“Maisanguaq—­where is he?” She heard Ootah’s reply.

“He hath gone the long journey of the dead.”

Annadoah breathed a sigh of relief and again floated into the coma of fever and exhaustion.

The journey before Ootah was desperately difficult in the storm and darkness.  In his way of reckoning he knew they had floated about two miles south of the village.  The return lay along the sea and over crushed, blocked ice.  Much as he regretted it, he was compelled to leave the precious load of walrus blubber behind, so as to carry Annadoah, who was unable to walk, on the sledge.  He covered the blubber with cakes of ice, hopeful that it might by chance escape the ravaging bears.  His companions might come for it after his return.  He knew the probabilities were, however, that the keen noses of bears or wolves would detect it.

After lashing Annadoah to the sledge, so she might not be jolted from it, Ootah, with a brave heart, started in the teeth of the biting wind.  The half-frozen dogs rose to their task nobly and pulled at the traces.  Ootah pushed the sledge from behind.  He trusted to the sure instinct of the animals to find a safe way.  Progress was necessarily slow.  Fortunately the snow stopped falling and one agony was removed.

In lulls of the storm Ootah heard Annadoah moaning in her delirium.

When they reached the village, a half dozen men were assembled outside their houses.  They rejoicingly hailed Ootah, whom they had counted among the dead.  He learned that two of his companions had gone to join Maisanguaq.  The first party had safely reached the shore before the breaking away of the ice.  The news of Ootah’s arrival brought out the women.  When they saw Annadoah they crowded about her, scolding.  Ootah silenced the garrulous throng with a fierce command.  They shrank away.

“She came to me on the ice,” he said.  “Knew ye not that the spirits fared not well within her, that she was ill, ye she-wolves?  She sees things that are not so and raves of the curses ye invoked, barking she-dogs! Aga! Aga!  Go—­go!”

Assisted by several of the men, Ootah conveyed Annadoah into her igloo and laid her upon her couch.  Her face was flushed, and as she lay there Ootah thought she was very beautiful.  She had become much emaciated—­Ootah did not like that.  But when she opened her eyes Ootah saw in them a soft, new light.

“Thou art brave, Ootah,” she said, essaying a smile of gratitude.  “Thou art brave of heart . . . and kind.”

Ootah’s heart stirred.  Once she had said that his heart was as soft as that of a woman; this was, indeed, to him reward for all the frightful terrors he had endured on the storming sea.

“And do the wings of thy heart not stir, Annadoah?” he asked softly, a world of pleading in his voice.  “Wilt thou not be mine in the spring?”

“In the spring,” she said, dreamily, and her voice quavered . . . “in the spring . . .”