The Ice Master (47 page)

When they were one hundred yards from shore, one of the men from the tent started toward them, carrying something. Finally, they thought, he knows he is saved. But their smiles disappeared as they saw the object the man was carrying. It was a rifle, and as he walked toward them, he loaded the magazine with cartridges.

The Eskimos in the umiak were terrified. One of them pointed to his forehead, shaking, and said in broken English, “That man long
⁵
time not much eat. Him crazy.. . .”

In Inuit, Swenson spoke to their fears. His words and voice were soothing and the Eskimos quieted, continuing to paddle. But they were all puzzled and alarmed by the man's behavior. What if this man was mad? What if he didn't understand that they were there to help him?

They landed the umiak and stayed close together as they started toward the castaways. They passed over the most desolate of landscapes, the earth gray and dreary, with patches of ice and snow here and there covering the otherwise empty ground. It seemed impossible that anything could live in this cold, barren place.

Time, hardship, exposure, and famine had made each of the men unrecognizable. McConnell tried to glimpse a familiar mannerism or feature in each, anything that would help him identify them. They could have been any of the men he last saw aboard the
Karluk,
nearly one year ago. They could have been strangers.

The man with the rifle met them halfway to the tent. The others stood several feet behind, waiting. The man's hair was wild and matted, and it streamed down over his eyes. His grimy face was streaked and furrowed with lines and wrinkles. He seemed to be about forty years old. His clothes, which he had lived in and slept in for the past six months, were in rags, begrimed and stinking with seal oil, blood, and dirt. His full, tangled beard hid the dark hollows of his cheeks, but his eyes shone through above, speaking of great suffering. He was ten feet from McConnell, and he was unrecognizable.

The man stepped forward to Swenson with outstretched hand. “I don't know
⁶
who you are,” he said, “but I'm mighty glad to see you all.”

It was only after hearing his voice that McConnell knew who he was. He never would have known him otherwise—chief engineer John Munro. He wasn't yet forty, but he looked forty, and he had lost at least thirty pounds since McConnell had seen him last.

He lay down the rifle and hugged McConnell. “How did you
⁷
get here and where is Mr. Stefansson? Did Captain Bartlett reach shore all right? How is he, and where?”

McConnell told him briefly that Bartlett had reached Siberia in May and that Stefansson was adrift on the ice somewhere north of the Canadian boundary.

Bartlett had won through. Munro smiled. His lips were cracked and white.

The other two men from the tent were approaching, slowly, cautiously. Munro leaned in toward Swenson. “Have you a
⁸
doctor aboard?”

“You don't need a doctor,” Swenson replied. “What you need is a cook, and we have a first-class one. Hurry and get your things together, and we will go aboard and have breakfast.”

“Breakfast,” Munro echoed. It had been such a long time.

Swenson and McConnell summoned up their courage then to ask Munro the question they were most afraid of asking, but the one they most needed to ask. How many of the expedition were left?

Twelve.

Swenson and McConnell sighed with relief that others were alive, and with grief that eleven were dead.

The remaining nine were camped at Cape Waring, about forty miles east of Rodger's Harbour. Last Munro knew, they were all well.

He pointed then to the cross that marked the nearby grave. Mamen and Malloch had died in the spring.

One of the other two men approached the rescuers now while the third man hung back. The second man was weak and emaciated. He looked as if he might lose the ability to stand or walk at any moment. McConnell didn't recognize him and it was only when Munro spoke his name that he knew who he was. Fred Maurer. Even after McConnell knew his identity, he couldn't believe it. The strong, intense young man he had known a year ago, and the frail creature standing before him now could not be the same man. Maurer smiled, but it was obvious that to talk would have been a great exertion, so they didn't press him.

The last man stepped forward then, gaunt and extremely pale. He was a little fellow, high-strung and jittery. He began babbling and it didn't take long for them to realize that the man was speaking gibberish. He was clearly on the verge of a nervous breakdown, so the men kept their conversation light and general, avoiding any discussion of the pain these men had suffered or the tragedies they had endured. McConnell recognized Templeman without Munro's guidance.

The crew from the
King and Winge
helped Munro, Maurer, and Templeman gather their few belongings. They left the tent standing as a beacon and McConnell sat inside and wrote a message for any vessel that might come after them. It was cold in the tent and dirty, and through the holes that riddled its sides, he could glimpse the pale Arctic sky. The remains of the food supply lay just outside, within reach, so that the men could crawl to it if they had to. It was a pitiful sight
—
empty pemmican cans; three or four arctic fox carcasses picked clean; and a few drops of seal oil.

They had only twelve cartridges of ammunition left, Munro had told him. After that, they did not know what they would do to sustain themselves. They had given up hope of ever being rescued.

McConnell left the tent hurriedly, tying the note to the tent pole and fastening the flap so snow would not drift in.

H
E HAD BEEN AWAKENED
by the steam whistle. At first, Maurer lay in his bed, listening for the sound, afraid to trust his ears. And then, clearly, the drone of a ship's horn, and he was out of his bunk, crawling out of the tent on his hands and knees.

He had stood shakily and rubbed his eyes to clear them, not trusting them any more than he did his ears. Was it an illusion? Or was he really seeing a ship? It sat a quarter of a mile offshore, the American flag flying proudly from its deck.

It took a while to find his voice and then to find the words, but eventually he was able to call out to Munro and Templeman. “The ship is
⁹
here.”

The ship is here.

Maurer had weighed 165 pounds when he joined the Canadian Arctic Expedition and sailed from Esquimalt in June of 1913. Now, in this September of 1914, he weighed only 125 pounds. The skin was taut over his cheekbones, his piercing eyes made more intense by the shadowed lines of his face. He was all angles and bones, his flesh thin and pale underneath the layers of dirt.

There came an umiak over the side of the ship, and the men with her, and there were the men rowing toward them now. The American flag was waving, her colors brilliant against the great whiteness of that northern world. It was the first time he had seen the flag in fourteen months, and he thought it could only be described as “transcendentally resplendent.”
¹⁰

Maurer, Chafe, and Templeman had invited their rescuers to have tea with them, but Swenson and the others wouldn't hear of it. “No, we want
¹¹
you to come aboard,” they said, “we have better stuff than that aboard.”

They ran the Canadian flag down the flagpole and took it with them. The wooden cross was left standing over the grave of Mamen and Malloch, the only mark to signify forever the “resting place of
¹²
our brave comrades,” said Maurer.

Leaving their camp and the island was bittersweet. Maurer had been prepared for the elation, but not for the sadness and the great hollowness he felt as well. This was a joyous occasion—the most wonderful thing that could ever have happened—the thing they had been wishing for and praying for, for so many months.

Maurer carried the Bible his mother had given him and gave thanks to God as he turned his back forever on Rodger's Harbour. But he couldn't help feeling, as he was escorted to the umiak, and then as he set foot on the deck of the
King and Winge
, that a part of him was buried out there, too.

T
HEY HAD GIVEN UP HOPE
of being rescued long ago, Munro told them again over a meal of soft-boiled eggs, toast, cereal, and coffee. They were now aboard ship, consuming quarts of coffee, with heaping spoonfuls of sugar and condensed milk in each cup. The
King and Winge
was on her way to Cape Waring to retrieve the rest of the
Karluk
's men.

Swenson and McConnell sat with them while they ate their first meal, and afterward Munro, Maurer, and Templeman had their first baths in eight months. They were given a change of clothes, pulled from the shipboard “slop chest,” and when they were clean they barely recognized themselves or each other. They ate a second meal, barely an hour later. Ham, eggs, fried potatoes, cream of wheat, toast. “There was nothing
¹³
we wanted but we got,” said Munro. Swenson and the rest of his men saw to it.

“Mr. Swenson, I
¹⁴
want to ask a great favor of you,” Munro finally got up the courage to say. He looked sheepish. The words came, falteringly, softly. “For several months I have been dreaming of eating a whole can of condensed milk with a spoon.”

Maurer and Templeman then confessed to having the same craving. After all this time and all their suffering, the only thing they could think to ask for was a can of condensed milk.

Immediately, three cans and three spoons were brought out, one for each of the men. They ate eagerly and with great delight, relishing each mouthful, and devouring the condensed milk as if it were ice cream. Munro was barely able to finish his, it was so rich and he was so overcome.

A
T FIRST LIGHT
on September 7, McKinlay, Hadley, and the Eskimos started packing up camp in preparation for their move to the winter site. It was truly amazing how little it took to survive in their world.

Around 10:00 in the morning, Kuraluk slipped outside to find a piece of driftwood so that he could make for Hadley the spear he'd been promising him for weeks. Hadley was inside the tent, busy making fox traps, and McKinlay was trying to repair their stove, which had stopped working properly. It was only minutes later that McKinlay heard an excited cry. He knew it was the Eskimo, but couldn't make out what he was saying.

Hadley had heard it, too. They stopped what they were doing and listened.

“Umiakpik kunno!” It was faint, but unmistakable. And again, “Umiakpik kunno!”
¹⁵

Maybe a ship
.

Hadley and McKinlay stumbled over each other out of the tent. “How we got
¹⁶
out of our tent we do not yet know,” said McKinlay. Kuraluk was standing there, pointing to the east. McKinlay strained, but he didn't see anything. He ducked back into the tent and came back with the field glasses. He trained them out to sea.

A ship. Their ship. A two-masted gasoline schooner, just four or five miles off to the east, at the edge of the ice that surrounded the island. From what he could tell, she was steaming northwest.

Hadley, McKinlay, and Kuraluk “raised a shout
¹⁷
that must have scared all the seals in the Arctic Ocean,” wrote McKinlay. And then McKinlay raced over to Williamson's tent. “The ship, Charlie, the ship!” he shouted, and Chafe quickly bandaged his lame foot and pulled on his boots so that he could hobble outside and join the others. Clam and Williamson had been down the beach collecting wood, but at the sound of the shouting, they rushed back to see what was happening.

They all stood there, shoulder to shoulder. It was too much to imagine that this ship was there to take them home. They had already resigned themselves to the fact that they would never be rescued, and it was easier for McKinlay to believe that she had gotten off course or been chasing walruses.

Suddenly, their hearts sank. She was hoisting her sails and seemed to be going past without stopping. Perhaps she was not a rescue ship. Instead, she might very well be up there walrus hunting. She might not even know they were there at all.

Frantically they ran toward the ship, shouting as loudly as they could. Hadley grabbed his revolver and started blazing away the precious ammunition. He aimed the gun into the air, firing at the sky, and quickly emptied the entire magazine. Kuraluk ran faster than any of them as they tried to head off the ship.

McKinlay had never run so hard in his life. He used every last ounce of his strength to run and shout. He screamed himself hoarse. The ground at Cape Waring was as thick with snow and ice as Rodger's Harbour was barren, and he stumbled over his boots, but still kept going.

Then she lowered her sail and McKinlay stopped running. He stood transfixed. Around him, his fellow castaways did the same. As they watched, a party of men disembarked from the ship and began the long walk across the ice toward their beach.

The survivors shook hands with one another and then began to dance deliriously. These were the happiest moments of their lives, said Chafe. Auntie was there by now with the little girls, having just returned from up the beach with a pot of fish.

As much as they'd dreamed of rescue, none of them was prepared for that moment. It was so much like a dream that, not knowing what to do with themselves, they went back to their tents, cooked their catch, and had a feast. For so long, they had lived on instinct, and instinct now told them to eat and to not waste the food they had been lucky enough to find. Hadley's tent traded some of the fish with Williamson's tent in exchange for tea, and soon the entire population of Cape Waring was gathered around the fire, eating.

Their rescuers arrived in the middle of the meal, having traversed the nearly five-mile stretch of ice that had kept them from sailing any closer. They must have thought everyone there crazy to be sitting down to a lunch of fish when a ship filled with provisions awaited them.