the youth throbbed the passion of love, indomitable, eternal, which the
blasting breath of time should never kill. In the maiden's bosom
quaked a reasonless shame, an unconquerable terror. Surrounded by her
whirling cloud of hair, the maiden sprang, untiring, across the wild
white world. His strength failing, the youth pantingly followed.
Thousands of years passed; the breathless pursuit continued; the
maiden's nebulous hair became shot with streaks of golden fire, from
her eyes beams of light streamed across the expanses over which she
exultantly, fearfully bounded; the tremulous faltering youth's face
paled until it shone silvery in the darkness, and the beads of
perspiration on his forehead glowed with a strange lustre. Reaching,
in their mad race, the very edge of the earth, the maiden leaped,
fiery, into space, and her hair becoming suddenly molten, she became
the sun--the eternal maiden Sukh-eh-nukh, the beautiful, the
all-desired. Utterly exhausted, his wan arms yearningly outstretched,
the youth swooned after her into the heavens, and was transformed into
the moon--the ever-desiring, ever-sorrowing moon. In the smile of
Sukh-eh-nukh the seas melted. Walrus and narwhals, seals and whales
came into being on the bosom of Kokoyah; on the earth the snows
disappeared, and the brow of Tornahhuchsuah was crowned with green
grasses and starry flowers. Men hunted game, women laughed for joy;
they beat drums, they danced, they sang. By the eternal, unrequited
passion of the lovers in the skies, happiness and plenty came upon the
earth. But, with Light, came also Death. Jealous of men's happiness,
Perdlugssuaq, the Great Evil, brought sickness; he struck men on the
hunt, on the seas, in the mountains. He was ever feared. He made the
Great Dark terrible. But when the night became bright with the
love-lorn glamour of the moon, Perdlugssuaq was for the time forgotten;
in their hearts men felt a vague, tender, and ineffable stirring--the
lure of a passion stronger and stranger even than death. They gazed