The Long Exile (22 page)

He made up his mind to sail by the old police skiff to the Craig Harbour detachment. It was already late in the navigation season
and the journey would be dangerous, but it would be more dangerous to stay and do nothing. He would take some others along and they would explain to Sargent that the Lindstrom Peninsula was a poor spot for a camp and ask him to find another, or, better still, take them out on the Peterhead along the coast so they could select their own. Paddy would say that they had expected to be better supported with supplies and equipment, they had been promised these and if they were not forthcoming, he was prepared to suggest they take some food supplies, plus ammunition and traps, to be set against future earnings on fox pelts and carvings. And so he set out the following day in cloudy weather with his stepsons and brother in the rickety old police skiff. The sea was rough and their passage from the shore was slowed by slushy water and shards of ice. Entering a clear channel, they turned east, the little boat pitched violently and its ancient motor began to struggle against the pull of water, coughing and pluming black smoke. The men arranged themselves round the sides to balance their weight and for hour after hour they sat like that, in the freezing salty spray, until the clouds, which had begun the day as soft as goose down, began to heap together and darken. They had passed Grise Fiord and were already in the deep waters of the sound when the weather really turned and a freezing wind began to gust across the little boat's bows. The waves crested white and the boat started to dive but they dared not slow the engine for fear that the storm would overcome them before they reached Craig Harbour. They hung on, grimly avoiding eye contact with each other lest their fear become infectious. When water began crashing into the boat they seized the bailing buckets and frantically scooped it back out over the bows. Gradually the skiff advanced and the rocky spit beside Craig Harbour came into view. The Inuit tried to turn the boat against the current towards the shore but were pushed back. The little motor cranked and spluttered and they advanced for a while northeastwards towards the harbour. The wind blustered and for an instant the fog cleared and they saw on all sides an armada of icebergs afloat on the currents. Once again they
approached the harbour and once again they were pushed back. The men tried to hold their position, hoping that someone from the detachment would eventually see them. If no one spotted them pretty soon, they were doomed. The boat was taking in water and they had more or less lost control of her in the swell. For what seemed like an infinity they danced crazily on the waves while the wind whipped ice crystals into their faces.

Suddenly they heard the trill of another engine and the sound grew until it became a generous rumble and from out of the gloom the detachment Peterhead appeared, not twenty yards distant. The special constable slung out a rope and the skiff was towed to shore. The men were given hot sweet tea, a pinch of tobacco and a strong warning from Corporal Sargent not to try to come into Craig Harbour by boat again. Taking his cue, Aqiatusuk spoke up then, listing the faults of the campsite and explaining why it was that the Inukjuamiut felt they could not stay there. Sargent listened, then shrugged. He told them to come back to the detachment when the ice had settled and they had some pelts and carvings to sell and he would discuss the possibility of moving the camp then. In the meantime, he would advance them credit on some ammunition, a few dozen steel-sprung fox traps and, for Aqiatusuk, a few pieces of soapstone he had found among the supplies. Aqiatusuk, who was by Inuit standards assertive and self-confident in the company of
qalu-naat
, knew that this was the moment he should insist and that if he did not Sargent would continue to dictate what the newcomers could and could not do, but even he found Corporal Sargent forbidding. Umilik towered over them and in certain lights his beard made him look wild and ursine. He was never far from a gun and he had a way about him Aqiatusuk found menacing. Besides, they now found themselves completely dependent on him. He had become, in effect, their guardian and their jailer.

The men returned to camp. The following few weeks passed uneventfully. Hunting and setting traps took the men's hours and the women spent their time collecting water and fuel and sewing
new clothes for the winter. They began to travel farther and farther from the camp, leaving a couple of people behind to tend to the children and guard against bears, trying to familiarise themselves with the land. The lack of snow on the land confined the men to the sea ice. By October a thick ice foot had built up along the coast, forming a highway of old ice smoothed by new. This made travel a good deal easier and the men were able to sledge out as far as Hell Gate to the west and to Grise Fiord in the east, setting their trap lines and travelling on the shore-fast ice far out to sea in order to shoot and harpoon seal at the floe edge.

During those early hunting trips, Aqiatusuk quite often remained behind. He felt too old to explore such a new and challenging terrain, his gallstones bothered him and he knew he could be more useful to his family carving walrus ivory and the little bits of soapstone Sargent had advanced him. The dark period would be on them very soon now, and he was anxious to carve as much as he could before the light failed. His eyes were weakened by the smoke of cooking fires, the blaze of the Arctic sun on the snow and by all the carving he had had to do by lantern light. Still he carved. It seemed that his life and the lives of his family might depend on it. Just before the light gave out completely, Aqiatusuk decided to return with three dog teams to the RCMP detachment at Craig to trade pelts and try to persuade Sargent to move them to somewhere more hospitable. He laid out his
komatik
and retied the sealskin knots between the battens, then greased them with seal fat as a guard against freezing. He melted ice in his mouth and spat it slowly on to the rails, rubbing as he went so the water froze in smooth layers. He laid his sealskins on top of the battens, tied them in and loaded his bundle of spare clothes, his caribou sleeping bag and his bag full of carvings. On top of those he put the fox pelts he had managed to trap. In a few weeks from now, the animals' guard hairs would already have been pulled out by the ice and the fur would be patched and tatty, but right now, in the freezing autumn of the High Arctic, the pelts were mossy and luxuriant and, although they were
few, he anticipated getting a good price for them. He took a step back to gauge the distribution of the weight, then covered the pelts with a final layer of skins and secured them down with sealskin ropes. He set the dogs into their customary harnesses, cracked his whip, urged them on with a
hai hai
and was off at the front of the younger men.

The Inukjuamiut's
komatiks
were strikingly different from Ak-paliapik's and Anukudluk's, and, as they discovered, less suited to the conditions in the High Arctic. They were more tightly battened, which made them less flexible in pressure ice, and they were longer and thinner, which made them more liable to tipping. Their dog traces were shorter and each fanned out separately from the sled where Akpaliapik's and Anukudluk's dogs were harnessed off a single, thick, central sealskin rope. And the dogs themselves were different. The Pond Inlet animals had Greenlandic blood. They were shorter, hardier and more placid, their coats were thicker and they had a tough covering on their pads which limited the damage done to their feet by candle ice or sharp scree. At some point, the Inuk-juamiut knew, they would have to make a new set of
komatiks
and start breeding their animals in with Greenlandic stock.

It was a slow journey. Though the ground had long since frozen there was almost no snow and the surface of the land was still too rough for sleds. The sea had been deeply frozen for three weeks but the ice was rough there, too, and the southern Arctic
komatiks
kept overturning and had to be laboriously repacked and retied before the party could go on. The dogs would not settle well. The dry air very quickly had them panting with thirst and the glassy ice along the shore broke their pads. Their leads soon became tangled and one or two of the weaker animals found themselves constantly dragged along whimpering on their backs or bellies by the momentum of the others. Farther out from shore, the ice in the sound seemed to be in a state of perpetual motion and they advanced with caution, watching for the black holes and drum ice which would sink the
komatiks.
Here and there, water burst through the surface
ice and wet the dogs paws and the men had to stop to wipe the ice crystals from between the creatures' pads to prevent them being cut to shreds. After a while, the animals began to lose heart, and Aqia-tusuk, Samwillie, Elijah and the other men were forced to run ahead of the
komatiks
encouraging them. They passed Grise Fiord and pressed on towards Lee Point, where the dogs flagged and the men had to take to them with their whips. They were eager to complete the outgoing trip in a day, rest overnight and begin the journey back again the following morning. Aqiatusuk was worried about his wife, Mary, whose health had begun to deteriorate and he did not want to leave her for longer than he had to. Besides that, few of the men had new caribou clothes, and they knew they would be vulnerable to frostbite in a blizzard. So they pressed on, and by a very great effort they reached Craig Harbour late, by moonlight, and began to set up camp. They fed their dogs with frozen meat and went into the detachment.

They were greeted by Areak, the special constable, who set water on to boil and for a while the Inuit men sat in the detachment building drinking sugary tea and smoking and recovering from the trip. To the Inuit the detachment seemed impossibly luxurious. An arrangement of low stilts kept out the permafrost and the building was warmed with coal-burning stoves. It was separated into rooms and from the centre of each hung a coal-oil lamp. There were other comforts, too, such as beds and hot and cold water. Even the air smelled of comfort, a predominance of coffee and tinned stew. Areak found them a few sardines and heated something from a can. They sat and ate while Sargent inspected the pelts and carvings, decided how much store credit to give, then issued each man another fifty traps on credit. He was hoping that once the snow came the camp would be able to extend their trap lines into the interior and out across the west coast of the island. Foxes were more likely to be found out on the sea ice, living off the carcasses left by polar bears. As for moving the camp, for the moment, Sargent said, that was impractical.

The journey back to Lindstrom began slowly. The days were mostly twilight now and the men were forced to navigate their way round pressure ridges by feeling the contours of the snow. Every so often they had to stop to untangle the dogs from their traces and the problem of the
komatiks'
overturning slowed them down. They had been going a few hours when they came on a huge lead of open water, where the smooth, shore-fast ice had been blown from the ice foot at the shore. Samwillie went ahead, following the line of the lead in the half-light, but he could find no end to the open water. It was too wide to cross so there was nothing for it but to return to the safety of Craig Harbour for the night before setting off the next day by a different route. As the men turned back another storm began brewing, flinging hailstones down on the sea ice which hurt the dogs and the men had to use their whips to make them move ahead. The ice was soon followed by snow falling in flakes as big as the pieces of shale on the beach and within minutes their tracks were obliterated. There was no choice now but to head for land and camp wherever they could, so they turned their
komatiks
and whipped the dogs towards the shore, coming in near Fielder Point. There they remained for more than three days, while the wind and the hail flustered and savaged their tents.

And it was there, on the second day, that Akpaliapik and Anu-kudluk found them. When they had not returned as expected, the women of the Inukjuamiut camp had persuaded the two Inglulig-miut to go out looking for their men and now they were all caught in the storm. They sat in the dark together. The Inukjuamiut cheered themselves by telling stories and cleaning their guns while the Pond Inlet men, who could not readily follow the conversations, slept, dreaming, perhaps, of better days. The next day the dog food ran out and by the following morning the poor animals were slinking miserably around the tents. During the early hours of the fourth day the Inuit woke to frantic yelping and, grabbing their guns, they rushed outside just in time to see a pack of dogs disappearing along a rocky ridge. They gave chase, sliding and tumbling across the
snowy scree, until they came upon two startled musk ox standing in their defensive position, with their heads lowered and horns presented. The dogs, agitated by starvation, began lunging at the oxen with their teeth bared, and the oxen responded by adopting fighting positions, scuffing at the snow and swinging their horns to and fro, one of which caught a dog and sunk into the flesh on its shoulder. Pulling back, the ox lifted the dog in the air and began trying to shake the unfortunate creature free. One of the lead dogs was by now snapping at the hooves of the second ox, which picked it up in its horns and flung it, as though weightless, across the snow where it landed, its guts blooming red and black on the snow. The musk oxen snorted, then lumbered away into the darkness. Once they were at a safe distance, the men approached the scene and, finishing off the first dog with the back of a rifle, they picked up the animals' bodies and headed back down the slope. Later, they butchered the flesh and distributed it evenly among the sled teams. Henry Larsen's decision to site the Inuit camp at Lindstrom Peninsula had now cost them four days and two dogs. Sooner or later, it was clear, someone or other would die.

On 15 October 1953, the sun set over Ellesmere Island for the last time that year. For the next four months the Inuit would be living in perpetual darkness. On good days, when the clouds were drawn back, the sea ice reflected the moon's glow and so long as the Inuit were out on the ice, they could see their footprints. On bad days, and most days were bad days, they could not tell what was beneath or above or around them, nor in which direction they were travelling or even when their journey, however short, might end. The Inuit of Inukjuak had no word for the void that opened up around them. At first, they tried to carry on with the routine they had worked so hard to establish while there was still light. The men left to go hunting in the dark and returned in the dark. They ate and pissed and shat and made love and sewed and cooked and swapped stories and fed their dogs and cleaned their equipment in the dark or by the dim yellow light of a
qulliq.
To cheer themselves they made bone flutes and lutes
with sinew for strings and they sang and played music and told stories. But the dark exhausted them and pretty soon it was almost impossible to maintain a routine. Their body clocks broke down and the brain could not tell whether it was day or night or something in between. The absence of light made hunting an almost daily terror. Though they could no longer see it, the constant creaking and cracking of the ice reminded them that they were surrounded. The ice around the Lindstrom Peninsula often broke open without warning and floes were blown away on the high winds. Rime frost and beached ice collected at the shore and right at the sea's edge the smooth spread of the ancient ice foot gave way to rough ice rubble and pressure ridges. The hunters had not had time to learn the position of all the contradictory currents and eddies in the sound before the dark came down, and they did not know where the ice was at its most unstable. Around the cracks there were patches of rotting ice and, beyond these, smooth fields of the open sea ice interrupted by immense, embedded icebergs.