Trial by Ice

by Richard Parry

  Buddington frowned. The man looked sicker than what he described.

  “I still plan on going north again after a few days,” Hall insisted. “This may be a bilious attack.” Then he enlisted Budding-ton's support for a purgative. “Don't you think I need an emetic, Captain Buddington?”

  “Yes.” Buddington, like all the rest, believed in purging the body of noxious elements.

  Both men turned toward Bessel, but the physician remained adamant. Folding his arms across his chest, he shook his head again. “It will not do for you to take an emetic,” he stated flatly.

  George Tyson stopped supervision of the snow-banking as soon as he learned of Hall's attack and visited the cabin. Hall asked him also if a purgative might not help, and, like Buddington, Tyson thought it would. But Bessel still refused.

  Denied what he believed his best chance to cure the burning in his stomach, Hall finally turned his face to the wall, rolled onto his left side, and drew his knees up. Buddington, Bryan, and Bessel filed silently out. Herron and Morton took stations outside the door to the cabin in case their captain needed them.

  Strangely, just after that first onslaught of vomiting, Bessel told Buddington that Hall's illness was fatal. This was an extraordinary thing for him to say. He had not examined Hall. While the vomiting was sudden and severe, nothing else pointed to a fatal outcome. Either Bessel was an incredibly bad physician, or else he knew something about the attack that no one else did.

  Word of Hall's sudden illness quickly spread. A palpable feeling of uneasiness flowed outward from that darkened cabin and seeped throughout the ship, spread into every corner, onto the ice to the men banking the sides of the ship, and across the frozen bay to the sailors working around the observatory. Men whispered to one another: the skipper was down. Within minutes everyone knew. In this isolated anchorage, ill news traveled fast.

  As soon as he heard of Hall's collapse, Herman Sieman uttered a silent prayer for his commander's speedy recovery. From the most religious to the most blasphemous member of the crew, each sailor probably echoed similar sentiments.

  On any ship the captain's words and deeds can save or sink the vessel. Few other places on earth bestow such awesome power on a single individual, but the merciless, unforgiving nature of the sea demands that a ship have one ultimate authority whose word is law. While some of the crew might not recognize Hall as that ultimate authority, everyone realized they depended upon him. Captain Hall knew more about surviving in this bitter wilderness than anyone else aboard. His years in the Arctic had proved that. His expertise strengthened the odds they would all return home alive.

  Everyone on board knew that three factions divided the Polaris expedition, and even the dullest Jack among them realized that Captain C. F. Hall was the only thing that held them all together.

  By morning, October 25, Hall felt better. Although the cramping pain had continued throughout the night, it subsided somewhat by daylight. He ate some chicken and arrowroot. An anxious Tookoolito and Ebierbing reached his side.

  “Did you drink the coffee, Joe?” Hall asked his friend. “I don't know. I took a cup of coffee, and then I got very sick and vomited.”

  He looked at Tookoolito. “I think the coffee made me sick. It tasted too sweet.” Drawing the two Inuit closer, he whispered, “I think there was something bad in the coffee. It burned inside my stomach. I never tasted anything like it before. Not like the coffee you make for me, Hannah.”

  The two Natives backed away as Dr. Bessel entered the cabin. For the remainder of the day, Hall rested in bed while Bessel hovered about applying cold compresses to the captain's head and mustard plasters to his legs and chest. No record is made of Hall's eating anything that day, but he steadily improved, according to Morton and Bryan.

  Nevertheless, Bessel wrote in his diary that Hall suffered from paralysis of the left side of his body, including his tongue something no one else saw on that day. With minute detail Bessel recorded his findings and treatments. Later he would use his notes to defend his care of Captain Hall.

  Furthermore, Dr. Bessel recorded an irregular pulse and now decided to purge his recovering patient. How massive diarrhea might correct an irregular pulse is a mystery. If Bessel had been worried about weakening Hall before, he must have gotten over his concerns. He administered castor oil mixed with four drops of cro-ton oil. Presumably copious glasses of water followed to wash down the objectionable concoction. To solidify his diagnosis even more, Bessel announced that Captain Hall had suffered from a fit of apoplexy and was not expected to live. Other than Bessel's questionable findings of paralysis, little documentation exists that the captain had had a cerebrovascular accident, or stroke.

  Granted, medicine has progressed considerably in the last 130 years. And granted, cathartics and purgatives were commonly prescribed at that time. But Bessel's treatment is inconsistent and without good foundationeven for that time. If Hall's irregular pulse was the result of electrolyte imbalance from his vomiting, knowing what we do now, inducing further loss of sodium and potassium through diarrhea only worsened the problem.

  By evening the stomach pain returned. Hall resumed vomiting all night. With the arrival of morning, once again, he improved. Although still weak, Hall inquired about the ship and speculated on his next trip by sled. The paralysis that Bessel described had vanished, although the doctor noted that Hall had difficulty swallowing. What trouble the captain had nevertheless failed to prevent him from taking some sustenance. His appetite had returned somewhat, as the stomach pains were also gone. He ate some preserved fruit, peaches or pineapple.

  During this time Dr. Bessel checked his patient's temperature. Taking both oral and axillary readings, the doctor recorded wildly diverse measurements, ranging from lows of 83°F to highs of 111°F. What sort of thermometer had Bessel used? Certainly it could not have been one of the carefully calibrated “black-bulb” or “naked-bulb” mercury thermometers that the National Academy of Sciences admired for their superb accuracy. The numbers Bessel recorded are unbelievable. His readings are incompatible with survival. The heart fibrillates when the core temperature drops below 90°F, and the brain cooks when temperature rises past 107°F. More worrisome is the fact that Bessel used these findings to initiate further treatment. Because of the elevated temperature, the physician prescribed quinine injections.

  In the 1870s quinine was used for a variety of ills, fever being just one. By dilating the small blood vessels in the skin, quinine will lower an elevated temperature. Other than its primary use in combating malaria, the drug also produced pain relief by depressing areas of the central nervous system. It can also produce digestive upsets, visual disturbances, and a skin rash. Bessel gave Hall an injection, which he described as “a hypodermic injection of one and a half grains of quinine, to see the effect.”

  The doctor's choice of quinine is open to question. Certainly Hall did not suffer from malaria, the drug's primary usage, nor did he complain of pain, another indication for quinine during that time. With the captain's temperature all over the map, quinine probably should not have been used, and it could be expected to further upset an already disturbed stomach.

  According to Bessel's notes, the effect was beneficial, and the captain's appetite and mental acuity improved over the next day. Not wanting to let well enough alone, Bessel injected Hall again, even though the man's temperature was no longer elevated. During this time Morton and Chester stayed at the sick man's bedside and clearly remembered the injections. Both men recalled Bessel's mixing a white powder into the solution before injecting it.

  The fact that the treatment improved the captain's appetite and mental conditionjust the opposite of what might have been expectedraises the question of whether the white powder was quinine or something else.

  Trouble began the next day. Hall leaped from his bed suddenly and shouted that Chester, Tyson, and Buddington planned to shoot him and that Bessel and the cook were poisoning him. For the next four days, Hall ranted and raved abo
ut his cabin.

  When Jackson, the cook, entered the cabin to fetch his pipe, Hall mistook the pipe for a pistol and cried out that Jackson meant to shoot him. The frightened man fled when Hall ordered Budding-ton to strip the cook's bunk and search it for weapons. Hall also refused a change of stockings from Chester, fearing they might be laced with poison.

  Focusing primarily on Bessel as the ringleader of a plot to kill him, Hall finally refused to let the doctor treat him. Pointing directly at Bessel, Hall told Jackson, “That man is trying to poison me!”

  Bessel abandoned his previously haughty demeanor and now suddenly adopted the patience of Job, affecting an air of extreme kindness toward his ranting leader. That appears to have been out of character for the brusque man. When Captain Buddington offered to drink a glass of medicine first to prove to Hall that it was safe, Bessel strangely would not allow it. Why was that? A sip of any medicine would have allayed Hall's fears and would not have hurt Buddington. Were the contents of the glass harmful instead of helpful? If it did contain poison, Bessel certainly would not wish to kill Buddington, a man whom he could readily control and who was needed to ensure their safe return.

  To the men around him, Hall appeared to accuse everyone, especially Bessel and Buddington, but he never laid any blame on his Inuit friends.

  Hoping to cure himself by tried-and-true methods, Hall asked for raw seal meat. Bessel refused to allow it, and Hall accused the doctor of starving him. To avoid the poison he feared, Hall refused all food unless it was proved safe. Like the Roman emperors with their food testers, the explorer ate only after Chester, Morton, or Herron had first sampled his meals. Tookoolito assumed the task of preparing his soups and teas. Hall even suspected that the water used to wash him might have been harmful.

  During this time Noah Hayes and Herman Sieman asked to visit the captain. Sieman wished to pray over a fellow Christian and Hayes to comfort his idol. Buddington and Bessel refused their requests. Why is unclear. The disturbed Hall might have garnered comfort from friendly faces. Was this a kind of psychological warfare being practiced on Hall? Or was it meant to prevent Hall from poisoning the crew with innuendo and accusation? No matter the reason, the skipper and doctor managed to isolate Hall from the crew during this time, allowing only the Inuit and officers access to the sick man.

  In the close confines of the ship, engulfed in darkness and hundreds of miles from help, the captain's raving unnerved the crew.

  One day Joseph Mauch took Henry Hobby aside and whispered darkly that “there was poisoning around there.” Mauch had studied some pharmacology in Germany and recognized the odor of a certain poison within the captain's cabin. Unfortunately Mauch could not recall the English word for the poison he smelled.

  Concurrent with the captain's illness, a strange affliction struck a litter of newborn sled dogs. One by one the previously healthy pups developed prolapsed intestines. With their protruding entrails dragging behind, the unfortunate creatures fell victim to the other dogs, which attacked and pulled on the exposed organs. To end their suffering, the animals were killed. Death and dying permeated the atmosphere of the entrapped ship and further unnerved the sailors. To the superstitious seamen, what befell the puppies was just another sign that their ship was unlucky. No one stopped to consider that someone might have been testing poisonous mixes on the unfortunate creatures.

  Meanwhile, Captain Hall teetered between the brink of madness and guilt for his outbursts. To Emil Schuman he apologized repeatedlyup to ten times, according to the engineer. “Mr. Schuman,” he lamented, “if I ever did wrong to you, I beg your pardon. I'm extremely sorry.” With Schuman's limited English, most of Hall's invectives went unnoticed; Hall's profuse apologies did not.

  Hall's hallucinations peaked one night. Awaking suddenly, he jumped up and seized Buddington by his collar. The startled whaler shouted to Tyson and Chester for help. But Hall barred their way. With his left hand (the one that was supposedly paralyzed), the captain held the door closed, grasping the doorknob so tightly that the men outside could not turn it. Showing remarkably good strength for a “paralyzed” and weakened person, Hall kept the two men at bay while he questioned Buddington.

  “There are blue vapors surrounding the cabin lantern,” he insisted to his captive audience while the other officers hammered at the door. “Do you not see it?”

  “Sir!” Buddington stammered.

  Hall's wild eyes rolled toward his captive. His already waxen face tightened, and his mouth gaped in horror. “What's this? Blue flames shooting from your mouth, sir!”

  Hall's grip on the handle relaxed, and Tyson forced the door ajar. Chester and he rushed inside and pried Hall's fingers from Buddington's throat. Gently they forced Hall back into his bunk. The stricken man wiped futilely at Chester's coat, brushing away the cloud of blue vapor that drifted around the first mate and clung to his coat. After anxious moments the men quieted Hall and covered him with his blankets. Tyson sat beside him.

  Weakly Hall raised on his elbow and ran his fingers around Tyson's mouth. “What's that coming out of your mouth?” Hall whispered. “It's something blue …”

  Bryan hurried to the cabin. Seeing him, Hall pointed to the bunk Bessel used. “Doctor Bessel had an infernal machine in his berth that emits blue vapor. Don't you see it? It is there. Can't you see the vapor coiling around in the air? I know the machine is in there because I can see blue vapor hanging along the edge of the berth. Don't you see it, Mr. Bryan?”

  The distraught chaplain looked about. Only smoke from the kerosene lamp circled inside the small cabin.

  Hall inclined his head toward the other bunks. A look of madness crept into his eyes. “Bessel has put his machine somewhere inside here. He is pumping his blue vapor into my berth.” Fear filled Hall's stricken face. “It is killing me,” he said slowly. Then a conspiratorial look replaced the terror. “That little German dancing master doesn't think I know that he is at the center of this, but I do.”

  During this time the “thin-skinned” and “sensitive” Bessel demonstrated remarkable equanimity. Before, he took offense at the smallest slight; now he seemed inured to the poison charges. The chief scientist wandered around the ship casting dire prognoses about Hall's chances of survival. Before Hall dismissed his services, Bessel had remained close by his patient, often sleeping in a chair by the captain's bed. On one occasion the doctor tied a string to Hall and then to his own arm to awaken him if his patient needed care. The men assumed that this was to spare the others sleeping in the cabin from loss of their rest, but the string arrangement conveniently enabled Bessel to treat the befuddled Hall without arousing possible witnesses.

  In lucid moments the explorer fed himself from tins of food stored under his bunk, which he opened himself.

  After treating all other foods as poisoned, drinking only water or tea directly from Tookoolito's hand, and not letting Bessel near him, C. F. Hall began to improve. From November 1 through November 3, he steadily regained his strength. His mind cleared, and he resumed his plans for another trip northward. If Bessel was poisoning the captain, this improvement when out of the good doctor's hands is damning evidence.

  On November 4 Hall kept his secretary, Joseph Mauch, busy revising the ship's logs and bringing his journal up to date. Throughout the day he chatted with anyone who passed about his plans for reaching the North Pole. His appetite was strong, and all signs of the mysterious stomach pains had vanished.

  At this time Dr. Bessel prevailed upon Mr. Bryan to intercede with the captain on the doctor's behalf. Bryan, acting mostly in his role of ship's chaplain and conciliator, implored Hall to let Bessel resume treatments. It was Dr. Bessel's highly skilled talents, learned in Heidelberg, that had brought about Hall's miraculous cure, Bryan argued.

  No one could doubt that Hall had improved remarkably. But was this due to Bessel's injections and solutions or to Hall's paranoid actions? Bryan's arguments must have been convincing, for the captain relented and allowed the doctor he h
ad accused of poisoning him to resume his care. Years later Bryan would express doubts about whether he had done the right thing.

  By that evening Bessel once more injected his medicines into the captain's thigh. In his journal Bessel wrote that Hall had difficulty speaking, appeared slow, and had numbness of his tongue that day, and that is why he restarted his treatments.

  The next two days Hall walked about on deck and continued amending the ship's journals with Mauch. As a seaman passed his porthole with a freshly killed seal, Hall laughed and pointed to the man. He seemed well on the road to complete recovery.

  He ate a full meal before turning in. He told Buddington he would have breakfast with him in the morning and added, “Mr. Chester and Mr. Morton need not sit up with me at night. I'm as well as I ever was.”

  Near midnight Hall developed labored breathing. Alarmed at this sudden change, Chester awoke Bessel and relayed his findings.

  Strangely, the doctor who had tied himself to his patient now appeared unimpressed with Chester's report. In the words of the startled first mate: “I asked the doctor about it. He said it was all right and started out quick as he could to the observatory.”

  What was so important for Bessel to do in the observatory in the middle of the night? Whatever scientific observation he needed could not have been that crucial, for Bessel would have slept through the night if Chester had not aroused him. Was he just trying to get in a few observations while awake? Was the good doctor trying to establish an alibi, one that put him in the science hut when Hall died? Most important, why would he ignore Chester's report when respiratory depression is frequently a terminal sign?

  When Chester returned to his charge, he found Hall muttering incoherently around a dangerously swollen tongue. The captain's condition so unnerved Chester that he ran on deck to dispatch the first man he saw to retrieve the errant Bessel from his observatory. The first mate then rushed to find Captain Buddington. “Captain Hall is dying,” he blurted to the ship's master.