Chapter Twenty-Eight #2
Shortly after this conversation is concluded, once Hearn has reclaimed his weapon and explained the plan, the three Englishmen, glancing warily about and gripping their muskets tight in both hands, enter the esquimaux village in single file.
The women and children, for safety’s sake, are sitting together at the far side of the camp, while closer to the center a dozen crudely armed men are gathered in a cluster.
Owliktuk tells Katelo and Harpik to bring out all the iron and lay it on the ground, and when they’ve done as he asked, Shaw and Hearn crouch down and examine it carefully piece by piece.
Everything they expected to find—knives and chisels, mattocks and sifting pans—appears intact and as it should be.
“I’ll tell him we’re satisfied,” Hearn says. “Then we can be on our way.”
“Not so quick,” Shaw tells him. “There’s something else we need as well.” He gets up and points in the direction of Hekwaw, who is standing on his own, close to the other men but not part of the group. “I believe that one over there still has a hammer that belongs to us.”
“The hammer was given to him as a reward, in payment for his services,” Hearn says. “It’s not a part of this agreement.”
“If it’s not included, then it should be. You can tell the old man we’ll take back what’s ours, every single piece.”
They both know they don’t need the hammer, but Hearn can see from the look in Shaw’s eye and the set of his jaw that he wishes to prove, in his usual prideful fashion, that although he did not broker this accord, he is still the one in command, and whatever occurs here occurs only under his purview and dispensation.
“Would you put the truce in jeopardy for such a trifle?” Hearn says to him in a low voice. “Can’t you leave it be this once?”
“You tell the old fellow what I want, or else I might start searching all by myself and who knows what that might lead to.”
Hearn, recognizing that Shaw will not relent, points over to Hekwaw and explains to Owliktuk that they gave his son a gift that they now want returned. Owliktuk seems neither surprised nor, as Hearn feared he might be, offended by this unmannerly request. He beckons Hekwaw to come closer.
“They want to know what you did with your prize,” he says to his son. “The reward they gave you for betraying your family and your friends.”
“I told you what happened,” Hekwaw answers, looking gloomy and shamefaced as he speaks. “I threw it away when Unaleq asked me to.”
“Then tell that to the Englishmen yourself.”
“We’re looking for the hammer,” Hearn explains. “I’m sorry, but we need to take it back.”
“I don’t have it any longer. I threw it into the lake because the shaman told me to. He said it was a bad thing.”
Hearn glances over at Owliktuk and the chieftain nods.
“The boy isn’t lying,” he says. “He’s not clever enough to invent a story like that.”
“What’s the old devil saying now?” Shaw asks. “Tell the other one to bring the hammer out and then we can leave here and get back to our work.”
“He says he threw it into the lake because the shaman told him to. I think he’s telling us the truth. The chieftain vouches for him.”
Shaw shakes his head.
“Did you hear that?” he says to Abel Walker. “He takes our fine gift that’s worth more than this whole ramshackle camp put together and tosses it away because some old magician says he should. Hurls it into the damned lake. That’s the kind of gratitude we get.”
Walker, who until now has been too scared to talk, smiles nervously.
“Perhaps he was hoping to catch a fish or two,” he says.
Shaw chuckles at the thought, then starts to laugh.
“By Christ,” he says. “You’re probably right about that. He probably thought he was out fishing for his supper.”
“See how the strangers laugh at you now,” Owliktuk says to his son in a dismissive, hard-edged whisper. “That’s what you get for helping them. Not respect or comradeship but disdain and mockery. They must think we’re all fools and you’re the biggest fool of all.”
Hearn sees that Hekwaw, who had always seemed calm and easy in his manners, looks disturbed and angered by whatever his father has just said.
Instead of answering, he stands pale and rigid, staring ahead with empty eyes like a figure carved from bone.
Owliktuk claims to speak for the whole band, Hearn thinks, but who knows how deep his authority truly runs?
If there’s some disagreement among the esquimaux men about the terms of Owliktuk’s peace, if some are displeased at giving away so much iron, then we may still be in danger.
“I don’t like the way that young one’s looking at us,” he says to Shaw. “We should go now, quickly, before any of these fellows have a chance to change their minds.”
Shaw nods.
“No reason to tarry, I suppose. You two take the sifting pans and the mattocks and put the smaller pieces into this sack for me to carry.”
As they gather the tools, Hearn glances again at Hekwaw, who is watching them with the same unreadable expression, and he wonders if he should say something conciliatory, apologize, perhaps, or at least express some regret about what has happened.
But before he has a chance to do so, Hekwaw, who has been holding a wooden spear in his right hand all this time, lowers the fire-hardened point and, with no warning except for a strange half-strangled gasp, thrusts it with both hands hard and quick into Abel Walker’s unprotected abdomen.
Walker drops the sifting pans and, grunting, hinges at the waist while Shaw, without hesitation, as if following the steps of some prearranged and well-rehearsed protocol, raises his gun and, from less than twelve feet away, shoots Hekwaw in the chest. Hekwaw drops to the earth and, after a moment’s shocked delay, the other esquimaux men in response to this sudden outburst of violence give out a collective roar and start to rush forward.
Hearn lets go of the mattock, points his musket at Owliktuk’s head, and calls for them to stop or else the chieftain will die too.
“Put down your spears,” he yells. “Put them down on the ground and don’t come any closer.”
In the meantime, while the esquimaux men stand fixed in place, Shaw, with his one good arm, holding the powder horn with his teeth, reloads his musket as fast as he can, and steps across to where Abel Walker is lying on the stony ground groaning in pain with his hands clutched tight to his seeping belly.
“There, there my lad,” he says. “There, there, we’ll get this mended soon enough. You hold tight on to me, and we’ll have you out of here and safe.”
Hearn, glancing twice behind him to check that Shaw and Walker are both back on their feet and ready to leave, with his musket still raised, starts slowly, one step at a time, to retreat.
His hands and legs are beginning to tremble, and he feels the horror of what is happening like a lead-black wave looming above him ready to descend and carry him off.
He remembers, not as an idea or image in his mind but as an awful ache like an unhealed wound inside him, the night at Yarmouth Roads when Stephen Cowper died, and he wonders how it is that time can bend back and catch itself again so that a man’s life is not an upward line or a curve as was promised but a circle of torment that must be trod and trod again forever without relief.