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 that period of mourning
which precedes the dreadful night, and to give their last messages and
farewells to the unhappy and disconsolate souls of the drowned, who,