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Annadoah lay her hand gently on his arm, and a brief sorrow clouded her smiles. Papik bowed his head. He understood the blight nature had set upon him and it made his heart cold. Truly his fingers were long and his nose was long and either was a misfortune to a tribesman.
"No, I did not kill him," answered Papik. Then the old woman rose up and cried: "You killed him, and said no word. The day shall yet come when I will eat you alive, for you killed Ailaq, you and no other." And now the old woman made ready to die, for it was as a ghost she thought to avenge her son.
The exigencies of life place an economic value on the structure of a hunter's body, and the little Eskimo women endowed with a crude social conscience which demands that a father shall live and remain efficient so as to care for his own children are loath to marry one afflicted as was Papik. "But I care for thee, Annadoah," Papik protested.
Walrus too many to count!" They stopped their work and gathered in a group, Papik before them, his arms pointing toward the sea. His eyes glistened. To the south, Im-nag-i-na, the entrance to the polar sea, was hidden by grayish mists which, as they shifted across the sun, palpitated with running streaks of gold.
Between them they carried a small stark body. The woman was weeping piteously. It was their child, which a brief while before had died. The sea monster had again claimed its human toll. Papik and Ootah disappeared Papik to his shelter, Ootah to Annadoah's igloo. The parents, left alone, dug up stones and ice and buried the child. Then beneath the stars they stood in silent grief.
"But thou art chubby yea," said Papik admiringly "thou art fat as the mother bears after a fat summer, and thy body is warm; it giveth heat; Papik would give thee food, and thou shalt keep him warm during the long winter." The maiden smiled delightedly.
Saturn, distinct among all the heavenly bodies, throbbed with a van-colored changing glow like a bulbous opal, and about it, with a strange shimmer, visibly swirled its iridescent rings. "Thou standest alone thou wouldst leave me?" Papik, eager, triumphant, questioning, emerged from the stone entrance to the house and approached the girl. The other natives, homeward bent, followed.
Walrus!" shouted Papik, tossing up his arms and dancing, his brown face twisting with grotesque grimaces of joy. "Aveq soah! Aveq soah!" He leaped in frenzy. He seized his harpoon in mimicry of striking, and darted it up and down in the air. "Walrus! Walrus!" he cried, and his feverish contagion spread through the crowd. "Aveq tedicksoah! A great many walrus," echoed Arnaluk. "Aveq tedicksoah!
The natives effusively gathered about Papik, who bent over his dog with proud affection. In the excitement Ahningnetty quickly left the igloo, and standing outside gazed meditatively at the stars.
But whenever those two went out hunting together, it was always Ailaq who came home with seal in tow, while Papik returned empty-handed. And day by day his envy grew. Then one day it happened that Ailaq did not return at all. And Papik was silent at his home-coming. At last, late in the evening, that old woman who was Ailaq's mother began to speak. "You have killed Ailaq."
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