sleep--returned to prepare food and to seek of the spirits the destined
name of the child, she saw Annadoah lying still, her face upturned,
tear drops glistening beneath her eyes. The wise woman placed some of
the fried walrus meat, or _seralatoq_--the prescribed food for a mother
the day her child is born--into a stone plate and put it on the floor
within reach of Annadoah. Then she melted some snow and placed it by
the couch. Slowly approaching the bed she lifted the naked infant.
"When thy mother wakes," she muttered, "I shall call upon the spirits.
I shall give thee the name they gave thee in the great dark ere thou
earnest hither--the name which was born with thee and which shall be as
thy shadow."
As she laid the little creature by the unconscious mother she saw a
strange and frightful thing. The curse! And thereupon she knew she
would not be called upon to learn of the spirits any name for this
unhappy child. It had, indeed, been named by the dead and with it the
unuttered name must soon return to the great dark. With set lips, and
the grim determination of duty on her face, she crept softly from the
igloo.
Annadoah awoke. At first she gazed about dazedly. Then she realized
that the _ilisitok_ had been with her--she observed the meat and warm
water by her couch. She realized also that the wise woman must have
seen the horror which had gripped her heart like the teeth of wolves.
Beneath lids scarred as by the claws of a hawk, the baby's eyes had
been blasted by some unknown prenatal disease--the terrible dead, with
their talon-hands, had smitten! The child was organically blind, and,
being defective and fatherless, Annadoah knew that, by the law of her
people, it was doomed to immediate death. While she shook with terror,
withal a grim determination rose within her. All the tremendous urge
of that mighty mother-love which has beautified and ennobled the world
clamored in the heart of this simple woman that her child _must not_
die.
As she touched the infant with a sacred tenderness, her very hands
warmed with the impassioned affection that throbbed through her with
every heart-beat. As she gazed upon the features, faintly suggestive
of its father's, she felt that she could never part from this familiar
and intimate link with the spontaneous and powerful passion of her
girlhood. When she peered into those piteous, blighted eyes, mighty
sobs of pity shook her, but she felt that she must be silent, and she
forced back the tears. Outside, a spring bunting was still singing,
sweetly, ineffably.
As she caressed it, the child's face twisted as if in pain.
"Well do I know, little one, thou dost desire thy
name--_ategarumadlune_," she said. "Thou dost desire it as that which
is as precious as thy shadow. But the _ilisitok_ has gone and never
will she breathe o'er thee the name I know . . . the name I felt
stirring within me since the night . . . when the women addressed the
dead . . . Sweetly didst thou sing within my heart--but thy song came
from the darkness. Yea . . . from the darkness. _Ioh-iooh_!"
Very gently, very softly, she pressed her fingers upon the baby's
sightless eyes.
"I shall call thee little Blind Spring Bunting," she softly murmured,
lifting the baby and pressing its tender face to her own. "Poor Little
Blind Spring Bunting." She soothed its face, infinite pity in her
eyes. "Thou wilt never see _Sukh-eh-nukh_, nor the _ahmingmah_, nor
the birds that fly in the air, Spring Bunting. All thy days shall be
as the long night, and thy whole life shall be without any light of
moon. But thy heart is warm and bright as the sun in the south, whence
Olafaksoah came, and it makes the heart of Annadoah very warm.
Poor . . . Little . . . Blind Spring Bunting!"
Murmuring softly she rocked the little baby gently in her arms. Then
she heard the ominous sound of a native rushing by the igloo and voices
upraised. What were they saying? That Annadoah's child was blind?
A frantic determination to escape filled her. The danger was
immediate--she must act at once. But what should she do? Where should
she go?
She rose and moved bewilderedly about the igloo. She felt weak and
dazed. At any moment they might break into her immaculate new home and
seize the child from her arms. At any instant they might come with
wicked ropes to wrap about the baby's tender neck. That she must flee
she knew--but where? Where? She thought of Ootah. But Ootah was in
the mountains. And not a moment could be lost. In these matters the
natives lose little time. Moreover, she knew the women hated her; and
that they had succeeded in making the men gradually bitter.
"Olafaksoah! Olafaksoah!" she called tragically. Then she recalled
with a start that Olafaksoah had summer headquarters some twenty miles
to the south. It was a boxhouse, built on a promontory of the
Greenland coast. She remembered it, as she had seen it on a journey
south some summers before; the way thither, dangerous at this season of
the year when the ice was breaking, she well knew. Yes, she would seek
refuge there.
"Perchance Olafaksoah hath returned--did he not say he would return in
the spring? When the buntings sing?" She laughed spontaneously.
"Yea, yea! We will go there, Little Blind Spring Bunting."
Quickly she adjusted her own new garments, and then she took the little
golden baby and over its head and shoulders laced a tight-fitting hood
of soft young fox skin. This done she gently placed the child into the
hood on her back. Inside this was lined with the breasts of baby auks
and made downy with fibrous moss. She hurriedly secured the child to
herself by means of a sinew thread which passed about its body as it
reposed in the hood, and which in turn, passing under her arms, she
tied about the upper portion of her waist. The voices outside had
ceased.
Suppressing her very breath, she crept through the long tunnel leading
from the igloo and peeped cautiously from the entrance. She could hear
her heart throb. She feared the natives might detect it.
Five hundred feet to the north a group were engaged in excited
conversation. Annadoah's brain whirled with the fragments of what they
said. She knew the moment had come to depart. She emerged and on all
fours crept to the protecting lee of her igloo where she was hidden
from their view.
An open space of six hundred feet lay between her and the cliff around
which the trail to the southern shelter lay. Annadoah summoned all her
strength of will, and then proceeded to walk slowly, with her head bent
and her face concealed, so as to avoid arousing suspicion, over the
dangerous area. Her heart trembled within her--at any moment she
expected to hear the savage cries. When she reached the cliff she felt
as if she were about to faint.
Looking fearfully backward, with a sigh of immeasurable relief, she saw
that she was unobserved. Raising her head heavenward she breathed her
thanks to the dead father and mother who were undoubtedly watching.
She turned about the cliff, her heart bounding tumultuously, and,
panting the words of the magic spell, asked that her legs be given the
swiftness of the wind spirits. She was very faint, she had scarcely
any feeling whatever in her limbs; but summoning all her courage,
bringing to bear all the love of this child she sought to save, she
turned and ran.
It was not long before she heard--or imagined--the angry cries of
pursuing natives behind her.
X
"_A frail, pitiful figure Annadoah stood on the cliff, wringing her
hands toward the declining sun . . . 'I-o-h-h-h,' she moaned, and her
voice sobbed its pathos over the seas. 'I-o-h-h-h! I-o-h-h-h,
Sukh-eh-nukh! Unhappy sun--unhappy sun! I-o-h-h-h, Annadoah--unhappy,
unhappy Annadoah!'_"
Twenty miles to the south, on a great cliff which stepped stridently
into the polar sea, stood a house built of stray timber and boxes
which, for a half decade, had been the summer headquarters of parties
of Danish and Newfoundland traders who came north annually and scoured
Greenland for ivories and furs. The hulk of a house was
weather-beaten, dilapidated, and scarred black by the burning cold. A
more desolate habitation could not be imagined in all the world, a more
devastated land could nowhere else on all the globe be found. For
leagues and leagues to the north and south, the scrofulous promontories
lay barren under the blight of the merciless northern blasts. Over the
corroded iron rocks strata of red earth and deeper crimson ore ran like
the streaky stains of monstrous and unhuman murders committed in aeons
past. Not a particle of vegetation was visible; there were no lichens
nor starry flowers. There was no life save that of the black birds
which winged restlessly about the sky and squawked in grotesque mockery
at the region and its doom. In strange contrast, the sky was as blue
as the limpid skies of Umbria,--and nearly two hundred feet below the
gnarled gashed cliff the ocean broke in terrific cascades of diamonded
foam.
The top of the cliff on which the house stood overleaped the sea, so
that, looking below, one saw only the recoiling waters of a rich, deep
gold, capped with silver crescents of broken spray. From the sheer
precipitous receding face of the cliff, knife-like granite spars
projected, and in the crevices and nooks of these countless birds
nested. Hungry, desirous, insatiate--the voice of that fearful and
balefully luring world--there sounded eternally the roar and crash of
the breaking golden waves.
Over the uneven scraggy promontory, blinded by the fierce sunlight,
Annadoah staggered. The world reeled about her; the sky above her had
become black. Before her--a small speck in the distance--she saw the
black wooden house silhouetted against the molten sea. She could
scarcely move her legs; she ached in every limb; every moment she felt
as if she would swoon, but the frenzied fear in her heart urged her on.
She suffered intolerably.
Of that long, tortuous journey Annadoah had no clear remembrance--with
each step her one urging, predominant thought had been to forge ahead,
to keep from swooning,--to escape those who were angrily calling far
behind.
Leaving her village, along the difficult broken coast her trail lay; it
crept painfully up over the slippery sides of melting glaciers, some of
them a thousand feet high, and made sheer descents over places where
the ice was splitting; it writhed about hundreds of irregular sounds
and twisted fjords.
In her desperation to escape, Annadoah, without a thought of the
danger, essayed to cross fjords where the ice was breaking. As she
sped over deceptive unbroken areas the ice often split under her feet.
In one of the sounds jammed ice was moving. To go around it she knew
would mean a loss of three miles. She leaped upon the heaving ice. It
rocked dangerously beneath her feet. As she left the shore the current
increased, the ice moved more swiftly. From cake to cake she leaped
with the agility of an arctic deer. The ice floes swirled under her
and tilted as her feet alighted. Half way across, her foot
slipped--the ice fragment eluded her wild grasp and she sank into the
frigid water. She felt herself sinking; for a moment she seemed unable
to continue the struggle--then she recalled the dear burden upon her
back. She fought the swift current and grappled madly with the jamming
ice. It gathered about her--she feared she would be buried by the
force of the impact. But with a mighty struggle she finally grasped
hold of a fortunate ridge on a cake and clambered to its surface. The
baby was unscathed. It was crying loudly in its hood. Although her
hands were almost frozen, the cold water had not entered her garments.
She leaped into the air and fled. She next scaled the rocky face of a
precipice to gain time--the rocks cut her face and hands. Swarms of
birds, frightened from their nests, surrounded her. Their cries filled
her with terror. Reaching, on the farther side, shallow streams over
which thin ice lay, she bravely forged ahead--the ice broke--her feet
sank into the mud. Her breath gave out--she felt paralyzing pangs in
her lungs. Yet the cries behind--which had become somewhat more
distant--urged her on. Again and again, in crossing water moving with
broken ice her feet slipped into black, treacherous streams, and,
swimming with native skill, she saved the child from the least harm.
By degrees its cries ceased and it fell into slumber. Occasionally
Annadoah was compelled to rest, to regain her breath. Her reserve
strength--as is that of her people--was tremendous. Staggering slowly
ahead, she often sank into engulfing morasses where the earth had
melted and willows were sprouting. Panting, trembling in every limb,
she fought her way out. For the better part of the journey her legs
moved mechanically--she was only half conscious. Urged by her
superhuman determination, the little woman struggled over twenty miles,
and when she reached the great promontory where the house stood, her
_kamiks_ were torn, her clothing was soaked with frigid water, and her
hands were bleeding from wounds inflicted by the sharp rocks.[1]
Behind her, in her delirious flight, Annadoah ever heard the
threatening cries of pursuing tribesmen.
As she approached the wooden house she staggered to and fro, and at one
time was perilously near the edge of the cliff.
Upon her back the infant slept peacefully.
"Olafaksoah! Olafaksoah!" she struggled to call, but her voice fell to
a whisper.
The windows of the grim house were as black as burnt holes; they glared
at her unseeingly, without welcome--like blind eyes.
Desperately she raised her voice. Only a panting, breathless plaint
quavered over the dumb, unreplying rocks. The sea licked its yellow,
hungry tongues below.
At the door of the frame house Annadoah paused and still without losing
hope again essayed to call. Her voice broke. The house was
undoubtedly vacant. There was no reply.
She bent her head to listen. She could hardly hear because of the
pound of blood in her ears.
Surely he had come--did he not say he would come in the spring?
She tried the door. It was locked.
She beat it frenziedly with her fists. She beat it until her fingers
bled.
Then she threw her body against it like a mad thing. With crooked
fingers she clawed savagely at the wood. At last she quelled the
tumult in her bosom and found voice.
"Olafaksoah--Olafaksoah--Olafaksoah--_ioh-h-h_! _Ioh-h-h_!" she
screamed. She sank to her knees and pounded at the door-sill with her
fists.
When the native tribesmen, furious at her flight, at her temerity in
trying to evade their inviolable law, clambered up the cliff, they saw
a dark, stark figure lying still before the door of the box-house.
Their voices rose in a raucous clamor.
Like wolves descending eagerly upon their prey they bore down upon the
unconscious woman. Some of the women of the tribe had accompanied
them. Their voices rose with eager, glad calls to vengeance; they
demanded the life of Annadoah's child without delay. The shrill howl
of their dogs was mingled in that vindictive, savage chorus.
"Little Blind Spring Bunting," Annadoah murmured, awakened from her
trance by the approaching calls.
Opening her eyes she saw the troop descending. Staggering to her feet
she stood with her back against the door, facing the clamoring crowd
defiantly. In their veins the savage blood of fierce centuries was
aroused, in Annadoah's heart all the primitive ferocity of maternal
protection.
They surrounded her. The struggle was brief. In a moment--while
strong hands held her--they cut the sinew lashing and rudely tore the
baby from its hood. Annadoah fell back, half-stunned, against the
floor; in their midst the merciless howling natives had the helpless
infant.
As they bore it over the promontory Annadoah uttered a savage, snarling
cry, as of a mountain wolf robbed of its youngling, and furiously
rushed after them.
Grasping hold of two of the men, she piteously begged them to give her
the child. She made frantic promises. She pleaded, she sobbed, she
raved incoherently. Holding to the men with a fierce grip she was
dragged along on her knees. Then letting go, she cursed the tribe; she
called upon them the malediction of all the spirits. Her voice
broke--she could only scream. She tore her hair and fell prostrate,
her body throbbing on the rocks.
Above the clamor Annadoah suddenly heard a strangely familiar voice
shouting from the distance. Raising herself slightly, she saw a
well-known figure bounding over the promontory toward the murderous
natives. Her heart bounded--she recognized Ootah.
Having returned from the mountains Ootah had learned of Annadoah's
flight and the pursuit; and with an unselfish determination to save the
child he had immediately followed.
At the very edge of the cliff the natives paused. In his hands,
Attalaq, the leader of the pursuit, held the crying babe. Their voices
were raised to an uproar; the women were chattering fiercely. With
quick dexterity Attalaq loosely twisted a leather thong about the
baby's neck, and in haste to finish the tragic task began swaying it in
his hands so as to give the helpless creature momentum in its plunge to
death. Ootah bounded toward them.
"_Aulate_! _Aulate_! Halt!" Ootah cried. "I will be father to
Annadoah's child."
The crowd turned--for a moment they gazed with mingled feelings of awed
surprise, half-incredulous wonder and speechless admiration upon this
man who offered to make the greatest sacrifice possible to one of the
tribe; to become the father, protector and supporter of another man's
helpless, defective infant. For, according to their custom, they just
as spontaneously grant life to a defective child when a member offers
to assume sole responsibility for its keeping as they are implacably
determined upon its death if its mother is husbandless. But seldom
does any man make this sacrifice; in this land of rigorous hardship and
starvation it means much.
Ootah fought his way among them. They gave way, and a low groan
arose--his noble offer had come too late!
On the crest of a golden wave a tiny white speck of a baby face gazed
in open-eyed, frightened astonishment skyward, and in a lull of the
intermittent rush of waters a thin, piercing baby cry arose from the
golden sea.
Awe-stricken, abashed, suddenly overwhelmed with regret and shame, the
natives silently drew back . . . Ootah paused at the very edge of the
cliff . . . he saw Annadoah's pleading white face . . . he extended his
arms as a bird opens its wings for flight and brought the finger tips
of his hands together above his head. For a moment his body slightly
swayed, then poising to secure unerring aim, he leaped into the dashing
sea . . .
Still and statuesque as a figure of stone, but wild-eyed, Annadoah
stood alone on the extreme edge of the precipitous cliff and watched
the struggle in the dizzy depths below . . .
Awed by the splendor of a heroism so dauntless, a love so overwhelming,
unselfish and great, the natives retreated to a far distance and waited
in fearful silence.
The prolonged infinity of suspense and horror of many long arctic
nights seemed concentrated in the brief spell that Annadoah tensely,
breathlessly, watched the struggle of the man to save her child.
Annadoah saw Ootah disappear in the waters after his desperate dive
from the cliff and rise with unerring precision on the surface near the
sinking babe. The sea came thundering against the jagged rocks in
long, terrific swells, and was hurled back in a torrential tumult of
breaking foam. Ootah fought the seething waves in his effort to
grapple the living thing which was to Annadoah as the heart of her
bosom. The tiny speck had begun to sink--Ootah made a dive under the
water--and rose with the infant clasped in his left arm. With only one
hand free, he made a desperate struggle against the onslaught of the
terrible watery catapults as they hurled him, nearer and nearer, toward
the rocks beneath the cliff. Annadoah saw his white hand, glistening
with water, shine in the sunlight as he tried to climb against the
impetus of the sea. Sometimes his head sank--then only the struggling
hand was seen. She crept dangerously closer to the edge of the
cliff . . . Slowly, but steadily, Ootah and the child were being swept
backward . . . By degrees the steady strokes of Ootah's arm began to
waver. Annadoah saw him being carried further and further under the
cliff by the irresistible momentum of the waves . . . To be dashed
against the jagged rocks beneath she knew meant death. Her heart
seemed to stop . . . but presently, swirling helplessly in the foaming
cauldron of a receding breaker, she saw Ootah, still clasping the baby,
emerge from under the rocks. He still lived. He still fought.
Annadoah watched each desperate, failing stroke. She saw his strength
giving out in that unequal struggle, saw his arm frenziedly but
ineffectually beating the water, saw his head disappear . . . for
longer and still longer periods . . . She caught a last vision of his
white upturned face, of his eyes, filled with importunate devotion,
gazing directly at her from out the blinding waters . . .
Then she fell to her knees, and lowering her body, gazed wildly, for a
long, long time, into the sea . . .
Suddenly she uttered a low, sharp, involuntary cry--and the waiting
tribesmen, recoiling as though stunned, understood. They all loved
Ootah--none dared, none could speak. Silent, grief-stricken, they
turned away their faces--even their dogs were still. Annadoah still
peered, searchingly, for a long time, into the sea.
No, there was nothing there--nothing. On the aureate waves was no
speck of life.
Rising, Annadoah gazed with wide-open, solemn eyes seaward; for the
moment she felt in her heart only a dull ache.
Along the horizon to the east the sun, irradiant and magnified, lay low
over the heaving seas. Over its face, like a veil of gold, translucent
vapors--the breath of _Kokoyah_, the god of waters--rose from the
melting floes. A strange spell seemed suddenly to have fallen over the
earth. Out on the ocean the great bergs, which had majestically moved
southward like the phantoms of perished ships, seemed to pause. The
little birds which had clustered about the rocks disappeared. High in
the sky above her, a sinister black bird poised motionless in the air.
At her feet the roaring clamor of the waves seemed resolved into the
solemn sobbing measure of some chant for the dead.
Slowly and by degrees the utter realization of her loss dawned upon the
soul of Annadoah. And to her in that magical spell the spirits of
nature and the souls of the dead began to manifest themselves.
Out of the crimson-shot vapors mystical forms took shape. Annadoah saw
the beautiful face of _Nerrvik_, and in the mists saw her watery green
and wondrous tresses of uncombed hair. She saw the nebulous shadow of
the dreaded _Kokoyah_, the pitiless god of the waters, to whose cold,
compassionless bosom had been gathered Ootah and Little Blind Spring
Bunting.
Along the horizon Annadoah saw the clouds moving to the south. Higher
up they moved to the west, and toward the zenith stray flecks moved to
the north. The spirits of the air were not at peace among themselves.
And dire things were brooding. From the inland highlands of Greenland
now came a series of swift explosions, and in the brief succeeding
interval there was an unearthly silence. Then a grinding crash rent
the air. The spirits of the mountains had engaged in combat. And in
the swift downward surge of the glacial avalanches Annadoah saw tribes
wiped from existence and villages swept into the sun-litten sea. But
Annadoah knew that the sun-litten sea was a treacherous sea; she knew
that _Koyokah_, whose face in the mist was wan, whose lips were golden,
had no love for men, and she knew that the spirits of the air, who
moved in the diversely soaring clouds, were engaged in some fell
conspiracy against her helpless race.
A vague realization of the impotence of humanity against fate, against
the forces that weave the loom of life within and without one's heart,
weighed crushingly upon her.