The Pole (9 page)

The Captain walked around the sledge to the dogs. Three were lying down, fanned out in front. He gave the lead dog a poke with the side of his boot and it jumped up. The others realized something was happening and got to their feet. He grabbed the line of the lead dog, yelled out something in Inuktitut, and pulled the dog forward.The whole team responded, and if I hadn't been holding
on I might have tumbled over as the sledge surged forward.

The sledge started moving slowly. Still holding on to the handles and the lead, I jumped off to lessen the weight.The sledge started to move faster so I put one foot back on the runner and pushed with the other. This wasn't so hard. It was sort of fun.

Captain Bartlett was now running beside the sledge rather than in front of it. The sledge wasn't moving very fast but I had to wonder how long the Captain could keep up this pace. He wasn't a young man—he must have been in his thirties.

“Cap'n … I can run,” I yelled out.

“Not yet.”

I kept my foot on the runner and kept pushing.

I was holding onto the lead but I realized that I didn't actually know how to drive the dogs, or stop them, or steer them. I was at the back of the sledge but I wasn't much more than baggage. How did the dogs even know which way to go? They were going the right way, weren't they? They had to be, or the Captain would have stopped them.

I looked up ahead, looking for something on shore to steer toward, or a path that had been scored by the previous teams. I couldn't see anything, and the ice was hard and clean and unmarked. There was nothing … Wait. Up ahead I saw something dark on the ice. Was it a seal? Whatever it was we were
headed straight for it. I expected it to move, run away, but instead it just stayed there, getting bigger and bigger. As we got closer it stayed put.What sort of animal would just sit there as we came charging toward it? Even if it were blind it couldn't have helped but notice the continual barking and yelping of the dogs. It couldn't be an animal, it couldn't be anything alive.

There was also something about the colour— maybe it was the ice playing tricks on my eyes but it looked bluish and … then it came to me. It was a metal container, one of the gigantic metal cans that held pemmican. It was on its side, standing almost a foot and a half wide and three feet high. How did that get out here? Maybe it fell off one of the other sledges… but why was it standing on its side like that?

“Cap'n!” I yelled. “Up ahead … do ya see it?”

“'Course I see it!” he called back. “That's one of the markers!”

Markers … that made perfect sense. That explained how we could find our way across the ice. But, how did the dogs know this was the way?

As we got closer to the marker the Captain moved to the front of the team. He grabbed the lead and yanked the dog off to the side, and the whole team and sledge followed after it. That was how the dogs knew where to go, because the Captain knew where to go.

I looked ahead, starting right in front and then allowing my eyes to move forward, slowly, toward the horizon.That was the way Oatah had shown me. There was nothing close at hand. I tried to trace the path directly in front of us, the route we were headed on.There, way up ahead, I could see a dark shape. It glistened slightly in the sun—the way a large metal container would—and I knew where we were going.

“Off!” Captain Bartlett yelled.

For a split second I didn't react, and then I realized. Captain Bartlett reached out and grabbed the lead from me. I let go of the handles and jumped off to one side, almost falling over as I hit the ice. The sledge surged forward and I scrambled, trying to catch up. I got level with the sledge and then slowed down so I could match the pace of the dogs.

As we kept moving I was starting to feel the strain in my legs and lungs. I was drawing in gigantic lungfuls of air and the cold etched a line down my throat and into my chest. My legs were aching and getting heavier and heavier. I wanted to stop, but I knew I couldn't. I kept going, step after step. I tried to get my mind off of the ice and onto the shore ahead. I knew it was getting closer with each step but it still wasn't close. If I could get there the camp probably wouldn't be too far. I really wanted to get ashore, away from any danger of falling through the ice. It was funny, though—if what the Captain had
said was true, and the ice got more dangerous closer to shore, the closer I got to safety the more dangerous it would get.

We were now close enough for me to have a good idea where we were going. There was a low, flat spot—I guessed it to be some sort of beach—that was bordered on both sides by higher, dark, rocky cliffs.Then, as confirmation, I caught sight of the glittering metal of one of the pemmican cans on the shore.

Our pace seemed to quicken the closer we got to the beach. It seemed like the dogs were getting more excited.Their barking got louder and more frequent and … no, that wasn't it. I was just hearing their yelps and barks bouncing back off the cliffs that were looming ever closer, and—

“Aaaahhhh!” I screamed as my legs crashed through the ice! A bolt of freezing water surged through my legs as they plummeted below the ice! My momentum pushed me forward and my body slammed down and then broke through, throwing the rest of me into the water. Desperately I clawed at the ice, trying to pull myself forward. It crumbled away in my fingers and I couldn't get a grip! I was going down … I was going to go under … I was going to drown!

CHAPTER TEN

“HELP!” I SCREAMED
as I struggled to keep my head and shoulders above the water.

I looked up. Bartlett and the team had stopped— thank God—and the Captain was standing there, staring at me … but he wasn't coming back to help.

I kept clawing at the ice and it kept giving way and—

“Stand up!” Bartlett yelled.

What was he talking about?

“Stand up!” he yelled.

My feet sank down to the bottom. The water was only two or three feet deep. I stood there, in waist-deep water, feeling even more stupid than cold.

“You plannin' on stayin' in there all day?” Captain Bartlett called out.

I tried to climb out and onto the ice but it kept giving way under my weight, and I stumbled, almost toppling over before finally securing a solid footing. I
sloshed over toward the Captain, my clothing, soaked, weighing me down.

“Strange place to take a bath,” Captain Bartlett said. “Once we get to the camp ya better get out of those clothes and into somethin' dry.”

“Is it far?” I asked.The temperature was warm—a few degrees above freezing—but the wind was strong and I felt shivers already radiating throughout my body.

“Not far. Get on the komatik and I'll run alongside,” the Captain said.

I took the lead as the Captain went to the front of the pack. The dogs had all settled down and were sitting or lying on the ice. He yanked the front pair to their feet and then dragged them forward, yelling out something. The dogs all jumped up and started moving. This time I was ready for the surge forward and held on tightly.

The dogs gained speed and I slid along with them, pushing with one foot, resting the other on the skid. We started to move up an incline—a sure sign that we were finally off the ice and onto the ice-covered land. Straight ahead I spotted another one of the pemmican cans, marking the way.The path continued to rise and then, after hitting that marker, cut sharply to the right, slicing between two cliffs.We were in a little valley and there were high walls of rock on both sides. I looked way up. There were little pockets of
ice and snow, but it was almost all brown and bare, the only white coming from the birds that were clinging to the rock face.

The trail snaked along between the cliffs. In places it wasn't very wide, and the dogs had to cluster together to get through the opening. Looking farther forward, though, I could see that it was opening up, getting wider and wider … and green. There was snow on the one side, the side protected from the sun by the rocks, but on the other side the ground was green—things were growing! That only made sense, it was still only September, so this was probably the last breath of life before the winter would swallow things up again. Just like this was the only time of the year that the birds could migrate this far north and survive before they retreated back south again.

The river of snow we were travelling on was getting narrower and narrower and I could now see that the green ahead was a combination of grass and muskeg, and scattered amongst it were flowers— dozens and dozens of red and yellow flowers. They looked so small, so delicate. Somehow they'd survived the bitter winter and burst into life again when the good weather allowed.That was amazing— and encouraging. We were going to be here for the bitter winter, surviving, and then coming to life in the spring when the weather allowed. If a bunch of little flowers could do it, we could do it too.

Up ahead I saw the camp.Well, at least what would become the camp. There were three teams of dogs resting, a dozen men, and a whole cluster of crates that had already been removed from the ship. They were piled together.The snow cover was even more sparse and we hit a patch of gravel and grass, the sledge slowing down before the dogs powered us over it. Finally, the Captain yelled out an order and the dogs slowed down, came to a stop, and then dropped to the ground amongst the other huskies and sledges.

“Welcome home,” Captain Bartlett said. “Not much yet, but the view is outta this world.”

“This is home?” I asked.

“It will be, at least for a little while. Beautiful, isn't it?”

I nodded. It was.

“Feast your eyes on the colours while you can. Soon there'll be no more greens or blues or yellows or reds. All will be white or shades of white. The closest you'll see to colour is the blue tinge in the ice.”

“How soon before the snows come?”

“It's already snowed here a few times, but melted.”

“How soon before it doesn't melt?” I asked.

“Could be anytime.” He looked up at the sky, studying it. I knew he could read the sky the way other people could read a book. “But not tonight.”
I bent down and picked one of the little flowers. It was a beautiful bright blue, small, fragile. It felt as though it might crumble in my hand, so I held it delicately.

“It's pretty amazing that something like this could survive up here all winter and then bloom in the spring,” I said.

“Amazing and inspiring. That's what we're gonna try to do.”

“But we're not a flower,” I said, holding it up.

“That we're not. The flower has an advantage over us.”

I gave him a questioning look.

“That flower
belongs
here.”

“And we don't?”

“No, sir. Even the Eskimos, the people of the north, don't come up this far.”

“But we're here now.”

“Being here doesn't mean that we belong here. We're just strangers in a strange land. Next spring the flowers will bloom again … Us … time will tell.”

A shiver went up my spine that had nothing to do with my wet clothing and the wind.

The Captain chuckled. “Don't you go worryin' none. We'll survive. Now, if
you're
going to survive to even see winter, we'd better get you some dry clothing.”
He untied the rope holding down the supplies on the sledge. He took down a cloth bag and passed it to me. It was surprisingly heavy. He motioned for me to take a second sack and I dropped the first to the ground. It landed with a thud, and then there was the unmistakable tinkling of metal against metal.

“You'll find some dry clothing in this sack,” he said as he handed it to me. “Change.”

“Here?” I asked.

He looked around. “For somebody who took a bath in the ocean I wouldn't be thinkin' you'd need much privacy.You 'aven't got nothin' that everybody hasn't seen before. I'm heading down to the campsite. Change, then take a hammer and spike out of that first bag and stake the dogs in place. After that you can come and join us. Lots of work to be done.”

I waited until the Captain had started to walk away and then looked around.There were a bunch of people at the camp—maybe a dozen or more Eskimos, as well as Dr. Goodwill, Mr. Marvin, Mr. MacMillan, and George. Commander Peary was nowhere to be seen, and none of the Eskimos were women. I guessed it was okay to change.

I took partial cover behind the sledge, using it as a screen between me and the men at the campsite. First I kicked off my mukluks. They were sopping wet, and as I pulled off the second one I turned it over and a stream of water poured out. I took off my
parka. It was wet on the outside, especially at the bottom, but the sealskin had held strong and the water hadn't penetrated through. I took it off and laid it on the sledge. My shirt was the same as the parka, just wet at the bottom, but I'd be best to put on a dry one. I took it off and dropped it to the ground. Next I pulled off my socks and pants. Any thought of leaving my underpants on vanished as I realized they were just as wet as everything else. I pulled them off as well and felt very, very exposed. The breeze made my skin tingle. I guessed that wasn't bad.The wind was going to have to dry me off before I put anything else on or there really wasn't much to be gained by changing.

I reached into the bag and rummaged around. There was a coat—sealskin—pants—sealskin as well—shirts, and a couple of pairs of mukluks. I searched around. No underpants. That sealskin was going to be pretty rough against my privates, but there didn't seem to be any real—I heard the barking of dogs and turned around.Another team was coming toward me—toward me standing there
buck naked
!

I grabbed the pants and pulled them on one leg, hopping on one foot until I could pull them onto my other leg.They were too short in the leg and too wide in the waist but they'd have to do. I grabbed a shirt and pulled it on over my head, tucking it into the pants. There was still too much room. I grabbed a second
shirt and pulled it over, tucking it into my pants as well. The two shirts, bunched up, looked like they might keep the pants from falling down to my ankles.