14 Arctic Adventure (16 page)

The wind struck with the force of a thousand hammers. The pup tent was ripped loose and sailed away toward Canada. The rocks on the side toward the wind rolled in upon the sleeping bag.

‘Ouch!’ cried Roger. ‘Get off my chest.’

‘I’m not on your chest,’ said Hal. ‘That’s just a couple of hundred pounds of rock.’

‘Why did you pile them on me?’

‘The wind did that without my help. Just be patient. The wind will blow them away again.’

The next gust picked them up and carried them off as if they had been cardboard boxes instead of rocks.

‘I suppose we’ll go next,’ said Roger.

‘Perhaps not. We’re heavier than rocks. This rock weighed about one hundredweight. You and I together weigh about three hundred pounds.’

To make matters worse, the black cloud sent down a deluge of rain. The bag was waterproof, so the boys pulled its flap over their heads.

‘It can rain all it pleases,’ said Hal. ‘We’re snug and warm.’

But the rain soon turned into hail. The hailstones were as big as the biggest marbles.

‘They’re knocking the breath out of me,’ complained Roger.

‘Lie face down,’ said Hal. ‘Then your lungs will be protected.’

It was no easy matter to twist into a face-down position. Hal got a few smart blows from the elbows of his squirming brother. He himself had a stronger rib cage and could stand the pummelling he got from the bullets of the sky. He put his arm over his face.

The wind was roaring and screeching like a banshee. How long would this go on? Hal didn’t know the habits of a williwaw. He had heard that the willies, as the Alaskans call them, come rushing down the valleys and mountainsides like devils bent on destroying everything man had made. If any planes were in the sky they would not remain there. They would be dashed to pieces against the mountain peaks.

Surely, he thought, this furious blizzard could not last long. It would peter out before evening and they would be home in time t& have a good night’s sleep.

But the williwaw had no intention of petering out. It became worse as night arrived and it continued until daybreak.

‘I’m hungry,’ said Roger.

Hal said, ‘I’m afraid you’ll just have to stay hungry. We didn’t bring any food because we expected to be in Barrow for supper.’

Roger was angry. ‘You were a big boob not to bring anything to eat.’

‘O.K.,’ said Hal. ‘I was a big boob. Perhaps you were a little boob because you didn’t think of it.’

‘Why should I think of it? You’re the boss.’

‘Sometimes I think you are,’ said Hal. ‘You’re fifteen. It’s time you started to think for yourself.’

‘I’d punch you on the nose if I could get my hand loose.’

Hal laughed. ‘What are we getting into? You and I never quarrel. It’s this blooming storm that is getting us down. Getting our nerves on edge.’

Thunder and lightning joined the wind and the hail. And it was getting icy cold. Two days and two nights went by without food and without any pause in the violent storm.

Then the wind died, the whirling dervishes in the sky quit putting on their act and the boys emerged from their cocoon. They could hardly walk about, so cramped and stiff were their legs and so empty their stomachs.

The storm had wiped out the trail they had come by. The sky remained covered with cloud so the sun could give them no help. East, west, north, south, did not exist for them. They were completely lost.

‘Someone will come along,’ was Roger’s optimistic forecast. No one came along.

‘At least we have to go down the mountain,’ said Hal. ‘We know that much.’

‘Yes, which way down?’ Castle Mountain was only 3,700 feet high and they were at the top. Every way down but one would be a mistake.

With so many mistakes possible, it was not surprising that they stumbled at random down the rocks, hoping against hope that they would meet some human being. They met a bear, but he could tell them nothing. He didn’t even try to eat them because he had already dined and these scrawny, starved humans didn’t look like a good dinner.

They sat down occasionally, puffing and snorting and trying to get their strength and their breath back. Hal wished that he could carry Roger, but the boy would resent being carried like a baby and, besides, Hal was much too weak to carry 130 pounds in his arms or on his back.

Then they saw it —a cabin!

‘Whoever lives there’, Hal said, ‘will help us. We can get warm by his fire and he may even let us have a little food. What luck!’

The roof was covered with half-melted hail three or four inches thick. The walls were made of heavy logs that were too stout to have been destroyed by the storm. The furious wind had caved in one window.

Hal knocked at the door. There was no answer. He rapped again. Nothing doing. Roger was shaking with cold. He sat down on the steps.

Hal said, ‘The fellow who lives here must have gone to town.’

Looking at Roger he thought, ‘I must get him in and warm him up. If I don’t, he’ll get pneumonia.’

He climbed in through the broken window, cutting himself with some of the loose bits of glass. He stepped down on to a table and from that to the floor. What a relief to be in a house again, even one so small as this.

He called. There was no answer. There was no one in the cabin but himself.

‘Come in through the window, Roger. There’s nobody home and the door is solidly locked.’

Roger came in, scratching himself as Hal had done.

He looked about. ‘Isn’t this great. We’ll start a fire and perhaps we’ll even find some food. Do you think the owner would mind?’

‘I don’t think there is any owner,’ said Hal. ‘It’s been cleaned out completely. The door isn’t really locked. It’s just been jammed shut by the years.’ He shivered. ‘It’s as cold as a refrigerator. It doesn’t even have a stove. All the dishes are gone, pots, pans, everything.’

‘Well, anyhow, it’s ours for the time being,’ said Roger. ‘Isn’t that the custom in the North? An empty house is for anybody or everybody. Isn’t that the way it goes?’

‘That’s right,’ said Hal. ‘But it isn’t of much use to us without food and without a stove.’

‘What are those tin cans in the corner? Piled up on each other. There’s a sort of pipe going up through the ceiling. I’ll bet the person who made it thinks that he made a stove. Let’s try it.’

‘We have to have wood,’ said Hal, ‘and there’s not a stick in the cabin.’

‘But there was a sort of hump that I had to stand on to get in through the window. It’s all covered with hail, but I’ll bet there’s some wood beneath,’ said Roger.

‘Bright idea,’ said Hal. ‘Let’s heave open this door. It’s just stuck.’

They threw their combined weight against the door and it popped open.

Roger attacked the hump with his mittened hands. He cleared away the hail. ‘There’s a cord of wood here,’ he exclaimed. ‘Do you think he forgot it?’

‘Perhaps. But it’s more likely that he left it on

purpose for anybody who wanted to use the cabin. People up here are like that.’

They took some sticks inside and Hal whittled off some shavings with his pocket knife.

He put the shavings in the silly tin stove, put some sticks on top, and blessed the tin stove when the fire blazed up and began to warm the room.

It was wonderful to feel even the small heat from this stove. They began to feel human once more. Roger’s stiff joints relaxed.

‘Now, if we only had some food. I’ll bet there’s some somewhere. The last people who were here left the wood and surely they would have left something to eat.’

‘Well,’ said Hal, ‘you can look for it if you like, while I patch up that window. We won’t get very warm with a busted window.’

‘There’s no way you can patch it up,’ said Roger. ‘There’s not a towel in the house, not an old shirt, not a piece of board, nothing.’

While Roger started his search for food Hal went outside. He faced an almost impossible task. If there had been snow he would have cut out a block of it and wedged it into the open space left by the broken window. But there was no snow. There was plenty of ice on the ground formed from hail that had frozen together into flat slabs. With his knife he cut out a section of hail-made ice and fitted it over the hole in the window.

Then he went in, expecting Roger to congratulate him. Instead Roger said, ‘That’s no good. The heat from the stove will melt it.’

‘It will try to,’ said Hal, ‘but perhaps the chill air from outside will keep the ice from melting. We’ve seen ice windows in Greenland. They last for months. There’s heat inside but the cold outside is stronger than the heat.’

‘I’ll bet your window will melt,’ said Roger, ‘and it will be as cold as Greenland inside here.’

But the window did not melt and the tin stove gave off enough heat to keep them half comfortable.

‘I found some food,’ said Roger.

‘You did? That’s great. You’re not such a dumb cluck after all. What kind of food?’

‘Pemmican, and dried raisins, some pretty tired bread, and a can of milk frozen solid. May I serve you? Do you like your milk hard or soft?’

‘Soft, if you please.’

‘Very well, sir,’ said Roger. ‘I shall put the milk on the stove and you shall have your milk not only thawed soft, but hot. Can you think of any greater luxury than that?’

When they had eaten Hal smacked his lips. ‘The best restaurant in New York couldn’t have done better,’ he said.

Next morning the sun shone and they could tell which way was north. They went down the mountain to the river at its base. There was no bridge in sight. But there was hardly any water in the river.

‘We’ll have to walk across,’ said Hal. ‘We’ll only get our feet wet.’

On his second step Hal’s right leg suddenly sank from sight. The other leg followed. He was terrified. He realized suddenly that he was facing death.

‘Stay where you are,’ he shouted to Roger.

‘What’s the trouble?’

‘Quicksand!’

He did everything possible to free his legs. But he couldn’t get either leg loose. Every moment he was sinking further. Roger started out to help him. ‘Stay where you are,’ commanded Hal. ‘No use both of us getting caught.’

Now the sand was up to his waist. He writhed and squirmed. The sand soaked with icy water was chilling him to the bone.

‘Lie down,’ Roger shouted.

This seemed to Hal a ridiculous thing to say. Why should he lie down? Well, of course, if he lay down there would be so much of him on top of the sand that be might not sink more. It was worth a try. He lay flat upon the sand, and worked to get his legs loose. He was more dead than alive. He was cold and exhausted but he kept struggling until his whole body including the legs lay flat on the sand.

Then he began inching toward the land. With a final struggle he reached firm ground. He lay on the shore breathing hard, his heart going like a triphammer. His clothes were soaked and heavy and his caribou boots were full of sand and water. He felt he couldn’t move an inch.

Roger knelt and took Hal’s head in his hands.

‘Don’t be in a hurry,’ he said. ‘This is as good a place to rest as any.’ Kneeling in sand and water, he was as dirty as his brother.

So Hal rested for half an hour. Then he got up and staggered off with Roger, looking for a bridge. It was almost dark before they found one.

After they had crossed it a car going their way pulled up in front of them. The Eskimo driver had seen that these staggering, soaking wet, sand-pasted fellows were in need of help.

‘Where are you going?’ he said.

‘To Barrow village,’ Hal answered.

‘Hop in,’ said the Eskimo. ‘If there’s any hop left in you.’

‘Mighty little,’ laughed Hal. And with the little hop he had left he climbed into, the car.

Arriving in Barrow, he heartily thanked the Eskimo driver for his kindness, and with Roger’s support he wobbled over to their lodging, where the proprietor stood in the door. He did not recognize Hal and said sharply, ‘This is a respectable place. We don’t take any bums here.’

Roger said, ‘Don’t you recognize us? We’re the Hunts.’

‘Oh, a thousand pardons.’ And he admitted these smelly, wet, dirty ‘bums’ to his proud establishment, which was almost as dirty as the ‘bums’.

A telegram came from their father.

YOU ARE DOING GOOD WORK. WE COULD USE ALASKAN ELK WHITE GRIZZLY GIANT KODIAK.

Hal went to the airport and showed the telegram to his pilot friend, Ben Bolt.

‘The best place to find those animals’, said Ben, ‘is down in that wonderful country called the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes.’

‘I’ve heard of it,’ said Hal. ‘That’s where one of the volcanoes exploded and sent clouds of smoke and gas around the world.’

‘One of the two biggest eruptions in all history,’ said Ben. ‘The other was Krakatoa.’

‘But isn’t it still dangerous there?’

‘Perhaps. But danger never stopped you.’

‘And we can find elk there?’

‘Quite near there,’ said Ben. ‘Most of them are on Afognak Island. It’s just across the strait from the volcanoes. I can’t take you there because there’s no landing strip. But I can fly you and Nanook to the volcano country and you can get a boat across to Afognak. Almost touching that island is another called Kodiak Island and that’s where you will find the biggest and strongest bear in all creation, the Kodiak bear. How you will ever bag that ferocious monster I can’t imagine, but that’s up to you.’

‘And how about grizzlies?’

‘You’ll find them almost anywhere. Or they’ll find you. They have a grudge against all two-legged animals such as you and your brother.’

Hal said, ‘Our father wants us to get a white grizzly. I thought all grizzlies were grey.’

‘Most of them are,’ said Ben. ‘But he means the silver-tip.’

‘Just what is a silver-tip?’

‘The tip of every hair is a silvery white so it looks as if the bear is wearing a white coat. A silver-tip is a very dangerous animal. It looks beautiful, but it has a devil where its heart should be. You’d better carry a gun.’

Hal laughed. ‘I don’t think Dad would appreciate a dead grizzly.’

‘O.K. It’s your funeral,’ said Ben. ‘When will you be ready to go?’