CHAPTER XVI

THE BIGGEST GAME IN THE ARCTIC

We slept splendidly on that banquet, and, breaking out early the next morning, we pa.s.sed up the ice of Porter Bay to its head, then, taking to the land, crossed the five-mile-wide isthmus which separates Porter Bay from the head of James Ross Bay. Every foot of this route was familiar to me and rich with memories. Reaching the other side, we descended to the ice again and made rapid progress along the western sh.o.r.e. The dogs were lively and well-fed, trotting along with tails and ears erect; the weather was good, and the sun, now low on the horizon, cast long, fantastic shadows on the ice from every man and dog.

Suddenly the quick eyes of Egingwah spied a moving speck on the slope of the mountain to our left. "_Tooktoo_," he cried, and the party came to an instant standstill. Knowing that the successful pursuit of a single buck reindeer might mean a long run, I made no attempt to go after him myself; but I told Egingwah and Ooblooyah, my two stalwart, long-legged youngsters, to take the 40-82 Winchesters and be off. At the word they were flying across country, eager as dogs loosed from the traces, crouching low and running quickly. They took a course which would intercept the deer a little farther along the slope of the mountain.

I watched them through my gla.s.ses. The deer, when he caught sight of them, started off leisurely in another direction, looking back every now and then, suspiciously alert. When the deer halted suddenly and swung round facing them, it was clear that they had given the magic call taught by Eskimo father to Eskimo son through generation after generation, the imitation call at which every buck reindeer stops instantly--a peculiar hissing call like the spitting of a cat, only more lingering.

The two men leveled their rifles, and the magnificent buck went down in his tracks. The dogs had been watching, with heads and ears erect; but at the report of the rifles they swung sharply to the sh.o.r.e, and the next instant we were hurrying across the rocks and over the snow, the dogs dragging the sledges as if they had been empty.

When we reached the two hunters they were standing patiently beside the deer. I had told them not to disturb him, as some good photographs were desired. He was a beautiful creature, almost snow-white, with magnificent branching antlers. When the photographs were taken, all four of the men set to work, skinning and cutting him up.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FAMILY GROUP OF PEARY CARIBOU (RANGIFER PEARYI), ARRANGED BY "FROZEN TAXIDERMY" AND PHOTOGRAPHED BY FLASHLIGHT]

The scene is vivid in memory: the towering mountains on both sides of James Ross Bay, with the snow-covered foresh.o.r.e stretching down to the white surface of the bay; in the south the low-lying sun, a great glare of vivid yellow just showing through the gap of the divide, the air full of slowly dropping frost crystals; and the four fur-clad figures grouped around the deer, with the dogs and the sledges at a little distance--the only signs of life in that great white wilderness.

When the deer was skinned and dressed, the pelt was carefully rolled and put on one of the sledges, the meat was made into a pile for Wesharkoopsi to take back to the ship when he returned from Sail Harbor with empty sledge, and we pushed along the western sh.o.r.e of the bay; then, taking to the land again, still westward across this second peninsula and low divide, till we came to the little bight, called Sail Harbor by the English, on the western side of Parry Peninsula.

Here, out at the mouth of the harbor, under the lee of the protecting northern point, we made our second camp.

Wesharkoopsi deposited his load of supplies, and I wrote a note for Bartlett, who was west of us on his way to Cape Columbia. That night we had deer steak for supper--a feast for a king.

After a few hours' sleep we started, straight as the crow flies, across the eastern end of the great glacial fringe, heading for the mouth of Clements Markham Inlet. Reaching the mouth of the inlet, we kept on down its eastern sh.o.r.e, finding very good going; for the tides rising in the crack next the sh.o.r.e had saturated the overlying snow, then freezing had formed a narrow but smooth surface for the sledges.

A part of this sh.o.r.e was musk-ox country, and we scanned it carefully, but saw none of the animals. Some miles down the bay we came upon the tracks of a couple of deer. A little farther on we were electrified by a tense whisper from the ever sharp-sighted Egingwah:

"_Nanooksoah!_"

He was pointing excitedly toward the center of the fiord, and following the direction of his finger we saw a cream-colored spot leisurely moving toward the mouth of the fiord--a polar bear!

If there is anything that starts the blood l.u.s.t in an Eskimo's heart more wildly than the sight of a polar bear, I have yet to discover it.

Hardened as I am to arctic hunting, I was thrilled myself.

[Ill.u.s.tration: POLAR BEAR, ARRANGED BY "FROZEN TAXIDERMY" AND PHOTOGRAPHED BY FLASHLIGHT]

While I stood in front of the dogs with a whip in each hand, to keep them from dashing away--for the Eskimo dog knows the meaning of "_nanooksoah_" as well as his master--the three men were throwing things off the sledges as if they were crazy.

When the sledges were empty, Ooblooyah's team shot by me, with Ooblooyah at the up-standers. Egingwah came next, and I threw myself on his sledge as it flew past. Behind us came Koolatoonah with the third team. The man who coined the phrase "greased lightning" must have ridden on an empty sledge behind a team of Eskimo dogs on the scent of a polar bear.

The bear had heard us, and was making for the opposite sh.o.r.e of the fiord with prodigious bounds. I jumped to the up-standers of the flying sledge, leaving Egingwah to throw himself on it and get his breath, and away we went, wild with excitement, across the snow-covered surface of the fiord.

When we got to the middle the snow was deeper, and the dogs could not go so fast, though they strained ahead with all their might. Suddenly they scented the trail--and then neither deep snow nor anything else could have held them. Ooblooyah, with a crazy team and only himself at the up-standers, distanced the rest of us, arriving at the farther sh.o.r.e almost as soon as the leaping bear. He loosed his dogs immediately, and we could see the bear in the distance, followed by minute dots that looked hardly larger than mosquitoes swarming up the steep slope. Before our slower teams got to the sh.o.r.e, Ooblooyah had reached the top of the slope, and he signaled us to go around, as the land was an island.

When we reached the other side, we found where the bear had descended to the ice again and kept on across the remaining width of the fiord to the western sh.o.r.e, followed by Ooblooyah and his dogs.

A most peculiar circ.u.mstance, commented on by Egingwah as we flew along, was that this bear, contrary to the custom of bears in Eskimo land, did not stop when the dogs reached him, but kept right on traveling. This to Egingwah was almost certain proof that the great devil himself--terrible Tornarsuk--was in that bear. At the thought of chasing the devil, my sledge companion grew even more excited.

On the other side of the island the snow was deeper and our progress slower, and when we reached the western sh.o.r.e of the fiord, up which, as on the island, we had seen from a distance the bear and Ooblooyah's dogs slowly climbing, both we and our dogs were pretty well winded. But we were encouraged by hearing the barking of the free dogs up somewhere among the cliffs. This meant that the bear had at last been brought to bay. When we reached the sh.o.r.e our dogs were loosed from the sledges.

They swarmed up the hot trail, and we followed as best we could.

A little farther on we came to a deep canon, and as we could tell by the sounds, the dogs and the bear were at the bottom. But where we stood the walls were too precipitous for even an Eskimo to descend, and we could not see our quarry. He was evidently under some projecting ledge on our side.

Moving up the canon to find a place of descent, I heard Egingwah shout that the bear had started down the canon and was climbing up the other side. Hurrying back through the deep snow and over the rough rocks, I suddenly saw the beast, perhaps a hundred yards away, and raised my rifle. But I must have been too much winded to take good aim, for though I fired two shots at him the bear kept right on up the canon side.

Surely Tornarsuk was in him!

I found that I had given the stumps of both my feet--my toes were frozen off at Fort Conger in 1899--some severe blows against the rocks; and as they were complaining with vehemence, I decided not to follow the bear any farther along the steep boulder-strewn bluffs.

Handing my rifle to Egingwah, I told him and Koolatoonah to go after the bear while I went back down the bluffs to the sledges and followed along the bay ice. But before I had gone far along the bay ice shouting was heard in the distance, and soon an Eskimo appeared on a summit and waved his hand--a signal that they had bagged the bear.

Just ahead, and abreast of where the Eskimo had appeared, was the mouth of a ravine, and I stopped the sledge there and waited. In a little while my men appeared slowly working their way down the ravine. The dogs which had been in at the death were attached to the bear, as if he had been a sledge, and they were dragging him after them. It was an interesting scene: the steep and rocky ravine in its torn mantle of snow, the excited dogs straining ahead with their unusual burden, the inert cream-colored, blood-streaked form of the great bear, and the shouting and gesticulating Eskimos.

When they finally got the bear down to the sh.o.r.e, and while I was taking photographs of him, the Eskimos walked up and down excitedly discussing the now certain fact that the devil had been in this animal, or he never would have traveled as he did after the dogs overtook him. The subtleties of arctic demonology being beyond the grasp of any mere white man, I did not join in the argument as to whither the devil had betaken himself when the rifle of Ooblooyah laid low his fleshly tenement.

Our prize was soon skinned and cut up by the skilful knives of the Eskimos, the meat was piled on the sh.o.r.e for future parties to bring back to the ship, the bearskin was carefully folded on one of the sledges, and we returned to the place where we had first seen the bear, on the other side of the bay.

There we found the supplies which had been thrown from the sledges to lighten them for the bear chase; and as the men and dogs were tired out, and we were satisfied with the day's work, we camped on the spot. Our tent was unfolded and set up, the oil-stoves were lighted, and we had a plentiful supply of bear steak--all the juicier, perhaps, for the recent presence of Tornarsuk.

CHAPTER XVII

MUSK-OXEN AT LAST

On the next march we had gone only some six or seven miles when, rounding a point on the eastern sh.o.r.e of the Inlet, we saw black dots on a distant hillside.

"_Oomingmuksue!_" said Ooblooyah, excitedly, and I nodded to him, well pleased.

To the experienced hunter, with one or two dogs, seeing musk-oxen should be equivalent to securing them. There may be traveling over the roughest kind of rough country, with wind in the face and cold in the blood; but the end should always be the trophies of hides, horns, and juicy meat.

For myself, I never a.s.sociate the idea of sport with musk-oxen--too often in the years gone by the sighting of those black forms has meant the difference between life and death. In 1896, in Independence Bay, the finding of a herd of musk-oxen saved the lives of my entire party. On my way back from 87 6', in 1906, if we had not found musk-oxen on Nares Land, the bones of my party might now be bleaching up there in the great white waste.

When we saw the significant black dots in the distance, we headed for them. There were five close together, and another a little way off. When we got within less than a mile, two of the dogs were loosed. They were wild with excitement, for they also had seen the black dots and knew what they meant; and as soon as the traces were unfastened they were off--straight as the flight of a homing bee.

We followed, at our leisure, knowing that when we arrived the herd would be rounded up, ready for our rifles. A single musk-ox, when he sees the dogs, will make for the nearest cliff and get his back against it; but a herd of them will round up in the middle of a plain with tails together and heads toward the enemy. Then the bull leader of the herd will take his place outside the round-up, and charge the dogs. When the leader is shot, another takes his place, and so on.

A few minutes later I stood again, as I had stood on previous expeditions, with that bunch of s.h.a.ggy black forms, gleaming eyes and pointed horns before me--only this time it did not mean life or death.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HEAD OF BULL MUSK-OX KILLED ON PARRY PENINSULA]

Yet, as I raised my rifle, again I felt clutching at my heart that terrible sensation of life hanging on the accuracy of my aim; again in my bones I felt that gnawing hunger of the past; that aching l.u.s.t for red, warm, dripping meat--the feeling that the wolf has when he pulls down his quarry. He who has ever been really hungry, either in the Arctic or elsewhere, will understand this feeling. Sometimes the memory of it rushes over me in unexpected places. I have felt it after a hearty dinner, in the streets of a great city, when a lean-faced beggar has held out his hand for alms.

I pulled the trigger, and the bull leader of the herd fell on his haunches. The bullet had found the vulnerable spot under the fore shoulder, where one should always shoot a musk-ox. To aim at the head is a waste of ammunition.