14 Arctic Adventure (8 page)

‘Floes?’ said inquisitive Roger. ‘What are floes?’

‘You’re looking at them,’ said Hal. ‘Those pieces of floating ice are called floes.’

Roger saw one that was as flat as a raft and about twelve feet wide. ‘Are they all like that?’

‘Some are smaller. Some are much larger. I’ve heard of a floe that was as big as the state of Connecticut.’

‘Gee!’ exclaimed Roger. ‘The North Pole right there and we can’t get to it.’

‘Yes you can,’ said Aram. ‘I’ll take you.’

‘You’re kidding,’ said Hal.

‘No I’m not. Button up your caribou coat and come along. Next stop, North Pole.’

He led them out to his plane. They climbed in, still doubting that Aram could do what he promised.

Away they flew, over the floes and the open water between them, with no worry about dogs and sledges that had made the journey so difficult for Admiral Peary.

Within two hours they came down on a great expanse of ice.

‘Meet the North Pole, gentlemen,’ said Aram.

‘But there’s nothing here,’ said Roger as he stepped down.

‘And there never will be,’ said Aram. ‘There is no land under this ice —nothing but water fourteen thousand feet deep. What you are standing on is just a great ice floe. And like all floes it drifts.’

‘But’, said Hal, ‘I understood that Peary planted a mast here with a flag to prove that he had reached the Pole.’

‘Right,’ said Aram. ‘But the floe where he planted his mast and flag floated away. And another floe came, and another, and another. Floes are always on the move. The wind blows them along, or a current carries them. I suppose thousands of floes have passed over the Pole during the seventy years since Peary was here.’

‘So there’s been nothing here since Peary’s time?’

‘Oh yes, other people have tried. They can’t get it through their heads that nothing will stay at the North Pole. The Russians put a weather observatory here. It drifted away. Another expedition brought ten tons of building material and put up a station. When they came back, it was gone.’

‘But there’s a station at the South Pole and it doesn’t float away,’ said Hal.

‘It can’t move,’ said Aram, ‘because there is land beneath. Here there’s just water.’

‘Anyhow,’ said Roger, ‘it’s great to be here on the very tip-top of everything. You just can’t go any farther north than this.’

‘Yes,’ said Aram, ‘this is the end of north. Nor is there any east or west here.’

‘How do you make that out?’

‘Well, just think a bit. There’s no direction here but south. It’s south to Greenland, isn’t it? And it’s south to Canada. It’s south to Alaska. It’s south to Norway. It’s south to Great Britain. And that brings you back to Greenland — we will go south to get there. Anywhere you turn, you are looking south.’

A big plane roared overhead. It did not stop. ‘Where’s it going?’ Roger wondered.

‘It’s a Japanese plane,’ said Aram. ‘It’s going from Greenland to Japan. Our trading post buys a lot from Japan.’

‘But why does it fly over the North Pole?’

‘Because that’s the shortest way. The trip around the world to Japan would be twice as long.’

‘I can’t imagine that,’ said Hal. ‘I’ll have to look at a map.’

‘A map won’t help you,’ said Aram. ‘It’s flat. The earth is round, like a globe. Drop in at my school. We have a globe there. You can measure the distances—over the Pole, or around the earth.’

‘So there’s a lot of traffic over the Pole?’

‘Dozens of planes every day.’ Aram laughed. ‘It’s as busy as Times Square, or Fleet Street. And it’s not just the planes that go this way. Since the submarine Nautilus passed under the North Pole in 1958, many subs do the same every year. Since the water is more than two miles deep, there is plenty of room under the ice for a sub to go full speed without bumping into anything more than a fish or two.’

‘Or a whale or two,’ laughed Hal.

‘They don’t come this far north,’ said Aram.

There was a crashing sound as their floe was struck by other floes, hurled against it by the waves.

‘I think we’d better get going,’ said Aram, ‘before this floe breaks up under us.’

He flew them back to their igloo. The next day Hal visited Aram’s school and examined the globe. Aram was right. The shortest way to many lands was over the North Pole.

No longer was it a place of mystery. Many explorers had given their lives in the struggle to reach it. Without any effort, thanks to Aram, the boys had stood where Peary had stood, on the top of the world.

‘The time has come,’ the Walrus said,

‘To talk of many things:

Of shoes — and ships — and sealing-wax —

Of cabbages — and kings —

And why the sea is boiling hot —

And whether pigs have wings.’

So Lewis Carroll wrote about the walrus.

The Eskimos call it ‘the sea horse’.

That makes two sea horses in the ocean. The walrus is one. The other is the little fellow two or three inches tall who always stands up on his hind feet and who has a head that looks exactly like the head of a horse.

The Eskimos also call the walrus ‘The Old Man of the Ice Floes’.

And he does look like an old man as he sits on his floe, his tusks almost three feet long hanging straight down. At a distance, the white tusks look like a long white beard.

John Hunt had asked his sons to capture a walrus. To do this it was necessary to use a kayak.

‘What’s a kayak?’ Roger asked his big brother.

Big brother knew a lot, but he had never been in a sort of canoe,’ Hal said. ‘But it’s quite different from the canoes that we have used for hundreds of miles in our travels. It’s not made of wood like the canoe. There’s hardly any wood in north Greenland—so they use sealskin.’

‘What good is that? Couldn’t a walrus punch a hole in it with one of his tusks?’

‘You guessed it. That’s a risk we have to take. If that happens, I’ll meet you at the bottom of the sea.’

They hired two kayaks. The owner told the boys how to use them. ‘A kayak takes one person only. You notice that all the top of it is covered except for one hole where you get in.’

‘It’s as good as a canoe,’ Roger said.

‘It’s a lot better than a canoe. If a canoe upsets, you drown unless you are a good swimmer. If a kayak upsets, you just flip it back up and you are not even wet.’

‘How come? How can you go upside down and not get wet?’

‘You wear this sealskin coat. No water can get through it. The hood is watertight. The collar fits tightly around your neck. The sleeves are tight-fitting. Best of all, the lower edge of the sealskin fits into this ring around the manhole so that not a drop gets into the kayak even if it is upside down.’

‘That’s wonderful,’ Hal admitted. ‘But if you are upside down, how do you get right side up again?’

‘You must hang on to your paddle. One stroke of the paddle, and up you come.’

‘Great,’ said Roger. ‘I can’t wait to try it.’

Hal was anxious about what might happen to his eager brother.

‘Take it easy,’ he said. ‘Watch me. I’ll try to do it right and you copy me.’

The kayaks were only ten feet long and far lighter than any canoe they had ever carried around a waterfall or rapids. They carried them over their heads to the water’s edge, launched them, and carefully stepped in, making sure to lock themselves into the ring around the manhole so no water could get into the kayaks.

Then they paddled off, searching for ‘The Old Man of the Ice Floes’.

Usually a walrus hunter carried a harpoon, since his purpose was to kill the beast. But the boys had a much harder job. Their father would have no use for a dead walrus. They must take it alive. Each boy carried a lasso.

The Eskimo owner of the kayaks stood on the shore watching the boys hunting for a 3,000-pound walrus with nothing but two pieces of rope.

‘They are just like children,’ he thought. ‘We Eskimos are much wiser than these children from the hot lands.’

And the ‘children from the hot lands’ considered themselves far better than the ignorant folk of the Arctic. Who was right? It was hard to say.

Hal had his doubts about this adventure. To take a walrus with a rope was like trying to catch an elephant with a piece of string.

Finding a walrus was the easy part. There were dozens of them, each on a cake of ice, singing their hearts out. Well, not exactly singing. The sound was more like the bellow of a bull or the bark of a bloodhound. Anyhow, it tore the air apart with noise.

As the kayaks came near, they slid off their icy pedestals and disappeared under water.

‘They’re all gone,’ said Roger.

‘Never mind. They have to come up to breathe.’

‘How long can they stay down?’

‘About nine minutes.’

‘What do they do down there?’

‘Use those sharp tusks to dig up the bottom for shellfish.’

‘Do they swallow them, shells and all?’

‘No. I’ve read that they crush the clam shells between their flippers, then drop the pieces of shell and eat the clam.’

‘But clam shells and oyster shells are like iron. How could they break them with a pair of flabby fins?’

‘Not so flabby,’ said Hal. ‘A walrus could take your head between its fins and turn it into a pancake.’

‘It must be as strong as a horse. No wonder they call it a sea horse. How deep does it go? Thirty feet?’

‘More like three hundred feet. A man is apt to get the bends if he goes down a hundred feet without a scuba. The walrus does three times as well. But if he doesn’t come up for breath, he dies. Watch. Here they come now.’

Up they came, poking their black heads out of the water and whistling a tune as they inhaled —not once, but a dozen times until every crevice of their lungs was full of air.

They were annoyed to find the kayaks still there and roared their disapproval. A big bull charged Hal’s kayak and upset it. Hal forgot what he had told Roger not to forget. Surprised by this sudden attack, he let go of his paddle. It was a strange feeling, his head hanging three feet under water, as he held his breath, paddling desperately with his hands to turn the boat upright.

It didn’t work. His hands were not as good as a paddle. He groped about but could not find it. He was getting dizzy. He could not hold his breath any longer. What a way to die, upside down!

But if there was any dying to be done he was glad that he was to do it, not his kid brother.

What was the kid brother doing all this time?

He had brought his kayak up beside Hal’s and was trying to roll Hal’s boat over. He couldn’t budge it. Hal’s weight kept it down.

Hal was a good swimmer. But he was locked into the kayak. Roger realized that a kayak, however good, had its drawbacks. Once in it, it was a devil of a job to get out of it.

Hal’s paddle was drifting away. Roger passed his paddle down. It poked Hal in the ribs and woke him from his stupor. He grabbed the paddle, and with one stroke he turned his kayak and himself right side up. Roger captured Hal’s drifting paddle.

The bull had been waiting for his chance to make trouble. He was more than the usual length of twelve feet. Some bulls were twenty feet long, and this was one of them. He was twice as long as a kayak.

What a prize, if they could take him before he took them.

Hal’s head was not working well, and no wonder after his terrible experience. It was up to the ‘kid brother’ to do the thinking for both of them. Roger had an idea — but would it work?

As the bull came near, he struck it on its tender nose with his paddle. The bull sank. Soon it rose, bellowing, and again Roger gave it the sore nose treatment before it had a chance to breathe.

Again, down went the bull. But he must have air. So he was up again almost at once. Another resounding crack. And down went the breathless sea horse.

Hal saw what Roger was trying to do — make the animal go weak for lack of air —and he joined in.

Finally the great beast’s eyes closed and he gave up struggling. Two boys had conquered him, simply by preventing him from filling his lungs.

Now they had to act fast. The bull might recover, and defeat them after all. They threw both lassos over his head and towed the unconscious monster to shore.

Many men had gathered to see the show. They knew the boys and liked them. They saw what was needed and had a truck with a drag behind. The drag, a sort of raft, was pushed under the walrus while still in the water — then they started the truck and pulled the drag and its ton-and-a-half, load all the way to the airport.

The walrus did not recover until he was safely stowed into a skyvan, ready for the trip to Long Island.

A voice outside the igloo called: ‘Somebody wants to come in.’

‘Who is it?’ said Hal. He got no answer. Then he remembered — no Eskimo would give his name —that would offend the name-ghost.

If it was Zeb, Hal certainly did not want him to come in. But Zeb wouldn’t say ‘Somebody’. So it must be an Eskimo.

‘Somebody may come in,’ Hal said.

Olrik entered. He was amazed to see the brothers dressed in their Neoprene rubber diving suits. Each carried a scuba breathing tank on his back.

‘What’s up?’ said Olrik. ‘Going for a swim just for fun? Or business?’

‘You might call it business,’ Hal said. ‘We got a telegram. Dad wants a killer whale.’

‘A killer whale! Why, you poor dopes—you’ll get murdered. We Eskimos know the killer whale. He’s about the most dangerous visitor we have in these waters. Many of them have just arrived. Everybody is staying off the ice for fear of being gobbled up by a killer whale.’

‘Perhaps they come so seldom that your people have never really become acquainted with them. Have you ever seen one?’

‘Can’t say I have. But there are a lot of stories. Some of our own friends have been killed by those brutes.’

Hal said, ‘No one can see very well under water. Perhaps what got them was a shark.’

‘But surely you know the reputation of the killer whale,’ said Olrik.

‘Yes, it has a terrible reputation,’ Hal replied. ‘It is only about thirty feet long and can kill a whale a hundred feet long. It has twenty-four teeth as sharp as razors. It bites a whale on the corner of its mouth, makes it open its jaws and then it proceeds to eat the tongue. For some reason that makes the whale almost helpless. It begins to bleed to death. The killer goes on until it has filled its six-foot-long stomach and then other killers come in and do the rest.’