Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 10, 2025
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.
Ootah shook his head. Olafaksoah had recourse to his stock-in-trade of oaths, and told his men to bring a gun, two hatchets, ammunition. Ootah was still obdurate. The natives' voices arose murmurously, for they felt it was not well to offend the strangers. During future seasons they might not come again, as they threatened, with ammunition and guns. This the natives feared as a calamity.
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.
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.
She thought of the blond man in the south, and the pleading of Ootah. As she heard his weeping, she shook her head sadly. She beat her breast and muttered over and over again: "Do the gulls that freeze to death in winter fly in springtime?"
Like the other women, Annadoah sat by her lamp day after day. When she could endure hunger no longer she would eat ravenously of the meagre food in the pot. Regular meals are unknown in the arctic a native abstains from food as long as he can in days of famine, but when he eats he eats unstintedly. As Ootah entered the low enclosure Annadoah's eyes lighted.
Fortunately the incandescent light of the aurora increased now and then a ribbon of light, palpitant with every color of the rainbow, was flung across the sky. Ootah lifted his harpoon lance the sky was momentarily flooded with light he struck. In the next flare he saw the bear lying on the ice his lance had pierced the brute's heart.
Finally, one day, in the cloud phantasmagoria, Ootah saw Olafaksoah reeling from the strange red-gold water the white men drank. He entered Annadoah's tent. She crouched, terrified, in a corner. With him were three of his rough blond companions. They staggered and in the winds they sang. Olafaksoah pointed consentingly to Annadoah. One of the men attempted to embrace her.
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."
A mystical silver light had risen over the horizon, and in the soft glimmer Annadoah saw that the face of Ootah was haggard and drawn. His voice was weak. "The sun hath gone," murmured Ootah. "The long night comes. Ootah heard thy cry and has come to care for thee, Annadoah." His voice was a caress. His face sank dangerously near the face of the girl.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking