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Page 57
Still and statuesque as a figure of stone, but wild-eyed, Annadoah
stood alone on the extreme edge of the precipitous cliff and watched
the struggle in the dizzy depths below . . .
Awed by the splendor of a heroism so dauntless, a love so overwhelming,
unselfish and great, the natives retreated to a far distance and waited
in fearful silence.
The prolonged infinity of suspense and horror of many long arctic
nights seemed concentrated in the brief spell that Annadoah tensely,
breathlessly, watched the struggle of the man to save her child.
Annadoah saw Ootah disappear in the waters after his desperate dive
from the cliff and rise with unerring precision on the surface near the
sinking babe. The sea came thundering against the jagged rocks in
long, terrific swells, and was hurled back in a torrential tumult of
breaking foam. Ootah fought the seething waves in his effort to
grapple the living thing which was to Annadoah as the heart of her
bosom. The tiny speck had begun to sink--Ootah made a dive under the
water--and rose with the infant clasped in his left arm. With only one
hand free, he made a desperate struggle against the onslaught of the
terrible watery catapults as they hurled him, nearer and nearer, toward
the rocks beneath the cliff. Annadoah saw his white hand, glistening
with water, shine in the sunlight as he tried to climb against the
impetus of the sea. Sometimes his head sank--then only the struggling
hand was seen. She crept dangerously closer to the edge of the
cliff . . . Slowly, but steadily, Ootah and the child were being swept
backward . . . By degrees the steady strokes of Ootah's arm began to
waver. Annadoah saw him being carried further and further under the
cliff by the irresistible momentum of the waves . . . To be dashed
against the jagged rocks beneath she knew meant death. Her heart
seemed to stop . . . but presently, swirling helplessly in the foaming
cauldron of a receding breaker, she saw Ootah, still clasping the baby,
emerge from under the rocks. He still lived. He still fought.
Annadoah watched each desperate, failing stroke. She saw his strength
giving out in that unequal struggle, saw his arm frenziedly but
ineffectually beating the water, saw his head disappear . . . for
longer and still longer periods . . . She caught a last vision of his
white upturned face, of his eyes, filled with importunate devotion,
gazing directly at her from out the blinding waters . . .
Then she fell to her knees, and lowering her body, gazed wildly, for a
long, long time, into the sea . . .
Suddenly she uttered a low, sharp, involuntary cry--and the waiting
tribesmen, recoiling as though stunned, understood. They all loved
Ootah--none dared, none could speak. Silent, grief-stricken, they
turned away their faces--even their dogs were still. Annadoah still
peered, searchingly, for a long time, into the sea.
No, there was nothing there--nothing. On the aureate waves was no
speck of life.
Rising, Annadoah gazed with wide-open, solemn eyes seaward; for the
moment she felt in her heart only a dull ache.
Along the horizon to the east the sun, irradiant and magnified, lay low
over the heaving seas. Over its face, like a veil of gold, translucent
vapors--the breath of _Kokoyah_, the god of waters--rose from the
melting floes. A strange spell seemed suddenly to have fallen over the
earth. Out on the ocean the great bergs, which had majestically moved
southward like the phantoms of perished ships, seemed to pause. The
little birds which had clustered about the rocks disappeared. High in
the sky above her, a sinister black bird poised motionless in the air.
At her feet the roaring clamor of the waves seemed resolved into the
solemn sobbing measure of some chant for the dead.
Slowly and by degrees the utter realization of her loss dawned upon the
soul of Annadoah. And to her in that magical spell the spirits of
nature and the souls of the dead began to manifest themselves.
Out of the crimson-shot vapors mystical forms took shape. Annadoah saw
the beautiful face of _Nerrvik_, and in the mists saw her watery green
and wondrous tresses of uncombed hair. She saw the nebulous shadow of
the dreaded _Kokoyah_, the pitiless god of the waters, to whose cold,
compassionless bosom had been gathered Ootah and Little Blind Spring
Bunting.
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