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Page 43
"Annadoah! Annadoah! Annadoah!" he wailed, his voice sobbing the
beloved name.
The igloo was stifling; he felt that he was suffocating. Everything
reeling about him, he crept painfully from the igloo into the night.
He felt he must be alone.
Outside the aurora was paling with intermittent cascades of resolving
lights. Over the snows glittering rosy fingers painted running rainbow
traceries. It seemed as though the spirit revellers were pouring fiery
jewels from the skies.
Ootah stood before that revealed and radiant land of the dead--the dead
who danced and were happy--his hands clenched and upraised above him.
"Annadoah! Annadoah!" he sobbed the name again and again, and in his
voice throbbed all the piteousness, all the bitterness of his utter
heartbreak. There was no reproach in his shuddering sobs; only sorrow,
only the desolation and eternal heart-ache of that which loves
mightily, unrequitedly, and realizes that all it desires can never,
never be.
Ootah asked himself all the questions men ask in such a crisis; why,
when he loved so indomitably, the heart of Annadoah should stir only
with the thought of another; why the spirits that weave the fabric of
men's fate had designed it thus. Why the ultimate desire of the heart
is forever ungranted and an intrinsically unselfish love too often
finds itself defeated--these questions, in his way, he asked of his
soul, and he demanded, with wild weeping, their answer from the dead
rejoicing in the paling Valhalla. But there was no answer--as perhaps
there may be no answer; or, if there is, that God, fearing lest in
attaining the Great Desire men should cease to endeavor, to serve and
to labor, has kept it locked where He and the dead live beyond the
skies.
Ootah fell prostrate to the ground and his body throbbed on the ice in
uncontrollable throes of grief. The aurora faded above him. Darkness
closed upon the earth. Sitting in her igloo, startled, vaguely
perplexed and half-afraid, Annadoah heard him sobbing throughout the
night.
VIII
"_For a long black hour of horror they were driven over the thundering
seas and through a frigid whirlwind of snow sharp as flakes of
steel . . .
"Seeing Ootah turn slightly toward Annadoah, Maisanguaq sprang at his
throat. Their arms closed about one another . . . The floe rocked
beneath them--they slipped to and fro on the ice . . . About them the
frightful darkness roared; they felt the heaving sea under them. And
while they struggled in their brief death-to-death fight, the floe was
tossed steadily onward._"
The long night began to lift its sable pall, and at midday, for a brief
period, a pale glow appeared above the eastern horizon. In this brief
spell of daily increasing twilight the desolate region took on a
grey-blue hue; the natives, as they appeared outside their shelters,
looked like greyish spectres. Ootah felt the grim grey desolation
color his soul.
He had regained his strength, and his wounds had healed with the
remarkable rapidity that nature effects in people who lead a primitive
life; only the hurt in his heart remained. Annadoah had often visited
him, and while he lay on his bed of furs she had boiled _ahmingmah_
meat and made hot water over the lamp very solicitously. Once,
half-hesitating, she looked into his eyes, and as though she had a
confession to make, said quietly:
"Thou art very brave, Ootah."
This pleased him--once she had said he had the heart of a woman.
He had thrilled when she soothed him, and now he was half sorry that
the injuries no longer needed attention. He loved Annadoah more deeply
than ever, and his greatest concern was for her. He might win
her--yes, perhaps some day, but he could not forget that, whenever she
had touched him with tenderness, she thought of Olafaksoah.
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