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Page 37
"Foolish Ootah," moaned the wind, "love cannot be won with food,
neither with _ahmingmah_ meat nor walrus blubber." Ootah felt his
heart sink; a vague and heavy misgiving filled him. Being very simple,
he had always thought that by securing wealth, in dogs and food, in
guns and ammunition, and by achieving pre-eminence on the hunt, he
should win Annadoah's confidence and love. But now, upon the breath of
the winds, by the voices of nature, doubt came into his heart. The
mistake of many men the world over, and of many wiser than he, he could
not understand just why this was--this thing the winds said, and which
his own heart correspondingly whispered. With food he might possibly
win Annadoah's consent to be his wife, yes, he knew that; but
Annadoah's love--that was another thing. Surely, he now realized, as
he strode along, that by simply giving her food he could not expect to
stir in her heart a response to that which throbbed in his. But why?
Singularly he never thought of the bravery of his seeking food on this
perilous adventure, an act which, had he known it, had indeed touched
the heart of the beautiful maiden.
With the quick atmospheric change of the arctic--a phenomenon common to
zones of extreme temperature--the wind steadily increased in velocity
and warmth. The shallow moon-shot clouds on the ice thickened and
swept softly under the two travellers' feet. Above their waists the
air was clear--they saw each other distinctly in the moonlight. Yet
their dogs, hidden in the low-lying vapor, were invisible. Great
masses of clouds slowly piled along the horizon and the moon was often
obscured. Then the two walked in a darkness so thick it seemed
palpable.
"Hark!" Ootah called, during one of these spells. "What is that?" A
shuddering sound split the air; the ice field on which they travelled
vibrated with an ominous jar. The echoes of splitting ice came like
distant explosions.
"Have we disturbed the spirits of the hills?" asked Koolotah, in a
whisper.
"No, no," answered Ootah, anxiously. "_Huk_! _Huk_!" He snapped his
whip and urged the dogs. They had not gone twenty paces when from the
interior heights of Greenland came a series of muffled explosions.
Undoubtedly the hill spirits had wakened, and, angry, were hurling
their terrible weapons.
They reached, in due course, the top of a mountain ridge down part of
the glassy slopes of which they had to make their way to the entrance
of the cleft in which the trail they had so laboriously hewn lay. The
gorge yawned blackly some five hundred feet below. In anticipation of
their return with loaded sledges, Ootah, on the last reach of their
upland climb, had chopped on the smooth snows of the mountainside a
narrow path that ran backward and forward in the fashion of a gently
inclining elongated spiral. The mountain sloped at an angle of eighty
degrees, but by descending cautiously along this circuitous trail a
safe descent was possible.
While Ootah and his companion stood on the peak, the moon passed behind
a veil of clouds and Ootah felt two soft wraith-like hands pass over
his face--cloud-hands which his simple mind believed were sentient
things. His heart for the moment seemed to stop. Thus the kind
spirits warn men of danger.
At that instant a stinging sound smote the air. The glacial side of
the mountain trembled, and as the moon reappeared, on the icy slopes
Ootah saw narrow black cracks zigzagging in various directions. A
cataclysmic rumbling sounded deep in the earth.
When the echoes died away he turned to Koolotah.
"Be brave of heart. Let us go--there is no time to lose."
"_Huk_! _Huk_! _Huk_!" They urged the dogs gently. Arranging
themselves instinctively in single file, the traces slackening, the
wonderful dogs, with feline caution, crept ahead. Lowering their
bodies, each behind his sledge, Ootah and Koolotah began moving
stealthily downward. With one hand each clung to the rough icy
projections of the slope; with the other they held the rear upstander
of their sleds to prevent them from sliding, with their precious loads
of meat, down the mountainside.
Half way down, Ootah uttered a cry.
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