king upward, in the clouds overhead, a white face, hard, fierce,
scowling, with burning blue eyes, momentarily appeared.

"A white warrior from the south," Ootah murmured. "And he comes with
swift tread. What can it mean?"

In common with many primitive peoples, Ootah possessed the soul of a
poet--nature was vocal with him, and the disembodied beings of other
worlds made themselves manifest and spoke in the light and in the
clouds. To him everything lived; the clouds were the habitation of
spirits, the waves were alive, all the animals and fish possessed
souls; the very winds were endowed with sex functions and loved and
quarreled among themselves. The interrelation of man and the forces of
the universe were inseparably intimate and familiar; integral parts of
one another, their destinies were bound together. And to Ootah nature
found much to gossip about in the affairs of men.

Eagerly Ootah sought the clouds. Along the horizon they resolved
themselves into a phantasmagoria of Eskimo maidens and white men
resembling the Danes who came each summer to gather riches of ivories
and furs. And the Eskimo maidens and white men danced together. As
these mirage-forms melted, Ootah glanced into the water by his side.
Looking up from the ultramarine depths he saw something white. For an
instant it assumed the likeness of the face of Annadoah. He saw her
golden skin, her cheeks flushed with the pink of spring lichen
blossoms, her lips red as the mountain poppies of late summer. He
started back and called aloud:

"Annadoah! Annadoah!" For she had smiled, cruelly and disdainfully.
Hoarse laughter answered him--the laughter of white men from the south.
A flock of hawks passed over the water. He was about to shout when he
heard the sound of kayak paddles behind him. He recalled himself and
beckoned silence.

II

"_The thought of Annadoah in the embrace of the big blond man, of her
face pressed to his in the white men's strange kiss of abomination,
aroused in Ootah a sense of violation. . . . He heard Annadoah murmur
tenderly, 'Thou art a great man, thou art strong; thy arms hurt me, thy
hands make me ache.'_"

Slowly, with silent paddles, the hunters moved over the limpid waters
to the north of the floe. On the far side they saw a horde of walrus
bulls dozing in the sunlight. Behind a ridge of ice they landed,
drawing their kayaks after them. With skin lassos, harpoons and
floats, the party crouched