A gust swept the clouds from the zenith. Still no breath of air touched the sea.
To the lee a group of small icebergs passed. They rocked and eddied, and from their glacial sides the light poured in changing colors.
"O spirit of the light, carry thy bright message to the eyes of
Annadoah, tell her Ootah has loved her for many, many moons."
The bergs crashed into one another, and in the impact sank into the sea.
Ootah bit his lips. A vague misgiving was cold within his heart.
A flock of gulls passed low over the waters.
He called to them—that they should take his love to Annadoah. They were to tell Annadoah that he would soon return, laden with food and fuel for the winter. Their raucous cries mocked him. He demanded what they meant. "Ootah—Ootah," they seemed to call, "how foolish art thou, Ootah, how foolish art thou to love Annadoah. For fickle is Annadoah—fickle, fickle the heart of the maiden Annadoah!"
Ootah shrieked an enraged defiance. His eyes sought the horizon. Kokoyah, the sea god, was breathing deeply, and in the mists which rose like fire-shot smoke before the sun, singular forms took shape. Ootah saw the magnified shadows of great dogs. They seemed to be dashing along the horizon. Then, with crushing strides, behind the adumbration a great sled, a titan figure gathered substance in the clouds. It moved with terrific speed; it dominated the sky. Its dress was not that of the northern tribes. Ootah felt a resentful stirring, as, looking upward, in the clouds overhead, a white face, hard, fierce, scowling, with burning blue eyes, momentarily appeared.
"A white warrior from the south," Ootah murmured. "And he comes with swift tread. What can it mean?"
In common with many primitive peoples, Ootah possessed the soul of a poet—nature was vocal with him, and the disembodied beings of other worlds made themselves manifest and spoke in the light and in the clouds. To him everything lived; the clouds were the habitation of spirits, the waves were alive, all the animals and fish possessed souls; the very winds were endowed with sex functions and loved and quarreled among themselves. The interrelation of man and the forces of the universe were inseparably intimate and familiar; integral parts of one another, their destinies were bound together. And to Ootah nature found much to gossip about in the affairs of men.