The Eternal Maiden Part 16

Ootah in the lead, with five others, started on the hunt, with three sledges, each of which was drawn by a team of five lean, hungry dogs.

After some urging Maisanguaq had sullenly consented to accompany the party.

Joy flushed the natives' skin, for a thin film of sunlight trembled low over the eastern horizon. As they sped northward past great promontories they saw several auks. Later two ptarmigan were spotted, and still later an eider duck. They began chanting songs of the race.

Quickly, however, the brief sunlight faded, heavy grey clouds piled along the sky-line, the atmosphere became perceptibly warmer, and intermittent gusts of wind blew downward from the inland mountains.

They directed their steps over the ice to a distant black spot, somewhat more than a mile distant, which they knew to be open water.

There, if there were any, the walrus would be found. As they were marching, a very faint crackling noise vibrated through the ice under their feet. They ceased singing. Four of the party paused and would have turned back. Ootah urged them onward. They paced off half a mile. The wind increased in volume and whined dolefully. Their steps lagged. Suddenly they heard the harsh nasal bellow they knew so well.

The hearts of all expanded with the joy of the hunt.

The dogs howled hungrily and, with tails swishing savagely, tore ahead.

As they approached the edge of the sea ice they pa.s.sed great lakes of open water. The twilight still continued to thicken, the wind came in increasingly furious blasts. Nearer and nearer came the low call of walrus bulls.

In a lake of lapping black water, about five hundred feet from the open sea, a small herd rose to the surface intermittently for breath. In the deep gloom the hunters saw fountains of spray ascending as they breathed. Hitching their dogs to harpoon stakes driven in the ice, they separated and quietly took positions about the open water.

"Wu-r-r!" The low walrus call rose over the ice. Ootah leaned over the edge of the ice and imitated the animal cry. "Woor-r," Maisanguaq, near him, replied. The water seethed, and two glistening white tusks appeared. Ootah raised his harpoon--it hissingly cut the air. A terrific bellow followed. The little lake seethed. A dozen fiery eyes, of a phosph.o.r.escent green, appeared above the water. Maisanguaq struck, so did Arnaluk. They let out their harpoon lines--the savage beasts dove downward, then rose for breath. In their frantic struggle their heads beat against the ice about the edge of the s.p.a.ce of open water. The natives fled backward--the ice broke into thousands of fragments. Each time the animals came up the hunters delivered more harpoons so as to pinion securely and at the same time despatch the prey. In the gathering gloom they had to aim by instinct. For an hour the struggle between the alert men and the enraged beasts continued.

Several times Ootah and Arnaluk fired their guns as the green eyes appeared so as to finish the task of killing.

Meanwhile the grey reflection of the descending sun entirely faded along the horizon; a bluish gloom blotted out the landscape. The wind swept over the ice with fiendish hisses. With a quick change the air became colder and snow flakes fell. The natives became alarmed. As they were drawing the first walrus to the ice a sound, like the discharge of a gun beneath the sea, startled them. Seizing their knives they dexterously fell upon the animal and lifted the meat and blubber in long slices from the bones. A great quant.i.ty was cast to the ravenous dogs. Two more walrus were lumberingly drawn to the ice; the first sledge load and two hunters started sh.o.r.eward; soon the second sledge was loaded. Ootah and Maisanguaq remained to dress the third beast.

Like scorpions in the hands of the mighty _tornarssuit_ the wind now steadily beat upon the ice. The two men were almost lifted from their feet. Not far away they heard the tumultuous crash of the rising waves. As they were lashing the blubber to Ootah's sledge, a resounding detonation vibrated through the ice under him--the field on which they stood slowly but unmistakably began to move!

Maisanguaq spoke. The wind drowned his voice. Above its clamor they heard the ice separating with the splitting sound of artillery.

Whipped by the terrific gale the snow cut their faces like bits of steel. In the darkness, which steadily thickened, they heard the appalling boom of bergs and the grind of floes colliding on the sea.

Ootah leaped to the team of dogs and interrupted their feast. He knew they had not a single moment to lose--the field had surely parted from the land ice and it was now a dreadful question as to whether a return was possible. As he was. .h.i.tching the dogs to the loaded sledge he suddenly gave a start. Was he dreaming? Was he hearing the disembodied speak, as men did in dreams? He listened intently--surely he heard a soft sweet voice calling piteously through the wind. His heart gave a great thud.

Through the gathering gloom he saw something . . . a blur of blackness . . . gathering substance as it approached over the ice. It moved uncertainly . . . and seemed to be driven toward him by the furious wind.

"Look--who is it?" he called to Maisanguaq.

For answer, through the din of the elements, a voice called brokenly, sobbingly:

"Ootah! . . . Ootah!"

Ootah leaped to his feet. Out of the snow-driven blackness a frail figure staggered toward him.

"Annadoah," Ootah murmured, seizing the trembling woman in his arms.

She seemed about to faint.

"Why hast thou come hither?" He hugged her fiercely to his bosom. He felt a throb of ecstatic delight; for the first time she had surrendered to his arms; for the first time he held her close to him; death--for the moment--lost its terrors--he felt that he would be willing to die, in that storming darkness, with her heart beating, so that he felt its every pulse, close, close to his.

The wild winds almost drowned Annadoah's words.

"The women came to me," she panted with difficulty, and Ootah had to bend his ear to her mouth so as to hear. "They were angry. They said 'She stealeth souls! Annadoah stealeth souls!' They said, 'Annadoah hath caused the death of many children!' Ootah! Ootah! They came, as they do when thou art absent. They threatened me--they called upon the spirits, as they once called to them beneath the sea. And the curse of the long night--of darkness--hunger--death . . . they invoked . . . of the dead . . . upon me . . . I was afraid." Ootah felt her shuddering in his arms. "The women came unto my igloo," she repeated wildly--"they desired that ravens peck my eyes--that I rest without a grave--that my body lie unburied and that my spirit never rest. And the curse of darkness--_io-o-h-h_!--they called the curse of darkness upon me. They trampled upon me with their feet, and they tore at my hair . . . They came unto my igloo as the storm came and called upon the spirits of the skins to strike me; for they said I had again driven thee to thy death, that I had sent the others to their death. Thou knowest I lay ill when thou didst depart. But they fell on me one by one and hurt me--I feared they would kill me. They were angry and they called upon the dead. The storm strikes; the spirits of the winds are angry; the ice breaks, and it is the fault of Annadoah. So they said."

Her eyes were wild, her hair dishevelled. Ootah felt her forehead--it burned with fever.

"How didst thou come hither--and why?" he asked, his heart bounding in the thought that she had followed him, that of him she sought protection.

"I know not--methinks I called upon the spirits. I knew thou didst come this way--I knew thou wouldst save me from the women. And I followed. The way was dark. The wind held me back. But I knew thou wert here--my heart led me; my heart found thee as birds find gra.s.s in the mountains. Ootah! Ootah! I fear I shall die!" She collapsed in his arms. The wind shrieked! In the distance two icebergs exploded--there was a flash of phosphorus on the sea as the arctic dinosaurs collided.

"Come! Or we perish in the sea!" Maisanguaq, his head bent near so as to hear, now yelled into Ootah's ear.

Annadoah cowered at the sound of his voice. Ootah felt her trembling, in his arms.

"And he . . . is here?" she whispered. "I am afraid."

They felt the great ice field rocking on the waves imprisoned beneath them. It trembled whenever it touched a pa.s.sing berg.

Maisanguaq prodded the terror-stricken dogs. Their howls shrilled through the storm,

"_Huk_! _Huk_! _Huk_!" he urged.

Supporting Annadoah with one arm Ootah pushed forward after the moving team. He knew they were being carried steadily and slowly seaward, but he had hopes that the ice field would swerve landward toward the south where an armlike glacier jutted, elbow-fashion, into the sea and caught the current.

Snapping their whips and frantically urging the dogs, they fought through the snow-driven darkness and over the moving field of ice.

Annadoah murmured wild and incoherent things in her delirium. They paced off half a mile.

"_Aulate_!" Ootah suddenly called, panic-stricken. "Halt! halt!"

Maisanguaq stopped the dogs. Before them a snaky s.p.a.ce of water, blacker than the darkness about them, and capped with faintly phosph.o.r.escent crests of tossing waves, separated them--Ootah knew not how far--from the land.

"To the right!" Ootah called. "Let us go onward!"

"_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 phosph.o.r.escence. 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 superst.i.tious 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.