Wash leaves the Arctic for Nova Scotia

Washington’s departure from the Arctic for Nova Scotia marks a turn from dependence on the absent Titch toward a precarious attempt at self-preservation. After Titch’s father dies and Titch is gone, Washington accepts help from Peter House, leaves the northern outpost, and eventually reaches Shelburne. The passage northward does not deliver the safe, free life he expects: in Nova Scotia, racial exclusion and the threat of kidnapping make freedom a condition he must keep trying to protect.

The decision to leave the Arctic

After Titch’s father dies, Washington sits in the igloo, staring at the thumbs of his torn mittens. The cold has become more than a physical hardship: he feels boxed in and believes Peter House and the local Inuit community can protect him only for an uncertain time. With both Titch and his father gone, he begins gathering his belongings and tells Peter House that he intends to leave. His departure follows loss, but is also a practical response to his isolation and insecurity.

Peter House responds with care despite his grief for his closest companion. He lets Washington choose from the Wildes’ possessions; Washington selects a leather-bound treatise on marine life, and Peter adds hand lenses that had belonged to James Wilde. He also gives Washington the money Titch left for him, along with food and other provisions. Before Washington goes, Peter embraces him, then helps place him on a sled with Hesiod. The farewell preserves a connection even as Washington sets out alone: he is sent away equipped, but not accompanied by the person whose absence shapes the decision.

At an outpost, Peter House adds another gift: several compact, self-made scopes belonging to Titch, with unusual dark gears serving as knobs. The small instruments give Washington tangible remnants of Titch’s work to carry onward. They also stand beside the marine treatise and hand lenses as practical equipment for the life of observation and study Washington has begun to build beyond Titch’s immediate care.

Passage toward Nova Scotia

Titch had spoken to Washington about the Loyalists, and Washington resolves to seek them because he believes he will be safest among them. After several weeks at the northern outpost, where he keeps away from drunken traders, he arranges passage on a vessel bound for the Maritime islands. The departure is no confident expedition: he is a frightened Black boy alone at sea, stays clear of the captain, and fears that he could be sold to a ship heading for the slaveholding states. He also worries that John Willard or one of his agents will find and kill him.

The danger of the crossing is not only Washington’s anticipation of capture. One evening, a sailor approaches while Washington eats cheese, ties him to the rigging, and taunts him until he agrees to provide a quart of rum. Afterward, Washington spends little time on deck and speaks to no one. He retreats to his quarters, where the slow movement of the boat and the book he carried from the Arctic—the marine treatise given by Peter House—become his narrow refuge during the voyage.

His choice of destination belongs to a wider geography of unequal freedom. Titch had explained that arriving in Upper Canada would free an enslaved person under an act of law, and had helped two fugitives bound for the north. But Washington’s own route, after the Arctic, turns toward Nova Scotia and its Loyalist communities. He has already learned that crossing a border or reaching a place described as free does not by itself ensure safety: his fugitive status, the reward notice issued in the name of Erasmus Wilde, and the possibility of being seized remain relevant to each stage of travel.

Shelburne and the limits of refuge

Washington travels south and then east, crossing water and continuing overland by cart and carriage until he reaches Shelburne. He arrives with high expectations of the free life he had been told about, only to find that the promised golden existence has been depleted by those who came before. The town is wet and poor, with muddy streets and displaced people from the previous century’s American war. Land is scarce, supplies scarcer, and Black residents receive the worst opportunities when any are available. Washington works for a time in a small fishery.

The insecurity of his new setting is intensified by the history he brings with him. Plantation life and the memory of Erasmus Wilde’s agent on the docks have left Washington uneasy in his own skin, irritable, nervous, and deeply melancholy. He cannot then give that condition a name, but he recognizes that fear remains with him. On the coast, kidnappers seize freed people and carry them onto ships bound for the Southern states, where they may be enslaved again. Legal freedom therefore coexists with an active threat of forced return.

Racial hostility also narrows the life Washington had hoped to find. White men resent Black workers for competing at lower wages, and sometimes rise against them. In one nighttime encounter, an unseen assailant grabs Washington by the throat in the street. Washington escapes by pressing pebbles into the attacker’s eyes and running. Bystanders later identify the man as a local tough and former Anglican priest, but Washington cannot shake the belief that he has escaped John Willard. The assault deepens his watchfulness and solitude, showing how the threat of pursuit shapes even encounters that may not involve his actual pursuer.

The departure’s consequence

Washington comes to see himself growing hard and bitter, with a restlessness that will not let him sleep. Looking at his reflection in a discarded piece of tin, he sees a lightless expression and a deliberate readiness for violence. The sight makes the situation seem starkly unsustainable: he knows he must move on, or kill, or be killed. Thus the journey to Nova Scotia does not resolve the dangers set in motion by his escape from Faith Plantation; it exposes the gap between being legally free and being able to live securely as a free Black person.

The episode’s contrast is carried by the objects and places Washington moves between. Peter House’s books, lenses, money, food, and scopes make departure possible; the ship and the road take him toward a refuge he has imagined; Shelburne reveals how little that refuge can guarantee. Washington’s Arctic departure is therefore both a practical break from an increasingly untenable outpost and an unfinished search for safety, shaped by loss, racialized danger, and the continued possibility of recapture.