"MacLeod, Ian R - Tirkiluk" - читать интересную книгу автора (Macleod Ian R)

transmit at nineteen hundred hours local time. Then dinner, and try as I might
the tins and dry reheated blocks all taste the same.

Then listen to the BBC, if the atmosphere is reflecting the signals my way.
Thought the radio would be more of a comfort than it actually is. Those fading
voices talking about cafes and trains and air-raids make me feel more alone than
gazing out of the window ever does.

September 10th

Saw another human being today. I knew that there are Eskimos in this region, but
when you get here everything seems so vast and -- empty isn't the word, because
the sea and the valley are teeming with birds and I've glimpsed caribou, foxes,
what might have been musk oxen, and hare -- unhuman, I suppose. But there it is.
I'm not alone.

Was up at Point B, taking the morning measurements. Point B is a kind of rocky
platform, with a drop on one side down to the valley floor and the river from
which I gather my water plunging over the rocks, and ragged cliffs rising in a
series of grass-tufted platforms on the other. I heard a kind of grunting sound.
I looked up, expecting an animal, fearing, in fact, my first encounter with a
polar bear. But instead, a squat human figure was outlined on the clifftop,
looking down at me, plaits of hair blowing in the wind, a rifle strapped to his
back. In a moment, he stepped out of sight.

Frank Cayman told me that he hadn't seen any Eskimos, but he showed me on the
map where there were signs of a campground. The tribes here are nomadic, and my
feeling is that they must be returning to this area after some time away,
probably stocking up with meat on the high plains below the glacier before
moving south as the winter darkness rolls in.

They're likely to be used to seeing white men -- the Arctic Ocean was a thriving
whaling and fishing-ground before the war -- but I was warned at Godalming to be
very wary of them. Was told that Eskimos are thieving, diseased, immoral, not
averse to selling information to the skipper of any stray German sub, etc., etc.

I suppose I should keep my head down, and padlock my hut and supply shed every
time I go out. But now that I know I'm not alone, I think I might try to meet
them.

September 14th

A long, long day, and the preternatural darkness that fills the air now that the
clouds are moving in and the sun is sliced for so long by the horizon gives the
whole exploit a weird sense of dream.

I found the Eskimo encampment. It lies a little west of the place Frank Cayman
showed me on the map, and was easily visible once I'd climbed north beyond Point
B out of the valley from the rising smoke at the edge of the boggy land before
the mountains. It's only about ten miles off, but it took me most of six hours