Fatal North (21 page)

They were now down to seven dogs, and soon those too would go from companion to entree. There was nothing for the dogs to eat, since the canned meat was in too limited supply for the humans to share with animals. The dogs would eat only in the event of surplus seal meat. In the meantime, they were down to nothing and almost dead.

Joe and Hans went out daily in search of seals. The blubber was nearly gone, and if they did not bring in some seals, the igloos would soon be in complete darkness and the party would be eating frozen food, with no means to cook or even thaw it. They also needed to keep melting freshwater ice for drinking. Fortunately, enough of this type of ice had gathered in crevasses from the snowstorms, but they still had to have a means of melting it.

On a cold and dark night Tyson, weak and hungry, wrote by flickering light in the igloo he shared with the Eskimos:

Oct. 26. We lost sight of the sun's disk three days ago. May the great and good God have mercy on us, and send us seals, or I fear we must perish. We are all very weak from having to live on such small allowance, and the entire loss
of the sun makes all more or less despondent. There now seems no chance of reaching the land—we have drifted so far to the west. We are about eight or ten miles offshore.

“Miserable we,

Who here entangled in the gathering ice, Take our last look of the descending sun; While full of death, and fierce with tenfold frost, The long, long night, incumbent o'er our heads, Falls horrible.”

13

Cry with Hunger

L
ike a wandering tribe of the Far North in the dead of winter, the lives of the ice-floe party now depended on their native hunters finding seal.

The seal had long been the Eskimo's staple winter food and most valuable resource. It provided them with not only their own diet but also food for their sledge dogs, as well as clothing, material for making boats, tents, harpoon lines, and fuel for light, heat, and cooking. But finding seal in winter is not easy since they live principally under the ice and can be seen only when the ice cracked. An inexperienced person would never catch one.

Being warm-blooded, seals cannot remain long under water or ice without breathing, and in winter they are forced to make air holes through the ice and snow through which to breathe. At the surface these holes are small—not more than two and a half inches across—and are not easily distinguished, especially in the dim and uncertain light of wintertime.

Seals are very shy, too, and seem to know when they are being watched. A native hunter sometimes remains sitting over a seal hole—bundled up in skins and not moving or making a
sound—for as long as forty-eight hours before getting a chance to strike. And if the first stroke is not accurate, the game is lost.

At that time barbed spears were used. Because the skull of the seal is exceedingly thin, if the blow was well aimed it was sure to penetrate. The seal could then be held securely until the breathing hole was sufficiently enlarged to pull the body through. Although Joe and Hans sometimes shot seals, they had to spear their prey before it sank or floated away.

On most days the two Eskimos went out hunting, and nine times out of ten they returned empty-handed. The long hours of traversing across the ice through blustering winds and near-zero visibility and waiting patiently over seal holes did not demoralize them, nor did their repeated failure to find game. Each understood his role and was prepared to do it again the next day, and the day after.

Following a brief storm, thick with new snow, the weather cleared up on November 4. Tyson could see that the floe was entirely surrounded by water and drifting swiftly in the current.

Two days later, Joe killed a seal, for which everyone was grateful. Its carcass provided a few bites of fresh meat for every man, woman, and child, blood for a strong fat-laced broth made by Hannah, and enough blubber to keep the lamps going.

The weather turned bad the next day, and all were confined to their igloos, with the exception of Joe and Hans, who went hunting in a driving blizzard. After they had been out for some time, they became separated. Joe, after trying his luck hunting alone, made it back to the camp, fully expecting to find Hans had preceded him. Joe was much alarmed when he learned Hans had not arrived. He persuaded one of the seamen to go back with him to find Hans. As they were going along, peering through the fast-coming darkness, they saw what they took to be a polar bear approaching them. They cocked their pistols and made ready to open fire as soon as he came into range. When the creature came a few steps closer, they saw that it was not a bear but poor, lost Hans. In the heavy weather they had been
completely deceived. The fur clothing Hans wore was covered with snow, and he had been crouched over nearly on all fours, scrambling up a snow-covered hummock.

Frederick Meyer, with whom Tyson had increasingly been at odds as the meteorologist assumed leadership over his fellow Germans, decided he would rather reside with his countrymen, and moved to the large igloo housing the men. Tyson found Meyer to be a strange, arrogant man. He had recently come up with a story that he was somehow related to Prussian royalty. Believing him, the Germans showed “the Count” new deference.

With Tyson facing a winter alone in his igloo, Joe and Hannah graciously invited him to move into their quarters, which he did.

When the daily allowances were handed out at the supply igloo they were taken back and prepared at three different messes. The men cooked their own food over a fire, burning the remains of the wood stripped from the boat. Hans' wife, Merkut, cooked for their family over an oil lamp, and Hannah did the same for her husband, daughter, and Tyson, who found that the Eskimo woman could make a meal out of almost anything. Granted, he preferred not thinking about the contents of some of her dishes before eating them.

On November 15, five dogs were shot after suffering much from hunger. They were skinned and eaten. Only two remained.

We are all prisoners,
Tyson, sick with rheumatism and hardly able to hold a pencil, wrote in his journal on November 19.
By the movement of the ice, I judge we are drifting to the southward. The natives tell me that they saw two bear tracks and five seal holes, but they brought home nothing. I wish they had better fortune, for we need the fresh meat very much. The children often cry with hunger. We give them all we can.

That day Joe saw three seals, but was unable to secure any of them.

Living on such short rations meant the subject of food was constantly on one's mind, a particularly cruel effect of starvation.
While the stomach is gnawing with hunger, it is almost impossible to think clearly, for any length of time, upon anything else but the matter of eating. As body weight declines, a starving person becomes sluggish and lethargic. The skin thins, becoming cold, pale, dry, and stiff, and the body's natural defenses against disease deteriorate.

How long they could bear it, Tyson did not know. If they could make do on what little they had left and get through until early April, they could rely on their guns to hunt. If game failed them then and rescue was not imminent, they would perish.

On November 21, Joe and Hans saw two bear tracks and five seal holes. They each staked out a breathing hole, and soon had bagged two seals. The seals brought in were received with much gratitude. So keen were the appetites of the party that the seal meat and skin was eaten uncooked, with the hair still on. Scalding water would remove hair, but they did not have sufficient heat to boil such quantities of water.

From the effects of exposure and want of food, some of the men trembled as they walked, and were unable to do much around camp. Mostly, they stayed in their huts, wrapped in skins and furs. It was now too dark to walk about, and even if there had been a reason to, it was too cold. The chill was made more pervasive because they had so little heat in their systems from lack of food. Exercise, which creates hunger, was avoided as a matter of economy. Remaining still and keeping as warm as possible was found to be the most agreeable mode of passing the time, and best suited for the circumstances.

Still, Joe and Hans ventured out in search of food. Without their courage, fortitude, and invaluable services, the party's chances of surviving the ordeal would have been much diminished. While the winter darkness lasted, few seals were to be found, but those that were became life-sustaining. When the period of daylight became longer, the Eskimos expected to hunt not only seal but bear and fox as well.

When Tyson learned that the men were hatching plans to
break up the last boat for firewood, he ventured uninvited into their domain to speak his mind.

“It will not do to touch the other boat, even if it means no fire or warm food,” he said sternly. “The time must come, if we live to see it, when the boat will be our only means of safety.”

Things were said in German that he did not wait to hear translated. Tyson wondered again why the men who could speak English and had done so freely aboard
Polaris
were unwilling to do so now. In any case, he did not intend to discuss this issue. Nineteen lives depended on the one remaining boat.

Tyson turned abruptly and departed.

Nov. 22. My situation is very unpleasant. I can only advise the men, and have no means of enforcing my authority. But if we live to get to Disco they will have to submit, or I shall leave them to shift for themselves. I will not live as I have lived here. But here I am forced to live for the present: there is no escape. It is not altogether their fault either; they were good men, but have been spoiled on board Polaris. For the last year nearly they have been allowed to say, do, and take what they pleased. Such as they were, had they been under good discipline, and left on the ice like we are, I could have saved them; but I don't know how it will be now. And then, too, there appears to be some influence at work upon them now. It is natural, no doubt, that they should put confidence in one of their own blood, but they will probably find out that all is not gold that glitters before they get through this adventure.

Tyson lay sick for several days and ate scarcely a thing for a week. He was so weak upon getting up that he could hardly stand. He knew he must eat for strength alone, and partook of his daily allowance, leftovers from Joe's last kill: seal, eaten raw.

Everyone was suffering greatly. The cold seemed to penetrate to the very marrow. The Eskimos had long believed that
man could not repel cold well without a certain quantity of fresh meat, and that no better meat served the purpose than seal. But now there were days when Joe and Hans couldn't go onto the ice to hunt given the total want of light and heavy winds that piled snowdrifts high around the encampment.

In contrast to the increasing alienation he felt from the men, Tyson enjoyed living with Joe and Hannah. In the long days and nights they spent together in close quarters, he came to appreciate their loyalty and intelligence. He could see why Captain Hall had grown so fond of them.

He was able to communicate his plans and wishes intelligibly to them, and they to express their ideas to him. He played checkers with them on their makeshift board, using buttons on squares marked out with pencil on a ragged piece of canvas. They could also play a respectable game of chess, and they understood card games as well as any sailor. Decks of cards went wherever sailors ventured; the first “civilized” instruction that natives of any land got were usually card games from sailors.

He also became close to their little girl, Punny. She sat wrapped in musk-ox skins, every few minutes saying to her mother, “I am
so
hungry.” Hearing her and the other children cry with hunger made Tyson's heart ache, knowing that they were obliged to bear such privation with the rest. At such times he tried occupying her by playing games or drawing pictures together. Both wished to be elsewhere: his were mostly of ships under sail, hers of birds in flight.

He witnessed how, in Eskimo society, marriage was a partnership forged from a necessity for physical survival, based on strict divisions of labor. The husband and wife retained their own tools, household goods, and other personal possessions. Men built shelter, hunted, and fished, and women cooked, prepared animal skins, and made clothing. Drying and mending clothing was a crucial job, for in subzero temperatures dampness or the smallest tear in outerwear could bring sickness and death. Tyson understood better why Eskimo hunters made a habit of traveling with their women at their side.

For Tyson, the worst part of the long, dark days was not the cold and hunger, but the sheer boredom of sitting all day with nothing to do but keep from freezing. It nearly drove him mad. There were few people to talk to and nothing to read—no books, Bible, magazines, or newspapers. He hadn't seen printed words, other than his own, in more than a hundred days.

They saved the tin of dried apples for Thanksgiving. That day Tyson ate a few dried apples as they came out of the can, a small portion of chocolate, and two biscuits, the size of which made ten to a pound. That was the “thanksgiving” part of the meal. To satisfy his fierce hunger, he was compelled to finish with strips of frozen seal entrails, sealskin—hair and all—just warmed over the lamp, and frozen blubber, which tasted sweet to a starving man. He was thankful that there was food of any kind to put in his stomach.

No doubt many of my friends who may one day read this will exclaim, “I would rather die than eat such stuff.” Tou think so, no doubt; but people can't die when they want to, and when one is in full life and vigor, and only suffering from hunger, he doesn't want to die. Neither would you.

Tyson thought of home and family all day long. He had been away at sea on many Thanksgivings before but always with a sound keel under his feet, clean and dry clothes, and no thought of what he would have for dinner, for it would doubtless be turkey with all the trimmings aplenty and delicious. Never did he expect to spend a Thanksgiving without even a plank between him and the waters of Baffin Bay, making his home in an igloo with Eskimos on an ice floe. But he had this to cheer him: his loved ones were together in safety and comfort, and they knew nothing about his perilous situation.