The Ice Master

by Jennifer Niven

  They kept themselves to small portions and two meals a day. McKinlay did not know what would happen to them if the seals went away entirely, as they appeared to be doing, or if the birds left or if the eggs disappeared. They had not seen polar bears or arctic foxes in a long time. Auntie soon announced that the pemmican was finished, so anything they ate from now on, they would have to catch themselves.

  The strain was unbearable. Throughout their ordeal thus far, McKinlay had managed to maintain his faith and a strong sense of hope, but often—especially lately—he felt burdened with a wretchedness that he probably would not have felt had he not been so completely alone. He rarely spoke to the men from the other tent anymore, except when they were arguing with Hadley over food. Williamson, Chafe, and because he lived with them, Clam, were greater strangers to McKinlay now than they had been at the beginning of the journey. With Bartlett gone, and Munro having abandoned everyone for Rodger’s Harbour, they were without an official leader, and McKinlay had no influence over them. They would not listen to him, and they had nothing to do with Hadley or the Eskimos or McKinlay.

  There was something else disturbing McKinlay. It was a horrible thought, and one he tried to push from his mind. But it lingered and refused to go away. It was about Breddy. He and Hadley had examined the body after death and made some unsettling observations.

  “One point I34 noted in addition to those already noted,” McKinlay confided to his diary. “His right hand was not in such a formation as would hold a revolver, the four fingers being bent slightly at the first joint & the thumb quite straight & hard against the first finger.”

  McKinlay was not sure what it meant. He had no experience with dead bodies. He was not a doctor or a detective. But he knew enough to know that something was amiss, and that thought alone was enough to keep him up at night.

  “Our suspicions have35 been raised,” he wrote, “by Williamson’s strange conduct & by other circumstances, that Breddy did not die by his own hand—either suicidal or accidental.”

  ON THE EVENING OF JUNE 28, McKinlay and Hadley trudged up the hill to cover Breddy’s grave with another load of wood. This time, they took Chafe with them. Hadley and McKinlay had already discussed the matter, and now they wanted Chafe to see what they already knew themselves. They wanted another pair of eyes to witness this and another brain to help process what it might mean.

  The day before, Hadley had asked Chafe to grill Williamson about Breddy’s death. Specifically, he wanted to know where the weapon was found afterward—where the gun lay that Breddy was killed with. Was it in his hand or on the floor? And if it was on the floor, then what position was it found in? Williamson said he couldn’t remember where the revolver was, whether it was on the ground or in Breddy’s hand. Yet when Hadley had demanded the weapon, Williamson had handed it to him, picking it up from Breddy’s left side.

  Uncovering Breddy’s body now, they showed Chafe “that Breddy’s Eyes36 were closed,” wrote Hadley, “and that he was shot through the Eye Lid and that his hands were Laying not Like a man that Held a gun and shot himself . . ..”

  There was only one answer and one reason for this, and now Hadley believed without a doubt that the thing he had suspected was true. That evening Hadley wrote in his diary, “I think its nothing but Murder”.37

  July 1914

  Now that time1 is wearing on, our anxiety increases. When will our relief come? Will we be relieved this summer, or must we winter? God forbid! Our chances are thin.

  —WILLIAM MCKINLAY, MAGNETICIAN

  Williamson had murdered Breddy. Hadley was convinced of it. The positioning of the dead man’s hand, his closed eyes, and Williamson’s strange behavior were all damning clues. Breddy didn’t look like a man who had shot himself, accidentally or otherwise. He didn’t look like a man who had put up a fight or who had even been awake at the time. He looked like someone who had been taken by surprise, who was probably asleep in his bed when the barrel of the gun was pointed at his right temple and the trigger was pulled.

  Hadley and McKinlay had examined the body carefully several times, but what now? How did you live with a murderer, especially in such close quarters? Where they were living, there were no courts of law, no trying of evidence, no judge and jury, no punishment for the guilty. Williamson knew Hadley suspected him, and he must have sensed McKinlay’s guarded skepticism as well. With a kind of desperate earnestness, he continued giving little presents to Helen and Mugpi and was as nice as possible to Hadley and McKinlay. But he was still up to his tricks. On days when Hadley and McKinlay weren’t in camp and Kuraluk had gone off hunting, Williamson tried to bribe Auntie into giving his tent food.

  Hadley took it all as proof. He and Williamson had been at odds for many months, it was true, and once crossed, Hadley had a hard time forgiving any man. But this wasn’t just Hadley being vengeful or Hadley being unforgiving. This was Hadley being convinced that Williamson was a murderer.

  Chafe had been hunting at the cliffs, so there was no reason to suspect him. Clam, who was in the tent at the time, was so deathly ill that it seemed impossible he could even hold a gun, much less commit a murder. Besides, Clam didn’t seem capable of such a brutal act.

  That left Williamson, who had been doing nothing but causing trouble since they landed on the island, deliberately stirring things up by spreading lies about Hadley and Kuraluk, so that everyone in camp was furious with Hadley; and then Munro almost killed him. What’s more, Williamson and Breddy had fought violently just weeks before, although no one ever found out what they were fighting over. Afterward, they had both argued vehemently in favor of convincing Munro to return to the main party; then, just a day or so before Breddy’s death, Williamson had changed his mind. We would be better off with fewer mouths to feed, he had told McKinlay. Don’t bring Munro back.

  And then, the day before Breddy died, Williamson’s tent had run out of food. They had cheated Hadley and the others out of birds, and they had even stolen meat from their larder, but still they had nothing left to eat. Had Williamson killed Breddy to save a mouth to feed?

  No one would ever know what happened on the morning of June 25 or what, if anything, might have passed between Breddy and Williamson before Breddy died. The only thing they knew, and would probably ever know, was that Breddy was dead and the wound did not appear to be self-inflicted.

  ON JULY 2, Kuraluk took his family egg hunting at the cliffs. They stayed out there for two days but wanted to stay longer. It was good to be away from the other men at camp.

  Mugpi was a sunny child. Kuraluk had made her some miniature sleds out of ivory to have as toys. She played with them for hours, her laughter sparkling and bright. But Helen was solemn and she felt the hardship of their situation as keenly as Kuraluk and Auntie. She helped her father with the hunting and her mother with the cooking and now and then would chase the cat with Mugpi, but mostly she worked. Auntie was tough and strong and could have survived on her own out there, without anyone’s help. But the family was thankful to be together.

  If Kuraluk could have stayed at the cliffs with Auntie, Helen, and Mugpi, he would have. So much rested on their shoulders—the expectation that they would find food for the party and prepare the food and keep everyone fed and warm. Kuraluk did not want to go back to camp. But if he didn’t, the men would come after him and make him return. Still it was good to take a break and go to a place where they could breathe and relax and sleep without worrying, even if it was only for two nights.

  ON JULY 1, Chafe had gone hunting as usual and brought back two crowbills and one small gull. Williamson, Chafe, and Clam had not offered to share with Hadley, McKinlay, and the Eskimos this time, and instead ate the entire catch themselves.

  The strain of living under this tension was wearing on McKinlay. Relations were disturbingly tenuous between the two tents, and McKinlay found himself worrying a great deal about what might happen next. He was still in shock from Breddy’s death and was trying to adjust to the thought of living
with someone who might be a murderer, not knowing, always wondering, afraid to turn his back on Williamson and not fully trusting Chafe and Clam.

  Bartlett had said he could size up a man in an instant. “One good look2 and I can tell what a man is like,” he liked to boast. “A couple of questions and I know his character. I can tell whether a man can be counted on or not in a pinch. I can almost say how he will behave when he dies.”

  Would Bartlett have been able to predict this? As much trouble as Williamson had caused during the past few months, as unpleasant as he could be, would anyone have ever picked him to be a killer? And under different circumstances, in a different world, would those violent tendencies have ever come out? McKinlay’s faith in essential human goodness was being sorely tested. He hated even entertaining the possibility in his mind. He wished he could forget and move on and not think about it anymore.

  Lately, he seemed to be suffering the effects of their all-meat diet, with excruciating stomach pains, but at least, thank God, they had not gone hungry yet. At times, he was so weak and sore that he would have to lie in the tent all day, unable to move. He was not the only one. Everyone seemed to be suffering from a stiffening of the joints, their limbs so dead that, as Chafe said, they “could pinch them3 hard and not feel it.” Chafe’s legs were so stiff that he was unable to leap across the cracks in the ice, even the smaller ones of three or four feet in width. Consequently, he began to take a sled with him when he went hunting. When he came to a lead, he would use the sled to form a bridge and walk across it to the other side.

  Kuraluk was not interested in hunting lately, preferring instead to sleep late and stay around camp. He seemed despondent, but Hadley said it was typical of an Eskimo with a well-stocked or semi-stocked larder to become a lazy hunter. Kuraluk, in turn, said they were in no danger of starving as long as they had some blubber on hand. So Hadley went out by himself day after day and tried, with no luck, for seals or birds. One day he counted fifty-four seals on the ice, but they were lying on a smooth, flat area, which meant there was no way to reach them without being seen.

  Kuraluk did begin work on building a kayak, at Hadley’s urging. Now that the ice was beginning to break up and the leads were beginning to open, the men knew they would have better luck at hunting seals from the water. And as there was much open water along the beach now, it was almost impossible for the men to go out onto the ice anyway.

  Kuraluk worked on the kayak daily, constructing a paddle out of a log to go with it. His only tools were an “adze,” made from a hatchet, and a knife, but with typical resourcefulness he somehow was managing to create a magnificent frame of driftwood, the pieces lashed together with sealskin. Soon it began to take shape as a small skin boat, pointed at each end like a canoe. Unlike a canoe, however, the kayak could only hold one person in the small, round hole that would be carved into the wooden frame and covered in seal skins.

  Hadley was unable to kill any game lately, although he miraculously caught two seals during the first week in July, which left everyone feeling hopeful and much relieved.

  Chafe, as usual, went out on his nightly hunts, but when he was lucky enough to find game, he rarely offered to share it with anyone other than the men in his own tent. Hadley’s seals, meanwhile, were still divided equally.

  Before the new meat was shared out, Williamson appeared at Hadley’s tent, asking how Hadley and the others made their meat last for so long. Williamson, Chafe, and Clam had already run through their share of the last three seals, divided out in June, and now they had no more food. Williamson begged for meat from Hadley and, grudgingly, the old man gave Williamson a large portion from their larder. Hadley wasn’t going to let them starve to death, no matter how much he felt they deserved to.

  Breakfast in Hadley’s tent—when there was food to be eaten—was usually between 7:00 and 8:00 A.M. Then they had meat and tea and fed the dogs soup. Between noon and 2:00 P.M., on the rare days when they had enough for three meals, they ate lunch, usually tea and cold meat left over from breakfast. Supper was eaten after 6:00 in the evening, again tea and meat, the latter eaten from a pan with cooked blubber. Hadley, McKinlay, and the Eskimo family sat in a circle and ate out of the pan, combining the meat with the chunks of blubber to fill out the meal. “I am sure4 I eat ten times as much fat as ever I did at home,” said McKinlay. And then, before bed, they had a snack of blood soup.

  By July 5, Williamson’s tent had devoured their entire share of the new seals, and somehow he persuaded Auntie to give him the intestines from one of the seals so that they would have something to eat. In Hadley’s tent, meanwhile, they used what they called “salad oil,” which McKinlay described as being “made by cutting5 blubber into small pieces & putting it into a ‘poke,’ which is a sealskin cut in such a way that the skin is complete except for a hole at the neck & another at the tail.” The poke was left out in the sun until the blubber became a sour tasting oil, which the Eskimos could then use in the wintertime. Their poke had rotted and torn and, as a result, the oil wasn’t fully ready; but Auntie served it up anyway and showed the men how to dip their meat into the oil before eating it. It was, said McKinlay, an “acquired taste.”6

  In early July, the temperature hovered just below the freezing point, and rain began, beating down upon their tents in a torrential downpour. It lasted for days, and there was nothing for the men to do except lie inside, sleeping, sewing, and eating. Only Kuraluk ventured outside to work on his kayak. He was sporadic about working lately and sometimes picked up the kayak and sometimes just laid it aside. The men were anxious for him to finish it, but there was no way to hurry him.

  Part of the trouble was that Williamson had installed a stove in his tent, which he had constructed out of a coal oil tin, and which the Eskimos loved. The entire family had started spending their evenings with the crewmen, gathered around the warmth of the stove, and enticed by the strong tea Williamson offered them at midnight. Kuraluk had never tasted anything like it, and he and Auntie found themselves awake all night and sleeping well into the next afternoon. One morning, Auntie was so exhausted that she fell asleep in the middle of fixing breakfast. Kuraluk, too, was tired and did not have as much energy now to work on the kayak.

  It was maddening for McKinlay and Hadley, who suddenly found themselves alone and alienated from the rest of the camp. Were they being purposely excluded? McKinlay couldn’t be sure, but even if they weren’t, the midnight tea parties were taking their toll.

  When the rain stopped, a thick fog crept in and the men moved camp to the north end of the beach. The rain had done a good deal of damage to the ice, which they were happy about, and in the distance, they could see that the great and powerful series of ice mountains, which had caused such grief to them on their trek to Wrangel Island, had now begun to crumble as the ice broke up. Open leads slithered everywhere across the horizon, wider and wider as the ice traveled south rapidly. “Eight days of7 this weather & one seal! The silver lining to our black cloud is that most of the winds we have been having are S. and SE.—the most favourable for any rescue,” wrote McKinlay.

  And then the rain set in again, cold, misting, and blowing and making it impossible to hunt. They lived on blubber for thirteen days while they waited for the weather to improve and for Kuraluk to finish the kayak. McKinlay and Hadley went out every night to pick and eat scurvy grass. The land surrounding them was barren, with only a scattering of flowers, grass, moss, and other plants. But there was scurvy grass in abundance, a seashore plant8 which grew flat against the ground and featured clusters of small white flowers and plump oval pods resembling green beads. More than anything, it was a good source of Vitamin C, which was almost impossible to get from anything else they were eating.

  Chafe managed to kill a few birds, which he shared with Hadley’s tent; during the odd break in the weather, Hadley went out sealing. There was one seal, far out on the ice, tantalizing but unreachable. Every day, Hadley watched it wistfully, and every day he returned to camp e
mpty-handed. The ice and water conditions would make sealing nearly impossible now until the kayak was finished. They gave up for the time being. They also gave up on getting any more eggs. Chafe had been for a walk on the top of the cliffs and reported that the slope down to the edge was too steep and too dangerous to lower anyone down to fetch them. McKinlay often wished he could go hunting, but the two rifles were better off in the hands of Hadley and Kuraluk. Williamson’s tent still wouldn’t give up the Mauser, which Chafe used on his hunting trips.

  Their supper table, as McKinlay observed, would have “created shocked surprise9 on a civilized table.” Now they were surviving on old blubber and oil; thin soups made of seal blood; and, now and then, a rotten seal flipper, several weeks old, hair and all, which only the Eskimos seemed to enjoy. Before the meat supply had been completely exhausted, they had eaten anything that was even remotely edible—tails, neck pieces, wings, and various other “sundry parts,”10 as McKinlay described it. They now had to make use of every single part of the animals they caught. The blubber—that thick layer of fat, which lay between the hide and the flesh of the seal, and which the Eskimos used for cooking and lighting—made McKinlay’s stomach turn, but it was all they had now. Kuraluk and Auntie were amused by his efforts to swallow the stuff. “It helps to11 fill a hollow if nothing else,” said McKinlay.

  THEY AWOKE ON JULY 13 to find the entire ice pack on the move, heading south, blown by a temperate north wind. Wherever the ice met the land, it piled into thick, towering ridges, and numerous leads formed as the ice split apart and dissolved into the depths. McKinlay and Hadley had begun a routine of walking up a nearby hill to view the ice conditions, and now they headed back to camp, only to find the ice had vanished from the north end of the beach and a gigantic lead sprawled out toward the sea from the mouth of the Cape Waring bay. It was a good sign. “A few southerly12 gales will bring our ship,” McKinlay wrote hopefully, “God send it soon.”