# The Savage Breast

The Savage Breast
Famine in the North Is Terrible Enough but When the Darkness Comes, and with It Superstitious Fear of Evil Spirits— A Story with Real Poetic Quality
By Edison Marshall
WINTER, like an old she white bear herself, had taken refuge in a den of hibernation; therefore the spring sun was yellow and bright again over the surging, rumbling, crashing floes of ice. At least, this was the explanation given by Kerallkuk, the medicine-man, and any one who, like Kerallkuk, had seen the sun come back fifty times, who could interpret any dream you would care to tell him, and who, by his own word, could go into a trance and fly straight out of the Singing House clear to the moon, surely ought to know. If in his heart he doubted his own wisdom, he gave no sign of it to the Kutki Island people. And they, simple-hearted children of the ice-fields, would have sooner cut off their own flat noses than to doubt him.
What did it matter, anyway? It was enough for them that the sun had come back. The thing to do with spring is not to wonder whence it had come but to live fully, to eat heartily of the rich frozen blubber and to be merry—for the Great Dark will surely fall again, all too soon.
This did Kerallkuk do. In fact, he overdid it according to strait-laced, civilized standards, and when the Eskimos gathered at their memorable spring festival, he would customarily let Wunchee, his round wife, drop bits of seal blubber into his mouth until he absolutely could not move. Such was Kerallkuk's idea of a real celebration. Tweegock, one of the best hunters of the little tribe, likewise enjoyed himself, and Tweegock's daughter, Coonee, ate so much that her round little stomach was fairly full too. And quite likely, though no man can say for sure, the other natives of the Kutki Island ice celebrated similarly—Nenook, the white bear that hunted seals in the leads, old Awak, the walrus, and the fox and musk-ox on the mainland.
It is a fact that young Nenook, old Nenook's four-year-old son, felt the spring in his blood when, along in the last days of April, he sat snugly at the edge of a mountainous ice-pack and enjoyed the daylight. Being a young bear, lacking his father's strength to stay out late nights, he had just emerged from his den, and now he was growing warm and comfortable. No one could have guessed, four months past, that spring would ever bless these endless fields of ice again; yet here she was, spreading her banners of my clouds through the cold blue sky, forming leads between the floes where the sleek heads of the seals now and then appeared above the icy, sparkling water. Nenook found himself wondering mightily about these same seals. His digestive tract was sadly empty, and he must needs feed lightly for a time; yet he felt tingly and excited just at the sight of them.
A very handsome figure was Nenook. The time would come, in old age, when his fur would be yellow like old ivory, but now it was of the whiteness of the drift itself. The basking seal needed a sharp, discerning eye to make out his snowy form stealing over the floes. Besides, ordinarily, Nenook made his attack under water, with only the tip of his black nose coming up from time to time for air. Then the sleepy seal would waken to find his escape cut off, with very few seconds thereafter in which to enjoy the sunlight. A seal can squirm along fairly swiftly on the ice, his flappers beating like the wings of a wounded water-bird, but he cannot race with Nenook. The latter, like all bears, looks too awkward to keep his feet at all; he is burly and ungainly, but he can pounce like a panther when occasion arises.
Nenook was half grown, and that meant he weighed better than three hundred pounds and had a pelt which, made into a hearth-rug, would stretch practically six feet. He had the topical polar-bear build—rather longer than his darker cousins to the south, longer neck, more narrow head, high shoulders and big feet for swimming. And at the present instant it appeared likely that he would never live to reach the full growth of maturity.
The air hummed, and something swift and deadly beyond thought pounced at him from the rough ice just beside. And something burned with a sharp pain across the long white bridge of his muzzle.
There is no more tender spot in a bear's anatomy than the region of his nose. Tweegock's arrow, aimed for the vulnerable throat, had not gone quite true; but it surely succeeded in administering the most painful wound that Nenook had ever had the bad luck to receive. It had slicked along the top of his muzzle, taking fur and skin with it, leaving a red track like a brand. And Nenook woke the echoes with his wail of pain.
In reality, that thunderous, doleful bawl did more than any other one thing to preserve his life. The Eskimo nerve is an unstable thing, and even the best of human nerves are likely to become jumpy and uncertain when the ice-crags reecho with a bear's roars of rage and pain. Both Tweegock and his fellow hunter, Kerallkuk, the priest, had been cool enough before, stealthy and sure; but now neither had a true shot left in his bow. Kerallkuk's nerve departed from him, and he shot his copper-tipped shaft without taking aim. And now, still bawling like thunder, Nenook turned, seeking flight.
Tweegock was a trained hunter, and he tried to steady himself for a second shot. The range of his weapon was a hundred yards and he might yet bring down the fleeing bear. But it came about that that deadly missile sought another target. At that instant there came terrible answer to the young bear's cry of distress.
Tweegock had made a disastrous mistake when he thought that Nenook was alone on the ice. The bear was in reality little more than a cub, and in the excitement of hunting the Eskimo had forgot the propensity of polar bears to hibernate in families. Nenook had shared his mother's den through the arctic night just gone; and now the savage old seal-slayer herself came leaping as if from the empty air.
She had been lying in the rough ice within fifty feet of Nenook, her two younger cubs beside her, and the three, through their protective coloration, had entirely escaped the gaze of the two hunters. This was no half-grown four-year-old to lay low with a deer-arrow—she who came leaping across the intervening distance like a white demon to her son's defense. Nenook's bawls of pain and astonishment were completely obliterated by her thunderous roar of rage.
There could be but one answer to that charge. Tweegock was a hunter, tried and true, and he held his harpoon to the last vital instant, but it was like trying to slay the bellowing storm with a bird-dart. His only shadow of hope lay in Kerallkuk; but now this had failed him, too. Kerallkuk, losing faith in his own magic, dropped his weapons and fled.
Thus it was that only the torno, the spirits that live in the stones and the sea, beheld the end of Tweegock. Nenook was bounding across the ice in frightened leaps, the wound at his nose leaving a thin red trail behind him, and Kerallkuk's eyes, almost protruding from the heavy face, did not glance back to see the fate of his friend.
By the mercy of Tweegock's gods, the bear struck but once. But the same full stroke by any full-grown polar bear would have struck dead the mightiest musk-ox in the herd.
THERE is one spirit haunting these strange ice-deserts that is particularly well known to the Eskimos.
Only the priest, as a rule, can talk to the torno, that dwell in the great boulders and ice-mountains, or with the keyukut, that often haunt the bodies of beasts; but this one spirit, the most dreadful of all, shadows every igloo in the village. He came and stood that day before little Coonee, Tweegock's daughter. She saw the tall white specter stalking over the ice.
The same spirit had visited Tweegock's igloo some years before, and Coonee's mother had talked with him in the long, mystic arctic night, and he had carried her away with him over the ice. It seemed hardly fair to the dark-eyed girl at the door of the skin tent that he would come twice to the same house in so short a time. Yet Death was a familiar spirit, ever waiting for the people, and there was no real cause to wonder. The Innuit learns, soon or late, to take all things as they come, and this bitter lesson had already gone home to little Coonee waiting in the doorway.
Tweegock would not come again to the village, returning in triumph with the slaughtered caribou—no matter if she waited clear until the Great Dark fell again. She had run to meet him, but she only met Kerallkuk, running to tell his horror-story in the village. Tweegock's spirit had gone afar, he said—perhaps, because he had been a brave hunter, to the blessed land of the Arsissut, possibly to a less-favored hereafter that is laid out above the pale gray-blueness of the arctic sky. The more the priest considered the matter the more likely it seemed that he had gone to the latter place—for Tweegock had certainly offended the ice-gods.
There was little sign in her impassive Oriental face of the blow that had gone so deep into her childish heart. Coonee—which means "kiss" in the Innuit tongue—was but fourteen, nearly a woman in the Eskimo way of thinking, yet, by the greater wisdom of civilized peoples, only a child. She was a dark little creature, her almond-eyes incredibly black; and her broad, childish face, dark with its accumulation of grease, was usually lighted with the far-famed Eskimo smile. But no smile played at her lips to-day; rather, she looked bewildered, unable to believe the bitter truth. And the mercy of tears had not yet come.
As yet she had given little thought to the question of how the tragedy would affect her own life. She knew vaguely that one of the tribe would adopt her, taking care of her until the time was ripe for her marriage to Shug-la-wina, the boy to whom her parents had promised her in infanthood. Yet she knew secretly that her position in the tribe would be less henceforth. Orphan girls are not in great demand among the Innuits. Where the very problem of existence is so hard to solve, the work of securing food and clothes so difficult, an additional mouth is a serious matter indeed to any family. Little Coonee would be given her food and clothes for the next few years because it was the tribe law; but she secretly knew that the tribesmen would have been glad if she, too, had gone with her father beyond the ice.
It was true that in four years more Shug-la-wina, a boy of her own age, was bound to claim her as his bride. Yet there would be no dower to go with her. Her father's early end precluded that. And in this land of too many women a dowerless wife does not often find a ready welcome in her husband's arms.
IN THE mean time, Kerallkuk had led most of the villagers back to the scene of the disaster. It was to be noted that the priest, in spite of the fact that he had no less than seven of the most powerful keyukut at his beck and call, stayed close to his fellows as they neared the spot. It might be that the old she bear still lingered about, anxious to try her luck with human hunters again.
The fate of Tweegock was speedily determined. He lay with a broken neck at the edge of the ice; and his slayer, pierced through with a spear and one copper-tipped arrow, lay dead not twenty feet distant. Nenook was nowhere to be seen.
Amarok, father of Shug-la-wina, stopped and examined the spear.
"It is Tweegock's," he announced gravely. "He died fighting."
Such was no mean epitaph, even in this far land. The others nodded gravely. Then one of them picked up Kerallkuk's arrows and spear, lying unmarked with blood on the ice.
The little men, their slanting eyes sober and black, turned quietly to their priest. It was curious that his spear should be lying here, unreddened, when the natural place for it was the body of the dead bear, thrust deep in defense of Tweegock's life. Ordinarily they asked no explanations of their priest, but one Innuit does not leave another in the grasp of a wounded bear as long as he is himself armed.
The priest seemed to lack words at first. The truth was that his cunning mind was seeking desperately for an answer to the silent accusation in his people's facts. But slowly the sharp light came back into his narrow, slanting eyes.
"Wait—wait till I may call all the village to the Singing House," he told them mysteriously. "Then ye shall know what befell. Then ye shall not turn such looks into the face of thy priest again."
THAT night, when the silvery arctic dusk came down, the whole village gathered in the Singing House to hear Kerallkuk's story. Even little Coonee had been told to gather with the others. And in the wan light of a single lamp Kerallkuk made the whole matter plain.
"Now ye shall know the truth, ye who went with me to-day, and thou, little Coonee, daughter of him on whom the gods are avenged!"
His people caught their breaths at these words. There was more to it, then, than a mere accident of hunting, death in the fangs of the white bear. Amarok, richest man in the tribe, gasped audibly.
"What art thou saying, Angatkut?" By using Kerallkuk's title he showed himself willing to be convinced.
"The gods are avenged," Kerallkuk said again. "Ye know that Tweegock and I went forth together to hunt the seal. We saw, this side the ice-pack, what seemed at first a white bear—a half-grown bear, easy to slay with arrows. We moved toward it I with ready bows, and presently a spirit whispered in my ear."
The others nodded gravely. It was a known fact that Kerallkuk had no less than seven spirits who habitually held conversation with him.
"'That is not Nenook, the white bear,' the spirit told me. 'He has taken that form only to lead thee to disaster. O Kerallkuk beloved, turn aside quickly and walk with averted face as if thou hadst not seen! That is the great spirit, Kusiunek.'"
No wonder the whole tribe was breathless with excitement now. Of all the wicked deities that hold their sway over the ice-fields there is none, in the folk-lore of this particular tribe, that is half so terrible as Kusiunek. He can not only hound an individual to his destruction but he can lay a whole tribe down with fever, shatter them in their skin boats or destroy them by starvation.
The people did not doubt for an instant but that Kerallkuk told them true. It was wholly reasonable that Kusiunek; should take the form of a white bear. And now their childish hearts were choked with fear of what might come next.
"My people, when I heard this I seized Tweegock by the arm and told him what had just been told me," Kerallkuk went on solemnly. "Woe upon him, he did not heed me. 'It is only Nenook,' he told me.
"My people, I could not make him believe. He did not heed my words. He had forgotten that I was Kerallkuk, beloved of seven spirits. I tried to turn him again, but still he hastened on. And I went with him, to save him if I could.
"He shot his arrow, but he might as well have tried to pierce an iceberg as the heart of Kusiunek. With my own eyes I saw the shaft turn in the air, missing the breast, but bringing bright blood to Kusiunek's muzzle. And fire leaped from his eyes as he regarded Twegock.
"He did not deign to destroy Tweegock himself. He called once, in a voice not greatly different from my own, and one of his servants came to do his will. It was the white bear ye saw lying dead. Tweegock pierced her with his spear, a mortal wound, but it was like the lemming in battle with the fox. My own weapons were torn from my hand as if by a great wind. And when I looked again Tweegock and the white she bear lay dead, and Kusiunek had vanished on the wind."
It made a perfectly plausible story to the Innuits. It not only explained their priest's fallen spears but it was also likely to have an important influence in his future relations with the people. His reputation as a medicine-man was greatly enhanced now he had lived to tell of contact with Kusiunek himself. Kerallkuk had seen some indication of late of the tribesmen falling away from his control, but now there was bound to be a revival of devotion. They would be quick to obey him now, when they saw that death was the answer to disobedience. Better still, the enmity of Kusiunek would explain any failures in his own magic in the future.
"Is it thy belief, Angatkut, that Kusiunek will be content with this one life?" Amarok asked, with a curious tremor in his voice.
Kerallkuk waited a long time before he replied.
"I will pray to my spirits to intercede for us," he answered at last. "But ye know Kusiunek. An injury to him must often be repaid by destruction of all the people. Tweegock's spear stained the snow with his bright blood. Tweegock has already paid the price; how many more of us must pay I know not." He suddenly looked, with narrowing eyes, toward little Coonee. "Ye must not forget that his blood is among us still."
The people moved uneasily. It was true. It might be that the whole tribe must suffer because of Tweegock's deed, because Tweegock's child still dwelt among them. Little Coonee, from a mere economic problem, had become a veritable hoodoo.
KERALLKUK made good use of his adventure with Nenook for the two years that followed. Whenever his prophecies went awry, whenever he advised his people as to a good hunting-ground only to have them return to him empty-handed, it was always because Kusiunek, still unavenged, was haunting the tribe. It was Kusiunek that wakened the waves that wrecked the skin boat on the reefs beyond Kutki Island. It was Kusiunek who, riding behind a shattering army of icebergs, drove the people from their spring hunting-ground at the mouth of the Mitirk River. It was the same dread spirit that turned Kataktovick's kayak upside down, so that they found him dead in the icy water.
Because Nenook was growing to maturity in the same district that the tribe hunted, there was material in plenty to keep the tradition alive. Now and then one of the hunters caught sight of a fine young white bear that bore a scar, like a brand, across the bridge of his nose, thereupon losing interest in hunting and running all the way back to the shelter of his igloo.
Meanwhile, both Nenook and Coonee were growing up—the former to as magnificent a specimen of polar bear as the ice-gods ever beheld; the latter, except for the curse that was upon her, into as pretty an Innuit maid as ever delighted a whaler's heart. She was rather short, given to plumpness. Her teeth were white between merry lips; her slanting eyes were full of happy fights, and her features and facial fines were soft with friendliness. Her hand had gained considerable deftness since Tweegock's death, and no woman in the tribe could cut and sew a more beautiful parka of fur. And she was happy, too.
This was not because the people had forgotten that, through her father's offense against Kusiunek, she was the direct cause of all the bad luck that had come upon them. But she came of a breed that knew how to make the best of a bad situation. Maybe Kusiunek would forgive her soon, and then she would come into her own again. Shug-la-wina, to whom she was betrothed, would not seem so frightened and uneasy when he talked to her. The tribesmen would not act so strange and discomfited when she gathered with them in the Singing House.
The truth was—and she knew it very well—that Shug-la-wina would give a whole skin boat full of deer-hides if he could get out of the contract that his parents had made with Coonee's parents years agone. Bad luck dogs a man's steps continuously enough without marrying all the bad luck in the tribe. Coonee was pretty, and a warm heart beat under her jacket of fur, and her eyes, when not laughing, were sober and wistful in a way to make a man's heart leap; yet she was the daughter of Tweegock, who had scratched Kusiunek's nose with an arrow!
Shug-la-wina was perfectly sincere with himself about the whole thing. Under ordinary circumstances Coonee would make him the best possible little wife, but who wanted to ally himself with one who is hated by the gods? Love is one thing, a very important thing, even on these windy fields of ice, but a life of persecution by Kusiunek is quite another. Shug-la-wina looked with no pleasure on a marriage that would bring him under the curse of the evil one. It was really a tragic situation for little Coonee.
The thing seemed perfectly reasonable to her. She was Tweegock's daughter—as long as she remained in the tribe the evil Kusiunek would never cease his persecutions. Had not the priest said that she was flesh of Tweegock's flesh, blood of his blood? Nor did it seem inconsistent with Kusiunek's character that he should take out his vengeance on the whole tribe instead of wiping her directly out of the way with one blow. The love of one's own people is deep and true among the Innuits; the very rigor of their lives develops a strong tribal consciousness, and it was a heart-breaking thing to be the cause of all their misfortune. No wonder her thought sometimes took a dangerous turn!
ORPHAN girls are only a burden to the tribe, to begin with. And when one is not only a burden but a curse as well, it causes queer, creepy fancies to be born in the mind. Little Coonee, with her child's heart, could hardly give them admittance at first. Then there were long hours when she would lie awake in her robes, breathless and dry-eyed, letting them turn over and over in her brain. Old women, grandmothers of the people, often climbed to the high crags and leaped off into the Arsissut when they had become a burden to the tribe. And the thing that made the situation particularly fraught with danger was that little Coonee was a child of an Oriental race that has followed the arctic sea round from their forgotten homes in Asia. Like all her people, she was at heart a fatalist. The plan that came so dimly to her now was wholly in keeping with an Oriental code of life.
The third autumn after Tweegock's death was one of signal misfortune for her tribe. The seal-catch, to begin with, was tragically light. The schools of fish had swum far from their accustomed haunts this year, and the seal had followed them away. But Kerallkuk explained the situation by the hatred of an angry god—a myth that he had told so often that he was beginning to believe it himself.
The women worked early and late with the darts and snares in pursuit of the seabirds on the cliffs; but the skin sacks seemed to fill so slowly. It did not even seem to help matters to have little Coonee remain in her igloo instead of going with the women to the cliffs. Indeed, the catch seemed noticeably smaller than ever, but it was not to be thought of that the explanation might be found in the simple fact that Coonee was the most deft and skillful bird-snarer in the tribe. Kerallkuk whispered to Wunchee, and Wunchee managed to whisper it all over the encampment, that the great evil spirit, Kusiunek, was leading the birds away from the snares.
There was the beginning of real panic in the tribe when the salmon-catch failed too. The Eskimos gathered as usual at the bank of the Mitirk River; but the silver armies failed to come. Only a few of the great fish were taken in the nets; and this was real disaster. The Innuits depend upon the salmon for one of their greatest sources of winter food.
The shortage was general, not confined to their own village, but there was plenty of talk back and forth through the skin tents and in the Singing House, and no one took the further trouble to converse in whispers. The truth was all too plain. Had not Amarok seen a white bear standing in the shallow water just below the place where he had stretch his net?
The Eskimo has a lively imagination, and by the time Amarok had told his story six times over it would have done credit to Kerallkuk himself. It grew steadily better with repetition. On first telling, Amarok had seen the bear from far off; on the sixth, he had been close enough to see a black scar across its white muzzle and hear what it said to the salmon. "Turn back into the sea," the bear distinctly said to the silver fish. It was Kusiunek, of course, still haunting the village folk in the form of a white bear. "This wound I carry was given me by the father of one who still dwells in the village. Turn back and thus avoid their nets, O my servants!"
It was entirely logical. And his story was borne out strikingly by the turn of events the day the hunters waited at the ford for the caribou herd, the destruction of which was their last chance to procure winter food.
No wonder, since the seal- and salmon-catch had failed, every hunter in Coonee's tribe gathered above the ford on the Mitirk River when they saw the herd approaching from afar. The plan of the hunt was astonishingly simple. They would wait round the bend and above the ford, and when hundreds of animals had entered the water, shoot down the riffles to them in their kayaks, ply among them, thrusting swiftly with their spears, and with fair luck they could slaughter a hundred of the heavy beasts before the herd could escape.
It was a real crisis in the history of this little band of Eskimos. There were no other tribes to whom they could appeal for help. The failure of the hunt meant famine—and famine might easily mean death for all but the strongest and hardiest of the tribe.
The men quivered in their kayaks, braced with their paddles. When the animals were in the water, Amarok would signal; swiftly the little crafts would dart down the rapids among them. Swift and sure would be their spears, red the waters when the hunt was done. Even now the herd was drawing close; they could make out the snowy manes, the spreading, many-tined antlers of their leader. Now they were skirting a snowy butte hardly three hundred yards away.
But there was one other hunter waiting for the herd of which the tribesmen were totally unaware. Because his fur was white, he lay perfectly concealed in an irregularity in the snowy hillside, just beside the narrow valley through which the herd must pass. The wind blew his scent away; he made not the slightest motion that might betray his outline to the watchful eyes of the old herd-leader. Eager though the Innuits were, they had no conception of the blood-lust—the wild, exquisite hunting-madness that flamed through the veins of this great polar bear. They were merely men, and he was the monarch of the wild.
This was his destiny—the silent wait in ambush for the caribou herd. His great size, ten feet from tip to tip, the agility and power and the hunting-craft develop to a superlative degree all combined to make him the savage deer-slayer that he was. He had come honestly by his prowess. For three years, since that memorable spring day on the ice-pack, Nenook had lived the life ordained by the great Manitou for the polar bears. He had loved it ail—the long voyages on a drifting ice-floe through the arctic waters, the swimming, endless hours on delectable journeys of exploration among the crags that outcropped in the straits, the rough games with his companions, the ecstasy of hunting, the drowsy hours of sunlight, his back against an iceberg in the long summer days. But not once in all those three years had his powerful body been the lodge of the evil Kusiunek, or of any other spirit, for that matter. He was blissfully unconscious of the things old Kerallkuk was saying about him. He was a big, healthy, full-grown polar bear, and that, considering the joys of living, was all he cared about being. He had long acquaintance with the salmon that came up Mitirk River—they had been of the keenest interest to him as long as he could remember—but his associations with them were not at all as had been reported. He now and then scooped them out with a whizzing blow of his paw, but it was never for purposes of conversation. And he was still playing his own game in his own way as he waited for the caribou in the valley.
They drew slowly up to his ambush. He leaped like white water down a fall. And the old caribou bull died swiftly by one lightning stroke of his great white fore paw.
It did not particularly disturb him that his sudden appearance had set the whole herd in panic, and now they were racing away up the valley, into the wide tundra from which they would never retrace their steps. But the hunters, waiting in their kayaks, beheld the sight with sinking hearts and with a creepy terror that began at their toes and came out through the erect hair of their scalps. The caribou-hunt had missed fire. And their protruding eyes identified the creature that had wrecked their plans.
"It is Kusiunek!" the priest exclaimed, gasping—fully believing himself in the myth he had built up. For they could see plainly the black scar of an arrow-wound across the bear's white muzzle.
THE sun's stay in the sky was ever more brief. It flashed just an hour or two along the far southern horizon; then it was gone. The green ice locked down upon the sea, and the rivers were stricken dead in their beds. The cold rain changed to snow that never ceased falling until the entire arctic world, as far as the tired eyes could reach or the mind conceive, was an unbroken waste of white. The snow changed to ice-dust that blew along in a thousand flurries over those still and lifeless seas. Then the sun flashed once more at the horizon and failed to rise again. The Great Dark had fallen.
With the darkness came the bitter, blasting cold, cruel as the fangs of a wolf. It stole through the warm garments of fur, under the robes where little Coonee slept, through the thick walls of the igloos. All except the oldest and strongest of the white bears—those who knew every wile of hunting—were driven against their will into hibernation. Such other living things as were left abroad the snow were only the small white foxes that yapped in the darkness, like the ghosts of the dead, and the white wolves that slipped like evil spirits over the moonlit snow.
The northern lights played in almost ceaseless glory in the pale sky. A frozen moon looked down over a frozen world. Kerallkuk's eyes were no longer sharp and cunning when he spoke of spirits. He knew of a magic greater than his own. Spirits were abroad in that strange, grim grayness outside his igloo more terrible than any to whom he had chanted in the Singing House.
Sometimes, when the ball-players that made the northern lights were resting in the sky, and when the moon's face was hidden, the night that pressed upon the village was black beyond any reach of thought. At such times cold horror gripped the heart, and the marrow froze in the bones at the yapping cry of a fox outside the igloo. Then there were nights, vaguely dim, when the stars emerged in countless multitudes, icy bright, remote, watching with eternal indifference the grim, pathetic battle that was waged below. Sometimes the storms swept in from the sea—stinging clouds of ice-dust borne through the night, bellowing winds in which the voices of a thousand malignant spirits were mingled in awful harmony. But mostly there was only the grayness—the eternal monotone of the deep twilight on the snow.
It was even worse than the smothering darkness. It was so wan, so cold, so unutterably dreadful! Hour after hour, week upon week, with only a measured deepening and paling alternately of the twilight that lay over the world. One man could see another's face dimly, yet plain enough to behold the glitter of incipient madness in his slanting eyes. Nothing was distinct; nothing was clear-cut. The very familiar sea was lost in unutterable strangeness. In such a time did the Kotki Island people come face to face with famine.
Famine could be endured—with that cold fatalism with which the Innuits, till they die, endure all misfortune—but it was the darkness that came with it that broke their hearts and their spirits. It was unspeakably terrible to meet famine in the darkness. The superstition that hounded them might have been grimly humorous before, but it was stark tragedy now. It is not bad to die, for death calls all the people in the end, but it is tragic to live under the scourge of fear. Already the lamps burned low and dim from the shortage of the precious seal-oil. The last of their little stores of food were gone from the igloos. A few days more, and the lights would burn down and out, and the lives of all except the strongest tribesmen would burn out too. Kusiunek's vengeance was complete.
BUT now the thoughts that had come at first so dimly into little Coonee's mind had taken definite form. It was not right that the tribe should perish because of her. Perhaps even now the dread spirit that hated her might be propitiated and the curse of famine removed. So it came about that, in one strange, soundless hour, little Coonee knew the strength of a great resolve.
No human being saw her leave the igloo and, like a ghost itself, steal through the shadows to the Singing House. Mostly the people lay in their igloos, watching the lamps burn down to darkness. Nor did the priest hear the song she sung—a queer rising and falling song in a wonderfully sweet, earnest voice—a chant that was the Innuit's prayer for atonement. Her black eyes were glistening with tears as she stood silent at last with lifted arms. She was only a child still—the darkness was terrible to face alone.
But not one instant did she weaken.
"I come, Kusiunek!" she said, trying hard to speak steadily and strong. "I will go to thee, and thou shalt have my soul in payment for what my father did to thee. Then thou wilt not wreak vengeance further on the people. Then thou wilt save them—thou wilt bring them the seal and the caribou—and break the famine. Kusiunek, for them I come to you, into thine own shadows!"
Little Coonee paused, shivering with terror. She wondered if Kusiunek would wait for her to come to him in the shadows, or whether he would reach into the Singing House, now that she had given herself, and take her now. Then the people would find only her lifeless form on the skin floor of the temple.
But there was no answer from the night. She turned, stealing once more into the pale gloom without.
Impelled by a woman's instinct she could not suppress, she made her way to the igloo where Shug-la-wina lived with his parents. The youth was lying on a bed of skins, and his interest quickened when he saw in the lamplight the dazed look on the girl's white face. She swiftly and quietly made her way to him, and knelt for a moment at his side.
"Shug-la-wina, I go to Kusiunek," she told him simply.
He nodded slowly, his own face turning white. He had already guessed the girl's intention. It was the fitting thing for the hated of the gods to do. Yet his hand shook, and he could not hold it still.
"Thou knowest—where to find Kusiunek?" the boy asked slowly.
"Straight north he has his igloo. Thou knowest the hunters have glimpsed him many times in past days—taking the form of the white bear with the wounded muzzle. Less than an hour's walk—straight north. And then Kusiunek will bring food to the tribe and harass them no more."
It was true that the white bear with the scarred muzzle had been seen several times of late, always in the region of the low hills that stood beside the sea, just to the north. It was Kusiunek, of course, and it was wholly reasonable that he had his igloo on the beach, back of those snowy hills. Of course, the hunters did not care to go near and determine its exact location. They had no wish to attract the attention of the evil god. And if they needed further proof of the creature's identity, they found it in the fact that the bear had remained for days in practically this same spot, instead of wandering the hundred inlets in a single night after the manner of bears. Unquestionably little Coonee had only to walk straight north, and sooner or later she would encounter Kusiunek.
Shug-la-wina shivered.
"Thou—thou wilt not return?" he asked.
There was a certain amount of anxiety behind the question. It is not good to behold again one who has gone to an evil god. Even when common death takes any of the people, the Innuits have little wish to have them return. It is enough that they should sometimes cry softly in the darkness outside the igloo. Shug-la-wina remembered that he was betrothed to Coonee, and if she did return, after her dread surrender to Kusiunek, likely she would visit this very igloo. The thought was ice on the youth's heart.
"Nay," the girl answered quietly. "Thou wilt not see thy betrothed again."
It was true. In spite of the nameless terror that devoured her heart, it was her firm intention to walk straight north, never to return to the beloved huts of snow. Kusiunek himself would destroy her, or else, as in Tweegock's case, some one of his agents—a wild beast or perhaps merely cold and hunger—would do his work for him. It was farewell between these two.
"Thou wilt save the people," Shug-la-wina told her, trying in vain to hold his voice steady. He looked into her glistening, dark eyes. "The loss is mine. We were betrothed."
"Yes—beloved!" All at once bright tears rolled down the girl's cheeks. "Wilt thou make wide thy arms, Shug-la-wina? Wilt thou let me lie close to thy breast—for the sake of what was to have been mine? Only for one breath——"
The boy moved to make room for her beside him, and for a long, dreamlike moment they lay breast to breast, these two guileless children of the ice-fields, forgetting for a moment the tragic superstitions the price of which was to be little Coonee's life. The brown cheeks pressed close, and then the girl, dry-eyed, got to her feet. The youth stood beside her.
"Amna-ah-ya," he pronounced slowly, quietly, in measured syllables, invoking the Eskimo gods in her behalf. "Amna-amna-ah-ya."
The girl smiled dimly, then, bending, removed from her boots her white bird-skin gloves and slipped them on her brown hands, showing in an instant that her forthcoming deed was of religious significance. Then she crept through the long snow passage, a small figure crushed with the black horror of the invisible, and her steps were soft on the snow as she headed straight north toward a fate she dared not guess.
WALKING at a respectful distance, the entire tribe, led by Shug-la-wina, followed the white-faced girl onto the ice-fields. They had no wish to come too close or to go too far; but if the girl were to vanish in a column of flame or in any other spectacular way, they wished to be on hand to behold it. For the first mile or two, however, nothing of the least excitement came to pass.
They could really see quite plainly into the wan grayness of the night. The moon was out, and the snow, like a great white mirror, accentuated what light there was. Besides, the northern lights had just resumed their wan, mysterious display in the far reaches of the sky. They could make out the girl's form plainly enough at the edge of the deeper shadow, pushing bravely on into the haunted dusk. And all at once a deep, troubled gasp passed from mouth to mouth as they discerned, a quarter of a mile farther on, the form of a great white bear.
It was true. Kusiunek was waiting. Already the girl was drawing nigh to his secret places, the ice-bound beach just beyond a low range of snowy hills. Among the grotesque ice-forms she would find his igloo, never to return to them again.
Now they saw with amazement that the bear had turned and was hastening away as if in flight. But their faithful priest had a perfectly satisfactory explanation for Kusiunek's unexpected conduct.
"He is leading her to his igloo," Kerallkuk told his people. "See! She follows him."
Yes; they could see plainly that the girl trudged on in the great creature's trail; but they could not watch her for long. The bear was on the low hills when they first saw him, and presently he vanished on the opposite side. In an instant more the girl had passed the crest of the hill and had likewise disappeared. Whatever grim fate would be hers would evidently come to pass on the ice-locked shore beyond the hills.
"She is gone," Kerallkuk said in a sepulchral voice. "We shall never see her again."
"Thou wilt not have us follow farther?" Shug-la-wina asked in a queer, breathless voice.
Kerallkuk hesitated. Surely the sensible course was to return to their igloos and leave little Coonee to her fate. Yet in his heart he had a great deal of curiosity as to what form this fate would take; and surely there was safety in numbers. They might push on to the top of the hills, at least. Surely Kusiunek would be content with the human sacrifice; and if the spectators did not push too close——
"Perhaps—a little farther," the priest returned. "When I am here, no harm can befall. Lead on, Shug-la-wina."
For it was just as well to have some one else walk in front, in case of accidents. And now the entire little tribe was pushing up the low range behind which little Coonee had just vanished.
NOT one of them could tell what he expected to see when he gained the crest. Certainly it would be something horrible. Their eyes shone with excitement as they mounted higher; their brown faces were pale as far as paleness was possible to such complexions, and sometimes they paused uncertainly in scattered groups. And in the faint, flickering gleam of the northern lights, it was a scene never to forget.
"We may find her lying still, just as we found Tweegock," the priest told them, feeling it was just as well to make as many prophecies as possible. "Perhaps Kusiunek will have already devoured her, or carried her to his great white igloo——"
But at that instant the priest's words died on his lips. There came a most astounding interruption.
Little Coonee herself, running like a deer, suddenly appeared just above them on the crest of the hill. The first thought that flashed through the tribesmen's minds was that she was fleeing, and probably Kusiunek himself was in pursuit; and they all but broke and fled themselves in wild and frenzied panic. The only thing that saved them was the sound that little Coonee made. It was the merriest, most joyful peal of laughter that any of them had ever heard.
"The girl has the madness!" Kerallkuk managed to say, bent on horror to the last. But, some way, the happy laugh that rang down to them did not sound like the cry of one who is suddenly demented. Besides a wondrous elation, Shug-la-wina felt a curious tide of embarrassment surging through him; and the blood mounted so hot and bright in his cheeks that it showed through some years' accumulation of grease.
"I have the madness, have I?" little Coonee answered saucily, in a way that no Innuit should ever address the priest. She had heard Kerallkuk's words, and she only laughed the merrier. For an instant she danced among her people in mad glee; and then, seizing Shug-la-wina by the hand, raced with him to the top of the ridge.
It was the hand of a living girl, not a ghost—Shug-la-wina could determine that fact through the bird-skin glove. Evidently no great harm had befallen her on the shore beyond. So he ran cheerfully beside her, and in a moment had gained the crest. And no wonder she had come dancing back in happiness!
Still running as fast as his four white legs could carry him, the great form of the white bear was already growing dim in the distant shadows. There could be no further doubt that the animal was running away! Nenook was a valiant hunter. He had slain the musk-oxen and caribou, but he did not care to come to grips with the tall form that had deliberately chased him over the snow. Like all sensible bears, Nenook had a healthy respect for human beings. Ever since the arrow had scraped off the skin of his nose, he had made it a point to keep well out of the way of his fur-clad neighbors, and he had made no exception of little Coonee, bent on yielding her brave, cheerful life for the good of her people.
The sacrifice, Shug-la-wina saw, had not come to pass. And in the same glance he saw the curse that had been upon the tribe was broken at last.
Stretched out a full seventy feet on the shore lay a vast, towering form—nothing more or less than the frozen body of a great whale cast upon the beach just before the last great freeze. No wonder Nenook had been seen so often on the snowy hills behind—no wonder he had lingered here instead of roaming far and wide after the usual custom of his breed. A great tear at one side showed where the white glutton had been eating his fill day after day for the past weeks. But one hundred tons of rich flesh and blubber remained—enough to sustain the whole tribe and to keep bright every lamp in the village clear until the spring brought the seal again.
LATER that night Amarok gave a great feast in honor of the savior of the tribe. Amarok felt it was his right, much more than the right of little Coonee's foster-parents—for in a short time more the girl was coming to his own igloo to live as his son's wife. It was a known fact that he had not been so proud and glad a few hours before that Shug-la-wina and little Coonee were engaged. But now he seemed to feel that special honor was due him on account of it.
The lamps burned bright with whale-oil—as soft and warm a light as ever shone in any home in any land. Every stomach was packed with whale-meat until it could receive no more. Even old Kerallkuk, who had acted rather disgruntled at first and had felt that he was discredited for good and all, fell to with good cheer and devoured boiled whale-meat until he could no longer stand erect.
Thereafter, lying flat on his back, he made a very creditable little speech. It was better, he considered, to fly with the wind than let it beat him down.
"I was right, after all," he said in the stillness. "The great and evil Kusiunek walked in the body of the bear."
His full-fed people opened sleepy eyes and gazed at him.
"Then why—" Shug-la-wina began.
"Wait, thou favored youth! It was Kusiunek we saw to-day, not merely Nenook, the bear. Why, ye ask me, did he then flee from Coonee, leaving his meat to us? My people, it was because Coonee also is blessed with powerful spirits." At the questioning grunts he heard on all sides he waved his fat hands. "I know it is not often that women are blessed with keyukut. When they are, they are thrice blessed. My people, she will grow to be great, to command the spirits of the air and the sea and the ice—even greater than I, Kerallkuk. Already my own spirits have told me of her might. Even Kusiunek could not conquer her; but to win her favor he led her to his own meat. My people, she is beloved of the gods!"
After all, it was quite a reasonable explanation. The tribesmen were perfectly willing to accept it. They nodded sleepily, gasping somewhat from the lack of air in the room. It was good to be full-fed, to see the lamps burning bright, and old Kerallkuk was quite a satisfactory priest. And little Coonee was particularly delighted. The dower she would bring her husband was greater than a boat-load of such riches as implements and skins—nothing less than a command over the spirits of the sea and the ice and the air. Kerallkuk said so himself.
As she drifted off into slumber she was vaguely and deliciously aware that, somehow, Shug-la-wina had crept close and had lifted her sleepy head upon his shoulder.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1959, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 64 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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