The Ice Master

by Jennifer Niven

  Chafe’s birthday, July 14, came and went. He had gotten a sea gull, which he said he enjoyed more than any birthday dinner he’d ever had. Hadley also managed to kill a few birds, but he could only retrieve half of them; the others fell into the water or were carried away by the pressure ice. Luck turned against them in all areas, it seemed. Even when they managed to kill a bird or seal, they could seldom retrieve it.

  On July 17, Kuraluk finished the kayak frame at last and brought it inside the tent out of the rain to cover with skins. The next day, he took it out on its maiden voyage. At first, it seemed that the kayak would solve their problems, since it took Kuraluk within range of three walrus. He was frightened of the walrus, aware of the damage they could cause both to him and to the kayak. They were typically gentle creatures that turned fierce when attacked, but he went after them anyway. He shot at them, but they managed to get away.

  Now there was no more meat in camp, and the next morning Williamson awoke McKinlay, Hadley, and the Eskimos to beg for blubber. He and his tent mates had run out of food again and had nothing left to eat. He was so pathetic and pitiful that Kuraluk reluctantly gave him some.

  They rose in the afternoon now because there was no breakfast to eat. McKinlay was constantly suffering from acute indigestion from the blubber they had been living on and his legs were so sore he could barely walk. “Rain, fog and13 mist are all we have been having this month,” he wrote wearily, “and conditions inside the tent are such that we will be having sickness around.” Yet they were surprisingly philosophical about their lack of food and their now constant hunger. They viewed the days ahead—sure to be hungry ones—with understandable fear, but there was something else, too—determination. Things could be worse and probably would be before it was all over, but the temperature was gradually warming now and the rain was breaking up the ice, which would make way for the rescue ship.

  On July 19, all they had left was tea. In desperation, Hadley gathered the last of the ammunition, loaded his revolver, and set out to find some birds.

  “Let us pray14 that something will turn up,” wrote McKinlay, “before things become too bad.. . .”

  BOTH THE Bear and the walrus-hunter Kit had reported heavy ice up north. The Bear was just back from Siberian waters, and Kit had returned from a recent trip up the Bering Strait. The ice was interminable, they said, and impenetrable. The New York Times reported these were the worst ice conditions in the history of the Arctic.

  The Times was closely following the story of Bartlett and his quest to reach Wrangel Island. Newspapers around the world reported on his every move, and ships from Russia to Scandinavia to America were sent in search of the castaways. As ship after ship was forced to turn back due to the relentless ice, the fervor to reach them grew. All the while, the leader who had abandoned them maintained a noticeable silence. Stefansson was far away from the public and press now, deep in the heart of the Canadian Arctic.

  In Nome, Bartlett had been anxious to be on his way. He had been sitting idle for over a month, waiting for word to come from the government, and for a way to open so that he could embark on the rescue mission. He had left his men on Wrangel Island in mid-March, and it was now July. At this rate, and with the ice conditions, he knew the earliest he could hope to reach them would be August 10.

  On July 13, the Bear left Nome with Bartlett on board. He shared the captain’s cabin with Cochran and spent much of the time in the chart room, where Lieutenant Dempwolf, the navigating officer, taught him a great deal about Alaskan and Siberian waters.

  As well as being a mail boat, the Bear had numerous other duties. Missionaries and schoolteachers who needed to transfer to different points up and down the Alaskan coast often hitched rides, and the Bear also brought aid to the needy in different ports, providing essential supplies, provisions, and care. In addition, according to Bartlett, she acted “as a kind15 of travelling law-court.”

  The downside of this, for Bartlett at least, was that the Bear had many stops to make on her journey north before she made for Wrangel Island. The reindeer Station on Saint Lawrence Island was the first stop, followed by various other stations on the island, where the ship dropped supplies for the local schools. Saint Lawrence Bay on the Siberian coast followed, and then Lütke Island. At Emma Town, they picked up Lord William Percy, the distinguished son of the Duke of Northumberland and a well-known ornithologist. Also at Emma Town, Bartlett saw his old friend Caraieff, who had accompanied him and Baron Kleist to Emma Harbor. At last, the captain was able to settle his debts, paying off the money he owed to everyone who had helped him.

  Afterward, the Bear headed up the coast to East Cape, and then to nearby Ugelen, and from there she steamed across to Teller, Alaska, where they visited many different settlements.

  The delays were frustrating, and Bartlett wished the Bear could have made a more direct path to Wrangel Island. But he was lucky to find the Bear, and she had her own business to take care of first. He knew, too, that they could only benefit from waiting for the ice conditions to improve. Perhaps there would be a helpful break or shift in the ice pack before they entered the Chukchi Sea, that frigid body of northern water that surrounded Wrangel Island. At least he was on his way. He had to remind himself of this whenever he became impatient or anxious.

  “It was a16 great relief to me to be really doing something at last, after so many weeks of inaction,” Bartlett wrote. “My thoughts were constantly on the castaways and I wondered how things had been going with them since the middle of March.”

  BURT MCCONNELL was an ambitious young man, so ambitious, in fact, that most who knew him would say overly ambitious was a more accurate description. For months, Stefansson’s personal secretary had grated on the nerves of the men in the Southern Party, who found him exceedingly pushy and overbearing, and Stefansson, at last, had given him his notice. This was right before Stefansson hired more men, purchased another ship, and vanished into the Arctic. McConnell, meanwhile, would be returning home to Los Angeles as soon as his year with the Canadian Arctic Expedition was up.

  On June 1, the day on which his commission with Stefansson expired, McConnell had written a letter to the Honorable Robert L. Borden, prime minister of Canada, regarding a proposed expedition to rescue the Karluk and her men. Word had not yet reached the Southern Party, still headquartered at Collinson Point, Alaska, of the Karluk’s destruction or of the men stranded on Wrangel Island. All they knew was that the ship was lost and drifting somewhere to the northwest.

  McConnell was now free, as he suggested, to lead a rescue mission to the Arctic to retrieve his lost comrades. The idea that Stefansson’s twenty-five-year-old former secretary should be entrusted with such a grand charge—particularly when he had no real Arctic experience—was a preposterous one, but he had thought out every step, every necessity that a journey such as this would need. His letter ran for pages, with detailed plans for how the mission should proceed and why he, Burt McConnell, was just the one to lead it.

  It was, as McConnell himself realized, “SOME letter for17 a kid like me to write.” A noble and grand plan, yes, but typical of McConnell’s notorious ambition. He had hoped to continue with Stefansson on the Canadian Arctic Expedition, even though they hadn’t always seen eye to eye. He liked the notoriety of the position and had expected to be promoted. But Stefansson had sent him home due to his ineptitude and impertinence, and now he felt dejected. He did not want to return to Los Angeles to resume yet another ordinary secretarial job, nor did he want his polar career to end.

  McConnell had posted his letter to Borden in June, and in July he followed up with a shorter one, which reiterated his desire to head north in search of his former shipmates. “At the time18 I wrote to you my sole reason for wishing to lead a relief expedition into the Arctic was for the benefit of the twenty-five people aboard the KARLUK at the time she disappeared,” his letter stated. “Now, however, a month later, another reason has presented itself, viz., Mr. Stefansson and his two men . . .
have not returned from their Ice Trip and are already six weeks overdue.”

  His mission now was even grander than he had originally dreamed. If he was going to save the men of the Karluk, he figured, he might as well save Stefansson, too. He was hungry for the glory it would bring him. What McConnell didn’t know was that Stefansson was neither in need of his help nor in need of saving. On the contrary, he was doing what he had wanted to do from the start of this expedition—heading as far north as possible in search of undiscovered land.

  AS JULY OPENED, Maurer, Munro, and Templeman had been riding high from June. The last weeks of June, ever since they moved to Rodger’s Harbour, had been good for them. They had gotten much game and eaten well and it seemed as if their prospects in the new location were good.

  Before leaving Cape Waring, Maurer had entrusted Helen with his kitten. The cat really belonged to everyone, but he felt quite possessive of her; she had bonded with him in a way she hadn’t with the others. Still, he thought it best to leave her at the main camp instead of taking her on the long trip to Rodger’s Harbour, so he left her with Helen, who promised to look after her.

  On Wednesday, July 1, they had raised the Canadian flag in honor of Dominion Day. They finished the flagpole that morning, although in the end they had to choose another pole, since the first one was too heavy for the three of them to lift in their weakened condition, even when they worked together. The months of meager diet had broken their strength.

  As the Canadian ensign was raised for the first time on Wrangel Island, Maurer felt happy. “It was a19 great celebration of Dominion Day,” he wrote. “The entire population of Rodger’s Harbor was there and what is more I knew the names of everyone of them.” Their meat safe held three and a half seals so far. There was just too much now for them to eat at once, and it was a lucky thing, because they only had two tins of pemmican left. Templeman was still lazy and getting on Munro’s nerves. But for the most part, they were in fine spirits. Sometimes Maurer would go hunting with Munro, and sometimes he would stay in camp to deepen the meat safe or to prepare the seals.

  July had begun beautifully, the sun shining, the air warm and calm. But by July 5, the sky had opened and it had begun to rain, so that there was nothing for the men to do but stay in camp and cook. They took advantage of every opportunity to stay out in the open and breathe the fresh air because the tent was small and cramped, with “little room for20 anything but sleeping,” according to Maurer.

  On July 16, a strong easterly wind had sprung up during the night and continued throughout the following day. The rain had lightened into a miserable, dank mist, and there was nothing to do but sit about camp and wait for the storm to break. Maurer had been working for the past two days digging a grave for Malloch and Mamen. It was sobering work, and as he stood in the rain, the water dripping down his face in cold, shiny rivulets, his hands stiff and sore from digging, he reflected on his own life as well as the lives of the two scientists. He was feeble, having lost a good deal of weight. He could have dug that hole in a day back home, in good health, well nourished. But the ground was still partially frozen and he was terribly weak. It was discouraging to feel the limits of his strength.

  Since May, the bodies of Mamen and Malloch had lain under their canvas covers, anchored by stones and wood. Maurer and Munro had waited this long to bury them because they had expected a ship in early July and wanted to take the bodies home so that Mamen could return to Norway, and Malloch to Canada, as they had dreamed of doing.

  But no ship had come, and they had no idea when one would arrive. It did not seem fair to leave the dead men out in the rain and the elements any longer. They would have to rest where they had died, on desolate Wrangel Island.

  AUNTIE LAY AWAKE at night, listening to the cries. They were haunting, unearthly sounds, which chilled her bones and caused the hair on her skin to bristle. It had been going on for days, and she was the only one who could hear them.

  They came from a mythical creature—a sea serpent of sorts, monstrous and vile. Its tusks were enormous, great grappling hooks that could crush a ship with one blow. Its teeth were long and jagged, sharpened to great, luminous points. The description alone, McKinlay remarked, “was enough to21 inspire terror.” Hadley said it was a being that existed only in the mind of the Eskimos.

  But it was real to Auntie, and the cries were growing louder every day. Her blood ran cold, and all she could do was listen to the calls of that distant, menacing creature and wait to see what destruction it caused.

  Every soul in the camp was discouraged and disheartened. They could feel their bodies weakening and slowly wasting away. They sat with their shoulders slumped, their heads hanging down in defeat, not saying a word to each other. There was nothing to say now when everything looked so bleak.

  On July 20, the men collected all the bird wings they could find lying about on the ground, plucking the feathers from them and tossing them into a pot of water to make a sort of soup. The wings were really nothing more than bones, but at least it was something, and more than they had had to eat in days.

  The wings had been boiling for an hour when Hadley raised his binoculars in the direction of a distant object, creeping toward them down the beach. Everyone else was gathered outside around the fire, anxiously awaiting their soup, which, they hoped, “would give us22 new life and strengthen us,” said Chafe.

  Hadley interrupted the silence with a shout, “Hey, boys! The native’s got a walrus.”23

  In an instant, they were all on their feet, passing the field glasses around so that each man could see it was true. Then they removed the pot from the fire, tossed the bird wings onto the ground, and put fresh water on to boil in preparation for the walrus that Kuraluk was bringing them.

  An hour later, he reached camp. The walrus weighed at least six hundred pounds, and it had taken five bullets to kill him. It took all hands to cut up the animal, since its hide was nearly an inch thick and, according to Chafe, “is so hard24 that every two or three inches you cut, takes the edge off your knife, and you have to sharpen it several times before the job is completed.”

  For most, it was their first taste of walrus. Chafe pronounced the flesh similar to seal, the blubber, when boiled, much like cornstarch pudding. It reminded McKinlay of beef, “both lean and25 fat; and the soup made from it was not to be compared with anything I had ever tasted, it was delicious. As our Scotch saying has it, ‘Hunger’s guid kitchen.’”

  Despite the strangeness of taste, the men were immensely grateful to have meat in their empty stomachs. Their spirits had lifted considerably from the catch and the fact that they now had meat in the larder. “Thus does our26 mental state depend on our stomach!” observed McKinlay happily.

  Momentarily, things seemed to be looking up. Auntie sewed a piece of calico onto the end of Hadley’s tent and they lengthened the ridgepole that held it so that the tent was roomier and now large enough to hold a stove. This they installed the next day, and all were grateful to have the warmth. But on July 23, a dense fog billowed in from the east, making it miserable for the men, whose old, rotting clothing could no longer withstand the low temperatures. They had been wearing the same clothes now for the past six months and they were in a pitiful state—filthy, torn, pocked with holes, stained with blood, and soaked with oil. The stove did little to combat the chill.

  A brisk northwest wind swept in on the heels of the fog, bringing the broken ice back together and closing up all of the open water outside the bay. The men were understandably defeated. “No more unfavourable27 conditions could exist for us,” McKinlay observed, “while the wind means delay in our relief.” With the ice pack reformed and solid once more, no ship would be able to reach them now until the end of August.

  After breakfast, Kuraluk and his family walked over to the headlands to get a good view of the east coast. When they returned, they reported nothing but solid ice across the horizon, as far as the eye could see. On July 24, it began to snow, the fog was thicker tha
n ever, and the wind blew until McKinlay and his fellow castaways were chilled to the bone. To make matters worse, Hadley’s tent was feeding on walrus hide now, which they boiled vigorously until it resembled jelly. A little of that meal, thought McKinlay with disgust, went a long way.

  Over the next few days, the wind changed to the east and, as a result, the ice began crushing in the bay. The men were despondent. Their rescue was at the mercy of the weather. Should the winds decide to change again, they would be doomed. As it was, the thick ice of the pack was barely moving, the bay still congested. This relentless fog and snow and wind grated on their nerves and depressed them, as did the waiting. Camp was shrouded in a thick, gray mist that covered them like a great, suffocating blanket so that they couldn’t see more than a hundred yards in front of them. What little glimpse of Arctic summer they had had was now gone, and winter seemed to be returning.

  In spite of the weather, Kuraluk and Hadley went hunting, the Eskimo in his kayak, and the old man on foot. Hadley shot a seal, a walrus, and an uguruk—or bearded seal—but was unable to reach any of them. Kuraluk stayed out overnight in the kayak, and just when they had begun to worry, he returned with an uguruk. The animal had sunk after he shot him, but Kuraluk had managed to fish him out with his nixie, a handy tool he had created to hook a dead or wounded creature and pull him up on the ice. The nixie was not strong enough to retrieve this powerful five-hundred-pound creature, but Kuraluk had gotten it in the end. Hadley, of course, claimed it was the very uguruk he had wounded just a day or so before. He couldn’t stand to see Kuraluk become the only provider in camp, and it had been days since he had brought back anything himself.

  The uguruk intestines provided a new dish, the kind McKinlay and the others had been more than willing to leave to the Eskimos until now. It seemed too revolting, too nauseating, but now that they were so famished, they tried it. The inner lining of the uguruk was washed and dried, the lining often used as material for everything from windows to raincoats. The outer skin was cut up with the blubber and served as quite a delicacy. It suggested raw clams, thought McKinlay, and although not a tasty dish, he had to thank God for the nourishment.