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.