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They looked seaward and shook their heads with dismay. "Many walrus far away," the men shouted. "No, no," the timid women returned. "Walrus too far away Perdlugssuaq will strike you there!" Against the distant horizon mighty bergs loomed. In swift eddies of water great floes swirled. The walrus were too far away to be seen.
As if to strike, it slowly lifted the likeness of a gigantic arm shrouded with tattered clouds . . . The baleful shade shut off the sunlight from the earth . . . Ootah's heart quailed . . . Terror gripped him . . . For he saw what few men had ever beheld the shadow of Perdlugssuaq, the Great Evil. Finally he found voice. Smite me!"
The spirits carried us over dark places in the hills, wherein Perdlugssuaq makes his home. But he did not strike. We were borne over abysses. The spirits of one's ancestors are often kind. We went through the world of the fog, she who was the wife of that hill spirit who carried the dead from their graves and ate them. Yea, she passed beneath our feet. We came to the high mountains.
For what they heard was, to them all, the Voice of the Great Unknown, He whose power is greater than that of Perdlugssuaq, He who made the world, created the Eternal Maiden Sukh-eh-nukh, and placed all the stars in the skies, who, never coming Himself earthward, instead sends in the aurora His spirits with messages of hope and encouragement to men, and Whose Voice sometimes, far, far away, itself comes as the faintly remembered music of long by-gone dreams preceding birth . . . Yea, it was the Voice . . . the Voice . . .
For having refused love she is compelled to flee in her elected lot from the love she now desires but which she once denied, and this by a fate more relentless than the power of Perdlugssuaq, a fate which they do not comprehend, but which is, perchance, the Will of Him Whose Voice sometimes comes as a strange whistling singing in the boreal lights, and Who, to the creatures of His making, teaches the lessons of life through the sorrows which result from the acts of their own choosing . . . Sometime when, they do not know the sun and moon will meet.
Radiant indeed was the sky and softly molten golden the glorious sea, but yet, grim and grisly, behind this smiling face of nature, Annadoah, primitive child of the human race, shudderingly felt the malevolent and evil eyes of Perdlugssuaq, the spirit of great evil, he who brings sickness and death.
"No man hath ever ventured there. The shadow of Perdlugssuaq is very dark." "Yea, may he smite Ootah!" exclaimed Maisanguaq. Sipsu laughed harshly. "Couldst thou cause the hill spirits to strike?" Maisanguaq asked eagerly. Sipsu faced Maisanguaq fiercely. "In my youth I went unto the mountains and I heard the hill spirits sing. Thereupon I became a great magician.
This done, the two men, benumbed and dazed, clung to the anchor for support. As the severed ice cakes dispersed, a curling wave lifted the floe on which they clung high on its crest and tossed it southward. As it rose on the surging breakers Ootah felt the dread presence of Perdlugssuaq ready to strike.
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