June 1914

A letter from¹ Mrs. Murray arrived yesterday with a clipping from a Liverpool paper—a copy of a letter from Mr. Stefansson.. . . He says again that the men are in no danger he thinks.. . . I think about them a great deal—all the things they said to me, and I wonder, wonder what has become of them.

—MRS. RUDOLPH MARTIN ANDERSON

In the aftermath of the assassination of King George I of Greece in 1913, violence had spread throughout Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Albania until, on June 30, 1913, the Second Balkan War had broken out. In the United States, Woodrow Wilson would enter the second year of his presidency in 1914 as conflict in Europe escalated ominously, and there were rumors of impending world war.

In the midst of it all, international press attention was riveted on the fate of the twenty-five missing people who had sailed from Victoria, British Columbia, on June 17, 1913, and vanished into the Arctic. They had been given up for dead by their former leader, by the Canadian government, and by everyone else. But now the world was transfixed by the story of the Karluk disaster and the surviving castaways on Wrangel Island.

The boys at the wireless station in Saint Michael, Alaska, gave Bartlett their back files to read so that he could catch up on current events. He had been away from the world for nearly a year and, as he always did when away for a long period of time, he found much had changed and progressed. It was good to get back to civilization, to become once more a citizen of this familiar world. It was an adjustment, but one he was used to making.

Under the care of Dr. Fernbaugh, the government surgeon, he was recovering nicely from the mysterious swelling in his legs and feet, as well as from his tonsillitis. Soon he would be completely revived and then he would be able to do the work before him. He was anxious to get on his way to Wrangel Island, even though it was still too early in the season for traveling. July would be the best month to make a trip to Wrangel, since the ice should be at its weakest by then, but Bartlett was spending all his time now trying to find a ship to take him north.

He had suggested three possible rescue ships to the Canadian government—the Russian ships Taimyr and Vaigatch, and the United States revenue cutter Bear. The Russian ships were noted icebreakers with good records of service. The Taimyr had forged through the icy Arctic waters in 1913, and its master, Captain Vilkitski, discovered Nicholas II Land, now known as Severnaya Zemlya, an archipelago located between the Laptev and Kara Seas. Both ships were similar to the steel vessels Bartlett had used in the Newfoundland seal-fisheries, and both were fitted with powerful engines.

The Bear had actually been built in the 1870s for those same Newfoundland seal fisheries. She was three-masted, her keel molded in greenheart, reputedly the world’s hardest wood, from the West Indies. When Adolphus Greely and his men became lost in the Arctic, the United States government sent the Bear to rescue them in 1883.

Bartlett felt that if any ship could maneuver its way through the impenetrable ice surrounding Wrangel Island, it was the Bear. Bartlett had never met the Bear’s current master, Captain Cochran, but from what he knew of his reputation, Cochran wasn’t afraid to put his ship into the ice.

Bartlett knew the Bear was presently headed to Nome from San Francisco. She would be the first ship from the “outside,” as they called it, to come to Nome that year. But the ice in Nome’s harbor, as Bartlett and Captain Pedersen had discovered upon trying to land there in the Herman, was especially thick and forbidding, so the Bear was forced to land at Saint Michael instead.

Bartlett went aboard and met with Captain Cochran. Together with the Bear’s officers, they discussed the castaways on Wrangel Island and what was to be done. Cochran and his men were eager to make the trip, but now they had to await the official government go-ahead from Washington, D.C.

Bartlett was hearing disturbing rumors about the thick, inaccessible ice that surrounded the coast. People were saying ice conditions were the worst in history. The news was deeply troubling and the waiting excruciating. He sent out word to captains of any ships leaving for northern waters, asking them to try for Wrangel Island if they were in the area. If he was not able to reach his men yet, perhaps someone else could. It didn’t matter who brought them home, just as long as McKinlay and Mamen and Hadley and the Eskimos and all of the others were found.

While Bartlett and Cochran awaited word, they sailed on the Bear for the Siberian coast. As she was on her way across, Cochran received the official orders over the wireless. He was to leave for Wrangel Island, as soon as conditions permitted, and rescue the lost men of the Karluk expedition. Captain Bartlett was to go with him. They still had to wait for the season to open and, most likely, would not be able to leave until July. But Bartlett believed he had found his rescue ship and that it was just a matter of time before he was on his way to free his men.

MCKINLAY WAS FEELING stronger every day. His feet were still sore from the rough journey, but as long as he moved around he felt better. He thought that exercise had much to do with his relative good health. The crewmen were ill, but they didn’t get up at all; they just lay there in their beds and refused to move about.

He was still living in the big igloo with the crewmen Williamson, Breddy, Chafe, and Clam, and playing nurse. Clam was the latest victim, his legs badly swollen. It was a miserable job tending to the invalids, especially with a demanding patient like Williamson, who always needed something and always complained, testing McKinlay’s great reserves of patience.

The weather was growing warmer now, which meant the igloos began to melt, becoming so wet and unlivable that the men finally swept the snow from the nearby spit and pitched tents there. They spread dry sticks on the ground to lie on, and it was a big improvement over the damp and cold of the snow houses.

They were down to their final case of pemmican, which would last about twelve more days. After that, as Hadley said, they would be “up against it² & have to Depend on our own Efforts as Hunters to live.. . .” Unfortunately, Hadley and Kuraluk were having no luck on their daily hunts, and the men were subsisting on the nauseating pemmican, which, by now, they could barely swallow. Their precious tea, too, had become repulsive, boiling black from the worn tins it was cooked in.

Kuraluk suggested that they move to Skeleton Island, where they would have better prospects—more wood and more game. He and his family, along with Hadley and McKinlay, left on June 4 on a scouting trip. They traveled between the sandspit and the island, Kuraluk breaking the trail. Hadley drove the sled while Auntie and her little girls walked along the spit. McKinlay tagged behind, unable to keep up even with Mugpi. He was still weak and walking was still difficult for him, but he was determined to keep on.

After traveling ten or eleven miles, they stopped for the night at Bruch Spit. They pitched a tent and ate a meal of blubber soup and pemmican, then fed the dogs with deer hair soaked in blubber soup.

McKinlay and the others were worried about Munro and Maurer, who should have returned by now with Mamen and Templeman. McKinlay wondered what could be keeping them. He had not been asleep long when Munro and Maurer awakened him. They were alone. No Mamen, no Templeman.

They brought the worst possible news. Mamen was dead and Templeman was out of his mind. They had left the cook there because he wasn’t strong enough to make the trip to Icy Spit.

The news was unfathomable. Mamen had died waiting for McKinlay to return with the pemmican, not knowing where McKinlay was or why he did not come back as promised. The men took the news of Mamen’s death hard. Their spirits, already low, dropped drastically, and they felt more hopeless than ever.

The way he had died was deeply disturbing. This wretched mystery illness was plaguing all of them, leaving them so weak and crippled at times that they could not even stand erect, but had to crawl about on their hands and knees. McKinlay had long suspected the pemmican. Hadley was beginning to suspect it as well. “Underwood Pemmican again,”³ he said. “That makes 2 in that party . . . the cook is the only one that’s Left There & he is nearly crazy.”

Tragedy aside, however, Rodger’s Harbour was, Munro and Maurer said, an oasis. The beach abounded with driftwood; the cliffs teemed with birds. Munro had confiscated Malloch’s Mauser pistol and he and Maurer had apparently had a feast of ducks along the way back to camp. There were seals as well. They had only come back to fetch whatever supplies they needed for the new camp, and to let the others know that Munro was going back to Rodger’s Harbour to live.

If there had only existed some sense—even a hint—of camaraderie, their ordeal would seem more tolerable. But they had been strangers when the expedition began, and they were still strangers. There was no common bond. Nothing—not even the tragic predicament in which they found themselves—could bring the men together. With Bartlett as leader, they had gotten along better. Munro was in charge, but he wasn’t well liked among the group; and he wasn’t the leader the captain was.

In Bartlett’s absence, the worst in each man had begun to surface. Character traits that had before seemed more like quirks and minor flaws were amplified in the Arctic wasteland. Admiral Peary had once observed, “A season in⁴ the Arctic is a great test of character. One may know a man better after six months with him beyond the Arctic circle than after a lifetime of acquaintance in cities. There is a something—I know not what to call it—in those frozen spaces, that brings a man face to face with himself and with his companions; if he is a man, the man comes out; and, if he is a cur, the cur shows as quickly.”

Templeman, in addition to being a drug addict, was a pathological liar. Breddy made a lot of noise about everything and couldn’t be counted on. Williamson was a troublemaker and untrustworthy. Chafe was impressionable. McKinlay had previously thought him to be a decent young man, but now that he was living with Williamson and Breddy, Chafe showed all the signs of having fallen in with the wrong crowd. He picked up their foul language and let them influence him. Of the crew, only Clam was dependably diligent and thoughtful.

Hadley was harder to figure out. He made no bones about his disgust for the “dirty Indians,” as he insultingly called Kuraluk and his family. Yet McKinlay knew he’d had an Eskimo wife, that he’d loved her, and that he had come to the Arctic to escape her memory.

McKinlay did not want to stay any longer at their present camp. He did not want to see how those traits would continue to manifest themselves in these men he cared nothing about, and who, he knew, cared nothing about him. It had been different when Mamen and Malloch were alive. Their scientific interests gave them something to talk about, a common ground. He and Mamen had been especially good friends, but now he found himself completely alone. Munro was the closest thing he had to an ally.

McKinlay couldn’t stand it anymore, and if they accused him of abandoning ship, then so be it. Mamen had left weeks ago because he didn’t want to be around the rest of them, and McKinlay intended to do the same. So he asked the engineer if he could go with them to Rodger’s Harbour. It was his due, after all. McKinlay was supposed to have moved there in the first place with Mamen, Malloch, and Templeman.

Munro told McKinlay that he wanted him to stay with the main party. The chief engineer was firm. He wanted everyone to move from Icy Spit to Cape Waring. There was a bay there with driftwood on the beach and thousands of crowbills nesting on the cliffs. They would be fine until the ship came. Munro, meanwhile, would return to Rodger’s Harbour. Someone needed to be there to await the rescue ship, as per Captain Bartlett’s orders. But he needed McKinlay to stay with the main party and tend to the sick men while Hadley and Kuraluk hunted. What’s more, he wanted McKinlay to take the sled back to Icy Spit and transfer the sick to Cape Waring. Afterward, once all the men were safely deposited in the new camp, Munro told McKinlay to return to Skeleton Island and bring back any useful gear he could carry.

It was only the beginning of June, which meant they could not expect a ship before July. While McKinlay would not accuse Munro of only looking out for himself and abandoning the rest of his men, he suspected it, and so did Hadley. Munro had not wanted the responsibility of these men in the first place. He was anxious about their poor health, but he was also anxious to be free of them. “I think,” Hadley observed,⁵ “that its because of his belly that he is going he will have a rifle and only himself and cook to keep.”

AS MUNRO HAD INSTRUCTED, McKinlay, Hadley, and the Eskimos reached Cape Waring early on the evening of June 5 to set up camp. By now all of the Eskimos, especially Kuraluk and Mugpi, were suffering from snow blindness.

In spite of his weakened eyes, Kuraluk went off to hunt seals and crowbills with Hadley. They returned hours later with a small seal, sixteen gulls, and a goose Kuraluk had shot from a flock flying overhead. It was a lifesaving abundance of food. Auntie cooked part of the seal for supper, and they gave thanks, silently, each in his own private way. “Behold, there is⁶ corn in Egypt,” mused McKinlay; “get you down thither, and buy for us from thence; that we may live, and not die.”

After dinner, Hadley called McKinlay aside. He was pointing to a strange form of ground plant, which seemed to cover the area. McKinlay bent down to give it a look. He had never seen anything like it before. Hadley peeled off a bit of bark. The best he could figure it was some kind of stunted form of Arctic willow. Hadley sniffed the bark, then tasted it with the very tip of his tongue. After a moment, he smiled.

Hadley had a stack of books, which he had somehow managed to save from the Karluk before she slipped beneath the water. Now he and McKinlay ripped a few pages out of one of these and rolled cigarettes, using the bark and leaves from the mysterious plant as tobacco. Then they enjoyed the first smoke they’d had in months. They sat there, on the ground outside the tent, not talking, just smoking. For the first time, McKinlay felt a strange kinship to this irascible old man. They had nothing in common, outside of their situation. They had little to say to one another. But at that moment, it didn’t matter.

Afterward, as McKinlay got ready to make his first trek back to Icy Spit to fetch the others and the rest of their supplies, Hadley and Kuraluk approached him and extended an unexpected invitation. Would McKinlay move into their tent when he returned? McKinlay was taken aback by their kindness, but immensely grateful. “I take it⁷ they see how difficult it is for me, living with some of the others,” he said, “Hadley gave a hint to that effect.”

The invitation meant a great deal to McKinlay. With Munro and Maurer gone to Rodger’s Harbour, Hadley knew McKinlay was alone, and that the “bloody scientist” would never be welcome in the other tent, filled with crewmen, even though he played nursemaid to them and had been taking care of them for weeks.

McKinlay thanked Hadley and Kuraluk and told them he must first consult Munro before accepting their offer. The engineer, after all, was still in charge, and McKinlay felt it was a matter of necessary courtesy to ask Munro’s permission. But he hoped to God he would say yes.

MCKINLAY ARRIVED AT ICY SPIT at one o’clock in the morning. There was still endless daylight, so they could travel—and often did—at any time of the day or night. When he reached camp, the men rushed to greet him, not because they were glad to see him, but because they were anxious for any meat he might have brought them. Auntie had given him six gulls—one for each of them—and these he handed over now.

Munro and Maurer were still there, with all of their gear and supplies sorted. Munro was restless and anxious to be off, and Maurer, it now seemed, was going with him. Somehow he had convinced Munro to let him join the party at Rodger’s Harbour. McKinlay was incensed but said nothing.

He was irritable and weary from his journey and asked to take a rest, but Munro wanted to leave immediately. Before he could get too distracted with preparations and orders, McKinlay asked him for permission to move in with Hadley and the Eskimos. To his great relief, Munro said yes.

They set out after a breakfast of gulls. McKinlay’s plan was that he would drive the sled with the gear halfway to Cape Waring and then come back for Clam and Williamson, who were too swollen to walk. Breddy and Chafe, although still weak, would walk it at their own pace and stop when they got to the gear and have everything ready when McKinlay arrived with the invalids. They would put up the tent and have a meal waiting for McKinlay and the others and then help the scientist unload.

Munro seemed to approve of the plan wholeheartedly, and he and Maurer set out on their own toward Cape Waring. McKinlay had not slept since he had reached Icy Spit, but soon he was on his way with the gear, guiding, and often helping, the three dogs pull the sled. Eight miles later, he unloaded the supplies and turned around. By mid-afternoon, he was back at Icy Spit, and after a cup of black tea, he loaded Clam and Williamson onto the sled. Half an hour later, he was off.

The journey was arduous, and it seemed longer than eight miles. It was a heavy load for the dogs and also for McKinlay, who again had to help the dogs pull. Williamson complained the entire way.

When at last they reached the halfway mark, there was no sign of a tent or a fire, no smells of food. For a moment, McKinlay was alarmed, fearing that Breddy and Chafe had somehow wandered off-course and were lying injured somewhere off the path. But a closer look revealed that the two crewmen lay in the middle of the ground, sound asleep.

Now McKinlay was furious as well as exhausted. He unhitched the dogs and fed them, then made himself a cup of tea. At midnight, he at last lay down to sleep, “in no very⁸ amiable frame of mind. But ‘Least said—’ will be the soundest policy, it seems to me.”

MUNRO WOKE MCKINLAY at 8:00 the next morning, having finished breaking down the old camp. After breakfast, they headed to the new camp at Cape Waring. Maurer, Chafe, and Breddy were going to walk it, and Munro and McKinlay were going to load the sled with the tent, some of the more necessary gear, and Clam. McKinlay would return later for Williamson and the rest of the gear.

They hadn’t gone a mile before Munro and McKinlay broke into an argument. McKinlay’s anger at and resentment of Munro had been building for some time. Now they argued over which route to take to Cape Waring. Munro wanted to travel over the land, McKinlay over the ice. Munro insisted on going his way, and McKinlay gave in, allowing for the fact that Munro had made the trip three times to his one. Hours later, they were lost in the fog, and McKinlay had to figure out the right direction and lead them—over the ice—to Cape Waring.

It was the last straw. McKinlay felt Munro was pushing him away, that he was alienating McKinlay in his selfish decision to go to Rodger’s Harbour. He felt Munro was neglecting his responsibilities as leader by abandoning the men. It was too reminiscent of Stefansson. True, the chief “seems to be⁹ in trouble all around,” McKinlay observed, “which may account for his desire to be at Rodger’s Harbour; I certainly cannot blame him as some do not seem to be happy unless they have a grumble.” Munro was on the outs with Kuraluk, Hadley, Williamson, and Breddy, but Captain Bartlett had left him in charge of them.

Suddenly McKinlay spied a small streak of color under the ice and snow. Munro was still talking as McKinlay knelt down. The earth bled through the ice in spots, and in these spots were patches of the prettiest, hardiest little wildflower he had ever seen. He couldn’t begin to identify it, but it was beautiful—deep, pungent purple, brilliant in its contrast to the white landscape. For so long, everywhere and everything had been white, as far as the eye could see. He could barely remember the world before the ice. But now, suddenly, there was color—rich, vibrant color. McKinlay knelt on the hard, cold ground brushing the snow away from a cluster of flowers. Even under the snow, the blooms were alive and growing.

Suddenly, his anger was forgotten. And he felt full of hope. This delicate little flower had survived—was continuing to survive—in this vast wasteland, here in this remote, unfriendly strip of earth at the very top of the world. Perhaps he himself would survive after all.

THEY REACHED CAPE WARING to find that Kuraluk and Hadley had shot a seal and several crowbills. They celebrated with a dinner of underdone seal meat—the way Eskimos preferred to eat it—and then McKinlay rested for half an hour. Breddy, Chafe, and Maurer appeared an hour later, tired from their walk, and happy to have reached camp. As they turned in for the night, McKinlay set off to retrieve Williamson.

It was 9:30 P.M. He was exhausted and so were the dogs, and they made slow progress. Even though the sled was empty and lighter than the loads the dogs were used to, they were too tired to pull McKinlay, so he walked; he didn’t reach Williamson until two o’clock in the morning.

They were on their way by 4:00 A.M., Williamson riding on the sled. McKinlay felt somewhat invigorated after his brief rest, and they moved along at a decent pace, even though he had to do a bit of maneuvering over the pools of water that were forming on top of the ice. Newer ice melted on top of the old ice, and sometimes—as they quickly found out—the old ice was very thin beneath the water. One or two times, as they rushed across these pools, the sled broke through and was saved from sinking only by their speed. It was harrowing, and McKinlay was suddenly wide awake. Williamson, he could tell, was frightened, and so were the dogs.

There was no stopping, even though McKinlay longed to turn back. They were skimming along with fair success when the unthinkable happened: as they were crossing a particularly precarious pool of water, the dogs suddenly drew up short in the middle of it, stopping right then and there, and their entire outfit broke through the ice. As McKinlay and the dogs scrambled to safety, soaked and shaken but unharmed, the sled and Williamson slid further into the water at a frightening angle. Williamson let out a yell and McKinlay leaped to his feet and pulled the sled back onto the ice. It took all his strength, and as he was balancing the load on more solid ice, the dogs broke their traces and bolted for camp. He tried to catch them, but they disappeared over the horizon.

Now they were in a spot. They were still ten miles from camp, and McKinlay knew there was no way he could haul Williamson there by himself. For an hour, he followed the dogs. But each time he crept toward them, off they would go again, until he knew it was hopeless. Eventually, he rejoined Williamson, who sat, helpless and frightened, in a pathetic heap on the sled.

Williamson said he would try to walk. McKinlay freed himself from the harness and helped the second engineer, as gingerly as he could, off the sled. Immediately Williamson’s knees weakened, and McKinlay caught him as he buckled. He was shaky but determined, and he supported himself on the handles of the sled while McKinlay dragged it. After fifty yards, however, Williamson was unable to go on.

Although the sun was still high in the sky, the bitter wind had picked up again. McKinlay suggested pitching the tent over Williamson while he went after the dogs, but Williamson wanted to remain on the sled. McKinlay then spread thick layers of skins beneath Williamson, who lay on top of these wrapped in two blankets, a traveling rug, and the tent cover. McKinlay made sure his face was covered to protect it from frostbite.

As McKinlay walked the ten miles to camp, the snow began to fall heavily while the ever-present sun softened what already lay on the ground. He sank in snow to his knees and then to his thighs. Because his eyes had begun to trouble him and he was seeing double, he had to rest now and then, afraid his suffering vision had gotten him off his path. His eyes had swollen nearly shut by the time he reached camp hours later. Learning that Kuraluk and the dogs, which had all returned unscathed, had already gone back to get Williamson, McKinlay stumbled into his new quarters with Hadley and the Eskimo and collapsed into sleep.

MCKINLAY’S SNOW BLINDNESS was so bad that his eyes remained swollen closed. He could see nothing. He wanted only to rest, to give his eyes a chance to heal, but Munro and Maurer were leaving for their new camp at Rodger’s Harbour and wanted McKinlay to accompany them long enough to bring back the dogs and sled. On his way back, he could stop at Skeleton Island for more gear and the Mauser pistol, Munro told McKinlay, who was lying there, blind, in the worst pain he had ever experienced.

McKinlay was obviously incapacitated and in pain, yet there Munro stood, over his bed, reciting their plans for departure. Finally, Munro gave up and decided to take fireman Breddy instead, but Breddy always hated working, preferring instead to do what he wanted when he wanted; so he avoided Munro until his departure. In the end, Munro and Maurer left for Rodger’s Harbour alone. It was what they had wanted anyway—to be alone, away from the rest of the men.

Once again, the men of the Karluk had been abandoned by their leader.

MCKINLAY LAY IN THE TENT for days, his eyes bound up. Hadley tended to him, bathing his eyes with zinc sulphate, which gave only momentary relief, and injecting them with cocaine from their meager medicine chest. Nothing seemed to help, though, and McKinlay remained in a miserable state. He had to be fed and led about camp like a blind person. All of them were suffering. Clam’s condition was much more grave, but as usual, he said little about the pain. Williamson, although not as ill, complained enough for the both of them.

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, Hadley 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 said. 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.

Munro had only been gone four days when Williamson took McKinlay aside and suggested that it might not be a good idea, after all, to get Munro and the others back from Rodger’s Harbour. While both Williamson and Breddy had been adamant about Munro returning, Williamson was now afraid of having three more mouths to feed. Right now they were experiencing trouble enough feeding themselves.

The sharing of the food was the point of contention. Hadley asked the men in Williamson’s tent each time if they were satisfied with the division of the game. Lately, even when they had been agreeable and claimed to be satisfied, they would return to their tents and eat their entire allowance and then begin to complain loudly that Hadley and the others were cheating them out of their rightful share.

Meanwhile, in Hadley’s tent, Auntie worked magic with the portions. She was in charge of the food and she made it last. Hadley, McKinlay, Kuraluk, and Auntie were still hungry, but they were nourished and she could make their meager rations go a long way. Always, they made sure that neither the little girls nor the kitten went hungry. All three were well fed and fussed over, and the men were more likely to give up shares of their own meals than to let the children or the cat suffer.

All that fuss over a cat might have seemed unlikely, but they were devoted to her. She helped sustain them on long, dark days. She gave them something to think about other than themselves, just as having Helen and Mugpi to worry over helped to take the focus off their own suffering. As long as the cat was alive, they felt they would survive. She was, after all, their good luck charm.

One evening, Hadley came back with ten gulls, which Auntie divided evenly between the two camps. An hour or so later, Breddy returned from hunting claiming there wasn’t a crowbill to be seen, and McKinlay saw Chafe come back not long afterward with four gulls. Chafe slipped into his own tent without seeing the scientist and emerged with four more.

On June 24, Williamson’s tent ran out of food. They had eaten all of their shares greedily and carelessly, and now they had nothing left. Hadley had warned them countless times about the importance of rationing themselves, but they never listened. Now they claimed they were being swindled by Hadley, McKinlay, and the Eskimos out of their rightful share of the catch. They grumbled all day and threatened to keep everything they shot for themselves. To prove their word, Breddy and Chafe returned from hunting with two good-sized eggs and five birds and made no move to share these with the other tent. Instead, they cooked the entire lot and had their own private feast.

The crew had lived separately aboard the Karluk, and now they insisted on living separately here. The camp was bitterly divided and there was nothing McKinlay could do about it. He agonized. He had, after all, promised the captain to keep the peace. Even though he and Munro were on the outs, he had done the best he could. But he hadn’t accounted for hunger and greed. He had not foreseen the stealing and the betrayal and the paranoia that seemed to plague all of them when it came to their precious supplies and food. There was no rational thought. There was only fear and hunger and survival—and now every man for himself.

MUNRO WAS NEVER SO THANKFUL as he was upon reaching Rodger’s Harbour. He and Maurer were exhausted from the trek and worn out from the conflagration up at Cape Waring. Munro was relieved to be safely back at this camp, miles away from the rest of the party. Now that they were back, they could concentrate on getting game, surveying the area more closely, and settling themselves into their new home.

He was glad, once and for all, to be done with the others. He was sick to death of the whole miserable lot of them, especially Williamson and Breddy, who never seemed to do anything but complain. He hoped he would have some peace and quiet. As far as he was concerned, he and Maurer and Templeman would just wait it out at Rodger’s Harbour. There was no reason to go back to Cape Waring, or to see the others until the rescue ship arrived.

The weather was raw and cold and a heavy mist lingered in the air. Munro, Maurer, and Templeman stayed near camp until the fog lifted enough for the engineer and Maurer to go in search of seal down by the river. They also set out a net for catching birds. Whenever they went hunting, Templeman remained at camp, too weak to join them. Lately, he was suffering from indigestion because he’d eaten too much pemmican and—like the rest of them—had not had enough fresh meat.

On June 24, they found one duck in their net, and then Munro went out that afternoon and saw two seals. He crept toward one of them, careful not to make a sound, but that seal escaped. Munro then headed for the other one, lying down on the ice about seventy-five yards away from it. He studied the creature and tried to get up his nerve to fire his gun. For five minutes, he lay there on his stomach, trying to convince himself to shoot. His heart was beating so loudly that he was sure the seal would hear it. The creature was stretched gloriously in the sun, unaware of Munro, whose hands were shaking as he aimed the rifle. For minutes, Munro aimed his gun at the seal until he realized that his hands were too shaky to hit his target.

“It was a terrible²⁰ predicament,” he said. “Our very lives were at stake, and here I was with an acute attack of something akin to ‘buck fever,’ although much more serious than that well-known affliction.”

He tried to get himself together, to clear his mind and gather his courage before the seal disappeared. He aimed again but, as he noted, he was so nervous that “in that state²¹ I could not have hit a barn, so I had to wait.”

In an effort to cheer himself on, he clenched his teeth and called the seal all sorts of names. “I’ll get you!” he threatened over and over again. And then the thought came to him. “If you miss him you will starve.. . .”

He aimed and fired. He had done it. His first seal.

Maurer loaded it on the sled and that night they had a grand “stew up,” which they had promised themselves upon getting their first seal. There was so much food that Templeman was unable to finish his meal.

The next day, with new confidence, Munro and Maurer headed out on the ice again. There were numerous seals in the distance and they were sure to get at least one. But they couldn’t get near enough to the animals to get off a decent shot, so they had to return to camp empty-handed. The next day they tried again, but they still couldn’t get close enough. On the twenty-seventh, they returned to the hunting ground, but a heavy fog quickly sent them back to camp, where they were forced to amuse themselves for the rest of the day with various odd jobs. They repaired their gear, mended their sled, and found a flag pole—or a piece of wood that would make a perfect flag pole—and set it aside for later. As soon as they had the strength and as soon as the frozen ground allowed, they would plant the pole and raise the British flag they had saved from the Karluk. They also created a storage space for their meat—a hole in the ground, lined with skins and blubber. They threw the seals in and then packed ice on top of them. Even with this, the seal meat rotted, but they ate every scrap of it, except for the hides and the blubber. Afterward, when there was nothing else, they were forced to eat those, too.

The mist lingered, but on the twenty-ninth it cleared enough for Munro and Maurer to go sealing. This time, they managed to kill two seals, and that evening they dined on fried liver. They were feeling more hopeful now, their moods much improved by all the food. Indeed, they felt like kings, and Templeman kept busy cooking all the time. As Munro said, “We are living²² high.”

IT WAS BETWEEN 6:45 and 7:15 on the morning of June 25 when they heard the gunshot. Hadley had awakened McKinlay at 6:30 a.m. when he left the tent, but the magnetician soon drifted off again. When he awoke the second time, he stuck his head out of the tent to look for Hadley, figuring he was out shooting at the ducks. Instead the old man was lying in bed.

A few seconds later, they heard a shout. It was Williamson. “Clam! Call Hadley! Breddy has shot himself!”²³

McKinlay was out of the tent in a flash. Hadley and the Eskimo were on his heels. They ran to the other tent, tore open the door, and burst inside.

“What is the²⁴ matter here?” Hadley demanded.

Williamson was sitting up in his bed. Now, he pointed at Breddy and said simply, “Breddy has shot himself.”

Clam and Williamson both said they were asleep when it happened. The shot woke them up. Chafe was out hunting. He had gone the night before.

Breddy lay in his bed, rolled partially on his left side, his right arm stretched alongside his body, his left flung across his breast, his hands open, his eyes closed. Hadley turned Breddy over and they could see the damage. The bullet had entered the right eye, exiting on the left side of his head, just two inches or so above the ear. His right eye was “powder-burned and blackened²⁵” where the bullet had entered. It must have made a perfect pass through his brain. He would have died instantly.

Williamson handed Hadley the gun—a Colt revolver—which he picked up from Breddy’s left side. Hadley snapped, “Have you another²⁶ gun in here?”

“Yes.”

“Give it to me and I will look after it. You don’t need guns in here, anyway. You . . . are scarcely able to move.”

The weapon that killed Breddy was a ’41 .345 caliber Colt DA revolver, owned by Hadley and loaned to Breddy. Clam and Williamson handed over their other gun, a .401 Winchester rifle, which had also belonged to Hadley, loaned to Williamson at Shipwreck Camp, back in the old days when Hadley had thought Williamson was a decent guy.

Williamson and Clam also gave Hadley all that remained of their ammunition, just twenty-four revolver cartridges and three of the original 83 to 100 rounds of rifle ammunition, “and there has²⁷ been nothing to show for it,” observed McKinlay.

The men carried Breddy’s body outside and, in the presence of everyone, Williamson went through Breddy’s personal effects. The dead man had kept everything on his person, apparently not having trusted his tent mates any more than he trusted Hadley and the others. All of the missing articles from McKinlay’s knapsack were there, including his compass, which was hidden in a sock.

Chafe had gotten in the habit of going out every night to hunt. He usually left around 8:00 or 8:30 P.M., returning the next morning, and Breddy usually went with him to help carry the birds. The snow on the ice was melting daily and deep pools of water were forming. Chafe had to wade through these every night, up to his knees or his waist, until his legs became numb from the cold. Each morning, he couldn’t wait to get back to camp so that he could take off his wet clothes and warm himself.

His foot was still so painful from the operation that it was hard for him to walk. For this reason, it would sometimes take Chafe twelve hours to make the trip to the cliffs and back again, even though they were only two to five miles from camp. “Of course,” he said,²⁸ “a lot of the time was wasted, for every time a shot is fired the birds leave the cliffs and fly away to sea; then I would have to wait till they returned and settled, before firing another shot.” The crowbills went out to sea every third or fourth day to feed, staying away twenty-four hours or more. Whenever these went away, Chafe tried to shoot seagulls, which nested on top of the cliffs.

Chafe had landed a goldmine on his hunting trip of June 24, killing twenty-three birds, an exceptional night’s work. Because the birds were too heavy and because Breddy wasn’t there to help him this time, he dragged them along behind him over the ice as he headed back to camp on the morning of the twenty-fifth.

Half a mile from the camp at Cape Waring, Chafe spotted McKinlay coming to meet him.

“Charlie, there has²⁹ been more trouble in camp,” McKinlay said by way of greeting.

“What is the matter now, Mac?”

McKinlay told him about Breddy. Chafe felt all his strength leave him. He could not believe what he was hearing. McKinlay took the birds from him and they returned to camp, where Chafe saw his friend’s body lying in the open, covered with a blanket, and stretched out beside a log.

According to Chafe, Breddy had come to him the night before, as Chafe prepared to go hunting. “Breddy . . . said³⁰ he was not going with me, but was going to get up early in the morning and clean his revolver, and was going to go out to one of the seal holes to try and get a seal. The poor fellow must have done as he intended—got up early, and was in the act of cleaning his revolver when it accidentally went off and shot him.”

The birds Chafe had killed were divided between the two tents, twelve going to Hadley’s larder and nine to Williamson’s. This time no one grumbled at having to share, and Williamson confessed to McKinlay that Chafe had admitted he and Breddy had been cheating on birds. “Wednesday last, they³¹ really obtained 6 eggs and 5 birds instead of 2 eggs and 4 birds, as they had reported, and also. . . Breddy stole the bird noted on June 16.”

Kuraluk and McKinlay worked all day at digging a grave. They chose a small hill beyond the camp, but the ground was still frozen. They used an axe to break up the earth and a piece of board for a shovel.

That night, they had a quiet supper and later, about 8:00 P.M., after the invalids and Chafe had turned in, Hadley, Kuraluk, and McKinlay carried Breddy up the hill on an improvised stretcher made of poles and canvas. They lowered him into the grave, but it wasn’t deep enough. His body was still so swollen from the mystery illness that they had to take him out and lay him on the ground. Covering Breddy’s body with the canvas, they agreed to finish the work tomorrow and started back down the hill.

There was something odd about the body, which had nagged at Hadley since he had first seen it on the floor of the tent. Something strange about the way Breddy’s shooting hand was positioned.

MCKINLAY COULDN’T IMAGINE why Breddy would have killed himself. Breddy had been a cocky, self-assured young man in good health, especially compared to some of the others. He had always done exactly what he wanted to, including stealing food from his fellowmen, and he had never allowed himself to be burdened with work he didn’t feel like doing. Perhaps Chafe was right, and maybe he had been cleaning his gun when it accidentally went off.

Williamson and Chafe were doing all they could now to ingratiate themselves to Hadley and the rest. Indeed they seemed quite chastened and frightened by what had occurred, worried about losing favor with their estranged comrades. They even seemed a little scared of Hadley, McKinlay, and the Eskimos. To the best of McKinlay’s knowledge, Clam had not participated in the lying, the stealing, and the cheating, and as far as he could tell, Clam had little in common with his tent mates, aside from being a crewman. He was instead stoic and silent, and when he did talk, he was soft-spoken and polite and seemed to have little reason to need to ingratiate himself as Williamson and Chafe were doing.

Williamson, in particular, was eager to make peace with Hadley, McKinlay, and the Eskimos. The night before, he had been all too happy to volunteer the fact that Chafe and Breddy had been cheating at birds—so generous of him to turn them in while not implicating himself when he had been, most likely, participating in their scheme. If not, he had almost surely reaped the benefits. Also, he was suddenly now making a habit of giving little presents to the children, scraps of pemmican and useless trinkets, in the hopes of bribing Auntie into giving his tent some seal meat.

McKinlay spent the day after the shooting deepening Breddy’s grave while Hadley sat by a seal hole for hours, with no luck. There were no seals anywhere on the ice. That night, they had a quiet supper and for the first time since they’d reached the island, both tents ate together. Williamson, Chafe, and Clam not only shared their store of food with McKinlay, Hadley, and the Eskimos, but they ate with much more restraint than usual.

McKinlay was tempted to tell them about Adolphus Greely and the way he had sentenced a man to death for stealing seal thongs, which was all he and his men had to eat when they were stranded in the Arctic for a winter of 250 days and only forty days’ rations. “The temptation recurred³², but I resisted it,” he said. “They would have failed entirely to appreciate my grim sense of humour. What a sorry bunch we were!”

After supper, McKinlay, Hadley, and Kuraluk walked back up the hill to the grave and deepened it further. They lifted Breddy’s swollen body from the ground and at last laid him to rest, to be covered later with wood, skins, and moss.

Keep the peace, the captain had told McKinlay. But Bartlett could not have foreseen a tragedy like this.

Of the rules they were used to—the laws that had governed them back home—none of them applied in this strange world. It had truly become every man for himself.

If the tension subsided between the two tents, at least for the time being, it was now building violently between Hadley and Kuraluk. It was hard to tell what the problem was except that Hadley was his usual surly self, and Kuraluk was intimidated by him. Hadley, too, had been in a fury lately over having to cook breakfast because Auntie, who usually performed the task, now refused or slept in.

Unfortunately, he and the Eskimo were the two best hunters, and the ones everyone else relied upon for nearly all of their food. Kuraluk, especially, was skilled and indefatigable. The only thing was, they had to keep him happy. The moment he felt unwanted, unneeded, or depressed, he would refuse to hunt. He was as stubborn as Hadley; in fact they were very much alike.

The days passed as usual, with Kuraluk and Hadley hunting each morning, and Chafe hunting each night. The weather turned warmer so that McKinlay’s tent had to sleep with the flap entirely open to let in fresh air.

Hadley and McKinlay lengthened the egging ladder, which was now about thirty-five feet tall. As soon as it was ready, they took it to the cliffs and McKinlay climbed to the top, fetching twenty-one eggs. As Chafe observed, the eggs were in a well-advanced state of development, “and would not³³ have been considered marketable under the Pure Food laws of any country. But there were no Pure Food laws on Wrangel Island, so we ate anything that would sustain life.” Ever since moving to Cape Waring, they had been lucky with birds and seals. Even McKinlay had been out hunting now and then, enjoying feeling useful and active.

They kept themselves to small portions and two meals a day. McKinlay did not know what would happen to them if the seals went away entirely, as they appeared to be doing, or if the birds left or if the eggs disappeared. They had not seen polar bears or arctic foxes in a long time. Auntie soon announced that the pemmican was finished, so anything they ate from now on, they would have to catch themselves.

The strain was unbearable. Throughout their ordeal thus far, McKinlay had managed to maintain his faith and a strong sense of hope, but often—especially lately—he felt burdened with a wretchedness that he probably would not have felt had he not been so completely alone. He rarely spoke to the men from the other tent anymore, except when they were arguing with Hadley over food. Williamson, Chafe, and because he lived with them, Clam, were greater strangers to McKinlay now than they had been at the beginning of the journey. With Bartlett gone, and Munro having abandoned everyone for Rodger’s Harbour, they were without an official leader, and McKinlay had no influence over them. They would not listen to him, and they had nothing to do with Hadley or the Eskimos or McKinlay.

There was something else disturbing McKinlay. It was a horrible thought, and one he tried to push from his mind. But it lingered and refused to go away. It was about Breddy. He and Hadley had examined the body after death and made some unsettling observations.

“One point I³⁴ noted in addition to those already noted,” McKinlay confided to his diary. “His right hand was not in such a formation as would hold a revolver, the four fingers being bent slightly at the first joint & the thumb quite straight & hard against the first finger.”

McKinlay was not sure what it meant. He had no experience with dead bodies. He was not a doctor or a detective. But he knew enough to know that something was amiss, and that thought alone was enough to keep him up at night.

“Our suspicions have³⁵ been raised,” he wrote, “by Williamson’s strange conduct & by other circumstances, that Breddy did not die by his own hand—either suicidal or accidental.”

ON THE EVENING OF JUNE 28, McKinlay and Hadley trudged up the hill to cover Breddy’s grave with another load of wood. This time, they took Chafe with them. Hadley and McKinlay had already discussed the matter, and now they wanted Chafe to see what they already knew themselves. They wanted another pair of eyes to witness this and another brain to help process what it might mean.

The day before, Hadley had asked Chafe to grill Williamson about Breddy’s death. Specifically, he wanted to know where the weapon was found afterward—where the gun lay that Breddy was killed with. Was it in his hand or on the floor? And if it was on the floor, then what position was it found in? Williamson said he couldn’t remember where the revolver was, whether it was on the ground or in Breddy’s hand. Yet when Hadley had demanded the weapon, Williamson had handed it to him, picking it up from Breddy’s left side.

Uncovering Breddy’s body now, they showed Chafe “that Breddy’s Eyes³⁶ were closed,” wrote Hadley, “and that he was shot through the Eye Lid and that his hands were Laying not Like a man that Held a gun and shot himself . . ..”

There was only one answer and one reason for this, and now Hadley believed without a doubt that the thing he had suspected was true. That evening Hadley wrote in his diary, “I think its nothing but Murder”.³⁷