Minds of Winter

by Ed O’Loughlin

  The men crowded around Tyson, jostling him, and Kruger shouted at him that he knew that we had more food hidden away and that we should hand it over. I moved around behind the men, and as they seldom paid me any notice except when they stole food from me they didn’t see me put my hand under my parka. Taqulittuq put Punny behind her own body and went over to the other side of the snow-house where our shotgun leaned. I saw how the sailors followed the woman and child with their eyes.

  Two of them moved towards Punny and Taqulittuq, not fast but deliberately, like wolves closing in on an exhausted musk-ox. Kruger swore and put a hand on Tyson’s chest and pushed him away with all his force, so that Tyson fell back against the wall of the snow-house. Then Kruger took out his pistol.

  I also took out my pistol and cocked it, and at the sound the Germans turned and looked at me. While they were distracted Taqulittuq picked up my shotgun and drew back both hammers, though she knew very well that I kept it unloaded because I was worried about Tyson. She waved the barrels at the Germans who had approached her and our little daughter and they did not move any closer to them after that. Yet the other one, the one nearest to me, had raised his rifle to point it at me, and Kruger still had his gun aimed at Tyson. It would have gone badly for all of us if Tyson hadn’t got to his feet and started to speak.

  Tyson told them that without Hans and I they would all surely die, because all winter long the white men hadn’t caught even one seal between them. And he asked them why they thought the Eskimos would stay to feed them if they harmed our women and children?

  Now a terrible rage came over Kruger and he shouted at Tyson again, bawling and spitting, and I believe he would have shot him then, just as Hall had shot Pat, because he felt his leadership slipping away from him. And indeed the other Germans spoke to each other in their own language and when they talked to Kruger again they didn’t sound friendly. The one who had been pointing his rifle at me turned it towards Kruger. Now with three guns pointing at him, Kruger had no choice but to walk away.

  They didn’t bother us again after that. Just to be sure, though, I gave Hall’s pistol to Tyson: he had seen what I had seen in the men’s eyes. I knew now, too, that he wouldn’t use the gun against himself. And I was glad to be rid of it: a pistol is only good for hunting, murder or suicide, and this was one that had murdered before.

  Spring came, and we were now in more southerly waters. One morning I went out and the floe was rocking from side to side and waves broke only yards from our tents. We packed everything we could into the whale boat and made for a larger floe to the west. Then this too split and we had to move again. Always, the currents and the set of the ice drew us westward onto smaller and smaller floes, away from salvation in Greenland. We were weak from the hunger and damp, and had no choice but to take whatever passage seemed the smoothest: the whale boat was greatly overloaded and wallowed in all but the smallest of seas, with freezing water slopping over the gunwales while everyone bailed to keep it afloat. So we moved ever westward, until one day we saw the tips of white peaks in the west and knew we were near Baffin Island.

  We now had to face another great worry: during our winter-long drift we had come so far south we must soon pass out of Baffin Bay into the wide southern ocean, where the last ice would melt and there would be no hope of landfall.

  Captain Tyson and I therefore resolved that on the next calm day we should risk everything on the boat. We would load only the oars and spars and a couple of guns, food enough for a day or two, and make for the land to the west.

  Yet Tyson was still worried that he might steer the overloaded boat into the fogs and tide races at the mouth of Hudson Strait. If he knew what course to steer, he said, he could make north-west for Frobisher Bay or south-west to the fishing grounds off Labrador. In either place we would surely meet a ship. But he didn’t know our latitude: if only he had a sextant and compass he could make a good guess.

  After parting with him I went to the sealskin tent which we then had for a shelter. Hidden in Taqulittuq’s sewing bag were a sextant and a compass, the very ones that Hall had with him when he had first come to Cumberland Sound. She also had the wooden box which Hall had got from Mr Grinnell. Taqulittuq had wanted to keep these things a secret. But now we would soon have to discard them anyway. Better to let Tyson have them if they could do us some good.

  Taqulittuq was away from the tent so I took the sextant and compass and brought them to Tyson, who had climbed a pressure ridge to look at a cape to the west. He was very pleased to see the instruments.

  I watched him work with the sextant and write in his book, and then he took up the compass and aimed it at the Cape to our west, and he wrote again. Together we went back to the tent, and there he consulted his almanac and did his calculations.

  The land we saw to the west of us was called Lok’s Land, he said. If we landed there we would surely meet the whalers that came every year to Cumberland Sound. Then he went to tell all the others.

  When he was gone I took the compass and the sextant and I fetched Hall’s pistol from its hiding place in Tyson’s bedding. I also took the little wooden box from Taqulittuq’s bag and I went out again. While I had been inside the tent a fog had rolled over our floe and I could no longer see the others, though I heard them calling to one another, preparing to launch the boat for the last time. But I didn’t join them. Instead, I followed the sound of the wavelets until I was at the edge of the water and there I stared into the fog until I saw shapes in it.

  When a woman gives birth, or a man commits a murder, they must immediately get rid of everything they owned before that time, their clothes and their tools and their weapons, and start again with new things. Otherwise their old life will come after them.

  I threw Hall’s pistol into the sea, and reflected further.

  Taqulittuq hadn’t been able to discard her clothes when Butterfly died in America. Hall had told her to keep her old furs to wear in the circus, since we couldn’t get others to replace them. Similarly, when Little King William had died on the march we should have camped at the place of his death and waited until Taqulittuq had finished mourning and could dress herself in new clothes. But Hall had been in a hurry and had pressed us onward. And we had believed that he could protect us.

  I threw the sextant after the pistol. It had been with Hall to Lok’s Land. And so had I. I searched my memory. What did I have in my possession that had been with me when I went to that place?

  I stood up and hurled my rifle into the fog. When I heard the splash I sat down again.

  Here now in my hand was the compass. Without getting up I dropped it into the sea. It sank with a plink, drawing its canvas lanyard down after it. Without a compass, we would have to steer south by the sun, towards Labrador, where we might find a ship in coastal waters; we couldn’t attempt to reach Lok’s Land.

  Only the little wooden box was left to me. I stood up, ready to join the others at the boat, and I was on the point of throwing the box after the other things when it came to me that I still didn’t know what was inside it. It was quite a nice box, made of pale shiny wood, and from its weight it must have contained something of value. But it was locked. It didn’t matter. I should still get rid of it. But as I extended my arm to throw it a terrible curiousity seized hold of me. I tried to wrench the box open, and when this didn’t work I put it on the ice and stamped on it. But it was very well built, and my soft kamiks didn’t protect my feet from its sharp edges.

  The box sat there on the ice, only inches from the edge. A tap of my foot would have pushed in in the sea. But now I had to know what was inside it. I had to know, even though knowing couldn’t do me any good. What use is any thing that can’t keep you warm or help you to win food? But I’ve never been sensible. I’d gone with Hall to Lok’s Land.

  Voices were calling. There was the scrape of the boat’s timbers being dragged across the ice. I heard Punny shout my name. Then I remembe
red that my knife was back in the tent, and that with its steel blade I could easily open the box.

  I went into the tent and there was Taqulittuq. She was on her knees, rooting through her possessions, and I knew at once what she was looking for.

  She didn’t turn to me at first, so desperately was she searching, and I had to call her name twice before she saw what I held. Her face contorted, as if she were screaming. And yet she made no sound. Instead, she scrambled towards me, still on her knees, and started to strike me with her fists about the shoulders and head. I cowered before her and didn’t resist when she grabbed the box from me. The only sounds had been the slap of her fists and the blood in my ears, and Taqulittuq’s sobbing breath. I let her take the box from me and she put it inside her parka and went back outside again, leaving me alone.

  I was still there when Captain Tyson came to look for me. I didn’t want to talk to him, because I would have to tell him what I had done with the compass and the sextant. But before I could speak he told me that he didn’t like the look of the fog, and that we wouldn’t launch the boat until the weather had cleared. So my luck had changed again. The fog stayed with us for another four days, as thick as a blanket, as we drifted on southward. On the fifth day, as the waves were washing over the floe and we had given up waiting for the fog to clear and were preparing to launch ourselves into the unknown, we heard a ship’s bell ringing close by. Hans got into his kayak and paddled off into the fog, and that is how we were rescued after two hundred days on the sea ice, just off the coast of Labrador.

  Polaris had grounded on the Greenland shore just after we last saw her. The rest of the crew – Captain Budington, Dr Bessels and all – had been rescued by the people of Etah, who fed them through the winter. In the spring they made boats and rowed south. A whaler brought them to Scotland. They were back in America before we were ourselves.

  When we returned to America Mr Tyson made accusations against Captain Budington and Dr Bessels. The navy held an inquiry in Washington at which I and Taqulittuq both had to speak. In the end the Secretary of the Navy couldn’t decide who was telling the truth. The doctors couldn’t say for sure whether Hall had died of a stroke, as Dr Bessels said, or of poison, as Hall believed himself. Although there was a lot of talk about drunkenness and mutiny, nobody was punished.

  Punny was a very kind and clever girl, and she attended the school at Groton with all the little white children of that place. For her, unlike her parents, Groton was a home, the only one she ever knew. The teacher said she was the quickest child in her class and would have made a great scholar, but she was very weak after her six months on the ice and she got sick and died. She had lived for nine years.

  By then, we had become quite famous because of what had happened to the Polaris, and several men from the newspapers attended Punny’s funeral. Mr Grinnell didn’t come himself, but he would have been pleased to learn that the name on Punny’s stone was Silvia Grinnell Ebierbing.

  Taqulittuq had learned to behave more like the American ladies who sometimes came to visit her in our house, and who I am sure were a comfort to her after Punny was gone. She was often alone after that, because I had started going to sea again, and even when ashore I would often go drinking in Boston or New London. I remember how very polite Taqulittuq was as she stood by the grave and listened to the priest say prayers for Punny. Taqulittuq herself made almost no sound.

  I wanted to return to the north but Taqulittuq wouldn’t leave Punny and Butterfly alone in a strange country. She was quiet from that day on, and she said very little in the letters which she sent to my ships and which my sailor friends would read to me. I would mail her back money whenever I could. I was just back from the sea when she died, a year after Punny. She was still quite a young woman, and might yet have had more children.

  Taqulittuq was gone, and Punny was gone, and I couldn’t stay in America without them. After her funeral I had to clean out the cottage because they said I could no longer stay there. I had to dispose of Punny’s clothes and school books and the doll that she had grown too old to play with. I put it on her grave, as we had done with the toys of our Little Butterfly. I knew someone would steal it, but what can you do? Maybe some other little girl would have it.

  Looking through Taqulittuq’s things I learned that for her last year she had kept her own journal, just as Hall did. I couldn’t read the words, but Mrs Budington said they were mostly just shopping lists and accounts of what Taqulittuq had been doing on some particular day or other when she was alone in the house after Punny died. But sometimes she made little drawings – birds and seals and bears and suchlike, and other things that we had in the north. The last thing she drew, just before she died, was a map of an island. I could tell from the lightness of the pencil that she had been weak when she made it. There were no names on it. Mrs Budington asked me if I recognized it. I told her I did not.

  Also among Taqulittuq’s things was the little wooden box she’d taken from me on the ice-floe. It was still locked. Mrs Budington wanted to open it but I distracted her with some other business and then I hid it in my bag. I didn’t have a key for it, but if I ever decided to see what was in it I could find a way to look inside.

  I said goodbye to the Budingtons and went back to New York, where I lived for a while in a lodging house close by the Brooklyn navy yard. It was run by a church and although they were cheerful and kind they made us sing songs and were strict about alcohol. When I came back in the evenings I had to make sure they didn’t know I was drunk. It was easier for me than for my white friends, of course: nobody minded if I couldn’t speak.

  The lodgings were warm and clean, and it was the first time in my life that I ever had a room to myself. But it was very small, and the only thing I could see when I looked out the window was the brick wall of a neighbouring building. There was nothing to do or to look at in that room. When I lay on the bed I had nothing to anchor my thoughts in the present. I saw only my future and past, over which I was powerless. I understood then why Tyson had lusted for other people’s words as he sat in the dark on the ice-floe.

  When my money was gone it was time to ship out again. I knew I would never come back to the United States so I went over to Manhattan to say goodbye to Mr Grinnell and his family. They were away, but the servants were pleased to see me and let me share their meal. They read me a letter which had been sent to me care of Mr Grinnell. An American soldier named Schwatka wanted a guide to go with him to King William Island. He was looking for Franklin’s books and all that sort of thing. I agreed to guide him.

  Like Hall, Schwatka found only buttons and bones on King William Island – I could have told him as much before we left New York, but it wasn’t my place to do so, and anyway I wanted to come here myself, because of the map in Taqulittuq’s journal.

  When Schwatka gave up and went home I exchanged my pay for ammunition and I stayed behind. You look in your book and you read about Schwatka, and you say that I must have come here more than twenty years ago, but I’ve lost count of years. Here on King William Island it’s always foggy in summer. In winter there is no sun for weeks on end and the land and the sea freeze under the snow until you don’t know which is which. I sit in my snow-house with my blubber lamp and sew my own clothes and listen to the wind until I hear voices. I never feel lonely. Sometimes, when the weather clears, I go outside and I see people watching from a distance, but we leave each other be. Who they are I don’t know. The Netsilik people only come here in summer, and then I move away to hide from them. I only showed myself to you because I saw your ship frozen in this bay and thought Schwatka had returned. But you say he died twelve years ago. It doesn’t seem any time at all since I last saw Taqulittuq or Punny yet they are dead for more than twenty years.

  This spring I became sick and for days I couldn’t move my hand. When I talked to myself I couldn’t understand the words. I lay in my tent for a while, eating dried-out blubber and scraps of o
ld sealskin until I got better. But I knew that the illness would recur and that it was time to open my wooden box. I expected I’d have to break it open, but when I tried to pick it with a fish bone the lock turned right away. There was only that old clock inside it, and a name scratched inside the box. You say that the name belongs to some friend of Franklin who was lost a long time ago, and who am I to argue? I am a stupid man, who spent his life ­surrounded by signs that he wouldn’t learn to read. The only word I can write is ‘Joe’, which I signed for my pay in the navy, and even that is not my real name.

  That is my statement. You may believe it or not as you wish. I will sign it, since you ask, so that you can account for the clock, but I don’t care what you do with it, or with the statement, now that it’s out of my hands. I’m no longer an explorer. But when I was, I was a great one. The white men came to these regions

  and looked for all sorts of things that they dreamed of but they found only the ice and the islands and places so cold and dark that even the Inuit don’t hunt there. Taqulittuq and I also dared the unknown, but we discovered Orkney and Hull and New York and London.

  Signed: Joseph Ebierbing

  His mark: Joe

  Transcribed and witnessed this 2nd day of February 1903 at ‘Gjoa Haven’, King William Island:

  R.E. Amundsen

  Part Four

  The Oates Coast

  69º30’S 159º0’E

  Inuvik, North West Territories

  When Fay woke up it was twilight outside. She had slept through the morning and now it was noon. She put shoes on her bare feet, wrapped herself in her coat and went out onto the porch. It was very quiet outside and very cold. The sky was a dark yet vivid blue turning silver in the south. Spruces hunched under their burdens of snow, so quiet and still that she had the sudden notion that they were playing dead on her, frozen in place by the sound of her door. If I make another sound, will they run from me like deer? She stamped her foot on the planks of the porch. Nothing happened for a moment and then, on the other side of the clearing, a spruce bow dipped slowly, shed its snow and snapped up again. There was the hiss of the falling snow then the dull thump as it landed, then silence. Only a lingering puff of white dust showed that she hadn’t imagined it. A coincidence, she thought, and then somewhere further off, in among the trees, she heard the sound repeated.