An Old Captivity (21 page)

Ross said sharply: “Luki!,” pointed to the girl, and frowned. The man said something and the women drew back, still staring avidly. Alix laughed breathlessly. “I don’t mind a bit, Mr. Ross, but let them look one at a time.”

“Ask him which one is his wife.”

The girl spoke to the chief in Danish, and a brawny copper-coloured matron came forward shyly. She wore a chequered jumper of rough cloth, a dirty cloth skirt, and sealskin boots; her hair was piled up curiously upon her head in a great ornamental curl. Ross said: “Be nice to her, Miss Alix. Then she’ll keep the rest of them away.”

“All right.” The girl patted the woman’s arm, and they began examining each other’s clothes.

Luki smiled broadly and said something interrogative. Ross turned to Alix. “I didn’t get that one.”

She said, a little shortly: “Nor did I.”

Luki repeated his question. Alix hesitated, and then shook her head.

Her father asked: “What was that?”

She forced a laugh. “He was asking if I was married to Mr. Ross.”

The pilot said: “Of course he would ask that.” He turned to the man and smiled. “No,” he said, shaking his head.

Luki did not seem to think this very satisfactory, and was inclined to pursue the subject, but abandoned it after a time. Instead, he led them into the house, crawling through the narrow stone tunnel which served as a door.

Inside the hut, the smell hit them like a blow in the face, a mixed smell of rotten meat, urine, dogs and babies. For a moment or two it was nauseating; Alix drew back in disgust. Ross touched her arm.

“It’s pretty foul,” he said quietly. “Stick it out if you
can. These people are very sensitive, and I don’t want to seem rude.”

She stuck it out, and after a time ceased to notice the odour. The house was quite a long building, of one single room. Half a dozen posts standing in the middle of the floor supported the roof; from these posts hide-thongs were stretched to the walls and hung with garments, making the place crowded and untidy and providing a small measure of privacy for the different families of the community. The floor was divided by a raised platform two feet high that ran for the whole length of the house. This was the sleeping bench, and on it the entire life of the community was carried on. The lower portion of the floor was used for dogs, cutting up meat, and repairing the hunting gear and sledges. Upon the edge of the sleeping bench two or three soapstone blubber-oil lamps burned with a wide, low flame under blackened cooking-pots. There was soot everywhere.

The natives thronged into the hut after them, and overwhelmed them with attentions. Their flying suits and boots were removed and placed carefully together on Luki’s portion of the sleeping bench. Then an unappetising plateful of boiled meat and liver was brought to them.

Ross said quietly: “We’d better make a show of this. Eat what you can.” He made Luki sit down with them to eat; Alix tried to induce the wife to eat with them, without success.

“She won’t eat with her man,” the pilot said. “She’ll have hers afterwards. You see.” There were no implements; eating was with the fingers.

Lockwood said presently: “It’s delicious meat, anyway—whatever it looks like. What do you think it is?”

The pilot said: “I should think it’s seal, sir. I’ve never had it before, but I guess that’s what it is.”

Alix got out her Danish dictionary, looked in it, and spoke a word interrogatively. Luki beamed and nodded. “That’s it,” she said.

After a little time they could eat no more. They lay back against the furs and sleeping-bags, conducting a desultory
conversation with Luki with the aid of the Danish dictionary. It was not easy. Most of the words they found were unknown to him; he only knew a few of the most common Danish words. Presently Lockwood said:

“I’ve been looking round to see if we could do anything for them in the medical way. We’ve got the first-aid box. But I can’t see much wrong with them.”

Alix said: “They could all do with a wash. Apart from that, they look very healthy, all the lot of them. Especially the children.”

Ross nodded. “They’re very healthy people. I tell you what they will like, though. We’ve got the emergency rations. We can give them some of those to-night—the coffee and the oatmeal. They’ll like that.”

They got up and went outside; the air seemed fresh and clean after the stench inside the house. The seaplane was high and dry upon the beach. Ross got some pieces of driftwood and put them under the floats; then he carefully instructed half a dozen men where they were to heave, and the machine was pulled up above high-water mark. He passed lashings from the pegging-down points on the wings to boulders on the ground, securing the seaplane as well as possible against a gale.

Finally, he was satisfied. There were banks of fog to seaward; it did not look like wind. He unlocked the cabin door and got up into the machine with Alix, and passed down their sleeping-bags. They left all their luggage in the cabin; they did not want to show too many of their possessions in the communal atmosphere of the house.

“We’ve got little enough as it is,” said Alix. “I’d hate to have to give away my only change of clothes.”

They opened the emergency ration box in the cabin with the door shut, screened from the natives’ gaze.

“I think we’ll give them about a third of this stuff,” said Ross. “We must keep some in hand in case we land again between here and Julianehaab.”

“I suppose it’s not much good giving them money,” said the girl.

Ross shook his head. “They’ll like this better.”

They separated out a quantity of Bovril, pemmican, margarine, biscuits, oatmeal, sugar, cocoa powder and chocolate, and got out of the machine with these in their arms. They gave them to Luki while the others crowded round; he accepted with delight. Immediately he divided the chocolate into equal portions, one for each family; within five minutes it was gone. He carried the rest of the food into the house and put it in a corner covered over with his fur sleeping-bag.

They spent the rest of the day examining the life of these people. There was no agriculture at all, nor any attempt to grow anything in that barren soil. There were a good number of sledge-dogs running loose, scavenging from the decaying seal carcasses on the beach; there were no other animals at all, no poultry. The whole life of the community seemed to be centred round the seal-hunting. They seemed to have no other food but seal, though from the bones and feathers it appeared that they would eat gulls and other seabirds on occasion. But the seal was obviously their mainstay. Seals provided their food, a good part of their clothing, their sleeping-bags, the covering of their kayaks and their women’s boats, the bone tips to their harpoons, their fuel, and their light.

Two or three of the young men got into their kayaks and gave a pantomime display of seal-hunting, sheltering behind a small white sail erected on the bow of the kayak to hide the man and simulate an iceberg. Presently they began to roll the kayaks, till one of them stuck upside down and had to be helped up by the others. This was a great joke to them; they came on shore convulsed with laughter, shaking the water from their hooded sealskin jumpers.

In the evening Ross walked with the Lockwoods a little way up a barren hill behind the house. Inland the white snow of the ice-cap rose to a level skyline penetrated here and there by peaks of rock; to the seaward the rocky black, indented coast was lost in mist. Ross said: “It’s
coming on much thicker now. I expect it will be clear again in the morning.”

The don nodded. “It was rather like this yesterday, at Angmagsalik.”

The sun dropped behind the ice-cap to the north-west; in the half-light of the night it quickly became very cold. They went down to the settlement and went into the house, stifled by the atmosphere at first. Lockwood said: “It’s going to be difficult to sleep in this.”

The girl said: “It’s simply terrible. I suppose there isn’t anything else that we could do?”

The pilot shook his head. “I’m afraid it’s got to be,” he said. “The only other thing would be to sit up in the machine, and that would be frightfully cold.”

“I know,” said Lockwood. “It froze hard at Angmagsalik.”

Alix said: “I suppose we’ll get accustomed to it in a minute …”

They settled down upon the sleeping bench with Luki. His wife and several other women were preparing a communal stew of their oatmeal, margarine and pemmican, all in a large pot. It was soon evident that all foodstuffs were shared equally in this community. Luki was chief, but it was quite beyond his philosophy that he should keep food to himself. Even the cocoa powder was put out in mathematically equal portions, poured into each grubby palm, and sucked off it. The donors of the feast were included; Alix turned to Ross with cocoa smeared across her face.

“I haven’t done this since I was ten years old,” she said.

Presently the stew was ready, and was attacked with a variety of tin mugs, plates and bowls. Finally the biscuit and the sugar was distributed in microscopically equal portions. Half an hour later the tribe were laying out their sleeping-bags, undressing with a complete absence of false modesty, and getting into them.

Luki showed them where to put their bags. The pilot said to the don: “Miss Lockwood had better go between
us, sir. I think they’re quite all right, but that might be the best way.”

Alix said decidedly: “I’m quite sure it would.”

He helped her to lay out her sleeping-bag. “You’d better take your things off inside it,” he said. “I’m afraid they’re bound to take a certain amount of interest in you.”

She smiled at him. “I can manage all right, thanks,” she said. “Besides, I really am quite decent underneath.”

Lockwood and Ross slipped off their outer clothes and got into their sleeping-bags. Alix took off her shoes and got into the bag, struggled and heaved inside it for a time, and threw out her white overall and a jersey. Then they settled down to sleep.

Sleep was not easy. The atmosphere, though they had ceased to notice it particularly, was heavy and oppressive. The Eskimos twitched and whimpered in their sleep in chorus with the dogs upon the lower part of the floor; it was rather hot. Ross lay awake, considering their position. It was not so bad. There was every indication that the next day would be like the last, with clear weather in the morning and fog in the afternoon. They had about two hundred and fifty miles to go to get to Julianehaab. If they got off soon after dawn they could be in the air with several hours of clear weather ahead of them. Julianehaab wireless station came on watch at seven o’clock; if they started then they could make contact on the radio before they left the neighbourhood of the settlement, and get the weather report. It was about two and a half hours’ flight. He had set his alarm clock for half-past five. With any luck they should be there by ten.

Presently he dozed, turned over restlessly, and dozed again. He could not get to sleep properly.

Soon after midnight there was a dog-fight on the lower portion of the floor. Luki roused and threw a tin mug at the fighters; it bounced and rattled on the rough stone floor, and the dogs settled down again. Ross turned restlessly around.

Beside him Alix said quietly: “Are you awake, Mr. Ross?”

He turned towards her. “I’ve been awake most of the time. Can’t you sleep?”

“No. It’s so hot.”

He leaned up on one elbow. “Look, you’ve got your bag all buttoned up. Undo that top part, and turn it back.”

She sat up, and leaned forward to undo the flap. She was wearing a light vest; in the half-light he saw her slim white arms, her bare shoulders, the firm lines of her breast. He thought that he had not seen anything more beautiful.

She threw back the heavy outer cover of the bag. “That’s ever so much better.” She looked at her father and turned back to Ross. “Daddy slept all through that.”

“I wish I could,” he said. He was careful not to look at her too hard; he did not want to make an awkwardness.

“Haven’t you been to sleep at all?”

“Just in bits and snatches. I’ve a good mind to take one of my tablets.”

“What are those?”

“Some stuff I got in Reykjavik because I couldn’t sleep. They’re very good.”

“Let me see.”

He reached over to his clothes and got the bottle; she stretched out a bare arm, and he handed it to her. She could read the label in the dim light. “Are they good?” she asked.

“Rather. They make you sleep like fun. Would you like to have one?”

She shook her head. “I don’t think I will. It doesn’t matter if I feel a bit washed out in the morning. But you’d better take one, Mr. Ross.”

“I think I will.”

She watched him while he took it, slightly uneasy, although she had just recommended him to do so. “That’s better,” he said cheerfully. “Now for a real sleep.”

She slipped down on to her pillow, and said: “Good night. Thanks ever so much for showing me about the bag.”

He turned on to his side. “Good night, Miss Alix.”

“Good night.”

She lay and watched him till his even breathing told her that he was asleep. Then she, too, slept.

R
OSS slept very heavily. He did not wake with the first stirring of the tribe; he did not wake when the girl by his side wriggled from her sleeping-bag and put on her overall, nor when she roused her father. It was not until the alarm clock went off in his ear that he stirred and rolled over, rubbed his eyes, and sat erect.

The whole tribe was awake. Beside him Alix was fully dressed and putting on her flying boots. She smiled at him. “How did you sleep?”

He did not answer for a moment. Then he said: “I had an awful lot of dreams.”

“About aeroplanes?”

He shook his head. “I was running somewhere … over a sort of moor. Miles and miles of it …”

She laughed. “I’m not surprised you dreamed in a stuffy place like this. Running to get away from it, I should think.”

The pilot got up and put his clothes on. He went out with the Lockwoods into the clean, cold air outside; they drew deep, satisfying breaths. Lockwood said thoughtfully: “Well, it’s been an experience. But I hope we don’t have to have another night of it.”