The Curse of the Viking Grave

by Farley Mowat

  “Is Elaitutna. He say bad things going to happen to us, and if we stay Eskimo camp bad things happen to Eskimos too. He tell people we never get to Hudson Bay. He say Koonar not let us carry his things to strange land. He tell Ohoto he never come back alive if he go with us.”

  “The old devil’s just jealous,” Jamie burst out angrily. “He’s run things here for a long time, and look at the mess the IhaImiut are in. Just because it looks like we can help them when he can’t, he’s out to stop us.”

  “I think we should talk to Ohoto again,” Angeline said quietly but firmly. “You are angry, Jamie, and that will not help anyone.”

  Several Eskimos were with Ohoto when the youngsters entered his tent, but these people quickly found excuses to get up and leave. Ohoto himself seemed subdued and uncomfortable. However, when Peetyuk explained why they had come, he showed relief.

  “I am glad you know what is happening,” he explained through Peetyuk. “I did not want to tell you myself, and that made me unhappy, for there should be no secrets between friends. Now I will tell you the rest. Elaitutna had another spirit-talk and most of the People were there. At the end of it Elaitutna said Koonar had cursed you and had warned all the People to have nothing more to do with you. Now the People do not know what to do. Some even say I should not go with you; but I am not a sick old man who is afraid of spirits. I will go with you as far as Big River. And I think it would be well for us to leave as soon as we can, for the People are listening more and more to Elaitutna. They are growing afraid, and frightened people can do strange things.”

  “How soon can we go, then?” Jamie asked anxiously.

  Ohoto wrinkled his heavy brows. “We cannot go until a strong wind comes to break up the rotten ice in the big lakes. I hope it will come soon. I do not trust Elaitutna, and if anything should happen to your canoes in the meantime you would never be able to make the trip.”

  “He wouldn’t dare do anything!” cried Jamie, but there was no conviction in his voice.

  Later that night when they were back in their own tent, the youngsters found it hard to go to sleep. They discussed the situation until well past midnight without finding any solution. Finally Angeline went outside to light a fire and boil the kettle for a mug-up of tea. When she came back her eyes were gleaming with excitement.

  “Listen,” she said. “The north wind is coming. Already you can hear it, and the sky is growing dark with clouds. Perhaps it will blow hard enough tonight to break the ice.”

  By the time they had drunk their tea the wind was rustling through the camp, and its hopeful sound finally lulled them to sleep. When they woke at dawn they found a full gale blowing. As they scrambled out of their tent they met Ohoto coming to waken them. He greeted them with a smile.

  “Eat quick,” he told them, “for there is much to do. The ice will go today, and tomorrow we will go too.”

  CHAPTER 16

  Lake-in-Lake

  ALL DAY WHILE THE STRONG WIND blew the travelers worked to complete their preparations. Awasin inspected the canoes very carefully, checking every seam to make sure the spruce-gum seal was still sound. The others spent their time assembling the gear and supplies.

  They had decided that they should travel as light as possible. Everything which could be dispensed with was to be left behind. Spare food was given away to the Eskimos, and Awasin and Peetyuk left behind their rifles, together with most of the ammunition, for the Eskimos to use. They calculated that one rifle and fifty rounds would be sufficient for the journey to the coast.

  The balance of the luggage included sleeping robes, the tent, two travel bags containing spare clothing, skeleton cooking gear, two hatchets, a coil of rope, tea, salt, flour, dried deer meat—and the Viking relics. These last had been carefully splinted and wrapped in two deer-hide parcels and were tied one to a canoe, beneath the thwarts so that in the event of an upset they would not be lost. It was arranged that Jamie and Peetyuk were to paddle one canoe while Awasin and his sister would paddle the other.

  Shortly after dawn the next morning the voyagers prepared to embark. Not many Eskimos showed up to see them off. Only Peetyuk’s friends and relations were on hand, and there was none of the good-natured badinage and horseplay which usually marks such an occasion. People moved about quietly and solemnly, helping the boys and Angeline load the canoes. Peetyuk’s mother had just brought down a farewell gift of boiled meat when there came a hoarse shout from the high bank overlooking the river beach.

  Everyone turned to look, and there stood Elaitutna, a black and forbidding figure against the dawn sky. For some minutes he remained motionless. Then he raised a short deer spear in his right hand and shook it fiercely in the direction of the voyagers, at the same time shouting harsh words in his old, cracked voice.

  There was a murmur of fear from the assembled Eskimos and for a moment it looked as if they would turn and run. But Ohoto jumped forward, raised his fist at the old angeokok and yelled a challenge in return. Elaitutna lingered only a moment longer, then vanished.

  Ohoto’s face was grim as he turned to where Angeline and the boys stood uncertainly by the canoes. He spoke sharply, and Peetyuk translated in a shaky voice.

  “Elaitutna has cursed us himself, but I have told him that if any harm comes to you four, I will put a knife under his skinny ribs. Come now, it is time to go.”

  The youngsters needed no urging. Peetyuk disengaged himself from his mother, who stood motionless with tears running down her cheeks. Kakut and some of the other men carefully slid the canoes into the water and the travelers jumped aboard. In a moment they were out in the stream following Ohoto, whose slim kayak shot ahead.

  Angeline turned for a last glance at the silent people standing against the backdrop of squat, skin-covered tents and rolling gray plains stretching to the horizon behind them. Despite herself she could not repress a shudder at the thought of Elaitutna, whose malice seemed to follow them as they began this voyage into the unknown country to the eastward.

  A mile northeast of the camps Ohoto led the canoes into the mouth of the small river where the deer-spearing had taken place. There was a swift current in this stream and the paddlers had to strain to make progress, but after some hours of hard work they entered a small lake which they coasted to its southern end.

  Here they found an even smaller stream which was so shallow that they had to get out and walk alongside the canoes. The boys were grateful for the thigh-length skin boots, called kamikpak, which the Eskimos had shown Angeline how to make. These were of parchmentlike deer hide, minutely stitched with a thread made of deer sinew. Before being worn the boots were filled with water, allowed to stand for a few minutes, and then emptied out. The water swelled the sinew thread, thus making the seams watertight and at the same time softening the hide so that the boots became supple.

  Ohoto did not have to tow his kayak. When the water became too shoal he simply hoisted it up and carried it balanced on his head while he walked merrily along, shouting back for the rest to hurry up.

  The stream ended in a pond which was soon crossed, and this was followed by a long portage across a low, gravel ridge to the foot of Wolf Lake. By the time everybody and everything was across the portage it was mid-afternoon and Ohoto suggested that they camp.

  “Eskimo not hurry when start trip,” Peetyuk explained to his friends. “Start slow. Go quicker later. White men start fast, slow down later.”

  Jamie did not rise to the bait. The truth was that twenty miles of hard upstream paddling and towing had made him quite ready to accept Ohoto’s suggestion. He only grinned at Peetyuk and replied. “Me Eskimo now. Me go slow, you bet!”

  They camped that night less than eight miles as the crow flies from the Innuit Ku camps, having made a semicircular detour in order to follow the water routes. But canoe travel in the north seldom follows a direct line and one grows used to paddling thirty or forty miles in order to make ten in any desired direction.

  They made better progress the next
day. Ahead of them, stretching out of sight to the southeast, lay the twenty-mile length of Wolf Lake. Only two days previously its waters had been imprisoned under five feet of ice. This ice had been rotted by the spring suns and when the gale struck the lake it turned to mush and disappeared. As the canoes and kayak set out down the western shore the following morning, the boys could see no trace of ice at all.

  There was little wind that day and the lake stayed smooth. All morning they coasted its flat, barren shores southward.

  A good-sized river ran out of the lake towards the southeast. It was swollen with flood waters and carried the canoes and kayak along at a good three knots. The little flotilla fairly flew downstream. There were no rapids to cause trouble, for this river ran through level country.

  “This is the stuff!” Jamie cried to Peetyuk in the bow. “A week at this rate and we’ll be at the coast!”

  “Ho! A week? Maybe a month! You wait. Not go so easy in little while.”

  “It can’t be too tough, Pete. I’ve been on plenty of bad rivers down in the forest country. Big River can’t be any worse.”

  “No bad rivers in south!” Peetyuk said disdainfully. “Baby riding in moccasin go down those river okay. Not like Big River. Ohoto say only big fish, and strong fish too, get down that river.”

  Half an hour later Ohoto, who had gone on far ahead and had landed on an island in a lakelike expansion of the river, signaled the canoes to put in to shore. He had a fire lit and the tea billy on the boil. Peetyuk carried the grub-box up to the fire where Angeline made bannocks.

  As they munched their bannocks and drank their scalding tea, the boys questioned Ohoto about the country they were going through. Peetyuk translated Ohoto’s reply.

  “Now we are on Koonok—No River. He get this name because he got so many lakes, but no rapids. He is half river and half lake. He runs to Lake-in-Lake. This big lake, sits on island, and there is even bigger lake around it.

  “It is secret place. Very hard find way in. In old, old times Itkilit come out into plains looking for Innuit one summer. They know Innuit living on Koonok, and so they come in four bands, many canoes and many men. One band comes from east, one from west, one from south, one from north.

  “But man called Yaha hunting deer see Itkilit coming and run to Innuit camp with news. Nearly one hundred Innuit in that camp, but maybe three hundred Itkilit coming. Innuit not know what to do. Women all wailing and children crying. Then man named Kahutsuak gather all and speak: ‘Take all kayaks. Make women sit on decks and tie children on behind. Nighttime leave camp with all fires going, all tents standing, dogs tied near tents. I take where we safe.’

  “Everyone do what Kahutsuak say, and he lead kayaks by secret way to Lake-in-Lake and to island in middle of inside lake, and Itkilit never see. Then Kahutsuak say: ‘All must sleep in holes in ground. Raise no tents. No person make fire. In daytime, no person walk around against sky.’

  “Itkilit bands meet on Koonok and find Eskimo camp. Attack it, but find nobody there—only dogs and empty tents. Itkilit very angry. Spread out and search everywhere for sign of where Innuit go, but not find any sign.

  “At island in Lake-in-Lake Innuit have very hard time. Cannot cook food, heat water, get warm. Rainy days come and people soaking wet. One woman there, Pameo, very pretty woman, very strong in mind. She say to herself: ‘Itkilit never find this place, why should I freeze to death?’

  “One night she slip away from camp and hide behind sand ridge on island. In morning she light little fire and cook some fish. It very little fire, but make some smoke. That morning Itkilit men standing on only hill where can see Lake-in-Lake. Itkilit men see smoke.

  “Next morning terrible yell from all around island and Itkilit canoes land all around. Great battle then, but Itkilit men too many, and after fighting done not one Innuit still alive except Pameo, who off by herself and Itkilit never see.

  “Pameo come back when Itkilit gone, and find all dead. Then she tear clothes and hair and cry a long time. Afterward she never leave that place. Old men say she still there, still crying in nighttime. Sometimes, old men say, little smoke come from island. But no Innuit go there. That island called Place of Bones.”

  After lunch they continued southeast down the stream. Toward evening the Koonok gave up all pretense of being a river and spread out into a maze of island-studded channels. Ohoto turned and twisted through this maze until he led the canoes out onto a larger body of water surrounded by low, barren muskeg plains. Only one small, mounded hill broke the bleak monotony of the landscape and Ohoto headed his kayak toward it and made a landing near its base.

  This was weird country. The low and featureless terrain, coupled with the formless and complicated outline of the lake, made it impossible to get any clear idea of what the place was like. Islands could not be distinguished from points, nor points from the main shore. Everything seemed to blend into one hazy, shapeless world with a nightmare quality of unreality.

  “I think I am lost already,” Awasin commented as he and Angeline landed their canoe and joined the others on the shore.

  “All Indian get twisted here,” Peetyuk replied. “Never mind. We climb little hill, then maybe you see straight.”

  Leaving Ohoto to start a supper fire, the four youngsters trudged up the gentle slope, wading almost knee deep in saturated muskeg. When they reached the low crest they turned about.

  In the last glittering rays of the fading sun Lake-in-Lake lay revealed to them. Its waters extended from the northward like two gigantic arms, embracing an almost perfect circlet of land which appeared to be fifteen or twenty miles in diameter. This circlet of land in turn enclosed another big lake in whose center lay a large island; and from the center of this island gleamed the water of yet another lake.

  “That where Innuit hide from Indians,” Peetyuk explained as he pointed to the island, “and this is hill where Itkilit see Pameo’s smoke.”

  Jamie shivered as he looked out over the flat, monochrome expanse of drowned lands, tundra and lakes where not a tree or a rocky ridge rose to break the monotony.

  “Come on,” he said, “before we start seeing smoke out there!” And he led the way back to the tiny campfire which glowed dimly against the darkening waters of the lake below.

  It was not much of a supper. Camp that night was on a tiny strip of gravel beach barely raised above the lake level. There was no other place to pitch the tent, since the whole country hereabouts was one vast drowned bog. There was only damp moss to burn, and it took Ohoto an hour to boil the kettle. There was no point in trying to cook anything, so the travelers contented themselves with a meal of cold bannock and hot tea before crawling into their robes. They slept badly, and all night long Peetyuk muttered and whimpered uneasily as if his dreams were haunted by the spirit of desolation which plagued this place.

  CHAPTER 17

  Anoeeuk

  THE NEXT MORNING DAWNED GRAY and somber. While a breakfast fire was being lit a fine gray drizzle had begun to fall and it was difficult to boil the kettle. The travelers were in a gloomy state of mind as they climbed into their canoes and set off across the open water through the drizzle.

  “You made enough noise last night to wake the dead,” Jamie remarked to Peetyuk some time after they had started. “What was the matter with you, anyhow?”

  “That bad joke, Jamie,” Peetyuk replied soberly, resting his paddle for a moment. “No talk of waking dead. Last night I think I hear Elaitutna talking. He say we stay in Lake-in-Lake. Leave our bones with Innuit who die here long ago.”

  Jamie, his nerves strained by the brooding atmosphere of the place, lost his temper.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Pete, lay off that stuff. What on earth can stop us from getting out of here?”

  “That can stop us, Jamie.” Peetyuk pointed toward the east where a gray, wavering wall of fog had appeared over the horizon and was advancing toward them.

  Ohoto had also seen the approaching wall of fog and now his kayak shot be
tween the two canoes while he shouted a warning. “He say hurry, hurry,” Peetyuk translated. “Hikikak come. Rain-fog make us blind, then anoeeuk, big wind, catch us. We not know where shore is. Big waves maybe sink canoes.”

  There was no mistaking the urgency in Ohoto’s voice. The two canoes followed him with all the speed the paddlers could muster as he drove his kayak toward the nearest piece of land—a low, rocky islet in the middle of the lake. Canoes and kayak seemed to fly over the leaden surface of the water, but fast as they went hikikak moved still faster. They were still half a mile from safety when the world vanished. It was as if they had paddled into a black and dripping tunnel. Awasin and Jamie, in the stern of their respective canoes, could barely see Angeline and Peetyuk in the bows. It was only by shouting that the canoes and kayak could keep touch with one another at all.

  The gray rain-fog was so thick as to be almost solid, but as yet there was no wind. The muffled reverberation of Ohoto’s voice guiding the two canoes was the only sound in the sinister silence.

  Really frightened, the four youngsters paddled with the strength of desperation. No one wasted breath trying to talk, but each of them secretly wondered how Ohoto could possibly manage to find the little islet now. Their hearts were pounding with effort and with apprehension when first Angeline and then Peetyuk yelled a warning as the two canoes surged over a ledge of rock that lay barely below the surface.

  Ohoto emerged out of the darkness and grasped first one canoe and then the other, lifting the bows up on the shore of the islet. The youngsters sprang ashore and at his snapped command picked up the canoes and carried them bodily to the center of the islet. Ohoto’s kayak was already there, and now he instructed them to fill the canoes with loose boulders, while he did the same with his kayak.