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.
Eagerly Ootah sought the clouds. Along the horizon they resolved
themselves into a phantasmagoria of Eskimo maidens and white men
resembling the Danes who came each summer to gather riches of ivories
and furs. And the Eskimo maidens and white men danced together. As
these mirage-forms melted, Ootah glanced into the water by his side.
Looking up from the ultramarine depths he saw something white. For an
instant it assumed the likeness of the face of Annadoah. He saw her
golden skin, her cheeks flushed with the pink of spring lichen
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