Between Two Worlds (19 page)

A weak yellow sun shone in a cloudy sky as we set out. The air was sharp, and with each sliding step, I drew the cold into my chest. I blinked as the wind stung my eyes.

Still, it was exhilarating to be out on the sound, seeing the horizon changing as we trekked.

We passed the
Windward
, a dark form on the glowing snow and ice. I saw two tiny lights.

All morning, we marched without stopping. Angulluk and Duncan took the lead, and Bag of Bones and I trailed behind. We came to where water had once foamed and roared, then froze solid in shapes of waves. We needed to head farther out on the harbor to find smoother ice. My heart beat fast as we turned away from shore. If the ice cracked, no one could help us.

We rested once we made it over the roughest stretch. I sat on a mound of ice, opened my bag, and sliced off a piece of seal meat. How good it felt to be off my feet. Chewing the tasty fat, I took in the wide, frozen ocean. By the position of the sun, I knew it was early afternoon and we’d have at least another hour of daylight.

Far ahead loomed tall cliffs. It must be Cape Sabine. Somewhere near there, Angulluk said, a trail through steep hills led inland to the fort where we hoped to find Peary.

I turned toward the tracks we’d left. Lights on the
Windward
had vanished far behind us. Then I saw a long, jagged gap in the ice. I gasped. How suddenly it had opened! Black water lay between us and the land.

I jumped to my feet. “Angulluk! Look!”

“Ai!”
His hunter’s eyes had already seen it. “Move fast! Now!”

Duncan, Bag of Bones, and I talked at once. “Can we get around it to shore? Are we trying for Cape Sabine?”

Angulluk set out north, and we hurried toward the cape. He said, “As soon as we get far enough, we’ll cross to land. Then back to the village.”

Suddenly, the ice under my feet lurched. An explosion burst in my ears. The ice was opening very close, and the solid mass under us was moving outward in the bay. We kept up our pace in our snowshoes, but the crack opened faster than we could trek.

After an agony of pushing forward, the water was stretching ahead of us. “Which way?” Bag of Bones asked.

“Ahead!” Angulluk commanded. “We have to find a way to the fort now.”

We pressed on, though the sun was low on the rim of the land. We’d have to walk in near darkness with only stars for light.

Finally, we drew near the cliffs of the cape. Duncan said, “How do we get there?”

Angulluk sent Bag of Bones running ahead and peered after him into the faint light.

Bag of Bones yelled, “I see a way!”

In the black channel, where Bag of Bones pointed, Angulluk made out a dim shape and guided us toward it. A block of ice as wide as an igloo appeared to float close to
the other side. But the channel between us and the block looked too wide to leap across.

“Take off your snowshoe frames. Get ready to run.” Angulluk and Duncan heaved the frames and our bags and packs onto the block. Next they slung across their rifles.

Bag of Bones threw his bag and missed. It sank in the water. “Two days of food.”

No one scolded him.

“You first, Qaorlutoq,” Angulluk ordered. “Get a good start.”

Bag of Bones measured his distance. He ran and leapt out over the dark water with a great shout. He sprawled on the slippery block, and held. We let out our breaths.

“You now,” Angulluk said to Duncan.

Duncan hesitated. “What about Billy Bah?”

“I’ll come with Angulluk. I can make it,” I said, though I wasn’t sure.

Duncan ran, jumped, and barely reached the block, falling forward on his chest.

I was next. Angulluk stood at the edge, showing me where to take off. The channel seemed to grow even wider.

I ran toward the blackness. I leapt. A shock of icy water closed over my head and poured under my jacket, stinging my body. I fought to rise and breathe.

Duncan reached for me. “Grab on, Billy Bah!” I gripped his hands with my mittens. The weight of water soaking
my clothes pulled me down. He couldn’t lift me far enough. Bag of Bones grasped my arm. But I slipped back into the channel.

Then I felt myself pulled up and dragged onto the ice block. I was on my knees, coughing up seawater. I looked up to see Angulluk. Quickly, he helped me to my feet on the rocking ice island. When I was steady, he took my hand and we jumped across the second chasm.

“Can you talk, Eqariusaq?”

“Pain. My throat.” My whole body burned, especially my fingers and toes.

With Angulluk holding one arm and Bag of Bones the other, I stumbled toward shore. It was hard to move in the soaked skins and furs. As we plunged ahead, Bag of Bones gasped out that Angulluk had sprung across the water and swiftly wrapped his arms around me before I sank farther, ordering Duncan to grab him, and Bag of Bones to pull Duncan. Then all three had heaved me onto the ice.

Angulluk traded mittens with me. I clapped my hands and strained to bend my fingers. They began to sting again, a good sign. But my toes remained frighteningly lifeless.

Darkness fell. The wind screamed to a high pitch like ghostly wailing. We reached the beach and came to a hollow sheltered by a snowdrift. “Duncan, keep Eqariusaq moving,” Angulluk said. “Qaorlutoq and I will build an igloo.”

After stamping my feet, I wanted to lie down, but Duncan held me up and walked me in tiny steps.

Finally, I couldn’t stand any longer. Angulluk rolled out a skin, and I sank down in the half shelter of the rising snow house. The men built the walls around and over me. With a skin, Bag of Bones made something of a door. Duncan lit his cooking stove with matches and sharp-smelling kerosene from a can.

Angulluk helped me take off my drenched
kapatak
and
kamiit
, drew his furs onto me, and wrapped himself in a thick wool blanket of Duncan’s. Soon jets of pain shot through my limbs. I bit my lip. Duncan melted snow in a pot to warm my hands and feet and then gave me tea. I was shaking too hard to hold it, so he tipped the cup to my mouth.

My husband and I huddled together. We ate the rest of the seal meat in my bag and Duncan’s biscuits and canned meat. We drank several cups of tea. Then, exhausted, we fell asleep.

Soon after, the spirits sent us a storm. It began with a thick, wet snow. Winds gusted from the north. Our igloo collapsed and the men struggled to rebuild it. I felt the presence of my parents very near.
Perhaps we will die
, I thought. The idea didn’t frighten me.

In the thick darkness, we lay huddled together. How long could we last before our bodies would go to sleep, never to awaken? At least we had seal meat, the stove, and tea.

After what I guessed was three days, the storm ended. I peered out to see crisp stars in a dark sky. Angulluk dressed, then beat ice out of my frozen
kapatak
. What choice did I have but to wear frozen clothes? They hung heavily and sent a chill through me. They cracked as I walked. After a while my body heat began to soften the furs. But my stomach rumbled.

We climbed and descended hills, waded through waist-high snowdrifts, labored over snow-covered rocks. Sometimes I couldn’t tell jutting stones from shadows. Even as we trekked bent over, the frigid wind blew against our faces. I fell, picked myself up, and kept going on trembling legs. My head was dizzy and my mouth dry.

We couldn’t see landmarks, only at times the harbor to the east, with its terrible black chasm of open water. Even when we were past the channel, we didn’t dare walk on the ice again.

We came to a place where a drift of snow rose to our waists. The men went first, partly clearing a way, and I followed. A shrill wind blew suddenly from behind and toppled me forward. My nose and cheeks, already lashed by wind, stung in the freezing snow.

Angulluk helped me to my feet. Each of us holding on to the person ahead, we trudged behind Angulluk. The wind drove hailstones into my eyes. I stumbled and fell again.

With his strong arm around me, Angulluk half carried
me. I labored forward, my legs almost too heavy to lift. I shielded my face with my frozen mittens.

We made it out of the deep drifts. I said, “I have to rest.”

“We must not stop,” Angulluk said. “You know the danger, Eqariusaq.”

“We
can
stop. You can build us a shelter.”

“We’re not stopping, woman!”

I took another step, then another, teeth chattering. Walking didn’t warm me anymore. My aching fingers were too stiff to bend. Hair whipped from under my hood and froze like wood splinters. My exposed face—how it burned! We pushed on.

Angulluk stopped, listening to the boom of ice cracking in the distance. Planting my aching, heavy feet, I listened, too. Another boom. No, it couldn’t be the ice. Gunshots.

“Someone’s out here. Maybe people from the
Windward
looking for us,” Angulluk said.

“Trying to show us the way,” Duncan said.

Angulluk replied, “But the shots would be coming from the south, not the north.”

“How could people from the ship get so far ahead of us?” Bag of Bones said.

Before us was nothing but the whiteness of blowing snow. Surely it must be a good thing that some man, either a hunter or sailor, was nearby. But I was so tired and
hungry, and my hands, feet, and face stung so much, it was like a strange dream. Angulluk had quickly taken out his rifle, removed his mitten, and with a click, chambered a shell. He fired into the air, loaded and fired again.

We heard another shot.

“Go! Toward the shots,” my husband said.

“Who is it?” Bag of Bones said.

“They might help us,” Angulluk replied.

So with Angulluk holding me on one side and Duncan grasping my hand on the other, we staggered on.

Colors flashed in the wind and blowing snow. Was this vision real? There were moving figures, barks, shouts, more gunshots. A sharp burning in every step, I moved forward with Angulluk pulling my numb hand. Just ahead, a form appeared, wearing the muddied
kapatak
of a
nanoq
and waving a red kerchief. Peary.

I caught my breath. His eyes were the same, blue and full, with more wrinkles than before around them. His face, except his ruddy pointed nose and thin, chapped lips, was all icy whiskers. Even in the wind I picked up the musky scent of his furs.

“Billy Bah!” he said in his deep voice. He put his large mittens on my arms. “You’re covered with ice!”

Unable to speak, I met his eyes. I could hardly believe our good fortune.

We’d come to a camp with a rough but fair-size igloo, a sled packed with provisions, and six tethered dogs. My old friend Mauripaulak, Matt Henson, fed them slabs of meat. I knew him at once from his
kapatak
, with its white fox shoulders and red fur body and hood: I’d sewn it for him. “Billy Bah! Angulluk!” He looked at me with alarm.

Angulluk said, “Eqariusaq fell through ice. We need to warm her.”

In the entrance to the igloo, out of the wind, Angulluk squatted before me and slid off my furs and boots. I raised my arms, but though my teeth chattered and my upper body shook violently, neither my legs nor feet would move.

Working fast, Angulluk rubbed snow on my feet until they were pierced with needles of pain. Good; feeling had come back. He rubbed snow on my hands and face until sharp sensation came to them as well. Then he pulled me into the igloo.

Angulluk wrapped me in a woolen blanket and set me before the flames of Peary’s kerosene stove. He heated water, filled a large bowl, and put my feet in to soak. Then he patted my feet dry and, despite the intense pain, rubbed them. Angulluk then boiled strips of seal meat and gave me the broth to sip. As warmth spread and strength rose inside me, my shaking gradually slowed. All this time, he eyed me tenderly.

Soon, Peary and Mauripaulak crawled in. From his bag, Mauripaulak brought out a warm flannel shirt and trousers for me, and a wool hat, so I was dressed like a
qallunaaq
man. I bent down and looked at my blue toes. My left foot was more tender and red than my right, the bottom broken open and oozing blood. Mauripaulak dabbed the wound with a cloth. Angulluk treated it with seal fat.

“You may lose your toes,” Mauripaulak said.

I jerked upright. “No! They will heal.”

“Perhaps,” Mauripaulak said. He dipped the cloth into the bowl of water and wrung it out. “You’ll know in a few days—if they turn black.”

I tested my big toe by tapping it with my finger. The pain was a sign of life.

Peary said, “Matt Henson did a good job of amputating my toes, and here I am walking again. He could do the same for you.”

“Do not say such thoughts aloud.”

Mauripaulak wrapped my foot and gave me wool socks, much longer than my feet, to put on. I hugged myself in the blanket, while searing pains started in my toes and moved up to my thighs. Angulluk and Bag of Bones talked at times in our tongue, though mostly the men spoke English.

“How extraordinary that you should all be here,” Peary said.

“We started from the ship to find you,” Bag of Bones said. “We came to a crack in the ice. We started to go back but—”