always . . . so--"  He described a circle with his hand.  "But
+I bethought me of Annadoah--" he smiled--"and I said I go to
+Annadoah . . .  That is how I came . . .  I said Annadoah is
+hungry--yea, as I said it when the eyes looked at me on the mountains,
+when the hill spirits made my heart grow cold, when Koolotah desired to
+return . . .  Koolotah--he hath gone . . .  Koolotah's dogs are
+gone . . .  But I called upon my dead father, my dead grandfather, and
+the older ones--and I thought of Annadoah."  He leaned toward her
+yearningly, his voice trembling.  Fearfully the girl drew away.  "It is
+she who brought the _ahmingmah_ meat," he said.  "It is she who led me
+to the _ahmingmah_.  Yea, she brings you the _ahmingmah_ meat.  For the
+thought of her brings Ootah back after the spirits strike . . .  It is
+she, who lives in the heart of Ootah, who has done all this . . .  But
+you are hungry.  Come!"
+
+He rose slowly and crept through the underground tunnel leading from
+the igloo.  The others followed.  Without, most of the tribe were
+waiting.  At Ootah's command the men unlashed the sledge-load of meat,
+and the division began.  To Annadoah Ootah gave one-eighth of the load,
+enough to last by frugal use for more than two moons, or months.  Among
+the others, of whom there were about twenty-five, the remainder was
+proportionately divided.  For himself Ootah reserved only as much as he
+gave the others.
+
+Outside Annadoah's igloo all engaged in a joyous revel.  Hungrily they
+feasted upon the raw meat.  Then they beat drums and danced.  Their
+voices rose in hilarious chants.  Wild joy shook them.  Ootah was
+acclaimed hero of the tribe.  Although they have no chiefs, he was
+accorded the honor of being the bravest and strongest among them.  And
+to the strongest and most heroic the last word in all things belongs.
+
+Of all who were able to participate in the celebration, Maisanguaq
+alone retired.  From the seclusion of his igloo entrance he watched the
+scene with rancor in his heart.
+
+Over the northern skies the auroral lights played, lighting the scene
+of spontaneous rejoicing with magical glory.  Great silver coronas--or
+rings of light--constantly arose in the north, passed to the zenith and
+melted as they descended to the south.  Luminous curtain-like films
+closed and parted alternately like the veils of a Valhalla drawn back
+and forth before the warrior souls of the north.  Tremendous fan-shaped
+shafts of opalescent fire shot toward the zenith and like search-lights
+moved to and fro across the sky.  The clouds became illumined with an
+interior flame and glowed like diaphanous mists of gold half concealing
+the vague faces of the beauteous spirits of the dead.  Their billowing
+edges palpitated with a tremor as of quicksilver.  Within and through
+this empyreal web of light marvellous scenes were simultaneously woven.
+They lasted a moment's space and vanished.  The natives, dancing
+unrestrainedly, saw heavenly mountain slopes covered with grass of
+emerald fire and glittering with starry flowers.  They saw the gigantic
+shadows of celestial _ahmingmah_ passing behind the clouds . . . and
+here and there were the cyclopean adumbrations of great caribou, and
+creatures for which they did not have a name.  A tossing sea of
+rippling waves of light was presently unfolded, and over it they saw
+millions of birds, with wings of fire, soaring with bewildering
+rapidity from horizon to zenith . . .  This faded . . .  Monstrous and
+gorgeous flowers of living rainbow tints burst into bloom--fields of
+them momentarily covered the heaven.  These the natives regarded with
+only half accustomed wonder, for they knew there were strange flowers
+in the land of the dead.
+
+As they danced, the colored imageries steadily faded in the growing
+intensity of the great banded coronas that rose from the north.  A
+light of cold electric fire increasingly blazed over the heavens until
+a frigid silver day, brighter than any day of sunshine, reached its
+brief noon upon the earth.
+
+Rocking their bodies and singing, the natives dispersed to their
+respective igloos.  Sitting on his sledge by Annadoah, Ootah dimly
+heard their voices echoing into silence; he experienced terrible pains
+again in his limbs and the fever in his head.  Everything became dizzy,
+and with a sick feeling of faintness he crept into Annadoah's igloo and
+fell upon her couch.
+
+It was in his heart to ask her once again to be his, to repeat the
+protestation of his love; he felt that he had shown he deserved to win
+her.  But his utter weakness, and the very enthralling delight of her
+soft hands on his forehead, kept him still.  He lay in a semi-delirium
+suffering greatly, but at heart very happy.  A new peace possessed him.
+Never had Annadoah caressed him before, never had he felt the tingling
+thrill of her tender hands, never had her breath so perilously warmed
+his face.  For an hour she sat by him, perfunctorily bathing his wounds
+with the white men's ointment and rubbing a yellow salve upon his face.
+And while she did this, often, very often, she closed her eyes.
+Sometimes her hands, as they passed over his forehead, absently
+wandered to the couch, sometimes they soothed the air near the
+suffering man.  Then she would recall herself.  Gazing upon Ootah, pity
+would fill her; and then--well, then her mind would wander.  She was
+faint herself, tired and half-asleep.
+
+Once, as she touched Ootah's hand, he closed it impulsively over hers.
+Her heart gave a thud.  Her eyelids quivered.  A smile appeared on her
+face.  Ootah pressed her hand more firmly--he did not realize how
+fiercely in his fever.  His blood ran high; in a mingled delirium of
+pain and transport he drew her slowly toward him.  Her one hand soothed
+his brow, softly, very gently.  The smile on her face deepened.  She
+gasped with a throe of the old memories.
+
+"Olafaksoah," she breathed, rapturously.
+
+Ootah felt a horrible pain grip his heart.  He opened his eyes, stark
+conscious.  He saw the eyes of Annadoah were closed.  On her face he
+observed the fond, far-away smile; he knew her heart was in the south.
+And in that frightful moment his untutored mind by instinct realized
+why she had bandaged and soothed him so tenderly, realized, indeed,
+that in doing so, in his stead, her mind had conjured up the vision of
+Olafaksoah.  His hands were strong, she had said, they hurt her.
+Ootah, with ferocity, gripped her little hand tighter.
+
+"Olafaksoah," she murmured again, with delight--then, recalling
+herself, suddenly uttered a sharp cry of dismay as she opened her eyes.
+
+Ootah staggered to his feet.  The utter tragedy of her devotion to the
+man who had deserted her, the utter hopelessness of his own deep
+passion blightingly, horribly forced itself upon him.
+
+"Annadoah!  Annadoah!  Annadoah!" he wailed, his voice sobbing the
+beloved name.
+
+The igloo was stifling; he felt that he was suffocating.  Everything
+reeling about him, he crept painfully from the igloo into the night.
+He felt he must be alone.
+
+Outside the aurora was paling with intermittent cascades of resolving
+lights.  Over the snows glittering rosy fingers painted running rainbow
+traceries.  It seemed as though the spirit revellers were pouring fiery
+jewels from the skies.
+
+Ootah stood before that revealed and radiant land of the dead--the dead
+who danced and were happy--his hands clenched and upraised above him.
+
+"Annadoah!  Annadoah!" he sobbed the name again and again, and in his
+voice throbbed all the piteousness, all the bitterness of his utter
+heartbreak.  There was no reproach in his shuddering sobs; only sorrow,
+only the desolation and eternal heart-ache of that which loves
+mightily, unrequitedly, and realizes that all it desires can never,
+never be.
+
+Ootah asked himself all the questions men ask in such a crisis; why,
+when he loved so indomitably, the heart of Annadoah should stir only
+with the thought of another; why the spirits that weave the fabric of
+men's fate had designed it thus.  Why the ultimate desire of the heart
+is forever ungranted and an intrinsically unselfish love too often
+finds itself defeated--these questions, in his way, he asked of his
+soul, and he demanded, with wild weeping, their answer from the dead
+rejoicing in the paling Valhalla.  But there was no answer--as perhaps
+there may be no answer; or, if there is, that God, fearing lest in
+attaining the Great Desire men should cease to endeavor, to serve and
+to labor, has kept it locked where He and the dead live beyond the
+skies.
+
+Ootah fell prostrate to the ground and his body throbbed on the ice in
+uncontrollable throes of grief.  The aurora faded above him.  Darkness
+closed upon the earth.  Sitting in her igloo, startled, vaguely
+perplexed and half-afraid, Annadoah heard him sobbing throughout the
+night.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+"_For a long black hour of horror they were driven over the thundering
+seas and through a frigid whirlwind of snow sharp as flakes of
+steel . . .
+
+"Seeing Ootah turn slightly toward Annadoah, Maisanguaq sprang at his
+throat.  Their arms closed about one another . . .  The floe rocked
+beneath them--they slipped to and fro on the ice . . .  About them the
+frightful darkness roared; they felt the heaving sea under them.  And
+while they struggled in their brief death-to-death fight, the floe was
+tossed steadily onward._"
+
+
+The long night began to lift its sable pall, and at midday, for a brief
+period, a pale glow appeared above the eastern horizon.  In this brief
+spell of daily increasing twilight the desolate region took on a
+grey-blue hue; the natives, as they appeared outside their shelters,
+looked like greyish spectres.  Ootah felt the grim grey desolation
+color his soul.
+
+He had regained his strength, and his wounds had healed with the
+remarkable rapidity that nature effects in people who lead a primitive
+life; only the hurt in his heart remained.  Annadoah had often visited
+him, and while he lay on his bed of furs she had boiled _ahmingmah_
+meat and made hot water over the lamp very solicitously.  Once,
+half-hesitating, she looked into his eyes, and as though she had a
+confession to make, said quietly:
+
+"Thou art very brave, Ootah."
+
+This pleased him--once she had said he had the heart of a woman.
+
+He had thrilled when she soothed him, and now he was half sorry that
+the injuries no longer needed attention.  He loved Annadoah more deeply
+than ever, and his greatest concern was for her.  He might win
+her--yes, perhaps some day, but he could not forget that, whenever she
+had touched him with tenderness, she thought of Olafaksoah.
+
+Standing before his igloo, musing upon these things, Ootah espied in
+the semi-light a dark speck moving on the ice.
+
+"_Nannook_! (_Bear_)" he called, and the men rushed from their houses.
+Without pausing to get his gun Ootah ran down to the ice-sheeted shore.
+Nature, as if repenting of her bitterness, had sent milder weather, and
+the bear, emerging from its winter retreat, made its way over the ice
+in search of seal.  Lifting his harpoon, Ootah attacked the bear.  It
+rose on its haunches and parried the thrusts.  A half-dozen lean dogs
+came dashing from the shelters and jumped about the creature.  The bear
+grunted viciously--the dogs howled.  The bear was lean and faint from
+hunger, and its fight was brief--the lances of four natives pierced the
+gaunt body.  The bear meat was divided after the communal custom of the
+tribe, and the gnawing of their stomachs was again somewhat appeased.
+Some days later three bears were killed near the village.  The hearts
+of the tribe arose, for spring was surely dawning.
+
+Early in March Arnaluk, skirmishing along the shore, saw a bear
+disappearing in the distance.  The animal was making its direction
+seaward, and this indicated to the astute native that its quick senses
+had detected the presence of seal.
+
+"Ootah!  Ootah!" he called.  "Attalaq!  Attalaq!"  The two tribesmen
+responded.  With harpoons and lances they followed the trail of the
+bear.  Less than a mile from shore they found it sitting near a seal
+blow hole in the ice.  At the sight of the men it fled.  A close
+inspection resulted in the discovery of a half dozen blow holes--or
+open places to which the seal rise under the ice and come to the
+surface to breathe.  For a long while the men waited.  Standing near
+the holes, their weapons ready to strike, they imitated the call of
+seals.  Finally there was a snorting noise beneath one of the holes.
+Ootah detected a slight rise of vapor.  Attalaq's harpoon descended.  A
+joyous cry arose.  Breaking open the ice about the hole a seal was
+drawn to the surface.  Daily visits were thereafter made to the
+vicinity and the hunters, patiently watching near the holes, succeeded
+in catching several seals.  Other blow holes were later detected along
+the ice, then they disappeared and for a period no seal rewarded the
+hunters.
+
+The weather continued to moderate, and these excursions on the sea ice
+became more and more dangerous.  One day Attalaq and Ootah, while
+walking along the shore, heard a familiar call in the far distance, out
+toward the open sea.
+
+"Walrus," said Ootah, the zest of the hunt tingling in his veins.
+
+"But the danger is great--the ice splits," said Attalaq.
+
+"But we need food."  Ootah thought of Annadoah.  She had not been well,
+she needed food--that was sufficient.  Moreover, he thought of the
+children; three were dying of lack of food.  So he called the tribesmen
+and gave the signal for preparations to depart.  A selection had to be
+made of the best dogs for the dangerous trip.  Few dogs remained in the
+village; many had been frozen by the bitter cold; others had to be
+killed as food for their companions; some had occasionally been
+devoured by the famished natives.  And this the desperate people had
+done with reluctance and great sorrow--for, as I have said, a native
+loves his dog but little less than his child.
+
+Ootah in the lead, with five others, started on the hunt, with three
+sledges, each of which was drawn by a team of five lean, hungry dogs.
+After some urging Maisanguaq had sullenly consented to accompany the
+party.
+
+Joy flushed the natives' skin, for a thin film of sunlight trembled low
+over the eastern horizon.  As they sped northward past great
+promontories they saw several auks.  Later two ptarmigan were spotted,
+and still later an eider duck.  They began chanting songs of the race.
+
+Quickly, however, the brief sunlight faded, heavy grey clouds piled
+along the sky-line, the atmosphere became perceptibly warmer, and
+intermittent gusts of wind blew downward from the inland mountains.
+
+They directed their steps over the ice to a distant black spot,
+somewhat more than a mile distant, which they knew to be open water.
+There, if there were any, the walrus would be found.  As they were
+marching, a very faint crackling noise vibrated through the ice under
+their feet.  They ceased singing.  Four of the party paused and would
+have turned back.  Ootah urged them onward.  They paced off half a
+mile.  The wind increased in volume and whined dolefully.  Their steps
+lagged.  Suddenly they heard the harsh nasal bellow they knew so well.
+The hearts of all expanded with the joy of the hunt.
+
+The dogs howled hungrily and, with tails swishing savagely, tore ahead.
+As they approached the edge of the sea ice they passed great lakes of
+open water.  The twilight still continued to thicken, the wind came in
+increasingly furious blasts.  Nearer and nearer came the low call of
+walrus bulls.
+
+In a lake of lapping black water, about five hundred feet from the open
+sea, a small herd rose to the surface intermittently for breath.  In
+the deep gloom the hunters saw fountains of spray ascending as they
+breathed.  Hitching their dogs to harpoon stakes driven in the ice,
+they separated and quietly took positions about the open water.
+
+"Wu-r-r!"  The low walrus call rose over the ice.  Ootah leaned over
+the edge of the ice and imitated the animal cry.  "Woor-r," Maisanguaq,
+near him, replied.  The water seethed, and two glistening white tusks
+appeared.  Ootah raised his harpoon--it hissingly cut the air.  A
+terrific bellow followed.  The little lake seethed.  A dozen fiery
+eyes, of a phosphorescent green, appeared above the water.  Maisanguaq
+struck, so did Arnaluk.  They let out their harpoon lines--the savage
+beasts dove downward, then rose for breath.  In their frantic struggle
+their heads beat against the ice about the edge of the space of open
+water.  The natives fled backward--the ice broke into thousands of
+fragments.  Each time the animals came up the hunters delivered more
+harpoons so as to pinion securely and at the same time despatch the
+prey.  In the gathering gloom they had to aim by instinct.  For an hour
+the struggle between the alert men and the enraged beasts continued.
+Several times Ootah and Arnaluk fired their guns as the green eyes
+appeared so as to finish the task of killing.
+
+Meanwhile the grey reflection of the descending sun entirely faded
+along the horizon; a bluish gloom blotted out the landscape.  The wind
+swept over the ice with fiendish hisses.  With a quick change the air
+became colder and snow flakes fell.  The natives became alarmed.  As
+they were drawing the first walrus to the ice a sound, like the
+discharge of a gun beneath the sea, startled them.  Seizing their
+knives they dexterously fell upon the animal and lifted the meat and
+blubber in long slices from the bones.  A great quantity was cast to
+the ravenous dogs.  Two more walrus were lumberingly drawn to the ice;
+the first sledge load and two hunters started shoreward; soon the
+second sledge was loaded.  Ootah and Maisanguaq remained to dress the
+third beast.
+
+Like scorpions in the hands of the mighty _tornarssuit_ the wind now
+steadily beat upon the ice.  The two men were almost lifted from their
+feet.  Not far away they heard the tumultuous crash of the rising
+waves.  As they were lashing the blubber to Ootah's sledge, a
+resounding detonation vibrated through the ice under him--the field on
+which they stood slowly but unmistakably began to move!
+
+Maisanguaq spoke.  The wind drowned his voice.  Above its clamor they
+heard the ice separating with the splitting sound of artillery.
+Whipped by the terrific gale the snow cut their faces like bits of
+steel.  In the darkness, which steadily thickened, they heard the
+appalling boom of bergs and the grind of floes colliding on the sea.
+
+Ootah leaped to the team of dogs and interrupted their feast.  He knew
+they had not a single moment to lose--the field had surely parted from
+the land ice and it was now a dreadful question as to whether a return
+was possible.  As he was hitching the dogs to the loaded sledge he
+suddenly gave a start.  Was he dreaming?  Was he hearing the
+disembodied speak, as men did in dreams?  He listened intently--surely
+he heard a soft sweet voice calling piteously through the wind.  His
+heart gave a great thud.
+
+Through the gathering gloom he saw something . . . a blur of
+blackness . . . gathering substance as it approached over the ice.  It
+moved uncertainly . . . and seemed to be driven toward him by the
+furious wind.
+
+"Look--who is it?" he called to Maisanguaq.
+
+For answer, through the din of the elements, a voice called brokenly,
+sobbingly:
+
+"Ootah! . . .  Ootah!"
+
+Ootah leaped to his feet.  Out of the snow-driven blackness a frail
+figure staggered toward him.
+
+"Annadoah," Ootah murmured, seizing the trembling woman in his arms.
+She seemed about to faint.
+
+"Why hast thou come hither?"  He hugged her fiercely to his bosom.  He
+felt a throb of ecstatic delight; for the first time she had
+surrendered to his arms; for the first time he held her close to him;
+death--for the moment--lost its terrors--he felt that he would be
+willing to die, in that storming darkness, with her heart beating, so
+that he felt its every pulse, close, close to his.
+
+The wild winds almost drowned Annadoah's words.
+
+"The women came to me," she panted with difficulty, and Ootah had to
+bend his ear to her mouth so as to hear.  "They were angry.  They said
+'She stealeth souls!  Annadoah stealeth souls!'  They said, 'Annadoah
+hath caused the death of many children!'  Ootah!  Ootah!  They came, as
+they do when thou art absent.  They threatened me--they called upon the
+spirits, as they once called to them beneath the sea.  And the curse of
+the long night--of darkness--hunger--death . . . they invoked . . . of
+the dead . . . upon me . . .  I was afraid."  Ootah felt her shuddering
+in his arms.  "The women came unto my igloo," she repeated
+wildly--"they desired that ravens peck my eyes--that I rest without a
+grave--that my body lie unburied and that my spirit never rest.  And
+the curse of darkness--_io-o-h-h_!--they called the curse of darkness
+upon me.  They trampled upon me with their feet, and they tore at my
+hair . . .  They came unto my igloo as the storm came and called upon
+the spirits of the skins to strike me; for they said I had again driven
+thee to thy death, that I had sent the others to their death.  Thou
+knowest I lay ill when thou didst depart.  But they fell on me one by
+one and hurt me--I feared they would kill me.  They were angry and they
+called upon the dead.  The storm strikes; the spirits of the winds are
+angry; the ice breaks, and it is the fault of Annadoah.  So they said."
+
+Her eyes were wild, her hair dishevelled.  Ootah felt her forehead--it
+burned with fever.
+
+"How didst thou come hither--and why?" he asked, his heart bounding in
+the thought that she had followed him, that of him she sought
+protection.
+
+"I know not--methinks I called upon the spirits.  I knew thou didst
+come this way--I knew thou wouldst save me from the women.  And I
+followed.  The way was dark.  The wind held me back.  But I knew thou
+wert here--my heart led me; my heart found thee as birds find grass in
+the mountains.  Ootah!  Ootah!  I fear I shall die!"  She collapsed in
+his arms.  The wind shrieked!  In the distance two icebergs
+exploded--there was a flash of phosphorus on the sea as the arctic
+dinosaurs collided.
+
+"Come!  Or we perish in the sea!" Maisanguaq, his head bent near so as
+to hear, now yelled into Ootah's ear.
+
+Annadoah cowered at the sound of his voice.  Ootah felt her trembling,
+in his arms.
+
+"And he . . . is here?" she whispered.  "I am afraid."
+
+They felt the great ice field rocking on the waves imprisoned beneath
+them.  It trembled whenever it touched a passing berg.
+
+Maisanguaq prodded the terror-stricken dogs.  Their howls shrilled
+through the storm,
+
+"_Huk_!  _Huk_!  _Huk_!" he urged.
+
+Supporting Annadoah with one arm Ootah pushed forward after the moving
+team.  He knew they were being carried steadily and slowly seaward, but
+he had hopes that the ice field would swerve landward toward the south
+where an armlike glacier jutted, elbow-fashion, into the sea and caught
+the current.
+
+Snapping their whips and frantically urging the dogs, they fought
+through the snow-driven darkness and over the moving field of ice.
+Annadoah murmured wild and incoherent things in her delirium.  They
+paced off half a mile.
+
+"_Aulate_!" Ootah suddenly called, panic-stricken.  "Halt! halt!"
+Maisanguaq stopped the dogs.  Before them a snaky space of water,
+blacker than the darkness about them, and capped with faintly
+phosphorescent crests of tossing waves, separated them--Ootah knew not
+how far--from the land.
+
+"To the right!" Ootah called.  "Let us go onward!"
+
+"_Huk_!  _Huk_!" Maisanguaq encouraged the dogs.
+
+"The floe may land near the glacier," Ootah cried.
+
+He spoke to Annadoah.  She made an irrelevant reply about the women who
+called upon the spirits--and their terrible maledictions.
+
+With Maisanguaq ahead driving the dogs, they turned to the south.
+Annadoah sank helpless in Ootah's arms--she could no longer walk.
+Ootah supported her.  At times his feet slipped.  He felt himself
+becoming dizzy.  The beloved burden in his arms became unsupportably
+heavy.  They travelled in utter darkness, near them the desirous clamor
+of the waves.  Seaward, at times, where the splitting floes crashed
+against one another, there ran zigzag lines of phosphorescence.  The
+winds howled in the ears of Ootah like the voices of the unhappy dead.
+Occasionally he heard the voice of Maisanguaq ahead urging the team.
+
+Ice froze on their faces, frigid water swept the floe.  Their garments
+became saturated and froze to the skin.  Finally the dogs refused to
+move.  "We can go no further," said Maisanguaq, in terror.  "I am
+resigned to die."  Ootah stubbornly invoked the spirits of his
+ancestors for succor.  He called to the dogs.
+
+Thereupon a terrific shock caused both men to reel.  The ice field
+trembled under them--then stopped.
+
+Ootah realized that a section of it had swept against one of the many
+land-adhering glaciers.  There was hope--and greater danger.
+
+With a rumbling crash that reverberated above the storm the field
+separated into countless tossing fragments.  The cake on which the
+terror-stricken party cowered swirled dizzily in an eddy of the
+released foaming waters.  On all sides the inky waves seethed up among
+the crevices of the sundering floes.  To the south Ootah heard the
+breakers booming against the ice cliffs, which perilously barred the
+currents of the angry sea.  The caps of the curling waves took on a
+pale white and appalling luminesence.
+
+"The faces of the dead!" cried Maisanguaq in superstitious terror.
+"From the bosom of _Nerrvik_ they come to greet us."
+
+Ootah, however, felt no fear.  For once he felt unheedful of those in
+the other world.  His mind was occupied with a more immediate
+interest--that of saving the life of the woman he loved.
+
+With quick presence of mind, Ootah grasped the rear upstander of the
+sled, which had begun to slide to and fro, and planted his harpoon in
+the ice.
+
+"Thy axe!" he shouted.  Maisanguaq passed the axe.  Ootah grappled for
+it in the darkness.  "Hold the harpoon," he directed.  Mechanically
+Maisanguaq groped for the harpoon and held it while Ootah, with his one
+free hand, lifted the axe and drove it into the ice.  With the other
+hand he still gripped the unconscious woman.  Her hair swished about
+his legs in the howling wind.  Maisanguaq planted his own weapon in the
+ice on the opposite side of the sledge, and Ootah, with unerring
+strokes, hardly able to see it in the darkness, pounded it firmly into
+the ice.
+
+"Thy lashings," he called.  Maisanguaq passed a coil of skin rope.
+
+About the improvised stakes which secured the sled Ootah whipped the
+lashings, then he passed them under and over the sled until it was
+securely pinioned.  Very gently he placed Annadoah upon the mass of
+walrus meat and lashed her body in turn to the sled and about the
+stakes.  With Maisanguaq's assistance he tied the cowering dogs to the
+harpoons.  This done, the two men, benumbed and dazed, clung to the
+anchor for support.
+
+As the severed ice cakes dispersed, a curling wave lifted the floe on
+which they clung high on its crest and tossed it southward.  As it rose
+on the surging breakers Ootah felt the dread presence of _Perdlugssuaq_
+ready to strike.  Each time they made swift, sickening descents in the
+seething troughs he felt all consciousness pass away.  On all sides the
+waves hissed.  Torrents of water swept over the floe.  Ootah felt his
+limbs freezing; he felt his arms becoming numb.  He feared that at any
+moment he should lose his grip and be swept into the raging sea.  Then
+he thought of Annadoah and conjured new courage.  For a while the dogs
+whined--then they became silent.  One already was drowned.  Ootah bent
+over Annadoah to protect her from the mountainous onslaughts of icy
+water.  His teeth chattered--he suffered agonies.  For a long black
+hour of horror they were driven over the thundering seas and through a
+frigid whirlwind of snow, sharp as flakes of steel.
+
+
+The recoiling impetus of the waters gradually increased under them.
+Ootah knew this indicated an approach to land.  The waves came in
+shorter, but quicker swells.  The floe bumped into others.  Ootah
+roused himself and hopefully turned toward Maisanguaq.
+
+"We approach the land," he called.  "We must bide our time--then jump."
+
+The waves washed the floe toward the distant shore.  Land ice steadily
+thickened about them.  Maisanguaq realized that they were actually
+being carried to the sheltering harbor of the arm-like glacier south of
+the village.  Ootah quickly began unlashing Annadoah so as to be
+prepared to seize her and spring, when the opportunity came, from cake
+to cake, to safety.
+
+Impelled by a warning instinct, Ootah suddenly looked up from his task,
+and felt rather than saw Maisanguaq near and about to leap upon him.
+Maisanguaq's eyes dimly glowered in the dark.  Ootah rose quickly.
+Maisanguaq drew back and uttered an exclamation of chagrin.  Ootah
+understood.  With rescue possible, Maisanguaq had quickly come to a
+desperate resolution.
+
+The girl lay between them.
+
+Ootah braced himself.
+
+"I hate thee, Ootah," Maisanguaq shouted, no longer able to suppress
+the baffled jealousy and seething envy endured quietly for many
+seasons.  He moved about, parleying for time and a chance to spring
+upon Ootah when he was unguarded.
+
+"I hate thee not, Maisanguaq," Ootah replied.
+
+He steeled himself, for he knew Maisanguaq was strong, he knew the ice
+was treacherous; he waited for the man to strike.
+
+"My heart warms for Annadoah; so doth thine: therefore, thou or I must
+die."  Maisanguaq's deep voice sounded hoarse through the storm.
+
+"As thou sayest," Ootah replied, "but why?"
+
+"Annadoah must be thine or mine; dead, she cannot choose thee, and with
+thee dead, my strength shall cow her.  As men did of old I shall carry
+her away by force.  She shall be mine."
+
+"Annadoah hath already chosen--her heart is in the south," Ootah
+replied, sadly.
+
+"Fool!" the other man shrieked.  "Didst thou not go to the mountains to
+get her food; didst thou not thieve from thine own self to give oil to
+her; didst thou not fawn upon her and perform the services of a woman?
+Thou liest if thou sayest thou wilt not have her for thy wife.  No man
+doeth this unseeking of reward."
+
+"I love Annadoah," Ootah said, bitterly.
+
+"Yea, and thou hast hope."
+
+"Perchance--perchance I have hope."
+
+"And Annadoah looks with favor upon thee--I have seen it in her eyes.
+Did she not greet thee as women greet their lovers when thou camest
+from the mountains, and did she not bind thy wounds with strange
+ointment?"
+
+"She thought of another--her heart was in the south."
+
+"Hath she not sought thee hither--upon the ice--when the women fell
+upon her with their curses?  Her heart wings to thee, did she not say,
+as birds to green grasses in the mountains?"
+
+"Her heart is in the south," Ootah sadly moaned.
+
+"The heart of woman changes always," cried Maisanguaq.  "The heart of
+woman always yields to force.  _Pst_?"
+
+Seeing Ootah turn slightly toward Annadoah, Maisanguaq sprang at his
+throat.  Their arms closed about one another.  Maisanguaq breathed the
+wrath of the spirits upon Ootah.  He fought with the fierce strength of
+one insane with jealous, murderous rage.  The icy floe rocked beneath
+them.  They slipped to and fro on the treacherous ice.  The sharp snow
+beat their faces.  Water washed under their feet.  At times they
+reached, in their frightful struggle, the very edge of the floe, and
+seemed about to tumble into the seething sea.  Ootah felt Maisanguaq
+trying to force him into the watery abyss--but he fought backward . . .
+time and time again . . .  They constantly fell over the unconscious
+woman on the sledge.  About them the darkness roared; they felt the
+heaving sea beneath them.  And while they struggled, in their brief
+terrible death-to-the-death fight, the floe was tossed steadily onward.
+Ootah felt his breath giving out.  Maisanguaq felt Ootah's hands
+closing about his throat.  He felt the blood pound in his temples.
+Desperation filled him--he determined to kill Ootah by any means.  A
+grim suggestion came to him.  He endeavored to release himself.
+
+In a lull of the wind both heard something that made them start.
+Aroused from her feverish coma by the two men falling against her,
+Annadoah suddenly cried aloud.  The two men stood stone-still, locked
+in a deadly grip.  At that moment Annadoah felt the warmth of their
+panting breath as they paused near her.  Where she was at first she did
+not realize.  She heard a clamor of wind and breaking waters.  She
+imagined herself being tossed through the air in the arms of the
+_tornarssuit_.  At the same time she became vividly aware of the
+desperate struggle nearby.  Subconsciously she realized Maisanguaq and
+Ootah were engaged in a fight to the death.  In the darkness she sensed
+them moving away from her.  Straining her eyes she began, very
+dimly--as Eskimos can even in pitch darkness--to descry the black
+outlines of the two men wrestling as they shifted nearer and nearer the
+edge of the ice.  Then it dawned upon Annadoah's mind that they were
+being carried, in the jeopardy of an awful storm, on a floe that was
+tossed hither and thither in a maelstrom of angry waters.  A frantic
+desire to save Ootah surged up within her.  Behind him she saw the
+swimming blackness of the heaving waves.  She attempted to rise.  Her
+head swam; there was loud ringing in her ears.  Her hands were not
+free, her ankles were bound--she struggled to release herself.
+Twisting her wrists and ankles in the tight lashings until they bled,
+it suddenly flashed upon her that she was lashed to the sled.  She knew
+that at any moment the floe might crash into a glacier and be crushed
+to atoms.  She knew that Maisanguaq and Ootah were fighting for the
+possession of her--that both might perish, or, what was worse, that
+Maisanguaq might win.  Chaotic terror filled her.  Struggling
+frantically but ineffectually, she uttered a maniacal scream.
+
+"Ootah!  Ootah!"
+
+Ootah did not reply.
+
+The storm howled.  The wind lashed the floe--it fell like a whip on her
+face.  Annadoah felt the surging impetus of the angry sea under them.
+She felt herself rising on the crests of mighty waves and being swiftly
+hurled into foaming troughs of water.  Frigid spray bathed her face.
+Still the two vague shadows, darker than the night, slowly and
+laboriously moved about her.  At times they brushed her lashed
+body--then she felt the quick gasps of their breath; she sensed the
+strain of Ootah's limbs twisting in the struggle.
+
+Again she perceived the two shifting away and being merged into the
+swimming blackness.  Presently she saw only the phosphorescent crest of
+a mountainous wave . . . rising in the distance . . .  She became cold
+with white fear--she felt her blood turn to ice . . .  She screamed and
+struggled vainly with the lashings . . .  She felt the floe rise, felt
+herself being steadily lifted into the sheer air, and of paralyzed
+fright again swooned.
+
+Maisanguaq, by a fierce wrench, managed to release one hand, struck
+Ootah a heavy blow and broke away.  Leaping to the opposite side of the
+sledge, with a terrific pull, he drew one of the harpoons out of the
+ice and with his knife speedily cut it loose from the lashings.  Ootah,
+stunned for a moment, turned upon him.  Maisanguaq desperately raised
+the weapon.  Ootah heard it hiss through the air.  He reeled
+backward--the harpoon grazed his arm and struck the ice.
+
+At that very instant the oncoming breaker descended with a rush from
+behind--a torrent of water washed the floe.  Ootah was lifted from his
+feet and dashed against the sled.  When he rose he waited in silence
+for an attack.  There was none.  He moved over the floe cautiously,
+feeling the darkness.  Creeping to the edge he saw something dimly
+white and blurred on the receding wave.  "Maisanguaq," he called,
+softly.  There was a pang at his heart, for he was truly gentle.  He
+strained his ears to hear through the din of the elements.  The floe
+suddenly jolted him as it was carried, with a thud, against
+shore-clinging ice.  Ootah peered seaward, and called again, loudly--
+
+"Maisanguaq!"
+
+Only the waves replied.
+
+Hurriedly he cut the leather lashings and, leaping from floe to floe,
+carried Annadoah to the shelter of the shore.  Returning he loosened
+the dogs.  Only three lived.  Biding his time until the floe was ground
+securely among others, he then dragged his load of meat ashore.
+Sinking to the earth he rubbed Annadoah's hands and breathed with eager
+and enraptured transport into her face.
+
+He called her name.  Presently she stirred.
+
+"Ootah," she murmured.  "It is very dark--very dark--I wonder . . .
+whether . . . it will soon . . . be spring."
+
+He chafed her hands.  For a lucid moment she nestled to him and in a
+terrified voice whispered----
+
+"Maisanguaq--where is he?"  She heard Ootah's reply.
+
+"He hath gone the long journey of the dead."
+
+Annadoah breathed a sigh of relief and again floated into the coma of
+fever and exhaustion.
+
+The journey before Ootah was desperately difficult in the storm and
+darkness.  In his way of reckoning he knew they had floated about two
+miles south of the village.  The return lay along the sea and over
+crushed, blocked ice.  Much as he regretted it, he was compelled to
+leave the precious load of walrus blubber behind, so as to carry
+Annadoah, who was unable to walk, on the sledge.  He covered the
+blubber with cakes of ice, hopeful that it might by chance escape the
+ravaging bears.  His companions might come for it after his return.  He
+knew the probabilities were, however, that the keen noses of bears or
+wolves would detect it.
+
+After lashing Annadoah to the sledge, so she might not be jolted from
+it, Ootah, with a brave heart, started in the teeth of the biting wind.
+The half-frozen dogs rose to their task nobly and pulled at the traces.
+Ootah pushed the sledge from behind.  He trusted to the sure instinct
+of the animals to find a safe way.  Progress was necessarily slow.
+Fortunately the snow stopped falling and one agony was removed.
+
+In lulls of the storm Ootah heard Annadoah moaning in her delirium.
+
+When they reached the village, a half dozen men were assembled outside
+their houses.  They rejoicingly hailed Ootah, whom they had counted
+among the dead.  He learned that two of his companions had gone to join
+Maisanguaq.  The first party had safely reached the shore before the
+breaking away of the ice.  The news of Ootah's arrival brought out the
+women.  When they saw Annadoah they crowded about her, scolding.  Ootah
+silenced the garrulous throng with a fierce command.  They shrank away.
+
+"She came to me on the ice," he said.  "Knew ye not that the spirits
+fared not well within her, that she was ill, ye she-wolves?  She sees
+things that are not so and raves of the curses ye invoked, barking
+she-dogs!  _Aga_!  _Aga_!  Go--go!"
+
+Assisted by several of the men, Ootah conveyed Annadoah into her igloo
+and laid her upon her couch.  Her face was flushed, and as she lay
+there Ootah thought she was very beautiful.  She had become much
+emaciated--Ootah did not like that.  But when she opened her eyes Ootah
+saw in them a soft, new light.
+
+"Thou art brave, Ootah," she said, essaying a smile of gratitude.
+"Thou art brave of heart . . . and kind."
+
+Ootah's heart stirred.  Once she had said that his heart was as soft as
+that of a woman; this was, indeed, to him reward for all the frightful
+terrors he had endured on the storming sea.
+
+"And do the wings of thy heart not stir, Annadoah?" he asked softly, a
+world of pleading in his voice.  "Wilt thou not be mine in the spring?"
+
+"In the spring," she said, dreamily, and her voice quavered . . . "in
+the spring . . ."
+
+A far-away look came into her eyes, and Ootah felt an infinite ache at
+his heart.
+
+"I am afraid, Ootah," she said presently, in a trembling voice . . .
+"Afraid . . . my head burns--the igloo is black . . .  Dost thou
+remember what the women told their dead? . . .  They invoked the dead
+to curse me . . . as I stood by the open sea . . . when the moon
+rose . . .  Ootah!  Ootah!  I cannot see thee . . .  It is very . . .
+dark."  Ootah laid his hand upon Annadoah's head.
+
+"The spirits do not fare well within thee," he said.  "But I will care
+for thee."
+
+
+For nearly a moon Annadoah lay ill with a strange fever.  And in her
+disturbed dreams, as Ootah watched through the long hours, she murmured
+vaguely, but longingly, for the spring.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+"_Turning softly, she found a tiny naked baby . . .  Annadoah leaned
+forward, gazing at it intently, wildly--then uttered a scream as though
+she had been stabbed to the heart . . ._"
+
+
+The sun rose above the horizon and flooded the earth with liquid gold;
+again the sea ran with running light; the melting glaciers shimmered
+with burning amethystine hues; the snow-covered mountains took fire and
+glowed with burning bars of chrysoberyl and sapphire, while on the
+limpid sea the moving bergs glittered like monstrous diamonds
+electrically white.  On the sequestered slopes of the low mountain
+valleys green mosses once more carpeted the earth, buttercups and
+dandelions peeped pale golden eyes from the ground, in the teeming
+crevices of the high promontories delicate green and crimson lichens
+wove a marvellous lacery, and wherever the sun poured its encouraging
+springtime light beauteous small star- and bell-shaped flowers burst
+into an effulgence of pale rose and glistening white bloom.  The
+suggestion of a very faint, sweet aroma pervaded the air.
+
+Above the promontories millions of auks again made black clouds against
+the sky,--eider ducks floated on the molten waters of sheltering
+fjords,--along the icy shores puffins, with white swelling breasts, sat
+in military line,--guillemots cooed their spring love songs and fulmar
+gulls uttered amorous calls,--on the green slopes the white hare of the
+arctic gambolled, and tiny bears, soft and silken flossed, played at
+the entrances of moss-ensconced caves.  Out on the sea unexpected herds
+of walrus lay sleeping on floating ice; harp seals sported joyously in
+the waves; a white whale spouted shafts of blue water high into the
+air.  From the interior mountains came the howl of wolves and foxes,
+the sound of rushing waters and the roar of released glaciers.  Nature
+was vocal with awakening life.
+
+In her igloo Annadoah lay alone--for with spring the time of her trial
+had come.
+
+
+In the customary preparations for the coming of Annadoah's unborn child
+Ootah had entered with rare tenderness and solicitude.  When a little
+one is expected among these northern people, new clothing, of the
+rarest skins of animals and the feathers of birds, must be made for
+both mother and child; a new igloo is built for the event by the happy
+father, for the little one they believe should come in a house
+unspotted and white as the driven snow.  Annadoah was deserted,
+husbandless; the women of the tribe remained aloof from her; Ootah
+alone stood by her.  And Ootah helped her with unselfish, eager
+gladness.
+
+For several summers, in anticipation of the day when he might be a
+father, Ootah had gathered exquisite and delicate skins.  These he now
+brought to Annadoah.  There were silken young caribou hides, soft,
+fluffy white and blue fox pelts, as well as the skins of hares and the
+young of bears.  Of these, Annadoah, in the last week of fading winter,
+made, according to custom, new garments for herself.  Then, as the sun
+rose in early spring and the birds mated, Ootah went away to the high
+cliffs, where the auks nested, and jumping from crag to crag, hundreds
+of feet above the sea, gathered a thousand tiny baby auks, with crests
+of wondrous down, of which the hood for the unborn child was made.  In
+these high crevices, from which at any moment he might be plunged to
+death, Ootah gathered mosses of ineffable softness, which were placed
+in the hood as a cushion for the little one.
+
+Near her winter home, Ootah built a new igloo for Annadoah, and never
+was one made with more infinite patience and greater care.  Inside it
+was immaculately white, and when he lighted the new lamp the walls
+glistened like silver; over the light he placed a new pot of soap
+stone, for everything in that place in which a new life was to come
+into being must by an unwritten law be freshly made and never used
+before.  He built a bed of ice, laid it thick with moss, and over this
+tenderly placed, in turn, first walrus hides, then thick reindeer and
+warm fox skins.  He brought to the igloo a supply of walrus meat, and
+then, fearful to be present at an event in which he had no right of
+participation, prepared to depart to the mountains to hunt game.
+
+Before leaving he crept half fearfully into Annadoah's old igloo and
+told her all was ready.  She smiled fondly and reached forth her little
+hands.  "Thou art very kind, Ootah," she said, "thou art brave and
+kind."  Ootah was at a loss for words, but his heart beat high, and he
+was very glad.
+
+The natives watched Annadoah, as, arrayed in her immaculate garments,
+she made her way, with bowed head, to her new home; they whispered
+among themselves as they saw the _ilisitok_ (wise woman) follow later.
+
+When she sank on the new and wonderful couch, gratitude filled
+Annadoah's heart, and she murmured over and over again: "Thou art very
+kind, Ootah: thou art brave and kind."  Somehow the bright igloo became
+black and she seemed to be floating on clouds.  She remembered the
+Eskimo women wailing in the moonlight . . . by the open sea . . .  and
+the curse they invoked upon her through the dead.  She trembled and
+felt inordinately cold.  But she knew it was spring, for outside the
+igloo, with blithesome and silvery sweetness, a bunting was singing.
+
+
+When Annadoah awoke from her delirium of agony she saw that the wise
+woman had left her.  The walls of the igloo sparkled as the flames of
+the lamp flickered.  Over it a pot sizzled with walrus meat frying in
+fat.  In her half-waking condition Annadoah realized that something lay
+by her, and turning, softly, she found a tiny, naked baby.  Its skin
+was pale golden, its hair, unlike that of other babies, was of the
+color of the rays of the sun.  With half-fearful gentleness she turned
+it over and over.  Speechless with wonder, an inexplicable stirring in
+her bosom, she regarded its face--she observed its nose, the contour of
+its cheeks, the arrogance of its little chin; she noted in her child
+that curious and often brief resemblance of the new-born to the
+father--and this immediately recalled vividly and achingly the face of
+Olafaksoah.  This was her child, and his.  Surely, surely, with great
+joy she understood!  With this thought, an impetuous longing for the
+father filled her.  Passionately pressing the little creature to her
+breast she gave vent to the homesickness and ache of her heart in wild,
+convulsed sobs.  The touch of the little one, the resemblance of its
+tiny face to that of the blond man--these brought back the old passion
+and longing in all their bitterness.  Yet at the same time the child
+brought a new satisfying solace to her; it filled an immeasurable void
+in her heart.  Now and again she held it from her, and suppressing her
+violent sobs, solemnly regarded its face.  She could not get over the
+wonder and half-surprise that possessed her.  With utter abandon she
+finally fiercely clutched it to her.  The infant began to cry.
+Annadoah, with slow, cautious gentleness laid it down by her side,
+scared, amazed.  Thereupon the baby for the first time opened its eyes.
+Annadoah leaned forward, gazing at it intently, wildly--then uttered a
+scream as though she had been stabbed to the heart.
+
+
+When the wise woman--who had left Annadoah alone for a long
+sleep--returned to prepare food and to seek of the spirits the destined
+name of the child, she saw Annadoah lying still, her face upturned,
+tear drops glistening beneath her eyes.  The wise woman placed some of
+the fried walrus meat, or _seralatoq_--the prescribed food for a mother
+the day her child is born--into a stone plate and put it on the floor
+within reach of Annadoah.  Then she melted some snow and placed it by
+the couch.  Slowly approaching the bed she lifted the naked infant.
+
+"When thy mother wakes," she muttered, "I shall call upon the spirits.
+I shall give thee the name they gave thee in the great dark ere thou
+earnest hither--the name which was born with thee and which shall be as
+thy shadow."
+
+As she laid the little creature by the unconscious mother she saw a
+strange and frightful thing.  The curse!  And thereupon she knew she
+would not be called upon to learn of the spirits any name for this
+unhappy child.  It had, indeed, been named by the dead and with it the
+unuttered name must soon return to the great dark.  With set lips, and
+the grim determination of duty on her face, she crept softly from the
+igloo.
+
+Annadoah awoke.  At first she gazed about dazedly.  Then she realized
+that the _ilisitok_ had been with her--she observed the meat and warm
+water by her couch.  She realized also that the wise woman must have
+seen the horror which had gripped her heart like the teeth of wolves.
+Beneath lids scarred as by the claws of a hawk, the baby's eyes had
+been blasted by some unknown prenatal disease--the terrible dead, with
+their talon-hands, had smitten!  The child was organically blind, and,
+being defective and fatherless, Annadoah knew that, by the law of her
+people, it was doomed to immediate death.  While she shook with terror,
+withal a grim determination rose within her.  All the tremendous urge
+of that mighty mother-love which has beautified and ennobled the world
+clamored in the heart of this simple woman that her child _must not_
+die.
+
+As she touched the infant with a sacred tenderness, her very hands
+warmed with the impassioned affection that throbbed through her with
+every heart-beat.  As she gazed upon the features, faintly suggestive
+of its father's, she felt that she could never part from this familiar
+and intimate link with the spontaneous and powerful passion of her
+girlhood.  When she peered into those piteous, blighted eyes, mighty
+sobs of pity shook her, but she felt that she must be silent, and she
+forced back the tears.  Outside, a spring bunting was still singing,
+sweetly, ineffably.
+
+As she caressed it, the child's face twisted as if in pain.
+
+"Well do I know, little one, thou dost desire thy
+name--_ategarumadlune_," she said.  "Thou dost desire it as that which
+is as precious as thy shadow.  But the _ilisitok_ has gone and never
+will she breathe o'er thee the name I know . . . the name I felt
+stirring within me since the night . . . when the women addressed the
+dead . . .  Sweetly didst thou sing within my heart--but thy song came
+from the darkness.  Yea . . . from the darkness.  _Ioh-iooh_!"
+
+Very gently, very softly, she pressed her fingers upon the baby's
+sightless eyes.
+
+"I shall call thee little Blind Spring Bunting," she softly murmured,
+lifting the baby and pressing its tender face to her own.  "Poor Little
+Blind Spring Bunting."  She soothed its face, infinite pity in her
+eyes.  "Thou wilt never see _Sukh-eh-nukh_, nor the _ahmingmah_, nor
+the birds that fly in the air, Spring Bunting.  All thy days shall be
+as the long night, and thy whole life shall be without any light of
+moon.  But thy heart is warm and bright as the sun in the south, whence
+Olafaksoah came, and it makes the heart of Annadoah very warm.
+Poor . . . Little . . . Blind Spring Bunting!"
+
+Murmuring softly she rocked the little baby gently in her arms.  Then
+she heard the ominous sound of a native rushing by the igloo and voices
+upraised.  What were they saying?  That Annadoah's child was blind?
+
+A frantic determination to escape filled her.  The danger was
+immediate--she must act at once.  But what should she do?  Where should
+she go?
+
+She rose and moved bewilderedly about the igloo.  She felt weak and
+dazed.  At any moment they might break into her immaculate new home and
+seize the child from her arms.  At any instant they might come with
+wicked ropes to wrap about the baby's tender neck.  That she must flee
+she knew--but where?  Where?  She thought of Ootah.  But Ootah was in
+the mountains.  And not a moment could be lost.  In these matters the
+natives lose little time.  Moreover, she knew the women hated her; and
+that they had succeeded in making the men gradually bitter.
+
+"Olafaksoah!  Olafaksoah!" she called tragically.  Then she recalled
+with a start that Olafaksoah had summer headquarters some twenty miles
+to the south.  It was a boxhouse, built on a promontory of the
+Greenland coast.  She remembered it, as she had seen it on a journey
+south some summers before; the way thither, dangerous at this season of
+the year when the ice was breaking, she well knew.  Yes, she would seek
+refuge there.
+
+"Perchance Olafaksoah hath returned--did he not say he would return in
+the spring?  When the buntings sing?"  She laughed spontaneously.
+"Yea, yea!  We will go there, Little Blind Spring Bunting."
+
+Quickly she adjusted her own new garments, and then she took the little
+golden baby and over its head and shoulders laced a tight-fitting hood
+of soft young fox skin.  This done she gently placed the child into the
+hood on her back.  Inside this was lined with the breasts of baby auks
+and made downy with fibrous moss.  She hurriedly secured the child to
+herself by means of a sinew thread which passed about its body as it
+reposed in the hood, and which in turn, passing under her arms, she
+tied about the upper portion of her waist.  The voices outside had
+ceased.
+
+Suppressing her very breath, she crept through the long tunnel leading
+from the igloo and peeped cautiously from the entrance.  She could hear
+her heart throb.  She feared the natives might detect it.
+
+Five hundred feet to the north a group were engaged in excited
+conversation.  Annadoah's brain whirled with the fragments of what they
+said.  She knew the moment had come to depart.  She emerged and on all
+fours crept to the protecting lee of her igloo where she was hidden
+from their view.
+
+An open space of six hundred feet lay between her and the cliff around
+which the trail to the southern shelter lay.  Annadoah summoned all her
+strength of will, and then proceeded to walk slowly, with her head bent
+and her face concealed, so as to avoid arousing suspicion, over the
+dangerous area.  Her heart trembled within her--at any moment she
+expected to hear the savage cries.  When she reached the cliff she felt
+as if she were about to faint.
+
+Looking fearfully backward, with a sigh of immeasurable relief, she saw
+that she was unobserved.  Raising her head heavenward she breathed her
+thanks to the dead father and mother who were undoubtedly watching.
+She turned about the cliff, her heart bounding tumultuously, and,
+panting the words of the magic spell, asked that her legs be given the
+swiftness of the wind spirits.  She was very faint, she had scarcely
+any feeling whatever in her limbs; but summoning all her courage,
+bringing to bear all the love of this child she sought to save, she
+turned and ran.
+
+It was not long before she heard--or imagined--the angry cries of
+pursuing natives behind her.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+"_A frail, pitiful figure Annadoah stood on the cliff, wringing her
+hands toward the declining sun . . . 'I-o-h-h-h,' she moaned, and her
+voice sobbed its pathos over the seas.  'I-o-h-h-h!  I-o-h-h-h,
+Sukh-eh-nukh!  Unhappy sun--unhappy sun!  I-o-h-h-h, Annadoah--unhappy,
+unhappy Annadoah!'_"
+
+
+Twenty miles to the south, on a great cliff which stepped stridently
+into the polar sea, stood a house built of stray timber and boxes
+which, for a half decade, had been the summer headquarters of parties
+of Danish and Newfoundland traders who came north annually and scoured
+Greenland for ivories and furs.  The hulk of a house was
+weather-beaten, dilapidated, and scarred black by the burning cold.  A
+more desolate habitation could not be imagined in all the world, a more
+devastated land could nowhere else on all the globe be found.  For
+leagues and leagues to the north and south, the scrofulous promontories
+lay barren under the blight of the merciless northern blasts.  Over the
+corroded iron rocks strata of red earth and deeper crimson ore ran like
+the streaky stains of monstrous and unhuman murders committed in aeons
+past.  Not a particle of vegetation was visible; there were no lichens
+nor starry flowers.  There was no life save that of the black birds
+which winged restlessly about the sky and squawked in grotesque mockery
+at the region and its doom.  In strange contrast, the sky was as blue
+as the limpid skies of Umbria,--and nearly two hundred feet below the
+gnarled gashed cliff the ocean broke in terrific cascades of diamonded
+foam.
+
+The top of the cliff on which the house stood overleaped the sea, so
+that, looking below, one saw only the recoiling waters of a rich, deep
+gold, capped with silver crescents of broken spray.  From the sheer
+precipitous receding face of the cliff, knife-like granite spars
+projected, and in the crevices and nooks of these countless birds
+nested.  Hungry, desirous, insatiate--the voice of that fearful and
+balefully luring world--there sounded eternally the roar and crash of
+the breaking golden waves.
+
+
+Over the uneven scraggy promontory, blinded by the fierce sunlight,
+Annadoah staggered.  The world reeled about her; the sky above her had
+become black.  Before her--a small speck in the distance--she saw the
+black wooden house silhouetted against the molten sea.  She could
+scarcely move her legs; she ached in every limb; every moment she felt
+as if she would swoon, but the frenzied fear in her heart urged her on.
+She suffered intolerably.
+
+
+Of that long, tortuous journey Annadoah had no clear remembrance--with
+each step her one urging, predominant thought had been to forge ahead,
+to keep from swooning,--to escape those who were angrily calling far
+behind.
+
+Leaving her village, along the difficult broken coast her trail lay; it
+crept painfully up over the slippery sides of melting glaciers, some of
+them a thousand feet high, and made sheer descents over places where
+the ice was splitting; it writhed about hundreds of irregular sounds
+and twisted fjords.
+
+In her desperation to escape, Annadoah, without a thought of the
+danger, essayed to cross fjords where the ice was breaking.  As she
+sped over deceptive unbroken areas the ice often split under her feet.
+In one of the sounds jammed ice was moving.  To go around it she knew
+would mean a loss of three miles.  She leaped upon the heaving ice.  It
+rocked dangerously beneath her feet.  As she left the shore the current
+increased, the ice moved more swiftly.  From cake to cake she leaped
+with the agility of an arctic deer.  The ice floes swirled under her
+and tilted as her feet alighted.  Half way across, her foot
+slipped--the ice fragment eluded her wild grasp and she sank into the
+frigid water.  She felt herself sinking; for a moment she seemed unable
+to continue the struggle--then she recalled the dear burden upon her
+back.  She fought the swift current and grappled madly with the jamming
+ice.  It gathered about her--she feared she would be buried by the
+force of the impact.  But with a mighty struggle she finally grasped
+hold of a fortunate ridge on a cake and clambered to its surface.  The
+baby was unscathed.  It was crying loudly in its hood.  Although her
+hands were almost frozen, the cold water had not entered her garments.
+She leaped into the air and fled.  She next scaled the rocky face of a
+precipice to gain time--the rocks cut her face and hands.  Swarms of
+birds, frightened from their nests, surrounded her.  Their cries filled
+her with terror.  Reaching, on the farther side, shallow streams over
+which thin ice lay, she bravely forged ahead--the ice broke--her feet
+sank into the mud.  Her breath gave out--she felt paralyzing pangs in
+her lungs.  Yet the cries behind--which had become somewhat more
+distant--urged her on.  Again and again, in crossing water moving with
+broken ice her feet slipped into black, treacherous streams, and,
+swimming with native skill, she saved the child from the least harm.
+By degrees its cries ceased and it fell into slumber.  Occasionally
+Annadoah was compelled to rest, to regain her breath.  Her reserve
+strength--as is that of her people--was tremendous.  Staggering slowly
+ahead, she often sank into engulfing morasses where the earth had
+melted and willows were sprouting.  Panting, trembling in every limb,
+she fought her way out.  For the better part of the journey her legs
+moved mechanically--she was only half conscious.  Urged by her
+superhuman determination, the little woman struggled over twenty miles,
+and when she reached the great promontory where the house stood, her
+_kamiks_ were torn, her clothing was soaked with frigid water, and her
+hands were bleeding from wounds inflicted by the sharp rocks.[1]
+
+Behind her, in her delirious flight, Annadoah ever heard the
+threatening cries of pursuing tribesmen.
+
+As she approached the wooden house she staggered to and fro, and at one
+time was perilously near the edge of the cliff.
+
+Upon her back the infant slept peacefully.
+
+"Olafaksoah!  Olafaksoah!" she struggled to call, but her voice fell to
+a whisper.
+
+The windows of the grim house were as black as burnt holes; they glared
+at her unseeingly, without welcome--like blind eyes.
+
+Desperately she raised her voice.  Only a panting, breathless plaint
+quavered over the dumb, unreplying rocks.  The sea licked its yellow,
+hungry tongues below.
+
+At the door of the frame house Annadoah paused and still without losing
+hope again essayed to call.  Her voice broke.  The house was
+undoubtedly vacant.  There was no reply.
+
+She bent her head to listen.  She could hardly hear because of the
+pound of blood in her ears.
+
+Surely he had come--did he not say he would come in the spring?
+
+She tried the door.  It was locked.
+
+She beat it frenziedly with her fists.  She beat it until her fingers
+bled.
+
+Then she threw her body against it like a mad thing.  With crooked
+fingers she clawed savagely at the wood.  At last she quelled the
+tumult in her bosom and found voice.
+
+"Olafaksoah--Olafaksoah--Olafaksoah--_ioh-h-h_!  _Ioh-h-h_!" she
+screamed.  She sank to her knees and pounded at the door-sill with her
+fists.
+
+
+When the native tribesmen, furious at her flight, at her temerity in
+trying to evade their inviolable law, clambered up the cliff, they saw
+a dark, stark figure lying still before the door of the box-house.
+Their voices rose in a raucous clamor.
+
+Like wolves descending eagerly upon their prey they bore down upon the
+unconscious woman.  Some of the women of the tribe had accompanied
+them.  Their voices rose with eager, glad calls to vengeance; they
+demanded the life of Annadoah's child without delay.  The shrill howl
+of their dogs was mingled in that vindictive, savage chorus.
+
+"Little Blind Spring Bunting," Annadoah murmured, awakened from her
+trance by the approaching calls.
+
+Opening her eyes she saw the troop descending.  Staggering to her feet
+she stood with her back against the door, facing the clamoring crowd
+defiantly.  In their veins the savage blood of fierce centuries was
+aroused, in Annadoah's heart all the primitive ferocity of maternal
+protection.
+
+They surrounded her.  The struggle was brief.  In a moment--while
+strong hands held her--they cut the sinew lashing and rudely tore the
+baby from its hood.  Annadoah fell back, half-stunned, against the
+floor; in their midst the merciless howling natives had the helpless
+infant.
+
+As they bore it over the promontory Annadoah uttered a savage, snarling
+cry, as of a mountain wolf robbed of its youngling, and furiously
+rushed after them.
+
+Grasping hold of two of the men, she piteously begged them to give her
+the child.  She made frantic promises.  She pleaded, she sobbed, she
+raved incoherently.  Holding to the men with a fierce grip she was
+dragged along on her knees.  Then letting go, she cursed the tribe; she
+called upon them the malediction of all the spirits.  Her voice
+broke--she could only scream.  She tore her hair and fell prostrate,
+her body throbbing on the rocks.
+
+Above the clamor Annadoah suddenly heard a strangely familiar voice
+shouting from the distance.  Raising herself slightly, she saw a
+well-known figure bounding over the promontory toward the murderous
+natives.  Her heart bounded--she recognized Ootah.
+
+Having returned from the mountains Ootah had learned of Annadoah's
+flight and the pursuit; and with an unselfish determination to save the
+child he had immediately followed.
+
+At the very edge of the cliff the natives paused.  In his hands,
+Attalaq, the leader of the pursuit, held the crying babe.  Their voices
+were raised to an uproar; the women were chattering fiercely.  With
+quick dexterity Attalaq loosely twisted a leather thong about the
+baby's neck, and in haste to finish the tragic task began swaying it in
+his hands so as to give the helpless creature momentum in its plunge to
+death.  Ootah bounded toward them.
+
+"_Aulate_!  _Aulate_!  Halt!" Ootah cried.  "I will be father to
+Annadoah's child."
+
+The crowd turned--for a moment they gazed with mingled feelings of awed
+surprise, half-incredulous wonder and speechless admiration upon this
+man who offered to make the greatest sacrifice possible to one of the
+tribe; to become the father, protector and supporter of another man's
+helpless, defective infant.  For, according to their custom, they just
+as spontaneously grant life to a defective child when a member offers
+to assume sole responsibility for its keeping as they are implacably
+determined upon its death if its mother is husbandless.  But seldom
+does any man make this sacrifice; in this land of rigorous hardship and
+starvation it means much.
+
+Ootah fought his way among them.  They gave way, and a low groan
+arose--his noble offer had come too late!
+
+On the crest of a golden wave a tiny white speck of a baby face gazed
+in open-eyed, frightened astonishment skyward, and in a lull of the
+intermittent rush of waters a thin, piercing baby cry arose from the
+golden sea.
+
+Awe-stricken, abashed, suddenly overwhelmed with regret and shame, the
+natives silently drew back . . .  Ootah paused at the very edge of the
+cliff . . . he saw Annadoah's pleading white face . . . he extended his
+arms as a bird opens its wings for flight and brought the finger tips
+of his hands together above his head.  For a moment his body slightly
+swayed, then poising to secure unerring aim, he leaped into the dashing
+sea . . .
+
+
+Still and statuesque as a figure of stone, but wild-eyed, Annadoah
+stood alone on the extreme edge of the precipitous cliff and watched
+the struggle in the dizzy depths below . . .
+
+Awed by the splendor of a heroism so dauntless, a love so overwhelming,
+unselfish and great, the natives retreated to a far distance and waited
+in fearful silence.
+
+
+The prolonged infinity of suspense and horror of many long arctic
+nights seemed concentrated in the brief spell that Annadoah tensely,
+breathlessly, watched the struggle of the man to save her child.
+
+Annadoah saw Ootah disappear in the waters after his desperate dive
+from the cliff and rise with unerring precision on the surface near the
+sinking babe.  The sea came thundering against the jagged rocks in
+long, terrific swells, and was hurled back in a torrential tumult of
+breaking foam.  Ootah fought the seething waves in his effort to
+grapple the living thing which was to Annadoah as the heart of her
+bosom.  The tiny speck had begun to sink--Ootah made a dive under the
+water--and rose with the infant clasped in his left arm.  With only one
+hand free, he made a desperate struggle against the onslaught of the
+terrible watery catapults as they hurled him, nearer and nearer, toward
+the rocks beneath the cliff.  Annadoah saw his white hand, glistening
+with water, shine in the sunlight as he tried to climb against the
+impetus of the sea.  Sometimes his head sank--then only the struggling
+hand was seen.  She crept dangerously closer to the edge of the
+cliff . . .  Slowly, but steadily, Ootah and the child were being swept
+backward . . .  By degrees the steady strokes of Ootah's arm began to
+waver.  Annadoah saw him being carried further and further under the
+cliff by the irresistible momentum of the waves . . .  To be dashed
+against the jagged rocks beneath she knew meant death.  Her heart
+seemed to stop . . . but presently, swirling helplessly in the foaming
+cauldron of a receding breaker, she saw Ootah, still clasping the baby,
+emerge from under the rocks.  He still lived.  He still fought.
+Annadoah watched each desperate, failing stroke.  She saw his strength
+giving out in that unequal struggle, saw his arm frenziedly but
+ineffectually beating the water, saw his head disappear . . . for
+longer and still longer periods . . .  She caught a last vision of his
+white upturned face, of his eyes, filled with importunate devotion,
+gazing directly at her from out the blinding waters . . .
+
+Then she fell to her knees, and lowering her body, gazed wildly, for a
+long, long time, into the sea . . .
+
+Suddenly she uttered a low, sharp, involuntary cry--and the waiting
+tribesmen, recoiling as though stunned, understood.  They all loved
+Ootah--none dared, none could speak.  Silent, grief-stricken, they
+turned away their faces--even their dogs were still.  Annadoah still
+peered, searchingly, for a long time, into the sea.
+
+No, there was nothing there--nothing.  On the aureate waves was no
+speck of life.
+
+Rising, Annadoah gazed with wide-open, solemn eyes seaward; for the
+moment she felt in her heart only a dull ache.
+
+Along the horizon to the east the sun, irradiant and magnified, lay low
+over the heaving seas.  Over its face, like a veil of gold, translucent
+vapors--the breath of _Kokoyah_, the god of waters--rose from the
+melting floes.  A strange spell seemed suddenly to have fallen over the
+earth.  Out on the ocean the great bergs, which had majestically moved
+southward like the phantoms of perished ships, seemed to pause.  The
+little birds which had clustered about the rocks disappeared.  High in
+the sky above her, a sinister black bird poised motionless in the air.
+
+At her feet the roaring clamor of the waves seemed resolved into the
+solemn sobbing measure of some chant for the dead.
+
+Slowly and by degrees the utter realization of her loss dawned upon the
+soul of Annadoah.  And to her in that magical spell the spirits of
+nature and the souls of the dead began to manifest themselves.
+
+Out of the crimson-shot vapors mystical forms took shape.  Annadoah saw
+the beautiful face of _Nerrvik_, and in the mists saw her watery green
+and wondrous tresses of uncombed hair.  She saw the nebulous shadow of
+the dreaded _Kokoyah_, the pitiless god of the waters, to whose cold,
+compassionless bosom had been gathered Ootah and Little Blind Spring
+Bunting.
+
+Along the horizon Annadoah saw the clouds moving to the south.  Higher
+up they moved to the west, and toward the zenith stray flecks moved to
+the north.  The spirits of the air were not at peace among themselves.
+And dire things were brooding.  From the inland highlands of Greenland
+now came a series of swift explosions, and in the brief succeeding
+interval there was an unearthly silence.  Then a grinding crash rent
+the air.  The spirits of the mountains had engaged in combat.  And in
+the swift downward surge of the glacial avalanches Annadoah saw tribes
+wiped from existence and villages swept into the sun-litten sea.  But
+Annadoah knew that the sun-litten sea was a treacherous sea; she knew
+that _Koyokah_, whose face in the mist was wan, whose lips were golden,
+had no love for men, and she knew that the spirits of the air, who
+moved in the diversely soaring clouds, were engaged in some fell
+conspiracy against her helpless race.
+
+A vague realization of the impotence of humanity against fate, against
+the forces that weave the loom of life within and without one's heart,
+weighed crushingly upon her.
+
+Radiant indeed was the sky and softly molten golden the glorious sea,
+but yet, grim and grisly, behind this smiling face of nature, Annadoah,
+primitive child of the human race, shudderingly felt the malevolent and
+evil eyes of _Perdlugssuaq_, the spirit of great evil, he who brings
+sickness and death.  Annadoah felt that instinctive fear which humanity
+has felt from the beginning--the superstitious terror of tribes who
+confront extinction, in the face of famine; the quiet white tremor of
+the hard working hordes of modern cities in the face of poverty and
+starvation; the dread of savage and civilized races alike of the
+incomprehensible factor in the universe which wreaks destruction, that
+original and ultimate evil which all the world's religions recognize,
+interpret, and offer to placate--the force that is hostile to man and
+the happiness of man.
+
+On the smooth tossing waters, reflecting the glory of the sky, there
+was no sign of those who had perished.
+
+Then, after the first crushing sense of helplessness, an instinctive,
+insurgent hope that would not be defeated asserted itself.  Annadoah
+called upon _Nerrvik_, for surely _Nerrvik_ was kind to men.  She
+pleaded with _Kokoyah_.  She importuned the spirits of the sea and air
+to return her beloved ones to her.
+
+"_Nerrvik_!  _Nerrvik_!" Annadoah supplicated persuasively, "gentle
+spirit of the sea, lift Ootah unto me!  Thou who art kind to man and
+givest him fishes from the deep for food, give unto Annadoah's arms
+Little Blind Spring Bunting."
+
+She swayed her frail body to and fro, and in a tremulous, plaintive
+chant told unto the gentle and gracious spirit of the waters all that
+Ootah had been, all that he had done for the tribe; of his prowess, of
+his love for her, of her own hardness, and how she had turned a deaf
+ear to his pleading.  Incident after incident she recalled.  She told
+of the long night, when Ootah went by moonlight into the mountains, how
+he had braved the hill spirits, how they struck him in the frigid
+highlands, and how the beneficent _quilanialequisut_ had brought him
+home.  Her exquisite voice rose to a splendid crescendo as she
+described that valorous adventure, and in the chant ran the _motifs_ of
+the hill spirit's anger, the brave leaping steps of Ootah, the tremor
+of the mountains as they were struck, and the deep tenderness of
+Ootah's love.  In that customary chanting address to the spirits,
+Annadoah told of Ootah's return from the mountains, of the suffering he
+endured, and how, when she soothed him, she thought of the great trader
+from the south.  She recalled how he had staggered from the igloo, the
+agony in his eyes, and how she heard him sobbing his heart-break in the
+auroral silence without her igloo through the long sleep.
+
+Extending her arms over the sea, Annadoah reiterated, after each
+statement of Ootah's bravery, her plea to _Nerrvik_ that Ootah be given
+back to her.
+
+"_Nerrvik_!  _Nerrvik_!" she called, "surely thou art kind!  O thou
+whom, when the great petrel raised a storm, wast cast into the depths
+by those thou didst love, thou whose heart achest for affection--hear
+me, hear me, and Annadoah will surely come to thee very soon and comb
+thy hair in the depths of the cold, cold sea." [2]
+
+Tears fell from her eyes.  With self-reproach she told of her old
+longing for Olafaksoah, the blond man from the south, whose grim,
+fierce face had cowed her, yet whose brutality had thrilled her, to
+whose beast-strength and to whose beast-passion all that was feminine
+in her had surrendered itself.  But he had left her--he said that he
+would come back in the spring.  Now, she knew he would not come
+back--and she did not care.  As if to convince the spirit of this, she
+compared Olafaksoah with Ootah; she knew now that he had used her to
+rob her people, that his heart was as stone.  Ootah, she had once said,
+had the heart of a woman; but now she realized the difference between
+them.  She knew the arms of Ootah were strong, that the words of Ootah
+were true, that the heart of Ootah was kind.  And she felt stirring in
+her bosom things she could not express; a vague comprehension of the
+pure spirituality of the man who had died to save her child, a response
+to the love that had stirred in the bosom now cold beneath the sea.
+All the primitive deep profundity of the devotion of that wild-hearted
+man who had brought a wealth of food to her from over the mountains,
+who had faced death for her on the frozen seas, who had tended her in
+her time of trial with the gentleness of a woman, his indomitable
+heroism, the splendor, the dauntless unselfishness and bravery of his
+offering to father her sightless child--all this--all this, and
+more--welled up in the heart of Annadoah.
+
+"_Nerrvik_!  _Nerrvik_!  To him who loved her Annadoah lied.  Dead, she
+told him, was her heart as a frozen bird in wintertime--but her heart
+was only sleeping!  And now the wings are beating--beating within her
+breast!  _Ootah_!  _Ootah_!  _Ioh-h, ioh-h_!"
+
+Her voice broke.  She beat her little breasts.  She bent over the sea
+and listened.  For a long while she watched.
+
+Then, from the shadows in the clouds, the answer came.  Truly Ootah was
+brave, and his heart was marvellously kind; unsurpassed was his skill
+on the hunt and of every animal did he kill; and great was his love for
+Annadoah.  Even the spirits had marvelled and spoken of it among
+themselves; but Annadoah had chosen her fate; she had denied the love
+that had unfalteringly pursued her, and now that she desired it, even
+so to her was that love to be denied.  That was fate.
+
+Then in a clamorous outbreak did Annadoah plead with Kokoyah.  She
+grovelled on the ground.  She called upon all the spirits of the winds
+and air.  In a tremulous, heart-broken plaint she finally called upon
+the spirits of her father, her mother, and those who had gone before
+them.
+
+But unrelenting, passionless, the answer came--from the shadows in the
+clouds, from the winds, from the moaning sea.  To warm the wild heart
+under the water was beyond the power of all the spirits.  They repeated
+to her, as in mockery, all that she had told them that Ootah had done,
+of his mighty love for her; but nevermore might she soothe his injured
+limbs, nevermore might she touch his gentle hands, nevermore might she
+look into his tender and adoring eyes.  His hands were cold, his eyes
+were closed, his heart was still.  It throbbed with the thought of her
+no more--and that would be forever.  That was fate.
+
+
+A frail, pitiful figure, Annadoah stood on the cliff, wringing her
+hands toward the declining sun.  In the midst of that wild
+golden-burning desolation, Annadoah felt her utter loneliness, her
+tragic helplessness.  In all the universe she felt herself utterly
+alone.
+
+Far away, awed by the heroism, the very splendor of the bravery of the
+man who had perished, the tribe stood murmuring.  In their hearts was
+no little unkindness toward Annadoah.  But, forsaken, outcast, she did
+not care.
+
+Over the aureate shimmering seas she wrung her little hands and into
+the waves lapping at her feet her tears fell like rain.  For the heart
+of Annadoah ached.  Nothing in the world any more mattered.  All that
+she had loved had perished in the sea.  And she loved too late.
+
+Gazing at the low-lying sun, veiled as in a vapor of tears, remote, and
+sadly golden in its self-destined isolation, an instinctive
+wild-world-understanding of that tragedy of all life, of all the
+universe perchance--of that unselfish love that is too often denied and
+the unhappy love that accents only too late--vaguely filled her
+primitive heart.
+
+Sinking to her knees, convulsed sobs shaking her, she wrung her hands
+toward the sun, the eternal maiden _Sukh-eh-nukh_, the beautiful, the
+all-desired.
+
+"_I-o-h-h-h_!" she moaned, and her voice sobbed its pathos over the
+seas.  "_I-o-h-h-h!  I-o-h-h-h!  I-o-h-h-h, Sukh-eh-nukh!  I-o-o-h-h,
+Sukh-eh-nukh_!  Unhappy sun--unhappy sun!  _I-o-o-h-h-h-h_, Annadoah!
+_I-o-o-o-h-h-h-h_, Annadoah!  Unhappy, unhappy Annadoah!"
+
+Annadoah's head sank lower and lower.  Her weeping voice melted in the
+melancholy sobbing of the aureate sea.  One by one the natives
+departed.  She was left alone.  To the north the sky darkened with one
+of those sudden arctic storms which come, as in a moment's space, and
+blast the tender flowers of spring.  A cold wind moaned a pitiless
+lament from the interior mountains.  Yellow vapors gathered about the
+dimming sun.  Ominous shadows took form on the shimmering sea.
+
+"_I-o-h-h-h--iooh_!  Unhappy sun--unhappy, unhappy Annadoah!"
+
+Taking fire in the subdued sunlight--and descending from heaven like a
+gentle benediction of feathery flakes of gold--over and about the dark,
+crouched figure, softly . . . very softly . . . the snow began to fall.
+
+
+
+[1] Annadoah's flight, extraordinary as it is, is not without even more
+remarkable precedents.  In one case a woman who had been rejected by
+her husband made a forty-mile journey during winter to a spot south of
+her village where a child, some years before, had been buried.  There
+the woman wept and thus consoled herself.  Having exhausted her grief,
+she returned to her people.  On the trip she had no food whatever.
+
+[2] _Nerrvik_, a beautiful maiden, according to the legend, married a
+storm-petrel who had disguised himself as a man.  When she discovered
+the deception she was filled with horror, so that later, when her
+relatives visited her, she determined to escape with them.  When the
+petrel returned from a hunting trip and discovered that his wife had
+gone, he followed, and flapping his great wings raised a terrible storm
+at sea.  Water filled the boat in which _Nerrvik_ was escaping.  When
+they realized that _Nerrvik_ was the cause of the storm her brothers
+cast her into the sea.  With one hand she clung to the boat; her
+grandfather lifted his knife and struck.  _Nerrvik_ descended into the
+ocean and became the queen of the fishes.  Possessing only one hand she
+cannot plait her hair.  A magician who can go to _Nerrvik_ in a trance
+and arrange her tresses wins her gratitude and can secure from her for
+the hunters quantities of fish.  It is interesting to note the
+similarity of the legend of _Nerrvik_ to that of Jonah.  But just as
+the Eskimos have changed the masculine sun of southern mythologies to
+the feminine, so the victim of the mythological sea storm in the arctic
+becomes a woman.
+
+
+
+FINALE
+
+_According to the legends of the tribes, not for many long and aching
+ages shall the melancholy moon win the radiant but desolate
+Sukh-eh-nukh.  For having refused love she is compelled to flee in her
+elected lot from the love she now desires but which she once denied,
+and this by a fate more relentless than the power of Perdlugssuaq, a
+fate which they do not comprehend, but which is, perchance, the Will of
+Him Whose Voice sometimes comes as a strange whistling singing in the
+boreal lights, and Who, to the creatures of His making, teaches the
+lessons of life through the sorrows which result from the acts of their
+own choosing . . .  Sometime--when, they do not know--the sun and moon
+will meet.  They will then, having endured loneliness and long
+yearning, be immeasurably happy, and in the consummation of their
+desire all mankind will share . . .  For as ultimate darkness closes,
+all who have been true to the highest ideals of the chase will be
+lifted into celestial hunting grounds, where no one is ever hungry nor
+where is it ever cold; all who have done noble deeds will be hailed as
+celestial heroes.  He who died to save another will attain immortal
+life; he who gave of his substance to feed the starving will find
+ineffable food and in abundance; he who loved greatly, who suffered
+rejection uncomplainingly, and who sought untiringly--even as the moon
+pursued Sukh-eh-nukh for ages--will, in that land where the heart never
+aches and where there are no tears, see the very fair face of his
+beloved smiling a divine welcome, and her eyes filled with a radiant
+response, gazing into his own.  The end of the world will come, and
+with it will cease the suffering struggles of all the world's races.
+And then all the highest hopes of men will find their realisation in an
+undreamed-of heaven to which all who have lived without cowardice,
+ingratitude or taint of selfishness in their hearts, will be translated
+as the world's last aurora closes its mystic veils in the northern
+skies._
+
+
+
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Eternal Maiden, by T. Everett Harre
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Eternal Maiden
+
+
+Author: T. Everett Harre
+
+
+
+Release Date: June 20, 2005  [eBook #16093]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ETERNAL MAIDEN***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Al Haines
+
+
+
+THE ETERNAL MAIDEN
+
+A Novel
+
+by
+
+T. EVERETT HARRE
+
+Published by
+Mitchell Kennerley
+New York
+
+Press of J. J. Little & Ives Company
+East Twenty-fourth Street
+New York
+
+1913
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+TO
+
+EDGAR WILSON RIDDELL
+
+JANUARY 31, 1892--JULY 2, 1912
+
+
+IN MEMORY OF
+
+A LIFE'S SUPREME FRIENDSHIP
+
+
+
+
+THE ETERNAL MAIDEN
+
+PRELUDE
+
+_Long ages ago, darkness brooded over the frozen world and held in its
+thrall the unreleased waters of the glacial seas.  There was no animal
+life upon the land, and in the depth of the waters no living thing
+stirred.  Kokoyah, the water god, breathed not; Tornahhuchsuah, the
+earth spirit, who rules above the spirits of the wind and air, was
+veiled in slumber.  Men had risen like willows from the frozen earth;
+but, although they lived, they were as the dead.  They spake not,
+neither did they hunt, nor eat, nor did they die.  Then the Great
+Spirit, whose name is not known, placed upon earth a man, in his arms
+the strength to kill, in his heart the primal urge of love.  And in
+that flowerless arctic Eden, out of its bounteous compassion, the Great
+Spirit placed also a maiden, her face beautiful with the young
+virginity of the world, in her bosom implanted a yearning, not unmixed
+with fear, for love.  Gazing upon her, the youth's heart stirred, with
+desire, the maiden's with virginal terror.  The maiden fled, the youth
+followed.  Over the desolate icy mountains the fleet feet of the youth
+sped with the swiftness of the wind gods, over the silent white seas
+the maiden with the elusiveness of the air spirits.  In the heart of
+the youth throbbed the passion of love, indomitable, eternal, which the
+blasting breath of time should never kill.  In the maiden's bosom
+quaked a reasonless shame, an unconquerable terror.  Surrounded by her
+whirling cloud of hair, the maiden sprang, untiring, across the wild
+white world.  His strength failing, the youth pantingly followed.
+Thousands of years passed; the breathless pursuit continued; the
+maiden's nebulous hair became shot with streaks of golden fire, from
+her eyes beams of light streamed across the expanses over which she
+exultantly, fearfully bounded; the tremulous faltering youth's face
+paled until it shone silvery in the darkness, and the beads of
+perspiration on his forehead glowed with a strange lustre.  Reaching,
+in their mad race, the very edge of the earth, the maiden leaped,
+fiery, into space, and her hair becoming suddenly molten, she became
+the sun--the eternal maiden Sukh-eh-nukh, the beautiful, the
+all-desired.  Utterly exhausted, his wan arms yearningly outstretched,
+the youth swooned after her into the heavens, and was transformed into
+the moon--the ever-desiring, ever-sorrowing moon.  In the smile of
+Sukh-eh-nukh the seas melted.  Walrus and narwhals, seals and whales
+came into being on the bosom of Kokoyah; on the earth the snows
+disappeared, and the brow of Tornahhuchsuah was crowned with green
+grasses and starry flowers.  Men hunted game, women laughed for joy;
+they beat drums, they danced, they sang.  By the eternal, unrequited
+passion of the lovers in the skies, happiness and plenty came upon the
+earth.  But, with Light, came also Death.  Jealous of men's happiness,
+Perdlugssuaq, the Great Evil, brought sickness; he struck men on the
+hunt, on the seas, in the mountains.  He was ever feared.  He made the
+Great Dark terrible.  But when the night became bright with the
+love-lorn glamour of the moon, Perdlugssuaq was for the time forgotten;
+in their hearts men felt a vague, tender, and ineffable stirring--the
+lure of a passion stronger and stranger even than death.  They gazed
+upon the moon with instinctive, undefined pity.  So, as the years
+passed, and ages melted and remade the snows, the long day was golden
+with the Beauty that is ever desired, the Ideal never attained; the
+night was softly silver with the melancholy and eternal hope of the
+deathless love that eternally desires, eternally pursues, and is
+eternally denied._
+
+Thus runs the Eskimo legend.
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+"_Her cheeks were flushed delicately with the soft pink of the lichen
+flowers that bloom in the rare days of early summer.  Her eyes played
+with a light as elusive, as quick as the golden radiance on the seas._"
+
+
+Great excitement prevailed among the members of the tribe.  Along a
+mottled green-and-brown stretch of shore, which rolled undulatingly
+toward the icy fringe of the polar sea, more than twoscore hunters were
+engaged in unusual activity.  Some were lacing tight over the framework
+the taut skin of their kayaks.  Others sharpened harpoon points with
+bits of flint.  Tateraq busily cut long lashings from tanned walrus
+hides.  Maisanguaq deftly took these and pieced them together into long
+lines, which were rolled in coils lasso-fashion.  Arnaluk and a half
+dozen others sat on their haunches, between their knees great balls
+made of the entire hides of seals.  With cheeks extended they blew into
+these with gusto.  Filled with air, the hides became floats, which were
+attached to the leather lasso lines.  The lines in turn were fastened
+by Attalaq and Papik to harpoons, which were to be driven into the
+walrus, the natives' chief prey of the arctic sea.
+
+A babel of conversation swayed to and fro among this northernmost
+fringe of the human race.  Now and then it was drowned in the raucous,
+deafening shriek of auks which swarmed from nearby cliffs and soared in
+clouds over the shore.
+
+"_Aveq soah_!  Walrus!  Walrus!" shouted Papik, tossing up his arms and
+dancing, his brown face twisting with grotesque grimaces of joy.
+
+"_Aveq soah!  Aveq soah_!"  He leaped in frenzy.  He seized his harpoon
+in mimicry of striking, and darted it up and down in the air.  "Walrus!
+Walrus!" he cried, and his feverish contagion spread through the crowd.
+
+"_Aveq tedicksoah_!  A great many walrus," echoed Arnaluk.  "_Aveq
+tedicksoah_!  Walrus too many to count!"
+
+They stopped their work and gathered in a group, Papik before them, his
+arms pointing toward the sea.  His eyes glistened.
+
+To the south, _Im-nag-i-na_, the entrance to the polar sea, was hidden
+by grayish mists which, as they shifted across the sun, palpitated with
+running streaks of gold.  From the veiled distance the sound of a
+glacier exploding pealed over the waters like the muffled roar of
+artillery.  The sun, magnified into a great swimming disc by the rising
+vapors, poured a rich and colorful light over the sea--it was a light
+without warmth.  In the turquoise sky overhead, the moving clouds
+changed in hue from crimson to silver, and straggling flecks, like
+diaphanous ribbons, became stained with mottled dyes.  Against the
+horizon, the arctic armada of eternally moving icebergs drifted slowly
+southward and, like the spectral ships of the long dead Norsemen who
+had braved these regions, flaunted the semblance of silver-gleaming
+sails.  The sea rose in great green emerald swells, the wave crests
+broke in seething curls of silver foam, and in the troughs of
+descending waters glittered cascades of celestial jewels.  It was late
+summer--the hour, midnight.
+
+The keen eyes of the natives searched the seas.
+
+To the south of where the watchers were gathered, the glacial heels of
+the inland mountains step precipitously into the sea and rise to a
+height of several thousand feet.  At the base of these iron rocks,
+corroded with the rust of interminable ages, the fragments of great
+floes, like catapults, are tossed by the inrushing sea.  Above, in
+summertime, rises and falls constantly a black mist resembling shifting
+cloud smoke.  Millions of auks swarm from their moss-ensconced grottos;
+an oppressive clamor beats the air.  Along the ocean, where crevices of
+the descending iron-chiselled cliffs are fugitively green with ribbons
+of pale grass, downy-winged ducks purr, mating guillemots coo
+incessantly, and tremulous oogzooks chirrup joyously to their young.
+
+As the natives listened, a deep nasal bellowing from the far ocean
+trembled in the air.
+
+Not a man stirred.  The sound vibrated into silence.  The auks
+screamed.  Hawks shrilled.  From the far interior valleys came the
+echoed wolf-howling of Eskimo dogs.  There the mountain tops,
+perpetually covered with ice and snow, gleamed through the clouds with
+running colors of amaranth, green and mottled gold.  The air swam with
+frigid fire.  As the tribe stood in silence along the shore, a roar as
+of gatling guns pealed from the mist-hidden heights.  After a taut
+moment of silence, a frightened scream rose from every living thing on
+land and sea.  Yet the group of men only bent their heads.  Then, like
+an undertone in the chorus of animate life, their quick ears detected
+the long-drawn, hoarse call of walrus bulls.  The howls of the dogs
+from the distant mountain passes came nearer.  More distant receded the
+stertorous nasal bellow on the sea.
+
+The natives feverishly leaped to their tasks.  There was a note of
+anxiety in their voices.  Onto the forepart of the kayaks they placed
+their weapons, leather lines, floats and drags.  More than twoscore
+boats were drawn over the land-adhering ice to the edge of the sea.  A
+fierce chatter brought all the women to the doors of their seal-skin
+tents.  They looked seaward and shook their heads with dismay.
+
+"Many walrus--far away," the men shouted.
+
+"No, no," the timid women returned.  "Walrus too far
+away--_Perdlugssuaq will strike you there_!"
+
+Against the distant horizon mighty bergs loomed.  In swift eddies of
+water great floes swirled.  The walrus were too far away to be seen.
+Yet the opportunity of securing walrus was too rare to be missed; for
+unless food and fuel were soon secured, starvation during the coming
+winter confronted the tribe.  The previous winter had been one of
+unprecedented severity and had wiped out bears, and herds of caribou
+and musk oxen.  The summer season, which was now drawing to a close,
+had been destitute of every kind of game.  Musk oxen had been seldom
+found and then only in the far inland valleys.  Some blight of nature
+seemed to have exterminated even the animals of the sea.  The natives
+had lived mainly on the teeming bird life.  From the scrawny bodies of
+the arctic birds, however, neither food that could be preserved nor
+fuel to be burned in the lamps could be secured.  On musk oxen the
+tribes depend chiefly for hides and meat, and on walrus for both food
+and fuel.  The ammunition, brought by Danish traders the summer before,
+was exhausted, so in the hunt they had for many sleeps to rely solely
+upon their skill with their own primitive weapons.  For months the
+doughty hunters had gathered but few supplies.  The prospect of the
+coming winter was ominous indeed.  Wandering up and down the coast in
+their migrating excursions the tribes had scoured land and sea with but
+meagre results.  At the village from which they now heard the inspiring
+walrus calls, a dozen visiting tribesmen--most of them in search for
+wives as well as game--had gathered.  Joy filled them in the prospect
+of securing supplies--and possible success in love--at last.
+
+As they launched their kayaks, in impatient haste lest the walrus drift
+too far seaward, some one called:
+
+"Ootah!  Ootah!"
+
+They gazed anxiously about.  Ootah, the bravest and most distinguished
+of the hunters, was missing.  All the young men would gladly have
+started without Ootah, but the elders, who knew his skill and the might
+of his arm, were not willing.
+
+To the younger men there was an added zest in the hunt; each felt in
+the other a rival, and Ootah the one most to be feared.  A feverish
+anxiety, a burning desire to distinguish himself flushed the heart of
+each brave hunter.  For whoever brought back the most game, so they
+believed, stood the best chance of winning the hand of Annadoah.  Of
+all the unmarried maidens of the tribes, none cooked so well, none
+could sew so well as Annadoah, none was so skilled in the art of making
+_ahttees_ and _kamiks_ as Annadoah.  And, moreover, Annadoah was very
+fair.
+
+"Ootah! _aveq soah_!  Hasten thou!  The walrus are drifting to sea."
+
+Attalaq rushed up to the village and paused at the tent of Annadoah.
+
+"Ootah!" he called.
+
+A voice from within replied.
+
+"We start--the wind drifts--the walrus are carried to sea."
+
+"I come!" replied Ootah.
+
+The flap of the tent opened.  The sunlight poured upon the face of the
+young hunter.  He smiled radiantly, with the self-assertion of youth,
+the joy of life.
+
+Ootah was graced with unwonted beauty.  He was slight and agile of
+limb; his body was supple and lithe; his face was immobile, beardless,
+and with curving lips vividly red, a nose, small, with nostrils
+dilating sensitively, and eyebrows heavily lashed, it possessed
+something of the softness of a woman.  His glistening black hair, bound
+about his forehead by a narrow fillet of skins, fell riotously over his
+shoulders.  His eyes were large and dark and swam with an ardent light.
+
+He turned.
+
+"Thou wilt not place thy face to mine, Annadoah?  Yet I love thee,
+Annadoah.  My heart melts as streams in springtime, Annadoah.  My arms
+grow strong as the wind, and my hand swift as an arrow for love of
+thee, Annadoah.  The joy the sight of thee gives me is greater than
+that of food after starving in the long winter!  Yea, thou wilt be
+mine?  Surely for my heart bursts for love of thee, Annadoah."
+
+He leaned back, stretching his arms, but Annadoah shyly drew further
+inside her shelter.
+
+With a sigh he flung his leather line over his shoulder, seized his
+harpoons, and stepped from the tent.  His step was resilient and
+buoyant, his slim body moved with the grace of an arctic deer.  He
+looked back as he reached the icy shore.  Annadoah stood at the door of
+her tent.  Her parting laughter rang after him with the sweetness of
+buntings singing in spring.
+
+Ootah's heart leaped within him.  Annadoah possessed a beauty rare
+among her people.  From her father, one of the brave white men who had
+died with the Greely party years before at Cape Sabine, Annadoah had
+inherited a delicacy and beauty more common indeed with the unknown
+peoples of the south.  Her face was fresh and smooth, and of a pale
+golden hue.  Her cheeks were flushed delicately with the soft pink of
+the lichen flowers that bloom in the rare days of early summer.  Her
+eyes played with a light as elusive, as quick as the golden radiance on
+the seas.  Her dark silken hair straggled luxuriantly from under the
+loose hood of immaculate white fox fur which had fallen back from her
+head.  The soft skins of blue foxes and of young birds clothed her.
+From her sleeves her hands peeped; they were small, dainty, childlike.
+Almost childlike, too, was her face, so palely golden, so fresh, so
+lovely, so petite.  There were mingled in her the coyness of a child
+and the irresistible coquetry of a woman.
+
+She waved her hands joyously to the hunters leaving the shore.  They
+called back to her.  Some of the women frowned.  One shook her fist at
+Annadoah.
+
+Papik, lingering behind, approached Annadoah timidly.
+
+"Thou art beautiful, Annadoah; thou canst sew with great skill.  With
+the needles the white men brought thee, thou hast made garments such as
+no other maiden.  Papik would wed thee, Annadoah."
+
+"Thou art a good lad, Papik," Annadoah replied, laughing gaily.  "But
+thy fingers are very long--and long, indeed, thy nose!"
+
+Papik flushed, for to him this was a tragedy.
+
+"But with my fingers I speed the arrow with skill," he replied.
+
+"True, but the fate of him who shoots with a skill such as thine is
+unfortunate indeed; for soon the day will come when thou wilt not speed
+the arrow, when thy hands will be robbed of their cunning.  When
+_ookiah_ (winter) comes with his lashes of frost he will smite thy
+fingers--they will fall off.  Then how wilt thou get food for thy wife?
+_Ookiah_ will twist thy nose, and it will freeze.  Poor Papik!"
+
+Annadoah lay her hand gently on his arm, and a brief sorrow clouded her
+smiles.
+
+Papik bowed his head.  He understood the blight nature had set upon him
+and it made his heart cold.  Truly his fingers were long and his nose
+was long--and either was a misfortune to a tribesman.  He knew, as all
+the natives knew, that sooner or later during a long winter his fingers
+would inevitably freeze, then he would lose his skill with weapons;
+consequently he would not be able to provide for a wife.  His nose,
+too, in all probability would freeze; then he would be disfigured and
+the trials of life would be more complicated.
+
+From the inherited experience of ages the natives know that a hunter
+with short hands and feet is most likely to live long; a man's length
+of life can be pretty accurately gauged by the stubbiness of his nose.
+The degree of radiation of the human body is such that it can prevent
+freezing in this northern region only when the extremities are short;
+thus a man with long feet is almost for a certainty doomed to lose his
+toes, and the most fortunate is he whose feet and hands are short,
+whose nose is stubby and whose ears are small.  The exigencies of life
+place an economic value on the structure of a hunter's body, and the
+little Eskimo women--endowed with a crude social conscience which
+demands that a father shall live and remain efficient so as to care for
+his own children--are loath to marry one afflicted as was Papik.
+
+"But I care for thee, Annadoah," Papik protested.
+
+"And well do I know thou art a brave lad, but seek thou another maiden;
+thou dost not touch my heart, Papik, and thy fingers are very, very
+long."
+
+With native spontaneity, Papik laughed and turned shoreward.  As he
+passed the assembled maidens he paused momentarily and greeted them.
+He made a brief proposal of marriage to Ahningnetty, a fat maiden, and
+was met with laughter.
+
+"Go on, Long Fingers," one called.  "How wilt thou strike the bear when
+thy fingers are gone?  How wilt thou seek the musk ox when _ookiah_
+hath bitten off thy feet?"
+
+The maiden who spoke was extremely thin.
+
+"Ha, ha!" Papik returned.  "How wilt thou warm thy husband when the
+winter comes?  How wilt thou warm the little baby when thou art like
+the bear after a famished winter, thou maid of skin and bones!"
+
+"Long-nose!  Long-nose! may thy nose freeze!" she called.
+
+The other maidens laughed and gibed at her.  In anger she fled into her
+_tupik_, or tent.  Being very thin she, too, like Papik, suffered from
+the bar sinister of nature.  For, in selecting a wife, a native comes
+down to the practical consideration of choosing a maid who will likely
+grow fat, so that, during the long cold winters, her body will be a
+sort of human radiator to keep the husband and children warm.  So love,
+you see, in this region, is largely influenced by an instinctive
+knowledge of natural economies.
+
+As he launched his kayak, Ootah turned toward Annadoah.
+
+"Thou art the sun, Annadoah!" he called.
+
+"And thou the moon, Ootah," she replied.  "I shall await thee, Ootah!
+Bring thou back fat and blubber, Ootah, to warm thy fires, Ootah."  And
+she laughed gaily.  Then she turned her back to Ootah, bent her head
+coyly and did not turn around again.  To Ootah this was a good
+augury--for when a maiden turns her back upon a suitor she thinks
+favorably of him.  This is the custom.
+
+Ootah felt a new strength in his veins.  He felt himself master of all
+the prey in the sea.
+
+
+At the entrance of the tent of Sipsu, the _angakoq_, or native
+magician, stood Maisanguaq, one of the rivals for the hand of Annadoah.
+His face twisted with jealous rage as he heard Annadoah calling to the
+speeding Ootah.  His narrow eyes glittered vindictively.  Turning on
+his heel he entered Sipsu's dwelling place.
+
+Sipsu sat on the floor near his oil lamp.  When Maisanguaq entered he
+did not stir.  He was as still, as grotesque, as evil-looking as the
+tortured idols of the Chinese; like theirs his eyes were beadlike,
+expressionless, dull; such are the eyes of dead seal.  His face was
+brown and cracked like old leather, and was covered with a crust of
+dirt; his gray-streaked hair was matted and straggled over his face; it
+teemed with lice.  He held his knotty hands motionless over the flame
+of his lamp.  His nails were long and curled like sharp talons.  As
+Maisanguaq saw him he could not repress a shudder.
+
+Sipsu was feared, and as correspondingly hated, by the tribe.  They
+brought to him, it is true, offerings of musk ox meat and walrus
+blubber when members fell ill.  But that was the urge of necessity.  Of
+late years Sipsu's conjurations for recovery had resulted in few cures;
+his heart was not in them; but with greater vehemence did he enter upon
+seances of malediction.  With almost unerring exactness he prophesied
+many deaths.  For this the tribe did not love him.  Nor did Sipsu love
+the tribe; especially did he hate the youthful, and those who courted
+and were newly wed.  When Maisanguaq touched his shoulder, he turned
+with a growl.
+
+"Canst thou invoke the curse of death upon one who goes hunting upon
+the seas?"
+
+Through the rheum of years Sipsu's eyes gleamed.
+
+The aged, gnarled thing found voice.  It was hollow and thin.
+
+"Ha, thou art Maisanguaq," his toothless jaws chattered.  "Thou bearest
+no one good will.  Seldom dost thou smile.  For this I like thee."
+
+He laughed harshly.  Maisanguaq impatiently repeated his question:
+
+"Can Sipsu invoke the great curse?  Ha, what dost thou mean?  Art thou
+a fool?  Have not many died upon the word of Sipsu, Sipsu whose spirits
+never desert him!  Harken!  Did not Sipsu go unto the mountains in his
+youth?  Did he not hear the hill spirits speaking?  Did he not carry
+food to them, and wood and arrow points for weapons?  And in _ookiah_
+(winter) did they not strike?  Did they not kill one Otaq, who hated
+Sipsu?  Did Sipsu not go unto the lower land of the dead--did he not
+speak to those who freeze in the dark?  Yea, did Sipsu not learn how
+the world is kept up, and the souls of nature are bound together?  And
+hath he not the power to separate them, yea, as a man from his shadow?"
+
+"Thou evil-tongued wretch, well doth Maisanguaq believe thee!  Here--I
+promise thee meat.  I follow Ootah upon the chase.  There are walrus on
+the sea.  Invoke the curse of destruction upon Ootah--and I will give
+thee meat for the long winter."
+
+"Ootah--Ootah--yah--hah!  Ootah!"  Sipsu snapped the name viciously.
+"With joy shall I bring the great evil unto Ootah.  For hath he not
+despised my art, hath he not scoffed at my spirits!  But thou--what
+reason hast thou to desire his death?"
+
+"Ootah findeth favor with Annadoah," said Maisanguaq briefly.  "I would
+she never make his _kamiks_ (boots)."
+
+"Yea, and she shall not.  She shall not!" the old man shrieked in a
+sudden access of rage.  "So saith Sipsu, whose spirits never fail."
+
+Lying on the floor Sipsu closed his eyes and, moving his head up and
+down, called repeatedly:
+
+"_Quilaka Nauk_!  _Quilaka Nauk_!  Where are my spirits?  Where are my
+spirits?"
+
+Presently he rose, and swaying his body crooned:
+
+"_Tassa quilivagit_!  _Tassa quilivagit_!  My spirits are here--they
+are here!  _Tassa quilivagit_!"
+
+Grasping a drum made of animal tissue strung over a rib-bone he began
+to dance.  He beat a slow, uneasy measure on the drum.  His face
+grinned hideously.  His voice at times rose to a harsh shriek, then
+suddenly it trailed away until it seemed like the voice of one speaking
+very far off.  In a curious sort of intermittent crooning and shrieking
+ventriloquism he called down curses upon Ootah.  His dance increased;
+he beat the drum frenziedly.  His legs twisted under him, he described
+short running circles and jumped up and down in accesses of hysteria.
+His scraggy arms, with their tattered clothes, writhed in the air as he
+beat the drum above him.  His head began to nod from side to side; his
+eyes glowed like coals; his tongue hung from his mouth; foam gathered
+at his lips.
+
+"Ootah!  Ootah!  May his _kaneg_ (head) swell with the great fire!  May
+he see horrors that do not exist--what the wicked dead dream in their
+frigid hell!  May the wrath of the spirits descend upon him!  May the
+wrath of the spirits descend upon him!"
+
+Sipsu uttered short howls.  Maisanguaq joined in the incantation, and
+re-echoed the blighting curses.
+
+"May he suffer from _kangerdlugpoq_ (terrible body pains).  May they
+end not!  May he lie awake forever!  May he never sleep!  May his teeth
+chatter during the great dark!"
+
+Sipsu groaned.  He worked himself into an ecstasy of torture.  His form
+became a black whirling figure in the dim tent.
+
+"May Ootah's eyes close, may the lids swell; may they burn with fire."
+
+"May he never see the light of day--may he never aim the arrow--may his
+harpoons strike forever in the darkness!" Maisanguaq replied
+rancorously.  "May the wrath of the spirits descend upon him!"
+
+"May Ootah's tongue fasten to his mouth--may it be as the tongues of
+dead _ahmingmah_ (musk oxen)," chanted Sipsu.  "May he never speak--may
+Annadoah never hear his voice," chorused Maisanguaq.
+
+"May Ootah lose his _pungo_ (dogs); may they all die!"
+
+Maisanguaq, caught by the evil contagion, began to sway his body in
+rhythm to the weird dance.
+
+"May Ootah become a cripple!  May he break his bones!  May he lie
+helpless for years!  May his shadow leave him!  May he suffer with the
+greatest of all pains!"
+
+As he uttered this terrible curse, desiring that Ootah's shadow,
+wherein exists the soul, might depart from his still-living body, and
+thus cause the most excruciating bodily anguish, Sipsu sank exhausted
+to the ground.  He writhed in a paroxysm.
+
+"May Ootah die slowly; may his legs die, may his hands die--yea, may
+the spirits of his body be severed from one another as ice fields in
+the breaking; may the spirit of his hands, the spirit of his feet, the
+spirit of his lungs, the spirit of his head, the spirit of his heart
+wander apart--may they be torn asunder as the clouds in a storm!  May
+they wander apart forever seeking and may they never find themselves!
+May Ootah suffer as never suffered the unhappy dead!"
+
+And Maisanguaq's deep voice growled hatefully:
+
+"May Ootah's body lie unburied!  May he rot upon the earth!  May the
+ravens peck out his eyes!  May a murderer drink his blood!  May the
+wolves eat his heart!  May the spirit of the fog grow fat upon his
+entrails!  And may the spirits of his body scatter--as the clouds in
+the wild _anore_ (winds) scatter!  May his soul forever seek to find
+its kindred spirits unavailingly and suffer in _Sila_, (throughout the
+universe) forever!"
+
+From under a pile of skins Sipsu, his chant subsiding, brought forth a
+bundle.  Opening it, he revealed a collection of old bones; there were
+the bones of musk oxen, seals, walrus and smaller animals.
+
+"Yah-hah-hah!  I shall create a _tupilak_!" he crooned vindictively.
+"I shall create a _tupilak_!  And from the depths of the waters the
+_tupilak_ shall see Ootah.  Yah-hah-hah!  I shall create a _tupilak_,
+and from the hands of Sipsu it shall carry destruction to Ootah on the
+sea.  Yah-hah-hah!"  He laughed crazily.  Continuing his chant he
+constructed of the bones a crude likeness to an animal skeleton.  Over
+this he sprinkled a handful of dried turf.  Then, from beneath the
+cover of his bed he brought a stone pot and from it poured a sluggish
+red liquid over the strange object of his creation.  This was a mixture
+of clotted animal blood and water kept for such purposes of
+conjuration.  This done, he threw over the bones an aged sealskin.
+Then he rose to his feet, and in a low voice uttered the secret
+formulas whereby, in the depths of the sea, the result of his labor
+should take the form of an artificial walrus.
+
+Maisanguaq stood by, silent, evil exultation shining in his eyes.
+
+While the Sipsu was moaning his spell over the pile of bones,
+Maisanguaq turned and left the tent.  Out on the sea he saw the kayaks
+of his departing companions.
+
+"Good luck, Maisanguaq, have courage in the chase!  Remember Annadoah
+awaits you all!" Annadoah called blithely and coquettishly after him.
+
+Maisanguaq's lips tightened, his heart leaped, but well he knew that he
+meant nothing to the maiden, well he knew what little chance he had,
+and envy filled him, and bitter doubt, for he knew Ootah's prowess, his
+strength of limb, and braveness of heart.  However, he put out with
+quick powerful strokes, and with a sense of anticipated triumph, for he
+was confident that the magician by his necromancy had created in the
+depths of the sea a _tupilak_, or artificial walrus, which should
+attack Ootah.  He knew it might upset Ootah's kayak and cause him to be
+drowned.  The probabilities were, however, that it would permit itself
+to be harpooned, in which case its blighting curse would fall upon
+Ootah, who would lose all power and strength of limb, whose body would
+become bent and crippled and racked with the _kangerdlugpoq_, and who
+would die slowly, inch by inch.  Thus, Ootah would be helpless the rest
+of his days and as he died all the dreadful horrors of the curses would
+come upon him.  Thus would Maisanguaq be revenged.
+
+As the midnight sun dipped below the horizon, the sea became more
+deeply golden.  To the women watching along the shore, the multitude of
+kayaks became mere black specks.  They disappeared now and then behind
+the crests of leaping waves, and reappearing moved with the swiftness
+of birds along the horizon.
+
+At the entrance of her tent Annadoah stood, one hand shading her eyes
+as they pierced the radiant distance.  From the mountain passes behind
+the village echoed the joyous howls of approaching dogs.  Something
+stirred in the heart of Annadoah--something fluttered there like the
+wings of a frightened bird.
+
+
+Ootah's paddle touched the water with the softness of a feather, yet so
+quickly that the double blades emitted constant flashes of light
+intermittently on either side.  His arms moved with consummate ease.
+His kayak made a dark blurred line as it sped forward over the yellow
+waters.  Soon he had outdistanced the party.  Then his speed slackened,
+he glanced behind.
+
+The other kayaks darted after him like erratic bugs.  The land was a
+mere curve on the horizon; all about him the sea rose and fell, and
+from the shimmering mirror of every wave the sunlight shot backward in
+various directions.  A thousand golden searchlights seemed playing over
+the sea.  Now and then through the coppery mists an emerald green berg
+loomed titanically, and as it slowly bore down upon him, Ootah would
+gracefully manipulate one end of his paddle and shift his kayak about
+while the berg lurched toweringly onward.  As he gained distance from
+the land the ocean swelled with increasing volume.  His frail skin
+kayak was lifted high on the oily crests of waves, and as it descended
+with swift rushes, Ootah felt exultant thrills in his heart.  Far away
+he heard the resounding explosion of ice bergs colliding.  A low bellow
+arose from a floe immediately ahead.  Ootah's blood leaped, the spirit
+of the hunter throbbed in his veins, his nostrils sensitively quivered.
+With a slow silent movement of the paddle, he prevented his kayak from
+going too great a distance forward in order to await the others.
+Judging by the sound of the muffled bellowing, he assumed that the
+great animals were sunning themselves on the southern ridge of the
+floe.  His tactics were to paddle about to the north, land on the floe,
+and descend upon the walrus from the protection of the ridges of
+crushed ice which always abound on these rafts of the arctic sea.
+
+While he retarded the kayak and played with his paddle, Ootah became
+conscious of disquieting things in the world about him.
+
+In the heavens he saw low lying clouds moving slowly southward.  Higher
+above, clouds moved more swiftly in another direction.
+
+"The _quilanialeqisut_ (air spirits) are not at rest," murmured Ootah.
+"O spirits of the air, what disturbs your ease?"
+
+The clouds in the higher ether circled as if in an eddy of wind.
+Certainly the spirits were not at peace among themselves.
+
+"Spirits of the air," spake Ootah, "waft your caresses to Annadoah's
+cheeks.  Tell her Ootah waits to kill the walrus, that Ootah loves her
+and would make Annadoah his wife--_neuilacto_ Annadoah; tell Annadoah
+Ootah presses his nose to hers and calls her _Mamacadosa_ (of all
+things that which tastes the most delightful)."
+
+A gust swept the clouds from the zenith.  Still no breath of air
+touched the sea.
+
+To the lee a group of small icebergs passed.  They rocked and eddied,
+and from their glacial sides the light poured in changing colors.
+
+"O spirit of the light, carry thy bright message to the eyes of
+Annadoah, tell her Ootah has loved her for many, many moons."
+
+The bergs crashed into one another, and in the impact sank into the sea.
+
+Ootah bit his lips.  A vague misgiving was cold within his heart.
+
+A flock of gulls passed low over the waters.
+
+He called to them--that they should take his love to Annadoah.  They
+were to tell Annadoah that he would soon return, laden with food and
+fuel for the winter.  Their raucous cries mocked him.  He demanded what
+they meant.  "Ootah--Ootah," they seemed to call, "how foolish art
+thou, Ootah, how foolish art thou to love Annadoah.  For fickle is
+Annadoah--fickle, fickle the heart of the maiden Annadoah!"
+
+Ootah shrieked an enraged defiance.  His eyes sought the horizon.
+_Kokoyah_, the sea god, was breathing deeply, and in the mists which
+rose like fire-shot smoke before the sun, singular forms took shape.
+Ootah saw the magnified shadows of great dogs.  They seemed to be
+dashing along the horizon.  Then, with crushing strides, behind the
+adumbration a great sled, a titan figure gathered substance in the
+clouds.  It moved with terrific speed; it dominated the sky.  Its dress
+was not that of the northern tribes.  Ootah felt a resentful stirring,
+as, looking upward, in the clouds overhead, a white face, hard, fierce,
+scowling, with burning blue eyes, momentarily appeared.
+
+"A white warrior from the south," Ootah murmured.  "And he comes with
+swift tread.  What can it mean?"
+
+In common with many primitive peoples, Ootah possessed the soul of a
+poet--nature was vocal with him, and the disembodied beings of other
+worlds made themselves manifest and spoke in the light and in the
+clouds.  To him everything lived; the clouds were the habitation of
+spirits, the waves were alive, all the animals and fish possessed
+souls; the very winds were endowed with sex functions and loved and
+quarreled among themselves.  The interrelation of man and the forces of
+the universe were inseparably intimate and familiar; integral parts of
+one another, their destinies were bound together.  And to Ootah nature
+found much to gossip about in the affairs of men.
+
+Eagerly Ootah sought the clouds.  Along the horizon they resolved
+themselves into a phantasmagoria of Eskimo maidens and white men
+resembling the Danes who came each summer to gather riches of ivories
+and furs.  And the Eskimo maidens and white men danced together.  As
+these mirage-forms melted, Ootah glanced into the water by his side.
+Looking up from the ultramarine depths he saw something white.  For an
+instant it assumed the likeness of the face of Annadoah.  He saw her
+golden skin, her cheeks flushed with the pink of spring lichen
+blossoms, her lips red as the mountain poppies of late summer.  He
+started back and called aloud:
+
+"Annadoah!  Annadoah!"  For she had smiled, cruelly and disdainfully.
+Hoarse laughter answered him--the laughter of white men from the south.
+A flock of hawks passed over the water.  He was about to shout when he
+heard the sound of kayak paddles behind him.  He recalled himself and
+beckoned silence.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+"_The thought of Annadoah in the embrace of the big blond man, of her
+face pressed to his in the white men's strange kiss of abomination,
+aroused in Ootah a sense of violation. . . .  He heard Annadoah murmur
+tenderly, 'Thou art a great man, thou art strong; thy arms hurt me, thy
+hands make me ache.'_"
+
+
+Slowly, with silent paddles, the hunters moved over the limpid waters
+to the north of the floe.  On the far side they saw a horde of walrus
+bulls dozing in the sunlight.  Behind a ridge of ice they landed,
+drawing their kayaks after them.  With skin lassos, harpoons and
+floats, the party crouched low and crept toward the prey.  Thus they
+would be mistaken for other walrus by the unsuspecting animals.  Ootah
+was ahead.  Softly they all muttered the magic formulas to prevent
+themselves from being seen:
+
+"_Nunavdlo sermitdlo-akorngakut-tamarnuga_!"  In the rear, his eyes
+evilly alight, Maisanguaq followed.
+
+As they approached the herd they scattered.  Along the edge of the floe
+lay about twenty monstrous animals, steam rising from their nostrils as
+they snorted in their slumber.  There were a half dozen mother walrus
+with half-grown young about them.  Now and then they sleepily opened
+their eyes and made low maternal noises.
+
+Before the others realized what had happened, Ootah sprang toward a
+bull and delivered his harpoon.  It rose in the air and roared
+deafeningly.  Ootah struck a second time.  The animal floundered in a
+pool of blood, whipping the floe furiously with its huge tail.
+
+With a thunderous roar all the others leaped with one glide into the
+sea.  The floe rocked, the water churned like a boiling cauldron.  In a
+few minutes Ootah had despatched the beast.  Standing erect, he gazed
+in defiance at the clouds, at the distant gulls.  He forgot the omens,
+and laughed with joy.
+
+Not a moment was to be lost, however.  Springing into their kayaks, the
+Eskimos put to sea.  Now the battle began in earnest.  Attacking
+enraged walrus in these frail skin boats is probably the most dangerous
+form of hunting in the world.  At any moment an infuriated animal is
+liable to rise from the sea immediately beneath a kayak and upturn it.
+
+Forming a semi-circle on the water about the swimming herd, the
+fearless hunters sat in their tossing boats, each with one arm upraised
+ready to strike, and with the other manipulating the paddle.  Whenever
+a whiskered head rose above the water one of the hunters let a harpoon
+descend.  After each attack they waited breathlessly.
+
+Tateraq suddenly let his arm descend--his harpoon point struck home.
+He shouted with joy--for he, too, sought Annadoah.  Roaring with rage
+the lanced sea-horse dived into the deep.  The foaming water became red
+with blood, and a few snorting, bellowing heads appeared.  All about
+glared enraged, fiery eyes.  The animals plunged and tossed furiously
+in the water--the savor of blood maddened them.  They began a series of
+attacks upon the kayaks.
+
+Alive to their danger the men kept an alert watch.  As they saw a
+seething streak described on the surface of the water, as an animal
+raged toward them, they would skillfully shift their positions.  The
+animal would rush snortingly by.
+
+With dexterous movements of the paddle, Ootah playfully moved his kayak
+among the herd, in one hand his harpoon ready to strike.  A feverish
+desire to make the greatest kill possessed him.  Each time a hunter
+made an attack he felt a pang of anxiety.  Tense rivalry spurred the
+young hunters.
+
+In the midst of the battle Arnaluk struck a beast.  Ootah summoned all
+his skill, and dashed in succession after a number of appearing
+heads--he forgot his danger.  Before the others realized it, he had
+killed two.  Maisanguaq's harpoon went wild.  He jealously watched
+Ootah and struck without skill, carried away by chagrin and rage.  Ere
+made valiant attacks for he, too, thought of Annadoah, but the walrus
+invariably went skimming from under his blows.  Papik's harpoon glanced
+the backs of half a dozen.  Finally it landed.  He shouted with glee.
+The inflated floats attached to the harpoon lines bobbed crazily on the
+surface of the ensanguined waters as the animals tossed in their death
+struggles below.
+
+Two white tusks appeared near Ootah's kayak.  His arm cut the air--his
+harpoon sped into the water--an enraged bellow followed.  He withdrew
+the handle, free of its line and the attached metal point--the point,
+with the sinew, descended into the water.  It had struck home.
+
+Suddenly a cry went up.  One of the natives waved his arms frantically.
+A great monster had risen by his kayak and fastened one of its tusks in
+the skin covering the boat from gunwale to gunwale.  To strike it with
+the harpoon meant that it would plunge and capsize the frail craft.
+Crazy with excitement, the native began hissing and spitting in the
+beast's face.
+
+"Lift his head!" cried Ootah, paddling near.  "Lift--_tugaq_!--lift his
+tusk!"
+
+"Lift his head!" echoed the others.
+
+"_Aureti_!  _Aureti_!  Behave!  Behave!" the panic stricken man
+ludicrously shrieked at the animal.
+
+Ootah paddled his kayak to the side of his companion's and, leaning
+forward, with a quick movement, threw a lasso over the animal's nose
+and under one tusk.  With a terrific jerk of the body, he gave a
+backward pull--the walrus rose on the water, the kayak was freed of the
+tusk and slipped away.  With a roar the animal sank into the sea.  A
+number now rose angrily about Ootah's kayak.  They were bent upon a
+combined assault.
+
+Ootah warded off the attacking bulls on all sides with his harpoon.
+The air trembled with infuriated calls, the animals were insane with
+brute rage.  The other natives, alarmed, paddled to a safe distance and
+watched the unequal conflict.  While Ootah manipulated his harpoons,
+Maisanguaq, in the shelter of the floe, watched him with eager eyes.
+
+He saw Ootah, with almost superhuman dexterity, striking constantly.
+Repeatedly he had to renew the metal points on his weapon-handle.  One
+by one the animals gave up the attack and dispersed, until only an
+obdurate bull remained.  The battle between man and beast continued,
+finally Ootah let the harpoon fly with full strength.  It struck the
+animal near the heart.  Ootah uncoiled the free line attached to the
+harpoon point quickly--and the walrus, weighing probably three thousand
+pounds, plunged with the impetus of a bulk of iron into the sea.  Then
+a strange thing happened.
+
+The pan-shaped drag, attached to the extreme end of the long line
+securing the harpoon which Ootah had driven into the animal, became
+entangled in the lashings on the forepart of Ootah's kayak.  Leaning
+forward, Ootah tried to disentangle it.  He feared that the beast, in
+its struggle, might drag all his weapons and paraphernalia into the
+sea.  He felt it tugging at the line while he unknotted the tangle.
+While he was doing this Maisanguaq saw the beast rise to the surface of
+the water not far from Ootah and describe a quick circle about his
+kayak.  Before he realized it, the leather line had wrapped itself
+about his chest and under his arms.  It took but a minute for the
+animal to circle the boat--then it plunged.  Maisanguaq saw Ootah
+struggle to release himself; then he saw the kayak tilt as the hunter
+was drawn, by the mighty impetus of the plunging sea-horse, into the
+water.  He heard Ootah's cry--saw the blood red waters seethe as they
+closed over him.  In a brief interval the kayak righted itself--it was
+empty.
+
+A murmur of dismay rose from the others.  "The _tupilak_! the
+_tupilak_!" Maisanguaq exultantly murmured, his eyes alight.  "Happy
+_angakoq_!  Thou shalt have much of Ootah's meat!"
+
+Over the spot where Ootah sank the sun flamed.  The water seethed with
+the threshing of the animals beneath the sea.  Ootah's float finally
+rose.  The natives watched breathlessly for the reappearance of Ootah.
+The float bobbed up and down as the animal's death struggles beneath
+the water subsided.
+
+Maisanguaq, looking at the floats which marked the dead animals, called
+out:
+
+"Ootah hath won Annadoah--hah-hah-hah!  Hah!  Ootah hath won Annadoah
+only to lose her!  We shall take Ootah's catch to Annadoah, but Ootah
+sleeps.  Ootah hath gone to taste the water in the country of the dead!
+Hah-hah!"
+
+At that moment Maisanguaq nearly fell from his kayak.
+
+"Methinks thou wilt perhaps join the fishes first, friend Maisanguaq,"
+a familiar voice laughed joyously behind him.
+
+Maisanguaq's face became livid with dismay.  Had the _angakoq_ failed?
+And why?
+
+Turning, he saw Ootah, not far away, clambering from the water onto the
+floe.  He was unscathed by the mishap--the water even had not
+penetrated his skin garments.  A joyous cry arose from the hunters as
+they saw him running to and fro, working his arms to get up
+circulation.  Noting Maisanguaq's scowling face, Ootah twitted him:
+
+"Laugh, friend Maisanguaq," he said, "for winter comes and then thy
+teeth will chatter."  Maisanguaq scowled deeply--Ootah's blithesome
+remarks filled him with rancor.
+
+"Peace, Maisanguaq.  Methinks thou, too, lovest Annadoah," continued
+Ootah kindly.  "Therefor, I hear thee no spite!  For who cannot love
+Annadoah.  _Ka--ka!_  Come--come!"  Shaking the water from him, he bade
+the others tow his kayak to the floe.
+
+Ootah entered his kayak.  The struggles of the walrus had subsided, and
+only two skin floats bobbed feebly on top of the waves.  The hunters
+now strung series of kayaks together with strong leather ropes, three
+skin boats being attached in a catamaran.  Taking up the leather floats
+one by one, to the rear kayak of each series the hunters fastened the
+harpoon lines which secured the prey.  Thus the animals were to be
+towed slowly ashore.
+
+Altogether eight walrus had been secured; four of these had fallen to
+the skill of Ootah.  Ootah sang for joy.  Again he had achieved
+distinction on the hunt, and so, with all the better chances of
+success, he believed he might pursue his suit for the hand of Annadoah.
+With powerful, steady strokes of their paddles the hunters, in their
+processions of kayaks, towed the walrus through the sea shoreward.
+They joined unrestrainedly in Ootah's hunting chant.  Only Maisanguaq
+was silent.
+
+Now and then, unable to restrain his exuberant joy, Ootah sang his love
+to the clouds, the waves, the winds.
+
+"O winds, O happy winds, speed my message to Annadoah!" he called.
+"Tell her that I return with the food of the sea!  O spirits of the
+air, breathe to her that Ootah's heart hungers for her as starving
+_ahmingmah_ desire green grass in winter time.  O happy, happy waters,
+I return to Annadoah with food and fuel for winter--say Ootah
+_meuilacto_--would wed--Annadoah.  Tell her Ootah calls her
+_Mamacadosa_!"
+
+The others, although disappointed in being outwon, in spontaneous
+recognition of his superior feat, chimed a chorus of congratulations.
+Suddenly Maisanguaq gleefully pointed a significant finger to the sky.
+
+"Pst!" he said.
+
+A black guillemot, like an omen of evil, passed over Ootah's head.
+
+
+By all the immemorial customs of their people, because of the
+established pre-eminence of his prowess, Ootah should now find favor in
+the eyes of Annadoah.  Scarce seventeen summers had passed over
+Annadoah's head and of wooers she had a score.  The young hunters, not
+only of her own tribe, but of others far south, sought her hand.  The
+fame of her beauty and skill had travelled far.  None, it was said,
+equalled her dexterity in plaiting sinew thread; none cut and sewed
+garments as this maid with tender child's hands.  She made weapons, she
+brewed marvellous broths.  Since the death of her mother she had served
+the tribe with her skill.  Yet, as the summers passed, she remained
+carefree and to all suitors shook her head.  "Become a great chief,"
+she would say.  "Win in the games, bring back the musk oxen, then
+perhaps Annadoah will listen."  Each summer the young men pursued the
+hunt with the hope of becoming chief hunter among the tribesmen.  But
+for three summers Ootah had won signally above them all.  To the remote
+regions of their world the name of Ootah was whispered with awe.  Ootah
+carried off honors in the muscle-tapping and finger-pulling matches; he
+out-distanced all rivals in kayak races on the sea; he left everyone
+behind on perilous journeys to the inland mountains.  Of every living
+animal on land and sea he had killed, and in quantity of game he
+excelled them all.  Only of late had Annadoah listened with some degree
+of favor to his pleadings.  In the days of want he brought blubber to
+her for fuel, and provided her with meat.  And she was grateful.
+Perhaps her heart stirred, but she feared the quiet passion of Ootah,
+and by a perverse feminine instinct she resented a tenderness so gentle
+that it seemed almost womanly.  With winter approaching, and food
+scarce, it was inevitable that Annadoah should wed.  And now that Ootah
+in the quest of the walrus had made the greatest kill, none doubted
+that he should be chosen.
+
+As the kayaks approached the village an unexpected sight greeted the
+eyes of the hunters.
+
+Along the shore, the women of the tribe and strange men were dancing.
+
+Before the village tents they were gathered in groups.  While the elder
+women of the tribe beat a savage dance on membrane drums, the
+chubby-bodied maidens, dressed in fur trousers, swayed in the arms of
+the foreigners.
+
+As the boats approached the shore, the natives recognized the visitors.
+They were one of a half dozen parties of Danish traders who came north
+yearly from Uppernavik to gather the results of the season's hunt.
+Their visit meant an untold distribution of wealth among the tribe, for
+they brought needles, knives, axes, guns, ammunition, and in return
+secured a fortune in furs and ivory tusks.  They also doled out tea,
+biscuits, matches, tobacco, thread, and gaudy handkerchiefs beloved by
+the women.  Their coming had not been expected this season because of
+the dearth of game.
+
+The men in the boats shouted to one another joyously.  Only Ootah felt
+a heavy sinking at his heart.  He saw the big blond-bearded men
+chucking the little women under their chins.  Their method of kissing
+was strange and repugnant to him.  Accustomed only to the chaste
+touching of a maiden's face, the kiss of the white men he instinctively
+regarded as unnameably unclean.  He resented their freedom with the
+women.  But, children of the heart and brain, primitive, innocent, the
+women did not understand the white men's strange behavior.  And the
+husbands, not comprehending, did not care.  A gun, ammunition, a few
+boxes of matches--these constituted wealth in value exceeding a wife.
+
+Now and then Ootah saw some of the visitors raising flasks to their
+lips.  Then their hilarity rang out more boisterously.
+
+When they saw the kayaks approaching the shore the strangers shouted.
+The hunters replied.  Only Ootah remained silent.  Disapproving of the
+spectacle, his thoughts were busier elsewhere; his heart glowed.
+
+"Ho, ho, what there?" some called.
+
+"_Aveq soah_," Maisanguaq replied.
+
+"Jolly for you!" shouted a Newfoundland sailor, whom Ootah recognized
+as having been in the region with some sportsmen from far away America
+several years before.
+
+As they danced the visitors broke into the fragments of a wild sailor's
+chorus.
+
+When they had finished, the Newfoundlander, a tall, tough, red-faced
+whaler, drank again from his flask and strode to the shore.  His bulky
+body reeled unsteadily.
+
+"Come on up--bring 'er in--hurry up!  Gawd, but you'r' blazin' slow!"
+
+Ootah and his companions landed.  Tugging at the leather lines they
+drew the walrus one by one from the water to the ice.  In these
+monstrous palpitating black bodies were tons of food and fuel.  Without
+wasting time, they fell to their task and dressed the animals.
+Meanwhile sleds were brought from the tents and the masses of steaming
+meat and blubber were loaded.  While the natives were thus busily
+engaged, the half-drunken Newfoundlander strode about uttering great
+oaths.  The strangers' dogs, attracted by the meat, with shrill howling
+descended to the ice and surrounded the sled-loads of blubber.  Ootah
+seized an oar and beat them away.
+
+"What the hell d'ye mean," the Newfoundlander demanded.  "Youh'd beat
+our dogs?  Eh?  Get away, damn youh!"  He lifted his fist above Ootah.
+His face purpled, Ootah raised his lithe body, his muscles quivered
+like drawn rubber.  His black eyes flashed proud defiance.
+
+"Youh'd fight me, eh?--youh defy me, youh damn candle-suckin' heathen!"
+
+His hand descended.  Beyond, the drum beaters ceased, the dancers
+turned--a surprised cry went up.
+
+Ootah drew hack, his face flushed.  There was a red spot on his cheek
+where the white man's fist had struck.  He felt a sense of momentary
+terror.  The white men's methods of fighting were unfamiliar to the
+natives.  A blow from the fist is a thing unknown among them.  Ootah
+drew away--the bullying Newfoundlander followed.
+
+"Youh'd beat our dogs, eh?  Well, I'll show youh, youh oily,
+tallow-eatin' husky!"
+
+He called the dogs, and stooping to the treasured mass of blubber threw
+a great mass to the howling animals.
+
+"Ha! ha! ha! guess youh thought youh were smart, eh?"  A second team of
+dogs, released from their tethering, came wildly dashing shoreward.
+The whaler seized another mass of meat and flung it to the animals.
+
+Ootah felt a flush of fierce indignation rise within him.  His food for
+the winter, whereby he hoped to win Annadoah, that which might keep
+away the wolves of starvation, was being wantonly wasted.  He saw his
+companions cowering at the sight of the white man--he drew himself
+erect.  He saw the Newfoundlander turn and shout to his companions on
+the shore.  Ootah thought of the saying, "Strike thy enemy when his
+back is turned."  He seized a heavy harpoon handle, made of a great
+narwhal tusk, and swinging it high struck the Newfoundlander a terrific
+blow on the head.  He fell senseless to the earth, his face bleeding.
+Half stunned he tried to struggle to his feet, but Ootah leaped upon
+him, and, as was ethical in the native method of fighting, trampled him
+into insensibility.  The man lay unconscious, his face bleeding
+effusively.
+
+Without a word Ootah continued loading his share of the game onto his
+sleds.  Attracted by the attack, the other members of the trading party
+descended and surrounded the fallen man.
+
+"Nice trick, eh?" laughed one.  "Sam got his all right.  'Minds him
+right for being so damned fresh."  They surveyed Ootah.  "Slick little
+devil," one said, handing Ootah his gun.
+
+"Take it, son," he said, with maudlin magnanimity.  "You've got nerve!"
+
+Ootah smiled bashfully, and shook his head in quiet refusal.
+
+The half-drunken traders, laughing at what they considered a clever
+trick, carried their companion into one of the tents and poured brandy
+into his mouth.  Then they left him lying alone, half sodden, and
+returned to the shore.  Some watched the natives working, while others
+clasped the native maidens in their arms and danced.  Half afraid of
+the whites, flattered by their attentions, and extremely embarrassed,
+the little women jumped and danced in the visitors' arms.
+
+Papik finally drew his single sledge load of walrus toward his tent.
+He had been rejected repeatedly, but now--with a load of blubber--he
+knew he could not afford to miss the opportunity of seeking a wife.
+
+"Ahningnetty!  Ahningnetty!" he hailed a chubby maiden who, breaking
+from the arms of one of the white men, was seen running toward her
+shelter.
+
+"What wouldst thou, Papik?" she called.
+
+"Papik would speak with thee.  _Ookiah_ (winter) comes, and his teeth
+are sharp.  They will bite thee with pangs of hunger, and the meat
+Papik brings will make joyful Papik's wife."
+
+Ahningnetty, summoning some of the other maidens, surveyed Papik's load
+of blubber.
+
+"Truly, as he saith, there is little food, and happy will be Papik's
+wife," said one.
+
+"But when thy blubber is gone with what shalt thou provide her?" asked
+Ahningnetty.
+
+"Perchance the bears will come," Papik said.  "And skillful is Papik's
+hand with the lance."
+
+"But thy hand is long, Papik, and long fingers soon lose their skill."
+
+Ahningnetty dubiously shook her head.
+
+"But thou art chubby--yea," said Papik admiringly--"thou art fat as the
+mother bears after a fat summer, and thy body is warm; it giveth heat;
+Papik would give thee food, and thou shalt keep him warm during the
+long winter."
+
+The maiden smiled delightedly.  For, as Papik indicated, whereas a man
+may admire a slimmer beauty during the summer, when the long night
+comes a maiden fat and chubby is a wife to be prized.
+
+"But alas, thy nose is long, Papik," she said, shaking her head.
+
+And the others chorused:
+
+"Long nose, short life!  Long nose--short life!  Long nose--short
+life!"  In anger Papik struck the offending member, and drawing his
+sledge after him proceeded toward his tent.
+
+Assisted by a number of the natives, Ootah, smiling, exultant, drew
+five sled-loads of blubber up over the ice toward Annadoah's tent.
+With their comparatively meagre portions the others followed.  To
+Annadoah Ootah meant to show the spoils of his quest.  To her he
+desired to present the greater portion of the riches he had by his
+prowess secured.  Here was meat to serve them during the long winter,
+and in that region the catch was a priceless fortune.  Surely Annadoah
+could not refuse him now.  He had proved himself beyond question the
+chief hunter of the tribe.  His eyes filled, his temples excitedly
+throbbed.  He felt a greater joy than that the natives feel when the
+sun dawns after the long night.  In his heart pulsed the sweet song of
+spring's first ineffable bird.
+
+Not far from Annadoah's tent he paused.  About him the natives,
+wondering, admiring, had gathered.  He turned to them; he felt a
+strength, a dignity, an assertion he had never experienced before.  His
+voice rose in a happy, ingenuously proud chant of exultation:
+
+"From the bosom of _Nerrvik_, queen of the sea, have I not brought food
+for the long winter; yea, have I not for many moons sought to win in
+the chase that I might claim Annadoah?  Annadoah!  Annadoah!"
+
+"Yea, that thou mightest claim Annadoah!  Thou art the strongest hunter
+of the tribe," the natives rejoicingly chorused.
+
+"Did I not win in the muscle-tapping games?" he sang.  "Did I not speed
+the arrow as none other--did I not speed the arrows as the birds fly?"
+
+"Yea," they replied, "thou didst speed the arrow with the skill of the
+happy dead playing in the aurora--over the earth as the birds fly didst
+thou send the arrows.  Strong is thy arm, Ootah."
+
+Not far away some of the natives, joining in the chorus, began beating
+drums.  The white men hilariously drank from bottles and joined in the
+merry dances.
+
+"Did I not call the walrus and seal from the sea--as none other?  Have
+I not lured the caribou from their hidden lair?  Have I not enticed the
+birds, the foxes, and the bear by my calls--as none other of the
+tribes?"
+
+In succession Ootah uttered imitations of the calls of the walrus
+bulls, the female caribou, and cries of the various birds.
+
+"Have I not held converse with the animals of the land, the birds of
+the air, and shall I not one day perchance comb the hair of _Nerrvik_
+in the sea!"
+
+The drums beat more loudly; the dancers hopped and leaped.  The chorus
+replied:
+
+"Thou lurest the walrus and seal from the sea, thou enticest the
+caribou, _ahmingmah_ and birds unto thee!  Thou hast learned the
+language of nature, and the happy spirits are kind to thee!  Marvellous
+is thy power, Ootah."
+
+And in the chorus, deep, hoarse, sneeringly ironical rang the words of
+Maisanguaq:
+
+"Marvellous is thy power, Ootah," and his low bitter laughter followed.
+
+The white men began to sing as they danced with the chubby women.  In
+couples they rocked to and fro.
+
+"Have I not killed of all the birds of the air, the animals of the land
+and sea!  Have I not observed the customs of the august dead?  Have I
+done aught to bring misfortune to the tribe?"
+
+In spontaneous recognition of his pre-eminence the young men freely
+yielded Annadoah.  Only Maisanguaq felt bitter.
+
+Ootah summoned his helpers and the sleds of blubber were drawn to the
+immediate entrance of Annadoah's tent.  He seemed to step upon air.
+His heart bounded.
+
+"Annadoah!  Annadoah!" he called.  "Ootah waits thee.  Ootah hath
+brought thee treasure from the depths of the sea.  Strong is the arm
+and brave is the heart of Ootah when the arm strikes and the heart
+beats with the thought of thee."
+
+Seeing him there, the natives ceased dancing.  The white men, curious,
+drew near the tent.
+
+As he stood there, his head erect, proud, expectant, he became
+conscious of a sudden ominous silence on the part of his companions.
+Some distance away the women were whispering to one another, and above,
+in the sky, circled a black guillemot.
+
+"Annadoah," he softly called.
+
+Only the hawk replied.
+
+"Annadoah, I bring thee my love, as constant as my shadow!  I bring
+thee riches!  Ootah would give thy couch new furs and caress thee."
+
+From the brown, weather worn sealskin tent came the murmurous sound of
+voices.  Ootah heard the voice of Annadoah--and that of another.
+
+The black bird in the sky screamed.
+
+Not far distant in the tent of the _angakoq_ Ootah heard the low
+disquieting sound of a drum beaten in some malevolent incantation.
+
+His heart sank as heavily as a dead walrus sinks in the sea.
+
+Something stifled him.  Then the flap of the tent parted and Annadoah
+stepped forth, her head tossed haughtily, her beautiful eyes flashing.
+
+"Get hence," she said.  "Thou art a boy, thy tongue is that of a boy.
+Thou art soft--thou hast the heart of a woman."
+
+"Annadoah . . ."  Ootah's voice wailed.  The stretch of shore seemed to
+heave and writhe.  He put out his hands as if to ward off a blow.
+
+Behind Annadoah, at the door of the tent, the form of a man stooped.
+As he emerged, Ootah saw he was taller than Annadoah's tent.  His
+shoulders were broad and massive.  His face, bronzed by the burning
+sun, was like tanned leather, hard, wrinkled; his expression was as
+grim as graven stone.  His large blue eyes glittered with the coldness
+of flint.  His hair and long curling moustache were blond.  Ootah
+recognized "Olafaksoah"--Olaf, the great white trader--whom he had seen
+two seasons before at a southern village.  He was noted for his
+brutality and hard bargaining.
+
+"What's all the noise about?" he growled.  His voice was deep and gruff.
+
+Ootah staggered back.
+
+"Annadoah, Annadoah," he moaned softly, supporting himself on the
+upstander of his loaded sled.
+
+Olafaksoah strode forward with great steps, scowling.  He critically
+surveyed the loads of blubber and gleaming walrus tusks.
+
+"Good haul, boy--good haul!  Game's been pretty scarce all along the
+coast.  It's lucky we got here in time, eh, comrades?  What'll you
+take"--he turned to Ootah--"I don't know your name."  He spoke in
+broken Eskimo.
+
+"Ootah," Annadoah whispered, "that is his name.  Ha-ha, thou callest
+him a boy."
+
+Ootah winced.
+
+Olafaksoah, with heavy strides, passed down the line of sledges.
+Turning to his men, he called:
+
+"Bring the junk."
+
+A sled of matches, needles, tea, biscuits, knives, tin cups, a few
+hatchets, and several guns and cases of ammunition were brought.  While
+these were unloaded a half-dozen eager natives hastened into their
+tents and hurriedly brought out their portions of the preciously
+preserved skins and ivories of the meagre summer hunt.  Clamorous,
+insistent, they presented these to Olafaksoah.  They clustered around
+him so that he could not walk.  Ootah watched as the bargaining began.
+He saw Annadoah clinging near the white trader.  A number of the white
+men began dickering down the line with Arnaluk.
+
+"Load blubber--one tin cup--box black powder."
+
+Arnaluk shook his head.  Olafaksoah cuffed him with his fist.  The
+timid native did not have the courage to resent this brutality.
+
+"What d'ye want, you greedy savage--two boxes matches!"
+
+"Two boxes matches--one box shooting fire--one tin cup."
+
+Still he could not be persuaded to part with the precious meat.
+Olafaksoah swore and shook his fists.  Fearful of offending the
+stranger, the women joined in and shrieked at Arnaluk, urging him to
+consent.
+
+Unprotesting, he let them draw away his sled of blubber and tusks.  He
+had a tin cup, matches and cartridges--which he could not eat.
+
+"Rotten lot," Olafaksoah said to Papik, surveying his single catch of a
+young walrus.  Papik winced at this reproach.
+
+"Two boxes fire powder," said Olafaksoah.  Papik refused.  Olafaksoah
+browbeat him in a high voice.  Finally he kicked him.  "One case
+needles."  He called Papik's mother and chucked her under the chin.
+She smiled at him, awed, flattered, half afraid.  Papik parted with his
+load for a box of ammunition and a few needles.  Meanwhile the
+bartering went on for the hoarded wealth of the tribe.  Eager to
+precede one another, the natives rushed to and fro, bringing armfuls of
+ivories and furs from their tents.  In exchange for stuff of trifling
+value the white men secured, by their method of threatening bargaining,
+loads of blue and white fox skins, caribou hides, and walrus and
+narwhal tusks which the natives had previously preserved.  One man
+parted with five tusks, worth as many hundred dollars, for two gaudy
+handkerchiefs for his wife.  Another gave several exquisite fox skins
+for a plug of tobacco.  When they demanded more biscuits, tobacco or
+matches than were offered, Olafaksoah bullied them with threats.  Yet
+they hung about him, eager for the almost worthless barter, for the
+time being valuing a box of crackers and allotments of tea more than
+their substantial supply of walrus meat.  Finally the leader paused
+before Ootah's loaded sledges.
+
+"What'll you take--a gun, fire-powder?"
+
+Ootah shook his head.
+
+Olafaksoah had recourse to his stock-in-trade of oaths, and told his
+men to bring a gun, two hatchets, ammunition.
+
+Ootah was still obdurate.  The natives' voices arose murmurously, for
+they felt it was not well to offend the strangers.  During future
+seasons they might not come again, as they threatened, with ammunition
+and guns.  This the natives feared as a calamity.
+
+"Bring some crackers--tea," Olafaksoah paused.  Ootah watched Annadoah
+nestling near the "white trader."  He had forgotten all about the
+sledges of meat.  He did not hear Olafaksoah.  He still continued
+shaking his head.
+
+"I'll be liberal with you, son," Olafaksoah indulgently increased his
+offer.
+
+Six more boxes of ammunition, more tea and crackers were added to the
+pile.
+
+Ootah again mechanically shook his head.  Amid all of those about him,
+he saw only the face of Annadoah, golden as sunlight and pink as the
+lichen blossoms of spring.  Through her open _ahttee_, or fur garment,
+he saw her breasts as tender as those of eider-feathered birds.  The
+sight of her melted his heart, the streams of spring were loosened
+within him.  Yet, with an agonized pang, he observed her gaze adoringly
+and eagerly at the tall stranger's hard face; he saw her quiver at the
+sound of his harsh, gruff voice.  Olafaksoah's brutal masculinity for
+the time dominated the shrinking femininity of the girl.  Ootah saw
+Annadoah beseechingly, almost fawningly, touch the white chief's horny
+hand and nestle it close against her cheek.
+
+Olaf, the trader, was oblivious to this.
+
+"Greedy, eh?  Well, we need the meat!  If we're goin' to stay here to
+chance hunting our dogs got to be fed!"  More supplies were brought.
+Still Ootah did not speak.
+
+The white chief presently gazed hard at Ootah.  Then his eyes
+brightened with amused mirth.  He saw the despairing, yearning gaze of
+the youth toward the girl he had selected to favor.
+
+"Ha, ha, ha!" he laughed good-naturedly.  "I see.  I've keel-hauled
+your Romeo stunt, eh?  Want the stuff?"  He kicked the supplies
+interrogatively.
+
+Ootah sadly shook his head.  He dully heard the vulgar gibes of the
+white men and the mocking laughter of Maisanguaq.
+
+One of the natives began beating a drum.  Ootah giddily caught an
+evanescent vision of women dancing with reeling traders.  He heard
+Olafaksoah as he entered Annadoah's tent laughing heartily.
+
+The thought of Annadoah in the embrace of the big blond man, of her
+face pressed to his in the white men's strange kiss of abomination,
+aroused in Ootah a sense of violation, an instinctive repugnance akin
+to the horror a native feels for the dead.  All the ardent hopes of his
+life for many moons had centered upon his bringing the results of a
+successful hunt to Annadoah and asking her to share his igloo, to
+become his wife.  And now, in his hour of high victory, after everyone
+had acclaimed him, he was crushed.
+
+A fervid fever seemed to take fire in his forehead and flush his veins,
+yet his heart was colder than ice, his hands and feet were cold.  He
+felt as though someone were strangling him; he felt giddy, suddenly
+sick.  At that moment he was too stunned to realize fully the blighting
+tragedy which had annihilated his hopes.
+
+Nearby in her tent he heard Annadoah's voice, sweet as the song of
+buntings.
+
+"Olafaksoah, Olafaksoah," he heard her murmur tenderly, "thou art a
+great man.  Thou art strong.  Thy arms hurt me, thy hands make me
+ache."  Then Ootah heard the man's hard voice and Annadoah's repressed
+murmurs of mingled pain and delight.  The day became black about him.
+He felt that he must get away; a wild madness to run seized him.  He
+felt the impetus of the winds in his feet.  Turning on his heel, his
+face to the northwest, he fled.
+
+In the sky overhead the black guillemot screamed.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+"_Her lips are red--red as a wound in the throat of a deer._"
+
+
+For seven weeks Ootah lived in the mountains.  The violence of his
+bitterness and grief scared away the wild hawks in whose high nesting
+place he found shelter.  At the door of that icy cave above the clouds,
+he called upon the spirits of the mountains for vengeance.
+
+"_Ioh--ioh_!" he wailed.  "Spirits of the glaciers, lift your
+hands--strike!  Descend and smite Olafaksoah! carry him to the
+narwhals; let the whales feed upon his body.  May the soul of his
+hands, and the soul of his feet, and the soul of his heart, and the
+soul of his head struggle with one another.  May he never rest!
+_Ioh--ioh--ioh--ioh_!"
+
+The boom of sliding avalanches answered him.  The sound was like that
+of muffled thunder.  Wild cries arose from the mountain birds.  They
+sounded demoniacal in the taut air.
+
+Far below soared the black vultures of the arctic.  In a fit of anger
+Ootah shook his arms frantically at the shrieking birds.  For they
+seemed to mock him.
+
+"Spirits of the clouds," he wailed, "_Ioh--ioh--ioh-h_!  Ye that wander
+to the south!  Ye that fly to the north!  Ye that struggle hither and
+yon, from the east to the west.  Bear my curses to Annadoah.  Tell her
+that the heart of Ootah is bitter.  Tell her Ootah would that her voice
+become as harsh as the winds of _ookiah_ (winter).  Tell her Ootah
+would that her face become withered as frozen lands in winter.  Tell
+her Ootah would that her heart rot within her, that the wild beasts
+feed upon her breasts.  _Ioh-h--ioh-h-h_!  Sing unto her the curses of
+Ootah, and may she not rest!"
+
+Below him the clouds, burning with vivid fire, moved in the varying
+strata of air currents--to Ootah they were conveying his messages.  The
+sun, circling low about the horizon, shifted its rays, and within the
+nebulous cloud-masses in the valleys, fountains of prism light played.
+In this radiant phantasmagoria messages in turn came to Ootah.
+
+He saw the figuration of Annadoah's tent, and within, reclining upon
+her couch, the form of Annadoah.  At the mirage picture of the
+beauteous and beloved maiden his heart throbbed violently.  In the high
+altitude he found respiration difficult, and now he almost suffocated
+for lack of breath.  He felt a pang at his heart as he saw the white
+chief enter the tent.  The winds wailed sibilant and agonizing messages
+into the ears of Ootah:
+
+"Thou hast cursed Annadoah.  Foolish Ootah!  For thou lovest Annadoah!
+Yea, her voice is as sweet as the sound of melting streams in
+springtime.  Lo, she whispers into the ears of Olafaksoah: 'Thou art
+strong, Olafaksoah; Ootah hath the heart of a woman.  Thou hurtest me,
+Olafaksoah; thy arms bruise me, thy hands make me ache; but thou art
+strong, thou art great, Olafaksoah; the heart of Annadoah trembles for
+joy of thee.'  Thus saith Annadoah!"
+
+And in the winds Ootah heard Olafaksoah's coarse laughter.
+
+"_Ioh--ioh-h-h_!" Ootah moaned.
+
+"Thou wouldst that Annadoah's face be blighted as frozen land in
+winter," laughed the winds, mockingly.  "Thou dotard Ootah!  Thou
+lovest the face of Annadoah.  It is very fair.  It is golden as the
+radiant face of _Sukh-eh-nukh_.  Her eyes are as bright as stars in the
+winter night.  Oh-h-h, Ootah!  Into the eyes of Olafaksoah Annadoah
+gazes, yea, she faints with joy, thou silly Ootah!"
+
+"_Ioh--ioh-h-h_!" wailed Ootah.
+
+"Her lips are red, Ootah---red as a wound in the throat of a deer."
+
+And in the cloud vision Ootah saw the blond chief take the head of
+Annadoah between his two palms and press her lips fiercely upon his
+own.  Ootah's heart trembled as water.
+
+"_Ioh--io-h-h_!" he sobbed, and tears coursed from his eyes.
+
+The constant haunting thought of Annadoah's face pressed close to that
+of Olafaksoah somehow made his face burn and his bosom ache.
+
+"Ootah, Ootah, thou wouldst that Annadoah's heart might wither, yea, as
+a frozen bird in the blast of winter, foolish Ootah, who lovest
+Annadoah!  Soft beats the heart of Annadoah upon the bosom of
+Olafaksoah; yea, for very joy it flutters as a mating bird in summer
+time.  Thou wouldst that beasts might rend her little breasts--safe are
+they now in the embrace of the strong man from the south.  Ootah!
+Ootah!"
+
+Ootah wrung his hands.
+
+"Thy curses fall dead upon the ears of Annadoah, she who hears only the
+voice of Olafaksoah."
+
+In the winds Ootah heard the whisper of Olafaksoah in the dim tent.  He
+heard Annadoah's rapturously murmurous replies.
+
+"Olafaksoah shareth the igloo of Annadoah," whispered the winds
+suggestively.  And Ootah knew the Eskimo custom.
+
+Annadoah, by sharing her simple habitation with him, had by choice
+formally become the wife of Olafaksoah.  And according to the unwritten
+law of ages she was now as much his property as his dogs.  He might
+abuse her, and desert--and thus divorce--her whenever he chose.  She
+might, at his pleasure, be loaned as a wife to another, and in this she
+would have no word.  Or she might be given away, and dare not protest.
+Ootah felt that she was lost to him irretrievably.
+
+For hours Ootah stood at the mouth of his mountain eyrie in dumb agony.
+All that he suffered it is beyond me to tell you.  For days he crouched
+there, motionless, stark dumb, every fibre of him aching.
+
+
+In the valleys below, as the hours of the burning days and golden
+nights passed, the sunlight constantly shifted.  In the palpitating
+mists Ootah read of the days' doings at the camp.  He saw the white men
+bartering for the meagre remaining furs and ivories gathered by the
+tribe.  With the natives he saw them going on long fruitless hunts.
+Finally one day he witnessed them harpoon a half dozen walrus on the
+sea.  They laboriously towed the catch ashore and rejoiced over the
+unexpected wealth of oil and blubber.  But the white men claimed the
+entire prize, loaded their extra sledges, liberally fed their dogs, and
+doled out but a penurious allotment of meat and blubber to the tribe.
+
+But in all this Ootah had no concern.  Day by day the cloud-swimming
+valleys below blazed with crimson-shot conflagrations . . .  Ootah knew
+the dead were lighting their monstrous camp fires--but even in this he
+found no interest.  Daily he became fainter and fainter from lack of
+food, and daily, constantly, the winds whispered:
+
+"The mouth of Annadoah is very red--red as a wound in the throat of a
+deer . . ." and then sibilantly--"softly beats the heart of Annadoah
+against the bosom of Olafaksoah."  Then every fibre of him burned and
+ached.
+
+One day the radiant valley darkened . . .  Out of the sky, as if rising
+from worlds beyond the horizon, a cyclopean phantasm of clouds took
+form.  Rising higher and higher toward the zenith, ominous and
+sinister, it gathered substance and spread across the glowing heavens
+like a film of smoke . . .  It took upon itself the awful semblance of
+a mighty thing, half-beast, half-man.  As if to strike, it slowly
+lifted the likeness of a gigantic arm shrouded with tattered
+clouds . . .  The baleful shade shut off the sunlight from the
+earth . . .  Ootah's heart quailed . . .  Terror gripped him . . .  For
+he saw--what few men had ever beheld--the shadow of _Perdlugssuaq_, the
+Great Evil.  Finally he found voice.
+
+"O most dreadful of the _tornarssuit_ (spirits)," he called, grovelling
+on his knees, "smite me!  Smite me!"
+
+During the tragic days of his isolation the full realization of all
+that he had lost had come to Ootah.  He fed upon the memory of
+Annadoah's face.  He remembered how, with the vision of that face
+before him, he had excelled in the hunts and games, and for many moons
+had felt confident of winning her.  He dwelt for hours upon her
+stunning rejection, of how she clung to the white man; he visioned with
+heart corroding bitterness her days with Olafaksoah, and he burned with
+unnameable anguished pangs as he conjured her nights.  Now, the
+violence of his grief exhausted, he invoked death.
+
+Expectant, fearful, with closed eyes, he waited.
+
+In the valley a storm gathered, and the low whine of the winds Ootah
+believed to be the breath of the descending terror.  The air became
+unbearably colder as the dreaded creator of death, darkness and ice
+descended.  The taut suspense was terrible.  Finally Ootah reached the
+limits of human endurance--merciful unconsciousness blotted out the
+long agony.
+
+When he recovered the storm had passed.  Scores of birds, driven
+against the rocks by the terrible winds, lay dead at the entrance of
+the cave.  Surely the Great Evil had struck, but he lived.  Hunger
+stirred within him and he fell upon the birds.
+
+Later he sought game in the lower valleys.  He had lances and bows and
+arrows with him.  He found an inland vale, where a patch of green grass
+was exposed despite a recent fall of snow--there a herd of musk oxen
+grazed.  He drew his bow of bone and sinew.  One fell after the first
+quiver of his arrow.  His skill was marvellous.  He had struck a vital
+spot.  He finished his killing of the fallen animal with a lance.  He
+feasted upon the raw meat, and carried away with him up to his eyrie
+enough to last for many days.
+
+The sun meanwhile sank lower and lower; there were long hours of
+twilight; snow storms came; the cold increased.  Ootah felt the first
+whip of approaching winter.  Ootah's spirit melted.  Disquieting
+messages came in the cold winds and darkening clouds.  His heart beat
+quickly at what the frightened birds told him.  Olafaksoah, they said,
+struck Annadoah.  As she lay on the ground he kicked her.  In the
+snow-driven wind Ootah heard the echo of her heart-broken weeping.  He
+revoked the curses he had uttered; he cursed his own weakness whereby
+he had invoked harm to her.  Then in the winds Ootah heard the beat of
+drums.  In the clouds he saw the white men dancing with the Eskimo
+maidens.  Day after day they danced--day after day Annadoah wept.
+Olafaksoah had become wearied.  Disappointed in the failure to secure
+greater supplies, he vented his impatience upon Annadoah.  Cruelly he
+bruised her little hands, he mocked and jeered her when she pleaded
+with him.  In fits of anger he often struck her.  Finally, one day, in
+the cloud phantasmagoria, Ootah saw Olafaksoah reeling from the strange
+red-gold water the white men drank.  He entered Annadoah's tent.  She
+crouched, terrified, in a corner.  With him were three of his rough
+blond companions.  They staggered--and in the winds they sang.
+Olafaksoah pointed consentingly to Annadoah.  One of the men attempted
+to embrace her.  Then she rose defiantly and did what few Eskimo women
+ever dared.  She smote the man's leering face and, sobbing, sank on her
+knees before Olafaksoah.  He roared out things the Eskimos do not
+understand.  "_Goddlmighty_!" and more awful words.  His fist
+descended.  In the winds Ootah heard Annadoah scream and call his name.
+
+That day he descended from the mountains.
+
+
+Much that Ootah conjured in his mind, or imagined he saw in the clouds,
+really happened.  Whether he actually sensed these things by some
+wonderful power of clairvoyance, which the natives themselves
+believe--or whether he just accurately guessed what occurred, I do not
+know.  But of this I can tell:
+
+By that strange contradictoriness of the feminine--much the same all
+the world over--by that inherent, inborn desire of subjugation to the
+brutal and domineering in the male, Annadoah had given herself
+unreservedly to Olafaksoah.  At the sound of his firm step she
+trembled.  His hard, brutal embraces caused her heart to flutter with
+joy.  At first he told her he would take her with him to the south.
+Annadoah believed him.  Then he changed his mind, and said she must
+wait until the next season for him.  She silently acquiesced.  She
+called upon all her simple arts to please him.  Carefully she oiled her
+face and made the golden skin soft by rubbing it with the fur of
+animals; with a broken comb, left with her mother years before by a
+party of explorers, she combed her long, black and wonderful hair and
+elaborately arranged it behind her.  About her forehead she bound a
+narrow fillet of fine, furry hares' skin.  She donned new garments; her
+_ahttee_ was made of the delicate skins of birds, her hood of white fox
+hides.  To all this Olafaksoah seemed blind; at times, with coarse,
+half-maudlin tenderness, he caressed her, called her his "little girl"
+and promised to "come back next spring."  But Annadoah was useful to
+him otherwise.
+
+During the days when Olafaksoah and his men were hunting or gathering
+furs and ivory at nearby villages along the coast, Annadoah sewed skins
+into garments for Olafaksoah and his men.  Sometimes she went with
+Olafaksoah on his expeditions and employed her coquetry upon the
+susceptible men of the migrating tribes to secure bargains for him.
+For a box of matches she would cajole from her people ivories worth
+hundreds of dollars.  She persuaded them to rob themselves of the
+walrus meat and blubber they had gathered for winter and give them to
+her master in exchange for tin cups and ammunition, all of which would
+be useless when the night came on.  To Ootah she gave no thought until
+one day the white man struck her.  As he vented his rage at not
+securing more riches upon her during the ensuing days, her heart more
+and more instinctively turned to the youth "with the heart of a woman"
+whom she had rejected.  When Olafaksoah brought his companions to the
+tent her soul rose in rebellion.  In the camp there was an orgy.  None
+of the married men, who for a slight consideration were willing to
+permit their wives to dance with the traders, objected to the drunken
+carousal.  Ribald songs sounded strange in this region of the world.
+Yet after Olafaksoah had kicked her and left her lying in the tent,
+high above the sound of the sailors' doggerel songs, Annadoah
+frantically called aloud:
+
+"Ootah!  Ootah!"
+
+For a long time she lay in a stupor.  Her face was bleeding.  When she
+regained consciousness the white chief and his men had left.  They had
+taken with them all available furs, ivories and provisions in the
+village.
+
+At the door of her tent Annadoah stood, dry-eyed, her hair dishevelled.
+To the south she yearningly extended her arms.  Her heart still ached
+toward the man who had lied to her and deserted her.  She was left, a
+divorced woman, alone among her people, with no one to care for her
+during the long winter night.
+
+As she stood there the light of the descending sun, which was now far
+below the rim of the horizon, paled.  Driven by a frigid wind, howling
+raucously from the mountains, great snow clouds piled along the sky
+line.  Out at sea the tips of the waves became capped--leprous white
+arms seemed reaching hopelessly for help from the depths of the sea.
+The sky blackened.  The increasing gusts tore at the frail tents.  The
+wolf-dogs crouched low to the ground and whined.  A tremor of anxiety
+filled the hearts of the tribe.  Presently the clouds were torn to
+shreds and whipped furiously over the sky.  In the thickening grey
+gloom Annadoah watched the men of the tribe fastening their sleds and
+belongings to the earth . . . mere dark shadows.  Above her tent,
+tossed by the wind in its eddying flight, a raven screamed.
+
+Annadoah finally entered and threw herself upon the rocky floor of her
+dwelling.  As the furies were loosed outside her voice rose and fell
+with the wailing grief and wrath of the wind.  "Olafaksoah!
+Olafaksoah!"  But only the hoarse evil call of the black bird answered
+during lulls in the storm.  And Annadoah heard it, with a sinking of
+her cold heart, as the voice of fate.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+"_'Do the gulls that freeze to death in winter fly in springtime?' she
+asked, simply. . .  'The teeth of the wolves are in my heart' . . ._"
+
+
+Desolate and alone, Annadoah walked along a crevice in the
+land-adhering ice of the polar sea.
+
+The prolonged grey evening of the arctic was resolving into the long
+dark, and the Eskimo women, as is their custom at this time of the
+year, had gathered along the last lane of open water--which writhed
+like a sable snake over the ice--to celebrate that period of mourning
+which precedes the dreadful night, and to give their last messages and
+farewells to the unhappy and disconsolate souls of the drowned, who,
+when the ice closed, should for many moons be imprisoned in the sea.
+
+An unearthly twilight, not unlike that dim greenish luminescence which
+filters through emerald panes in the high nave of a great cathedral,
+lay upon the earth.  The forms of the mourning women were strangely
+magnified in the curious semi-luminance and, as their bodies moved to
+and fro in the throes of their grief, they might have been, for all
+they seemed, shadowy ghosts bemoaning their sins in some weird
+purgatory of the dead.
+
+In the northern sky a faint quivering streak of light, resembling the
+reflection of far away lightning, played--the first herald of the
+aurora.  To the south a gash of reddish orange, like the tip of a
+bloody-gleaming knife-blade, severed the thick purple clouds.  There
+was a faint reflected glimmer on the unfrozen southern sea.
+
+Snow had fallen on the land, igloos had been built.  Over the village
+and against the frozen promontories loomed a majestic yet fearful
+shadowy shape--that of a giant thing, swathed in purple, its arm
+uplifted threateningly--the spectre of suffering and famine.
+
+This wraith, brought into being by the gathering blackness in the
+gulches and crevices of the mountains, filled the hearts of the natives
+with unwonted foreboding.
+
+Profound silence prevailed.
+
+Already the sea for miles along the shore was frozen.  The open water
+lay at so great a distance from the land that the sound of the waves
+was stilled.  The birds had disappeared.  Even the voices of the
+sinister black guillemots and ravens were heard no more.
+
+Annadoah's sobs rose softly over the ice.
+
+"Spirit of my mother, thou who wast carried by the storm-winds into the
+sea!  Hear me!  Annadoah loved one Olafaksoah, a chief from the south;
+for him the heart of Annadoah became very great within her.  And now
+the heart of Annadoah aches.  For he hath gone to the south.  And not
+until the birds sing in spring will he return.  And Annadoah is left
+alone.  _Ookiah_ comes with the lash of wicked walrus thongs, and there
+is no blubber buried outside Annadoah's shelter.  Neither is there oil.
+And the couch of Annadoah is cold--so very cold.  Yea, listen, spirit
+of my mother, and bring Olafaksoah back, that he may bruise Annadoah's
+hands, that he may cast Annadoah to the ground and crush Annadoah if he
+wills with his feet!  Io-oh-h!"
+
+She moaned this in a curious sing-song sort of chant.  Over the ice the
+voices of the other women rose, and each, to her departed relatives and
+friends who had died in the sea, told about the important incidents of
+the year and the misgivings for the winter, in a varying crooning song.
+
+Annadoah passed Tongiguaq, who jumped and danced in a frenzy of grief.
+Tongiguaq had lost three children; two had been drowned, and a new-born
+baby, three months before, was born maimed.  According to the custom of
+the people, a fatherless defective child is doomed to death.  So
+rigorous is their struggle to survive, so limited the means of
+existence, that a tribe cannot bear the burden of a single unnecessary
+life.  So in keeping with this Lycurgean law, worked out by instinct
+after the stern experience of ages, a rope had been twisted about the
+neck of Tongiguaq's baby and it had been cast into the sea.
+
+All this the weeping woman told in her chant to the departed.  When she
+saw Annadoah approaching, she paused.
+
+"Here cometh the she-wolf that hath devoured the food of our tribe,"
+she wailed, intense bitterness in her voice.  "Yea, by her cajolery she
+persuaded our men to give unto the traders from the south our precious
+food.  And now we starve!  Yea, she hath robbed us.  She is as the
+breath of winter, as the blackness of the night."
+
+Along the line of wailing women Tongiguaq's reproach was suddenly taken
+up.  As Annadoah walked by them they did a strange thing.  The natives
+fear their dead--they never even mention their names.  For possessed of
+great power are the dead, and they can wreak, as befits their moods,
+unlimited good or ill.  Believing they could persuade the dead to array
+themselves against Annadoah, the women took up Tongiguaq's denunciation
+and reviled Annadoah in their weird chant to the departed.  Annadoah
+wrung her hands and wept.  Bitter and jealous because the white chief
+had selected her during his stay, their bosoms full of the harbored ill
+will and envy of years because she had been the most desired by the
+young men of the tribes, the women now invoked curses upon the deserted
+and unprotected girl through the medium of the incorporeal powers.
+
+The dread of it filled poor Annadoah's heart.  She quailed at the
+bitter execrations called upon her head.  Instinctively her hand
+reached through the opening of her _ahttee_ and she clutched at a piece
+of old half-decayed skin.  This was a remnant of her mother's father's
+clothing, a amulet given her as a child, when saliva from the maternal
+grandfather's mouth had been rubbed on her lips, and which she believed
+protected her from ill fortune.
+
+"Io-ooh! io-oh!" Annadoah moaned in pain.
+
+The women forgot their own tragedies.  They forgot the messages they
+were imparting to the dead.  Directly they might not be able to invoke
+any effective curse upon Annadoah; but well they knew, indeed, the
+awful power of the disembodied.  And to the dead in the cold shuddering
+sea they told how Annadoah had played with the men, how she had
+betrayed them to the white traders, cajoling them to rob themselves of
+food, and how, because of her, famine now confronted the tribe; they
+told of the long devotion of Ootah, the desired of all the maidens, and
+how Annadoah had rejected him.
+
+Possessed by a frantic contagion of released rage, their voices rose
+and fell in a frightful chanting malediction.  In the weird gloom their
+vague forms leaped about, their arms writhing like black things in the
+air as they called the names of their individual dead to hear.
+
+As their voices approached a crescendo they danced with increasing
+hysteria.  Some shrieked and fell to the ice groaning, their bodies
+twisting in  convulsions.  Others laughed madly--laughed at the
+dreadful horrors with which the dead would smite Annadoah.  Losing all
+control they were carried away by their delirious malevolence; their
+voices reached a high shrill pitch.  Their arms clawed the air.
+Through the dead curses were invoked upon Olafaksoah, the great trader,
+who had cowed them and robbed them.  They begged of the _tornarssuit_
+that he might be rended by wolves, that his body might rot unburied,
+and that the spirits of his limbs might be severed and be compelled to
+wander in restless torment forever.  They called anathemas upon his
+unborn children; and of their dead, who should be imprisoned in
+darkness in the depths of the sea, they furiously invoked upon
+Annadoah's offspring the curse of the long night . . .  Their voices
+shuddered over the ice as they demanded that most dreadful of all
+dreaded evils--that Annadoah's child might be born as blind to light
+and the joy of light as the dead in the sea.
+
+Annadoah crouched in frantic terror upon the ice.  From the Greenland
+highlands a moaning echo answered the women.  To Annadoah the hill
+spirits had joined in cursing her--all nature seemed to upbraid her.
+Tremblingly, with a last lingering hope, she crept on her knees to the
+edge of the lane of lapping black water.  She whispered a pathetic plea
+to _Nerrvik_, the gentle queen of the sea, whose hand had been severed
+by those she loved, and who felt great tenderness for men.  Annadoah
+listened.
+
+"Thou art cold of heart to him who loves thee, Annadoah," a voice
+seemed to whisper in the lapping waves.  "Thou art beautiful as the
+sun, but as _Sukh-eh-nukh_ shall thou be eternally sad.  Thou shalt
+lose because of thine own self the greatest of all treasures.  That is
+fate."
+
+Far out on the open ocean spectral fire-flecks flashed like mast-lights
+on swinging ships.  These mysterious jack o' lanterns of the arctic are
+caused by the crashing together of icebergs covered with phosphorescent
+algae.
+
+To Annadoah the dead were lighting their oil lamps for the long night.
+As she watched the weird illuminations a paralyzing fear of the vague
+unknown world beyond the gate of death filled her, and her blood ran
+cold.  She felt utterly crushed, utterly helpless, and utterly
+deserted, both in the affection of the living and that of the dead.
+She uttered a despairing cry and fell back in a cold faint.  The women
+drew about as if to leap upon her.
+
+A momentary wavering of the northern lights revealed her face grown sad
+and wan.  The women stood still, however, for approaching in the
+distance they heard a man's voice calling:
+
+  "Avatarpay--avatarpay,
+  akorgani--akorgani,
+  anagpungah . . ."
+
+Those mystic words, believed to give magic speed to the one who utters
+them, came in the well known tones of Ootah.  A joyous cry went up from
+the women.
+
+When Annadoah opened her eyes Ootah was bending over her.
+
+"I was held in the mountains, Annadoah.  The hill spirits were at war.
+The snow came, the storm spirits loosed the ice.  I fell into an abyss
+. . .  I lay asleep . . . for very long.  It seemed like many moons.  I
+could barely walk when I awoke.  I had no food.  I became very weak,
+but I uttered the _serrit_ (magic formula;), those words of the days
+when man's sap was stronger, and the good winds bore me hither."
+
+A mystical silver light had risen over the horizon, and in the soft
+glimmer Annadoah saw that the face of Ootah was haggard and drawn.  His
+voice was weak.
+
+"The sun hath gone," murmured Ootah.  "The long night comes.  Ootah
+heard thy cry and has come to care for thee, Annadoah."
+
+His voice was a caress.  His face sank dangerously near the face of the
+girl.  She panted into full consciousness and struggled to free
+herself.  Ootah helped her to her feet.
+
+"The winter comes . . . and famine," muttered Annadoah, hopelessly.
+She pointed to the gaunt, hollow-eyed shadow, empurpled-robed, against
+the frozen cliffs.  "My heart is cold--I am resigned to death."
+
+"But I have come to give furs for thy couch," murmured Ootah, a
+beseeching look in his eyes.  "Thou wilt need shelter--I shall build
+thee an igloo.  Thou wilt need food--I shall share all that I have with
+thee and seek more.  Thou wilt need oil for heat.  I shall get this for
+thee."
+
+Annadoah made a passionate gesture.  A curious perverse resentment for
+the youth's insistent devotion rose in her heart.
+
+"Nay," she said, warding him away.  "My shadow yearns only to the south
+. . . the far, far south."
+
+"Thy soul yearns to the south--forsooth, will I all the more cherish
+thee.  Thou art frail, and the teeth of _ookiah_ (winter) are sharp."
+
+"The teeth of _ookiah_ are not so sharp as the teeth in my heart,"
+sobbed Annadoah.
+
+Ootah felt a great pity for her--a pity and tenderness greater than his
+jealousy.
+
+"But I shall teach thee to forget, Annadoah."
+
+"I cannot forget.  Even as the ravens in their winter shelter dream of
+the summer sun, so my soul grows warm, in all my loneliness, in the
+memory of Olafaksoah."
+
+Ootah groaned with an access of misery.  Frenziedly he caught her hands
+and pressed them.  Annadoah struggled.  His words beat hotly in her
+ears:
+
+"But I want thee.  My blood burns at the thought of thee.  It is
+against the custom of the tribe that thou shouldst be alone.  Thou must
+take a husband."
+
+"No--no," she shook her head.
+
+"But some one must care for thee.  I love thee.  Thou wilt forget
+Olafaksoah.  Thy hurt will heal."
+
+Annadoah shook her head piteously.
+
+"Do the gulls that freeze to death in winter fly in springtime?" she
+asked, simply.
+
+Ootah did not reply.
+
+"He was strong," she murmured.  "His hands bruised me.  He was cruel.
+He hurt me.  Yet he gave my heart joy.  My heart is dying--dying as the
+birds die.  I feel the teeth of the wolves in my heart."
+
+Ootah pointed to the women.  The soft crooning of their voices reached
+him as they resumed the dismal dirge of their own woes.
+
+"They hate thee," he said.  He pointed to the constellation of the
+Great Bear which glittered faintly in the sky.  "Yonder _qiligtussat_
+(the barking dogs) would rend the gentle bear.  Thou rememberest the
+old men's tale.  A woman ran away from her family.  She was false at
+heart.  The good mother bear protected her and gave her food.  But
+yearning for her husband, she returned and to gain his favor betrayed
+the hiding place of the mother-bear and her young.  Then the husband
+drove out with sledges.  His dogs attacked the bear.  But they all
+became stars and went up into the sky.  Even as the bear was good to
+the false woman so hast thou made clothing for those yonder, and now
+they would as the dogs rend thee.  Thou needest a husband."
+
+"They would be bitter to thee," she argued.
+
+"Perchance, but I would protect thee.  I love thee."
+
+Annadoah shook her head.  "The teeth of the wolves are in my heart,"
+she said.  "And I no longer care."
+
+"Yonder _Nalagssartoq_ (he who waits and listens) bends to hear thy
+reply."  Ootah pointed to Venus, the brightest of the stars--to the
+Eskimos an old man who waits by a blow-hole in the heavenly icefloes
+and listens for the breathing of seals.  "Thou wilt come to Ootah, who
+loves thee?  Answer, Annadoah!  Ootah listens."
+
+He soothed her little hands.  A wondrous light burned in his eyes.
+Every fibre of his being yearned for her.  But Annadoah's hands were
+cold, her eyes were sullenly turned away.  In her heart a vague fear of
+him, a resentment of his very love, stirred.
+
+"My shadow yearns to the south," she repeated pathetically.  "I shall
+wait.  Perhaps he will come as he said when the spring hunting sings."
+In her heart she feared that he would not.
+
+Ootah in utter anguish dropped her hands.  Annadoah sadly turned away.
+Falling to his knees on the ice, he covered his face with his arms.
+The sound of his heartbroken sobbing was drowned in the funereal chant
+of the women as, in a long procession, they passed near him on their
+way to the shore.
+
+When he raised his head, the rim of the moon, a great quarter-disc of
+silver, peeped above the horizon.  A mystical melancholy light flooded
+the gloriously gleaming desolate white world.  The ice floes glistened
+as with the dust of diamonds.  The ice covered faces of the
+promontories glowed with the sheen of burnished metal.  The clouds
+became tremulous masses of argent phosphorescence.  Far away the
+women's chants subsided.  One by one they joined the men in their
+grotesque dances in the distant igloos.  Ootah was left alone.
+
+He gazed long upon the pearly lamp of heaven.  The subtle sorrow of
+this world of magical moonlight filled his soul.  Then the hopelessness
+and tragedy of all it symbolized were unfolded to him, and, extending
+his arms in a vague wild sympathy, in a vague wild despair, he moaned:
+
+"Desolate and lonely moon!  Oh, desolate and unhappy moon! . . .
+Desolate and unhappy is the heart of Ootah!"
+
+Far away, in her shelter, Annadoah heard the sobbing voice of Ootah.
+And nearer, in an igloo where the men beat drums and danced, she heard
+the voice of Maisanguaq laughing evilly.  Of late Maisanguaq had gibed
+her with her desertion; he was bitter toward her.  But nothing mattered
+to Annadoah.  She thought of the blond man in the south, and the
+pleading of Ootah.  As she heard his weeping, she shook her head sadly.
+She beat her breast and muttered over and over again:
+
+"Do the gulls that freeze to death in winter fly in springtime?"
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+"_What they heard was, to them all, the Voice of the Great
+Unknown, . . .  He who made the world, created the Eternal Maiden
+Sukh-eh-nukh, and placed all the stars in the skies . . .  Whose voice,
+far, far away, itself comes as the faintly remembered music of long
+bygone dreams preceding birth . . .  And now, out of the blue-black
+sky, great globes of swimming liquid fire floated constantly, and
+dispersing into feathery flakes of opal light, melted softly . . ._"
+
+
+Ootah began work on an igloo for Annadoah.  None of the tribesmen had
+offered to do this for her, and, as only the men develop the
+architectural skill required to construct a snow shelter, Annadoah,
+until Ootah's return, was forced to continue to live in her seal-skin
+tent, where she suffered bitterly from the cold.  His back aching,
+scarcely pausing to rest, Ootah constructed an icy dome of more than
+usual solidity.  This completed, he went many miles, through the
+darkness, to the south, where, in the shelter of certain rocks, he knew
+there was much soft moss.  Digging through the frozen blanket of ice he
+secured a quantity, and returning, made with it a soft bed for Annadoah
+over a tier of stones.  This he covered in turn with the soft skin of
+caribou.  Inside the immaculate house of snow he fashioned an interior
+tent of heavy skins to retain the heat of the oil lamps.  Of his own
+supplies of blubber and walrus meat, which he had secretly buried early
+in the hunting season and which had thus escaped the rapacity of the
+white men, he gave more than half to Annadoah.  He fixed her lamps with
+oil, and arranged them solicitously in positions where they would give
+most heat.  He placed supplies in the house, and buried the rest
+outside so that Annadoah might readily reach them.  Meanwhile Annadoah
+sat alone in her tent, her sad face buried in her hands, "her shadow
+yearning toward the south."  Many of the tribe, emerging from their
+igloos, had paused to taunt Ootah at his labors.
+
+"A-ha--a-ha!" they laughed.  "Thinkest thou that Annadoah will let thee
+share her igloo when the snow closes in?"  They laughed again.  Ootah
+seriously shook his head.
+
+"I would that Annadoah be protected from the storm," he said simply.
+
+"A-ha--ha!  No man buildeth a house wherein he may not have shelter; no
+man layeth a bed of soft moss whereon he doth not expect to lie.  Idiot
+Ootah, as well mayest thou expect the willows to sprout in the long
+night--Annadoah thinketh naught of thee.  Why seekest thou not a
+sensible maiden?"
+
+"He hath given Annadoah half of his meat and fuel," the women murmured
+complainingly among themselves.
+
+"He hath given her his skins; he hath thieved upon himself."
+
+"Why hath he not taken another to wife?  Verily men are few; women are
+many.  And all gaze favorably upon Ootah."
+
+"Yea, his arm is strong."
+
+"There is courage in his heart."
+
+"He feareth not the night."
+
+"He should press his face upon the face of one who is fair; his wife
+should bear children."
+
+When Annadoah passed from her tent into her new home the women scolded
+her bitterly.  The men goodnaturedly jeered Ootah.  Annadoah huddled
+near Ootah and gazed gratefully into his eyes.  In the thought that he
+was there to protect her the heart of Ootah pulsed with joy.
+Annadoah's heart was cold.  Annadoah sat inside the new little house of
+snow, the oil lights flickering fitfully.  In the dancing shadows
+Annadoah saw the semblance of the form of the blond chief.  Joylessly
+Ootah built his own home.
+
+And in their houses, in celebration of the fall of night, the natives
+continued their grotesque dances.  Beating membrane drums, and singing
+jerky chants, they danced frenziedly, forcing a false hilarity.  They
+felt the overwhelming approach of the dread spectre of famine.  In
+their dances some sobbed, others passed into uncontrollable hysteria.
+
+Ootah alone did not indulge in the fierce ceremonies.  His own igloo
+built, day after day, night after night, he sat alone.  His heart ached
+with the unrequited and eternal desire of all the loveless and lonely
+things of the world.  Outside, the moon increased in fulness and soared
+in a low circle about the sky.  The dogs crouched low on the ground,
+howling dismally.
+
+During the first days of the long night the natives held a series of
+dog fights inside the snow and stone houses.  Ordinarily Ootah would
+have attended these, for a dog fight is of keenest interest to a
+tribesman, and the Eskimos' most exciting form of sport.
+
+To a hunter with healthy blood in his veins the dog encounter affords
+the same thrills as other men, in more southern lands, find in bull
+fights, horse racing, card playing and other games of chance.  Two
+lovers, both desirous of a maiden, may hold a fight between their king
+dogs, each hoping that success may determine the girl's favor.  Pieces
+of blubber, animal skins, ivory carvings and less valuable objects are
+often bet by the contestants and the onlookers.
+
+By all logical assumptions, one might naturally suppose that the
+Eskimos--whose night is many months long--through many dark and
+rigorous ages, would have developed into a taciturn and moody people,
+just as the denizens of sunny climes are joyful, effervescent and
+pleasure loving.  However, this is not so.  Troublous as is their
+existence, they preserve until old age that playful joy of life, that
+carefree ignoring of danger, which we find in our children--which,
+alas, we lose too soon.  Each day brings to them its novel delights; in
+their monotonous foods they find a constant variety of pleasure; in
+their simple games of muscle-tapping, throwing of carved ivories, and
+fighting of dogs they experience the exultant and exuberant fun of our
+schoolboys.  Constant experience with jeopardous tasks has eliminated
+the human fear of danger, and even death, in its most tragic shapes, by
+long association has lost its terrors.  When the long night falls, and
+an ominous depression makes heavy the heart of the lover or fills with
+anxiety the heart of the father, they turn, with a delightful
+spontaneity, to play.
+
+Now great interest was aroused by the news that Papik was to fight his
+king dog with the magnificent brute owned by Attalaq.  Both Papik and
+Attalaq were paying evident attentions to Ahningnetty, the chubby and
+ever smiling maiden, who, while she showed a certain leaning toward
+Papik, had misgivings as to his eligibility as a husband because of his
+long fingers.
+
+Born of noted fighters, a dog attains the position of "king" or chief
+dog of a team by whipping all the dogs in the team of his particular
+master.  When he has asserted his supremacy over the dogs of his own
+team, he is successively set before the rulers of other teams.  And by
+a process of elimination of those which lose, the two final victors in
+a village are finally aligned against one another.
+
+In the series of fights held between the king dogs of the various
+teams, both Papik's and Attalaq's had come off with final honors.  The
+immediate contest between the two most distinguished canines in the
+village was an event of exciting importance, and to the women there was
+a romantic zest in it, for all believed that victory would determine
+Ahningnetty's favor.
+
+At the time of the event all who could do so crowded into Attalaq's
+stone house.  In the centre of a tense group of onlookers the two dogs
+were placed before each other.  They were handsome animals, with long
+keen noses, denoting an aristocracy of canine birth, and long shaggy
+coats, mottled brown and white, as soft as silk.  A long line of
+victories lay to the credit of each.
+
+A sharp howl announced the fight--the two lithe bodies leaped
+together--the air within the little circle became electric.  The dogs
+snapped, tumbled over each other.  Their sharp teeth sank into each
+other's shanks.  The natives cheered whenever a favorite secured an
+advantage.  Bets were made.  Papik's eyes gleamed as he alternately
+watched his dog and the face of Ahningnetty as she peered interestedly
+over the onlookers' shoulders.  Attalaq's countenance was grim--not a
+muscle moved.
+
+Finally Attalaq's dog, with a chagrined growl, unexpectedly rushed from
+the enclosure and crouched in a corner of the igloo.
+
+The natives effusively gathered about Papik, who bent over his dog with
+proud affection.  In the excitement Ahningnetty quickly left the igloo,
+and standing outside gazed meditatively at the stars.  They hung in the
+sky above like great pendulous jewels, palpitant with interior
+name--there were purple stars, and blue stars, and orange-colored
+stars; some resembled monstrous amethysts, some emeralds fierily green,
+some rubies spitting sparks vindictively red; others globular sheeny
+pearls, creamy of lustre but shot with faint gleams of rose; and
+fugitively sprinkling the firmament here and there were orbs that
+glistened like diamonds, wonderfully and purely white.  Saturn,
+distinct among all the heavenly bodies, throbbed with a van-colored
+changing glow like a bulbous opal, and about it, with a strange
+shimmer, visibly swirled its iridescent rings.
+
+"Thou standest alone--thou wouldst leave me?"  Papik, eager,
+triumphant, questioning, emerged from the stone entrance to the house
+and approached the girl.  The other natives, homeward bent, followed.
+
+The girl was silent.
+
+"Methought thou wouldst be glad----"
+
+"Thy dog is strong," the girl replied.
+
+"Dost thou love that dotard Attalaq?"
+
+"No," the maid replied.  "He is clumsy as the musk ox."
+
+They turned, walking toward the igloo occupied by Ahningnetty and her
+aged father.
+
+"Wilt thou not be Papik's wife?" Papik pleaded.  "My shelter is
+cold--little meat have I.  The white men robbed the tribe.  But
+perchance the bears come--then I shall kill them; valiant is my dog."
+He patted the animal's shaggy head.
+
+"But thy fingers, Papik--Papik!  No--no!"
+
+"But Papik loves thee," he protested; "his skin flushes with the
+thought of thee."
+
+"That thou didst also say to Annadoah, whom thou didst seek before me."
+
+Papik was silent; it was true that Ahningnetty was only a second choice.
+
+At that moment an ominous noise was heard on the sea.  The tide, in
+moving, caused the massive floe-ice to grate against that adhering to
+the shore.  To the simple natives, the noise indicated something more
+sinister.
+
+"Hearest that?" Ahningnetty asked.
+
+"Yea," replied Papik, "_Qulutaligssuaq_, the monster who lives in the
+sea, cometh with his hammers."
+
+"He cometh to steal the children.  In winter he is very hungry."
+
+"They say he frightens people to death when a baby which is fatherless
+screams."
+
+"And after he heats his ladles, the babies often die."
+
+Again the grating noise shuddered along the shore, and Ahningnetty,
+frightened, fled to her house.  Papik, pursuing his way, accosted Ootah.
+
+As they were speaking they saw Otaq and his wife emerge from their
+house.  Between them they carried a small stark body.  The woman was
+weeping piteously.  It was their child, which a brief while before had
+died.  The sea monster had again claimed its human toll.
+
+Papik and Ootah disappeared--Papik to his shelter, Ootah to Annadoah's
+igloo.  The parents, left alone, dug up stones and ice and buried the
+child.  Then beneath the stars they stood in silent grief.  Other
+natives, emerging from their houses and seeing them, understood and
+disappeared, for while relatives weep over their dead none dare disturb
+their mourning.  For five days, in commemoration of the death, the
+parents would visit the grave of their child, During this time no
+native dare cross the path leading from their igloo to the silent
+resting place, and while they stood beneath the stars all alien to
+their sorrow must remain within their houses.  Only the Great Spirit,
+who lives beyond the golden veils of the boreal lights, may hear the
+sobbing of a stricken human creature over the thing of which it has
+been bereft.
+
+In the course of ten sleeps--as days are called--the first moon of the
+long night sank below the horizon and the colorful stars fierily
+glittered over a world of black silence.  The cold increased to an
+intolerable bitterness.  Ootah, venturing from his igloo to dig up
+walrus meat, found the earth frozen so solid that it split his steel
+axe.
+
+It was not long before many white mounds appeared beneath the liquid
+stars.  The old and the very young, unable to endure the rigorous cold
+and dearth of food, passed into the mysterious unknown of which the
+long dark of earth is only the portal.  After the passing of the first
+moon the storms came; the sky blackened; the winds voiced the desolate
+woe of millions of aerial creatures.  Terrific snow storms kept the
+tribe within their shelters for days.  Often the winds tore away the
+membrane windows of their snow houses, and blasts of frigid cold
+dissipated the precious warmth within.  In the lee of circular walls of
+ice, right at the immediate entrance of the houses, the natives kept
+their dogs.  Inside they had only room for the mother dogs, which at
+this period brought into being litters of beautiful little puppies with
+which the Eskimo children played.  Outside, scores of splendid animals,
+which could not be sheltered, were frozen to death in great drifts.
+These, during the following days, were dug out and used as food both
+for men and the living animals.
+
+During a quiet period between storms, Ootah, venturing from his
+shelter, heard a shuffling noise near his igloo.  In the northern sky a
+creamy light palpitated, and in one of the quick flares he saw a bear
+nosing about the village.  He called his dogs and they soon surrounded
+the animal.  Fortunately the incandescent light of the aurora
+increased--now and then a ribbon of light, palpitant with every color
+of the rainbow, was flung across the sky.  Ootah lifted his harpoon
+lance--the sky was momentarily flooded with light--he struck.  In the
+next flare he saw the bear lying on the ice--his lance had pierced the
+brute's heart.  Attracted by the barking of Ootah's dogs, several
+tribesmen soon joined him in dressing the animal.  During their task,
+one suddenly beckoned silence, and whispered softly:
+
+"The Voice . . . the Voice . . ."  And they paused.
+
+A weird whistling sound sang eerily through the skies.  The air,
+electrified, seemed to snap and crackle.  It was the voice that comes
+with the aurora.
+
+The knives fell from the natives' hands.  The howling of the hungry
+dogs was stilled.  In hushed awe, in reverence, with vague wondering,
+they listened.  Ootah was on his knees.  An inspired light transfigured
+his face.  His pulses thrilled.  For what they heard was, to them all,
+the Voice of the Great Unknown, He whose power is greater than that of
+_Perdlugssuaq_, He who made the world, created the Eternal Maiden
+_Sukh-eh-nukh_, and placed all the stars in the skies, who, never
+coming Himself earthward, instead sends in the aurora His spirits with
+messages of hope and encouragement to men, and Whose Voice sometimes,
+far, far away, itself comes as the faintly remembered music of long
+by-gone dreams preceding birth . . .  Yea, it was the Voice . . . the
+Voice . . .
+
+And now, out of the black-blue sky, as if released from invisible
+hands, great globes of swimming liquid fire floated constantly, and
+dispersing into millions of feathery flakes of opal light, melted
+softly . . .  Along the lower heavens there was a fugitive flickering
+of a rich creamy light, as of the reflection of celestial fires far
+beyond the horizon.
+
+Speechless, Ootah viewed the flameous wonder, and, although he knew no
+prayer, he felt in his soul an instinctive love, a profound awe . . .
+In the silent sanctity of that auroral-shot and frigidly glorious
+region he seemed to feel the pulsing of an Unseen Presence--a presence
+of which he was a part, of which, with a glow, he felt the soul of her
+he loved was a part, to which all nature, everything that lives and
+breathes, was vitally linked . . .  He felt the drawing urge, the
+thrilling tingling impetus, as it were, of the terrific currents of
+vital spirit force that sweep vastly through the universe, keeping the
+earth and all the planets in their orbits . . .  He felt, what possibly
+the primitive and pure of heart feel most keenly . . . the presence of
+the Great Unknown, He who is the fountain source of love, and whose
+hands on the sable parchment of the northern skies perchance write, in
+irid traceries of fire, mystic messages of hope which none, of all
+humanity, during all the centuries, has ever learned entirely to
+understand.
+
+Not until the wonder lights were fading did the tribesmen take up the
+precious bear meat, and according to Ootah's instructions divide
+portions among the community.  His arm full of meat, Ootah joyously
+entered Annadoah's igloo.
+
+Annadoah, sad and lonely, sat by her lamp.  Her igloo was like that of
+all the others.  Inside, so as to retain the heat and carry off the
+water which dripped from the melting dome of snow, there was an
+interior tent of seal skin.  In a great pan of soapstone was a line of
+moss, which absorbed the walrus fat, and served as a wick for the lamp.
+This emitted a line of thin, reddish blue flame.  Over the light, and
+supported by a framework, was a large soapstone pot in which bits of
+walrus meat were simmering.  By the side of the pot a large piece of
+walrus blubber hung over a rod.  In the heat of the lamp this slowly
+exuded a thick oil which, falling into the pan below and saturating the
+moss wick, gave a constant and steady supply of fuel.
+
+Like the other women, Annadoah sat by her lamp day after day.  When she
+could endure hunger no longer she would eat ravenously of the meagre
+food in the pot.  Regular meals are unknown in the arctic--a native
+abstains from food as long as he can in days of famine, but when he
+eats he eats unstintedly.
+
+As Ootah entered the low enclosure Annadoah's eyes lighted.
+
+Ootah told her of the bear encounter, and, with the joy of children,
+they placed bits of the meat in the pot and sat by, delightedly
+inhaling the odor as it cooked.
+
+Several days later, while they were eating the last remainder of the
+meat, both heard an uproar outside.  They crept from the igloo and
+discovered most of the village assembled without.
+
+"Attalaq hath carried off Ahningnetty," one told them.
+
+"He broke into her father's house and seized her with violence!"
+
+Not far away they heard Ahningnetty's screams.
+
+"Attalaq is strong," said one.
+
+"Yea, as a boy did he not kill his brother?"  All remembered the brutal
+encounter of the two brothers years before, when, throwing him to the
+ground, Attalaq jumped on his brother's body and striking his head with
+stones beat him to death.  Attalaq was a type of the older warriors;
+unlike his more gentle tribesmen he possessed the atavistic savagery of
+his forebears of centuries ago when it was customary to abduct brides.
+
+An excited crowd gathered outside of Attalaq's house.  Soon Attalaq
+himself appeared.  He was exultant.
+
+"Ha!  Ha!" he laughed.  "Methinks that is the way to treat a woman!"
+Then with swollen-up gusto he told them all about it.  Tiring of being
+alone he determined to carry off Ahningnetty.  "A woman's mind is as
+the wind--it constantly changeth," he said.  "Women should be driven as
+the dogs."  Ahningnetty, still weeping, still protesting, came to the
+door.  Attalaq turned fiercely upon her and struck her in the face.
+Then he laughed again.  The girl screamed.
+
+"Well," he said, turning to her.  "I carried thee here--if thou wouldst
+return thou canst walk back.  Eh?"  The girl cowered away, but on her
+face there was the semblance of a pleased expression.  The other women
+regarded her with a tinge of envy.
+
+"'Tis not often in these days a lover careth sufficiently to carry a
+maid away," said an aged crone.
+
+"In the days of old there were men like Attalaq," said a younger woman,
+admiringly.
+
+"Where is Papik?" one asked.  He was not to be seen.
+
+"Dost thou not wish to return to thy father?" Annadoah asked
+Ahningnetty, approaching her.
+
+The girl shook her head.  Much as she had protested, she was
+unquestionably pleased by the forcible abduction.
+
+One of the gossips, desiring to impart the unpleasant news to Papik,
+had gone to his house.
+
+"Papik sits alone," she called, on her return.  "And when I told him
+Ahningnetty hath been carried away by Attalaq, he replied, ''Tis well!
+'Tis well!'  And then he showed me his hands--they were frozen--frozen!
+Verily, he would now be a sorry husband to provide for a wife."
+
+"Papik's fingers frozen!" took up the others.  "Unhappy Papik."
+
+"He sobs and weeps--he sobs and weeps," said the old woman.  "He saith
+the dreaded misfortune hath come, and the days of his skill on the hunt
+are over!"
+
+"Long fingers, short hunt; long nose--short life," remarked Maisanguaq,
+sententiously.
+
+Attalaq, happy in his conquest, was broad enough to be generous.  He
+declared that Papik should never want as long as he could shoot the
+arrow.  Generous-hearted, many of the others joined in and bits of
+blubber were soon offered the lonely Papik, as he sat, nursing his
+frozen members, in his house.  The mishap was tragic, for, his hands
+injured, he had lost not only his skill in the hunt but his ability to
+protect himself in case of accidents.  And from the experience of ages
+all knew that, sooner or later, he was doomed to a comparatively early
+death.
+
+During the first period of the night, and after Ootah's first capture,
+several prowling bears were shot.  The howl of occasional wolves was
+heard in the mountains; then all the bears disappeared, the hunger of
+the wolves was stilled.
+
+When the third moon rose not a thing stirred outside the igloos.  A
+glacial silence gripped the northern world.  In their shelters the
+natives clustered together, warming one another with their breathing
+and the heat of their bodies.  They lacked the courage even to speak.
+
+Day by day their supply of food had run low.  Day by day they decreased
+their portions; their cheeks sunk, hunger burned in their eyes.  To
+save the precious fuel they burned only one lamp in their houses; they
+were unable to sleep because of the intense cold.  Finally their food
+gave out.  From his store Ootah silently doled out allotments until
+starvation confronted him.  One by one the dogs were eaten.  And this
+caused a dull ache, for the men loved their dogs only a little less
+than they did their wives and children.  The quaking fear of the long
+hours slowly gave way to a dull lethargy.  In their igloos, where
+single lamps smoked, they sat, and to keep up their circulation and to
+prevent themselves from falling into a coma, they rocked their bodies
+like things only half alive.
+
+The black days and black nights slowly, tediously, achingly passed.
+One day was like another--one night seemed to mark no progress of time.
+Only the children, to whom parents gave the last bits of food, showed
+some animation.  They played listlessly with one another.  For toys
+they had crude carvings of soapstone--tiny soapstone lamps and pots
+with which they made pitiful mimicry of cooking.  The little girls
+played with crude dolls just as do little girls in more southern
+lands--but they were grotesque effigies, made of skin roughly sewn
+together.  The boys found brief zest in a game which was played by
+sticking ivory points in a piece of bone, hanging from the roof of the
+igloo, and which was perforated with holes.  Finally, as the night wore
+on, the children lost interest in their games, and with aching
+stomachs, lay silent by the fires.  Starvation steadily claimed its
+toll.  Death, slowly, surely, laid its grim and terrible hands upon
+that pitiful fringe of earth's humanity on the desolate star-litten
+roof of the world.  One by one a stark body would be carried from an
+igloo into the black, bitter cold silence without and buried under
+blocks of snow.  And above, intense and incandescent, the Pole
+Star--that unerring time mark of God's inevitable and unerring
+laws--burned like an all-seeing, sentient and pitiless eye of fire in
+the heavens.
+
+
+Annadoah lay upon her couch of furs.  Her face was thin, and white as
+the snows without.  The flame in her stone lamp was about to flicker
+into extinction.
+
+Ootah, entering the igloo, sprang quickly to her side.  Her breath came
+very faintly.  He seized her hands.  He breathed on her face.  He
+opened her ahttee and rubbed her little breasts.  He felt something
+very strange, and wonderful, stirring within him.  And with it a
+ghastly fear that the thing he loved was dying.
+
+Into the lamp he placed the last meagre bits of remaining blubber.
+Then he again set to chafing the tender little hands.  Cold and hunger
+had wrought havoc upon Annadoah.  Ootah's heart ached.
+
+Finally her eyelids stirred.  Her lips parted.  A smile brightened her
+face.  Ootah leaned forward, breathlessly.  Her lips framed an
+inaudible word:
+
+"Olafaksoah . . .  Olafaksoah . . ."  She opened her eyes.  The smile
+faded.  "Thou . . . ?" she said.
+
+"Yea, Annadoah, I have brought thee food," Ootah said.  It was his last.
+
+"I hunger," she breathed.  "It is very cold . . .  I was in the
+south . . . where the sun is warm . . . it is very cold here."
+
+Eagerly he pressed her hands.  She drifted again into a stupor and for
+a long while was silent.  Ootah's warm panting breath finally brought
+blood to her cheeks.
+
+"Thou art so big . . . and strong . . ." she smiled again.  "Thy arms
+hurt me . . . as the embrace of _nannook_ (the bear). . . ."  Her smile
+deepened . . . her breath came more quickly.  "Oh, oh, it is
+pleasant . . . here . . . in . . . the south."
+
+"Annadoah!"  Ootah's wail of hurt recalled her.
+
+Her eyes sought the igloo wonderingly.
+
+"Thou?" she repeated, dully.  "Yea, it is cold here.  I am hungry . . .
+Are there not _ahmingmah_ in the mountains, Ootah?  Didst thou not tell
+me there were _ahmingmah_ in the mountains . . . why do not the men of
+the tribe seek the musk oxen in the mountains?"
+
+With a sudden start Ootah remembered having told Annadoah of the herd
+he had found in the inland valley--it was strange, he thought, he had
+not remembered the herd before.  And it was stranger still that now she
+should remind him.  But the improbability of ever reaching the game,
+the obvious impossibility of such a journey at this time of winter, had
+prevented any such suggestion.
+
+"Many musk oxen are there in the mountains," he said, soothing her
+hands.  She drew them away.  "And thou art hungry . . ."
+
+"I am hungry," she replied, faintly.
+
+After he had given her the last bit of meat he left her igloo.  Above
+him the stars burned, the air was clear and still.  Not a thing moved,
+not a sound was heard--the earth was gripped in that unrelenting spell
+of wintry silence.  Above the imprisoned sea the January moon was
+rising and for ten sleeps--ten twenty-four hour days--it would circle
+about the horizon of the entire sky.  Already the sky above the sea was
+bright as a frosted globe of glass, and pearly fingers of light were
+stealing upward over the interior mountains.
+
+"She is hungry," Ootah repeated over and over again.  "And the tribe
+starves . . . and there may be _ahmingmah_ in the mountains."  Behind
+him they loomed, gigantic and precipitous.  That such a journey meant
+almost certain death he knew; but that did not deter him in the resolve
+to essay a feat no native had ever dared in many hundreds of years.
+
+
+The face of Sipsu, the _angakoq_, as I have said, resembled dried and
+wrinkled leather.  He had been an old man when the eldest of the tribe
+were children.  He had seen hard times, he had suffered from starvation
+during many winters; yet never even in his experience had the lashes of
+_ookiah_ struck so blastingly upon the tribe.  Yea, they had even lost
+their fear of the _tornarssuit_ and no longer brought propitiatory
+offerings of blubber to him.  Yet being wise with age, early in the
+summer he had buried sufficient supplies beneath the floor of his house
+to keep him from starving.  He scowled maliciously as he heard someone
+creeping through the underground entrance of his igloo.  Presently the
+cadaverous face of Maisanguaq appeared.
+
+The interior was heavy with the stench of oil.  The room hung with soot
+from the lamp.  A thin spiral thread of black smoke rose from the
+taper.  In the dim light the leering face of Sipsu appeared like the
+face of the great demon himself.  His small half-closed eyes blazed
+through their slits.
+
+"The spirits are wrathful.  The tribe is forgetful.  What wilt thou
+have?"
+
+Maisanguaq, with unconcealed hesitation, placed a bit of blubber before
+the magician.
+
+"The last I have," he mumbled.  Sipsu seized it avidly.
+
+"Ootah goeth to the mountains," Maisanguaq said, panting for breath.
+
+The old man sneered bitterly:
+
+"He cannot brave the spirits.  No man can live in the mountains.  The
+breath of the spirits is death."
+
+"Yea, he goeth.  He says that he knows where the _ahmingmah_ abound.
+The air is still; the moon rises for ten sleeps.  By then, so he saith,
+he can return with meat."
+
+"No man hath ever ventured there.  The shadow of _Perdlugssuaq_ is very
+dark."
+
+"Yea, may he smite Ootah!" exclaimed Maisanguaq.
+
+Sipsu laughed harshly.
+
+"Couldst thou cause the hill spirits to strike?" Maisanguaq asked
+eagerly.
+
+Sipsu faced Maisanguaq fiercely.
+
+"In my youth I went unto the mountains and I heard the hill spirits
+sing.  Thereupon I became a great magician.  They spoke to me; I was
+silent; thereafter, when I called they answered.  What wouldst thou?"
+
+Maisanguaq indicated the blubber.
+
+"I would thou call them now; that they release the glaciers, that Ootah
+may be carried to his death.  I hate Ootah, I would that he die."  He
+shook his fist.
+
+Sipsu's body quivered from head to foot.  "Ootah hath never consulted
+my familiar spirits," he rejoined bitterly.  "He despiseth them."
+
+Rising from his sitting posture Sipsu seized his drum and began moving
+his body.  He groaned with extreme pain.  By degrees his dance
+increased.  He improvised a monotonous spirit song.  His face grimaced
+demoniacally.  As his conjuration approached the climax, his voice rose
+to a series of shrieks.  He shuddered violently; he seemed to suffer
+agonies in his limbs.  Finally he fell to the floor in a writhing
+paroxysm.
+
+"_Pst_!"  Maisanguaq's eyes lighted.
+
+Outside he heard the sharp barking of dogs.  "_Huk_!  _Huk_!" Ootah's
+voice called.  Others joined in the clamor.  The entire tribe seemed to
+wake as from a sleep of the dead.
+
+"He starts for the mountains," said Maisanguaq.  "Thinkest thou the
+spirits will strike?"
+
+Sipsu opened his eyes--and glared wildly at Maisanguaq.
+
+"Speak," Maisanguaq demanded.  "Hast thou not the power?"
+
+"Did I not once go to the bottom of the sea to _Nerrvik_, she who rules
+over the sea creatures?  Hath she not only one hand, and is she not
+powerless to plait her hair?  Doth she not obey me?  For did I not
+plait her hair?  Did I not carry wood for weapons to the spirits of the
+mountains?  And have they not answered for nigh a thousand moons?"
+
+"Yet there is doubt in thy voice, Sipsu!"
+
+"Yea, to be truthful with thee, Maisanguaq, there is dispute among the
+spirits.  I cannot determine what they say."  He bent his head as if
+listening.  Then he asked:
+
+"Doth Ootah not go that Annadoah may have food?"
+
+Maisanguaq nodded assent.
+
+"And the tribe?"
+
+Maisanguaq again nodded.
+
+As though he suddenly heard some terrifying converse among his
+familiars the necromancer's face blanched.  He struggled to his feet.
+
+"Take thy food," he flung the blubber to Maisanguaq.  "I dare not take
+thy gift.  I am afraid."
+
+Maisanguaq sprang at the old man.  "Revoke not thy curse," he breathed,
+his fingers sinking into the _angakoq's_ throat.  "Will the hill
+spirits strike?"
+
+"Yea," the old man gasped, "but they say----"
+
+Maisanguaq's fingers loosened.  "What?" he demanded.
+
+"That there is . . . some other power . . . which is very
+strange--which----"
+
+"Yea, yea----"
+
+"Protecteth Ootah . . .  It concerneth . . . Annadoah.  I do not wish
+thy gift.  I fear the spirits.  The magic of Ootah--what it is . . .  I
+cannot tell thee . . .  But the spirits say . . . it . . .
+concerneth . . .  Annadoah.  And against it none of the _tornarssuit_
+can prevail."  Maisanguaq threw the old man fiercely to the floor and,
+disgusted, left the igloo.
+
+
+Outside, the entire tribe, with the exception of those dying of hunger,
+had gathered in groups.  Ootah lifted his whip.  His team of eight lean
+dogs howled.
+
+"_Tugto_!  _Tugto_!" he called.  The dogs leaped into the air--his sled
+shot forward.  Ootah strode forward.
+
+In his desperate adventure Ootah was joined by one of the younger
+members of the tribe, Koolotah by name, a lad barely eighteen years of
+age.  All the others had hung back.  Koolotah's mother was dying; a
+desperate desire to save her stirred in his heart as he lifted his whip
+in the signal to start.  The tribe cheered.
+
+"_Huk_!  _Huk_!" he shouted, and his lean dogs followed Ootah's team.
+
+"_Au-oo-au-oo_!" called the natives.
+
+"_Auoo-auoo_!" the voices of Ootah and Koolotah returned.
+
+Over the snow-covered stretch of level shoreland the moon poured a
+flood of silver incandescence.  In this magical light the forms of
+Ootah and his companion were magnified into the likeness of those of
+the giants that the old men said once lived in the highlands.  Their
+dogs were distended into creatures of the size of musk oxen.  Their
+whips exploded as they dashed past the straggling line of snow and
+stone houses; the snow crisply cracked and splintered under their feet.
+
+Then the village disappeared behind them.  The voices of their
+tribesmen trailed shudderingly into silence.
+
+The assembled tribe watched the teams diminishing in the distance.
+Presently someone whispered a terrible thing.
+
+"Sipsu hath cursed Ootah."
+
+A low ominous murmur passed from lip to lip among the gathered men and
+women.  In the distance a black speck in the moonlight marked the
+departing hunters.
+
+"Yea, he hath called upon the spirit of the mountains to destroy Ootah."
+
+A low groan followed this.
+
+"Methinks he hath prophesied too many deaths," said Arnaluk.
+
+"He hath declared that Koolotah's mother will die."
+
+"And Koolotah--did he not say two moons ago that Koolotah would depart
+on a long journey from which he should never return?"
+
+"And the wife of Kyutah--did she not perish after his evil prophesy?
+And Piuaitsoq--did not the spirit of the skin tents strike him when he
+lay asleep?  And did not yon evil wretch tell of it long before?"
+
+A dozen voices angrily rose in assent.
+
+"Verily he hath found hatred in his heart for Ootah.  For Ootah hath
+had no need of his powers.  Did not Ootah's mother sew into his cap the
+skin from the roof of a bear's mouth?  And hath he not become as strong
+as the bear?  Did not his father place in his _ahttee_ the feet of a
+hawk--and have not his own feet the swiftness of the wings of a bird?
+And doth not Sipsu hate him for his strength?  Yea, as he hateth all
+who are young, who are brave, and who find joy in their shadow."
+
+Their voices rose threateningly.  Maisanguaq, chagrined and bitter at
+the old man, leered among the crowd.
+
+"Hath he not lived too long," he whispered softly.  And the others
+suddenly shouted:
+
+"Let Sipsu die!"
+
+In a wild rush they bore down upon the _angakoq's_ igloo.  Screaming
+with rage they kicked in the sides.  The icy dome shattered about the
+startled old man.  They leaped upon him as hungry dogs upon a dying
+bear.  A dozen hands ferociously gripped his throat.  They moved to and
+fro in a mad struggle over the uneven ice.  They seized hold of one
+another in the blood-thirsty desire to lay their hands upon the old
+man.  He made no struggle.  Finally all drew away.  Amid the wreck of
+his igloo Sipsu lay, motionless, his face sneering evilly in the
+moonlight.  His dead lips seemed to frame a curse.
+
+They secured a rope of leather lashings and placed a noose about the
+old man's neck.  Then they dragged his body from the wrecked igloo.
+Weak from lack of food, they still forced themselves to dig up the
+frozen snow at a spot where they knew there were stones, for according
+to their belief they had to bury the old man--otherwise, his spirit
+would haunt them.  To this spot they brought the rotted skins of his
+bed, and on them placed the body, fearful lest they touch it.  By the
+body they placed the old man's lamp, stone dishes, membrane-drum and
+instruments of incantation.  Over the corpse they piled the ice
+encrusted stones, and over these in turn weighty masses of frozen snow.
+Then they turned in silence and entered their respective shelters.
+Thenceforth, until a child should be born to whom it could be given,
+the name of Sipsu might not pass their lips.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+"_As he looked upon the descending wraiths, Koolotah saw they had the
+spirit-semblance of gleaming faces, and that their eyes burned, through
+the enveloping cloud-veils, like fire . . .  'The dead--the dead . . .'
+he said, 'we have come into a land of the dead.' . . .
+
+"Then the glacial mountainside to which he clung trembled . . . the
+silver-swimming world of white dust-driven fire became suddenly
+black--and the earth seemed removed from under him . . ._"
+
+
+Leaving the low-lying shore, Ootah's path led up through a narrow gorge
+between two great cliffs.  Since he had returned from the mountains the
+path had been covered by many successive falls of snow.  At places the
+path sloped abruptly downward at a terrible angle, and the ice cracked
+and slid beneath the hardy hunters' feet.  With the agility of cats,
+the dogs fastened their claws into the ice and climbed upward.
+
+Constantly the two men had to hold to the jagged rocks to their right,
+otherwise, time after time, they would have slipped into the perilous
+abyss below.  Through the chasm the moon poured its liquid rays.  At
+certain points towering crags shut off the light--then Ootah and his
+companion had to feel their way slowly upward in the dark.  Finally
+Ootah's dogs, with a loud chorus of barking, leaped ahead.  Seizing an
+overhanging ledge of rock Ootah lifted himself to the top of the
+precipice.  Koolotah's team followed.
+
+For interminable miles a vast icy plateau stretched before them--a
+plain glistening with snow and reflecting like a burnished mirror the
+misty silveriness of the moon.  Over the glacial expanse an eerily
+greenish phosphorescence, which palpitated and shifted at times with
+vivid splashes of opal and deeper tones of burning blue, hung low.
+
+The upland was split with thousands of canyons that writhed over the
+white expanse like snakes in tortuous convulsions.  From these
+bottomless abysses arose a luminous amethystine vapor.  In the depths
+jutting icicles took fire and glowed through the lustrous mists like
+burning eyes.   Where the chasms joined with others or widened, ominous
+shapes, swathed in wind-blown blackish-purple robes, with extended
+arms, took form.  As Ootah and Koolotah dashed forward, great spaces of
+clear ice palpitated on all sides of them with interior opaline fires.
+
+Neither spoke.  Holding the rear framework of their sleds, they trusted
+to the instinct of their dogs.  Mile after mile swept under their feet.
+Their road often lay along the very edges of purple-black abysses.  The
+echoes of their sharp gliding sleds cutting the ice, of the very patter
+of their dogs' feet, were magnified in volume in the clear air, and it
+seemed as though, in the hollow depths on every side, ghostly teams
+were following.  Koolotah was white with fear.  But Ootah encouraged
+him onward.
+
+They paced off twenty miles.  They reached an altitude of more than a
+thousand feet above the sea.
+
+The great moon slowly circled about the sky; the scurrying clouds
+contorted like grotesque living things.
+
+The two hunters made precipitous descents over unexpected frozen
+slopes--at times it seemed as though they were about to be hurled to
+instantaneous death.  Yet Ootah steeled his heart.  His teeth chattered
+but he gritted them firmly.
+
+"Annadoah needeth food," he murmured, "and----"
+
+His eyes shone, a new pity not unmingled with a taint of bitterness
+filled his heart.  Annadoah must live; she must have food.  For a
+strange thing, he observed, had come upon her.  Her inexplicable moods,
+her brief moments of tenderness, her riotous griefs, and other
+prefigurements of maternity--these made her dearer to Ootah.  So he
+vigorously cracked his whip and urged the dogs.
+
+The chasms twisted with lifelike motion all around him.  Behind, as in
+a dream, Ootah heard the whip of Koolotah, and the barking of
+Koolotah's dogs.  For hours his feet moved swiftly and mechanically
+under him.  Once his foot slipped.  He swerved to the right.  A vast
+black mouth yawned hungrily to receive him; then it closed behind him.
+The leaping team of dogs had pulled him forward.  Luckily he maintained
+a tenacious hold to the rear upstander of his sled.
+
+Narrow chasms constantly cut their trail.  With sharp howls the dogs
+leaped over these, the sleds passed safely, and by instinct Ootah would
+bound forward.  Narrower than a man's stride in width, Ootah knew these
+slits in the glacial ice were hundreds of feet in depth, that a slip of
+the foot might plunge him to immediate death.  Now and then he lost his
+footing on the uneven ice; his heart leaped for fear, but he held
+grimly to the sledge and the lithe, lean but strong dog-bodies carried
+him to safety.  These faithful animals bounded over the glimmering ice
+field with amazing speed.  They snapped and barked with the joy of the
+race.  In the white moonlight the vapor of their breathing enveloped
+them like a silvery cloud.
+
+For hours the hunters continued the trail.  Their mighty purpose fought
+off fatigue.  The moon passed behind cumulous mountains of clouds along
+the horizon, and periods of darkness blotted the world from Ootah.
+Then they traveled in darkness.  A chill dampness rising from the
+gaping abysses that sundered the ice field told them of their danger;
+then Ootah's heart chilled, his teeth were set chattering; but he
+thought of Annadoah and the grim need of food, and he gripped the
+upstander of his sled more determinedly.  When the moon again unclosed
+its pearly sheen over the ice, the serpentine chasms moved their
+tortuous backs and writhed about them, the icy hummocks billowed, and
+the glittering ice-peaked horizon swam in a dizzy circle of diamonded
+light.
+
+As their trail ascended higher the penetrating cold dampness somewhat
+moderated.  In the taut air the sound of their whips was like that of
+splitting metal.  Shuddering and sepulchral echoes answered the barking
+of their dogs.  The faithful ghosts of the dogs of fallen hunters were
+following their departed masters in the amethystine mists of the
+canyons about them.  Ootah and Koolotah trembled with the thought of
+the dreadful nearness of the dead.  Believing other animals to be
+ahead, the dogs set up a wilder, shriller howling.  Then the echoes
+came back with more startling and terrifying proximity.  Ootah's flesh
+crept.  Finally, with an explosive sound, Koolotah let his whip fall.
+
+"_Aulate_--halt!" he called.
+
+They came to a dead standstill.
+
+"_Pst_!" he whispered.  He hit the snapping, whining dogs.  "_Pst_!"
+They crouched to the ground and whined mournfully.
+
+"Dost thou hear?" Koolotah asked in a hushed voice.  In the moonlight
+Ootah saw that the lad's face was as white as the face of the dead, and
+that in his eyes was a wild fear.  From the mountain ridges, which
+loomed beyond, came an ominous noise--resembling a low wind.  Ootah
+bent his head and listened to the sobbing monotone, then whispered:
+
+"The breathing of the spirits of the hills who sleep."
+
+"Perchance we waken them," Koolotah ventured.
+
+"That would be bad," Ootah replied.
+
+"I have left my mother forever," Koolotah wailed.
+
+"Be brave, lad; they need food; beseech the spirits of those who lived
+when men's sap was stronger, thy ancestors, for strength.  Come!"
+
+Koolotah raised his head--then uttered a low cry of alarm.  He drew
+back, fearfully, pointing with a trembling arm to the mountain pass
+ahead.
+
+Covered with glacial snow and ice the slopes of the first ridge of the
+interior mountains gleamed with frosted silver.  Over the white
+expanse, formed by the countless clefts and indentations of the slope,
+cyclopean shadows took form, and like eldritch figures joining their
+hands in a wild dance, loomed terrifyingly before the two men.  Their
+trail now ascended through a gorge which abruptly opened immediately
+before them.  Into this rugged chasm the argent moonlight poured, and
+from unseen caverns in the pass glowered monstrous phosphorescent green
+and ruby eyes.
+
+From the heights above fragments of clouds descended through the chasm.
+In the full moonlight they were transformed into tall aerial beings, of
+unearthly beauty.  They were swathed in luminous robes that fluttered
+gently upon the air, and like the birds they soared, with tremulous
+wings resembling films of silver.  They moved softly, with great
+majesty.  As he looked upon the descending wraiths, Koolotah saw they
+had the spirit-semblance of gleaming faces, and that their eyes burned,
+through the enveloping cloud-veils, like fire.  He drew back, afraid.
+
+"The dead . . ." he murmured . . .  "We have come unto the land of the
+dead."
+
+Both stood in silence, reverent, awed, half-afraid.
+
+Then Ootah snapped his whip.  He called to the dogs.
+
+"Let us go unto them . . .  Let us show that men are not afraid.
+_Huk_!  _Huk_!  _Huk_!  Come!"
+
+The dogs howled, the traces tightened, the sleds sped forward.  They
+entered the defile.  The trail twisted up the side of the abyss.  Less
+than three feet wide for long stretches, the dogs had to slacken and
+pass upward in line, one by one.  Covered with new ice it was
+dangerously slippery, and in climbing the men had to hold to jutting
+icicles for support.
+
+Ootah was ahead.  At times sheer walls of ice confronted him.  At
+certain places there had been drifts, at others glacial fragments had
+slipped from the mountain above.  Before these almost insuperable walls
+Ootah would pause and with his axe hew steps in the hard ice.
+
+They slowly toiled ahead for an hour.  Then a blank sloping ice wall,
+twice the height of Ootah, blocked the path.  He grasped his axe and
+began hewing a series of ascending steps.  He breathed with difficulty;
+the air in the high altitude made respiration difficult.  He was soon
+bathed in perspiration.  The moisture of his breath and beads of sweat
+froze about his face, covering him with an icy mask.  His eyelashes
+froze together.  He had to pause to melt the quickly congealing tears.
+He suffered unendurably.  Finally his axe split; the ice was harder
+than his steel.  He uttered an impatient exclamation.
+
+"Thy axe!" he called to Koolotah.
+
+Koolotah swung his axe in the air and over the dog team separating
+them.  Ootah leaped from his feet and caught the axe as it soared above
+him.  In a half hour the step-like trail was cut, and he clambered over
+the wall.  Digging their nails into the indentations, the dogs
+followed.  Then Koolotah and his team scaled the obstruction.
+
+Koolotah felt his heart choking him as it seemed to enlarge within;
+Ootah, in truth, was not entirely unafraid.  Both knew that a slip of
+the foot would plunge them to instant death.  As they ascended the
+trail, the gathering clouds surrounded them.  They could no longer see
+their dogs.  They could not even perceive the blackness of the chasm to
+their right.  Above and below they were enveloped in a silver mist.
+Only the reflected glitter of the moonlight on jutting icicles on the
+opposite indicated the depths so perilously near.  Through the mist
+Koolotah saw the green and crimson eyes of baleful creatures that
+might, at any moment, spring upon him.
+
+
+When they reached the inland valley they were both spent in strength.
+In sheer relief from the agonized suspense of the journey they sank on
+their sledges and lay palpitating for an hour or more.  But the cold
+froze their perspiring garments and they had to rise and exercise so as
+not to freeze to death.  Ootah knew that no time could be lost.  In the
+interior mountains the breathing of the hill spirits was becoming more
+uneasy.  And Ootah noted with anxiety the increasing moderation of the
+atmosphere.  That was not well.  When the cold relented the hill
+spirits released the glaciers.
+
+With frantic eagerness they explored the valley.  The green grass
+whereon Ootah had seen the splendid animals grazing months before was
+covered with ice.  There was no sign of the _ahmingmah_.  Ootah's heart
+sank.  He felt very much like weeping.
+
+Suddenly the dogs began to sniff the air and bark hungrily.
+
+"_Ahmingmah_!" Koolotah cried, joyfully.
+
+Ootah released the team--the dogs made a misty black streak in their
+dash over the ice.  The men followed.
+
+In the shelter of a cave they found five musk oxen.  They were huddled
+together and half numb with cold.  They roared dully as the howling
+dogs assaulted them, and rushed lumberingly from the cave into the
+moonlight.  Five great black hulks, with mighty manes of coarse hair,
+they ambled over the ice for a space of five hundred feet and then,
+surrounded by the dogs, assembled in a circle, their backs together,
+their heads facing the howling dogs.  Thus they were prepared to
+protect themselves from attack.
+
+The dogs, frantic with hunger, made fierce rushes at the animals.  Now
+and then, as the dogs dashed forward, one of the great beasts would
+charge, its head lowered, and the dogs would leap backward into the air
+and scatter.  Then turning, the animal would rush back to its
+companions as fast as its numbed legs could carry it.
+
+Through the white vapor of their breath, which half hid their great
+horned heads, Ootah could see the eyes of the musk-oxen--they were
+greenish and phosphorescent.  Occasionally the creatures roared
+sullenly, but the fight was less exciting than it would have been had
+they been less torpid from hunger and cold.
+
+Ootah called away the dogs, and raised his gun, one which Olafaksoah,
+in payment for the five sledloads of walrus blubber which he
+confiscated after Ootah's flight to the mountains, had left with a
+generous supply of ammunition with a companion.  Ootah now realized the
+value of the payment which he had scorned.
+
+There was a yellow flash in the moonlight--a mighty roar went up.  The
+dogs, with a cyclonic dash, swooped upon the fallen monster, snapping
+viciously at it as it roared in its death agony.  Frightened, the other
+four scattered--one rushed into the shelter of the cave, the other
+three, dispersing, soon became diminishing black specks in the
+moonlight.  The dogs would have followed, but Ootah called them back.
+One animal was even more than they could manage.
+
+With quick despatch they fell upon the animal with their knives.
+Neither spoke--they worked breathlessly.  With marvellous skill they
+peeled off the heavy skin, and with amazing dexterity carved great
+masses of bleeding meat clean from the bones.  When they had finished,
+only a great skeleton remained.  Outside the cave, eager, whining, the
+starving dogs obediently crouched.  When they had completed the task of
+dressing, Ootah lifted his hand and the canines, with howling avidity,
+fell upon the steaming mass of entrails.
+
+Upon the two sledges the hunters loaded and lashed securely their
+treasure of meat.  In the moonlight the hot steam rose from the
+tremulous masses and Ootah's nostrils dilated with eager, anticipatory
+delight.  The blood dripped upon the snow and Ootah's stomach ached.
+He had not dared to think of eating until now.  Their hands shaking
+with nervous hunger, the two fell upon the remaining meat.  They
+feasted with that savage hungry joy known only to human creatures who
+have faced starvation.  When they started on the return journey there
+was a new vibrant elasticity in their steps.
+
+Ootah snapped his whip and sang.
+
+And his heart sang, too, of Annadoah.
+
+Looking at the clouds, as they drifted through the valley, Ootah
+imagined he saw Annadoah lying upon her couch asleep, and in the faint
+light of an oil lamp he saw upon her face a pleased smile.
+
+"Of what doth Annadoah dream?" Ootah asked the winds.
+
+"Of springtime when the flowers bloom," the winds replied.
+
+"And Annadoah will move to a new skin tent with Ootah!" he said,
+joyously, exultantly.  "Ootah will bring food unto Annadoah and she
+will reward him with her love."
+
+"Foolish Ootah," moaned the wind, "love cannot be won with food,
+neither with _ahmingmah_ meat nor walrus blubber."  Ootah felt his
+heart sink; a vague and heavy misgiving filled him.  Being very simple,
+he had always thought that by securing wealth, in dogs and food, in
+guns and ammunition, and by achieving pre-eminence on the hunt, he
+should win Annadoah's confidence and love.  But now, upon the breath of
+the winds, by the voices of nature, doubt came into his heart.  The
+mistake of many men the world over, and of many wiser than he, he could
+not understand just why this was--this thing the winds said, and which
+his own heart correspondingly whispered.  With food he might possibly
+win Annadoah's consent to be his wife, yes, he knew that; but
+Annadoah's love--that was another thing.  Surely, he now realized, as
+he strode along, that by simply giving her food he could not expect to
+stir in her heart a response to that which throbbed in his.  But why?
+Singularly he never thought of the bravery of his seeking food on this
+perilous adventure, an act which, had he known it, had indeed touched
+the heart of the beautiful maiden.
+
+With the quick atmospheric change of the arctic--a phenomenon common to
+zones of extreme temperature--the wind steadily increased in velocity
+and warmth.  The shallow moon-shot clouds on the ice thickened and
+swept softly under the two travellers' feet.  Above their waists the
+air was clear--they saw each other distinctly in the moonlight.  Yet
+their dogs, hidden in the low-lying vapor, were invisible.  Great
+masses of clouds slowly piled along the horizon and the moon was often
+obscured.  Then the two walked in a darkness so thick it seemed
+palpable.
+
+"Hark!" Ootah called, during one of these spells.  "What is that?"  A
+shuddering sound split the air; the ice field on which they travelled
+vibrated with an ominous jar.  The echoes of splitting ice came like
+distant explosions.
+
+"Have we disturbed the spirits of the hills?" asked Koolotah, in a
+whisper.
+
+"No, no," answered Ootah, anxiously.  "_Huk_!  _Huk_!"  He snapped his
+whip and urged the dogs.  They had not gone twenty paces when from the
+interior heights of Greenland came a series of muffled explosions.
+Undoubtedly the hill spirits had wakened, and, angry, were hurling
+their terrible weapons.
+
+
+They reached, in due course, the top of a mountain ridge down part of
+the glassy slopes of which they had to make their way to the entrance
+of the cleft in which the trail they had so laboriously hewn lay.  The
+gorge yawned blackly some five hundred feet below.  In anticipation of
+their return with loaded sledges, Ootah, on the last reach of their
+upland climb, had chopped on the smooth snows of the mountainside a
+narrow path that ran backward and forward in the fashion of a gently
+inclining elongated spiral.  The mountain sloped at an angle of eighty
+degrees, but by descending cautiously along this circuitous trail a
+safe descent was possible.
+
+While Ootah and his companion stood on the peak, the moon passed behind
+a veil of clouds and Ootah felt two soft wraith-like hands pass over
+his face--cloud-hands which his simple mind believed were sentient
+things.  His heart for the moment seemed to stop.  Thus the kind
+spirits warn men of danger.
+
+At that instant a stinging sound smote the air.  The glacial side of
+the mountain trembled, and as the moon reappeared, on the icy slopes
+Ootah saw narrow black cracks zigzagging in various directions.  A
+cataclysmic rumbling sounded deep in the earth.
+
+When the echoes died away he turned to Koolotah.
+
+"Be brave of heart.  Let us go--there is no time to lose."
+
+"_Huk_!  _Huk_!  _Huk_!"  They urged the dogs gently.  Arranging
+themselves instinctively in single file, the traces slackening, the
+wonderful dogs, with feline caution, crept ahead.  Lowering their
+bodies, each behind his sledge, Ootah and Koolotah began moving
+stealthily downward.  With one hand each clung to the rough icy
+projections of the slope; with the other they held the rear upstander
+of their sleds to prevent them from sliding, with their precious loads
+of meat, down the mountainside.
+
+Half way down, Ootah uttered a cry.
+
+His quick ear detected a faint splitting noise, like the crack of young
+ice in forming, under his feet.  In an instant he realized their danger.
+
+At the time he had reached a hollow in the perilous slope.  The dogs
+ahead, with quick instinct, retreated and crouched at his feet in the
+sheltering cradle.
+
+Ootah saw Koolotah turn and look inquiringly upward.  The next moment,
+driven downward by the wind, a mass of clouds, glittering with bleached
+moonfire, rolled over the slopes and hid Koolotah.  Ootah only heard
+his voice.
+
+Then the glacial mountainside to which he clung trembled.  A terrific
+crash, like that of cannon, followed.  The very mountain seemed to
+shake.  For a brief awful spell everything was still--then, with an
+appalling thunder, the ice split and began to move.  The moon
+reappeared and Ootah--in a tense moment--saw chasms widening about him
+on the glistening slope.  He heard the deafening echoing explosions of
+splitting ice in the distance . . .  With fierce ferocity he
+instinctively fastened one bleeding hand to an icy projection above
+him, with the other he held with grimly desperate determination to the
+sled . . .  In the next dizzy instant he felt the icy floor beneath him
+lurch itself forward and downward . . .  before his very eyes he saw
+Koolotah and his team--not twenty feet below--wiped from existence by
+the descending glacier to which he clung and in the hollow crevice of
+which he found security . . .  In a second's space he caught a clear
+vision of tremendous masses of green and purple glaciers being ground
+to fine powder in their swift descent on all sides of him, . . .  he
+saw the feathery ice fragments catch fire in the moonlight, . . . he
+heard the elemental roar and grinding crash of ice mountains sundering
+in a titanic convulsion . . . then he lost hearing . . .  In that same
+sick bewildering moment of preternatural consciousness he thought
+wildly of Annadoah . . . he saw her appealing wan face amid the blur of
+white moonlight . . . he knew she needed food . . . and he felt an ache
+at his heart . . . he called upon the spirits of his ancestors.  Then
+the silvery swimming world of white dust-driven fire became suddenly
+black--and the earth seemed removed from under him.
+
+
+In the village the natives were awakened from their lethargic sleep by
+the far-away crash of the avalanche.  Their faces blanched as they
+thought of the hunters.  "The hill spirits have smitten!  _Ioh_!
+_Ioh_!" they moaned.  In her igloo Annadoah, who had waited with
+sleepless anxiety, wept alone.  Of all in the village only the heart of
+one, Maisanguaq, was glad.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+"_The utter tragedy of her devotion to the man who had deserted her,
+and the utter hopelessness of his own deep passion, blightingly,
+horribly forced itself upon him . . .  Ootah asked himself all the
+questions men ask in such a crisis . . . and he demanded with wild
+weeping their answer from the dead rejoicing in the auroral Valhalla.
+But there was no answer--as perhaps there may be no answer; or, if
+there is, that God fearing lest, in attaining the Great Desire, men
+should cease to endeavor; to serve and to labor has kept it locked
+where He and the dead live beyond the skies._"
+
+
+The moon dipped behind the horizon.  For five sleeps naught had been
+heard from Ootah and his companion.  Inetlia, the sister of Koolotah,
+followed in turn by some of the other women, visited the igloo of
+Annadoah.  Upon her couch of moss Annadoah lay, and over her a cover
+given by Ootah and lined with the feathers of birds.
+
+"'Twas thou who sent Ootah to the mountains," one complained.  "May the
+ravens peck thine eyes!" cried another.  Annadoah shook her head sadly
+and wept.
+
+"'Twas thou who chose Olafaksoah, the robber from the south, that thou
+mightest be his wife; and 'twas thou, his wife, who beguiled the men
+and robbed thy tribe.  Did we not give away our skins, and didst thou
+not make garments for Olafaksoah?  And do we not now shudder from the
+cold?  'Twas thou who put the madness into the head of Ootah, the
+strongest of the tribe.  Many are the maidens who are husbandless and
+yet Ootah pined for thee.  Why didst thou not choose Ootah?  Then he
+would have remained and prevented the thievery of the strangers, we
+should not have been robbed, and he would not have had to go far unto
+the mountains, where the spirits have struck him in their wrath?  Nay,
+nay, thou didst make the men of our tribe sick with thoughts of thee.
+They have quarrelled among themselves.  And before the white men came,
+did they not reproach us, their wives and their betrothed, with thy
+name and the vaunted skill of thee?  Thou art as the woman with an iron
+tail, she who killed men when they came to her, their skins flushed
+with love.  Thou destroyest men!  Thou didst send Ootah and Koolotah to
+the mountains!  And they have perished!  _Ioh-h_!  _Ioh-h_!"
+
+Entering her igloo two or three at a time they reproachfully recited in
+chiding chants to Annadoah the story of her life; how her worthy mother
+and august grand-parents had died, hoping she would choose a husband
+from the hunters, and how she had refused all who sought her; they
+told, with reiterant detail, how she had caused quarrels among the men,
+and sent many of the warriors in their competitive hunts to death; and
+how, finally, when Ootah, the bravest of the hunters, wanted to wed
+her, she had chosen a foreign man, who deserted her and left her a
+burden on the tribe.  Sometimes they shook her roughly.
+
+To the native women the brutality and virility of the men from the
+south exert a potent appeal; and the fact that Olafaksoah had chosen
+Annadoah many moons since still made their mouth taste bitter.  This
+jealousy rankling within them, they now with angry exultation took
+occasion to mock and abuse her.  The girl lay still and did not reply.
+Her heart indeed seemed like a bird lying dead in wintertime.
+
+Then one of three women who stood by Annadoah's couch leaned forward
+and whispered a terrible thing.  The others looked at the girl and
+fear, mingled with hatred, shone in their eyes.
+
+"Thou sayest this thing," said one, "how dost thou know?"
+
+And the other, pointing accusingly to the girl who lay before them, her
+face hidden in her arms, replied:
+
+"The night my baby died . . .  I heard her voice."
+
+They stood in silence, rigid, implacable, bitter.
+
+During the latter dark days a terrible calamity had made itself felt
+among the tribe.  This was the death of many of the newly born.
+Outside the igloos during the past months, as the babies had come, the
+number of tiny mounds had increased, and when the aurora flooded the
+skies heart-broken mothers could be seen weeping over these graves of
+snow.  It is not uncommon in this land for babies to die at birth or
+come prematurely; but the number of recent deaths and tragic accidents
+to expectant mothers was unprecedented.  This was undoubtedly due to
+the depleted vitality of the starving mothers--but to the natives there
+was some other, some unaccountable, some sinister, cause.  In their
+hearts they experienced, each time a new mound rose white in the
+moonlight, that tremulous terror of a people who instinctively fear
+extinction.  The grief of a mother was for a personal loss; to the
+tribe each death meant an even greater, more significant loss, a thing
+of more than personal consequence.
+
+And when, out of the dim regions of her brain, one of the women now
+conjured the terrible thing which she whispered concerning Annadoah, it
+was little wonder the other two regarded the girl as a thing hateful
+and accursed.
+
+"_She stealeth souls!_"
+
+Nothing more frightful could have been said.
+
+"Yea, the night my baby died I heard her voice," repeated Inetlia
+angrily.
+
+And the other, among the superstitious voices in her memory, found it
+not difficult to recall a similar thing:
+
+"Methinks I heard her sing the night my own little one came--too soon."
+
+And the third whispered:
+
+"She is as the hungry hill spirit who feasts upon the entrails of the
+dead.  Yea, she carrieth off the souls of the children.  _Ioh_!
+_Iooh_!"
+
+Their voices rose in a maniacal cry of terror and denunciation.
+
+Annadoah rose.  Clasping her hands, she demanded piteously:
+
+"Why . . . sayest ye this of me?"
+
+And they shrieked:
+
+"Thou stealest souls!  By the _angakoq_ shalt thou be accursed!"
+
+"No, no!  No, no!" the girl pleaded, falling on her knees and weeping.
+
+Although they suddenly ceased their reviling, hearing outside the
+barking of dogs, the women thereafter in secret often assembled
+together; there were ominous whisperings; and each time a child died
+visits were paid to the _angakoq_, and the unseen powers were invoked
+to bring misfortune to Annadoah.
+
+Outside the silenced women detected the barking of dogs approaching the
+village from the distance.  They heard the excited calls of tribesmen
+and the chatter of other women.  One by one they crept from the igloo.
+A strange light in her eyes, Annadoah followed.
+
+Over the mountains to the north a soft and wondrous light began to
+palpitate tremulously . . .  While the men of the tribe rushed to meet
+the oncoming team of dogs in the distance, the women stood and gazed
+with awe upon the increasing wonder in the skies . . .  The northern
+lights, seen nowhere else so splendidly in all the world, had begun the
+weaving of their glorious and eerie imagery.  A nebulous film of
+silvery light wavered with incredible swiftness over the heavens . . .
+The snow-blanketed land took instantaneous fire in the sudden
+flares . . .  In the torridly tropic heaven of the virtuous dead an
+Unknown God, so the tribes believe, makes fire--just as in the nether
+regions beneath the earth the Great Evil, who has revealed himself with
+a more terrible reality than the Great Benign, creates cold and forges
+ice.  In that land of the happy dead, disclosed in the aurora, there is
+never any night, nor is it ever cold.  So the souls there are always
+happy.  Sometimes in their revels they troop earthward to cheer the
+mortals who suffer from _Perdlugssuaq's_ frigid breath as it comes
+during winter from hell . . .  The women looked at one another.  The
+augury was good.
+
+"The spirits of the dead," one whispered, "are happy . . .  They are
+playing ball."
+
+Into their midst, surrounded by the glad cheering men of the tribe,
+Ootah staggered.  His face was cut and covered with black clotted
+blood.  His legs dragged with utter exhaustion.  His features were
+gaunt and marked by lines of frightful suffering.  His eyes were bright
+with the light of fever.  When he saw Annadoah a faint but very glad
+smile passed over his countenance; he made an effort to forget the
+anguished throes of pain in his limbs and the intermittent shudderings
+of cold and flushes of intense fever.  He tried to speak, but then
+shook his head sadly.  Instead, he pointed to the dilapidated sledge.
+Three of his dogs had perished--five had been saved.  The sled had been
+battered, but was lashed together.  Upon it, however, the precious load
+of meat was intact.  The subtle aroma of it sent a wave of gladness
+through the crowd.  They danced about Ootah, asking questions.  Ootah
+staggered backward and sank helpless against the sledge.  After a while
+he found voice.
+
+"I am very weak," he managed to say.
+
+Several of the women disappeared and soon returned with a bit of walrus
+blubber.  This, having undergone a process of fermentation in the
+earth, possessed the intoxicating qualities of alcohol.  It is used by
+the natives for purposes of stimulation in such cases and in their
+celebrations.  Ootah with difficulty ate this.
+
+He felt stronger, and rose.
+
+"Thou art ill," said Annadoah, approaching him, and gently touching his
+wounded face.  "Enter, Annadoah will care for thee."
+
+Her face was perilously near him; it was very wan and beautiful in the
+auroral light--Ootah felt his heart beat wildly.  But it was pity, not
+love, that shone softly from Annadoah's eyes.
+
+"Thy igloo is cold, thy lamp unlighted," Annadoah insisted.  "Come!
+The others will prepare thy couch and light thy lamps.  Until then my
+bed is thine.  It is warm within."
+
+With difficulty Ootah bent low and followed Annadoah through the
+underground entrance of her igloo.  His dogs, which the men had
+unhitched, and as many as could enter the small enclosure, followed.
+The stench of the oil lamp at first almost suffocated him.  He sank to
+Annadoah's couch from sheer weakness, and his dogs, licking his face
+and hands, crept about him.
+
+Meanwhile Annadoah began melting snow over her lamp.  The others plied
+Ootah with questions.  Did he go far into the mountains?  Were there
+many _ahmingmah_?  Did Koolotah perish?  Was he in the mountains when
+the spirits struck?  To all of this he could only move his head in
+response.  While he sipped the warm water gratefully, Annadoah cut away
+his leather boots and bathed his injuries.  His flesh was torn and one
+ankle was sprained--by a miracle not a bone had been broken in the
+fall.  With unguents left years before by white men, Annadoah treated
+his many cuts and bruises and bound them securely with clean leather.
+After he lay back on the couch she bathed his face, and rubbed into the
+wounds salves which her father had given to her mother and which for
+years had been preciously preserved.
+
+Ootah lay with his eyes closed; he seemed to float in the auroral skies
+without, in the very happy land of the dead.  He forgot the pain in his
+limbs, the furnace in his forehead.  He felt only the soothing touch of
+Annadoah's dear hands, and her breath at times very near, fanning his
+face; he heard her voice murmuring to the onlooking natives.  Not
+satisfied with these ministrations, in which they really had little
+faith, the others presently brought a young _angakoq_, one better loved
+than the dead Sipsu.  For being young he had not prophesied many deaths.
+
+All moved away as the magician began beating his membrane drum over
+Ootah's body.  Working himself into frenzy, he called upon his familiar
+spirits.  For, according to their belief, illness, and the suffering
+resultant from wounds, are actually caused by the spirits of the
+various members of the body falling out of harmony.  Then the _angakoq_
+must persuade his friends in the other world to restore peace among the
+spirits of the human hands, feet, head, or whatever limbs may be
+affected.  The soul, or great spirit, they say resides in one's shadow,
+and sometimes this falls out of agreement with the minor spirits of the
+body.  Then one is in bad shape, indeed.
+
+For half an hour the chant and dance continued.  Meanwhile Ootah opened
+his eyes and often smiled at Annadoah.  He was better, he told them,
+and motioned the _angakoq_ to go.  He bade Annadoah sit beside him.  He
+felt unquestionably better.
+
+"You have asked me whether I went far over the mountains?  Yea, we
+travelled many sleeps, yet we scarcely rested.  The world was white
+about us.  The spirits carried us over dark places in the hills,
+wherein _Perdlugssuaq_ makes his home.  But he did not strike.  We were
+borne over abysses.  The spirits of one's ancestors are often kind.  We
+went through the world of the fog, she who was the wife of that hill
+spirit who carried the dead from their graves and ate them.  Yea, she
+passed beneath our feet.  We came to the high mountains.  We passed
+upward where the eyes of strange beasts glared upon us.  I was afraid.
+But I called upon my father.  Then the spirits of the great dead came
+down upon us.  They wove _kamiks_ and _ahttees_ of fire.  Their eyes
+burned as the great light of the stars.  They did not regard us.  We
+came unto the _ahmingmah_ . . .  But upon our return the hill spirits
+who live in the caves wakened and struck with their great harpoons.
+They shook the mountains.  Then the good ancestors carried me through
+_sila_--the world of the air--yea, my dogs, my sledge, and the
+_ahmingmah_ meat.  I had called upon those who went before me.  I woke
+at the bottom of the mountain, three of my dogs were crushed, my sledge
+was broken . . .  I lay there a while . . .  I slept again . . .
+often . . .  Then I lashed the sled, ate a little of the _ahmingmah_
+meat, and came . . . hither . . .  How . . .  Ootah knows not . . .  It
+was hard at times . . .  I could hardly walk . . . the ice moved about
+me . . . always . . . so--"  He described a circle with his hand.  "But
+I bethought me of Annadoah--" he smiled--"and I said I go to
+Annadoah . . .  That is how I came . . .  I said Annadoah is
+hungry--yea, as I said it when the eyes looked at me on the mountains,
+when the hill spirits made my heart grow cold, when Koolotah desired to
+return . . .  Koolotah--he hath gone . . .  Koolotah's dogs are
+gone . . .  But I called upon my dead father, my dead grandfather, and
+the older ones--and I thought of Annadoah."  He leaned toward her
+yearningly, his voice trembling.  Fearfully the girl drew away.  "It is
+she who brought the _ahmingmah_ meat," he said.  "It is she who led me
+to the _ahmingmah_.  Yea, she brings you the _ahmingmah_ meat.  For the
+thought of her brings Ootah back after the spirits strike . . .  It is
+she, who lives in the heart of Ootah, who has done all this . . .  But
+you are hungry.  Come!"
+
+He rose slowly and crept through the underground tunnel leading from
+the igloo.  The others followed.  Without, most of the tribe were
+waiting.  At Ootah's command the men unlashed the sledge-load of meat,
+and the division began.  To Annadoah Ootah gave one-eighth of the load,
+enough to last by frugal use for more than two moons, or months.  Among
+the others, of whom there were about twenty-five, the remainder was
+proportionately divided.  For himself Ootah reserved only as much as he
+gave the others.
+
+Outside Annadoah's igloo all engaged in a joyous revel.  Hungrily they
+feasted upon the raw meat.  Then they beat drums and danced.  Their
+voices rose in hilarious chants.  Wild joy shook them.  Ootah was
+acclaimed hero of the tribe.  Although they have no chiefs, he was
+accorded the honor of being the bravest and strongest among them.  And
+to the strongest and most heroic the last word in all things belongs.
+
+Of all who were able to participate in the celebration, Maisanguaq
+alone retired.  From the seclusion of his igloo entrance he watched the
+scene with rancor in his heart.
+
+Over the northern skies the auroral lights played, lighting the scene
+of spontaneous rejoicing with magical glory.  Great silver coronas--or
+rings of light--constantly arose in the north, passed to the zenith and
+melted as they descended to the south.  Luminous curtain-like films
+closed and parted alternately like the veils of a Valhalla drawn back
+and forth before the warrior souls of the north.  Tremendous fan-shaped
+shafts of opalescent fire shot toward the zenith and like search-lights
+moved to and fro across the sky.  The clouds became illumined with an
+interior flame and glowed like diaphanous mists of gold half concealing
+the vague faces of the beauteous spirits of the dead.  Their billowing
+edges palpitated with a tremor as of quicksilver.  Within and through
+this empyreal web of light marvellous scenes were simultaneously woven.
+They lasted a moment's space and vanished.  The natives, dancing
+unrestrainedly, saw heavenly mountain slopes covered with grass of
+emerald fire and glittering with starry flowers.  They saw the gigantic
+shadows of celestial _ahmingmah_ passing behind the clouds . . . and
+here and there were the cyclopean adumbrations of great caribou, and
+creatures for which they did not have a name.  A tossing sea of
+rippling waves of light was presently unfolded, and over it they saw
+millions of birds, with wings of fire, soaring with bewildering
+rapidity from horizon to zenith . . .  This faded . . .  Monstrous and
+gorgeous flowers of living rainbow tints burst into bloom--fields of
+them momentarily covered the heaven.  These the natives regarded with
+only half accustomed wonder, for they knew there were strange flowers
+in the land of the dead.
+
+As they danced, the colored imageries steadily faded in the growing
+intensity of the great banded coronas that rose from the north.  A
+light of cold electric fire increasingly blazed over the heavens until
+a frigid silver day, brighter than any day of sunshine, reached its
+brief noon upon the earth.
+
+Rocking their bodies and singing, the natives dispersed to their
+respective igloos.  Sitting on his sledge by Annadoah, Ootah dimly
+heard their voices echoing into silence; he experienced terrible pains
+again in his limbs and the fever in his head.  Everything became dizzy,
+and with a sick feeling of faintness he crept into Annadoah's igloo and
+fell upon her couch.
+
+It was in his heart to ask her once again to be his, to repeat the
+protestation of his love; he felt that he had shown he deserved to win
+her.  But his utter weakness, and the very enthralling delight of her
+soft hands on his forehead, kept him still.  He lay in a semi-delirium
+suffering greatly, but at heart very happy.  A new peace possessed him.
+Never had Annadoah caressed him before, never had he felt the tingling
+thrill of her tender hands, never had her breath so perilously warmed
+his face.  For an hour she sat by him, perfunctorily bathing his wounds
+with the white men's ointment and rubbing a yellow salve upon his face.
+And while she did this, often, very often, she closed her eyes.
+Sometimes her hands, as they passed over his forehead, absently
+wandered to the couch, sometimes they soothed the air near the
+suffering man.  Then she would recall herself.  Gazing upon Ootah, pity
+would fill her; and then--well, then her mind would wander.  She was
+faint herself, tired and half-asleep.
+
+Once, as she touched Ootah's hand, he closed it impulsively over hers.
+Her heart gave a thud.  Her eyelids quivered.  A smile appeared on her
+face.  Ootah pressed her hand more firmly--he did not realize how
+fiercely in his fever.  His blood ran high; in a mingled delirium of
+pain and transport he drew her slowly toward him.  Her one hand soothed
+his brow, softly, very gently.  The smile on her face deepened.  She
+gasped with a throe of the old memories.
+
+"Olafaksoah," she breathed, rapturously.
+
+Ootah felt a horrible pain grip his heart.  He opened his eyes, stark
+conscious.  He saw the eyes of Annadoah were closed.  On her face he
+observed the fond, far-away smile; he knew her heart was in the south.
+And in that frightful moment his untutored mind by instinct realized
+why she had bandaged and soothed him so tenderly, realized, indeed,
+that in doing so, in his stead, her mind had conjured up the vision of
+Olafaksoah.  His hands were strong, she had said, they hurt her.
+Ootah, with ferocity, gripped her little hand tighter.
+
+"Olafaksoah," she murmured again, with delight--then, recalling
+herself, suddenly uttered a sharp cry of dismay as she opened her eyes.
+
+Ootah staggered to his feet.  The utter tragedy of her devotion to the
+man who had deserted her, the utter hopelessness of his own deep
+passion blightingly, horribly forced itself upon him.
+
+"Annadoah!  Annadoah!  Annadoah!" he wailed, his voice sobbing the
+beloved name.
+
+The igloo was stifling; he felt that he was suffocating.  Everything
+reeling about him, he crept painfully from the igloo into the night.
+He felt he must be alone.
+
+Outside the aurora was paling with intermittent cascades of resolving
+lights.  Over the snows glittering rosy fingers painted running rainbow
+traceries.  It seemed as though the spirit revellers were pouring fiery
+jewels from the skies.
+
+Ootah stood before that revealed and radiant land of the dead--the dead
+who danced and were happy--his hands clenched and upraised above him.
+
+"Annadoah!  Annadoah!" he sobbed the name again and again, and in his
+voice throbbed all the piteousness, all the bitterness of his utter
+heartbreak.  There was no reproach in his shuddering sobs; only sorrow,
+only the desolation and eternal heart-ache of that which loves
+mightily, unrequitedly, and realizes that all it desires can never,
+never be.
+
+Ootah asked himself all the questions men ask in such a crisis; why,
+when he loved so indomitably, the heart of Annadoah should stir only
+with the thought of another; why the spirits that weave the fabric of
+men's fate had designed it thus.  Why the ultimate desire of the heart
+is forever ungranted and an intrinsically unselfish love too often
+finds itself defeated--these questions, in his way, he asked of his
+soul, and he demanded, with wild weeping, their answer from the dead
+rejoicing in the paling Valhalla.  But there was no answer--as perhaps
+there may be no answer; or, if there is, that God, fearing lest in
+attaining the Great Desire men should cease to endeavor, to serve and
+to labor, has kept it locked where He and the dead live beyond the
+skies.
+
+Ootah fell prostrate to the ground and his body throbbed on the ice in
+uncontrollable throes of grief.  The aurora faded above him.  Darkness
+closed upon the earth.  Sitting in her igloo, startled, vaguely
+perplexed and half-afraid, Annadoah heard him sobbing throughout the
+night.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+"_For a long black hour of horror they were driven over the thundering
+seas and through a frigid whirlwind of snow sharp as flakes of
+steel . . .
+
+"Seeing Ootah turn slightly toward Annadoah, Maisanguaq sprang at his
+throat.  Their arms closed about one another . . .  The floe rocked
+beneath them--they slipped to and fro on the ice . . .  About them the
+frightful darkness roared; they felt the heaving sea under them.  And
+while they struggled in their brief death-to-death fight, the floe was
+tossed steadily onward._"
+
+
+The long night began to lift its sable pall, and at midday, for a brief
+period, a pale glow appeared above the eastern horizon.  In this brief
+spell of daily increasing twilight the desolate region took on a
+grey-blue hue; the natives, as they appeared outside their shelters,
+looked like greyish spectres.  Ootah felt the grim grey desolation
+color his soul.
+
+He had regained his strength, and his wounds had healed with the
+remarkable rapidity that nature effects in people who lead a primitive
+life; only the hurt in his heart remained.  Annadoah had often visited
+him, and while he lay on his bed of furs she had boiled _ahmingmah_
+meat and made hot water over the lamp very solicitously.  Once,
+half-hesitating, she looked into his eyes, and as though she had a
+confession to make, said quietly:
+
+"Thou art very brave, Ootah."
+
+This pleased him--once she had said he had the heart of a woman.
+
+He had thrilled when she soothed him, and now he was half sorry that
+the injuries no longer needed attention.  He loved Annadoah more deeply
+than ever, and his greatest concern was for her.  He might win
+her--yes, perhaps some day, but he could not forget that, whenever she
+had touched him with tenderness, she thought of Olafaksoah.
+
+Standing before his igloo, musing upon these things, Ootah espied in
+the semi-light a dark speck moving on the ice.
+
+"_Nannook_! (_Bear_)" he called, and the men rushed from their houses.
+Without pausing to get his gun Ootah ran down to the ice-sheeted shore.
+Nature, as if repenting of her bitterness, had sent milder weather, and
+the bear, emerging from its winter retreat, made its way over the ice
+in search of seal.  Lifting his harpoon, Ootah attacked the bear.  It
+rose on its haunches and parried the thrusts.  A half-dozen lean dogs
+came dashing from the shelters and jumped about the creature.  The bear
+grunted viciously--the dogs howled.  The bear was lean and faint from
+hunger, and its fight was brief--the lances of four natives pierced the
+gaunt body.  The bear meat was divided after the communal custom of the
+tribe, and the gnawing of their stomachs was again somewhat appeased.
+Some days later three bears were killed near the village.  The hearts
+of the tribe arose, for spring was surely dawning.
+
+Early in March Arnaluk, skirmishing along the shore, saw a bear
+disappearing in the distance.  The animal was making its direction
+seaward, and this indicated to the astute native that its quick senses
+had detected the presence of seal.
+
+"Ootah!  Ootah!" he called.  "Attalaq!  Attalaq!"  The two tribesmen
+responded.  With harpoons and lances they followed the trail of the
+bear.  Less than a mile from shore they found it sitting near a seal
+blow hole in the ice.  At the sight of the men it fled.  A close
+inspection resulted in the discovery of a half dozen blow holes--or
+open places to which the seal rise under the ice and come to the
+surface to breathe.  For a long while the men waited.  Standing near
+the holes, their weapons ready to strike, they imitated the call of
+seals.  Finally there was a snorting noise beneath one of the holes.
+Ootah detected a slight rise of vapor.  Attalaq's harpoon descended.  A
+joyous cry arose.  Breaking open the ice about the hole a seal was
+drawn to the surface.  Daily visits were thereafter made to the
+vicinity and the hunters, patiently watching near the holes, succeeded
+in catching several seals.  Other blow holes were later detected along
+the ice, then they disappeared and for a period no seal rewarded the
+hunters.
+
+The weather continued to moderate, and these excursions on the sea ice
+became more and more dangerous.  One day Attalaq and Ootah, while
+walking along the shore, heard a familiar call in the far distance, out
+toward the open sea.
+
+"Walrus," said Ootah, the zest of the hunt tingling in his veins.
+
+"But the danger is great--the ice splits," said Attalaq.
+
+"But we need food."  Ootah thought of Annadoah.  She had not been well,
+she needed food--that was sufficient.  Moreover, he thought of the
+children; three were dying of lack of food.  So he called the tribesmen
+and gave the signal for preparations to depart.  A selection had to be
+made of the best dogs for the dangerous trip.  Few dogs remained in the
+village; many had been frozen by the bitter cold; others had to be
+killed as food for their companions; some had occasionally been
+devoured by the famished natives.  And this the desperate people had
+done with reluctance and great sorrow--for, as I have said, a native
+loves his dog but little less than his child.
+
+Ootah in the lead, with five others, started on the hunt, with three
+sledges, each of which was drawn by a team of five lean, hungry dogs.
+After some urging Maisanguaq had sullenly consented to accompany the
+party.
+
+Joy flushed the natives' skin, for a thin film of sunlight trembled low
+over the eastern horizon.  As they sped northward past great
+promontories they saw several auks.  Later two ptarmigan were spotted,
+and still later an eider duck.  They began chanting songs of the race.
+
+Quickly, however, the brief sunlight faded, heavy grey clouds piled
+along the sky-line, the atmosphere became perceptibly warmer, and
+intermittent gusts of wind blew downward from the inland mountains.
+
+They directed their steps over the ice to a distant black spot,
+somewhat more than a mile distant, which they knew to be open water.
+There, if there were any, the walrus would be found.  As they were
+marching, a very faint crackling noise vibrated through the ice under
+their feet.  They ceased singing.  Four of the party paused and would
+have turned back.  Ootah urged them onward.  They paced off half a
+mile.  The wind increased in volume and whined dolefully.  Their steps
+lagged.  Suddenly they heard the harsh nasal bellow they knew so well.
+The hearts of all expanded with the joy of the hunt.
+
+The dogs howled hungrily and, with tails swishing savagely, tore ahead.
+As they approached the edge of the sea ice they passed great lakes of
+open water.  The twilight still continued to thicken, the wind came in
+increasingly furious blasts.  Nearer and nearer came the low call of
+walrus bulls.
+
+In a lake of lapping black water, about five hundred feet from the open
+sea, a small herd rose to the surface intermittently for breath.  In
+the deep gloom the hunters saw fountains of spray ascending as they
+breathed.  Hitching their dogs to harpoon stakes driven in the ice,
+they separated and quietly took positions about the open water.
+
+"Wu-r-r!"  The low walrus call rose over the ice.  Ootah leaned over
+the edge of the ice and imitated the animal cry.  "Woor-r," Maisanguaq,
+near him, replied.  The water seethed, and two glistening white tusks
+appeared.  Ootah raised his harpoon--it hissingly cut the air.  A
+terrific bellow followed.  The little lake seethed.  A dozen fiery
+eyes, of a phosphorescent green, appeared above the water.  Maisanguaq
+struck, so did Arnaluk.  They let out their harpoon lines--the savage
+beasts dove downward, then rose for breath.  In their frantic struggle
+their heads beat against the ice about the edge of the space of open
+water.  The natives fled backward--the ice broke into thousands of
+fragments.  Each time the animals came up the hunters delivered more
+harpoons so as to pinion securely and at the same time despatch the
+prey.  In the gathering gloom they had to aim by instinct.  For an hour
+the struggle between the alert men and the enraged beasts continued.
+Several times Ootah and Arnaluk fired their guns as the green eyes
+appeared so as to finish the task of killing.
+
+Meanwhile the grey reflection of the descending sun entirely faded
+along the horizon; a bluish gloom blotted out the landscape.  The wind
+swept over the ice with fiendish hisses.  With a quick change the air
+became colder and snow flakes fell.  The natives became alarmed.  As
+they were drawing the first walrus to the ice a sound, like the
+discharge of a gun beneath the sea, startled them.  Seizing their
+knives they dexterously fell upon the animal and lifted the meat and
+blubber in long slices from the bones.  A great quantity was cast to
+the ravenous dogs.  Two more walrus were lumberingly drawn to the ice;
+the first sledge load and two hunters started shoreward; soon the
+second sledge was loaded.  Ootah and Maisanguaq remained to dress the
+third beast.
+
+Like scorpions in the hands of the mighty _tornarssuit_ the wind now
+steadily beat upon the ice.  The two men were almost lifted from their
+feet.  Not far away they heard the tumultuous crash of the rising
+waves.  As they were lashing the blubber to Ootah's sledge, a
+resounding detonation vibrated through the ice under him--the field on
+which they stood slowly but unmistakably began to move!
+
+Maisanguaq spoke.  The wind drowned his voice.  Above its clamor they
+heard the ice separating with the splitting sound of artillery.
+Whipped by the terrific gale the snow cut their faces like bits of
+steel.  In the darkness, which steadily thickened, they heard the
+appalling boom of bergs and the grind of floes colliding on the sea.
+
+Ootah leaped to the team of dogs and interrupted their feast.  He knew
+they had not a single moment to lose--the field had surely parted from
+the land ice and it was now a dreadful question as to whether a return
+was possible.  As he was hitching the dogs to the loaded sledge he
+suddenly gave a start.  Was he dreaming?  Was he hearing the
+disembodied speak, as men did in dreams?  He listened intently--surely
+he heard a soft sweet voice calling piteously through the wind.  His
+heart gave a great thud.
+
+Through the gathering gloom he saw something . . . a blur of
+blackness . . . gathering substance as it approached over the ice.  It
+moved uncertainly . . . and seemed to be driven toward him by the
+furious wind.
+
+"Look--who is it?" he called to Maisanguaq.
+
+For answer, through the din of the elements, a voice called brokenly,
+sobbingly:
+
+"Ootah! . . .  Ootah!"
+
+Ootah leaped to his feet.  Out of the snow-driven blackness a frail
+figure staggered toward him.
+
+"Annadoah," Ootah murmured, seizing the trembling woman in his arms.
+She seemed about to faint.
+
+"Why hast thou come hither?"  He hugged her fiercely to his bosom.  He
+felt a throb of ecstatic delight; for the first time she had
+surrendered to his arms; for the first time he held her close to him;
+death--for the moment--lost its terrors--he felt that he would be
+willing to die, in that storming darkness, with her heart beating, so
+that he felt its every pulse, close, close to his.
+
+The wild winds almost drowned Annadoah's words.
+
+"The women came to me," she panted with difficulty, and Ootah had to
+bend his ear to her mouth so as to hear.  "They were angry.  They said
+'She stealeth souls!  Annadoah stealeth souls!'  They said, 'Annadoah
+hath caused the death of many children!'  Ootah!  Ootah!  They came, as
+they do when thou art absent.  They threatened me--they called upon the
+spirits, as they once called to them beneath the sea.  And the curse of
+the long night--of darkness--hunger--death . . . they invoked . . . of
+the dead . . . upon me . . .  I was afraid."  Ootah felt her shuddering
+in his arms.  "The women came unto my igloo," she repeated
+wildly--"they desired that ravens peck my eyes--that I rest without a
+grave--that my body lie unburied and that my spirit never rest.  And
+the curse of darkness--_io-o-h-h_!--they called the curse of darkness
+upon me.  They trampled upon me with their feet, and they tore at my
+hair . . .  They came unto my igloo as the storm came and called upon
+the spirits of the skins to strike me; for they said I had again driven
+thee to thy death, that I had sent the others to their death.  Thou
+knowest I lay ill when thou didst depart.  But they fell on me one by
+one and hurt me--I feared they would kill me.  They were angry and they
+called upon the dead.  The storm strikes; the spirits of the winds are
+angry; the ice breaks, and it is the fault of Annadoah.  So they said."
+
+Her eyes were wild, her hair dishevelled.  Ootah felt her forehead--it
+burned with fever.
+
+"How didst thou come hither--and why?" he asked, his heart bounding in
+the thought that she had followed him, that of him she sought
+protection.
+
+"I know not--methinks I called upon the spirits.  I knew thou didst
+come this way--I knew thou wouldst save me from the women.  And I
+followed.  The way was dark.  The wind held me back.  But I knew thou
+wert here--my heart led me; my heart found thee as birds find grass in
+the mountains.  Ootah!  Ootah!  I fear I shall die!"  She collapsed in
+his arms.  The wind shrieked!  In the distance two icebergs
+exploded--there was a flash of phosphorus on the sea as the arctic
+dinosaurs collided.
+
+"Come!  Or we perish in the sea!" Maisanguaq, his head bent near so as
+to hear, now yelled into Ootah's ear.
+
+Annadoah cowered at the sound of his voice.  Ootah felt her trembling,
+in his arms.
+
+"And he . . . is here?" she whispered.  "I am afraid."
+
+They felt the great ice field rocking on the waves imprisoned beneath
+them.  It trembled whenever it touched a passing berg.
+
+Maisanguaq prodded the terror-stricken dogs.  Their howls shrilled
+through the storm,
+
+"_Huk_!  _Huk_!  _Huk_!" he urged.
+
+Supporting Annadoah with one arm Ootah pushed forward after the moving
+team.  He knew they were being carried steadily and slowly seaward, but
+he had hopes that the ice field would swerve landward toward the south
+where an armlike glacier jutted, elbow-fashion, into the sea and caught
+the current.
+
+Snapping their whips and frantically urging the dogs, they fought
+through the snow-driven darkness and over the moving field of ice.
+Annadoah murmured wild and incoherent things in her delirium.  They
+paced off half a mile.
+
+"_Aulate_!" Ootah suddenly called, panic-stricken.  "Halt! halt!"
+Maisanguaq stopped the dogs.  Before them a snaky space of water,
+blacker than the darkness about them, and capped with faintly
+phosphorescent crests of tossing waves, separated them--Ootah knew not
+how far--from the land.
+
+"To the right!" Ootah called.  "Let us go onward!"
+
+"_Huk_!  _Huk_!" Maisanguaq encouraged the dogs.
+
+"The floe may land near the glacier," Ootah cried.
+
+He spoke to Annadoah.  She made an irrelevant reply about the women who
+called upon the spirits--and their terrible maledictions.
+
+With Maisanguaq ahead driving the dogs, they turned to the south.
+Annadoah sank helpless in Ootah's arms--she could no longer walk.
+Ootah supported her.  At times his feet slipped.  He felt himself
+becoming dizzy.  The beloved burden in his arms became unsupportably
+heavy.  They travelled in utter darkness, near them the desirous clamor
+of the waves.  Seaward, at times, where the splitting floes crashed
+against one another, there ran zigzag lines of phosphorescence.  The
+winds howled in the ears of Ootah like the voices of the unhappy dead.
+Occasionally he heard the voice of Maisanguaq ahead urging the team.
+
+Ice froze on their faces, frigid water swept the floe.  Their garments
+became saturated and froze to the skin.  Finally the dogs refused to
+move.  "We can go no further," said Maisanguaq, in terror.  "I am
+resigned to die."  Ootah stubbornly invoked the spirits of his
+ancestors for succor.  He called to the dogs.
+
+Thereupon a terrific shock caused both men to reel.  The ice field
+trembled under them--then stopped.
+
+Ootah realized that a section of it had swept against one of the many
+land-adhering glaciers.  There was hope--and greater danger.
+
+With a rumbling crash that reverberated above the storm the field
+separated into countless tossing fragments.  The cake on which the
+terror-stricken party cowered swirled dizzily in an eddy of the
+released foaming waters.  On all sides the inky waves seethed up among
+the crevices of the sundering floes.  To the south Ootah heard the
+breakers booming against the ice cliffs, which perilously barred the
+currents of the angry sea.  The caps of the curling waves took on a
+pale white and appalling luminesence.
+
+"The faces of the dead!" cried Maisanguaq in superstitious terror.
+"From the bosom of _Nerrvik_ they come to greet us."
+
+Ootah, however, felt no fear.  For once he felt unheedful of those in
+the other world.  His mind was occupied with a more immediate
+interest--that of saving the life of the woman he loved.
+
+With quick presence of mind, Ootah grasped the rear upstander of the
+sled, which had begun to slide to and fro, and planted his harpoon in
+the ice.
+
+"Thy axe!" he shouted.  Maisanguaq passed the axe.  Ootah grappled for
+it in the darkness.  "Hold the harpoon," he directed.  Mechanically
+Maisanguaq groped for the harpoon and held it while Ootah, with his one
+free hand, lifted the axe and drove it into the ice.  With the other
+hand he still gripped the unconscious woman.  Her hair swished about
+his legs in the howling wind.  Maisanguaq planted his own weapon in the
+ice on the opposite side of the sledge, and Ootah, with unerring
+strokes, hardly able to see it in the darkness, pounded it firmly into
+the ice.
+
+"Thy lashings," he called.  Maisanguaq passed a coil of skin rope.
+
+About the improvised stakes which secured the sled Ootah whipped the
+lashings, then he passed them under and over the sled until it was
+securely pinioned.  Very gently he placed Annadoah upon the mass of
+walrus meat and lashed her body in turn to the sled and about the
+stakes.  With Maisanguaq's assistance he tied the cowering dogs to the
+harpoons.  This done, the two men, benumbed and dazed, clung to the
+anchor for support.
+
+As the severed ice cakes dispersed, a curling wave lifted the floe on
+which they clung high on its crest and tossed it southward.  As it rose
+on the surging breakers Ootah felt the dread presence of _Perdlugssuaq_
+ready to strike.  Each time they made swift, sickening descents in the
+seething troughs he felt all consciousness pass away.  On all sides the
+waves hissed.  Torrents of water swept over the floe.  Ootah felt his
+limbs freezing; he felt his arms becoming numb.  He feared that at any
+moment he should lose his grip and be swept into the raging sea.  Then
+he thought of Annadoah and conjured new courage.  For a while the dogs
+whined--then they became silent.  One already was drowned.  Ootah bent
+over Annadoah to protect her from the mountainous onslaughts of icy
+water.  His teeth chattered--he suffered agonies.  For a long black
+hour of horror they were driven over the thundering seas and through a
+frigid whirlwind of snow, sharp as flakes of steel.
+
+
+The recoiling impetus of the waters gradually increased under them.
+Ootah knew this indicated an approach to land.  The waves came in
+shorter, but quicker swells.  The floe bumped into others.  Ootah
+roused himself and hopefully turned toward Maisanguaq.
+
+"We approach the land," he called.  "We must bide our time--then jump."
+
+The waves washed the floe toward the distant shore.  Land ice steadily
+thickened about them.  Maisanguaq realized that they were actually
+being carried to the sheltering harbor of the arm-like glacier south of
+the village.  Ootah quickly began unlashing Annadoah so as to be
+prepared to seize her and spring, when the opportunity came, from cake
+to cake, to safety.
+
+Impelled by a warning instinct, Ootah suddenly looked up from his task,
+and felt rather than saw Maisanguaq near and about to leap upon him.
+Maisanguaq's eyes dimly glowered in the dark.  Ootah rose quickly.
+Maisanguaq drew back and uttered an exclamation of chagrin.  Ootah
+understood.  With rescue possible, Maisanguaq had quickly come to a
+desperate resolution.
+
+The girl lay between them.
+
+Ootah braced himself.
+
+"I hate thee, Ootah," Maisanguaq shouted, no longer able to suppress
+the baffled jealousy and seething envy endured quietly for many
+seasons.  He moved about, parleying for time and a chance to spring
+upon Ootah when he was unguarded.
+
+"I hate thee not, Maisanguaq," Ootah replied.
+
+He steeled himself, for he knew Maisanguaq was strong, he knew the ice
+was treacherous; he waited for the man to strike.
+
+"My heart warms for Annadoah; so doth thine: therefore, thou or I must
+die."  Maisanguaq's deep voice sounded hoarse through the storm.
+
+"As thou sayest," Ootah replied, "but why?"
+
+"Annadoah must be thine or mine; dead, she cannot choose thee, and with
+thee dead, my strength shall cow her.  As men did of old I shall carry
+her away by force.  She shall be mine."
+
+"Annadoah hath already chosen--her heart is in the south," Ootah
+replied, sadly.
+
+"Fool!" the other man shrieked.  "Didst thou not go to the mountains to
+get her food; didst thou not thieve from thine own self to give oil to
+her; didst thou not fawn upon her and perform the services of a woman?
+Thou liest if thou sayest thou wilt not have her for thy wife.  No man
+doeth this unseeking of reward."
+
+"I love Annadoah," Ootah said, bitterly.
+
+"Yea, and thou hast hope."
+
+"Perchance--perchance I have hope."
+
+"And Annadoah looks with favor upon thee--I have seen it in her eyes.
+Did she not greet thee as women greet their lovers when thou camest
+from the mountains, and did she not bind thy wounds with strange
+ointment?"
+
+"She thought of another--her heart was in the south."
+
+"Hath she not sought thee hither--upon the ice--when the women fell
+upon her with their curses?  Her heart wings to thee, did she not say,
+as birds to green grasses in the mountains?"
+
+"Her heart is in the south," Ootah sadly moaned.
+
+"The heart of woman changes always," cried Maisanguaq.  "The heart of
+woman always yields to force.  _Pst_?"
+
+Seeing Ootah turn slightly toward Annadoah, Maisanguaq sprang at his
+throat.  Their arms closed about one another.  Maisanguaq breathed the
+wrath of the spirits upon Ootah.  He fought with the fierce strength of
+one insane with jealous, murderous rage.  The icy floe rocked beneath
+them.  They slipped to and fro on the treacherous ice.  The sharp snow
+beat their faces.  Water washed under their feet.  At times they
+reached, in their frightful struggle, the very edge of the floe, and
+seemed about to tumble into the seething sea.  Ootah felt Maisanguaq
+trying to force him into the watery abyss--but he fought backward . . .
+time and time again . . .  They constantly fell over the unconscious
+woman on the sledge.  About them the darkness roared; they felt the
+heaving sea beneath them.  And while they struggled, in their brief
+terrible death-to-the-death fight, the floe was tossed steadily onward.
+Ootah felt his breath giving out.  Maisanguaq felt Ootah's hands
+closing about his throat.  He felt the blood pound in his temples.
+Desperation filled him--he determined to kill Ootah by any means.  A
+grim suggestion came to him.  He endeavored to release himself.
+
+In a lull of the wind both heard something that made them start.
+Aroused from her feverish coma by the two men falling against her,
+Annadoah suddenly cried aloud.  The two men stood stone-still, locked
+in a deadly grip.  At that moment Annadoah felt the warmth of their
+panting breath as they paused near her.  Where she was at first she did
+not realize.  She heard a clamor of wind and breaking waters.  She
+imagined herself being tossed through the air in the arms of the
+_tornarssuit_.  At the same time she became vividly aware of the
+desperate struggle nearby.  Subconsciously she realized Maisanguaq and
+Ootah were engaged in a fight to the death.  In the darkness she sensed
+them moving away from her.  Straining her eyes she began, very
+dimly--as Eskimos can even in pitch darkness--to descry the black
+outlines of the two men wrestling as they shifted nearer and nearer the
+edge of the ice.  Then it dawned upon Annadoah's mind that they were
+being carried, in the jeopardy of an awful storm, on a floe that was
+tossed hither and thither in a maelstrom of angry waters.  A frantic
+desire to save Ootah surged up within her.  Behind him she saw the
+swimming blackness of the heaving waves.  She attempted to rise.  Her
+head swam; there was loud ringing in her ears.  Her hands were not
+free, her ankles were bound--she struggled to release herself.
+Twisting her wrists and ankles in the tight lashings until they bled,
+it suddenly flashed upon her that she was lashed to the sled.  She knew
+that at any moment the floe might crash into a glacier and be crushed
+to atoms.  She knew that Maisanguaq and Ootah were fighting for the
+possession of her--that both might perish, or, what was worse, that
+Maisanguaq might win.  Chaotic terror filled her.  Struggling
+frantically but ineffectually, she uttered a maniacal scream.
+
+"Ootah!  Ootah!"
+
+Ootah did not reply.
+
+The storm howled.  The wind lashed the floe--it fell like a whip on her
+face.  Annadoah felt the surging impetus of the angry sea under them.
+She felt herself rising on the crests of mighty waves and being swiftly
+hurled into foaming troughs of water.  Frigid spray bathed her face.
+Still the two vague shadows, darker than the night, slowly and
+laboriously moved about her.  At times they brushed her lashed
+body--then she felt the quick gasps of their breath; she sensed the
+strain of Ootah's limbs twisting in the struggle.
+
+Again she perceived the two shifting away and being merged into the
+swimming blackness.  Presently she saw only the phosphorescent crest of
+a mountainous wave . . . rising in the distance . . .  She became cold
+with white fear--she felt her blood turn to ice . . .  She screamed and
+struggled vainly with the lashings . . .  She felt the floe rise, felt
+herself being steadily lifted into the sheer air, and of paralyzed
+fright again swooned.
+
+Maisanguaq, by a fierce wrench, managed to release one hand, struck
+Ootah a heavy blow and broke away.  Leaping to the opposite side of the
+sledge, with a terrific pull, he drew one of the harpoons out of the
+ice and with his knife speedily cut it loose from the lashings.  Ootah,
+stunned for a moment, turned upon him.  Maisanguaq desperately raised
+the weapon.  Ootah heard it hiss through the air.  He reeled
+backward--the harpoon grazed his arm and struck the ice.
+
+At that very instant the oncoming breaker descended with a rush from
+behind--a torrent of water washed the floe.  Ootah was lifted from his
+feet and dashed against the sled.  When he rose he waited in silence
+for an attack.  There was none.  He moved over the floe cautiously,
+feeling the darkness.  Creeping to the edge he saw something dimly
+white and blurred on the receding wave.  "Maisanguaq," he called,
+softly.  There was a pang at his heart, for he was truly gentle.  He
+strained his ears to hear through the din of the elements.  The floe
+suddenly jolted him as it was carried, with a thud, against
+shore-clinging ice.  Ootah peered seaward, and called again, loudly--
+
+"Maisanguaq!"
+
+Only the waves replied.
+
+Hurriedly he cut the leather lashings and, leaping from floe to floe,
+carried Annadoah to the shelter of the shore.  Returning he loosened
+the dogs.  Only three lived.  Biding his time until the floe was ground
+securely among others, he then dragged his load of meat ashore.
+Sinking to the earth he rubbed Annadoah's hands and breathed with eager
+and enraptured transport into her face.
+
+He called her name.  Presently she stirred.
+
+"Ootah," she murmured.  "It is very dark--very dark--I wonder . . .
+whether . . . it will soon . . . be spring."
+
+He chafed her hands.  For a lucid moment she nestled to him and in a
+terrified voice whispered----
+
+"Maisanguaq--where is he?"  She heard Ootah's reply.
+
+"He hath gone the long journey of the dead."
+
+Annadoah breathed a sigh of relief and again floated into the coma of
+fever and exhaustion.
+
+The journey before Ootah was desperately difficult in the storm and
+darkness.  In his way of reckoning he knew they had floated about two
+miles south of the village.  The return lay along the sea and over
+crushed, blocked ice.  Much as he regretted it, he was compelled to
+leave the precious load of walrus blubber behind, so as to carry
+Annadoah, who was unable to walk, on the sledge.  He covered the
+blubber with cakes of ice, hopeful that it might by chance escape the
+ravaging bears.  His companions might come for it after his return.  He
+knew the probabilities were, however, that the keen noses of bears or
+wolves would detect it.
+
+After lashing Annadoah to the sledge, so she might not be jolted from
+it, Ootah, with a brave heart, started in the teeth of the biting wind.
+The half-frozen dogs rose to their task nobly and pulled at the traces.
+Ootah pushed the sledge from behind.  He trusted to the sure instinct
+of the animals to find a safe way.  Progress was necessarily slow.
+Fortunately the snow stopped falling and one agony was removed.
+
+In lulls of the storm Ootah heard Annadoah moaning in her delirium.
+
+When they reached the village, a half dozen men were assembled outside
+their houses.  They rejoicingly hailed Ootah, whom they had counted
+among the dead.  He learned that two of his companions had gone to join
+Maisanguaq.  The first party had safely reached the shore before the
+breaking away of the ice.  The news of Ootah's arrival brought out the
+women.  When they saw Annadoah they crowded about her, scolding.  Ootah
+silenced the garrulous throng with a fierce command.  They shrank away.
+
+"She came to me on the ice," he said.  "Knew ye not that the spirits
+fared not well within her, that she was ill, ye she-wolves?  She sees
+things that are not so and raves of the curses ye invoked, barking
+she-dogs!  _Aga_!  _Aga_!  Go--go!"
+
+Assisted by several of the men, Ootah conveyed Annadoah into her igloo
+and laid her upon her couch.  Her face was flushed, and as she lay
+there Ootah thought she was very beautiful.  She had become much
+emaciated--Ootah did not like that.  But when she opened her eyes Ootah
+saw in them a soft, new light.
+
+"Thou art brave, Ootah," she said, essaying a smile of gratitude.
+"Thou art brave of heart . . . and kind."
+
+Ootah's heart stirred.  Once she had said that his heart was as soft as
+that of a woman; this was, indeed, to him reward for all the frightful
+terrors he had endured on the storming sea.
+
+"And do the wings of thy heart not stir, Annadoah?" he asked softly, a
+world of pleading in his voice.  "Wilt thou not be mine in the spring?"
+
+"In the spring," she said, dreamily, and her voice quavered . . . "in
+the spring . . ."
+
+A far-away look came into her eyes, and Ootah felt an infinite ache at
+his heart.
+
+"I am afraid, Ootah," she said presently, in a trembling voice . . .
+"Afraid . . . my head burns--the igloo is black . . .  Dost thou
+remember what the women told their dead? . . .  They invoked the dead
+to curse me . . . as I stood by the open sea . . . when the moon
+rose . . .  Ootah!  Ootah!  I cannot see thee . . .  It is very . . .
+dark."  Ootah laid his hand upon Annadoah's head.
+
+"The spirits do not fare well within thee," he said.  "But I will care
+for thee."
+
+
+For nearly a moon Annadoah lay ill with a strange fever.  And in her
+disturbed dreams, as Ootah watched through the long hours, she murmured
+vaguely, but longingly, for the spring.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+"_Turning softly, she found a tiny naked baby . . .  Annadoah leaned
+forward, gazing at it intently, wildly--then uttered a scream as though
+she had been stabbed to the heart . . ._"
+
+
+The sun rose above the horizon and flooded the earth with liquid gold;
+again the sea ran with running light; the melting glaciers shimmered
+with burning amethystine hues; the snow-covered mountains took fire and
+glowed with burning bars of chrysoberyl and sapphire, while on the
+limpid sea the moving bergs glittered like monstrous diamonds
+electrically white.  On the sequestered slopes of the low mountain
+valleys green mosses once more carpeted the earth, buttercups and
+dandelions peeped pale golden eyes from the ground, in the teeming
+crevices of the high promontories delicate green and crimson lichens
+wove a marvellous lacery, and wherever the sun poured its encouraging
+springtime light beauteous small star- and bell-shaped flowers burst
+into an effulgence of pale rose and glistening white bloom.  The
+suggestion of a very faint, sweet aroma pervaded the air.
+
+Above the promontories millions of auks again made black clouds against
+the sky,--eider ducks floated on the molten waters of sheltering
+fjords,--along the icy shores puffins, with white swelling breasts, sat
+in military line,--guillemots cooed their spring love songs and fulmar
+gulls uttered amorous calls,--on the green slopes the white hare of the
+arctic gambolled, and tiny bears, soft and silken flossed, played at
+the entrances of moss-ensconced caves.  Out on the sea unexpected herds
+of walrus lay sleeping on floating ice; harp seals sported joyously in
+the waves; a white whale spouted shafts of blue water high into the
+air.  From the interior mountains came the howl of wolves and foxes,
+the sound of rushing waters and the roar of released glaciers.  Nature
+was vocal with awakening life.
+
+In her igloo Annadoah lay alone--for with spring the time of her trial
+had come.
+
+
+In the customary preparations for the coming of Annadoah's unborn child
+Ootah had entered with rare tenderness and solicitude.  When a little
+one is expected among these northern people, new clothing, of the
+rarest skins of animals and the feathers of birds, must be made for
+both mother and child; a new igloo is built for the event by the happy
+father, for the little one they believe should come in a house
+unspotted and white as the driven snow.  Annadoah was deserted,
+husbandless; the women of the tribe remained aloof from her; Ootah
+alone stood by her.  And Ootah helped her with unselfish, eager
+gladness.
+
+For several summers, in anticipation of the day when he might be a
+father, Ootah had gathered exquisite and delicate skins.  These he now
+brought to Annadoah.  There were silken young caribou hides, soft,
+fluffy white and blue fox pelts, as well as the skins of hares and the
+young of bears.  Of these, Annadoah, in the last week of fading winter,
+made, according to custom, new garments for herself.  Then, as the sun
+rose in early spring and the birds mated, Ootah went away to the high
+cliffs, where the auks nested, and jumping from crag to crag, hundreds
+of feet above the sea, gathered a thousand tiny baby auks, with crests
+of wondrous down, of which the hood for the unborn child was made.  In
+these high crevices, from which at any moment he might be plunged to
+death, Ootah gathered mosses of ineffable softness, which were placed
+in the hood as a cushion for the little one.
+
+Near her winter home, Ootah built a new igloo for Annadoah, and never
+was one made with more infinite patience and greater care.  Inside it
+was immaculately white, and when he lighted the new lamp the walls
+glistened like silver; over the light he placed a new pot of soap
+stone, for everything in that place in which a new life was to come
+into being must by an unwritten law be freshly made and never used
+before.  He built a bed of ice, laid it thick with moss, and over this
+tenderly placed, in turn, first walrus hides, then thick reindeer and
+warm fox skins.  He brought to the igloo a supply of walrus meat, and
+then, fearful to be present at an event in which he had no right of
+participation, prepared to depart to the mountains to hunt game.
+
+Before leaving he crept half fearfully into Annadoah's old igloo and
+told her all was ready.  She smiled fondly and reached forth her little
+hands.  "Thou art very kind, Ootah," she said, "thou art brave and
+kind."  Ootah was at a loss for words, but his heart beat high, and he
+was very glad.
+
+The natives watched Annadoah, as, arrayed in her immaculate garments,
+she made her way, with bowed head, to her new home; they whispered
+among themselves as they saw the _ilisitok_ (wise woman) follow later.
+
+When she sank on the new and wonderful couch, gratitude filled
+Annadoah's heart, and she murmured over and over again: "Thou art very
+kind, Ootah: thou art brave and kind."  Somehow the bright igloo became
+black and she seemed to be floating on clouds.  She remembered the
+Eskimo women wailing in the moonlight . . . by the open sea . . .  and
+the curse they invoked upon her through the dead.  She trembled and
+felt inordinately cold.  But she knew it was spring, for outside the
+igloo, with blithesome and silvery sweetness, a bunting was singing.
+
+
+When Annadoah awoke from her delirium of agony she saw that the wise
+woman had left her.  The walls of the igloo sparkled as the flames of
+the lamp flickered.  Over it a pot sizzled with walrus meat frying in
+fat.  In her half-waking condition Annadoah realized that something lay
+by her, and turning, softly, she found a tiny, naked baby.  Its skin
+was pale golden, its hair, unlike that of other babies, was of the
+color of the rays of the sun.  With half-fearful gentleness she turned
+it over and over.  Speechless with wonder, an inexplicable stirring in
+her bosom, she regarded its face--she observed its nose, the contour of
+its cheeks, the arrogance of its little chin; she noted in her child
+that curious and often brief resemblance of the new-born to the
+father--and this immediately recalled vividly and achingly the face of
+Olafaksoah.  This was her child, and his.  Surely, surely, with great
+joy she understood!  With this thought, an impetuous longing for the
+father filled her.  Passionately pressing the little creature to her
+breast she gave vent to the homesickness and ache of her heart in wild,
+convulsed sobs.  The touch of the little one, the resemblance of its
+tiny face to that of the blond man--these brought back the old passion
+and longing in all their bitterness.  Yet at the same time the child
+brought a new satisfying solace to her; it filled an immeasurable void
+in her heart.  Now and again she held it from her, and suppressing her
+violent sobs, solemnly regarded its face.  She could not get over the
+wonder and half-surprise that possessed her.  With utter abandon she
+finally fiercely clutched it to her.  The infant began to cry.
+Annadoah, with slow, cautious gentleness laid it down by her side,
+scared, amazed.  Thereupon the baby for the first time opened its eyes.
+Annadoah leaned forward, gazing at it intently, wildly--then uttered a
+scream as though she had been stabbed to the heart.
+
+
+When the wise woman--who had left Annadoah alone for a long
+sleep--returned to prepare food and to seek of the spirits the destined
+name of the child, she saw Annadoah lying still, her face upturned,
+tear drops glistening beneath her eyes.  The wise woman placed some of
+the fried walrus meat, or _seralatoq_--the prescribed food for a mother
+the day her child is born--into a stone plate and put it on the floor
+within reach of Annadoah.  Then she melted some snow and placed it by
+the couch.  Slowly approaching the bed she lifted the naked infant.
+
+"When thy mother wakes," she muttered, "I shall call upon the spirits.
+I shall give thee the name they gave thee in the great dark ere thou
+earnest hither--the name which was born with thee and which shall be as
+thy shadow."
+
+As she laid the little creature by the unconscious mother she saw a
+strange and frightful thing.  The curse!  And thereupon she knew she
+would not be called upon to learn of the spirits any name for this
+unhappy child.  It had, indeed, been named by the dead and with it the
+unuttered name must soon return to the great dark.  With set lips, and
+the grim determination of duty on her face, she crept softly from the
+igloo.
+
+Annadoah awoke.  At first she gazed about dazedly.  Then she realized
+that the _ilisitok_ had been with her--she observed the meat and warm
+water by her couch.  She realized also that the wise woman must have
+seen the horror which had gripped her heart like the teeth of wolves.
+Beneath lids scarred as by the claws of a hawk, the baby's eyes had
+been blasted by some unknown prenatal disease--the terrible dead, with
+their talon-hands, had smitten!  The child was organically blind, and,
+being defective and fatherless, Annadoah knew that, by the law of her
+people, it was doomed to immediate death.  While she shook with terror,
+withal a grim determination rose within her.  All the tremendous urge
+of that mighty mother-love which has beautified and ennobled the world
+clamored in the heart of this simple woman that her child _must not_
+die.
+
+As she touched the infant with a sacred tenderness, her very hands
+warmed with the impassioned affection that throbbed through her with
+every heart-beat.  As she gazed upon the features, faintly suggestive
+of its father's, she felt that she could never part from this familiar
+and intimate link with the spontaneous and powerful passion of her
+girlhood.  When she peered into those piteous, blighted eyes, mighty
+sobs of pity shook her, but she felt that she must be silent, and she
+forced back the tears.  Outside, a spring bunting was still singing,
+sweetly, ineffably.
+
+As she caressed it, the child's face twisted as if in pain.
+
+"Well do I know, little one, thou dost desire thy
+name--_ategarumadlune_," she said.  "Thou dost desire it as that which
+is as precious as thy shadow.  But the _ilisitok_ has gone and never
+will she breathe o'er thee the name I know . . . the name I felt
+stirring within me since the night . . . when the women addressed the
+dead . . .  Sweetly didst thou sing within my heart--but thy song came
+from the darkness.  Yea . . . from the darkness.  _Ioh-iooh_!"
+
+Very gently, very softly, she pressed her fingers upon the baby's
+sightless eyes.
+
+"I shall call thee little Blind Spring Bunting," she softly murmured,
+lifting the baby and pressing its tender face to her own.  "Poor Little
+Blind Spring Bunting."  She soothed its face, infinite pity in her
+eyes.  "Thou wilt never see _Sukh-eh-nukh_, nor the _ahmingmah_, nor
+the birds that fly in the air, Spring Bunting.  All thy days shall be
+as the long night, and thy whole life shall be without any light of
+moon.  But thy heart is warm and bright as the sun in the south, whence
+Olafaksoah came, and it makes the heart of Annadoah very warm.
+Poor . . . Little . . . Blind Spring Bunting!"
+
+Murmuring softly she rocked the little baby gently in her arms.  Then
+she heard the ominous sound of a native rushing by the igloo and voices
+upraised.  What were they saying?  That Annadoah's child was blind?
+
+A frantic determination to escape filled her.  The danger was
+immediate--she must act at once.  But what should she do?  Where should
+she go?
+
+She rose and moved bewilderedly about the igloo.  She felt weak and
+dazed.  At any moment they might break into her immaculate new home and
+seize the child from her arms.  At any instant they might come with
+wicked ropes to wrap about the baby's tender neck.  That she must flee
+she knew--but where?  Where?  She thought of Ootah.  But Ootah was in
+the mountains.  And not a moment could be lost.  In these matters the
+natives lose little time.  Moreover, she knew the women hated her; and
+that they had succeeded in making the men gradually bitter.
+
+"Olafaksoah!  Olafaksoah!" she called tragically.  Then she recalled
+with a start that Olafaksoah had summer headquarters some twenty miles
+to the south.  It was a boxhouse, built on a promontory of the
+Greenland coast.  She remembered it, as she had seen it on a journey
+south some summers before; the way thither, dangerous at this season of
+the year when the ice was breaking, she well knew.  Yes, she would seek
+refuge there.
+
+"Perchance Olafaksoah hath returned--did he not say he would return in
+the spring?  When the buntings sing?"  She laughed spontaneously.
+"Yea, yea!  We will go there, Little Blind Spring Bunting."
+
+Quickly she adjusted her own new garments, and then she took the little
+golden baby and over its head and shoulders laced a tight-fitting hood
+of soft young fox skin.  This done she gently placed the child into the
+hood on her back.  Inside this was lined with the breasts of baby auks
+and made downy with fibrous moss.  She hurriedly secured the child to
+herself by means of a sinew thread which passed about its body as it
+reposed in the hood, and which in turn, passing under her arms, she
+tied about the upper portion of her waist.  The voices outside had
+ceased.
+
+Suppressing her very breath, she crept through the long tunnel leading
+from the igloo and peeped cautiously from the entrance.  She could hear
+her heart throb.  She feared the natives might detect it.
+
+Five hundred feet to the north a group were engaged in excited
+conversation.  Annadoah's brain whirled with the fragments of what they
+said.  She knew the moment had come to depart.  She emerged and on all
+fours crept to the protecting lee of her igloo where she was hidden
+from their view.
+
+An open space of six hundred feet lay between her and the cliff around
+which the trail to the southern shelter lay.  Annadoah summoned all her
+strength of will, and then proceeded to walk slowly, with her head bent
+and her face concealed, so as to avoid arousing suspicion, over the
+dangerous area.  Her heart trembled within her--at any moment she
+expected to hear the savage cries.  When she reached the cliff she felt
+as if she were about to faint.
+
+Looking fearfully backward, with a sigh of immeasurable relief, she saw
+that she was unobserved.  Raising her head heavenward she breathed her
+thanks to the dead father and mother who were undoubtedly watching.
+She turned about the cliff, her heart bounding tumultuously, and,
+panting the words of the magic spell, asked that her legs be given the
+swiftness of the wind spirits.  She was very faint, she had scarcely
+any feeling whatever in her limbs; but summoning all her courage,
+bringing to bear all the love of this child she sought to save, she
+turned and ran.
+
+It was not long before she heard--or imagined--the angry cries of
+pursuing natives behind her.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+"_A frail, pitiful figure Annadoah stood on the cliff, wringing her
+hands toward the declining sun . . . 'I-o-h-h-h,' she moaned, and her
+voice sobbed its pathos over the seas.  'I-o-h-h-h!  I-o-h-h-h,
+Sukh-eh-nukh!  Unhappy sun--unhappy sun!  I-o-h-h-h, Annadoah--unhappy,
+unhappy Annadoah!'_"
+
+
+Twenty miles to the south, on a great cliff which stepped stridently
+into the polar sea, stood a house built of stray timber and boxes
+which, for a half decade, had been the summer headquarters of parties
+of Danish and Newfoundland traders who came north annually and scoured
+Greenland for ivories and furs.  The hulk of a house was
+weather-beaten, dilapidated, and scarred black by the burning cold.  A
+more desolate habitation could not be imagined in all the world, a more
+devastated land could nowhere else on all the globe be found.  For
+leagues and leagues to the north and south, the scrofulous promontories
+lay barren under the blight of the merciless northern blasts.  Over the
+corroded iron rocks strata of red earth and deeper crimson ore ran like
+the streaky stains of monstrous and unhuman murders committed in aeons
+past.  Not a particle of vegetation was visible; there were no lichens
+nor starry flowers.  There was no life save that of the black birds
+which winged restlessly about the sky and squawked in grotesque mockery
+at the region and its doom.  In strange contrast, the sky was as blue
+as the limpid skies of Umbria,--and nearly two hundred feet below the
+gnarled gashed cliff the ocean broke in terrific cascades of diamonded
+foam.
+
+The top of the cliff on which the house stood overleaped the sea, so
+that, looking below, one saw only the recoiling waters of a rich, deep
+gold, capped with silver crescents of broken spray.  From the sheer
+precipitous receding face of the cliff, knife-like granite spars
+projected, and in the crevices and nooks of these countless birds
+nested.  Hungry, desirous, insatiate--the voice of that fearful and
+balefully luring world--there sounded eternally the roar and crash of
+the breaking golden waves.
+
+
+Over the uneven scraggy promontory, blinded by the fierce sunlight,
+Annadoah staggered.  The world reeled about her; the sky above her had
+become black.  Before her--a small speck in the distance--she saw the
+black wooden house silhouetted against the molten sea.  She could
+scarcely move her legs; she ached in every limb; every moment she felt
+as if she would swoon, but the frenzied fear in her heart urged her on.
+She suffered intolerably.
+
+
+Of that long, tortuous journey Annadoah had no clear remembrance--with
+each step her one urging, predominant thought had been to forge ahead,
+to keep from swooning,--to escape those who were angrily calling far
+behind.
+
+Leaving her village, along the difficult broken coast her trail lay; it
+crept painfully up over the slippery sides of melting glaciers, some of
+them a thousand feet high, and made sheer descents over places where
+the ice was splitting; it writhed about hundreds of irregular sounds
+and twisted fjords.
+
+In her desperation to escape, Annadoah, without a thought of the
+danger, essayed to cross fjords where the ice was breaking.  As she
+sped over deceptive unbroken areas the ice often split under her feet.
+In one of the sounds jammed ice was moving.  To go around it she knew
+would mean a loss of three miles.  She leaped upon the heaving ice.  It
+rocked dangerously beneath her feet.  As she left the shore the current
+increased, the ice moved more swiftly.  From cake to cake she leaped
+with the agility of an arctic deer.  The ice floes swirled under her
+and tilted as her feet alighted.  Half way across, her foot
+slipped--the ice fragment eluded her wild grasp and she sank into the
+frigid water.  She felt herself sinking; for a moment she seemed unable
+to continue the struggle--then she recalled the dear burden upon her
+back.  She fought the swift current and grappled madly with the jamming
+ice.  It gathered about her--she feared she would be buried by the
+force of the impact.  But with a mighty struggle she finally grasped
+hold of a fortunate ridge on a cake and clambered to its surface.  The
+baby was unscathed.  It was crying loudly in its hood.  Although her
+hands were almost frozen, the cold water had not entered her garments.
+She leaped into the air and fled.  She next scaled the rocky face of a
+precipice to gain time--the rocks cut her face and hands.  Swarms of
+birds, frightened from their nests, surrounded her.  Their cries filled
+her with terror.  Reaching, on the farther side, shallow streams over
+which thin ice lay, she bravely forged ahead--the ice broke--her feet
+sank into the mud.  Her breath gave out--she felt paralyzing pangs in
+her lungs.  Yet the cries behind--which had become somewhat more
+distant--urged her on.  Again and again, in crossing water moving with
+broken ice her feet slipped into black, treacherous streams, and,
+swimming with native skill, she saved the child from the least harm.
+By degrees its cries ceased and it fell into slumber.  Occasionally
+Annadoah was compelled to rest, to regain her breath.  Her reserve
+strength--as is that of her people--was tremendous.  Staggering slowly
+ahead, she often sank into engulfing morasses where the earth had
+melted and willows were sprouting.  Panting, trembling in every limb,
+she fought her way out.  For the better part of the journey her legs
+moved mechanically--she was only half conscious.  Urged by her
+superhuman determination, the little woman struggled over twenty miles,
+and when she reached the great promontory where the house stood, her
+_kamiks_ were torn, her clothing was soaked with frigid water, and her
+hands were bleeding from wounds inflicted by the sharp rocks.[1]
+
+Behind her, in her delirious flight, Annadoah ever heard the
+threatening cries of pursuing tribesmen.
+
+As she approached the wooden house she staggered to and fro, and at one
+time was perilously near the edge of the cliff.
+
+Upon her back the infant slept peacefully.
+
+"Olafaksoah!  Olafaksoah!" she struggled to call, but her voice fell to
+a whisper.
+
+The windows of the grim house were as black as burnt holes; they glared
+at her unseeingly, without welcome--like blind eyes.
+
+Desperately she raised her voice.  Only a panting, breathless plaint
+quavered over the dumb, unreplying rocks.  The sea licked its yellow,
+hungry tongues below.
+
+At the door of the frame house Annadoah paused and still without losing
+hope again essayed to call.  Her voice broke.  The house was
+undoubtedly vacant.  There was no reply.
+
+She bent her head to listen.  She could hardly hear because of the
+pound of blood in her ears.
+
+Surely he had come--did he not say he would come in the spring?
+
+She tried the door.  It was locked.
+
+She beat it frenziedly with her fists.  She beat it until her fingers
+bled.
+
+Then she threw her body against it like a mad thing.  With crooked
+fingers she clawed savagely at the wood.  At last she quelled the
+tumult in her bosom and found voice.
+
+"Olafaksoah--Olafaksoah--Olafaksoah--_ioh-h-h_!  _Ioh-h-h_!" she
+screamed.  She sank to her knees and pounded at the door-sill with her
+fists.
+
+
+When the native tribesmen, furious at her flight, at her temerity in
+trying to evade their inviolable law, clambered up the cliff, they saw
+a dark, stark figure lying still before the door of the box-house.
+Their voices rose in a raucous clamor.
+
+Like wolves descending eagerly upon their prey they bore down upon the
+unconscious woman.  Some of the women of the tribe had accompanied
+them.  Their voices rose with eager, glad calls to vengeance; they
+demanded the life of Annadoah's child without delay.  The shrill howl
+of their dogs was mingled in that vindictive, savage chorus.
+
+"Little Blind Spring Bunting," Annadoah murmured, awakened from her
+trance by the approaching calls.
+
+Opening her eyes she saw the troop descending.  Staggering to her feet
+she stood with her back against the door, facing the clamoring crowd
+defiantly.  In their veins the savage blood of fierce centuries was
+aroused, in Annadoah's heart all the primitive ferocity of maternal
+protection.
+
+They surrounded her.  The struggle was brief.  In a moment--while
+strong hands held her--they cut the sinew lashing and rudely tore the
+baby from its hood.  Annadoah fell back, half-stunned, against the
+floor; in their midst the merciless howling natives had the helpless
+infant.
+
+As they bore it over the promontory Annadoah uttered a savage, snarling
+cry, as of a mountain wolf robbed of its youngling, and furiously
+rushed after them.
+
+Grasping hold of two of the men, she piteously begged them to give her
+the child.  She made frantic promises.  She pleaded, she sobbed, she
+raved incoherently.  Holding to the men with a fierce grip she was
+dragged along on her knees.  Then letting go, she cursed the tribe; she
+called upon them the malediction of all the spirits.  Her voice
+broke--she could only scream.  She tore her hair and fell prostrate,
+her body throbbing on the rocks.
+
+Above the clamor Annadoah suddenly heard a strangely familiar voice
+shouting from the distance.  Raising herself slightly, she saw a
+well-known figure bounding over the promontory toward the murderous
+natives.  Her heart bounded--she recognized Ootah.
+
+Having returned from the mountains Ootah had learned of Annadoah's
+flight and the pursuit; and with an unselfish determination to save the
+child he had immediately followed.
+
+At the very edge of the cliff the natives paused.  In his hands,
+Attalaq, the leader of the pursuit, held the crying babe.  Their voices
+were raised to an uproar; the women were chattering fiercely.  With
+quick dexterity Attalaq loosely twisted a leather thong about the
+baby's neck, and in haste to finish the tragic task began swaying it in
+his hands so as to give the helpless creature momentum in its plunge to
+death.  Ootah bounded toward them.
+
+"_Aulate_!  _Aulate_!  Halt!" Ootah cried.  "I will be father to
+Annadoah's child."
+
+The crowd turned--for a moment they gazed with mingled feelings of awed
+surprise, half-incredulous wonder and speechless admiration upon this
+man who offered to make the greatest sacrifice possible to one of the
+tribe; to become the father, protector and supporter of another man's
+helpless, defective infant.  For, according to their custom, they just
+as spontaneously grant life to a defective child when a member offers
+to assume sole responsibility for its keeping as they are implacably
+determined upon its death if its mother is husbandless.  But seldom
+does any man make this sacrifice; in this land of rigorous hardship and
+starvation it means much.
+
+Ootah fought his way among them.  They gave way, and a low groan
+arose--his noble offer had come too late!
+
+On the crest of a golden wave a tiny white speck of a baby face gazed
+in open-eyed, frightened astonishment skyward, and in a lull of the
+intermittent rush of waters a thin, piercing baby cry arose from the
+golden sea.
+
+Awe-stricken, abashed, suddenly overwhelmed with regret and shame, the
+natives silently drew back . . .  Ootah paused at the very edge of the
+cliff . . . he saw Annadoah's pleading white face . . . he extended his
+arms as a bird opens its wings for flight and brought the finger tips
+of his hands together above his head.  For a moment his body slightly
+swayed, then poising to secure unerring aim, he leaped into the dashing
+sea . . .
+
+
+Still and statuesque as a figure of stone, but wild-eyed, Annadoah
+stood alone on the extreme edge of the precipitous cliff and watched
+the struggle in the dizzy depths below . . .
+
+Awed by the splendor of a heroism so dauntless, a love so overwhelming,
+unselfish and great, the natives retreated to a far distance and waited
+in fearful silence.
+
+
+The prolonged infinity of suspense and horror of many long arctic
+nights seemed concentrated in the brief spell that Annadoah tensely,
+breathlessly, watched the struggle of the man to save her child.
+
+Annadoah saw Ootah disappear in the waters after his desperate dive
+from the cliff and rise with unerring precision on the surface near the
+sinking babe.  The sea came thundering against the jagged rocks in
+long, terrific swells, and was hurled back in a torrential tumult of
+breaking foam.  Ootah fought the seething waves in his effort to
+grapple the living thing which was to Annadoah as the heart of her
+bosom.  The tiny speck had begun to sink--Ootah made a dive under the
+water--and rose with the infant clasped in his left arm.  With only one
+hand free, he made a desperate struggle against the onslaught of the
+terrible watery catapults as they hurled him, nearer and nearer, toward
+the rocks beneath the cliff.  Annadoah saw his white hand, glistening
+with water, shine in the sunlight as he tried to climb against the
+impetus of the sea.  Sometimes his head sank--then only the struggling
+hand was seen.  She crept dangerously closer to the edge of the
+cliff . . .  Slowly, but steadily, Ootah and the child were being swept
+backward . . .  By degrees the steady strokes of Ootah's arm began to
+waver.  Annadoah saw him being carried further and further under the
+cliff by the irresistible momentum of the waves . . .  To be dashed
+against the jagged rocks beneath she knew meant death.  Her heart
+seemed to stop . . . but presently, swirling helplessly in the foaming
+cauldron of a receding breaker, she saw Ootah, still clasping the baby,
+emerge from under the rocks.  He still lived.  He still fought.
+Annadoah watched each desperate, failing stroke.  She saw his strength
+giving out in that unequal struggle, saw his arm frenziedly but
+ineffectually beating the water, saw his head disappear . . . for
+longer and still longer periods . . .  She caught a last vision of his
+white upturned face, of his eyes, filled with importunate devotion,
+gazing directly at her from out the blinding waters . . .
+
+Then she fell to her knees, and lowering her body, gazed wildly, for a
+long, long time, into the sea . . .
+
+Suddenly she uttered a low, sharp, involuntary cry--and the waiting
+tribesmen, recoiling as though stunned, understood.  They all loved
+Ootah--none dared, none could speak.  Silent, grief-stricken, they
+turned away their faces--even their dogs were still.  Annadoah still
+peered, searchingly, for a long time, into the sea.
+
+No, there was nothing there--nothing.  On the aureate waves was no
+speck of life.
+
+Rising, Annadoah gazed with wide-open, solemn eyes seaward; for the
+moment she felt in her heart only a dull ache.
+
+Along the horizon to the east the sun, irradiant and magnified, lay low
+over the heaving seas.  Over its face, like a veil of gold, translucent
+vapors--the breath of _Kokoyah_, the god of waters--rose from the
+melting floes.  A strange spell seemed suddenly to have fallen over the
+earth.  Out on the ocean the great bergs, which had majestically moved
+southward like the phantoms of perished ships, seemed to pause.  The
+little birds which had clustered about the rocks disappeared.  High in
+the sky above her, a sinister black bird poised motionless in the air.
+
+At her feet the roaring clamor of the waves seemed resolved into the
+solemn sobbing measure of some chant for the dead.
+
+Slowly and by degrees the utter realization of her loss dawned upon the
+soul of Annadoah.  And to her in that magical spell the spirits of
+nature and the souls of the dead began to manifest themselves.
+
+Out of the crimson-shot vapors mystical forms took shape.  Annadoah saw
+the beautiful face of _Nerrvik_, and in the mists saw her watery green
+and wondrous tresses of uncombed hair.  She saw the nebulous shadow of
+the dreaded _Kokoyah_, the pitiless god of the waters, to whose cold,
+compassionless bosom had been gathered Ootah and Little Blind Spring
+Bunting.
+
+Along the horizon Annadoah saw the clouds moving to the south.  Higher
+up they moved to the west, and toward the zenith stray flecks moved to
+the north.  The spirits of the air were not at peace among themselves.
+And dire things were brooding.  From the inland highlands of Greenland
+now came a series of swift explosions, and in the brief succeeding
+interval there was an unearthly silence.  Then a grinding crash rent
+the air.  The spirits of the mountains had engaged in combat.  And in
+the swift downward surge of the glacial avalanches Annadoah saw tribes
+wiped from existence and villages swept into the sun-litten sea.  But
+Annadoah knew that the sun-litten sea was a treacherous sea; she knew
+that _Koyokah_, whose face in the mist was wan, whose lips were golden,
+had no love for men, and she knew that the spirits of the air, who
+moved in the diversely soaring clouds, were engaged in some fell
+conspiracy against her helpless race.
+
+A vague realization of the impotence of humanity against fate, against
+the forces that weave the loom of life within and without one's heart,
+weighed crushingly upon her.
+
+Radiant indeed was the sky and softly molten golden the glorious sea,
+but yet, grim and grisly, behind this smiling face of nature, Annadoah,
+primitive child of the human race, shudderingly felt the malevolent and
+evil eyes of _Perdlugssuaq_, the spirit of great evil, he who brings
+sickness and death.  Annadoah felt that instinctive fear which humanity
+has felt from the beginning--the superstitious terror of tribes who
+confront extinction, in the face of famine; the quiet white tremor of
+the hard working hordes of modern cities in the face of poverty and
+starvation; the dread of savage and civilized races alike of the
+incomprehensible factor in the universe which wreaks destruction, that
+original and ultimate evil which all the world's religions recognize,
+interpret, and offer to placate--the force that is hostile to man and
+the happiness of man.
+
+On the smooth tossing waters, reflecting the glory of the sky, there
+was no sign of those who had perished.
+
+Then, after the first crushing sense of helplessness, an instinctive,
+insurgent hope that would not be defeated asserted itself.  Annadoah
+called upon _Nerrvik_, for surely _Nerrvik_ was kind to men.  She
+pleaded with _Kokoyah_.  She importuned the spirits of the sea and air
+to return her beloved ones to her.
+
+"_Nerrvik_!  _Nerrvik_!" Annadoah supplicated persuasively, "gentle
+spirit of the sea, lift Ootah unto me!  Thou who art kind to man and
+givest him fishes from the deep for food, give unto Annadoah's arms
+Little Blind Spring Bunting."
+
+She swayed her frail body to and fro, and in a tremulous, plaintive
+chant told unto the gentle and gracious spirit of the waters all that
+Ootah had been, all that he had done for the tribe; of his prowess, of
+his love for her, of her own hardness, and how she had turned a deaf
+ear to his pleading.  Incident after incident she recalled.  She told
+of the long night, when Ootah went by moonlight into the mountains, how
+he had braved the hill spirits, how they struck him in the frigid
+highlands, and how the beneficent _quilanialequisut_ had brought him
+home.  Her exquisite voice rose to a splendid crescendo as she
+described that valorous adventure, and in the chant ran the _motifs_ of
+the hill spirit's anger, the brave leaping steps of Ootah, the tremor
+of the mountains as they were struck, and the deep tenderness of
+Ootah's love.  In that customary chanting address to the spirits,
+Annadoah told of Ootah's return from the mountains, of the suffering he
+endured, and how, when she soothed him, she thought of the great trader
+from the south.  She recalled how he had staggered from the igloo, the
+agony in his eyes, and how she heard him sobbing his heart-break in the
+auroral silence without her igloo through the long sleep.
+
+Extending her arms over the sea, Annadoah reiterated, after each
+statement of Ootah's bravery, her plea to _Nerrvik_ that Ootah be given
+back to her.
+
+"_Nerrvik_!  _Nerrvik_!" she called, "surely thou art kind!  O thou
+whom, when the great petrel raised a storm, wast cast into the depths
+by those thou didst love, thou whose heart achest for affection--hear
+me, hear me, and Annadoah will surely come to thee very soon and comb
+thy hair in the depths of the cold, cold sea." [2]
+
+Tears fell from her eyes.  With self-reproach she told of her old
+longing for Olafaksoah, the blond man from the south, whose grim,
+fierce face had cowed her, yet whose brutality had thrilled her, to
+whose beast-strength and to whose beast-passion all that was feminine
+in her had surrendered itself.  But he had left her--he said that he
+would come back in the spring.  Now, she knew he would not come
+back--and she did not care.  As if to convince the spirit of this, she
+compared Olafaksoah with Ootah; she knew now that he had used her to
+rob her people, that his heart was as stone.  Ootah, she had once said,
+had the heart of a woman; but now she realized the difference between
+them.  She knew the arms of Ootah were strong, that the words of Ootah
+were true, that the heart of Ootah was kind.  And she felt stirring in
+her bosom things she could not express; a vague comprehension of the
+pure spirituality of the man who had died to save her child, a response
+to the love that had stirred in the bosom now cold beneath the sea.
+All the primitive deep profundity of the devotion of that wild-hearted
+man who had brought a wealth of food to her from over the mountains,
+who had faced death for her on the frozen seas, who had tended her in
+her time of trial with the gentleness of a woman, his indomitable
+heroism, the splendor, the dauntless unselfishness and bravery of his
+offering to father her sightless child--all this--all this, and
+more--welled up in the heart of Annadoah.
+
+"_Nerrvik_!  _Nerrvik_!  To him who loved her Annadoah lied.  Dead, she
+told him, was her heart as a frozen bird in wintertime--but her heart
+was only sleeping!  And now the wings are beating--beating within her
+breast!  _Ootah_!  _Ootah_!  _Ioh-h, ioh-h_!"
+
+Her voice broke.  She beat her little breasts.  She bent over the sea
+and listened.  For a long while she watched.
+
+Then, from the shadows in the clouds, the answer came.  Truly Ootah was
+brave, and his heart was marvellously kind; unsurpassed was his skill
+on the hunt and of every animal did he kill; and great was his love for
+Annadoah.  Even the spirits had marvelled and spoken of it among
+themselves; but Annadoah had chosen her fate; she had denied the love
+that had unfalteringly pursued her, and now that she desired it, even
+so to her was that love to be denied.  That was fate.
+
+Then in a clamorous outbreak did Annadoah plead with Kokoyah.  She
+grovelled on the ground.  She called upon all the spirits of the winds
+and air.  In a tremulous, heart-broken plaint she finally called upon
+the spirits of her father, her mother, and those who had gone before
+them.
+
+But unrelenting, passionless, the answer came--from the shadows in the
+clouds, from the winds, from the moaning sea.  To warm the wild heart
+under the water was beyond the power of all the spirits.  They repeated
+to her, as in mockery, all that she had told them that Ootah had done,
+of his mighty love for her; but nevermore might she soothe his injured
+limbs, nevermore might she touch his gentle hands, nevermore might she
+look into his tender and adoring eyes.  His hands were cold, his eyes
+were closed, his heart was still.  It throbbed with the thought of her
+no more--and that would be forever.  That was fate.
+
+
+A frail, pitiful figure, Annadoah stood on the cliff, wringing her
+hands toward the declining sun.  In the midst of that wild
+golden-burning desolation, Annadoah felt her utter loneliness, her
+tragic helplessness.  In all the universe she felt herself utterly
+alone.
+
+Far away, awed by the heroism, the very splendor of the bravery of the
+man who had perished, the tribe stood murmuring.  In their hearts was
+no little unkindness toward Annadoah.  But, forsaken, outcast, she did
+not care.
+
+Over the aureate shimmering seas she wrung her little hands and into
+the waves lapping at her feet her tears fell like rain.  For the heart
+of Annadoah ached.  Nothing in the world any more mattered.  All that
+she had loved had perished in the sea.  And she loved too late.
+
+Gazing at the low-lying sun, veiled as in a vapor of tears, remote, and
+sadly golden in its self-destined isolation, an instinctive
+wild-world-understanding of that tragedy of all life, of all the
+universe perchance--of that unselfish love that is too often denied and
+the unhappy love that accents only too late--vaguely filled her
+primitive heart.
+
+Sinking to her knees, convulsed sobs shaking her, she wrung her hands
+toward the sun, the eternal maiden _Sukh-eh-nukh_, the beautiful, the
+all-desired.
+
+"_I-o-h-h-h_!" she moaned, and her voice sobbed its pathos over the
+seas.  "_I-o-h-h-h!  I-o-h-h-h!  I-o-h-h-h, Sukh-eh-nukh!  I-o-o-h-h,
+Sukh-eh-nukh_!  Unhappy sun--unhappy sun!  _I-o-o-h-h-h-h_, Annadoah!
+_I-o-o-o-h-h-h-h_, Annadoah!  Unhappy, unhappy Annadoah!"
+
+Annadoah's head sank lower and lower.  Her weeping voice melted in the
+melancholy sobbing of the aureate sea.  One by one the natives
+departed.  She was left alone.  To the north the sky darkened with one
+of those sudden arctic storms which come, as in a moment's space, and
+blast the tender flowers of spring.  A cold wind moaned a pitiless
+lament from the interior mountains.  Yellow vapors gathered about the
+dimming sun.  Ominous shadows took form on the shimmering sea.
+
+"_I-o-h-h-h--iooh_!  Unhappy sun--unhappy, unhappy Annadoah!"
+
+Taking fire in the subdued sunlight--and descending from heaven like a
+gentle benediction of feathery flakes of gold--over and about the dark,
+crouched figure, softly . . . very softly . . . the snow began to fall.
+
+
+
+[1] Annadoah's flight, extraordinary as it is, is not without even more
+remarkable precedents.  In one case a woman who had been rejected by
+her husband made a forty-mile journey during winter to a spot south of
+her village where a child, some years before, had been buried.  There
+the woman wept and thus consoled herself.  Having exhausted her grief,
+she returned to her people.  On the trip she had no food whatever.
+
+[2] _Nerrvik_, a beautiful maiden, according to the legend, married a
+storm-petrel who had disguised himself as a man.  When she discovered
+the deception she was filled with horror, so that later, when her
+relatives visited her, she determined to escape with them.  When the
+petrel returned from a hunting trip and discovered that his wife had
+gone, he followed, and flapping his great wings raised a terrible storm
+at sea.  Water filled the boat in which _Nerrvik_ was escaping.  When
+they realized that _Nerrvik_ was the cause of the storm her brothers
+cast her into the sea.  With one hand she clung to the boat; her
+grandfather lifted his knife and struck.  _Nerrvik_ descended into the
+ocean and became the queen of the fishes.  Possessing only one hand she
+cannot plait her hair.  A magician who can go to _Nerrvik_ in a trance
+and arrange her tresses wins her gratitude and can secure from her for
+the hunters quantities of fish.  It is interesting to note the
+similarity of the legend of _Nerrvik_ to that of Jonah.  But just as
+the Eskimos have changed the masculine sun of southern mythologies to
+the feminine, so the victim of the mythological sea storm in the arctic
+becomes a woman.
+
+
+
+FINALE
+
+_According to the legends of the tribes, not for many long and aching
+ages shall the melancholy moon win the radiant but desolate
+Sukh-eh-nukh.  For having refused love she is compelled to flee in her
+elected lot from the love she now desires but which she once denied,
+and this by a fate more relentless than the power of Perdlugssuaq, a
+fate which they do not comprehend, but which is, perchance, the Will of
+Him Whose Voice sometimes comes as a strange whistling singing in the
+boreal lights, and Who, to the creatures of His making, teaches the
+lessons of life through the sorrows which result from the acts of their
+own choosing . . .  Sometime--when, they do not know--the sun and moon
+will meet.  They will then, having endured loneliness and long
+yearning, be immeasurably happy, and in the consummation of their
+desire all mankind will share . . .  For as ultimate darkness closes,
+all who have been true to the highest ideals of the chase will be
+lifted into celestial hunting grounds, where no one is ever hungry nor
+where is it ever cold; all who have done noble deeds will be hailed as
+celestial heroes.  He who died to save another will attain immortal
+life; he who gave of his substance to feed the starving will find
+ineffable food and in abundance; he who loved greatly, who suffered
+rejection uncomplainingly, and who sought untiringly--even as the moon
+pursued Sukh-eh-nukh for ages--will, in that land where the heart never
+aches and where there are no tears, see the very fair face of his
+beloved smiling a divine welcome, and her eyes filled with a radiant
+response, gazing into his own.  The end of the world will come, and
+with it will cease the suffering struggles of all the world's races.
+And then all the highest hopes of men will find their realisation in an
+undreamed-of heaven to which all who have lived without cowardice,
+ingratitude or taint of selfishness in their hearts, will be translated
+as the world's last aurora closes its mystic veils in the northern
+skies._
+
+
+
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