My father came to Cambridge Bay, in Canada’s Northwest Territories, working for Hudson Bay. A Scot he married my Inuit mother and soon took us to Glasgow. Mother did not like rainy Scotland, and she soon returned back to her native land when I was not even ten years old. I was sent to a private boarding school, where I learned the basics of arithmetic, geography and navigation by sea. As soon as I turned sixteen, my father arranged for me to join the company so that I could return to where my native Inuit blood was pulling me - to the north of Canada to Cambridge Bay.

I still don’t understand everything in Inuktitut, and so my cousin Kugluktuk often laughs and teaches me. He is seventeen years old and a pure Inuit with narrow eyes and a small nose.

The musher in me is terrible, but I can manage dogs very well. I can also light a fire in the stove, if that matters. Kugluktuk only chuckled at me, as I am too pampered for the harsh North. I almost did not have to manage the dogs as they obediently followed the Kugluktuk through the snowy desert, framed only by hills. It was a polar night - eternal northern darkness. When we finally got to the place, it was already completely dark, nothing visible. The path was lit only by a kerosene lamp. The trading post was locked. The locks on all trading posts are the same, but despite the long distances, all keys to the offices are stored in Cambridge Bay to prevent theft.

Despite the fatigue from the road, we immediately lit the stove and prepared the skins for the night. Kugluktuk took out a bag of char and seal fat and laid it on the table. Seal fat felt pleasant in the stomach. I went outside to feed the dogs. We tied the dogs a little further away so as not to scare off the kabloons . In absolute darkness, only the reddish light from the trading post was visible. Kugluktuk stood near the entrance and smoked a pipe. Aurora borealis lazily shimmered in the sky, shining with green flashes. The night passed peacefully.

We went hunting in the morning. When we returned closer to noon, the sun was already setting. Seeing off the red edge of the sun's disk, we went to the trading post. We closed the house, so that no one could open it. But Kugluktuk noticed suspicious traces around the post, as if someone was walking nearby. Our guest, whoever he was, could not open the door and did not wait for us. It seems that the guest was pretty drunk, as his footprints mapped aa shaky gait. “If one came, he will bring others,” Kugluktuk reasoned. He was thrilled that he had a chance to hear the kabloons.

In the evening, a polar snowstorm began to howl. I was falling into a deep sleep when Kugluktuk shock me. Outside the door, a crunch of footsteps in the snow was heard. Several creatures walked around the house, trying to figure out how to get inside. We held our breath. There was total darkness. We listened to the noises outside the door. The kabloon outside the door tramped around a little, before freezing in place and began to talk quite loudly. We heard male voices, a strange stifled laugh and loud exclamations, but I could not hear anything clearly. Kugluktuk quietly opened the door, tying the door handle to the table in advance with a seal leather belt.

I heard the shrieking, unpleasant laugh of a madman. The clang of metal utensils, as if someone was carrying spoons and forks in their hands. Someone walked very close and scraped a large stick across the snow. To top off the crazy performance, someone sharply spoke in English with a sheer reprimand: “Gentlemen! Today we have a performance in the house of Sir Franklin! ”

The louder kabloon did not stop laughing, exclaiming, “Bravo!” He suddenly sprinkled all the cutlery in the snow and began to clap his hands. Then a second entertainer from the music hall, who had a loud velvet voice, joined in. “It would be nice to try some fresh meat, wouldn't it, Mr. Torrington?” - affectionately suggested the "entertainer" "For dinner, Captain Crozier’s fresh leg, served with asparagus and beans!" The stranger did not calm down. “Glory to the British Crown, the best meat of England!” - proclaimed the madman, as if he was on the stage of a London variety show, and not wandering through a snowstorm in the Canadian North.
Then I heard how madmen frantically began to scratch the walls, my body numb with horror. The frenzy continued. The laughing man picked up the cutlery and began throwing them at the windows. With every blow of silver on the glass, he shouted: "10 points!" The Entertainer with a velvety voice presented the menu: “Chicken legs, pork ribs, beef thighs and attention... the public... John the Sailor's juicy cheeks with Irish beer and cheddar cheese!” Only the third was silent, wandering in a circle with a stick.

We listened to the madmen's speeches until our large table suddenly staggered as unknown people pushed the door from the other side and tried to open it. I turned on the kerosene lamp and saw creepy blue withered fingers clinging to the edges of the door before Kugluktuk slammed it shut again. I shone the light through the window, and blue, crouched face of a long-dead man looked at me. There was nothing to make out, but the dead blue man, grimacing, was still shouting something to us. We watched, fascinated by this performance until the lamp went out. We slept on the floor until the morning.

In the morning, we immediately left on the dog sled for Cambridge Bay. Blizzard swept away all traces of the stay of the dead. After my account of the conversations of the dead, Kugluktuk sighed gloomily. "The British turned into kabloons. Now they will forever roam the island until their bodies are found. Most likely, they died a bad death and cannot find peace." Kugluktuk's logic has always found an explanation, even in the most obscure situations.

Franklin, Crozier, Torrington,... these names did not leave my mind until I rummaged through the local newspaper archive and found a note in the Toronto Herald about the disappearance of the John Franklin expedition in 1845. It turns out that kabloons have been roaming the ocean for about a hundred years.

*Kabloons – white people in Inuktitut.