East of Desolation. Jack Higgins

I said. ‘An Eskimo word. It means big with child.’

      She laughed harshly. ‘Well, that’s Freudian if you like,’ she said, and turned and led the way out through the gap in the wall.

      Just like that she had changed again, back into the tough, brittle young woman I had first encountered in the dining room of the hotel at Frederiksborg, safe behind a hard protective shell that could only be penetrated if she wished, and I felt strangely depressed as I followed her.

       3

      Off the southern tip of Disko we came across another two Portuguese schooners moving along nicely in a light breeze, followed by a fleet of fourteen-foot dories, their yellow and green sails vivid in the bright sunlight.

      We drifted across the rocky spine of the island and dropped into the channel beyond that separates it from the mainland. I took the Otter down, losing height rapidly and a few moments later found what I was looking for.

      Narquassit was typical of most Eskimo fishing villages on that part of the coast. There were perhaps fifteen or sixteen gaily painted wooden houses strung out along the edge of the shore and two or three whaleboats and a dozen kayaks had been beached just above the high water mark.

      The Stella was anchored about fifty yards off-shore, a slim and graceful looking ninety-foot diesel motor yacht, her steel hull painted dazzling white with a scarlet trim. When I banked, turning into the wind for my landing, someone came out of the wheelhouse and stood at the bridge rail looking up at us.

      ‘Is that Jack?’ she asked as we continued our turn. ‘I didn’t get a good look.’

      I shook my head. ‘Olaf Sørensen – he’s a Greenlander from Godthaab. Knows this coast like the back of his hand. Jack signed him on as pilot for the duration of the trip.’

      ‘Is he carrying his usual crew?’

      ‘They all came with him if that’s what you mean. An engineer, two deck hands and a cook – they’re American. And then there’s the steward – he’s a Filipino.’

      ‘Tony Serafino?’

      ‘That’s him.’

      She was obviously pleased. ‘There’s an old friend for a start.’

      I went in low once just to check the extent of the pack ice, but there was nothing to get excited about and I banked steeply and dropped her into the water without wasting any more time. I taxied towards the shore, let down the wheels and ran up on to dry land as the first of the village dogs arrived on the run. By the time I’d switched off the engine and opened the side door, the rest of them were there, forming a half-circle, stiff-legged and angry, howling their defiance.

      A handful of Eskimo children appeared and drove them away in a hail of sticks and stones. The children clustered together and watched us, the brown Mongolian faces solemn and unsmiling, the heavy fur-lined Parkas they wore exaggerating their bulk so that they looked like little old men and women.

      ‘They don’t look very friendly,’ Ilana Eytan commented.

      ‘Try them with these.’ I produced a brown paper bag from my pocket.

      She opened it and peered inside. ‘What are they?’

      ‘Mint humbugs – never been known to fail.’

      But already the children were moving forward, their faces wreathed in smiles and she was swamped in a forest of waving arms as they swarmed around her.

      I left her to it and went to the water’s edge to meet the whaleboat from the Stella which was already half-way between the ship and the shore. One of the deckhands was at the tiller and Sørensen stood in the prow, a line ready in his hands. As the man in the stern cut the engine, the whaleboat started to turn, drifting in on the waves and Sørensen threw the line. I caught it quickly, one foot in the shallows, and started to haul. Sørensen joined me and a moment later we had the whaleboat around and her stern beached.

      He spoke good English, a legacy of fifteen years in the Canadian and British merchant marines and he used it on every available opportunity.

      ‘I thought you might run into trouble when the mist came down.’

      ‘I put down at Argamask for an hour.’

      He nodded. ‘Nothing like knowing the coast. Who’s the woman?’

      ‘A friend of Desforge’s or so she says.’

      ‘He didn’t tell me he was expecting anyone.’

      ‘He isn’t,’ I said simply.

      ‘Like that, is it?’ He frowned. ‘Desforge isn’t going to like this, Joe.’

      I shrugged. ‘She’s paid me in advance for the round trip. If he doesn’t want her here she can come back with me tonight. I could drop her off at Søndre if she wants to make a connection for Europe or the States.’

      ‘That’s okay by me as long as you think you can handle it. I’ve got troubles enough just keeping the Stella in once piece.’

      I was surprised and showed it. ‘What’s been going wrong?’

      ‘It’s Desforge,’ Sørensen said bitterly. ‘The man’s quite mad. I’ve never known anyone so hell-bent on self-destruction.’

      ‘What’s he been up to now?’

      ‘We were up near Hagamut the other day looking for polar bear, his latest obsession, when we met some Eskimo hunters out after seal in their kayaks. Needless to say Desforge insisted on joining them. On the way back it seems he was out in front on his own when he came across an old bull walrus on the ice.’

      ‘And tried to take it alone?’ I said incredulously.

      ‘With a harpoon and on foot.’

      ‘What happened?’

      ‘It knocked him down with its first rush and snapped the harpoon. Luckily one of the hunters from Hagamut came up fast and shot it before it could finish him off.’

      ‘And he wasn’t hurt?’

      ‘A few bruises, that’s all. He laughed the whole thing off. He can go to hell his own way as far as I’m concerned, but I’m entitled to object when he puts all our lives at risk quite needlessly. There’s been a lot of pack ice in the northern fjords this year – it really is dangerous – and yet he ordered me to take the Stella into the Kavangar Fjord because Eskimo hunters had reported traces of bear in that region. The ice was moving down so fast from the glacier that we were trapped for four hours. I thought we were never going to get out.’

      ‘Where is he now?’

      ‘He left by kayak about two hours ago with a party of hunters from Narquassit. Apparently one of them sighted a bear yesterday afternoon in an inlet about three miles up the coast. He had to pay them in advance to get them to go with him. They think he’s crazy.’

      Ilana Eytan managed to disentangle herself and joined us and I made the necessary introductions.

      ‘Jack isn’t here at the moment,’ I told her. ‘I think that under the circumstances I’d better go looking for him. You can wait on the Stella.’

      ‘Why can’t I come with you?’

      ‘I wouldn’t if I were you. Apparently, he’s finally caught up with that bear he’s been chasing. No place for a woman, believe me.’

      ‘Fair enough,’ she said calmly. ‘I’ve never been exactly a devotee of Jack’s great outdoors cult.’

      The deckhand was already transferring the stores from the Otter to the whaleboat and I turned to Sørensen. ‘I’ll go out to the Stella with you and I’ll take the whaleboat