The Ice Master (32 page)

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.

O
N
A
PRIL 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't
¹²
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 you
¹³
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 certainly
¹⁴
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 soon
¹⁵
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 we
¹⁶
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.

Before setting out, Mamen penned a note, which he left for McKinlay. He couldn't understand where the magnetician was, as he was supposed to have joined them some time ago. “It is a
¹⁷
month now since we left Icy Spit,” he confided in his journal. “I wonder if another month will pass before we see McKinlay, or what is the matter with him or the others up there. Has Munro not come back, or is illness raging?”

They left Skeleton Island on the morning of April 24, manhauling two sleds loaded with provisions and equipment. Mamen pulled the heavier one, which carried 225 pounds, while between them Malloch and Templeman pulled the 60-pound sled. They switched at Cape Hawaii, which was half way to Rodger's Harbour, but soon had to stop as Templeman and Malloch were too weak to manage the heavier load even with their combined strength.

Mamen removed some of the provisions from the lighter sled and added them to the heavy one. Then he let Malloch take the light load, while he and Templeman hauled the other. Overheated and overexerted, Mamen peeled his skin shirt off his body for the first time since leaving Shipwreck Camp. He never got any peace. Even now, while he was straining under the larger load, he was playing referee to the other two, who were at each other's throats the entire way to Rodger's Harbour.

They stopped overnight and stayed inside their igloo for twenty-six hours, sleeping and resting. The trip so far had worn them out, and although they longed to keep going, they needed the rest. They had enough food for only two meals each—one pound of pemmican and five biscuits a day. It wasn't very much, especially with their recent physical exertions.

On the road to Rodger's Harbour, in the midst of the snow and ice, they caught beautiful glimpses of spring. Mamen found an arctic willow in bloom, and they heard the unmistakable song of a bird, although they couldn't see him. It was a sign of returning life and “with the spring
¹⁸
comes new life for man and beast,” wrote Mamen.

Everything seemed more promising when they arrived at Rodger's Harbour on April 27. They found no sign of shelter or game at the harbor, but there was driftwood in abundance, which was encouraging. They could at least build themselves a little cabin to use until the ship arrived.

They put up their tent and settled in. Mamen had planned to send Malloch and Templeman back to Skeleton Island to retrieve the rest of their stores, but Malloch was in immense pain. His feet were far gone with frostbite, and his toes stank of rotten flesh. One of them, in particular, was badly frozen, and Mamen feared he would have to amputate it if it did not show signs of improvement. Yet Malloch still walked about the tent and about camp without his mukluks on. It was the most maddening thing imaginable.

Soon it was clear that the toe had to come off, and Mamen would have to do the cutting. He promised Malloch he would do what he could for him, but without responsibility for anything that might happen afterward— infection or disease. Malloch agreed, and the operation was underway. Mamen cleaned his instruments—a small pair of scissors and a lancet—with boiling water and some antiseptic. Then as Malloch gritted his teeth, Mamen did the job, wrapping the foot afterward in gauze. It had gone as well as it could have, under the circumstances, and Malloch bore up impressively.

They would wait a few days to make the trip to Skeleton Island for supplies, Mamen decided. Malloch needed looking after now, and when it was time to go, Mamen would go in his place. While Malloch remained in the tent and tried to recover from his operation, Mamen and Templeman walked as far as they could along the shore, in search of life. They saw nothing, not even tracks, and the singing bird was now silent. They were too weak to go far, and when Mamen returned to camp, he picked up his diary and wrote, “I don't know what
¹⁹
ails me nowadays, I feel infinitely weak, my body has swollen, my legs are worst, they are about twice as thick as ordinarily. I can hardly walk, I move like an old man.”

Over the next few days, he began to feel worse and had no choice but to lie inside the tent and rest. Malloch, for once, was feeling better, but Mamen lay in bed, weak and exhausted, listening to the wind that blew through camp and rattled the walls of their tent. He was worried the tent would cave in or fly away at any given moment, but he was helpless to do anything. Luckily, it withstood the gale, and Mamen was able to rest, nourishing himself with a drop of tea, but nothing more. He couldn't stomach the thought of pemmican right now.

It was mysterious, this illness. He had no idea how it had gotten him or what it was. He did not recognize the symptoms. He only knew that he was terribly weak and tired all the time. Malloch was improving daily, but still he relied upon Mamen. He and Templeman both looked to Mamen to lead them now, even as he lay in his bunk, unable to rise or eat.

“I don't know how
²⁰
this will end,” he wrote in his diary on the last day of April. “The prospects are certainly not bright.”

B
ARTLETT KNEW LITTLE
about the northeast coast of Siberia except for the history. Captain James Cook had made the first examination in 1778, followed by Admiral Ferdinand von Wrangel in 1820. In 1878, Baron Nordenskjöld sailed along the coast in his ship
Vega
, before becoming frozen in at Pitlekaj. In 1881, Lieutenant Hooper of the USS
Corwin
further examined the coast, and it was his descriptions and findings that had made their way into the
American Coast Pilot Book,
better known as the seaman's Bible.

Bartlett had looked at Nordenskjöld's book,
Voyage of the Vega,
aboard the
Karluk,
even though it was written in German and he didn't speak the language. But he studied the pictures, which gave him an idea of what they would be facing once they reached land. There were woods, apparently, which stretched down to the shore at points, and if the pictures could be relied upon, reindeer lived there.

What the
Pilot Book
didn't tell him, though, and what he especially wanted to know, was what the Siberian natives were like and what condition they were in, meaning what food they ate and if they were overrun with tuberculosis, as was the case with other “primitive races” that had come into contact with civilization. It had been thirty years since the last reported data on the region, and so much could have changed since then.

Kataktovik grew more terrified of reaching land. It was the Eskimo, he said. “Eskimo see me
²¹
, they kill me,” he told the captain. “My father my mother told me long time ago Eskimo from Point Barrow go to Siberia, never come back, Siberian Eskimo kill him.”

They had been through numerous narrow escapes—cracking ice, shifting ice, crushing ice, ice in motion everywhere. The ice now moaned and thundered and ground its fearsome teeth. The dogs were nervous and uneasy at the noise and almost useless now.

On April 4, Bartlett had left the dogs and sled in camp and then set out with Kataktovik. With pickaxes, they made their trail through the hazardous ice. The captain scaled a tall rafter and scanned the horizon. Up ahead, he could see the field of rough ice and then, lying beyond this, an open lead. On the other side of the lead, lay the ice foot, the Arctic term for the ice “which is permanently
²²
attached to the land and extends out into the sea.”

He hoped they could reach land by nightfall. As Kataktovik continued cutting the trail, Bartlett went back for the dogs and sled, and they forged their way over the moving ice until they reached the open water. They dragged the dogs across and then jumped across themselves, the lead opening wider all the time. To make matters worse, there was a blizzard blowing, stirring up the snow around them.

But now, at last, they were on land ice. It would be easier from here on out, with only rafters and deep snow to worry about. The snow was so deep that they were forced to don their snowshoes, which they had not yet worn on the trip because the ice conditions were too rough. Bartlett was grateful now to have them because, as he said, “snowshoes are indispensable
²³
in Arctic travel and I should as willingly do without food as without snowshoes.”

Kataktovik had been in better spirits for the past few days, and now he said that he smelled wood smoke coming from the land. They were not close enough yet for Bartlett to detect the scent himself, but he trusted the Eskimo's keen senses.

Finally, early on the evening of April 4, after two hundred miles traveled and seventeen days' march, they set foot on land. The first thing they saw was the trail of a sled.

“Ardegar,”
²⁴
Kataktovik said, which meant “that's good.” “Eskimo come here.”

Bartlett asked him if, at last, he thought it was Siberia. Kataktovik said yes, he believed so.

“Where we go
²⁵
?” the captain asked him, and Kataktovik pointed east.

That night, they built their igloo, made some tea, and turned into their bunks, thankful to have made it across the treacherous ice pack. Then they slept like the dead. As Bartlett commented, in typically understated fashion, “It seemed pretty
²⁶
good to sleep on land again.”

The snowstorm was still raging the next morning, and they could see little of their new surroundings. Later, Bartlett discovered they had landed near Cape Jakan, which lay about sixty miles west of Cape North. The land was swept clean of snow, which made traveling easy across the Siberian tundra. They followed the sled tracks, and after the horrific conditions of the ice, they now felt the worst was over. The dogs were all but useless now, and Bartlett and Kataktovik were feeling worn themselves; but they were encouraged because they had, miraculously, reached Siberia.

Suddenly, Kataktovik, who was walking ahead while Bartlett drove the dogs, stopped in his tracks. He turned back, meeting up with the captain and pointing to distant black objects on the horizon.