By the end of the day, we had stacked most of the new delivery away in the stores in the appropriate spots, the drums of gasoline had been moved to line up with the old stock, the coal piled behind the post building, the ammunition packed into its own special section and a home found for all that remained. Next morning we were able to turn our attention to the timber, which lay in higgledy-piggledy confusion beside the main store and was destined to provide two shacks for the company’s two Innuit employees.
Meanwhile Ooloo had got the stove going in the guardroom and had stretched her culinary abilities to the extent of heating up a delicacy known as ‘boiled dinner’, which came out of a tin. The guardroom was simply furnished. The square table from which we ate our meal served for all other purposes. There were no easy chairs but several basic wooden ones. A rickety bookcase with a cupboard underneath occupied a corner by the stove. A rather splendid Victrola phonograph filled the opposite corner to the bookcase. It had been retrieved from one of the shipwrecks, so they told me, which perhaps accounted for the haphazard selection of records, six or seven of them, varying from Mendelssohn’s incidental music to A Midsummer Night’s Dream to a bloodthirsty ballad about a certain Turk named ‘Abdul Abulbul Amir’.
An elaborate but not very effective radio set stood on the window ledge behind the Victrola. It seldom gave us any continuous session of entertainment without going off into hysterical oscillation. Alan was the only person who had enough patience to attempt to control the thing.
My most urgent need, those first days, was to get fitted out with a pair of sealskin boots. Ordinary shoes were not fitted to the rocky terrain, apart from being very uncomfortable. One of the Eskimos working for the company, Kilabuk by name, said that his wife would make me a pair. She duly appeared, measured my feet with a piece of string in the most casual manner possible and went home, returning the next morning with a pair of sealskin boots which fitted me perfectly. The upper parts, which came to the knee, were of ordinary skin with a few black patches sewn in to make a pattern, while the soles were cut from a larger, tougher skin from a big seal known as an ujuk. The boots were secured with drawstrings at the top which fastened below the knee. I paid her one dollar fifty cents, which included the cost of the materials.
Next day, Agiak, for that was her name, sent a message by her husband (who could speak some English) to say that she was going to wash my clothes and would make an arrangement with Ooloo to use the facilities of our kitchen one day a week. I was quite pleased about this for it had not been easy to keep my small stock of clothes clean, and although I had seized every opportunity, my inexpert efforts at laundering had resulted in my garments looking decidedly dingy. What did not please me very much was my discovery, a few weeks later, that the Eskimos had also decided that I was a child and had named me simply ‘The Boy’.
By the next afternoon, the ship-time sorting had been concluded and the workers lined up in the store to be paid off. As each one came up to the counter, Alan looked in the book in which the times had been recorded, to find the amount due then spread out the coins to represent the pay. These coins were imitation money, acting as dollars, half dollars and quarters, so that people could see exactly how much money they had to spend. The Eskimo would normally debate with his wife as to what they should buy, generally deciding upon food, tobacco, ammunition and perhaps something small for the children. If the women had any spare money of their own it usually went on print for a dress or some other item of clothing.
The Innuit could not earn very much during the summer season. Trapping did not start until the end of October, but before that time it was necessary to lay in good supplies of dog food, so that the hunters could devote as much time as possible to their traps during the six-month open season for foxes. This meant that they had to be allowed quite large amounts of credit, so they could obtain supplies of petrol, cartridges and other necessities for the summer seal and walrus hunting. Each hunter was assessed according to his past record and allowed to run up a debt of as many foxes as it seemed likely he would be able to catch fairly easily during the winter.
That afternoon, Alan took me down to the blubber house, scene of much of the activity after a whale drive. The place was as unromantic in appearance as in name. Inside one shed was a rendering machine into which the cut-up blubber was stuffed to be processed into oil which was then pumped from the machine to tanks outside. In another shed, the hides were stored at one end and meat which could be used to feed the dogs at the other. The hides had been shipped off on the Nascopie, but a pile of decomposing meat remained. This was my first encounter with high meat en masse and the smell was too much for me. I had to grasp my nose and retire in haste. I surmised that, as with Geordie’s and Ooloo’s relationship, this was another aspect of my new life that I would adjust to in time.
HOUSEKEEPING ON BAFFIN ISLAND had its complications. We had a plentiful supply of canned goods in the storeroom, but fresh food supplies for the winter then had to be thought about weeks in advance. Hunting was seasonal and whenever possible we took advantage of each season to lay in a stock for the future.
The fall was an especially good time to concentrate on winter food requirements. The plump young ducks gathered on the lakes before their southward flight. The salmon trout, fresh and firm after their summer in the sea, could still be taken on their way back to their home lake, as well as the seals, always with us, though in varying numbers. The deer often came down to feed near the coast before the onset of winter. Apart from this normal plenitude of game, there was another useful advantage at this time of year, which was that with the temperature well down, meat, birds and fish could be stored in good condition right through the winter until the following May.
Geordie had remained absent in spirit from us for a few days after the ship had gone, but Alan set about his rehabilitation with determination and succeeded in bringing him back to our world by the start of the following week, when a party of hunters came in from one of the southerly camps. They reported that they had seen deer feeding near the shoreline of one of the inlets they had passed on their way to the post. Geordie decided that it would be a good opportunity to lay in meat supplies and perhaps a few fish for the winter stock.
Kilabuk and Beevee, the two post servants, were instructed to prepare for the hunt, and then it was suggested at the last moment that I go with them as a reward for all the hard work since ship-time. The suggestion was meant kindly, and no doubt both Geordie and Alan thought I would jump at the chance of a hunting trip, but the idea did not really appeal to me.
My recent journeyings had temporarily satisfied the explorer in me, while I felt that I had put up with enough discomfort for one year, particularly after my long spell on the draughty kitchen floor at Port Burwell. Not that my present quarters could be described as luxurious, but now that my unpacking was completed, so that my own things were scattered about the room and one or two pictures were up on the wall, it had an air of home about it. However, it seemed churlish to refuse what was obviously intended as a sort of holiday, so I took the easy way out, even managing to work up a rather spurious air of excitement about the coming trip. My box was packed with the cooking utensils, such as Primus stove, frying pan, pots and kettles under the mistaken impression that I was acquainted with the use of these things. It looked as though I was going to learn the hard way as usual.
We set off one beautifully calm morning. The hills were mirrored in the waters of the fiord and the seals coming up for air sent the ripples spreading over the sea in ever widening circles. Just down below the post buildings, an inquisitive seal popped