The Coming of the Whirlpool

by Andrew McGahan

  Dow was struck dumb. All along, there had been a link between his village and the sea, and he hadn’t known! Why had no one ever told him about it? Ah – but perhaps he knew the answer to that. After all, why would anyone in Yellow Bank want to admit out loud that so much hard work by so many New Island men was, in the end, only for the Ship Kings’ benefit?

  The captain was musing over his beer. ‘Aye, and New Island Oak makes for the best hulls too. That’s why our ships used to be the finest that ever sailed the Great Ocean, back before the war. Beautiful ships, swift and true, they say. Only we weren’t so rich as some others, so we couldn’t build enough of them, and so we lost the war, for all that we had the better craft.’ He gave Dow a cunning glance. ‘And the better commanders, if the old stories are to be believed.’

  Dow said nothing.

  ‘Ah well, all forgotten now,’ was the captain’s summation. He ate in silence for a time, while Dow sat lost in thought by his side. Finally he swept the crumbs from his shirt, stowed away the beer bottle, and rose. ‘Ho there!’ he called to his crew. ‘White water ahead, lads.’

  The men put away their food and drink and returned to their oars. Dow rose too and stared downstream. He saw that the banks ahead lifted abruptly into low cliffs, and that the water between them rippled and foamed over great boulders. Further ahead the river seemed to drop away out of sight. Spray hung in the air, and there came a faint sound of roaring.

  The river began to hurry forward, but the bargemen were unperturbed. Heaving steadfastly on their oars, they worked the barge over to the left side of the stream. As the roaring drew close, Dow saw that there curved out from the bank a stone breakwater, extending perhaps a third of the way across the river. Within its arc the water swirled slow and calm, and cut into the bank, angling away between stone walls, was a man-made canal.

  ‘The locks,’ called the captain, catching Dow’s eye. ‘Three of them we’ll pass through, and close to seventy feet we’ll drop, to reach the lake. It’s that or run the rapids – and I doubt you’re game for that, lad.’

  The barge swung laboriously in behind the break- water and, with many oar strokes, was eased slowly into the narrow canal. The muted roar of the rapids dropped away, and for a short time they slid silently down the channel, moisture dripping from the rock walls. Then the walls shrank back to reveal a green and rolling country – and here waited two sets of wooden gates, the first pair wide open, the second pair, fifty yards on, closed across the canal. The barge swept slowly through the first gates and then stopped before the second. On the bank at this point was a cottage, half hidden by a thriving vegetable garden.

  ‘Ahoy there,’ cried the captain. ‘Lock keeper!’

  A face appeared amid the vines at the rear of the garden, and after a moment the lock keeper emerged, brushing dirt from his knees. He nodded a wordless greeting and set his hands to turning a great wheel beside the canal. The first set of gates began to close slowly behind the barge. When they were fully shut the captain threw a coin to the keeper, who, still without having uttered a word, began to turn another wheel. Water rushed and splashed somewhere out of sight and after a few moments Dow realised that the barge was sinking – or, more correctly, that the water level was dropping, taking the barge with it.

  Down they went, and up rose the canal walls until the barge floated at the bottom of a deep pit, into which peered the lock keeper. He nodded once in farewell, then spun a third wheel, and now the forward gates swung open. A small rush of water carried the barge onward; through the gates and back into the canal, now a deep cut that extended away before them.

  So passed the first lock of three, spaced out along the channel with perhaps a quarter of a mile between each. Twice more the barge descended, and Dow found himself fascinated by the process, picturing the pipes and valves that must lie hidden inside each lock, regulating the water levels. Then the final set of gates opened and the barge emerged into a last section of channel. The walls fell away to a pebbled shore, and the barge drifted out into a vast expanse of blue.

  They had reached Long Lake.

  Dow’s glimpses of the ocean aside, he had never seen such an uninterrupted stretch of water. The lake must have been five miles wide, north to south, and at least a dozen miles long, rimmed by green and grey hills on all sides, its eastern end lost in the haze of the afternoon.

  ‘Now, boy,’ the captain said, beckoning to him, ‘if you were serious about wanting to learn some boat handling . . .’

  Dow went, and the captain stood aside to let him take hold of the giant oar. The rest of the crew laughed and called insults, but Dow concentrated as the captain showed him how to stand properly and how to dip and stroke and then lift the oar. It was more complex than it had looked, and within a few minutes even Dow’s timber-cutting muscles were complaining from the unfamiliar strain. But the captain grinned and nodded, slapped him on the back and left him to it.

  The barge laboured south. Looking back after a time, Dow could scarcely locate the entrance of the canal, but had a clear view now into the gorge through which the river descended to reach the lake. Its deeper recesses were shadowed with spray, marking the rapids that the canal had bypassed.

  He faced forward again and attended to his oar. An hour and then another passed in the lengthening afternoon, and it seemed that the barge barely moved upon the lake’s surface, for all that the crew strained. It was airless and hot, and Dow’s limbs grew quivery and weak. He cursed himself for not eating lunch when he’d had the chance. But he persevered, and as the white sun began to lower towards the hills, the southern shore of the lake finally drew near.

  A settlement waited there, set on the slopes of a broad inlet, a mass of roofs climbing up from the water’s edge. This was no mere village, it was a proper town, with a hundred houses or more and a knot of larger buildings at its centre, many of which would dwarf even the Barrel House back in Yellow Bank. Along the shore were numerous docks and warehouses, and at least a dozen barges were tied up there. Even more were anchored a short distance out into the lake.

  ‘Fallston, and day’s end,’ announced the captain. ‘That’s enough for now, son, I’ll take the oar from here.’

  Dow stepped back gratefully and sat down before his quaking legs gave out, watching as the crew navigated to their anchorage for the evening. They avoided the crush of craft around the docks and instead joined a small group of barges that were lined up before the entrance of another canal which led southwards out of the lake. A short distance along this channel Dow could see the wooden gates of yet more locks. The Long River proper escaped the lake through a gap in the hills to the right of the town; from a distance came the faint roar of more rapids.

  The captain dropped an anchor over the side and smiled approvingly at Dow. ‘Four more descents we’ll make in the morning and then we’re in the lowlands. It’s plain sailing after that, all the way to the Claw. Two more days on the river, and then another two to cross the bay, and we’ll have you delivered.’

  Dow did not reply. The dark sweep of the lake, the cold echo of the rapids, the strange town with so many houses – it all made the world feel too big and too alien. And he was only a single day’s sail from home.

  The crew lit a fire in a metal hearth on the deck and brought forth provisions to cook a stew. Dow opened his bag and contributed his own share to the pot, and drank from the beer bottles as they were passed around. He began to feel better. When the food was ready he dug in with as much appetite as anyone, unembarrassed now that he had put in an afternoon’s work.

  All the while, a few hundred yards away on the shore, the lights of Fallston glimmered orange and red, outlining a maze of alleyways; and occasionally laughter and yells and snatches of song came ringing over the water. With a full stomach and the beer buzzing pleasantly in his head, Dow might have welcomed a visit to the town, but the captain was allowing no trips ashore.

  In any case, an irresistible weariness settled over him and he soon fell asleep on th
e deck, under the great field of stars, and to the sounds of the crew muttering quietly over the crackle of the dying fire.

  *

  In the morning the bargemen were stirring at first light, and by sunrise they were already working their way through the first of the four lower locks, dropping stage by stage until at last they rejoined the main waterway. From that point on, the Long River was done with hills and valleys and rapids, and instead began to meander in great curves across the lowland plains.

  This was truly a foreign land to Dow, a warmer, greener, somehow slower and yet at the same time more bustling world. At first the riverbanks were lined by squat-trunked trees with spreading canopies, festooned in trailers and creepers, but these forests soon gave way to well-tilled farmlands and flourishing orchards. Then followed villages and towns, and more and more barges thronged the waters, some carrying planks of timber, some carrying bags of grain, others crates of vegetables and fruit, or bales of wool, or live cattle.

  All through that day, and then, after anchoring for the night, all through the next day as well, for mile after mile they followed the river. It wound back and forth in ever broader loops, and became ever busier with traffic. Dow grew weary just watching it all. He had never imagined that New Island was so big or so wide – or so crowded. He had always thought that he lived in a poor land, an empty place of little import- ance. Now he saw that it was only his home in the valley that fitted such a description. It made him feel awkward somehow. And ignorant.

  In other ways, however, the lowlands were not as rich as they first seemed. On the third night of the journey the bargemen cast anchor on the riverbank opposite the largest town Dow had yet seen. Its name, the captain told him, was Jacobsville. Sitting up late into the evening, Dow studied its streets carefully. One section of the town was impressive indeed, with tall buildings brightly lit, but the rest of the town was another matter. Most of the houses were in fact smaller even than Dow’s cottage back home, and they were all jammed together in the dark laneways or even stacked one atop the other in rickety piles. Smoke hung thick over the rooftops, and a combined stench of rotting food and human waste wafted across the river on the night air. So there was wealth here, for some, but not for all.

  ‘Who lives in the big houses?’ he asked one of the bargemen.

  The man laughed sourly. ‘Who do you think? Them from over the sea and those in their pay, that’s who. The Ship Kings.’

  The fourth morning dawned an overcast grey, the air heavy and damp, though there was no rain. They set off again, in company now with many other barges all strung out in a long line. The river grew wider still and the current even slower. The banks gave way in places to swamps and beds of reeds. Then about mid-morning Dow saw the white shapes of birds beating upstream, crying out shrilly, and he recognised them as the same creatures he had seen from the headland. They were gulls, the birds of the ocean. So the sea must be close!

  And yet the river had slowed so much that to Dow it seemed there was no current at all anymore – and although a certain tang had grown in the air, it was more something mildewy and old, rather than the fresh smell he remembered from the headland. Nevertheless, when he dipped his hand into the river and raised it to his lips, the taste was unmistakable.

  The captain was watching on. ‘It’s salt, sure enough. The tide brings it far upriver. But we’ve a way to go yet before we reach Lonsmouth or the bay. And we’ve struck the slack. It’ll be slow going till the ebb comes.’

  For another hour or so, for all that the crews worked tirelessly at the oars, the line of barges only crept along as the gulls circled and shrieked overhead. Eventually, however, the oily waters began to flow slowly downstream again. Soon the current was such that the bargemen could rest between oar strokes. They had sailed beyond the swamps and reed beds by then, and the riverbanks were lined once more with fields and walls and houses. Salt tasted ever stronger in the air.

  Expectant, Dow moved to stand at the captain’s side. Finally the barge rounded a sweeping bend in the river and before them lay a broad reach of open water. On either bank buildings rose in bewildering profusion, not in their mere hundreds but in their thousands.

  ‘Welcome to Lonsmouth,’ said the captain, his eyes scanning the river ahead, where swarms of small craft were crossing busily between the two crowded banks. ‘Capital city of New Island, and once the greatest port in all the Four Isles, or so the old stories claim.’

  Dow could well believe it. He stared in wonder from one side of the river to the other, marvelling at buildings five or six storeys high, at towering cranes on the docks, and at the throngs of boats and barges. Surely there could not be a larger or busier place in the whole world.

  And yet, once again – even to Dow’s awed gaze – there was much squalor visible too. Whole neighbourhoods consisted of little but flimsy shanties leaning together in narrow, muddy lanes, and on one bank there was a great swathe where every building appeared to have been destroyed by fire, but so long ago, and with so little reconstruction since, that grass and trees grew in the ruins. The docks were busy for the most part, but here and there were wharves that rose high above the water – too high for any river craft – which were deserted and rotting.

  Dow’s barge drove steadily on through the traffic, and now the heart of the great city loomed on either hand. On a stony bluff set back from the river stood an immense domed building that dominated the skyline, but its soaring arched windows were smashed and its metalled dome was black with soot and mould.

  ‘What is that?’ Dow asked the captain, pointing.

  ‘That is – or rather was – the Hall of the Grand Council. That’s where the elders from all over New Island used to meet, in the years when we ruled ourselves. It’s long been closed down, of course. The Ship Kings have no time for councils. You see those fine houses on the riverfront below it? That’s where you’ll find our lords and masters now, all the ambassadors and bureaucrats and tax collectors that the Ship Kings send here – them, and the New Island folk who work with them.’

  It was the only part of the city that looked truly prosperous; a fortified compound of tall houses and green gardens, cordoned off from the shabbier streets around it and fronting onto its own private dock. Dow noted with an uneasy thrill that there were uniformed men patrolling the walkways atop the walls, with long muskets slung at the ready. Soldiers.

  ‘Aye,’ continued the captain, also watching the walls, ‘in every big town you’ll find a stronghold like that, where the Ship Kings and their friends live safe and sound. But this one is not the greatest. The greatest is at Stone Port, the seat of their governor. A mighty keep they have there, with cannon on the battlements. And a great bonfire too, burning atop a high tower, to guide their ships in at night. But you’ll see it all for yourself, soon enough.’

  Dow glanced sideways. ‘Is that where we’re going? Stone Port? I was told I was being sent to a village named Stromner?’

  ‘You are indeed, lad, but Stromner lies close by to Stone Port, and Stone Port is where we’re bound.’ The captain ran an eye over the crowded river. ‘Us, and most of these craft you see here; their cargo, the same as ours, is destined for the Ship Kings’ warehouses. Later their fleets will come and haul it all away. Fully half of everything that New Island produces, that’s the tribute we’re obliged to pay every year, under the laws of the Settlement.’

  Dow turned his gaze back to the water. It was true – amid all the cross-river traffic most of the barges that had come downstream were not making for any of the city docks, rather they were keeping to the middle of the river and sailing right through Lonsmouth without stopping, just as his own barge was.

  Half of everything, he wondered.

  And all the finest timber.

  But the great reach of the city was falling behind now and the barge was being carried around another bend. The riverbanks drew back further and further until they were half a mile apart, and the houses shrank away from the shore, unable to find footing it
seemed amid a maze of sandbars and mud flats, exposed now by the withdrawing tide. The salt smell came again, fresher than before on a stiffening breeze, and ahead the land failed altogether, opening out to an expanse of grey, troubled water. It was the river’s end. The barge shuddered as a sudden chop splashed over the bow, and Dow’s heart lifted. Was this—?

  ‘No, boy,’ said the captain, smiling as if he had read Dow’s thoughts. ‘This isn’t the sea. Not yet. This is only the Claw.’

  Dow nodded sheepishly. Of course. He had been taught about the Claw as a child. It was a great bay, shaped by two long peninsulas that were the southernmost extremities of all New Island. Each peninsula angled away from the other as it stretched south, until they were dozens of miles apart, then they curved in again to almost meet at their tips – like the pincers of a titanic crab.

  Peering left and right now across the water, Dow could just discern the low outlines of those peninsulas, receding to the east and west. He also knew that where they almost met again there was a tiny gap, a treacherous narrows through which all ships seeking the bay must pass. It was called the Rip.

  Chop splashed over the bow once more, and at a word from the captain the bargemen laid down their oars and worked swiftly at contraptions on the deck, fore and aft. Dow realised they were erecting slim masts, each a good fifteen feet high, stayed by ropes. Next they unrolled bundles of canvas and within a short while the barge had become a sailing ship. Not a real sailing ship – it was still essentially a cumbersome raft of logs – but the breeze filled the canvas even so, and Dow felt the barge shift beneath his feet, then plough forward.