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Page 50
"Ootah," she murmured. "It is very dark--very dark--I wonder . . .
whether . . . it will soon . . . be spring."
He chafed her hands. For a lucid moment she nestled to him and in a
terrified voice whispered----
"Maisanguaq--where is he?" She heard Ootah's reply.
"He hath gone the long journey of the dead."
Annadoah breathed a sigh of relief and again floated into the coma of
fever and exhaustion.
The journey before Ootah was desperately difficult in the storm and
darkness. In his way of reckoning he knew they had floated about two
miles south of the village. The return lay along the sea and over
crushed, blocked ice. Much as he regretted it, he was compelled to
leave the precious load of walrus blubber behind, so as to carry
Annadoah, who was unable to walk, on the sledge. He covered the
blubber with cakes of ice, hopeful that it might by chance escape the
ravaging bears. His companions might come for it after his return. He
knew the probabilities were, however, that the keen noses of bears or
wolves would detect it.
After lashing Annadoah to the sledge, so she might not be jolted from
it, Ootah, with a brave heart, started in the teeth of the biting wind.
The half-frozen dogs rose to their task nobly and pulled at the traces.
Ootah pushed the sledge from behind. He trusted to the sure instinct
of the animals to find a safe way. Progress was necessarily slow.
Fortunately the snow stopped falling and one agony was removed.
In lulls of the storm Ootah heard Annadoah moaning in her delirium.
When they reached the village, a half dozen men were assembled outside
their houses. They rejoicingly hailed Ootah, whom they had counted
among the dead. He learned that two of his companions had gone to join
Maisanguaq. The first party had safely reached the shore before the
breaking away of the ice. The news of Ootah's arrival brought out the
women. When they saw Annadoah they crowded about her, scolding. Ootah
silenced the garrulous throng with a fierce command. They shrank away.
"She came to me on the ice," he said. "Knew ye not that the spirits
fared not well within her, that she was ill, ye she-wolves? She sees
things that are not so and raves of the curses ye invoked, barking
she-dogs! _Aga_! _Aga_! Go--go!"
Assisted by several of the men, Ootah conveyed Annadoah into her igloo
and laid her upon her couch. Her face was flushed, and as she lay
there Ootah thought she was very beautiful. She had become much
emaciated--Ootah did not like that. But when she opened her eyes Ootah
saw in them a soft, new light.
"Thou art brave, Ootah," she said, essaying a smile of gratitude.
"Thou art brave of heart . . . and kind."
Ootah's heart stirred. Once she had said that his heart was as soft as
that of a woman; this was, indeed, to him reward for all the frightful
terrors he had endured on the storming sea.
"And do the wings of thy heart not stir, Annadoah?" he asked softly, a
world of pleading in his voice. "Wilt thou not be mine in the spring?"
"In the spring," she said, dreamily, and her voice quavered . . . "in
the spring . . ."
A far-away look came into her eyes, and Ootah felt an infinite ache at
his heart.
"I am afraid, Ootah," she said presently, in a trembling voice . . .
"Afraid . . . my head burns--the igloo is black . . . Dost thou
remember what the women told their dead? . . . They invoked the dead
to curse me . . . as I stood by the open sea . . . when the moon
rose . . . Ootah! Ootah! I cannot see thee . . . It is very . . .
dark." Ootah laid his hand upon Annadoah's head.
"The spirits do not fare well within thee," he said. "But I will care
for thee."
For nearly a moon Annadoah lay ill with a strange fever. And in her
disturbed dreams, as Ootah watched through the long hours, she murmured
vaguely, but longingly, for the spring.
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