The Last of the Gentlemen Adventurers: Coming of Age in the Arctic. Edward Maurice Beauclerk

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СКАЧАТЬ motor boat broke down? How could a sound knowledge of history stop me from being sick when someone came to see me with a bone sticking out of their arm and blood everywhere? Would the promise that the form master had assured me I had shown in English give me any confidence to prepare a meal for the weary traveller?

      These fears subsided when the final documents arrived for my mother and sister to sign for their passage to New Zealand. Amid the excitement at the prospect of an early release, my natural optimism reasserted itself. When the last day came, it seemed unlikely that we should ever spend time together in England again, so the three of us took a picnic and hired a boat to laze down a river through the quiet Somerset countryside, where we had passed many happy hours in days gone by.

      That night I said goodbye to my grandmother. She seemed much affected. She said that she wished that she had had more money so that we could have stayed in England and not gone so far away, but the family fortunes had dwindled and there was nothing she could do. She gave me a little package wrapped up in tissue paper. It contained two spoons and a fork, silver with her family crest stamped on the handles. This was to remind me of all those people who had stared down on my childhood, and how well some of them had acquitted themselves.

      Mother and I set off for London early the next morning, my sister having already gone back to her job in Bristol. We stayed at an old-fashioned hotel, and went to a theatre, and after breakfast the next morning made our way quietly to the ten o’clock rendezvous at Euston station. I remember thinking back to our first parting, on the day that mother had taken me down to start school. The tears had streamed down my face then and she had tried to console me by saying that it would only be a few weeks before the holidays. This time the tears streamed down her face as we began to move, and I did not know what to say.

      Five years suddenly seemed a very, very long time.

      *

      I remember little about the voyage across the Atlantic. Being a summer passage, it was calm and uneventful I suppose, with little to do except eat, sleep and play deck games until we reached the St Lawrence river and had our first glimpse of our future homeland. We had a brief run ashore at Quebec, just enough to say that we had set foot in Canada, then the next day docked at Montreal, where our posts would be assigned.

      Our accommodation on the ship had seemed almost luxurious, so our temporary home in the city was something of a let-down. The public rooms were sparsely furnished with trestle tables and wooden chairs and there was little attempt to reach any standard of comfort, but the people who ran the place were good-hearted souls, who kept our spirits up with an ample supply of good plain food.

      The Hudson’s Bay Company offices in Montreal were in McGill Street, and though half our number had taken the train westward, there seemed to be quite a crowd of us milling about in the comparatively small office space. We met the men in charge of our areas and most of the apprentices were told where they would be going. Another boy, Ian Smith, and I were ‘odd men out’ for whom a home would be found during the course of the summer travels.

      To relieve the congestion, a party of us were sent down to the docks to work on the Nascopie, the ship that the archdeacon had told us about at school, now loading up for her annual trip with the year’s supply for the distant posts.

      After the majestic liner which had carried us so smoothly across the Atlantic, the Nascopie seemed very small and insignificant. Her decks only just rose above the level of the wharf, whereas the liner had towered up above the dockside. Her paintwork was dark and workmanlike whereas the Duchess had gleamed and dazzled in white. None the less, many of us were, in the years to come, to form an affection for the little ship which no ocean liner could ever have inspired. Sometimes she was naughty. In rough weather there were few tricks that were beyond her, particularly when coming down the Labrador coast with only a few light bales of furs in her holds. She would then creak and groan in the most alarming manner, but survived the worst hammerings the North Atlantic and the Arctic seas could serve up, to return each year, like a faithful friend, to keep us company for a few hours or a day or so in our northern solitude.

      More than once the Nascopie took on a double duty, when lesser craft than she gave up the unequal struggle against fog and ice. The old ship had been built during or just before the First World War, and was one of the finest steel icebreakers ever constructed. During the war, she was employed smashing the ice in the White Sea, and according to all reports was well ahead of the Russians in this field. Once, in a convoy in heavy ice, the huge Russian icebreaker leading the convoy got stuck. The Nascopie bustled up alongside and hailed the Russian.

      ‘Shall I go ahead, sir?’ shouted the captain.

      ‘How the devil can you go ahead when I’m stuck?’ roared back the Russian.

      ‘Shall I try?’

      ‘Oh, go to hell if you want to,’ snapped the Russian.

      The Nascopie broke through the ice jam to lead the convoy into harbour, and for good measure, on the way home, she sank a submarine. Small wonder that she grew on us almost as though she were human.

      On that first Monday morning, however, we were not greatly impressed. In fact by the time we had finished carrying the heavy mail boxes – and it is extraordinary how heavily a year’s mail can weigh – we were not sorry to see the last of her for the day.

      We soon made friends around our temporary home. One Saturday night, a French Canadian family held a wedding reception in the building. Two or three of us were hanging about so they invited us to join the party. During the evening, we were approached by a rather unsteady-looking man who, after casting a glance at a priest standing near by, said in a deep but penetrating whisper: ‘H.B.C. eh? Do you know what that means? “Here before Christ,” that’s what it means!’

      He told us that he had been trading with the company for over thirty years. Ian asked him if he had retired and the man roared with laughter.

      ‘Retired?’ he shouted. ‘I’m never going to retire. They’ll find me one day somewhere along the trail and I hope they’ll leave me there.’ He waved his arm round the room then went on.

      ‘This sort of thing’s not for me. I only came because she happens to be a niece. I’ll not be down this way again. Victor’s my name. They’ll know me up the river. I don’t have much in this world but I’m free. I go where I like when I like and I’m off home in the morning.’ He waved his arm and marched off towards the table where the food was set out. I was often to think about Victor in the years to come, his boisterous good health, his obvious contentment with the life he had chosen, and his best clothes, which looked as if they had not been worn for many a long day.

      We met three sisters at the wedding too who had come from Three Rivers and had made the trip down with their father and mother. They were good fun and Ian Smith and I and another chap took them out for a picnic the next day, as they spent the weekend in the city. It was the first time that I had ever been out with a girl other than my sister, and one of them, Laurette, said she would write to me. I rashly promised to write and send her a fur from wherever I was. She did write too but alas did not receive the promised fur.

      By the end of the next week, so far as we could see, the Nascopie was just about fully laden. We were not surprised to be told to pack up again in preparation for moving on. Then at the last minute, because of the shortage of accommodation on the ship, Ian, myself and three others were told that we were to take passage on another freighter, which was going up as far north as the Labrador coast and Ungava Bay. Somewhere up there we should join up again with the Nascopie. This meant that we should be sailing a few days later.

      The evening before we parted we all clubbed СКАЧАТЬ