The Ice Master

by Jennifer Niven

  Before setting out, Mamen penned a note, which he left for McKinlay. He couldn’t understand where the magnetician was, as he was supposed to have joined them some time ago. “It is a17 month now since we left Icy Spit,” he confided in his journal. “I wonder if another month will pass before we see McKinlay, or what is the matter with him or the others up there. Has Munro not come back, or is illness raging?”

  They left Skeleton Island on the morning of April 24, manhauling two sleds loaded with provisions and equipment. Mamen pulled the heavier one, which carried 225 pounds, while between them Malloch and Templeman pulled the 60-pound sled. They switched at Cape Hawaii, which was half way to Rodger’s Harbour, but soon had to stop as Templeman and Malloch were too weak to manage the heavier load even with their combined strength.

  Mamen removed some of the provisions from the lighter sled and added them to the heavy one. Then he let Malloch take the light load, while he and Templeman hauled the other. Overheated and overexerted, Mamen peeled his skin shirt off his body for the first time since leaving Shipwreck Camp. He never got any peace. Even now, while he was straining under the larger load, he was playing referee to the other two, who were at each other’s throats the entire way to Rodger’s Harbour.

  They stopped overnight and stayed inside their igloo for twenty-six hours, sleeping and resting. The trip so far had worn them out, and although they longed to keep going, they needed the rest. They had enough food for only two meals each—one pound of pemmican and five biscuits a day. It wasn’t very much, especially with their recent physical exertions.

  On the road to Rodger’s Harbour, in the midst of the snow and ice, they caught beautiful glimpses of spring. Mamen found an arctic willow in bloom, and they heard the unmistakable song of a bird, although they couldn’t see him. It was a sign of returning life and “with the spring18 comes new life for man and beast,” wrote Mamen.

  Everything seemed more promising when they arrived at Rodger’s Harbour on April 27. They found no sign of shelter or game at the harbor, but there was driftwood in abundance, which was encouraging. They could at least build themselves a little cabin to use until the ship arrived.

  They put up their tent and settled in. Mamen had planned to send Malloch and Templeman back to Skeleton Island to retrieve the rest of their stores, but Malloch was in immense pain. His feet were far gone with frostbite, and his toes stank of rotten flesh. One of them, in particular, was badly frozen, and Mamen feared he would have to amputate it if it did not show signs of improvement. Yet Malloch still walked about the tent and about camp without his mukluks on. It was the most maddening thing imaginable.

  Soon it was clear that the toe had to come off, and Mamen would have to do the cutting. He promised Malloch he would do what he could for him, but without responsibility for anything that might happen afterward— infection or disease. Malloch agreed, and the operation was underway. Mamen cleaned his instruments—a small pair of scissors and a lancet—with boiling water and some antiseptic. Then as Malloch gritted his teeth, Mamen did the job, wrapping the foot afterward in gauze. It had gone as well as it could have, under the circumstances, and Malloch bore up impressively.

  They would wait a few days to make the trip to Skeleton Island for supplies, Mamen decided. Malloch needed looking after now, and when it was time to go, Mamen would go in his place. While Malloch remained in the tent and tried to recover from his operation, Mamen and Templeman walked as far as they could along the shore, in search of life. They saw nothing, not even tracks, and the singing bird was now silent. They were too weak to go far, and when Mamen returned to camp, he picked up his diary and wrote, “I don’t know what19 ails me nowadays, I feel infinitely weak, my body has swollen, my legs are worst, they are about twice as thick as ordinarily. I can hardly walk, I move like an old man.”

  Over the next few days, he began to feel worse and had no choice but to lie inside the tent and rest. Malloch, for once, was feeling better, but Mamen lay in bed, weak and exhausted, listening to the wind that blew through camp and rattled the walls of their tent. He was worried the tent would cave in or fly away at any given moment, but he was helpless to do anything. Luckily, it withstood the gale, and Mamen was able to rest, nourishing himself with a drop of tea, but nothing more. He couldn’t stomach the thought of pemmican right now.

  It was mysterious, this illness. He had no idea how it had gotten him or what it was. He did not recognize the symptoms. He only knew that he was terribly weak and tired all the time. Malloch was improving daily, but still he relied upon Mamen. He and Templeman both looked to Mamen to lead them now, even as he lay in his bunk, unable to rise or eat.

  “I don’t know how20 this will end,” he wrote in his diary on the last day of April. “The prospects are certainly not bright.”

  BARTLETT KNEW LITTLE about the northeast coast of Siberia except for the history. Captain James Cook had made the first examination in 1778, followed by Admiral Ferdinand von Wrangel in 1820. In 1878, Baron Nordenskjöld sailed along the coast in his ship Vega, before becoming frozen in at Pitlekaj. In 1881, Lieutenant Hooper of the USS Corwin further examined the coast, and it was his descriptions and findings that had made their way into the American Coast Pilot Book, better known as the seaman’s Bible.

  Bartlett had looked at Nordenskjöld’s book, Voyage of the Vega, aboard the Karluk, even though it was written in German and he didn’t speak the language. But he studied the pictures, which gave him an idea of what they would be facing once they reached land. There were woods, apparently, which stretched down to the shore at points, and if the pictures could be relied upon, reindeer lived there.

  What the Pilot Book didn’t tell him, though, and what he especially wanted to know, was what the Siberian natives were like and what condition they were in, meaning what food they ate and if they were overrun with tuberculosis, as was the case with other “primitive races” that had come into contact with civilization. It had been thirty years since the last reported data on the region, and so much could have changed since then.

  Kataktovik grew more terrified of reaching land. It was the Eskimo, he said. “Eskimo see me21, they kill me,” he told the captain. “My father my mother told me long time ago Eskimo from Point Barrow go to Siberia, never come back, Siberian Eskimo kill him.”

  They had been through numerous narrow escapes—cracking ice, shifting ice, crushing ice, ice in motion everywhere. The ice now moaned and thundered and ground its fearsome teeth. The dogs were nervous and uneasy at the noise and almost useless now.

  On April 4, Bartlett had left the dogs and sled in camp and then set out with Kataktovik. With pickaxes, they made their trail through the hazardous ice. The captain scaled a tall rafter and scanned the horizon. Up ahead, he could see the field of rough ice and then, lying beyond this, an open lead. On the other side of the lead, lay the ice foot, the Arctic term for the ice “which is permanently22 attached to the land and extends out into the sea.”

  He hoped they could reach land by nightfall. As Kataktovik continued cutting the trail, Bartlett went back for the dogs and sled, and they forged their way over the moving ice until they reached the open water. They dragged the dogs across and then jumped across themselves, the lead opening wider all the time. To make matters worse, there was a blizzard blowing, stirring up the snow around them.

  But now, at last, they were on land ice. It would be easier from here on out, with only rafters and deep snow to worry about. The snow was so deep that they were forced to don their snowshoes, which they had not yet worn on the trip because the ice conditions were too rough. Bartlett was grateful now to have them because, as he said, “snowshoes are indispensable23 in Arctic travel and I should as willingly do without food as without snowshoes.”

  Kataktovik had been in better spirits for the past few days, and now he said that he smelled wood smoke coming from the land. They were not close enough yet for Bartlett to detect the scent himself, but he trusted the Eskimo’s keen senses.

 
Finally, early on the evening of April 4, after two hundred miles traveled and seventeen days’ march, they set foot on land. The first thing they saw was the trail of a sled.

  “Ardegar,”24 Kataktovik said, which meant “that’s good.” “Eskimo come here.”

  Bartlett asked him if, at last, he thought it was Siberia. Kataktovik said yes, he believed so.

  “Where we go25?” the captain asked him, and Kataktovik pointed east.

  That night, they built their igloo, made some tea, and turned into their bunks, thankful to have made it across the treacherous ice pack. Then they slept like the dead. As Bartlett commented, in typically understated fashion, “It seemed pretty26 good to sleep on land again.”

  The snowstorm was still raging the next morning, and they could see little of their new surroundings. Later, Bartlett discovered they had landed near Cape Jakan, which lay about sixty miles west of Cape North. The land was swept clean of snow, which made traveling easy across the Siberian tundra. They followed the sled tracks, and after the horrific conditions of the ice, they now felt the worst was over. The dogs were all but useless now, and Bartlett and Kataktovik were feeling worn themselves; but they were encouraged because they had, miraculously, reached Siberia.

  Suddenly, Kataktovik, who was walking ahead while Bartlett drove the dogs, stopped in his tracks. He turned back, meeting up with the captain and pointing to distant black objects on the horizon.

  “Eskimo igloo,”27 he said. His expression was difficult to read.

  “Ardegar,”28 said Bartlett heartily and urged him onward.

  They pressed on, until suddenly the skipper found himself in the lead. Kataktovik was a good, strong walker, but now he fell back near the dogs, and then behind them. Kataktovik was certain that the Siberian Eskimo would kill him, no matter what the captain said.

  The captain told him it was hogwash and repeated all he had already told him about the hospitality of these people. They were safe now, he said, and these Eskimos would give them a place to dry and mend their clothes. Perhaps they could get some new dogs to help them on their way, or convince one of the Eskimos to go with them on their journey, which would make it easier for them.

  Kataktovik would have none of it.

  “Maybe,” Bartlett said,29 in one last effort to appease him, “we get tobacco.”

  The younger man was still skeptical, but at this prospect, he agreed to go on.

  The objects on the horizon were soon revealed to be people, who were running about, back and forth, excited at the approach of these strangers. Kataktovik fell back again behind the dogs, and Bartlett told him, “You drive the30 dogs now and I will go ahead.” He saw the relief in the Eskimo’s face as he strode forward.

  When Bartlett was within yards of the Siberian Eskimos, he stuck out his hand and said in English, “How do you31 do?” The Eskimos shook his hand excitedly, talking rapidly in a language he didn’t comprehend. They greeted Kataktovik the same way, and neither he nor Bartlett could understand a word they were saying. The language of the Siberian Eskimos was vastly different from that of the Alaskan Eskimos, and none of the Siberian Eskimos seemed to speak any English. Although the captain tried to explain who they were and to tell them what had happened and where they had come from, they clearly didn’t know what he was talking about.

  They were hospitable, though, and quickly unhitched the dogs and fed them, then transferred the sled to a section of their house, where they stored it away from the bad weather. A stooped old woman led Bartlett by the arm, pushing him into her house. His head knocked against the low ceiling and he took a seat in the spacious room. The house itself was built of driftwood and covered with a dome-shaped roof of saplings. Over the entire structure were stretched walrus skins, held in place by ropes and fastened to the ground by heavy stones.

  The Chukches, as the Siberian Eskimos were called, did not use snow igloos. Instead, they built these arangas, as they termed them. Inside, this particular living space measured about ten feet by seven and was separated from an outer room by a curtain. In the outer room they kept sleds and equipment, and this was where Bartlett’s sled was being stored now.

  The old woman fussed about Bartlett, brushing the snow from his clothes with a tool called a snow beater, which was shaped like a sickle. She gave him a deerskin to sit on and hung his boots, stockings, parka, and fur jacket up to dry. As Bartlett pulled on a pair of deerskin stockings she had given him, he looked over at Kataktovik to see how he was faring.

  The young man appeared stunned but relieved. He was being fussed over as well, and soon both of the weary travelers were sitting in front of a dish of frozen reindeer meat, “eating sociably with32 twelve or fourteen strangers to whom, it might be said, we had not been formally introduced.”

  The Chukches lighted and heated the aranga with a lamp fueled by walrus or seal oil. They also used this for cooking. In all, there were three lamps in this house, which meant the temperature rose to about a hundred degrees.

  There were three families, all neighbors, gathered tonight in the aranga to eat and drink with the strangers. They brewed strong Russian tea, which they were terribly fond of drinking. The old woman dusted off her best cups, unwrapping the exquisite china from dirty cloths, and then spat into each cup to clean it.

  Bartlett decided to hell with being polite and asked Kataktovik to fetch his own mug from the sled. There was no way he was drinking from those cups, and when Kataktovik brought him his mug, which was much larger than the cups she was offering, the woman looked hurt. He couldn’t tell, though, if it was from her disappointment because he was not using her finest china, or her alarm that, given the size of his mug, he obviously planned to drink more tea than anyone else.

  After the reindeer meat, their hosts served some walrus meat, which smelled rancid. Bartlett did his best with it, but had to push his plate away. The taste was overpowering and he didn’t trust the meat, which was obviously quite old; but Kataktovik loved it.

  As far as Bartlett could tell, they thought the captain was a trader; but Kataktovik escaped them and they didn’t seem to believe that he was an Eskimo. When he spoke to them in his native language, they held up their hands, touching their faces to say they did not understand him. Then they would speak to him, at which he would throw up his hands helplessly, saying, “Me no savvy33.”

  Using his charts, Bartlett showed their hosts where they had come from and, by drawing pictures, managed to tell them about the Karluk and what had happened to her. From what he could learn, he and Kataktovik could expect to run into various settlements of Chukches along the coast. He also learned that there were two kinds of people native to the northeastern Siberian shore, coast Eskimos and deer men. The former made their living by hunting, and many of them traveled between the different settlements in skin boats. The latter were an even hardier people. Tuberculosis had indeed become a fixture in the lives of many of them. When they became too ill or old, they apparently were left to die, their bodies given over to the animals to eat.

  All night long, Bartlett listened to the incessant coughing of his hosts and hostesses. The air was stifling, thick with the smoke from their Russian tobacco, and the lamps burning all night long. Bartlett slept fitfully and, finally, unable to stand it any longer, he sat up, barely able to breathe. The lamps had burned themselves out and he tried to light a match, but with no luck. He tore open the curtain and breathed deep breaths of the cold, clean air. His hosts regarded him with some surprise and polite disapproval, but didn’t say a word.

  The next day, on the anniversary of Peary’s supposed discovery of the North Pole, Bartlett and Kataktovik set out toward Cape North, one of the bigger rustic settlements in that vast wilderness.

  With luck, Bartlett thought, he and Kataktovik would now reach civilization and wire word to the authorities about the men on Wrangel Island. He thought of them all the time and agonized about how they were. “I wondered how34 the storms which had so delayed our progress across Long Strait had af
fected Munro’s chances of retrieving the supplies cached along the ice from Shipwreck Camp and getting safely back to the main party, and how the men would find life on the island as the weeks went by . . ..”

  IT WAS MINUS SIXTY DEGREES Fahrenheit on the trail, and Bartlett could not remember ever feeling this cold. His hands were frozen, and it was the first time in his life that he was not able to block out the chill or the frost.

  Siberia meant “Sleeping Land.” It was wild country and the coldest region in the northern hemisphere, with temperatures falling to minus ninety degrees Fahrenheit in deepest winter. Only in the heart of Antarctica did temperatures ever dip lower than they did in northeastern Siberia. It was Bartlett’s first experience in this place, and he had never known such bitter, destructive cold or such harsh weather, even near the North Pole.

  They were caught in a blizzard on their way to East Cape, the wind blowing with hurricane force, the snow sweeping across the land with enough power to knock a man down. It was frightening, but beautiful. Even as it produced mayhem, the Arctic could create great scenes of beauty. Ice crystals often seemed to float in the air, sometimes forming glowing halos around the sun and the moon. And on quiet nights, there was a rustling in the air that the Eskimos called the “whisper of the35 stars.”

  Along the way, Bartlett and Kataktovik ate the usual pemmican and some deer meat given to them by Chukches at Cape North. They had long ago used up their supply of ship’s biscuits, most of it ruined by the salt water they had run into on the ice from Wrangel Island. Now Bartlett’s arms pained him, and Kataktovik was suffering from sore hands and feet. The sled was growing lighter every day as their food supply diminished, but the dogs still pulled badly. They were worn down and, as Bartlett observed, practically dead on their feet. One of them, Whitey, finally lay down and refused to go on, so they picked him up and put him on the sled. Whenever they stopped at an aranga, Bartlett bartered with the people there and tried to persuade them to sell him a dog or two, but no one seemed willing, or else they had no dogs to spare.