NANOOK!
That night in Jones Sound, after getting the walrus, was very
beautiful. There was a great big full moon and a very pink and golden
sunset. The sun really went down that night, although of course it
stayed quite light. And it was the first time we had seen the moon for
a long time. Both the sunset and the moon, one in the west, the other
in the east, lasted all the night, reflected over a very thin coat of
silvery new ice.
Dad and I stayed up all night. Dad shot a bearded seal on a pan, a
pretty good shot getting him right through the head. Then Ralph got out
on the pan and put a strap around the seal and we hoisted him on board
with a burton and were off again. A little while later we saw another
big one on a pan and Dad tried a long shot and missed, shooting high.
On the second shot he hit him, but the seal wriggled off and came to
the surface in a few minutes. Dan and Dad went out in the skiff and
tried to get him but they would go close to the place where he was and
he would go down and come up at another place. There was no use
shooting him unless they got close enough to put a seal hook in him,
for he would just sink.
After a while they gave up and started back. Then three seal came right
up near them, popping out of the water to see what it was all about.
But they dodged back too quick for a shot.
The new ice was forming quickly and the barometer was dropping. So we
began to move out to the mouth of the Sound, as Cap’n Bob wanted to get
out of there before we might have trouble with the ice in case of a
storm. Of course if it had been earlier in the season we would have
liked to stay in Jones Sound, where there certainly was good hunting.
We watched and watched, but saw nothing more. We were working easterly
following along the edge of big fields of floe ice, that is, floating
pans, some of them just little pieces a few yards square, and others
perhaps a hundred feet or more, or a number of pans floating about
together, partly joined by new ice. You could almost see this new ice
forming. The thermometer I suppose was about 25 degrees, or perhaps
colder. Little crystals gathered together in the quiet water and then
there was a thin sheet of rubbery ice. As the boat moved through it the
surface held with a lot of strength. It would wave as the ripples from
the bow worked out under it, and took a lot of pressure before it
actually broke.
It was just about four o’clock in the morning and I was going to turn
in. I was cold. But it had been fun staying up and I don’t think I ever
saw anything so beautiful as that light on the ice and the calm grey
water, with the snowy mountains and dark cliffs and white glaciers on
both sides of the sound.
Dan was still working, cleaning up his walrus head. Dad was at the bow.
Ralph was at the wheel, and Jim on lookout.
“Bear! Bear!”
Suddenly Ralph called that out, in a low voice.
Jim rang for the engine to stop and at once the Captain, who was below
getting a nap after being up about twenty-four hours, came on deck.
From where we were all that could be seen of the bear was a small
yellow spot away over on the other side of a big pan. I was told to go
aloft and keep my eyes on him and to yell if he went into the water. If
a bear gets into the water it is pretty easy to get him, for he doesn’t
swim too fast to catch. But if he gets to land he is likely to get
away. Cap’n Bob was afraid he might start across the big pan one way,
as we went round the other.
Anyway, the Morrissey went around the pan and nosed up, very quietly,
to within about thirty yards of him. The bear held his nose high in the
air and then came toward the ship making a very pretty jump across some
young ice. He seemed not a bit afraid, only very interested in this
strange new huge animal that had come to bother him.
Cap’n Bob wanted to be sure for us to get this first bear, so several
took a shot together. The rifles of Dad and Dan and Doc all blazed out
together and later we found that each shot hit and that any one of them
apparently would have been fatal.
Jim and Ralph jumped out on the ice from the bowsprit and made a line
fast to the dead bear and he was hoisted aboard and laid up forward,
the rest of the deck being pretty full of walrus meat and skins and
heads. About that time we looked pretty messy and like a butcher shop,
but right away, as the barometer was falling and it felt like snow, all
hands went to work and kept at it until breakfast, by which time things
were pretty shipshape.
After that, by the way, we had a wonderful assortment of meat. There
was walrus heart and meat, and bear meat hanging in the rigging and a
big bunch of auks and murres hanging in the shrouds, and also some fine
seal meat. Some of this seal we ate at dinner that next day, boiled not
very much, and it certainly was fine. So for some time we had a pretty
fine meat diet.
Right away, too, Billy boiled out a couple of bottles of bear oil for
Dad and Rasmussen. This is great stuff for shoes and leather.
And speaking of bear, I now have two complete outfits of Eskimo
clothing. The northern kind has nanookies, or bear pants. Nette made
these on board from a part of a skin Dr. Rasmussen gave Dad, and at
Karnah when we stopped the Eskimo women there chewed it up in their
teeth so that the hide became very soft and easy to work. Then there
are sealskin boots with rabbit fur inside and a sealskin netcha or
jacket with a hood to go over the head. It is a wonderfully warm and
comfortable rig, this northern outfit.
This bear of ours, they said, was a four-year-old. He measured seven
feet and four inches long and they guessed he weighed close to six
hundred pounds. Later on Fred fixed up the skin and the head to be
taken back and made into a rug. I worked on the skull, which takes
quite a lot of work to clean all the flesh off.
So that made a pretty exciting finish to a really wonderful day. We
were sorry for just one thing. There wasn’t enough light at that time
of the morning or late night to get any pictures of the bear. Anyway,
in about eight hours we had got walrus and bearded seal and then the
pride of it all, Nanook the bear.
And a funny part of it is that just the night before, Dad had sent a
radio to Mother saying that pretty soon he hoped to find a bear on one
of the ice pans, and that his skin was mortgaged to make a rug for my
little brother June to play on in front of the fire this winter.
Then so soon after that we got the bear and the rug for Junie!