Andrea Barrett - Voyage of the Narwhal

Take the iron, I told them. Take anything you want, all the fittings, I can’t use them anymore. But apparently rnis isn’t enough. The two men seem prepared to carry me off bodily if I refuse. And so I am to go. Perhaps it’s not a bad thing. They mean me no harm, I think; and I’ll have warmth and company and food for the winter; and who else has lived among the Esquimaux like this? I may see things no one’s seen before, live in this part of the world as no white man has. Annie does her best to make her tribe’s offer attractive — we welcome you, she says.

Meanwhile Nessark and Marumah are loading their sledges with hoops and hardware they tear from the brig. On top of the iron the men pile meat from my caches; I want to go to their village as a strong hunter, not a beggar. Also I’m bringing two of the smaller sails as a gift. Everything else must stay here but my personal belongings. I pray the Franklin relics Erasmus took with him have reached home safely. That the men have reached home. We leave in a few hours.

DECEMBER 23, 1856. Anoatok is much changed since my first visit. During this season the Esquimaux usually move to Etah, where Dr. Kane visited them, but since my arrival the hunting has been unusually good and several extended families have stayed on after repairing and expanding the huts. Fresh sealskins cover the walls, a bear skin warms the floor, the blubber lamps burn steadily. The angekok, Annie says, has determined that my presence is drawing the animals. By their rescue of me, and their continued care — I sleep with Nessark, Annie, their little boy, Annie’s parents, and her two young brothers— the spirit of the iron stone has been pacified.

The traps yield foxes, and despite the darkness we’ve harpooned many seals. We take bears as well — although I’d assumed they all disappeared at this time of year, it isn’t so. On Monday the moon was full, we were hunting seal. Suddenly an iceberg near us began to tip and shift position — and a huge bear clambered out of the snow alongside it, disturbed in his rest. Our dogs pursued him and mine was the first shot. By tradition I’m credited with the kill and the skin is mine, but it was Nessark whose spear finished him — and lucky for me, the bear was upon me. I’m now missing most of the fleshy portion of my left ear. The wound is healing and the pain isn’t bad. Nessark stopped the bleeding with snow and showed me how to slice the bear’s skin from the body and fold it into a shape like a sled, then how to carve out legs, ribs, backbone, and shoulder blades and set each chunk to freeze on the ice. We pulled the meat home on the frozen skin.

JANUARY 28, i8$j. A most remarkable event yesterday. The Esquimaux call itsaugssat or so it sounds to my ear. A high tide two days ago, combined with a strong wind, opened a large lead in the cove. Into it poured hundreds of narwhals in search of breathing space and food. When the end of the lead froze over again the animals were trapped. It was horrible to see them thrashing around in the ever smaller hole, pushing each other underwater as they struggled for air, pulled tighter and tighter until their tusks projected above the surface like a forest of clashing spears. Yet wonderful, too, that it should happen so near to us.

Annie’s little boy spotted them first and ran home nearly speechless with excitement — he’s very clever, I’ve taught him much English and call him Tom. We all gathered our weapons and followed him, everyone rushing before a crack opened and freed the desperate creatures. But luck was with us not them. We stood around the edges of the pool, needing only to thrust the harpoons into the nearest animals and haul them up. Even in this we were aided, as the thrashing survivors heaved the carcasses upward.

Twenty-seven narwhals! Such a celebration we had. Tom is a hero and so, somehow, am I. Not for anything I do but because this season has been so generous. There hasn’t been a saugssat here for seven years, nor such successful winter hunting. My presence — or more accurately my survival among them — is thought to have caused this good fortune. So I am pampered, fussed over, Annie makes me pants from my polar bear skin and an undershirt from the skins of murres while her mother feeds me dovekies cached since the summer in a sealskin bag. The birds, permeated with blubber, are a great delicacy. Nessark has also been most generous and begrudges me no hospitality. They’re generous not only with material things but with their time and knowledge; men and women alike spend hours with me, answering my questions.

MARCH 14, 1857- I leave with both reluctance and excitement. The food caches are empty, it’s time to move to new hunting grounds, we have sun for nearly twelve hours daily and the dogs are strong. It’s the best time of year to make a long sledge journey and the whole encampment has decided to accompany me to Upernavik. They would move now anyway, Annie tells me. But not so far, never so far — they do this, as everything else, on the advice of the angekok. He never speaks to me directly but only through Annie. The winter has been so good, he says, and everyone so healthy, because all the elements of his vision dream were satisfied. Yet he believes the spirits will still turn against them unless they convey me safely to Upernavik — which they’ve only heard about, where no one of them has ever been — and hence out of their country. Annie tells me this as if ashamed. I suppose they all assume I’d want to stay here forever. And how can I tell them nothing could be luckier for me than this — that they should bend their energies, their time and skills and dogs and sledges, to bringing me just where I want to go, and likely couldn’t reach myself.

I’ve had time, these last months, to consider all the mistakes I made my first year here. One was certainly my failure to cultivate these people more fully when they first visited us. Because Dr. Kane’s ship was frozen in on this side of the Sound, he was in more immediate contact with them. Always they aided him; and might have aided us had I pressed them more last winter. Perhaps we might have escaped with their help last spring. Instead we saw them only twice; our great loss. Now it seems clear that something one of my crew said or did — I won’t speculate as to whom — gave these people the impression we were evil and to be avoided. Only after I was alone did they approach again, giving me the chance to adapt myself to their habits. The white man can only survive comfortably here by living as the Esquimaux do. Almost all the things we brought with us are useless. Esquimaux clothes, hunting techniques, eating habits are what make life possible. I imagine that Dr. Kane also discovered this — but he never lived among them, as I’ve done for six months now.

APRIL 30, 1857. Upernavik, at last! The Danish traders welcomed me and gave me news of Dr. Kane — how tragic, this unexpected death after escaping the arctic! Also they tell me my men arrived here safely and are thought to be home. The walrus are streaming north and my Esquimaux must follow them; they’re uncomfortable here, they’ve had no previous contact with the natives of this settlement and their customs are very different. I’ve given each a parting gift: a knife or a packet of needles, the last of my flannel shirts cut into pocket squares for the children.

Two remain behind as the sledges head north again. Annie and her son, Tom, have agreed to accompany me home, despite the hardship of leaving their family behind. They’re excellent representatives of their race, intelligent and agreeable; fine ambassadors to the civilized world. With their help I can convey to others the interest and wonders of their culture. And together we may teach other travelers how best to prepare for future journeys of discovery in the arctic.