The Ice Master (25 page)

But for the next trip out, the hapless Malloch joined Munro. They were a pair—between Malloch's blissful carelessness and self-absorption, and Munro's habitual lethargy—and Mamen shook his head as he watched them leave, expecting disaster. Malloch might be a good worker, but he had no clue what he was doing out there; and Munro was one of the most indecisive men he had ever seen.

Their goal was to get to Camp Four, where they would drop off seven cases of dog pemmican and various other stores, including one hundred tea tablets, five pounds of sugar, a half dozen candles, one gallon of alcohol oil, and a stove. Before they left, McKinlay passed out a supply of chocolate to each man from a box he'd found frozen in the ice. They could use it now or save it for the trail; it was up to them.

The temperature was minus forty-five degrees Fahrenheit, and there was a biting wind, which made it seem even colder. It was February 11, one month to the day since the
Karluk
sank, and they were still stalled in the same place.

Soon after Malloch and Munro started on their way, they were held up by a large opening in the ice. They bunked down for the night, and by the next morning, some young ice had formed over the lead. Assuming that it could hold them, they crossed the new ice, tramping over it with their heavy boots, and the dogs, and the sled full of pemmican. Of course the ice wasn't strong enough to hold them. The ice cracked, plunging Munro into the bitter cold water, along with the sled and the dogs. Malloch managed not to get a dunking and soon salvaged Munro, the dogs, the sled, the tent, and their stove, but all seven cases of the pemmican were lost, along with an axe, a pick, and a spade.

They spent a miserable night, cold and wet, with nothing warm to drink because their matches were ruined, and no tent to sleep under because it was frozen stiff as a board and impossible to pitch. It was yet another disastrous and unsuccessful journey, and the routine was becoming disturbingly familiar.

B
ARTLETT AND
M
C
K
INLAY
were having a cup of coffee in the galley when Auntie announced that she could hear the sound of dogs barking. They rushed outside, but could see no movement on the horizon. However, every now and then they heard a distinctive bark and an occasional “Mush! Mush!”
¹⁸

They climbed their watchtower, and from there they could see a black spot in the distance. McKinlay grabbed the field glasses and could make out three figures and two sleds. Bartlett and McKinlay met Chafe and the Eskimos as they neared the camp. Chafe told the captain immediately about the condition of Dr. Mackay's party and about what he feared was the loss of Sandy and his men. Bartlett was stunned and didn't speak for several minutes. They walked on in silence, and finally he told Chafe not to say anything to dishearten the other men.

Bartlett tried never to do anything that would discourage the men, even when he knew they were in danger. Instead, he would force himself to laugh, proclaiming, “Why, there is
¹⁹
nothing to it,” and that he had met with the same thing dozens of times on his trip with Peary toward the Pole.

But he was now gravely worried. Due to the wretched conditions of the ice, it seemed their relaying trips were all for nothing. The most troubling matter, however, was the well-being, and whereabouts, of Sandy's party. He had hoped that they would come back to Shipwreck Camp with Chafe and then they could all make the final march to Wrangel Island together. But Chafe and the Eskimos were back without the first mate.

Even if Sandy and his party had experience with ice travel, Bartlett knew that Herald Island, with its precipitous sides and rocky face, was unreachable. He hoped they would venture on to Wrangel Island instead. In his mind, he urged them there. In either case, it was best that the rest of them leave for land immediately. He decided it then and there. They would take the trail toward Herald Island, in order to pick up the stores cached at Camp Four and to look for Sandy and his men, and then they would go on to Wrangel.

W
ILLIAMSON HAD BEEN WORKING
on Mamen's leg, and now Mamen was finally starting to feel better, although the knee was still swollen and sore. There was hope, thought Mamen. Maybe I will make it after all. Everyone had been taking such good care of him, including Bartlett, who wouldn't even let him take the night watch, and instead took it himself. “You must keep
²⁰
quiet,” the skipper told him, “and get well in your leg before you think of anything like that.”

They could see Wrangel Island clearly now, west of Herald. It seemed to be much closer than they had expected. Indeed, they now appeared to be drifting closer and closer to the island, although this may have only been some sort of optical illusion caused by the light.

Chafe was back now, along with Kuraluk and Kataktovik. Mamen thought about Sandy and his mates and wondered where they were. He told himself that they had probably gone on over to Wrangel Island, and would be there waiting for him, Bartlett, McKinlay, and the rest of them when they got there. Dr. Mackay's party seemed more hopeless. He pitied them out there, struggling over the ice. “They have a
²¹
hard time, I should think,” he wrote. “I suppose that Beuchat has left this world, poor fellow. He did not know what he did when he left the camp.”

Bartlett was emphatic that they all leave soon. Mamen's knee was well enough now so that he had given up the idea of staying in camp alone. He would be able to go with them. And the truth was, he didn't want to be left by himself. He was a brave young man, but he didn't savor the thought of being left behind.

They would divide into four teams, with two teams starting out first, and the other two following within a day. Munro would lead the first two teams—Hadley, Williamson, Breddy, and Maurer on one, and Munro, Malloch, Chafe, and Clam on the other—and Chafe was put in charge of the dogs. Bartlett, of course, was leader of the other two teams. For his own foursome, he chose the pick of the litter—Mamen, McKinlay, and Kataktovik while Kuraluk and his family would travel with Templeman.

There would only be five dogs per sled, since two were too injured to pull and would probably be shot early on for dog food. They had already had to kill Nellie's puppies because they would only be a hindrance on the trail, as young and weak as they were, and to take them along as passengers was impossible. This way, too, they would save Nellie's strength so that she could work. The dog power was too limited for Bartlett's tastes; there were too many injuries, and they were always at one another's throats. So he ordered each man to make a man harness, in case it should come down to having to haul the sleds themselves.

Bartlett made no bones about it. They would be in for one of the hardest struggles men could ever come up against, certainly the hardest struggle any of them had ever faced. The work ahead was tough, tougher than they could imagine, he told them, but if they used care and caution, all would be well in the end.

Malloch was especially careless, and Bartlett lit into him about his habits. The geologist had never dried out his shirt and foot bag from his unfortunate relay trip with Munro, and now they were still wet and already stowed away for the upcoming journey. He would never make it on the trail like that, and Bartlett warned him that he would end up like Beuchat if he wasn't more careful.

All worked to ready themselves, until they were dripping with perspiration. Everyone sewed warm clothing and loaded up the sleds for the upcoming journey. McKinlay was busy issuing stores to Munro, since his teams would set out first. Each sled would bear a load of nine hundred pounds, Munro's carrying five cases of man pemmican, two cases of biscuits, eighty-four tins of milk, and two gallons of oil. Hadley's would carry identical stores, but with six cases of pemmican instead of five.

Munro would lead both of his teams directly to Wrangel Island while Bartlett's teams would head first for Herald to look for Sandy and the others. After they either found them or ascertained that they were not to be found on the island, they would continue on to Wrangel.

At 5:30
A.M.
on February 19, all hands were called and everyone hurried about making final preparations. There was much swearing as the men tried to locate last-minute additions to the load—mittens, socks, bags. Tempers were short and the men were anxious, particularly the ones starting out that day. One or two of the crew complained that the weather was bad, trying to postpone the inevitable. They wanted to stay in Shipwreck Camp, where they felt relatively safe and where everything was familiar. Now that the ship was gone, it was home, and they were loathe to leave it.

The weather, however, was fine and clear, a brisk easterly breeze stirring the air. It was a fresh wind, but it would be at their backs, steering them away from their home on the ice, and propelling them, at long last, toward land.

W
HENEVER THERE WAS
any movement on the ice that sounded even the faintest bit like footsteps, one of the men would shout, “There is a bear
²²
outside, Charlie!” And they would all break up into laughter.

Chafe had made the mistake of telling them about the time he and Clam were camped out on the ice and heard what they thought was a bear running outside their tent. Each time Chafe would race out into the night with his gun, there was no bear to be found. It was only later that they learned that ice, grinding at a distance, sent vibrations over miles through the ice floes, which made a thumping sound that closely resembled a person walking, or a bear running at a slow trot.

Chafe knew he should never have told them, but now he brushed it off because the laughter was good for them. It was important they keep their spirits up.

Their faces were frozen and the drifting snow and strong winds made traveling unpleasant. Under Munro's leadership—so different from Bartlett's commanding and confidence-instilling influence—the two teams followed the trail marked by the various sledging parties.

They learned quickly about life on the ice, something none of them but Hadley had experienced before. The surface of the ice was fissured and uneven, interrupted everywhere by large ridges and hummocks, which had formed by lateral pressure. Sometimes they could get around these, and sometimes they had to climb them with pickaxes, forging the way step by careful step. Then they had to wrest the sleds over, being careful not to topple the provisions, and then wrangle the dogs across. It took hours sometimes, and it was the most tedious work imaginable. Everyone was discouraged and frustrated, and there were always one or two who wanted to turn back.

They had ten decent hours of daylight now during which to travel; this helped immensely, especially since the trail was broken up and hard to maneuver, a result of the constant shifting of the ice. There was no earth beneath their feet; the ice was the closest thing they had, and it was disconcerting—and at times, terrifying—to feel the quaking and trembling underneath them. Sometimes the ice made a break of three or four miles in the middle of the trail, and then they had to figure out a way around and across, and then once again try to locate the trail. It could take a day as the men headed east and west until someone found the trail, following it for three hundred yards or so to make sure it was passable. Other times, the trail would disappear altogether, ending abruptly because of ice movement, and they knew to look for it two or three miles to one side or the other. They usually found it to the left, “for the farther
²³
away from Wrangel Island the ice was,” noted Hadley, “the faster it was drifting to the west.”

They ate two meals a day, usually pemmican and biscuits, and they did their cooking over a Primus stove, also using it to melt ice for water so they could make their tea. At the end of each day, they built snow houses that were four feet high by seven feet long, and as wide as the number of people sleeping in them. The houses were just large enough for everyone to lie down close together, which was fine because they had nothing other than body heat to warm themselves.

The first thing that had to be done in building a snow igloo was to find a level field of ice that was heavy and strong. Snow knives were used to cut the blocks of snow. The knife had a steel blade, a foot and a half long, two inches wide, and about a sixteenth of an inch thick. The handles were usually six inches long, but Bartlett had his men lengthen the handles of their knives by lashing hatchet handles to them. Sometimes they also used handsaws to cut the snow blocks, which they carved into different sizes. The bottom of the snow house was made up of large blocks, as much as two feet thick, and the blocks in the upper part of the house were smaller, tapering at the roof.

Inside, they built a bed platform of snow, and they lay skins on top of this. They slept in their clothes, sometimes without any other covering, just so they could be ready at a moment's notice to leap up and run, should the ice give way. Other times they used blankets. Each man also had his foot bag, which, after he removed his skin boots, he would draw over his legs, just up to the knees.

They were always aware of the cold; it was simply an element of their lives now, a constant force. But they never caught pneumonia or influenza or even a head cold because these things did not exist in the Arctic, beyond, as Bartlett said, “the limit of
²⁴
habitation of civilized man.”

When it came time to leave Shipwreck Camp, no one wanted to abandon the cat, even though she was, technically, another mouth to feed. Bartlett said Munro's party could take her along, so Maurer and Hadley stitched a deerskin bag to carry her in, and that is how she rode on the trail to Wrangel Island. Sometimes, she traveled in state on the sled, and other times Maurer wore the bag round his neck, and she snuggled safe and warm against him for the journey.

At night, they brought her into the igloo and let her out of her bag and everyone would give her something to eat, one by one, down the line. She lived mostly on pemmican scraps, which she seemed to enjoy. Then, quite contented, she would crawl into one of their foot bags and curl up on top of their feet. Here, she would sleep through the night, until they began again in the morning, when she was once again put into her deerskin bag and tied round Maurer's neck.