14 Arctic Adventure (6 page)

So they set out to do five more ‘sleeps’ before turning back toward home.

‘How’s that hand of yours?’ Olrik asked Hal.

‘Still frozen solid,’ Hal said. ‘It doesn’t hurt a bit.

‘I know it’ll hurt like fury when it starts warming up. I kept it out of the sleeping bag to keep it frozen so that I could get some sleep.’

‘It mustn’t stay frozen too long,’ said Olrik, ‘or the rot called gangrene will set in and you’ll have to have your hand amputated.’

The idea that his hand might have to be chopped off was not pleasant. Hal knew that a good snow rub was necessary. But as far as the eye could see there was nothing but ice.

Olrik looked at the sky. ‘Cheer up. Pretty soon it’s going to snow.’

It did snow before sleep time. Hal promptly gave his hand the snow treatment. He would nave preferred to keep it frozen, because then it didn’t hurt. Now it began to give him terrible pain.

‘Good,’ said Olrik. ‘That means circulation is coming back. The blood is beginning to flow down into your hand.’

‘I don’t understand it,’ Hal said. ‘Snow is cold, and yet it is warming my hand.’

‘Snow is not as cold as it seems,’ Olrik said. ‘Animals like to be covered by snow. They burrow into snowbanks to keep warm. When our dogs lie in a heap they are happy if they are buried in snow.’

When Hal found that he could move his fingers he discontinued the snow bath and tucked his aching hand under his caribou jacket, where it could get the heat from his body. Here it gradually stopped hurting and felt like a hand once more, not a chunk of ice.

They travelled on for three sleeps, then came upon a treasure.

‘A musk-ox!’ exclaimed Olrik. ‘There used to be a lot of them in Greenland. Most of them have been killed, so now they are extremely rare. We are in luck.’

The amazing thing about the musk-ox was its great coat of shaggy hair, hanging so low that it almost touched the ground.

‘It reminds me of Mother,’ Roger said.

‘Is that any way to speak of your mother?’ Hal protested.

Roger explained. ‘Whenever Mom went out to a party or a concert, she wore a long evening dress that reached all the way down to her feet.’

Olrik laughed. ‘You have a good imagination, Roger, if you can compare this beast to your mother.’

‘But what’s the use of all that hair?’

‘It’s a lot better than a lady’s evening dress,’ said Olrik. ‘It keeps the animal warm even when the temperature is way down below zero. It really consists of two coats — two heavy layers, and inside them there is a lovely undergarment of beautiful wool softer than cashmere. And there’s one other thing the long evening dress is good for. If the musk-ox has a baby it can conceal the youngster behind those heavy curtains of fur.’

Hal sniffed the air. ‘What’s that strange smell?’ he asked. ‘It’s not a bad smell and it’s not a good smell. What is it?’

‘Musk,’ said Olrik. ‘The lady is not only wearing evening dress, she is using perfume.’

‘Well,’ said Hal, ‘it doesn’t exactly smell like perfume.’

‘Perhaps not,’ said Olrik, ‘but the manufacturers of perfume couldn’t get along without it. In almost every bottle of perfume there is some musk.’

‘Do they get it only from the musk-ox?’

‘No — some other animals secrete musk — the civet, musk-rat, otter, and the musk-deer.’

The musky musk-ox showed no inclination to run away. Instead it acted as if it might charge at any moment. It tossed its great head around, made threatening grunts, and lowered its curved, sharp-pointed horns dangerously.

‘But I’m sure the lady would be too much of a lady to attack us,’ Roger said.

‘Don’t be too sure,’ said Olrik. ‘It happens that this lady is no lady. This is a bull. He would like nothing better than a fight and he could kill us all in a few minutes.’

Hie bull was angrily pawing the ground.

Hal didn’t wait to be flattened under that quarter-ton of wild beast. He drew his sleep gun from the sledge and sent a dart into the animal’s neck. The medicine in one dart was not enough to put the beast to sleep but at least it would calm him down. The bull turned and began to wander away. Hal’s lasso whistled through the air and the loop settled over the great head just behind the horns. Hal fastened the end of the line to the sledge and Olrik snapped the long whip over the dogs. The ten huskies began to pull and the musk-ox, half asleep, staggered along behind.

After five sleeps they all turned about and headed for home.

They got one more fine animal —a wandering reindeer. This was a polar reindeer, quite different from the reindeer of Lapland. It did not bite them and was easily captured. It was graceful and beautiful. Unlike the musk-ox it had no curtains reaching to the ground. Its body was well formed and its horns were magnificent. This was a male. The female also has horns, but not so large.

‘You judge reindeer antlers by the number of points,’ said Olrik. ‘I’ve made a careful count and find there are sixty points in this animal’s fine set.’

‘Does the reindeer have any enemies?’ Roger asked.

‘It doesn’t like wolves,’ Olrik answered. ‘And its worst enemy is the raven.’

‘How can a raven do any harm to a big reindeer?’

‘It swoops down and pecks out its eyes.’

‘You said the animals on the ice cap live by eating other animals,’ Roger said. ‘But I don’t believe the musk-ox and reindeer eat other animals. So how do they live on the ice cap?’

‘They scratch away the snow from the rocks and eat the lichens that grow on them.’

Like the musk-ox, the reindeer was attached by a long line to the sledge and walked along behind.

Click, click, click went his feet.

‘What’s all the clicking about?’ Roger asked.

Olrik answered, ‘The bones in the reindeer’s feet rub together and make that noise. All the little animals hear that sound and get out of the way. I don’t know of any other animal on earth that clicks as he walks along. There’s one other way that the reindeer is different. He has flat feet as big as pancakes.’

‘I’m getting hungry,’ said Roger.

‘We’re all out of food,’ Olrik said, ‘but we don’t have to wait long. As soon as we get to the first cache we can eat.’

After the last sleep there had been no breakfast. There would be no lunch. Some hours later they should get to the cache.

The dogs ran twice as fast as usual because they were going home. But even this was not fast enough for the stomachs of the hungry boys. Then Roger had an idea.

‘Don’t reindeer pull sledges in Lapland?’

‘So I’ve heard,’ Hal said.

‘Well, we have a reindeer. Why can’t he pull instead of being pulled?’

Olrik said, ‘I should have thought of that. Hal, you have a bright kid brother.’

He stopped the team. The huskies were not harnessed two by two as in Canada where the whole outfit must be narrow to get through the trees. On the ice cap there were no trees — so the dogs were spread out in a sort of fan. Each dog could see straight ahead instead of having nothing to look at but the rear of the dog in front.

The reindeer was brought around and placed in the middle of the fan, five dogs on one side of him and five on the other.

Then Olrik cracked his whip and away they all went like the wind. The boys could not run so fast, so they climbed on to the sledge.

This did not slow things down in the least. The reindeer was so strong and swift that he was almost equal to all the dogs put together.

The musk-ox kept up well in spite of the wind that caught his side curtains and sent them flying up in the air.

As for the great thousand-pound bear, he could have been excused for being slow because of his weight. But he was not slow. All his life he had been forced to run if he wanted to eat. Even now he stopped for an instant to put his teeth into a lemming, and again to catch an Arctic hare, yet he at once regained his place beside the rushing sledge.

So it was not surprising that they came in sight of the cache sooner than they expected. The boys shouted and the dogs howled. Soon they would fill those aching stomachs.

But as they came nearer, Olrik began to worry. The stones he had put over the food had been disturbed. Something or somebody had been tampering with the cache.

He hauled his team to a stop beside the cache.

It was empty.

Not one scrap of food remained.

‘Look,’ said Hal. ‘Aren’t those bear tracks?’

‘That’s just what they are/’ said Olrik, ‘and the tracks go that way.’

Nanook was sniffing the tracks. Then he began to follow them. Behind a big clump of ice he found the thief.

At once there was a battle royal. The other bear was as big as Nanook. But he was loaded down with food and his reactions were slow. Nanook gave him a thorough lambasting, tearing out his fur, bloodying his nose, biting off his tail.

But that didn’t get the food back. Roger called Nanook. His huge pet came at once. The other bear stumbled off. He had been taught a lesson. He would think twice before robbing another cache.

Olrik, who was as hungry as the others, tried to be cheerful.

‘Never mind,’ he said. ‘Let’s hope we have better luck at the next cache.’

But when they arrived at the spot they saw wolf tracks all about. A pack of wolves had been here. However, the stones still stood up, so the food must be under them.

Then Olrik noticed that just one stone low down had been pulled away. The hole was big enough for wolves, one at a time, to crawl in and steal their dinner.

He pulled down the other stones and saw that all the supplies had vanished.

Hal and Roger could have stormed at Olrik for not building better caches. They didn’t. They knew that Olrik had done his best, and now he was just as hungry and unhappy as they were.

‘Sorry,’ said Olrik.

‘Not your fault,’ said Hal.

Having eaten nothing, they were even more weary than usual. So they put up their tent and went supperless to their sleeping bags.

The animals did better. The dogs, the musk-ox and the reindeer all scraped away the snow and ate the lichen that grew on rocks.

Roger heard them scratching and chewing, and crawled out to see what was going on.

Lichen! They were all eating lichen. It must be good.

He scraped away some of it and put it in his mouth. It was bitter. Manfully, he swallowed it. His indignant stomach threw it up. It would rather be empty than try to digest such fodder.

Roger thought he would have some fun with his brother and Olrik. After sleep he said, ‘You don’t need to be hungry any more. You’ve got tasty food all around you.’

‘What do you mean?’ demanded Hal.

‘Lichen. It’s on all the rocks. You’ll love it. Just try it.’

They were hungry enough to try anything. Their faces twisted as they tasted the bitter lichen. They swallowed it, and up it came.

Hal glanced at Roger. ‘You son of a gun. If I weren’t so weak I’d wallop you so hard that you couldn’t stand up.’

‘I’m glad you’re weak,’ said Roger.

Surely, by the time they reached the cache above the waterfall, their bad luck would turn to good. But a crack between the stones was just large enough to admit an Arctic fox. His tracks as he came were light, and heavy as he left loaded down with a good meal.

Now they had to cross Thunder River. The reindeer was unhitched. Roger had said he wanted to ride it.

‘You’ll both sink,’ said Olrik. ‘You and the reindeer.’

But Roger remembered what he had read about reindeer. Every hair of the reindeer was hollow and was full of air, which meant that the reindeer couldn’t sink even if he tried. His body was so high out of the water that Roger rode across without getting wet.

Hal and Olrik put their clothes inside the waterproof tent. Olrik drove the dogs and sledge across, and Hal swam.

The line that held the musk-ox broke and the beast in his heavy evening dress was swept down toward the falls. If he went over the waterfall he would be killed on the rocks below.

The best swimmer of all, Nanook, gripped one end of the trailing dress and swam against the strong current to the other shore. The bewildered musk-ox clambered out on the sand, making his own waterfall as the river water poured out of his masses of shaggy fur.

The dogs were used to going without food for many sleeps, but the boys slept the sleep of utter exhaustion.

Feeling more dead than alive, they lay on the sledge until the final cache was reached. Here there were no animal footprints. But there were human prints, of heavy boots. And the cache was empty.

Somebody had stolen the food. How could any man be so mean? Whoever it was could be charged with murder if one of the starving boys fell dead.

Nothing was left in the cache except a slip of paper. Hal picked it up. It was a picture of Zeb. Zeb was in the habit of carrying a bunch of pictures of himself and handing one out to anybody he met. He had dropped this one by mistake.

The boys went on to Thule, where they made straight for an eatery.

‘Don’t eat too much,’ Hal warned them. ‘Our stomachs aren’t used to food. They’ll just throw it up, unless you eat very little. A couple of hours later, you can eat a little more. After another hour, some more. Take it easy, or you’ll have trouble.’

They felt like devouring everything in the place, but they followed Hal’s advice and went easy. Then they had food put up for them to eat later.

Off to the airfield to put their haul of animals into the box-car. The snow-white Arctic fox, the wolverine, the four small polar bears, the great musk-ox, the beautiful polar reindeer. The airport hands slid the box-car on to the flat deck of the skyvan and Hal wired his father to expect the shipment.

Not until this was done did they think of making a home for themselves. They went back to the ruins of their igloo and began building a new one.

Zeb strolled over, not to help, but to look on.

‘What did you do that for?’ said Hal.

‘Do what for?’ said innocent Zeb.

‘Steal everything in that cache.’

‘You’re out of your head,’ Zeb replied. ‘I don’t know anything about any cache.’

‘Oh, you don’t? How about this picture?’ He pulled out Zeb’s photograph.