sounded strange in this region of the world.
Yet after Olafaksoah had kicked her and left her lying in the tent,
high above the sound of the sailors' doggerel songs, Annadoah
frantically called aloud:

"Ootah! Ootah!"

For a long time she lay in a stupor. Her face was bleeding. When she
regained consciousness the white chief and his men had left. They had
taken with them all available furs, ivories and provisions in the
village.

At the door of her tent Annadoah stood, dry-eyed, her hair dishevelled.
To the south she yearningly extended her arms. Her heart still ached
toward the man who had lied to her and deserted her. She was left, a
divorced woman, alone among her people, with no one to care for her
during the long winter night.

As she stood there the light of the descending sun, which was now far
below the rim of the horizon, paled. Driven by a frigid wind, howling
raucously from the mountains, great snow clouds piled along the sky
line. Out at sea the tips of the waves became capped--leprous white
arms seemed reaching hopelessly for help from the depths of the sea.
The sky blackened. The increasing gusts tore at the frail tents. The
wolf-dogs crouched low to the ground and whined. A tremor of anxiety
filled the hearts of the tribe. Presently the clouds were torn to
shreds and whipped furiously over the sky. In the thickening grey
gloom Annadoah watched the men of the tribe fastening their sleds and
belongings to the earth . . . mere dark shadows. Above her tent,
tossed by the wind in its eddying flight, a raven screamed.

Annadoah finally entered and threw herself upon the rocky floor of her
dwelling. As the furies were loosed outside her voice rose and fell
with the wailing grief and wrath of the wind. "Olafaksoah!
Olafaksoah!" But only the hoarse evil call of the black bird answered
during lulls in the storm. And Annadoah heard it, with a sinking of
her cold heart, as the voice of fate.

IV

"_'Do the gulls that freeze to death in winter fly in springtime?' she
asked, simply. . . 'The teeth of the wolves are in my heart' . . ._"

Desolate and alone, Annadoah walked along a crevice in the
land-adhering ice of the polar sea.

The prolonged grey evening of the arctic was resolving into the long
dark, and the Eskimo women, as is their custom at this time of the
year, had gathered along the last lane of open water--which writhed
like a sable snake over the ice--to celebrate tha