Gazing at the low-lying sun, veiled as in a vapor of tears, remote, and sadly golden in its self-destined isolation, an instinctive wild-world-understanding of that tragedy of all life, of all the universe perchance—­of that unselfish love that is too often denied and the unhappy love that accents only too late—­vaguely filled her primitive heart.

Sinking to her knees, convulsed sobs shaking her, she wrung her hands toward the sun, the eternal maiden Sukh-eh-nukh, the beautiful, the all-desired.

“I-o-h-h-h!” she moaned, and her voice sobbed its pathos over the seas. “I-o-h-h-h!  I-o-h-h-h!  I-o-h-h-h, Sukh-eh-nukh!  I-o-o-h-h, Sukh-eh-nukh!  Unhappy sun—­unhappy sun! I-o-o-h-h-h-h, Annadoah! I-o-o-o-h-h-h-h, Annadoah!  Unhappy, unhappy Annadoah!”

Annadoah’s head sank lower and lower.  Her weeping voice melted in the melancholy sobbing of the aureate sea.  One by one the natives departed.  She was left alone.  To the north the sky darkened with one of those sudden arctic storms which come, as in a moment’s space, and blast the tender flowers of spring.  A cold wind moaned a pitiless lament from the interior mountains.  Yellow vapors gathered about the dimming sun.  Ominous shadows took form on the shimmering sea.

“I-o-h-h-h—­iooh!  Unhappy sun—­unhappy, unhappy Annadoah!”

Taking fire in the subdued sunlight—­and descending from heaven like a gentle benediction of feathery flakes of gold—­over and about the dark, crouched figure, softly . . . very softly . . . the snow began to fall.

[1] Annadoah’s flight, extraordinary as it is, is not without even more remarkable precedents.  In one case a woman who had been rejected by her husband made a forty-mile journey during winter to a spot south of her village where a child, some years before, had been buried.  There the woman wept and thus consoled herself.  Having exhausted her grief, she returned to her people.  On the trip she had no food whatever.

[2] Nerrvik, a beautiful maiden, according to the legend, married a storm-petrel who had disguised himself as a man.  When she discovered the deception she was filled with horror, so that later, when her relatives visited her, she determined to escape with them.  When the petrel returned from a hunting trip and discovered that his wife had gone, he followed, and flapping his great wings raised a terrible storm at sea.  Water filled the boat in which Nerrvik was escaping.  When they realized that Nerrvik was the cause of the storm her brothers cast her into the sea.  With one hand she clung to the boat; her grandfather lifted his knife and struck. Nerrvik descended into the ocean and became the queen of the fishes.  Possessing only one hand she cannot plait her hair.  A magician who can go to Nerrvik in a trance and arrange her tresses wins her gratitude and can secure from her for the hunters quantities of fish.  It is interesting to note the similarity of the legend of Nerrvik to that of Jonah.  But just as the Eskimos have changed the masculine sun of southern mythologies to the feminine, so the victim of the mythological sea storm in the arctic becomes a woman.