Alaska (33 page)

She was of the sky, and the ice, and the endless nights, and the quiet harmony of this village beside the Arctic Ocean. 'Oh, Nikaluk!' he sometimes cried aloud when he was alone. 'What will happen to us?'

He did not, like many American men who were in those days exploring the world and new societies, engage in sentimental reflection about the poor island girl left behind, as if she were going to cry her heart out while he went on to better things, unaware that she was going to handle the situation rather easily in her island paradise while he would be tormented about island memories when he returned to Philadelphia or Charleston.

No, Pym saw Nikaluk as a human being equal to himself in all ways except the possibility of her living in Christian Boston. Corey had been right; she was, in so many respects that mattered, a savage.

But he continued to wear the polar-bear cloak and to luxuriate in its richness and the memories it held of those great days hunting on the ice. The long coat became his symbol as he moved about the Evening Star

preparing her for sea. One morning Atkins brought his wife aboard, and when Captain Pym saw her, smiling and eager for adventure, his breath caught and he wished he were that young seaman

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bringing Nikaluk, so much more mature and lovely than Kiinak, aboard for the long voyage to the closing of his life.

The sun shone. The sea relaxed. The ice retreated, baffled for another summer but sullenly hoarding its strength for a swift return in autumn, and sails were set.

All the people of Desolation came down through the mud to watch the departure, and it might have been a gala morning except that with the raising of the gangplank, this final severance from the shore that had treated the visitors so hospitably with seal blubber and dancing and loving women, Nikaluk ran from her husband, approached the departing ship, and wailed: 'Captain Pym!' Her husband ran after her, not to rebuke but to comfort, but he had that morning drunk the last of Harry Tompkin's rum, and before he could catch his wife he fell in the mud and lay there as the ship withdrew.

Land had scarcely been lost on the journey south to Lapak Island, where the whaler would replenish as best it could for the long run to Hawaii, when Captain Pym, on the bridge, suddenly called out: 'Mr. Corey, this polar bear is strangling me!' and with frantic hands he tore at the beautiful cloak, throwing it from him and kicking it into a corner when it fell.

When Harpooner Kane heard of the incident he went to the captain, saying: 'I, too, helped kill the bear. Can I have the cloak?' and Pym said hurriedly and with a sense of overpowering guilt: ”You are entitled to wear it, Mr. Kane. You have not covered it with shame.' And during the long, cold trip to Lapak Island, Noah Pym continued to refrain from reading the evening prayers, for he was indeed strangled: the bear, and Sopilak fallen in the mud, and Nikaluk flying magnificently in the air were all fragments of his agony, especially his memory of those little girls, so untouched by the coming of the

Evening Star, dancing on the frozen beach to rejoice in the return of their sun.

THE ENFORCED STOP AT LAPAK ISLAND WAS BRIEF AND

terrible. When the little brig entered the familiar water between the volcano and the island and saw the Aleuts in their kayaks and elegant hats, Harpooner Kane cried: 'Home port!' but they had barely anchored when the sight of Kane in that rich white cloak excited the two reprobates, Innokenti and baldheaded Zagoskin, to start whispering among their men: 'That ship out there must be crammed with furs,' and after two days of adroit spying, prolonged by dilatory action in delivering provisions to the ship, the talk became: 'Properly led, sixteen determined men could take that ship.' When this was secretly discussed among seven ringleaders, In-207

nokenti reminded his fellows of something he had spotted when the Evening Star stopped at Lapak on its way north: 'Captain Cook had soldiers aboard his ship. This one has none.' And now the plotting began.

No one had yet made a specific proposal of piracy, but Innokenti, remembering how Captain Pym had relished talking with Trofim Zhdanko, encouraged the New Englander-to spend time in the old cossack's hut, and this necessitated the presence of the interpreter, Seaman Atkins, who took his wife along. The sessions were protracted, and Trofim had an opportunity to see what an excellent wife the young American had acquired in the Eskimo girl Kiinak, and he became especially concerned about her pregnancy: 'How wonderful that one of the first Americans in these waters found himself an Eskimo girl that he wanted to marry . . . before a priest . . . like decent human beings.' He returned several times to this theme, finally betraying his deeper concern: 'How much better these islands would have been if men like my son had taken Aleut wives.' He smiled at the young couple and said: 'You're beginning a new race. May God bless you.'

With Trofim was a boy named Kyril, son of a Russian brigand and an Aleut woman whom he had raped and later killed. The Russian had sailed off to an eastern island in the Aleutians, abandoning his son, who began to frequent Zhdanko's hut, where he helped the old man. Trofim was especially eager that Kyril see how easy and normal it was for a man like Atkins to marry an Eskimo woman like Kiinak: 'Let this be a lesson. Good lives come from good beginnings.'

'Are you married?' Captain Pym asked, and the old man said proudly: 'Most powerful woman in Siberia. She'd make a grand tsarina,' and he asked Pym: 'Have you a family?'

and the captain flushed a deep red, giving no answer, but Trofim needed none; what the trouble was he could not guess, but that there was trouble he knew.

While these wandering conversations were under way in the hut, Innokenti and Zagoskin, defeated men in their advancing years who had accomplished nothing but destruction, were huddled with their fellow conspirators, coordinating their attack on the Evening Star:

'Tomorrow when the captain and the young couple go to talk with the old fool, you and you, keep them inside. Then Zagoskin and I, with you three, board the ship as if bringing them supplies. He goes below with one helper. I stay on deck with two.

And all of you speed out in your kayaks. At this signal,' and he shouted in Russian, 'we take the ship.'

'And if they fight?' one of them asked.

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'We kill as many as we have to.'

'The others?'

'Like the ones in the hut? We deal with them later. But get the ship, because then we can do almost anything.' It had been secretly agreed between Innokenti and Zagoskin that after capturing the ship, all survivors would be taken to nearby Adak and murdered, the blame being placed upon the Aleuts there.

The plot was uncomplicated and brutal, with an excellent chance for success, except that on the target day Captain Pym did not visit Trofim and Kyril; he stayed aboard ship and this meant that Atkins and his wife stayed too, but the conspirators were so sure of success that the plan went forward. At one in the afternoon the two leaders came to the

Evening Star,

accompanied by three traders, as agreed. They brought with them a substantial supply of stores, and as they began to deliver them, other men with more goods set out from shore.

Noah Pym, learned in the lore of ships' being taken by land-based natives, was below when the second contingent started to come aboard, and instinctively he rushed toward the door of his cabin, crying: 'Mr. Corey, what goes on?'

He was met by Zagoskin, who gave a loud bellow signaling that the fight had begun, and then clubbed Pym over the head, cracking his skull and knocking him to the deck.

From that fallen position the dazed man raised himself on one elbow and tried to defend himself, but with a heavy boot Zagoskin kicked him in the face, whereupon Zagoskin's Siberian helper beat the little New Englander to death. He died trying to save his ship, which in his last moments he supposed he had lost. He uttered no final words, entertained no last thoughts. He was not even allowed time for prayer, which had been absent from his lips for so long.

Young Atkins and his wife, hearing the commotion in the captain's cabin, ran to his assistance, just in time to be clubbed to death by Zagoskin and his helper, who were then free to rush topside to help Innokenti clear the decks, but when they reached there they found far more confusion than they had anticipated, for First Mate Corey, an iron-tough Irishman, assumed that Pym was dead and that the salvation of the ship depended on him. Armed with pistol and sword, he killed two attackers and forced their leader Innokenti to stay back. But now, seeing huge Zagoskin coming at him, he shouted: 'Help! Help!' threw down his empty pistol and grabbed a belaying pin, determined to kill as many Russian pirates as possible before surrendering the ship.

At this moment a huge man in a long white cloak rushed 209

on deck, wielding a long harpoon in each hand. It was Kane, shouting: 'Pym's dead.

Kill them all!' And without stopping to take careful aim, he threw one of his lethal spears at the approaching Zagoskin. It sped through the air like a slim bolt of lightning, struck the Russian just above the heart and pinned him like a helpless seal to the mast.

Not satisfied that the harpoon had killed the man, Kane leaped at him as he stood speared and with his other harpoon stabbed him twice, once through the neck, once through the face. Then, failing to jerk the first harpoon loose, he abandoned it, grabbed the club with which Zagoskin had killed Atkins and his wife, and rampaged about the deck, striking with fury any Russians he encountered.

Joining with Corey, who was defending himself with only a belaying pin, Kane pointed to Innokenti and shouted to all the Americans within earshot: 'He's the bastard!

Kill him!' and with that he launched his other harpoon at the instigator of the attack.

He missed, and when Corey lunged at him, Innokenti deftly sidestepped and gained a moment to survey the deck where plans had gone so terribly wrong. He saw the dead Russians, his partner Zagoskin skewered against the mast, and both Kane and that damned Irishman summoning their men, so in one bloodstained second he made his decision.

With a wild dive over the side he abandoned his cohorts and ignored the fact that he couldn't swim. With the superhuman power that men can often muster in the face of mounting disaster, this amazing scoundrel flopped about in the sea like a stricken fish, reached an empty kayak, upset it sideways, thrust his legs into one of the hatches, righted it, and with long skilled strokes fled toward shore. Corey, seeing him about to escape punishment, grabbed a pistol from a sailor and tried to shoot him, but missed.

After the Boston men had tossed overboard the corpses of Zagoskin and his fellow pirates, Corey said in controlled voice, as if nothing of importance had happened: 'Up anchor, prepare sails. Mr. Kane, you are promoted to First Mate. Report to me on the condition of the crew.'

The last sight the Russian fur traders had of this doughty little ship which had explored the seas, chased whales, and survived being pinned down in an arctic winter was a file of men standing at attention along the port gunwales while the new captain read solemnly from a Bible, and a big man in a long white cloak lifted three bodies, one by one Captain Pym, Seaman Atkins, the pregnant Eskimo girl Kiinak and pitched them into the Bering Sea.

But that was not all, for when the ceremony ended, the new captain ordered the ship's ineffectual gun unlimbered,

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pointed ashore, and fired. A cannonball of no great weight ricocheted across the rocky land of Lapak Island, coming to harmless rest close to the hut occupied by Troflm Zhdanko, who had watched the events of this day with shame and horror.

THIS ATTEMPTED PIRACY OCCURRED IN THE SPRING OF

1781, and combined with the near-loss of the Evening Star in the ice pack off Desolation Point, it deterred other American whalers from adventuring into the Chukchi Sea and Arctic Ocean for half a century, but by 1843 the floodgates would be opened, and a few years later nearly three hundred whalers would brave these northern seas.

After the Evening Star,

first of that gallant breed, escaped to the south and a memorial stone was erected to indicate where Zagoskin's pierced and mutilated body had drifted ashore, it seemed as if the fur traders were willing to dismiss the affair of the Evening Star

as nothing more than a good risk which had gone astray. 'We came this close to taking that ship,' Innokenti said to the men who closed ranks around him. 'That damned harpooner.'

He ignored Zhdanko when the old man asked: 'Why did you have to kill that fellow and his wife?' for his son felt that this could happen in any lively action. As for the killing of the captain, who had been so congenial during his two visits, that was also one of the accidents of war.

When his stepfather asked: 'But was it war?' Innokenti snapped: 'We are at war with anyone who thinks to take this new land from us,' and when Zhdanko asked further what made him sure that Americans would want an island like Lapak, with no trees and a diminishing supply of seals and sea otters, he said: 'Yes, this island is used up. The natives are no good. But there are others better than this farther east.'

And it was this indication that his son planned to continue eastward with his slaughter, his piracy and his wanton killing that decided the old man.

On a fine overcast day with no rain or wind, perfect for hunting otters, Zhdanko surprised Innokenti by saying: 'Fine day. We've been enemies too long. With Zagoskin gone, let's see if we can catch some more furs,' and when they went to the kayak in which Zagoskin had sat in the stern so that Innokenti could club the otters forward, the old man said: 'I'll paddle here,' and his son shouted to some idlers on the beach: 'Come help us form the circle,' but only two others responded.

Trofim led the way, far from shore and into the shadow of 211

Qugang, assuring Innokenti: 'I've seen otters out here,' and they came at last to a spot from which the actions of the three kayaks could not easily be followed by the men on the beach. Here they did find otters, and as Innokenti started the abbreviated circle in pursuit of a female with a babe on her belly, the mother proved surprisingly agile, dodging this way and that, aided of course by the fact that the circle did not contain enough boats.