Into the lamp he placed the last meagre bits of remaining blubber.  Then he again set to chafing the tender little hands.  Cold and hunger had wrought havoc upon Annadoah.  Ootah’s heart ached.

Finally her eyelids stirred.  Her lips parted.  A smile brightened her face.  Ootah leaned forward, breathlessly.  Her lips framed an inaudible word: 

“Olafaksoah . . .  Olafaksoah . . .”  She opened her eyes.  The smile faded.  “Thou . . . ?” she said.

“Yea, Annadoah, I have brought thee food,” Ootah said.  It was his last.

“I hunger,” she breathed.  “It is very cold . . .  I was in the south . . . where the sun is warm . . . it is very cold here.”

Eagerly he pressed her hands.  She drifted again into a stupor and for a long while was silent.  Ootah’s warm panting breath finally brought blood to her cheeks.

“Thou art so big . . . and strong . . .” she smiled again.  “Thy arms hurt me . . . as the embrace of nannook (the bear). . . .”  Her smile deepened . . . her breath came more quickly.  “Oh, oh, it is pleasant . . . here . . . in . . . the south.”

“Annadoah!” Ootah’s wail of hurt recalled her.

Her eyes sought the igloo wonderingly.

“Thou?” she repeated, dully.  “Yea, it is cold here.  I am hungry . . .  Are there not ahmingmah in the mountains, Ootah?  Didst thou not tell me there were ahmingmah in the mountains . . . why do not the men of the tribe seek the musk oxen in the mountains?”

With a sudden start Ootah remembered having told Annadoah of the herd he had found in the inland valley—­it was strange, he thought, he had not remembered the herd before.  And it was stranger still that now she should remind him.  But the improbability of ever reaching the game, the obvious impossibility of such a journey at this time of winter, had prevented any such suggestion.

“Many musk oxen are there in the mountains,” he said, soothing her hands.  She drew them away.  “And thou art hungry . . .”

“I am hungry,” she replied, faintly.

After he had given her the last bit of meat he left her igloo.  Above him the stars burned, the air was clear and still.  Not a thing moved, not a sound was heard—­the earth was gripped in that unrelenting spell of wintry silence.  Above the imprisoned sea the January moon was rising and for ten sleeps—­ten twenty-four hour days—­it would circle about the horizon of the entire sky.  Already the sky above the sea was bright as a frosted globe of glass, and pearly fingers of light were stealing upward over the interior mountains.

“She is hungry,” Ootah repeated over and over again.  “And the tribe starves . . . and there may be ahmingmah in the mountains.”  Behind him they loomed, gigantic and precipitous.  That such a journey meant almost certain death he knew; but that did not deter him in the resolve to essay a feat no native had ever dared in many hundreds of years.