The Coming of the Whirlpool

by Andrew McGahan

  And what of Dow’s own responsibility? Yes, in his long grief and anger, the old man had always sought for the whirlpool – but would he really have gone to it now, like this, to such a futile death, if he had been well and in his right mind? Was he doing so now only in a delirium of black infection and fever? And who was to blame for that fever? No one but Dow himself.

  And yet, ultimately, what decided Dow was not his own guilt, nor even concern for Nathaniel’s life. Rather it was that, as he agonised over the choice, Dow felt something yield inside him, something that had fought and struggled and now admitted defeat. A strange calm descended, an acceptance – after resisting for so long – that he was meant to do this. That Mother Gale was right. That he and Nathaniel were bound together by fate, and could not now be separated, no matter if the maelstrom itself should come between them.

  He shook his head. ‘I must go after him.’

  Boiler had already hauled the boat half onto the shore. Now he turned and stared. ‘Are you mad?’

  ‘It’s what I’m supposed to do.’

  ‘Supposed to do?’ The innkeeper’s face went scarlet with frustration. ‘You’re supposed to do nothing! That fool of an old woman has filled your head with nonsense. There is no need for this.’

  But Dow was drawing the boat back into the water. ‘Nathaniel can be saved, from the whirlpool and from himself. It’s why I’m here.’

  ‘No, no, it isn’t! Listen to me, Dow. I know that I’m partly to blame for all this insanity. It was unfair the way we brought you here; it was unfair what we expected of you. And I apologise for that. But do not throw your life away now because of our mistakes.’

  ‘I won’t be throwing my life away.’ The conviction possessed Dow ever more firmly, even as he said it. ‘This storm won’t harm me.’

  ‘Fool!’ Boiler pointed a finger to the sky. ‘Do you not see? The wind blows from the north now!’

  Dow glanced up. ‘I know. It will help me catch Nathaniel.’

  ‘Are you witless? Think! It was the south wind that piled the waters in through the Rip. And now the north wind will push them out.’

  Dow’s hand went slack on the Maelstrom’s bow, as at last Boiler’s point sank home. Ten years before, when the southern gale had failed, there had been no new wind to replace it, only a dead calm. The waters of the Claw had flowed out through the Rip under no greater force than their own weight.

  But this time there was no calm. Instead, a northern gale had sprung up. So now the escaping waters would have the wind at their back, driving them even harder. It meant a doubling of the forces mounting in the Rip, or a tripling, or even more . . .

  The innkeeper was shaking his head. ‘It will be dreadful beyond all reckoning in the channel this day. You dare not go.’

  In that moment Dow hated Boiler more deeply than he had ever hated anyone – not because the innkeeper was wrong, but because he was right, and in being right had at last awoken Dow’s fear. It twisted coldly now in his stomach, clutching and craven and shrivelled, unmanning all his new certainty.

  ‘You dare not,’ said Boiler again.

  But then Dow realised that he did dare. Nothing had changed, after all, other than his own terror, and what did terror matter? Fate itself had ordered that this should be. Against fate, even cowardice was of no consequence.

  He straightened abruptly and in a single movement shoved the boat away from the shore and leapt aboard. Boiler cried out in protest behind him, but Dow was already raising the sail. The wind filled it instantly – greedily – and the boat canted hard. Boiler shouted one last entreaty, but it was lost in the snap of canvas, and Dow was away, skimming across the troubled waters.

  He looked ahead, but Nathaniel was no longer visible. While Dow had delayed, the old man had rounded the point and been swept into the channel. Well then, into the channel Dow must follow, no matter how fast and deep it was running. He was not afraid now. The wind was fierce, the tiller kicked in his hand, strong and true, and he was sure again of his path.

  He did not waver even when he heard it over the wind. A thunder, a vibration in the very sea, a roaring that drew him on, irresistible.

  The voice, newly risen and ravenous, of the whirlpool.

  It was a sound unlike any Dow had heard before. The only comparison he could make was with the roaring of the Long River in flood during the spring thaw; the noise of water flowing, enormous masses of it, tumbling trees and rocks along in booming cacophony. But this was much louder than anything a river could produce. This was the clamouring of a thousand rivers. And more.

  But Dow could see nothing as yet, the inner headland hid what lay beyond. He rounded it now to enter the channel, and the great flood took hold of him, a torrent vast and dark and smooth, surging with the entire weight of the Claw, and the north wind too, at its back. The Maelstrom, already racing, was swept up even more swiftly, and Dow had to wrestle the tiller to guide the boat mid-stream. Only then could he look ahead to the channel’s mouth. On his left rose East Head, blunt and bare, and on his right rose its western twin, crowned with the Stone Port fortress. And waiting as ever between was the mile-wide maw of the Rip.

  Only – what was happening there?

  Dow could make no sense of what he beheld. It was as if against all laws of the world, water was flowing uphill. The whole expanse of the Rip seemed to have risen above the level of the Claw, as if the sheer volume of water trying to flow between the Heads was too great to be contained. And even stranger, at the very place where the Rip opened to the sea there appeared to be a wave, many feet high, smooth and unbreaking, that was somehow standing still. It extended from headland to headland, and up and over its hump the escaping floodwaters had to flow, fast and foam-streaked and thunderingly loud.

  It was a spectacle that spoke of appalling forces at work, but even as he stared uncomprehending, Dow noted the one crucial thing – there was no whirlpool. He’d been so sure it would be there, raging at the channel’s mouth to devour Nathaniel and any who dared follow him, yet for all the fury and din of the Rip, the currents within its ambit were not rotating, no funnel had opened. The maelstrom, though it must surely rise soon, had not yet formed.

  There was time, then. Dow searched the waters and spied the skiff. It was perhaps a quarter of a mile ahead of him in the channel, and adrift upon the sluice-like current, for Nathaniel was no longer at the oars. Instead, he was crouched in the skiff’s bow, gazing forward to the Rip as if he could not come there quickly enough. Was he utterly mad? Was he aware of any danger? Or had his fever blinded him to all else but the insane hope of finding his lost son and grandson?

  It didn’t matter. Dow’s only purpose here – his fated purpose, no less – was to apprehend the old man before it was too late. He tightened his sail and set the Maelstrom spearing along in Nathaniel’s wake.

  Never before had he known such speed. Between the flood and the gale, the boat might have had wings. And yet even as he raced, Dow’s inner certainty remained. He knew exactly what needed to be done; his every move felt serene and preordained. It was as if time had slowed, so that despite the urgency of the pursuit, he had the leisure even to gaze about on either side.

  There were witnesses present, he noted; onlookers gathered about the shores to watch the emptying of the Claw. Outlined atop East Head were a meagre few only, huddled together in a knot; the folk of Stromner, or at least those who had dared climb up from the near-deserted village. But on the western side of the channel the townsfolk of Stone Port had come out in their hundreds, or even thousands, to crowd the sea wall for a view. And high above, lining the ramparts of the Stone Port fortress, were the tiny figures of the Ship Kings.

  All come to marvel at the sight of the maelstrom, if it should form. But they would see something else today . . .

  Already Dow had gained on the skiff. Nathaniel was still perched in the bow, oblivious to his pursuer, and Dow was close enough now to see the bloodstains on the back of the old man’s nightshirt, and the
terrible gauntness of his limbs. But the skiff, in turn, had been carried nearer to the Rip and to the bizarre upraised wave at its mouth. Dow called a warning to Nathaniel, but the thunder of the waters drowned him out. It was a sound so wide and deep it was scarcely a sound at all, rather it filled up the space where all other sounds might be.

  He drew closer yet to the skiff, but looming closer too was that impossible, unmoving wave. It reared up like a wall, higher than the Maelstrom’s mast. Dow could hardly believe that water could be contorted so. Worse, he saw that he would lose the race. There would not be time to secure Nathaniel before both their craft were carried to the wave’s foot – and then swept over it.

  But still his calm held intact. Keeping one hand on the tiller, Dow grasped a spare coil of rope and readied a loop in it. His intent, when he came abreast of Nathaniel, was to lasso the skiff’s prow and take it in tow. They would not be able to sail back up the channel against the flood, but if they could make it over the freakish wave without being swamped, they would be through the Rip and out into the open sea – and there they could wait in relative safety for the flood to pass, beyond even the reach of the maelstrom should it finally be born.

  He glanced about one last time. Atop East Head, the small figures were running forward and waving frantically, as if to convey some message to him. But they were too far away, and he had no more time to watch. The water was driving both boats ever faster, and even as Dow drew level with Nathaniel (the old man still heedless) they slipped together into the trough at the wave’s foot. In a fluid rush both boats dipped, and then climbed steeply towards the rounded crest. Dow held his lasso high and prepared to throw it. And then—

  Then they broached the broad peak of the wave, and saw what lay beyond. The rope fell un-thrown from Dow’s fingers. He staggered back, the tiller slipping from his grip, forgotten. Everything was forgotten – Nathaniel, the rescue, all of it. Dow knew only blank stupefaction and terror.

  The maelstrom had tricked him.

  It had been waiting there all along, fully formed and cunning in its monstrosity, a colossal spider crouched in a vast web – all too visible, no doubt, to the watchers on the headlands, but hidden to anyone at sea level, concealed behind the uplifted waters of its own rim. What Dow had thought was a wave stretching across the Rip was not a wave at all, but the northern arc of an immense circular lip. And within that lip the maelstrom wheeled in all its horror.

  Was it a mile across? Was it more? Dow’s frozen mind could not calculate, and it was too late anyway. Both boats swept on over the rim, fell into the grip of the rotating waters, and were spun away. The world heeled and Dow was flung back against the tiller. The sky, the clouds, the blunt shapes of East and West Heads; everything was tilted madly, and in motion. He was caught by the great whirlpool, and even on its outermost edge, the water was driving his boat faster than any wind ever had. Indeed the sail had come loose and was flapping wildly – but soundlessly, for the thunder of the maelstrom consumed all.

  But it was inwards that Dow’s gaze was inexorably drawn. Inwards and down – for the whirlpool, as it turned on its axis, had hollowed an enormous depression within the ocean, shallow on the outer rim, but growing ever steeper towards the centre. A misted darkness seemed to fill this gargantuan bowl, and its slopes, rotating with unspeakable momentum as they descended, glowed a baleful green that was streaked with lines of stark white foam, spiralling down to the maelstrom’s heart. And at that heart, drawing everything to it with an irresistible pull, opened the funnel. There the waters plummeted away entirely, spinning with such force that they drew back from themselves into a vast throat, gaping into nothingness; and from that nothingness there howled an unearthly, endless shriek.

  Dow shrank to the Maelstrom’s floor, a helpless child again, eyes wide, his calm shattered into a thousand despairing fragments, exposed for the delusion it was. How wrong he had been. Everything that Mother Gale had said, everything Dow had come to believe, the certainty that had led him to this point, it was all laid bare as purest folly. The maelstrom was before him now, worse than any tale had made of it, worse than any imagining, and it was not a thing to be bound by an old woman’s talk of fate or fortune – Dow’s own eyes and ears told him that. It was a beast roaring without purpose or reason, a mindless force of destruction only. And he had been fool enough to sail blithely, blindly, into its grip.

  Dow tore his gaze away from the awful sight below and looked about to gauge his position. What he saw only made him shrink back again. His boat, having come scarcely halfway around the whirlpool’s great rim, had already slipped inwards and down by many yards. So his descent had begun, and he was doomed. He had not even the refuge of ignorance now, he knew exactly what would happen. Had not Boiler described it? Once Nathaniel’s son and grandson had been caught, all attempts at escape had been in vain. Oars had not helped them, and there had been no wind to fill their sail, and so they had gone round and round until they were perched on the lip of the funnel, and then, helpless, they had fallen in.

  The same ghastly death would be his . . .

  But then realisation flared. No wind! They’d had no wind to fill their sail. On that day, when the southern gale had failed, only a dead calm had replaced it. But today – today the north wind was blowing!

  Dow stared at the madly flapping sail above him. Yes, even here in the maelstrom’s clutches, the north gale was still whipping across the water. A blaze of hope broke his paralysis. He grasped about, took hold of the loose rigging, and pulled it taut. The sail tightened, caught the wind, and filled. The Maelstrom lurched in response, righting itself partially against the whirlpool’s incline. Dow’s hand went to the tiller. It quivered in his grasp – feeble maybe, but alive.

  He rose to his knees, glancing fore and aft. West Head was in front now, and East Head behind; he’d completed a full circuit around the maelstrom. He had descended no further into the green abyss, but nor could he escape this way; he was sailing with the current as it raced, so the rudder remained slack. If it was to bite, if he was to manoeuvre to break free, he needed to be sailing against the current. Dow stared about, measuring angles amid the confusion. Already he was a third of the way round again, the wind now from his left. Yes. There!

  He hauled on the rudder, and the Maelstrom turned – grudgingly – up and away from the shrieking gulf below. It stalled almost immediately, as Dow had known it would, sail fluttering, and slid back. But as it did so Dow worked deftly with the tiller, so that the boat yawed and the bow swung about to face into the whirlpool’s spin. The sail filled again and the rudder kicked hard. Elated, Dow shoved it full over. Now he could use the maelstrom’s very power against itself, the racing waters driving his vessel upwards and out against the hold of the wind. The Maelstrom lifted, and there was the rim looming, and beyond it freedom.

  It was only then that Dow remembered Nathaniel, and glanced back. What he saw pierced him. The old man’s skiff was far away – on the opposite side of the maelstrom, beyond all reach, helpless without a sail, and spiralled half the way down towards the insatiable funnel. Nathaniel himself was but a tiny figure clinging in the bow, and yet even across the gulf that separated them, Dow was sure that the old man’s face was turned to him, and that his expression was no longer maddened or possessed, but sane again at last, and now deathly afraid.

  Then the Maelstrom was leaping over the whirlpool’s rim, like some giant flying fish, and splashing down in the waters beyond. For the first time in his life Dow found himself sailing upon the open ocean.

  Relief and horror fought within him. For a long while he could only stand numbly at the tiller, the bow pointed southward. Great ocean waves reared around him, ponderous and grey, and the wind beat at his back. Further south, fans of sunlight broke through the clouds and the sea there was a dazzling blue and green. The storm-tossed horizon waited beyond, calling . . .

  But Dow knew he could not go to it. Not yet. He bowed his head finally, and brought the Maelstrom about, n
orth into the wind.

  Already, he had come a surprising distance from the shore – and how unfamiliar everything looked. The two great headlands presented much sterner faces to the ocean than they did to the bay, and extending away on either side were the long shores of the peninsulas, fading into mist, empty and harbourless – as forbidding a coast as Dow could imagine. Even a mile wide, the gap of the Rip looked a narrow haven amid such wilderness; and the maelstrom still raged there, betrayed from out at sea by a dark spray that hung above it, and by the strange waves of its rim, and by its voice, distant now, but ravenous still.

  And yet, rather than being sucked back towards the whirlpool, Dow saw that he was actually being carried rapidly eastwards. He studied the waves; yes, there were two currents at work here – Boiler had spoken of them once. Dow was now caught in the great north-east flow that ran perpetually across the base of New Island. But if he turned back towards the Rip he would cross into the flood emerging from the bay – a wide swathe of darker water surging off to the south-west.

  It was there, Dow finally recognised, where the two currents rubbed side by side, driving in opposite directions to each other – at the mouth of the Rip, but not wholly within it – that the maelstrom had formed. Dow could sense its hidden abyss even now, yawning with monstrous appetite. And yet it was simply a giant eddy ground out between the conflicting flows. Why, little whirlpools formed the same way among the rocks and ripples of any stream.

  The knowledge brought no comfort. Even though the maelstrom was a natural thing, to be inside it had felt utterly unnatural, utterly aberrant, and to be devoured by that black funnel seemed to Dow the loneliest death a man could face. And the question came, creeping and unwanted: Was Nathaniel actually dead yet? And worse, was there a chance of rescuing him even now?