14 Arctic Adventure (5 page)

‘I hear thunder,’ said Roger, and he looked up at the sky. There was not a cloud in sight. The sky was one great vault of brilliant blue.

And yet Roger heard thunder, and so did Hal.

Olrik said, ‘It’s not up there. It’s down below. Pretty soon you’ll see what makes it. We’re just coming to Thunder River.’

They arrived at what seemed to be the end of the world. They looked down a steep cliff several hundred feet to a rushing river. Its loud roar echoed against the cliffs. The noise was tremendous. The boys agreed that Thunder River was a good name for this frantic torrent.

‘How do we cross that?’ Hal asked. ‘Is there a bridge?’

‘No bridge,’ was Olrik’s answer.

‘Then how?’

‘Swim.’

‘You’re joking,’ said Hal. ‘Three of us plus the bear plus ten dogs and a sledge? Swim?’

Olrik said, ‘You can swim, can’t you?’

‘Of course. But not in that.’

Four of the dogs had gone over the edge and were suspended by their walrus-hide harness. They were whining pitifully and struggling so wildly that the rawhide lines that held them might break at any moment and drop them to the bottom of the abyss.

Olrik saved them by backing up the other dogs so that the ones hanging in space were also pulled up and away to safety.

Hal was bewildered. ‘Where does all this water come from?’

‘From far away to the south where it is warmer than it is here. This is melt water from that part of the ice cap.’

‘Why doesn’t it freeze over?’

‘It’s running too fast to freeze.’

‘Well, what do we do now? Can we go around it?’

Olrik shook his head. ‘That would take us hundreds of miles out of our way. No, we’ll have to cross it.’

‘But how do we get down this cliff?’

‘We don’t. We’ll go along the edge until we find a slope that may lead us down.’

The three boys and Nanook did as Olrik suggested. They found a place where the slope was gradual enough for the dogs to go down while the boys held back the sledge to prevent it from sliding forward and breaking the legs of the huskies.

Now they were at the edge of the river. It was a roaring tumult of water. It rushed by like an express train. Its waves-leaped many feet into the air.

‘It’s quite impossible,’ Hal said. ‘I suggest we turn around and go home.’

Olrik laughed. ‘You don’t really mean that. I suppose you can both swim?’

‘Yes, but not in that,’ said Hal once more.

‘And the dogs can swim. And the best swimmer of all is the polar bear. So why not strip off your clothes and pack them inside the tent, where they’ll keep dry.’

Hal still had his doubts. He knew that his young brother had been pretty well beaten up by the wolves. Would he be able to stand the beating he would get from the waves of this wild river?

‘Let’s get to it,’ said Roger. He took off his clothes and stowed them away. Hal did the same and so did Olrik. As for Nanook, he didn’t mind getting his overcoat wet.

Olrik drove the huskies into the wild turmoil of water and foam. The huskies swam as these brave animals were used to doing, and the sledge floated on the surface. Waves broke over it but did not penetrate the inside of the tent. Roger hung on to the tail of the sledge. He was battered, bumped and pummelled by the waves but never let go. Nanook swam beside him protecting him from the worst of the rushing waves.

Hal swam without hanging on. That was his mistake. As soon as he came out of a back eddy into the main current he was carried off like a leaf in a gale. In vain he tried to swim back up to the sledge. It was no use. He was being carried steadily down toward the ocean. He crashed against unseen rocks. The waves played with him as if he were a football. One wave tossed him to the next wave, and they all howled with glee. They were having a good time, but Hal was not. He looked back and saw that the rest of the company had all reached the other shore. Hal was perhaps the best swimmer, except for Nanook. But now he was losing his nerve, getting short of breath, swallowing too much water.

He tried to reach either shore, but the central current was too strong and held him firmly in its grip.

His eyes began to cloud over and his head ached. A little more of this, and he would be finished.

Then he was aware that someone was beside him. Was it Olrik, or was it Roger?

It was Nanook. This magnificent swimmer of the animal world would save his life. He placed himself on the downstream side of the exhausted Hal, and with the boy’s body pressed hard against him he swam to shore. Hal found himself dumped on a bank of gravel and it felt like a bed of roses. He lay there almost unconscious until Olrik and Roger came to help him to his feet. The bear stood in front of him, looking up at him. Hal weakly reached down and took the bear’s right foot in his hand.

‘Thank you, pal,’ said the boy to the bear.

The boys put on their clothes. The dogs had done their work well. The contents of the sledge had been splashed a bit, but there was no serious damage.

Hal’s voice rose above the thundering voice of the river, ‘Imagine — a river on the ice cap! Are there any others?’

‘Half a dozen,’ said Olrik. ‘They all come from the south, where the deep snow that falls on the ice melts quickly and is in a great hurry to get to the sea. Hal, I want to show you what you just missed.’

‘What did I miss?’

‘Sudden death.’

Olrik led them around a corner, and there was a sight that made Hal’s blood run cold —a waterfall plunged down more than a hundred feet and created new thunder as it crashed on rocks below.

Said Olrik, ‘You would have been mushed to a jelly on those rocks if Nanook hadn’t got to you just in time.’

‘Good old Nanook,’ said Hal.

‘I think this is a good place to put another cache,’ Olrik said. ‘We’ll remember it’s just above the waterfall.’

Again, food was stored under heavy rocks.

Five miles farther on another cache was made.

‘That makes three,’ said Olrik. ‘Now if we run out of food we’ll be sure to have some waiting for us in these caches.’

Even Olrik could be wrong. It was not going to be as easy as he thought.

The weather changed, as it suddenly does on the ice cap. The sun disappeared behind a cloud. Up came the wind. This time there was no snow dust, but something worse. This was an ice storm.

The boys had been tramping over broken ice. Now the wind swept pieces of ice into the air and they cut painfully into their faces. They even ripped holes in clothing. The wind howled like a wild beast. The dogs were whipped off their feet. The boys could hardly breathe. It was bitterly cold, but the great effort of fighting the storm made them perspire. Hal had not shaved since leaving the lowlands, and he had a short beard on his cheeks and chin. Sweat covered his face and promptly turned to ice. Hal tried to wipe off the ice but did not succeed. Roger laughed as he looked at his brother.

‘That’s what you get for not shaving,’ he said.

Hal tried to answer but his iced-over face was so stiff-that he could not say a word. Even his lips were frozen together.

He took off his mitt and put his hand over his mouth in order to melt the ice. It didn’t work, because his hand was frozen.

He had been told that his hands would unfreeze if he rubbed them in snow. That was fine. The only trouble was that there was no snow. There was nothing but these flying pieces of ice as sharp as fragments of a broken window. Like knives, they cut his face and the blood oozed out only to be frozen at once and make him look more wild than ever. ‘

Roger had done what he saw Olrik do. Olrik had twisted his parka around so that it covered his face. Now he could not see, but he placed one hand on the crossbar at the back end of the sledge and trusted the dogs to keep going in the same direction. Roger imitated Olrik and got along pretty well.

However, Hal had one advantage. He was the only one who saw the small Arctic fox who stood gazing with wonder at the strange things that were passing him. Hal scooped it up and popped it into a crate on the sledge.

That was easy, but he didn’t have as much luck when he tried to snatch a wolverine. It bit him viciously but his frozen hand didn’t feel the pain. He managed to get hold of it and toss it into another crate.

The wolverine is a bunch of black hair with teeth. It is very cunning and cruel. It has no friends. If it is caught in a trap, it will run away and carry the trap with it. The Eskimos are superstitious about it. They think it is an evil spirit. They are afraid of it because it is so powerful and they try to get its power by wearing a bit of wolverine fur next to their skin.

It is about the size of a bulldog and looks a little like a black bear, though much smaller. It is believed to be the most powerful animal of its size in the world. There are great numbers of this little rascal in the Arctic. It finds food in places where no other animal would look for it. It eats squirrels, hares, foxes, grouse, and birds when it can catch them. It lives in under-ice dens.

Hal had never seen one in a zoo and was sure that his father would be glad to have this unique beast to sell to some zoo-keeper who would appreciate such a strange animal.

Mr Frozen Face, the only one who could see, saw something else of great interest. He could not take care of this so quickly. He reached for the reins and stopped the dogs.

Olrik mumbled through his parka, ‘What’s up?’

‘The best of luck,’ said Hal. ‘Four baby bears.’

There they were, four little fellows crowded close together to keep warm, and whimpering under the onslaught of flying ice. At a little distance was their mother, lying in the ice, stone dead.

A female polar bear usually has twins, but sometimes gives birth to quadruplets, four little bears.

These were exactly what Hal wanted because there was a great demand for polar bears. And it was good that they were small. Any zoo would rather have a small bear that would live for twenty-five years than a big bear whose life was nearly over.

Olrik and Roger lifted their parkas just enough to watch Frozen Face pick up the orphans, one at a time, and tenderly put them in a little house of their own. Because the bitter wind sang through the crate, he covered the small creatures with a caribou mat.

The wolverine in the next crate made a violent effort to get at these small balls of meat and fur, his favourite food, but he didn’t succeed.

When the ice storm died down the tent was again erected, and after a sleep they planted a new cache of food to await their return journey. Hal’s icy face melted and he once more looked like a human being instead of a pillar of ice.

A strange thing happened that day. A black cloud blotted out the sun and yet light came from the sky.

A very strange light, with many colours, red, yellow, green, blue, grey and violet.

‘What in the world is that?’ Roger asked.

Olrik said, ‘You are looking at what the dictionary calls the aurora borealis, but some Eskimos who never saw a dictionary imagine it to be a dance of hobgoblins.’

‘What’s a hobgoblin?’ Roger wanted to know.

‘It’s something that doesn’t exist—like a devil or an evil spirit. Many people are afraid of it. They think it means that they are going to have trouble.’

‘We never saw this in Long Island.’

‘No, you are not likely to see it anywhere except north of the Arctic Circle.’

What a show it was! Quivering rays of colour shot here and there. They bounced up and down as if they were dancing. They waved like a curtain blown by the wind. Every moment there was a change.

Sometimes they wound about like a serpent. Sometimes the colourful little devils danced around in a circle. Sometimes there was a faint whistling sound. It was all very weird and Roger shivered.

Hal said, ‘You would think you were looking right up into heaven.’

‘The Eskimos don’t think of it that way,’ said Olrik. ‘Their heaven is not up in the sky — unless they have become Christians. The old Eskimo tradition is that heaven is down in the centre of the earth where it is nice and warm at all times. Hell is up in the sky. It is bitterly cold. It sends down freezing storms upon the earth. Many of man’s troubles come from the sky. Terrible winds come from there. Hail, so big that people must go indoors to get away from it, comes from above. The devil called Thunder and the other devil called Lightning come from there. Even the sun refuses to go up there. If you have led a bad life you’ll go up there when you die and you will freeze solid and stay frozen through all eternity. If you have led a good life you will go down to that lovely, warm, comfortable place beneath the earth and you will be cosy and happy for ever.’

Hal wished that he had a camera with a colour film to make a picture of this wild dance of the sky devils. But he didn’t think of them as devils. He knew that the whole performance was electrical and rarely seen anywhere except in the polar regions. Once in Long Island he had noticed a white glow in the northern sky but there was no red, blue, green and so forth in it, and no dance of the hobgoblins. After all, to see some of the world’s greatest performances you had to go to this savage land of ice and snow.

‘I think we can go on for about another five sleeps,’ said Olrik. ‘Then we’ll turn around and go back.’

Roger was puzzled. ‘Five sleeps! I suppose you mean five days.’

‘Well, I could hardly say that,’ said Olrik, ‘since we have only one day all summer long. The Eskimos don’t count in days. They count the number of times that they sleep. They sleep when they are tired. But it’s always daytime. The sun never quite sets until summer is over. The whole summer is just one day. But whenever we feel we have had enough we put up our tent and sleep.’

‘Why do you figure on five sleeps?’

‘Because then our food will be almost gone. We will have just enough to get back to the last cache we set up. That was the fourth cache we made. There will be food enough there to carry us on to the third cache. What we get there will take us to the second cache. And then the first cache, and after that, Thule.’