Left to Die Read online

  With their heads together, they talked in low tones about removing the clothing from the dead to save the living. Most of them agreed; it was the practical thing to do. They walked toward a pan where the dead bodies of several of their companions were laid.

  “After all,” said one, as if justifying what they were about to do, “if he was alive, he would give me his coat.”

  He worked at the fastenings of his dead friend’s coat. One fellow approached another of the downed sealers who was nunnied into a ball and drifted in with snow. He placed his hand on the man’s shoulder and was about to unbutton his coat collar when the sealer moaned. The startled robber jumped back in surprise.

  Then, through the curtain of snow, a ship’s topmasts and rigging, stark against the late evening sky, beckoned them to safety. It was two miles away, but the ship was headed toward them. The strong shouted words of encouragement to the weak. From scattered pans, the different watches started for the ship. Their ordeal was over. They were saved!

  * * * * *

  On board the SS Bellaventure, the second hand, Abraham Parsons, was busy guiding the ship through the ice, picking up seal pelts and men as they went. The wind was bitter cold from the northwest with heavy ground drifting. Parsons was from Bay Roberts and had spent twenty-seven years at the seal hunt, a few of them on the Newfoundland. Through hard work and dedication he had worked his way up through the ranks from sealer to second hand. He loved his job, especially when he was on the bridge and directing the work of loading seal pelts. Looking out the bridge window at the work in progress, Parsons heard the clinking sound of the forward winch hauling a large tow of pelts up over the starboard side of the Bellaventure. He could see over the drift from his vantage point; sometimes the heavy wind flaws obscured his men completely. Other times the snowdrift cut them off at the waist until their upper bodies seemed to float on a swirling white cloud. Parsons watched the sealers jump around flising their arms and holding their hands over their ears to ward off the biting cold wind.

  The pelts swung on the rope strap hanging from the heavy steel cable. The winch stopped as it cleared the gunnels, the strap was let go, and fifty or more sealskins slid onto the greasy deck, the smaller whitecoats as bloodied as the larger adults. The men on the ice clambered up over the side sticks and Parsons ordered the big ship slow ahead, toward the next pan with seals marked with the Bellaventure’s flag.

  Away in the distance, directly over his bow, he thought he saw a few men. They were moving slowly, as if they were killing seals. Probably men from the Newfoundland, Parsons thought, which he could see beyond them. The Bellaventure came to the next bunch of her own sealers and Parsons ordered the ship stopped. They loaded the pelts, three strings of them this time, and the sealers climbed aboard. Parsons ordered hard a-starboard and the ship lumbered away.

  Framed in the eastern sky of the after window on her bridge, where no one was watching, a dead man’s coat was raised on a pole.

  * * * * *

  Sidney Jones watched as Arthur and Elias Mouland left to walk toward the Bellaventure. Jones heard Arthur yell to his men to stay where they were on the pan and he would send help back as soon as he reached the ship. Jones, master watch from Newtown, had stood on a pan earlier in the day and had watched helplessly as three of his friends dropped. He had never seen men die like that before. They had wandered from one quarter to the other, shivering and moaning with the burning pain of frostbite as they went. One of them stumbled after the others and fell into the water, encasing his boots with ice. The laces were swollen to three times their size and frozen stiff.

  Warning the three men did nothing to sway them wandering dangerously close to open swatches of water. They were dead on their feet. One after the other, the trio fell and no amount of yelling or poking could rouse them. Jones had stood over them, incredulous. Tears filled the man’s eyes as he spoke their names over and over. Unable to stay where they had fallen, Jones walked away to another pan and others joined him, leaving the three corpses of their downed comrades as they had died—together.

  Now as the day was ending, Jones was on a different ice pan with another man who was dying. Henry Dowding was from Templeman and the two were good friends. They had both eagerly shipped aboard the Newfoundland and had stayed together throughout the ordeal. Jones called Henry “Harry,” and Harry called Sidney “Sid.” Sid knew Harry was going to die. The man was shivering so violently he couldn’t speak. He flised his arms feebly, going through the motions of it with little effect.

  “Cheer up, Harry b’y. The b’ys are ’eaded fer the Bell. ’Twon’t be long now an’ you’ll be aboard o’ ’er wit’ a cuppa ’ot tea in yer ’ands.”

  Harry brightened as Jones delivered the good news. Supported by Sid, he walked in the direction of the Bellaventure.

  “Oh praise the Lard, Sid b’y, I’m all but done. I ’lowed I wudn’t goin’ to make it,” Harry said weakly. His teeth were chattering so badly, Jones could barely understand him.

  Suddenly, Jones stopped. He watched in disbelief as the Bellaventure turned her stern to them and sailed away, leaving her dirty spoor smeared across the evening sky. He watched as tiny groups of men who were headed toward her stopped walking. He saw a raised gaff, with a garment of clothing at its point, fall down. Even from a distance, Jones could feel the despair of the men who had tried so hard. Then he saw the figures turn and walk in the opposite direction, carrying the gaff with them.

  Jones turned his gaze in the direction they were headed. They were walking toward their own ship, the Newfoundland! She was much farther away than the Bellaventure, but she appeared to be coming their way.

  Then, to his horror, the Newfoundland turned her bow and sailed away from them.

  Jones told Harry they had failed to reach either of the two ships. Harry folded into a crump on the ice, in utter despair, and Jones was sorry he had told him. No amount of coaxing could get him on his feet again. Jones cradled his friend in his arms. He cursed at him to get up. He pleaded with him. He cried over him. But five minutes after the second ship had abandoned them, Henry Dowding died. Sidney Jones, who had just seen his best friend die, walked away sobbing.

  * * * * *

  George Tuff had ordered Jones to stay with the dying men and left for the Bellaventure with Jesse Collins, who Tuff considered to be the smartest man on their pan.

  “Cheer up, men,” he said. “We’ll soon be aboard the Bonaventure.” Tuff had mistaken the distant Bellaventure for the Bonaventure. “They’ve seen us fer sure! We’re goin’ to be all right!”

  He assured Jones he would send help back to the dying men as soon as possible. Collins was carrying the gaff tied with a jacket taken from a dead sealer. Tuff and Collins crossed another pan where every man on it, twelve or more, was dead. Their fellow sealers had dragged them together, and the snowdrift had entombed them in a mass grave.

  Approaching another group, still alive but suffering badly, Tuff and Collins told them to hang on and asked them to hoist the crude flag. Shortly, five of them stood on the highest rafter of ice they could find and held the flag high, waving it back and forth. From their vantage point it looked as though Cecil Mouland and the four men with him were almost aboard the Bellaventure. They yelled with excitement beneath the makeshift flag. Then, to their dismay, they saw Mouland and his men turn as the Bellaventure sailed away from them.

  Tuff spotted the Stephano and thought Abe Kean was searching for them. She was miles away and seemed to be looking for open water that would bring the ship to them. The sealers’ spirits lifted again, until the Stephano too turned and steamed away.

  Then their own ship, the Newfoundland, was spotted a little more than two miles away. She appeared to be coming for them despite the fact she was jammed in the ice. Determined, George Tuff and a few others headed her way. They figured that even though the ship was stuck in the ice, they could get clos
e enough to make themselves heard before the deep night came. They stopped walking. In stunned amazement, they watched as the Newfoundland turned away to the northwest, hull down among the tumbled ice.

  Defeated, the sealers dropped the flag on the ice. They would never be found. No one was looking. No one gave a damn. They were all going to die within sight of their would-be rescuers, the men who had put them here. Even the indomitable George Tuff’s spirit was broken.

  “Well b’ys, ’twould seem it only remains fer us to fix away a place to die and wait fer our end.”

  He leaned his tired back against the rough ice and slid down. The snow curled around his feet and legs as he buried his face in his trembling hands.

  Their second night without shelter was upon them. The wind had lessened but it still cut like a knife. The sealers with Tuff cut bavins of wood from their gaffs and tried to get a fire going, but their fingers were shaking so badly they lost their last wet match without making one spark.

  Between the scudding flaws, the lights of ships on the horizon taunted them. The clouds were scattered and the full moon stood out like a pearl in the starry, wintry sky. The glittering firmament peered down in silence, and now the stalk of death on the Great White Plain had changed. For two days and a night it had preyed on the weak, but now it turned toward the strong, intent on weakening and harrying them and taking every last man.

  21

  The second night, Wednesday, April 1, was even more unforgiving than the first. The sealers’ resources were dwindling. Many of those sealers who had fought so valiantly would lose the battle, but they would not die easily.

  With the night came a low snowdrift, which at times the men could see over when they had the strength to stand. The wintry clouds scudded away, taking into the heavens what little heat remained, and the cold deepened. All of the ice hunters were hungry, exhausted, and freezing. Many of them couldn’t bring themselves to believe there was any hope of survival. Combined with hypothermia, the loss of will to live created a state of body and mind that could only end in death.

  Hypothermia occurs when the body’s core temperature drops below the temperature needed to sustain normal metabolism. Shivering begins as the nervous system becomes agitated, warning of danger. Mental confusion sets in. Muscles won’t do as they are asked. The surface blood vessels contract as the brain directs blood to the vital organs deep in the chest cavity. Extremities such as the fingers, toes, ears, and nose turn pale with the sudden removal of blood. When the warm blood leaves, the cold rushes in, and they turn blue and puffy. Speaking is a challenge. Walking becomes a wandering, irrational, stumbling exercise in futility. The organs fail. The bladder muscles will not hold water. The mind is sluggish, incoherent, and sees things that aren’t really there. In a mindless paradox, the victim may remove his clothes, thus hastening his death. Burrowing into the puniest of shelters, they sometimes seek warmth but find colder temperatures.

  Twenty or more sealers had gathered on one pan. Some cowered for shelter on the ice while others walked. Jacob Dalton was one of the latter, and stumbling weakly next to him was Theophilus Chalk. Around them, between the pans, were a few swatches of water, some big enough for a man to fall through. Others were hundreds of feet across, black and dangerous, promising a quick end. Starshine glittered on the surfaces of these, what the people of the Arctic regions called polynyas. They are mysterious bodies of water that never freeze despite their frigid environs.

  Talking became confused stammering, brought on by hypothermia. Those standing around looked like black-robed priests sequestered in a nave, praying for penance. Those bent over looked like parents weeping over an empty cradle.

  A loud voice came across the pan from Chalk and the others. Jesse Collins was still trying to rally them. Collins had more of a mothering instinct than he had for leadership. The sealers heeded him. He was answered with shouts from those who would not give up. They appeared like tired soldiers marching home after a lost battle.

  Jacob Dalton managed to ward off cold more easily than most men. He always seemed to be warm and seldom wore mitts on his big hands. He had a quick stride, unusual for a fisherman who spent a lot of time on a rolling deck, and he was seldom idle when on his feet. But Jacob was cold now. He had stayed on his feet since they left the Stephano. Despite that first night, and the next day fraught with disappointment, he had kept moving. His arms were idle only when he was forced to cover his ears with his hands. He alternated from ear to ear in a constant effort to keep them warm. Now several of his fingers wouldn’t function as they should. His wet coat sleeves had shrunk with the frost and his right wrist was blue and swollen. Two toes and the heel on one foot were numb. His eyes were watering and he feared he was becoming snow-blind.

  Theophilus Chalk was in a bad way. He was staggering around without any knowledge of where he was, and without Jacob’s help he would wander away from the group. He was talking through chattering teeth and kept staring at the ships’ lights in the distance with a strange expression on his face, which had taken on an alarming blue cast.

  “’Ow come we don’t go in outta the cold, Jake?” he stammered.

  “What do you mean, Offie? Go in where?” Jake asked, flinging his arms around his body.

  Offie stared off toward the twinkling lights again. “Why, dere in the ’ouses, Jake b’y! I can see the lamplight from the upstairs windows. Don’t s’pose dey’re all gone to bed an’ left us, do ya? I needs to dry me mitts, Jake b’y. Me ’ands are perishin’ cold.”

  With that, Offie started to remove his wool mitts. Before Jacob could answer his confused friend, a shout rang out.

  “Help, b’ys, help! Someone’s gone in the swatch! Come on, fer God’s sake, I can’t hold ’im much longer!”

  Jake ran off toward the noise, leaving Offie to stare eerily at the mirage of house lights. It took Jake a few minutes to find the caller in the dark and the blowing snow. Others had arrived by the time he got there. One of the sealers was holding onto one hand of a man who was in the water at the edge of a pan. The sealer in the water was groaning pitifully and shaking so badly he could not offer any assistance with his own rescue. Jacob Dalton knelt down and grabbed the man’s other hand. Men pitched in and clutched the man’s clothing, and with everyone hauling, he emerged from the water and onto the ice like a large seal.

  His clothing quickly froze solid. He had lost his hat in the water and now his head was bare. The man became encased in ice from head to toe. His face was covered with slush and he couldn’t get his eyes open. There was nothing the sealers could do. They had no fire, no heat of any kind. There was no warm clothing to replace his wet outfit and no warm food or drink to ease the man’s final moments. One man knelt beside him and started to brush the ice from his face. In total misery but seemingly without effort, the doomed man began crawling like a child toward a cavity at the base of a knob of ice. Someone tried to stop him, but another laid a hand on his arm and said, “Leave him bide. ’Tis fer the best.” He squeezed himself head first into the icy valley until he was visible only from the waist down. He tried to draw his legs up to his chest, when suddenly he grew still. Snow drifted all around him, covering what could be seen of him below the frozen white headstone.

  “I seen ’im comin’ across the pan,” the man who had called for help explained to Dalton and the others. “He was ’eaded fer the swatch an’ I bawled fer ’im to stop. ’Twas no use. He was like a crazy man! I couldn’t go near ’im. He ’ad his sculping knife in his ’and, skearin’ it around as if he were stabbin’ at somet’in’, and yellin’ he was. ‘I’ll stab the bugger, I will,’ he was sayin’. ’Twas the damnedest t’ing I ever seen, b’ys! I knowed him all me life. A real gentleman, he was. Wouldn’t kick a crackie bitin’ at his feet, he wouldn’t.” The sealer shook his head as if he couldn’t believe what he had seen. “Walked right out into the black swatch as if ’twas not even there, he did, still lu
ngin’ with that knife. I ran to the edge after ’im. He went right under and came back up real quick, like. The knife was gone from his hand. I grabbed him and sung out fer you fellers. Why would he do sech a t’ing? And who do ya t’ink he wanted to stab?”

  “Ol’ man Kean, I’d say,” one man said without hesitation.

  “Yes, by God,” said another.

  Jacob remembered the strange way Offie was acting when he left him. He ran back the way he had come and fumbled in the dark, wondering why his step was so slow. Despite the need for haste, he couldn’t get his muscles to work faster. It took him a while to reach the pan where he had left his friend, but Offie wasn’t there.

  Jacob thought he had taken a wrong turn somewhere and he was on the wrong pan. But then, staring up at him from the snow was a pair of woollen mitts. They looked as if they had been laid down with care. Beside them was a woollen hat. They were both Offie’s. Jake shouted, “Offieee! Offieee!” again and again. He ran, calling as he went, heading toward the lights of the ships. He stumbled across a pan where more men were grouped together trying to keep alive. He inquired about his friend. No one had seen anything. Jacob was sure Offie had left to walk home. He wondered if he would make it.

  * * * * *

  Jacob Dalton had no way of knowing it, but the lights of Little Catalina, which Theophilus Chalk had imagined in his hypothermic state, bore west-northwest of them by just forty nautical miles. The gale of northwest wind from yesterday had pushed the ice steadily south. The men from the Bonavista Cape area were dying abeam of their homes.

  A few miles north of Little Catalina, in the community of Elliston, moonlight glinted on the frost-covered window upstairs in one such home. The frosty window was partially draped with a pretty white curtain Mary Crewe had made herself. A beam of light fell diagonally across the clean wooden floor, the bed, and the woman’s face. She was awakened not by the pleasant light on her face but by the feeling of someone touching her gently through the blanket’s fold. The touch didn’t frighten Mary, as she later said. She knew what she would see when she sat up. Strangely, she had somehow expected it.