The War of the Four Isles

by Andrew McGahan

  It took an age to get everyone to the safety of the higher decks. The ship thudded and slammed all the while against the bank, and waves came furious over the sides. Dow helped injured sailors up the high deck stairs, but his thoughts were with his friends. Were they all safe? He could see Johannes, and Nicky too. And Cassandra? Yes, thank the deeps, she had struggled up to the high deck, drenched and ragged, but unharmed. And others as well – the captain, reeling drunkenly about and yelling orders that all ignored; Jake Tooth, grinning madly; and even Colonel Oliver, looking – to Dow’s fleeting pleasure – much less self-possessed for once, his red face gone sickly grey. He was no sailor!

  At length it was done, and without further loss of life. Some five hundred souls were now huddled upon either the high deck or the forecastle; the entirety of the crew, aside from a gang of half-drowned engineers who were stationed below, bravely attending to the pumps and keeping the ship from flooding completely.

  But by then the surges had begun to break less often across the deck, and the night was growing pale beneath the black overcast. And as the approach of dawn grew fuller across the sea, so the pounding of the current and the roar of the flood gradually waned. Soundings were taken to confirm it. The water was falling, the flow fading in strength. At last, and some sixteen hours after its due time, the great tide was draining away.

  Indeed, it soon emerged that the Snout would be stranded rather than drowned. The growing light revealed swathes of running water all about, but also many gleaming sandbanks curving away in sinuous lines, between which the deeper channels ran. The bank the ship rested on was emerging too, unmasked as a humped mass of sand that stretched north and south for miles like a wall.

  All the crew could do was watch bleakly as the dawn broke. The tide kept draining, as low now as it had been high only hours before, some sixty feet in difference. Soon their own sandbank was fully exposed, as were many more like it, and the channels of flowing water grew narrower and narrower, and shallower and shallower, until the last trickle faded further away, then ceased.

  Full daylight, leaden, cold and silent, found the disaster complete. There was no running water visible anywhere anymore, only a few shallow pools gathered here and there between the banks. Otherwise the ship sat atilt and aground upon a great exposed moor of sand and mud, Dow stared to the east and west, north and south, but could see no sign of deep water, let alone any hint of how far it might be to the open sea.

  ‘Well, lads and lasses,’ smiled Jake Tooth to the shivering, wide-eyed crowd gathered on the high deck. ‘Time to get out and walk.’

  9. TO RACE THE TIDE

  Time to get out and walk.

  The harpooner had only been making a grim joke, no doubt, but the words stayed with Dow throughout that long cold morning, as the Snout sat marooned upon the sand – and the ocean, wherever it had gone, did not return.

  It defied all laws of tides and seas as far as Dow understood them. The tides he knew rose and fell twice every day in immutable rhythm, even the greatest of them. They did not first create a flood that was sixty feet deep or more, over four hundred miles of sand, and then simply make the ocean vanish for an entire day.

  And yet there the ship sat.

  ‘My main mistake,’ Emmet Bone observed, early in the afternoon, ‘was to underestimate the power of the opposing gyres, and to overestimate the force of the equinox and the moon.’

  A meeting of the command staff had been called at the pilot’s request. It took place on the high deck, deserted now that the ship was no longer threatened. The assembled officers were gathered about the useless wheel, their feet braced against the cant of the timbers.

  They looked a shocked and dispirited bunch, Dow thought; bruised and cut, their uniforms still soggy from the night’s drenching, their gazes harrowed, having come so close to death, and knowing that maybe death waited still. But his eye was drawn particularly to Cassandra. She was as dishevelled as anyone else – yet there seemed to be an air of relief about her, as if the worst had happened now, and there was nothing more to fear.

  The pilot continued without any apology in his voice, only recognition of failure. ‘I was so focussed on the notion of double king tides that I never considered another possibility; that if one or other of the gyres ebbed entirely in strength, then the Banks might simply drain clean, king tide or no. Well, in any case, we have been tricked, and are aground. The only blessing is that we remain seaworthy. Or at least, we will be, once the repairs are done.’

  Below on the main deck the crew were at work upon those very repairs. The damage was severe; spars had broken free from all the masts, sails and shrouds were a tangled ruin, the hull was sprung in several places, and the flailing anchor chains had wreaked havoc upon their housings about the bow. But in truth, the great serpent had done worse to them in the Wilderness – and here they had the luxury of rebuilding on dry land! Ladders had been lowered to the sand so that the carpenters could attend to the hull from outside as well as within.

  ‘Seaworthy be damned,’ spat Captain Fletcher, wretchedly hungover and in a terrible mood. ‘There’s no blasted sea! What I want to know is, when is your precious tide coming back?’

  Emmet Bone regarded the captain disdainfully. ‘Who knows? Did I not just say it: the tides of the Banks obviously follow no laws or schedules. But even when the water does come back, I am not so sure that we will be able to float the ship free anyway.’

  ‘Why ever not?’

  ‘Consider, Captain. We came aground here on the highest of high waters. The moon and the equinox still played their part in that, even if they were overcome by other forces. But the equinox is a day passed now and the moon is waning. Thus, when the water returns, it will not rise as high. And yet anything less than the sixty-foot flood that deposited us here will not be enough to lift us off again. Just look where we are!’

  Everyone gazed about, and could only acknowledge the observation. The Snout rested not on the lower sands or the mudflats, but near the crest of the highest sandbank visible. They were not merely aground, they were perched atop a slope; literally high and dry.

  The tragedy was that if they had only cleared this last obstacle, they might have ridden the flood out intact. Further north, the Banks appeared to be free of the great dunes; there seemed to be only a great flat tundra of sand and mud and stagnant pools.

  The pilot smiled. ‘The truth is, to again see water as exactly deep as it was last night, we may have to wait for the next combination of moon and equinox – and at best that won’t be until the autumn equinox. Six months away.’

  ‘Six months!’ exclaimed one of the junior midshipmen, voicing the horror on many faces. ‘But can we survive here that long?’

  ‘Of course we can survive,’ snapped Agatha Harp, admonishing the youth. ‘We left port provisioned for over a year, and that could be stretched half as long again if necessity demands. But we won’t be here anything like six months. Even if our pilot is correct and the tide does not return in full height, there are other ways to launch ourselves. We can lighten the ship, putting all our stores on the top of the bank to be recovered when we are free, then tow ourselves off with the boats; we can dig a channel beneath the hull, so that even a lower tide would float us; and other things. We are not helpless.’

  ‘Indeed not,’ agreed Emmet Bone. ‘But none of those things can be done quickly. If the tide has not returned to float us off by tonight, before the equinox fades entirely, then I would say we have little chance of escaping – even if we dig a whole canal – until at the very earliest the next new-moon high tide. Two weeks from now.’

  ‘And when we are afloat once more,’ interjected the captain bitterly, ‘what then, Pilot? Will you be able to steer us free of these shallows, having lost us so thoroughly?’

  ‘Oh, we’re not lost, Captain.’ And the very offhandedness of the pilot’s tone caught everyone’s attention. ‘I know exactly where we are. Banishment lies but thirty miles north-west of us.’

&nb
sp; There was a beat of stunned silence on the high deck. Banishment!

  For Dow, the name brought a sudden warmth to a heart that had gone cold. All morning the weight of defeat had borne down on him. Defeat – and guilt. This whole voyage, after all, had been undertaken at his behest, and now how many men and women were dead because of him? The tally was mounting. In addition to the eleven who had perished in the sea serpent’s attack, there was now also those who’d fallen from aloft to the deck when the Snout ran hard against the bank. Five dead, and six badly injured.

  But the ones who haunted Dow most were those who’d fallen not to the deck, but into the sea; and those washed overboard by the surges. Eight sailors had been so unfortunate – and Dow could still hear their despairing cries as they were swept away. There had been nothing anyone could do to help them, no boat that could be launched in the tumult. But the true horror of it was – they may not yet be dead. The flood may not have killed them, but merely carried them beyond all aid, perhaps hundreds of miles by now, clean off the Banks and into the ocean. And there they would be floating yet, alive, knowing that they were forsaken.

  But now, hearing the pilot’s words, Dow lifted his head. Banishment. If it was truly so close, then perhaps it had not all been in vain?

  It was Colonel Oliver who responded, his face having regained its ferocious shade of red. ‘How can you know that, Pilot? What landmarks are there upon which to base such a claim, here amid the mud and sand?’

  ‘There is, in fact, one,’ Emmet Bone answered. ‘It’s not easily visible from here on deck, but this morning I climbed to the crow’s nest and the view is more expansive from there. Nothing is to be seen in any direction other than sandbanks – except, that is, directly north of us.’ He had retrieved the telescope from its casing in the binnacle as he spoke. Now he handed the instrument to the captain and pointed to the horizon. ‘Take a look, sir.’

  Fletcher put the glass to his eye, and followed the pilot’s finger. ‘I’ll be damned,’ he breathed after a time, and passed the instrument on.

  When Dow took his turn, all he saw at first was a blur of sand and water channels, bleak under the leaden sky. But then – there! On the very horizon, revealed through the magnifying lenses, something rose up.

  What was it? Another ship? Stranded as they were? Dow squinted into the glass. No, it was too blunt, too unformed to be a ship – it was a tall rock of some kind, a buttress of stone, alone in all the wasteland, a monolith sticking up from the sand.

  ‘You all see it?’ enquired the pilot. ‘Good. Now, at first I thought that perhaps I had spied Banishment itself – but no, that rock out there is too small and bare to be inhabited. Still, I wondered – would it be marked on our Ship Kings map of the Banks? Might we at least take some bearing of our position from it?

  ‘So it is, and so we can. The map shows just such a finger of rock located in the northern Banks – the only rock it charts at all – and here’s the thing; it’s called Little Banishment, and it’s only fifteen miles south-east of Banishment proper.’

  Fifteen miles! Dow lowered the telescope and stared. Now that he knew it was there, the rock was visible as a faint smudge, tantalising. Why, it couldn’t be much more than a dozen miles from the ship. Which meant Banishment – as the pilot said – lay but thirty miles in total from where they stood.

  ‘Just think,’ mused Jake Tooth idly. ‘If the tide only stayed away for a day or two, we could reach the prison isle on foot from here with ease.’

  ‘Feel free to volunteer,’ invited Captain Fletcher, ‘if you are so keen to wager your life on the tides in this part of the world.’

  Colonel Oliver was also gazing thoughtfully at the faraway blur. ‘Need I remind you all, if we could walk to Banishment, then the Ship Kings garrison there could walk out here to us.’

  ‘What? How would they know we’re even here?’ asked the captain, puzzled.

  ‘They are only just beyond the horizon, Captain. We burned many lights last night; the glow could have been visible against the clouds. Someone may come to investigate.’ Oliver’s spare frame seemed to straighten even further, and a strange look of satisfaction warmed his icy gaze. ‘We must be on guard, and take all precautions.’

  Cassandra glanced at the army officer in sudden alarm. ‘There’s no need for anything drastic, Colonel. The risk you speak of is slight, and we may yet be away without further trouble.’

  He was unmoved. ‘Nevertheless, Laundress, the risk remains, and I won’t ignore it.’

  Cassandra seemed to search for a rejoinder – but Captain Fletcher had focussed on the word away. ‘Yes,’ he averred, ‘away we will be, and from this whole cursed region. When we do refloat the ship, tomorrow or in six months’ time, I will turn the Snout for home. We’ve risked life and limb too far as it is. We are done with this attempt.’

  Dow, having regained a measure of hope, was dismayed to have it snatched away again so quickly. ‘But, sir, we’re so close. When the water comes back, the boats could reach Banishment easily.’

  ‘Aye, and the ship would have to wait for them while they went there and back – and who knows what might happen in that time? Another flood? No, I’ll not risk staying an hour longer than we need. I wouldn’t care if Banishment was only a mile away now. If and when the water returns, we leave immediately!’

  Dow was ready to argue further, but one glance around the assembled officers told him that he would argue alone. There was no will on any face to pursue the rescue of the Banishment prisoners any longer, only dread and weariness, and the desire to escape with their lives if they could. The one exception was perhaps Colonel Oliver – but he, for the moment, seemed content to remain silent.

  ‘We have one purpose only, now,’ declared the captain. ‘To repair the ship and have it fit for refloating. Attend to that and nothing else.’

  So saying, he stalked away across the tilted deck, leaving the others to regard each other for a time in silent surmise, as if an order coming from Fletcher was no longer exactly a command.

  But then Agatha Harp shrugged. ‘You heard the captain; everyone back to work!’

  And so they all went their ways.

  *

  Later in the afternoon Dow did get out and walk, if only for a brief period.

  The tide had not returned, and fascinated by the exposed seabed, he descended one of the ladders and strode away from the ship. The sand was dry, quite firm underfoot, and bereft of any sign of life; there was no seaweed or kelp, no fish left behind by the departure of the flood, not even any crabs scuttling. It might have been a desert, if not for the salt smell in the air, and the pools and mudflats that glistened in the distance.

  About a hundred yards out, aware of an unease he couldn’t name, Dow turned to look back at the ship – and found it an unnerving sight. It seemed so wrong, tilted there, huge and awkward on the high dune. And so far away. He was reminded forcibly that he was not really on dry land at all, that fifty or sixty feet of water could come rushing back at any moment.

  The image, once conjured, was impossible to banish from the mind. Dow could bear it for only a few moments more, then he hurried back to the ship. No one else, he noted by the footprints left by other excursionists, had even walked as far out as he had. No . . . the ocean floor, waterless or not, was no place for humans to tread.

  Nevertheless the thought of Banishment so near over the horizon preyed on him. As evening approached, and still the tide did not return, he found himself often at the rail, staring out over the mockingly dry sands. Thirty miles – after having crossed more than ten thousand! How could the captain now just give up and turn for home?

  Nell was so close!

  That was the truly painful part. After three years spent on the opposite side of the world from her, not to mention the opposite side of the war, she was a mere thirty miles away! Across dry land, no less. A two-day walk. No, less than that; a walker could surely manage close to three miles an hour across the sand. That made it only a dozen h
ours. Why, if Dow set out before sunset he could be at Banishment by the next morning . . .

  Yes – and he could be drowned. It was madness even to contemplate it; he would be helpless out upon the sand when the tide came in.

  Well then, what if he took a boat with him? Not an attack boat, obviously, but one of the Snout’s light wooden skiffs; the ship carried several, for transport when in harbour. Even if the captain forbade him the use of one – forbade the whole enterprise, indeed – it wouldn’t be too hard to steal one by night.

  Ah, but he couldn’t drag even the lightest skiff over the sand on his own; he would need companions – and what right did he have to risk more lives? Too many were dead already. He did not dare risk more, not even to be reunited with Nell.

  No, if he went to her, he would go alone.

  Only, what use would he be, alone, even if he reached Banishment? It was one thing to plot a rescue with the attack boats and armed soldiers on his side – but what was one solitary man to do?

  *

  Night fell, and there was no tide.

  By then, the most urgent repairs on the hull had been completed, and the ship was crudely seaworthy once more. But though lookouts had watched from the crow’s nest until the last of the gloaming light died, scanning horizon to horizon for any hint of the ocean flooding back, there was nothing to be seen.

  ‘We have left the world of natural laws,’ growled the captain over a rough dinner in the slanted Great Cabin. ‘Pilot, how do we know the tide will ever come back to this accursed place?’

  Emmet Bone chewed complacently on a biscuit. ‘The tide came here once; it’s reasonable to assume it will come here again. But as to when? There’s no way for us to be sure. Start digging your canal, Captain. We may need many miles of it.’

  Later, unable to sleep, Dow roamed the decks restlessly. The crew, exhausted from the day’s labours, had hunkered down for an uneasy night marooned, their hammocks hanging at weird angles. The only ones still awake were those on lookout; the ship was quiet. Dow washed up finally against the foredeck rail, his gaze drawn to the north again, hopeless though it was. The sky had cleared a little, and through the clouds the moon – a day past full now – palely illuminated the great sand flats.