CHAPTER XV
OFF WITH THE ESKIMOS
The tide had left the bay drained, on the farther side and well toward the bottom of which the Post stands, and between us and the buildings was a lake of soft mud. There seemed no approach for the canoe, and rather than sit idly until the incoming tide covered the mud again so that we could paddle in, we carried our belongings high up the side of the hill, safely out of reach of the water when it should rise, and then started to pick our way around the face of the clifflike hill, with the intention of skirting the bay and reaching the Post at once from the upper side.
It was much like walking on the side of a wall, and to add to our discomfiture night began to fall before we were half way around, for it was slow work. Once I descended cautiously to the mud, thinking that I might be able to walk across it, but a deep channel filled with running water intercepted me, and I had to return to Easton, who had remained above. We finally realized that we could not get around the hill before dark and the footing was too uncertain to attempt to retrace our steps to the canoe in the fading light, as a false move would have hurled us down a hundred feet into the mud and rocks below. Fortunately a niche in the hillside offered a safe resting place, and we drew together here all the brush within reach, to be burned later as a signal to the Post folk that some one was on the hill, hoping that when the tide rose it would bring them in, a boat to rescue us from our unpleasant position. When the brush was arranged for firing at an opportune time we sat down in the thickening darkness to watch the lights which were now flickering cozily in the windows of the Post house.
“Well, this is hard luck,” said Easton. “There’s good bread and molasses almost within hailing distance and we’ve likely got to sit out here on the rocks all night without wood enough to keep fire, and it’s going to rain pretty soon and we can’t even get back to our pemmican and tent.”
“Don’t give up yet, boy,” I encouraged. “Maybe they’ll see our fire when we start it and take us off.”
We filled our pipes and struck matches to light them. They were wax taper matches and made a good blaze. “Wonder what it’ll be like to eat civilized grub again and sleep in a bed,” said Easton meditatively, as he puffed uncomfortably at his pipe.
While he was speaking the glow of a lantern appeared from the Post house, which we could locate by its lamp-lit windows, and moved down toward the place where we had seen the boats on the mud. The sight of it made us hope that we had been noticed, and we jumped up and combined our efforts in shouting until we were hoarse. Then we ignited the pile of brush. It blazed up splendidly, shooting its flames high in the air, sending its sparks far, and lighting weirdly the strange scene. We stood before it that our forms might appear in relief against the light reflected by the rocky background, waving our arms and renewing our shouts. Once or twice I fancied I heard an answering hail from the other side, like a far-off echo; but the wind was against us and I was not sure. The lantern light was now in a boat moving out toward the main river. Even though it were coming to us this was necessary, as the tide could not be high enough yet to permit its coming directly across to where we were. We watched its course anxiously. Finally it seemed to be heading toward us, but we were not certain. Then it disappeared altogether and there was nothing but blackness and silence where it had been.
“Some one that’s been waiting for the tide to turn and he’s just going down the river, where he likely lives,” remarked Easton as we sat down again and relit our pipes. “I began to taste bread and molasses when I saw that light,” he continued, after a few minutes’ pause. “It’s just our luck. We’re in for a night of it, all right.”
We sat smoking silently, resigned to our fate, when all at once there stepped out of the surrounding darkness into the radius of light cast by our now dying fire, an old Eskimo with an unlighted lantern in his hands, and a young fellow of fifteen or sixteen years of age.
“Oksutingyae,” * said the Eskimo, and then proceeded to light his lantern, paying no further attention to us. “How do you do?” said the boy.
* [Dual form meaning “You two be strong,” used by the Eskimos as a greeting. The singular of the same is Oksunae, and the plural (more than two) Oksusi]
The Eskimo could understand no English, but the boy, a grandson of Johm Ford, the Post agent, told us that the Eskimo had seen us strike the matches to light our pipes and reported the matter at once at the house. There was not a match at the Post nor within a hundred miles of it, so far as they knew, so Mr. Ford concluded that some strangers were stranded on the hill—possibly Eskimos in distress—and he gave them a lantern and started them over in a boat to investigate. Their lantern had blown out on the way—that was when we missed the light.
With the lantern to guide us we descended the slippery rocks to their boat and in ten minutes landed on the mud flat opposite, where we were met by Ford and a group of curious Eskimos. We were immediately con-ducted to the agent’s residence, where Mrs. Ford received us in the hospitable manner of the North, and in a little while spread before us a delicious supper of fresh trout, white bread such as we had not seen since leaving Tom Blake’s, mossberry jam and tea. It was an event in our life to sit down again to a table covered with white linen and eat real bread. We ate until we were ashamed of ourselves, but not until we were satisfied (for we had emerged from the bush with unholy appetites) and barely stopped eating in time to save our reputations from utter ruin. And now our hosts told us—and it shows how really generous and open-hearted they were to say nothing about it until we were through eating—that the Pelican, the Hudson’s Bay Company’s steamer, had not arrived on her annual visit, that it was so late in the season all hope of her coming had some time since been relinquished, and the Post provisions were reduced to forty pounds of flour, a bit of sugar, a barrel or so of corn meal, some salt pork and salt beef, and small quantities of other food stuffs, and there were a great many dependents with hungry mouths to feed. Molasses, butter and other things were entirely gone. The storehouses were empty.
This condition of affairs made it incumbent upon me, I believed, in spite of a cordial invitation from Ford to stay and share with them what they had, to move on at once and endeavor to reach Fort Chimo ahead of the ice. Fort Chimo is the chief establishment of the fur trading companies on Ungava Bay, and is the farthest off and most isolated station in northern Labrador. This journey would be too hazardous to undertake in the month of October in a canoe—the rough, open sea of Ungava Bay demanded a larger craft—and although Ford told me it was foolhardy to attempt it so late in the season with any craft at all, I requested him to do his utmost the following day to engage for us Eskimos and a small boat and we would make the attempt to get there. It has been my experience that frontier traders are wont to overestimate the dangers in trips of this kind, and I was inclined to the belief that this was the case with Ford. In due time I learned my mistake.
Ford had no tobacco but the soggy black chewing plug dispensed to Eskimos, and we shared with him our remaining plugs and for two hours sat in the cozy Post house kitchen smoking and chatting. Over a year had passed since his last communication with the outside world, for no vessel other than the Pelican when she makes her annual call with supplies ever comes here, and we therefore had some things of interest to tell him.
Our host I soon discovered to be a man of intelligence. He was sixty-six years of age, a native of the east coast of Labrador, with a tinge of Eskimo blood in his veins, and as familiar with the Eskimo language as with English. For twenty years, he informed me, with the exception of one or two brief intervals, he had been buried at George River Post, and was longing for the time when he could leave it and enjoy the comforts of civilization.
After our chat we were shown to our room, where the almost forgotten luxuries of feather beds and pillows, and the great, warm, fluffy woolen blankets of the Hudson’s Bay Company—such blankets as are found nowhere else in the world—awaited us. To undress and crawl between them and lie there, warm and snug and dry, while we listened to the rain, which had begun beating furiously against the window and on the roof, and the wind howling around the house, seemed to me at first the pinnacle of comfort; but this sense of luxury soon passed off and I found myself longing for the tent and spruce-bough couch on the ground, where there was more air to breathe and a greater freedom. I could not sleep. The bed was too warm and the four walls of the room seemed pressing in on me. After four months in the open it takes some time for one to accustom one’s self to a bed again.
The next day at high tide, with the aid of a boat and two Eskimos, we recovered our things from the rocks where we had cached them.
There were no Eskimos at the Post competent or willing to attempt the open-boat journey to Fort Chimo. Those that were here all agreed that the ice would come before we could get through and that it was too dangerous an undertaking. Therefore, galling as the delay was to me, there was nothing for us to do but settle down and wait for the time to come when we could go with dog teams overland.
On Thursday afternoon, three days after our arrival at the Post, we saw the Eskimos running toward the wharf and shouting as though something of unusual importance were taking place and, upon joining the crowd, found them greeting three strange Eskimos who had just arrived in a boat. The real cause of the excitement we soon learned was the arrival of the Pelican. The strange Eskimos were the pilots that brought her from Fort Chimo. All was confusion and rejoicing at once. Ford manned a boat and invited us to join him in a visit to the ship, which lay at anchor four miles below, and we were soon off.
When we boarded the Pelican, which, by the way, is an old British cruiser, we were received by Mr. Peter McKenzie, from Montreal, who has superintendence of eastern posts, and Captain Lovegrow, who commanded the vessel. They told us that they had called at Rigolet on their way north and there heard of the arrival of Richards, Pete and Stanton at Northwest River. This relieved my mind as to their safety.
We spent a very pleasant hour over a cigar, and heard the happenings in the outside world since our departure from it, the most important of which was the close of the Russian-Japanese war. We also learned that the cause of delay in the ship’s coming was an accident on the rocks near Cartwright, making it necessary for them to run to St. Johns for repairs; and also that only the fact of the distressful condition of the Post, unprovisioned as they knew it must be, had induced them to take the hazard of running in and chancing imprison-ment for the winter in the ice.
Mr. McKenzie extended me a most cordial invitation to return with them to Rigolet, but the Eskimo pilots had brought news of large herds of reindeer that the Indians had reported as heading eastward toward the Koksoak, the river on which Fort Chimo is situated, and I determined to make an effort to see these deer. This determination was coupled with a desire to travel across the northern peninsula and around the coast in winter and learn more of the people and their life than could be observed at the Post; and I therefore declined Mr. McKenzie’s invitation.
Captain James Blanford, from St. Johns, was on board, acting as ship’s pilot for the east coast, and he kindly offered to carry out for me such letters and telegrams as I might desire to send and personally attend to their transmission. I gladly availed myself of this offer, as it gave us an opportunity to relieve the anxiety of our friends at home as to our safety. Captain Blanford had been with the auxiliary supply ship of the Peary Arctic expedition during the summer and told us of having left Commander Peary at eighty degrees north latitude in August. The expedition, he told us, would probably winter as high as eighty-three degrees north, and he was highly enthusiastic over the good prospects of Peary’s success in at least reaching “Farthest North.”
The Eskimo pilots of the Pelican were more venturesome than their friends at George River. They had a small boat belonging to the Hudson’s Bay Company, and in it were going to attempt to reach Fort Chimo. Against his advice I had Ford arrange with them to permit Easton and me to accompany them. It was a most fortunate circumstance, I thought, that this opportunity was opened to us.
Accordingly the letters for Captain Blanford were written, sufficient provisions, consisting of corn meal, flour, hard-tack, pork, and tea to last Easton and me ten days, were packed, and our luggage was taken on board the Pelican on Saturday afternoon, where we were to spend the night as Mr. McKenzie’s and Captain Lovegrow’s guests.
Mr. McKenzie, before going to Montreal, had lived nearly a quarter of a century as Factor at Fort Chimo, and, thoroughly familiar with the conditions of the country and the season, joined Ford in advising us strongly against our undertaking, owing to the unusual hazard attached to it, and the probability of getting caught in the ice and wrecked. But we were used to hardship, and believed that if the Eskimos were willing to attempt the journey we could get through with them some way, and I saw no reason why I should change my plans.
Low-hanging clouds, flying snowflakes and a rising northeast wind threatened a heavy storm on Sunday morning, October twenty-second, when the Pelican weighed anchor at ten o’clock, with us on board and the small boat, the Explorer, that was to carry us westward in tow, and steamed down the George River, at whose mouth, twenty miles below, we were to leave her, to meet new and unexpected dangers and hardships.
At the Post the river is a mile and a half in width. About eight miles farther down its banks close in and “the Narrows” occur, and then it widens again. There is very little growth of any kind below the Narrows. The rocks are polished smooth and bare as they rise from the water’s edge, and it is as desolate and barren a land as one’s imagination could picture, but withal possesses a rugged grand beauty in its grim austerity that is impressive.
About three or four miles above the open bay the Pelican’s engines ceased to throb and the Explorer was hauled alongside. Everything but the provisions for the Eskimo crew was already aboard. We said a hurried adieu and, watching our chances as the boat rose and fell on the swell, dropped one by one into the little craft. A bag of ship’s biscuit, the provisions of our Eskimos, was thrown after us. Most of them went into the sea and were lost, and we needed them sadly later. I thought we should swamp as each sea hit us before we could get away, and when we were finally off the boat was half full of water.
The Eskimos hoisted a sail and turned to the west bank of the river, for it was too rough outside to risk ourselves there in the little Explorer. The pulse of the big ship began to beat and slowly she steamed out into the open and left us to the mercies of the unfeeling rocks of Ungava.