THE RESCUE OF THE PARTY AT WARING POINT, WRANGELL ISLAND“The rescue, both here and at Rodgers Harbor, was effected just in time.”
THE RESCUE OF THE PARTY AT WARING POINT, WRANGELL ISLAND“The rescue, both here and at Rodgers Harbor, was effected just in time.”
THE RESCUE OF THE PARTY AT WARING POINT, WRANGELL ISLAND
“The rescue, both here and at Rodgers Harbor, was effected just in time.”
None of the three could well be spared. Breddy had been a careful and efficient worker in all the struggles we had gone through since the storm had carried us away in the previous September. Mamen was a great companion, indoors or out; he especially excelled in all athletic sports that demanded fearlessness and endurance, and he was, besides this, a devoted and helpful associate. At one time, in fact, I had had it in mind to send him to the Siberian coast with Kataktovick in my stead, if the injury to his knee-cap had not incapacitated him, and, if he had been able to start on such a journey, I feel confident that he would have made it or died in the attempt. Malloch was an ideal man for an exploring expedition like ours, brought face to face by circumstances with conditions that were calculated to test to the utmost a man’s real nature, for he was not only fully equipped in his own special field of science but beyond all that he was one of the most self-sacrificing men with whom it has ever been my lot to be thrown into intimate contact. If his task for the moment happened to be something connected with his own work as a scientist, he performed it as a matter of course, and if it happened to be sweeping the floor or doing any other odd job that needed to be done, he did that equally as a matter of course, without the slightest thought of self or any other idea in mindexcept to be as useful as possible to his companions.
I shook hands all around with our party and then with Mr. Swenson and Captain Jochimsen, the brave skipper of theKing and Winge, and thanked them in the name of the Canadian Government for rescuing the men. Then I asked Mr. Swenson’s permission to have theKarlukpeople transferred to theBear. There they could receive the medical attention that they needed, for there was no doctor on theKing and Winge; there was, too, no reason now why Mr. Swenson should not continue the walrus-hunt that he had postponed to go to Wrangell Island for the men of theKarluk. McConnell, also, who was on theKing and Winge, came on board theBearwith the rest.
To get the whole party and their few possessions over to theBeartook about an hour. Then we said good-by to theKing and Wingeand steamed in the direction of Herald Island to make a search for the mate’s and the doctor’s parties, though there was no likelihood of seeing any traces of them. At dark, owing to the ice, the engines were kept working easy ahead; at eight o’clock the next morning, September 9, we were twelve miles from Herald Island. The ice kept us from getting any nearer, and after we had done what we could to find a way through, Captain Cochran decided to go back toNome. Mr. Swenson had already taken theKing and Wingeas near Herald Island as he could get, without seeing any signs of human life, and months before, shortly after my departure with Kataktovick for Siberia, McKinlay and Munro had made their way across the ice in the direction of Herald Island and had got near enough to see that no one was there. Later on, as I afterwards learned, theCorwin, on the trip on which, as he had promised, Mr. Linderberg sent her, cruised all around Herald Island without seeing any evidences that any one had been there. It was as certain as anything could be that both parties had long since perished, but it was very hard for me to give them up, men with whom I had spent so many months, men with the future still before them.
From the vicinity of Herald Island, theBearheaded for Cape Serdze and at six o’clock the next morning we anchored off Mr. Wall’s place. Mr. Wall was still away and we did not stop long but were soon steaming down the coast on the way to our next stop, Cape Prince of Wales.
I did not attempt to press the men for an account of what had happened on the island. They had been through a long period of suspense and were entitled to a rest, so it seemed the kindest thing to let the story come out spontaneously as time went on. McKinlay told me part of it andgradually further details appeared, as they came out in general conversation.
Kataktovick and I, as I have already related, left the island on March 18. The Munro party, starting the day before for Shipwreck Camp, made their way with comparatively little difficulty over the ice until they had crossed the great pressure-ridge that had held us up so long on the way in. Not far on the other side they came to open water, so they had to return to the island.
Various trips were afterwards made out on the ice, on one of which Williams froze his great toe so badly that there was nothing to do but to amputate it, to save the foot and possibly further complications. Perhaps many people would have preferred to risk one danger at a time, rather than be operated on with the means at hand. Williamson was the surgeon; he had shown his natural deftness, as I have mentioned before, by his care of Mamen’s dislocated knee-cap at Shipwreck Camp. His instruments consisted of a pocket-knife and a pair of tin-shears. Perhaps no more painful and primitive operation was ever performed in the Arctic, though the whaling captains have frequently had to exercise a rough and ready surgery, whether it was possible to live up to the requirements of Listerism or not. Williamson did hiswork well, and his patient did his part with rare grit, so that the result was a success.
Following their instructions to divide into smaller parties, for general harmony and larger hunting areas, Mamen, Malloch and Templeman left the main party on Icy Spit and went down around the southeastern shore of the island to Rodgers Harbor. Here they erected a tent and planned to build a house of driftwood, a plan which on account of circumstances they were never able to carry into effect. Towards the end of May Malloch and Mamen became ill with nephritis and died, Malloch first and Mamen only a few days later. Templeman was thus left alone, until he was joined by Munro and Maurer, who stayed with him until the rescue. They lived on birds’ eggs and seal and, later in the summer, on some Arctic foxes which fortunately came their way.
During the early spring the party at Icy Spit were fortunate in killing polar bear, which gave them fresh meat. As the season advanced they moved down the coast to Waring Point, where they found conditions more favorable for getting birds than on the barren levels of Icy Spit. Here they pitched their tents again and took up a regular routine of life. Hadley, McKinlay, Kerdrillo, Keruk and the two children occupied one tent andWilliamson, Chafe, Williams and Breddy the other. Breddy accidentally shot himself later on, making the third death on the island. Hadley and Kerdrillo hunted daily and as the season advanced they were able to get seal and duck, which gave sufficient food after the supplies that we had brought from Shipwreck Camp had become exhausted the first week in June. It was never possible to get a very large supply of food ahead at any one time, and as the summer wore on and they heard nothing from me they faced the prospect of another winter with misgivings. Hadley and Kerdrillo fashioned a rude Eskimo kayak, by making a framework of driftwood and stretching sealskins over it, and Kerdrillo made good use of this in hunting seal after the ice had broken up.