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Page 3
He turned.
"Thou wilt not place thy face to mine, Annadoah? Yet I love thee,
Annadoah. My heart melts as streams in springtime, Annadoah. My arms
grow strong as the wind, and my hand swift as an arrow for love of
thee, Annadoah. The joy the sight of thee gives me is greater than
that of food after starving in the long winter! Yea, thou wilt be
mine? Surely for my heart bursts for love of thee, Annadoah."
He leaned back, stretching his arms, but Annadoah shyly drew further
inside her shelter.
With a sigh he flung his leather line over his shoulder, seized his
harpoons, and stepped from the tent. His step was resilient and
buoyant, his slim body moved with the grace of an arctic deer. He
looked back as he reached the icy shore. Annadoah stood at the door of
her tent. Her parting laughter rang after him with the sweetness of
buntings singing in spring.
Ootah's heart leaped within him. Annadoah possessed a beauty rare
among her people. From her father, one of the brave white men who had
died with the Greely party years before at Cape Sabine, Annadoah had
inherited a delicacy and beauty more common indeed with the unknown
peoples of the south. Her face was fresh and smooth, and of a pale
golden hue. Her cheeks were flushed delicately with the soft pink of
the lichen flowers that bloom in the rare days of early summer. Her
eyes played with a light as elusive, as quick as the golden radiance on
the seas. Her dark silken hair straggled luxuriantly from under the
loose hood of immaculate white fox fur which had fallen back from her
head. The soft skins of blue foxes and of young birds clothed her.
From her sleeves her hands peeped; they were small, dainty, childlike.
Almost childlike, too, was her face, so palely golden, so fresh, so
lovely, so petite. There were mingled in her the coyness of a child
and the irresistible coquetry of a woman.
She waved her hands joyously to the hunters leaving the shore. They
called back to her. Some of the women frowned. One shook her fist at
Annadoah.
Papik, lingering behind, approached Annadoah timidly.
"Thou art beautiful, Annadoah; thou canst sew with great skill. With
the needles the white men brought thee, thou hast made garments such as
no other maiden. Papik would wed thee, Annadoah."
"Thou art a good lad, Papik," Annadoah replied, laughing gaily. "But
thy fingers are very long--and long, indeed, thy nose!"
Papik flushed, for to him this was a tragedy.
"But with my fingers I speed the arrow with skill," he replied.
"True, but the fate of him who shoots with a skill such as thine is
unfortunate indeed; for soon the day will come when thou wilt not speed
the arrow, when thy hands will be robbed of their cunning. When
_ookiah_ (winter) comes with his lashes of frost he will smite thy
fingers--they will fall off. Then how wilt thou get food for thy wife?
_Ookiah_ will twist thy nose, and it will freeze. Poor Papik!"
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. He knew, as all
the natives knew, that sooner or later during a long winter his fingers
would inevitably freeze, then he would lose his skill with weapons;
consequently he would not be able to provide for a wife. His nose,
too, in all probability would freeze; then he would be disfigured and
the trials of life would be more complicated.
From the inherited experience of ages the natives know that a hunter
with short hands and feet is most likely to live long; a man's length
of life can be pretty accurately gauged by the stubbiness of his nose.
The degree of radiation of the human body is such that it can prevent
freezing in this northern region only when the extremities are short;
thus a man with long feet is almost for a certainty doomed to lose his
toes, and the most fortunate is he whose feet and hands are short,
whose nose is stubby and whose ears are small. 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.
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