Into White Silence

by Anthony Eaton

  16th January, 1922

  Polar Exploration Vessel Raven

  Approx. 66°08’S, 139°24’E

  Yet another day of little progress, only twenty-one miles in the last twenty-four hours, and all of that eastwards. The weather remains terrible, the sky grey and heavy and blending into the ocean, and the strain on the men is terrible.

  This is not the worst of things, though. This afternoon we were faced with the unfortunate task of locking Piotre down below in the brig, where he has remained since. Not a pleasant duty and even now, several hours on, his wailing can be heard echoing up through the entire ship.

  He left us little choice. His attack on Mr Rourke made it remarkably clear that, for the moment at least, the lad is a serious threat to everyone aboard, including himself.

  Things came to a head during the afternoon watch when, having been forced by the ice to retreat yet again to a large area of open water in the lee of an enormous tabular berg, Mr Rourke decided that we should take advantage of our lack of progress and use the afternoon to exercise the dogs. He ordered Captain McLaren to take us alongside an enormous floe – easily one of the largest and thickest we’ve seen to date – and to have the men lower a gangplank so that we might spend some time ‘ashore’.

  Most of us grabbed the opportunity to stretch our legs and, while the sensation of stepping off the ship in the middle of the ocean was somewhat unsettling at first, it was also nice to be able to walk a few hundred yards without having to turn around again. After Mr Ryan and I had determined that the floe was safe, and had set limit markers a couple of hundred yards from the ship, the rest of the company were permitted across the gangplank and most rushed over at the first opportunity.

  At first, the atmosphere was something like a carnival – there was much skylarking and hurling of snow – even the normally taciturn Moreton brothers joined in the festivities. A small group of penguins, attracted perhaps by the amount of noise we were making, popped up from the water and wandered across to watch us, much to everyone’s amusement. It is remarkable, but these little birds show absolutely no fear. They waddled to within three or four feet of the gangplank, so docile, in fact, that Michael Burke was even able to chase one down and pick it up with only minimal effort.

  After perhaps fifteen minutes or so of skylarking, Mr Rourke ordered the dogs brought onto the ice for a run around and it was at that point we realised that Piotre was not among us. Two of the crew found him, as usual, in his hammock. At first he refused to come up, but when Mr Rourke himself went back aboard and roared at him, he eventually hauled himself up the companionway onto the deck.

  By this time, we’d broken out the leads and harnesses for the dogs and, under his reluctant directions, we managed to fit them to the animals. Mr Rourke directed Piotre to take the first team of five off the ship to be harnessed together, and the rest of us to follow him. When he reached the top of the gangplank, however, Piotre froze, and refused to take another step.

  By this point, of course, the dogs had sensed that something was happening, and were becoming increasingly excited, leaping and snapping. As they became more and more frantic to get ashore, the situation aboard the Raven deteriorated and several men began shouting at Piotre to ‘get a bloody move on!’ When Mr Rourke stormed down from the poop to see what was holding things up, and discovered that the problem was Piotre, he started shouting at the Russian lad at the top of his voice.

  All of this, however, only caused Piotre to become even more frightened, and he backed away from the walkway, shaking his head and saying. ‘Nyet! Nyet!’ until he tangled in the leads of his dog team and went crashing to the deck, which raised an enormous laugh from most of the men.

  The laughter was short-lived, though, because Mr Rourke waded into the mass of dogs – which had, of course, promptly leapt all over Piotre and were attempting to lick him to death – then reached down and grabbed the Russian by the collar of his parka, hauling him bodily across the deck and down the gangplank. There he dumped Piotre on the ice and, pointing a finger into the young man’s tear-stained face, shouted that he was ‘… paying you to handle the bloody dogs, and that’s exactly what you’ll do, d’you hear me?’

  By now, of course, all aboard the Raven had gone silent and rushed to the rail, watching the unfolding scene. The dogs were still snapping and leaping, but nobody was paying them any attention at all, so intent were we on the events playing out on the ice.

  At first Rourke leaned over Piotre and pointed right into the boy’s face, causing the Russian to scramble backwards across the ice as though trying to escape. For a moment, I feared he might rise to his feet and flee, throwing himself off the ice and into the open water, and so I asked Mr Ryan to take two crewmen onto the ice and be prepared to chase Piotre down, if necessary.

  Before they could manage this, though, Mr Rourke stopped advancing and Piotre, still sprawled upon the ice, directed at the leader a string of curses and invective which, had it not been in Russian, would no doubt have been impressive. As it was, Mr Rourke remained unmoved. Instead he stood there, legs planted firmly, and when he next spoke, his voice was quiet.

  ‘Speak English, or don’t speak at all. You understand me, son?’ he said.

  For several moments, nobody moved or spoke and then, slowly, Piotre shook his head and tried to climb back to his feet. ‘Nyet!’ he said once more, at which Mr Rourke stepped forward and shoved him hard back down onto the ice.

  ‘English!’ he repeated, his voice still soft.

  At this, Piotre’s eyes narrowed. At some point in the scuffle his woollen cap had fallen off and, with his black hair and dark eyes, he looked remarkably savage.

  ‘NYET!’ he shouted again, and lunged to his feet.

  This time Mr Rourke was not quick enough and before he knew it, Piotre was upon him. From somewhere in the depths of his clothing the Russian produced a knife – an evil looking thing with a narrow, short, straight blade – and, charging at Mr Rourke, he slashed at the leader’s face with startling speed.

  Fortunately, Mr Rourke had stepped slightly backwards and managed to throw up an arm to fend off the blade which, instead of striking its mark, slashed into the padded material of his sleeve, delivering a nasty but comparatively harmless slice across Mr Rourke’s forearm.

  By this time Dick Ryan and his men had reached the bottom of the gangplank and they hurled themselves onto Piotre, quickly disarming him and pinning his hands. Immediately they did this, all the fight went out of the boy and he fell limp in their grasp. Mr Rourke, now clutching his arm, ordered the men to bring Piotre back aboard and secure him below in the brig.

  It took Randolph Lawson several minutes to remove his photographic equipment from that tiny cell, but when he had done so, Piotre was shoved inside, unresisting, and there he was left, in the dark, until we can make a decision as to what course of action to take.

  * * *

  FIFTEEN

  DOCTOR JAMES HOUSEMANN (PART TWO). THE RAVEN IS DRIVEN BACK TO SEA. RANDOLPH LAWSON DEMONSTRATES UNUSUAL ABILITIES. A SECRET IS REVEALED. DOWNES FACES A CONUNDRUM OF SIGNIFICANT PROPORTIONS.

  No doubt, at this point, you’re wondering how the journal made the leap from Dr Housemann’s possession to being stashed under the shelves in the station library. Unlike so much of this tale, it’s not a particularly interesting or mysterious story, and rather than bore you with the doctor’s rather long-winded explanation, I’ll give you the short version:

  Returning to his campsite, James Housemann had determined not to reveal what he’d discovered to anyone until he’d had the opportunity to open the package and learn for himself what was inside. I guess that Housemann suffered the same human frailties as many of us, including pride and the desire for glory. The journal lay concealed in the bottom of his pack for the next three days, until his colleague, in a moment of carelessness, slipped on some particularly slick ice and slid down a small incline, losing his ice-axe and breaking his arm in the process.

  On the mor
ning of 22nd December, the two scientists were evacuated by helicopter back to Casey, where the broken arm could be set and where Michael Spinks would recuperate until he could be repatriated back to Australia on the next available ship.

  In the meantime, no doubt in the privacy of his bunk, James Housemann unwrapped the enigmatic bundle and in it discovered the red, leather-bound journal. I can only speculate as to the effect that reading Downes’ words might have had on the glaciologist. As I said in my foreword to this book, words are funny things. Certainly we can infer that the tale contained in those pages had a profound impact upon the doctor because, like myself, he immediately saw the potential in the story of Lieutenant William Downes.

  Unlike me, though, Housemann wasn’t a writer. He didn’t understand that the pathos, the terror and the utter, utter humanity contained in those pages was already enough of a story in and of itself. He had to know more and that, perhaps, is where our stories differ. It certainly proved to be his undoing, and so I shall allow you to read, in his own words, the final page of his testimony …

  After some persuasion, I have managed to convince the Station Leader to allow me to return to the Bunger Hills. There is a chopper headed that way in a couple of days to drop supplies at the fuel dump there, and I will be going with it, ostensibly to complete the survey work which was interrupted by Mike’s injury.

  My intention, though, is firstly to revisit the cave and see if I can find any further clues there, then to investigate the areas around Taylor and Currituck Islands. I suspect that if anything is left to be found, it will be somewhere in that vicinity.

  In the meantime, I am sealing this account into the journal for safekeeping, and I shall hide the book somewhere here at Casey, to recover on my return from the field. That way, should something untoward happen, there will still be a chance that this story will one day find its way to the wider world.

  On 29th December 1991, Dr Housemann was dropped back at the Bunger Hills. He had with him food and fuel for a fortnight, first aid equipment, a high powered field radio and a strict call-in schedule. As a general rule, it is rare for an expeditioner, regardless of their project or experience, to be permitted into the field on their own. Circumstances, however, made it impossible to locate a suitable field assistant to send with him. During the summer, an Antarctic station is a hive of activity, and spare hands are rare hands. Additionally, the work that he and Dr Spinks had been engaged in needed to be completed that season, and with some urgency, otherwise it would have been of little or no value to anyone. He’d estimated that he could complete his measurements in three or four days and so, reluctantly, he’d been given permission to go.

  The pilot of the helicopter which dropped him off reported that Housemann seemed in exceptionally good spirits and appeared to be looking forward to getting on with his work. After unloading the fuel that was being cached at the Edgeworth David summer base, and topping up his own tanks, the pilot then flew Dr Housemann the nine or ten kilometres further west and dropped him at the foothills on the edge of the Apfel Glacier, very near where he and Dr Spinks had camped. They made arrangements that, barring unforeseen changes, he’d be picked up again in the same spot four days later.

  The helicopter then departed, and Dr James Housemann was never seen again.

  The fate of James Housemann, like so many casualties of the Antarctic, will most likely never be known, however there is much that we can deduce: For the first two days – 30th and 31st December – Dr Housemann kept up his scheduled radio calls. The station logs record that he reported all well and the work coming along without any hitches. On 1st January, however, during his morning sched, he reported threatening skies and believed a blizzard was likely. He declined the offer of an early extraction, instead stating his intention to see it through in his tent. The radio operator recorded that Dr Housemann sounded ‘remarkably unworried’ at the prospect of being blizzed in, perhaps for several days, and told them that he ‘had found a decent place to hole up, if necessary’.

  By evening, satellite images showed an enormous storm raging across most of the western part of Wilkes Land and blanketing a large section of the coastline, including the Bunger Hills. That night James Housemann missed his radio sched but, given the atmospheric conditions, this wasn’t considered surprising.

  The blizzard in question howled across the coast for another three days, during which time no contact could be made with Housemann. By the time the weather had finally abated enough to attempt a flight into the area, the Station Leader at Casey was significantly concerned for the doctor’s wellbeing and immediately dispatched a search and rescue party to locate and retrieve him.

  Upon their arrival at the rendezvous point, however, the party was alarmed to discover no sign of Dr Housemann anywhere. For seven hours they searched the area around the western reaches of the Bunger Hills and along the eastern edge of the Apfel Glacier, by air and on foot, but found not even a trace of a campsite. They then retreated to the apple huts at Edgeworth David Base to refuel the chopper and rest for a few hours before resuming their search.

  After three fruitless days, the search was called off and the rescue party returned to Casey. The disappearance of Doctor James Housemann was written up as a tragic accident and a subsequent coroner’s enquiry found it likely that the doctor had been:

  … caught unaware by the speed and ferocity of the blizzard, had become disoriented in the whiteout and unable to locate his camp or a suitable place of refuge. Given the treacherous nature of the countryside in that vicinity, it is quite possible that he fell into a crevasse in the glacier or simply wandered until collapsing of exhaustion. It is the finding of this investigation that, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, and with his chances of survival being nil under those conditions, the doctor be pronounced dead by accidental misadventure.

  Thus James Housemann, glaciologist, became yet another of Antarctica’s mysteries. His disappearance, as absolute and dramatic as it was, was widely reported in the Australian Press. The West Australian ran an editorial after the conclusion of the coronial enquiry, which observed that:

  Death is no stranger to those who work in Antarctica and tragedies such as this, while not common, are certainly not unheard of. It is rare, though, in this day and age, for somebody to vanish as completely as Dr Housemann. Generally searchers would expect to find some evidence, some human detritus to suggest the passing of a person, but in this case, the seeming vacuum of such evidence poses many questions for the people who run our stations and programs down there.

  Indeed, many questions were asked by those responsible for the safety of Dr Housemann – quiet, unsettling questions, which brought only unsatisfactory, unsettling answers. Why could no sign of his camp be found? How could an experienced field scientist have misread the conditions so badly? Why did he not try and call for help, or at least try to leave some path for searchers to follow?

  Of course the journal, and Housemann’s account of its discovery, throws an entirely new light onto these and other similar queries, but in the absence of any hard evidence, all we can really do is speculate.

  Perhaps, as would seem likely, Dr Housemann returned to the Bunger Hills that December with no intention of completing his research work. Perhaps the reason no trace was found of him in his area of operations is that, when the searchers finally arrived, he was no longer in his area of operations. Given the final lines of the pages he had left hidden in the back of the journal, it seems likely that the doctor had, perhaps, headed out to sea; over the fast ice and across the massive expanse of the Edisto Glacier Tongue, making his slow way towards the distant Highjump Archipelago and the Shackleton Ice shelf beyond it. While such a journey would be treacherous – the sea ice rotten and unstable that deep into the summer – it is not entirely beyond the realm of possibility.

  And what would he have hoped to find out there? What did he think he might discover in that vast, white emptiness?

  On those questions, we shall not s
peculate, for to do so would be an utterly pointless exercise. Instead, let us turn our attention back to the object which caused the doctor to take such drastic steps in the first place …

  * * *

  From the Journal of Lieutenant William Downes

  18th January, 1922

  Polar Exploration Vessel Raven

  Approx. 64°51’S, 135°27’E

  After another fruitless day of bashing our bow against the unyielding pack, Mr Rourke finally took the decision to return to the open sea early this morning and we immediately turned north-west, following increasingly open leads back towards the ice edge, which we crossed late last night, much to the relief of all aboard. Upon emerging from the pack and back out into clear water, Captain McLaren immediately pulled us into the lee of a large iceberg and we spent the remainder of the evening enjoying the relative silence and gentle motion of the ship.

  This morning, we took the decision to turn west and continue along the edge of the pack in the hope of finding a more conducive passage towards the coast. Mr Rourke announced this to the men after breakfast, and shortly afterwards we were underway.

  Luckily, at the moment the wind is right for sailing in this direction and so we have been able to bank the engine room fire for a couple of days and conserve our coal. This is good, as Mr Weymouth reports that the amount of power required to drive the ship through the ice floes has resulted in our supplies becoming perilously low.