The ice split them down the middle, leaving Chafe alone on his side of the open water, with five of the dogs and all of the food. He could barely see Munro and Clam on the other side of the lead. Munro was shouting, but Chafe couldn’t make out the words. The weather was awful—blinding snow and winds—and Chafe’s eyes were bad to begin with. All three of the men were nearly snowblind because their goggles had frosted so badly that they’d had to take them off, and their eyes were so weak that they could only keep them open for ten or fifteen minutes at a time. Their eyes were red and swollen and tears ran down their cheeks. They took turns, fifteen minutes each, cutting the trail and leading the dogs while the other two rested their eyes. When it was his turn, Chafe took hold of the handles on the sled and shut his eyes to ease the pain, letting the dogs lead him.
The trail had been especially difficult and easily lost. They were surrounded by vast fields of open water. It was as if the entire Arctic Ocean had opened beneath their feet.
On the night of April 7, they had decided that they had done their best to reach Shipwreck Camp, but that it was impossible. The way was too rough, too dangerous. Their food was getting low, as was their oil, so it was clearly time to turn back to Wrangel Island.
The next day, they were met by open water. Over one lead in particular, Munro and Chafe got into an argument about which way to go. Since Chafe was breaking the trail at that point, he got his way, and they followed his direction. Chafe went first, testing the ice with his pickaxe, and Munro followed with one sled, with Clam and the other sled bringing up the rear. They were cautious, careful, but suddenly, they heard a shout. Clam had plunged into the water with the sled and dogs on top of him, pushing him under. Down he went into the frigid black depths, again and again. Up for a gasp of air, and then under, the weight of the sled, the supplies, and the dogs pushing him beneath the water’s surface.
Chafe and Munro thought they had lost him. Quickly, they grabbed a bamboo pole from the other sled and held it out to him, but just as he managed to get hold of it, the ice gave way under Chafe and Munro, sending them into the water as well. Struggling against the cold, knowing they would not last long in these temperatures, they somehow pulled themselves up onto the ice and once again held the bamboo pole out to Clam. He grabbed it again and they pulled him to the edge of the ice and heaved him out of the water. They were all soaked through by this time, but at least Clam was safe. Freezing, but safe.
They rescued the dogs and the sled next, brushing the dogs off with dry snow to help warm them and prevent them from freezing. The rifle was gone off the sledge, as well as Chafe’s binoculars and his treasured camera, both of which meant the world to him. The binoculars, especially, had sentimental value, being the first prize Chafe had won shooting at the long ranges when he was sixteen. He had saved them from the Karluk, but still the Arctic Ocean had claimed them.
While Chafe continued to carve the trail, Munro fell to work taking care of the sled and the dogs, whose traces were tangled. Clam stood, dripping wet and miserable, trying desperately to get warm. He had spent about three minutes in the water, long enough to have done some damage, and now he was shivering and shaking, his teeth chattering so badly that he couldn’t speak. Chafe gave Clam his mittens, since Clam’s had been lost in the water, and changed to a woolen pair. They did the best they could with Clam and prayed he could hold up and somehow get warm when they started moving again.
The open water seemed to have doubled since the accident, and now the ice was crushing and drifting swiftly. A hundred yards later, they were faced with another lead, at least four feet wide. Chafe jumped across, bringing Munro’s dog and sled with him. Then he went on ahead while Munro doubled back to help Clam with his sled. By the time he and Clam reached the lead, it was ten feet wide and growing.
“Work round the2 water,” Chafe yelled to them. And then he told them he would meet them on the other side.
“You can’t,” shouted Munro, straining to be heard over the howling Arctic wind. “You’re adrift from the other side as well.”
And he was. He drifted away from them rapidly until they were separated by three hundred yards.
Munro yelled to Chafe to cross the lead where they stood, but the words fell dead against the strong wind. Chafe couldn’t hear a word or see well enough to find a way out. Munro headed across the young, fragile ice to reach him, but Clam urged him not to, shouting to be heard. As Munro turned toward Clam, the engineer broke through the ice and landed in the water. He scrambled out and they assessed the situation.
Clam and Munro were on one side of the steadily growing lead with the sled and six dogs while Chafe was on the other side with the food, the gear, and five dogs. They waited an hour, praying the ice would close again, but Chafe drifted farther and farther away. He could not see or hear them anymore and soon he was alone in the ice, the snow, and the howling wind.
The weather was thick all around him. He was completely isolated except for the dogs, stranded on a floe of ice. He could do nothing but wait. He built an igloo, which looked more like a coffin, between fifteen inches and two feet high, but long enough for him to lie down in. Throwing the sled cover on top for a roof, he crawled into the snow shelter feet first, with his head to the door. With little room to move, he lit the Primus stove and boiled a cup of water. Because Munro and Clam had the tea, he put a bit of pemmican in the water to make a kind of soup. It tasted awful, but it was hot and it helped warm him.
He was utterly frozen, and as he lay there he willed himself to stay awake. His clothes were frozen solid now, and he was terrified of falling asleep for fear he would freeze to death. Instead, he lay there, shivering, teeth chattering, thinking about Munro and Clam. Mostly Clam, who had been in the water so long. Chafe knew Clam would most certainly freeze to death if he stayed out there, and he prayed they would head back to Wrangel Island. Please don’t wait for me, he urged them silently. Please go on.
He fell asleep after an hour or so and was awakened two hours later by the ice rising beneath him. He crawled outside and saw that the wind had changed, bringing the ice together now. The floes were joining with such pressure and force that the floe he was sleeping on had buckled. He gathered his things quickly and broke camp, setting out to look for his comrades.
He searched for their trail, but when he didn’t find it, he looked for the old Shipwreck Camp trail instead. The dogs were weak and useless so he unhitched them from the sled and led them over the pressure ridge, where he fed them. The one named Bronco ran off, and Chafe was unable to catch him. He returned to the sled and camped for the night, exhausted and discouraged.
Should he leave the sled and try to reach Wrangel without it? This was the next decision to be made. If he left the sled behind, he would have an easier time of it over the fifteen miles of rough ice that waited between him and the ridge, and from there he could make the island in two days. But if the ice opened up again and he was left adrift or if he was lost in a blizzard, then he would need the camping gear, which was on the sled. Without shelter or equipment, he would certainly perish.
In the end, he took the sled because it was the safest way to travel and because they would be able to use the provisions on the island, should he make it back. With his ice pick, he set to work cutting the trail, chipping away for every two or three hundred yards, and then going back for the dogs and the sled. He pressed onward, traveling three miles for every one he advanced. It seemed endless.
He worked for eighteen hours the next day, but only made seven miles. His oil was gone, which meant he couldn’t make tea or soup, so he lay in his igloo that night and sucked on ice and snow. One of his feet was disturbingly numb and he knew it was badly frozen. His right hand was also frozen and growing quite sore.
When he awoke the next day, he discovered one of the dogs, Blindie, lying dead in the snow. The dogs had been working constantly for three months now, with only a pound of pemmican per day or every other day. The last several days they had had nothing.
Now with only three dogs left, he unharnessed the rest and tried to move the sled over the ice ridges, through which they had only recently cut a trail on their original journey from Shipwreck Camp. It took him more than an hour to haul the sled over the first grade, which slanted at a sheer and precarious angle, twelve feet skyward. He unloaded the sled, tying a rope to the nose of it and pulling it up from the top of the ridge. But when the sled wouldn’t budge, down Chafe went again, pickaxe in hand, to chip away at the incline. Over and over, he did this, until he finally managed to pull the sled up the face. At each incline, he repeated this process until finally he crossed the ice mountains at 10:00 P.M., just an hour after darkness had fallen.
He opened his eyes the next morning to a savage blizzard, which had blown up from the southwest. With a frozen hand and foot, and dogs that now refused to head into the blinding snow, Chafe decided the only thing he could do was leave the sled and head for Wrangel Island. Carrying his blanket, pickaxe, and snow knife strapped to his back, he chained Hadley’s dog Molly to his wrist and let her lead him. The other two dogs ran ahead, untethered, following the trail.
Chafe was on the verge of collapse, feeling his knees buckling and his strength giving way. He was so weak now that he could barely walk. Molly pulled him along behind her, and he prayed she knew where she was going. The direction seemed all wrong to him, but he could only trust and be led. They traveled all day like this until it grew dark and he could no longer see. Still Molly kept on.
All he wanted to do was lie down. The first cake of ice that was big enough to shelter him from the blizzard would do. His right foot throbbed and he could barely walk on it. He could no longer feel his heel or one of his toes. His pants were ripped at the seam and one of the legs was filled with snow. His right hand was useless. But Molly kept on, tugging him along, refusing to stop. She was the smallest of all the dogs and by far the best trail hunter, as she had proven when she disappeared from the ship in October and found her own way back. She was Hadley’s own pet and had gone along for the ride, just like Hadley, not expecting to be put to work.
And now she worked, pushing on through the bitter cold and the blowing snow toward land. Chafe had no choice but to hold on and follow. To stop for the night in his condition would be fatal. He knew this, and yet he yearned for rest as he bumped along behind Molly, his sore eyes closed against the storm, his blanket clutched against his chest.
THURSDAY NIGHT, APRIL 9, Munro and Clam returned to the island without Chafe. The two of them appeared in the door of Williamson’s house, which was the designated hospital. They were a pitiful sight. The men at Icy Spit quickly set about warming them up, feeding them, and making them tea. They were soaked and frozen and both had swollen hands. Munro’s foot was badly nipped by the cold, and the soles of Clam’s boots were worn bare. His feet were in horrendous condition. They all sat there, drinking tea, and taking turns rubbing his feet and holding them against the warm flesh of their stomachs to restore circulation. While they warmed Clam, he and Munro told the others what had happened.
They could neither see nor hear Chafe after they became separated, and then he just floated off without a sound. Chafe had taken over breaking the trail because Munro’s eyes were so bad from snow blindness. And that was when it had happened. It had seemed useless for Munro and Clam to try to take the sled back through the ridges of ice in their poor condition. Both were soaking wet from falling into the water, and Clam was half frozen. They’d left the sled and marked it with a pole and, letting the dogs loose, they headed to the ridges on foot.
That night, they had walked up and down to try to warm themselves, because Chafe had their Primus stove on his sled. He also had the food, so they ate ice and snow to keep their strength up—such as it was. After that, they’d headed south, searching for the pressure ridges. They thought they were lost when suddenly the weather cleared and they found themselves inside the ice mountains. Driven by the thought of food and shelter and dry clothing, they pushed on toward Wrangel Island.
They were hopeful that Chafe would make it back. At least he had the food, the gear, and dogs; if he could just make it across the treacherous ice, they felt his chances were good.
After a day of rest, Munro set out alone to look for him. McKinlay, still bedridden, was too weak to go with him, and no one else seemed eager to go except Clam, who was too badly frozen to move. Munro asked Kuraluk to make him a sled out of skis, and then set out with five days’ rations. Unable to find the trail, he returned to camp the next day.
At the main camp, McKinlay and the others remained desperately ill. McKinlay, for one, was living on his milk ration, which, thankfully, he had saved. Everyone else had used theirs up on the trail, and now they were suffering for it. The only thing they had to eat now was pemmican, and the thought of it turned McKinlay’s stomach. It was a bitter concoction to face, especially day after day. But then Maurer cooked some bear meat, and for the first time in a long time, they actually enjoyed a meal.
Little by little, McKinlay was able to get up and out of the igloo, trying to help out with the cooking or take a walk. He was not able to go far just yet, but it felt wonderful to be out in the fresh air.
On April 13, a blizzard swept through, blowing the snow into huge drifts. The wind was fierce and chilling, and they all feared for Chafe, lost somewhere on the rough and unpredictable ice pack. Had he followed the same course as Sandy’s party and Dr. Mackay’s?
Later that night, McKinlay moved into the Eskimos’ igloo with Munro and Hadley, and they had just sat down to tea, when they heard a sound at the door. It was Chafe, almost unrecognizable because he was so worn down and battered.
“Is that you3, Charlie?” Munro asked, not believing his eyes. They had begun to lose hope, and they were thrilled at the sight of him. “Come in, come in.” They ushered him into the igloo and began to fuss over him.
Munro lighted a candle and got the Primus stove working. While the water boiled, Munro and McKinlay took off Chafe’s skin boots and socks and trousers. The socks and boots were frozen together in a block of solid ice, and his pants were packed with snow. His hand and foot were covered in blisters, which Munro lanced with a needle and then bandaged. They gave him dry clothes and filled him with hot tea as he told them his story.
It was Hadley’s little dog, Molly, who had saved Chafe’s life. Chafe was convinced he could not have gotten to Wrangel without her, and he said that after she led him thirty miles over the snow and ice and deposited him at Icy Spit, he fell to his knees and hugged her and thanked her for saving him. Then set her free and watched her run ahead, following at his own slow pace. Molly had brought him home.
The blizzard blew all night and the next morning. McKinlay dug his way out through five feet of snow piled over the door. Other than that, no one ventured outside, and the sick men in the hospital igloo were nearly asphyxiated from the lack of fresh air. Chafe lay in his bed, eyes swollen shut from snow blindness. It would be days before he could open them again.
When the weather cleared, they all turned outside and had a good feed of bear meat. McKinlay took short walks up and down the Spit, trying to regain his strength, and played nursemaid to the invalids, even though he himself was still quite weak. Munro, Chafe, and Clam, meanwhile, tried to doctor their frozen limbs. As usual, Hadley and Kuraluk went hunting in the morning, but also as usual, came up empty-handed. They did spy the first birds of the season, two snow buntings. Day after day, it was the same. They went out in search of game, and always came back with nothing. The men did not know how much longer they could stand the all-pemmican diet, but for now, at least, they had no choice.
IT WAS CLAM’S left big toe that was giving him problems. It had gone gangrenous and would have to be amputated. They had no doctor, now that Mackay was gone, and they had no surgical instruments or anesthesia. The only equipment they had was a skinning knife and a pair of tin shears used to make cooking pots out of empty gasoline cans. The only medicine they had was a small supply of morphine, which they would save to treat him after the operation. Williamson volunteered for the role of surgeon.
They held Clam down, a man on either side to grip his arms, and one to hold his head turned away so that he couldn’t watch. The shears were sharp, but not meant for cutting bone, and McKinlay could tell Williamson was struggling with them. He leaned into them more and finally had to kneel against the shears to cut his way through. It was a gruesome sight and McKinlay had to turn away himself to keep from getting sick.
But Clam didn’t flinch. Through it all, his lips remained tightly closed and his eyes open. Except for a slight twitching of his facial muscles, he didn’t move, nor did he speak. McKinlay had never seen anyone live up to a nickname so well. Indeed, it was the greatest act of bravery and strength he had ever witnessed.
After the operation, some gangrenous area still remained, but Williamson thought it best to wait until Clam had a chance to do some healing before he removed it completely. He felt the sailor had endured enough for the time being, even though Clam, obviously in pain, was his usual stoic and pleasant self, quiet and uncomplaining.
THE WEATHER ONCE AGAIN WORSENED, the wind raging more than ever, the snow blowing heavily. The men were forced back inside, with only pemmican and tea for nourishment. Once in a rare while, they cooked some of the bear meat, which gave them great relief from the pemmican, until finally all that remained were the bones and the fat.
Chafe had been unable to eat at all lately and was still suffering the effects of his ordeal. Both he and Munro underwent Williamson’s surgery, Munro having the dead matter cut from his heel, and Chafe having the dead area removed from his toe and heel with a pocket knife. The lingering pain killed Chafe’s appetite and he ate only two pounds of pemmican in ten days. As soon as his foot began to improve, though, his appetite came back and his strength returned, until finally he was able to crawl outside of the igloo and sit by the fire.
Williamson decided Clam was now strong enough to have the rest of his toe removed, and once again, he was an exemplary patient. McKinlay didn’t know how he endured it, although the toe was clearly causing him immense discomfort. Williamson put silver nitrate on it to form a scab and then he prescribed morphine, which Hadley administered, to dull the pain.
They were a party of cripples, Munro observed, and it was true. Those who weren’t frostbitten or maimed were still bedridden and swollen from the mystery illness. McKinlay, recovering from the sickness, was also suffering from frostbite, his nose and hand inflamed and beginning to peel.
McKinlay had become increasingly important to Munro, who relied on his advice. As soon as he was physically able, however, McKinlay planned to join Mamen and the rest of his group at Rodger’s Harbour. He was still too weak to travel, but he longed to be with them. “I wonder when4 I will be able to join my own party,” he wrote wistfully, “I hope it will be soon.”
For now, though, Munro made it clear that he was thankful for McKinlay’s presence. “I don’t know5 how we would get along without him,” wrote the chief engineer. He would do whatever he could to detain McKinlay for as long as possible.
Hunger became a hard fact of daily life. They still had no game, except for a couple of bears shot by Hadley and Kuraluk at the beginning of the month. They counted on their tea supply, relied upon it, because it helped wash down the pemmican, even without sugar or milk. For breakfast, they drank a pot of tea with a bite of pemmican each. “Everyone here swears6 they will do bodily injury to anyone who denies that tea is the finest thing in the world,” said McKinlay. “But as I write, I dream of a breakfast of porridge, ham & eggs, tea with sugar & cream, toast & rolls, butter & marmalade.”
Every day when the weather allowed, they built a log fire out of driftwood and gathered around it, talking almost entirely of food—of the good meals they would eat when they got back to civilization, foods they missed, foods they loved. They created elaborate imaginary multiple-course dinners and sumptuous fictitious feasts. It somehow helped satisfy the cravings they had for something other than pemmican and kept their minds off their growling stomachs.
“Another month gone7 is the general greeting today. Let us hope the weather improves quickly now,” McKinlay wrote on the last day of the month, “& we will be happy, even though hungry.”
ON APRIL 27, Hadley and Kuraluk set out on a hunting trip to the ice ridges, where they hoped to find more game. There was no sign of anything where they were—no seals; no birds, except for the two buntings they had spotted; no fox; and no bears since the first of the month. Their only hope right now was to find another hunting ground. They took three of the dogs with them and struggled across the ice to the range of pressure ridges, wading through snow up to their stomachs.
Once they reached the ridges, they were enshrouded by a thick black fog, “the worst going8 I Ever saw,” said Hadley. Still, they managed to get four seals down by the water. At last. There were bears, too, but the dogs chased them away before the hunters could grab their guns and leave the tent. They followed the great, lumbering beasts for a while, but had to give up because the bears were too far ahead and traveling too fast.
Then both the old man and the Eskimo came down with snow blindness and were forced to lie confined in the tent, helpless to move. Aside from the seals and the escaped bears, there was nothing out there. But if the group were to survive until help arrived—if help arrived—the two knew they would have to cover the area and then cover it again until they found something to eat.
THINGS HAD NOT GONE WELL for Mamen’s party as they headed for Skeleton Island. And now Malloch worried him. He was so careless, as he had always been careless with himself, not using sense or logic. He was sick all the time, just as they all were, but he did nothing to help himself. Instead, Mamen had to do everything, the looking after, the feeding, the cleaning up. When Malloch “made water” on himself one night because he could not get up to go outside, Mamen had to clean him. When he wandered off without socks or boots on the snow and ice, it was Mamen who had to look after his frozen feet.
And now the toe would have to be amputated. It was not a challenge Mamen welcomed, but there was no one else. Templeman was sick as well, and there was only Mamen. They leaned on him and expected him to save them. He was tired of it already. They fought like cats and dogs, Templeman’s sharp and insulting tongue clashing with Malloch’s violent temper. Mamen did not enjoy being in the middle of it. Yet there was no shaking it. Somehow, he alone had been saddled with the responsibility for them. It was not supposed to be this way. “I could swear9 at and curse Captain Bartlett who has foisted [Malloch] and [Templeman] on to me . . . yes I could curse all three of them, for that matter, for they are of no help and of no use, only in the way.”
The trip to Skeleton Island had worn Mamen down. He was too tired, too weak, and he was having trouble with his sled. He had started for Skeleton Island manhauling a Peary sleigh, but it was too heavy and the distance too far for him to pull it. So he improvised, something he did skillfully. He took a pair of skis and rope, and some pieces of wood, and made a small sleigh, just large enough to transport his knapsack and footbag, three skins, one bear ham, and the rest of the provisions he was taking with him.
Skeleton Island was just a few square yards in size, lying a hundred yards or less off the east coast of Wrangel Island, halfway between Icy Spit and Rodger’s Harbour. Eight miles from Skeleton Island, he parked his sled and unloaded his footbag, one skin, a snow shovel, and a rifle and, carrying these, marched toward camp. When he reached Hooper Cairn, he could see two small dots in the distance and a pillar of smoke. He quickened his pace, and when he was near camp, Templeman came to meet him.
They had had a terrible time of it while he was away. Templeman said they had been near death and had not expected to live to see Mamen again. When he reached camp, he could see the damage. Their igloo was in horrible shape, and their provisions and tools were covered in snow. Malloch was still frightfully ill, and now Mamen felt his own eyes swelling shut, a sure sign of snow blindness. He had some eye medicine in his knapsack, and after Templeman brought him a cup of water, Mamen bathed his eyes. As he lay there in darkness, he agonized over “being in poor10 shape myself, too,” and worried about how it would all end. One thing was certain: he had no time to be sick right now, with Templeman and Malloch unable to care for themselves.
Over the next three days, Mamen was confined to bed, unable to open his eyes. Templeman brought him water three times a day for an eye bath, but it didn’t seem to help. In the midst of it all, on April 5, Mamen spent his twenty-third birthday. It was, as he observed, the worst one he ever had.
When his eyes improved, he was able to be of use again. Templeman and Malloch badly needed him, and Mamen hoped he could get them back into shape soon. Templeman’s toes were frozen and Malloch’s knee was giving him trouble. They were weak as newborn puppies, but Mamen was in rotten shape himself. His eyes, although better, still couldn’t stand the light for long, so he was forced to stay inside with the others.
On the tenth, Mamen and Templeman headed the eight miles out of camp to fetch Mamen’s abandoned sled. At Hooper Cairn, Mamen sent the cook back to camp with orders to get all the skins out and start on a new igloo. It was the least Templeman and Malloch could do, he thought, while he was manhauling the sled all by himself.
He used snow goggles, but his eyes were in misery. He had to stop and polish the glasses every other minute, or dry them off, and it slowed his progress considerably. Finally, he retrieved the sled, and when he at last made it back to Skeleton Island, he found Templeman and Malloch deep asleep in the old igloo. The skins were nowhere to be seen and there was no sign of a new snow house. He woke them up and gave them both hell. The weather was too cold, they said, and they just couldn’t bring themselves to go out in it.
Mamen remained spitting mad. “Yes, I see11 now what I will have to put up with,” he wrote vehemently. “Yes they are both some fine specimens.” Mamen made a cup of tea and then started on the igloo himself, building it without any help from Templeman or Malloch, who simply lay watching him. He finished all four walls before turning in for the night, and the next day he built the roof. Then he beat and brushed the skins and transferred everything to the new igloo. He lit the Primus stove and then they settled down to some tea and biscuit and pemmican, not enough food, by any means, but enough to quiet their hunger. Mamen was cook now, just as he was everything else, and for a treat he served up some bear steak from the meat he’d brought with him.
His knee had popped out of the joint again, a worrisome thing, but something he was getting used to by now. He worked at it for half an hour and finally got it back in place.
That was the day Malloch had urinated in his pants because his hands were so frozen that he couldn’t use them and the pull string on his trousers was twisted into a knot. Too proud to call for help from the others, he simply lay there and the accident happened. He was barely recognizable now, and as exasperated as Mamen had been with him lately, he pitied the poor fellow.
ON APRIL 13, Mamen heard a sound outside the igloo and clambered out in his stocking feet to find himself face to face with a small arctic fox. Grabbing Malloch’s rifle, he shot the fox before it could get away and nabbed their first catch on Skeleton Island.
The wind was blowing stronger now and they found themselves in a full-force blizzard. They stayed in the snow house, bringing a load of ice inside to give them several days’ supply of water for tea and soup. But the snow and wind also found their way inside the shelter, until soon the snow was piling up around their beds. “Happily it wasn’t12 so very much,” said Mamen, “and it confined itself nicely to my corner of the igloo.” He rose from his snow-covered bed and filled up the cracks in the walls and ceiling of the igloo and then brushed off all of the skins and coverings.
The health of Malloch and Templeman wavered all the time, but they were at least beginning to get the color back in their cheeks. Malloch, in a moment of lucidity, was suddenly overcome with gratitude toward Mamen. He had been such a burden, he realized now, and he didn’t know how to thank his friend. He could only say simply, “I have you13 to thank for my life.”
Mamen alternated between pity, sympathy, and disgust at Malloch’s situation and behavior. Even with moments of improvement, Malloch seemed to be getting worse every day. He was too weak to move, or else he just didn’t want to move, and he slept day and night. Mamen suspected him of laziness, and as he repaired Malloch’s skin anorak, which was in wretched shape, he found himself lost in thought over it all. “Malloch is certainly14 a peculiar fellow; I begin to get sick and tired of him; he needs a nurse-maid wherever he goes . . . he certainly is the most careless fellow I have seen, both with himself and his clothes.. . .”
To make it worse, Malloch was eating more than his share of the pemmican. He also ate as much as he could of the fox meat while downing soup and biscuits and tea. Neither Malloch nor Templeman made any noise about trying to supplement their precious food supply, and indeed Malloch in particular seemed to believe that as long as they had something to eat, there was no reason to go in search of other food. “We will soon15 be ruined the way he carries on,” Mamen complained. “He must reef his sails if he wants to be with us.”
It was a month now since Bartlett and Kataktovik had left for Siberia. This weighed heavily on Mamen’s mind. Bartlett’s decision not to take him along still stung and the burden of his two companions weighed him down until he feared for his own health and well-being. He prayed Bartlett would win through “so that we16 can get out of this situation as quickly as possible, for if I have to stay here longer than to the fall, I am sure I will go to pieces, for Malloch and [Templeman] are of little help.”
Their oil was gone and now, Mamen felt, it was time to move down the coast to Rodger’s Harbour where he hoped to find more game. His leg had given out yet again, but he felt determined to make the trip. Bartlett’s instructions to them, after all, had been to move about the island in different camps. They would have better chance for game that way, and besides, someone from the company needed to be at Rodger’s Harbour when help arrived. Even though they didn’t expect the rescue ship before July, Mamen wanted to be there waiting for it. There was no use staying where they were, and Skeleton Island seemed to fit its name all too well. There was no sign of life or of game for miles.
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 affected 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.
They stayed one night with a man who had seven good dogs, and the man said he would let Bartlett borrow one of them, as long as the captain promised to send it back to him when he reached East Cape. At the next aranga, Bartlett traded his forty-five-caliber Colt revolver for a small but strong dog, which he named Colt.
That night on the trail, he decided not to take any chances and brought both of the new dogs into the igloo. He left their harnesses on and then tied their traces together, Bartlett and Kataktovik both lying on top of the traces to keep the dogs from running off.
The temperature outside was at least fifty below, and sometime in the night, Bartlett woke from a sound sleep, shivering with cold. Opening his eyes, he saw the hole in the side of the igloo where the dogs had broken through. They were both long gone. At daylight, Bartlett sent Kataktovik back to the last aranga where they had gotten Colt to see if he had fled home. Hours later, the Eskimo returned with the dog, but there was no sign of the other one.
That night, Bartlett tied Colt’s mouth to keep him from chewing his harness and again brought him into the igloo. Once again, Bartlett and Kataktovik fell into a deep sleep, and once again, the skipper awoke in the middle of the night to a blast of cold. Colt had chewed himself free once more and escaped. This time, Bartlett gave up. The dog was too far away by now, and it was better just to go on their way and not waste any more time on the matter.
Down to four dogs again, they made slow and halting progress. Whitey was recovered enough to limp behind the sled, but he could do little more than that, and the others were broken. That night, after Bartlett and Kataktovik had made their camp, some men arrived with Colt. His owner had sent him back with them to give to Bartlett. The captain was astounded by the integrity of this man. It was, as he said, “one of the36 many instances of fine humanity which I met with among these Chukches. All honor and gratitude to them!”
THEY REACHED CAPE WANKAREM on April 15. The land was low and rough, and Bartlett and Kataktovik stopped the night at the nicest aranga they had seen so far. It was clean and comfortable, and the people were wonderful. They had heard of these strangers who were journeying along the coast. Men had brought word of them the day before. They seemed honored to have them as guests in their house, and the man proudly brought out copies of old magazines—National Geographic, Literary Digest, The Illustrated London News—which he handed to Bartlett.
The captain politely declined, because his eyes were feeling the strain of the hours on the ice and snow, the glare of the sun against all that white, and the stinging snowdrift, which always seemed to follow them. His eyes needed a rest, and he could hardly make out objects or images right now.
THEY PASSED CAPE ONMAN in a blinding snowstorm that made it hard to find their way. Even so, they could see that the place was a ghost town. Empty arangas were the only sign of life left, and they found out later that everyone had moved to Koliuchin Island. They followed the trail, which took them away from land and out onto the ice, until they came to Koliuchin Island.
There was a vast difference in this landscape and Cape Onman. Here, there were signs of prosperity, and a dozen or so arangas littered the area. A young man approached them from one of these, saying, “Me speak37 ’em plenty English. Me know Nome. Me know trader well. Me spend long time East Cape. You come in aranga. Me speak ’em plenty. You get plenty eat here.”
The people of Koliuchin had also already heard about Bartlett and Kataktovik and knew they were trying to reach East Cape. After a dinner of frozen deer meat, cooked seal meat, flapjacks, and tea, the young man who had greeted them said, “I bring you38 East Cape; how much?” He said he had a good sled and plenty of dogs and could get them there in five days.
Bartlett had forty-five dollars loaned to him by Hadley before he left Wrangel Island.
“How much you39 pay me?” the man repeated.
“Forty dollars,”40 said Bartlett. He didn’t want to part with the money, but it would be worth it to get to East Cape so quickly.
“All right,” the boy said. “You show me money.”
“No.”
“Maybe you have no money.”
“I have the money.”
This seemed to take care of things for now. Kataktovik was suffering from severe pains in his legs, so they delayed the trip a day so that he could rest. They would leave their sled and possessions at Koliuchin Island, and travel on the young man’s sled. When they reached Koliuchin Bay, they were told they would find an American trader named Olsen, about whom Bartlett had heard many tales along the coast.
They left on April 19. Bartlett harnessed their four dogs to the young man’s sled. He wanted to take their own sled as well, but the Chukches would get more use out of it, and it would only slow them down now.
Now Bartlett, Kataktovik, and their driver headed back the way they had come, past Cape Onman, and from there followed the shore toward Mr. Olsen’s house. Two hours before reaching him, their guide halted the sled and announced that he was not going to East Cape after all.
Bartlett gave the boy five dollars for taking them to Koliuchin Bay, and then their guide turned his sled back toward home and was gone. The captain and Kataktovik were left without a sled and no way of reaching. Olsen, who lived several miles away. That night, however, Bartlett managed to barter with another Chukche who promised to take them to Olsen’s place in exchange for a snow knife, two steel drills, and a pickaxe.
In the morning, they harnessed their dogs to his sled, and by noon they reached Olsen, a thirty-eight-year-old trader who knew about the Karluk’s expedition, and who offered to hire them a guide. From Olsen’s, they headed for Cape Serdze, traveling through Pitlekaj. After Pitlekaj, they arrived at an aranga near Idlidlija Island, where Olsen’s guide turned back. They paid him off first with a spade and tobacco, and Bartlett realized he had now given away almost all of his tradable items.
They reached Cape Serdze the following afternoon, with the help of two Chukches and their sleds. It was, at last, beautiful weather. The temperature, while still well below freezing, felt more bearable, and the sun’s rays warmed them as they traveled. Once again, Bartlett’s eyes suffered from the glare of the sunlight upon the snow. It was bright as a mirror, and he was forced to pull a cap over his forehead, and a hood over this to shield his eyes from the light.
At Cape Serdze, they met Siberia’s most famous hunter, a man called Corrigan. He was the most prosperous Eskimo Bartlett had met, and with the assistance of a Norwegian neighbor of Corrigan’s, the captain was able to convince Corrigan to take them to East Cape. It was ninety miles distance, but they covered it swiftly. They headed out over the sea ice just off the shore and traversed numerous steep inclines, sliding along at rapid speeds. It was a hair-raising and thrilling experience to travel with Corrigan. He maneuvered the sled as deftly as Bartlett steered a ship. His sixteen dogs were first-rate and one of Corrigan’s buddies came along for the ride, bringing his own sled, upon which Kataktovik rode.
They passed great jutting cliffs that stood over a hundred feet high. They made fifty miles the first day, the traveling made easier by the nearly twenty-four hours of sunlight and the improving weather. When the temperature rose the next day to freezing point, it felt almost balmy. Traveling was rougher the second day, however, and they were forced to stay close to the cliffs. This wasn’t the safest path; the warming sun was melting the ice and now and then boulders would come crashing down from above them, thundering across their paths.
Corrigan knew very little English, which frustrated him immensely because he wanted to tell Bartlett stories of his exploits. He was a hero, the “daredevil of northern41 Siberia,” and he was proud of his conquests.
He had heard all about Bartlett’s adventures from the Norwegian, and he grew more and more animated as he related stories about his own narrow escapes and great hunts. Bartlett could pick up a word here and there, but the more excited Corrigan grew, the less the captain could understand him. Soon he was just nodding at everything the hunter said until Corrigan realized Bartlett had no idea what he was saying. Grabbing his head in despair, the great hunter moved onward in frustration, driving the sled fast and hard over the ice.
On April 24 at 6:00 P.M., Bartlett, Kataktovik, Corrigan, and his friend reached Emma Town, a few miles southwest of East Cape. “The second stage42 of our journey from Wrangel Island was over,” wrote Bartlett. “We had been thirty-seven days on the march and . . . had actually travelled about seven hundred miles, all but the last part of the way on foot. There now remained the question of transportation to Alaska, and the sooner I was able to arrange for that the better.”
AT EMMA TOWN, Bartlett gave his letter of introduction to Mr. Caraieff, the brother of a man he had met at Cape North. Then Caraieff and Bartlett discussed ways to get to Alaska. Because of the season, it was too late to travel by sled and too early to travel by boat. It would be at least June before any ships could reach East Cape. Bartlett could get an Eskimo to take him in a whaleboat to the Diomede Islands, Caraieff said. From there he could take another whaleboat to Cape Prince of Wales. He would have to wait until May to do this, though, and even then the ice conditions would be unpredictable.
Bartlett was most concerned about sending a wire to the government in Ottawa to alert them of the Karluk tragedy and of the castaways on Wrangel Island. He knew time was critical, and that every day that passed would be harder on the men he’d left behind. The closest place with a wireless station was Anadyr, at the tip of the northeastern Siberian coast, just off the Bering Sea. This, he knew, was where he would go.
Caraieff helped him make the arrangements. Some local Eskimos would take Bartlett to Indian Point, and from there he would find other Eskimos to take him to Anadyr. Kataktovik would remain at East Cape. He wanted to go to Point Hope, Alaska, he said, even though he had joined the expedition at Point Barrow. Bartlett planned to give him provisions enough to last him until he could get a ship across to Alaska.
And so the plans were set into motion. They would start in the next few days.
Bartlett went to bed feeling satisfied at last. He was on his way for help. He would be there soon and the wireless message would be sent to the authorities; then they would do everything possible to rescue his men as soon as they could. It had been a long, difficult journey, but soon help would be on the way.
The next morning, Bartlett awoke to find his legs and feet rapidly swelling. He was in tremendous pain and could barely move, and he couldn’t imagine why. The only thing he could attribute it to was the harsh pounding his legs and feet had received, day in and day out, from the long and tiresome trek across ice and water and cliffs and snow. Whatever it was, though, he had become an invalid overnight.
Three days after Bartlett had arrived at Caraieff’s, a distinguished Russian dignitary from Emma Harbor came to visit. His name was Baron Kleist, and he was the supervisor of Northeastern Siberia. The captain was thankful to run into Kleist. He had been hoping to track him down while he was there. Kleist was leaving May 10 for Emma Harbor and asked Bartlett to go with him. This might be faster, they decided, than traveling to the wireless station at Anadyr.
But for now, all trips, and the telegram to Ottawa, would have to wait. Bartlett was utterly helpless. He was no longer in pain, but the swelling in his limbs was so severe that it drained him of every drop of energy. He had lost forty pounds and, aside from the swelling, was dangerously thin. Kataktovik was pale and gaunt as well, and suffering from sharp pains in his legs.
They had won through. They had traveled over seven hundred miles of perilous ice and savage Arctic wilderness. But the journey had beaten them, and now they were too weak to move, too ill to continue. They were completely unable to take those final steps to bring help to the castaways back on Wrangel Island.