The Coming of the Whirlpool

by Andrew McGahan

  First published in 2011

  Copyright © Andrew McGahan 2011

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or ten per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.

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  Later, when he was the greatest mariner of his day and famous throughout the Four Isles, he was to be known by many names. He would be called the Last of the Ship Kings, even though he was nothing of the sort. He would be called the Young Admiral, and the Scapegoat’s Captain. He would be called The Man Who Sailed Off The Edge Of The World, and a good many other things besides; a traitor and rebel by his numerous enemies, a hero by his few friends.

  But his real name, the name of his birth, was simply Dow.

  Dow Amber.

  And strange as it may seem, he was not born to the sea. As this volume – the first of his extraordinary history – will tell, his childhood was, in fact, a landlocked one, and it was only through peculiar chance and gravest hazard that he came to voyage upon the open ocean at all.

  But take note. Dow’s time was not our time, and the world was not as we know it now. The Great Ocean rose and fell with different waves then, and different creatures moved in its depths – some vast and deadly, some unearthly and cold, and some small beyond sight yet of immense consequence. The ocean Dow sailed should not be confused with the lesser seas of today.

  It was a world too of curious beliefs. Folk practised no magic maybe, and worshipped no spirits or gods, nevertheless, there were some who held strange superstitions, and who whispered of dread omens and portents. Dow – at first – was not such a one. But it would be his fortune to witness many a terrifying and inexplicable thing, and to know the darkest of doubts.

  ‘The sea is a fool,’ the Ship Kings were wont to say. And in time it may be seen that this was perhaps the truest wisdom.

  To begin then . . .

  Dow Amber was born and raised on New Island, a grey and rainy land of highland forests and lowland pastures. His home was the little logging village of Yellow Bank, set in a deep valley at the foot of the Great Plateau, far from any coast and beyond even a glimpse of the ocean.

  His intended future had been decided upon at his very birth. Dow himself discovered this when he was a child of six. It was an evening in winter, and he was standing in the snow with his family – his mother and father, his younger brother and his twin baby sisters – watching the last ox dray of the season arrive, delivering its great hewn tree trunk to the timber yard. Dow was entranced by the driver, a giant bearded man who cried out strings of curses as musically as if they were songs, and who plied a long whip in whirling cracks about his head.

  ‘When I grow up,’ Dow declared to his parents, ‘I want to be an ox driver.’

  His mother only laughed gently, and his father, smiling, knelt down to Dow’s side. ‘Your little brother, if he wanted, might choose such a life. But not you. Your lot is to cut timber, not haul it. That’s because I am a timber cutter, as was my dad and his dad before him, and so will you be. You’re the eldest son, and eldest sons must always – always – follow after their fathers.’

  Dow frowned in disappointment, for timber cutters seemed to do little other than saw wood in the timber yard. But then his mother also knelt by him.

  ‘It’s ancient custom and strictest law, so you mustn’t think of arguing. But don’t be sad, Dow. When you come of age, you’ll be given your own timberman’s jacket and your own tent, and you’ll get to go with the other men up to the high plateau, and camp in the snow, and cut down the tallest pine trees with your axe. That’s more exciting than smelly old oxen any day.’

  It did sound more exciting, and so Dow was content. He would be a timber cutter, like his father.

  His childhood years were happy ones. He was a quiet boy who was never in any particular trouble, always somewhat small for his age, but with a calm, determined air that prevented bigger boys from bullying him. His parents – Howard and Rose – were humble folk, and poor no doubt, but then so was everyone else in the valley. And if the family’s two-room cottage was noisy and crowded at times, at least it was snug and warm in the winter.

  The wider world as Dow knew it reached for only a few miles in any direction. First there was Yellow Bank; thirty or so houses arranged around a patch of muddy earth along the north bank of the river. At the centre of the village was the Barrel House, where the men gathered every night to talk and drink, and off to one side were the timber yard and the dock. Then there was the river itself, the Long River by name, wide and deep, along which laboured the timber barges. And lastly there were the valley walls, mounting slopes of heather and stone that rose steeply to the north and south, the heights as often as not lost in rain and cloud.

  For most of Dow’s childhood that world was enough. Nothing happened to spark any greater curiosity in him, and anyway, no one in Yellow Bank travelled much. By the time Dow was ten, the furthest he’d ever ventured from home was the half-day walk along the valley road to the next village downstream, where his mother had family. But now and then he did wonder about what lay beyond the heights above, or where the Long River might flow in all its length, and he listened ever more attentively to his father’s tales of the high plateau, never forgetting what his mother had promised about the day that he would come of age.

  That day finally came on Dow’s eleventh birthday. Up until then he had been considered a boy, fit only for a boy’s work – helping out with the summer chores in the timber yard; stripping bark, or squaring the logs so that they stacked neatly in the seasoning sheds. But at eleven he was a man, provisionally at least, and ready to start working as one. On the night of his birthday his mother duly presented him with the traditional coming of age gifts – a heavily lined leather jacket and his own canvas tent. Dow received them gravely. The jacket was too big for him, for he had much growing to do, and the tent was so stiff with waterproofing he could scarcely unfold it; still, it was the same gear as his father’s, and it was disturbing how adult that made Dow feel.

  His birthday was in early autumn, so barely a month had passed before it was time to put the gifts to use. It was always in mid-autumn that the timbermen set out for the high forests, for it was then that the great pine trees were most full of resin and the wood at its finest.

  On the appointed morning Dow rose before dawn – having barely slept through the preceding night – and, with his father, joined the other timber cutters gathering before the Barrel House. They were three dozen in all, every able-bodied man and older boy of Yellow Bank.

  The party set out at first light, and the climb lasted the entire day. They followed a narro
w path that took them, in many switchbacks, from the grassy slopes of the lower valley all the way up to the misty heights of the plateau’s rim, a realm where the land grew rocky and sheer, where water gushed over noisy falls, and where the very air was fresh and cold and full of new promise.

  And yet, at dusk, when the men wearily clambered up the last steep pitch to broach the rim, Dow’s first sight of the high forest left him as disappointed as his six-year-old self had once been. He had always imagined that, having climbed so high, there would be wide new vistas to behold. Instead there was only a stretch of flat, muddy ground, and then the wall of the forest itself – dense and silent and curled through with fog. The trees blocked the very sky, and darkness seemed to flow out of them along with the mist. The men barely had time to set up camp on the forest’s edge before night fell.

  Next morning they split into teams of four and moved out through the trees. Dow followed his father and two other men, and was soon completely lost. The great pines enclosed them on all sides, tall pillars receding endlessly into shadows, and the land itself remained level, offering no sense of direction or place. Dow would scarcely have known they were in the high country at all if it wasn’t for the cold and the patches of early snow that lay melting in the darker furrows.

  And the rain. It rained all that first day. The ground was a squelching mush of pine needles and mud, and water dripped constantly from the branches overhead. After all Dow’s childhood anticipation, it seemed that the Great Plateau was little more than a freezing and claustrophobic bog. But he swallowed his disappointment and set to work – that day, and then over the weeks that followed.

  The men settled into an unvarying routine. First came the hunt for a suitable tree. Only the tallest and straightest would do, and so half a day might be spent searching through the forest before one was chosen. As it was vital that the trunk not be damaged as it fell, ground then had to be cleared, and other trees and branches removed, and the tree’s own branches stripped, before the felling began. And finally, after the tree was down, a path had to be hacked through the forest, sometimes for a mile or more, to one of the icy tracks that criss-crossed the plateau, so that a driver and his dray could be called in. With great labour the tree would be suspended under the dray’s massive axles, and after much cracking of the whip and snorting of the oxen, the laden vehicle would lumber off on its long journey down to Yellow Bank, and the timber cutters would go in search of their next tree.

  Day after day it went on, the pattern never altering, the forest unchanging no matter how far they roamed within it. There were probably hundreds of men at work upon the plateau – adding together all the teams from the different timber villages down in the valley – but so wide was the forest Dow often felt there was no one else in the world other than his own small gang of four. His shoulders ached, his fingers were full of splinters, his palms were blistered. But that wasn’t what bothered him most; what weighed on him was the damp gloom under the trees, growing colder and wetter and altogether more oppressive as the weeks went by.

  But then one evening, as dusk closed in, Dow’s father took him aside from the other two men and led him a short way through the forest. The land grew rocky as they went, and a wind began to rise in the higher branches of the trees. Abruptly they emerged from the forest and saw an open sky before them. A brief steep slope of tufted grass and bare stone climbed away to an upraised edge that hid what lay beyond. There was a strange murmur and hiss coming from somewhere, and the wind carried a tang that Dow had never tasted before.

  ‘This is where the forest ends,’ his father said. ‘We’re standing now atop the great headland that marks the northernmost tip of the plateau, and of all New Island. From here the land drops sheer and straight to the ocean. Go on. Climb up and look. But be careful. It’s almost a mile to fall.’

  Dow climbed the last few yards to the edge. The wind grew stronger as he approached, whipping his hair into his eyes. For a moment he bent almost to his hands and knees, but then he stood upright, heedless of the gale, and the entire world below sprang dizzyingly into view.

  For the first time, Dow beheld the sea.

  In the west the sun was setting behind a bank of broken cloud. But great shafts of light were reaching through, igniting the clouds overhead, so that all the sky glowed red and golden. And beneath that sky, stretching unbroken all the way to the darkening horizon, was a grey, heaving, white-flecked mass of water.

  But not water as Dow had ever known it. This was no river or pond, this was a body vast and savage and beckoning – indeed, a strange vertigo seemed to pull Dow outwards, with only the gale to hold him back. He glanced straight down and saw that at his feet the cliff plummeted away appallingly to where great piles of rock waited far below. Waves rolled and foam boiled down there, and the sound of it roared up on the wind. Dow felt his lungs expand with salt, and tears filled his eyes, not of pain or sadness, but of some other emotion.

  His father came up beside him.

  ‘The Northern Sea,’ said Howard Amber, his voice raised to fight the wind. ‘A thousand miles and even further it runs, so they say, without landfall or hope until the water turns to ice and there is no sun.’

  Dow’s gaze leapt again to the horizon, half lost in a haze of night and spray, and it defied his mind, land-born as he was, raised in a narrow valley, that he could see so far in one glance, and that a landscape could appear so restless and shifting, and yet feel so old somehow, and unchanging.

  ‘It’s . . .’ Dow faltered, for he could not find the words. He had always known that the ocean surrounded New Island, he’d been taught so – but he had never imagined that it would pierce his heart this way.

  His father nodded, mistaking his meaning. ‘It’s a cruel sight, sure enough. I come here every year to remind myself; no matter how cold and wet it may be in the forest, there are colder and wetter places in the world. Why, at least under the trees a man is sheltered from the wind.’

  Dow didn’t dare speak. He had never disagreed with his father before – but how could anyone prefer the gloom of the forest and the slow drip from the branches to this, the shrieking wind, and the cliff, and the tumbling grey ocean?

  ‘It’s no place for the likes of us,’ Howard Amber con- cluded, and shook his head. ‘We’ll leave it to the Ship Kings, you and I.’ And with that he turned and began to descend again to the forest.

  Dow lingered for an aching moment, staring out, but the sun was gone now and the shafts of light had died; the ocean had turned ashen and featureless. Only the wind remained, and the far roar of the waves, and the salt smell. Then his father was calling and Dow could delay no more. He climbed down obediently and trudged back into the forest where all was dank and silent and still.

  He did not spy the ocean again that year. The gang’s work took them away from the plateau’s edge, deep into the forest again, and there in the dimness they cut down trees until the first heavy snowfalls came, and it was time to leave. The teams re-assembled and the men of Yellow Bank descended into the valley once more. Almost three months after setting out they came home at last to their little village by the river. Snow had fallen there too, but in their absence the women had stocked the cottages well with food and kindling, and now for everyone came the winter holiday, safe and warm inside by the fire. Only in spring would Yellow Bank stir again, and work begin on the stored wood in the timber yard.

  It should have been a happy time for Dow. He had survived his first season in the highlands and performed to satisfaction. He had grown a little more into his overlarge jacket, and his tent was properly worn in. His younger siblings looked at him with new respect, his mother fussed over him, and he was permitted now to attend councils in the Barrel House with the other men, and to drink beer (although not yet whisky) through the winter nights.

  And yet . . .

  Had the village always been so small? Dow had barely recognised Yellow Bank when he’d first returned, so insignificant seemed the little huddle of houses on t
he river’s edge. And had it always been so dark and smoky indoors? In the past, his parents’ cottage had always felt so bright and cosy during the winter, now felt suffocating and cramped. And when he braved the cold outdoors, the walls of the valley bore down on him, and the low grey sky; there was nowhere for his gaze to escape and roam free to a distant horizon.

  The sea. Dow could not forget it.

  Winter passed and spring came, and Dow went to work in the timber yard. Summer arrived, and he grew eager, waiting for autumn. At last the nights grew chill and it was his birthday again, his twelfth, and then it was time for the men to climb to the plateau once more. Dow’s eagerness preserved him even through the slow weeks of damp and darkness in the forest, and through all the weary labour of tree felling. For he knew that day by day his team was slowly crossing the plateau north towards the headland, and towards another sighting of the sea.

  And indeed there came a day when a salt wind was blowing in the tree tops and the four men emerged from the forest, and there before them was the rocky point, rising to its sharp edge against the sky.

  Dow scrambled up and laughed aloud when the ocean came into view, clear from horizon to horizon. It was different. The last time he’d stood in this spot it had been dusk, and the sea had appeared grey and cold. But this time they had arrived at midday. The sky was empty, the sun shone bright, and the ocean was a vibrant blue, sketched with lines of silver. A steady wind came thrumming up over the cliff, and riding it, only a few yards out in mid-air, were white birds that Dow had never seen before. They called with sharp voices and watched with black eyes the ebb and flow of the waves in the rocks a mile below.

  Dow drank it all in with delight. The rest of the team climbed up more slowly and stood behind him, cautious of the edge.

  ‘What birds are those?’ Dow asked.

  ‘Gulls,’ his father replied. ‘They live and hunt at sea.’

  The birds shrieked, weaving on the wind. Then one folded its wings and dropped away down the escarpment, a white stone plummeting until it was lost to sight. Dow’s heart stung to follow.