5thCLASS_97_185_jg:Layout 1 5/3/12 17:46 Page 152


We paddled on for a bit, and then I said: ‘I wouldn’t blame them if they’d killed us. ‘Who?’ asked Henry. ‘The whales.’ ‘Why would they want to kill us?’ ‘Because we killed one of them.’ ‘Yes, but that was a hunt,’ said Henry. ‘We didn’t kill the whale out of anger.’ ‘What difference does that make? You kill it, it’s dead.’ ‘All the difference. If we were fighting the whales, if we were killing them for fun or because we wanted to get rid of them, then they would be angry. But when we hunt, we pray for the whale, we ask the whale to give itself to feed the people. We release its spirit. There’s no need for anger. That’s just how things are. The whales know that.’ He sounded very sure of himself, but I couldn’t agree. How could the whales know a thing like that? It didn’t make any sense. And I noticed that for all his talk, Henry had been just as anxious as I was not to disturb the whales when they swam near our boat. But I didn’t argue. I just kept paddling. ‘Like the bear in the story,’ Henry added. ‘What?’ ‘The bear in the story. The story is about how the people and the animals help each other.’ Yes, but that’s a fairytale, I thought to myself, but I didn’t say so out loud. We made much better progress with the umiaq now that there were two of us and pretty soon the ice shore seemed reachable. There were figures standing about on the ice, watching us. They seemed to be getting umiaqs ready to come out to meet us, but I think when they saw that we were making good progress, they held back. As we came closer, I saw that two of the people were my dad and Henry’s dad and they had a pair of binoculars that they kept passing from one to the other. When they could see us getting closer, they started punching each other encouragingly on the upper arms and hallooing and roaring and waving their arms at us. ‘How on earth did you manage an umiaq on your own?’ asked Dad, as he put out his hand to help me ashore. ‘I have absolutely no idea,’ I said, putting my foot on ‘dry land’. The words came out like washing from a wringer, all stretched and squeezed. It seemed to hurt my chest to talk. That’s the last thing I remember, my dad’s hand under my elbow and my feet touching the pack ice. My dad said I collapsed at his feet. Exhaustion, he said. I don’t think so. I think it was sheer relief.


Whose point of view do you agree with? 152


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