Classics Mutilated Part 37

Judging from the gray in his hair and mustache-less beard, the man was in his fifties, with a physique seasoned by sun and hard work. Indeed, his skin was tanned so deep a brown he looked to have been cast of bronze. As I dropped my gaze, I saw that his right leg was missing just below the knee, beneath which he wore an artificial one made of ivory.

Although unusual as his prosthesis might have been, it was nothing compared to his manner of dress, which was not only woefully inappropriate for the harsh climate of Manitoba, but also strangely anachronistic, seeming to be at least twenty-five years or more out of date. It consisted of a black wool mariner's jacket, a dark-colored cravat, and an odd-looking wide-brimmed black felt hat with a buckled ribbon band.

"Where did he come from?" I exclaimed. The sight of a sailor at the trading post was not that unusual, for the merchant marines aboard the ships that ferried the Hudson Bay Company's stockpile of furs to England often came ash.o.r.e, but that was during the spring, after the thaw had melted the ice.

"I'll be d.a.m.ned if I know," the clerk replied with a shrug. "The old Indian who sees to the gate said he simply walked up out of the snow, just as you see him here. Mighty queer business all around, if you ask me, what with all those thees and thous of his."

As the clerk went about tallying up the furs I brought in for trade, I decided to see what this strange, solitary figure wanted with Buchan.

"Excuse me, mister-?"

As the sailor turned toward me, I realized my attention had been so focused on his peg-leg and clothes I had somehow failed to notice the slender, livid white scar that started in the hairline above his brow and ran down his face, disappearing behind the cravat knotted about his neck. Whether it was a birthmark or evidence of some horrific wounding, I could not tell.

The one-legged man glanced at my outstretched hand, but did not move to take it. Instead, he removed the pipe from his mouth and slightly bowed his head in acknowledgment. "I was once called captain," he intoned in a rich, deep voice. "But thou may call me Ahab."

"I'm told you've been looking for d.i.c.k Buchan."

"Aye, that I am, lad," Ahab said, nodding his head once again. "Dost thou know where I might find him?"

"He's one of my partners," I explained. "Are you a friend of his?"

Ahab shook his head as he returned the pipe to his mouth. "I have never met the gentleman. All the same, I have business of the utmost importance with him."

"Might I inquire as to the nature of that business?" I asked.

"My own," Ahab replied curtly. The dark look the older man gave me was enough to stop me from pressing the matter.

"I'm sorry if my question offended you, sir. Do you mind if I sit and warm myself?" I asked, pointing to the pot-bellied stove as I drew up a chair.

The man called Ahab nodded and silently gestured with his pipe for me to join him. As I sat beside him, I fought the desire to stare at the strange mark about the older man's neck, and instead focused my attention on the same thing as he: the glowing embers and flickering flames on view through the vents in the stove's hinged door.

After a couple of minutes I grew equal parts bored and bold and decided to resume my questioning. "I take it from your clothes that you are a sailor?"

Ahab nodded and said with a small, humorless laugh, "Though now I am dry-docked, I once spent forty of my fifty-three years at sea."

"Did your ship come into the Bay before it froze?"

The darkness that had previously filled Ahab's eyes now threatened to reappear. He shook his head and returned his gaze to the stove. "No-I came a different way."

"Do not take my question wrongly, sir; but your manner of speech is most unusual-where do you hail from?"

"I am a Nantucket Quaker, good sir," Ahab replied, not without a touch of pride. "A Yankee, if thee will."

"You are very far from home, then."

"Farther than thee can imagine," the old sailor said, his voice melancholy. He took the pipe from his mouth and gave it a sharp rap against his peg-leg, knocking the ashes onto the floor. "Enjoying a good smoke is one of the few solaces those such as me and thee-men who make our living on the knife-edge of the world-can count on," he said, waxing philosophical. "Yet once, in a fit of pique, I threw my pipe in the ocean because it could not soothe me. But now all is forgiven between us, and it provides me comfort once again."

I was about to ask Ahab how he could possibly be smoking the same pipe he had hurled into the sea, when the clerk called out that he'd finished his accounting. I excused myself from the old salt's company and returned to the counter.

"I can trade you the laudanum and rubbing alcohol, but not the dogs," the clerk said, pointing to the bottle of Dr. Rabbitfoot's Tincture of Opium.

"Can't you extend us credit? You know we're good for it. The dogs I got now aren't enough to last the winter. If one or two go lame or die on me, I'll be on foot until spring."

"I wish I could help you out, but the Company don't allow credit," the clerk said with a shrug of his shoulders. "Cash on the barrelhead or trade only-them's the rules."

A sun-darkened hand suddenly slapped down onto the clerk's open ledger, placing a gold coin atop the page.

"I'll buy thee the dogs thou needest, my friend," Ahab said. "Granted I ride with thee to thy camp."

The clerk picked up the gold piece and turned it over in his hands, giving out a low whistle of admiration. The coin was a doubloon, the border of which was stamped Republica del Ecuador: Quito. On the face were three mountains: on top the first was a flame, the second a tower, while atop the third was a crowing rooster. Above the three mountains was a portion of the zodiac, with the sun entering the equinox under the sign of Libra. The coin seemed to glow in the dim light of the trading post, as if it possessed a life of its own.

"What say thee, clerk?" Ahab said. "Is that coin enough to buy his dogs?"

"But there's a hole in the middle of it ..." the clerk pointed out weakly.

"It is gold, is it not?" Ahab said sternly, in a voice that could be heard through a hurricane. "Now give the man his dogs!"

The clerk cringed as if he'd been struck with a cat o' nine tails. "Yes, sir," he replied obsequiously. "As you wish, sir."

As the clerk wrapped the supplies I'd come for in a bundle of rags to protect them from breaking, I turned back to face the man called Ahab.

"I appreciate your generosity, sir. And you are welcome to ride with me back to our camp. But I warn you, Buchan is extremely ill. In fact, I came to the post to trade for medicine in hopes it will save his life. There is a very good chance that he will be dead by the time we get back."

"All the more important that we leave as soon as possible," Ahab said grimly.

As I headed for the door, the sea captain fell in step behind me. There was a line of pegs on the wall just inside the door, upon which were hung several different outer garments, including my own. As I pulled on my gear, I was surprised to see Ahab reach, not for a coat, but for a harpoon that stood propped up against the doorjamb.

It stood taller than the man himself, with a shaft fashioned from a hickory pole still bearing strips of bark. The socket of the harpoon was braided with the spread yarns of a towline, which lay coiled on the floor like a Hindoo fakir's rope. The lower end of the rope was drawn halfway along the pole's length, and tightly secured with woven twine, so that pole, iron, and rope remained inseparable. The harpoon's barb shone like a butcher's knife-edge in the dim light. It was indeed a fearsome weapon, made all the more intimidating by its incongruity.

"Where is your coat, sir?" I exclaimed, when I realized that my new companion planned to step outside dressed exactly as he was. "It's below freezing outside!"

"Do not concern thyself for my comfort," Ahab said calmly. "I have been in far more inhospitable climes of late."

"Why do you carry a harpoon on dry land?" I asked, shaking my head in disbelief.

"Where a shepherd has his crook, and the cowboy his lariat, this is the instrument of my profession," the old mariner said matter-of-factly. "Wherever I go, it follows with me."

As we approached the kennel to fetch my team, the dogs set up an awful racket. However, it was not the snarling expected from sled dogs jockeying amongst themselves for dominance within the pack, but growling born of genuine fear. The lead dog, his nape bristling and ears flat against his skull, snapped at me as I moved to harness him. If I had not jerked my hand back when I did, I most certainly would have lost some fingers.

Before I could unfurl my dog-whip, Ahab stepped forward and planted the b.u.t.t of the harpoon in the frozen mud of the kennel yard, glowering at the wildly barking huskies with those strange eyes of his. One by one, the dogs fell silent and lowered their heads, skulking away, tails tucked between their legs, without the old sea captain having to utter a single word.

"How did you do that?" I asked, amazed by what I had just seen.

"I have stared down my share of mutineers in my day," Ahab replied. "There is not much difference between a dog and a deckhand; if they smell the slightest whiff of fear, they will tear thee limb from limb."

I added the three new dogs Ahab had staked me to my existing team and harnessed them to my sled. I served as musher, while Ahab sat in the basket. With an old horse blanket draped about his shoulders for warmth, and his harpoon held across his lap, the dour sea captain looked like some grim Norse king preparing for his final battle.

As we exited through the trading post's gates, I looked up at the night sky to find it filled with the shifting radiance of the Aurora Borealis. It was by this light that we made our way back to camp.

Once we were off, Ahab did not utter a single word, but instead stared into the darkness, lost in whatever thoughts he kept locked inside his head. As a man who turned his back on the predictability of city life in favor of a wilderness as isolated and unknown as the uncharted ocean, I felt a certain kinship toward the taciturn Quaker who had forsaken the certainty of solid ground for a pitching deck and the vast horizon of the open sea, despite his strange demeanor.

The weather for the return trip was cold but otherwise clear until a mile or so out from our destination. Suddenly the wind picked up and quickly grew to gale-force, accompanied by increasing snowfall. Once more, I heard the eerie wailing within the storm, which grew stronger the closer we got. I could not escape the sensation that somehow the blizzard sensed our approach, and was not at all pleased by the intrusion.

The snow was so heavy I could barely discern the outline of the cabin. Despite my heavy boots and fur-lined gloves, my hands and feet felt like blocks of ice. I was looking forward to warming myself by the fireplace, the humble chimney of which jutted from the roof of the shanty like the bowl of a giant's pipe. Given my own chilliness, I could only imagine the discomfort Ahab was experiencing. He'd said that he'd lost one leg to a whale, which I had no reason to doubt, and now I feared he might lose the other to frostbite, as well as some fingers. My concern proved to be ill placed, however, for he climbed out of the basket as easily as if he was stepping out of a carriage. Using his harpoon as a walking stick, Ahab made his way toward the darkened cabin without so much as a backward glance.

"Come back here!" I shouted over the howling wind. "I need help putting up the dogs!"

If the sailor heard me, he made no show of it, but continued his beeline to the front door. I grabbed the lantern from the sled and hurried after him, cursing loudly the whole way. I knew Martin well enough to easily envision what his first reaction would be to the sight of an unannounced stranger armed with what looked like a spear entering his abode in the middle of the night. I caught up with the Quaker before he could put his shoulder to the door.

"Are you daft?" I growled. "If you go barging into a trapper's cabin like that, you're apt to get shot for an Indian or a poacher! And I am in no hurry to clean your brains off my walls!"

"Forgive me, friend," Ahab said, stepping aside so I might go ahead of him. "The prospect of concluding my business has made me ... incautious."

Holding up the lantern so that its light would illuminate my face as well as the darkness, I pushed open the door of the shanty. The interior of the cabin was as dark as a well digger's snuffbox.

"Martin! Hold your fire and sheath your knife! It's me!" I called out. "And I have brought a visitor."

I expected to hear my partner's voice in return, telling me to close the d.a.m.ned door before I let in a polar bear, but there was no reply. I crossed the threshold into the darkness, Ahab's ivory peg-leg tapping against the rough-hewn planks of the cabin floor close behind.

I hadn't taken more than a couple of steps before I collided with a piece of furniture. I lowered the lantern so I could see where I was going and was shocked to find the interior of the cabin in utter chaos. The table on which my companions and I ate our meals had been reduced to kindling, along with its accompanying chairs, as if demolished in a brawl. My heart sank at the sight of several sacks of flour and sugar-provisions for the entire winter-dumped amidst scattered traps, furs, cookware, and clothes. The fire in the stone hearth had gone out, its ashes kicked out into the middle of the room, and the cabin was nearly as cold as the wilderness beyond its walls.

"Martin! Buchan! Where are you?" I cried, swinging the lantern about in hopes of it illuminating some sign of my friends. My mind rushed about in circles, as if caught in one of my traps. Had poachers broken into the cabin, looking for furs to steal? Or was this the result of an Indian attack? Perhaps Jack had returned, and he and Martin got into a fight?

I fell silent, hoping I might detect a response. Instead, all I heard was a low, grunting noise, like that of a rooting hog, coming from the back of the cabin, where the shadows were the darkest. Lifting high the lantern, I moved to investigate the sound.

I found Buchan-or rather, what had become of him-crouching in the corner. His back was turned toward me and I could see not only that he was completely naked, but every vertebrae along his spine as well.

"Buchan-what happened? Where's Martin?"

In response, Buchan spun around to face me, growling like a cornered dog. Save that he was covered in skin, which was by now ash-gray and fairly bursting with weeping sores, he was little more than a skeleton. He was so gaunt the ribs in his chest stood out like the staves of barrel, and his diseased flesh was pulled so tautly across his pelvis it looked as if it was wrapped in leather. But the worst of it was that Buchan's face was smeared with gore and saliva, and in his bony, claw-like hands he clutched the half-devoured remains of a raw liver. I was so shocked by his wretched condition, I did not at first realize that Martin lay sprawled at Buchan's feet, split open from a.n.u.s to throat, his guts scooped out and piled beside him like those of a field-dressed deer.

Suddenly, strong, iron-hard fingers dug into my shoulder. It was Ahab. I had been so horrified I had forgotten he was there.

"Stand aside, friend," the sea captain said grimly. "For this is the business I must attend to." Ahab hoisted the harpoon, his voice booming in the close confines of the cabin like ocean waves breaking against the sh.o.r.e. "Wendigo! Cannibal Spirit of the North! I am Ahab, hunter of fiends! And in the Devil's name, I have come to claim you!"

I do not know if the light from the lantern held in my trembling hand played tricks on me, or if what I saw was what indeed happened; but as Ahab hurled the harpoon, the thing I knew as d.i.c.k Buchan seemed to grow, like a shadow cast upon a wall, becoming taller and even thinner than before. He then turned sideways, seeming to disappear, causing the razor-sharp harpoon to sail past harmlessly and imbed itself into the wall of the cabin.

Buchan reappeared just as suddenly as he had disappeared, but now he was standing in front of the hearth of the fireplace. With a terrible shriek, more like that of a wounded elk than a man, he raised his arms above his head, causing his body to elongate yet again, and shot straight up the fireplace chimney. I was so dumbfounded I at first did not believe my own eyes-until I heard the sound of footsteps on the roof overhead, followed by a wild, maniacal laughter.

Ahab s.n.a.t.c.hed the harpoon free and hurried for the door, moving as fast as his missing leg allowed. He charged out into the snowstorm, bellowing curses in seven different languages with the heedless bravery peculiar to those who have hunted down and slain creatures a thousand times their size. The dogs-still in harness and attached to their gang line-frantically barked at whatever it was that was stamping back and forth across the roof over their heads.

As I crossed the threshold to join my companion, I felt something snag the hood of my parka. I looked up and, to my horror, saw a long, bony arm reaching down from the eaves above. I tried to tear myself free of whatever had hold of me, but was unable to break its grip. The thing on the roof gave a single tug, as if testing the strength of its hold, and I found that my boots no longer touched the ground.

As I was dragged upwards to whatever awaited me on the roof, my mind flashed back to Martin's fate, and I began to kick and scream as hard as I could. Suddenly Ahab was there beside me, jabbing at the thing on the roof with his harpoon.

"Leave him be, wendigo!" he shouted angrily. "Thou hast feasted enough for one night!"

The creature cried out in pain and released its hold, sending me tumbling into a snowdrift. As I got to my feet I saw it squatting on the roof like a living gargoyle. It no longer bore any resemblance to Buchan, save that it was roughly the shape of a man. Its arms and legs were as long as barge poles, and the horns of an elk grew from its skull. Its eyes were pushed so far back in their orbits they at first seemed to be missing-until I caught a flicker of reddish light in each socket, like those of a wild animal skulking beyond a campfire. Its lips were tattered and peeled back from its gums, revealing long, curving tusks the color of ivory. Even from where I stood, I could smell its stink-that of death and decay, just like the horrid freak that had bitten poor Buchan.

"Laugh all thee like, monster!" Ahab shouted at the ghastly apparition. "Thou shalt not escape! I did not drown thirty good men to be bested by the likes of thee!"

As if in reply, the creature shrieked like a wild cat, its voice melding with the whistling north wind. It got to its feet and jumped from the roof of the cabin to a nearby pine tree, clearing a distance of thirty feet as easily as a child playing hop-scotch. As I watched in amazement, the creature darted to the very top of the towering pine, which swayed wildly back and forth in the wind, climbing with the agility of an ape.

Ahab drew back his arm and hurled his harpoon at the abomination a second time. It shot forth as if fired from a cannon, the towline flapping behind it like a pennant, only to fall short of its target. Apparently unfazed, the beast leapt into the uppermost crown of the tree beside it, and then the one after that. Within seconds it had disappeared from sight, its scream of triumph fading into the distance.

"Come inside," I said. "The thing is gone. It's over."

Ahab shook his head in disgust as he trudged back into the cabin, his harpoon slung over one shoulder like a Viking's spear. "It will not wander far-not while there is still meat on our bones."

I did not argue with the man, but instead busied myself with releasing the dogs from their gang line. As I returned them to the kennel, I decided it would be wise to keep them in their harnesses, as I foresaw a need to leave camp in a hurry.

Upon returning inside the cabin, I found a fire set in the hearth and saw that Ahab had draped a length of canvas over Martin's savaged corpse. The old sailor sat on a stool that was still in one piece in front of the fireplace, sharpening his harpoon with a piece of whetstone.

"You owe me an explanation, old man," I said sternly. "Whatever your business with Buchan, it now concerns me."

"Fair enough," Ahab replied. "Ask me what thou wilt, and I will answer thee true. But I warn thee, friend-thou might find this truth unbecoming to reason."

"You seem to know what that thing is-you called it wendigo. What is it?"

"It is a spirit, of sorts. The Indians of the North-the Cree, the Inuit, the Ojibwa-know it well," he explained, pausing to light his pipe. "It comes with the winter storms and is driven by a horrible hunger for human flesh. Some say it overtakes those who stay too long alone in the wilderness, while others claim it possesses only those driven to cannibalism. Of the last I have my doubts, for I have known many a cannibal in my travels, some of whom were men of good character, if not Christian disposition."

I stared at Ahab for a long moment, trying to determine if he truly believed what he had just told me. Under normal circ.u.mstances I would have laughed and called him a lunatic. But things were far from normal, as evidenced by poor Martin, lying there under his makeshift shroud.

"How is it you knew poor Buchan was afflicted by the wendigo?"

"My friend, are thee sure of thine desire for knowledge?" Seeing the steadfastness in my gaze, the old sailor gave a heavy sigh. "Very well, I shall answer thee, as promised. It is my business to know the unknowable, for I have been set a task unlike any since the labors of Hercules. Where once I hunted the great beasts of the ocean, now I stalk the fiends of h.e.l.l."

I could no longer hide my incredulity, and responded to this declaration with a rude laugh. "Have you lost your mind?"

"I was once mad, but no more," Ahab said sadly. "Would that I had the balm of insanity to allay my suffering; for I am just as sane as thee, my friend, if infinitely more d.a.m.ned."

"What are you babbling about?" I snapped, my patience finally worn thin.

"Once, decades ago, I bragged of being immortal on land and on sea. Now I find I must bear the burden of that boast for all eternity."

As I listened to the old sailor's rant, the hairs on my neck stood erect. The dark fire deep in Ahab's eyes frightened me in a way the wendigo's did not. It was one thing to be stalked by a fiendish creature, quite another to be trapped with a lunatic.

"Ah, I see the look in thine eyes," Ahab said with a grim smile. "Thou hadst seen what thou hath seen, and yet thee still deem me mad? What of this, then?" He pulled aside the cravat about his throat, revealing the marks of a noose no man could have survived. "Aye, I am dead. I have been such since long before your birth. I was once a righteous, G.o.d-fearing man, but I was made wicked by my pride and blasphemous by my wrath. I was determined to avenge myself on the whale that took my leg, and offered up my immortal soul in exchange for its annihilation.

"It did not matter to me that I had a child-bride and an infant son awaiting me in Nantucket. Nor did it matter that thirty men, brave and true, had placed their lives and livelihoods in my care. There was a fire in my bosom that burned day and night, and naught would extinguish it, save the blood of the whale that maimed me. Now my child-bride is a withered crone, my infant son dead on the end of a Confederate's bayonet, and my brave crew, save for one, sleeps at the bottom of the sea.

"I chased the accursed beast halfway across the world, and sank my harpoon into its d.a.m.ned hide, only to run afoul of the line. A flying turn of rope wrapped itself about my neck, yanking me below the waves, drowning me within seconds. Yet, to my horror, though I knew myself dead, I was still aware of all that transpired about me. I was helpless witness to the destruction of my ship and the deaths of my men by the whale I had pursued across three seas and two oceans.

"And when it was over, the hated whale pulled me down, down, down-past sunken galleons, past the lairs of slumbering leviathans, past the drowned towers of long-lost kingdoms-down to the very floor of the ocean. With dead man's eyes I beheld a great chasm, from which boiled dreadful beasts with the bodies of men and heads like that of jellyfish. These abominations freed me of my tether and escorted me down into the rift, which lead into the very belly of the world, h.e.l.l itself. There I swam not through a mere lake of fire, but an entire ocean, until I came at last to a great throne.

"The throne was fashioned of horn and upon it sat the King of the Fallen, the Devil himself. The Lord of the d.a.m.ned resembled nothing so much as a gigantic shadow in the shape of a man, with wings of flame and eyes that shone like burnished shields. The Devil spoke unto me, and though he had no mouth, his voice rang like a gong, shaking me to my marrow.

" 'Ahab', he said, 'Thou promised me thine soul in exchange for the life of the whale. Yet here you stand before me, and the fish still swims! Let it not be said that I do not honor my covenants. I have within my kingdom a park unlike any seen on Earth, with trees of bone and rivers of blood. I would populate it with monsters for the pleasure of my sport. Bring me as many fiends as men you led to death, and I shall return thy soul, to do with as thou wish.' "