Thomas Keneally - The Daughters of Mars

We ought to take off our skirts, yelled Nettice. She immediately and functionally did it herself. The others began to obey by dropping their skirts until they were all in drawers. That would have amused the Fusiliers had there been time for hilarity and perhaps had the deck been level. A lifeboat was being cranked down from the upper deck and swung way out. It was unreachable because the ship was listing and at the same time inclined by the bows. But there were men with boat hooks to haul it closer. Sally held Honora around the waist.

Honora muttered, Sea bathing. I never understood the charm of the thing.

Are you saying you can’t swim? asked Sally.

In my book it’s not a natural thing to do, said Honora in defense.

The noise from the unwounded soldiers surging from the bows and climbing up the deck towards the stern was like the hubbub of a football crowd and seemed almost as innocent. But that was now joined by the sound of braying mules and screaming ponies. For far below them some brave man had opened the double door on the livestock hold and offered them a hope of escape.

They’re trying to make them jump into the sea—all those horses, said Freud, looking at Sally starkly. Mitchie herself had taken off her skirts and showed her plump, bloomered thighs amongst the shuffling girls. But then she broke off and went forward against the tide to direct orderlies with half a dozen stretchers. She looked helplessly at the deck where stretchers might be laid. But it was taking on an angle which—as yet not decisive—would become comic pretty soon. Two of the wounded were howling.

Ladies, said the George V officer, whose men had secured the swaying boat to the fixed starboard railing by its down ropes and who had opened the removable railing to allow easy boarding. Come aboard quickly. No false bravery or hanging back now. Up you step!

Four sailors were already aboard the boat to act as oarsmen. Their oars were held vertical. Nurses stepped over the gunwale to board the lifeboat with a display of reluctance—just to show the others they were not panicked. Last—determined to speed things up—Mitchie edged Naomi ahead of her and stepped off the ship and into the boat, where the upraised hands of her women helped her down.

Sally, called Mitchie, aware that Sally was still on deck.

I’ll be in this one, called Sally. Already a second boat was being cranked down from the upper deck. The Fusiliers still maintained decent order. Officers arranged them in ranks now, as they watched the boats further aft descending to receive them. The nurses’ second boat was lashed to the railing at a steep angle some might consider perilous. The officer gently but with an increased urgency pushed the women aboard. Sally traversed the tilting boat and took a seat on the seaward side. At her angle she could see—in Mitchie’s boat lower than this one—her sister’s face frowning up.

Sally’s boat filled up with women whose upper bodies were bulked out with life preservers. Sally held Honora’s hands, which were blue with fright. A few soldiers came aboard—almost apologetic. Peril had civilized them. The rope that attached the boat to the railing was let go and they swung wildly into the air with a joint female scream that lacked any composure. And so the Archimedes ’s daughters dangled over the sea and were lowered away an inch at a time.

Other boats were descending further aft—but so slowly. Sally saw the ranks breaking up at the officers’ permission. Resignation and calm were no longer the day’s order. And the swinging out of boats seemed to present technical difficulties and was not occurring fast enough. The rake of the far side of the ship must be presenting awful difficulties for boat lowering. So men were now permitted to seek their individual rescues. Soldiers milling at the railings seemed to speculate on what the canting of the ship might mean. Then they climbed the rails to come splashing down into the sea all around the boats. Sailors hurled rafts from both the bows and aft.

Sally’s boat—descending by its hawsers—now picked up too much downward speed. Looking over the gunwales she saw that because of the growing steepness of the deck her sister’s boat had swung in part below hers and had stuck in place, dipping unevenly. A mere instant later it dropped hectically and splashed into the sea. The ship was nose down and Sally saw that her boat would slam the stern of her sister’s and Mitchie’s unless it could be detached from its hawsers and rowed clear. Still attached to the Archimedes by its thick cables, the boat below them—with her sister in it—now turned crazily beam on and crosswise.

She looked up and cried to the sailors at the winches, Stop!

But her lifeboat smashed into the midsection and across the thwarts of Naomi’s. It wildly jolted Sally and Honora, and they could hear the screams of those below them.

This was the place where Sally’s memory changed or died. The thud of the one boat atop another numbed the brain. Sally and Honora were thrown by the impact head and shoulders first into the water and their hands separated on their individual arcs. Time ceased. Only the nurses’ watches—till choked by saltwater—kept it. But the time of the heart and brain vanished now in the minuteless, hourless, choking sea. They flew through an atmosphere of lusty but impotent shouts from men and were unhearing then in green water where she went so much deeper than was justifiable for someone wearing a life belt. She had a memory that this was the way of water in the muddy Macleay too. This was why—unlike other farm children—she had never liked to drop from tree branches into it. Rising by painful inches rather than as a cork, she squandered all the air in her lungs. In her aching want of breath, she wondered remotely—though without intimate concern for anything but air—about Honora. But breaking into air and light she rejoiced to see her friend bobbing in her dun life jacket with its collar pushed up high around her ears. Sally could hear Honora utter a gasp that was halfway to a scream—like a picnicking girl ducked in the surf by a lout. She was slick-haired but she seemed to Sally a breathing promise that this might be an adventure after all.

Sally? Honora shouted, wanting identification. She gave the impression she really wanted to have all this explained to her. We’re fine now, said Sally.

Wine-dark sea, be fucked! yelled Honora. Kiernan had told her that Homer called the Mediterranean that.

Suddenly Sally could not contemplate the fretfulness of losing Honora and knew she must lead. Stay close! Sally called like a woman with a plan. All around, nurses in life belts were thrashing with unnecessary zeal—as if they had lost any water skills they had once possessed. In front of Sally—as she spun—was the blank steel flank of the Archimedes , and forward the upper rim of a part-submerged hole, which the green sea was entering like a tide invading a grotto. Its upper shredded contours were visible—complicated by explosion. Its irregularities were known only to God but otherwise were savage and unreadable. She saw the two lifeboats—one atop the other crosswise—and sensed they were about to sink. Naomi agreed, for she could be seen lowering Matron Mitchie into the water. Mitchie displayed all blood from the waist down. It shocked Sally like nakedness. Mitchie’s mouth gaped, and she did not seem to know her circumstances. But Naomi had soon skidded into the sea beside her. Ah yes, Sally remembered. Naomi was the family swimmer. Jumping from Sherwood bridge or tree forks into an opaque gray-green mixture of topsoil and escarpment grit from up as far as Armidale.

Sally saw the midships doorway open and tilted a few feet above the water. Protesting horses were jumping, their hooves stuttering on the last plates of steel beforehand. There were men in there, screaming at them to go and lashing their hindquarters. Mules fell gracelessly on their flanks as the Archimedes ’s own leaning flank loomed above them. Two nurses and some orderlies walked down the canting ship’s stairs a step or two and launched themselves. Still looking out at the sea from the rail Nettice could be seen—squinting like a woman trying to recognize a face at a tea party. How had Nettice missed the lifeboats? By choice or accident? Already Sally and Honora and the remnants and population of their own shattered boat were sliding astern of the Archimedes and could see a little of the great rump of the ship rising by degrees. They could at once see men dropping from the lower port side closest to the shadowy surface of the water as well as others—by choice it seemed and with the howl of their lives—throwing themselves from the upmost, portside railing. They slid down the ship’s sides. Why did they choose that? What did the rivets do to their flesh? But men were queuing for the fright and abrasions of it.