It was not long before many white mounds appeared beneath the liquid stars.  The old and the very young, unable to endure the rigorous cold and dearth of food, passed into the mysterious unknown of which the long dark of earth is only the portal.  After the passing of the first moon the storms came; the sky blackened; the winds voiced the desolate woe of millions of aerial creatures.  Terrific snow storms kept the tribe within their shelters for days.  Often the winds tore away the membrane windows of their snow houses, and blasts of frigid cold dissipated the precious warmth within.  In the lee of circular walls of ice, right at the immediate entrance of the houses, the natives kept their dogs.  Inside they had only room for the mother dogs, which at this period brought into being litters of beautiful little puppies with which the Eskimo children played.  Outside, scores of splendid animals, which could not be sheltered, were frozen to death in great drifts.  These, during the following days, were dug out and used as food both for men and the living animals.

During a quiet period between storms, Ootah, venturing from his shelter, heard a shuffling noise near his igloo.  In the northern sky a creamy light palpitated, and in one of the quick flares he saw a bear nosing about the village.  He called his dogs and they soon surrounded the animal.  Fortunately the incandescent light of the aurora increased—­now and then a ribbon of light, palpitant with every color of the rainbow, was flung across the sky.  Ootah lifted his harpoon lance—­the sky was momentarily flooded with light—­he struck.  In the next flare he saw the bear lying on the ice—­his lance had pierced the brute’s heart.  Attracted by the barking of Ootah’s dogs, several tribesmen soon joined him in dressing the animal.  During their task, one suddenly beckoned silence, and whispered softly: 

“The Voice . . . the Voice . . .”  And they paused.

A weird whistling sound sang eerily through the skies.  The air, electrified, seemed to snap and crackle.  It was the voice that comes with the aurora.

The knives fell from the natives’ hands.  The howling of the hungry dogs was stilled.  In hushed awe, in reverence, with vague wondering, they listened.  Ootah was on his knees.  An inspired light transfigured his face.  His pulses thrilled.  For what they heard was, to them all, the Voice of the Great Unknown, He whose power is greater than that of Perdlugssuaq, He who made the world, created the Eternal Maiden Sukh-eh-nukh, and placed all the stars in the skies, who, never coming Himself earthward, instead sends in the aurora His spirits with messages of hope and encouragement to men, and Whose Voice sometimes, far, far away, itself comes as the faintly remembered music of long by-gone dreams preceding birth . . .  Yea, it was the Voice . . . the Voice . . .

And now, out of the black-blue sky, as if released from invisible hands, great globes of swimming liquid fire floated constantly, and dispersing into millions of feathery flakes of opal light, melted softly . . .  Along the lower heavens there was a fugitive flickering of a rich creamy light, as of the reflection of celestial fires far beyond the horizon.