“Nerrvik! Nerrvik!” Annadoah supplicated persuasively, “gentle spirit of the sea, lift Ootah unto me!  Thou who art kind to man and givest him fishes from the deep for food, give unto Annadoah’s arms Little Blind Spring Bunting.”

She swayed her frail body to and fro, and in a tremulous, plaintive chant told unto the gentle and gracious spirit of the waters all that Ootah had been, all that he had done for the tribe; of his prowess, of his love for her, of her own hardness, and how she had turned a deaf ear to his pleading.  Incident after incident she recalled.  She told of the long night, when Ootah went by moonlight into the mountains, how he had braved the hill spirits, how they struck him in the frigid highlands, and how the beneficent quilanialequisut had brought him home.  Her exquisite voice rose to a splendid crescendo as she described that valorous adventure, and in the chant ran the motifs of the hill spirit’s anger, the brave leaping steps of Ootah, the tremor of the mountains as they were struck, and the deep tenderness of Ootah’s love.  In that customary chanting address to the spirits, Annadoah told of Ootah’s return from the mountains, of the suffering he endured, and how, when she soothed him, she thought of the great trader from the south.  She recalled how he had staggered from the igloo, the agony in his eyes, and how she heard him sobbing his heart-break in the auroral silence without her igloo through the long sleep.

Extending her arms over the sea, Annadoah reiterated, after each statement of Ootah’s bravery, her plea to Nerrvik that Ootah be given back to her.

“Nerrvik! Nerrvik!” she called, “surely thou art kind!  O thou whom, when the great petrel raised a storm, wast cast into the depths by those thou didst love, thou whose heart achest for affection—­hear me, hear me, and Annadoah will surely come to thee very soon and comb thy hair in the depths of the cold, cold sea.” [2]

Tears fell from her eyes.  With self-reproach she told of her old longing for Olafaksoah, the blond man from the south, whose grim, fierce face had cowed her, yet whose brutality had thrilled her, to whose beast-strength and to whose beast-passion all that was feminine in her had surrendered itself.  But he had left her—­he said that he would come back in the spring.  Now, she knew he would not come back—­and she did not care.  As if to convince the spirit of this, she compared Olafaksoah with Ootah; she knew now that he had used her to rob her people, that his heart was as stone.  Ootah, she had once said, had the heart of a woman; but now she realized the difference between them.  She knew the arms of Ootah were strong, that the words of Ootah were true, that the heart of Ootah was kind.  And she felt stirring in her bosom things she could not express; a vague comprehension of the pure spirituality of the man who had died to save her child, a response