Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Here I promise thee meat. I follow Ootah upon the chase. There are walrus on the sea. Invoke the curse of destruction upon Ootah and I will give thee meat for the long winter." "Ootah Ootah yah hah! Ootah!" Sipsu snapped the name viciously. "With joy shall I bring the great evil unto Ootah. For hath he not despised my art, hath he not scoffed at my spirits!
It is Sipsu, the baby brother of Agoonack, a round little boy, who rides sometimes, when the weather is not too cold, in the hood of his mother's jumper, hanging at her back, and peering out from his warm nestling-place over the long icy plain to watch for his father's return from the bear-hunt. When the men come home dragging the great Nannook, as they call the bear, there is a merry feast.
He held his knotty hands motionless over the flame of his lamp. His nails were long and curled like sharp talons. As Maisanguaq saw him he could not repress a shudder. Sipsu was feared, and as correspondingly hated, by the tribe. They brought to him, it is true, offerings of musk ox meat and walrus blubber when members fell ill. But that was the urge of necessity.
A thin spiral thread of black smoke rose from the taper. In the dim light the leering face of Sipsu appeared like the face of the great demon himself. His small half-closed eyes blazed through their slits. "The spirits are wrathful. The tribe is forgetful. What wilt thou have?" Maisanguaq, with unconcealed hesitation, placed a bit of blubber before the magician. "The last I have," he mumbled.
Sipsu shook her head in dissent; but her eyes glistened with gladness, and she was proud that this man had shown toward her such favor. But she, like the women of all her race, was born to obey the will masculine, and when Hitchcock repeated "Go!" he did it with authority, and though she made no answer he knew that his will was law.
Sigmund broke off from his song to hurl oaths and firewood at the animals. Then the light was parted by a fur-clad figure, and an Indian girl slipped out of the webs, threw back the hood of her squirrel-skin parka, and stood in their midst. Sigmund and the men on the bearskin greeted her as "Sipsu," with the customary "Hello," but Hitchcock made room on the sled that she might sit beside him.
His broad cosmopolitanism had never impelled toward covenanting in marriage with the daughters of the soil. If it had, his philosophy of life would not have stood between. But it simply had not. Sipsu?
His face twisted with jealous rage as he heard Annadoah calling to the speeding Ootah. His narrow eyes glittered vindictively. Turning on his heel he entered Sipsu's dwelling place. Sipsu sat on the floor near his oil lamp. When Maisanguaq entered he did not stir.
May the wrath of the spirits descend upon him!" Sipsu uttered short howls. Maisanguaq joined in the incantation, and re-echoed the blighting curses. May they end not! May he lie awake forever! May he never sleep! May his teeth chatter during the great dark!" Sipsu groaned. He worked himself into an ecstasy of torture. His form became a black whirling figure in the dim tent.
But he was quick to his feet, and the night might have turned out differently had not Sipsu struck backward with the long dog-whip and smitten him a blinding blow across the eyes. Hitchcock, hurrying to overtake her, collided against him as he swayed with pain in the middle of the trail.
Word Of The Day