Trapped in Ice (6 page)

The two sleds were now so close I could make out the men driving the teams. I wasn't surprised. One sled was being driven by Mr. Stefansson and his assistant, Burt McConnell. On the other team was one of the Eskimos, whose name I couldn't remember, and Captain Bartlett. Side by side the two teams came towards us. They stopped in our midst. Kataktovick stood up, followed by Michael, and walked over to them.

“Well, Cap'n?” said Alex Anderson. Mr. Anderson was the ship's first mate.

“Not so well,” Captain Bartlett answered. “Solid ice, for close ta two miles in all directions. We're smack in the
middle of this pan of ice. Then there's some open water an' fresh leads ... places where the ice has just frozen an' it can't support a man or dog.”

“Is there any way out?” asked one of the scientists, Mr. Diamond Jenness.

“Or off?” asked another.

“None I know of,” Bartlett answered. “Too far an' too thick ta cut our way through an' not solid enough ta sled our way off.”

“There must be some way!” somebody protested.

“I am afraid there is not,” Mr. Stefansson interrupted. “The Captain is correct. There is nothing that we can do at this time.”

“We can't just sit here! We're only a two-day sled ride from Herschel Island,” objected Mr. Jenness. He was an anthropologist and was on this expedition to study the natives in the area.

“I wish we were just sittin' here,” Captain Bartlett replied.

“What do you mean?”

“We're movin', right now, as we talk. This pan of ice is floating at about eight knots.”

“In which direction?”

“South-west ... away from Herschel Island an' tawards the coast of Alaska,” answered Bartlett.

“Then we must leave immediately!” Jenness said loudly. “Even worse than sitting here, we're moving farther and farther from our goal!”

“You can go if ya want ... although I think maybe you're missin' a couple of things that would make it possible.”

“What do you mean? What am I missing?” asked Jenness angrily.

“Feathers an' wings. Only way off this pan is ta fly.”

“Very amusing, Captain,” Jenness answered, although I could tell he was far from amused.

Bartlett walked past Jenness and towards the ship. Jenness reached out and grabbed the Captain by the shoulder, spinning him around. Bartlett looked at the hand on his shoulder and then fixed his eyes directly on Jenness.

“I'm goin' 'board ship for a cup of java. Ya can join me, or …” he let the sentence trail off. Mr. Jenness removed his hand from Bartlett's shoulder.

 

 

Chapter Eight

September 19, 1913

Dear Diary,

This has been the longest five weeks of my life. Each day seems even longer than the one before. Everybody except my brother and I have something they have to be doing. Every morning parties of men go out on the sleds and scout for a break in the ice—something they can cut a passage towards. The water under the ice, the current, keeps moving and it causes the ice to shift and buckle and grind, making ominous sounds. Sometimes places open up, or press together into ridges that rise high up into the sky. When it buckles, they have to take their pickaxes and hack a trail right through it. In the places where it opens up it quickly freezes again. These are called fresh leads and you don't know you're on one until you fall through the thinner ice. I heard Captain Bartlett say he can tell a new lead by the colour of the ice; it looks a little more blue and a little less white. So far we've had two men and a few dogs fall through. It was scary to see somebody go into the water. I saw it happen just a hundred yards off the port side of the ship. I was watching one of the scientists walking towards the ship and then he just dropped down through the ice. They got him out quickly and he was all right but it frightened me so much I didn't venture onto the ice again for almost a week. Not that I ever went far from the ship. The only time I left was with Jonnie each morning when he went out to measure the depth of the ice. And each day the ice grows thicker.

Mr. Stefansson told me this was the most dangerous time of year to be travelling on the ice. Later, when it's much thicker, there's less chance of falling through to the freezing water below.

Mother is working almost non-stop and hardly has time to even say good morning or good night. Why did she even bring us along if she was going to be so busy she doesn't even spend a moment with us?

Two of the Eskimos have been helping her design and work on the clothing. Together they've almost finished making everybody's winter outfits: hooded parka, pants, big mitts and boots like those worn by the Eskimos, called mukluks. She had me try on the boots she was making for me. I couldn't believe how big they were! I could almost put both feet into one boot. When I told her they couldn't possibly be for me, she said she was told to make them big so we could wear many extra socks to keep warm. I couldn't even imagine ever needing that many pairs of socks to keep warm.

It's been very hard for Mother because the clothes are made from animal skins and they're very tough. She's broken off many needles and her hands are getting all calloused.

Mr. Stefansson says Mother has the most important job on the whole expedition. If people aren't dressed in warm clothes, clothes that will keep a body warm and protect them from the wind and even be waterproof, then they'll die. I've heard all sorts of tales about people getting frostbite so badly they lose fingers or toes or even their feet. I think that would be so awful and …

 

My thoughts drifted back to our warm safe house ... I guess it really wasn't our house any more ... somebody else was living there now
...
somebody with enough money …

“Helen, stop writing and come and see the morning parties off,” Michael ordered as he opened the cabin door.

I put my pen down, although I wasn't writing when he barged in. “What's to see? They've been going off and coming back every morning.”

“I don't know, but from the way they're loading up the sleds I think they might be going a lot farther today.”

“Farther?”

“I heard a couple of the men say they might even be heading for land if they can find ice to support them.”

None of this was news to me. There'd been talk of parties leaving the ship since almost the first day we'd been locked in, but it never amounted to anything.

“What makes you think today will be any different?”

“I heard we've drifted closer to land and the ice may be solid right to shore. Besides the ice is getting thicker all the time. Why not today?”

What he said made sense. “Who's going, and how many are—” Before I could finish my sentence Michael retreated out of the cabin. He was probably headed back to the deck. I walked over to the tall locker and placed the open diary on top. I didn't want my brother to read it, but I couldn't close and lock it until the ink had dried. Luckily the locker was so tall the diary was out of sight and Michael hadn't discovered my hiding place. I screwed the lid back on the bottle of ink. With the cabin getting colder by the day the ink was becoming much thicker and more difficult to write with.

I retreated to my bedside and put on my boots. I wanted Mother to finish my mukluks as soon as possible. It would be more awkward to move around but I wanted to get used to wearing them.

I reached down and adjusted the leggings I wore under my skirt. Even my longest and heaviest dress wasn't warm enough without the leggings underneath. Next I pulled on a heavy sweater, and hurried out of the cabin. Then I remembered my mittens and ran back for them. I was always forgetting them, but I knew it was important to have them with me.

Usually when the sun was out it was warm enough, but when the sun went down it got chilly very fast. The sun was now setting at four in the afternoon. With no trees or buildings or hills to slow down the wind it just whipped across the ice, picking up speed and cold.

Coming onto the deck I wasn't surprised to see that nobody was there. I knew they'd all be down on the ice. The deck was littered with boxes and cannisters and barrels. Things which had been stowed away below were being brought up top. At first this didn't make much sense to me. The crew complained, to themselves, about having to lug everything up, but they followed the Captain's orders. My mother said she thought he was just trying to keep people busy, keep their minds off being trapped, but I didn't think so. There was too much order to what they were bringing up. They weren't just carrying whatever was closest to the hatches but specific things Captain Bartlett ordered: kerosene, coal, gasoline, water and food. All the things you'd need to feed a fire or a person.

I walked aft. The dog pens were empty. All the animals were now living on the ice. The ladder leading down had been replaced by a crude set of stairs made from discarded crates. Below me were four shelters constructed out of slabs of ice and snow. They were dome-shaped and called “igloos.” The two largest were for the dogs, although most of the time they were staked in the open. They were happier on the ice than on board ship, and from what Kataktovick had told Michael, healthier as well. Kataktovick and the other Eskimos lived in the other two shelters. The shelters were all the same shape, with a roof that curved right over the top. They almost looked like big white bee- hives.

Michael and I had been inside them. You had to get right down on your belly and crawl up a sloping tunnel to enter. Inside it was much warmer than on the ice. Michael had asked if he could spend the night in one with Kataktovick. At first Mother had agreed, but then she
heard about the polar bear tracks that had been discovered right through the middle of the little huddle of ice shelters. The bear had wandered through, without bothering anything, or anybody even noticing it.

Mr. Hadley said polar bears aren't like other wild animals that will usually run or shy away from people. They haven't seen enough people to be afraid of them. To a polar bear a person is no different from a seal or a salmon—just another meal. Mother said she hadn't raised her son to be bear food.

What I'd heard, sitting around the big table in the galley, and something Mother didn't know, was that the danger in the ice huts didn't come from bears, but from the ice. There was no telling where a pressure ridge would form, or where the ice might just crack. It could open up right under where you were sleeping, plunging you into the freezing water below, catching you in the current, pulling you down below the surface, your raised hand disappearing below the freezing water, weighed down by all the heavy clothing, the air forced out of your lungs, and … I shuddered. I didn't ever put my foot onto the ice without thinking about what might happen. At least having Jonnie close by when I was down there made me feel safer.

It was obvious, even to me, that the sleds were being prepared for a longer expedition. They were piled high with food and gear and supplies. Both sleds had seven dogs hooked up. I'd gotten to know the snarling, yelping pack of huskies well enough to know that these fourteen dogs were amongst the biggest and strongest.

Standing by one sled was Burt McConnell and one of the Eskimo hunters. Beside the other sled were three
men—one of the other Eskimos, and George, who was the trip's photographer, and Mr. Jenness. I wouldn't be sad to see Mr. Jenness go. He made me even more nervous than the Captain. He had hard piercing eyes and never seemed to have time to talk to anybody. I knew the sixth member of the expedition would be Mr. Stefansson. He led almost every trip away from the ship. Mother said men like Mr. Stefansson are never very good at waiting. They didn't understand that “patience is a virtue.” I knew, from sitting in the galley and listening to him talk, he didn't have time to be patient. While we were locked into the ice, he was worried other explorers could be working their way towards the discoveries that “belonged” to him.

I loved sitting in the galley, sipping on a hot chocolate and drinking in stories. Mr. Stefansson was a wonderful storyteller. He told us all about his adventures, other explorers and even fairy tales. Listening to him talk I could feel a warm glow in my head and sometimes I'd just close my eyes and try to see it all in my mind.

It wasn't just Mr. Stefansson, though, who told stories. Almost everybody sitting around the table took turns. I was shocked one day when Michael started telling a tale about how the spirits created the polar bear from snow and ice. It was a wonderful story. Later I asked him about it and he said it was a story told by one of the Eskimos; Mr. Hadley had translated it. He said that since they didn't write anything down they had stories for everything.

Being in the galley, surrounded by all those men, reminded me of the times Father would be working late and I'd take a meal up to the mine for him. All the miners would be sitting together, eating and talking
before heading back down into the pit. Mother was always hesitant about me going up there, because she said the tone wasn't appropriate for a young girl. But there were many days when this was the only way I could see him and Mother knew how much I missed him ... how much I miss him.

Turning around I saw Mr. Stefansson, and then Captain Bartlett, emerge from one of the ice shelters. Mr. Stefansson walked through the crowd. He moved so regally, his head up and his chest out. The Captain shuffled along behind him. Mr. Stefansson came to one of the sleds and stepped up on it so he was head and shoulders above the people gathered around. It looked as though everybody, with the exception of Mother working below deck and the cook preparing breakfast in the galley, was gathered on the ice.

“Could I have your attention!” he called out.

Everyone fell silent. Even the dogs stopped yapping, as if they too were interested in his words.

“Gentlemen,” he started, then paused and looked directly at me, “and lady.” He gave me a big smile and I blushed and looked down at the ice. “I will be leading a party which will travel farther from the ship than any of our previous trips. It is my hope we will make the land which was within sight of yesterday's exploration party. If successful we will mark a trail to shore, and return with fresh meat from the caribou herds. We will be gone for at least three days. In my absence, Captain Bartlett will be in charge of not only the
Karluk
but the entire expedition.” He gestured to the Captain, who stood on the ice beside him. “We must leave with the light, but I promise you all
upon our return fresh caribou, the greatest delicacy known to man.”