Trial by Ice (17 page)

George Tyson dropped the snow block he held and looked up. The sled dogs tethered on the ice and near the observatory barked and strained against their leashes. Beside him Morton and Sieman continued their work of hauling the cut squares to bank against the sides of the ship. Whenever the weather permitted, insulating the
Polaris
continued. This was the fourth day, and the snow bank measured ten feet thick in parts. Still, much more needed to be done.

Tyson scanned the horizon. The thick twilight restricted his vision to a few hundred yards. Something had disturbed the animals. No musk ox would be foolish enough to blunder into camp. Polar bears were another matter. He squinted harder. The white bears blended so well with their surroundings as to be almost invisible. Only their black eyes and black nose stood out. But he saw nothing.

The dogs renewed their yelping. Now they all stood, howling and facing to the east. In the cold, dense air, sound carried for miles across the jumbled ice field. Faint barks returned from the base of the foothills. Tiny dark dots crested the rise of a snow ridge and sped toward the ship. Captain Hall and Chester had returned.

Instinctively Tyson fished his pocket watch from the folds of his
sealskin coat. It read one o'clock. Two weeks to the day, the advance party was back. He waited as the sleds drew nearer.

Expertly Ebierbing brought the team to a halt alongside the observatory building. Hall rolled out of the sled basket and sprang to his feet. Walter Campbell, one of the firemen, greeted him. To Campbell, the commander looked unwell.

Hall shook his head. “No, I'm pretty tired, but quite well in health.”

Emil Bessel emerged from the hut. The two shook hands, and Bessel walked beside Hall, talking about several of the experiments. Frederick Meyer and Noah Hayes stopped stacking provisions to welcome their commander. Hayes thought Hall looked “very much exhausted.” Once again Hall insisted he felt fine.

A crowd gathered as Hall walked toward the
Polaris.
Budding-ton and Morton approached. “Do you think the Pole can be reached along the shore you just explored?” Buddington asked.

“It can,” Hall answered firmly. He then clasped Tyson's outstretched hand and smiled warmly. Patches of hoarfrost silvered Hall's beard and eyebrows, contrasting with the ruddy complexion of his flushed face.

“How was the trip?” Tyson asked.

Hall grinned widely. “Wonderful time. Only went fifty miles instead of the hundred miles I planned. But, all went well. Didn't lose a single dog.”

Tyson nodded.

Hall wiped his running nose with the back of his mitten. “Going again,” he said. “And I want you to go along.”

Hall shook hands with everyone in the work party. Before climbing the gangplank, he addressed the men. “Men, I thank you for your good behavior during my absence,” he said.

Ebierbing and Mr. Chester, both covered with snow and frost, climbed the platform with Hall. Campbell and Morton followed. At the tumble home Bryan and the steward, Herron, waited as the reception party. Hall exchanged a few words with the chaplain before crossing the tented deck and making his way below to his shared quarters. Joseph Mauch greeted the captain at the doorway. In his hands he held a bound ledger recording the events that had
taken place during Hall's exploratory trip. Before he left, Hall had ordered Mauch as secretary to keep an accurate log of all happenings. Proudly Mauch thrust the book at Hall.

Hall eyed the ledger. He nodded his approval but waved off the book. “I'll read it as soon as possible,” he said. Perusing the log was not on his mind. He was thirsty.

“Have you any coffee ready?” Hall asked Herron.

“Always enough,” the steward beamed. “Under way down stairs in the galley. Would the Captain care for anything else?”

“No. Just the coffee.”

Herron rushed off to find the cook, Jackson. But the pot was empty. Dinner would not be served to the working parties for another two hours. The thirsty crew stacking provisions by the hut and banking the ship had drunk the morning's coffee to keep warm. Campbell, acting as assistant cook, watched as Jackson brewed a fresh pot. Later, under cross-examination, Jackson would claim that the captain's cup was filled from the same pot everyone else had sampled. Whether he lied or had a lapse of memory, the truth remains that the cook brewed a fresh cup for Captain Hall. Both Campbell and Mauch remembered watching him make one.

In the cabin William Morton pulled off Hall's mukluks and washed his feet. The commander sat on his bunk. Going from minus-zero temperatures to the relative warmth of the ship caused him to sweat, further drenching his already damp shirt. Throughout their trip moisture had plagued Chester and Hall. Without modern synthetic fibers to wick perspiration away from their bodies, the two men had steamed inside their clothing as they ran beside the dogsleds. Furthermore, the wet wool lost all of its insulating property.

By evening their undergarments had literally dripped. Each morning they had awakened to sleeping bags frozen into stiff cocoons from the water vapor. Hans and Ebierbing avoided this problem by sensibly wearing nothing beneath their furs and sleeping under the hollow-haired caribou robes.

As an afterthought Morton went out to retrieve a change of dry clothing for his commander. Bryan and Bessel stood inside the cabin. When the mate returned, Hall sat drinking his cup of coffee. Herron had returned with the brew. Captain Hall drank his coffee
sweetened with sugar “white lump sugar,” as the steward described it. How many hands beside Jackson's and Herron's passed the cup to Hall is unknown, but Dr. Bessel and Mr. Bryan were present.

As Hall gulped down the coffee, he grimaced. Those present saw him do so. The taste was awful, unlike any coffee he had drunk before, far too sweet and metallic in character. He mentioned it to Morton and again, later, to Tookoolito. He set the cup aside and rose to pull his shirt over his head. Suddenly his stomach burned, a visceral fire deep inside as if he had swallowed molten iron.

“Something is the matter with me,” Hall stammered. “I … I feel sick.” Abruptly he doubled over as the pain struck even harder. He vomited suddenly. But the pain continued, and he collapsed onto his bunk.

The vomiting continued unabated.

Helplessly Morton and the steward watched as wave after wave of pain and nausea swept over the captain. Bryan wrung his hands, while Bessel studied the attack with medical detachment. Within minutes Hall appeared to improve. Emptying his stomach seemed to relieve the symptoms.

Fearing that something in the coffee had affected him, Hall asked Dr. Bessel for an emetic. If his vomiting had left anything harmful behind, further regurgitation could only help. With problems in food handling, preparation, and preservation rampant in the nineteenth century, food poisoning was common. On an Arctic vessel with little water used for hand-washing, the problem was compounded. Emetics were a common way of dealing with contaminated foods.

Surprisingly Bessel shook his head. “No. You are not strong enough,” he said. “One would weaken you too much.” Bryan blinked at this unexpected recommendation. Purging was standard practice, and the captain's vomiting had seemed to help him. However, he deferred to Bessel's medical experience. Since he had not examined Hall, the Heidelberg-trained physician had no basis for such a pronouncement regarding Hall's relative strength or weakness, unless he was trying to keep the contents of the coffee cup inside Hall.

Captain Buddington arrived. Hall looked up from his bunk,
pale and shaken. “I felt a little sick coming in from the cold to this warm cabin,” Hall explained, “and I've been vomiting slightly.”

Buddington frowned. The man looked sicker than what he described.

“I still plan on going north again after a few days,” Hall insisted. “This may be a bilious attack.” Then he enlisted Budding-ton's support for a purgative. “Don't you think I need an emetic, Captain Buddington?”

“Yes.” Buddington, like all the rest, believed in purging the body of noxious elements.

Both men turned toward Bessel, but the physician remained adamant. Folding his arms across his chest, he shook his head again. “It will not do for you to take an emetic,” he stated flatly.

George Tyson stopped supervision of the snow-banking as soon as he learned of Hall's attack and visited the cabin. Hall asked him also if a purgative might not help, and, like Buddington, Tyson thought it would. But Bessel still refused.

Denied what he believed his best chance to cure the burning in his stomach, Hall finally turned his face to the wall, rolled onto his left side, and drew his knees up. Buddington, Bryan, and Bessel filed silently out. Herron and Morton took stations outside the door to the cabin in case their captain needed them.

Strangely, just after that first onslaught of vomiting, Bessel told Buddington that Hall's illness was fatal. This was an extraordinary thing for him to say. He had not examined Hall. While the vomiting was sudden and severe, nothing else pointed to a fatal outcome. Either Bessel was an incredibly bad physician, or else he knew something about the attack that no one else did.

Word of Hall's sudden illness quickly spread. A palpable feeling of uneasiness flowed outward from that darkened cabin and seeped throughout the ship, spread into every corner, onto the ice to the men banking the sides of the ship, and across the frozen bay to the sailors working around the observatory. Men whispered to one another: the skipper was down. Within minutes everyone knew. In this isolated anchorage, ill news traveled fast.

As soon as he heard of Hall's collapse, Herman Sieman uttered a silent prayer for his commander's speedy recovery. From the most
religious to the most blasphemous member of the crew, each sailor probably echoed similar sentiments.

On any ship the captain's words and deeds can save or sink the vessel. Few other places on earth bestow such awesome power on a single individual, but the merciless, unforgiving nature of the sea demands that a ship have one ultimate authority whose word is law. While some of the crew might not recognize Hall as that ultimate authority, everyone realized they depended upon him. Captain Hall knew more about surviving in this bitter wilderness than anyone else aboard. His years in the Arctic had proved that. His expertise strengthened the odds they would all return home alive.

Everyone on board knew that three factions divided the
Polaris
expedition, and even the dullest Jack among them realized that Captain C. F. Hall was the only thing that held them all together.

By morning, October 25, Hall felt better. Although the cramping pain had continued throughout the night, it subsided somewhat by daylight. He ate some chicken and arrowroot. An anxious Tookoolito and Ebierbing reached his side.

“Did you drink the coffee, Joe?” Hall asked his friend. “I don't know. I took a cup of coffee, and then I got very sick and vomited.”

He looked at Tookoolito. “I think the coffee made me sick. It tasted too sweet.” Drawing the two Inuit closer, he whispered, “I think there was something bad in the coffee. It burned inside my stomach. I never tasted anything like it before. Not like the coffee you make for me, Hannah.”

The two Natives backed away as Dr. Bessel entered the cabin. For the remainder of the day, Hall rested in bed while Bessel hovered about applying cold compresses to the captain's head and mustard plasters to his legs and chest. No record is made of Hall's eating anything that day, but he steadily improved, according to Morton and Bryan.

Nevertheless, Bessel wrote in his diary that Hall suffered from paralysis of the left side of his body, including his tongue something no one else saw on that day. With minute detail Bessel recorded his findings and treatments. Later he would use his notes to defend his care of Captain Hall.

Furthermore, Dr. Bessel recorded an irregular pulse and now
decided to purge his recovering patient. How massive diarrhea might correct an irregular pulse is a mystery. If Bessel had been worried about weakening Hall before, he must have gotten over his concerns. He administered castor oil mixed with four drops of cro-ton oil. Presumably copious glasses of water followed to wash down the objectionable concoction. To solidify his diagnosis even more, Bessel announced that Captain Hall had suffered from a fit of apoplexy and was not expected to live. Other than Bessel's questionable findings of paralysis, little documentation exists that the captain had had a cerebrovascular accident, or stroke.

Granted, medicine has progressed considerably in the last 130 years. And granted, cathartics and purgatives were commonly prescribed at that time. But Bessel's treatment is inconsistent and without good foundationeven for that time. If Hall's irregular pulse was the result of electrolyte imbalance from his vomiting, knowing what we do now, inducing further loss of sodium and potassium through diarrhea only worsened the problem.

By evening the stomach pain returned. Hall resumed vomiting all night. With the arrival of morning, once again, he improved. Although still weak, Hall inquired about the ship and speculated on his next trip by sled. The paralysis that Bessel described had vanished, although the doctor noted that Hall had difficulty swallowing. What trouble the captain had nevertheless failed to prevent him from taking some sustenance. His appetite had returned somewhat, as the stomach pains were also gone. He ate some preserved fruit, peaches or pineapple.

During this time Dr. Bessel checked his patient's temperature. Taking both oral and axillary readings, the doctor recorded wildly diverse measurements, ranging from lows of 83°F to highs of 111°F. What sort of thermometer had Bessel used? Certainly it could not have been one of the carefully calibrated “black-bulb” or “naked-bulb” mercury thermometers that the National Academy of Sciences admired for their superb accuracy. The numbers Bessel recorded are unbelievable. His readings are incompatible with survival. The heart fibrillates when the core temperature drops below 90°F, and the brain cooks when temperature rises past 107°F. More worrisome is the fact that Bessel used these findings to initiate further
treatment. Because of the elevated temperature, the physician prescribed quinine injections.