Call of the Whales (7 page)

13

Henry Goes Missing

A
fter a few days, when the poor old whale had been completely dissected, and even the bones had been disassembled and packed up, we got ready to break camp and set off back to the village. There was even more commotion making ready to go home than there had been on the way out to the camp, because the people were jubilant at their success, and their busyness was infused with joy.

I never noticed that Henry was missing, not for ages. I was too busy helping to pack and chattering to my dad about the hunt. But just as we were loading our tents onto the snowmobile, I realised I hadn’t seen him for hours. Was he avoiding me? I wondered. Was he annoyed at what I’d said about killing whales?

‘I bet he’s in the snow house,’ I said to Dad. ‘He really likes it in there.’

‘But the snow house is full of whale meat,’ said Dad.

‘No. It’s been packed up for going home,’ I said. ‘It’ll be empty again by now.’

‘Well, but it’ll smell of whale, it’ll be bloody and greasy.
I can’t imagine him going in there just to play.’

Play! Really, adults haven’t got a clue, have they? If Henry had gone into the snow house, it would be because he liked it in there. He wouldn’t be playing house!

Anyway, we went looking for him, me and my dad, but he wasn’t in the snow house. I crawled in, and Dad was right, it stank in there, but there was no sign of Henry.

‘Would he have gone on ahead with one of the other crews?’ Dad suggested.

‘No, I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘He’s very responsible about being a boyer. He’d never just go off home and not say. Anyway, his dad is part of this crew and his older brother. He’d hardly want to go home with a different family, would he? Dad?’

Dad grunted.

‘You don’t suppose a polar bear got him, do you?’ I still wasn’t sure if there really were polar bears about, but I didn’t like the thought of them all the same.

‘No! I don’t suppose so, not for a minute.’

‘Well, they keep going on about bears.’

‘Yes, but if a bear came to the camp, we’d know all about it. We’d hear it, see it, there’d be tracks. A bear couldn’t just happen by and run off with a boyer and nobody notice.’

‘You sure?’ I asked.

‘Of course I’m sure,’ said Dad.

But I thought he was being too light-hearted. If polar bears weren’t such a danger, why would the people keep talking about them? I was worried about my friend, and starting to feel a bit guilty too that maybe I’d driven him away with my talk about whale-hunting being so dreadful. This was very unlikely, I see that now. You wouldn’t get
rid of Henry that easily. But at the time I was worried and confused. You think daft things when you’re anxious.

‘Look,’ said Dad, ‘you keep looking around here. I’ll go around the other camps and see if he’s gone to visit a friend. But I won’t say anything to his dad yet. Don’t want to worry him. If we don’t find him within the hour, we’ll meet back at our tent, and decide what to do. OK?’

‘OK,’ I said, but really it didn’t seem a very good plan to me. I couldn’t imagine any place else he could be, apart from in the snow house. There were no trees, no walls, no ditches to hide in. Nothing but snow and ice and sea and emptiness.

14

Tyke to the Rescue

I
wandered off along what we thought of as the shore, but was really the point where the frozen sea met the watery sea. I was further up the coast, a bit away from the spot where the whale had been landed and the big clean-up operation was going on. I could hear the murmur of work and the occasional shout on the air, but I was pretty much out of actual earshot. All I could see of the villagers, when I looked over my shoulder, was constant movement up and down the icy shoreline as men and boys and girls and women moved about, packing and readying themselves for the homeward journey.

In one direction, the ice stretched in a glaring white expanse for miles and miles. It was enough to give you a headache looking at it, there was so much gleaming, retina-stretching white. In the other direction was the indigo expanse of the ocean. Since it was spring and the ice was breaking up, small sections of the icy shore were constantly breaking off and drifting out to sea, so that the surface of the water was dotted with the glittering
debris of the break-up, little flat ice islands and odd half-melted lumps of ice like tiny icebergs jostling their way along, bumping off each other, drifting together sometimes, and then floating off again.

Overhead the sky was the bluest blue you can imagine, an icy, terrifying blue, far bluer than the skies you see in hot places, and streaked with feathery white cloud on the horizon. There was so much ice and so much sea, so much white and so much blue, that I thought we’d never find Henry. You could walk for miles on the icy shore, calling his name, and all you’d see would be blue and white and white and blue, broken only by the huge inky shapes of the bowheads flickering through the sea like giant shadows, making large dark zeppelins under the surface, with an occasional dark shape drifting elephantinely to the surface, its blow erupting through the deep blue water into silvery fountains.

I walked the endless ice away from the noise and the bustle of the camp and the stench of food and blood and oil and into the icy blue wilderness. I concentrated on Henry, imagining that if I thought hard enough about him, I could conjure up an image of where he was in my head.

Every now and then, I scanned the horizon, pointlessly as I thought, but then something seemed to flutter on one of the drifting ice floes way out to sea. I screwed up my eyes and sure enough, the flutter came again. Someone was moving about, waving, on one of the drifting ice floes. It had to be Henry. I waved back, throwing all my strength into the movement of my arms, to assure him that I’d seen him.

I turned then and yelled for my dad. I yelled and yelled till my throat hurt, but it was several minutes since he’d
left. He’d evidently walked out of earshot by now. I started to run in the direction he’d gone, but then I stopped. It could take me ages to catch him. By then Henry might have floated off out of sight, and I’d never find him in the huge, heaving expanse of sea and float-ice.

If I’d had time to think I’d never have done it, but I was in such a panic my body acted on its own. There were umiaqs everywhere about. I leapt into one, loosely tethered to a grappling iron driven into the ice. I undid the rope that held it, and pushed it away from the ice shore. It was only after I’d got it out on the water that I thought to look for oars. The boat was full of things – a small stove, a harpoon, a gun and, thank heavens, paddles.

I’d never rowed even a little rowing boat, much less manned a boat of this size, heavy with equipment, across an expanse of arctic sea, bobbing with ice islands, but somehow I managed to get it moving roughly in the direction I wanted it to go. I kept my eyes fixed on Henry’s drifting ice floe. He was yelling to me. I could hear his cries floating on the icy air, but I couldn’t hear what he was trying to tell me. I knew I had to reach him. I had to. If I didn’t rescue him, he could go floating off and over the horizon and never be heard of again. It happens to arctic hunters all the time, one of the hazards of their way of life.

‘I’m coming!’ I yelled, but I knew he couldn’t possibly hear me. Still, it helped to shout it. It kept me going.

I paddled and paddled, but I didn’t seem to be getting any closer. Was I going around in circles? I thought I must be, because I was only paddling on one side. I grabbed another paddle and tried to use them like oars, but the boat was too wide for me. I couldn’t reach across it to use
two paddles at once.

I stood up and paddled frantically from one side, then, unsteadily, I slithered to the other side of the boat and paddled a bit more on that side. Slowly, slowly, the boat moved in wide arcs. It wasn’t exactly going in circles, but it was zigzagging forward only very slowly. Most of the movement was sideways, in the sweep of the arcs. I could see this was a problem, but it was the only way I could make the umiaq move at all, so I kept paddling, wriggling from one side to the other and paddling, paddling, paddling furiously.

Every now and then, I looked up to check if I could still see Henry. Every time I looked, he seemed further away, but I could hear his panic-stricken cries and I kept heading for him, though I was getting exhausted.

At last – it seemed like hours – I started to get closer. Each time I looked up, he seemed a little larger, a little easier to make out. I came close enough to hear his voice, as distinct from just yells, to hear actual words. He was shouting directions. He stood on the edge of his ice floe, which was bobbing along with slow, almost dreamy movements on the swell of the sea, and yelled instructions at me. He understood boats better than I did, so I listened.

‘Paddle from the left,’ he was shouting. ‘Keep going. OK now, quickly, from the right. Quick, quick, she’s circling, stop her! Good, good, now a few more goes on the right. Now run to the other side …’

Slowly, slowly, the boat swung closer and closer to Henry’s ice floe, but every time we were about to make contact, the ice floe drifted tantalisingly away again. It was like trying to catch an ice cube in a sink with wet fingers. I
can’t, I thought. I can’t do it. I’m too tired. It won’t do what I want.

‘Just keep coming,’ yelled Henry. ‘You are getting closer. You are. Just don’t lose your nerve, don’t panic and don’t tire.’

My arms were taut as iron rods by now with the effort of paddling, and the constant evasive action of the ice floe was beginning to wear me down, but Henry’s shouts kept me concentrated on what I was doing.

Eventually, I felt the umiaq make contact with the ice with a gentle bump. The mild impact propelled the boat back again, but with the next paddle we made contact again, like a currach nosing in to a harbour wall. On the third impact, Henry’s outstretched arm brushed mine, and on the fourth attempt, he took a flying, floundering leap and landed in the umiaq like a huge, thrashing fish. The boat rocked dangerously with the impact, and hit off the ice floe several times, but I steadied it by bracing my feet against the sides, and gradually it settled on the water.

Henry scrambled off the floor and, keeping his body bent to prevent overturning the boat, he managed to sit down.

‘Hey, Henry!’

He looked smaller than himself, and his body was shaking, shaking, his face white and thin.

‘Hey, Tyke!’ he said, his voice wobbly and small. He looked as if he was trying to smile, but he couldn’t manage it.

He leaned over the side of the boat then and projected a stream of vomit out over the sea.

I stared at him, listening helplessly to his retching. It was only when I saw him getting sick that I realised how
close he’d been to death, how scared he must have been. I started to feel scared myself, then – up to then I’d felt only panic and unnamed terror, but now it was real, logical, believable fear, fear of death, fear of drowning, fear of never seeing my dad again. Mum, I thought suddenly. Oh, Mum! I felt bile rise in own throat. I swallowed hard and looked away, determined not to join Henry in getting sick. Somebody had to keep upright, and it would have to be me.

Henry turned to me then, still half-hanging over the side of the boat, vomit-streaked snot hanging from his nose, and I could feel the shaking of his body rocking the boat.

‘Here,’ I said, and I threw a hanky at him. ‘Wipe up.’

He wiped his streaming face with the handkerchief and then he held it out to me.

‘Yuck!’ I said, and pulled away from it.

‘Oh, sorry,’ he said with half a smile.

He trailed the hanky in the water, wrung it out and wiped his face with it again. He bunched the wet hanky up then and threw it in the bottom of the boat.

‘That’s better,’ Henry said, and picked up a paddle.

‘You OK?’ I asked.

‘I’ll live,’ he said and leant over the side of the boat to help me manoeuvre it away from the ice floe. We paddled furiously, but without co-ordination, and so instead of moving the boat away from the island, we rammed it back against the edge of the ice with double-force, and, with a sickening scrunch, the prow of the boat wedged itself into a crevice in the ice and we were stuck fast.

Henry pushed against the ice with his paddle, but the boat wouldn’t budge. I leant over and we both pushed and
heaved with all our might, but we didn’t have much strength left between us, and the umiaq had embedded itself in the ice. It wouldn’t give an inch.

‘What’ll we do?’ I wailed. My teeth were chattering now, with fear as much as cold, and my body was shaking from the efforts I was making to shift the boat.

‘One of us is going to have to get off the umiaq and back onto the ice floe,’ said Henry, ‘and use the paddle to lever the boat away from the ice.’

‘Not me,’ I said quickly. I knew my own limits. I’d probably slip, I’d probably fall into the water, I’d probably die. I knew what a spill into the arctic waters could do. I could feel the pain of the freezing water gripping my limbs without so much as a splash getting on my skin.

‘Me then,’ said Henry.

I stared at him, and he stared back. I couldn’t see how he was going to muster either the strength or the courage to get back off the boat, having just made it aboard. I’d have cowered in the boat and refused to move.

‘But it’s moving!’ My voice was thin and high with anxiety. I couldn’t believe this was happening to us, that my dad and Henry’s dad were less than a quarter of a mile away and here we were going to be lost at sea.

‘Yup,’ said Henry, his eyes scrunched up in concentration. ‘Still, that’s the only way we can get the umiaq loose. Otherwise we’re going to drift off all the way to the North Pole.’

Something about the idea of the North Pole froze my heart. I imagined a maypole, spiralling red and white like a barber’s pole, and me and Henry slumped at the bottom of it, waiting for a polar bear to come along and gobble us both up.

Henry stood up unsteadily and then, with a sudden spurt of energy, he leapt off the boat and back onto the ice floe. He stood on the ice floe again and kicked the edge of the umiaq with all his force. Nothing happened. He kicked again and again, and then he prised his paddle into the crevice and at last, with a groan, the boat released itself and bobbed out, away from the ice. Henry took another flying leap and landed in the boat as it floated away. There was another awful moment as the boat rocked and rocked and rocked, steadying itself from the impact of Henry’s leap, but it settled as it had before. Henry lay slumped against the side of the boat for a while, gathering his strength.

‘You OK?’ I asked again.

He nodded wearily, then sat up straight and picked up a paddle.

With two of us paddling, the umiaq moved more swiftly and in a perceptible direction. I felt my heart begin to lift as the shore came closer. We were going to survive. It was only when I thought that, that I fully realised how close we had come to not surviving. I looked at Henry, and he was looking at me.

‘Hey, Henry,’ I said again.

‘Hey, Tyke,’ he said and grinned.

But we weren’t home yet. We still had an expanse of water to cross, with only a flimsy boat between us and the freezing ocean. We paddled away for a bit, saying nothing, concentrating on keeping the boat moving.

I looked over the edge into the water and thought about how many miles down it was to the depthless bottom and how many tons of water were under the boat, and as I looked, a shadow nudged by, a huge, huge shadow,
like a submarine only much swifter and more graceful.

‘Henry,’ I said, in as low a voice as I thought he could hear. ‘There’s a whale on this side of the boat. It’s close enough to touch.’

I remember thinking as I said that, that this was the realisation of my dreams, to be within touching distance of a bowhead whale. I never thought I ever would be, and I certainly never thought that if I was, I would be alone on the ocean with another boy in a skin boat and in danger of being capsized at any moment by a casual flick of the whale’s tail.

‘Hmm,’ said Henry, his voice also low, hardly more than a whisper, ‘there’s one on this side too. But whatever you do, don’t touch it, Tyke. Pull your paddle in.’

I didn’t need to be told a second time. I drew my paddle in as calmly and quietly as I could, and we both sat huddled together, our paddles dripping ice-cold sea-water onto the flat floor of the boat. We sat silently, drifting casually, like two people out for a little leisurely boating and taking a break from the hard work of making the craft move, but knowing that we were in danger of being flicked over at any moment. Even if we didn’t drown, we would probably die of hypothermia if we hit the water and down our bodies would go, cold and twirling, to the bottom of the sea. I shuddered at the thought.