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‘Me then,’ said Henry. I stared at him, and he stared back. I couldn’t see how he was going to muster either the strength or the courage to get back off the boat, having just made it aboard. I’d have cowered in the boat and refused to move. ‘But it’s moving!’ My voice was thin and high with anxiety. I couldn’t believe this was happening to us, that my dad and Henry’s dad were less than a quarter of a mile away and here we were going to be lost at sea. ‘Yup,’ said Henry, his eyes scrunched up in concentration. ‘Still, that’s the only way we can get the umiaq loose. Otherwise we’re going to drift off all the way to the North Pole.’ Something about the idea of the North Pole froze my heart. I imagined a maypole, spiralling red and white like a barber’s pole, and me and Henry slumped at the bottom of it, waiting for a polar bear to come along and gobble us both up. Henry stood up unsteadily and then, with a sudden spurt of energy, he leapt off the boat and back onto the ice floe. He stood on the ice floe again and kicked the edge of the umiaq with all his force. Nothing happened. He kicked again and again, and then he prised his paddle into the crevice and at last, with a groan, the boat released itself and bobbed out, away from the ice. Henry took another flying leap and landed in the boat as it floated away. There was another awful moment as the boat rocked and rocked and rocked, steadying itself from the impact of Henry’s leap, but it settled as it had before. Henry lay slumped against the side of the boat for a while, gathering his strength. ‘You OK?’ I asked again. He nodded wearily, then sat up straight and picked up a paddle. With two of us paddling, the umiaq moved more swiftly and in a perceptible direction. I felt my heart begin to lift as the shore came closer. We were going to survive. It was only when I thought that, that I fully realized how close we had come to not surviving. I looked at Henry, and he was looking at me. ‘Hey, Henry,’ I said again. ‘Hey, Tyke,’ he said and grinned. But we weren’t home yet. We still had an expanse of water to cross, with only a flimsy boat between us and the freezing ocean. We paddled away for a bit, saying nothing, concentrating on keeping the boat moving. I looked over the edge into the water and thought about how many miles down it was to the depthless bottom and how many tons of water were under the boat, and


Why do you think the two boys don’t express their feelings more? What do you learn about Henry here?


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