nds
closing about his throat. He felt the blood pound in his temples.
Desperation filled him--he determined to kill Ootah by any means. A
grim suggestion came to him. He endeavored to release himself.

In a lull of the wind both heard something that made them start.
Aroused from her feverish coma by the two men falling against her,
Annadoah suddenly cried aloud. The two men stood stone-still, locked
in a deadly grip. At that moment Annadoah felt the warmth of their
panting breath as they paused near her. Where she was at first she did
not realize. She heard a clamor of wind and breaking waters. She
imagined herself being tossed through the air in the arms of the
_tornarssuit_. At the same time she became vividly aware of the
desperate struggle nearby. Subconsciously she realized Maisanguaq and
Ootah were engaged in a fight to the death. In the darkness she sensed
them moving away from her. Straining her eyes she began, very
dimly--as Eskimos can even in pitch darkness--to descry the black
outlines of the two men wrestling as they shifted nearer and nearer the
edge of the ice. Then it dawned upon Annadoah's mind that they were
being carried, in the jeopardy of an awful storm, on a floe that was
tossed hither and thither in a maelstrom of angry waters. A frantic
desire to save Ootah surged up within her. Behind him she saw the
swimming blackness of the heaving waves. She attempted to rise. Her
head swam; there was loud ringing in her ears. Her hands were not
free, her ankles were bound--she struggled to release herself.
Twisting her wrists and ankles in the tight lashings until they bled,
it suddenly flashed upon her that she was lashed to the sled. She knew
that at any moment the floe might crash into a glacier and be crushed
to atoms. She knew that Maisanguaq and Ootah were fighting for the
possession of her--that both might perish, or, what was worse, that
Maisanguaq might win. Chaotic terror filled her. Struggling
frantically but ineffectually, she uttered a maniacal scream.

"Ootah! Ootah!"

Ootah did not reply.

The storm howled. The wind lashed the floe--it fell like a whip on her
face. Annadoah felt the surging impetus of the angry sea under them.
She felt herself rising on the crests of mighty waves and being swiftly
hurled into foaming troughs of water. Frigid spray bathed her face.
Still the two vague shadows, darker than the night, slowly and
laboriously moved about her. At time