The Voyage of the Unquiet Ice

by Andrew McGahan

  The sun, if it was seen at all through the overcast, climbed lower in the southern sky each day, and the cold deepened, both of the air and of the sea. Already, the water was so chill that a man could not hope to survive long should he fall in; the exercises for men overboard were thus carried out with an urgency that was entirely real. When Dow took his turn at jumping from the Chloe 4 he was astonished at how the shock stole his breath away, and at how quickly the water sapped the strength from his limbs. He had to be hauled back on board like a giant infant. Afterwards, only the heat of the forge in the smithy seemed to truly warm him through again.

  But despite the deepening cold and the darkening days and the regular insult of Diego’s victories, these were in fact the most satisfying times Dow had yet known at sea. Partly it was because he finally had a purpose on board, after so many weeks of idleness, and partly it was the simple pleasure he found in sailing a small swift craft in open waters, no matter how clumsy its commander. But mostly it was the ocean itself, and the sheer majesty and desolation that was revealed in it, the further north the Chloe sailed.

  It was a sea that now seemed incapable of calmness, where the sky was never blue and where the wind was never less than a gale; an ocean in which even a travelled ship like the Chloe was a stranger. It was frightening, such vastness and hostility, but it was beautiful too, and sometimes Dow would stand for hours on the main deck, shivering in his timberman’s jacket, soaked by spray or by rain, but unable to look away.

  This was what he had left his home to behold …

  It was also during the trials that Dow saw his first sea monster.

  The encounter took place on the last afternoon of the exercises. Fidel had set the cutters a course roaming far out eastwards from the Chloe – almost beyond sight – before turning back. And it was at that turning point, with the Chloe 4 already well behind the other three craft, the race lost yet again, that Alfons suddenly pointed further to the east, and shouted, ‘Lieutenant – look!’

  A mile or so off, appearing and then disappearing as the grey waves rose and fell, something huge rolled low in the water.

  Samson peered uncertainly. ‘Is it a whale?’

  The poet nodded. ‘A big one – but dead, maybe.’ The old sailor was squinting hard. ‘At least, there’s something wrong with it …’ Dow watched the shape intently. It was long and black, streaked with white discolorations, and big enough that surf broke across it, but due to the distance and the intervening waves, it was impossible to tell more. Without thinking he said, ‘We have to get closer!’

  Samson gave an annoyed glance – but it was clear that his own curiosity was roused. He looked west to the far-off Chloe, and to the other cutters already well advanced on their homeward leg. ‘I suppose it hardly matters now. And the captain would want us to investigate.’

  They came about and made for the object. Its true size became ever more apparent, the closer they approached. Dow caught glimpses of immense flippers, and a mighty tail – but they were lifeless, merely flopping back and forth as the thing rolled sluggishly in the swell.

  ‘It’s a whale sure enough,’ said Alfons. ‘An old bull, by the look. Must be a hundred and fifty feet long. I reckon he’s come up here to die – no other reason he’d be so far north at this time of year.’

  Dow stared on. So this was a whale – one of the great beasts that men hunted for oil, in the faraway southern seas around the Twin Isles. To think, that such a mighty creature could be caught and killed by mere men! But he could see so little; they must get closer still.

  But suddenly Alfons was yelling, his voice high with terror. ‘Turn back! Turn back! Excellency, look! Ropes! White ropes!’

  The effect was instantaneous; panic gripped the boat, the men rearing back convulsively in their seats, as if to get as far as they could from the whale in front of them. ‘Come about!’ Samson was shrieking at Dow, the fear naked in his voice. ‘Come about, you fool!’

  Dow did as he was told, but he didn’t understand. White ropes? What did that mean? What was wrong with everyone?

  ‘Does anyone see any?’ Samson asked feverishly. ‘Keep watch now! Knives at the ready, and sing out at a sighting.’

  The men were all staring over the side, their faces alert with trepidation. Dow looked too, but saw only empty water. He turned to stare back at the whale. And now, finally, he discerned a disturbing thing. What he’d thought were white markings on the whale’s skin were in fact long, rope-like tendrils. There were dozens of them draped across the carcass, stuck fast seemingly, and each of them leading down to vanish in the sea.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked, whispering almost, for such was the tension in the boat. ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘There is a Rope Fish below us,’ uttered Samson.

  The name meant nothing to Dow, but there was no mistaking the dread in Samson’s tone, or in the other men’s eyes. They sailed on in silence, the whale falling further behind. Dow could feel the fear lessening slightly around him, and finally Alfons looked up from the water long enough to note Dow’s puzzlement.

  ‘You do not know of this thing?’ the poet enquired. He gave a shuddering breath. ‘Then do not be misled by its harmless sounding name. There are few things more vile and deadly in all the ocean.’

  Dow glanced back to the whale, scarcely visible now. ‘All those ropes – they’re part of the one creature?’

  ‘Aye – although what the whole creature looks like, no one can say for certain; at best, men have glimpsed a great shapeless bulk in the depths, far below, like some monstrous jellyfish grown beyond all reason, vaster than any ship. That, and tentacles; a Rope Fish has hundreds or even thousands of them, reaching up. They’re thin, but supple and grasping, and stronger than any ship’s cable. They drift upon the ocean’s surface like seaweed, but woe be to any craft or beast that strays into their clutches.’ The old sailor addressed his fellows, ‘Look sharp now. Any hint of white, yell out!’

  ‘It will drag us down?’ Dow asked.

  It was Samson who answered. ‘Nay – the Rope Fish does not kill so quickly or so mercifully. Indeed, some scholars say that it does not mean to kill at all, that it merely takes hold of its victims for buoyancy’s sake, so that it may drift all the easier in the depths. It’s likely that the whale was already dead, or dying, before the Rope Fish took hold of it – for a dead whale floats much as does a ship. But by intent or not, the Fish’s embrace is lethal. For once one tentacle has taken hold, hundreds will follow, and they cannot be pried loose. They will reach up over the side and smother a ship, preventing it from setting sail and thus holding it fast upon the ocean.’

  ‘Nor can the crew escape,’ resumed Alfons, ‘for the ropes will capture any boat that tries to launch, and any sailor that leaps from the rail. And so a ship will drift, helpless, for many days, and not even if another ship is nearby can it come to their aid, for the ropes would clutch it as well. Men have been witnessed to go mad and raving in such straits. Others have decided that it is best to end their suffering by sinking their own vessel. But none have ever escaped. In the finish, the embrace of the Fish tightens so much that a ship will crack open, and so finally descend to the depths – but even that relief is a long time coming for the doomed crew. It is a slow, horrid way to die.’

  The whale was lost in the waves now, and the men were daring to breathe again – although they still kept watch upon the waters.

  ‘We can only be grateful,’ Alfons concluded, wiping the cold sweat from his brow, ‘that Rope Fish are rarely encountered. This is but the second I’ve beheld in all my fifty years at sea.’

  ‘And well sighted it was,’ nodded Samson. ‘You have sharp eyes yet, Alfons.’ Then to Dow he instructed, ‘Make your own course home, and fast. We seem to be clear of the thing for now, but the captain will want to be warned. The Chloe must not linger in the vicinity.’

  So ended their final exercise. After eight days of drilling, Fidel appeared satisfied that the four crews were now ready
for their duties in the Ice.

  But in fact there was to be one more launch of the cutters before the arctic regions were reached; it took place five days after the encounter with the dead whale, and fifteen days out from Great Island. The ship was roused at daybreak – which came late now, at well past nine bells, so far north were they – by a cry from the crow’s nest, the last cry Dow had expected to hear, out in the empty expanse of the northern ocean.

  ‘Land ho!’

  Dow clambered topside in surprise and beheld, in the grey winter dawn, land indeed. It was some miles off the bow to the windward side – an island, narrow and low and rocky, no more than a mile long, and fenced all about with white water that warned of reefs.

  Dow was still gazing at it nonplussed when Alfons, whose company was on watch, joined him at the rail.

  ‘A grim landfall, is it not,’ said the poet. ‘Trap Island; the northernmost isle of all the isles in the world. ’ Dow wondered – of all the isles? ‘I thought there were only four.’

  ‘Well, so there are. Four large Isles. Four habitable Isles. But there are many smaller islands in the wide seas besides. Dozens of them. Maybe even hundreds. I don’t know that anyone has ever counted them all. They are in any case mostly just barren rocks, or waterless sandbars, uninhabitable and barely worth naming. But Trap Island here is another story. Mark the reefs that extend all about it – what do you see there?’

  Dow studied the island anew. It was without greenery or life that he could see, a frigid sliver of stone, its jagged shoreline washed by white water and devoid of any beach or landing. But the shoreline was unreachable anyway, so densely did reefs crowd the seas all around. To the west, on the far windward side, great ocean swells were crashing against these reefs, but in the calm of the lee side, rocky shoals were exposed above the waves. And lodged on those shoals were many jumbled shapes, black and skeletal …

  They were ships, Dow realised. Wrecked ships, ancient and all broken to pieces, bereft of masts or rigging – but ships nonetheless, their remains preserved through untold years by slick shells of nicre.

  ‘The island’s name is well given,’ Alfons observed gravely. ‘A trap this place has indeed proved for many a doomed vessel over the centuries. Its lure is this: the two great currents that swirl in endless circles about the northern ocean meet, by evil chance, in these very waters – one from the east, one from the west. An unwary captain, or one beset by fog or foul weather, can thus be driven here long before he expects it, and so stray all unwitting upon the reefs. Be thankful then for Vincente’s skill; he has delivered us to the lee side. It would go ill for us, to be caught windward of such shore.’

  Dow gazed at the wrecks in fascination. ‘But why risk passing so close to such a place at all?’ he asked.

  ‘Isn’t it obvious? If any of the lost fleet was adrift in the northern waters, they would in time have washed up here. Vincente passes this way no doubt in search of survivors – or at the least, of wreckage.’

  Dow studied the island once more. Nothing and no one moved there. A more bleak and inhospitable spot was hard to imagine.

  ‘Aye,’ the poet added, following his gaze, ‘it would be scant reward to survive a wreck only to end up marooned on such an rock. But I’ve never heard, even in legend, of any survivor making it through the reefs to the Trap itself. Certainly none have ever been rescued from it.’ Just then an order was called from the high deck, summoning the cutter crews, and Alfons grinned morbidly. ‘To the boats, it seems. I expected as much.’

  He and Dow gathered with the others in front of the stern castle. From the Captain’s Walk, Commander Fidel explained to them that the Chloe dared go no closer to the island, so it would be up to the cutters to make a detailed search for any sign of the lost fleet.

  ‘Think of it as your final drill before the Ice,’ the first officer advised. ‘We’re looking for any recent wreckage – but do not become wrecks yourselves. Keep to the lee of the reefs, and make no attempt upon the island. Landings have been tried there before, but if old tales are to be believed, no boat has ever won through.’

  The crews – well practised now – launched their cutters and set out across the heaving sea towards the reefs. These stretched in great arcs north and south of the Trap, like talons of rock and white water, out-thrown to catch as many passing vessels as could be.

  Two of the boats bore away north, but Dow’s boat, and the boat commanded by Diego, bore south. It was demanding sailing, to keep close to the eastern line of the reefs without being dashed upon them. There in the lee of the Trap there was no surf crashing, but swells and chop still threatened, and foam swirled in wracks, and strange cross-currents sucked this way and that, contorted by invisible underwater chasms.

  They worked their way south for perhaps an hour, peering through an ever-present mist, for the breakers on the windward side were hurling up great sheets of spray that fell again in a thin rain. They saw much wreckage jammed upon the exposed shoals – broken hulls sticking up like chewed bones stuck fast in monstrous teeth – but all of it was old, and black with ancient nicre. The reefs were a graveyard of the sea, it seemed to the searchers, but no one had been buried there in many years.

  They reached the southernmost extent of the shoals – a good five miles from the island – and turned back. They were searching still, but more and more Dow found himself staring ahead to the Trap as it drew close. How strange it was to think that here was a land upon which no man had ever set foot. Not that there was any earthly reason a man would want to; it was a bare place, windswept and wet, and all its approaches were sharp with teeth. On the other hand, it was the only safe and stable refuge in all these miles of tormented seas, and if a man had to choose between the Trap and drowning …

  And then Dow saw it, a flicker of white, a motion against the dark stone. Then it was gone. He blinked and stared again. Nothing. No – there! In a dark crevice that opened near the blunt crown of the island, the flicker again. It was an arm – an arm waving, lifted above a parapet of stone. There was a man there! Sheltering in the crevice, and too weak maybe with hunger and thirst to stand, but signalling with his last strength.

  ‘Lieutenant!’ Dow cried, and pointed.

  Samson stared. The white flicker came once more.

  ‘A castaway!’ declared Alfons from the bow, having turned to look. ‘A poor wretch caught upon the Trap!’

  They all stared now, but the arm did not reappear, and Samson shook his head, doubtful. ‘It’s impossible, surely. No one has ever survived a wreck and the reefs to make safe haven on the island.’

  Dow said, ‘No one before, maybe. But that doesn’t mean it can’t ever be done. See – there are channels between the rocks, paths that a man might follow and not drown, if he was swimming for his life.’ He gave Samson a look. ‘Paths that a boat too might follow …’

  ‘You can’t be thinking—’

  ‘Excellency,’ urged Alfons, ‘if a man is there, he must be rescued. He can only have come from the lost fleet.’

  ‘Enough, seaman.’ Samson studied the island pensively, half a mile away now – but a half mile that was all surging white water and the broken-glass scatter of reefs and rocks. Then he raised his voice to hail the other boat, some distance ahead. ‘Lieutenant Diego!’

  Diego looked back, and called, ‘Samson?’

  ‘We think we spied a signal from the island!’

  Diego turned in surprise to look at the Trap. Dow stared too, but the arm did not wave again. And yet it had waved, of that he was certain. He’d even seen that the man’s shirt sleeve was ragged and torn, and extended only to the elbow. Perhaps the poor soul had expended himself to signal just that once, and was now insensible, on death’s very doorstep.

  ‘I see nothing,’ shouted Diego.

  ‘It was there,’ was Samson’s stubborn response.

  The two cutters now drew to within a dozen yards of each other, sails slackened, and wallowing in the swell. ‘Even if it was – what help can w
e give?’ demanded Diego. ‘It’s impossible to land upon the island, and we’re forbidden to try. Such was Fidel’s order.’

  Samson hesitated. ‘I thought it to be advice rather than an actual order. And if Fidel knew a man was there …’

  Diego was frowning across the water. ‘It was an order. We will proceed back to the Chloe. You can report whatever it is you think you saw then, if you want. But for now I suggest you follow me.’

  Alfons gave a disgruntled mutter. ‘Hark at his follow me. If it was him on that forsaken rock, he’d forget all about orders quick enough.’

  Samson glanced reprovingly at the poet, but then bit his lip and studied the island once more.

  ‘Well?’ Diego called impatiently.

  Samson shrugged. ‘Go ahead – we’ll follow you home.’

  Diego nodded brusquely and turned away, and soon his boat was cutting off for the Chloe, hove-to in the distance. Samson watched them go, then said with soft urgency, ‘What about it, men? Shall we dare the reefs? It’s not something I’d order you to do.’

  The six sailors exchanged looks, then the poet spoke up humbly. ‘Begging your pardon, Excellency, but what does Mr Amber think? No disrespect to your command, but he was the one who rode the whirlpool, was he not? And that was a worse fix than these waters.’

  Samson frowned, then nodded. ‘Aye, I’ll concede it was at that.’ He turned to Dow. ‘So then – Mr Amber?’

  Dow nodded eagerly, his thoughts already leaping beyond the reefs to the moment when they would find the dying man, the look that would be on his face as he realised he was going to live after all … ‘Very well then,’ Samson ordered, ‘lower the sail and deploy the oars. Mr Amber, you have the helm. Quickly now.’

  ‘Aye, boys,’ added Alfons, ‘and fear no reef. That old ice bird didn’t call Mr Amber into the north just to have him die on a lump of rock!’