Fatal North

by Bruce Henderson

  Frederick Meyer, with whom Tyson had increasingly been at odds as the meteorologist assumed leadership over his fellow Germans, decided he would rather reside with his countrymen, and moved to the large igloo housing the men. Tyson found Meyer to be a strange, arrogant man. He had recently come up with a story that he was somehow related to Prussian royalty. Believing him, the Germans showed “the Count” new deference.

  With Tyson facing a winter alone in his igloo, Joe and Hannah graciously invited him to move into their quarters, which he did.

  When the daily allowances were handed out at the supply igloo they were taken back and prepared at three different messes. The men cooked their own food over a fire, burning the remains of the wood stripped from the boat. Hans’ wife, Merkut, cooked for their family over an oil lamp, and Hannah did the same for her husband, daughter, and Tyson, who found that the Eskimo woman could make a meal out of almost anything. Granted, he preferred not thinking about the contents of some of her dishes before eating them.

  On November 15, five dogs were shot after suffering much from hunger. They were skinned and eaten. Only two remained.

  We are all prisoners, Tyson, sick with rheumatism and hardly able to hold a pencil, wrote in his journal on November 19. By the movement of the ice, I judge we are drifting to the southward. The natives tell me that they saw two bear tracks and five seal holes, but they brought home nothing. I wish they had better fortune, for we need the fresh meat very much. The children often cry with hunger. We give them all we can.

  That day Joe saw three seals, but was unable to secure any of them.

  Living on such short rations meant the subject of food was constantly on one’s mind, a particularly cruel effect of starvation. While the stomach is gnawing with hunger, it is almost impossible to think clearly, for any length of time, upon anything else but the matter of eating. As body weight declines, a starving person becomes sluggish and lethargic. The skin thins, becoming cold, pale, dry, and stiff, and the body’s natural defenses against disease deteriorate.

  How long they could bear it, Tyson did not know. If they could make do on what little they had left and get through until early April, they could rely on their guns to hunt. If game failed them then and rescue was not imminent, they would perish.

  On November 21, Joe and Hans saw two bear tracks and five seal holes. They each staked out a breathing hole, and soon had bagged two seals. The seals brought in were received with much gratitude. So keen were the appetites of the party that the seal meat and skin was eaten uncooked, with the hair still on. Scalding water would remove hair, but they did not have sufficient heat to boil such quantities of water.

  From the effects of exposure and want of food, some of the men trembled as they walked, and were unable to do much around camp. Mostly, they stayed in their huts, wrapped in skins and furs. It was now too dark to walk about, and even if there had been a reason to, it was too cold. The chill was made more pervasive because they had so little heat in their systems from lack of food. Exercise, which creates hunger, was avoided as a matter of economy. Remaining still and keeping as warm as possible was found to be the most agreeable mode of passing the time, and best suited for the circumstances.

  Still, Joe and Hans ventured out in search of food. Without their courage, fortitude, and invaluable services, the party’s chances of surviving the ordeal would have been much diminished. While the winter darkness lasted, few seals were to be found, but those that were became life-sustaining. When the period of daylight became longer, the Eskimos expected to hunt not only seal but bear and fox as well.

  When Tyson learned that the men were hatching plans to break up the last boat for firewood, he ventured uninvited into their domain to speak his mind.

  “It will not do to touch the other boat, even if it means no fire or warm food,” he said sternly. “The time must come, if we live to see it, when the boat will be our only means of safety.”

  Things were said in German that he did not wait to hear translated. Tyson wondered again why the men who could speak English and had done so freely aboard Polaris were unwilling to do so now. In any case, he did not intend to discuss this issue. Nineteen lives depended on the one remaining boat.

  Tyson turned abruptly and departed.

  Nov. 22. My situation is very unpleasant. I can only advise the men, and have no means of enforcing my authority. But if we live to get to Disco they will have to submit, or I shall leave them to shift for themselves. I will not live as I have lived here. But here I am forced to live for the present: there is no escape. It is not altogether their fault either; they were good men, but have been spoiled on board Polaris. For the last year nearly they have been allowed to say, do, and take what they pleased. Such as they were, had they been under good discipline, and left on the ice like we are, I could have saved them; but I don’t know how it will be now. And then, too, there appears to be some influence at work upon them now. It is natural, no doubt, that they should put confidence in one of their own blood, but they will probably find out that all is not gold that glitters before they get through this adventure.

  Tyson lay sick for several days and ate scarcely a thing for a week. He was so weak upon getting up that he could hardly stand. He knew he must eat for strength alone, and partook of his daily allowance, leftovers from Joe’s last kill: seal, eaten raw.

  Everyone was suffering greatly. The cold seemed to penetrate to the very marrow. The Eskimos had long believed that man could not repel cold well without a certain quantity of fresh meat, and that no better meat served the purpose than seal. But now there were days when Joe and Hans couldn’t go onto the ice to hunt given the total want of light and heavy winds that piled snowdrifts high around the encampment.

  In contrast to the increasing alienation he felt from the men, Tyson enjoyed living with Joe and Hannah. In the long days and nights they spent together in close quarters, he came to appreciate their loyalty and intelligence. He could see why Captain Hall had grown so fond of them.

  He was able to communicate his plans and wishes intelligibly to them, and they to express their ideas to him. He played checkers with them on their makeshift board, using buttons on squares marked out with pencil on a ragged piece of canvas. They could also play a respectable game of chess, and they understood card games as well as any sailor. Decks of cards went wherever sailors ventured; the first “civilized” instruction that natives of any land got were usually card games from sailors.

  He also became close to their little girl, Punny. She sat wrapped in musk-ox skins, every few minutes saying to her mother, “I am so hungry.” Hearing her and the other children cry with hunger made Tyson’s heart ache, knowing that they were obliged to bear such privation with the rest. At such times he tried occupying her by playing games or drawing pictures together. Both wished to be elsewhere: his were mostly of ships under sail, hers of birds in flight.

  He witnessed how, in Eskimo society, marriage was a partnership forged from a necessity for physical survival, based on strict divisions of labor. The husband and wife retained their own tools, household goods, and other personal possessions. Men built shelter, hunted, and fished, and women cooked, prepared animal skins, and made clothing. Drying and mending clothing was a crucial job, for in subzero temperatures dampness or the smallest tear in outerwear could bring sickness and death. Tyson understood better why Eskimo hunters made a habit of traveling with their women at their side.

  For Tyson, the worst part of the long, dark days was not the cold and hunger, but the sheer boredom of sitting all day with nothing to do but keep from freezing. It nearly drove him mad. There were few people to talk to and nothing to read—no books, Bible, magazines, or newspapers. He hadn’t seen printed words, other than his own, in more than a hundred days.

  They saved the tin of dried apples for Thanksgiving. That day Tyson ate a few dried apples as they came out of the can, a small portion of chocolate, and two biscuits, the size of which made ten to a pound. That was the “thanksg
iving” part of the meal. To satisfy his fierce hunger, he was compelled to finish with strips of frozen seal entrails, sealskin—hair and all—just warmed over the lamp, and frozen blubber, which tasted sweet to a starving man. He was thankful that there was food of any kind to put in his stomach.

  No doubt many of my friends who may one day read this will exclaim, “I would rather die than eat such stuff.” Tou think so, no doubt; but people can’t die when they want to, and when one is in full life and vigor, and only suffering from hunger, he doesn’t want to die. Neither would you.

  Tyson thought of home and family all day long. He had been away at sea on many Thanksgivings before but always with a sound keel under his feet, clean and dry clothes, and no thought of what he would have for dinner, for it would doubtless be turkey with all the trimmings aplenty and delicious. Never did he expect to spend a Thanksgiving without even a plank between him and the waters of Baffin Bay, making his home in an igloo with Eskimos on an ice floe. But he had this to cheer him: his loved ones were together in safety and comfort, and they knew nothing about his perilous situation.

  I wonder what they had for dinner today. It is not so hard to guess: a fifteen or sixteen pound turkey, boiled ham, and chicken-pie, with all sorts of fresh and canned vegetables; and celery, with nice white bread; and tea, coffee, and chocolate; then there will be plum pudding, and three or four kinds of pies, and cheese, and perhaps some good sweet cider—perhaps some currant or raspberry wine; and then there will be plenty of apples, and oranges, and nuts and raisins. And if the children have been to Sunday school in the morning, they will have their little treasures, besides all their home presents spread out too. How I wish I could look in upon them! I would not let them know I was here, if I could. How it would spoil their day!

  With the arrival of December, complete darkness descended upon them.

  There was little change in their way of living. Mostly, they lay still in their bunks; the more quiet they lay, the warmer they stayed and the less food they could live on. The daily allowance was now six ounces of bread and five ounces of canned meat. These ingredients were mixed with brackish water for seasoning and warmed over lamp or fire. Even this inadequate ration was more than they could spare from their depleting stores.

  While the darkness lasted, they had little hope of getting seals. Bears only come where seals are to be caught, and foxes usually followed in the trail of bears. However, the first week of December a poor, thin fox wandered into camp in search of food and was shot and killed. It had hardly a pound of flesh on its bones—“all hair and tail,” as one of the men said—but they ate what there was of it, and picked its bones clean.

  In the constant darkness, a serious disagreement arose as to which way they were drifting. Frederick Meyer announced his opinion that they were drifting eastward across Baffin Bay and nearing Cape York, on the western shore of Greenland.

  Tyson was certain they were not heading east at all. He knew heavy ice such as the floe they were riding did not obey the winds—not as loose, floating surface ice often did. Assuming the currents had not changed their natural course—and he had seen nothing to indicate that they had—he knew from sailing these waters the past decade that they must be drifting south-southwest, which would put them closer to the eastern shore of Ellesmere Island and perhaps a hundred fifty miles from Greenland.

  Normally, it would not have mattered what opinions were entertained as to the course of the floe, except that the German seamen wanted to believe Meyer, their tacit leader, that they were nearing the coast of Greenland. There was much discussion about taking the boat and heading to land, which they would then follow down to the Danish settlement of Disco, where they knew a large store of provisions had been left for the expedition.

  Tyson realized if they started off in the hope of reaching Greenland, the result would be the death of all of them. Too late they would recognize that they were nowhere near Greenland but had the whole of ice-clogged Baffin Bay before them.

  Would the men set out for Greenland, leaving Tyson and the Eskimo families to fend for themselves on the floe? If they were left behind without a boat, they could never get off, and would be doomed—awaiting the inevitable breakup of the ice floe underneath their feet, from which there could be no escape.

  Tyson would not voice such thoughts without proof of their intentions, but he was concerned about what some of the men might be capable of doing. They openly complained about their miserable circumstances, as if those conditions weren’t shared by everyone. In Tyson’s view, they did not possess much self-control, courage, or endurance.

  Had they moved more quickly to reach shore that first morning they had been separated from Polaris, the outcome would have been very different, Tyson knew. They could well have made it back aboard ship. He had since understood that the men that fateful morning had discussed the drift of the Hansa crew, and the gratuity of one thousand thalers donated by the Danish government to each man of that party. There had been talk that if they should drift likewise, they would get double pay from Congress! But Tyson appreciated the difference in the circumstances, even if they did not. The Hansa party had had ample time to get all they wanted from the vessel—provisions, clothing, fuel, and even a house frame—because there had been firm leadership aboard ship and no panic. And they had drifted along the east coast of Greenland, where the weather is moderate compared to that of the west coast. If this incident had influenced them in any way, they must have by now—after months of suffering—realized the sad mistake they had made. Why did they think Congress would handsomely reward them for coming back without their ship, and with their popular commander in his grave?

  Everyone’s weaknesses were most felt in the flesh, on attempting to do any kind of work. Tyson could not imagine where Joe and Hans found the reserves to go forth and hunt. While the crewmen were evidently uneasy, and their talk and plans at times bold, whenever they ventured outside and faced the cold, they were glad to creep back again to their shelter and such safety and certainty that they found there.

  However, the Germans are organized now, Tyson wrote, and appear determined to control their destiny. They want to be masters here. They go swaggering about with their pistols and rifles, presented to each of them after the death of Captain Hall. I see the necessity of being very careful; any disorder would be ruinous. They think the natives a burden, particularly Hans and his family, and they would gladly rid themselves of them. Then they think there would be fewer to consume the provisions, and if they moved toward the shore, there would not be the children to lug. With the return of light and game, I hope things will be better, if I can manage to keep all smooth till then. But I must say I never was so tired in my life.

  One day in their igloo Joe, who had all along kept his rifle and pistol and had not been willing to lend them to Tyson even for hunting, gave him the handgun and ammunition. Hannah sat next to him, their daughter wrapped in furs and asleep in her arms.

  “Why are you giving me your pistol?” Tyson asked.

  “Not like look in men’s eyes,” Joe said solemnly.

  Tyson had never seen the Eskimo hunter afraid of anything, but he was now.

  “They are very hungry, sir,” Hannah said. “Joe and Hans not get enough seal.”

  “You’re doing your best,” Tyson protested. “Without you they’d be dead men.”

  “Afraid for family,” Joe said. “Help protect?”

  With horror Tyson realized the couple’s worst fear was not abandonment on the ice by the rest of the party. It was far more evil: Joe and Hans would be killed first, then their wives and children would be killed—and they all would be eaten.

  “With my life if they should try to harm any of you,” Tyson promised.

  It was a dark moment for them, facing the unthinkable.

  Tyson brooded for days. Aside from the obvious crime against humanity, it would be the worst possible decision for the men to kill the natives. They were the party’s best hunters; in winter or s
pring, no white man could catch seal like an Eskimo, who had practiced it all his life. It would be killing the goose which lay the golden egg.

  Yet, Tyson sadly agreed with Joe and Hannah; he could not trust what that group of desperate, frightened, and hungry men were capable of doing—they who stayed to themselves so much and spoke only their language and did only what they wanted to do.

  Keeping the pistol at his side whenever he ventured out, he kept a close watch. He was armed for the first time, and it would go hard with anyone who tried to harm his friends Joe, Hannah, young Punny, and the other Eskimos—the very people who had been doing the most to see that everyone survived on this God-made raft.

  Dec. 7. Joe and Hannah are much alarmed. Cannibalism! God forbid that any of this company should be tempted to such a crime! If it is God’s will that we should die by starvation, let us die like men, not like brutes, tearing each other to pieces.

  Dec. 16. The fear of death has long ago been starved and frozen out of me; but if I perish, I hope that some of this company will be saved to tell the truth of the doings on Polaris. Those who have baffled and spoiled this expedition ought not to escape.

  14

  The Sun Rises

  For Christmas dinner they divided up their last ham, which they had been saving for the occasion. That day they also saw land for the first time in months. It showed itself to the west—at a distance of forty to fifty miles. In all likelihood it was desolate Baffin Island, the largest island in Canada and 950 miles long. If the Germans were relieved they had not followed their leader’s advice and set off to the east to find Greenland across treacherous miles of icy seas, they kept it to themselves.

  The shortest and darkest day of the year was now behind them, and their southward drift was helping them to gain fast on the light. Bright streaks of twilight were beginning to show in the sky.