After Oogruk eased himself into the opening, he pulled the upper part of the sealskin about his waist and tied it carefully, so that no water could seep through even if the kayak turned upside down. If that happened, all Oogruk would have to do would be to work his paddle furiously and the kayak would right itself. Of course, if a lone man lashed into the opening was foolhardy enough to tackle a mature walrus, the beast's tusks might puncture the covering, throw the man into the sea, and drown him, for Eskimos could not swim; besides, the weight of his bulky clothing, if it became waterlogged, would drag him down.
When the whale-hunting umiak vanished in the distance, Oogruk tested his aspen paddle and started out for the seas east of Pelek. He had little confidence that he would find any seals and even less that he would know how to handle a big one if he did. He was merely scouting, and if he happened to sight a whale surfacing in the distance, or a walrus lazing along, he would mark the beast' heading and inform the others when they returned, for if Eskimos knew for certain that a whale or a really big walrus was in a given area, they could track it down.
He saw no seals, and this did not entirely disappoint him, for he was not yet sure of himself as a hunter, and he wanted first to familiarize himself with the tricks of this particular kayak before he took it among a herd of seals. He contented himself with paddling toward that distant land on the other side of the sea which he had sometimes seen on clear days. No one from Pelek had ever sailed to the opposite shore, but everyone knew it existed, for they had seen its low hills gleaming in the afternoon sun.
He was well out from shore, some miles south of where the umiak must be by now, when he saw off to his right a sight which paralyzed him. It was the full length of a black whale riding the surface of the water, its huge tail carelessly propelling it forward. It was enormous, much bigger than any Oogruk had ever seen on the beach when the men butchered their catch. Of course, he was not an expert judge, for the hunters of Pelek had caught only three whales in the last seven years. But this one was huge, no one could deny that, and it was imperative that Oogruk alert his companions to the whale's presence, for he alone against this great beast was powerless. Six of the best men in Siberia would be required to subdue it.
But how could he notify his father-in-law? Having no other choice, he decided to stay with the whale as it lazed its way north, trusting that its course must sooner or later intersect the umiak's.
This was a delicate maneuver, for if the whale felt threatened by a strange object in its vicinity, it could with three or four flips of its mighty tail swim over and collapse the kayak or bite it in two, killing both the man and his frail canoe. So all that long afternoon Oogruk, alone in his boat, trailed the whale, seeking to remain invisible, cheering when the whale spouted, showing that it was still there.
Twice the great beast sounded, then disappeared, and now Oogruk sweated, for his prey might surface at any spot, might even come up under the kayak accidentally, or be lost forever in one strenuous underwater plunge. But the whale had to breathe, and after a prolonged absence, the huge dark creature resurfaced, spouted high in the air, and continued its lazy way north.
About an hour before the sun swept low to the north in its reluctance to set, Oogruk calculated that if the men in the umiak had continued in their proposed direction, they must now be well to the northeast of where the whale was heading, and if so, they would miss it completely. So he decided that he must cut across the whale's path, paddle furiously, and hope to overtake the six hunters.
But now he had to determine which method of getting to the east of the whale promised the greatest likelihood of success, for he must not only avoid inciting an attack, which would destroy both him and the kayak, but he must also move in such a way as to conserve maximum time and distance. Remembering that whales, according to tradition, could see poorly and hear acutely, he decided to speed ahead, making as little noise as possible, and cut directly across the whale's path, doing so as far in front as his paddling would allow.
This was a dangerous maneuver, but he had far more than his own safety to consider.
From his earliest days he had been taught that the supreme responsibility of a boy or man was to bring a whale to the beach so that his village could feast upon it, and use the huge bones for building and the precious baleen for the scores of uses to which its suppleness and strength could be put. To catch a whale was an occasion which might happen only once in a lifetime, and he was in position to do just that, for if he led the hunters to the whale, and they killed it, the honors would be shared with him for his steadfastness in trailing the great beast across the open seas.
In this moment of vital decision, when he was about to throw himself across the very face of the whale, he was sustained by a curious fact, for his doomed father who had left him so little did provide him with a talisman of extraordinary power and beauty. It was a small circular disk, white and with a diameter of about two narrow fingers. It had been made of ivory from one of the few walruses his father had ever killed, and it had been carved with fine runic figures depicting the ice-filled ocean and the creatures that lived within it, sharing it with the Eskimos.
Oogruk had watched his father carve the disk and smooth the edges so that it would fit properly, and since both realized from the beginning that when finished, this disk was to be something special, it was in no way foolish when his father predicted:
'Oogruk, this will be a lucky one.' Accepting this without question, the boy of nine had not winced when his father took a sharp knife made of whalebone, pierced his lower lip, and stuffed the incision with grass. As it healed and the opening grew wider, with larger plugs of wood inserted each month, his lower lip would form a narrow band of skin surrounding and defining a circular hole.
Halfway through this process, the hole became infected, as so often happened in these cases, and Oogruk lay on the mud floor stricken with fever. For three bad days and nights, while his mind wandered, his mother applied herbs to his lip and packed warm rocks against his feet. Then the fever subsided, and when he was again able to take notice, the boy saw with satisfaction that the hole had mended to just about the required size.
On a day he would never forget, Oogruk was taken to a sinister hut at the edge of the village and ceremoniously led inside one of the filthiest, most jumbled places he had ever seen. The skeleton of a man dangled from one mud wall, the skull of a seal from another. Dirty pouches sewn from sealskin lay about the floor beside a collection of stinking skins on which the occupant slept. He was the shaman of Pelek village, the holy man who uttered the prayers that controlled the oceans and conversed with the spirits who brought whales to the headland. When he loomed out of the shadows to confront Oogruk, he was formidable tall, gaunt, with sunken eyes and missing teeth, his hair extremely long and matted with a filth that had not been removed in a dozen years. Uttering incomprehensible sounds, he took the ivory disk, looked at its elegance with obvious astonishment that a man as poor as Oogruk's father should possess such a treasure, then pulled down the boy's lower lip and with befouled fingers pressed the disk into the hole. The hardened scar tissue adjusted painfully to pinch the disk firmly in the position it would occupy for as long as Oogruk lived.
The insertion had been painful; it had to be if the disk was to stay in place, but when the beautiful object was properly seated, all could see, and some with envy, that the cross-eyed boy Oogruk who had so little was henceforth going to possess one treasure: the finest labret on the eastern shore of Siberia.
Now, as he sped his kayak across the path of the oncoming whale, he sucked in his lower lip, taking courage from the reassuring presence of the magical labret. When his tongue felt the ivory, carved on both faces, he could trace the talismanic whale carved there, and he was convinced that its companionship would assure him good fortune, and he was right, for as he sped past, so close that the whale could have made one thrust of its gigantic tail and leaped ahead to crush both kayak and man, the lazy beast kept its head underwat
er, not deigning to bother with whatever small thing was moving through the seas so close to it.
But when the kayak had safely passed, the whale lifted its huge head, spouted great volumes of water, and casually opened its mouth as if yawning, and Oogruk, looking back toward the sound of the spouting, saw how enormous the mouth was that he had escaped, and its size appalled him. As a young man he had through the years participated in the butchering of four whales, and two of them had been large, but none had a head or a mouth as big as this. For almost a minute the cavernous mouth remained open, a black cavelike recess that could have crushed an entire kayak, and then almost drowsily it closed, a desultory spout of water came forth, and the massive whale sank once more below the surface of the water, still headed toward where Oogruk suspected his companions in their umiak would be waiting. Clicking his lucky labret against his teeth, he hurried ahead.
He was now to the east of the whale, heading north, and he was so far at sea that the headlands of home were no longer visible, nor was the opposite shore. He was alone on the vast northern sea, with nothing to sustain him but his lucky labret and the possibility that he might help his people catch that trailing whale.
Since it was midsummer, he had no fear of a descending darkness in which the whale might be lost, for as he paddled he could from time to time see over his left shoulder the plodding creature, and in the silvery light of endless summer he remained reassured that the great beast was traveling north with him, but whenever he did see the whale, he saw again that monstrous mouth, that black cavern which bespoke the other world about which the shaman sometimes warned when he was in one of his trances. To travel north in the whispering grayness of an arctic midnight while a dark whale kept pace in the deep billows of the sea was an experience which tested the courage of a man, and Oogruk, even though he was determined to comport himself well, might have turned back had not the presence of his labret reassured him.
At dawn the whale was still heading north, and before the sun was much above the horizon where it had lingered through the night, Oogruk thought he saw off to the northeast something that could be an umiak, and he quit monitoring the whale and started paddling frantically toward the supposed boat. He was correct in his guess, for at one point both he and the umiak rode the crest of waves, enabling him to see the six men rowing and they to see him. Waving his paddle, he gave the sign which indicated that a whale had been sighted, and with pointing directions he indicated its course.
With surprising speed, the umiak cut westward, intending to intercept the leviathan and ignoring Oogruk completely, for it was the whale that was important, not the messenger. Oogruk understood, and with his own strokes he set his frail kayak on a course which would overtake the umiak just as it reached the whale, and now a three-part drama unfolded, with the men in the larger boat panting with excitement, the whale moving majestically ahead, oblivious of the danger about to assault it, and lone Oogruk paddling furiously, uncertain as to what his role in the forthcoming fray was going to be. And all about, in all directions, lay the gently heaving arctic sea, devoid of spring icebergs, devoid of birds, devoid of headlands and gulfs and bays. There in the vast loneliness of the north, these creatures of the north prepared for battle.
When the umiak first came in sight of the whale the men could not appreciate the size of this monster; they saw its head at times, its tail at other times, but they never saw the complete Length of the beast, so they were able to convince themselves that this was just one more ordinary whale. However, when they drew closer, the whale, still unaware of their presence, suddenly breached; that is, for reasons unknown it arched itself completely clear of the water, exposing its entire body. Then, exercising tremendous power, it turned on its side as if wishing to scratch its back, and thundered back into the sea with a gigantic splash. Now the six Eskimos realized they were facing a master whale that, if it could be taken, would feed their village for many months.
Oogruk's father-in-law needed to give only a few orders. The inflated seal bladders, which would impede the whale's progress if they managed to harpoon it, were made ready. Each of the four rowers brought close to hand the spears they would use when they closed upon the whale, and in the prow of the umiak tall and handsome Shaktoolik stood erect, wedged his knees against the gunwales of the boat, his strong hands grasping the harpoon which he would thrust into the vitals of the whale. Far behind trailed Oogruk.
The harpoon which Shaktoolik tended so carefully was a powerful affair, its long shaft tipped with sharpened flint followed immediately by hooklike barbs carved from walrus ivory. But even this lethal weapon would prove ineffective if thrown, like a spear, with an overhand motion, for the force thus generated would be insufficient to penetrate the whale's thick, blubber-protected skin; the miracle of the Eskimo system was not the harpoon but the harpoon throwing-stick, which ingeniously imparted three or four times the penetrating power to the barbed shaft.
A throwing-stick was a carefully shaped, thin length of wood about two and a half feet long, so devised as to increase considerably the length of a man's arm. The rear end, which contained a kind of slot in which the haft of the harpoon rested, snuggled in the crooked elbow of the thrower. The length of the stick ran along the man's arm, extending well beyond his fingertips, and it was against this wood that the harpoon rested. Toward the front end there was a finger rest enabling the man to retain control over both the harpoon and the stick, and close nearby a smoothed place at which the thumb could steady the long harpoon as the man prepared to throw. Steadying himself, the harpooner drew his right arm bearing the stick as far back as possible, checking to ensure that the butt end was secure in its slot.
Then, with a wide sweep of his right arm, parallel to the surface of the sea and not up and down as one might expect, he snapped his arm swiftly forward, released his hold on the nestled harpoon at the precise moment, and, thanks to the doubled length this gave his arm, released the flint-tipped harpoon at the whale with such force that it could drive through the thickest skin. In this intricate method the man slung the harpoon much as little David, twelve thousand years later, would sling his rock against big Goliath. It sometimes required years of practice before accuracy was obtained, but once the various tricks were synchronized, this slingshot harpoon became a deadly weapon.
It seems unbelievable that primitive man could have invented such a curious, complicated instrument, but hunters on various continents did: the atlatl it would be named after the example the Europeans encountered in Mexico, but all versions were similar. Somehow, men with no knowledge of engineering or dynamics deduced that their harpoons would be trebly effective if they were loaded into their atlatls and slung forward instead of being thrown. How awesome the intellectual force of this intricate discovery, but in assessing it, one must remember that for a hundred thousand years men spent most of their waking hours trying to kill animals for food; they had no occupation more important, so perhaps it is not remarkable that after twenty or thirty thousand years of experimentation they discovered that the best way to deliver a harpoon was with a sideways slingshot motion, almost like an awkward child throwing a ball.
On this day the Eskimo leader had calculated perfectly his approach to the target, and from a position a little to the right and close behind the lumbering beast, he planned to flash ahead on an angle which would enable Shaktoolik to strike at a vital spot just behind the right ear and thus provide the two paddlers on the left-hand side an opportunity to unleash their spears also, with the headman remaining available in the stern to plunge his spear somewhat behind the others. Using this maneuver, the four Eskimos on the left-hand side of the umiak would have a chance to wound this enormous creature, perhaps not mortally but certainly deeply enough to render it vulnerable to their subsequent attacks and ultimate victory. A battle of profound strategy was under way.
But as the umiak bore down, the whale became aware of its danger, and with an automatic response which astounded the men, wheeled on its midsection a
nd swung its huge tail viciously. The leader, anticipating the destruction of his umiak if the tail struck, heeled his craft over, but this left the man in front, Shaktoolik with his harpoon, exposed, and as the tail swept past, one fluke struck Shaktoolik in the head and shoulders, sweeping him into the sea. Then, in what could only have been an accidental blow, the mighty tail smashed down, crushing the harpooner, driving him unconscious deep below the surface of the sea, where he perished. The whale had won the first encounter.
As soon as the headman grasped the altered situation, he acted instinctively. Drawing away from the whale, he looked about the sea for Oogruk, and when he saw the kayak just where it should have been, he moved the umiak in that direction and cried: 'Aboard!'
Oogruk was eager to join the fight, but he also knew that the craft in which he rode was the property of his father-in-law: 'The kayak?'
'Leave it,' the headman said without hesitation. Any boat was valuable, and this one was his, but the capture of the whale was of paramount importance, so the kayak was turned adrift as Oogruk climbed into the umiak.
It had long been understood in this crew that if either Shaktoolik or the headman was killed or lost, the principal rower, the one fore and left, would assume that vacant role, and this he did, leaving his own post empty. At first Oogruk assumed that he would move into that seat, but his father-in-law, knowing his limited skill, quickly reshuffled the men, leaving vacant the left rear seat, where Oogruk would sit under his direct supervision. There he could do the least harm, and in this new configuration, with almost no thought to the dead Shaktoolik, the Eskimos resumed their chase of the whale.
The leviathan, now aware that it was under attack, adopted various stratagems to protect itself, but since it was an air-breathing animal and not a fish, it had to surface from time to time, and when it did, these pestiferous little creatures in their boat tormented it. And they kept doing so, regardless of the fact that they were having no success, because they knew that if they could keep the whale reacting to their intrusions, they could in time wear it down and develop that critical moment when, tired from fleeing and exhausted by this constant sounding and spouting, it would leave itself vulnerable.