14 Arctic Adventure

by Willard Price

  The kayaks were only ten feet long and far lighter than any canoe they had ever carried around a waterfall or rapids. They carried them over their heads to the water’s edge, launched them, and carefully stepped in, making sure to lock themselves into the ring around the manhole so no water could get into the kayaks.

  Then they paddled off, searching for ‘The Old Man of the Ice Floes’.

  Usually a walrus hunter carried a harpoon, since his purpose was to kill the beast. But the boys had a much harder job. Their father would have no use for a dead walrus. They must take it alive. Each boy carried a lasso.

  The Eskimo owner of the kayaks stood on the shore watching the boys hunting for a 3,000-pound walrus with nothing but two pieces of rope.

  ‘They are just like children,’ he thought. ‘We Eskimos are much wiser than these children from the hot lands.’

  And the ‘children from the hot lands’ considered themselves far better than the ignorant folk of the Arctic. Who was right? It was hard to say.

  Hal had his doubts about this adventure. To take a walrus with a rope was like trying to catch an elephant with a piece of string.

  Finding a walrus was the easy part. There were dozens of them, each on a cake of ice, singing their hearts out. Well, not exactly singing. The sound was more like the bellow of a bull or the bark of a bloodhound. Anyhow, it tore the air apart with noise.

  As the kayaks came near, they slid off their icy pedestals and disappeared under water.

  ‘They’re all gone,’ said Roger.

  ‘Never mind. They have to come up to breathe.’

  ‘How long can they stay down?’

  ‘About nine minutes.’

  ‘What do they do down there?’

  ‘Use those sharp tusks to dig up the bottom for shellfish.’

  ‘Do they swallow them, shells and all?’

  ‘No. I’ve read that they crush the clam shells between their flippers, then drop the pieces of shell and eat the clam.’

  ‘But clam shells and oyster shells are like iron. How could they break them with a pair of flabby fins?’

  ‘Not so flabby,’ said Hal. ‘A walrus could take your head between its fins and turn it into a pancake.’

  ‘It must be as strong as a horse. No wonder they call it a sea horse. How deep does it go? Thirty feet?’

  ‘More like three hundred feet. A man is apt to get the bends if he goes down a hundred feet without a scuba. The walrus does three times as well. But if he doesn’t come up for breath, he dies. Watch. Here they come now.’

  Up they came, poking their black heads out of the water and whistling a tune as they inhaled —not once, but a dozen times until every crevice of their lungs was full of air.

  They were annoyed to find the kayaks still there and roared their disapproval. A big bull charged Hal’s kayak and upset it. Hal forgot what he had told Roger not to forget. Surprised by this sudden attack, he let go of his paddle. It was a strange feeling, his head hanging three feet under water, as he held his breath, paddling desperately with his hands to turn the boat upright.

  It didn’t work. His hands were not as good as a paddle. He groped about but could not find it. He was getting dizzy. He could not hold his breath any longer. What a way to die, upside down!

  But if there was any dying to be done he was glad that he was to do it, not his kid brother.

  What was the kid brother doing all this time?

  He had brought his kayak up beside Hal’s and was trying to roll Hal’s boat over. He couldn’t budge it. Hal’s weight kept it down.

  Hal was a good swimmer. But he was locked into the kayak. Roger realized that a kayak, however good, had its drawbacks. Once in it, it was a devil of a job to get out of it.

  Hal’s paddle was drifting away. Roger passed his paddle down. It poked Hal in the ribs and woke him from his stupor. He grabbed the paddle, and with one stroke he turned his kayak and himself right side up. Roger captured Hal’s drifting paddle.

  The bull had been waiting for his chance to make trouble. He was more than the usual length of twelve feet. Some bulls were twenty feet long, and this was one of them. He was twice as long as a kayak.

  What a prize, if they could take him before he took them.

  Hal’s head was not working well, and no wonder after his terrible experience. It was up to the ‘kid brother’ to do the thinking for both of them. Roger had an idea — but would it work?

  As the bull came near, he struck it on its tender nose with his paddle. The bull sank. Soon it rose, bellowing, and again Roger gave it the sore nose treatment before it had a chance to breathe.

  Again, down went the bull. But he must have air. So he was up again almost at once. Another resounding crack. And down went the breathless sea horse.

  Hal saw what Roger was trying to do — make the animal go weak for lack of air —and he joined in.

  Finally the great beast’s eyes closed and he gave up struggling. Two boys had conquered him, simply by preventing him from filling his lungs.

  Now they had to act fast. The bull might recover, and defeat them after all. They threw both lassos over his head and towed the unconscious monster to shore.

  Many men had gathered to see the show. They knew the boys and liked them. They saw what was needed and had a truck with a drag behind. The drag, a sort of raft, was pushed under the walrus while still in the water — then they started the truck and pulled the drag and its ton-and-a-half, load all the way to the airport.

  The walrus did not recover until he was safely stowed into a skyvan, ready for the trip to Long Island.

  Chapter 17

  Roger and the Killer

  A voice outside the igloo called: ‘Somebody wants to come in.’

  ‘Who is it?’ said Hal. He got no answer. Then he remembered — no Eskimo would give his name —that would offend the name-ghost.

  If it was Zeb, Hal certainly did not want him to come in. But Zeb wouldn’t say ‘Somebody’. So it must be an Eskimo.

  ‘Somebody may come in,’ Hal said.

  Olrik entered. He was amazed to see the brothers dressed in their Neoprene rubber diving suits. Each carried a scuba breathing tank on his back.

  ‘What’s up?’ said Olrik. ‘Going for a swim just for fun? Or business?’

  ‘You might call it business,’ Hal said. ‘We got a telegram. Dad wants a killer whale.’

  ‘A killer whale! Why, you poor dopes—you’ll get murdered. We Eskimos know the killer whale. He’s about the most dangerous visitor we have in these waters. Many of them have just arrived. Everybody is staying off the ice for fear of being gobbled up by a killer whale.’

  ‘Perhaps they come so seldom that your people have never really become acquainted with them. Have you ever seen one?’

  ‘Can’t say I have. But there are a lot of stories. Some of our own friends have been killed by those brutes.’

  Hal said, ‘No one can see very well under water. Perhaps what got them was a shark.’

  ‘But surely you know the reputation of the killer whale,’ said Olrik.

  ‘Yes, it has a terrible reputation,’ Hal replied. ‘It is only about thirty feet long and can kill a whale a hundred feet long. It has twenty-four teeth as sharp as razors. It bites a whale on the corner of its mouth, makes it open its jaws and then it proceeds to eat the tongue. For some reason that makes the whale almost helpless. It begins to bleed to death. The killer goes on until it has filled its six-foot-long stomach and then other killers come in and do the rest.’

  ‘Well then,’ said Olrik, ‘if you know it’s so terrible why go down after it?’

  ‘Because it happens to be one of man’s best friends. People call it a whale but it isn’t. It is a big dolphin. And dolphins never attack men. They seem to think that we are their cousins.’

  ‘I’m no cousin of any killer,’ said Olrik.

  Hal went on, ‘I wish I could introduce you to a killer whale.’

  ‘You want to get me murdered?’

&n
bsp; ‘Certainly not. But I know you’d be safe. I know he would like you.’

  ‘You’re right. He’d like me so well he’d eat me up.’

  ‘Not a chance. In all the zoos where they have dolphins they are the best performers. They can do no end of tricks. They are very easy to teach. The elephant is a fine animal and has a great brain. But the brain of a killer whale is seven times as large as the brain of an elephant.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean anything,’ said Olrik. ‘A big brain that thinks of nothing but mischief is not as good as a small brain that behaves itself.’

  ‘That is true, Olrik,’ said Hal. ‘But now H you will excuse us we’re off to see if the big brain can also behave itself.’

  ‘Well,’ said Olrik, ‘it’s been nice knowing you. I suppose I’ll never see you again, so here’s goodbye.’

  ‘Not a long goodbye,’ said Hal, ‘but just a short one. See you at lunch.’

  It was now mid-summer, yet there was plenty of ice. They walked out on the drifting floes, jumping from one to another. If their jump was a bit short they would go into the sea long before they intended to. When they were far enough out to know that they were over deep water, they slid down into the sea.

  The water was cold, but their rubber suits kept them as warm as toast.

  They looked about with great care. It was not a killer whale that they were looking for just now, but a shark. The shark was no friend of man.

  As bad luck would have it they glimpsed one which was coming their way. They shot up like two bolts of lightning and clambered up on to a floe.

  Olrik, on the shore, was amused. ‘They’re running away from the killer whale already.’

  He expected to see the snout of a killer whale rise above the surface. Instead he saw the jaws of a shark shoot out of the water, reach for the boys, sink again.

  The floe that they were on was drifting with the current. Not until it had floated a quarter of a mile did the boys once more drop into the sea.

  No shark was in sight, nor was a killer whale.

  They could see a great object like a submarine coming their way. It had its huge mouth wide open. Hal guessed that it was a Greenland whale.

  It was a whale with no teeth.

  How can any animal get its food if it has no teeth?

  There are two kinds of whales —those with teeth, and those without. The toothed whales include the beaked whale, the white whale, the goose-beaked whale, the sperm whale and others. On the other hand the whales without teeth are the humpback, the finback, the grey, the sei, the right and the blue. Largest of all is the blue whale, one hundred feet long, the largest animal in the world, equal in size to 150 oxen or twenty-five big elephants.

  How do these monsters live? Simply by swimming along with their mouths open and taking in anything that gets in the way —the tiny living things called plankton, also crabs, lobsters, shrimps and what-not.

  This might seem like small stuff for such a huge animal, but they succeed in putting away about a ton of food a day — and without taking one bite. What an easy way to live!

  The Greenland whale, swimming along with eyes shut and mouth open, was as surprised as Roger was when the boy was scooped up by those great jaws. He could not be chewed because there were no teeth. He could not be swallowed because the throat of the animal was too small. He was just stuck. His feet dangled out of one side of the mouth and his hands out of the other. And if there was any bellowing to be done, Roger did it. But if you try to howl inside a whale’s mouth, you might as well save your breath. You cannot be heard.

  The whale stopped. He was very much annoyed by this squirming thing in his mouth. He tried to get rid of it but it was stuck fast.

  Hal sympathized with the whale, as well as with his brother. There was nothing he could do. He was unusually strong, and weighed more than his own father, but what chance did he have against this monster that weighed perhaps a hundred times as much?

  He grabbed Roger’s feet to pull him out. He could not move him one inch. He went to the other side and took hold of Roger’s hands. These he pulled lustily but with no effect.

  He looked around for help.

  It came in the shape of a young killer whale, not more than fifteen feet long, who saw the two boys and came to the rescue. He thrust his head into the great mouth and closed his jaws on Roger. The sharp teeth were not too comfortable but they did not penetrate the heavy rubber suit. With a thrash of his tail the killer whale propelled himself backward and pulled Roger out of the jaws of death.

  The Greenland whale made off with all speed because he was no friend of the killer whale.

  The whale who was not a whale was apparently reluctant to leave. He rubbed his head dog-fashion against Roger and then, in order not to have any favourites, he gave Hal the same treatment. When they rose to the surface he was with them.

  Their faithful friend, Olrik, had a truck and drag waiting for them. The young killer whale was hauled on to the drag and the boys got into the truck. Away they went to the airport.

  ‘We’ll have to hurry,’ Hal said. ‘No whale or dolphin is any good until he is in the water. His lungs are in his chest. The weight of his body presses down so hard that he cannot get enough air into his lungs and will suffocate. He may be dead before we can get him into a sky van. Those tanks we saw at the airport -could we have one put into the sky van at once?’

  ‘It’s in already,’ Olrik said. ‘I knew you’d need it. It’s twenty feet long, about five feet longer than the animal. And it’s full of water.’

  ‘Bless you, Olrik. I don’t know what I’d do without you,’ said Hal gratefully. The killer whale was still alive when it was put into the tank. It would never need to kill again. It would be fed as soon as it arrived at Long Island, and then it would be tanked to the zoo that had ordered it. There it would be happy, learning the various acts required of it more quickly than any other swimming animal because as the scientist Dr Lilly had said, ‘Dolphins learn as fast as humans.’

  Chapter 18

  His Tooth Is Nine Feet Long

  ‘Now we are asked to get a narwhal,’ said Hal.

  Roger’s forehead wrinkled. He thought he knew animals pretty well but he had never heard of this one. ‘What’s a narwhal?’

  ‘It’s one of the most peculiar animals on the face of the earth. It’s found only in the Arctic, so most people have never heard of it.’

  ‘What is it-a whale?’

  ‘No, it’s not a whale.’

  ‘A fish?’

  ‘No, it’s not a fish.’

  ‘Well then, what is it?’

  ‘It’s a narwhal.’

  ‘Don’t beat about the bush. What the dickens is a narwhal?’

  ‘Something like the unicorn.’

  ‘All right then, what’s a unicorn?’

  ‘Something that isn’t. It doesn’t exist and it never did. But people two thousand years ago believed in it. It was supposed to be a kind of horse, but the odd thing about it was that it was thought to have a horn protruding many feet in front of the head. So it was called a unicorn—uni meaning one and corn from the Latin cornu meaning horn. The explorers found a horn of solid ivory, the very best. Only animals produce ivory, therefore they decided that this must come from a real unicorn. They told the world that they had proof that the beast called a unicorn really existed. Actually it was the tooth of a narwhal. It was nine feet long.’

  Roger said, ‘You can’t tell me that any animal has a tooth nine feet long.’

  ‘We’ll see, when we get one. A very peculiar thing about the narwhal is that it has only two teeth. The one on the right side is just a small tooth, the one on the left is nine feet long —sometimes ten.’

  Roger shook his head. ‘I still don’t believe that there’s anything on earth like that. I’ve been in a lot of zoos and never saw one.’

  ‘Most zoo men don’t know anything about it. The New York Aquarium in Coney Island had a very small one. It was said to be the first narwhal
that had ever been captured alive. It refused to eat fish. But it did like milk shakes. It gained twenty pounds in a week on milk shakes. That was in 1969. If it grew up it would be twenty feet long by this time. I have no idea whether it lived or not. But up here they come and go, sometimes a thousand of them at a time.’

  ‘So perhaps we won’t see one of them or we may see a thousand.’

  ‘That’s the way it goes,’ said Hal. ‘The Eskimos kill them for their meat, which is delicious. Olrik told me that the Eskimos once killed a thousand narwhals. They left the meat on an ice floe and a gale came along and swept it out to sea. The meat was lost to the bears.’

  ‘Are the horns any good?’

  ‘They are ground into powder and sold to the Chinese, who think they are wonderful medicine. And tourists who come to Greenland like to take home a foot or two of horn with a carving on it done by some talented Eskimo artist. A fine carving on pure ivory brings quite a lot of money.’

  Olrik came to tell them, ‘Now’s your chance to get a narwhal. They haven’t come in thousands as they sometimes do, but there are at least a hundred offshore.’

  ‘A hundred is more than we need,’ said Hal. ‘Just one will do.’

  ‘Well it won’t be easy to get one. They swim like lightning. But if anybody can get one I know you can. I’m so sure of that that I’ll have a truck and a drag ready when you come ashore with it.’

  Hal and Roger went out in their two rented kayaks. Olrik was right — there were a hundred or more narwhals having a grand time leaping over each other, poking each other playfully with their horns, shooting down to the bottom to scratch up halibut. Those that were at rest stood upright in the water, their horns standing straight up above the surface so they looked like dozens of posts, all about nine feet high. Suddenly the posts would disappear and the water would-boil with the antics of these lively animals. They treated the kayaks like new playthings. They bumped them into the air and they actually slid across the front deck and the rear deck but never touched the boy who occupied the hole in the middle.

  Hal tried repeatedly to catch one with his lasso but it only slid on to the horn and was shaken off again.