The Ice Master

by Jennifer Niven

  At the main camp, McKinlay and the others remained desperately ill. McKinlay, for one, was living on his milk ration, which, thankfully, he had saved. Everyone else had used theirs up on the trail, and now they were suffering for it. The only thing they had to eat now was pemmican, and the thought of it turned McKinlay’s stomach. It was a bitter concoction to face, especially day after day. But then Maurer cooked some bear meat, and for the first time in a long time, they actually enjoyed a meal.

  Little by little, McKinlay was able to get up and out of the igloo, trying to help out with the cooking or take a walk. He was not able to go far just yet, but it felt wonderful to be out in the fresh air.

  On April 13, a blizzard swept through, blowing the snow into huge drifts. The wind was fierce and chilling, and they all feared for Chafe, lost somewhere on the rough and unpredictable ice pack. Had he followed the same course as Sandy’s party and Dr. Mackay’s?

  Later that night, McKinlay moved into the Eskimos’ igloo with Munro and Hadley, and they had just sat down to tea, when they heard a sound at the door. It was Chafe, almost unrecognizable because he was so worn down and battered.

  “Is that you3, Charlie?” Munro asked, not believing his eyes. They had begun to lose hope, and they were thrilled at the sight of him. “Come in, come in.” They ushered him into the igloo and began to fuss over him.

  Munro lighted a candle and got the Primus stove working. While the water boiled, Munro and McKinlay took off Chafe’s skin boots and socks and trousers. The socks and boots were frozen together in a block of solid ice, and his pants were packed with snow. His hand and foot were covered in blisters, which Munro lanced with a needle and then bandaged. They gave him dry clothes and filled him with hot tea as he told them his story.

  It was Hadley’s little dog, Molly, who had saved Chafe’s life. Chafe was convinced he could not have gotten to Wrangel without her, and he said that after she led him thirty miles over the snow and ice and deposited him at Icy Spit, he fell to his knees and hugged her and thanked her for saving him. Then set her free and watched her run ahead, following at his own slow pace. Molly had brought him home.

  The blizzard blew all night and the next morning. McKinlay dug his way out through five feet of snow piled over the door. Other than that, no one ventured outside, and the sick men in the hospital igloo were nearly asphyxiated from the lack of fresh air. Chafe lay in his bed, eyes swollen shut from snow blindness. It would be days before he could open them again.

  When the weather cleared, they all turned outside and had a good feed of bear meat. McKinlay took short walks up and down the Spit, trying to regain his strength, and played nursemaid to the invalids, even though he himself was still quite weak. Munro, Chafe, and Clam, meanwhile, tried to doctor their frozen limbs. As usual, Hadley and Kuraluk went hunting in the morning, but also as usual, came up empty-handed. They did spy the first birds of the season, two snow buntings. Day after day, it was the same. They went out in search of game, and always came back with nothing. The men did not know how much longer they could stand the all-pemmican diet, but for now, at least, they had no choice.

  IT WAS CLAM’S left big toe that was giving him problems. It had gone gangrenous and would have to be amputated. They had no doctor, now that Mackay was gone, and they had no surgical instruments or anesthesia. The only equipment they had was a skinning knife and a pair of tin shears used to make cooking pots out of empty gasoline cans. The only medicine they had was a small supply of morphine, which they would save to treat him after the operation. Williamson volunteered for the role of surgeon.

  They held Clam down, a man on either side to grip his arms, and one to hold his head turned away so that he couldn’t watch. The shears were sharp, but not meant for cutting bone, and McKinlay could tell Williamson was struggling with them. He leaned into them more and finally had to kneel against the shears to cut his way through. It was a gruesome sight and McKinlay had to turn away himself to keep from getting sick.

  But Clam didn’t flinch. Through it all, his lips remained tightly closed and his eyes open. Except for a slight twitching of his facial muscles, he didn’t move, nor did he speak. McKinlay had never seen anyone live up to a nickname so well. Indeed, it was the greatest act of bravery and strength he had ever witnessed.

  After the operation, some gangrenous area still remained, but Williamson thought it best to wait until Clam had a chance to do some healing before he removed it completely. He felt the sailor had endured enough for the time being, even though Clam, obviously in pain, was his usual stoic and pleasant self, quiet and uncomplaining.

  THE WEATHER ONCE AGAIN WORSENED, the wind raging more than ever, the snow blowing heavily. The men were forced back inside, with only pemmican and tea for nourishment. Once in a rare while, they cooked some of the bear meat, which gave them great relief from the pemmican, until finally all that remained were the bones and the fat.

  Chafe had been unable to eat at all lately and was still suffering the effects of his ordeal. Both he and Munro underwent Williamson’s surgery, Munro having the dead matter cut from his heel, and Chafe having the dead area removed from his toe and heel with a pocket knife. The lingering pain killed Chafe’s appetite and he ate only two pounds of pemmican in ten days. As soon as his foot began to improve, though, his appetite came back and his strength returned, until finally he was able to crawl outside of the igloo and sit by the fire.

  Williamson decided Clam was now strong enough to have the rest of his toe removed, and once again, he was an exemplary patient. McKinlay didn’t know how he endured it, although the toe was clearly causing him immense discomfort. Williamson put silver nitrate on it to form a scab and then he prescribed morphine, which Hadley administered, to dull the pain.

  They were a party of cripples, Munro observed, and it was true. Those who weren’t frostbitten or maimed were still bedridden and swollen from the mystery illness. McKinlay, recovering from the sickness, was also suffering from frostbite, his nose and hand inflamed and beginning to peel.

  McKinlay had become increasingly important to Munro, who relied on his advice. As soon as he was physically able, however, McKinlay planned to join Mamen and the rest of his group at Rodger’s Harbour. He was still too weak to travel, but he longed to be with them. “I wonder when4 I will be able to join my own party,” he wrote wistfully, “I hope it will be soon.”

  For now, though, Munro made it clear that he was thankful for McKinlay’s presence. “I don’t know5 how we would get along without him,” wrote the chief engineer. He would do whatever he could to detain McKinlay for as long as possible.

  Hunger became a hard fact of daily life. They still had no game, except for a couple of bears shot by Hadley and Kuraluk at the beginning of the month. They counted on their tea supply, relied upon it, because it helped wash down the pemmican, even without sugar or milk. For breakfast, they drank a pot of tea with a bite of pemmican each. “Everyone here swears6 they will do bodily injury to anyone who denies that tea is the finest thing in the world,” said McKinlay. “But as I write, I dream of a breakfast of porridge, ham & eggs, tea with sugar & cream, toast & rolls, butter & marmalade.”

  Every day when the weather allowed, they built a log fire out of driftwood and gathered around it, talking almost entirely of food—of the good meals they would eat when they got back to civilization, foods they missed, foods they loved. They created elaborate imaginary multiple-course dinners and sumptuous fictitious feasts. It somehow helped satisfy the cravings they had for something other than pemmican and kept their minds off their growling stomachs.

  “Another month gone7 is the general greeting today. Let us hope the weather improves quickly now,” McKinlay wrote on the last day of the month, “& we will be happy, even though hungry.”

  ON APRIL 27, Hadley and Kuraluk set out on a hunting trip to the ice ridges, where they hoped to find more game. There was no sign of anything where they were—no seals; no birds, except for the two buntings they had spotted; no fox
; and no bears since the first of the month. Their only hope right now was to find another hunting ground. They took three of the dogs with them and struggled across the ice to the range of pressure ridges, wading through snow up to their stomachs.

  Once they reached the ridges, they were enshrouded by a thick black fog, “the worst going8 I Ever saw,” said Hadley. Still, they managed to get four seals down by the water. At last. There were bears, too, but the dogs chased them away before the hunters could grab their guns and leave the tent. They followed the great, lumbering beasts for a while, but had to give up because the bears were too far ahead and traveling too fast.

  Then both the old man and the Eskimo came down with snow blindness and were forced to lie confined in the tent, helpless to move. Aside from the seals and the escaped bears, there was nothing out there. But if the group were to survive until help arrived—if help arrived—the two knew they would have to cover the area and then cover it again until they found something to eat.

  THINGS HAD NOT GONE WELL for Mamen’s party as they headed for Skeleton Island. And now Malloch worried him. He was so careless, as he had always been careless with himself, not using sense or logic. He was sick all the time, just as they all were, but he did nothing to help himself. Instead, Mamen had to do everything, the looking after, the feeding, the cleaning up. When Malloch “made water” on himself one night because he could not get up to go outside, Mamen had to clean him. When he wandered off without socks or boots on the snow and ice, it was Mamen who had to look after his frozen feet.

  And now the toe would have to be amputated. It was not a challenge Mamen welcomed, but there was no one else. Templeman was sick as well, and there was only Mamen. They leaned on him and expected him to save them. He was tired of it already. They fought like cats and dogs, Templeman’s sharp and insulting tongue clashing with Malloch’s violent temper. Mamen did not enjoy being in the middle of it. Yet there was no shaking it. Somehow, he alone had been saddled with the responsibility for them. It was not supposed to be this way. “I could swear9 at and curse Captain Bartlett who has foisted [Malloch] and [Templeman] on to me . . . yes I could curse all three of them, for that matter, for they are of no help and of no use, only in the way.”

  The trip to Skeleton Island had worn Mamen down. He was too tired, too weak, and he was having trouble with his sled. He had started for Skeleton Island manhauling a Peary sleigh, but it was too heavy and the distance too far for him to pull it. So he improvised, something he did skillfully. He took a pair of skis and rope, and some pieces of wood, and made a small sleigh, just large enough to transport his knapsack and footbag, three skins, one bear ham, and the rest of the provisions he was taking with him.

  Skeleton Island was just a few square yards in size, lying a hundred yards or less off the east coast of Wrangel Island, halfway between Icy Spit and Rodger’s Harbour. Eight miles from Skeleton Island, he parked his sled and unloaded his footbag, one skin, a snow shovel, and a rifle and, carrying these, marched toward camp. When he reached Hooper Cairn, he could see two small dots in the distance and a pillar of smoke. He quickened his pace, and when he was near camp, Templeman came to meet him.

  They had had a terrible time of it while he was away. Templeman said they had been near death and had not expected to live to see Mamen again. When he reached camp, he could see the damage. Their igloo was in horrible shape, and their provisions and tools were covered in snow. Malloch was still frightfully ill, and now Mamen felt his own eyes swelling shut, a sure sign of snow blindness. He had some eye medicine in his knapsack, and after Templeman brought him a cup of water, Mamen bathed his eyes. As he lay there in darkness, he agonized over “being in poor10 shape myself, too,” and worried about how it would all end. One thing was certain: he had no time to be sick right now, with Templeman and Malloch unable to care for themselves.

  Over the next three days, Mamen was confined to bed, unable to open his eyes. Templeman brought him water three times a day for an eye bath, but it didn’t seem to help. In the midst of it all, on April 5, Mamen spent his twenty-third birthday. It was, as he observed, the worst one he ever had.

  When his eyes improved, he was able to be of use again. Templeman and Malloch badly needed him, and Mamen hoped he could get them back into shape soon. Templeman’s toes were frozen and Malloch’s knee was giving him trouble. They were weak as newborn puppies, but Mamen was in rotten shape himself. His eyes, although better, still couldn’t stand the light for long, so he was forced to stay inside with the others.

  On the tenth, Mamen and Templeman headed the eight miles out of camp to fetch Mamen’s abandoned sled. At Hooper Cairn, Mamen sent the cook back to camp with orders to get all the skins out and start on a new igloo. It was the least Templeman and Malloch could do, he thought, while he was manhauling the sled all by himself.

  He used snow goggles, but his eyes were in misery. He had to stop and polish the glasses every other minute, or dry them off, and it slowed his progress considerably. Finally, he retrieved the sled, and when he at last made it back to Skeleton Island, he found Templeman and Malloch deep asleep in the old igloo. The skins were nowhere to be seen and there was no sign of a new snow house. He woke them up and gave them both hell. The weather was too cold, they said, and they just couldn’t bring themselves to go out in it.

  Mamen remained spitting mad. “Yes, I see11 now what I will have to put up with,” he wrote vehemently. “Yes they are both some fine specimens.” Mamen made a cup of tea and then started on the igloo himself, building it without any help from Templeman or Malloch, who simply lay watching him. He finished all four walls before turning in for the night, and the next day he built the roof. Then he beat and brushed the skins and transferred everything to the new igloo. He lit the Primus stove and then they settled down to some tea and biscuit and pemmican, not enough food, by any means, but enough to quiet their hunger. Mamen was cook now, just as he was everything else, and for a treat he served up some bear steak from the meat he’d brought with him.

  His knee had popped out of the joint again, a worrisome thing, but something he was getting used to by now. He worked at it for half an hour and finally got it back in place.

  That was the day Malloch had urinated in his pants because his hands were so frozen that he couldn’t use them and the pull string on his trousers was twisted into a knot. Too proud to call for help from the others, he simply lay there and the accident happened. He was barely recognizable now, and as exasperated as Mamen had been with him lately, he pitied the poor fellow.

  ON APRIL 13, Mamen heard a sound outside the igloo and clambered out in his stocking feet to find himself face to face with a small arctic fox. Grabbing Malloch’s rifle, he shot the fox before it could get away and nabbed their first catch on Skeleton Island.

  The wind was blowing stronger now and they found themselves in a full-force blizzard. They stayed in the snow house, bringing a load of ice inside to give them several days’ supply of water for tea and soup. But the snow and wind also found their way inside the shelter, until soon the snow was piling up around their beds. “Happily it wasn’t12 so very much,” said Mamen, “and it confined itself nicely to my corner of the igloo.” He rose from his snow-covered bed and filled up the cracks in the walls and ceiling of the igloo and then brushed off all of the skins and coverings.

  The health of Malloch and Templeman wavered all the time, but they were at least beginning to get the color back in their cheeks. Malloch, in a moment of lucidity, was suddenly overcome with gratitude toward Mamen. He had been such a burden, he realized now, and he didn’t know how to thank his friend. He could only say simply, “I have you13 to thank for my life.”

  Mamen alternated between pity, sympathy, and disgust at Malloch’s situation and behavior. Even with moments of improvement, Malloch seemed to be getting worse every day. He was too weak to move, or else he just didn’t want to move, and he slept day and night. Mamen suspected him of laziness, and as he repaired Malloch’s skin anorak, which
was in wretched shape, he found himself lost in thought over it all. “Malloch is certainly14 a peculiar fellow; I begin to get sick and tired of him; he needs a nurse-maid wherever he goes . . . he certainly is the most careless fellow I have seen, both with himself and his clothes.. . .”

  To make it worse, Malloch was eating more than his share of the pemmican. He also ate as much as he could of the fox meat while downing soup and biscuits and tea. Neither Malloch nor Templeman made any noise about trying to supplement their precious food supply, and indeed Malloch in particular seemed to believe that as long as they had something to eat, there was no reason to go in search of other food. “We will soon15 be ruined the way he carries on,” Mamen complained. “He must reef his sails if he wants to be with us.”

  It was a month now since Bartlett and Kataktovik had left for Siberia. This weighed heavily on Mamen’s mind. Bartlett’s decision not to take him along still stung and the burden of his two companions weighed him down until he feared for his own health and well-being. He prayed Bartlett would win through “so that we16 can get out of this situation as quickly as possible, for if I have to stay here longer than to the fall, I am sure I will go to pieces, for Malloch and [Templeman] are of little help.”

  Their oil was gone and now, Mamen felt, it was time to move down the coast to Rodger’s Harbour where he hoped to find more game. His leg had given out yet again, but he felt determined to make the trip. Bartlett’s instructions to them, after all, had been to move about the island in different camps. They would have better chance for game that way, and besides, someone from the company needed to be at Rodger’s Harbour when help arrived. Even though they didn’t expect the rescue ship before July, Mamen wanted to be there waiting for it. There was no use staying where they were, and Skeleton Island seemed to fit its name all too well. There was no sign of life or of game for miles.