Fatal North (16 page)

Bryan was down below washing up when a fistfight broke out between a drunken John Herron and the cook, William Jackson. Bryan separated the two men, but not before the diminutive English steward was so badly injured that he would be confined to his bunk for the next two months.

Bryan and Hans departed the next morning in two replacement sledges pulled by fresh dogs to rejoin Bessels.

Aboard
Polaris,
the partying resumed, culminating in what Tyson described in his journal as a “bacchanalian feast.”

One morning Buddington came to Tyson looking anguished. “I suppose the doctor will be back soon,” Buddington said.

“He's been gone about a fortnight. He'll soon be here, I expect.”

“Wonder what he will say about the bottles he left in his locker?”

Tyson saw many of them had been smashed to the deck or tossed over the side. “How many are left?” he asked.

“I put three back when I turned in last night, but they were gone this morning. I think that damned engineer, Schuman, got them. He has a key for every lock on board.”

“Are they all gone?” asked Tyson, who knew there had been several dozen bottles.

Buddington, pacing up and down the compartment, nodded solemnly. Then he stopped and looked up with the start of a mischievous smile. “Won't the good doctor look comical when he opens up his precious locker and finds it empty?”

The first week of April, with the fair weather continuing, Tyson and Chester began fitting up two small boats for an exploring trip to the north they planned for May. Tyson would have preferred a journey by sledge, for although patches of open water could be seen outside the bay, there was still much floating ice that could damage a boat.

Tyson believed, as had Hall, that early April was the best time to head north by sledge. An expedition would have sixty or seventy days in which to travel without being interrupted by the fierce torrents that came pouring down the ravines from the melting inland snow during the summer. They would have until about mid-June to reach as far north as possible. They had forty excellent dogs, two good sledge drivers, and ample supplies. But his proposed sledge journey had been dismissed by Buddington as “not practicable.” And what did Buddington know about Arctic exploration? The man hadn't stepped off the ship once during the entire winter, “not even to answer the call of nature,” Tyson wrote scornfully in his journal. “He is lazy and fat, eats enormous amounts of food … [is] physically and mentally unqualified for any journey by sledge or by boat.”

As far as Tyson was concerned, there was “no earthly excuse” for not exploring by sledge for a couple of months before the opportune time for boat travel. “One of the best opportunities ever known in Arctic experience,” he wrote, “was about to be lost.”

The first mate, a sailor and not an Arctic explorer by experience, preferred going by water, and Buddington, beginning to hear murmurs of discontent from some of the crew because of the expedition's continued idleness, agreed to give him the use of two boats. Chester would lead one boat crew, and Tyson,
ready to participate in any push northward, volunteered to lead the other.

On April 8, Bessels and his companions returned, bringing with them the carcass of a large bear that Joe had shot, and also a plump seal. The fresh meat was welcomed by all hands. Even though they still had plenty of canned food and other stores aboard
Polaris,
a change of diet was always desirable.

One of the dogs had been injured in the bear hunt, and because he was a favorite of many, he was the object of great attention. He was a plucky Newfoundland ironically named “Bear” because, at one hundred and twenty pounds, he was among the largest of the sledge dogs. Like others of his breed, he had small, deeply set dark brown eyes, small ears that lay flat against his broad head, a massive chest, and a dense, water-resistant double coat, dull black in color. His feet were large, strong, and webbed for traversing marshland and shore. Powerful swimmers, Newfoundlands were known to have rescued humans from drowning and to carry lifelines from shore to ships in distress. “Bear” had taken several severe blows from Joe's eventual trophy, a nine-hundred-pound male polar bear, which had made a better fight than the creatures usually did, perhaps because mating season, when the males are more aggressive, was only a month away. The bear had thrown another dog with such violence against the ice that it was left for dead, but the next day it showed up at the party's encampment nearly recovered.

The Bessels party accomplished little in their two-week absence other than to discover inaccuracies in some of the earlier surveys of the area they had traveled. After crossing the southern fjord, which was twenty miles wide, they traveled along the coast for forty miles in search of Cape Constitution but did not find it at the location marked on the chart. Hans, who had seen the cape in person, decreed that it must be farther south. The party-would have pushed on in their search but could not get their sledges over the steep, slippery hills along the coast, and the shore ice was so invaded by open water that they could not trust
it for travel. As it was, they had to carry their sledges at several points.

Bryan and the two Eskimos returned from the journey with a very low estimation of Bessels' endurance, nor did they think much of his expertise or judgment as an explorer, the man having shown himself ignorant of Arctic navigation.

Upon their arrival at the ship, everyone was fatigued. Bessels had promised the Eskimos, who on the final stretch home had driven the sledges hard for thirty hours straight, shots of his long-hoarded spirits. When he opened his locker he found it empty.

He searched frantically about the cabin but found not a single bottle, empty or full. He let out an emphatic curse in English, then added incredulously, “Forty-eight bottles in two weeks!” He continued his diatribe in German for several minutes. It was the most anyone had heard him speak at one time, as he was a reticent man by nature.

Bessels slammed the locker shut and walked away, bewildered.

A couple of days later, Tyson was surprised to come across Buddington walking along the shore. He took the opportunity to speak to the captain about the urgency to launch a northward expedition by land. Buddington pointed out that Bessels was in charge of sledge journeys since Hall's death. The doctor was not up for a major land expedition into uncharted regions, Buddington explained with some satisfaction, and was against anyone else using them to try for the Pole.

Tyson persisted. “Go to the doctor and tell him how things stand,” he said. “Tell him if we don't make our move by land now, it will be too late. If he is obstinate, take the responsibility in your own hands. If he rebels, I will assist you in putting him in irons.”

Buddington considered that idea for a moment. “No, I've got him just where I want him. I don't mean that he shall do anything.”

Tyson knew Buddington meant what he said. The last thing
the captain wanted was for anyone else to discover the Pole or do anything significant on the expedition.

“You know, Captain, we are not going to accomplish anything in the boats with all the floating ice. We'll not get far.”

“I know,” Buddington said smugly “I don't expect the boats to do anything. That damned Chester is always talking about the North Pole. I want to get that fool off in a boat and the doctor, that damned organ grinder, with him. Let them catch hell. I tell you, Tyson, we should never have come this far north. I mean to start south as soon as there's an opportunity to do so, and if those boats are not back, damned if I'll wait for them.”

Tyson decided to appeal directly to Bessels the next morning. The doctor listened politely but refused use of the sledges, claiming that he had his own plans for them.

Feeling dispirited, Tyson took a long stroll. He thought about why he had come on the expedition, and realized that he had done so solely because of Hall's leadership and enthusiasm. That loss was incalculable.

When Tyson returned to
Polaris
that night, he ran into Meyer preparing for a sledge trip to Newman Bay—on Bessels' orders—to take observations and chart the different capes and prominent mountains along the way. “If you want to go musk-oxen hunting, come along,” Meyer said, “I won't be gone longer than four or five days.”

Tyson jumped at the chance to get off the ship for a few days.

Before he left, Tyson had a heart-to-heart talk with Chester, telling him his views about using the boats. The first mate was wrapped up in the prospects for his boat expedition, and Tyson could not make him see the folly of the venture.

Tyson still had not told anyone about Buddington's nefarious plan to wreck
Polaris
on the way home. He had kept silent because he didn't know if anyone would believe him, and also because he did not wish to be labeled as mutinous. He knew that Buddington, in his powerful position as captain, would have ample opportunity to make Tyson appear in such a light. Buddington
could simply deny that he said it, and charge Tyson with conspiring to undermine his authority. Good men had sailed home in irons for far less.

Tyson now decided, however, to take a chance and tell Chester, whom he respected as a fellow man of the sea, of the captain's threat. The first mate was shocked, and agreed it was a monstrous plan that must be prevented at all costs. Chester promised to keep watch on Buddington and to report any dangerous or suspicious behavior.

On May 9, with the temperature warming to 16 degrees, Tyson left in the company of Meyer, Joe, and Hans, with two sledges. Each one was fourteen feet long, with two and a half feet between the centers of the two runners, which were two and a half inches thick and ten inches high. Fourteen crossbars, four by two inches each, were fastened by strong lashes of rawhide to the runners, which had a play of about six degrees. This flexibility of the runners, a feature common to all Eskimo sledges, was a great advantage when transporting a heavy load over rough ice.

They took an east-northeast direction inland and succeeded in reaching Newman Bay, which averaged seven miles wide and sixty miles long. Meyer surveyed the surrounding area, and from there they went farther until reaching a northernmost latitude of 82 degrees, 9 minutes.

Tyson reveled in the Arctic solitude. He remembered a passage in a book by an earlier explorer that referred to the Arctic plain as “the land of desolation.” Tyson saw before him silent and mysterious works of nature on a colossal scale. Some of the ravines were at least a thousand feet deep—enormous slabs of limestone and slate cut out as if by a huge chisel in the hands of the Creator himself.

Concentrating on getting game, as the ship's company was always in want of fresh meat, Tyson noticed the tracks of musk oxen coming from the southeast, heading for the bay. The next morning they came across a large herd.

A long-haired, dark-brown ruminant related to goats and
sheep, musk oxen have a dense undercoat and an ankle-length outer coat for protection against the cold. Standing up to five feet tall at the shoulder on legs that are short in proportion to their size and weight, they travel in herds of ten to a hundred. When threatened, they form an outward-facing circle with the young in the middle, and so await attack. A heavy creature, weighing from five to six hundred pounds when fully grown, the musk ox is somehow able to develop on what looks like a slender diet. Its food is the moss and lichen growing on the rocks, and to obtain it the animal must first scrape away the accumulated snow with its hooves.

The Eskimos released the excited dogs, who were trained to keep oxen at bay, allowing the hunters to get off clear shots. One of the first dogs to reach the herd was immediately thrown by the curved horns of a bull ox.

Tyson and Joe fired and reloaded as fast as they could, and the animals made no rush at them. It was not very exciting sport, for there was no more chance of missing them than the side of a house. Once the oxen got themselves into a circle and had been checked by the dogs, the hunters merely had to walk up within range and shoot them. Tyson and Joe methodically killed eight before the rest of the herd panicked and scattered.

After securing the slain animals, they made several trips hauling them to the encampment. They had some heavy butchering to do to skin them and cut up the prime pieces to take back to the ship. The next day, following a trail, they came upon the same herd and bagged four more. Sledges loaded with fresh meat, they headed back.

As they came over the rise overlooking Polaris Bay, they stopped in their tracks.

For the first time in nine months, smoke was rising from the stack of
Polaris.

10

Journeys North

T
yson could not imagine why
Polaris
had steam up. He knew the engineering crew had made a thorough examination of the engine in early spring and found it in excellent order, surprisingly unaffected by its hibernation during the long, cold winter. And recently it had been overhauled and cleaned.

As they came down the sloping ground to the ship, Tyson could see that
Polaris
was still locked in the ice. So why, he wondered, was she burning precious coal?

When the hunting party boarded the ship, they found everyone asleep below deck except for chief engineer Emil Schuman and his gang of firemen.

The day before, Schuman explained to Tyson, the ship had been found to be leaking forward from a broken stem caused by her position on the iceberg. Her bilge had flooded and some pumps had become choked. Water had gotten into the lower hold, damaging a quantity of provisions. They had fired up the boilers in order to run the ship's donkey engines to drive the most powerful pumps, which were clearing out the water that had collected.

In late May, the temperature had reached a year's
high of 26 degrees—the low, in January, had been minus 43 degrees—the two boats for the exploring parties were sent over the ice on sledges to Cape Lipton, seven miles northward, since that was the only place they could be launched. Provisions and stores were also ferried by sledge to the location. Between there and Polaris Bay, the channel was narrower and the ice still packed. It was anticipated that open water would first appear above Cape Lipton.