An Old Captivity (26 page)

They all stood silent for a minute, looking round about. The wind had dropped to a light air that drifted from the ice-cap, cold and desolate. It was very quiet.

Lockwood stirred. “They’re frightened by their own tradition.”

The pilot glanced at him. “Tradition?”

They turned and walked towards the camp. The don said: “This colony was Norwegian. Norse settlers from Iceland started it, about the year 980. It died out in the fourteenth century.”

Alix aid: “Is this the place that went native, Daddy?”

Lockwood nodded. “The colony that died of neglect.”

“How did that happen?” asked the pilot.

“The Norwegians used to send a ship here every year, to trade, to sell the colonists axes, weapons, things of that sort in exchange for their furs. I don’t suppose the trade was worth much to Norway. Under the Hanseatic League they began to send the ships less frequently. In the end, there was an interval of eighty years when no ship came here. When they did come at the end of that, there were no Norsemen here at all. Only Eskimos.”

The pilot asked: “What happened to them?”

The don said: “They became absorbed. You’ve only got to look at Ajago.”

Alix nodded. “I was noticing him. He’s got a much longer face than the Eskimos at Angmagsalik, and that place where we spent the night. More European.”

Her father nodded. “They’re like that here. He’s got a Norse ancestry all right, although I don’t suppose he knows it.”

Ross said: “You mean the Norsemen intermarried with the Eskimos?”

“They had to. You see, while the ships kept coming here, and they had iron weapons, timber, corn, and all the culture of their homeland, the colonists were better men than the Eskimos. When the ships stopped coming, the Eskimos became the better men, because they could live on the country. The colonists would have had to take lessons from the Eskimos in hunting, building houses, making clothes … All their superiority must have vanished very soon. In the end, it probably became
an honour for a colonist to marry with an Eskimo.”

“And the result,” said Ross reflectively, “is Ajago and Mayark.”

Lockwood smiled. “Descendants of the Viking kings.”

They reached the camp, and began to make arrangements for their supper. “This place is full of ruins,” said Lockwood, opening the tin that Alix put into his hand. “I went practically as far as Brattalid. There are the stone walls of homesteads all over the country.”

His daughter said: “In fact, we’re sitting on one now. Don’t spill that juice, Daddy—I want it for the stew.”

Ross said: “We took some of the stones from that wall to build the fireplace. It’s useful having them to hand like that.”

The don looked round him at the lines of the stone walls upon the moor. “I’ll have a look at this one in the morning, before you have to build another fireplace.” He studied it with an expert eye. “It’s been a farm—a large farm, I should say. You see that raised bit—there? That would have been the midden. If you dug there you’d probably find bits of broken pottery, and stuff like that.”

The pilot looked at their camp with a new interest: “Are you going to have a crack at it?”

“It’s not worth the time. I want to have a go at that church, over on the other side. But it’s the Celtic influence that I’m really interested in. That means coming here again next year, after we’ve had the winter to digest what’s in the photographs.”

Ross said: “When we’ve done the survey you’d better come up with me, sir, and have a good look at it all by eye.”

The don nodded. “I’ll do that. But the main thing I want to do is to start digging on that church site, the one you saw in the air photograph at Oxford. That’s about three miles from here.”

They supped off a meat stew cooked over the wood fire, with biscuits and jam. Around them the dusk fell. There was no real night in that latitude; the clear sky turned to a deep blue against which the hills made undulating black
silhouettes. To the west of them two glaciers ran down from the ice-cap, which itself could be seen between the hills, a dark grey shadow under the indigo sky. It grew bitterly cold. From time to time Ross left the fire and went down to the beach to adjust the mooring ropes of the seaplane to the rising tide.

Presently the tide was full and it was necessary for him to stay down on the beach to fend the seaplane off and prevent her from grounding too soon. At last, at midnight, he pulled in the tail ropes and let her touch upon the sand. He waited for a time as the tide fell till he was satisfied that she was sitting evenly on both floats and coming to no harm. Then he went back to the tents.

Alix was already in her tent and in her sleeping-bag, laid out upon a bed of birch twigs gathered by the Eskimos.

Ross joined Lockwood in the other tent, undressed, and got into his sleeping-bag. It had been an easy day, but he had much to occupy his mind. He reached out and took a tablet of his Troxigin, and slept.

He woke in broad daylight, with Lockwood shaking him by the shoulder and looking at him curiously. “Time to get up,” said the don. “It’s after seven o’clock.”

The pilot sat up, still bemused with sleep. Lockwood noticed that he was trembling. “Did you sleep all right?” he asked.

The pilot passed an unsteady hand across his eyes. “I had the hell of a dream,” he muttered.

Lockwood asked quietly: “What was it about?”

“I don’t know. Yes I do—it was about a bear. It came up out of the ice, because of the seal. It wanted to get at the carcass, you see. All I had was one of those little short spears, for seals, and I fought it with that.”

He stared around him, and began to get out of his sleeping-bag. “Bloody funny, the things one dreams.”

“What happened after that?”

“After what, sir?” Already the dream was fading from his memory.

“After you began fighting with the bear?”

The pilot laughed. “Oh, I don’t know. I woke up.”

He dressed, and went out of the tent. The machine was still safely aground, the sea was calm, the day was bright. He passed a hand wearily across his eyes. He was unrefreshed by his sleep, as always seemed to be the case these days. He had a great feeling of relief that he was awake. There had been a dream … what was it about? He could not remember. Already it had sunk into the subconscious.

Alix came out of her tent. “’Morning, Miss Lockwood,” he said. “How did you sleep?”

“Splendidly, thanks. How did you?”

“Not so bad.”

She glanced at him. “Haggard” was the word that came into her mind; she thought that he was looking awfully tired. “Really?” she asked.

“Well, I slept all the time. You can’t do more than that.”

She said a little doubtfully: “I suppose not.”

An hour later they were loading the machine with films, and a small quantity of provisions and camp gear in case of forced landing. They got on board and started up the engine; the Eskimos waded into the water and turned the seaplane towards the entrance to the cove, and she moved out into the fiord. Ross swung her round into the wind, and took off. Lockwood stood watching them for a few minutes; then he left for Brattalid with Mayark, leaving Ajago to mind the camp and help with the machine when it came back.

All morning the seaplane flew up and down, backwards and forwards over hill, mountain, and fiord in exactly parallel lines. Alix sat huddled by the camera at the rear of the cabin, alert and intent on her work; ahead of her the pilot sat hunched at the wheel, staring at the horizon ahead of him, glancing from time to time down through the drift sight. Once a film jammed in the camera and they landed in a fiord to clear it; then they took off again and went on with the job.

They landed opposite the camp at about half-past twelve,
both strained and tired with the concentration. Ajago was standing waist-deep in the icy water of the cove as they taxied in; he caught the float as it came to him and the seaplane grounded gently on the sand.

Ross swung round in his seat. “That went all right, didn’t it?”

Alix got up stiffly; she was cold and very tired. “I think it did. The films went through the camera, anyway.”

Ross nodded. “They’re probably all right. We’ll get on shore and have a bit of lunch. Then we’ll pick one of them at random and develop it.”

They got down on to the float, and so to shore. Alix went up to the camp; Ross stayed behind with Ajago to see the seaplane settled. Together they put her in position and let her ground at once upon the falling tide.

After lunch they began their preparations for developing. The smaller of the two tents, the one that Alix slept in, had been made of a specially lined fabric for conversion to a dark room. They turned out her bed and all her kit, set up a little table in the tent, drew a couple of buckets of water from the stream, unpacked the chemicals and dishes, and began their work.

They spent the afternoon huddled together in the dark tent. Each spool of film carried a hundred exposures and was about fifty feet long. Working in close, intimate contact with each other in the darkness they cut the last few feet off two spools taken at random, developed the pieces, and fixed them. After a couple of hours they emerged blinking from the tent and examined the results critically.

“Well,” said Ross, “they’re quite all right. A bit on the dark side perhaps.”

The girl said: “That means a smaller stop, doesn’t it?”

“That’s right.” He scrutinised the detail carefully. “I don’t know that we’ve got sufficient overlap for safety. We’ll have to do something about that.”

They put the films back into the bucket, carried it down to the stream, and washed them carefully. Then they packed up the photographic gear again and put the bed back into
the tent. They were both tired. Ajago had a kettle boiling on the fire; they made themselves tea and sat down by the tent. Alix asked: “How long will it take to do the whole thing, Mr. Ross?”

He yawned. “Four or five days for the big survey, if we get along like this. And then two days for the little one.”

She thought for a minute. “That means that we’d be finished about Thursday of next week.”

He shook his head. “We shan’t go on like this each day. The weather may break. But, anyway, there’s the petrol to think about. We’ve got enough petrol to do a flight to-morrow, but then we’ve got to go to Julianehaab to fill up. That’s going to waste a day. Two days survey and one day refuelling is about the best we’ll do.”

He yawned again. She said: “Why don’t you lie down and have a rest?”

He smiled at her. “I believe I will. She won’t float for another couple of hours.”

“Don’t bother about the seaplane, Mr. Ross. We can look after her—Ajago and I. Go on and get some sleep, and I’ll call you in time for supper.”

He shook his head. “I’d like to be about while she’s afloat. She’s not too safe where she is, and we don’t want to stick a rock through a pontoon. But I could use a little sleep.”

He went and lay down on his bed, having set the alarm clock for seven o’clock. He went to sleep at once, and slept quietly, without dreaming. It seemed only an instant before the alarm went off in his ear. He roused, rolled over, and came out of the tent rubbing his eyes.

Lockwood was back in camp, after a day’s digging on the church site with Mayark. They discussed the survey for a few minutes; then Ross went down to the seaplane, now just afloat, and spend some time adjusting the mooring ropes. He stayed there till they called him up to the camp for supper.

In the evening they strolled a little way up on to the hill and stood looking out over the wild and barren
countryside. “This was the hell of a place to come to for a colony,” said Ross.

The don nodded. “It’s not attractive. But Norway was overcrowded in those days—too many people for the land to support. They had to get out and go somewhere else. They had battle after battle with the English, trying to settle in our country. They didn’t have much luck in Scotland, or in Ireland. They got quite a good colony going in Iceland, and then they came on here as an experiment.”

“Which didn’t work,” said Alix.

“It worked for the first couple of hundred years. They had about two thousand people here.”

The pilot said: “I suppose all they needed was a square deal from the mother country, and they didn’t get it.”

The don said: “But for that, they might have been here still.”

They went back to the camp, and strolled down to readjust the lines mooring the seaplane. High tide that night was at about eleven o’clock, and low water at five in the morning. If the machine were to be afloat at eight in readiness for an early start upon the survey, she must be kept afloat till two in the morning, and not allowed to ground before then. By this schedule Ross would get five hours’ sleep at the most, if he stayed up to see the seaplane safely grounded.

Alix was very upset when she heard this proposal. “That’s not good enough, Mr. Ross,” she said. “You’ve got to get a longer night than that.”

“That’s all right,” the pilot said. “I got a couple of hours’ sleep this afternoon.”

The girl persisted: “Even with that, it’s not enough—and anyway, you weren’t asleep much longer than an hour.” She turned to her father. “Daddy, we’ll have to do something different. We can’t go on like this.”

Lockwood said mildly: “I can stay up and see the seaplane safely grounded, Mr. Ross.”

Ross said, a little shortly: “It’s awfully good of you, sir. But really, I’m quite all right, and I’d rather do it myself.”

Alix said: “But, Mr. Ross, you’ve got to have a decent
night. You can’t stay up till after two and then fly all day to-morrow.”

The conflicting strain of the girl’s presence, of her solicitude for him, and of his technical responsibilities made him burst out in irritation. “I’m perfectly all right, Miss Alix,” he said sourly. “I’m going to see that seaplane safely on the beach, and we’ll take off to-morrow morning at nine o’clock. It’s very good of you to bother about me and I’d much rather that you didn’t. I’ve got my job to do, and that’s to keep that seaplane in the air and working. And I’d like to do it in my own way, please.”

There was a pregnant silence.

The don said pleasantly: “Mr. Ross is quite right, my dear. He knows what he’s got to do, and we can’t help him with advice. Now, you run off to bed and get some sleep yourself.”