Annadoah saw Ootah disappear in the waters after his desperate dive from the cliff and rise with unerring precision on the surface near the sinking babe.  The sea came thundering against the jagged rocks in long, terrific swells, and was hurled back in a torrential tumult of breaking foam.  Ootah fought the seething waves in his effort to grapple the living thing which was to Annadoah as the heart of her bosom.  The tiny speck had begun to sink—­Ootah made a dive under the water—­and rose with the infant clasped in his left arm.  With only one hand free, he made a desperate struggle against the onslaught of the terrible watery catapults as they hurled him, nearer and nearer, toward the rocks beneath the cliff.  Annadoah saw his white hand, glistening with water, shine in the sunlight as he tried to climb against the impetus of the sea.  Sometimes his head sank—­then only the struggling hand was seen.  She crept dangerously closer to the edge of the cliff . . .  Slowly, but steadily, Ootah and the child were being swept backward . . .  By degrees the steady strokes of Ootah’s arm began to waver.  Annadoah saw him being carried further and further under the cliff by the irresistible momentum of the waves . . .  To be dashed against the jagged rocks beneath she knew meant death.  Her heart seemed to stop . . . but presently, swirling helplessly in the foaming cauldron of a receding breaker, she saw Ootah, still clasping the baby, emerge from under the rocks.  He still lived.  He still fought.  Annadoah watched each desperate, failing stroke.  She saw his strength giving out in that unequal struggle, saw his arm frenziedly but ineffectually beating the water, saw his head disappear . . . for longer and still longer periods . . .  She caught a last vision of his white upturned face, of his eyes, filled with importunate devotion, gazing directly at her from out the blinding waters . . .

Then she fell to her knees, and lowering her body, gazed wildly, for a long, long time, into the sea . . .

Suddenly she uttered a low, sharp, involuntary cry—­and the waiting tribesmen, recoiling as though stunned, understood.  They all loved Ootah—­none dared, none could speak.  Silent, grief-stricken, they turned away their faces—­even their dogs were still.  Annadoah still peered, searchingly, for a long time, into the sea.

No, there was nothing there—­nothing.  On the aureate waves was no speck of life.

Rising, Annadoah gazed with wide-open, solemn eyes seaward; for the moment she felt in her heart only a dull ache.

Along the horizon to the east the sun, irradiant and magnified, lay low over the heaving seas.  Over its face, like a veil of gold, translucent vapors—­the breath of Kokoyah, the god of waters—­rose from the melting floes.  A strange spell seemed suddenly to have fallen over the earth.  Out on the ocean the great bergs, which had majestically moved southward like the phantoms of perished ships, seemed to pause.  The little birds which had clustered about the rocks disappeared.  High in the sky above her, a sinister black bird poised motionless in the air.