d his body from the wrecked igloo.
Weak from lack of food, they still forced themselves to dig up the
frozen snow at a spot where they knew there were stones, for according
to their belief they had to bury the old man--otherwise, his spirit
would haunt them. To this spot they brought the rotted skins of his
bed, and on them placed the body, fearful lest they touch it. By the
body they placed the old man's lamp, stone dishes, membrane-drum and
instruments of incantation. Over the corpse they piled the ice
encrusted stones, and over these in turn weighty masses of frozen snow.
Then they turned in silence and entered their respective shelters.
Thenceforth, until a child should be born to whom it could be given,
the name of Sipsu might not pass their lips.

VI

"_As he looked upon the descending wraiths, Koolotah saw they had the
spirit-semblance of gleaming faces, and that their eyes burned, through
the enveloping cloud-veils, like fire . . . 'The dead--the dead . . .'
he said, 'we have come into a land of the dead.' . . .

"Then the glacial mountainside to which he clung trembled . . . the
silver-swimming world of white dust-driven fire became suddenly
black--and the earth seemed removed from under him . . ._"

Leaving the low-lying shore, Ootah's path led up through a narrow gorge
between two great cliffs. Since he had returned from the mountains the
path had been covered by many successive falls of snow. At places the
path sloped abruptly downward at a terrible angle, and the ice cracked
and slid beneath the hardy hunters' feet. With the agility of cats,
the dogs fastened their claws into the ice and climbed upward.

Constantly the two men had to hold to the jagged rocks to their right,
otherwise, time after time, they would have slipped into the perilous
abyss below. Through the chasm the moon poured its liquid rays. At
certain points towering crags shut off the light--then Ootah and his
companion had to feel their way slowly upward in the dark. Finally
Ootah's dogs, with a loud chorus of barking, leaped ahead. Seizing an
overhanging ledge of rock Ootah lifted himself to the top of the
precipice. Koolotah's team followed.

For interminable miles a vast icy plateau stretched before them--a
plain glistening with snow and reflecting like a burnished mirror the
misty silveriness of the moon. Over the glacial expanse an eerily
greenish phosphorescence, which palpitated and shifted at times with
v