An exceptional New Zealand novel, but alas neglected. The Auckland University Press' "Anthology of New Zealand Literature" doesn't even give Billing a mention, which tells you something's wrong.
This then is a complex story written by a historian (Dowser), married to a Maori woman (Mareikura, or Marei for short), who was previously the wife of a boyhood friend, Brickell. Dowser is writing a fiction about whaling in Port Puissance (Otago Harbour) from the years 1830-41, using Brickell's collection of writings as a source.
Two other boyhood colleagues, John Mark Vodanovich and Richard John Travis feature in this novel and notably so in an episode which takes place in Antarctica, where Travis saves the other, when Vodanovich falls into a crevasse during a surveying expedition, an incident which reveals a deep rivalry and distrust between the pair.
The Maori woman, Marei believes herself to be the eleventh of the twelve Guardians of the Overworld of Io. She considers Vodanovich the ninth such Guardian because he understands the secret of the "chambered nautilus", with its three-dimensional spiral shell. The nautilus is able to descend or rise huge sea depths because it has a tube which it fills or empties in the chambered spiral shell.This ability is little understood to science. Thus Marei believes Vodanovich understands how the Guardians (the mereikura and whatukura) move between Earth and the Twelfth Heaven of Maori spiritual religion.
This then is the basis of our country's most ambitious and, I think, most considered novel about what it meant to be spiritually alive as a Maori when Europeans made first contact. This part of the novel centres on the experience of the first Wesleyan missionary at the whaling station (Windseer). He suffers physically in the primitive outpost, and becomes chronically depressed because of the depravity of Maori and European interaction at the settlement. He inevitably seeks female respite with a Maori woman in a neighbouring village, and in doing so understands the crushing, debilitating nature of his Christian vocation in these circumstance; and as well comes to appreciate the devastating effects this new religion is having on the tapu (sacred) and the spiritual world view of the natives.
I have read one other Billing novel, "The Slipway", set in my home town of Dunedin. It is an aching and stunning revelation of what it is to be an alcoholic. I considered Billing a superb intelligent writer on this one reading.
"The Chambered Nautilus" takes effort, patience while the grand scheme unfolds, an appreciation that Billing knows his stuff, and that he is muscular in his presentation. Coastal navigation, Greek and Maori mythology. our native flora, polar exploration, history (local and world-wide), marine biology - they are all there. You, dear reader, must be prepared for concentration. You will be rewarded.