14 Arctic Adventure (11 page)

Roger drew his parka around over his face. His breath made his face damp. He pulled his parka away in order to see. At once the moisture on his skin froze and his face was encased in ice. Even his eyelids were frozen together. He could dimly see through his lashes.

‘Why did that happen?’ he wanted to know.

‘It’s a lot colder here than on the ice cap,’ said Hal.

‘I’ll run around and get warm,’ Roger said.

‘You’d better not. You will sweat and the sweat will turn to ice. Then you’ll be covered from top to toe with ice.’

Crash, crash, crash. More and more icebergs where there were plenty already.

‘What good are icebergs anyhow?’ Roger said. ‘Why don’t the engineers find a way to prevent them?’

‘They have tried,’ said Hal. ‘They have shot them with cannon. They have bombed them. They’ve drilled and blasted them. They have painted them black to make them melt more quickly. All these measures have failed.’

‘But surely they must melt after a while.’

‘Yes, after a while. But it’s a good long while. An iceberg will last more than a year. Very large icebergs take much longer to melt. Some bergs are seven hundred feet high and weigh eight million tons. They may last for years. Storms make them crash into each other and chip off ice. But not enough is chipped off to have any great effect.’

They put up the tent and anchored it firmly so that the wind would not blow it away. Then Hal said, ‘Let’s take a walk.’

‘Where?’

‘Out on this glacier.’

‘But the glacier will take us out and drop us into the sea.’

‘I think we can get off in time,’ said Hal. ‘It only moves very slowly.’

So they walked on the groaning, grinding glacier, which was not as smooth as they expected. It had many furrows and ridges and holes. Roger got tired and went back to the tent. He crawled into his sleeping bag to warm up. He took a nap — then was roused by a scream louder than the crashing of icebergs.

He jumped out to see what was going on. He saw his brother falling through space. Hal had gone out too far on the glacier as it reached out over the sea, and when it broke off he went down with it. There, far below, was Hal floating away on an iceberg.

What could Roger do? Even if he could get down the 300-foot cliff he could do nothing. Hal’s berg was already too far away.

‘If only I had a boat,’ Roger thought.

There must be someone, somewhere, living on top of this cliff. Roger ran north through deep snow. He did just what Hal had warned him against. He began to sweat, and the sweat turned to ice. Now he was an ice man and could hardly move his joints. There was no sign of a house or hut or igloo. No one was fool enough to live here.

He turned about and ran south. All he accomplished was to make more sweat which turned into more ice on his body.

He looked out to sea, hoping he could signal a ship. There was no ship to be seen. No ship was likely to sail into this ocean of icebergs.

He must do something about this coat of ice he was wearing. It was getting more and more difficult to move.

He went into the tent and lit the little camp stove. Then he took off all of his clothes and stood as stiff as a statue while his icy armour began to melt. When it had turned to water and run off him he dried himself with a towel and dressed. Then he went out and looked but he could not see Hal now. His iceberg had floated too far away.

He felt like crying but he was too old to cry. He was a big boy and a big boy should be able to do something. But he was helpless. He went back inside and got into his sleeping bag.

He could not sleep. Every time he was about to drift off he thought someone had left him all alone at the North Pole.

‘Never mind,’ he told himself. ‘When Hal gets beyond the iceberg area some ship will come along and rescue him.’

If only Pete would come back now rather than wait two or three days. Pete would know what to do. He could fly south and perhaps he would find Hal.

But it was four sleeps before Pete came back.

‘Hal is way off somewhere floating on an iceberg. He hasn’t had any food for four days and he must be just about dead.’

‘Let’s go find him,’ said Pete.

They flew away in the direction that Hal’s iceberg had floated. They did not find the floating boy. They searched among all the icebergs but caught no sight of him.

Roger, with sinking heart, said, ‘Let’s go outside the iceberg area.’

They went outside and within an hour they came upon a small fishing vessel and there was Hal upon its deck as neat and fat and chipper as ever.

The helicopter came near and hovered above the deck. A rope ladder was lowered and Hal climbed to the helicopter. He waved his thanks to the captain of the fishing boat.

Roger’s first question was, ‘Did you get anything to eat?’

‘I was three days without anything to chew but the iceberg,’ Hal said. ‘Then we floated outside the ice pack and this fishing boat took me in and fed me.’

Roger was happy — and angry.

‘You gave me the heebie-jeebies,’ he said.

Hal smiled, ‘Sorry, my boy, that you had to eat alone while I starved on an iceberg.’

Roger was too glad to get his brother back to do any more grouching.

They flew back to the cliff and struck camp, climbed aboard the helicopter again, and in four hours were in their own igloo, where Nanook gave them a warm and sloppy reception, standing up on his hind feet and licking their faces as if they had been away for a year instead of only four days.

‘We’ve got to get a polar bear to send home,’ said Hal.

‘We already have one,’ said Roger. ‘Nanook.’

Hal said, ‘We’d hate to part with Nanook. He’s a member of our family. I mean this little family that we have in our igloo. Nanook and you and myself. And he’s so fond of us I doubt he’d be happy without us.

‘Where would we go to get another? Up on the ice cap?’

‘We might go miles without finding one,’ said Hal. ‘I think the best place to get one is Hudson Bay. They say there are plenty of them in a town called Churchill.’

Roger laughed. ‘We go to town to find a polar bear?’

‘I know it seems strange —but that’s just where you would find a lot of them. Right in town on the main street.’

‘You’re kidding. Where did you get that crazy idea?’

‘From an article in the Smithsonian. That’s the official magazine of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. It’s the national museum of the United States. I think we can believe anything they say.’

‘But how do we get there?’

‘A brig is sailing for Churchill tomorrow. We’ll be on it. Don’t expect any luxuries. It’s no ocean liner. Usually a brig just carries sails. But this one has both sails and engine. I think it will get us there without trouble.’

It wasn’t Hal’s fault that he was making a wrong guess. He couldn’t foresee the coming hurricane.

Two hours after they boarded the little vessel, the sky exploded. A terrific wind had come up. It was so violent that it threatened to carry away the sails, so they had to be brought down. The wind shrieked and wailed. A violent ice storm attacked the little vessel.

There was a grinding and thrashing sound as millions of tons of ice under the force of the gale beat upon the small ship. Ice floes ten or twenty feet thick screeched and roared as they attacked the brig.

No boiler factory could produce such a racket. The Arctic Ocean has been called the silent sea, but there was no silence aboard the Happy Waters. Hal and Roger, side by side as they clung to a mast in order to avoid being blown away, could not hear each other speak.

They wanted to go down below and get into their bunks, but then they would miss the show. It wasn’t every day that you could see a hurricane in action. Everybody else was below except the captain.

They were ploughing through Melville Bay, which has the reputation of being the most dangerous in the Arctic. It was full of icebergs. They did not soar seven hundred feet high like those on the east coast. But even icebergs twice as tall as the ship presented a great danger. The brig was strongly built but the best hull can’t stand a million tons of ice leaning against it.

Since only one-eighth of an iceberg shows above the surface, the seven-eighths below the surface is very likely to cause trouble. Time and time again the brig was nearly upset by the part of an iceberg reaching out below her keel. Once she tipped so far to starboard that all the passengers below fell out of their bunks. Sometimes the brig stuck fast and only the screaming wind was strong enough to move it onward.

The gale was roaring like a lion. The captain tried to bring his ship around into the lee of an iceberg where it would get less wind. He had no sooner done this than the iceberg that sheltered the brig was pushed into another berg and the ship was squeezed between them. Since both bergs slanted, the ship was hoisted up in the air until she was raised ten feet above the raging sea.

There she was, no longer tipping and teetering, but so still that the passengers put their heads up to see if the boat was in some harbour. They were astonished to see their craft stuck up in the air above the dashing waves. Now for a little time at least the ship was still and they had a chance to get over their seasickness.

But this was not getting them to Churchill. And the captain was distressed for fear the pressure on both sides would break the hull. Then everything and everybody would go down to the bottom, where there was perfect peace and death. For twelve hours the ship remained suspended in the air.

The passengers complained about the bothersome bergs.

Hal told them, ‘There’s only one nice thing about bergs. That drink you are swallowing wouldn’t be half as good without icebergs.’

‘You’re off your head,’ said one gruff fellow. ‘What do icebergs have to do with a drink?’

‘The ice in it is the very best. Greenland exports iceberg ice all over the world. Every summer at least ten Greenland icebergs are cut into small chunks and shipped abroad. They have a trade name, ‘Greenland Iceberg Rocks’.’

The passengers grinned and rattled the ‘Rocks’ m their glasses. For the moment they were amused, but soon became grouchy again.

One complained to the captain. ‘Why don’t you do something?’ he asked angrily.

‘If you tell me what to do,’ said the captain, ‘I’ll do it.’

‘Well,’ said the man, ‘it’s perfectly simple. Just push one of the bergs away and the ship will drop into the water.’

The captain smiled. ‘Suppose you push it away. I’m sure it doesn’t weigh more than a million tons.’

Finally the hurricane passed and the powerful wind that had held the two bergs in place relaxed. The ship slid into the sea, and the voyage continued. Passing through Hudson Strait, the brig crossed Hudson Bay to the small town called Churchill.

Hal and Roger walked into a small hotel on the Churchill waterfront and asked the man at the desk for a room.

‘Yes, I have one room left. Number eight on the ground floor. You’ll find it easily. The door is open.’

They found the open door and walked into their room. But the room was already occupied. Hal stopped and stared. He could hardly believe what he saw.

‘I’ll be hornswoggled,’ he said.

Sitting on a low stool was a polar bear.

‘Let’s get out of here— fast,’ said Roger.

‘Wait a minute,’ Hal said. The bear did not even look at them. He seemed to be very much at home. He did not move.

The boys went back to the office. ‘There’s a bear in our room,’ said Hal.

‘Don’t let that bother you,’ said the proprietor.

‘Why shouldn’t it bother us?’ Hal demanded.

‘Just let him be. Sooner or later he’ll walk away.’

‘Is it a tame bear?’

‘Far from it. He’s as wild as they come. He could kill you with one swat if he didn’t like you. In Churchill we are very careful not to annoy our bears.’

‘You mean that the bears come first?’

‘Always. You see, we have more bears than people.

The population of Churchill consists of sixteen hundred people and two or three thousand bears. But not all the year long. Sometimes no bears at all—sometimes thousands. I can promise that if you stay a few months you will find no bears in Churchill.’

‘A few months!’ exclaimed Hal. ‘We can’t stay here more than a few days.’

‘Then you may as well prepare to enjoy our bears. We like them. Sure, they kill a few of us every year. But most of them are all right if you just leave them alone. If you get a polar bear cross he’s far more dangerous than a grizzly. So, go easy.’

They went back and peeked into their room. The bear had gone.

They flopped down on the beds to rest a while after the hard trip on the brig.

Then they went out to see the town. In the main street there were more bears than people. Why did the police allow this?

‘It’s too small a town to have a police force,’ said Hal. ‘But there’s a Mountie.’

‘What’s a Mountie?’ asked Roger.

‘A member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police,’ said Hal.

The man who was called a Mountie because he was mounted on a horse, leaned down when Hal spoke to him.

Hal asked him, ‘What do you do when one of these bears makes trouble? Do you shoot it?’

‘Never, unless we have to,’ said the Mountie. ‘There’s a law that protects the bears. There are only about twelve thousand, of them still left in Canada. We don’t want them to disappear entirely. If you kill one you go to jail — unless the bear has already killed you.’

‘So your main job’, said Hal, ‘is to protect the bears, not the people.’

‘Of course we protect the people. But there’s no danger that they will disappear from the earth. So our main concern is to look out for the welfare of the bears. There’s a Bear Patrol truck that keeps moving all day and all night around Churchill to see that the bears don’t hurt people and the people don’t hurt the bears.’

‘One more question, officer. We represent an agency to provide wild animals to zoos. Would there be any objection to our taking one of your bears for a zoo?’

‘Of course not. It would get better care in a zoo than it does in the wilderness. Just how you are going to manage it I can’t imagine. But apparently you are bright fellows and you will find a way.’