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.