Ghosts of James Bay (5 page)

The surprisingly bright sunlight made me screw up my eyes, and that was why I didn't see the rock until it was too late. It wasn't big, but it was sharp-edged and I was paddling hard. With a sickening crunch the rock gouged a long, jagged hole in the fibreglass bottom of the canoe. Cold water instantly began pouring in. Fortunately the first thing I saw when the collision jerked my eyes back open was the shore. It was rocky, inhospitable, and backed by a line of unwelcoming dark trees. Nonetheless, it was dry land and only a few metres in front of me. With a few last paddle strokes, as the water continued to pour in, I pushed the now-heavy canoe toward safety.

With a grumbling noise the canoe grounded on the sloping shore. Hurriedly I stepped into knee-deep water. The shock of the cold made me gasp, but I kept working, grabbing the canoe and dragging it onto the beach as far above the water line as I could. Then I slumped beside it, exhausted and confused. Almost immediately, and despite the bright sun, I began to shiver. Partly it was the sweat cooling on my body, partly it was my chilled legs, but mostly it was reaction to the impossibilities I had seen. To stop myself thinking, I took stock of my surroundings. I could worry about why there were ghosts later.

There was no sign of fog anywhere. As far as I could see, the water before me was clear and calm. On the horizon I could barely make out the dark line of an island out in the bay. With relief I noticed there were no ice floes in sight. The beach itself was composed of sharp limestone boulders. In both directions it stretched off with only an occasional washed-up tree trunk to break the monotony. The beach was narrow and the trees behind it closely packed and dark.

Moving forward, I examined the damage to the canoe. The hole was jagged and almost a half metre long. There was no way the canoe was going anywhere without extensive repairs. How could I have been so stupid, paddling about wildly because of some imagined ghosts? That was what they must have been. Ghosts didn't exist, so I must have imagined them. They were tricks of the fog magnified by my worried state. Maybe I had even dozed off for a few minutes and dreamt it all. Dad would be worrying by now.

Before the fog enshrouded me I had been paddling north, with the eastern shore of James Bay to my right. If I kept the landward side of the beach to my left and walked, sooner or later I would arrive back at camp.

I knew you weren't supposed to leave the sight of a crash in the wilderness, but it would be a long time before Dad called for serious help and I figured the camp couldn't be far. The activity would help keep me warm and I would probably be back before the floatplane arrived in the afternoon. Then we could come and get the canoe. If it was farther than I thought and the floatplane came looking for me, I would be easy to spot on the beach.

Stopping only long enough to pull the canoe a little farther from the water, I set off. I knew that by concentrating on the present I wouldn't have to think about the past, either my recent past or the one I had apparently witnessed. I figured I had it all worked out, but I was wrong. The past still had some surprises in store for me before I got home.

“No!” The anger in the
okimah's
voice shocked the warrior into silence. “We will not trade with these
kawaaposit
who come uninvited into our land. They respect nothing of the
earth and only bad will come of it.”

The
okimah
was the senior elder and speechmaker of the band. He and the warrior were sitting with the other men around a fire in the centre of the collection of skin tents that housed their people. Others hovered around on the edge of the firelight. Anyone could speak their mind, and several had done so on both sides of the argument, but it was the talk between the
okimah
and the warrior that would determine what was to be done.

“It is true what you say,” the warrior spoke quietly. “These
kawaaposit
know nothing of the land. This is an abundant winter, yet they starve. But they are not
natuwewak,
not threatening strangers. I think they would offer us no harm and we can get much of benefit in trade with them.” In a dramatic gesture he held up the hatchet and knife he had brought back. Raising his voice to address the surrounding crowd, he continued. “With enough of these, and even with the sticks that kill with noise, we need never fear our enemies again. They would fear us.”

A sigh of agreement passed around the circle. To live without fear, that would be something worth trading for. The noise died away as the
okimah
began speaking again.

“Yes, that would indeed be good, but would we truly live without fear? Trade goes two ways, and we have seen that these strangers are traders. Two caribou skins for a single hatchet is not a good trade.” The warrior flinched. He knew it was not a good trade, and he could hear murmurs of agreement from the crowd. He had lost a point in the argument.

“But to trade for the wonders we see here,” the
okimah
continued, “we must give something the strangers want. That is the nature of trade. We know these
kawaaposit
come from far away, but we do not know how many there are of them. Perhaps there are many, like the rocks on the beach. If
our enemies need to fear us with the strangers' weapons, need we not fear these strangers themselves?”

“They are only a few in one canoe,” the warrior interrupted, “and they are sick and hungry. We could easily kill them all if we wished.”

“Let us not talk of killing. They have not attacked us. Nevertheless, where some come, others may follow, and they may not be sick and hungry. If they see benefit to trade with us, they will surely come in their big canoes with wings. And note this, too. If there is benefit for them in trading with us, will there not also be benefit for them in trading with our enemies?”

A worried murmur swept through the crowd. Sensing the people were swinging to his way of thinking, the
okimah
continued before the warrior could say anything. “If our enemies need fear us with the weapons of these strangers, should we not fear our enemies twice as much if they have the weapons?”

The noise of the crowd swelled.

“I say,” the
okimah
said, his voice rising against the increased background noise, “that we should have no contact with these
kawaaposit
. If they starve, it will not be our concern. If they return home, they will have nothing in trade and no reason to bother us again.”

The crowd now openly agreed with the
okimah
. The warrior had no more arguments to give. He had lost. Perhaps it was for the best. He would not return to the strangers' camp.

It was good to be walking and I soon warmed up. The beach was clear and the going easy. The only problem was that I couldn't stop my mind from working. Like a dog worrying a bone, it kept going over what I had seen. It even seemed to make an odd kind of sense.

I knew something of Henry Hudson from a project I'd done for social studies in school, and I had even read a book about him. It had been the only thing I could find in the library and had been old-fashioned but quite interesting. It was based on a journal kept by one of Hudson's crew. The crewman had such an unlikely name that I still remembered it—Abacuck Prickett. I figured things were different four hundred years ago, but I still had trouble imagining going through life with a handle like that.

Hudson had left London in 1610 to search for the Northwest Passage to the Orient. It was his fourth voyage. Previously he had explored a possible Northeast Passage around the north of Russia and sailed up what was now the
Hudson River in New York. This time he was convinced he knew the answer and a year or two would see him returning home with a shipload of valuable spices.

With Hudson sailed his son, John, who had been on his earlier voyages, and several men who had sailed with him before. Among them was the mate, Robert Juet, with whom Hudson had quarrelled before, and a friend, Henry Greene, who had been staying at Hudson's house.

After exploring Ungava Bay, Hudson's ship made a perilous passage of Hudson Strait, which had been named the Furious Overfall by the explorer John Davis when he had seen huge pieces of ice rushing through it in 1587. When Hudson reached the large body of water beyond, he was convinced he was within reach of Japan. He was horribly disappointed when, after sailing down the eastern shore of Hudson Bay, he ended up in James Bay and was faced with a western shore blocking his way. Since it was too late in the season to return, the ship's crew settled in for the winter.

It was a hard time, with scurvy running rampant and only minimal contact with the local First Nations. One man died. When the ice finally released the ship in June 1611, the sick and weakened crew were desperate to head home before what little food they had left ran out. Hudson, on the other hand, wanted to continue exploring and sailed aimlessly around James Bay.

This was too much, and the crew, led by Juet and Greene, cast Hudson, his son, Staffe, and the sickest of the rest adrift to die in one of the ship's boats. No one ever discovered what happened to them.

The saga of Henry Hudson was one of murder and mystery, and it fascinated me. Was Hudson a poor leader who couldn't control his crew, or were the crew a bunch of hardened villains? Why did Hudson take Juet with him? Juet was, after all, a man
who had led a mutiny against Hudson on a previous occasion. Why did he take Greene, someone who had to be sneaked aboard at Gravesend, was not on the crew list, and was to be paid directly from Hudson's pocket? What did happen to Hudson's lonely boat after it was cast adrift?

All these questions came flooding back to me as I went over the visions I had recently witnessed. Despite my skepticism and my fear of ghosts, I was in little doubt that what I had witnessed had been images of events that had occurred in 1611. The specific presence of Juet, Greene, Staffe, and Prickett proved it. I was less sure whether I had watched a ghostly reenactment played out in some supernatural fog, or whether my overstressed mind had created hallucinations based on what I had read years before. Either way it was a disturbing series of events. Did ghosts really exist, or was I going crazy? At least now the fog had lifted and the world, in the bright morning sunlight, had returned to normal.

I was so wrapped up in my thoughts and worries that I almost fell over the figure sitting on the beach. It had its back to me and was gazing out to sea, as preoccupied with its thoughts as I was with mine. Whoever it was must be a member of the local First Nations and must have a boat or all-terrain vehicle close by. Maybe I could scrounge a ride back to Dad's camp. I put on my friendliest smile. “Hello,” I said cheerfully.

Startled by my voice, the figure leaped to its feet and turned to face me. My smile died. The cold horrors of the fog rushed back over me. I knew this face. It was thinner than I remembered it—painfully thin—and the eyes, surrounded by dark shadows were sunk deep into their sockets. But they still had the sparkle I remembered. It was the boy who had smiled at me from the ghostly rowboat as we passed in the fog.

Everything I had planned to say vanished from my mind. “You!” was all I could gasp.

“Aye,” the boy replied, “and 'tis you, the salvage from the small boat.”

“Salvage?” I asked.

“Aye,” he repeated,
“sauvage
, as the French say, man of the woods, native of these parts. Yet you look not like the others we have seen.” A frown crossed his face. “And you speak the king's English passably well. How can this be?”

I ignored his question and asked one of my own, even though I dreaded the answer. “What's your name?”

“I am named John,” he said, stepping forward and holding out his hand. “But most call me Jack.”

“And your other name?” I ignored the outstretched hand. “What's your family name?”

The puzzled look returned. “Why, Hudson.”

“And your father is Henry Hudson, the explorer?” I had to be certain.

“Aye,” he responded proudly, “a great explorer. Greater than Willoughby, Davis, or Frobisher. But how know you such things?”

Again I ignored his question. Retreating, I sat heavily on the beach. The nightmare hadn't ended. The fog had gone and there was colour in this world now, but it wasn't my world. Or not his. One of us was wrong.

“What year is this?” I asked.

John Hudson still stood with his hand held out, looking down at me. “The year of our Lord 1611. As close I can calculate, around the middle of the month of August.”

The middle of August 1611. My mind rebelled. “No!” I almost shouted. “It's Saturday, the first of September, 2001.”

“Well,” he continued calmly, “Saturday it may well be. I might even allow for it being nearer the month of September than my calculations, but even with the uncertainties of our calendar in the dire straits we find ourselves, it is most definitely
the year 1611.” His face brightened at a new thought. “But you keep not the same calendar as us, being in no way Christian. Are you one of the Lost Tribes of Israel?”