The Curse of the Viking Grave (19 page)

“I will dive for the rifle,” she said. “It was partly my fault we lost it. If I had been quicker when Awasin turned we would not have upset. I am a good swimmer and I can dive very deep.”

For an instant hope flared in Jamie's heart, then it died again.

“No, it wouldn't work, Angeline. That water's far too cold. You could never stand it.”

Angeline's eyes blazed. “Perhaps it is too cold for
you
. But it is not too cold for
me. I
am a
Cree!
”

“My sister swims and dives like an otter,” Awasin interjected. “But you are right, Jamie, it is too cold and too swift.”

Angeline rounded sharply on her brother.

“Would you rather we all starve then? I tell you I can do it. I
will
do it!” She turned to Peetyuk who had been standing silent, undecided what to say. “Peetyuk. You believe I can do it. Tell them I can do it!”

Full of admiration for her spirit, yet convinced that the others were right, poor Peetyuk could do nothing but mumble inarticulately. For a moment Angeline stared at him coldly, then with a rapidity which left the boys helpless to stop her she flung off the sleeping robe and raced for the riverbank. Awasin gave an angry shout and started after her but he was too late. For a moment the girl stood slim and poised on the high cutbank, then she dived cleanly into the river.

“She's gone crazy!” Jamie yelled. “Grab the canoe, Pete!”

Leaving Awasin standing impotently on the bank, Jamie and Peetyuk flung themselves into the canoe and paddled frantically toward the middle of the pool. They gained on the sleek black head of the girl as she swam strongly for
the backwave, but as Peetyuk leaned over to grab her she dived like a seal.

When she broke surface a few seconds later she was right under the lip of the falls. Before the boys could reach her she took a great gulp of air and again disappeared.

Awasin was desperate. He had waded out thigh-deep into the current and only Jamie's angry shout prevented him from plunging in.

“Don't be a fool, Awasin. You'll drown too. I'm going in for her…Pete, steady the canoe…”

Jamie had slipped off his moccasin rubbers and his jacket when Peetyuk yelled:

“She's up. Help me, Jamie!”

Almost capsizing the canoe, Jamie jumped to the bow. Peetyuk had hold of the girl by one arm but was unable to haul her up. Jamie leaned over and slipped his hands under both her arms. Pulling together, the two boys eased her up and over the gunwale. As she tumbled into the canoe there was a heavy thump against the wooden ribs. Clutched tightly in the girl's right hand was the missing rifle.

Angeline was almost unconscious and they had to pry the rifle out of her hand, which was as cold as death. Minutes later they had carried her to the fire and covered her with sleeping robes, and Awasin was forcing hot tea between her blue lips. Uncontrollable paroxysms of shivering wracked her whole body. Nevertheless she managed to force a small smile. Her voice was no more than a whisper and the boys had to lean close to hear what she said.

“A Cree girl can do anything…you see?”

Dumbly Jamie nodded. But Peetyuk, his eyes glistening with something deeper than admiration, leaned down and clumsily took the girl's hand in his.

“I see very good,” he muttered huskily. “And I think we never forget what Cree girl, she can do.”

 

CHAPTER
21

The Sea People

T
HE JULY DAYS SLIPPED PAST AND
the travelers made steady progress to the east. Big River seemed to have settled down a little and although there were as many rapids as ever, most were passable—if barely so. Occasionally a really bad stretch necessitated a portage. The weather remained reasonably good and the voyagers were storm-bound only once, when a torrential rain and gale winds kept them in their tent for two days. Eventually they reached Edehon Lake—a mighty lake running thirty miles to the southeast. Carefully they coasted its indented shores searching for the outlet, which turned out to be on a hidden bay to the
northwest
. The search for Big River's outlet had cost them another two days.

The emptiness of the country they were passing through had begun to have a depressing effect upon them. Since leaving the Deer's Way they had come across no trace of human beings. There were no old campsites, nor even cuttings in the few spruce thickets they encountered. It was as if mankind had always avoided Big River, and the voy
agers began to have an uneasy feeling that they had stepped out of the inhabited world into some lost wilderness.

But if there were no humans on Big River, there was other life along its banks. Several times they saw wolves, and almost every night their travel camp was visited by arctic foxes who were so fearless they would come right up to the campfire. On one occasion Angeline even coaxed a fox to take a piece of meat out of her hand.

Life on the river itself was abundant too. There were many geese and ducks, and the river held stranger beasts as well. One day, shortly after leaving Edehon, the travelers ran a steep rapid and emerged into a tiny lake across whose center ran a gravel bar. Jamie noticed three immense, shiny black rocks on this bar and he was about to draw Peetyuk's attention to the peculiar appearance of the rocks when one of them suddenly humped itself to the water's edge and vanished with an enormous splash.

They were still staring goggle-eyed at the place where the moving “rock” had vanished when Jamie realized what it was that they had seen. With a shout he headed his canoe toward the reef.

The remaining two seals waited until the canoes were less than a hundred feet away before they too humped their way into the water. Meantime Peetyuk had grabbed the rifle but he waited too long and the seals disappeared before he could shoot.

Jamie was much amused by Peetyuk's expression of bewilderment.

“Seals aren't caribou, you dope! They don't swim on
top
of the water. Keep your eyes peeled now. They'll pop up somewhere for another look at us.”

A few seconds later a bewhiskered, sleek, big-eyed head reappeared close by. Its appearance was so sudden that Peetyuk was caught off balance and came within an ace of pitching out of the canoe to join the seal. Before he could recover himself and level his rifle the seal was gone again.

Angeline could not contain herself and broke into a shout of laughter as a second seal, which had incautiously surfaced right beside Jamie's canoe, went down again with such a powerful flurry that the spray flew into Peetyuk's face and momentarily blinded him.

“Leave them be!” Jamie yelled, at the sight of the wildly waving rifle barrel. “You'll shoot one of us. No use killing them anyway. They'll sink and we won't get them. Sit down and let's just watch.”

Rather reluctantly Peetyuk sat down and laid the gun aside. The canoes drifted idly in the current and in a few moments all three seals had their heads out. They swam closer and closer, and occasionally one of them would lose his nerve. With a loud, wet
whoof
he would duck under until curiosity got the better of him and up he would come for another look.

Tiring of the show at last, the travelers took up their paddles and moved on—and so did the seals. They escorted the canoes the length of the little lake and left them only at the head of the next rapids, which was a particularly bad one.

“I read about ‘fresh-water' seals once,” Jamie told his friends as they were preparing to portage this rapid. “They're really harbor seals but some of them get a taste for fresh water and go way inland up rivers and lakes and never come down again. Scientists don't know much about them, and not many white people have ever seen them in the north. I guess we're lucky.”

“I glad I not shoot,” Peetyuk said. “They got face like funny old man. And they good sign. If seal come here, we maybe not too far from salt water.”

 

The next morning, the fifteenth day after leaving the Deer's Way, they came out into the long westerly arm of a lake. As they were paddling under the lee of the rocky shore, Peetyuk began to wave his paddle wildly. Having caught everyone's attention, he pointed to a low ridge just back from the shore where, in silent welcome, stood a cluster of three
inukok
—Eskimo stonemen.

“Not far now!” Peetyuk cried. “Sea People must make those. Ohoto tell me late summertime they come upriver and camp to meet
tuktu
. Spend winter in country, and go back to sea in spring. We watch hard for camps.”

But it was not a camp which gave them their first contact with the Sea People. Later that day, as they were again entering the river, they saw a big white canoe upside down upon a sand ridge a few hundred yards back from the shore.

Beaching their own canoes, the youngsters climbed the ridge. There was no sign of a camp nearby and the canoe itself was very old. Most of its canvas had rotted away
leaving the wooden planking to whiten in the sun and gales.

Peetyuk stared at it with a puzzled frown, but Awasin and Jamie began to examine it more closely.

“Something underneath, I think,” Jamie said. “Let's turn it over.”

Both boys bent down and got a grip on the gunwale. They had to strain to lift it for this was no little river canoe—it was a twenty-two-foot sea-going one. With a sudden jerk they managed to raise it and at that instant Peetyuk yelled at them.

“No! No! Do not turn! Leave alone!”

He was too late. The big canoe teetered on its under gunwale and then fell right side up with a crackling sound.

“Not touch!” Peetyuk cried. “I fool. Not guess before. That sea man's grave!”

There was no doubt that he was right. Under the canoe lay a shapeless bundle of rotted caribou hides. Foxes and lesser beasts had rummaged it thoroughly, and here and there could be seen the white bones of a human being. Next to the body was a wooden box without a lid in which could be seen stone pipes and other personal oddments. Alongside the body lay a badly rusted rifle, a long-handled fish spear, and two broken paddles.

“We put back quick!” Peetyuk said, and his voice was sharp with perturbation. “Eskimo in our country bury dead people on top of ground and put tools and weapons with him for next world. My people put rocks on top; but Sea People put canoe on top.”

He hurried to the canoe and the other two boys joined him without a word, for they had been shocked by the discovery of what was under it. In a moment they had levered the heavy boat back on its edge and then they lowered it gently into its former position over the dead man and his belongings.

 

Somewhat shaken, the voyagers hurried on downriver. But they realized that the great canoe had been a good sign too. It was obvious that the river below this point could not be very difficult to navigate, since otherwise no one would have brought a sea-going canoe this far inland.

Big River had indeed changed its nature. It was no longer flinging itself down a steady slope at express-train speed. Now it flowed more sedately through a dead-flat, drowned land of muskegs, bogs and innumerable ponds. Although the travelers did not know it, they were already on the flat coastal plain which borders Hudson Bay.

When they camped that night it was on a site that had been used by other people for many centuries. Here they found scores of tent-circles of round stones marking the places where Eskimo
topay's
had stood. Several stone fireplaces still held fresh ashes. Piled carefully under rocks near the camp were boxes and bales covered in skins. Peetyuk explained that these were caches containing the winter gear of several families of Eskimos.

“Now we almost there,” he said jubilantly.

Jamie had a thoughtful look on his face. “Almost
where?
” he asked. “We don't have any idea where the mouth of Big River is on Hudson Bay. Your people never followed the
river all the way to its mouth on their winter journeys, Pete. They used to branch off between Edehon and the sea and go across country. We're strictly on our own.”

“We know
something
about it, Jamie,” Awasin said. “We know the river mouth is north of Churchill. All we must do is turn south along the seacoast.”

Jamie snorted. “What an optimist!
All
we have to do is turn south! You don't know the sea, Awasin. Remember that big Eskimo canoe? I tell you
it
wasn't any too big for going on the open sea. I hate to think what will happen to these cockleshells.”

Angeline poured them all a mug of tea—almost the last they had. “Why do you worry?” she asked brightly. “We have come many, many miles through this land and we are still alive and healthy. Nothing will happen to us now. With three good men and me we will be fine.”

 

They had not gone more than ten miles the next morning when they shot out into a small triangular-shaped lake. On its northern edge, they saw another sea-going canoe pulled up on shore with a
topay
standing beside it. A wisp of smoke from a small fire showed them that this time they had found living people.

As they paddled toward the camp they were gripped with nervousness. It was rather like stage-fright. It had been so long since they had seen strangers that the prospect of an encounter with an alien people made them feel ill at ease.

They approached so cautiously and quietly that they were within a few yards of shore before they were noticed.
Then an old Eskimo man with a few scraggly black whiskers at his chin came out of the tent, glanced at them, started visibly, and ducked quickly back into the tent. A moment later he again emerged, accompanied by an old woman and two well-grown boys. All four stood and stared dubiously at the strangers, who stared back as silently.

The impasse might have lasted a long time had not Angeline dipped her paddle to drive the canoe shoreward and called out a musical greeting in Cree.

The boys came out of their trance.

“That no good, Angeline. They not understand. I speak.”

Peetyuk called out something in his own tongue. The air of silent wariness on the part of the four people ashore seemed to dissipate. The old man shouted something in return and in a moment he and Peetyuk were engaged in a voluble conversation.

At length Peetyuk paused.

“It all right. They good people. We go shore now.”

As the canoes were being hauled up on the beach he explained further. “We scare these people. They never hear of anyone come down Big River with canoe in all time Eskimo live here. They not know what we are. But okay now. They understand me pretty good, even though don't talk quite same as my people. They glad have visitors. We go up their tent.”

 

The Sea People, who called themselves Dhaeomiut, proved to be as hospitable and friendly as Eskimos everywhere. The old man, his wife and their two grandsons
were part of a family of twelve people. The rest of the family had gone out to the coast three weeks earlier to set up a sealing camp and to trade their fox furs to a white man who, so the old fellow said, lived at the mouth of Big River. The old couple and the two boys had remained behind to net and dry arctic char, a pink-fleshed salmonlike fish.

While the old lady scampered about preparing a huge iron kettleful of char to make a feast, the travelers sat inside the tent talking to the old man and the two wild-looking youths. The news that a white man was living at the mouth of the river was greeted with great excitement.

“Ask him what the fellow's name is, Pete. Find out is he a Hudson Bay Company trader, or what?”

“He say not Hudson Bay man. He say wintertime this man go trapping fox. Spring do a little trading with Sea People. Summertime take big boat and go Iglu-ujaruk—Stone House—what we call Churchill.”

“A free trader! Listen, Pete! When does he go to Churchill? Has he gone yet?”

Once more Peetyuk addressed himself to the old man.

“He say not know. Maybe gone, maybe not. Say if we hurry quick, maybe catch. He say Big River split up near mouth. Have many, many channels. Only one take to
kablunak
—white man—house.”

“Ask him if he will show us the way,” Awasin interjected.

“He not can go himself,” Peetyuk replied after posing the question. “But he say one his grandson maybe go with us. Old man, he got no tobacco. Very hungry for tobacco.
Grandson can go and bring back tobacco for old man. He say go tomorrow morning. Now must have big feed and we tell about where we come from.”

Despite their anxiety to meet the unknown white man before he left for Churchill, the travelers realized that they would have to curb their impatience. They made the best of the long day that followed. They stuffed themselves on fresh char and on smoked deer-tongues. Curious as pups, they prowled around the camp accompanied by the two Eskimo youths, whose names were Paijak and Mikkiluk. They examined a stone fish weir where the char were diverted into a backwater on their migratory journey upstream to spawn. And they watched with admiration as Paijak and Mikkiluk demonstrated how they caught the char with long fish spears, triple-tipped like the trident that Neptune is supposed to carry.

That evening they sat for many hours in the tent while the old man talked to Peetyuk. The Meewasins and Jamie were somewhat bored, but Peetyuk and the Eskimos had a fine time of it. This was the first meeting between Ihalmiut and Dhaeomiut in several decades, and there was a great deal to tell on both sides. When Jamie, Awasin and Angeline went wearily off to sleep, Peetyuk and the Sea People were still hard at it.