Andrea Barrett - Voyage of the Narwhal

Ootuniah was the name of one of the men; Awahtok another. Erasmus couldn’t catch the names of the three younger men, who hung behind the first pair and seemed hardly more than boys. All five were dressed in fur jackets and breeches, with high boots made from the leg skins of white bears. The men’s feet, Erasmus saw, were sheltered by the bears’ feet, with claws protruding like overgrown human toenails. Walking, the men left bear prints on the snow.

“They’d like to come up,” Joe said, after speaking with them for a minute.

“It’s too risky to let them all aboard at once,” Zeke said. “Tell them one, the oldest one, may come. The others must remain outside for now.”

Inside the deckhouse Ootuniah fingered Joe’s tent approvingly. He opened the flap and stuck his head inside, then said something that made Joe laugh. Joe opened the hatch and’ led the way down the ladder, which Erasmus thought Ootuniah might find unfamiliar. But Ootuniah descended as calmly as if he’d been using ladders all his life. Inside, he opened the bunk curtains, picked up the books, fondled the stove. Erasmus saw him slip a wooden cooking spoon into his jacket.

Ootuniah squeezed between the stove and the partitions before anyone could stop him. But Dr. Boerhaave, who’d darted belowdecks as soon as he sensed what was going on, had managed to move the sick men onto stools and chests, so that they were sitting upright when Ootuniah saw them. Ootuniah smiled and said some words of greeting, which Joe translated. Then Joe added, for the men’s benefit, “Don’t be frightened, he’s friendly.”

Was he? Nothing seemed to surprise their visitor, Erasmus thought. Not the Narwhal itself, nor the number or condition of the crew. Dr. Boerhaave whispered to him, “What do you think of this? It’s almost as if they’ve been keeping watch on us, and took Mr. Francis’s death for a sign that we’re weak enough to be approached safely.”

Behind Ootuniah’s back, Dr. Boerhaave signaled the men to sit up straight and smile. But when Ootuniah finally sat down at the table, the first thing he said, as Joe translated it, was, “Your people are sick. Do you have meat?”

Before him was a plate of salt pork and beans and bread, which Zeke had asked Ned to prepare. Ootuniah poked the food with his finger and then ignored it. “Only this food,” Zeke said, and then translated his own words slowly. He looked up at Joe.

“Did I say that right?”

Joe nodded. “Tell him,” Zeke added, “or tell me how to tell him: ‘We would like to trade with you for meat. We have needles and beads and cask staves. Do you have meat to spare?’ “

Joe spoke to Ootuniah and listened to his response. “They have some walrus meat,” he reported to Zeke. “Ootuniah says if you will allow the others aboard, he’ll trade with us.”

Zeke thought for a moment. “Not in here. But we’ll receive them in the deckhouse.”

Ootuniah shrugged when Joe spoke to him, then rose, went up on deck, and spoke to the group below. They ran across the ice floes, disappearing behind a line of hummocks to return with a heavily laden sledge drawn by eight dogs. They couldn’t have been hiding there for long, Erasmus thought. But they might have spent days farther off, on the other side of the point — what an odd feeling, to think that the brig had been under observation!

The Esquimaux scrambled into the deckhouse, bearing great lumps of blubber and walrus meat. Erasmus and Dr. Boerhaave led the sick men up one by one, leaning them like bundles against the bulwarks. Ned and Scan put a handful of precious coal in the deck stove and brought up an iron cooking pot. In exchange for five cask staves the Esquimaux offered some chunks of meat, which Ned quickly boiled. They ate and ate, the crew slurping the hot broth and tearing at the parboiled flesh, the Esquimaux taking their own portions raw, alternating slices of meat and blubber. Zeke, after the first frenzy, said in a low voice to Joe, “See if they’d trade those dogs as well.”

“They won’t,” Joe said after some discussion. Erasmus thought there’d been a lot said in Ootuniah’s language to yield these few words in English. Yet Zeke, who claimed to understand many words now, didn’t seem uncomfortable.

“It’s been a hard winter, and many of their dogs have died,” Joe continued. “They can’t spare this team.” He talked with Ootuniah more, and also with Awahtok. Wiping his mouth, he said to Zeke, “This is a hunting party; they come from across Smith Sound, from a small village called ‘Anoatok,’ I think. They must bring the sledge and the dogs and the walrus back to their families.”

“How far away is their home?” Zeke asked. “Why haven’t we seen them before?”

“It’s some days’ journey across the Sound,” Joe said. “They believe no Inuit live on this side — they come here only to hunt.”

Ootuniah spoke again, at some length, and Joe’s face grew still. He asked something brief, then repeated it. Ootuniah said a word Erasmus thought he recognized, and when Joe turned back to Zeke, his eyes were round.

“They ask if we are friends with ‘Docto Kayen.’ “

“What?” Zeke said, leaping to his feet.

“That’s what he said. He says last winter, and the winter before, they knew white men on the other side of the Sound. Dr. Kane, and his men. They lived in what he calls a ‘wooden idgloo,’ like this one. And had no luck hunting, and grew very sick. Ootuniah hunted for them, and traded with them. Last spring the party abandoned their ship and went south.”

Zeke stared down at his feet for a long time. It would take weeks, Erasmus understood later, before Zeke would really absorb this information or what it meant. For now, he made only a calm proposal.

“I’d like to make a treaty with them,” Zeke said. “If they’ll continue to bring us food, and perhaps some dogs, we’ll trade them iron and wood and other things they need. I need their help and the loan of sledges and dogs. In return I’ll help them in every way I can. Like Kane did. Tell them I’m a friend of Kane’s, and wish to be their friend as well.”

There was more conversation, some of which Zeke seemed to understand but most of which Joe had to translate. “They thank you for this offer of friendship,” Joe said. “They’ll leave us half their walrus meat as a token of peace. And will discuss your proposal with their families. For now they say they must go home. They wish us well.”

Zeke gave them all gifts of pocketknives. In return, Ootuniah gave Zeke an ivory-handled knife he’d concealed in his boot.

“He must have made the blade from one of Kane’s cask hoops,” Zeke said, turning the knife in his hand. “How do we know they haven’t murdered Kane’s entire party?”

Joe shook his head. “If they’d wanted to,” he said, “they could have murdered all of us. Instead they’ve given us walrus, when I can’t find any to save my life. Why would you think they’re hostile?”

In the flurry of leave-taking, the iron cooking pot disappeared, and two spoons, a lantern, and a large piece of wood from the railing. The next day, when Erasmus went out to the storehouse, he found the door pried open. Only an axe and a barrel of blubber were missing — but Mr. Francis’s coffin had been moved a few inches. As if, Erasmus thought, the Esquimaux crowding around it and peering down had bumped it gently and in unison with their bear-clawed toes.