Into White Silence

by Anthony Eaton

  TWENTY-TWO

  (IN)SANITY. AN AXE FALLS UPON THE RAVEN. A GRUESOME DISCOVERY. ANOTHER BURIAL. A FIGURE ON THE ICE.

  The first time I read Downes’ account of the night he and Lawson spent on the ice, my first, natural reaction was one of pure horror. Rourke’s decision to put his second officer and expedition photographer out with no food, shelter or preparation, was indeed tantamount to a death sentence.

  But was it the decision of a madman?

  This question continues to bother me, even now, years after my first reading of the journal – was Edward Rourke insane, or just horribly calculating?

  Certainly, had Downes and Lawson perished that evening it would have removed perhaps the two largest threats to Rourke’s authority aboard the Raven. Downes, with his solid, logical approach to every problem and his deft awareness of the nuances of what was occurring around him, probably appeared every bit the leader. And Lawson, who’d embarked on the journey harbouring the opinion that it was most likely a fool’s undertaking and had, in the months since, demonstrated an open willingness to say so at every opportunity, had the potential to pull apart the fabric of Rourke’s power, just by his mere presence aboard.

  Both men were dynamic, both ambitious, both leaders in their various ways, and both had much to live for in the world they’d left behind.

  Whereas what did Edward Rourke have to return to? Nothing.

  By the time he gave Captain McLaren the order to put to sea, Edward Rourke had pared his entire life back to one single, driving motivation – his need to conquer the southern continent, no matter the cost. He was a man who, by that point in his life, loved nobody, called nowhere home, and was possessed of no ambition other than that which had obsessed him while living in England all those many years earlier. Fuelled by his rejections – first by Shackleton, then Scott, then finally, by the Royal Geographic Society – Rourke had eventually, inevitably, turned his back on them all, on what he saw as their dated ways of doing things, on their reliance on others for power, and had looked only to himself to achieve his ends.

  And no doubt, as the darkness of the polar winter drew its sable cloak around them, Edward Rourke saw in Downes and Lawson the two men aboard whose vision and outlook were not only at odds with his own, but who also had the potential to prevail, thwarting him in the process.

  And so he acted.

  But, the question remains, was it the act of a madman?

  Certainly insanity has proven itself an oft-used and occasionally successful defence in matters of attempted murder, and without a doubt polar winters have been known to drive men to strange and unusual acts.

  During the winter of 1898, while the Belgica remained beset in the ice, one English-speaking crewman misunderstood the French expression ‘quelque chose’ meaning ‘something’. Convinced that the words meant ‘kill’, he became increasingly paranoid and began to attack any of his French or Belgian crewmates who used them in his presence.

  On the same ship, during the same winter, another man climbed down onto the ice and departed, declaring himself done with the entire voyage and stating his intention to walk across the ice back home to Belgium.

  And so it must remain a possibility that, when he sentenced Downes and Lawson to their night of icy purgatory, Edward Rourke was already well down the slide into the paranoid delusions of a madman.

  But was he the only one?

  I have never been certain what to make of Downes’ description of the Ice Man, as he recounts his visions during that night. Certainly conditions of extreme cold have been known to have strangely hallucinatory effects upon the human mind, and Downes’ account of his ‘most disjointed’ recollections of that evening would appear to fit nicely with the classic symptoms of advanced hypothermia. I suspect that, once back in the warm and relatively safe confines of the Raven, Downes himself was uncertain what to make of his memories, and so he simply recounts them, as above, and then makes no further effort to explain, nor to analyse them. I wonder if Downes too was beginning to question his own sanity at this point?

  And finally, what to make of the others – the rest of the men who allowed Rourke’s travesty of a ‘trial’ to take place, without apparent objection? Certainly Dalby and Holdsworthy eventually distinguished themselves by their ‘courage’, but not until there was at least a possibility that it would be far too late, and their defiance of Rourke would make little difference.

  All in all, a most puzzling set of questions.

  Luckily some, if not all, of the answers are shortly to follow …

  * * *

  From the Journal of Lieutenant William Downes

  6th May, 1922

  Polar Exploration Vessel Raven

  Position Unknown

  Feeling much improved today and able to get properly up and about again. My hands still ache terribly, and I have no feeling whatsoever in my fingertips, which is an unpleasant sensation, but the Doctor is now quietly hopeful that my fingers might still be saved.

  Today, though, a terrible decision had to be made. Since the loss of our fuel supplies, we have been burning all manner of things for warmth – all of the dog kennels have been gradually pulled apart and consigned to the flames, our remaining longboat has met a similar fate and even one of the wooden benches that the Moretons put together for the temporary galley has been reclaimed and converted to firewood. These sources are all but exhausted now and, with the failure of the ‘hunting parties’ to discover and recover even the smallest amount of our stolen supplies, the decision was taken to tear down one of the masts. Mr Ryan spent the majority of the day directing the removal of the gaff and boom from the mizzen and the securing of temporary shrouds and backstays to the foremast, so that we will still have some hope of propulsion once the summer comes.

  It is a grim day, though, and without our full suite of sails, nor any coal remaining to fuel the engine, our chances of reaching safety, even should we be fortunate enough to escape from the ice, are rapidly approaching nil. While I have not yet reached the point where I am willing to surrender and make my peace with the Almighty, for the first time I can foresee that the moment might not be too far off …

  7th May, 1922

  … and by the beginning of the forenoon watch most of the sidestays and rigging had been cleared and we began the process of bringing down the mast itself.

  It is a longstanding nautical tradition that in these situations the Captain of the vessel be the one to strike the first blow upon the mast. This afternoon, though, when Dick Ryan handed the axe to Captain McLaren, he stared at it for several seconds and then swung it hard – burying it not in the mast, but in the deck at Mr Rourke’s feet. This he accomplished so unexpectedly and with such speed and force that Rourke did not even have time to leap back, but simply stood, dumb and staring at the quivering handle.

  The Captain, for his part, looked Mr Rourke in the eye and told him, ‘This is your doing, and your ship, and I’ll have no part of it from now on. The responsibility is yours, Rourke.’

  With those words, the Captain walked from the deck down onto the ice and headed north-east until he reached one of the hummocks that mark the fifty yard perimeter. There he sat himself down and spent the remainder of the afternoon, watching.

  Mr Rourke, in the meantime, recovered his wits quickly enough and seized the axe from the deck, muttering to all present that he was quite prepared to do whatever was necessary, then swung the axe with all the strength he could muster. It struck the frozen wood at an oblique angle and rebounded awkwardly, slipping from his grasp in the process and very nearly striking Peter Grace, who was standing nearby.

  Rourke swore loudly, ordered Ryan to organise work parties to continue chopping in shifts ‘until the bloody thing comes down!’ and then vanished below into his cabin. We did not see him again for the remainder of the afternoon …

  8th May, 1922

  Captain McLaren did not return to the ship last night and there was no sign of him anywhere this morning. An invest
igation of the ice around the hummock where he was last seen revealed only a confusion of footprints, both dogs and human, and nothing easily trackable. Alex, Greg and I made an attempt to follow them for perhaps a mile or so, but we soon ran into deep, fresh snow which covered the traces completely. Mr Rourke would not spare any other men from the work bringing down the mast and so our desultory search was, it would appear, the only effort that will be made to locate the Captain …

  10th May, 1922

  By nightfall yesterday afternoon, with the mast still only half through, the winds and snow had picked up to the extent that we were forced to abandon our efforts to drop it and retreat into the comparative safety of the ’tween deck. For warmth, we combed through the supplies in the hold and liberated some of our stores from their pine crates, which burn quickly and without giving out a great deal of heat, but which are nevertheless better than the alternative.

  Food is becoming a serious problem; while we have below our feet ample supplies to keep us sustained, most are now frozen solid, and without sufficient heat to thaw them in any quantity our meals have become meagre shadows of their former selves. It is frustrating in the extreme …

  11th May, 1922

  In the small hours of the night, while the blizzard was raging in full force, we were woken by a terrible crashing and grinding, which set the entire ship shuddering violently along the length of her keel.

  My first thought was that the ice had closed in upon us again and that this time we were to be crushed for certain. I rolled from my bunk, almost flooring Alex in the process as he attempted to struggle from his. In the wardroom and ’tween deck we could hear much thumping and cursing as men collided with one another in the dark, until finally somebody found and lit a couple of lanterns and we were able to see our way around.

  In the ’tween deck, we discovered the galley-stove out and a blast of icy air and snow being driven through it from outside. A couple of still-smouldering embers had been hurled into the midst of the men’s hammocks and these were quickly stamped out by those nearest. Once some order was restored, we took stock of the situation. The ship was still creaking terribly and from outside we could hear a repetitive banging, as though somebody was pounding upon the hull with a large hammer. The chartroom companionway was blocked from outside and we were forced to duck forward through the cramped confines of the forepeak stores and out onto deck via the companionway in the deckhouse.

  We stepped into a night thick with driven snow and, as each man emerged onto the deck, we were forced to our hands and knees and had to crawl along in order to make our way safely aft. There, the source of the commotion was immediately apparent – the mizzen had finally given way under the tremendous pressure of the wind, and had crashed awkwardly off the stern of the ship.

  In the process, though, it had twisted and caught itself in one of the support stays for the funnel, which had immediately folded up and collapsed on top of the aft companionway, tearing an enormous hole in the deck through which wind and snow were now being driven deep into the bowels of the ship. The wire stay was thrashing violently in the wind and banging hard upon the hull in the process.

  After a hurried and shouted conference between Mr Rourke, Mr Ryan and myself, a crew was detailed to immediately board up the hole in the deck, another to cut the remaining stays holding the funnel across the ship, and I was assigned the dangerous task of circling the ship, inspecting the hull for damage and assessing the situation of the fallen mast.

  Doctor Dalby, upon hearing this, objected that I was still in no condition for such a duty, but I overruled him before Mr Rourke had a chance to do so and said that I was more than up to the task. At that, he stated his intention to accompany me, and Greg Shannon-Stacey also volunteered.

  I will not linger on the details, suffice to say that the moment we stepped onto the gangplank we were assaulted by a wind the like of which I have never experienced before, nor hope to ever again. It tore at our clothes with the fury of a living thing, and threatened to hurl us bodily across the ice. The only way to make any progress was by doubling over and driving our ice axes into the ice ahead of us to provide some amount of leverage by which we could pull ourselves forward.

  Our single circuit of the ship took us the better part of an hour, all of it spent moving just a couple of tortuous feet forward, then looking up for only as long as it took to assess that particular section of the hull before dropping back to our hands and knees and moving again.

  At the stern, we found the mast, hurled from the ship like an enormous javelin, its base ending up several yards clear of the hull and badly splintered where the frozen wood had been torn apart by the wind. Most of it was invisible in the screaming darkness of the blizzard, and to attempt to check along its entire length would have been suicide.

  Having ascertained the integrity of the hull, we made our way back towards the gangplank. We were not halfway there when a warning shout, almost unheard against the noise of the storm, sounded from the deck. A moment later our ears filled with a loud screeching, like nails being dragged across tin, and an enormous black shape hurtled out of the darkness, flying directly over us before vanishing into the night with a series of sickening crashes. Had we not already been pressed low to the ice, the freed funnel would no doubt have taken our heads off.

  Finally we dragged ourselves back aboard and returned gratefully to the comparative warmth of the deckhouse …

  12th May, 1922

  First light this morning saw all hands roused and detailed to duties. The blizzard has continued unabated, however our fuel crisis, compounded by the amount of heat that dissipated from our living quarters when the funnel came down, has now become so critical that we have no other choice but to endure the conditions outside if we are to have any hope of survival.

  I volunteered to lead the first party out to the fallen mast and there to commence the recovery of as much wood as possible. We organised ourselves into groups of six, each equipped from the carpenter’s stores with two axes and a double-handled saw, leaving two men free to carry wood to the ship. It was decided that two teams at a time would go out to the mast, working for thirty minutes and rotating tasks every five. The remaining two teams would stay aboard and rest in preparation for their own shift.

  Conditions on the ice were as terrible as in the middle of the night, and attempting to wield the heavy axes and saws in the gale was next to impossible, but I’m proud to say that every single man did his bit and even when Lawrence Moreton took a nasty blow from a poorly swung axe, which required several stitches in his forearm, he still found it in him to return to the mast with his team for their next shift.

  Despite the fact that it was daytime, the blizzard has reduced the few scant hours of sunlight to nothing more than a twilit soup, and for the most part we worked as much by feel as by sight. The wood is iron-hard and the saw became blunt within minutes of our starting work, but we persisted through to the early afternoon, by which time we had a gratifying pile of very roughly cut timber thawing and drying out in the ’tween deck. Tonight, for the first time in many weeks, we have a roaring fire burning in the stove and it is possible to sit in the wardroom without wearing our full outside rig, which is lifting everybody’s spirits remarkably.

  13th May, 1922

  A bleak discovery today. The blizzard finally ended mid-morning and as the snow cleared we were able to take our first look at the damage. The funnel is nowhere to be seen and would appear to have been blown off the face of the earth. Without that or her mizzenmast our poor ship which, despite all her faults, has taken such a battering on our behalves, now appears sadly bereft. Against the vastness of the ice she now seems very, very vulnerable. The foremast, despite Mr Ryan’s efforts to rig temporary supports, now leans at a noticeable angle and also looks very much in danger of falling. If it does so, it will most certainly come down upon the length of the deck, and who knows what damage that will do?

  Having assessed the overall situation, the first two work
parties returned to the mizzen to continue cutting it into manageable lengths. Work had barely commenced, however, when a shout from Doug King brought everybody running.

  In the course of its fall, the mizzen had disturbed several of the snowdrifts which have, almost since the moment we became beset, been piling up on the windward side of the hull and forming a long tail astern in the slightly more sheltered lee of the ship. As we approached the point where Doug was standing, roughly halfway along the mast, we were greeted by the grisly sight of a human arm poking out of one of the disturbed drifts.

  For several seconds nobody spoke and then there was a rush to fetch from the Raven some shovels and a sledge. Once these were brought out, we began the awful process of exhuming from the snow whichever of our poor crewmates had been so inadvertently uncovered.

  The actual business of digging was done by Doug and Greg and the rest of us stood and watched in shocked silence. Despite having seen more dead bodies than I care to count, I will admit that I still had to suppress a tremor of horror as, slowly, the body of Piotre Dimitri, twisted into frozen rigor mortis, emerged before my eyes from the cold embrace of the snow.

  The boy looked oddly peaceful – his eyes closed and his lips slightly parted. A long, pale gash, drained of all colour now, ran from above his right eye up into his hair, but otherwise his face seemed unblemished.

  Nobody spoke as, carefully, we lifted his body onto the sledge and returned with it to the ship, where Doctor Dalby ordered it placed in the deckhouse so he could examine it properly.

  Mr Rourke at first objected to this, stating that there was nothing to be done about it and so the body should be properly buried with all haste, but the Doctor stuck to his guns and Mr Rourke eventually acquiesced.