I occasionally accompanied Dr. Cook when he made his rounds of the tupiks. There were about two dozen of them arranged in a cluster—haphazardly, it seemed to me, though there may have been a pattern that I could not discern. The village was a constant frenzy of activity. The Eskimos worked as though the sky had cleared in the midst of a storm that had lasted for years and would soon return some night while they were sleeping. The men scoured animal pelts, some with knives for which they had traded furs, others with sharp-edged stones through which they had painstakingly carved grips like those of saws. The women sewed the pelts together with large needles carved from walrus tusks, threading them with rawhide as thick as the laces of my boots.
As he did with the residents of Brooklyn and Manhattan, Dr. Cook observed the Eskimos in a manner that somehow combined detachment and sympathy, moving about among them slowly, as if a sudden movement or even a brisk manner would scare them off or earn him their mistrust. He spoke quietly to them, inquired of their symptoms, smiling no matter what they replied so as to assure them that their answer boded well for their recovery. They wore sheepish grins, as if their illnesses were forms of misbehaviour, as if they were sorry for putting him to all this trouble.
Many of the crew members of both ships preferred, for various reasons, to spend their nights on shore. They slept in tupiks, luxurious accommodations given that on the ship, they had no quarters and merely bunked down each night wherever they would not be underfoot. On shore, there was space, peacefulness and quiet, fresh air, food and water, and, for those who wanted it, the company of women. Dr. Cook told me that there was no sexual jealousy among the Eskimos. Nor was a pregnancy ever regarded as anything but a cause for celebration.
“I suppose,” he said, “they would be greatly amused to know the truth about us and the lengths to which we go to keep it secret. It mystifies them, this race for what they call the Big Nail. They place no importance whatsoever on its discovery, had never heard of it until they met the first explorers. They will think no more highly of the man who gets there first than they do of any other man. Yet they take care of us while we are in their country, as if they are to blame for its hazards and therefore must protect us from them. They cannot conceive that another race’s capacity for evil might be greater than their own. Some of them will die trying to keep Peary alive if he remains another winter. He knows this, yet insists on staying anyway. Whoever makes it to the pole first will owe a greater debt to the Eskimos than he owes to his captain, his crew and his backers put together.”
Despite extolling the character of the natives, he slept apart from them at night, going back to the ship instead of sharing a tupik with one of the families as they were forever urging us to do. On the Erik at night, he would jot down in his notebook his observations of them, add new words to the Eskimo dictionary he was compiling.
One day, as I was walking through the village, I was surrounded by a group of Eskimo women and children. The women were laughing so hard they were clutching their stomachs. Two of them stood on either side of me, took me by the arms and began to pull and push me towards one of the others, a young woman roughly my age. I resisted, my heels ploughing furrows in the dirt as I moved towards my intended. She was laughing, clearly my partner in neither embarrassment nor reluctance. What might be expected of me once we were face to face I had no idea. I began to struggle even harder.
“They are only playing with you,” a voice I recognized as Dr. Cook’s said behind me. At the sound of his voice, they released me and ran away laughing. He clapped me on the back and walked on past me with a briskness meant to minimize my embarrassment.
I thought about the incident later that night as I sat on the deck of the Erik with Dr. Cook. I was not sure that they had only been playing with me. I wondered if they had meant me to understand that she would be receptive if, later on, after dark, I sought her out.
From time to time each day, I looked down the beach at the tupik. I was finding it ever more difficult to believe, in spite of hearing him night after night roaring Henson’s name, that Peary was inside it, or indeed that anyone was. Standing on the deck of the Erik, I had seen from within the tupik after dark no lights, no lantern, no smoke from a campfire, not even on cold nights when it rained. I had not seen so much as Peary’s shadow, day or night, through the walls of the tent.
Some days, it seemed that the purpose of the rescue mission had been forgotten altogether, that the tent in the shadow of the cliff had been forgotten by all but Dr. Cook and Matthew Henson.
It was as though Peary was quarantined, the rest of us waiting for Dr. Cook to declare him cured and non-contagious so we could take him home.
Dr. Cook went day after day to Peary’s tent—sometimes several times a day—only to emerge each time in ever-more-obvious frustration, striding away from the tent in long, savage strides.
It began to feel like we were waiting not for Peary to emerge from his tent, but for word that he was dead.
“Peary knows you are here,” said Dr. Cook one night. “Henson told him so that he would not find out some other way. If Peary was in his right mind, your being here would bother him no more than it bothers Mrs. Peary. But you are now in the stew of his delirium like all the rest of us, you whom he has never met. Don’t worry. You are not a primary ingredient as far as I can tell. He mentions Francis Stead more often than he mentions you.”
It occurred to me that I might well leave Etah, go back to New York, without ever having seen Peary, having only heard him at night, roaring out what might have been the only word he knew. It was also possible, even likely, in that case, that I would never in my life see Peary. It seemed absurd that having come all this way, I might leave without even having set eyes on him. I considered walking down the forbidden stretch of beach to poke my head in through the tent just for one brief look at him.
One night on the Erik, after Peary had been roaring Henson’s name for an unusually long time, Dr. Cook jumped out of bed and began to pace the cabin. “Where in God’s name is Henson?” he all but hissed at me, whispering to keep from waking Mrs. Peary or Marie, though I was sure that they had already woken up. “Can he not hear Peary calling for him? Does he not realize the effect it must have on Peary’s wife and child?”
At last the shouting stopped, but Dr. Cook could not get back to sleep.
“My motives for leading this rescue mission are not as pure as I have led you to believe,” he said. “It will help my own cause immeasurably if I bring the Pearys safely home.”
“I know,” I said. “It’s only natural to think about such things.”
“The outcome of this expedition will affect my standing in the Peary Arctic Club, and my chances of getting up an expedition of my own. It weighs on my mind that his wife and child are depending on me to bring him home. But I also wonder what people will think of me if I leave him here and he does not make it through the winter.” He cast a momentary glance in the direction of the Windward. Our porthole faced theirs, so both were covered with small curtains.
“When I told her I might eventually have to insist that we leave, with or without him, Mrs. Peary reminded me that I was sent here to save his life. ‘I am trying to save his life,’ I told her, ‘but I was also sent here to bring you and your daughter back.’ She offered to give me written permission to remove him from the tent and put him on the ship against his will. I told her that unless he agrees to go, we must leave him here. The crews of both ships are depending on me to bring this rescue expedition to an end, one way or another, before it is too late in the season to make a run for home. Perhaps they should have sent someone else, someone he would not feel so threatened by. Someone with the courage to defy him.”
“You are right not to force him to go home,” I said. “Mrs. Peary should not have asked you to.”
“I told Peary today that I would not feel I had done my duty to the Peary Arctic Club unless he returned with me. ‘It is, as you say, Doctor,’ he said, ‘the Peary Arctic Club. Not, un
fortunately for you, the Cook Arctic Club. Not yet, anyway. You must first rescue me before you can succeed me. If you bring me back, you will be their favoured one. Who better to succeed Peary than the man who saved him, the man who did what Peary could not do—brought Peary home.’ “
“You should try to sleep,” I said.
“The Pearys are in a fix, and I wish to help them,” he said. “But so, too, am I in a fix, one that I should have foreseen. I thought that Peary, if he was alive, was awaiting rescue, that the Windward was lost or disabled. I know I should not see myself as the victim of this piece, but it seems that whatever I decide, I risk paying a great price. If I order Peary removed from the tent and put on board, he will tell the world that if not for me, he might have made it to the pole. He will be spared the humiliation of being rescued with his wife and little girl. He could ruin me with the Peary Arctic Club. Some of them would be only too glad to think the best of him and the worst of me. He could have me charged with insubordination, even mutiny. I think he would be quite happy if I forced him to leave. It may be the very thing he has been waiting for all this time. But if I leave him here and he dies, I will be blamed for deserting him and he will be remembered as a hero.”
He looked again at the curtain-covered porthole, then turned over on his side, facing the wall, staring at it, I was certain. For a long time I watched him as he lay there motionless.
One night, I was awakened in my bunk on the Erik by the sound of sled dogs barking on the hill. I had been listening to them for some time before I realized that they were barking in response to the voice of a man far below them on the beach. I couldn’t make out what the man was shouting or where he was in relation to Peary’s tent. The words, though unintelligible, had the cadence of English. The man was shouting, but not angrily, his tone that of a man making customary small talk with a distant neighbour. I would not have been surprised to hear it answered by a like-sounding voice from farther down the beach, but the only answer was an echo that rolled round and round like a marble in the bowl of the harbour. Was it Peary, amusing himself with echoes, perhaps even mistaking the echoes for replies? Peary having a reflective conversation with himself? I thought of going up on deck, but I knew there was no moon. On moonless nights in Etah, nothing was visible except the stars, a host of lights that illuminated nothing.
• CHAPTER NINETEEN •
THE DAY AFTER I HEARD THE VOICE, THE SEVENTEENTH DAY OF our anchorage at Etah, Dr. Cook and I were talking on the deck of the Erik when we saw several Eskimo boys running uphill towards the tupiks, shouting, “Pearyaksoah! Pearyaksoah!” We looked down the beach at Peary’s tent.
Henson was standing just outside the doorway, clearly waiting for someone to emerge. I wondered if Mrs. Peary might be in there, or if she was in her quarters on the Windward. Henson peered inside, then stood erect again. I was now sure from Henson’s posture and air of anxiousness that it was Peary he was waiting for. The Eskimos came running from their tupiks and gathered on the hill to watch. Crew members from both the Erik and the Windward came up on deck or stopped working to stare at Peary’s tent. Those who were on the beach did likewise.
I looked back at Henson just in time to see Peary stagger regally into the light, his legs wobbling but his upper body ramrod straight, his hands behind his back as if he had emerged from his tent for a customary stroll about the beach.
At first, there were shouts of greeting and celebration among the Eskimos, but they did not, as I half expected they would, run down the hill to greet him. The shouting stopped abruptly. The initial euphoria having subsided, they had looked more closely and were dismayed by what they saw. I wondered what he had looked like when they saw him last. Some of them, as if to spare him the indignity of being seen in such a state, went back to their tents.
Peary looked towards the harbour, stood for some time staring at the ships, one of which had not been there when he last looked out.
He was, it seemed, trying to project the image of a frail but past-the-worst-of-it, improving convalescent. He was wearing winter moccasins that came up past his knees. Thicker-soled than summer ones, they enabled him to stand on the rocks despite his injured feet.
With his hands still behind his back, so that his arms looked like a pair of folded wings, he began to make his way over the beach rocks, as much through them as over them, shuffling his feet, scuffing as though, shod in slippers, he was crossing a newly waxed floor. He moved his legs, which were bent at the knees, faster than normal to keep himself from falling.
I felt certain that he would pitch forward onto the rocks before he could reach the rowboat in which two crew members were waiting. Dr. Cook had to have thought the same thing, for he shouted to the men of the Erik to lower the rowboat so that he could go ashore. Henson, who must have heard him, put up his hand, and Peary shouted, “STOP,” the second word I had ever heard him speak.
“All right. For the moment, we will wait,” Dr. Cook said.
Peary towered by at least a foot over Henson, who walked beside him, discreetly solicitous, glancing sideways at him now and then, ready to support him should he begin to fall. He had clearly been instructed not to touch him unless absolutely necessary.
Peary wore a black peaked hat, a black double-breasted watchcoat and thick black woollen trousers.
It seemed that the only sound in all the world was the distant clattering of those rocks beneath his moccasins. Stretching behind him almost to his tent were the jagged pair of furrows he had ploughed with his feet. Then I heard another shout and, looking towards the other end of the beach, saw Mrs. Peary and Marie, Mrs. Peary walking as quickly as she could without dragging the little girl behind her. They were much farther from the rowboat than Peary. It was as though a race was taking place, with Mrs. Peary trying to make it to the boat before her husband did. She was urging Marie to walk faster, now and then looking impatiently behind her, clearly hoping to intercept her husband before he reached the boat, as if she somehow knew what his intentions were and meant to keep him from announcing them to Dr. Cook.
From the quarterdeck, we watched in silence this convergence of the Pearys—watched Peary, whom Jo and Marie hadn’t seen on his feet in months, lurching down the beach like some black, weird-gaited bird with Henson at his side.
What does he want? I wondered.
Dr. Cook placed his hand very lightly on my shoulder and left it there, all the while looking at Peary, who, it was now apparent, would reach the rowboat long before his wife and daughter did. Dr. Cook’s hand tightened on my shoulder the closer to the boat Peary drew, as though he thought I needed reassurance. The crew members, and the passengers who had come up from below, were now gathered in twos and threes behind us, whispering among themselves.
As Peary and Henson reached the boat, Henson and one of the crewmen helped Peary climb aboard. The crewmen pushed the boat into deeper water and began to row at a furious pace, doubtless ordered to do so by Peary, whose back was to the shore. He did not so much as glance over his shoulder to acknowledge his wife when she shouted something to him that I could not make out. Mrs. Peary and Marie stopped walking and for a few seconds watched the receding rowboat, until Mrs. Peary called out to Dr. Cook to send a boat for them. Dr. Cook complied, so that even as Peary’s boat was drawing closer to the ships, another was setting out from them for shore.
Peary, sitting, held himself as rigidly, as upright, as he had while he was walking down the beach, head motionless, hands on his thighs.
I could see his face clearly now. It was a strange cherry brown colour, the combined effect, I guessed, of the elements and the deficiencies of diet. He must have shaved or had Henson shave him. He had a neatly trimmed Vandyke beard and a florid moustache, both bright red and all the more conspicuous because of the unvaried colour of his clothes.
His long frame served only to exaggerate his emaciation, as did the layers of clothes that he was wearing to disguise it. Even with others underneath, his outer clothes were far too big for hi
m. The shoulder seams of his overcoat were just above his elbows. The wind gusted for a moment and his trousers became a pair of flags, so that I could see the stick-like outlines of his legs. I mentally compared the man advancing towards me with the one I had so often seen in photographs. His normal weight, of which I guessed he had lost more than one-third, was two hundred pounds. Newly coiffed, neatly attired—albeit in clothes that were all but rags—a physical ruin, he might have been the commander of some long-besieged army who had come out to offer to the enemy a ceremonial surrender. I would not have been surprised, once he came on board, if he had taken from Henson and presented to Dr. Cook some symbol of surrender like a sabre or a folded flag.
And perhaps that is it, I thought. He has come out to tell Dr. Cook that he has changed his mind. This is the formal end of Peary’s final expedition. He wants to make the announcement standing up, looking down at Dr. Cook, not lying on his back half delirious in a tent he hasn’t left in months. He means to put as splendid a face as he can on this defeat. And he had looked splendid, a towering, tottering wreck of a man, moving with a lurching grace along the beach, and he looked splendid now as he sat there in the boat, the epitome of military impassivity and composure. The boat that had been sent from the Erik for his wife and child passed within ten feet of his, but he gave no sign of having noticed it.
Dr. Cook’s hand tightened yet again on my shoulder. He seemed to be saying that just as Peary had Henson by his side, he had me.
I lost sight of the rowboat as it drew up on the far side of the Erik. I watched two crew members crank the winch, the ropes creaking with the weight. And then the boat came slowly into view—or rather its four occupants did, so it seemed that they were levitating, especially Peary, who, as the boat rose side-on to it, did not so much as glance at the ship but stared straight ahead, sightlessly ahead, it seemed. He might have been in such a trance he did not know the ship was there.
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