Book: The Eternal Maiden

T >> T. Everett Harre >> The Eternal Maiden




As they danced, the colored imageries steadily faded in the growing
intensity of the great banded coronas that rose from the north. A
light of cold electric fire increasingly blazed over the heavens until
a frigid silver day, brighter than any day of sunshine, reached its
brief noon upon the earth.

Rocking their bodies and singing, the natives dispersed to their
respective igloos. Sitting on his sledge by Annadoah, Ootah dimly
heard their voices echoing into silence; he experienced terrible pains
again in his limbs and the fever in his head. Everything became dizzy,
and with a sick feeling of faintness he crept into Annadoah's igloo and
fell upon her couch.

It was in his heart to ask her once again to be his, to repeat the
protestation of his love; he felt that he had shown he deserved to win
her. But his utter weakness, and the very enthralling delight of her
soft hands on his forehead, kept him still. He lay in a semi-delirium
suffering greatly, but at heart very happy. A new peace possessed him.
Never had Annadoah caressed him before, never had he felt the tingling
thrill of her tender hands, never had her breath so perilously warmed
his face. For an hour she sat by him, perfunctorily bathing his wounds
with the white men's ointment and rubbing a yellow salve upon his face.
And while she did this, often, very often, she closed her eyes.
Sometimes her hands, as they passed over his forehead, absently
wandered to the couch, sometimes they soothed the air near the
suffering man. Then she would recall herself. Gazing upon Ootah, pity
would fill her; and then--well, then her mind would wander. She was
faint herself, tired and half-asleep.

Once, as she touched Ootah's hand, he closed it impulsively over hers.
Her heart gave a thud. Her eyelids quivered. A smile appeared on her
face. Ootah pressed her hand more firmly--he did not realize how
fiercely in his fever. His blood ran high; in a mingled delirium of
pain and transport he drew her slowly toward him. Her one hand soothed
his brow, softly, very gently. The smile on her face deepened. She
gasped with a throe of the old memories.

"Olafaksoah," she breathed, rapturously.

Ootah felt a horrible pain grip his heart. He opened his eyes, stark
conscious. He saw the eyes of Annadoah were closed. On her face he
observed the fond, far-away smile; he knew her heart was in the south.
And in that frightful moment his untutored mind by instinct realized
why she had bandaged and soothed him so tenderly, realized, indeed,
that in doing so, in his stead, her mind had conjured up the vision of
Olafaksoah. His hands were strong, she had said, they hurt her.
Ootah, with ferocity, gripped her little hand tighter.

"Olafaksoah," she murmured again, with delight--then, recalling
herself, suddenly uttered a sharp cry of dismay as she opened her eyes.

Ootah staggered to his feet. The utter tragedy of her devotion to the
man who had deserted her, the utter hopelessness of his own deep
passion blightingly, horribly forced itself upon him.

"Annadoah! Annadoah! Annadoah!" he wailed, his voice sobbing the
beloved name.

The igloo was stifling; he felt that he was suffocating. Everything
reeling about him, he crept painfully from the igloo into the night.
He felt he must be alone.

Outside the aurora was paling with intermittent cascades of resolving
lights. Over the snows glittering rosy fingers painted running rainbow
traceries. It seemed as though the spirit revellers were pouring fiery
jewels from the skies.

Ootah stood before that revealed and radiant land of the dead--the dead
who danced and were happy--his hands clenched and upraised above him.

"Annadoah! Annadoah!" he sobbed the name again and again, and in his
voice throbbed all the piteousness, all the bitterness of his utter
heartbreak. There was no reproach in his shuddering sobs; only sorrow,
only the desolation and eternal heart-ache of that which loves
mightily, unrequitedly, and realizes that all it desires can never,
never be.

Ootah asked himself all the questions men ask in such a crisis; why,
when he loved so indomitably, the heart of Annadoah should stir only
with the thought of another; why the spirits that weave the fabric of
men's fate had designed it thus. Why the ultimate desire of the heart
is forever ungranted and an intrinsically unselfish love too often
finds itself defeated--these questions, in his way, he asked of his
soul, and he demanded, with wild weeping, their answer from the dead
rejoicing in the paling Valhalla. But there was no answer--as perhaps
there may be no answer; or, if there is, that God, fearing lest in
attaining the Great Desire men should cease to endeavor, to serve and
to labor, has kept it locked where He and the dead live beyond the
skies.

Ootah fell prostrate to the ground and his body throbbed on the ice in
uncontrollable throes of grief. The aurora faded above him. Darkness
closed upon the earth. Sitting in her igloo, startled, vaguely
perplexed and half-afraid, Annadoah heard him sobbing throughout the
night.




VIII

"_For a long black hour of horror they were driven over the thundering
seas and through a frigid whirlwind of snow sharp as flakes of
steel . . .

"Seeing Ootah turn slightly toward Annadoah, Maisanguaq sprang at his
throat. Their arms closed about one another . . . The floe rocked
beneath them--they slipped to and fro on the ice . . . About them the
frightful darkness roared; they felt the heaving sea under them. And
while they struggled in their brief death-to-death fight, the floe was
tossed steadily onward._"


The long night began to lift its sable pall, and at midday, for a brief
period, a pale glow appeared above the eastern horizon. In this brief
spell of daily increasing twilight the desolate region took on a
grey-blue hue; the natives, as they appeared outside their shelters,
looked like greyish spectres. Ootah felt the grim grey desolation
color his soul.

He had regained his strength, and his wounds had healed with the
remarkable rapidity that nature effects in people who lead a primitive
life; only the hurt in his heart remained. Annadoah had often visited
him, and while he lay on his bed of furs she had boiled _ahmingmah_
meat and made hot water over the lamp very solicitously. Once,
half-hesitating, she looked into his eyes, and as though she had a
confession to make, said quietly:

"Thou art very brave, Ootah."

This pleased him--once she had said he had the heart of a woman.

He had thrilled when she soothed him, and now he was half sorry that
the injuries no longer needed attention. He loved Annadoah more deeply
than ever, and his greatest concern was for her. He might win
her--yes, perhaps some day, but he could not forget that, whenever she
had touched him with tenderness, she thought of Olafaksoah.

Standing before his igloo, musing upon these things, Ootah espied in
the semi-light a dark speck moving on the ice.

"_Nannook_! (_Bear_)" he called, and the men rushed from their houses.
Without pausing to get his gun Ootah ran down to the ice-sheeted shore.
Nature, as if repenting of her bitterness, had sent milder weather, and
the bear, emerging from its winter retreat, made its way over the ice
in search of seal. Lifting his harpoon, Ootah attacked the bear. It
rose on its haunches and parried the thrusts. A half-dozen lean dogs
came dashing from the shelters and jumped about the creature. The bear
grunted viciously--the dogs howled. The bear was lean and faint from
hunger, and its fight was brief--the lances of four natives pierced the
gaunt body. The bear meat was divided after the communal custom of the
tribe, and the gnawing of their stomachs was again somewhat appeased.
Some days later three bears were killed near the village. The hearts
of the tribe arose, for spring was surely dawning.

Early in March Arnaluk, skirmishing along the shore, saw a bear
disappearing in the distance. The animal was making its direction
seaward, and this indicated to the astute native that its quick senses
had detected the presence of seal.

"Ootah! Ootah!" he called. "Attalaq! Attalaq!" The two tribesmen
responded. With harpoons and lances they followed the trail of the
bear. Less than a mile from shore they found it sitting near a seal
blow hole in the ice. At the sight of the men it fled. A close
inspection resulted in the discovery of a half dozen blow holes--or
open places to which the seal rise under the ice and come to the
surface to breathe. For a long while the men waited. Standing near
the holes, their weapons ready to strike, they imitated the call of
seals. Finally there was a snorting noise beneath one of the holes.
Ootah detected a slight rise of vapor. Attalaq's harpoon descended. A
joyous cry arose. Breaking open the ice about the hole a seal was
drawn to the surface. Daily visits were thereafter made to the
vicinity and the hunters, patiently watching near the holes, succeeded
in catching several seals. Other blow holes were later detected along
the ice, then they disappeared and for a period no seal rewarded the
hunters.

The weather continued to moderate, and these excursions on the sea ice
became more and more dangerous. One day Attalaq and Ootah, while
walking along the shore, heard a familiar call in the far distance, out
toward the open sea.

"Walrus," said Ootah, the zest of the hunt tingling in his veins.

"But the danger is great--the ice splits," said Attalaq.

"But we need food." Ootah thought of Annadoah. She had not been well,
she needed food--that was sufficient. Moreover, he thought of the
children; three were dying of lack of food. So he called the tribesmen
and gave the signal for preparations to depart. A selection had to be
made of the best dogs for the dangerous trip. Few dogs remained in the
village; many had been frozen by the bitter cold; others had to be
killed as food for their companions; some had occasionally been
devoured by the famished natives. And this the desperate people had
done with reluctance and great sorrow--for, as I have said, a native
loves his dog but little less than his child.

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 passed 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 phosphorescent 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 space 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 quantity was cast to
the ravenous dogs. Two more walrus were lumberingly drawn to the ice;
the first sledge load and two hunters started shoreward; 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 hitching 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 grass 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 passing 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 space of water,
blacker than the darkness about them, and capped with faintly
phosphorescent 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 phosphorescence. 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 superstitious 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.

"Thy axe!" he shouted. Maisanguaq passed the axe. Ootah grappled for
it in the darkness. "Hold the harpoon," he directed. Mechanically
Maisanguaq groped for the harpoon and held it while Ootah, with his one
free hand, lifted the axe and drove it into the ice. With the other
hand he still gripped the unconscious woman. Her hair swished about
his legs in the howling wind. Maisanguaq planted his own weapon in the
ice on the opposite side of the sledge, and Ootah, with unerring
strokes, hardly able to see it in the darkness, pounded it firmly into
the ice.

"Thy lashings," he called. Maisanguaq passed a coil of skin rope.

About the improvised stakes which secured the sled Ootah whipped the
lashings, then he passed them under and over the sled until it was
securely pinioned. Very gently he placed Annadoah upon the mass of
walrus meat and lashed her body in turn to the sled and about the
stakes. With Maisanguaq's assistance he tied the cowering dogs to the
harpoons. This done, the two men, benumbed and dazed, clung to the
anchor for support.

As the severed ice cakes dispersed, a curling wave lifted the floe on
which they clung high on its crest and tossed it southward. As it rose
on the surging breakers Ootah felt the dread presence of _Perdlugssuaq_
ready to strike. Each time they made swift, sickening descents in the
seething troughs he felt all consciousness pass away. On all sides the
waves hissed. Torrents of water swept over the floe. Ootah felt his
limbs freezing; he felt his arms becoming numb. He feared that at any
moment he should lose his grip and be swept into the raging sea. Then
he thought of Annadoah and conjured new courage. For a while the dogs
whined--then they became silent. One already was drowned. Ootah bent
over Annadoah to protect her from the mountainous onslaughts of icy
water. His teeth chattered--he suffered agonies. For a long black
hour of horror they were driven over the thundering seas and through a
frigid whirlwind of snow, sharp as flakes of steel.


The recoiling impetus of the waters gradually increased under them.
Ootah knew this indicated an approach to land. The waves came in
shorter, but quicker swells. The floe bumped into others. Ootah
roused himself and hopefully turned toward Maisanguaq.

"We approach the land," he called. "We must bide our time--then jump."

The waves washed the floe toward the distant shore. Land ice steadily
thickened about them. Maisanguaq realized that they were actually
being carried to the sheltering harbor of the arm-like glacier south of
the village. Ootah quickly began unlashing Annadoah so as to be
prepared to seize her and spring, when the opportunity came, from cake
to cake, to safety.

Impelled by a warning instinct, Ootah suddenly looked up from his task,
and felt rather than saw Maisanguaq near and about to leap upon him.
Maisanguaq's eyes dimly glowered in the dark. Ootah rose quickly.
Maisanguaq drew back and uttered an exclamation of chagrin. Ootah
understood. With rescue possible, Maisanguaq had quickly come to a
desperate resolution.

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