The Eternal Maiden

f gleaming faces, and that their eyes burned, through the enveloping cloud-veils, like f

the silver-swimming world of white dust-driven fire became sud

the path had been covered by many successive falls of snow. At places the path sloped abruptly downward at a terrible angle, and the ice

the moon poured its liquid rays. At certain points towering crags shut off the light-then Ootah and his companion had to feel their way slowly upward in the dark. Finally

a burnished mirror the misty silveriness of the moon. Over the glacial expanse an eerily greenish phosphorescen

or. In the depths jutting icicles took fire and glowed through the lustrous mists like burning eyes. Where the chasms joined with others or widened, ominous shapes, swathed in wind-b

g the very edges of purple-black abysses. The echoes of their sharp gliding sleds cutting the ice, of the very patter of their dogs' feet, were magnified in volume in

y reached an altitude of more th

the sky; the scurrying clouds cont

imes it seemed as though they were about to be hurled to instantaneous death

th food," he mu

For a strange thing, he observed, had come upon her. Her inexplicable moods, her brief moments of tenderness, her riotous grie

hours his feet moved swiftly and mechanically under him. Once his foot slipped. He swerved to the right. A vast black mouth yawned hungrily to receive

hundreds of feet in depth, that a slip of the foot might plunge him to immediate death. Now and then he lost his footing on the uneven ice; his heart leaped for fear, but he held grimly to the sledge and the lithe, lean but strong dog-bodies

pness rising from the gaping abysses that sundered the ice field told them of their danger; then Ootah's heart chilled, his teeth were set chattering; but he thought of Annadoah and the grim need of food, and he gripped the upstander of his sled more d

e faithful ghosts of the dogs of fallen hunters were following their departed masters in the amethystine mists of the canyons about them. Ootah and Koolotah trembled with the thought of the dreadful nearness of the dead. Believ

halt!" h

to a dead

ing, whining dogs. "Pst!" They crouch

s the face of the dead, and that in his eyes was a wild fear. From the mountain ridges, which loomed beyond, came

the spirits of the

aken them," Koo

be bad," O

mother forever,"

pirits of those who lived when men's sap was

y of alarm. He drew back, fearfully, pointing

s of the slope, cyclopean shadows took form, and like eldritch figures joining their hands in a wild dance, loomed terrifyingly before the two men. Their trail now ascended through a gorge

uminous robes that fluttered gently upon the air, and like the birds they soared, with tremulous wings resembling films of silver. They moved softly, with great majesty. As he looked u

red . . . "We have come u

ence, reverent, a

d his whip. He ca

et us show that men are not

of the abyss. Less than three feet wide for long stretches, the dogs had to slacken and pass upward in line, one by on

been drifts, at others glacial fragments had slipped from the mountain above. Before th

culty; the air in the high altitude made respiration difficult. He was soon bathed in perspiration. The moisture of his breath and beads of sweat froze about his face, covering him with an icy mask. Hi

he called t

the axe as it soared above him. In a half hour the step-like trail was cut, and he clambered over the wall. D

hering clouds surrounded them. They could no longer see their dogs. They could not even perceive the blackness of the chasm to their right. Above and below they were enveloped in a silver mist. Only the reflected glit

But the cold froze their perspiring garments and they had to rise and exercise so as not to freeze to death. Ootah knew that no time could be lost. In the interior mountains the breathing of the

ad seen the splendid animals grazing months before was covered with ice. There w

egan to sniff the a

Koolotah cr

ade a misty black streak in their

lumberingly from the cave into the moonlight. Five great black hulks, with mighty manes of coarse hair, they ambled over the ice for a space of five hundred feet and t

one of the great beasts would charge, its head lowered, and the dogs would leap backward into the air and sc

yes of the musk-oxen-they were greenish and phosphorescent. Occasionally the creatures roared sullenly,

of walrus blubber which he confiscated after Ootah's flight to the mountains, had left with a generous

it as it roared in its death agony. Frightened, the other four scattered-one rushed into the shelter of the cave, the other three, dispersing, soon beca

ng dexterity carved great masses of bleeding meat clean from the bones. When they had finished, only a great skeleton remained. Outside the cave, eager, whining, the starvin

atory delight. The blood dripped upon the snow and Ootah's stomach ached. He had not dared to think of eating until now. Their hands shaking with nervous hunger, the two fell upon the remaining

ped his wh

t sang, too,

imagined he saw Annadoah lying upon her couch asleep, and in th

adoah dream?" Oot

the flowers bloom,

" he said, joyously, exultantly. "Ootah will bring foo

. But now, upon the breath of the winds, by the voices of nature, doubt came into his heart. The mistake of many men the world over, and of many wiser than he, he could not understand just why this was-this thing the winds said, and which his own heart correspondingly whispered. With food he might possibly win Annadoah's consent to be his wife, yes, he knew that; but Annado

the ice thickened and swept softly under the two travellers' feet. Above their waists the air was clear-they saw each other distinctly in the moonlight. Yet their dogs, hidden in the

ing sound split the air; the ice field on which they travelled vibrated wit

irits of the hills?" aske

not gone twenty paces when from the interior heights of Greenland came a series of muffled explo

yawned blackly some five hundred feet below. In anticipation of their return with loaded sledges, Ootah, on the last reach of their upland climb, had chopped on the smooth snows of the mountainside a narrow path that

felt two soft wraith-like hands pass over his face-cloud-hands which his simple mind believed were

embled, and as the moon reappeared, on the icy slopes Ootah saw narrow black cracks

died away he tur

. Let us go-there

ept ahead. Lowering their bodies, each behind his sledge, Ootah and Koolotah began moving stealthily downward. With one hand each clung to the rough icy projectio

wn, Ootah u

like the crack of young ice in forming, under

slope. The dogs ahead, with quick instinct, retreate

ven downward by the wind, a mass of clouds, glittering with bleached moon

rimly desperate determination to the sled . . . In the next dizzy instant he felt the icy floor beneath him lurch itself forward and downward . . . before his very eyes he saw Koolotah and his team-not twenty feet below-wiped from existence by the descending glacier to which he clung and in the hollow crevice of which he found security . . . In a second's space he caught a clear vision of tremendous masses of green and purple glaciers being ground to fine powder in their swift descent on all sides of him, . . . he saw the feathery ice fragments catch fire i

blanched as they thought of the hunters. "The hill spirits have smitten! Ioh! Ioh!" they moaned. In her igloo Annadoah