In all of nature there was no comparison with the arctic mosquito; mercifully, it appeared only for a few weeks in late spring and summer, but when it did men shuddered and animals sought high ground where breezes would keep the pests away.
On this hideous day the two men were not to find their escape on high ground, for there was none that they could see, only the remorseless tundra swamp populated by myriad mosquitoes which maintained their attack in unbroken phalanxes. At one point in the early morning Lord Luton was so beleaguered by a black swarm—perhaps five hundred thousand coming at him in waves that darkened the sky—that he clawed at his face in despair as hordes broke through a tear in his netting. In that moment he realized that if the assault were to continue with such fury throughout the day, he might indeed go berserk as caribou were said to do when the mosquitoes pursued their relentless assault.
Fortunately, Fogarty spotted the break in Luton’s protection and repaired it with grasses that he wove through the surrounding interstices, and in this way Luton was saved, but neither man had much hope that if such conditions persisted for several days, they could survive, especially since they had only limited food and no clear understanding of where the western mountains lay.
They did have drinking water, of course, and Fogarty suggested: ‘Milord, that was a sad attack you suffered. Fill your belly with water. It gives a man courage to feel something down there … anything.’ But when the Irishman led Luton to one of the pools and they bent down to drink, they found the surface covered with millions of black and wriggling larvae that even as they watched were transforming themselves into mosquitoes. The insects rose in swarms from the lake to enjoy their brief two or three weeks chasing across the tundra in search of any living thing that carried blood. Finding Luton and Fogarty delivered right into their cradle as it were, they swarmed upon them so mercilessly that drinking became impossible, and in this extremity Lord Luton very nearly lost control: he shivered, he fought the attacking hordes with shadowy movements of his hands as if he were a doomed boxer, and looked helplessly at Fogarty.
But before he could speak and reveal his near-disintegration, he saw behind the Irishman an animal moving, or was it a pair of animals? Believing that he was to be attacked from yet another quarter, he ran back to retrieve his gun, and would have fired at the creatures had not Fogarty anticipated his wild action and knocked the gun aside, so that the bullet sped harmlessly through the horde of mosquitoes rising from the lake.
‘Milord, they’re Indians!’ and when Luton lowered his gun he saw two Indians of the Han tribe whose representatives he had seen at the mouth of the Peel. Toward them walked a robust man, dark-faced and with black hair neatly cropped above his eyes, and a lively little woman adorned with strands of seashells around her neck and with intricately beaded shoes upon her feet. They halted a few yards before the two men and dropped to their knees. From their manner of probing into everything and even inspecting the knapsacks, Fogarty concluded that they had come, with friendly intentions, across the tundra to see whether the white men were lost and needed help.
Luton, with a bounding joy which cleared his tormented brain, rushed toward the startled Indians, shouting to Fogarty: ‘You see! There is a track through this wilderness! They’ve come to show us!’ But when he reached the Indians he stopped short, as if a mighty hand had been thrust in his face, for the Indians were engulfed in a most putrid stench. However, when Fogarty came close he burst into laughter and pointed to the man’s face: ‘Some kind of animal grease, probably rotting. Keeps away mosquitoes, but it does stink.’
Luton was correct in guessing that the Han had come to help; they had seen the wanderers from a distance and had deduced that they were lost and in grave trouble. Their tribe made their summer camp along the edge of this inhospitable land and various members had made the long excursion to the Hudson’s Bay establishment at Fort Norman, where they had traded furs for the rifles, axes and iron cooking pots they treasured. They were not engaged in such travel now, for it would have been unlikely that any Han man would take his wife on such a trip, trading among strangers, especially when the latter were white. They were in this harsh land only to hunt the arctic hare, but this intent was discarded now, for to succor men who were obviously lost was another matter.
However, Lord Luton could conceive of no way to converse with these people who had no command of English and no proficiency in any language other than their own, and he was angry with himself at being unable to explain to them the extremity in which he and Fogarty found themselves. But the Irishman was encountering no difficulty in discussing his predicament with the Indians, for with vigorous and imaginative gestures he described Fort Norman, and the Mackenzie River, and the Peel with its ugly rapids, and the journey through the western range, and the mosquito attacks.
When this was understood, with the Han nodding in enthusiastic agreement and adding comments of their own, also in sign language, Fogarty turned his attention to the gold fields at Dawson, and he had dug only half a gold mine with his lively gestures when the Indians indicated that, yes, they understood about the find on the Klondike because several of their men had worked there and others had acted as guides from the headwaters of what had to be the Porcupine or some similar river into Dawson. Yes, they knew the mosquitoes were horrendous at this time of the year. Yes, there was some game among these many lakes. And what was most important of all, yes, they would guide the two men through the myriad lakes and the endless swamps along the paths which gained high ground where the mosquitoes were less ferocious.
When Fogarty gestured a question about a route directly through the distant mountains, the Indian man shook his head and pointed insistently along the valley, indicating that if they kept to the lower elevations, they would at the far end of the valley reach a spot from which two relatively easy passes led through the mountains. Then he turned toward the nearby range Luton had proposed to climb, and started to scrabble in the air as if hauling himself up sheer rock and then collapsed suddenly on the ground. His stunned audience realized that they would have perished had they attempted to climb those heights; fallen to their deaths down some monstrous chasm.
That night the two Indians took from sacks about their waists odd bits of dried meats they carried with them when traveling the tundra, and after assuring the strangers that they were going to make a kind of stew in an iron pot they carried, they went to the shore of the very lake that Luton had refused to drink from because of the mosquito larvae and dipped up a copious supply of the water. Fogarty, seeing that the water was still crawling with future mosquitoes, indicated that perhaps the Indian would want to skim off the violently swimming creatures, but the woman shook her head vehemently, indicating that the larvae, when properly boiled with bits of venison, were not only palatable but also nourishing.
After they had eaten, the Han built a smudge fire, using an aromatic grass they had gathered that repelled the insects most effectively, and the men slept well, with Luton whispering to Fogarty before they fell asleep: ‘They’ve saved our lives. We must pay them well.’
It was what happened the next day that shocked Lord Luton, making him not a scorner of the primordial Han but a devotee, for after leading them to a footpath and pointing out the pass through the mountains, they insisted that the two strangers leave the path, which Luton was reluctant to do, and visit a site on a little rise beside a clear lake. There Luton and Fogarty found three mounds, each the size of a grave, and where the headstones might properly have been, rested three small piles of stone.
‘Who?’ Fogarty asked in sign language, and so clearly that it could not be mistaken, the little Han woman indicated that the three corpses had been white men like himself, that they too had become lost, and that they had perished from mosquito bites and madness and starvation. To indicate madness she rotated her forefingers about her ears, crossed her eyes, and staggered to her imaginary death.
Luton was tremendously affected by this account: ‘Damn me, we’ve
got to give the poor souls a Christian burial,’ and to Fogarty’s astonishment, Luton stood bareheaded facing the graves and recited long passages from the Book of Common Prayer, saying at the close: ‘Heavenly Father, accept belatedly the souls of these good men who perished in their Wilderness of Gibeon.’
It required three days for the Han couple to lead their guests across the desolate plateau to the first rises of the jagged mountains, and when they had deposited them safely, they indicated that from this spot two well-marked tracks led to Dawson; they would accompany the men no farther. That evening as the four travelers shared their last frugal meal, Lord Luton addressed his saviors in flowing and gracious words they could not possibly have understood: ‘Beloved friends, guides and helpers, when I first saw your people engulfed in the strangeness of Edmonton, I saw you as savages. When you helped us find the mouth of the Peel, I chuckled at your confusion about the telescope. And even when I saw you coming as our saviors as I knelt by that fetid mosquito lake, I tried to shoot you as if you were animals. I was vain and blind and arrogant, and I pray you will forgive me, for I owe you my life.’
They could make nothing of his words, of course, but Fogarty repaired that deficiency by indicating that he, Luton and the Indians had shared the same camps and the same food. They had marched together, had fought the mosquitoes, had prayed together at the graves, and had crossed the land of death. This sharing had made them brothers, and as members of mankind’s common family they would place their final beds side by side. Before they fell asleep Luton whispered: ‘I’ve almost grown to like their stench. Reminds me of salvation from mosquitoes and that wilderness of lakes.’
Next morning they faced an impasse, for although the travelers were safely through the desolate land, where assistance from the Han was vital, they still faced a taxing journey to Dawson, and they must now choose which of two radically different routes to follow. Each path, as the Han indicated, had been well marked by the passage of many Indian feet in centuries past and even by some white men’s traces in recent years.
The first was the easiest and most inviting: a northwest trail which lead over relatively low mountains to the Yukon some miles down the river from Dawson, where the travelers could catch an American boat that would carry them upriver to the gold fields. The alternate path led off to the southwest, plunged immediately up into the higher mountains and quickly led down into Dawson; it would require real climbing. But there was one more significant difference: the route to the right edged toward the American portion of the north; the way to the left stayed completely within Canada, and although Luton could not verify that this would be the case, for his discarded maps had lacked accuracy, he still was so determined to avoid America that he said resolutely: ‘We’ll take the mountain route.’
When the Han saw the two men actually start for the more difficult climb they protested, showing by labored steps and bent backs that the route being chosen was bad, then springing easily along the lower pathway and even indicating a boat on the river. For the first time in their days together, Fogarty was unable to devise any hand symbols which would explain to the Indians that Lord Luton was driven by an obsession to complete this tortured journey on Empire terrain and to avoid even in the last painful moments any trespass on American soil. Indeed, the Irishman found it difficult to explain to himself why Luton was choosing the more difficult route, but in a restatement of the decision he had made that night as they plunged blindly into the pathless tundra, where they would surely have perished had not the Indians saved them, he now told the Han in words neither they nor he could comprehend: ‘He leads. I go,’ and he resolutely followed Luton onto the path leading to the high mountain.
Now came the moment of farewell, one that moved Luton profoundly, for he had developed a bond of deep affection for these two Indians who had saved him from the mosquitoes and the feral tundra and who had gone so far out of their own way to guide him to safety. He saw them now as remarkable human beings, living at their own level of civilization and doing it with competence, for they knew their vast wasteland as well as he knew his London, and such mastery he could respect. But he really did not care to embrace them as brothers any more than he would have wanted to clutch Fogarty to his bosom in gratitude for what the Irishman had done, so stiffly he stood before the two small brown people and bowed, saying: ‘I shall remember you with affection all the days of my life.’ Then he handed each a pair of Canadian bills, which he delivered with another bow.
For one frightening moment he feared that the Han woman was going to clutch his hands in gratitude or even throw her arms about him, but her intentions were quite contrary. She placed her hands not in his but in the air close to her ears, where she revolved them as she made funny faces and wobbled about to indicate that Luton, in choosing the more difficult route, was out of his mind. As she danced her pantomime of insanity, Fogarty muttered to himself: ‘I think he’s crazy, too,’ but unlike her, he had to follow Luton as His Lordship attacked the final range that rose between them and the gold fields.
The first half-mile into these newer mountains with their sharp peaks and deep gorges proved that the concluding segment of their journey was not going to be an easy one, for although the range was not excessively high—little more than six thousand feet—it was rugged, and at times the well-marked track could be so steep that real effort was required to master it. Indeed, the climb proved so demanding that the two men reacted as other climbers had throughout history: the more their path led upward, the more encouraged they were to dispose of trivia they felt they no longer needed, and this impulse was intensified by the realization that they were closing in upon their goal. So quietly they began to cast aside the burdens which, though once of vital importance, they now calculated they could do without: a hammer, a valuable rope, two books without covers, one of the axes, a score of things once treasured but now too heavy to lug.
There was one bundle, however, of concentrated weight which Lord Luton alone carried, the remaining cans of meat, for since Fogarty had once opened a can without permission, he could not be trusted to guard these, for Luton knew that upon their rich contents might depend the safe conclusion of his expedition. Once as they started the day’s climb, Fogarty hefted the rucksack, containing the cans and said: ‘Heavy, Milord, too heavy,’ but Luton said as he took the burden himself: ‘Not if our salvation depends upon it.’
The angle of upward climb was sharper than Luton had anticipated, a steady, grinding ascent up a barely discernible rock-strewn trail, not precipitous like the Alps, but fearfully exhausting for climbers in their debilitated condition. Luton could feel the heavy weight of the meat cans pulling him back, but in a curious way this added burden inspired him, for whenever he became aware of its familiar weight he assured himself: Well, we won’t starve on the mountain.
But as the trail grew steeper, Fogarty, struggling along behind with his own burden, saw Luton’s steps begin to waver and his pace to slow; at times it would look as if he was in danger of plunging forward onto his knees, so exhausting was his pack. Then the Irishman would quietly maneuver to take the lead, from where he would search for a resting spot, and when he sighted one he would cry out as if it were he who was at the end of his tether: ‘Milord! This one looks inviting. I’m near spent,’ and he would throw down his pack as if he could proceed no farther.
This enabled Luton to play the game of wanting to forge ahead but agreeing grudgingly to a pause for his companion’s sake. After a rest, which each man needed, Luton would be the first on his feet, as if he were impatient to get on with the climb, but almost without betraying that he was doing so, Fogarty would hoist Luton’s heavy rucksack onto his own back, and the two would resume their climb.
Now the miracle of the arctic abetted them, for the days of late spring were practically endless, more than twenty hours long during which they could climb as they wished. They kept pushing painfully upward through the silvery dusk, stopping for rest and even unplanned sleep, then rising aga
in, as if it were dawn, to strike for higher ground. However, real night, shadowy though it was, did eventually come upon them, forcing them to face the problem of what to eat, and this caused tension.
‘We can’t go on climbing like this without something to eat,’ Fogarty said on the second night, staring at the rucksack in which Luton kept the remaining cans of meat. Luton replied: ‘It’s up to you. You’re the hunter. For God’s sake, get going,’ and desperation glared in his eyes. Luton absolutely refused to discuss the possibility of slashing open one of the cans: ‘No! No! We must still have scraps of that meat the Indians gave us,’ and they searched their bags for fragments of food, chewing on them in triumph when they found a few edible morsels.
When they neared the top of their exhausting climb, Fogarty succeeded in bagging an adventurous goat, a remarkable feat considering the wariness of that beautiful animal. And on each occasion when they built a fire with such twigs as they had gathered during that day’s struggle, and they could smell the meat beginning to roast, Luton said generously: ‘Excellent shot, that one, Fogarty. Never seen better.’
The upward climb was merciless, but no matter how steep the rude pathway sketched out by earlier travelers to and from the gold fields, the pair were consoled by the knowledge that the Yukon could not be far distant, and they did not allow their spirits to flag. At the close of one extremely difficult climb, when Fogarty who carried the slightly heavier load was exhausted, and there was no more goat meat, he went boldly to Lord Luton’s rucksack, ripped open the package of cans, took one out and chopped it through the middle, handing Luton one half. Since the meat had been well cooked by steam before packing, they could eat it as it was, but they did so in grim silence, for Luton felt himself aggrieved. At the conclusion, knowing that he must in decency say something lest they go to sleep embittered, he observed: ‘Up here we aren’t bothered by mosquitoes.’
Journey: A Novel Page 17