Into White Silence

by Anthony Eaton

  In the darkness, it seemed to take much longer than usual to reach the perimeter markers and when we did so there was no sign anywhere of Greg, nor of the food bag. We cast about in the darkness for a few minutes, shouting at the top of our voices, but to no avail. At 0355 we returned to the Raven and roused all hands for a search, telling Rourke that Greg had simply stepped down onto the ice to relieve himself.

  Dawn came at around 1220 and, in the scant couple of hours of daylight allowed us, we found a mess of scuffled snow beside one perimeter marker and a confused trail heading south, which we followed for as long as daylight allowed, but by 1420 it was already close to darkness again and we beat a hasty retreat to the ship.

  For some time this afternoon I stood on deck, watching in case Greg should decide to return, but by 1600 I was miserably cold and it seemed clear that my vigil was serving no useful purpose and so I retreated to the warmth of the wardroom, where most of the others were keeping themselves occupied. At one end of the table, Alex was sitting alone, with Greg’s almost-finished skua perched upon the table before him and a bleak expression on his face. To distract him, I suggested a game of chess but he declined this offer immediately. When he spoke his voice was flat and he sat with a distinct drooping aspect to his shoulders, which doesn’t bode well for his general state of mind.

  For a few minutes, I attempted to engage him in conversation, discussing various inconsequentialities, but he refused to be drawn until, just as I was about to give up and retire to my bunk for a spell, he finally spoke:

  ‘We’re all pawns now, Will. You understand that, don’t you? Every last one of us.’

  I wasn’t certain what to reply, other than to assure him that it was still my opinion that, if we maintained a positive outlook, most of us might still come through this trial. Alex didn’t respond, and simply returned to his contemplation of the stuffed bird on the table …

  31st May, 1922

  Another disappearance this afternoon. William Moreton went outside for a breath of air at around 1520 and, when he hadn’t returned by 1600, his brother raised the alarm and we all turned out, yet again, into the darkness, armed with only a few storm lanterns. The afternoon was bleak, with unsteady gusts from the north-east whipping up flurries of loose snow into vague spectres. In recent days there has been increased pressure in the pack again and the floe around our ship, which was relatively smooth, has now become fractured and broken in appearance, with tiny pressure ridges rising up all over the place, making the ice underfoot treacherous and unstable. Additionally, the Raven herself has shifted; squeezed up about a foot-and-a-half out of the ice and tilting five or six degrees to port – only the props which we set into place all those weeks ago have saved her from going over far more steeply.

  After an hour of searching, with no result, George Dalby fell through into a new, deep lead just inside the perimeter, which had been covered with driven snow. He was completely immersed and only quick action by Dick Ryan and Doug King, who were standing just a couple of feet away, managed to save him. Even so, he was in the water for several minutes and by the time they dragged him back aboard he was not in a good way; his face and eyes were badly frostbitten during the rush across the ice, and his whole body deathly cold. Mercifully, he’d fallen into a stupor soon after being hauled from the water and was therefore not fully aware of the pain.

  Doug King also sustained terrible frostbite, having immersed his hands and arms up above the elbow and then stripped off his gloves once Dalby was removed from the water so that he might be able to assess the Doctor’s pulse rate.

  We have set the Doctor up in a cot beside the fire and he has regained consciousness and even spoken on several occasions, but these periods have been brief and his words garbled and confused.

  At the moment he is in a deep slumber, and I am sitting beside him while I write this. When I touch his forehead, it is alarmingly clammy with sweat, however we don’t dare unwrap him, nor move him away from the stove, in case his fever breaks suddenly and he freezes again. A few moments ago he began muttering, mentioning the name ‘Sarah’ several times before falling back into his stupor.

  Lawrence Moreton is trying with little success to rouse enough men to continue the search for his brother, but nobody is willing to venture out onto that tortured ice again today, so I fear he is wasting his time.

  It is difficult to fathom that tomorrow marks only the beginning of winter. Already it feels like we have been trapped down here forever, and I long to feel proper sunlight on my face again. Increasingly I find my thoughts turning to the weeks ahead, and when I do I am filled with nothing but sick dread, and so have to consciously force myself to live only in the moment – one day at a time, and to dwell on the problems of the here and now, of which we have plenty.

  Addendum to previous entry:

  It is now 2230 hours, and I am still maintaining my vigil beside the Doctor’s cot – no change there, I’m afraid. A few moments ago, Lawrence Moreton crept up the companionway to the deck. When I challenged him, he produced one of the cook’s long knives from his anorak and announced that he was going to search for his brother. I followed him up, entreating him to wait until the morning when I and others would join in, but he would not be convinced. Whenever I drew too near he brandished the knife at me in such a way as to make it very clear that he intended to use it, if necessary.

  Pete Grace and Joe Smith were on watch on deck, and both of them were similarly threatened for several seconds. They also attempted to persuade Moreton to stay aboard but their pleas fell on deaf ears. Upon reaching the starboard midships rail, Moreton leaped over it onto the ice and moments later was swallowed up by the darkness.

  Mr Rourke has declared a search too risky tonight and so we will see what we can do in the morning. I doubt we will meet with any success.

  * * *

  TWENTY-FOUR

  WINTER.

  Some dates from the almanac, for those of you who keep track of these things: In 1922, the winter solstice – midwinter’s day – fell on 22nd June. This means that those men still aboard the Raven would have seen their final sunset at around midday on the 14th June, and then lived in complete darkness until the morning of the 30th June.

  By this point, that tiny black ship had drifted to somewhere in the vicinity of 67°30’S, 98°E, roughly one hundred kilometres offshore from the Bunger Hills area and very near the edge of the Shackleton Ice Shelf. In the months since becoming trapped, the Raven, and all aboard it, had travelled approximately fourteen hundred kilometres west, skirting along the vast edge of Antarctica, the coast remaining tantalisingly hidden, always somewhere over the southern horizon – ever changing and utterly unattainable.

  From the start of June, the journal becomes harrowing. After the death of Doctor Dalby in his sleep on 2nd June, Downes abandons all pretence at hope and, while he continues to document events aboard the Raven in the same calm, almost journalistic manner, his writing becomes a litany of stoic suffering.

  But before we return, for the final time, to the deck of that ice-bound ship, I would like, if you will indulge me for just a little longer, to conclude my own role in this tale.

  On my final full day in Antarctica I stood upon the fast sea ice in Brown’s Bay, about a kilometre downhill from Casey, observing while divers from the Antarctic Division’s Human Impacts program lowered themselves through a metre-wide hole, drilled into the surface of the sea, to measure waste runoff levels from a disused rubbish tip nearby. A gentle breeze was drifting down from the moraine, high above us to the south-east, and a smattering of snow was falling.

  Just a hundred metres or so away from where the divers were working, a giant Weddell seal lay prone beside the ice edge and, beside it, a few curious Adelie penguins had torpedoed themselves from the bay and were, like myself, observing the activities of the dive team with detached interest.

  Wandering a little away from the group, as far as was permitted by the safety rules, I stood alone on the ice and imagin
ed the liquid world below my feet; to stand upon the frozen surface of the ocean is an unsettling experience, even just a few hundred metres out from dry land. I cannot, for the life of me, fathom what it must have been like for Downes and his companions, who lived, and walked, and played, and worked, and eventually died so far from land, amidst the frozen seascape atop the waters of the deep ocean.

  The reality that I was standing not on ice-covered land but on top of an ice-bound bay was driven home to me just a few moments later when, on the far side of the bay, a section of ice-cliff collapsed into the water, heralded by a muted rumble and a distant splash. The collapse set in motion a series of waves, which rippled out, breaking against the ice-edge. A couple of moments later the ice below my feet shifted slightly, creaking into a motion so gentle that it might have been imagined, for just a second or two as the wave passed below. The sensation sent a shiver through me and set my fingertips, warm inside their leather gloves, tingling with adrenaline.

  That evening, in the Red Shed, we celebrated; round trippers, summer staff, incoming and outgoing winterers alike. We celebrated the end of a safe year for the men and women who’d made Casey their home for the previous fourteen months, and the beginning of one for those who’d arrived with me aboard the Aurora to take over the running of the station. We celebrated the camaraderie and community that comes to everybody who puts themselves in the way of Antarctica, and allows themselves to be drawn into it.

  And, alone in the midst of the festivities, I celebrated quietly and privately the tale I’d discovered within the leather-bound pages of Downes’ journal, which was at that moment tucked away safely in my backpack, ready at long last to begin its journey back to Australia.

  The following afternoon, I took a last walk through the station, bade farewell to those colleagues with whom I’d travelled down and who would be remaining behind, and then I signed myself ‘off station’ on the fireboard beside the main door. The walk down to the wharf took about fifteen minutes, the boat was already waiting, and just a few moments later I climbed up the ladder back into the warm bulk of the Aurora.

  Alone in my cabin I looked out my porthole. On the hills above Newcombe Bay the enormous sheds of Casey seemed nothing more than a fragile straggle of thrown-together structures, horribly temporary and insignificant against the imperious, enduring landscape of the continent, which rose into the distance behind it.

  For some time I sat there, silently contemplating the magnificence of the place and trying to find some frame of reference for my feelings, but with only mixed success – words cannot truly capture the starkness, the incredible beauty and the terrible isolation of the place.

  It is worth remembering, though, that Antarctica is, in many ways, the parent of us all; that, millennia ago, it was the great continent of Gondwanaland which broke apart and gave birth to Australia, the Americas, Asia – a long, violent and shuddering labour which took thousands upon thousands of years, and left its mark indelibly upon the entire planet.

  And while her offspring continents moved north towards the equator and nurtured life of all varieties, the parent – Antarctica – now spent and wasted and a mere shadow of her former self, shrouded herself in ice and fogs and storms and there she remained for the ages; driving the world’s weather, feeding the food chain, and watching, always watching. It was many, many centuries before humans proved themselves brave enough – or foolhardy enough – to venture south, into that cold bosom, and when they did so it was usually for exploitative purposes – for whales, for glory, for conquest. And in response Antarctica has, over the years, extracted some terrible wages for their trespass.

  As I sat, lost in such melancholy contemplation, the ship’s horn sounded, a long and mournful farewell which echoed off the hills behind Casey, and through the deserted icescape of Wilkes, and over the rocky hump of nearby Shirley Island. Then we turned our bows northwards, into the embrace of the waiting icepack, and Casey Station slipped from my view for the last time.

  On my desk, the journal of William Downes lay where I’d placed it and that evening, cocooned in the warmth of my bunk, with the reassuring rumble of the engines below and the echoing protest of ice pushed asunder by our passage, I read again through the final weeks of Downes’ record, which I present to you now.

  * * *

  From the Journal of Lieutenant William Downes

  2nd June, 1922

  Polar Exploration Vessel Raven

  Position Unknown

  Doctor Dalby slipped away during the early hours of this morning, and this afternoon we buried him out on the ice beside the others. As we lowered his shrouded body into the hole, nobody spoke. I think we all saw ourselves in that icy pit.

  Rourke has isolated himself almost completely from the rest of us, now. He emerges from his cabin only when there is a decision to be made, or when we find ourselves facing some new crisis. Otherwise he maintains a silent isolation. He attended the interment of the Doctor this afternoon, but returned to his cabin immediately it was complete, locking the door behind him.

  After we had finished burying the Doctor, I walked with George Smythe-Davis, taking in several slow laps of the ship. The cold has played merry hell with his wound and he now moves like a man of eighty or ninety. Neither of us was quite ready yet to face the bleak and rank interior of our beleaguered ship again, so we decided to remain out upon the ice for the last few minutes of ‘daylight’, such as it is.

  Most of the first lap we spent in our own thoughts, silently contemplating what is, now, a very grim outlook for us. Soon after we began our second circuit George suddenly stopped and placed a hand on my arm,

  ‘I’m terribly sorry to have dragged you into this fiasco, William.’

  I replied that he should not take such a responsibility upon himself and that I knew full well the risks when I agreed to join the voyage, but the Captain was not to be so easily mollified and shook his head sadly as we continued walking,

  ‘It’s nice of you to say so, but the fact remains that you and all the others are in this situation because Edward’s made a complete cock-up of things and I, the only one who might have been able to do something about it, didn’t act.’

  By this time, it was obvious that the Captain needed to voice these thoughts and so I held my tongue and allowed him to continue without interruption.

  ‘He’s a strange man, Edward. One of the strangest I’ve ever met. Lost his parents far too young, you know, and inherited far too much money as a result. For as long as I’ve known him he’s been plagued by nightmares and unable to settle to any one direction for any period of time. A lonely, frustrated man, Will. And yet, for all that, I had always thought him to be genuine.’ At this, the Captain sighed, deeply, then added, ‘But then, I suspect one never truly knows another person, no matter how much one thinks one might.’

  After this, we continued in silence until we reached the gangplank and then the Captain visibly shivered and gestured towards the ship.

  ‘Let’s get back into the warm, Will. We might as well be comfortable for as long as we can.’

  3rd June, 1922

  A shout from the ice this afternoon alerted us to the fact that something was up, and we all rushed down the gangplank to discover that Doctor Dalby’s grave was uncovered and quite empty. Scuffled trails led away to the south, but the weather is turning bad again and nobody was keen to follow them into the darkness. Several men have suggested that the culprits must be the dogs, and while I have voiced my support for this possibility – the alternative being too ghastly to contemplate – the fact is that we have not heard any howling for some days now and I suspect that our animals are now long gone, or dead, and our grave robber is a far more human creature …

  5th June, 1922

  Currently battened down in the middle of the worst blizzard we’ve experienced to date. The wind is howling banshee-fashion through the rigging, and it is impossible to remain outside for even a few seconds.

  Yesterday morning, the wind t
ore free the boards which had been nailed across the funnel opening and, ever since, the temperature inside the ship has been dropping steadily, despite our best efforts to combat it. The large stove was promptly extinguished and the small one in the wardroom is proving inadequate to our needs. Condensation on the inside of the hull has frozen, and the ’tween deck now resembles something more like an ice cave than the inside of a ship.

  Breakfast this morning was a meal of raw, half-frozen seal meat and ship’s biscuit which we thawed as best we could over the wardroom stove. Everything else is solidly frozen, and until we can seal up the funnel hole again and relight the large stove, there is little prospect of improving our situation.

  Captain Smythe-Davis was unable to rise from his bed this morning and has, in the last twenty-four hours, developed an awful cough; a fluid hacking about which I am extremely concerned.

  We are all terribly thirsty, too – for several hours this afternoon we attempted to melt snow in the wardroom, but without the large stove, the yield is pitifully small, and we have had to ration ourselves to just a half-cup per man.

  With luck, this storm will blow over quickly and we can restore our quarters to some semblance of functionality.

  6th June, 1922

  Still trapped by the blizzard. Most of us were awake all night, unable to sleep at all. Sometime in the middle of the night – it is impossible to say when precisely, as the chartroom chronometer has frozen and no longer functions – the ship commenced shaking terribly and we were all alarmed by several noisy crashes on the deck above our heads. Dick Ryan attempted to poke his head out from the chartroom companionway to locate the cause, but conditions were so terrible that he was forced back inside before seeing anything. Hopefully it was only one of the yardarms coming down, and not the entire foremast.