With a rumbling crash that reverberated above the storm the field separated into countless tossing fragments.  The cake on which the terror-stricken party cowered swirled dizzily in an eddy of the released foaming waters.  On all sides the inky waves seethed up among the crevices of the sundering floes.  To the south Ootah heard the breakers booming against the ice cliffs, which perilously barred the currents of the angry sea.  The caps of the curling waves took on a pale white and appalling luminesence.

“The faces of the dead!” cried Maisanguaq in superstitious terror.  “From the bosom of Nerrvik they come to greet us.”

Ootah, however, felt no fear.  For once he felt unheedful of those in the other world.  His mind was occupied with a more immediate interest—­that of saving the life of the woman he loved.

With quick presence of mind, Ootah grasped the rear upstander of the sled, which had begun to slide to and fro, and planted his harpoon in the ice.

“Thy axe!” he shouted.  Maisanguaq passed the axe.  Ootah grappled for it in the darkness.  “Hold the harpoon,” he directed.  Mechanically Maisanguaq groped for the harpoon and held it while Ootah, with his one free hand, lifted the axe and drove it into the ice.  With the other hand he still gripped the unconscious woman.  Her hair swished about his legs in the howling wind.  Maisanguaq planted his own weapon in the ice on the opposite side of the sledge, and Ootah, with unerring strokes, hardly able to see it in the darkness, pounded it firmly into the ice.

“Thy lashings,” he called.  Maisanguaq passed a coil of skin rope.

About the improvised stakes which secured the sled Ootah whipped the lashings, then he passed them under and over the sled until it was securely pinioned.  Very gently he placed Annadoah upon the mass of walrus meat and lashed her body in turn to the sled and about the stakes.  With Maisanguaq’s assistance he tied the cowering dogs to the harpoons.  This done, the two men, benumbed and dazed, clung to the anchor for support.

As the severed ice cakes dispersed, a curling wave lifted the floe on which they clung high on its crest and tossed it southward.  As it rose on the surging breakers Ootah felt the dread presence of Perdlugssuaq ready to strike.  Each time they made swift, sickening descents in the seething troughs he felt all consciousness pass away.  On all sides the waves hissed.  Torrents of water swept over the floe.  Ootah felt his limbs freezing; he felt his arms becoming numb.  He feared that at any moment he should lose his grip and be swept into the raging sea.  Then he thought of Annadoah and conjured new courage.  For a while the dogs whined—­then they became silent.  One already was drowned.  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.