Edward Maurice - The Last of the Gentlemen Adventurers - Coming of Age in the Arctic

When the people went off on one of their summer hunts, the whole camp went with them, women, children and often the dogs as well. Usually, the dogs were fitted with small packs so that they could help to carry the load when the meat had to be brought home. The speed of the party would naturally not be very great, but as soon as they arrived at an area where there was a chance of good hunting, camp would be made, so that the women and children could establish themselves while the hunters got to work.

We had not walked very far before we came to a waterfall, though it was smaller than the one I had seen the previous day. Beevee got to the top of the fall simply by heaving himself from one rock to the next, Kilabuk going after him. This method looked highly perilous, as it would obviously be an easy matter for me to slip off the rock into the water and bounce down to the bottom. However, the hunters were used to dealing with the women and children of their parties, and so had come prepared.

Kilabuk produced a length of line from somewhere about his person and lowered one end down to me, after which he and Beevee took the strain, thus enabling me to pull myself up from rock to rock and reach the top without harm.

A short distance above the waterfall, the gulley veered away quite sharply to the east. Just as he was about to disappear from view, Beevee stopped quite abruptly and motioned us back. Then he beckoned to Kilabuk and the two men cautiously climbed the bank, presumably to position themselves behind what it was that Beevee had seen.

I stationed myself behind a nearby rock and waited. Suddenly, pandemonium broke out. A fusillade of rifle fire was followed by the pounding hooves of an approaching herd of deer, which swept round into the main gulley. Their sudden appearance took me by surprise, so that I only had time for one shot before they swerved away and charged up the opposite bank. I tried not to appear surprised that my single shot had felled a prime stag, but privately gave thanks to the school corps drill sergeant, who the previous year had given us a course of instruction in the art of sharpshooting.

Between us we had secured five deer, which would give us a reasonable load of meat and skins to take home. The two men started the skinning operations immediately and soon had the first animal ready to be cut up. The hunters worked with a smooth expertise, stopping every now and then to pop little squares of rump fat into their mouths. They chewed the fat with relish and when Beevee noticed me watching him, he handed me a piece which I accepted doubtfully, but then had to admit that it had a most palatable, nutty flavour. This is a much-prized source of fat during the winter months, often taken on the trail to be chewed during the long hours of dog-team travelling.

The Eskimos spent the afternoon in journeying up and down the hill fetching meat and skins. Before long, our camp began to look like a slaughterhouse, with skins, meat, seal carcasses and blubber scattered about beside the tent.

It seemed to me that we had been successful enough without any further hunting, but the Eskimos, their stalking instincts now thoroughly aroused, decided to make another sortie the following morning. They set off straight after breakfast, soon disappearing along the river course in the same direction we had taken the previous day.

I didn’t go with them, but pottered around the lower reaches of the river with a gaff to see if there were any fish going upstream to their home in the lakes. I had no success, so took advantage of the Eskimos’ absence to make myself a cup of coffee and was enjoying this with a hunk of bannock when there was a sudden noise outside the tent. I called out, thinking it was the men come back sooner than they had intended, but there was no response.

The silence continued for a moment or two, then was broken by a sort of tearing sound interspersed with low growling. Clearly, an animal was helping itself to what it no doubt considered to be our ample meat supplies, and as it did so, an unnerving thought struck me. My rifle was outside, leaning up against the far end of the tent; the only weapon on hand was a small meat knife, not really suitable for a confrontation with a savage creature.

My visitor was obviously wasting no time in getting down to its meal, which it consumed to the accompaniment of an increasingly ferocious munching, growling sound, which did nothing to quiet my rising panic. Once or twice there was a lull, which made me hopeful that the animal had departed, but a few seconds later the meal was resumed, with what seemed to be redoubled energy and noise.

The difficulty of explaining to the Eskimos my apparent inaction while our hard-earned meat supplies came under the fierce attention of a thief at last drove me to take action. As I stood up, silence fell, but my hopes that the creature had been frightened off were soon shattered as the noisy feeding sounds began again. I crept to the door, suddenly flung it open, then slammed it shut again. Except that a piece of the door fell off, this achieved nothing, for the noise continued unabated.

There was nothing for it but bold action, so, feeling anything but courageous, I opened the door again, stepped briskly outside, and forced myself to peer round the corner of the tent.

I had never before seen a wild animal at close quarters, except behind the bars of a zoo, so the sight that met my eyes both horrified and fascinated me. The most enormous creature was sitting on its haunches, tearing blubber from a handy seal carcass and clearly not at all pleased by the interruption. The bear, for there was no doubt as to the identity of the thief, looked hard at me and it took all my resolution to stand my ground in a sort of eyeball to eyeball confrontation.

I had no plan in mind, and do not know how the situation would have been resolved, had not the bear, having completed his inspection of me, slowly shaken its head, dropped quietly on all fours and loped away. I just stood there and watched the great animal wander off, without making any attempt to get my rifle and shoot it. There was something about the casual indifference in the rear view of the bear, moving without haste in its chosen direction, that left me standing and gaping after the thing until it disappeared behind a pile of rocks.

Shortly afterwards the hunters returned. They had not come across any more deer, but when they heard about the bear, they rushed off immediately to try their luck but were too late to catch up with it and lost its tracks somewhere in the rocky ground at the entrance to the gulley. Somehow, although the bear had given me an anxious quarter of an hour, I felt relieved that it had not met its death at our hands.

As we had been reasonably successful with our hunting, we now decided that it would be wise to head for home, before the weather deteriorated, for it was apparently most unusual to experience long spells of fine weather during the fall. We loaded the meat, skins and blubber into the boat before dark, so that our catch would be safe from any more roving beasts, while we would also be saved a delaying job in the morning.

The night was cold and frosty. We rose early while the stars were still bright, determined to get a good run home in daylight if possible, and after we had breakfasted the men did not dally. The tent was packed up and taken down to the boat with all our other possessions. No time was lost, so that as Kilabuk was turning the flywheel to persuade the sometimes reluctant engine into life, the dawn was just streaking the sky along the ridge of high eastern hills.

Despite our good start we did not fare too well, for by daylight the night crispness had gone out of the air and the clouds were jostling angrily along the northern horizon. It was no surprise when the wind burst down on us as we came out into the open to cross the mouth of a nearby fiord. We made very slow progress, for the further we moved out to sea, the worse the conditions became. We could not turn back, since that would have meant contending with a following sea, which might have been dangerous with our heavily loaded stern.