Outside Annadoah’s igloo all engaged in a joyous revel.  Hungrily they feasted upon the raw meat.  Then they beat drums and danced.  Their voices rose in hilarious chants.  Wild joy shook them.  Ootah was acclaimed hero of the tribe.  Although they have no chiefs, he was accorded the honor of being the bravest and strongest among them.  And to the strongest and most heroic the last word in all things belongs.

Of all who were able to participate in the celebration, Maisanguaq alone retired.  From the seclusion of his igloo entrance he watched the scene with rancor in his heart.

Over the northern skies the auroral lights played, lighting the scene of spontaneous rejoicing with magical glory.  Great silver coronas—­or rings of light—­constantly arose in the north, passed to the zenith and melted as they descended to the south.  Luminous curtain-like films closed and parted alternately like the veils of a Valhalla drawn back and forth before the warrior souls of the north.  Tremendous fan-shaped shafts of opalescent fire shot toward the zenith and like search-lights moved to and fro across the sky.  The clouds became illumined with an interior flame and glowed like diaphanous mists of gold half concealing the vague faces of the beauteous spirits of the dead.  Their billowing edges palpitated with a tremor as of quicksilver.  Within and through this empyreal web of light marvellous scenes were simultaneously woven.  They lasted a moment’s space and vanished.  The natives, dancing unrestrainedly, saw heavenly mountain slopes covered with grass of emerald fire and glittering with starry flowers.  They saw the gigantic shadows of celestial ahmingmah passing behind the clouds . . . and here and there were the cyclopean adumbrations of great caribou, and creatures for which they did not have a name.  A tossing sea of rippling waves of light was presently unfolded, and over it they saw millions of birds, with wings of fire, soaring with bewildering rapidity from horizon to zenith . . .  This faded . . .  Monstrous and gorgeous flowers of living rainbow tints burst into bloom—­fields of them momentarily covered the heaven.  These the natives regarded with only half accustomed wonder, for they knew there were strange flowers in the land of the dead.

As they danced, the colored imageries steadily faded in the growing intensity of the great banded coronas that rose from the north.  A light of cold electric fire increasingly blazed over the heavens until a frigid silver day, brighter than any day of sunshine, reached its brief noon upon the earth.

Rocking their bodies and singing, the natives dispersed to their respective igloos.  Sitting on his sledge by Annadoah, Ootah dimly heard their voices echoing into silence; he experienced terrible pains again in his limbs and the fever in his head.  Everything became dizzy, and with a sick feeling of faintness he crept into Annadoah’s igloo and fell upon her couch.