The Ice Master (29 page)

Per Bartlett's instructions, Munro and McKinlay were planning a search trip to Herald Island to look for Sandy and the rest of his party, leaving in two days, no matter what the weather. Mamen, meanwhile, had asked Munro for permission to go to Rodger's Harbour, seventy miles or so across the island on the southern coast. He would take Kuraluk and they would find the most suitable camping places along the way. Once everyone reconvened at Icy Spit, another attempt would be made at reaching Shipwreck Camp. None of the trips would last more than a week due to the shortage of dog feed.

As the weather mercifully began to improve over the next few days, so did the health of some of the sick men. Williamson and Breddy were soon able to move around a bit. The healthier members of the party even managed, after a great deal of swearing and urging, to get Templeman and Malloch outside into the good weather, to dry out their skin clothing in the warm sunshine. The sky was clear, and for the first time, they could feel the warmth of the sun on their upturned faces. A pronounced wind still chased through now and then, awakening the drifts again, but it remained the best day they had seen in a long time.

T
HERE HAD BEEN A CHANGE
in plans, and now Malloch and Templeman were going with Mamen and Kuraluk to Rodger's Harbour. They would set up a camp there, and afterward Mamen and Kuraluk would return with the dogs for the journey to Shipwreck Camp. The captain had instructed them, after all, to settle in different camps about the island, and Mamen argued that now was as good a time as any to do so. Mostly, though, he was sick to death of Munro and anxious to get away from him. McKinlay would join them as soon as he returned from Herald Island.

On the morning of March 23, the men loaded up the sleds, and the two parties set out—Mamen, Malloch, Templeman, and Kuraluk for Rodger's Harbour, and Munro and McKinlay for Herald Island.

T
HE ICE BETWEEN
W
RANGEL
I
SLAND
and Siberia was always shifting and breaking up beneath their feet. Great leads of water surrounded them on all sides, and each step required thought and caution. It was the most treacherous kind of Arctic travel, and Bartlett and Kataktovik quickly developed a routine to get through it.

The dogs and sled were left beside an open lane of water while Kataktovik headed in one direction and Bartlett took the other, searching for a point where they could cross. When they found one, the person who discovered it would fire a revolver or climb up to the nearest ice ridge and signal, providing the drifting snow and heavy fog allowed him to be seen. The ice didn't always cooperate, God knows, and more often than not the best they could do was to find a place where the ice almost formed a bridge across the water. Then they would hurl the dogs over to the other side and drag the sled quickly as they jumped for it. When this wasn't an option, they searched for a floating ice floe, which they could use as a sort of boat to transport them to the other side.

It was lane after lane of open water and uncooperative ice, and it slowed down their journey immensely. So many times, the sled plunged through the young ice, soaking various provisions, including their sleeping gear. Whenever this happened, the dogs would huddle, terrified, in a pack, which was too much weight for the fragile ice beneath them. Bartlett was taxed, calling on all the experience he had ever gleaned as a Newfoundland sealer and an Arctic explorer.

At night, they spent three quarters of an hour building their igloo and stayed up to mend their clothes, which were ripped every day on the ragged, jutting ice.

At last the weather began to clear. And then, even better, they shot a seal in a lead of open water and Kataktovik retrieved him with a special device the Eskimos used for just such a thing. It was a large wooden ball, with hooks projecting from it, and a handle about ten inches long. Attached to this was a white cotton fishing line, fifty fathoms long, to which Kataktovik sometimes added lumps of ice to add weight and increase momentum. Then he would spin the contraption around by the handle and send it sailing out beyond the body of the seal. Drawing the line in, he would hook the seal and pull it to the edge of the ice floe. Lying down on his stomach, he then edged himself out over the thin ice to the water's edge and hooked the seal. Bartlett stood back several feet, attached to Kataktovik by a rope, and as soon as he had the seal, the skipper would haul them both back onto the solid ice.

The good weather came and went, and the light conditions suddenly worsened. Nights were restless and often sleepless, because the ice was constantly in motion; they were afraid of it splitting beneath them as they slept. To save time, they would forgo making snow roofs for their igloos and would use instead a small tent, which they weighed down with pemmican tins, snowshoes, snow blocks, and a rifle. One night, however, the wind blew so hard that it tore off the canvas roof and they were temporarily buried in snow.

They had numerous problems with the dogs. They chewed through their harnesses and devoured anything in their path—clothing, sled lashings, provisions. Sometimes Bartlett had to tie their mouths to keep them from chewing themselves free.

The dogs were fond of running off when they were unleashed; once the entire team got away from the sledge and started running over the trail, the harness dragging behind, in the direction of the island. Afraid that he and Kataktovik would be stranded without the dogs, Bartlett grabbed a pemmican tin and headed stealthily toward them, pretending to open it. The dogs watched him warily and then, drawn by the pemmican, crept back to him. Bartlett quickly took hold of the harness and they behaved for the next several hours.

One night, Kataktovik gave a great shout as Bartlett was brushing the snow off their sleeping robes. There, at arm's length, was the largest polar bear Bartlett had ever seen. At least thirteen feet from head to toe, the bear fell at the second shot of Bartlett's rifle. He was an old bear, from what they could tell, a stunning creature. The skipper cut off a hind-quarter, which was all they could carry, and they had a generous helping of the raw meat because there was no time to cook it. The dogs had not even noticed the bear, a sign of how exhausted they were, and now they fed the animals all they could eat.

The next morning, they discovered a wide lead that had opened during the night just near their camp. Splitting up as usual, Bartlett heading in one direction, and Kataktovik in the other, they searched to no avail for a crossing point. They met again at the sledge and decided to cross there. A thin layer of young ice filled the lead, too weak to hold a man, but workable, Bartlett thought. He remembered something he had learned among the Newfoundland sealers and figured it just might work here.

Kataktovik was lighter than the captain, so he laid tent poles across the lead—just as Bartlett had seen the sealers do—and crawled over the young ice, a rope fastened around his middle so that Bartlett could pull him up and back if the ice broke.

He reached the other side safely, and then they drew the sledge across with only a few of the provisions. Kataktovik unloaded these on the other side and sent back the empty sled, which Bartlett loaded with a few more items. They did this over and over again until all their stores rested on the other side of the ice. The dogs got across on their own, except for one that had to be tied and pulled across, given his penchant for running away. Then Bartlett lay face down on the empty sled and held on for dear life as Kataktovik threw the rope over his shoulder and ran as fast as he could, pulling Bartlett clear, just as the ice buckled.

Afterward, they began the long, laborious job of digging their provisions out of the steadily drifting snow and loading them back onto the sledge. “It was a slow
²⁰
job,” Bartlett wrote. “Everything was white; boxes, bags, sleeping-robes, all the objects of our search, in fact, were blended into the one dead tone, so that the effect on the eye was as if one were walking in the dark instead of what passed technically for daylight. The drifts all looked level but the first thing we would know we would stumble into a gulch of raftered ice, heaped full of soft snow, or a crack in the ice, covered by a similar deceptive mass.”

All in all, though, it had been the best day's work they had done since leaving Wrangel Island. And that night, they were able for the first time to build their igloo on a solid and reliable floe of old ice. They had their first good night's sleep, free—at least for the moment—of worry.

B
Y EARLY AFTERNOON
, McKinlay and Munro came within view of Herald Island, about fifteen miles due west of the northwest point of the island. There was no way they could get through. The ice here looked like the bad ice they had encountered on the journey from Shipwreck Camp to Wrangel Island. It had taken the entire party a week to build a road through that, and now, standing on top of a pinnacle of ice twenty-five feet high, they could see that this bad ice stretched clear to Herald Island. It was like some sort of tortuous obstacle course and it took their breath away. A trail would have to be cut to make the ice passable, and they knew, standing there, that it would be impossible for two of them to do it.

McKinlay and Munro trained their binoculars on the island, scanning it for any signs of a camp or of human life. The glasses were powerful, and they could see the island clearly. But there was no Sandy, no Barker, no Brady, no Golightly. There was no Dr. Mackay or Murray or Beuchat or Morris. As far as they could see, there was no life at all. No means of living either. Herald Island was, indeed, little more than rock, and it was impossible to reach. They suspected then that their search was fruitless. Sandy was not there; they could see that.

With heavy hearts, they turned back, retracing their steps, and made camp. They fed the dogs the rest of the pemmican before turning in, determined to return to Wrangel Island tomorrow.

On the way back, one of the dogs collapsed, and McKinlay and Munro had to put him on the sled. They were pitiful creatures now, barely resembling the fine animals they were when Scotty Allen had sold them to Stefansson. They were skin and bones, weak, and voraciously hungry.

Back at Wrangel Island, McKinlay and Munro were told that Mamen and Kuraluk had quarreled on the journey to Rodger's Harbour, and because of it, Kuraluk had returned. No one knew exactly what had happened, and the Eskimo wasn't talking; so they were left to wonder what went wrong. On his way home, though, Kuraluk had shot a female bear and two cubs, which was the first good news they had had since reaching land.

Mamen returned the next day, reporting that he had only gotten as far as Skeleton Island because Malloch was quite ill again and unable to go any further. He had left him there for the moment with Templeman and would return to them after the trip to Shipwreck Camp. He also said that the trouble with Kuraluk was over the building of an igloo, and that he had ordered the Eskimo to return to Icy Spit.

Kuraluk and Munro set out the next day to retrieve the bear meat. It was a hard trip, heading into a gale blowing from the east; they walked against the wind, their eyes creased into slits, nearly shut from the blast of cold. Everyone else was too sick to go, including McKinlay, who was now planning to move into the big igloo with the rest of the invalids.

When Munro and Kuraluk returned, they cooked up a grand feed of bear meat and bear broth in the battered pots Munro and Williamson had made from kerosene tins. It was, to everyone, a welcome relief from the pemmican, which they had been eating every day with little variation.

On the last day of the month, Munro, Chafe, and Clam spent the day preparing to leave for Shipwreck Camp. Munro had decided it was time to make another attempt, now that Chafe and Clam were feeling better. They would take two sleds, the remaining twelve dogs, and their portion of the bear meat. Mamen, meanwhile, was preparing to return to Skeleton Island. He didn't want to leave McKinlay, but Munro insisted he go back to look after Malloch and Templeman. So Mamen was to leave tomorrow, and McKinlay would have to suffer it out in the big igloo with the other sick men.

He could not think when his feet had felt warm. For as long as he could remember, they had been frigidly, fearfully cold, and they were now swollen to twice their normal size, and he was in great pain. When he began feeling unwell, he had prayed that it wasn't the mystery illness that plagued everyone else. But soon McKinlay, too, was unable to rise from his bed. It felt like influenza, with every limb aching, and his body horribly weak. He tried raising himself on one elbow, but was forced to lie back down. It was too much for him.

Now, with Mamen and Malloch moving to Rodger's Harbour, McKinlay was, at the moment, the only “bloody scientist” remaining in camp. He would join them just as soon as he was well again.

T
HE OPEN LEADS OF WATER
were more numerous now. Bartlett and Kataktovik hopscotched across them, unharnessing the dogs and pulling animals and sled across from floe to floe. They stepped lightly, afraid of upsetting everything into the water that now surrounded them.

They had now been out on the sea ice for nine days. That night, there was a clear and beautiful sunset, and the sky was clean and cloudless. Bartlett squinted toward the southwest, trying to make up his mind about something. His eyes were in such pain right now, from the days of travel over the blinding white of the ice, that he didn't trust them. He picked up the field glasses and turned them toward a shadow on the horizon.

Still unsure, he called Kataktovik and pointed. “That land
²¹
?”

Kataktovik said that it might be. He took the glasses from Bartlett and climbed to the top of a nearby ridge to have a look. He came back down in a moment and handed Bartlett the binoculars. It might be an island like Wrangel, the Eskimo said, but it was nothing bigger and therefore useless. He was already discouraged and this seemed to darken his spirits even more.

“We see no
²²
land,” he told the captain, “we no get to land; my mother, my father, tell me long time ago Eskimo get out on ice and drive away from Point Barrow never come back.”