The Ice Master

by Jennifer Niven

  Scrambling down, Chafe and the Eskimos rescued two of the dogs from the water just in time and moved both teams to one side of the lead. But the ice was once more alive beneath them, and new leads opened, splintering in all directions until the three of them—with the dogs and the sleds—were trapped on a floe just twenty-five yards long and ten to fifteen yards wide. Because there was no way to cross, they built an igloo out of loose snow and sled covers and waited out the night.

  It was even worse the next day. Slabs of the ice cake had broken off during the night, and now it was two-thirds its original size. They were afraid to move for fear of ending up in the open water, which was everywhere now. They were helpless. The temperature was minus forty-eight degrees Fahrenheit, and they spent another miserable night on the ice floe, huddled together and frightened. It was, as Chafe said, “a night of11 suffering and waiting—waiting for some good turn that might free us from that awful prison.” They prayed the sea would freeze over in the next twelve hours and they would be able to escape.

  They had just turned in for the night when there was a deafening crash and the ice split underneath their igloo. Their precious ice floe had collided with another, the impact of which crushed theirs in half. They spent another sleepless night on the now minuscule floe, afraid to move for fear they would lose the only support they had.

  When daybreak arrived, they discovered they had been carried within two miles of the island. “Herald Island is12 only a huge rock four and a half miles in length, and less than a mile in width,” observed Chafe, and this was the island they could see at hand. They were sure of it now because just to the west, about forty miles away, was Wrangel, rising up out of the horizon like some grand fortress. Compared to Herald, it looked magnificent.

  Chafe turned the field glasses toward land and peered through the lenses, scrutinizing every visible inch of the smaller island. The glasses were strong and allowed him to see even small objects on the earth’s surface. He stood there a long time, straining his eyes, running the glasses up and down, back and forth, to this corner and that, but there was no sign of Sandy’s party—no sign of life at all.

  Chafe took it hard, and he also took it as an omen. “I believe the13 poor fellows met with the same experience as ourselves, and not being as fortunate as we were to escape, they must have perished in the sea.”

  Chafe and the Eskimos knew the dangers all too well, having just barely escaped with their own lives from the thrusting, crashing power of the ice. Sandy, Barker, Brady, and Golightly could have been crushed by raftering floes, or lost as the pack suddenly and unpredictably opened, leaving nothing below them but the dark polar sea. They may never have made it to the island. The ice was too forceful, the open water too vast. If one could make it across the fickle ice by some miracle, Herald itself was almost inaccessible, lacking any sort of shoreline, and ringed with imposing cliffs. Perhaps they had gone on to Wrangel Island, as instructed. Or perhaps they were lost. One thing was clear to Chafe now—he and Kuraluk and Kataktovik were not going to make it to either of the islands with these conditions.

  Now they tested the young ice that had grown up around their floe, fearing it wasn’t strong enough to hold them yet, but deciding to chance it. They couldn’t stay stranded forever, so they piled all their provisions on a high ice cake and placed a flag at the center to mark it. Then they grabbed their camping gear and five days’ provisions for themselves and for the dogs, loaded the sleds, and headed across the young ice. They separated, traveling twenty yards apart from each other to lighten the weight.

  When they reached the main floe, they all breathed sighs of relief. They trudged for five miles before they found their trail again, and by this time it was dark. They made hot tea, fed the dogs, and slept. It was the first full night’s sleep they had had in sixty hours.

  DAYS LATER, on their way back to Shipwreck Camp, Chafe and the Eskimos found the doctor’s party on the icy trail, in bad shape. Mackay and the others had been on the trail for ten days now, and their clothes were frozen as stiff as boards, their boots were worn out and threadbare, and they were clearly on the verge of exhaustion. Mackay did not look well, and he and Murray were man-hauling the sled while seaman Morris stumbled behind them. He had accidentally run the doctor’s knife through his left hand while trying to open a tin of pemmican and was obviously in great pain. They said he had blood poisoning, which might be a curable malady back in civilization, but here in the Arctic it could be fatal. The chills and raging fever it brought on meant that Morris was now even more susceptible to the cold and frost. Soon his system would begin to shut down and he would go into septic shock, then die. There was nothing to be done for him.

  Mackay and his colleagues were discarding gear along the trail to lighten the sled—mittens, shirts, sleeping bags, notebooks. They had lost half their provisions one night by leaving them on young ice, waking up the next morning to find them soaked with water. They had removed their pemmican from the tins and stored it in bags, and these had gotten wet, turning the pemmican to salt.

  Chafe asked Mackay and the others to return to Shipwreck Camp. When that didn’t work, he pleaded with them. But Mackay and Murray were as foolishly stubborn as ever. They had made their bed, they told him, and now they were going to lie in it. There was no changing their minds, but Chafe persuaded them at least to accept an ice pick and some seal meat. He offered some of his pemmican, but they refused it. He told them about the conditions surrounding Herald Island and about having spotted Wrangel Island to the west, and hearing this, they changed their course and pointed themselves in the direction of Wrangel. Chafe had no choice. He and the Eskimos dropped back and watched the three weary figures make their slow progress across the Arctic desert, discarding items here and there as they went.

  As Chafe and the Eskimos continued back toward camp, they came across Beuchat, a mile or so down the trail. He stood there, utterly lost, a pitiful sight, waiting with the other half of his party’s stores. Mackay and the others were coming back for him just as soon as they could, but for now, he waited, unable to walk or move.

  Simply to look at Beuchat brought Chafe to tears. His arms hung lifeless at his sides, his hands swollen and bare. He wasn’t wearing his gloves anymore because they didn’t fit his hands, which were frozen into fists, purplish and swollen, covered in blisters and a thick layer of black skin. Beuchat could not wear his stockings or boots, as his feet were in a similar condition. Instead, his skin boots were only half on his feet, and he was standing on the legs of them, while the soles of the boots were sticking out in front of him on the snow.

  He was delirious and in the throes of hypothermia, his breathing slow and irregular, his muscles stiff, his face puffy.

  “It’s useless for14 you to try to go any further in the condition you’re in,” Chafe told him, “so the best thing you can do is to come back with us to Shipwreck Camp.”

  Beuchat wasn’t listening.

  “You will be welcomed there,” Chafe persisted, “and we will fix you up all right.”

  He would never live to get there, Beuchat said.

  Chafe persevered. He begged and pleaded, but Beuchat was obstinate in his delirium. He had given up all hope of living and expected to die at any time. Mackay, too, had said that he thought Beuchat would be dead by the end of the night.

  “Go on,”15 this once elegant Frenchman said at last, “and leave me alone.”

  Chafe reluctantly decided that there was nothing he could do, and although it was the hardest thing he had ever faced, he must respect Beuchat and let him be.

  Before Chafe and the Eskimos left him, Beuchat asked Chafe to give Bartlett a message for him. Please tell the captain that he had absolutely nothing against him. And tell him that it was through no ill feeling whatsoever toward him or anyone else that Beuchat chose to leave the main party.

  Chafe promised to deliver the message, and then he, Kuraluk, and Kataktovik shook hands with Beuchat and left him there.

  He wou
ld die that night, they were sure of it. And Morris, thanks to the blood poisoning, wouldn’t last much longer.

  THERE WAS ONLY one razor in camp, and McKinlay borrowed it to have a much-needed shave. He washed and then put on a clean suit of underwear, and it was the height of luxury after a month of accumulating dirt and soot and coal oil. He felt quite dapper afterward in pants that shone from the seal blubber and coal oil that coated them. Every seam on the trousers had ripped open and been restitched and patched at least once, but McKinlay was saving his only other pair for the trail.

  He was enjoying keeping company with Auntie and the two little girls, who were lonely without Kuraluk. He frequently made malted milk for Mugpi and amused her and her sister by making jumping rabbits and caps out of his handkerchiefs. They would laugh with delight, and it felt good to make them happy.

  Now that Mackay was gone, Auntie had begun to look on McKinlay as the official camp doctor. There was little medicine in camp, since the only medical supplies saved from the ship were in a small traveling medical chest that Munro had rescued. For several days16 now, McKinlay had been treating a deep scratch on Mugpi’s chin, just below her lip. Auntie had warned her daughter repeatedly about teasing the cat, but Mugpi couldn’t resist. The cat was her playmate and friend, and she loved to chase it about and pull its tail. This time, the cat had gotten its revenge.

  On the night before Kuraluk left, Auntie had complained about a pain in her thigh. McKinlay told her to rub it, and she was cured. To further validate his reputation as a miracle doctor, he had given Auntie two cascara tablets for heart pain, and now she was once again feeling fine and thinking him a great “medicine man.”

  “Thus easily are17 reputations made!” McKinlay wrote in his diary later that night.

  A GREAT DEAL OF OPEN water stopped Clam and Munro from overtaking Chafe and the Eskimos, so they cached their load and returned to camp. Bartlett was trying to give everyone some experience on the trail before they all set out for Wrangel Island. McKinlay, who was in charge of the stores, was the only exception, as he was much more useful to Bartlett in camp and was looked upon by the captain as a confidant and trusted companion.

  But for the next trip out, the hapless Malloch joined Munro. They were a pair—between Malloch’s blissful carelessness and self-absorption, and Munro’s habitual lethargy—and Mamen shook his head as he watched them leave, expecting disaster. Malloch might be a good worker, but he had no clue what he was doing out there; and Munro was one of the most indecisive men he had ever seen.

  Their goal was to get to Camp Four, where they would drop off seven cases of dog pemmican and various other stores, including one hundred tea tablets, five pounds of sugar, a half dozen candles, one gallon of alcohol oil, and a stove. Before they left, McKinlay passed out a supply of chocolate to each man from a box he’d found frozen in the ice. They could use it now or save it for the trail; it was up to them.

  The temperature was minus forty-five degrees Fahrenheit, and there was a biting wind, which made it seem even colder. It was February 11, one month to the day since the Karluk sank, and they were still stalled in the same place.

  Soon after Malloch and Munro started on their way, they were held up by a large opening in the ice. They bunked down for the night, and by the next morning, some young ice had formed over the lead. Assuming that it could hold them, they crossed the new ice, tramping over it with their heavy boots, and the dogs, and the sled full of pemmican. Of course the ice wasn’t strong enough to hold them. The ice cracked, plunging Munro into the bitter cold water, along with the sled and the dogs. Malloch managed not to get a dunking and soon salvaged Munro, the dogs, the sled, the tent, and their stove, but all seven cases of the pemmican were lost, along with an axe, a pick, and a spade.

  They spent a miserable night, cold and wet, with nothing warm to drink because their matches were ruined, and no tent to sleep under because it was frozen stiff as a board and impossible to pitch. It was yet another disastrous and unsuccessful journey, and the routine was becoming disturbingly familiar.

  BARTLETT AND MCKINLAY were having a cup of coffee in the galley when Auntie announced that she could hear the sound of dogs barking. They rushed outside, but could see no movement on the horizon. However, every now and then they heard a distinctive bark and an occasional “Mush! Mush!”18

  They climbed their watchtower, and from there they could see a black spot in the distance. McKinlay grabbed the field glasses and could make out three figures and two sleds. Bartlett and McKinlay met Chafe and the Eskimos as they neared the camp. Chafe told the captain immediately about the condition of Dr. Mackay’s party and about what he feared was the loss of Sandy and his men. Bartlett was stunned and didn’t speak for several minutes. They walked on in silence, and finally he told Chafe not to say anything to dishearten the other men.

  Bartlett tried never to do anything that would discourage the men, even when he knew they were in danger. Instead, he would force himself to laugh, proclaiming, “Why, there is19 nothing to it,” and that he had met with the same thing dozens of times on his trip with Peary toward the Pole.

  But he was now gravely worried. Due to the wretched conditions of the ice, it seemed their relaying trips were all for nothing. The most troubling matter, however, was the well-being, and whereabouts, of Sandy’s party. He had hoped that they would come back to Shipwreck Camp with Chafe and then they could all make the final march to Wrangel Island together. But Chafe and the Eskimos were back without the first mate.

  Even if Sandy and his party had experience with ice travel, Bartlett knew that Herald Island, with its precipitous sides and rocky face, was unreachable. He hoped they would venture on to Wrangel Island instead. In his mind, he urged them there. In either case, it was best that the rest of them leave for land immediately. He decided it then and there. They would take the trail toward Herald Island, in order to pick up the stores cached at Camp Four and to look for Sandy and his men, and then they would go on to Wrangel.

  WILLIAMSON HAD BEEN WORKING on Mamen’s leg, and now Mamen was finally starting to feel better, although the knee was still swollen and sore. There was hope, thought Mamen. Maybe I will make it after all. Everyone had been taking such good care of him, including Bartlett, who wouldn’t even let him take the night watch, and instead took it himself. “You must keep20 quiet,” the skipper told him, “and get well in your leg before you think of anything like that.”

  They could see Wrangel Island clearly now, west of Herald. It seemed to be much closer than they had expected. Indeed, they now appeared to be drifting closer and closer to the island, although this may have only been some sort of optical illusion caused by the light.

  Chafe was back now, along with Kuraluk and Kataktovik. Mamen thought about Sandy and his mates and wondered where they were. He told himself that they had probably gone on over to Wrangel Island, and would be there waiting for him, Bartlett, McKinlay, and the rest of them when they got there. Dr. Mackay’s party seemed more hopeless. He pitied them out there, struggling over the ice. “They have a21 hard time, I should think,” he wrote. “I suppose that Beuchat has left this world, poor fellow. He did not know what he did when he left the camp.”

  Bartlett was emphatic that they all leave soon. Mamen’s knee was well enough now so that he had given up the idea of staying in camp alone. He would be able to go with them. And the truth was, he didn’t want to be left by himself. He was a brave young man, but he didn’t savor the thought of being left behind.

  They would divide into four teams, with two teams starting out first, and the other two following within a day. Munro would lead the first two teams—Hadley, Williamson, Breddy, and Maurer on one, and Munro, Malloch, Chafe, and Clam on the other—and Chafe was put in charge of the dogs. Bartlett, of course, was leader of the other two teams. For his own foursome, he chose the pick of the litter—Mamen, McKinlay, and Kataktovik while Kuraluk and his family would travel with Templeman.

  There would only be five dogs per
sled, since two were too injured to pull and would probably be shot early on for dog food. They had already had to kill Nellie’s puppies because they would only be a hindrance on the trail, as young and weak as they were, and to take them along as passengers was impossible. This way, too, they would save Nellie’s strength so that she could work. The dog power was too limited for Bartlett’s tastes; there were too many injuries, and they were always at one another’s throats. So he ordered each man to make a man harness, in case it should come down to having to haul the sleds themselves.

  Bartlett made no bones about it. They would be in for one of the hardest struggles men could ever come up against, certainly the hardest struggle any of them had ever faced. The work ahead was tough, tougher than they could imagine, he told them, but if they used care and caution, all would be well in the end.

  Malloch was especially careless, and Bartlett lit into him about his habits. The geologist had never dried out his shirt and foot bag from his unfortunate relay trip with Munro, and now they were still wet and already stowed away for the upcoming journey. He would never make it on the trail like that, and Bartlett warned him that he would end up like Beuchat if he wasn’t more careful.

  All worked to ready themselves, until they were dripping with perspiration. Everyone sewed warm clothing and loaded up the sleds for the upcoming journey. McKinlay was busy issuing stores to Munro, since his teams would set out first. Each sled would bear a load of nine hundred pounds, Munro’s carrying five cases of man pemmican, two cases of biscuits, eighty-four tins of milk, and two gallons of oil. Hadley’s would carry identical stores, but with six cases of pemmican instead of five.

  Munro would lead both of his teams directly to Wrangel Island while Bartlett’s teams would head first for Herald to look for Sandy and the others. After they either found them or ascertained that they were not to be found on the island, they would continue on to Wrangel.