* * *
Before they see the sledge, they hear the sledge dogs’ hectic barking. Sumner thinks at first that he is dreaming of Castlebar and Michael Duigan’s famous pack of lurchers coursing hare, but when the other men begin to rouse and mumble, he realizes that they must hear it too. He wraps a scarf tight about his head and face and goes outside. Looking west, he sees a pair of Yaks coming in at a pace across the sea ice, their brindled dogs fanned out in front of them, their rawhide whip, antenna-like, flicking and wafting in the frigid air. Cavendish rushes out of the tent, then Otto and the rest of the men. They watch the sledge gradually approaching, appearing ever more solid and real as it does so. When it reaches them, Cavendish steps forwards and asks the Yaks for food.
“Meat,” he says loudly, “fish.” He makes crude feeding gestures with his fingers and mouth. “Hungry,” he says, pointing at his own stomach first and then the stomachs of the other men.
The Yaks look at him and grin. They are small and dark-skinned both. They have flat gypsy faces and filthy black hair down to their shoulders. Their anoraks and boots are stitched from untanned caribou and their britches from bear fur. They point back at the loaded sledge. The dogs are barking madly all around.
“Trade,” they tell him.
Cavendish nods.
“Show me,” he says.
They undo the lashings on the sledge and show him a frozen seal carcass and what looks like the hind part of a walrus. Cavendish calls Otto over and the two men briefly confer. Otto goes back into the tent and comes out with two blubber knives and a hand ax. The Yaks examine them carefully. They give the ax back but keep both the knives. They show Cavendish an ivory harpoon head and some soapstone carvings, but he waves them off.
“All we want is the food,” he says.
They agree to swap the frozen seal carcass for the two knives and a length of whale line. Cavendish gives the meat to Otto, and Otto takes it inside the tent, hacks it into lumps with the hand ax, and drops the lumps onto the embers of the fire. They hiss a moment, and then, after a few minutes longer, begin to broil and give off steam. While the men wait eagerly to eat, the Yaks tether and feed their dogs. Sumner hears them outside, laughing and chattering away in their own rapid, jerky tongue.
“If they give us seals,” he says to Cavendish, “we can live until the spring. We can eat the meat and burn the blubber.”
Cavendish nods.
“Aye,” he says. “I need a parley with them aboriginal fuckers. I need to strike up a good bargain. Problem is, they know we’re fucked already. Listen to ’em out there, laughing and joking with themselves.”
“You think they’d let us starve to death?”
Cavendish sniffs.
“Happily they would,” he says. “Heathenish fuckers such as them int burdened with the Christian virtues as men like us are. If they don’t fancy what we have to offer, they’ll be gone just as quick as they arrived.”
“Offer the rifles,” Sumner suggests. “Ten dead seals for each rifle. Three rifles is thirty seals. We can live off that.”
Cavendish thinks a moment, then nods.
“I’ll tell them twelve,” he says, “twelve per rifle. Though I honestly doubt the savage bastards can even count that high.”
After they have eaten, Cavendish goes back outside, and Sumner goes with him. They show the Yaks one of the rifles and then point back at the tent and make feeding gestures. The Yaks examine the rifle, heft it, peer along the barrel. Cavendish loads a cartridge and lets the elder Yak shoot it off.
“That there’s a fucking good weapon,” Cavendish says.
The Yaks talk to each other for a while, then slowly reexamine the rifle. When they finish, Cavendish leans down and makes twelve short marks in the snow. He points to the rifle, then he points to the marks and then to the tent. He makes the same feeding gesture as before.
For a minute, the Yaks say nothing. One of them reaches into his pocket, takes out a pipe, and stuffs and lights it. The other smiles briefly, says something, then bends down and rubs out six of the marks.
Cavendish purses his lips, shakes his head, and then slowly reinscribes the same six marks.
“I won’t be jewed down by no fucking Esquimaux,” he says to Sumner.
The Yaks look displeased. One of them frowns, says something to Cavendish, and then quickly with the toe of his boot rubs out the same six marks again and then rubs out another.
“Shit,” Sumner whispers.
Cavendish laughs scornfully.
“Only five,” he says. “Five fucking seals for a rifle. Do I honestly look like that much of a cunt?”
“If they leave us now, we’ll starve to death,” Sumner reminds him.
“We’ll survive without them,” he says.
“No we fucking won’t.”
The Yaks look back at them indifferently, point down at the five marks on the ground, then hold out the rifle as if well prepared to give it back. Cavendish looks at the rifle steadily but doesn’t reach for it. He shakes his head and spits.
“Gouging ice-nigger bastards,” he says.
* * *
The Yaks build themselves a small snow house fifty yards away from the tent, then mount the sledge and go back out onto the ice to hunt. It is dark when they return. The black sky is dense with stars and upon its speckled blank the borealis unfurls, bends back, reopens again like a vast and multicolored murmuration. Drax, still in manacles, but left unguarded now since they are all, in effect, imprisoned by the shared calamity, watches them unship their kill. He listens to the throttled grunting of their caveman speech, sniffs, then smells, even through the frigid air, the sour reek of their grease-streaked armature. He weighs them up awhile — their height, their weight, the speed and implication of their various shiftings — then walks towards them, clinking as he goes.
“Ye got two nice fat-looking ones there,” he says, pointing at the two dead seals. “I can help you butcher ’em if you’d like.”
Although they have been out hunting all day, the two men seem as fresh and lively as before. They look at him a moment, then point at his chains and laugh. Drax laughs with them, then rattles the chains and laughs again.
“Them cunts in there don’t trust me, see,” he says. “They think I’m dangerous.” He makes a distended, monster face and claws the air to illustrate his meaning. The Yaks laugh louder still. Drax reaches down and takes one of the dead seals by the tail.
“Let me butcher this one for ye,” he says again, making a cutting gesture along its belly as he does so. “I can do it easy.”
They shake their heads and wave him off. The elder takes a knife, leans down, and quickly cuts open and guts the two seals. He leaves the parti-colored giblets, purple, pink, and gray, steaming in a pile on the snow, then separates the blubber from the meat. Drax watches on. He smells the ferric blood-tang of the innards and feels the drool begin to puddle in his mouth.
“I’ll haul that over for ye if you’d like it,” he says.