Ootacamund

“ At times they reached, in their frightful struggle, the very edge of the floe, and seemed about to tumble into the seething sea. Ootah felt Maisanguaq trying to force him into the watery abyss—but he fought backward . . . time and time again . . . They constantly fell over the unconscious woman on the sledge. About them the darkness roared; they felt the heaving sea beneath them. And while they struggled, in their brief terrible death-to-the-death fight, the floe was tossed steadily onward. Ootah felt his breath giving out. Maisanguaq felt Ootah's hands closing about his throat. ”

“ Presently she saw only the phosphorescent crest of a mountainous wave . . . rising in the distance . . . She became cold with white fear—she felt her blood turn to ice . . . She screamed and struggled vainly with the lashings . . . She felt the floe rise, felt herself being steadily lifted into the sheer air, and of paralyzed fright again swooned.
Maisanguaq, by a fierce wrench, managed to release one hand, struck Ootah a heavy blow and broke away. ”

“ In this brief spell of daily increasing twilight the desolate region took on a grey-blue hue; the natives, as they appeared outside their shelters, looked like greyish spectres. Ootah felt the grim grey desolation color his soul.
He had regained his strength, and his wounds had healed with the remarkable rapidity that nature effects in people who lead a primitive life; only the hurt in his heart remained. Annadoah had often visited him, and while he lay on his bed of furs she had boiled ahmingmah meat and made hot water over the lamp very solicitously. ”

“ Ootah bent over Annadoah to protect her from the mountainous onslaughts of icy water. His teeth chattered—he suffered agonies. For a long black hour of horror they were driven over the thundering seas and through a frigid whirlwind of snow, sharp as flakes of steel.
The recoiling impetus of the waters gradually increased under them. Ootah knew this indicated an approach to land. The waves came in shorter, but quicker swells. The floe bumped into others. Ootah roused himself and hopefully turned toward Maisanguaq.
"We approach the land," he called. "We must bide our time—then jump." ”

“ You might set her body down under her orange-boughs, under her blue sky, but you could not give her the heart of her childhood. You are a god in your way; the only god the nineteenth century knows—a rich man—but to do that is beyond your power.'
'If I had that power I should be a god indeed!' said Othmar bitterly, 'and the whole sick world would come to me to be cured.'
He needed not the words of Rosselin to remind him that never would he be able to undo the work his wife had done in one idle moment of imperious caprice. ”

“ Ootah's wail of hurt recalled her.
Her eyes sought the igloo wonderingly.
"Thou?" she repeated, dully. "Yea, it is cold here. I am hungry . . . Are there not ahmingmah in the mountains, Ootah? Didst thou not tell me there were ahmingmah in the mountains . . . why do not the men of the tribe seek the musk oxen in the mountains?"
With a sudden start Ootah remembered having told Annadoah of the herd he had found in the inland valley—it was strange, he thought, he had not remembered the herd before. ”

“ With dexterous movements of the paddle, Ootah playfully moved his kayak among the herd, in one hand his harpoon ready to strike. A feverish desire to make the greatest kill possessed him. Each time a hunter made an attack he felt a pang of anxiety. Tense rivalry spurred the young hunters.
In the midst of the battle Arnaluk struck a beast. Ootah summoned all his skill, and dashed in succession after a number of appearing heads—he forgot his danger. Before the others realized it, he had killed two. Maisanguaq's harpoon went wild. ”

“ In succession Ootah uttered imitations of the calls of the walrus bulls, the female caribou, and cries of the various birds.
"Have I not held converse with the animals of the land, the birds of the air, and shall I not one day perchance comb the hair of Nerrvik in the sea!"
The drums beat more loudly; the dancers hopped and leaped. The chorus replied:
"Thou lurest the walrus and seal from the sea, thou enticest the caribou, ahmingmah and birds unto thee! Thou hast learned the language of nature, and the happy spirits are kind to thee! Marvellous is thy power, Ootah." ”

“ Ootanga's affection, however, was sufficient to make amends for anything; she was, in truth, a most killing beauty, for she brought him tigers slain by her own hands, and made a couch for him of the skins.
She caught rattlesnakes for him, and spitch-cooked them for his breakfast. In fact, there was nothing she left undone to convince him of her unbounded love.
Peter's heart, however, was untouched by all this show of tenderness; for the fact is, he had already given his heart to a white-face in his own country. ”

“ Besides, this journey now before them has been preceded by lesser ones, and these had been so frequent and of such trivial result as that vanity seemed written upon all the deep and checkered past, with its world of toil and journeyings. In a subdued whisper, but with speaking countenances and sparkling eyes, these parents are dwelling upon this many-colored by-gone.
Mr. Oatman is a medium-sized man, about five feet in height, black hair, with a round face, and yet in the very prime of life. Forty-one winters had scarcely been able to plow the first furrow of age upon his manly cheek. ”

“ Yet, as the summers passed, she remained carefree and to all suitors shook her head. "Become a great chief," she would say. "Win in the games, bring back the musk oxen, then perhaps Annadoah will listen." Each summer the young men pursued the hunt with the hope of becoming chief hunter among the tribesmen. But for three summers Ootah had won signally above them all. To the remote regions of their world the name of Ootah was whispered with awe. Ootah carried off honors in the muscle-tapping and finger-pulling matches; he out-distanced all rivals in kayak races on the sea ”

“ Ootah sadly moaned.
"The heart of woman changes always," cried Maisanguaq. "The heart of woman always yields to force. Pst?"
Seeing Ootah turn slightly toward Annadoah, Maisanguaq sprang at his throat. Their arms closed about one another. Maisanguaq breathed the wrath of the spirits upon Ootah. He fought with the fierce strength of one insane with jealous, murderous rage. The icy floe rocked beneath them. They slipped to and fro on the treacherous ice. The sharp snow beat their faces. Water washed under their feet. ”

“ Oh, the beast, the beast! All that belonged to my son—every atom of it, from her little ear to her slender foot, and should have been burnt with him, like the Indian women, if I could have had my way—should have been buried with him, like his stars and his crosses. Oh, the beast, the beast! if I could only wring her neck!'
Then she rose, and murmuring some words inaudible and indifferent to her companions, she left the apartment. Othmar, alone beside his wife in the aromatic warmth of the summer evening, bent over her couch and kissed her little bouquet of heliotrope. ”

“ While Ootah and his companion stood on the peak, the moon passed behind a veil of clouds and Ootah felt two soft wraith-like hands pass over his face—cloud-hands which his simple mind believed were sentient things. His heart for the moment seemed to stop. Thus the kind spirits warn men of danger. ”

“ It takes so much; it offers nothing. True, some of the greatest passions the world has [22] seen have been born after youth had long passed, and have burned on till death with deeper fires of sunset than ever dawn has seen. But a woman is not consoled by that possibility as morning slides past her and the shadows grow long.
Othmar, without other reply, opened the door of her dressing-room, and there entered two small children, a boy and a girl with faces like flowers, and sweet rosy mouths, carrying a large gilded basket between them, filled with white lilac and gardenia. ”

“ The news of Ootah's arrival brought out the women. When they saw Annadoah they crowded about her, scolding. Ootah silenced the garrulous throng with a fierce command. They shrank away.
"She came to me on the ice," he said. "Knew ye not that the spirits fared not well within her, that she was ill, ye she-wolves? She sees things that are not so and raves of the curses ye invoked, barking she-dogs! Aga! Aga! Go—go!"
Assisted by several of the men, Ootah conveyed Annadoah into her igloo and laid her upon her couch. Her face was flushed, and as she lay there Ootah thought she was very beautiful. ”

“ When Rosselin received them he was sitting by his solitary lamp examining the condition of a much injured copy on vellum of 'The Birds,' which he had picked up at a bookstall on one of the quays the day before. He put the manuscript down, and read the note with its clear signature of Othmar at the end.
'A graceful amende,' he thought. 'He has a heart of gold, but his judgment is not so much to be trusted as his feelings are. He spoke of his wife's indifference. What could he expect? You cannot get out of a nature what it has not got in it. ”

“ You are a man, my dear Count Othmar, who is much more likely to be fascinated by a disinterested action than by a vulgar amour. I understand you, but I warn you that nobody else will.'
'I suppose not,' said Othmar. 'That must be as it may. How did you divine so well what I was thinking of?'
'Divination of that kind is easy after experiences as long as mine are,' answered Rosselin, gathering one of his carnations and fastening it in his linen coat. 'If we do not acquire that much from life we live to be old to little purpose. ”

“ Besides, you made me so many in Paris, and then you went to the Mongols. I never knew why you went to the Mongols; why did you go?’
‘Wounded brutes always get away somewhere to be unseen as long as their wound bleeds,’ said Othmar, with some bitterness.
‘How Sachs cried for that cartouche-box!’ she said, as she lit a cigarette. ‘His women scolded him, but I said to them, “Why do you scold him? He is a male creature; therefore he must weep for what he cannot get.” Some children cry for the moon; a moon, or a cartouche-box, or a woman, the principle is the same.’
Othmar rose and approached her. ”

“ She shall be mine."
"Annadoah hath already chosen—her heart is in the south," Ootah replied, sadly.
"Fool!" the other man shrieked. "Didst thou not go to the mountains to get her food; didst thou not thieve from thine own self to give oil to her; didst thou not fawn upon her and perform the services of a woman? Thou liest if thou sayest thou wilt not have her for thy wife. No man doeth this unseeking of reward."
"I love Annadoah," Ootah said, bitterly. ”

“ But the perfect candour of her eyes remained unclouded.
'I do not think about him,' she replied in that tone which was an echo of her free and fearless life upon the island. 'He is kind, and M. Rosselin says he is good. He is a great friend of hers, is he not?'
'Of my wife's?' said Othmar, with irritation. 'Yes. She likes him, he is often with her; he is one of those persons whom great ladies care to chain to their thrones.'
He had himself always had a vague jealousy of Gui de Béthune ”

“ She smiled and rose. 'My dear Otho, jealousy is a very ugly, useless, and unwise passion. The world decided, as soon as ever I was presented to it, that I had no such thing as a heart. You have always persisted in supposing that I have, but very likely the world is more right than you.'
'May I not hope at least that I have a place in it?' murmured Othmar, and he bent towards her with much of a lover's ardour. ”

“ Walking along in the moonlight in the direction of Afton Lake, which sometimes offers its deep 154 waters too freely to victims of sin and suffering, Oscar Otwell resolved to bathe his body of perilous adventure in its darkened waters of deepest death, never more to face the troubles and trials of weak man and share them with weaker woman—never again to approach the wife of his bosom with language of lowest type or lift to her the hand which he so often had sworn should extend her the aid she now must seek. ”

“ You know at one time he actually dreamed of breaking up the whole network of the Othmar power, and stripping himself of everything, and living like St. Vincent de Paul. That was before those children were born; their mother would certainly never take the vow of poverty! Well, shall you and I ride down to Magny some morning and see this prodigy of genius and simplicity? You can recall yourself to her, and you can present me. We will represent ourselves as inspired by what we have heard from Rosselin.'
Loswa hesitated. Othmar was not a man whom he cared to cross. ”

“ She had power over him to make him relinquish many a project, abandon many a desire, but this power was not reciprocal; it seldom or never is so between two human beings. The old proverb, that of any twain one is booted and spurred and the other saddled and bridled, has a rough truth in it.
Othmar knew nothing of, and cared as little for, this girl whose face looked with so frank an audacity, so wistful an innocence, out of the brilliant drawing of Loswa. ”

“ To suffer, but to show no sign, is the proverb of the true Indian. And yet Astumastao would not admit even to herself that she was deeply in love with Oowikapun. She had treasured the fond conceit in her heart that the one all-absorbing passion with her was that which she had freely revealed to him, and she in her simplicity had honestly believed that no other love could take its place, or even share the room in her heart. ”