Journey (12 page)

Every man aboard the
Sweet Afton
was aware of two conditions. Winter was perilously close, requiring them to find a place to pitch camp and dig in for seven or eight months, and they were drifting along without the courage to make a hard decision as to how they were to survive the winter and then get across to the Yukon. They were men morally disarmed by the vastness of the north, the complexity of the decisions they must make, and the sweet seduction of the Mackenzie. “We must soon make up our minds,” Lord Luton said several times at sunset, as if on the morrow he would force a decision, but when day broke, and the peaceful river rolled northward, it carried them along, and decision was postponed.

The apt simile for their curious behavior came, as might have been expected, from poet Trevor: “We go forth, like all significant voyagers, in quest of our Holy Grail, but we approach it by running away, as if we were afraid to challenge the rim of Dark Mountain behind which it hides in self-protection.”

Toward twilight on a day in October, Luton was inspecting carefully
a stream which debouched into the Mackenzie from the west, and after some minutes of close study he said: “I do believe it's got to be the Gravel.” Everyone crowded the port side to see this ominous yet fortuitous river, for they knew that it was the last viable escape route to choose if they wished to avoid the difficult tangle of rivers at the delta, where the Mackenzie would finally break through to the Beaufort Sea.

If they elected to leave the Mackenzie here and row up the Gravel, they would encounter at its headwaters the easiest portage over the Rockies and a fine free-flowing river, the Stewart, to whisk them down to Dawson in the spring. Lord Luton, aware of the amiable possibilities, cried: “We'll anchor in her mouth tonight and decide in the morning whether to keep drifting down the Mackenzie,” and his men steered the
Sweet Afton
hard to port and into the Gravel for an overnight stay and some tough decision-making in the morning.

But that harsh obligation could once more be postponed because as soon as it was light Harry Carpenter announced: “I think our spot for the winter has been chosen for us.” And when the others looked, they saw that the edges of both the large river and small had begun to freeze. The ice did not yet reach out far from shore but frail fingers did enclose their boat, a stern warning that soon the entire system would be frozen.

“Well!” Luton said as he studied the situation. “This comes a mite sooner than I had intended. I was so eager to have us reach Fort Norman. It can't be more than eighty miles downstream.”

“Milord,” Harry said, and by using his friend's formal title he indicated the gravity of what he had to say, “you're right. It is only a few miles to Norman. But in Edmonton and Athabasca, too, they warned us that the Mackenzie can freeze like that,” and he snapped his fingers. “If we were to be trapped in the middle of this powerful river, with blocks of ice crushing down upon us, we could vanish in the midst of some floe, with our boat reduced to kindling.”

Luton required only a few moments to appreciate the inevitability of this judgment: “We'll build our cabin a hundred yards up the Gravel. To escape the ice.” So, aided by long ropes carried ashore and tied to trees, the men warped the
Sweet Afton
out of the larger river and berthed her safely a short distance up the left bank of the Gravel.

Ironically, Luton had been forced to choose the Gravel, after all, but he was putting it to the wrong use, a haven for the winter rather than a highway westward toward the safety of the Yukon.

 

T
he regimen Lord Luton's party adopted in their refuge on the left bank of the Gravel was evolved through committee discussion, for Evelyn did not act dictatorially except when a decision might mean the life or death of his enterprise. He was a shining example of the ancient English principle of
noblesse oblige
, always mindful that as a noble man, he had the moral obligation to act honorably and generously toward those about him. In reaching decisions which might affect Fogarty, Luton even allowed the Irishman to participate in the discussions. “We're civilized human beings,” Luton was fond of saying, “and shall conduct ourselves accordingly.”

His style of leadership was manifested immediately as the
Sweet Afton
was safely drawn onto the shore, for he sought advice from all members of his team regarding the location and size of their winter quarters: “You're to be living in them October to May, so share with me your best thoughts.”

He began by stepping off what he considered an adequate living-and-sleeping area, and marking the proposed corners with small piles of rocks, and as soon as he had completed this, Philip, Trevor and Fogarty lay down within the indicated space to demonstrate where the beds would have to be. When Luton himself dropped to the ground, inviting Carpenter to do the same, it became apparent
that his first estimate for the size of the living area was ridiculously small, and he began to adjust its confines outward, warning his men: “With each step I take, your work is doubled.” After some silent calculations, Carpenter agreed: “You know, men, he's speaking the truth. Enlarging in any direction increases the work tremendously.”

Harry eased the problem by an ingenious suggestion: “Let's pull the
Sweet Afton
up here to ground level, wedge her on her beam ends, and use her as one flank of our cabin,” and Philip elaborated the proposal with one of his own: “Let's orient the
Afton
so she protects us from the north winds.” Carpenter countered: “Sound idea, Philip. But on this spot the winds will come howling down the Gravel out of the west,” and the boat was shifted to provide protection in that quarter.

So Luton transferred his piles of corner rocks to the new terrain: “Harry, that was a splendid idea. See how it obviates one entire wall. A lot of chopping saved by that device and we can use the cabin jutting in as our cupboard.” But Trevor Blythe chipped in with one of the best suggestions: “Let's tie our largest canvas into this free end of the
Afton
. Lash it down securely and provide ourselves with a kind of protected storage area. Too cold for sleeping but valuable as a place to hold things.” He smiled at Fogarty: “Say the frozen carcass of a moose you've shot.” And this idea, too, was incorporated into the overall plan, with the canvas being erected immediately and tied securely to the
Afton
.

When Luton visualized his finished three-part winter dwelling he christened it “Our Hermaphrodite Igloo,” and when the others protested that this part of the world had never known an igloo, he said: “In my storybooks there were nothing but igloos, and I've always wanted one,” but Harry said more soberly: “You know, what we'll have here is pretty much what the Eskimos along the oceanfronts have always had. A big canoe lashed down on its side to protect a kind of dugout in the earth. An entrance area much like this tent.” Surveying the site, he said: “We're in the grand tradition. And if thousands of Eskimos have survived the arctic winter in dwellings like this, so can we.”

Then the philosophizing and the frivolity ended, for the laborious work of building a fairly large cabin had to be accelerated against the coming of blizzards, and each of the men went studiously about his assigned tasks. Philip and Trevor were given ropes and sent to search for usable timbers from the bleached driftwood that cluttered the banks of the Gravel. Like all arctic rivers that passed through an almost
treeless terrain, its shores contained such an inexhaustible supply of wood that Trevor cried: “Where can it come from?” and naturally they asked Carpenter.

“Simple. The banks here contain few trees. But up in the mountain, small forests.”

“How does this tangle reach us?”

“Winter snow blankets the forest. Spring thaw erodes the banks, and down come the trees.
Voilà
, the next flood brings them right to our doorstep.” Within a short distance east or west along only the left bank they had at their disposal enough straight, fine wood to build a cathedral; choosing only the best timber, they worked far into the dusk hauling up to site level the wood that would be needed to face their cabin.

Carpenter and Fogarty, meanwhile, had taken upon themselves the most arduous task, that of felling and trimming the four stout poles that would form the corners of the cabin. With the expedition's two hefty axes they sought out larch or spruce, girdled the chosen tree as close to ground level as practical, then took stances on opposite sides of the trunk and chopped away until the tree was felled. Then, by common agreement, they took turns resting and hacking off the lower branches and the unneeded crown of the tree, so that the end result was a sturdy corner post. It was strenuous work but necessary, for although driftwood of nearly proper size was available, both men feared it might have been so weakened by floodwater and bleaching and rough transit down the Gravel that it could not withstand winter blasts when wind pressures could be tremendous.

While the others were thus engaged in the demanding business of assembling the wood for their cabin, Lord Luton was painstakingly grubbing away with an improvised hoe-cum-scraper to provide a level base as the floor, and when that was finished to his satisfaction, he reached for the expedition's sole shovel, and began the fatiguing task of digging four postholes for the corners. Almost immediately he learned that this was not like digging in a Devon garden where the loamy soil seemed almost to step aside to let the shovel pass. This was brutal, demanding work, each inch of niggardly soil defended by rocky deposits, and when he found that an hour of his best effort had produced a hole only a few inches deep, he summoned the others.

“I'm not a shirker,” he told them. “You know that. But this digging the postholes…really, I'm getting nowhere,” and he showed them his pitiful results.

This led to serious discussion, with Lord Luton and Trevor Blythe suggesting that a meager footing might be adequate if properly buttressed by stones above the ground, and Carpenter and Fogarty counseling from their greater experience: “A corner post not properly sunk is an invitation to disaster.” Now a subtle change came in the structure of the Luton party, for without ostentation or any move which might denigrate his leader's position of authority, Tim Fogarty lifted the shovel from where Luton had dropped it, saying almost jocularly as he did so: “The fields of Ireland have far more rocks than those of England, Milord. Harry will need help chopping on that third post.”

When time came to attack the fourth post, Carpenter said: “Fogarty, give Evelyn a hand on that last one,” and just as quietly as the Irishman had behaved when taking over the back-breaking work of digging the postholes, Harry took away the shovel and asked: “Evelyn? Where did you have in mind for this one?” By these easy steps, Lord Luton was removed from command work but protected in his apparent leadership of the expedition as a whole.

It was Fogarty who suggested the solution to the chimney problem, for it was known in the arctic regions that to live in any cabin for seven or eight months without adequate ventilation for removal of smoke and noxious gases might not only damage eyesight but also result in death. Each winter in remote northern lands a handful of men, often two or three crowded in one small cabin, would perish in their sleep because there was no way for smoke to escape. Those who found their peaceful bodies in the spring would often say: “It's an easy way to die, but not necessary.”

Carpenter and Fogarty knew it was obligatory to devise some arrangement which encouraged smoke and fumes to escape while preventing wind, rain and snow from entering. Since the team had not brought with them from Edmonton a stovepipe or anything that could be used as such, the men had to devise a reasonable substitute. Several ingenious ideas were suggested, including Trevor's that the stove should be located in one of the corners, with that section of the roof left open and a wall of some sort erected across the corner to keep the smoke out. This proposal was rejected by Carpenter on the grounds that the chimney would have to be so huge an opening that there would be no upward draw: “The wind would howl down it and suffocate us all with smoke.”

Fogarty, at this point, found a collection of slablike rocks, rough
on one side, smooth on the other, and he proposed constructing from them a stone chimney, wide at the bottom, narrow at the top, and when he put it together it was applauded by Carpenter, who pointed out: “Best feature is that the wooden wall will be faced by stone. Prevent fires, the kind that kill sleeping people in the north.”

In this quiet way Carpenter and Fogarty assumed effective command of the expedition during the period of building the winter retreat. They decided how deep the difficult postholes must be, where the chimney should be located, how beds should be constructed, and how the tent area should be incorporated into the whole, but even between them an unspoken struggle for leadership evolved, although neither trespassed the other's prerogatives. When Harry decided that for maximum safety the cabin section must have an additional central post, Fogarty did not even comment, but when Harry himself started to seek out and cut down the added post, the Irishman quietly took command of the two axes and said: “Mr. Harry, time you learned the secrets.” Off they marched to fell and trim the post, and when that job was completed, Fogarty also dug the fifth hole.

In this subtle manner each of the men acknowledged and performed his special function. Lord Luton decided the questions of policy, or anything requiring a resounding speech; Harry made the strategic decisions upon which the life and death of the expedition rested; Fogarty determined the practical ways to achieve ends with a minimum of oratory. And even the two young members differentiated their contributions, with Philip providing muscle and boundless energy when required, Trevor an ingratiating willingness to do the most menial jobs, such as washing dishes, gathering firewood, or taking waste to an improvised disposal dump. He also surprised the others at times with suggestions of the greatest practicality, as when he constructed and positioned three different sites from which the lanterns could be suspended, depending upon where their light was most needed for specific tasks.

When the log cabin was properly roofed, its sides erected and lashed securely to the corner posts, the two younger men rejoiced that the hard work was over, but Carpenter and Fogarty soon disabused them of that foolishness, for as Harry announced when the roof was in place: “Now the tedious work begins. All of us scour this land, miles in every direction, to find moss, and twigs and mud, especially the clayey type, for caulking every hole you see up there.” And he pointed to the roof, where a hundred ill-matched joints provided
entry for snow and rain and especially wind: “Caulk along the walls, too.”

Philip turned to the
Sweet Afton
and said jocularly: “I'll caulk that wall,” but he was one of the first down to the creek searching for mud, and far upstream he came upon one of those apparently random deposits of earth which had a modified clay consistency. He became the hauler of buckets of clay and river weeds to the other four as they strove to render their arctic home reasonably weatherproof.

After the talents of these energetic and willing men completed the building of their winter refuge, they had indeed what Lord Luton still called his Hermaphrodite Igloo, a weatherproofed cabin defended from blizzards by the resting
Sweet Afton
, enlarged by the unheated space of the strong tent, and warmed by the big wood-palisaded room from which the smoke escaped through Fogarty's chimney and to which proper light was delivered by what Trevor Blythe called “my peripatetic lanterns.”