Tristan Jones

by Ice! [V2. 0]

  Sunrise on the eighteenth of October was around eleven in the morning, and there was daylight until around one in the afternoon, then twilight until about four. I made good time, for Cresswell's hull was tough as an ox and I rammed my way through thin ice. Gradually the lead widened. Once I broke out of the pack ice field into comparatively open water, I intended to head south, and so out to a point where I could turn east for Iceland, or perhaps even make my way into one of the Greenland fiords, to winter there.

  Suddenly, again, my fate was decided for me. There, on the western horizon, was a smudge of smoke, coming closer. I fired off one of my emergency signal flares. As I gazed at the ship's hull, which by now was plainly visible, with the lights shining from her cabins, I saw a brighter light flashing away from where I imagined the bridge was. They had seen my flares!

  I patted Nelson on the back of his head. "Now behave yourself, mate, we've got company coming!"

  The ship was soon very close, having broken a wide swath right through the thin ice. She was wearing the Danish flag and her name was Gustav Holm, her port of registry Copenhagen. Seeing my tattered, barely recognizable red ensign, one of her officers sang out in English over his megaphone.

  "Where are you coming from?"

  "Reykjavik—I was trying to make for Jan Mayen Island, only I got stuck."

  "We can see—how was your trip?"

  "Up and down, up and down."

  He laughed. As the ship edged closer, I distinctly heard him say to the others crowded on the bridge deck, "Bloody Englishmen. Bloody crazy fools!"

  "Hey, up there!" I hollered, between cupped mittens. "Hello, up there!"

  "Ja?" he replied, bending down low over the bulwark, his gloved hand around his ear. I could plainly see his clean-shaven face under the clean parka hood.

  "Ja?" he shouted again.

  "Welshman, if you don't mind!"

  For I'm going back to the frozen North,

  To the land where spunk is spunk-

  Not a trickling stream of lukewarm cream,

  But a solid frozen chunk!

  Last verse of "The Ballad of Deadeye Dick and Eskimo Nell." There are ninety-two verses of this, written by an anonymous bard in the early 1900s and traditionally rendered at Royal Navy "Sods' Operas."

  19

  Trapped!

  Clumsily, in my sealskin boots and Arctic gear, I clambered up the rope ladder which had been cast over the weather-streaked side of the Gustav Holm, clinging to the lines which were already stiffening in the cold. It was no strain, for my arms, after six weeks of hauling and digging in solid ice, were like steel-wire rope, and I soon clattered on deck, watched by the astonished crew and passengers.

  I was met by Captain Svensson, who, shaking my mitten heartily, led me up to his cabin under the bridge. Soon I was doffing my caribou-skin jerkin in his warm cabin. My shirt underneath was filthy and stiff with frozen sweat. My beard was eight inches long.

  "You have a bath, and I will get your clothes cleaned up," said the captain, who was surprisingly young, about thirty. And then I realized that when ships' captains appear young, it is a sign of one's own advancing age.

  The steward showed me into the bathroom, and I looked around in wonder. This was the first bathroom I had seen for months, ever since leaving Iceland. The marvel of hot water pouring from a faucet at the turn of a tap delighted me. For half an hour I soaked in sudsy hot water; it was the first time in weeks that I had been really warm. Afterwards I inspected myself in the mirror. My eye had completely recovered from the blow on the voyage up from St. Kilda, and although tired, I felt fitter than I had for years.

  "How was the bath?" asked the captain when I had done.

  "For a small-boat voyager," I told him, "there is no finer welcome, no greater luxury."

  The dinner, with the passengers and crew, was in the Danish fashion, and that night there was boiled ham. As usual among Northern Europeans, there was far too much on my plate for me to eat, and, as usual, I had to make apologies for my small needs. But the aquavit went down well, though I was careful not to overindulge.

  During the meal the captain said, "You know, I can easily lift your boat out of the water and carry her onboard to Reykjavik."

  That was the last thing I wanted. The authorities there had charged me mooring fees at fishing boat rates, a fantastic sum, about ten dollars per day. As I had not been in Icelandic waters for commercial reasons, as I had not been exploiting their fishing grounds, and as I had been out at anchor the whole while, using the port facilities only to the extent of drawing off forty gallons of water, this was daylight robbery. Besides, I was 360 miles north of Reykjavik, and if I could winter on the coast of Greenland, I would be in a favorable position to try another probe north early next summer, 1960. Generous as the captain's offer was, if there was rough weather it would not be possible to lower Cresswell back down into the sea before the Gustav Holm reached Reykjavik, and then, with the shipping company watching all, I would have a fat freight bill to pay, and my coffers were exceedingly low.

  "Thank you very much for your offer, Captain Svensson, it is most kind, but I think I will try to get into one of the Greenland fiords. Our position now, you said, is about sixty miles southeast of the King Oscar fiord. What about if I try for there, go up the fiord and reach Ella Island? I can winter there, at the radio station."

  He shook his head. "Impossible. We've just come out from there and it was all we could do to force our way through the piled-up shore ice in the fiord. We were very lucky not to be frozen in ourselves. You would stand no chance." After dinner, he led me up to the bridgehouse and showed me a chart of Eastern Greenland.

  "Look," he said, "if you are determined on this, your best chance, probably your only chance, is to try to get into Scoresby Sund. There are a lot of bergs coming down from the glaciers inland, but the latest information is that the shore ice is still fairly loose. The pack ice is still moving, so there's a good chance you can find your way in to the wireless station. Anyway, I will signal them and tell them you are heading there, and if you don't reach there in a couple of days, they can set up a search with the Catalina flying boat from Angmagssalik."

  "Sounds fair enough to me, captain. Look, I don't want to hold you up any longer. You have been most helpful and kind, and I surely do appreciate it. Mange tak!"

  I climbed back down to the deck of my boat, gave Nelson a pat, cast off the lines, and was away. The Gustav Holm slid away to the southeast while her passengers and crew lined up, waving to me as she eased through the thin ice pack. Then I set off to follow the passage she had already broken up between the point where she had encountered me and the coast of Greenland.

  The weather was cold, with a bitter wind of about fifteen knots blowing from the northeast. I soon had all working sail up and in two hours was out in fairly open water. After another twelve hours standing at the wheel in the freezing cold, trying to dodge behind rigged-up canvas shelters, I sighted, away to the southwest, the red light atop the Scoresby Sund wireless mast and, feeling my way around the edge of a great mass of broken-up shore ice, entered the great sound. Now I was within a few miles of a good wintering haven, and there would be company and warmth over the coming months of night.

  But try as I would there was no passage through the ice to the shore. In the pale light of the twilit day, I estimated that the nearest I could approach the station was eight miles. There, on the edge of the shore ice, I would be completely exposed to all the winter storms and to the huge, monstrous icebergs as they swept out to sea. There was only one thing to do; I must try to penetrate into the great long fiord and find a suitable spot, no matter how isolated, where I could perhaps beach the boat, thus keeping her from being crushed as the shore ice piled up. And so I made up by the Scoresby Sund, watching the tiny red light of warmth and cheer fading away beyond the shore fog. Even though I was shining a light, I knew the people in the wireless station would probably not see me through the fog. Then I remembered the great bra
ss foghorn. I gave six toots on it— "Dah dit dah; dah dit dah: I wish to communicate with you"—then listened. No reply. Another six hoots, then I heard them—eight miles away. That's how noise carries in the dry Arctic air. They were signaling back slowly, in straight Morse. Their hoots were deep and melancholy. I listened carefully.

  "Dit dah dah; dit dit dit dit; dit; dit dah dit; dit. Dit dah dit; dit, dit, dah. Dit dah dit; dah dah dit dah: Where R.U. Interrogative?"

  I gave the hooter handle heavy jerks. "Due south; going up fiord; try Syd Kap."

  The answer came after a brief pause. "C., dah dit dah dit, yes; R.A.R. Message received. Ends."

  That was the last communication I had with anyone but the Eskimos for well over a year. Slowly, I wended my way upstream under sail and engine, dodging the ice floes and bergs, this way and that, under the moon and stars, with the ice mountains gleaming and sparkling nine thousand feet up above the wide fiord. Progress was slow, and it was another two days before I sighted the umiak, forty feet long, made of skins, with five Eskimos onboard. They paddled over to meet me, for they were against the wind, and I was under very short sail, for fear of colliding with a floe. They waved and pointed towards the shore. At first it seemed there was nothing there but bare rock, but then I saw the huts, three of them, sitting on a small headland. There were some children running over the ice on the shore. To the east of the huts, a smaller fiord dropped back from the main fiord. I sailed along it for about three hours. It was free of ice, right up to the beach!

  After starting the engine I made my way in. I dropped the sails and slowly, holding the string to the very primitive throttle arrangement I had rigged up, steered the boat head on, at right angles to the pebble beach. She touched; then, with a rumble, her speed carried her gently about five yards onto the beach as she slid on her three keels. There is very little tide in Scoresby Sund, so there was no fear of the boat refloating and being carried away by the tide; in any case, I secured her with a stout mooring line to a nearby boulder. Then I went to sleep.

  When I awoke there was a full storm heading in from the northeast, but going on deck it was obvious that I was in a very good spot, protected by high mountains all around, except due south, where there was a fetch of about thirty miles from the range of mountains which stretch out west to east across Knud Rasmussen Land. If there was to be any danger here, it would come from the south. While I made breakfast of eggs and bacon, courtesy of the captain of Gustav Holm, I thought about this problem.

  The answer was soon obvious. The beach I was sitting on sloped up to the land at about the same angle as the ramp on the Ark Royal ice floe. About sixty feet ahead of the bows was a line of boulders, quite high, about thirty feet on average, and over at an angle of forty-five degrees northwest of the boat, about eighty feet away, was a gap. Behind that, when I went to look, I found sand. Further up, there was a slope of smooth rock, also strewn with lichen-covered boulders. There was no sign of a glacier above the rock hillside. Climbing up it, in the cold starlight, I was reminded of the great water catchments which cover the southern side of the Rock of Gibraltar.

  I would haul the boat up through the gap and settle her in behind the rocks which followed the line of the shore. There she would be protected from all winds, from any high seas brought in by a south wind, and from any ice which might drive ashore with the wind.

  There was a problem here though, because unlike the glassy smooth ice of the floe, which had made it comparatively easy to slide the boat, the pebbles and sand would be much more difficult to haul the weight of the boat over. The first thing I would need was long balks of timber, two of them, to lay up the beach, then three heavy rollers. Securing the blocks to the rocks was simple, with a rope lashed right around the base of one of the boulders.

  Even after the storm died, there was no sight of the Eskimos, though far in the distance, from the west, the sound of chopping and hammering carried over in the wind. I estimated that the Eskimo hamlet was about twelve miles away. I dared not leave the boat in the position she was in, half-ashore and half-afloat, so I started to make ready to haul her up the beach, first landing all the removable stores over the bow onto the beach, all two and a half tons. While I was doing this, the thought came to me that perhaps I could use the spars, the masts, the gaffs, and the booms to roll her up the beach. The mainmast was hollow for half its length only, but very strong; the mizzenmast completely solid.

  It took me three hours to lower the mainmast and the mizzenmast; with a long line umiak through a block way up the beach and back to the mastheads, I had then to take the pins out of the tabernacles and slowly ease the main-mast down. The difficulty was to prevent the mast from crashing down once it was past an angle forty-five degrees from the vertical, so I rigged another line, from the mizzen head to the mainmast top, and, while easing away on the shore line, hauled in on the triatic line. Then, once the mast reached the critical forty-five-degree angle, the mizzen took the weight. Lowering away slowly, or "handsomely," as sailors say, with the triatic line, the whole of the mast was soon down on deck. Then, securing the shore line to the base of the mast, which was lying foot forward by now, I heaved away and dragged the mainmast over the bow onto the beach.

  The mizzenmast was comparatively simple to lower, being only two-thirds the height of the main and only half the diameter. That, too, was soon lying up the beach. I packed the underside of the two masts with sails and blankets. Now I had my "railway"! The booms and gaffs were soon lying at right angles across the masts and I had my "wheels." Then I started hauling, with the three keels of the boat, only six inches deep below the hull, resting on the booms. She moved slowly but steadily as I hauled away, using the same five-block purchase I had used on the ice floe, and after six hours or so she was high and dry on the beach, close to the rock gap. Then I made ready to slew her around the corner of the far rock and tuck her in on the sand. But first I had a good meal of corned beef and rice, then a sleep of four hours or so. By the time the four next meals had been eaten, she was lying cozily tucked in, low behind the rock barricade, bows facing northeast and the masts and booms stowed on deck to make a frame for a tent rigged up from the older, spare sails and the canvas awnings. Between the booms I packed boxes of food stores to provide plenty of holding and supporting surface for the tent, which would soon be supporting snow and ice. This took another day.

  After another meal and another sleep, with the wind again howling outside, I unshipped the heating stove from its engine-room berth and repositioned it in the cabin. It was the twenty-sixth of October. The sun had disappeared altogether, and there was only about two hours of pale, ghostly twilight. Other than that, all was night. When it was clear, bright with the reflected light of the moon and the stars from the ice and snow of the great massifs overhead, it was a sight of beauty; but when the sky was overcast or foggy, pitch-black and cold, with the bitter Arctic winds blowing blinding blizzards of snow and frozen rain, it was misery in the extreme. But I was ready, my winter haven was prepared. I set out southwest along the frozen, rocky beach to find the Eskimos.

  Traveling on foot along the shore was much more difficult than I had imagined. Often there were rock tumbles, or crushed ice right up on the shore, which meant a long detour inland, up slippery', almost vertical, cliff faces. I had left Nelson onboard, on a loose line. The wind was slight, and I made good going. Considering the icy and rocky terrain, I thought I could reach Syd Kap in fourteen hours. I had taken along my sleeping bag and a small sea bag with some baked beans, corned beef, and sugar, just in case I got stuck in a blizzard—or, if the Eskimos were friendly and hospitable, I could exchange it for some food.

  It is awkward to account for the passage of time when the "days" are so short, and the only way it can be done is by the twenty-four-hour clock system, used by seafarers and airmen. The normal days and nights fuse into one during the Arctic winter, and much of the time the visibility is better in the "night" hours than in the "day." I left the boat at 1600 hours and pl
odded first along the pebble beach, now mostly iced over, for two hours. Coming to a rockfall of huge boulders fallen down from the mountainside onto the shore, much too smooth and slippery to climb over, I wended my way up the steep rise of the moraine to circumvent the rocks. On my way down again, the wind piped up from the north and the sky darkened, with great masses of black clouds overhead. In a matter of minutes, there was a raging blizzard, snow sweeping down the mountainside out into the fiord below. A little later, as I took my bearings, worried lest I be marooned in a drift, visibility dropped to a matter of feet. All was black, with white snow swirling around. I could tell my direction because of the fall of the land and the direction of the wind, so I made my way slowly down to the upper edge of the rockfall. By 2350 I had found a gap between two boulders, one resting on top of the other, and crawled inside, freezing cold and shivering, despite the extra jersey under my parka. There was a space about eight feet long and as big as a coffin between the rocks, and in this I laid my sleeping bag, then crawled inside and scoffed another can of beans mixed with some sugar: Then I went to sleep with the driven snow and ice whistling past the end of the opening between the giant boulders.

  I wasn't too worried about animals, as I had heard that bears were timid ashore and avoided man, even a sleeping man, while foxes or wolves mainly traveled alone. I packed some driven snow around the bag and dropped off, exhausted.

  When I awoke the scene outside was beautiful. The wind had dropped entirely and all around were huge hummocks of snow under the moonlight. It was 0400 hours on November 1; I ate a can of corned beef and swung myself up onto the top of the boulder I had slept under. Peering all around in the freezing night, I found to my horror that I was trapped! The pile of boulders, about half a mile above the shore line, was completely isolated, surrounded by snow drifts of twenty feet or more. I scampered below again, into my rock cleft, lit a cigarette, and had a think. My hands shook as I doffed my outer mittens.