The face of Sipsu, the angakoq, as I have said, resembled dried and wrinkled leather.  He had been an old man when the eldest of the tribe were children.  He had seen hard times, he had suffered from starvation during many winters; yet never even in his experience had the lashes of ookiah struck so blastingly upon the tribe.  Yea, they had even lost their fear of the tornarssuit and no longer brought propitiatory offerings of blubber to him.  Yet being wise with age, early in the summer he had buried sufficient supplies beneath the floor of his house to keep him from starving.  He scowled maliciously as he heard someone creeping through the underground entrance of his igloo.  Presently the cadaverous face of Maisanguaq appeared.

The interior was heavy with the stench of oil.  The room hung with soot from the lamp.  A thin spiral thread of black smoke rose from the taper.  In the dim light the leering face of Sipsu appeared like the face of the great demon himself.  His small half-closed eyes blazed through their slits.

“The spirits are wrathful.  The tribe is forgetful.  What wilt thou have?”

Maisanguaq, with unconcealed hesitation, placed a bit of blubber before the magician.

“The last I have,” he mumbled.  Sipsu seized it avidly.

“Ootah goeth to the mountains,” Maisanguaq said, panting for breath.

The old man sneered bitterly: 

“He cannot brave the spirits.  No man can live in the mountains.  The breath of the spirits is death.”

“Yea, he goeth.  He says that he knows where the ahmingmah abound.  The air is still; the moon rises for ten sleeps.  By then, so he saith, he can return with meat.”

“No man hath ever ventured there.  The shadow of Perdlugssuaq is very dark.”

“Yea, may he smite Ootah!” exclaimed Maisanguaq.

Sipsu laughed harshly.

“Couldst thou cause the hill spirits to strike?” Maisanguaq asked eagerly.

Sipsu faced Maisanguaq fiercely.

“In my youth I went unto the mountains and I heard the hill spirits sing.  Thereupon I became a great magician.  They spoke to me; I was silent; thereafter, when I called they answered.  What wouldst thou?”

Maisanguaq indicated the blubber.

“I would thou call them now; that they release the glaciers, that Ootah may be carried to his death.  I hate Ootah, I would that he die.”  He shook his fist.

Sipsu’s body quivered from head to foot.  “Ootah hath never consulted my familiar spirits,” he rejoined bitterly.  “He despiseth them.”

Rising from his sitting posture Sipsu seized his drum and began moving his body.  He groaned with extreme pain.  By degrees his dance increased.  He improvised a monotonous spirit song.  His face grimaced demoniacally.  As his conjuration approached the climax, his voice rose to a series of shrieks.  He shuddered violently; he seemed to suffer agonies in his limbs.  Finally he fell to the floor in a writhing paroxysm.