Neither spoke.  Holding the rear framework of their sleds, they trusted to the instinct of their dogs.  Mile after mile swept under their feet.  Their road often lay along the very edges of purple-black abysses.  The echoes of their sharp gliding sleds cutting the ice, of the very patter of their dogs’ feet, were magnified in volume in the clear air, and it seemed as though, in the hollow depths on every side, ghostly teams were following.  Koolotah was white with fear.  But Ootah encouraged him onward.

They paced off twenty miles.  They reached an altitude of more than a thousand feet above the sea.

The great moon slowly circled about the sky; the scurrying clouds contorted like grotesque living things.

The two hunters made precipitous descents over unexpected frozen slopes—­at times it seemed as though they were about to be hurled to instantaneous death.  Yet Ootah steeled his heart.  His teeth chattered but he gritted them firmly.

“Annadoah needeth food,” he murmured, “and——­”

His eyes shone, a new pity not unmingled with a taint of bitterness filled his heart.  Annadoah must live; she must have food.  For a strange thing, he observed, had come upon her.  Her inexplicable moods, her brief moments of tenderness, her riotous griefs, and other prefigurements of maternity—­these made her dearer to Ootah.  So he vigorously cracked his whip and urged the dogs.

The chasms twisted with lifelike motion all around him.  Behind, as in a dream, Ootah heard the whip of Koolotah, and the barking of Koolotah’s dogs.  For hours his feet moved swiftly and mechanically under him.  Once his foot slipped.  He swerved to the right.  A vast black mouth yawned hungrily to receive him; then it closed behind him.  The leaping team of dogs had pulled him forward.  Luckily he maintained a tenacious hold to the rear upstander of his sled.

Narrow chasms constantly cut their trail.  With sharp howls the dogs leaped over these, the sleds passed safely, and by instinct Ootah would bound forward.  Narrower than a man’s stride in width, Ootah knew these slits in the glacial ice were hundreds of feet in depth, that a slip of the foot might plunge him to immediate death.  Now and then he lost his footing on the uneven ice; his heart leaped for fear, but he held grimly to the sledge and the lithe, lean but strong dog-bodies carried him to safety.  These faithful animals bounded over the glimmering ice field with amazing speed.  They snapped and barked with the joy of the race.  In the white moonlight the vapor of their breathing enveloped them like a silvery cloud.