Alaska (31 page)

The service that Captain Pym conducted was a solemn affair, outlined in pages printed at the rear of his Bible, and it was made doubly relevant by a passage which he arbitrarily quoted from Proverbs:

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' ”There be three things which are too wonderful for me, yea, four which I know not: the way of an eagle in the air; the way of a serpent upon a rock; the way of a ship in the midst of the sea; and the way of a man with a maid.”

'During this voyage we have seen eagles in the air and serpents on land. The way our ship escaped ice in the sea was truly mysterious, and which of us can understand the passion which has impelled our man John Atkins to take as his bride this lovely maid Kiinak?'

The ceremony made a profound impression on the Eskimos, for although they understood nothing of its religious significance, they could see that Pym took it with such high seriousness that this must be a true marriage. At its conclusion the older women attending Kiinak began to chant ritual words reserved for such occasions, and for a few precious moments there in the darkness of the Evening Star the two cultures met in a harmony that would not often be repeated in years to come, and never exceeded.

But of all the persons participating in this occasion and in the limited feast which followed, only pregnant Kiinak detected a collateral event which was going to have even greater significance, for as she watched the women during the feasting she observed her sister-in-law, and she whispered to her new husband: 'Look at Nikaluk! She's in love with your captain.'

And as the long, dark winter drew to a close, and the sun returned to the heavens, no more than a silvery shadow at first, peeking its head above the horizon for a few minutes, shivering and running away, Nikaluk was powerless to hide the abiding affection she felt for this strange man, so different from her husband, the notable hunter Sopilak. She was loyal to her husband and reverenced his skill in leading the villagers and keeping them provided with food, but she also recognized in Captain Pym a man of deep emotion and responsibility, one in touch with the spirits who ruled the earth and the seas. She observed how his men respected him and how it was he who made decisions and said the important words. More even than her admiration for his qualities was the fact that she thrilled to his presence, as if she knew that he was bringing to this lonely village at the edge of the icebound ocean a message from another world, one which she could not begin to visualize but which she knew intuitively must have aspects of great power and goodness. She had known two men from this world, Atkins, who had loved her 195

husband's sister, and Captain Pym, who controlled the ship, and they were in their way as fine as her husband.

But there was also the fact that she was captivated by the idea of Pym, by the possibility that she might lie with him as Atkins had done so easily with Kiinak and with such joyous results. Driven by these impulses, she began to frequent the places where Pym would be, and she became the object of gossip in the village, and even the sailors in the long hut knew that their married captain, the one who took the Bible so seriously and had three daughters in Boston, had caused an Eskimo woman to fall in love with him, and she with a husband of her own.

Pym, an austere man who took life seriously, thrashed about in a blizzard of moral confusion: sometimes he refused to acknowledge that Nikaluk was in love with him; later, when he did confess to himself that complications threatened, he assumed no responsibility for them. In either case, he made not the slightest gesture toward Nikaluk, not even so much as giving her a glance, for he was absorbed in what he deemed a much more weighty problem. 'When,' he asked his officers at New Year's, 'can we expect the ice to melt?' and one of them who had read books written by Europeans about Greenland gave it as his judgment that the ice would not start to melt till May, but when Atkins asked among his wife's people, they gave an appalling date which translated into early July, and when Pym himself consulted with Sopilak, he was satisfied that this later date was probably correct.

Only then did despair settle upon the men of the Evening Star, for in autumn when the ice trapped them they had accepted their imprisonment, expecting it to last till the end of March, when spring thawed New England ponds. And at the onset of winter they were almost eager to see if they had the fortitude to withstand its historic blasts and were proud when they did. But now to greet a new year and to realize that summer would be more than six months distant was intolerable, and frictions developed.

Some wanted to shift their quarters to the ship, but the Eskimos warned vigorously against this: 'When ice melts, strange things happen. Maybe worst time.' So Captain Pym ordered them to remain ashore, and each day his inspections were more careful.

He was considerate in dealing with men who gave trouble, assuring them that while he understood their anxieties, he could not tolerate even the slightest show of insubordination.

He was pleased, therefore, when the Eskimos organized hunting trips far out on the ice, which still showed no signs of melting, for then his more adventurous men could accom—

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pany them to share the dangers. He himself went once to where a long lane of open water had lured sea lions north, and he had shared in the dangerous task of killing two and then lugging them home over the ice. 'If we keep busy,' he told the men and himself, 'the day will come when we'll break free.'

As the day Captain Pym calculated to be the twenty-fourth of January approached, he encouraged his crew by telling them that the sun, still hiding beneath the horizon, would soon be returning to the Northern Hemisphere, and at a speed that would make the noonday twilight grow longer and brighter. And he explained to those sailors who knew no astronomy: 'Yes, the sun is heading north, and it will keep coming till it stands directly over the Arctic Circle. Then daylight will last twenty-four hours.'

'Tell it to hurry up,' one of the sailors said, and Pym replied: 'As with all things ordained by God, like the planting of corn and the return of geese, the sun must follow the schedule He gave it.' But then he added a curious bit of information: 'The ancient Druids, who did not know God, expressed their joy at the sun's responsible behavior with prayer and song, and since the Eskimos are also primitive people, I suppose we can expect the same.'

But he was not prepared for the things that happened at Desolation Point, for when on the twenty-third of January the sun threw unmistakable signals that on the next noon it would show its face, the villagers went wild, and children cried: 'The sun is coming back!' Drums were produced and tambours made of sealskin fastened to rims of driftwood, but what seemed to be the focus of attention and delight was a huge blanket woven years ago from precious fur spindled into thread and woven into a stout cloth. It was colored with dyes gathered along the shore in summer and from the exudations of sealskin and walrus.

That afternoon Sopilak and two other men in ceremonial garb came solemnly on their skis to the long hut to announce that on the morrow, at high noon when the sun would reappear, the sailors were invited to its celebration, and gravely they bowed as Captain Pym had done when conducting the wedding in his ship. First Mate Corey, speaking for the crew, promised they would be there, but when the Eskimos had gone he said, not spitefully but with a certain cynicism: 'Let's see what these savages are up to,' and half an hour before noon on the twenty-fourth he and Captain Pym led their entire complement of sailors over the frozen snow to Desolation Point.

In the silvery darkness they joined a solemn crowd, a 197

group of people who had lived for many months without sunlight, and there was muffled excitement as the Eskimos looked to the east where the sun had regularly reappeared in years past, a hesitant disk bringing rejuvenation to the world. When the first delicate rays flickered briefly and a gray light suffused the sky, men began to whisper and then cry out in uncontrolled joy as shoots of flame came forth, heralding the true dawn. Watchers from the dark huts smiled, and even the sailors felt a surge of joy when it became apparent that the sun really was going to appear, for they had resented this strange dark winter even more than the Eskimos, and as the villagers gazed in awe when the sun itself peaked over the edge of the world to see how the frozen areas had sustained themselves during its absence, a woman began to chant, and one of Pym's sailors shouted: 'Jesus Christ! I thought it would never come back!'

Then, in the brief moments of that glorious day when hope was restored and men were assured that the world would move as it always had, at least for one more year, people began to cheer and sing and embrace, with the sailors jigging in heavy boots with old women in parkas who had not expected ever to dance again with a young man. And there were tears.

But now things happened that the sailors could not have imagined and which, perhaps, had never before happened at Desolation Point, unpremeditated acts which captured the essence of this glorious moment when life began anew. Along the beach, where great blocks of ice protruded like the backdrop to some drama enacted by the gods of the north, a group of girls, eight or nine years old, danced, and their little feet clad in huge fur-lined moccasins moved so gracefully as their bodies smothered in furs bent in unusual directions that the sailors fell silent, thinking of their daughters or little sisters whom they had not seen for years.

On and on the dancing of the little girls continued, elfin spirits paying respect to the frozen sea, feet clomping handsomely in the snow as they performed steps which had graced this day and this seashore for ten thousand years. It was a moment in time that would be frozen in the memory of all the Americans who saw it, and two big sailors, overcome by the sudden beauty of the spectacle, remained in the background but in their own clumsy way aped the movements of the little girls, and old women clapped, remembering those years long ago when they had greeted the returning sun with similar dancing.

But no one watching these little girls reacted in the way Captain Pym did, for as he followed their unaffected steps 198

and saw the joy with which they smiled at the sun, he thought of his own three daughters and unprecedented judgments came to his lips: 'My daughters never showed such joy in their lives. In our home there was little dancing.' Tears came to his eyes, a symbol of his confusion, and he kept staring at the dance; he could not join it as his sailors did, but he understood its significance.

While the sun was still visible on its brief stop to say hello, excitement grew among the huts, where Eskimo men busied themselves with something that Captain Pym could not see, and after a few moments all the Eskimos cheered as Sopilak and his fellow hunters, mature men all, brought forth the big blanket which Pym had seen earlier but whose purpose he had been unable to guess. Laughter and excitement attended its passage to the spot where the girls had been dancing, but still none of the Americans could fathom why a mere blanket should be causing such a flurry. But then it was unfolded, and Pym saw that it had been made in the form of a circle with a rim strengthened to provide handholds, which most of the men in the village now grabbed. At signals from Sopilak, they simultaneously pulled outward, causing the blanket to form the surface of a huge drum, which was instantly relaxed and as quickly drawn tight again.

Under Sopilak's skilled timing, the blanket pulsed like a living membrane, now loose, now taut.

When the men indicated their confidence that they could operate the blanket, Sopilak paused, turned to the crowd, and pointed to a rather pretty girl of fifteen or sixteen with braided hair, a large labret in her lower lip and prominent tattoos across her face. Obviously proud to have been chosen, she jumped forward, flexed her knees, and allowed two men to toss her in the air and onto the waiting blanket, which had been drawn tight to receive her. As watching women cheered, the girl waved to assure them that she would not dishonor them, and Sopilak's men began to make the blanket pulse, lifting the girl higher and higher, but as she had promised the women, she deftly maintained her balance, remaining erect on her feet.

Then, suddenly, the men tightened the blanket furiously, all pulling outward at once, whereupon the girl was tossed high in the air, perhaps a dozen feet, and there she seemed to hang for a moment before falling back to the blanket, upon which she landed still upright on her feet. The villagers applauded and some sailors shouted, but the girl, surprised at how high she had been thrown that first time and knowing that much more was to follow, bit upon the upper edge of her labret and prepared for the next flight.

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This time she soared aloft to a considerable height, but still she maintained her footing; however, on the final toss she went so high that gravity and a spinning motion acted upon her heavily padded body and she came down in a heap, collapsing with laughter as the men helped her descend from the blanket.

Kiinak, clutching her husband's hand, told him: 'None went higher than me, but that was last year,' and he, always aware of her pregnancy, said: 'That was last year.'

However, after two more saucy girls went flying up toward the sky, Sopilak relinquished his place on the blanket and came to stand before his sister, saying: 'To make the baby strong,' and gravely she took his hand and accompanied him to the blanket.

'Wait!' Atkins shouted, terrified at the prospect of his gravid wife's flying through the air and landing on the taut blanket with a thump, but Kiinak held up her right hand, indicating that he must stop where he was. Agitated as never before, he watched as she was lifted onto the blanket and her brother resumed his place in the circle of men holding it.

Gently, as if dealing with a baby already born, they started the rhythm of the blanket, chanting as they did, and then at a nod from Sopilak they imparted just the right gentle lift, and the pregnant girl rose slightly into the air and was expertly caught as she descended, suffering no shock whatever from her brief flight. When she rejoined her husband, she whispered: 'To make the baby brave.'