The Ice Master

by Jennifer Niven

  Fortunately, there were now plenty of birds at the new camp, and Hadley and Kuraluk were having tremendous luck with the gaming. Chafe began hunting on a nightly basis, and rarely came home empty-handed. The catch was always divided equally between the two tents, in the ratio of five (Hadley’s tent) to four (Williamson’s tent), with Helen and Mugpi counting as one adult. At first, the dividing of game seemed to go smoothly, all hands being present during the sharing out so that everyone could make sure he was getting his proper ration.

  The members of Williamson’s tent, however, were rotten at rationing the food among themselves. They ate through their stores quickly, in one or two sittings instead of saving the meat for later, and nothing Hadley or McKinlay said could make them realize the importance of being frugal.

  On the evening of June 12, McKinlay, Hadley, and the Eskimos were awakened by groaning from the other tent, followed by panicked shouts from Williamson. He couldn’t breathe, he was shouting over and over. Someone from the crew tent ran to fetch Hadley, and McKinlay and the others spilled outside and saw Williamson sitting on a log, “the fear of death” on his face. It was his heart, he gasped. He was done for.

  After a careful examination, Hadley concluded that it was no such thing and that, instead, Williamson was suffering from nothing more than a case of acute indigestion. Hadley questioned Chafe, Breddy, and Clam and discovered that each of them, including Williamson, had eaten two crowbills and then divided two small gulls among them. Hadley lectured them about being more careful with their stores of food and then, since he was in charge of the medicine chest, gave Williamson some tonic before they all turned in.

  The lesson failed to make an impact, because the next night the men in Williamson’s tent finished all of their birds at supper. What they did was their business, of course, but it soon became clear that Hadley, McKinlay, and the Eskimos would suffer from it. Hadley and Kuraluk were away on a hunt one day, and McKinlay was in the tent mending his clothing when he heard steps outside and peered through a small hole in the tent. There were Chafe and Breddy, helping themselves to some of his tent’s soup—Hadley’s soup, McKinlay’s soup, the Eskimos’ soup. “They went about10 it so freely,” he wrote, “that I was sure that they thought no one else was in camp. Breddy then handled the birds in our store tin, apparently counting them, and later, when I checked on them, they were at least one short.” He could not believe men would steal food from other hungry men, much less from a woman and two little girls.

  There was more trouble on June 13. Chafe and Breddy had gone hunting and sometime afterward Breddy returned, reporting to his tentmates that there wasn’t a crowbill to be seen. He had only gotten one gull, he said. At 7:00 A.M., Chafe returned and McKinlay overheard him report having gotten four gulls, although they later told Hadley and McKinlay that they had gotten only two.

  Another time, Chafe shot eight crowbills, giving four to Hadley’s tent and keeping the other four for Williamson’s tent, even though these were not the proportionate shares they had agreed upon. And afterward Hadley had seen Chafe cooking three birds for himself and Clam, which left Breddy and Williamson unaccounted for. Did Chafe really get eight birds as reported? Was he cooking three of their four for himself and Clam, thereby cheating Breddy and Williamson? Or had he actually gotten more birds than reported, in which case were they really cheating Hadley’s tent?

  Hadley and McKinlay were growing increasingly concerned. The men in the other tent, with the lone exception of Clam, were loose cannons. They didn’t trust them. If the crewmen were, in fact, stealing from them and cheating them out of birds, it was something to be gravely worried about.

  “Hadley declares they are not dealing squarely,”11 McKinlay wrote. “We may be unduly suspicious; but things have not always gone so smoothly as they might have done, if everybody were to hang together a bit more.”

  McKinlay’s eyes had gradually improved, and on the evening of June 13 he set out for Skeleton Island to retrieve his knapsack and the ammunition for the Mauser pistol. Before he left, he asked Williamson for the Mauser so that he could have a chance at game on the way, but Williamson refused. Munro had given strict orders that the pistol shouldn’t leave Williamson’s tent, he said. This seemed odd, given Munro’s intense dislike of the second engineer, but there was nothing McKinlay could do to change his mind.

  Munro, it appeared, had already removed most of the gear and provisions that had been at Skeleton Island, so McKinlay loaded what was left onto his sled and turned immediately back toward Cape Waring. He had retrieved 270 Mauser cartridges, one empty biscuit tin, one empty coal oil tin, and seven tins of pemmican, as well as his own knapsack. When he got back to camp, however, he found several items missing from his bag, including his compass, a cap, one sack of boot packing, several pairs of socks, a notebook, and a tin of pemmican. Munro must have taken the things on his way back to Rodger’s Harbour, Breddy said. There seemed to be thievery everywhere now.

  ON JUNE 16, Kuraluk took his family and headed for the cliffs. He would only be gone for a day, but he feared that was too long to leave his family alone in camp. Hadley would be joining them there later, which would have left only McKinlay to look after Kuraluk’s wife and children, and the other men never seemed to listen to McKinlay like they did to Hadley. They were a bit afraid of Hadley, but the scientist didn’t scare them.

  So Kuraluk took Auntie, Helen, and Mugpi with him to the cliffs to hunt for eggs and birds. The men in the other tent had guns and used fierce words and made threats. He was not going to leave his family alone in that camp.

  Kuraluk was depressed and he didn’t expect to live. Every day, he asked his younger daughter, “Are we going12 to live?” and “Will we live through this?”

  Each time Mugpi replied, “Yes, we will live.”

  Perhaps he should not have let Mugpi know his fear. He was the father after all, and she was just four years old. But she comforted him. They were so much alike, both comical and funny, more light-hearted than Auntie or Helen. Maybe this is why he reached out to her now when he should have been protecting her. Or maybe it was because he was in a desperate situation—one he had never before experienced or dreamed of experiencing—and because he was afraid.

  “Are you sure13 we will live?” he asked.

  “We are living now, aren’t we?” said Mugpi.

  CLAM FOAMED AT THE MOUTH, blood streaming from between his lips. His eyes rolled about, unable to focus, and he couldn’t breathe. He had been ill for so long, sicker than any of them, and had borne everything so well—not only the amputation, but a terrible bout of the mystery illness. For some reason, he had been hit the hardest, although he never complained or asked for help or cursed his luck.

  They expected him to die at any time. For an entire week, they kept him propped up in a sitting position because when he lay down he would begin to choke again, and his eyes rolled back into his head so that only the whites showed. One night, they almost lost him. McKinlay was called into Williamson’s tent, and somehow they managed to bring Clam back around.

  After that, he began to improve; but the progress was slow and it seemed doubtful he would ever return to his robust, handsome self. Would he follow the fates of Mamen and Malloch?

  Williamson, as Clam’s surgeon, had prescribed dosages of morphine to ease the pain from the amputation of his toe and to help Clam sleep. Hadley was in charge of the stock of medicines and refused to take responsibility for giving Clam another dose until the patient himself requested it. In Clam’s weakened condition he might die from another dosage, especially a substantial one, and Hadley wasn’t about to take that risk. Clam would have to ask for it himself. This was doubtful, since Clam was stubborn about asking for help, but two or three days after his last dose, he broke down and asked Hadley for half a grain. When it had no effect, Hadley made him write a note, which absolved the old man of any responsibility for any bad effects suffered as a result of the drug, and only then did Clam get more morphine. That, Hadle
y said, would be the last of it. He was wary about handing out the stuff, knowing how powerful it could be. He did not want Clam to become addicted to it, and he also had to preserve their supply.

  THE ESKIMOS RETURNED from the cliffs on the evening of June 16, bringing forty-three crowbills. Later that same day, someone from Williamson’s tent stole a bird from Hadley’s stores, which left the old man’s tent one short for two meals. There was no doubt about it now. In addition to cheating and lying, the other tent was stealing from them. And McKinlay and Hadley were sure they would catch the thief in the act if he kept it up.

  They had been lucky in June. Hadley, Kuraluk, and Chafe had managed to kill a few seals and scores of birds—crowbill ducks for the most part, called “atbah” by the Eskimos—which afforded them two good meals a day. It was certainly more fresh meat than they had been used to for some time.

  Kuraluk frequently climbed to the top of a nearby hill to look out over the land and ice, scouting for seals across the horizon. They were not having much luck with seals lately because a good many of them had been frightened away by the shooting around the cliffs. The seals, too, were losing their blubber in this summer season, which meant that they sank in the water immediately after they were killed, making it impossible to retrieve them. They must be shot in the brain, the men discovered, as opposed to the heart. Unless they were shot through the brain, they managed to get away, slipping into their holes and disappearing from sight.

  While this worried them, there was a matter of greater concern. The ammunition would not last forever, and they had used up an alarming amount of it already on the birds. Now Kuraluk set about making a bow and arrows so that he would have another method of shooting crowbills.

  Hadley, McKinlay, and Kuraluk had decided that they would also need to hunt eggs to supplement their diets. The only problem with this was that it was dangerous work. They named the place where they shot the birds Crowbill Point. It was a fantastic series of five separate cliffs that reached into the sea for a hundred yards or so. The birds nested high in these jagged, rocky cliffs, which meant a man would have to be lowered over the top of the peaks and down the face to reach the nests. McKinlay, being the smallest and lightest, was the only choice. They made a bo’sun’s chair to be used in the lowering, and constructed an especially long ladder for climbing the peaks.

  Auntie did her own share of hunting now and then, going out with the bow and arrows, sometimes taking the little girls with her. Helen caught a pirate gull one day by attaching a piece of blubber to a feather quill. She tied a piece of string to the quill; when the gull swallowed the blubber, the quill stuck in his stomach and he was held fast by the string. Even the indolent Breddy made an attempt to hunt, although on his way to the cliffs he lay down on the beach to sleep, and “then came back14 complaining of stomach-ache. We have come to the conclusion,” said McKinlay, “that he is another shirker . . ..”

  Munro and Maurer arrived at Cape Waring at 1:00 A.M. on June 18 to retrieve more ammunition. No one was happy to see them. Everyone looked on them—especially Munro—as deserters, and they were treated to a chilly welcome.

  Munro and Maurer brought with them eight or ten crowbills, which they cooked up immediately and ate in front of everyone, not offering to share. Afterward, Maurer turned into Williamson’s tent to sleep, but Munro refused to sleep beside Kuraluk in the other tent; so he stretched out on the ground nearby.

  McKinlay was still curious about the disposition of the Mauser. When he questioned Munro about it, the chief engineer denied leaving orders that the pistol was only to be used by Williamson’s tent. True, he had loaned it to Chafe with ammunition, but that didn’t mean it was not to be used by the others as well.

  McKinlay also confronted Munro about the missing items from his knapsack. Munro said he had left McKinlay’s bag untouched and knew nothing about the items. Only one other man had been in the camp at Skeleton Island—Breddy—leaving McKinlay to wonder which of them was the thief and the liar.

  The men were beginning to quarrel like selfish children over every scrap of food and ammunition. This was not child’s play, however. It was a life-or-death struggle to survive. When Munro demanded fifty rounds of ammunition from Hadley, the old man gave it to him under protest. This would give Munro, all told, 170 rounds of ammunition for three men, and Hadley and Kuraluk would be left with 146 rounds for ten people. Munro and Maurer slept all day, and when they woke they begged birds from Hadley’s supply.

  Munro couldn’t believe what a mess this camp was. The crewmen had been stealing from the Eskimos, and now the Eskimos were afraid of them and wouldn’t go near them anymore. Williamson and the rest were also, apparently, cheating on birds and lying about how much game they were getting, keeping it all for themselves, no doubt, and then eating it right away. Everyone was ill and swollen and often crawling around on hands and knees when they couldn’t stand erect from the illness. But the crewmen ate like horses in their tent, as many as four birds a day, which, if you asked Munro, was “fairly good for15 people who are dying. God knows how everything is going to end.”

  Munro had seemed in no hurry to check on the sick men in the crew tent until Breddy appeared, demanding in the strongest of language that he call a meeting of the entire party. Grievances needed to be aired and this was the time to do it. Tension had built for too long and it was finally at a head now that Munro was back, and showing little interest in the condition of his charges.

  Everyone—even the invalids—attended the meeting, and the pent-up feelings of the past several months erupted. Williamson, Breddy, and now Chafe didn’t like the Eskimos, despised Hadley, and considered McKinlay only a “bloody scientist.” The Eskimos were afraid of the crewmen, and McKinlay and Hadley knew the other tent was stealing from them. And everyone was furious with Munro and felt they had been abandoned by him.

  Like a rapid-fire gunfight, accusations and recriminations shot back and forth. The language was loud and obscene as Williamson and Breddy demanded that the party stay together for the sake of looking after the sick men and hunting game. Either that or Maurer should stay with them and McKinlay should go back to Rodger’s Harbour with Munro. They would rather have one of their own looking after them.

  Maurer said that he had absolutely no desire to stay with his former party, and then the “orgy of charges16 and countercharges” truly began. When Breddy again demanded that Maurer stay with them and McKinlay go to Rodger’s Harbour, Munro proclaimed that McKinlay had absolutely no wish to be at Rodger’s Harbour. He said that McKinlay wanted to stay at Cape Waring.

  It was an outright lie. “This, Munro well17 knew, was untrue, as I had all along gone out of my way to do all in my power to help him in his plans; & it was his own wish that I should remain to look after the sick,” wrote McKinlay. Munro knew full well that McKinlay had pleaded to let him move to Rodger’s Harbour. More than anything, McKinlay wanted to be away from this place and these people. He was sick of playing nursemaid.

  McKinlay had put up with a good deal for the sake of peace, testing the limits of his physical and mental strength as well as his patience, but now he snapped. He would not stand for lies. He gave Munro a much-deserved piece of his mind.

  To soothe the party as best he could, Munro announced that he and Maurer would return to Rodger’s Harbour for Templeman, and then, as soon as the water cleared off the ice, McKinlay would head there with the dogs and the sled to get them. Thus, the three of them could rejoin the main party at Cape Waring. This seemed to satisfy even the loudest of the men—Breddy and Williamson—who, although still bristling, seemed to think it a fair plan. Munro, Maurer, and Templeman were returning. That was all they had wanted in the first place.

  When the meeting was over, McKinlay turned in, exhausted and irritated, only to be called outside by Munro. The engineer steered him out of earshot of the others and told him to disregard everything he had said about fetching them from Rodger’s Harbour. Do not seriously attempt to reach us, he sa
id. Instead, McKinlay should set out and only go part of the way, then return and report to the others that the trail was impossible. That way, Munro and Maurer could remain as they wanted to at Rodger’s Harbour with Templeman, and no one would be the wiser.

  Any remaining respect McKinlay had for Munro vanished in that moment. McKinlay was not going to lie for Munro, nor would he help him deceive the rest of the men. When the time came, McKinlay said, he would make the journey to Rodger’s Harbour and he would do everything in his power to get there and bring them back. Furthermore, he told Munro that he was “informing Hadley of18 his suggestion, but would not mention it to any of the others, in order to avoid causing what, I was certain, would be unavoidable trouble.”

  Williamson, Breddy, and the rest of the men, he knew, needed no further reason for despising Munro, and if possible, McKinlay wanted to avoid what was likely to be a violent showdown.

  McKinlay reported Munro’s suggestion to Hadley, who shared the scientist’s outrage. “I believe he19 leaves to night for Rogers Harbour again,” said the old man, “so I suppose that we shall not see him again before the ship comes . . . and it Looks to me if They Both wanted to shirk the responsibility of Looking after the sick people.”

  He recorded the incident in his diary, and McKinlay did the same, and true to his word, they never mentioned it to the others. But after that, McKinlay lost all desire to go to Rodger’s Harbour. For the first time, he was glad he had been left behind.

  They were an even sorrier bunch after Munro departed. Between them, Munro and Maurer had consumed enough food to last both Hadley’s tent and Williamson’s tent for a day and a half. Everything had come to a head, all of the tension, anger, and resentment that had been building for months, but the confrontation with Munro had done little to quell this or improve the situation. If anything, it had made things worse, because now feelings were bruised, tempers were raw, and no one was in a civil mood.