The Curse of the Viking Grave

by Farley Mowat

  Staggering about in the dripping darkness, the youngsters tripped and bumped into each other, and fell helplessly over unseen obstacles.

  “What’s going on?” Jamie yelled plaintively as he strained to lift a heavy rock into the canoe. “Has Ohoto gone nuts? What are we doing this for?”

  “Not talk, just work,” Peetyuk grunted in reply. “You see pretty quick what happen. You not make bad joke about dead men again, I bet.”

  The travelers were still ballasting the canoes when the wind struck. This was anoeeuk, a fearsome gale which is called a line squall on the open ocean, but which also blows over the great plains of the Barrenlands. Anoeeuk strikes out of a dead calm and wind velocities mount instantly up to as much as a hundred miles an hour. It gives no warning except for the sullen darkness of the sky which precedes its coming. It does not last long, but while it blows there is not much that can resist its power.

  When anoeeuk struck Lake-in-Lake it spun Jamie right around. He felt a hand grasp him and fling him to the ground, then someone fell on top of him. It was Ohoto, whose other arm was tight around Angeline’s waist. Peetyuk had meanwhile grabbed Awasin and the two boys rolled into the lee of the canoes.

  It was impossible to stand up. The wind was like a solid battering-ram and the canoes began to shift and grind ominously on the rocky ground. Ohoto thrust Angeline into Jamie’s arms, and on hands and knees scrabbled to the nearest canoe, where he flung himself over the gunwale to help hold it down. The grinding stopped but now a new threat appeared.

  The shallow waters of the lake had been whipped into foam and short, high waves were marching angrily against the islet. With every minute they grew in size. Spray from them was soon whipping right across the islet, and it was obvious that in a few more minutes the spray would be followed by solid water.

  The hurricane had blown away the fog, but it was still impossible to see much, due to the spray. Jamie caught a glimpse of Awasin and Peetyuk, who had joined Ohoto and were clinging to the gunwales of the second canoe. “Can you stick it out alone?” he bellowed in Angeline’s ear.

  Angeline was wet and cold and miserably uncomfortable, and she was also frightened. But she did not intend to let Jamie see any signs of weakness in her. Bravely she shouted back at him: “I am all right. You go.”

  Slipping free of her, Jamie crawled toward the others. Ohoto gestured toward the kayak, which was jerking like a wounded bird trying to fly. Jamie changed course. Reaching the fragile Eskimo boat, he crawled over it so that it lay under him. As he did so a gigantic wave broke just short of the kayak, drenching him with solid water.

  Numbly the five people clung to the rapidly flooding islet. There was nothing more they could do. Each of them was aware of the cold finger of death reaching out to touch them…and there was nothing they could do.

  Then, as suddenly as it had begun, anoeeuk ceased to blow. The sky began to lighten. The roar of the hurricane vanished, to be replaced by the thunder of surf upon the islet.

  Shaken and white-faced, the four youngsters got to their feet and stood beside Ohoto. They looked out over the lake and saw that its entire surface was a contorted mass of breaking waves in which no canoe could have lived for more than a few moments. On the windward side of the islet the waves were reaching fifty feet in from the shoreline, almost to the center of the rocky little sanctuary.

  Although the rain-fog was gone, the sky was still overcast and the scene was dreary and desolate beyond belief. Ohoto’s face was gaunt with strain—and perhaps with something else—as he muttered a few words to Peetyuk.

  “He say we safe now,” Peetyuk interpreted. “But only his tapek—his good luck—make it so. Very strong tapek. Too strong for Elaitutna.”

  Jamie glanced at his friend, but the derisive remark with which he once might have replied to such a statement was never born. Jamie had nothing to say.

  It was well into the afternoon before the seas died down enough to make it safe to continue the voyage. When the canoes and kayak were again launched on Lake-in-Lake, the occupants took to their paddles with something close to frenzy. No one slacked off until Ohoto led them into a little cove on the southern mainland shore. A little stream ran from the south into the bottom of this cove.

  “Now we leave dead land,” Ohoto told them with unmistakable relief.

  CHAPTER 18

  The Deer’s Way

  STILL SWOLLEN BY THE SPRING floods, the stream offered hard going at first and there were many places where the boys and Angeline had to get out and track the canoes through shallow rapids. But after a time they reached a little lakelet upon whose southern shore they saw a dwarfed clump of willows. They headed for this meager “bush” with as much joy as if it had been a full-fledged forest.

  Cheering them even more, the skies began to clear. In short order they had a roaring fire going and were soon cooking a huge meal of meat with which to still the rumblings in their empty stomachs.

  “Good country now,” Peetyuk said. “See? Many deer paths on the shore.”

  During the rest of the day, as they worked their way south over small lakes and ponds to the portage over the height of land, the country came more and more alive. Mating ducks disported themselves on every pond. Twice they saw smoky brown arctic foxes watching them from sandy ridges. Flock after flock of shore birds skittered along the fringes of the lakes. Towards evening when they had crossed the short portage and were descending another small stream, they saw above them a herd of buck caribou standing on a gravel ridge. Although still in velvet, and only partly grown, the deers’ antlers loomed against the sky like a spreading forest.

  Ohoto looked keenly at the herd and then shouted something to Peetyuk, who grinned and translated for the others.

  “Ohoto say we come good time. He say tomorrow reach greatest deer path in world. Maybe we see tuktu-mie, the Great Herd.”

  Although enough daylight was left to travel by (at this season there is no real night on the arctic tundra since the sun barely sets before it rises again), Ohoto called a halt and camp was pitched on the ridge where the bucks had been. No effort was made to shoot one of the deer, for there was still fresh meat in the canoes and neither Eskimos nor Indians kill game unnecessarily.

  With a comfortable little fire to warm and cheer them, the boys sat sipping tea after their evening meal. Angeline was busily stitching up rents in their kamikpak where these had been torn by sharp stones during the wading in the streams.

  “What is the Great Herd, Peetyuk?” Angeline asked.

  “Is like this, Angeline. Tuktu—the deer—they never still. In spring they move long way north, like the birds. When winter start, they move long way south, like the birds. But in summer they move too. About July all deer from all over gather in big herds, then suddenly start south. One big mob of deer. But when they get to edge of forest, big mob breaks up, and all start back north again. When they go south in July, that when we see the Great Herd. Deer come over country like swarm of flies then. Flatten out whole country where they go! Most famous place for Great Herd we call Deer’s Way—at north end Nuelthin-tua.”

  “I have heard my father speak of such a herd,” Awasin said. “Our people have never seen it, but the Chipeweyans used to tell of it. I thought it was all finished now, that the deer were not plenty enough to make great herds.”

  “Maybe finish soon,” Peetyuk replied. “Not finish yet. Maybe see tomorrow. Tuktu-mie…deer come like flies…”

  He was interrupted by a resounding whack as Jamie slapped the back of his own neck with his open palm.

  “Speaking of flies, I’m being et alive! Where in heck did all the mosquitoes come from? There’s still snow in the gullies, but here they are!”

  There was no doubt about it. An all-pervading hum was rising in the night air, and out of nowhere clouds of viciously hungry mosquitoes swept down upon the little camp. These were the first of the Barrenland mosquitoes. Tough, tiny, insatiable, they appear while snow is still on the ground and stay until late
summer. On calm days they make life miserable for all warm-blooded beasts. Fortunately there are few calm days on the great plains, or life there would be unendurable in summertime.

  Unhappily for the travelers it was calm this night, and as the hum rose to a roar they were driven to take refuge in their sleeping bags with their heads well down under the robes. The choice was to suffocate or be eaten alive, and suffocation seemed preferable.

  Dawn brought a westerly breeze and relief from the plague of mosquitoes. The voyagers breakfasted and all morning they worked down the little stream. Shortly before midday they reached the shores of the northeastern arm of Nuelthin-tua.

  Since leaving the northwestern bay of this mighty lake several weeks earlier they had made a great circle. With the difference in the seasons, the nature of the lake had completely changed. Far to the south there were still patches of ice, but for the most part the lake was open, whipped with white wind-lop as the canoes ventured out upon it.

  Fortunately the arm they were in was filled with a mass of islands which provided shelter for the canoes; otherwise they would have had to camp until the wind blew itself out.

  Led by the agile Ohoto in his slim little kayak, the flotilla dodged from lee of island to lee of island for several hours. In the early afternoon they reached a bay from which a short, savage stretch of river drained Nuelthin-tua. The outlet gorge had been carved deep into the gray bedrock and the roar of its rapids could be heard for a long time before the voyagers reached its lip.

  They went ashore at the head of the short, steep run, and the boys and Angeline were very quiet as they looked down the foaming cataract. Ohoto glanced at their thoughtful faces and grinned. Making them a low bow and giving a comic skip, he jumped into his kayak and shot straight out into the foaming maelstrom.

  Angeline muffled a little shriek and the boys gasped. The kayak slipped over the lip of a six-foot backwave, poised for a second on the crest like a bird about to take flight, and then shot out of sight into a curtain of white water. It reappeared seconds later, going like an arrow, with Ohoto wielding his paddle so furiously that it made a blur of reflected light over his head. Seconds later the kayak leaped out of the lower cataract and came to rest, perkily swinging around on a quiet backwater eddy, while Ohoto waved an arm at his companions and beckoned them to hurry up and follow.

  Jamie was incredulous. “I never thought that crazy little boat would last one second!” he said.

  “Crazy boat? Ho!” Peetyuk replied indignantly. “Crazy like a fish! Eskimo kayak he go anywhere. Now we see if Indian canoe, he half as good!”

  With some reluctance the four took their places. Jamie took the responsible stern position in one canoe and Awasin in the other. Despite taunting gestures from Ohoto, they approached the lip of the rapid with excessive caution, back-paddling hard until the current finally gripped them and they had no choice but to drive on down.

  Once the first instant of doubt was over, they all began to experience the wild exhilaration of running white-water rapids and drove their canoes forward, adroitly steering them from side to side of the run in order to miss the bigger waves. They shot out at the bottom seconds later, unharmed although half soaked with spray.

  Ohoto greeted them with a shout of laughter, then spun his little craft around and went skittering out onto the open waters of the new lake which stretched ahead.

  “Eskimo call this Netchilikuak—Seal Lake,” said Peetyuk in reply to a question from Jamie. “Supposed to be seals swim all way up here from ocean. Maybe true—maybe not.”

  “It’s good news if it is true,” Jamie replied. “If a seal can get up Big River, we can surely get down it.”

  “You run one rapid, now you talk big,” Peetyuk cautioned him. “Paddle more hard, talk more less or Ohoto lose us.”

  The canoes and kayaks made a fast crossing of the six-mile width of Seal Lake, for the wind was now behind them. Well before twilight they brought up on a long, jutting sandspit along whose base a frieze of willows promised fuel for a campfire.

  The land beyond their camp was a narrow isthmus some five miles long running north and south and separating Seal Lake from another, larger lake to the eastward. Low and level, this isthmus formed a natural highway for the migrating herds moving north or south up the hundred-mile-long eastern shores of Nuelthin-tua. This was the first point at which the herds could pass the barrier of the great lake. The Eskimos knew it as the Deer’s Way, and it was evident to the visitors that deer in countless thousands must have used the way recently.

  Even while they were pitching camp the travelers could smell a strong barnyard odor. When they walked up on the flat muskeg beyond the beach they discovered that it had been churned into an immense chocolate-colored pudding by the feet of innumerable caribou.

  As they watched, they saw a slow-flowing wave of darkness, like molasses, pouring down a distant hill at the northern end of the isthmus. As it came closer it resolved itself into a herd of over a thousand bucks, marching fifty or sixty abreast, moving with such an irresistible motion that Jamie felt a touch of panic.

  “We better get out of the way,” he yelled to Awasin and Angeline, who stood a little distance from him.

  “Be brave, Jamie!” Peetyuk called back. “Deer not eat you. You stand still, you see what happen.”

  Much as he wanted to retreat to the shore, Jamie could not do so as long as Peetyuk stood his ground. However, Awasin had Angeline to worry about and, preferring caution to bravado, he led his sister to the edge of the isthmus as the great herd approached at a long, space-eating lope.

  When the head of the throng was no more than two hundred yards from the three small figures standing in its path, the lead bucks caught the human scent. Some of them flung up their heads, snorted loudly and tried to halt. But the pressure of the multitudes behind them was irresistible and, jostled from the rear, they were driven forward.

  Inexorably the mass of animals bore down on Jamie. Wild-eyed, he spun around to see what Ohoto and Peetyuk were doing. To his amazement he saw that Ohoto was sitting down, filling his stubby little soapstone pipe, while Peetyuk was leaning casually on his rifle, whistling through his teeth.

  Firmly resisting the impulse to take to his heels, Jamie cocked his rifle and held it in front of him. Then the deer were on him.

  It seemed certain that he must be trampled underfoot; but at the last minute the mass of animals split away on both sides of him, passing no closer than ten feet.

  The rumbling of the animals’ guts and the musical clinking of their ankle joints filled his ears, while his nostrils were full of the sweet, rank smell of the beasts. His fear began to evaporate, to be replaced by a strange excitement and by a feeling of awe such as he had never known before. So much tumultuous life swirling past him, unhurried and unafraid, stirred him to his inner being. A feeling of affinity, almost of love, for these magnificent, imperturbable animals swelled through him. When the herd had passed by he remained standing as if entranced, staring after them until they were far away.

  Peetyuk joined him, and the Eskimo boy’s face was sober.

  “You feel it, Jamie? The Spirit of the Deer. Now you know how Eskimo feel about tuktu. Tuktu give Eskimo his life. Tuktu, he is our brother.”

  CHAPTER 19

  The Curse of Flies

  THE BIG HERD WAS FOLLOWED BY several smaller herds and Ohoto shot a particularly fat buck from one of these. Angeline went back to camp with a piece of back meat to cook for supper while the boys and Ohoto quartered the beast.

  That night they stayed up late, talking by the fire. The next morning they would reach Big River, where Ohoto was to leave them.

  Their knowledge of what lay ahead of them was very scanty. All they really knew was that the river would eventually take them to Hudson Bay; that there were several lakes along it; that it was almost one continuous rapid and ran with a tremendous current; and that they might hope to meet sea Eskimos near the coast. Consequently, the boys were not at all anxious to
say good-by to Ohoto. Jamie was tempted to ask the Eskimo if he would go with them as far as the coast, but his pride would not let him. In any case, he knew that Ohoto would have found it almost impossible to fight his way back up the river. A trip on Big River was one-way—downstream only.

  Next morning the campers were reluctant to wake up. It was a gloomy, slow breakfast. Ohoto finally broke the spell. With a good-natured shout he tousled Angeline’s hair, pushed Peetyuk flat on his face in the sand, and trotted off toward his kayak, his small bundle-bag on his back.

  This little bit of horseplay roused the boys and they soon had the tent down and their gear in the canoes. Then, under a blue sky and with a light riffle of wind to help them along, they set out for the head of Big River.

  They had barely entered Big River Bay, a couple of miles from their overnight camp, when Angeline held up her paddle.

  “Listen,” she asked. “What is that?”

  The boys strained to hear a low, muted muttering like the sound of distant summer thunder.

  “Rapids, or a falls,” Awasin said in a small voice.

  “Big rapids!” Peetyuk added. “We still many miles from end of bay. Very big, or we not hear upwind.”

  Ohoto, who was well ahead, beckoned impatiently with his paddle and the boys and Angeline again took up the stroke. But they were very subdued and not a word passed between them as they paddled on. The thunder grew in volume as they neared the end of the bay.

  They beached their canoes on a point of land at the river mouth and, led by Ohoto, climbed a low ridge to see what lay ahead.

  What they saw was enough to shake the confidence of the bravest of canoemen. They seemed to be standing on the raised edge of an immense bowl. To the eastward the land sloped away to a dim and distant horizon, and down this endless slope plunged one of the biggest rivers in the Barrenlands.