The natives feverishly leaped to their tasks.  There was a note of anxiety in their voices.  Onto the forepart of the kayaks they placed their weapons, leather lines, floats and drags.  More than twoscore boats were drawn over the land-adhering ice to the edge of the sea.  A fierce chatter brought all the women to the doors of their seal-skin tents.  They looked seaward and shook their heads with dismay.

“Many walrus—­far away,” the men shouted.

“No, no,” the timid women returned.  “Walrus too far away—­Perdlugssuaq will strike you there!”

Against the distant horizon mighty bergs loomed.  In swift eddies of water great floes swirled.  The walrus were too far away to be seen.  Yet the opportunity of securing walrus was too rare to be missed; for unless food and fuel were soon secured, starvation during the coming winter confronted the tribe.  The previous winter had been one of unprecedented severity and had wiped out bears, and herds of caribou and musk oxen.  The summer season, which was now drawing to a close, had been destitute of every kind of game.  Musk oxen had been seldom found and then only in the far inland valleys.  Some blight of nature seemed to have exterminated even the animals of the sea.  The natives had lived mainly on the teeming bird life.  From the scrawny bodies of the arctic birds, however, neither food that could be preserved nor fuel to be burned in the lamps could be secured.  On musk oxen the tribes depend chiefly for hides and meat, and on walrus for both food and fuel.  The ammunition, brought by Danish traders the summer before, was exhausted, so in the hunt they had for many sleeps to rely solely upon their skill with their own primitive weapons.  For months the doughty hunters had gathered but few supplies.  The prospect of the coming winter was ominous indeed.  Wandering up and down the coast in their migrating excursions the tribes had scoured land and sea with but meagre results.  At the village from which they now heard the inspiring walrus calls, a dozen visiting tribesmen—­most of them in search for wives as well as game—­had gathered.  Joy filled them in the prospect of securing supplies—­and possible success in love—­at last.

As they launched their kayaks, in impatient haste lest the walrus drift too far seaward, some one called: 

“Ootah!  Ootah!”

They gazed anxiously about.  Ootah, the bravest and most distinguished of the hunters, was missing.  All the young men would gladly have started without Ootah, but the elders, who knew his skill and the might of his arm, were not willing.

To the younger men there was an added zest in the hunt; each felt in the other a rival, and Ootah the one most to be feared.  A feverish anxiety, a burning desire to distinguish himself flushed the heart of each brave hunter.  For whoever brought back the most game, so they believed, stood the best chance of winning the hand of Annadoah.  Of all the unmarried maidens of the tribes, none cooked so well, none could sew so well as Annadoah, none was so skilled in the art of making ahttees and kamiks as Annadoah.  And, moreover, Annadoah was very fair.