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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.
Then the hurry of the departure recalled itself to him, the crowds of people at the Franz Josef station, the sense of rest in finding himself alone with Keyork in a compartment of the express train; after that he had slept during most of the journey, waking to find himself in a city of the snow-driven Tyrol.
Then he plunged on foot downward through the wind-swept, snow-driven darkness. It was a terrible journey. He slipped and fell so often and so far that when the light behind him dwindled to a faint point, he dared continue no farther. Standing waist-deep in snow, he whistled and called. But the cyclone wind drove the sound back into his teeth. Sick at soul, he prepared to turn back.
His heart beat quickly at what the frightened birds told him. Olafaksoah, they said, struck Annadoah. As she lay on the ground he kicked her. In the snow-driven wind Ootah heard the echo of her heart-broken weeping. He revoked the curses he had uttered; he cursed his own weakness whereby he had invoked harm to her. Then in the winds Ootah heard the beat of drums.
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.
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