Into White Silence

by Anthony Eaton

  Several hours ago, though, the weather finally abated somewhat. The ship has taken on a more comfortable motion and the pumps are slowly getting ahead of the water in the holds. The Captain has stood down all but the deck watch and most of the men have turned in and are sleeping like the dead – despite the horrific events of yesterday. Most are too utterly drained to think about poor Ivan yet.

  For myself, I thought I should take the opportunity of a quiet and private wardroom to record here my own account of events aboard the Raven since Christmas, for my own peace of mind, if nothing else.

  One thing has become very clear: we are in a perilous position until we reach the ice, as the Raven, for all her strength, handles the ocean terribly. Until we reach the shelter of the pack ice we are completely at the mercy of the elements. Overloaded as we are, and with a heavy and unresponsive helm at the best of times, the Raven is not a good ship to be aboard in the teeth of a Southern Ocean gale.

  This we discovered to our horror, early on the morning of the 26th at around 0630, when we woke to a dull sky, so black as to almost match the colour of our hull, and an unsettled sea, strewn with whitecaps as the winds, which had swung south-west, tore foam from the crests of the swells, sending spindrift whipping away into the distance. As the morning wore on the wind continued to increase inexorably, at first through forty and fifty knots, but then to seventy and at times (according to Alex’s best estimate) even hitting ninety in the gusts.

  The crew struggled aloft and hauled in as much canvas as possible but, even with almost bare masts, the strength of the gale was such that the ship’s engines struggled to simply hold our bow to windward. The sound of the wind through the rigging, which is generally just a soft and gentle moaning, rapidly became a banshee-wail that set the dogs howling in their kennels and at times reminded me of the rising scream of incoming artillery shells.

  And with the wind came the seas: enormous, black hummock-like waves which continued to build right through the afternoon of the 26th, until we received our first knock shortly after the dogwatch came on deck at 1600. By that point, Captain McLaren had ordered all nonessential personnel below, however Mr Rourke, Captain Smythe-Davis and myself remained on the poop so we might be able to take quick action should something drastic happen.

  The wave came upon us from the south-west and I suspect that the sight of it bearing down on our fragile little vessel is one that will haunt me for years to come.

  Having turned our bows so that we might tackle the increasing swell head-on, without exposing our vulnerable beams to the sea, the two men on the helm were fighting a constant battle just to hold course as the wind kept pushing us around. Every time we crested one wave, the ship would drop like a stone into the following trough and, heavy as she is, she’d often lack the buoyancy to climb back out fully over the next, and so would take on board tons of seawater across her bows. The main deck was regularly awash to waist depth and the unfortunate dogs in their kennels were, on several occasions, almost totally submerged for up to a minute as the scuppers struggled to cope with the incredible volume of water trying to escape back into the sea.

  Below decks was almost as bad. Despite battened hatches, water still flooded between gaps in the companionways, pouring into the chartroom and forward deckhouse. Cook had to extinguish the galley stove early on the 26th, and so none of us have seen a hot meal or cup of tea in three days.

  At one point, Captain McLaren suggested to Mr Rourke that we go about and run for safe harbour, to which Mr Rouke responded by simply fixing the Captain with a hard stare for several moments before finally shaking his head.

  ‘We go on.’

  For a moment I thought that the Captain might argue the point, but then one of the crew shouted a warning and we all looked ahead.

  It took me some seconds to understand precisely what I was seeing – at first my eyes were unable to grasp the scale of the wave. Its crest was a seething mass of white foam, so high above us that for a second I thought it might have been a break in the cloud ahead. Then I realised that the dark mass immediately below it, which blotted out the entire horizon, was in fact a wall of black water surging towards us at probably sixty or seventy miles per hour.

  Captain McLaren shouted at the helmsmen to ‘Hold her bows-on, for God’s sake!’ and for everyone else to take hold of something secure. A couple of sailors dived for the chartroom companionway and I wrapped my arms around one of the stays supporting the mizzenmast.

  Then a roaring, loud enough to drown out the rest of the noise of the storm and, almost immediately following it, the wave was upon us.

  My first thought was that we should all be driven straight under in much the same way that a sledge-hammer drives in a fence-post, but then, one inch at a time, the Raven began to lift her bows up that terrible slope and the dogs set about a new level of howling. Below my feet, I fancied I could almost feel the engine setting the timbers of the deck shuddering as it struggled to hold us from sliding backwards, stern-first into oblivion.

  Up and up we went and then a wave of icy, foaming water cascaded down the deck, slamming into the boats and timbers lashed atop the deckhouse and tearing loose four ventilators. There was a loud report as one of the wire-stays supporting the funnel snapped under the pressure and whipped backwards along the deck, narrowly missing Captain Smythe-Davis, who clung to a pin rail.

  Then, miraculously, it passed and we felt the Raven struggle through the crest – her bows driving high into the air before slamming down with alarming force through the spindrift and into the back of the wave.

  ‘Brace for another!’ yelled Captain McLaren, but to everyone’s great relief, another didn’t come. At least, not immediately.

  ‘All hands to the pumps!’ was the next command, and immediately the deck crew went tumbling below to check for sprung timbers and leaks and to turn out anyone still in their bunks to assist in keeping us afloat.

  Twice more, in the course of the following day and a half, we faced down similarly monstrous waves and each time managed to claw our way through them, largely due to the excellent seamanship of Captain McLaren and his men, who have had to contend with the seas despite, rather than assisted by, the design of their ship.

  Last night, though, just after cook had passed around a ‘meal’ of cold ship’s biscuits, for which few of us had the stomach, Alex came up from the chartroom and informed us that the barometer, which had plunged just before the initial blow on the 26th and remained steadily low since, was finally climbing again. This news was greeted by most aboard with a sigh of relief, rather than any degree of jubilation, and Dick Ryan went so far as to say that he’d believe the storm was over ‘when it bloody happens and not a moment earlier’.

  These, it turned out, were prophetic words because, not ten minutes later, an incredible gust of wind – so strong that it seemed to strip the very surface off the water – assaulted us with enough force to blow out the tiny storm jib that we carried on the forestay. Without it, the wind began to swing our beleaguered ship almost completely broadside, our bows drifting fast to the east and leaving our starboard side exposed to the incoming seas. Immediately the ship set about a terrible rolling motion, the masts swinging side to side through an arc so large that the ends of the forecourse yardarm actually plunged below the surface of the water on several occasions.

  From below came the sound of bedlam, as items of cargo, secured primarily against fore-aft pitching and not this type of violent rolling, came free of their lashings and set about creating havoc.

  Worse, on the main deck one of the kennels, which had been fixed to a stanchion on the starboard side of the foremast, ripped loose at one end and began immediately crashing forwards and backwards across the deck with each roll, the twelve terrified dogs within it raising such a frightful din that Ivan and Piotre both rushed topside.

  While three of the crew struggled forward to try and raise a new storm jib, the rest of us concentrated upon capturing and securing the rampant kennel, a tas
k made more difficult by the traumatised animals inside it which, terrified out of their minds, took to snapping at anyone whose fingers came within cooee of the doors.

  We eventually managed a temporary lashing, which stopped the worst of the movement and would hold the kennel in place, at least until the weather became calm enough for the Moreton brothers to replace the broken stanchion. The dogs, however, would have to be shifted into the three remaining kennels, which were still secure. This task would clearly be difficult on the wet, rolling deck and so Ivan dispatched us all back to the poop, so he and Piotre could work at calming and moving the dogs by themselves.

  One dog at a time, the two Russians retrieved their charges from the damaged kennel, and I have never seen a more sorry, unhappy group of animals. The first two had to be dragged bodily from the back of their pens, so reluctant were they to come out into the screaming, pitching world outside. One bit Piotre on his left wrist, which earned him in return a sharp rap across the nose and a thorough cursing in Russian.

  The forward crew finally managed to haul aloft the spare storm jib and, with some sort of balance re-established, the Raven began to make way again and the helmsmen were able to bring her head back to the weather, settling her motion into a more comfortable movement.

  The final dog to be moved was a young male, christened ‘Pirate’ owing to a black marking over his left eye, and he was putting up a solid fight. Ivan eventually crawled on his hands and knees into the kennel and pulled the animal out by his tail, before wrapping his huge arms around the dog’s belly and lifting him bodily into the air to carry him across to the portside kennel. Even in the maelstrom of the storm, the sight of poor Pirate being hauled out and handled with so little dignity raised a laugh among all of us, and perhaps that was the reason nobody noticed the next set of waves which, at that moment, rolled out of the darkness and sent the entire ship lurching hard to port.

  Ivan, his arms full and his balance encumbered, went flying down towards the port rail and he and Pirate vanished over the side and into the black water. It happened so quickly that not a man on deck had a chance to assist him. One second he was there, struggling with the dog, the next, just … gone.

  Stunned, we rushed to the ship’s rail. Several of the men claimed later that they heard a brief yelp, which was cut off as the ship fell away down the back of a wave, but I personally heard nothing except the wind and the sea. Of Ivan there was no sign, not a head nor waving arm, no cries for help, just a nightmare of whitecaps and spray. It was as though he’d gone over the rail and been swallowed.

  Amidships, his face a mask of horror, Piotre collapsed to the deck and set up a howling which rivalled his charges in the kennels. Dick Ryan, the first to arrive at the point where Ivan had disappeared, realised immediately the futility of trying to spot the Russian from the deck and so strode to the poop and addressed the Captain.

  ‘Give me a minute. I’ll put men aloft to look out and get a couple on the headsail so we can put about.’

  The Captain nodded his approval and Ryan was turning to muster his crew to the foredeck when Mr Rourke interrupted.

  ‘Belay that, Mr Ryan.’

  The bosun’s eyes narrowed as he stopped and faced the leader.

  ‘Pardon, sir?’

  Mr Rourke met the man’s eyes squarely.

  ‘We won’t be going around. The man’s gone.’

  Horrified, I started to interject, but both men ignored me as though I wasn’t even present. After a long moment, Ryan nodded, though grudgingly.

  ‘If that’s the way things are, sir. The men won’t like it, though.’

  ‘Then the men can take it up with me in private.’

  With that, Rourke marched off the poop and vanished below into his cabin, where he’s remained since.

  Ryan watched him go, then made his way forward to where the men of the deck watch stood waiting in a small knot. The ensuing scene was clearly tense, with much shouting and waving of hands, but over the wind I couldn’t make out more than occasional snatches of conversation.

  On the poop, Captain McLaren crossed to the port rail and stared for some time into the grey, wild, unforgiving seas. For a brief interval, I thought he might be about to countermand Mr Rourke’s decision, but then he turned back to the helmsmen.

  ‘Steady as she goes,’ he commanded and with those four short words, Ivan’s fate was set, once and for all.

  It is now 1430, on the afternoon of the 28th. Ivan went into the sea nineteen hours ago, and barely a word has been spoken on board the Raven by anyone since. Those who managed to get any rest at all last night woke this morning to a restless but considerably calmer sea, and by lunchtime it was clear that the storm had finally abated. The doctor has sedated Piotre, who since the terrible event has remained in a stupor in his hammock, and the rest of the crew are sunk in a combination of exhaustion and numb disbelief.

  For myself, I am not at all certain what to make of the events of yesterday. Clearly, Ivan’s death was a terrible accident and one which could have befallen any one of us, which makes Mr Rourke’s decision not to turn the ship and search for him just that much more terrible in its finality. At the same time, given the precarious nature of our hold on things, perhaps it was the only decision he could have made.

  * * *

  NINE

  A VISIT WITH ROSE. A CREW MEETING. THE LEADERSHIP OF EDWARD ROURKE. A CLANDESTINE ENCOUNTER.

  In autumn the oak trees that line Essex Street, in the Melbourne beachside suburb of St Kilda, transform themselves into a riot of reds and oranges. Standing in their dappled shadow, almost six months after my visit to Weatherly, I stopped and considered the tiny Federation-era worker’s cottage at number seventeen.

  The house, its weatherboard façade painted white, stood separated from the pavement by a beautifully tended rose garden and a picket fence. After some moments, I unlatched the gate, made my way up the central path and knocked on the front door.

  The woman who answered it was Rose Harcourt, née Downes. White-haired and with a spryness that belied her eighty-one years, she’d clearly been waiting and ushered me eagerly into her home with twinkling eyes.

  ‘I was very pleased when you called. Andy said you might, though that was some time ago, now.’

  In truth, it had taken me a while to build the nerve to contact Rose. Although I’d realised the effect that William Downes’ ghost was having on my life, I was unwilling to offer it any more of a toehold in my thoughts than it had already established. Besides, I wasn’t convinced that Rose would be able to tell me anything I hadn’t already learned from Andy or the journal.

  But on the other hand, I also hadn’t been able to throw away the card upon which Andy had scrawled, in scratchy farmer’s handwriting, his mother’s name and telephone number and so finally – inevitably, I guess – I’d picked up the phone one evening and dialled.

  And now, here I was, being shown into a neat back courtyard festooned with hanging baskets full of flowers, where an old man sat dozing in a wheelchair, his knees tucked tightly beneath a chequered blanket.

  ‘Don’t mind my husband. Poor Sam spends half his time asleep, nowadays. Can I get you a cup of tea?’

  From nowhere, it seemed, Rose produced a tray laden with a pot, cups, milk and Tim Tams, and in less than a minute I was settled into a chair between her and her sleeping husband and she was pouring two generous cups of very strong-looking tea.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind Darjeeling. It’s all I drink these days.’

  Finally, the cup and saucer pressed into my hand along with a biscuit that I felt obliged to accept, Rose turned her attention to the matter at hand.

  ‘Andy told me you’re writing a book about William Downes?’

  ‘Not just William, but about returned servicemen from all over …’ I began, but didn’t need to elaborate my lie further, because the old lady smiled broadly and interrupted.

  ‘You know, for years people in my family have been hoping someone would chase up
this mystery. I’d have done it myself, except that life on the farm didn’t leave much time for little projects like this, and now, let’s face it, I’m far too old.’

  ‘What can you tell me about William?’ I asked.

  ‘I never met him myself, of course. He’d vanished long before my parents even thought about marrying. But my mother used to speak of him quite often. They both did, really. You know she was William’s sweetheart before she married his brother?’

  I admitted that I’d worked out as much.

  ‘I don’t think that either she or my father ever really believed William had died, you know? It’s one of the things I remember very clearly. They both used to talk about him as though he were still alive – “When William comes back …” or “Your uncle Will is the best horseman in the district”. As a child, I used to think that this mysterious Uncle Will might walk through the door at any moment. Poor things. It was hard on them.’

  ‘It must have been. What did they think had happened to him?’

  ‘Father always maintained that the government had something to do with his disappearance, but I don’t know about that. Father was never really the same after my grandmother died. He blamed it all on William disappearing, but couldn’t bring himself to actually blame it on William, so I imagine the government was something of a convenient scapegoat.’

  As she spoke, an odd, hard edge crept into Rose’s voice.

  ‘Who do you blame?’ I asked and, for the briefest of seconds, she looked as though she was about to answer but then Sam coughed and spluttered into consciousness and opened his rheumy eyes.

  ‘Who’s this?’ His voice, unlike his wife’s, was weak and phlegmy.

  ‘This is Mr Eaton, Sam. Remember, I told you he was coming.’ She turned to me, apologetically. ‘Poor dear doesn’t know if he’s coming or going a lot of the time. He even forgets who I am, now and then.’

  But today, it seemed, Sam was having a good day. He regarded me balefully for a moment, then demanded, ‘This the bloke wants to know about William Downes?’