Thomas Keneally - The Daughters of Mars

Some wisdom prevented even the overactive Kiernan from trying to fetch him. Dear God, Naomi said. It’s starting, is it?

She cried loudly, We’re all staying here . There is no other boat for us. Just this one.

No one answered directly except that some communal discontent at her edict came out in groans. They speculated about the chances of something warmer and more mothering.

In the raft Mitchie berserkly said, I don’t know where I’ve been, but I’m pleased to be home again.

A large gray ship appeared and was seen first by Honora. In the north, she called out. Yes. The north.

Leaning back a little way and her flesh blazing with ice, she could see the ship revealed by a swell. The men shouted and shrilled and whistled, and she bayed too. But it was set on finding its way to deliver more battalions to that terrible shore. Too busy delivering the dead to find the living.

Bastards! yelled one of the Ulster men.

Language, called Kiernan as if the rules here weren’t different.

Go to hell, roared the Ulsterman back. When I’m dictated to by a fookin’ colonial…

But he suddenly ran out of steam.

May I point out, called Kiernan, that it’s your crowd who want us here, beating our heads against the Turks. We are doing your Empire a favor.

There was another communal outcry from men on and attached to the raft.

Nettice leaned over the side and confided to Naomi, I’m finished now. I lost too much air. I went too deep.

She slid like a dolphin and was in the water, but Naomi gathered her in with a long arm and attached one of Nettice’s small blue hands to the rope. Nettice slumped there with a disappointed weariness.

Sally wondered why others were not so incarnately cold as she was. They complained in terms she knew were understandable. They spoke of the false current. They cursed a passing ship. But no one spoke of cold. Naomi was in the water but superior to it. Certainly she had lost all her authority on the Archimedes . Triage had chastened her. Ellis Hoyle’s watch was an albatross. Yet now she had not only resumed control but done it in a particular way—by becoming the jolliest girl and the best camping companion. Sally was pleased for it since it was the accustomed arrangement which she welcomed at the moment. It was a grateful wonder. It was a light shining through ice.

There was another gray ship appearing up north and from the populace of the raft more waving and shouting and hooting and whistling in which Sally took part, but only by reflex.

Nurse Slattery, called Kiernan from the water, is there a box there, on board? One end of the raft or the other?

A box? There is a box, said Slattery. A young man has his head on it. Move him a little to the side. That’s right. So you want it, Mr. Kiernan?

Open it up, said Kiernan.

Honora said it was locked. Kiernan asked who had a knife.

Slattery inquired of the now mute sergeant if he had a knife. It seemed he produced something appropriate. Unskilled metal sounds were heard of Slattery working at the box. Fingers hopeless, she admitted. Then, Dear God, she cried. Broke the blade.

Keep working on it, said Kiernan. You see, there might be a flare.

Sally could hear Slattery battering at the box with the broken blade. She grunted, God, if you ever loved a poor girl, help me open this damned thing.

It amazed her by opening. A papist miracle of which none of the Ulstermen around and on the raft were heard objecting. Well, said Slattery, a jug of water here. Just right for Matron Mitchie.

I’ll have a sip of that too, said the sergeant aboard with a clotted voice.

In hearing that plea Sally discovered her own thirst. Dryness and ice. She was a cold desert no living water could redeem. She was not surprised to see her mother floating at her side where Honora had been. Life is sweet, said her mother but with the famed Durance frown which raised the chance that death was sweet too. Sally felt with a strange loathing pride what she had achieved—the lethal hoard of morphine gathered in as honest girls gather in… what? Linen, blackberries, peaches? Time to put her money down on the chance death was sweet. Time to discover the infinite space of what she had done. The space lay beneath her and could be explored without limit.

A bandage and this stick thing, said Honora, further reporting the contents of the box.

The flare, said Kiernan. Hang on to it and keep it dry.

But there’s nothing dry here, said Slattery.

Kiernan redefined the objective. Well, don’t let it get too sodden. And pass it to me when another ship appears. It can give you phosphorus burns so don’t let it off yourself.

I wouldn’t know how to, Slattery reflected. She sounded a bit amazed that she had neglected this section of her education.

Go aboard when the time comes, Naomi advised him. Else you’ll drop it in the sea.

Sally saw another soldier slip away and no one but she seemed to take notice or be able to afford to. She could see him floating—she believed—towards Egypt.

Does anyone here have a red handkerchief? Naomi called.

Aboard, Honora repeated the request. Then she seemed to go about rifling pockets. We’ve got gray, she announced.

Use that too! said Kiernan.

For he and Naomi spoke and thought with one mind.

We’re as good as rescued, Naomi told everyone.

Men dangling on the sides of the craft were calling for their sip of the water. Naomi handed it over the far side of the raft. It had gone to only a few men when someone—according to the yells and reproofs of men—dropped it so that it half sank before it could be retrieved, already useless and tainted with salt. There were groans and curses all around the raft. The treasure was gone. That was the conclusive disaster. And the light was growing conclusive too, the sun getting low. In dark—it came to Sally—no one can stop me going to explore. Her forgiving mother said, We’ll slip off alone. Sally looked forward to it, rejoicing. The pain of her hooked arm and the ice at her heart would be relieved.

She could not see more than the upper structure of one of them but it happened the sea was all at once full of ships. Two large shapes—Honora reported—and a smaller, faster one. The flare, called Kiernan, and Slattery passed it over the side like a baton without it being lost in the sea. Sally saw Kiernan—frowning like a prodigy of care—pull some string from it and hold it as high as he could. It blazed brighter than suns in his hand. He waved it while Slattery dared to stand in the raft and wave the gray handkerchief. One of the larger ships veered towards Kiernan’s light and Honora’s cloth. Around the raft ran a sudden, hoarse conversation.

They bloody seen us, cried the sergeant. They’ve got some gobshite there that isn’t total blind. Seen us! Seen us!

But after small hesitancy it turned broadside on, then stern on. Renouncing them.

No excuse to let go, cried Naomi at once. Everyone stay. He’s lowering boats.

A British naval launch—the smallest of the three vessels—presented itself and swept past them making a wave. They could hear the reverberations of its braked engine as it sat by a distant overturned boat to which some still clung. From the raft they could see people lifted and laid down or allowed to limp on its deck. A brisk pennant flapped above them from the mast. Then—instead of to them—it turned to another unseen raft to take its living aboard. The deck seemed to bristle with the rescued as it came onwards to their raft.

Hold on, called a fine, casual, polished voice through a loud-hailer. Hold on there. The French will get you. We have signaled them and they replied.

Their powers of reason were dimmed, but the people of the raft could see that it was so, and the launch was so crowded that its stern dipped. Sally felt a murderous hatred for those who were already on board. The raft swung in the launch’s wake, and they beheld a launch and cutter being lowered as promised from a dusk-lit naval shape. A destroyer—someone said. As the raft swirled in the vortex made by the ship’s displacement of water, they could see the tricolor on the high mast.