The Ocean of the Dead: Ship Kings 4

by Andrew McGahan

  Long he travelled and much he saw, but an account of that famous voyage, and of the new lands discovered, lies beyond the scope of this history, to tell, for it has now run its course. Save to say only this: nowhere on any isle or sandbank or reef was any trace of Dow or Nell ever found; no footprint in sand, no camp on any shore, no chopped tree or carved stone.

  So the riddle was never solved.

  *

  Much later still, on the one-hundred-year anniversary of the settlement of Port Amber, when all living memory of the deeds within these pages was departed, a great festival was held in honour of those who had gone before. Huge garlands were laid upon the gravestone of Nicholas Ostman, founding father of the New World, and also upon the stones of Boiler Swan and Jake Tooth and Benedicta of the Husk, and others too among the first pioneers.

  But for Dow Amber and Ignella of the Cave, smaller garlands were merely set adrift upon the sea. For although all agreed that they must surely be long dead by then – if in fact they had ever lived at all, other than in legend – no one could say where their bodies now rested.

  Nor did any tale ever claim to tell.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Andrew McGahan is one of Australia’s finest fiction writers. His first novel, Praise, won the 1992 Australian/ Vogel Literary Award. The White Earth won the 2004 Miles Franklin Literary Award, the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, The Age Book of the Year and The Courier Mail Book of the Year Award. In 2009 Andrew was shortlisted for the Manning Clark House National Cultural Awards for his contribution to Australian Literature.

  The Coming of the Whirlpool, book one in the Ship Kings series, was shortlisted for an Indie Award, an ABIA, an Aurealis Award, a Golden Inky and a 2012 CBC award. Book two, The Voyage of the Unquiet Ice was Highly Commended in the 2012 Fellowship of Australian Writers National Literary Awards – Christina Stead Award, a 2013 CBC Notable Book and shortlisted for the Queensland Literary Awards. Andrew lives in Melbourne.

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