“Come!  Or we perish in the sea!” Maisanguaq, his head bent near so as to hear, now yelled into Ootah’s ear.

Annadoah cowered at the sound of his voice.  Ootah felt her trembling, in his arms.

“And he . . . is here?” she whispered.  “I am afraid.”

They felt the great ice field rocking on the waves imprisoned beneath them.  It trembled whenever it touched a passing berg.

Maisanguaq prodded the terror-stricken dogs.  Their howls shrilled through the storm,

“Huk! Huk! Huk!” he urged.

Supporting Annadoah with one arm Ootah pushed forward after the moving team.  He knew they were being carried steadily and slowly seaward, but he had hopes that the ice field would swerve landward toward the south where an armlike glacier jutted, elbow-fashion, into the sea and caught the current.

Snapping their whips and frantically urging the dogs, they fought through the snow-driven darkness and over the moving field of ice.  Annadoah murmured wild and incoherent things in her delirium.  They paced off half a mile.

“Aulate!” Ootah suddenly called, panic-stricken.  “Halt! halt!” Maisanguaq stopped the dogs.  Before them a snaky space of water, blacker than the darkness about them, and capped with faintly phosphorescent crests of tossing waves, separated them—­Ootah knew not how far—­from the land.

“To the right!” Ootah called.  “Let us go onward!”

“Huk! Huk!” Maisanguaq encouraged the dogs.

“The floe may land near the glacier,” Ootah cried.

He spoke to Annadoah.  She made an irrelevant reply about the women who called upon the spirits—­and their terrible maledictions.

With Maisanguaq ahead driving the dogs, they turned to the south.  Annadoah sank helpless in Ootah’s arms—­she could no longer walk.  Ootah supported her.  At times his feet slipped.  He felt himself becoming dizzy.  The beloved burden in his arms became unsupportably heavy.  They travelled in utter darkness, near them the desirous clamor of the waves.  Seaward, at times, where the splitting floes crashed against one another, there ran zigzag lines of phosphorescence.  The winds howled in the ears of Ootah like the voices of the unhappy dead.  Occasionally he heard the voice of Maisanguaq ahead urging the team.

Ice froze on their faces, frigid water swept the floe.  Their garments became saturated and froze to the skin.  Finally the dogs refused to move.  “We can go no further,” said Maisanguaq, in terror.  “I am resigned to die.”  Ootah stubbornly invoked the spirits of his ancestors for succor.  He called to the dogs.

Thereupon a terrific shock caused both men to reel.  The ice field trembled under them—­then stopped.

Ootah realized that a section of it had swept against one of the many land-adhering glaciers.  There was hope—­and greater danger.