The Voyage of the Unquiet Ice

by Andrew McGahan

  In moments they’d furled the sails and were rowing swiftly towards the white water. At the tiller, Dow studied the many channels that threaded between the reefs, searching for the right path through the maze. But now that he was in charge, his confidence wavered. There were paths yes … but did any lead all the way to the Trap? The island seemed further off suddenly. And even if he reached it, would he be able to land there safely? Or was he rashly – arrogantly – leading his crew to disaster? Alfons and the others might believe in omens like the albatross, but omens couldn’t steer a course.

  Then Dow shook his head, throwing off such doubts the way a dog shakes off water. He was not mistaken. The reefs, he reassured himself, were simply not as impassable as they first looked. It was just that the myth of the Trap’s invulnerability had grown over the centuries into a fact that could not be questioned – when all it had needed was a fresh eye like his, ignorant of history, to see that a way might be found.

  And yes – he spied it clearly now, a series of channels twisting between the shoals; a path to the island. Currents surged wickedly along its length, but one thing the great whirlpool had indeed taught Dow was to not be overawed merely by the sight of rushing water.

  ‘We’re going in,’ he warned the others. ‘Row steady for now, and then hard as you can when I call for it.’

  Samson laughed, high and nervous. ‘Diego has just noted our course, it seems. He does not look happy.’

  But Dow had no time to glance to Diego. Already the boat was slipping into the first channel, broaching a gap that opened barely ten yards wide between two rocky prominences. The water there rippled ominously, and beneath the surface stony walls were visible, dropping away into blackness, and Dow was reminded of the Rip, far away in the mouth of the Claw.

  Was there a cry of protest from across the wind? Dow smiled, thinking of Diego’s fury. Then he was calling to the rowers – ‘Hard now, left oars only!’ – as he turned the boat into the next channel, running northwards off the first. And now the cutter, for all its waywardness when under sail, displayed its true agility, for with the shove of the left hand oars it rounded sweetly to the right. ‘Together now,’ ordered Dow, and they were away, riding over the waves as foam hissed on reefs not a dozen feet to either side.

  So they progressed, now surging rapidly forward, now hanging back to wait for a swell to pass. Dow was taut with concentration at the tiller, alive to every movement of the wind and water, the cutter a mote awash in a white swathe of rocky teeth and broken froth. And as the surf of the windward side drew closer, so its boom and hiss grew louder, and the spray from its breakers rained more heavily, whipped on by the gale.

  But Trap Island drew closer too. And as it did so the narrow waters of the channels – against all Dow’s expectations – grew calmer. From afar, the sea about the Trap had appeared white with foam, and deadly, but up close the foam proved to be only old wrack, washed there by swirls and eddies, and the great waves that crashed on the outer reefs had long since their lost their power by the time they ran up against the island’s shore.

  But where to land? There was no beach or harbour. Then Dow spied a mossy platform of smooth stone that lay tilted at an angle to the sea. If the boat was run up over such a platform, very gently … Riding a dying wave, Dow slid the cutter in, and on his command Alfons and the other leading oarsman leapt from the bow, just far enough to gain a foothold on the bare stone above the moss, and so hold the boat steady. The others followed in a rush, and after a few moments of slipping and cursing, the eight of them had dragged the boat clear from the water.

  For an instant they only stared at each other. They had landed on Trap Island! And what amazed Dow most was the sudden quiet of the place. The roar of the surf, the nagging of the gale, everything had pulled back into the distance, now that they were ashore.

  Then he remembered why they had come. ‘The castaway!’ he declared, turning to gaze up to the narrow crest of the island.

  ‘Antonio, Luca,’ ordered Samson, selecting two of the sailors, ‘stay with the boat. The rest of you follow me.’

  And they were off, scrambling up the stony incline. Every rock was drenched with spray, and the wind grew bitter once more as they climbed, but at close hand the island was not as utterly barren as it had appeared from afar; tiny green things grew in cracks and holes, and small crabs scuttled out of their way. It seemed to Dow that a shipwrecked sailor could indeed survive here, for a time. The crest loomed ahead, and he recognised the crevice from which the arm had waved, a deep groove cut in the ridge, the only shelter in sight.

  ‘Hallo!’ Dow called. ‘You there!’

  Up they clambered to the crevice’s rim, and even as they reached it the wind gusted hard and a white thing flapped up from within. Not an arm – they all recognised that instantly – but rather a strip of canvas, ancient and discoloured, dirty white at one end, split into shreds like grasping fingers, and black at the other end, from mould, so that it looked like a sleeve; a strip of canvas blown there from some long-ago wreck on the reef, and snagged amid the rocks, to flap whenever the wind caught it just so. Otherwise the crevice was bare of anything save for a few puddles of mossy water.

  The six of them stood and stared down at those puddles, and at the rag of canvas. Dow’s first reaction was one of fury at such deception. It was all for nothing! But then Alfons was roaring with laughter. The poet snatched up the strip of canvas and held it high. ‘Here we are, lads – a fine castaway to risk our lives and limbs for! No doubt he’s been signalling for many a long year, until someone was fool enough to answer his call.’

  Then they were all laughing – for what else was there to do? Even now, as Alfons waved the thing about, the fragment of old sail looked comically like a man’s arm waving frantically.

  Then the old sailor sobered, and let the canvas drop to his side. ‘Even so – look where we now stand; where none have before. Fools we might be, but we’ve done something no other fool ever dared.’

  They fell silent at that, and turned from the crevice to climb the last few yards to the island’s highest point. Stony slopes tumbled away on every side, and beyond spread the reefs, revealed now in all their intricacy, the twisted peaks of a great undersea ridge of which the Trap itself was the summit. On the western side was the breaking line of the surf, the sea beyond hidden by clouds of rolling spray, and to the east the ocean extended off to the grey horizon, heaving and empty and friendless.

  If they had indeed been shipwrecked mariners, it was a view that would have brought only despair. And yet Dow felt uplifted. The strip of canvas did not matter. The poet was right – what mattered was that they’d won their way to the island by skill and bravery, when no one else had. The other men felt it too, he was certain; even Samson was standing straight and proud as he gazed about.

  Which made Dow think of Diego. He turned east, and spied, just beyond the fringe of the reefs, Diego’s boat. It was patrolling up and down with a palpable air of frustration, and Diego himself was visible crouched in the stern. Dow could not resist raising his arm and waving, knowing he would be clearly outlined against the sky.

  Then his gaze lifted further, and there was the Chloe, half a mile out into deep water, moving slowly forward, as if coming closer to inspect the strange behaviour of its boats. Figures were clustered at the railing of the high deck. Vincente and Fidel would surely be there, witnesses to the first conquering of the Trap – a thought that pleased Dow greatly. But his eyes were drawn to a figure who stood somewhat alone and apart from the others.

  Even from so far away he knew it was Nell, by the slightness of her, and by her pose, hands in pockets. Which pleased him even more. After Diego’s petty triumphs in the trials, here at last was a true achievement for her to observe; an act of discovery, not the mere winning of a race. Dow was quite certain she would be infuriated by the development, just as Diego would be – outshone and outsailed by a mere New Islander.

  And that – he reflected contentedly –
was almost as good as rescuing a castaway might have been.

  Of course, such sentiments were of little use on the return trip through the reefs, which was in fact more difficult, and more frightening – now that no urgency drove them – than the journey inwards had been.

  And when Dow and his crew – exhausted and cold and deflated now – were hauled back aboard the ship, they were immediately summoned to the high deck. Captain Vincente himself was waiting there for them, his expression stern, as well as Fidel; and off to one side – as if he’d just finished complaining to the captain – was Diego, frowning still in pique. Nell was with him, wrapped in her coat with her collar turned high, hiding half her face and leaving only her eyes exposed.

  ‘Report, Lieutenant Samson!’ commanded Vincente.

  Samson did so, hesitantly but denying no responsibility, though all the while Dow stood by in uncomfortable silence, feeling that it was he who should be facing the captain’s wrath. Diego was nodding his head with every word, his chest puffed out in indignation.

  ‘You might think your actions noble, Mr Samson,’ Vincente said at last, ‘but to risk eight men for the sake of so uncertain a sighting is not noble, it’s foolishness, and insubordinate foolishness at that, given Commander Fidel’s instructions. Lieutenant Diego, indeed, has registered a formal charge, and as he was the ranking officer between the two of you, he has cause. You should have obeyed his command and returned.’

  Samson bowed his head, and Diego, with another fierce nod, looked to the captain to hear what the punishment would be; and Dow thought how strange it was that Diego could on one hand be an enemy of Vincente’s and plot in his downfall, and yet at the same time still turn to the captain to rule fairly now in his favour. There must, he supposed, be a code of etiquette that existed between the officer class of the Ship Kings, a code that put the respect of rank and of discipline above personal disputes. For Dow had no doubt that Vincente would indeed rule fairly in this matter, even if it meant punishing Samson to gratify Diego.

  But before Vincente could continue, Nell interjected, her voice muffled but quite discernible through her collar. ‘Captain – no harm has come from it, and it was a brave and skilled piece of boat-handling, for which Lieutenant Samson is surely to be commended.’ At her side, Diego had swivelled to stare at her, but she ignored him. ‘Against orders or not, to land on Trap Island is to increase our knowledge of the world. And is that truly something for which any mariner should be rebuked?’

  Vincente considered her with mild surprise. He then glanced to Fidel, who gave a slight shrug in reply. The captain frowned a moment longer in deliberation, then nodded stiffly. ‘A not wholly irrelevant point, Nell.’ To Samson he added, ‘I’m still of a mind to impose a punishment of some kind, but – pending your good behaviour – we’ll say no more on the matter for now.’

  Samson saluted. ‘Thank you, sir!’

  Diego had by now turned speechlessly to the captain, but Dow’s eyes were upon the scapegoat, and found that her eyes in turn were watching him over the rim of her collar. But with the rest of her face hidden he couldn’t tell the meaning of her stare, or of the colouring of her high cheeks.

  It was baffling. She, of all people, had spoken in their defence – in Dow’s defence, effectively. It made no sense. She made no sense. Was she with Diego and against Dow – or was she not?

  ‘You and your men are dismissed,’ Vincente told Samson, and then turning to Fidel, ordered, ‘Make sail, Commander.’

  And so the Chloe departed, having found nothing and saved no one. Their course set northwards once more, and with all lands now left behind, a grim sense of finality settled over the crew. A great darkness of rain came sweeping over the horizon to engulf them, and as Trap Island and its reefs sank away behind, so it seemed to many that the Chloe’s last connection with normality, and with the ocean of everyday, likewise sank away.

  For they were entering now the true northern ocean, the arctic ocean, the sea of eternal night and never-ending winter.

  The realm, vast and bitter, of the Ice.

  7. IN THE LATITUDE OF STORMS AND MISTS

  Dow had always thought – as a native of the New Island high valleys, and as a timber cutter and wanderer in the snows of the Great Plateau – that he knew what cold was, and what winter meant.

  But in the days and weeks following Trap Island, as the Chloe fought its way deeper and deeper into the north, he was forced to confess that he’d had no conception at all about what real cold was – or at least, he hadn’t known that cold upon the land, cruel and biting though it could be, was a toothless thing compared to the utter misery of cold upon the ocean.

  At first there was the rain. It embraced them as they departed the Trap and then fell ceaselessly for the next five days, grey and steady, driven by a frigid gale that ebbed at times but never faltered. Duty topside became a sodden, numbing ordeal, and men would hurry below at the end of their watches, blue lipped and shivering, in search of their last dry clothes, or to warm themselves by the fires that burned in the ovens of the galley.

  But even the luxuries of dry clothes and fires were soon to be lost, for on the sixth day north of the Trap the first true arctic squall struck. In itself it was no great storm, merely a swift moving front of wind and heavy rain and dark cloud that swept over them and was gone – but it was followed within the hour by another, with stronger winds and darker clouds, and then another again, more severe yet, and then another still.

  Word passed about the ship; they were crossing now into the Latitude of Storms. This was a zone, feared by all north-faring voyagers, of unchangingly hostile weather; a high circle of the world around which – regardless of the season – an endless succession of squalls formed and raged and died, one after the other, wheeling west to east in great spiralled arms; a forbidding and unwelcoming region of the sea. Indeed, according to Ship Kings lore, the storm latitudes spoke a last warning to the unwary captain: you have strayed too far to the north, turn back now, before it is too late!

  But the Chloe could not turn back, it must win through to the Ice. And so they pushed on, ever northwards, and hour after hour, day after day, the squalls kept coming, each front looming rapidly over the western horizon to rush forward and batter the ship. The sky would turn black, the wind would heighten to an unnerving shriek, icy rain or hail would lash the ocean, and the waves would rear up with a new ferocity and hunger.

  The Chloe was equal to it all, yes, but it was a fiendishly uncomfortable time for the crew. Sea sickness was rife, for even under reduced sail the battleship was permanently heeled far to one side, either smashing its way bone-jarringly through the swell, or surging over the crests in stomach-churning swoops. Below decks all was a cacophony of clattering gear and groaning timber, with bruised and swearing and vomiting men constantly being hurled off their feet by sudden rolls and drops.

  And everything was drenched. Ever and anon some great wave would rear high enough to break across the Chloe’s main deck; and those topside would suddenly be waist-deep in freezing water; and despite the closed hatches, icy cascades would rain down through the lower decks, soaking all beyond hope of drying out again.

  Dow was as sodden as anyone. Indeed, for the first time since his eleventh birthday, his timberman’s jacket failed him. It was waterproof enough in the forest, and upon fair seas – but now it became saturated through. Also, although he remained small in build for his age, and the jacket had been many sizes too large when his mother gave it to him, it was a close fit on him now, leaving no room beneath for jumpers and jerseys. So Dow put it away and adopted the same winter gear as the rest of the crew – a hooded and voluminous anorak made of layers of thin leather, specially oiled against the sea, and stuffed between with down.

  Nevertheless he was still eternally cold and wet, for nothing ever dried out properly, and even the smithy was no refuge any more; it was too rough for Johannes to safely light his forge, so it was as frigid there as anywhere else on board. Even the cooks
in the galley could not keep their ovens lit during the worst times, and so for days on end there was only cold food for the crew to eat – and no hot drinks to be had either.

  What Dow would have given for a tot of whisky, to warm his insides at least. This was the first truly foul weather he’d experienced since putting to sea, and as much as he’d longed to be tested by such conditions, the relentlessness of it was exhausting, and he found himself dreaming idly at times of the blazing fires and warm cheer of the Barrel House back home.

  But there was no whisky on the Chloe. The Ship Kings imbibed only beer by day – a thin brew at that, compared to the black New Island ales – and then wine by night, thick, red, and bitingly dry. Dow could barely stomach the stuff. Even fortified wine, or sherry as the Ship Kings called it – issued to the crew now, as the cold deepened – was no improvement. It burned the throat a little, like whisky, but still, it wasn’t whisky …

  ‘No,’ laughed Johannes, down in the smithy on the first night that the sherry ration was passed around. He had refused a tot himself, only watched in amusement as Dow had gulped his own, grimacing at the taste. ‘I didn’t think you’d take to it. But each to their own tipple. Dry wines for the proud Ship Kings, and sour whiskies for you dull New Island folk. But do you want to try a real drink, Dow, from my own Twin Isles?’

  They were hunkered about the workbench, as around them the ship rolled and creaked and clattered. Nicky, who’d been bent with his head to his knees, unfolded with an interested look as the blacksmith rose and went digging to the bottom of his sea chest.

  ‘Here now,’ said Johannes, pulling forth a large earthen jug, stopped with a cork. ‘This is what a frozen soul needs when beset within the storm latitudes – a memory of sunshine and blue seas and warm air; aye, and of a warm smile, too. It’s a rare commodity on a vessel like this, I can tell you.’ He took a long and grateful swig, then passed it to Nicky, who did the same.