14 Arctic Adventure

by Willard Price

  They took off for the great beyond. Roger’s heart thumped with excitement. Even his big brother was thrilled to think of the adventures that awaited them. They were going to travel on the mighty ice cap. Under them would be ice not three inches thick as on a lake or ocean, not three feet thick, but two miles thick. It seemed impossible.

  It was not easy to get from the lowland up to the ice cap. It did not slope gently down from high to low. Instead it ended in a steep cliff three hundred or four hundred feet high. To get up such a cliff with ten huskies and a sledge was impossible.

  There were only a few places in all Greenland where the abrupt cliff gave way to an easy slope from low to high. Olrik knew where to find the nearest one. The huskies were happy, the humans enjoyed speeding along on their skis in the sparkling fresh air straight from the North Pole.

  Suddenly Olrik said, ‘Now you are on the ice cap.’

  The wind had blown the snow away and their skis were sliding over ice but it was only two inches thick.

  ‘Is this a joke,’ Roger demanded.

  ‘No joke,’ said Olrik. ‘This is the edge of one of the two greatest caps of ice in the world. The other is in Antarctica. Now all we have to do is go up and up and up. The famous ice cap is only a few inches thick here. We will keep going until it is two miles thick. If anyone wants to go back, now is the time to say so.’

  Nobody said so.

  The rise was so gradual that they could still ski.

  They had followed a road through the low country, but now there was no sign of a road.

  Roger asked Olrik, ‘Why don’t we go up one of the roads?’

  Olrik answered, ‘There’s no road across the ice cap.’

  ‘I can see that there’s no road here. But there must be somewhere. How do people get from one shore of Greenland to the other shore?’

  ‘There’s no road anywhere. There will be some day. Then automobiles will stream across from one side to the other of the great ice cap. They will pull caravans, or perhaps they will live in motor homes. They will stop where they please and have all the comforts of home. That day hasn’t come yet.’

  ‘How about snowmobiles—like the ones we have in America?’ Roger asked. ‘Then you could go anywhere without roads.’

  ‘I know,’ said Olrik. ‘I’ve been there and I’ve seen them. They are all right but I hope they don’t come here soon. I like my friends, the huskies. And I’d rather have the peace and quiet of the dog team than the noise and stink of engines. Besides, if your gasoline or petrol or whatever you call it ran out where would you be? There’s no place up here where you could get more. With dogs you don’t have to worry. They don’t run on gasoline. They eat only once in two days and they are always cheerful and eager. Besides, you can make friends with them and you can’t do that with an engine.’

  Poor Olrik. The time would come, and soon, when the old pleasant way of life would change.

  Now they were going up a slope so steep that they had to remove their skis, put them on the sledge and walk.

  It was a stiff climb but the huskies never hesitated. Olrik didn’t seem to mind it, but Hal and Roger did a good deal of snorting and puffing. Even the brave dogs were tiring. Roger understood now why his dream of resting comfortably on the sledge and being pulled up the mountain was not practicable. For three hours they struggled on.

  Now they were nearing the top of the great ice cap. It didn’t look at all as Roger had imagined it. He had expected that it would be perfectly rounded, as smooth as the top of an old man’s bald head.

  But instead it was all hills and holes. The holes were great cracks in the ice, sometimes forty feet wide and hundreds of feet deep. The hills were drifts of snow that had grown higher and higher under the strong winds so that they rose into the air anywhere from twenty to ninety feet high. The snow had turned to ice so that they looked exactly like icebergs, except that they were not floating in the sea but two miles up in the air on top of the Greenland ice cap.

  ‘We can go around some of them,’ Olrik said. ‘But this one ahead is so long that we can’t take the time to go around it. We’ll simply have to climb over it.’

  Olrik picked out the place where this mountain range of ice could be climbed. It looked impossible to the boys from Long Island. But the huskies were tackling it and set an example of courage for the other climbers.

  Up they went, slipping, sliding, advancing two yards and falling back one, but keeping at it until they reached the peak.

  Now, what a view they had! Away down there by the sea was the city of Thule. Around them they could count seventy nunataks, which was what Olrik called the pyramids of snow and ice.

  Judging by the position of Thule, Roger guessed the direction of the North Pole.

  ‘It must be that way,’ he said. ‘Hal, what does your compass say?’ Hal got out his compass. The needle didn’t point to the North Pole. Instead, it pointed south-west.

  ‘What do you make of that?’ said Hal. ‘This compass must have gone crazy.’

  Olrik grinned. He thought that the crazy one was Hal, not the compass.

  ‘You’re forgetting something,’ he said. ‘A compass never really points to the North Pole.’

  ‘Then what does it point to?’ Hal demanded.

  ‘To the Magnetic Pole.’

  ‘I remember now. The earth is a sort of magnet or bowl of electricity. The electric’ centre is down there to the south-west. But if you were in New York and looked at the compass you would be so far away from both poles that the compass would give you a pretty good idea of due north.’

  ‘But up here’, complained Roger, ‘we just have to guess where the North Pole is. It seems to me we’ve got to do a lot of guessing. We have to guess whether it is morning, noon or night. Look at that silly sun. All summer it never goes up in the sky. And it never sets. It just goes round and round, low down all summer. And up here, summer is like winter.’

  He shivered inside his thick caribou coat.

  ‘Here it is June,’ he said, ‘and it’s a sight colder here than in New York in February. Everything is the wrong way around.’

  ‘Well,’ laughed Hal, ‘that’s what makes it interesting. You wouldn’t want to find Greenland just another New York.’

  They went down the hill of ice and wound their way in and out and over the nunataks.

  A bitter wind came up. Winds could be terrific on the ice cap. Down at Thule they were not so bad. But two miles up winds could tear over the surface of the ice cap at more than 150 miles an hour.

  Soon they were all chilled to the bone.

  To make matters worse, it began to snow. But it was the strangest kind of snow the boys from Long Island had ever known. It did not come down in big flakes. The strong wind ground the flakes into a powder.

  ‘We call it snow dust,’ said Olrik.

  Like dust,.it got into the parkas that covered their heads, inside their fur coats, even into their sealskin trousers, into every pocket, into their boots, and, worst of all, into their eyes, and into their ears, and even their mouths if they dared to open them.

  Roger was lagging behind. He was a strong boy but he couldn’t keep up with his twenty-year-old companions. An especially strong gust knocked him over and he lay in the snow. Oh, how good it was to lie down. He didn’t care if he never got up. He was dizzy, tired, and all his natural energy was whipped out of him by this awful wind.

  Hal looked back. He could not see his brother because of the dense cloud of flying snow dust. He called, but the screech of the wind was stronger than his shout. He would have to go back and find his brother. That should be easy — he need only follow his tracks.

  But he found no tracks. They had promptly been filled by snow. Now, which nunatak had they come around last? He wasn’t sure. He was getting lightheaded.

  ‘Wait a minute, Olrik. We’ve lost the kid.’

  Olrik was only a few feet away but did not hear him. But Olrik saw him stagger. At once he reached out to help him.
r />   ‘I can’t see anything,’ Hal said.

  ‘I know. You’re having a white-out.’

  ‘What’s a white-out?’

  ‘It’s a dizzy spell because wherever you look there’s nothing but white —white on the ground, White in the air, and a white sky. It’s all very confusing. Some people have gone crazy in a white-out.’

  ‘Well, I can’t go crazy because I’ve got to find my brother. If he’s tumbled down in the snow, he may freeze to death. Which way did we come?’

  ‘I’m not sure. Fact is, I’m having a bit of a white-out myself,’ said Olrik. ‘But I know who can find him.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The huskies.’

  He turned the dogteam about. Perhaps they thought they were going home. They went back as they had come and stopped where Roger lay in the snow. He was unconscious.

  Hal pushed and pulled the body. ‘Wake up,’ he said. There was no response.

  Olrik was worried. ‘Is he dead?’

  Hal pulled off one of Roger’s fur mitts and put his finger where the pulse should be. He could feel nothing. The hand was stiff with cold.

  ‘I’m afraid he’s gone,’ said Hal.

  ‘Perhaps not. He’s so cold the circulation has stopped in his wrist. Try his temple.’

  Hal put his finger on a point about an inch in front of the boy’s ear. At first he felt nothing. His own fingers were so cold that even if there were a pulse he might not feel it. He put his hand inside his own coat and warmed it up. Then he tried again. He found a very slow, weak throb in his brother’s temple.

  ‘Thank the Lord,’ he yelled. ‘He’s alive!’

  ‘That’s great,’ cried Olrik. ‘Too many have died up here. Let’s wrap him up in a couple of caribou hides and put him on the sledge. He ought to warm up and wake up. Perhaps he won’t —but we’ll do our best.’

  The boy was bundled up in a caribou skin with the fur side inside. Around this was wrapped another skin with the fur side outside.

  ‘That’s the way we do it to get the most warmth,’ Olrik said.

  The huskies, who had thought they might be going home, were turned about and the trip was continued.

  For an hour Roger lay there without moving, his eyes closed. Then warmth and life seemed to steal through his body and he opened his eyes.

  ‘What am I doing on the sledge?’ he asked. ‘Am I a piece of baggage?’ He tried to throw off the covers.

  ‘Just try to be baggage for a while longer,’ Hal said. ‘We almost lost you.’

  ‘I don’t remember anything,’ Roger said. ‘Get me out of here. The dogs have enough to pull without me.

  ‘Don’t move,’ said Hal. ‘Just pretend you are the King of Siam and this is your golden chariot.’

  ‘The storm is letting up,’ Olrik announced. ‘Already there’s a bit of blue above. In half an hour we’ll see the sun. Then we’ll stop for lunch.’

  ‘How can you tell, when it’s lunch-time?’ Hal wondered.

  ‘By my stomach,’ said Olrik. ‘I don’t really know whether it’ll be lunch-time or dinner-time or midnight. Anyhow, something inside me tells me that it’s time to eat.’

  Chapter 7

  Perils of the Ice Cap

  They put up a tent. It was easier than building an igloo every time they stopped. The tent was not made of canvas. It was far better than that. Thick caribou hide with plenty of shaggy hair still on the outside would keep out the cold and would also shut out the sunlight in case they wanted to sleep. The floor was another caribou hide.

  ‘How about the dogs?’ Roger asked. ‘Don’t they have to be unharnessed?’

  ‘No,’ Olrik answered. ‘The harness is very light — it won’t bother them. If a bear came around and the dogs were not harnessed they might run away and we’d never see them again. Or they might gang up against the bear and kill it. You wouldn’t want that to happen.’

  ‘But won’t they freeze to death if they can’t run?’

  ‘They know how to avoid freezing. Come and take a look at them.’

  He took Roger around to the side of the tent. There Roger saw one of the strangest sights he had ever seen in his life.

  What he saw was a great heap of dog flesh. The weary huskies had piled up on each other so that every one of them was kept warm by the dogs who pressed against him on both sides or the dogs beneath or above him.

  ‘Pretty smart dogs to think of that way of keeping warm,’ Roger said. He was about to enter the tent when Olrik stopped him.

  ‘First get rid of your snow dust,’ he said. ‘It’s all over you. You look like a ghost. If you go into the tent that way and start your little stove, the snow dust that covers you will melt and soak into your clothes. Then if you come out your wet clothes will freeze and you will be-dressed in ice.’

  All three began to brush off the snow powder that covered them, blow it out of their noses, take it out of their ears and eyes, dump it out of their pockets, and turn their pockets inside out.

  It was only when they were free of the pesky snow dust that they dared enter the tent, light the small portable stove, and eat.

  ‘All I want to do now is sleep,’ Roger said. Hal and Olrik were quite willing to do just that. Hal was the only one who carried a watch. He took it out and looked at it. It had stopped. Whether he had banged it against some icy nunatak or some snow dust had gotten into it, there was no doubt that it was useless.

  ‘Well, it doesn’t matter what time it is,’ Hal said. ‘We’re all tired —let’s sleep.’

  It was some seven or eight hours later that Roger woke and looked into the face of a polar bear. It had forced its head in between the flaps and seemed to be trying to decide which of these juicy morsels to eat first. Roger had no desire to be a bear’s breakfast. His yell woke up his two companions and they stared with horror and disbelief as the great beast forced its way into the tent.

  Olrik felt guilty. He should have brought a gun. But Hal had told him not to because they were not killers.

  But the polar bear is a killer and could not live if he were not. He must kill if he wants to eat. What do three non-killers do if they face a killer?

  Hal picked up the heavy frying pan and prepared for battle. Before he could land this heavy weapon against the bear’s nose, the unwelcome visitor turned into one who was very welcome. The monster went straight to Roger and rubbed its great furry head against the boy’s shoulder.

  ‘It’s Nanook!’ cried Roger. ‘Put away the frying pan.’

  The bear lay down beside Roger, gargling something that may have been his effort to say, ‘Good Morning’. Roger put his arms around the great furry neck. Both boy and bear were very happy.

  ‘How did he ever rind us?’ Roger wondered. ‘Our tracks must have been covered with snow.’

  Olrik explained. ‘It takes more than snow to defeat a bear’s sense of smell.’

  ‘I didn’t know we smelled as bad as all that,’ said Roger.

  ‘Bad or good, it’s all the same to the bear. Two things brought him to you. One was smell — the other was love.’

  They fed the bear and then had some food themselves. The three of them went out — the four of them —the bear following Roger.

  It was a sparkling morning — if it was morning. The sun was shining bravely. It had of course been shining all the time they were asleep. The thick tent-hides had kept out the light. Now there was no snow dust, no wind. The sky was a great dome of pure blue.

  But there was one thing that bothered Roger. ‘We’re supposed to be after animals and we haven’t seen one—except Nanook.’

  ‘They were all in their holes during the storm,’ Olrik said.

  ‘I don’t believe there are any animals up here. How could there be? There’s nothing for them to eat — not a sprig of grass, not a leaf, nothing.’

  ‘They don’t need grass or plants,’ said Olrik. ‘They’re all carnivores, meat-eaters.’

  ‘Where do they get the meat?’

  ‘By ea
ting each other. The bear eats the wolf. The wolf eats the wolverine. The wolverine eats the fox, and so on. All these animals eat birds such as the auks, the barnacle goose, the pink-foot goose, the white-tailed eagle, the Greenland falcon, the snow bunting, the snowy owl and the raven. So, don’t worry, there’s plenty of food for everybody.’

  ‘Well,’ said Roger, ‘I think they’re pretty smart to find it.’

  ‘You’re right. I saw a fox hole near that nunatak. Come and see how smart the fox is.’

  They walked over to inspect the home of the fox. The animal was not present.

  ‘Look in there,’ said Olrik. ‘See that pile of birds?’

  ‘They don’t have any heads,’ said Roger.

  ‘Exactly. Even a fox can’t eat heads. These are all auks. The fox bites off all their heads and piles up the bodies in neat rows, covers them with gravel, and puts stones on top. Then, when winter comes, he has a fine supply of food to last him through the dark months.’

  Roger was astonished. ‘I thought animals didn’t have enough brains to think about the future.’

  ‘Some, like the fox, can plan ahead better than some people do,’ said Olrik.

  It was such a lovely day that it seemed nothing bad could possibly happen.

  But then it did. There was a wild commotion on the other side of the tent. The boys ran to see what was going on. Three wolves were not eating birds for breakfast. They were attacking the dogs.

  ‘But they wouldn’t really kill the dogs, would they?’ said Roger. ‘After all, the huskies and the wolves are cousins.’

  ‘A cousin can kill a cousin,’ Olrik said. ‘Last year wolves killed all seven of my dogs.’

  Roger popped into the tent and came out with a pan. He started beating it loudly and sang. It was a sound the wolves had not heard before. With ears erect, they stared at the boy with the pan.

  ‘See? They’re scared. They’ll run away,’ cried Roger.

  The wolves ran, but not away. They attacked the boy with the pan. They had meant to make the dogs their breakfast, but this two-legged nuisance seemed to have plenty of meat on him and would make a good meal.