The Invisible Hero (6 page)

Well that's it. No more journal. As long as I get a Pass, I'm happy.

I've found my hero. Actually, it was Mrs Wilgard from the library who suggested him. Can't wait to tell Mustafa, Oliver and Ruth. It's just such an incredible story. How come we've never been taught about this guy and his adventure at school? I'll just have to make sure he's known about again.

Okay, I bet people might think
Oh, yawn. Just another adventurer.
But beginning to end, I've never heard of an adventure like it. For starters, if you were going to take over thirty men to the Antarctic for a life endangering exploration, how would you choose them? All my ideas about this were blown out of the water when I read how Shackleton selected his team.

Shackleton asked every single interviewee, from scientific and medical people to tradespeople, if they could sing! If they actually could sing and they showed they had a sense of humour, they were chosen. Apparently, Shackleton reckoned these people's references told him enough about how good they were at their jobs, but he was looking for more than skill.

When I told Dad about this, he laughed his head off, but he said he could see Shackleton's logic. If you can sing and you have a sense of humour, you are probably going to be a cheerful, optimistic sort of person. A team of positive people are more likely to cooperate and succeed. Are you listening, Mr Quayle?

I'm just so into this guy it's going to be hard to know what to leave out. If you were a Macca type, you might just put Shackleton's journey down, because it actually failed. Their ship got stuck in pack ice which is like ice floes. They actually never made it onto shore.

Shackleton and his men spent ages on this jammed ship waiting for spring to thaw the ice. Talk about bad luck. The ice started to kind of eat the ship. I mean it began to squeeze the living daylights out of the ship. It started creaking, then it started leaning over. Eventually, Shackleton told everyone to get stuff off the ship and abandon it altogether. Lucky he decided that. The ship ended up completely destroyed and in bits. Gone. Finito.

Next step was to take some small open sailing yachts they had on the old ship and get to a place called Elephant Island. There was nothing but rocks and stones on the island. It was freezing cold and the constant winds were up to 100 mph. The men built these low stone walls and then upturned two of the small boats and used them as roofs over the walls. But all they had to eat was penguins and seals.

Lots of men got really sick. Gangrene was a big problem. The youngest person on the expedition, Perce Blackborow, was eighteen years old and had to have all the toes of his left foot cut
off. He was a stowaway. When Perce was first discovered, hiding in a locker, Shackleton was furious and tried to scare the living daylights out of Perce by whispering into his ear, ‘...we often get very hungry. If there is a stowaway available, he is first to be eaten.' But Perce answered, ‘They'd get a lot more meat off you, sir.' That got a smile out of Shackleton and he put Perce to work helping the cook.

Back to Elephant Island, though – Shackleton knew he had to try to get a rescue ship. He left twenty-two of the men on Elephant Island and took five men with him. With just a sextant and a compass to guide them, they sailed off in the third open boat (22 1/2 feet long) trying to get to a whaling station on South Georgia Island which is down the bottom of South America.

Eight hundred miles of some of the roughest seas on earth and seventeen days later, Shackleton's crew got to South Georgia, but to the wrong side. High snow-bound mountains came between the five men and the whaling station where they knew they could get help.

Now here's the sort of mountaineering that I cheer for. Shackleton chose two of the men to climb those mountains with him – Crean and Worsely. He had never in his life done any mountaineering. They hammered nails into the bottom of their boots to make climbing spikes. The only gear they had was one carpenter's adze and fifteen metres of rope. They had three days' food and they walked thirty-six hours without stopping ‘til they got over those mountains. When they reached the whaling station, the tough station manager broke down in tears to see
such haggard, worn-out men. This is what Shackleton wrote about the experience of having crossed those mountains:

‘We had pierced the veneer of outside things. We had suffered, starved and triumphed, grovelled down yet grasped at glory, grown bigger in the bigness of the whole. We had seen God in His splendours, heard the text that nature renders. We had reached the naked soul of man.'

Almost the next day, Shackleton got a rescue ship happening and on its way. The twenty-two men back at Elephant Island were saved.

Mrs Wilgard gave me a book on Shackleton's expedition. You should see the photos. This Aussie guy called Frank Hurley took awesome photos of the whole adventure. He even climbed up to the top of the icy mast of the strangled ship to get some of his shots.

Well didn't we have some entertainment in SOSE yesterday! Our Dill Dugan has found himself a hero. Here's Quayle walking round the class like a police inspector, hands behind his back, peering over at our journals to check that we have kept up with writing in them. He stops at Dill's desk and says, ‘Well miracles will never cease, Dugan. You've written more than a page for the second time.' Then he leans over to read what Dill has written. But Dill covers the open book with his hands.

‘You said you wouldn't read it, Sir.'

‘But this is exceptional for you, Dugan. And an exceptional effort deserves an exceptional response from me,' says Quayle.

‘No, Sir,' says Dill and he leans his body over his book.

‘Don't you speak to a teacher like that,' says Quayle and he snatches the book from under Dill's hands.

‘Don't you dare, Sir!' yells Dill who is red faced and in a panic.

Well, the whole class – okay, most of the class – are dead keen to know what Dill has been writing. Ruth (aka Waterworks – because she's been a weepy little sop since primary) objects and says, ‘It's not ethical, Mr Quayle. You shouldn't.'

My mate, Sam de Grekh, turns and snarls, ‘Shut the effen up, Waterworks.'

Waterworks starts crying. Predictably.

Quayle does what's expected of him and yells, ‘Language, de Grekh!'

Then it's back to the fun and games. Quayle starts reading Dill's book. The class is silent as the tomb. We watch Quayle's eyebrows raise and then he says with a smirk, ‘You're quite the poet, Dugan.'

Dill's head is hanging low, and anyway those dumb blue glasses stop you from seeing the expression in his eyes – but his jaw is twitching.

‘Come on now, you deserve a bit of positive attention,' smiles Quayle. ‘Look at this!
Beautiful like a Madonna painting, green eyes, milky skin.
'

Of course, all heads turn to the snooty Raphaela. She's looking as horrified as a princess might be who's been proposed
to by a toad. So she's the hero that our Dill has chosen. But before we can comment on that, Quayle starts reading Dill's book again, ‘What's this?
A deep pool of...
'

But we never hear the rest. Dill has rushed up to Quayle, wrenched the book out of his hands and stormed out of the class. Now that's a first for Dugan the Dill. And what's more, he kept on marching right out of the school and, we've heard on the grapevine, all one-and-a-half hours by foot to his Nanna's warm embrace at home. He's in for it now.

I reckon this counts as SOSE work. I call it research into what other people see as heroes. Poor suckers.

But according to my mate, Machiavelli, Quayle has made a big mistake. He's broken one of the golden rules. And that is, most men will put up with the ruler or be reasonably content as long as they don't have their possessions or their women taken off them. Now as far as I can see the situation with Dill, Quayle has pinched his book and humiliated him in front of his chosen woman. Bad move.

The general feeling in the class (apart from enjoying the live entertainment we've all been treated to) is that Quayle has stepped out of line. Personally, I couldn't be gladder, but to take a leaf out of my hero's book, I need to appear to agree with the class. So after class, I go along with the general mood of the kids and we all bag Quayle. I reckon I could rule the world one day.

I feel so bad. Not for doing something bad, but for not doing something right. Nonna used to tell me that you don't just
do
bad things, you can be bad by
not doing
what you should. I can hardly bear to write this down, to admit this even to the paper – but I have to.

Yesterday, I sat by silently as someone in my class was persecuted. Philip Dugan. As far as I know he's never done anything mean against a kid in the class. He's been one of less than a handful of kids to offer me a kind word in this place.

There was Philip being humiliated by the teacher in front of the class by having his journal read out. Of course I was embarrassed by what he wrote about me – all that stuff about green eyes and milky skin. I wish he hadn't. In fact, I was repulsed that he might have the hots for me and I just can't look him in the face now. But it was so wrong of Mr Quayle, smiling away like a kind of groper – his long teeth pointing backwards into his mouth – making public the private thoughts of one of his students.

But when I saw Philip shrinking into himself as if he'd like to eat himself into oblivion, I saw my own humiliation was not nearly as bad. When Philip asked Mr Quayle, so politely, to stop, I wanted to stand up for him. I looked around the room. Genelle, Amber and Tiffany were smirking. Macca was leaning forward on his desk, chin cupped in his hands, as if he was doing some fascinating scientific study. Macca's minions, de Grekh and Cheung, leant back on their chairs like Romans out for a day's
entertainment watching Christians being fed to the lions. It was clear just about everyone else was uncomfortable. But we stayed silent. I stayed silent.

Then comes my second cowardly act. Two in one day. Ruth Stern, the girl some kids call Waterworks, did the brave thing and asked the teacher to stop embarrassing Phil. Big watery blue eyes, scrawny little body, voice like a squeaky doll's – and she was the only one to speak out. Not ‘ethical' was the word she used. I was surprised she knew a word like that, but it was a good word. It sort of summed up that Mr Quayle was way out of line – just plain not fair and maybe even not moral. But when Sam de Grekh got Ruth crying by calling out, ‘Takes a loser to know a loser', the rest of us were silent.

And what's this word ‘loser', anyway? The way Macca says it, ‘loser' must mean gentle, quiet types. And so if ‘winner' means types like Macca, Genelle and Co, then let me get out of here.

By being silent we allowed the persecution to happen. It's kind of safe to say ‘we'. And gutless. Let me face facts. I, who know what it feels like to be shunned, did nothing to show Ruth I was on her side.

Then again, it wasn't easy for me. I mean, I feel it was harder for me to stand up for Philip than for most of the others. If I'd spoken out, maybe the others would have thought I had something going with Philip, that I had a soft spot for him. Or maybe they'd think I'm too full of myself, too outspoken. This school doesn't encourage girls to speak out. I'm new. I'm unpopular enough. I was too scared to stick my neck out.

At home tonight there was a TV documentary on the holocaust. I'd always come down so hard on the Germans who kept safe and silent about the Nazis' persecution of the Jews, homosexuals, communists, Jehovah's witnesses, gypsies and any other ‘enemies', i.e. people who disagreed with Hitler. Jeremy, my younger brother and my parents were talking aloud – calling out their disgust. But this time, I couldn't join in. I understood that fear can make us betray our consciences and others' lives.

Last night I lay in bed wondering how it would have turned out if Mrs Canmore had been at the lesson. She would have stopped Mr Quayle somehow. Then I started composing a powerful speech that, given the chance, I would have delivered to the class and Mr Quayle when he was bagging Philip. Everyone was going to be so swayed by my words that Mr Quayle would have apologised to Philip for his unjust treatment. And the kids would look up to me for doing the right thing. I was pretty impressed with my imaginary speech until I realised that it had taken about half an hour to compose it. In a real life situation, how do you collect your thoughts quickly enough to say something that's worth it?

I've always worried that I'm weak. Being called Waterworks all my school days doesn't help how I see myself. But yesterday I didn't have to even think about it. I just couldn't stand another bad thing said to Phil. The words came straight out of my mouth.
‘Not ethical'. I'd only heard that word, ‘ethical', for the first time last night. Mum, my sister, Hannah, and me were watching the TV news after tea. They had some of Parliament on. My God, what a bunch of bullies. And they tell us at school not to bully.

There was this big creep from one political party slagging off at a lady on the enemy side. She was into some sort of environmental protection thing and the creep just wanted to pull her down for no obvious reason. But he didn't even stick to an argument. He called her a ‘frustrated, barren woman with nothing better to do than impede the world of big business'. I asked Mum, ‘What does he mean by
barren?
' And Mum said, ‘It means you haven't or can't have babies. He's being completely illogical and unethical.
Argumentum ad hominem.
'