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Page 20
IV
"_'Do the gulls that freeze to death in winter fly in springtime?' she
asked, simply. . . 'The teeth of the wolves are in my heart' . . ._"
Desolate and alone, Annadoah walked along a crevice in the
land-adhering ice of the polar sea.
The prolonged grey evening of the arctic was resolving into the long
dark, and the Eskimo women, as is their custom at this time of the
year, had gathered along the last lane of open water--which writhed
like a sable snake over the ice--to celebrate that period of mourning
which precedes the dreadful night, and to give their last messages and
farewells to the unhappy and disconsolate souls of the drowned, who,
when the ice closed, should for many moons be imprisoned in the sea.
An unearthly twilight, not unlike that dim greenish luminescence which
filters through emerald panes in the high nave of a great cathedral,
lay upon the earth. The forms of the mourning women were strangely
magnified in the curious semi-luminance and, as their bodies moved to
and fro in the throes of their grief, they might have been, for all
they seemed, shadowy ghosts bemoaning their sins in some weird
purgatory of the dead.
In the northern sky a faint quivering streak of light, resembling the
reflection of far away lightning, played--the first herald of the
aurora. To the south a gash of reddish orange, like the tip of a
bloody-gleaming knife-blade, severed the thick purple clouds. There
was a faint reflected glimmer on the unfrozen southern sea.
Snow had fallen on the land, igloos had been built. Over the village
and against the frozen promontories loomed a majestic yet fearful
shadowy shape--that of a giant thing, swathed in purple, its arm
uplifted threateningly--the spectre of suffering and famine.
This wraith, brought into being by the gathering blackness in the
gulches and crevices of the mountains, filled the hearts of the natives
with unwonted foreboding.
Profound silence prevailed.
Already the sea for miles along the shore was frozen. The open water
lay at so great a distance from the land that the sound of the waves
was stilled. The birds had disappeared. Even the voices of the
sinister black guillemots and ravens were heard no more.
Annadoah's sobs rose softly over the ice.
"Spirit of my mother, thou who wast carried by the storm-winds into the
sea! Hear me! Annadoah loved one Olafaksoah, a chief from the south;
for him the heart of Annadoah became very great within her. And now
the heart of Annadoah aches. For he hath gone to the south. And not
until the birds sing in spring will he return. And Annadoah is left
alone. _Ookiah_ comes with the lash of wicked walrus thongs, and there
is no blubber buried outside Annadoah's shelter. Neither is there oil.
And the couch of Annadoah is cold--so very cold. Yea, listen, spirit
of my mother, and bring Olafaksoah back, that he may bruise Annadoah's
hands, that he may cast Annadoah to the ground and crush Annadoah if he
wills with his feet! Io-oh-h!"
She moaned this in a curious sing-song sort of chant. Over the ice the
voices of the other women rose, and each, to her departed relatives and
friends who had died in the sea, told about the important incidents of
the year and the misgivings for the winter, in a varying crooning song.
Annadoah passed Tongiguaq, who jumped and danced in a frenzy of grief.
Tongiguaq had lost three children; two had been drowned, and a new-born
baby, three months before, was born maimed. According to the custom of
the people, a fatherless defective child is doomed to death. So
rigorous is their struggle to survive, so limited the means of
existence, that a tribe cannot bear the burden of a single unnecessary
life. So in keeping with this Lycurgean law, worked out by instinct
after the stern experience of ages, a rope had been twisted about the
neck of Tongiguaq's baby and it had been cast into the sea.
All this the weeping woman told in her chant to the departed. When she
saw Annadoah approaching, she paused.
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