Читать книгу The Last of the Gentlemen Adventurers: Coming of Age in the Arctic - Edward Maurice Beauclerk - Страница 14

IV

I HAD LOST TRACK of the days during our expedition. Somehow it had not seemed to be of any importance what day it was. I was pleased to discover on our return from the hunting trip that it was Saturday night, and though this did not have the same significance up north as in less remote spots, it was special in one way. The Canadian broadcasting authorities used the CKY Winnipeg station, after the usual broadcast programme had closed down, to relay messages from friends and relations in the outside world to the men and women of the Arctic.

This was the only channel of communication from the south at this time, so practically all northerners spent the early hours of Sunday morning with their heads glued to their radio receivers.

Our set was of uncertain temperament. With the greatest of care and gentle tuning, Alan would bring in the Winnipeg station, often quite clearly, for a period before our programme started, but as soon as the announcer began the messages, the trouble commenced and the old set would go off into shrieking oscillation. Sometimes holding an admonitory finger about an inch in front of the receiver would do the trick, but only so long as there was no movement, for the slightest variation of position would upset everything, bringing on the howling with renewed vigour.

I once got a message through from my mother, who had left for New Zealand during the autumn after my departure, to say that they were safe and well after a severe earthquake. This I heard quite clearly, though I had not known about the disaster. Had it not been for Alan’s patient determination with this infuriating piece of equipment, we should have heard nothing at all. As it was, quite often we received at least part of the programme.

On Sunday mornings, Geordie would pad across from his bedroom into the little storeroom and bring out a tin of English sausages. They came in a very special, superior-looking tin and were as different from the ordinary sausages, which flopped like congealed sawdust out of a large can, as a tender beef steak is from a hunk of old bull walrus meat. On the morning after my return, however, we had to pay for our treat. The water supply had run low, and as all the Eskimos would be going to church, Alan and I would have to hoof it back and forth to the river to fill the tank.

Meanwhile, Geordie supervised the preparations of the lunch, consisting of juicy leg of caribou, with roast potatoes and green peas (tinned). Alan came in time to make the gravy since neither Geordie or Ooloo were competent in this department. To round things off, I prepared the peaches and ‘cream’.

After our repast, we relapsed into inactivity for a while, then Alan went off to develop some photographs (using the storeroom as a darkroom) and, as Geordie spread himself very inelegantly over two chairs and fell asleep, I had a look at the books in our bookcase. The selection ranged from Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations to a lurid thriller entitled Blood Ran Down the Bishop’s Face. Heaven knew where the books had come from, probably some good-hearted soul had packed all the unwanted volumes from their library into a box and sent them off to us. In the end I settled for a year-old copy of the New York Times that carried a report of the great stock market collapse which heralded the terrible 1930s depression.

Early the next week, a whole campload of Eskimos came in by boat to collect their outfit for the coming fur-trapping season. There were about a dozen hunters with their families packed into two boats. This was quite an occasion, so biscuits and tea were made available in our kitchen for the travellers. As they were related to Ooloo, they were of course specially welcomed by her, though all visitors were entitled to the welcoming tea and biscuits.

The leading hunter and his family were the first to come in. The man’s name was Evitook. He and his family were well dressed and prosperous looking. They wore new clothes which had obviously been made with great care by an expert seamstress, intricate designs having been worked with the different shades of the skins. The man had about him that air of easy confidence common to people possessing a professional ability of a high order, and some of these hunters were undoubtedly highly able men. Kilabuk stood by to act as his interpreter, so when Evitook had finished his tea they came into the guardroom for him to have his say.

‘Assioyotiddley,’ the hunter greeted Geordie. (This roughly means, ‘It’s so long since I have seen you that I thought you were lost.’)

‘Hello Evitook,’ Geordie replied. The people had grown so accustomed to this greeting from traders that among themselves they frequently referred to us as the ‘halloo-alloos’. ‘Everything all right?’ asked Geordie politely.

‘We are well,’ replied the hunter, ‘but there has been much wind during the summer and we have not always been able to go hunting.’

To a trader this sort of opening sounds ominous. When the people have bad news, they lead up to it gradually, beating about the bush until they consider the manager to be in a fit frame of mind to stand whatever it is he has to hear.

‘Here the hunting has been good,’ fenced Geordie.

‘From the north this fiord has some shelter. Across the bay our inlet is open to the north.’

‘Did you catch any seals in the nets we lent you?’ Geordie was referring to the seal nets that Evitook had borrowed during the spring.

‘A few only. One of the nets was badly torn by a shark and we lacked the twine for repairs. The other we lost and have only just found it again.’

‘Then I suppose that you are short of dog food for the winter,’ said Geordie, bowing as he thought to the inevitable, though there are many possibilities to such a conversation.

‘No, we have sufficient meat for the dogs. In the last moon the walrus came up to the point of land just beyond our camp.’

‘Good. How many did you kill?’

‘We have seven carcasses and this will last us for most of the winter.’

Geordie was becoming suspicious.

‘Have you damaged one of the boats?’