The Ice Master (45 page)

As the
Bear
steamed up the Alaskan coast toward Point Barrow, she ran into the first sea ice they had seen so far, just off Icy Cape. Afterward, it was a struggle for the
Bear
to move, and she wrestled her way through the thickening ice, which grew more forbidding and densely packed the farther north they traveled.

A Canadian schooner called the
King and Winge
accompanied them to Point Barrow. Managed by the
²¹
personable Olaf Swenson and mastered by a captain named Jochimsen, she was a walrus hunter chartered by the Hibbard-Swenson Company for trading in the Arctic and carried provisions for the mounted police at Herschel Island. As they ran up against the ice, Bartlett doubted the
King and Winge
would be able to reach Point Barrow with her overloaded deck, which kept her exceedingly low in the water. She was a light, speedy ship usually, but not at all an icebreaker. Powered only to do eleven knots at top speed, she'd not been fitted out for such work; no sheathing or stem plates had been added for extra strength and protection. However, he had to admit, she was “short for her beam” and “quick to answer the helm” and seemed to be quite successful at bucking the ice with her slender, upturned nose.

As the
Bear
charged through the ice, slicing the pack as she steamed onward, churning through the field until it was reduced to powder, Bartlett gazed longingly at the crow's nest and wished he could be up there to watch it all. As he said, “steering such a ship
²²
through the ice is not unlike driving a big automobile through a crowded thoroughfare; this time, however, I was a passenger.” Somehow, they made it through the increasingly treacherous ice field and reached Point Barrow on August 21. The
King and Winge
pulled in a day behind them.

Burt McConnell had come in from the east on a small schooner and was there to greet Bartlett. The captain remembered McConnell, of course, from the
Karluk
. The last time he had seen Stefansson's ingratiating young secretary, he had been striding away from the ship with Diamond Jenness, George Wilkins, the Eskimo hunters Jimmy and Jerry, and Stefansson himself as they embarked on their fateful “hunting trip.”

McConnell filled the captain in on all that had happened since leaving the
Karluk
. They had left Jenness at Cape Halkett where he was to conduct ethnological studies, while Stefansson, Wilkins, and McConnell headed for Flaxman Island. In April, Stefansson had released his supporting party and set off northward with two men, six dogs, a sled, two rifles, and supplies for forty days. Stefansson, it seemed, was planning to do what he had wanted to do all along with the
Karluk,
but which the ice had prevented them from doing—to discover new land along the 141st Meridian. He had not been heard from since.

The Canadian government had not replied to Burt McConnell's petition for a relief expedition to Wrangel Island because they were already sending the
Bear
. McConnell was disappointed, not so much for the sake of the people he was petitioning to find, but for himself. Now he needed to figure out a new plan to bolster his future polar career.

He transferred his belongings to the schooner
King and Winge,
planning to hitch a ride to Nome. There were two motion picture photographers on board from Los Angeles, and they all watched the Point Barrow shore disappear as the ship pulled up anchor and set out for Nome on August 26. They crossed Kotzebue Sound and then Cape Prince of Wales, arriving at Nome on August 30.

The
Bear,
meanwhile, delivered the mail and various provisions she was carrying, and then, on August 23, she pointed her nose northwestward, steamed out of the harbor at Point Barrow, and headed for Wrangel Island. A fresh wind blew up behind them, steering them on, and Bartlett breathed deeply and easily for the first time in months. The harder it blew, the better, and the faster they would be there. At last, after months of working toward this moment, the rescue mission was truly underway. And if they couldn't reach his men, Bartlett knew there was a good chance that someone else would get them. The Russian government, at the request of the authorities in Canada, had sent their two icebreakers, the
Taimyr
and the
Vaigatch,
toward Wrangel Island. There was also a little schooner named the
Peter J. Abler
attempting the journey, in addition to numerous privately owned vessels.

“It was getting
²³
late,” he wrote, “and before many weeks the ice might close in around the island and render it inaccessible to a ship, but it was not altogether this danger alone that worried me but also the feeling that the longer the men were kept on the island the greater would be their suspense and the harder it would be for them to keep up their spirits.”

As they steamed across the Arctic Ocean, fighting the ice, the thought that his men might never be rescued did not even occur to Bartlett. The only thing that he was afraid of was the possibility of thick fog or snow or ice creating an obstacle, which would delay their progress. But he pushed the thought to the back of his mind and instead focused his eyes on the horizon and watched for the first sign of Wrangel Island.

The days of waiting, he wrote, “had been nightmares
²⁴
to me, the more so because naturally under the circumstances I was not in a position to do anything to hasten matters. My feeling of relief at being at last on the way to the goal of all my thought and effort may be imagined.”

A
UGUST 27 WAS,
as McKinlay observed to Hadley, the day their “mental barometer” dropped out, leaving them with the great and sudden realization that they were doomed. Bartlett was not coming. No ship was coming. Instead, they must try to survive the winter here.

Kuraluk and his family left camp and scouted the surrounding area for a good site to build a house. He went out nearly every day, sometimes alone and sometimes with his family, to climb one of the nearby hills and check on the ice conditions in the bay and beyond. At the beginning of August, he had seen nothing but water all around, which, when he told the others about it, gave them a great deal of hope. For days, they had expected a ship at any time.

But now prospects seemed dim. There was no game, even though they saw geese flying overhead now and then, probably heading south for the winter. Kuraluk had made a throwing stick out of materials he had found on the beach. He also had made a bird spear to save on ammunition, but he rarely had the chance to use either now.

If a ship didn't arrive, Kuraluk wanted them to move camp to the west—still remaining on the north coast—where they would build their house on the banks of the river. There was plenty of wood there to build a decent shelter, and he expected they might also find fish and walrus, if they were lucky. Hadley approved. He had taken a stroll over that way one day and come across a flock of molting geese, which he took as a good sign. They would begin building the house at the end of the month.

On August 29, Hadley and Kuraluk left camp after breakfast in search of birds. They didn't expect to find any. There had been no game for as long as they could remember now, and it seemed futile to even try. The ice was weak and rotten and it was dangerous going, but they reached the rookeries and somehow managed to catch thirty ducks and sixty ducklings. It was a miracle and gave them their first real meal in weeks. They knew they had been lucky, that they couldn't count on getting more, and that it was only temporary relief.

In his tattered black notebook, Hadley scrawled, “If the ship
²⁵
Don't show up very soon now I guess it's all up with us I guess something will have happened to the capt & the Canadian Government Don't know about us & it will be up to me & the native to get the crowd out of this the Best way we can which will be Siberia by sled if we can get grub if not the Lord Help us. . .. ”

I
N THE CREWMEN'S TENT,
rotten food did not harm them anymore. Their stomachs seemed able to put up with anything now. Back at home, with a well-stocked larder and a handsomely laid table, Chafe, Williamson, and Clam would have never imagined eating some of the things they were now forced to eat. But as long as it sustained life, they ate it, “and things that
²⁶
would poison the ordinary person had no effect on us at all,” wrote Chafe.

They did anything they could to sustain themselves. Chafe, Clam, and Williamson dug up kelp from the beach, half rotten, discolored, ancient, and tried to eat it but it made them sick. They worried about winter and their lack of warm clothes, especially footgear. They had sealskins to make boots, but they needed the skins for sustenance, and besides, there was no material for making socks.

Then one of them said, “That blanket that
²⁷
we buried with Breddy would have come in handy for making socks.”

The next morning, Williamson and Chafe opened the grave and removed the blanket along with Breddy's boots. Someone would be able to use them. Afterward, they cleaned the blanket as well as they could by covering it with snow and tramping up and down on it so that the snow would soak it through. Then they hung it up to bleach and dry.

Every day, one of the men would climb to the top of a nearby hill and scan the horizon with the field glasses, hoping to see the smoke of a ship. Williamson, Clam, and Chafe made holes in their tent, facing southeast, so that they could watch for the arrival of their rescuers. Every time one of them got up during the night, he would peer through the holes with great expectation. The expectation never seemed to die, no matter how often they looked and were disappointed. And the first thing they did when they arose in the morning was to look out the holes—or the “windows”—again.

“No, no ship
²⁸
yet, fellows,” was always the report.

And then someone would reply with great discouragement, “I don't think there is one coming for us.”

“We had been
²⁹
expecting a ship every day since the first of August, but now we were beginning to wonder whether there was one after us or not,” wrote Chafe. “We knew that if Captain Bartlett had succeeded in his hazardous undertaking and reached civilisation, the Canadian government would spare no expense in trying to rescue us. But had Captain Bartlett succeeded? Did anyone know we were there? These were the questions we were beginning to ask ourselves. It was the uncertainty of the whole thing that worried us
—
for if we knew that they were trying to get us, and that ice conditions only, were preventing them, then we would be content to wait for the day that would bring us relief. The last day of August came and went, but no rescue ship. So we came to the conclusion that our faithful Captain Bartlett had met with some accident that had caused his death, and that we were doomed to stay on this desolate looking land for another winter. There was very little chance for any of us to survive another winter, and we knew it, but, nevertheless, we had made up our minds to try it, and were determined to fight to the bitter end.”

T
HE WEATHER WAS AS DEPRESSING
and dreadful as ever, and winter had clearly arrived. The blizzard had begun on August 20, bringing gusting winds, frigid cold, heavy snow, and, worst of all, hail and sleet, which sliced the air, the ground, their tent, like a thousand sharpened knives.

If a ship didn't come soon, Munro, Maurer, and Templeman would have to try for the other camp where they hoped they could beg for food. Even as low as he felt right now, Munro's pride was still intact, and the last thing he wanted to do was ask Hadley, McKinlay, and the others for something to eat. But they were starving, and if they were strong enough to make the trip, which was doubtful, they would have to be strong enough to beg. The storm was too fierce, though, for them to attempt the journey yet. They would have to pray for the weather to break, and then they would have to pray they were strong enough by that point to leave.

“Will relief ever
³⁰
come?” Munro did not know anymore. They had expected a ship for so long, and nothing. Nothing. “The strain is awful on our minds,” he wrote. “We are still hopeful trusting in the Lord for delivery.”

M
C
K
INLAY HAD, AT LAST,
given up hope. Until now, he alone had clung to the belief that everything would work out.

He had revered and admired Bartlett like no other man he had ever known. But now he was faced with the hard reality that Bartlett was fallible, mortal, and human, vulnerable to the elements. In the real world, he could have survived anything. But out here, the same rules didn't apply. Out here, he was just like any of the rest of them. He was known as the greatest ice master in the world, but the ice had taken away his power. He must have died trying to reach Siberia.

There was no doubt in McKinlay's mind. Bartlett was gone and no one knew where the lost men of the Canadian Arctic Expedition were. They would have to try to survive there as best they could, until spring. Then, if they were still alive, they would try for the mainland. But McKinlay knew here was no way of surviving another winter on the island without ammunition, without game, without proper covering. They would all die here, in this cold, hostile place, thousands of miles from their homes and their families, hundreds of miles from civilization, just as Mamen had died, and Malloch, and Breddy.

T
HE
B
EAR
WAS ENGULFED
in fog so thick that it was impossible to see what lay before them. For days, it had been the same drill—the ship steaming slowly toward land before the engines were stopped at night. They had taken in the square sails on August 24, when they had first run into the fog bank. Every now and then, the haze would clear enough for Bartlett to glimpse birds circling in the distance, which suggested land. But then the mist would close in about them once again, and the
Bear
would be unable to move.