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Page 47
"_Huk_! _Huk_!" Maisanguaq encouraged the dogs.
"The floe may land near the glacier," Ootah cried.
He spoke to Annadoah. She made an irrelevant reply about the women who
called upon the spirits--and their terrible maledictions.
With Maisanguaq ahead driving the dogs, they turned to the south.
Annadoah sank helpless in Ootah's arms--she could no longer walk.
Ootah supported her. At times his feet slipped. He felt himself
becoming dizzy. The beloved burden in his arms became unsupportably
heavy. They travelled in utter darkness, near them the desirous clamor
of the waves. Seaward, at times, where the splitting floes crashed
against one another, there ran zigzag lines of phosphorescence. The
winds howled in the ears of Ootah like the voices of the unhappy dead.
Occasionally he heard the voice of Maisanguaq ahead urging the team.
Ice froze on their faces, frigid water swept the floe. Their garments
became saturated and froze to the skin. Finally the dogs refused to
move. "We can go no further," said Maisanguaq, in terror. "I am
resigned to die." Ootah stubbornly invoked the spirits of his
ancestors for succor. He called to the dogs.
Thereupon a terrific shock caused both men to reel. The ice field
trembled under them--then stopped.
Ootah realized that a section of it had swept against one of the many
land-adhering glaciers. There was hope--and greater danger.
With a rumbling crash that reverberated above the storm the field
separated into countless tossing fragments. The cake on which the
terror-stricken party cowered swirled dizzily in an eddy of the
released foaming waters. On all sides the inky waves seethed up among
the crevices of the sundering floes. To the south Ootah heard the
breakers booming against the ice cliffs, which perilously barred the
currents of the angry sea. The caps of the curling waves took on a
pale white and appalling luminesence.
"The faces of the dead!" cried Maisanguaq in superstitious terror.
"From the bosom of _Nerrvik_ they come to greet us."
Ootah, however, felt no fear. For once he felt unheedful of those in
the other world. His mind was occupied with a more immediate
interest--that of saving the life of the woman he loved.
With quick presence of mind, Ootah grasped the rear upstander of the
sled, which had begun to slide to and fro, and planted his harpoon in
the ice.
"Thy axe!" he shouted. Maisanguaq passed the axe. Ootah grappled for
it in the darkness. "Hold the harpoon," he directed. Mechanically
Maisanguaq groped for the harpoon and held it while Ootah, with his one
free hand, lifted the axe and drove it into the ice. With the other
hand he still gripped the unconscious woman. Her hair swished about
his legs in the howling wind. Maisanguaq planted his own weapon in the
ice on the opposite side of the sledge, and Ootah, with unerring
strokes, hardly able to see it in the darkness, pounded it firmly into
the ice.
"Thy lashings," he called. Maisanguaq passed a coil of skin rope.
About the improvised stakes which secured the sled Ootah whipped the
lashings, then he passed them under and over the sled until it was
securely pinioned. Very gently he placed Annadoah upon the mass of
walrus meat and lashed her body in turn to the sled and about the
stakes. With Maisanguaq's assistance he tied the cowering dogs to the
harpoons. This done, the two men, benumbed and dazed, clung to the
anchor for support.
As the severed ice cakes dispersed, a curling wave lifted the floe on
which they clung high on its crest and tossed it southward. As it rose
on the surging breakers Ootah felt the dread presence of _Perdlugssuaq_
ready to strike. Each time they made swift, sickening descents in the
seething troughs he felt all consciousness pass away. On all sides the
waves hissed. Torrents of water swept over the floe. Ootah felt his
limbs freezing; he felt his arms becoming numb. He feared that at any
moment he should lose his grip and be swept into the raging sea. Then
he thought of Annadoah and conjured new courage. For a while the dogs
whined--then they became silent. One already was drowned. Ootah bent
over Annadoah to protect her from the mountainous onslaughts of icy
water. His teeth chattered--he suffered agonies. 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.
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