Trial by Ice (40 page)

Hastily Ebierbing built another hut. The next day the ice split directly under the igloo, cutting it in half. Now too little real estate remained for Ebierbing to build another igloo. Without options the men pitched their tent and took turns hiding from the storm. Few slept.

Their isle of respite now became their trap. Piece by piece it broke apart under the storm's pounding. Yet taking to the boat would have been suicidal, for the steep waves and fierce wind would have sunk the overloaded craft.

On the third day of the storm, the ice split between the tent and the boat. The piece bearing the kayak and the boat shot off with only Mr. Meyer aboard. In desperation the meteorologist launched the kayak toward the two Inuit, who scrambled to the frothing edge of their slab. The wind blew the light craft beyond their reach.

While Tyson watched helplessly, Ebierbing and Hans performed a perilous ballet, vaulting and springing from one chip of bobbing ice to another. Each jump brought them closer to the hapless Meyer, but each leap also threatened to plunge them into the roiling water. Using their paddles and spears, the Natives approached close enough to Meyer to catch a rope he tossed to them. Then they pulled themselves to his side.

Now more than half a mile away, the three men and the boat drifted off as darkness fell.

Morning found the three elements of the group triangulated the kayak, the main party, and Meyer's group separated by equal amounts of water. Unfortunately neither the sickened Meyer nor the Inuit had the strength to launch the whaleboat.

Taking his cue from the Inuit's ice dance, Tyson grabbed a stick and hopped onto the rocking plates that filled the gap. Kruger followed him. Slipping and sliding, they eventually made it across.

Even then, the five men could not budge the boat. One by one the rest of the crew crossed over the bar. All but two swallowed their fear and traversed the shifting stepping-stones. The boat was launched and the kayak retrieved before they returned. Once more united, the men pitched their tent, and Ebierbing built his third igloo in twenty-four hours.

Frederick Meyer had suffered terribly from his ordeal. Already nearly dead of starvation, he fell into the water during the rescue and stopped breathing. Hans and Ebierbing applied their primitive form of artificial respirationwith good results. By vigorously rubbing Mey ir's chest and face with snow and pulling his arms up and down, the y restored his breathing and his consciousness. They had saved his life. But his toes had frozen solid.

The si orm passed, but its effects lingered for another day. Fetch and wind generated huge breaking waves that battered the limited expanse of the campsite. While an uncaring sun set in a cloudless sky, waves broke over the camp and washed the men out of their tent and the Natives from their igloo. The cold beauty of the evening contrasted with the desperate struggle taking place on the ice. What little everyone possessed was loaded into the boat along with the children. The night passed with the adults standing beside the boat as frigid water lapped at their ankles. Without a dry place to light theii lamps, no food was thawed, and no ice could be melted for water. Morning found the party worn out, hungry, and thirsty.

By the twelfth their pitiful island had wedged itself between two icebergs. While their position presented the possibility of being capsized and crushed at a moment's notice, the lofty white peaks did provide some shelter from the wind and waves. Along with this respite ca me the realization that they were again captives of the meandering ice pack.

By April 15 a sun sighting placed their position at 54°58' N. They hac drifted twelve hundred milespast Disko, past Uper-navik, and even past Cape Farewell at the southern tip of Greenland. While the current kept them frustratingly far from the coast of Greenland, it dragged them southward toward the Labrador coast. New each mile they drifted south increased the possibility of spotting whaling ship.

But starvation threatened them first. Only two pounds of pem-mican and bread remained. As before, someone raided the supplies and ate most of them. All around hundreds of birds flew in flocks, heading northward to their nesting grounds. Skittish and familiar with the habits of men, these birds stayed well beyond rifle shot. All the hungry men could do was watch them swoop and dive.

That dangerous look returned to the men's eyes. Tyson recognized it. “This hunger is disturbing their brains,” he scribbled with his pencil stub. “I can not but fear that they contemplate crime. After what we have gone through, I hope this company may be preserved from any fatal wrong. This party must not disgrace humanity by cannibalism.”

A single seal put off the unthinkableat least for a few more days. Every scrap of the animal vanished down their blistered throats except for its gallbladder. Cruelly Tyson amused himself by watching the near-dead Meyer gleaning picked-over bones from the ice. With his bony hands encased in oversize deer-hide gloves, the feeble man struggled to pick up the scraps. Hampered by the gloves and his cold-numbed fingers, time after time Meyer found his gloves empty. Yet each effort of grasping for the bones nearly caused the meteorologist to fall over.

The night of April 20, a cry of alarm pierced the night. Instantly an icy wave of seawater swept over the piece of ice, inundating the camp. As the men struggled to their feet, the wave washed away whatever was not secured. The sea swallowed pipes, socks, shirts, gloves, and the essential oil lamps.

Wave after wave followed. Battered at five-minute intervals, the crew loaded the women and children into the boat just as a monstrous wave ripped the tent loose and carried it off along with blankets and reindeer robes. In that instant all their bedding was lost.

Shouting over the roar of the wind, Tyson ordered his men to stand by the boat. Wide-eyed and trembling, they all obeyed. “Hold on, men!” he cried. “Bear down! Put on all your weight!”

“Aye, aye, sir,” came the frightened response.

Each wave lifted and rocked the boat, threatening to wash it off the ice and into the churning maelstrom. Sailor after sailor threw his body across the thwarts to keep the whaleboat from lifting free.

For twelve hours they struggled. Blocks and slabs of ice borne
by the waves slammed into the legs and feet of the desperate men. Each blow spun its victim and upset his balance. Chunks of ice the size of dressers tumbled the men like ninepins. Their hands and mittens now frozen to the sides of the craft perversely helped them keep hold as they dropped. One fall meant death, swept away into the roiling tempest. Luckily the crew worked together. Helping hands snatched those who slipped before they slid from sight.

And with each wave, the boat leaped forward, closer to the edge of the ice.

While the men weakened, the storm showed no signs of relenting. By morning the two Inuit women tumbled onto the ice to help hold the boat in place. At seven in the morning, the fury abated.

Tysor spotted a better piece of ice close by and ordered the boat laurched. Jackson fell overboard in the attempt, but hands snatched his jacket and pulled the shivering cook aboard. On reaching the new site, the last morsels of dried bread were divided. The crew was split into two watches, which allowed half to sleep in the boat at one time.

Tysor took stock of their situation. It was hopeless. All were soaked and covered with bruises. There was no more food, no shelter except the boat, no dry clothing, and no means of starting a fire.

In their darkest hour, the captain found reason to hope.
We cannot have been saved through such a night to he starved now,
he thought.
God will send us some food.

As Tyson and his party chewed on strips of their clothing to assuage their hunger, Ebierbing climbed a crest of their frozen world and scanned the jumbled horizon. Three times he ventured to the top to look for food without success.

On his fourth attempt, a slight movement caught his eye. A patch of vory moved along the blazing white hummocks. It was a bear. Among toward the smell of something he could eat, the animal was coming to them.

Ebierbing and Hans ran for their rifles. The anxious sailors flopped cown onto the ice and did their best to resemble sleeping seals whi e the bear approached. As the men held their breath, two shots rang out and the bear skidded onto his nose.

The animal was starving just as they were. Its stomach was empty, and its hide hung loosely over a bony frame. None of the
usual layers of insulating fat remained beneath its skin. The bear had meant to eat them. Instead, it became food itself. Its warm blood and stringy meat revived the men, especially the semicomatose Meyer.

But the respite was short-lived. Another gale descended upon the straits. In a recurring theme, the wind and waves ate away at their new home until the group was forced to take to their boat once more. For the next three days, they spent more time in their leaking craft than on ice floes. The warming weather favored rotten ice, and the storm shattered most of the weakened pack ice.

Now a different situation threatened. Little remained of the level places where they could land. Only sharp-faced icebergs that split and capsized incessantly shared the stormy straits with a slurry of slush and brash ice. There was no place suitable to repair their boat. Besides, they had no materials with which to repair it. There was nothing left for them to do but bail the sinking boat and dodge the walls of ice that thundered past.

At four-thirty in the afternoon of April 28, just when their hopes had sunk the lowest, Ebierbing's sharp eyes spotted a smudge of smoke rising from the horizon.

“A steamer! A steamer!” a hoarse voice croaked.

Instantly Tyson hoisted the American flag. Men shouted and waved. The boat rocked perilously while the crew tried everything to get the ship's attention. Through his telescope Tyson made out the steam sealer working its way through the ice on a southwest course.

Pulling with their last ounce of energy, the crew rowed toward the ship. But fog and ice blocked their way. The steamer vanished from sight. Sobbing from despair as well as exhaustion, the men slumped over their oars. Darkness settled over the small boat just as Tyson found a piece of ice barely large enough to land. Lighting scraps of their oil-soaked clothing, they set watch fires in hopes the steamer would see them.

Morning found another steamer approximately eight miles off. Hurriedly they launched their boat and paddled for it. An hour of hard rowing saw them gaining on the idling ship. Another hour found their tiny boat blocked by pancake ice. Clambering onto the
highest point of a floating cake, those with guns fired them into the air.

The s:eamer changed course, heading directly for them. Almost delirious with joy, the men fired three rounds. A report of three shots echoed back. Was it a response from the ship or merely the echoes oF the icebergs?

To their dismay, the vessel veered off, weaving first south, then north and west. Tyson and his men shouted, with no result, until their threats cracked. The captain watched in amazement as the ship zigzagged along the horizon. The vessel was threading its way around the ice. “Strange,” he wondered out loud. “I should think any sailing ship, much more a steamer, could get through with ease.”

Helpless, the men watched in frustration as hours slipped away while the steamer came no closer than five miles from them. Even more depressing, another ship steamed into sight just as the sun set. Night found the castaways huddled on another sliver of ice, bracketed by unseeing sealing ships. Hans caught a baby seal sleeping on the other side of their base, so the depressed party had a little to eat.

As he settled into his night watch, Tyson felt warmer air waft past his windburned cheek. The puff of warm air sent a chill through him. Warm air could mean only one thing: fog! The next day would see thick fog, and that would make their discovery more difficult.

As morning broke on the last day in April, Tyson had just closed his eyes when the lookout cried out, “There's a steamer! There's a steamer!”

Shimmering through the fog like the ghostly image of the Flying Dutchman loomed a ship.

Everyone jumped up and fired their rifles. Tyson tied the flag to the top of their mast and joined the others in shouting. Hans launched the kayak and paddled furiously toward the ship. With its funnel bi lowing sooty smoke between its two masts, the ship was less than a quarter mile off. Still, fog rolled about the ship and hid it from view.

Hans reached the ship and waved his arms as his kayak
thudded into the side of the steamer. She was the steam barkentine
Tigress,
out of Conception Bay, Newfoundland. Curious men lined the rails to look down at him.

All the while as he paddled, Hans shouted out, “American steamer! American steamer!” Knowing only a few words in English, he could not say more.

Men aboard the steamer looked down in amazement. Where had this Native come from? He was in the middle of the straits. And what did he want? The
Tigress
was no “American steamer.”

The fog parted just as Hans pointed at the people on the floe.

Instantly the captain shouted orders. The ship slowed and turned toward the marooned party. Three sealing boats splashed into the water, and their crews rowed for the patch of floating ice.

When he saw the change of course, Tyson doffed his threadbare Russian cap and gave three cheers. His men followed suit. Tears flooded his eyes when three hearty cheers resounded from the steamer. As she hove into sight, he saw a hundred men lining her forecastle, rigging, and topgallant mast, waving and cheering at their rescue.

Not waiting for their rescuers, Tyson and his group abandoned their dented cooking pot and launched their own boat. Boat hooks caught the battered craft as it reached the
Tigress.

The rescued party climbed shakily aboard. Curious seamen crowded around them. The dirty, haggard group looked less than human. One boatload of sailors from the
Tigress
had peered into the beat-up tin pot to see what the rescued had been eating. The greasy loop of seal intestine spoke eloquently of their dire straits.