Trial by Ice (14 page)

Tyson half expected the whaling captain to voice concern that
they would sail off the edge of a flat world like the sailors of old. To Tyson, Buddington's actions recalled Sir Edward Belcher's words:

If they entered the Polar Sea on the range of these islands, with comparatively open waters for one hundred miles, they might drift to and fro for years, or until they experienced one of those northern nips which would form a mound above them in a few seconds! The more I see of the actions of the icethe partially open water and the deceitful leads into poolsthe more satisfied I am that
the man who once ventures off the land is in all probability sacrificed!

Obviously Buddington feared the same things.

Men with those feelings ought to stay at home, Tyson snorted.

Locked in the ice and without propulsion, the
Polaris
now drifted backward with the ice floe. The relentless blows of the northeastern gale forced the ship to relinquish each precious mile for which it had struggled so hard. Over the next seven days, the vessel found itself carried down inside Polaris Bay, almost fifty miles south of its highest sail.

As if to mock their timidity, the ice opened again the next day. This time the open lead ran along the eastern side of the bay. Quickly the propeller was lowered. The bay rang with the sounds of hammers chipping ice from the frozen shaft as the men worked feverishly to free it. By evening the
Polaris
steamed into a small bite. After midnight Hall and five others rowed out to take soundings. The spot proved sufficiently deep to support the draft of the
Polaris,
and the whaleboat landed. Ever the explorer, Hall murmured a brief prayer and planted another American flag on this land he had discovered. The
Polaris
steamed closer and dropped anchor. For better or worse, this barren cove flanked by steep cliffs would be home for the winter.

Perhaps satisfied that its secrets were still guarded, the Arctic weather relaxed its hold on the expedition. The clouds parted, and the sun shone brightly. The fresh snow melted to expose the stunted willow and lichen battling for a grip on the shale and gravel beach. Lemmings and voles scurried about stocking their burrows while
musk oxen grazed warily along the far plateau. In spite of the sun, the cold bite remained in the air, so the denizens of this site continued their preparations for winter. This far north summer could end any day. During this relentless freeze-thaw cycle, the scientists began their routine of measuring the hourly temperatures with specially coated “black-bulb” thermometers designed to reduce radiated warmth from the ground along with the usual “naked-bulb” mercury thermometers.

Four days passed while the ship maneuvered for better shelter inside the bay. Each reanchoring brought the vessel closer to land. But the holding ground was poor. The rough gravel and shale proved not sticky enough for the anchor. Another gale and the anchor would drag.

However, within sixty yards of the shore, a large iceberg lay grounded in about thirteen fathoms of water. Rising roughly 60 feet above the waterline, the iceberg offered a shelter 450 feet long and 300 feet wide. Many times the weight of the
Polaris,
it could provide the needed protection, especially against sea ice sweeping along the shallow curve of the harbor. In a land where ice is the predominant feature, a berg thus grounded appeared ideal as a mooring platform. Slipping inside the shadow of this frozen wharf, the ship dropped anchor. Here Buddington declared the ship would stay. Other storms would rock the ship until the men finally secured the vessel to the iceberg with ice anchors and screws driven into the ice and connected to hawsers and cables.

After the next Sunday services, Captain Hall named their new home Thank God Harbor and their frozen guardian Providence Berg. Besides sheltering the beleaguered ship, the iceberg proved providential in another way. During the terror of the storm, moving the emergency supplies had engaged all hands, and the firemen neglected their touchy machines. The small boilers nearly ran dry and hovered on the verge of exploding. Luckily the problem was noticed before another disaster occurred. The firemen hastily fed freshwater ice from their mooring into the tanks, thus cooling as well as replenishing the boilers.

Any thoughts of leaving their secure harbor vanished by September 11. Winter arrived. A cold snap descended upon the harbor. By morning ice inches thick encased the hull of the
Polaris.
In the
cold, metal turned into a common enemy that burned the unwary at the slightest touch like a hot poker, freezing the skin hard and producing blood-filled blisters when the frozen part thawed.

As if the ship were entering a cocoon, her shape changed, and she began to merge into her surroundings. Canvas tenting housed the deck, blocking the wind that howled through the rigging with each new gale. Hans and Ebierbing showed the men how to cut blocks from the wind-packed snow to bank against the sides of the ship. Slowly, inexorably, the ship's dark wooden sides vanished behind the mounting blocks of snow. With a constant temperature of 32°F, the snow offered excellent insulating properties against the cold.

Internally the
Polaris
contracted on itself like a cat curling up for warmth. The Inuit families moved below decks to warmer quarters, for their staterooms on the upper deck had little insulation. The location of the galley on the forward deck proved even more troublesome. William Jackson, the black cook, and John Herron, the steward, risked their lives daily to bring food aft to the dining salon. Chained along the narrow deck were sixty hungry sled dogs. These dogs were bred for their stamina and ability to pull a sled not for their manners. Anyone passing close by with food risked loss of limb or worse. While the ship battled northward, the diminutive Herron beat his own treacherous course through snapping jaws and lunging brutes. Several times the animals robbed him of food and tore his clothing.

Once
Polaris
anchored for good, the dogs were brought ashore. But another problem arose: the deepening cold. Jackson struggled hourly to keep the stoves going as the mercury dropped, and no amount of sprinting across the icy deck by Herron could keep the grub from growing cold before it reached the crew.

To solve this problem, Captain Hall gave up his own stateroom. His generous move increased the size of the galley, moving it closer to the mess hall, and further aided the passage of warm air into the crew's quarters. His action thrust him into the lion's den. He moved into a cramped cabin with Bryan, Meyer, Bessel, Schu-man, and the mess crew. Now Bessel and his Teutonic brethren surrounded the commander. Hall slept beside the three hostile Germans. Only the cook, William Jackson, and Herron, the steward,
remained friendly besides young Bryan. Fresh from the seminary, the ship's chaplain and astronomer overflowed with Christian charity toward everyone and everything. Wandering about like Percival after the Holy Grail, the undiscriminating Bryan remained well liked by all factions. The galley crew, not being officers, largely kept out of sight.

While the men prepared the ship, an unnerving pattern recurred in the surrounding ice. Existing leads and open pools froze solidly enough to support men and loaded sleds during wintry snaps. Clear, cold nights, lit by sinuous northern lights and eye-burning stars, accompanied these drops in the thermometer. Then, with little warning, fierce gales and blinding snowstorms raked through the bay. The ice buckled and cracked as the underlying waves roiled their frozen covers. Treacherous crevasses, fissures, and pressure ridges reappeared, while massive blocks of ice broke and cascaded about like tumbling dominoes. More cold air followed, and blown snow soon concealed these openings. Then the ice would thicken once more to await the next storm.

As a consequence, the bay surrounding Providence Berg and the
Polaris
took on the characteristics of a lunatic's garden. Like everything in the North, Buddington's secure anchorage was proving dangerous in itself.

Under Hall's direction supplies were moved ashore, again as a precaution. A small, prefabricated shed manufactured in New York was dragged the three hundred yards over the dangerous ice onto land. Bolted together and anchored to the ground, the wooden hut became Emil Bessel's scientific observatory.

Extending back from the bay, a flat, windswept plain climbed gradually until it collided with mountains bordering the north, south, and east. Eroded by wind and water, the sides of these surrounding peaks were steep while the tops remained flattened. Deep ravines and fissures scarred the face of the slopes where melting runoff and glacial streams had cut into the rock. Water creeping into the cracks of dislodged boulders split these stones into flinty shards as the water froze and expanded. The debris from this incessant war between the earth and the elements littered the beach, carried there by wind, water, and gravity.

Powdery glacial flour, silt, pebbles, and coarse shale filled the
basin. Furrows cut by glacial streams raced from the headlands to the restless sea. Clumps of lichen and moss battled for every toehold with spidery roots of stunted willow. A tree in its own right in more hospitable climes, the willow here was reduced to twisted scrub. Minute blue and red flowers, killed by the first frost, littered the beach like fallen soldiers. On viewing this depressing sight, Herman Sieman wrote in his diary: “But, why should we fear the darkness around us, if light remains only in our hearts? Yes, my Lord, if I have only Thee, I do not care for heaven or earth.”

The heaven and earth surrounding Sieman were hardly inviting. Unfortunately for him and all the others, the heaven and earth he viewed cared even less for them. All too soon they would demonstrate that fact.

The ice thickened and snow fell until only the windswept bluffs retained their dull gray color. Unleashed to do what they did best, Hans and Ebierbing and their dog teams spread out across the basin to hunt. Returning with a seal and four geese, the hunters demonstrated their skill and another fact about the Arctic: animals grow large where the climate is cold. Being bigger reduces their surface area in proportion to their volume, notably cutting their heat loss. One day the two Eskimo returned with an Arctic hare weighing eighty-one pounds.

Encouraged by the seeming ease with which the Natives moved about, Frederick Meyer decided to survey the mountains to the south. He enlisted the help of Mr. Bryan and Joseph Mauch. Captain Hall warned Meyer that the mountains were close to twenty miles away and not an easy trek. The experienced explorer knew that distances can be deceiving in the clear Arctic air. Meyer disregarded the warning. The hike would take only a few hours, he reasoned. The survey party set off at eight the next morning.

Nine hours later the party had only just reached the foothills. Exhausted, with night fast approaching, they turned back. Now they discovered what many a climber knows: going down a mountain is often harder than going up.

By the time they had descended to the inlet, a storm struck. The wind rose, howling through the darkness like a lost soul. Blowing snow blinded them, stinging their eyes until they watered constantly.
Their lashes froze together, and white patches of frostbite speckled their cheeks. Ice covering the bay shifted and split with resounding cracks like rifle shots as swells and waves rolled into the harbor. Fissures opened and closed, and blowing snow disguised these dangers.

Struggling through snowdrifts and crawling over ice hummocks, the three men lost sight of the ship. Stumbling about in drunken arcs, they used the glowering mountains behind them for reference. Hour after hour they pressed desperately onward, but each time they turned back to gauge their progress, the dark mountains seemed just as close.

Exploiting every weakness, the Arctic had turned a simple excursion into a life-threatening rout. Like men before them, they had underestimated the power of the Arctic. Any such error exposes the maker to severe punishment.

Crossing the quivering ice, all three men fell into open cracks. Meyer was the first, sinking up to his knees before he pulled himself to safety. Next Bryan leaped across a crevasse only to break through where he landed. Mauch fell through twice.

The icy water that soaked them to the skin chilled the men to the bone and robbed their clothing of its vital insulating properties. They were already dehydrated from their efforts, and now their body temperatures began the deadly slide into hypothermia.

With each dropping degree in core temperature, the body fights desperately to keep the heart warm. Over eons the human organism has learned to make hard choices to survive. Without a beating heart, life ceases. What are a few fingers or toes compared to the pumping heart? Chill the heart below 90°F and it fibrillates. Death quickly follows. So when faced with its temperature dropping, the body begins to circulate its warming blood in an ever-tightening circle close to the heart, shunting the warmth away from areas of lesser importance to survival and those sites most likely to lose that vital heat.

The skin, fingers, limbsall have their circulation drastically curtailed. The cerebral cortex, a comparatively new addition to the brain, is also on the hit list. That regionwhich is responsible for thought, judgment, and reason and separates man from animal
ranks below the brain stem, which processes vital functions. With hypothermia blood shunts away from the cortex, impairing clear thought.

Panic set in. Tantalizingly, the clouds of snow parted just enough to offer them a glimpse of their ship. Befuddled and robbed of clear thought, the men broke into a terrified run. Stumbling, falling, slipping, they stampeded toward the
Polaris.

The fortunate Meyer and Bryan wore Inuit mukluks, light and designed for the ice. Tough
oogrik
hide lined the soles of these boots. On some the natives sew a strip of sealskin along the bottom with the hairs facing backward. With each step the hairs grip the ice and resist sliding backward yet easily slip on the forward motionthe precursor of modern waxless cross-country skis. A skilled hunter can skim across the ice using his mukluks like skates.