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.