by Bob Chaulk
Nobody argued with him. Jim nodded and Wints turned the boat to starboard and the other boat did the same, now travelling parallel to the land and heading out the bay. “How much further in this direction?” Jim asked, as the boats squeezed between two floes, almost touching one another.
“I suppose I’ll know when we get there,” was Jackie’s snippy reply.
Jim and Wints glanced at one another as if to say, “Lippy kid! Needs his arse kicked.”
Away from the comfort and safety of her home, Emily was experiencing the desolation, the immensity of the sea and the night, and their insignificance in comparison. She remembered happier times on her father’s schooner, standing alongside him at the wheel, the huge sails reaching above them to the sky. How different from this sixteen-foot punt with only their own energy to move them along. The enormity of the task was overwhelming and she was beginning to regret her impulsive reaction to Jackie’s childish pronouncement. And how she had coerced poor Wints! It was unfair; there was no comparison between what she had done and what she was now asking of him. She regretted the words the instant she spoke them but she knew that Wints would never back down once he had said yes.
She needed to talk to shake this negative thinking. “Daddy, do you remember the year you took me to Labrador as the cook on the William and Emily?”
“I sure do. The grub was good that summer. It went downhill after you went in to St. John’s, though.”
“This evening reminds me of that trip. Remember all the ice we ran into when we got north of Belle Isle?”
“That was a bad year for ice. It turned out to be a half-decent trip though. We did another one after you left that year, as I recall.”
Turning her attention to Jackie, she asked, “Whatever possessed you to stow away on a sealing ship?”
He kept standing with his back to her, facing the land. “I dunno. Something to do, I guess.”
“I guess it wasn’t such a good idea, huh?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Don’t call me ma’am, please. That’s what we call old ladies.”
“Sorry, uh, miss.”
“That’s what my pupils call me. Feel free to call me Emily—or if you don’t like that, you can call me Miss Osmond.”
Jackie turned around and stared at Emily for a moment. “Are you the teacher?” he asked. “The one who knows all about birds?”
Emily hesitated. “Yes.”
Jackie continued to look at her and then he replied thoughtfully, “I’ll call you Miss Osmond if that’s okay.”
Emily quickly realized that Henry must have said something about her, something complimentary. She resisted the impulse to ask Jackie about it and returned to her questioning, but in a less officious tone. “You didn’t tell your mother you were going to stow away, I suppose?”
He paused and swallowed. “No.”
“Tsk, what a sin. She must be worried to death.”
I wonder if she is, he thought. Up to now, when he thought of home it had always been in the context of what he was missing out on: good food and lots of it, his warm bed, and the comforting routine of his life. He had never given much thought to his parents or their feelings for him. Their role was to provide and protect; his was to receive. It was a good arrangement. But feelings were another matter. The whole issue had become a web of confusion for him. He was surprised at the emotion he felt for Henry and how worried he was about him. Could it be that his mother had felt like this ever since the day he ran away?
“We should have sent her a telegram,” he heard Emily say. “We’ll have to do that as soon as we get back. She’ll be so relieved.”
Anger was the only one of his mother’s emotions that he had bothered to notice, perhaps because it usually inconvenienced him in some way. And, what of love? He could not remember ever thinking about love from her point of view. Was that why she was able to tolerate his crankiness? Was that why she gave him a better birthday present than they could afford because she knew he wanted it so much? And if she loved him, then his leaving must have caused her pain. He knew something of that feeling after seeing Henry injured and then having to leave him alone, unable to take care of himself. Thinking about it made him uncomfortable, even ashamed. He would have to tell her how sorry he was when he got back home.
The outline of the hills against the night sky started to look familiar. “I think this is it!” he yelled. “I was around here when I ran out of ice and then I drifted along the shore until you found me. I think we’re close to where I left Henry. He should be straight in that direction.”
“That was twenty-four hours ago,” Jim reminded him, “There hasn’t been much wind but, with the tides, he could be miles away from there by now. But let’s see if we can figure it out, Wints. I think we’ll steer more westerly. Let’s swing her around to sou’west by west. That’s four points to port. It looks like the wind is starting to breeze up some more.”
For a couple of hours, the winds became contrary and gusty, slopping the water around. At first the ice thinned out, which made the going difficult in the turbulent waters, but they were soon into the ice again, with the danger of one of the heaving pans crashing into a punt and putting a hole in it. They were all relieved when the wind finally died back and settled into a southerly breeze.
“I believe the ice is thinned out enough to get the paddles out,”
Jim decided. “You take a blow now, Wints; you been workin’ hard. Come up forward and take the lookout. Emily, you take the scul’n’ar and I’ll row and we’ll see if we can get movin’ a bit faster. Whaddaya think, Wints, time to bear west sou’west?”
“I would say.”
“Okay then. Line us up and keep us on course.”
Conditions improved as they moved farther from land, going through patches of dense ice and then back into open water. Twillingate Island had disappeared somewhere behind them into the darkness.
“It’s clearin’ up,” said Wints, as he looked up to see the ceiling above them slowly sliding to the horizon to expose a closely packed display of tiny blue lights. “There’s a nice, big moon up there, too.”
Another half hour went by, and Jim took the oars in after deciding that the ice was getting too thick to row through. “We’ll be up to the bay ice soon. Let’s hope he’s drifted in there.”
“Here, Em,” said Wints. “I’ll give you a spell on the scul’n’ar and we’ll get your father up front here with the glasses. If there’s anything out there, he’s the one to find it.”
The bumpy outline of New World Island was off to the left, and the second punt was on the right, covering the area towards the outside of the bay. Jim was hoping that the drifting ice floe that carried Henry had met the permanent ice of the bay, finally stopping its wayward movements. “Wints, let’s head more southerly now, straight for Moreton’s Harbour.” He pointed towards a hill. “Keep ’er headed towards that nuttick,” he ordered, standing in the bow with his binoculars, patiently scanning the ice field.
“I’m surprised there’s neither seal around,” he commented a few minutes later. “I haven’t seen a one.”
“I heard the crowd from Tizzard’s Harbour was gettin’ a few offa here last week,” Wints replied.
“Well, you’d have a job to find one out here tonight. They must have cleaned them all up or chased ’em away.”
“I dare say,” said Wints. “My, getting rid of them clouds sure brightened things up a lot. You must be able to see a nice ways off?”
“Yes, you couldn’t ask for better,” said Jim. “It’s not for want of light that we haven’t seen ’im. I can see as far as the glasses will let me and I…I…” His voice trailed off as he stared into his binoculars, turning the little wheel to sharpen the focus.
“What is it, Daddy? Do you see something?” She looked ahead to an area where the full moon shone down between the clouds like an ice-blue spotlight on an opera stage. He did not reply but had stopped scanning and was staring intently at one spot. Activi
ty ceased and all eyes looked at Jim.
“Daddy?”
Everybody held their breath as they waited for a pronouncement. He handed the binoculars to Emily and pointed. “About half a point to the right of the nuttick there, and just down a bit. Can you see something moving?”
Emily looked at the hill, brought the binoculars to her eyes and focused. After a long silence, she said, “Yes, I think there’s something. I can’t…it looks like an animal of some sort, a big dog perhaps or…it looks like a bear. Yes, it’s a bear walking over the ice; that’s what it is; it must be a polar bear. He’s magnificent.” A minute later, she continued, “Every now and then he stands on his hind legs and looks up in the sky. Why would he do that?”
“He’s sticking his nose into the air to smell. He must be onto a scent,” said Jim. “You fellers see that bear?” he yelled across to the other punt. There was a moment of hesitation.
“He’s a big bruiser; looks like he knows where he’s goin’, too,” Ches yelled. “Can you see anything up ahead of ’im?”
“No,” Jim replied, “but I think we should follow him and see what he’s after.” They spun the boats around and began moving parallel to the bear. “Make sure you keep him to wind’ard so he don’t get our scent. Those things got smellers like you wouldn’t believe. You fellers keep an eye on the bear and we’ll keep lookin’ up ahead.”
“Do you think he smells the dead seal that Henry is lying against?” Jackie asked.
“He certainly smells something because he’s in one hell of a hurry. He’s a long ways from home—must have come down on the ice from the Labrador. We get a scattered one around here chasin’ after the seals. Did Henry tell you about the one his uncle shot?”
“Yeah. That’s some story.”
“Everybody around here has heard that one. Most animals will stay away from you but those things are pretty brazen. They’ll eat ya, sir, those white bears will, just as soon as look at ya.”
Nobody spoke, but everybody was thinking the same thing. As if in response, Jim volunteered, “I got my rifle aboard if we need it. But right now he’s out of range, and there’s no point in shootin’ ’im until we know what he’s up to.”
The scullers felt a renewed sense of urgency, each twisting and swishing his long oar to propel the boats forward. The bear, which Jim could see clearly now through his binoculars, was moving faster than they were, even though it occasionally stopped and stood on its hind legs, as if to confirm the scent. Jim kept searching the ice up ahead but could not see anything that it might be stalking.
As they worked their way closer to the pack ice, the bear came into clear view; now even those without binoculars could see it. They stopped talking for fear of being heard. Then it halted and turned towards them, staring into what to the bear should have appeared to be black water. Nobody flinched. It rose on its hind legs, its forepaws drooping down in front, looking like a tall man wearing an oversized fur coat, its nose shoved into the air for what seemed like minutes. As he stared over at it, Jackie had a distinct recollection of something Henry had told him about Simeon’s bear: “Uncle Levi’s schooner has nearly seven feet of freeboard at the forechains when she’s empty, and buddy was set to just waltz in over the rail. He had to have stood ten or eleven feet tall.”
Jim feared that the wind had taken their scent to the bear and distracted it. They waited, propped like statues in their places. The boats slowly drifted back with the wind. The bear stood as still as a fur coat hanging on a rack, its small ears perked for the slightest hint of any sound besides the wind and the water and the ice.
Emily held her breath. Fresh in her mind was last week’s geography lesson with her five Grade Six students, when the topic had been about bears. She had gathered them around her desk to show them some pictures in a book. To the accompaniment of oohs and ahhs, she told them that this was one of the two largest carnivores on land, sharing the top of the food chain with the Alaska brown bear; that a polar bear could smell a dead animal three miles away and could smell a live seal through three feet of ice. Never in her wildest dreams did she expect to be this close to one, with its nose twitching for any indication that she might be nearby. Now they were sure that it saw them, but it seemed that they were not as interesting as the scent it was following, for it went back on all fours and continued the hunt with renewed concentration.
Emily’s father took up his binoculars again and almost immediately spotted something. “I can see something dark on the edge of a big ice floe half a mile or so ahead, and there’s a wide swatch of water separating it from the bear. We better pick up the pace, Wints.” Out went the oars to supplement Wints’s sculling, with Jackie insisting on rowing for the first time in his life.
He succeeded only in impeding their progress. “How about if you take one and I’ll take one,” said Emily. “Put your feet up against the back of that thwart.”
“I don’t know what a thwart is, Miss Osmond.”
“The seat there. That way you can really put your back into it. Okay, watch me; lean forward, put your paddle in the water and one, two, three, pull…puuuull. That’s it! Now again…”
As they got closer, Jim could see it was not just a shadow, and he felt a fresh surge of hope. “Okay, let’s give her all she got. We got to get there before he does.” As if it had understood Jim’s command, the bear started to run. It clearly had no intention of sharing whatever lay ahead with them.
Jackie was hypnotized as he watched it bounding across the ice. They had entered the gap between it and Henry. “Never mind that thing! Pay attention to the rowing,” Wints yelled with a ferocity that startled him. “You’re slowin’ us down.” As the bear plunged into the water and swam towards Henry’s ice floe, Jackie realized he was seeing Henry’s nightmare unfold before his eyes.
A few more frantic strokes of the oars and, with the painter in one hand and his rifle in the other, Jim flung himself over the stem head the instant the punt slammed into the ice. Pulling the painter taut he held the boat against the ice while the others leapt out.
chapter forty-four
Jackie was back on the floe that had been his home for five days. There was the shelter he and Henry had built nearly a week before. It was eerie seeing it again. But his arrival was not the triumph he had anticipated. There was no movement—no yelling to get attention, no trying to get up, not even a waving hand. It was deathly quiet.
“Henry! Henry!” he yelled as he ran and knelt down next to where Henry lay, just as he had left him, propped against the dark seal carcass. “Henry, wake up, it’s me, Jack!”
With the grappling hook in his hand, Jim turned to Wints. “Here, take the gun. See any sign of the bear?”
“No, no sign of ’im.”
“Well, make sure you give it to him before he even gets out of the water. You’re the best shot of us all,” he added.
“Now, Jim, you know I’m not fussy about—”
“You do what you got to do. We’re here to get Henry back. Can I count on you?”
“Of course you can.”
With the boat secure and the second one arriving, he joined his daughter and the young stowaway. He found them standing above Henry, looking distraught, unsure of what to do next. The ice was full of blood and smatterings of frozen seal entrails and bits of fur. Both of Henry’s legs were wrapped in sealskin that was frozen on the outside. Jackie’s long coat was laid over him from the top of his head to his knees as if someone had come by, seen his body, and respectfully pulled the coat to cover his face. The coat, too, was frozen stiff, having been soaked by the rain.
Jackie felt sick. What had happened to the life that had been here? When he left, steam was still rising from the seal and Henry was his old self. Now all was cold and still. The seal had turned into a frosty hulk and Henry was still and silent. He looked like an object instead of a person.
To add to his fear of what might be, Jackie was filled with a longing to return to what had been. He would rather be her
e with no boat and no rescue, alone with Henry telling him one of his stories, than to have this. The pile of unused blubber lay next to Henry, untouched since Jackie had left. “Is he…?” He couldn’t say it.
“He’s alive. I know he is,” said Emily firmly, trying to convince herself. She had envisioned a joyous, tearful reunion. There were so many things she was going to say.
“Let’s assume so,” said Jim, as he bent down and lifted the coat from Henry. Under the austere light of the moon his pale face looked peaceful, showing no pain, as if asleep. His arms were folded across his chest and his mittened hands were tucked under his elbows. “Oh my, he’s so thin!” said Emily.
“Here, b’ys, give us a hand to get him aboard,” Jim yelled, just as Emily let out a loud scream. The bear was climbing out of the water just a few feet from them. Everybody jumped as the report from Jim’s rifle cracked the night air and the bear flopped back into the water.
“He missed!” one of Ches’s sons declared, dumbfounded. “The thing is right alongside, sure.”
“Wints don’t miss, but he don’t listen too good either,” Jim muttered. The bear swam menacingly alongside the ice floe while Wints followed it, the rifle trained on its skull. For now, it kept its distance.
“Hold on, there,” said Ches, as they tried to move Henry, “it looks like the fur around his legs is froze onto the ice. Hand me your knife there, Jim…okay, that should do it.”
“Everybody ready? All right b’ys,” said Jim, “on the count of three, now. One, two…”
With the harmony of men accustomed to teamwork, the four slid their hands under Henry’s body and lifted him. “Oh, be careful!” Emily yelled as his head flopped back. She tenderly cradled his head in her hands and with short, scuffing steps they moved Henry towards the boat. A worried voice spoke up. “Geez, Jim, that thing can come outa the water in two seconds and be right on top o’ Wints. Is the gun jammed?”