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Updated: June 10, 2025
"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.
Maisanguaq, his head bent near so as to hear, now yelled into Ootah's ear. Annadoah cowered at the sound of his voice. Ootah felt her trembling, in his arms. "And he . . . is here?" she whispered. "I am afraid." They felt the great ice field rocking on the waves imprisoned beneath them. It trembled whenever it touched a passing berg. Maisanguaq prodded the terror-stricken dogs.
A momentary wavering of the northern lights revealed her face grown sad and wan. The women stood still, however, for approaching in the distance they heard a man's voice calling: "Avatarpay avatarpay, akorgani akorgani, anagpungah . . ." Those mystic words, believed to give magic speed to the one who utters them, came in the well known tones of Ootah. A joyous cry went up from the women.
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.
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.
Turning on his heel, his face to the northwest, he fled. In the sky overhead the black guillemot screamed. "Her lips are red red as a wound in the throat of a deer." For seven weeks Ootah lived in the mountains. The violence of his bitterness and grief scared away the wild hawks in whose high nesting place he found shelter.
Maisanguaq, caught by the evil contagion, began to sway his body in rhythm to the weird dance. "May Ootah become a cripple! May he break his bones! May he lie helpless for years! May his shadow leave him! May he suffer with the greatest of all pains!"
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.
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.
His scraggy arms, with their tattered clothes, writhed in the air as he beat the drum above him. His head began to nod from side to side; his eyes glowed like coals; his tongue hung from his mouth; foam gathered at his lips. "Ootah! Ootah! May he see horrors that do not exist what the wicked dead dream in their frigid hell! May the wrath of the spirits descend upon him!
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