A Twist of Sand Read online

  Automatically I rang the telegraph — "Half ahead."

  Etosha made her way west — to safety.

  John joined me at the wheel, grinning, axe in hand.

  "Fried fish for dinner," he said laconically.

  "We'll have to open up the hatches and see how much is spoiled," I replied. But I intend to get clear of this bloody part of the world first."

  "She was magnificent," said John warmly.

  "Much damage astern?" I asked.

  "A complete shambles. The mast and boats are gone and the davits are as curly as a Hottentot's topknot."

  "Where's Jim?" I asked. "Take the wheel a moment while I see how the crew's fared."

  John's face clouded. "Crew!" he sniffed. "Bloody lot of frightened savages. Do you think one of them stirred a hand to help me? They hung on to anything they could find and prayed for their souls — if they have such a thing."

  I looked over the bridge. Even where the force of the huge wave had been slightest, the damage was frightening. The wheel valves on the two winches under the bridge were awry, gear was swept in a wild tangle to starboard and lay in the scuppers in confusion; the crew, with fear in their faces, still clung to their handholds. Paint had been stripped as if with a blowlamp. Curled fragments clung to the blackened bulwarks.

  "Helmsman!" I roared. The Kroo boy detached himself and came slowly along the deck. "God's truth!" I shouted. "This isn't an old men's home! Shake a leg!"

  He came on to the bridge, sullen and frightened.

  "Course south by west," I snapped.

  The wheel swung over and the ragged welt of the coast, steaming, turbulent, half mist-shrouded, came into view.

  John looked at it ruminatively.

  "First round to us — over the Skeleton Coast!" he muttered.

  II

  Rays and Beetles

  I brought the Etosha into Walvis Bay towards sunset. John was with me on the bridge. As Pelican Point, a narrow peninsula which juts into the sea at the harbour mouth, came, clearly to view about five miles to the southward, the moderate wind to seaward suddenly switched northerly and the uneasy lop of the waves from the south-west indicated that we were in for a couple of days of the great rollers which crash so mercilessly on the coast after a northerly blow, more so at this late autumn season than during the summer.

  Etosha eased towards the harbour mouth at seven knots. "If she'd been a sailer, we'd be all aback now," John remarked. His lips were cracked from the wind, and the top of his thick woollen polo-necked jersey was stained with salt and paint. He was tired, too, after the excitement of the dawn. He had been on his feet solidly since.

  "I've got some old sailing directions below," I remarked. "It would drive me round the bend bringing a schooner, even under snug sail, up to an anchorage like this."

  The wind off the land, blowing powerfully across the direction of the northerly wind outside the harbour, threw up a short, nasty sea.

  "Starboard fifteen," I told the Kroo boy at the wheel. "Slow ahead," I rang.

  The sun, endowed by the great surge of volcanic dust thrown up by the eruptions, was making a great show of going down. Sunsets are always spectacular on the Skeleton Coast, but this one was out-vying them. Gold spears stabbed heavenwards like molten searchlights, refracted and diffused by the volcanic dust over the sea and the fine particles of sand whipping in from the desert which backs the port.

  As Etosha edged in towards her buoy, I laid her length parallel with the sandy peninsula.

  John laughed. "Not forgotten the tricks of the trade, eh? Put her against the sunset with a spit of land behind and what do our nosey-parkers see from the shore of damage? Nothing. Only blackness. I suppose it's in the blood, Geoffrey — you might as well ask a wolf not to stalk a caribou as expect a submariner not to hide himself!"

  I joined in the laugh, although a little cautiously. I was not sure how much the Kroo boy understood of what we were saying.

  "You've done such a damn fine job that it's scarcely necessary to conceal the damage," I said.

  He nodded. "With a more responsive crew, I'd have had her more shipshape still," he remarked. "We certainly scared the pants off this lot to-day."

  John had done wonders. Apart from the missing boats, twisted davits and the mast aft, even the idlers hanging around the quayside (they never seemed to disperse) would not have noticed much amiss. The paintwork had been restored where the blistering eruption had stripped it off her plates like a blow-lamp, although there were still obvious signs on the deck of her ordeal — the twisted winches and bent bulwarks. Nevertheless, I could take her to sea any ' time. Mac had not reported from the engine room, but I knew he would be along once we had secured. In addition to the repairs, we had heaved about ten tons offish overboard which had been spoilt by the heat of the eruption.

  I brought Etosha up to her moorings, which lay well away from most of the other fishing boats anyway, most of them local wooden sail-and-engine craft which (to my mind) have none of the seaworthiness or grace of those fine cutters one finds off the Norwegian coast or on the Icelandic grounds.

  The angry sun transformed the harbour, even the ugly Cold Storage works with its tall chimneys and fortress-like structure, to a world of golds, blues, ambers and blacks. The quick late autumn night was falling when we cleared away the crew for the night — I did not allow them to sleep aboard, which they resented, but it was a point on which I was adamant.

  John, Mac and I had the Etosha to ourselves.

  "Come in, Mac," I called from my sea-cabin where John was having a drink with me later.

  "Scotch?" I asked.

  "Aye," he replied in his dour way. "No water."

  "Anything left of your engines after this morning?" asked John.

  "Bluidy little," he growled. He turned from the painting of a full-rigged ship which he was contemplating above my desk. Although I had known Mac for more than fifteen years, I still felt a little chilled at his eyes, like a line of surf under the Northern Lights, coupled with his morose dour-ness.

  "Some day," he said angrily, "ye'll go too far, skipper, and you won't have me to haul you out of the muck." He smiled grimly at his inner knowledge. "The luck's been with you, so far, laddie. It damn near wasn't to-day."

  I refilled his glass. For Mac to utter more than half a dozen words a day was surprising. This sounded almost like an unburdening. I poured the Haig slowly and thought, he does know too much. What do I know about him? Precious little. And yet everything a man can learn from another from being in tight corners together and carrying out deeds beyond the arm of the law. Did the same rules apply in the Glasgow gutter where Mac had been born? Was our alliance one of expediency or one of loyalty, the gamin's loyalty to the gang, so long as the leader paid off? Certainly, Mac knew too much.

  Mac took the straight drink without a word. "Bit of strain in the shaft, I think, but nothing t' worry about."

  "That means that the whole damn thing's as sweet as a nut," laughed John. "What was it like down in your stokehole when we staggered through that bit of flame, Mac?" "Like someone had put a blow-lamp under my backside," he said shortly.

  "Everything will be all right for getting out on to the fishing grounds in the morning?" I asked him.

  He treated me to one of his hard stares. "Aye," he said slowly, spinning the amber liquid round and round in the glass, obscuring the deep oil stains on the capable fingers. "Where were we this morning, laddie? Anywhere near the old place?"

  Blast Mac, I thought. I had enough on my hands without his raking up what was dead. Certainly he knew a lot too much. I played for time. "Another drink, John?"

  A heavy knock at the door saved my answering. I opened it. There stood a policeman. He spoke in Afrikaans. "Which of you is Captain Macdonald?"

  "I am," I replied in the same language. "Come in."

  "Venter," he said, introducing himself in the German way. "Sergeant."

  Still speaking in Afrikaans, I said: "This is my first mate, Mister John
Garland, and my engineer, Mister Macfadden." He shook hands formally.

  "Neither of them speak Afrikaans," I said to relieve the uneasy air in the cabin. "Shall we speak English?"

  Now was the time for my act, carried out whenever I came to port. I dropped into English with a South African accent, that clipped, staccato form of English which shortens its vowels and studs its sentences with the word "man." They say the first word you hear on arriving in Cape Town from overseas is the typical "man." Ask a South African to say "castle "and listen to the value he gives the "a" and you'll recognise him anywhere. It has none of the twang of Australia, but has an individuality all its own.

  "Have a drink, Sarge?" I said with forced heartiness. "Whisky, or the real stuff?"

  I pulled out a bottle of well-matured Cape brandy.

  Venter gazed at the label in admiration. "Jesus!" he said with a wink. "You sea b——s certainly get the mother's milk. A nice little sopie of that, and you can't say I'm sucking on the hind tit."

  I caught John's amazed eye at this little introduction and nearly burst out laughing. Mac gazed at him with the sort of expression I should imagine he reserved for delinquent pieces of machinery.

  Venter took a big swallow, tossed his helmet on the table and sank with a big sigh into my chair.

  "Man, captain," he said. "They sent me to ask about this bastard of your crew who got drowned."

  I glanced swiftly across at John, for I had told him earlier that I had sent a note with the Kroo helmsman to the police advising them officially that I'd lost a man overboard.

  "I'll get the charts," said John.

  "I'll show you the exact place where we lost him. It was during a volcanic eruption, you know."

  "Have your drink first," said the sergeant. "No hurry. This is bladdy good brandy. A non-European, wasn't he?"

  "Yes," I said. "I was making a run at speed to get clear of a couple of volcanic islands, and the fellow — his name was Shilling — jumped overboard and swam for a rock which was sticking out of the sea. I never saw him again."

  "Silly bastard," replied Venter expansively. "What did he want to go and do that for? Not a solitary clue, I'd say."

  "There was no chance to go back for him," I added. "I was moving at full speed and almost at the same moment we were hit by a big wave."

  "Ag, man, the docks are full of unskilled hands — you'll find another boy quite easily," commented Venter.

  "Another brandy," I suggested.

  "It's good stuff," approved Venter.

  John slipped out and returned with the chart. He had found time even to complete the duplicate. There were the neat crosses and position of the chain of islands, about 150 miles from where we really had been. It would be safe enough, for islands on this coast simply appear one day and disappear the next. No one could dispute it.

  "Our position was about twenty degrees fifty minutes South" he began in a formal voice which took me back to Royal Navy courts-martial.

  "Jesus!" exclaimed Venter: "I don't understand that sort of thing. I wouldn't know how even to write it down. Tell me something simple, just for the report."

  "Won't there be an inquest?" I asked tentatively.

  "Nothing more than just a formality," said Venter. "No, man, just tell me where it was and I'll write it down for the major. That's about all. Bit of a waste of time, I'd say, but there it is."

  John looked relieved. I don't think he liked the job of explaining faked charts.

  "I should say it was about 150 miles N.N.W. of Walvis Bay. He went overboard somewhere about six o'clock."

  Venter slopped some brandy on to his notebook. He raised it to his mouth and gave it a neat lick, and then went on writing. Mac regarded him with distaste. He laboriously wrote down a few details of the affair. Well, there shouldn't be any questions about where we were to judge from the policeman's attitude.

  "Captain Macdonald — what is the voornaam — first name?"

  "Geoffrey," I replied.

  He wrote it down "Jeffrie". That wouldn't do any harm either.

  "South African?" he said.

  I dropped into Afrikaans with a bonhomie which sounded as false as a sham beard to me, but it didn't worry Venter.

  "Man, have you ever heard a rooinek speak Afrikaans like I do? I was born in the Free State."

  "Ag, here," he replied matily. "I'm a Transvaaler. Ventersdorp."

  "Parys," I replied cheerily, thinking of the little resort which clings to the banks of the Vaal River with one foot in the veld of the Northern Free State, and the other in the Vaal River.

  "This calls for a drink," he said without a blush.

  I filled up his glass.

  "Gesondheid! (good health)," he said. "Man. I'd like to stay and have a party with you boys, but I've got to get back to the station."

  Mac breathed a visible sigh of relief. He took his helmet. "Cheerio, heh!" he said. "Totsiens, you chaps." I saw him over the rail. John was convulsed when I returned. "How to win friends and influence people!" he laughed. "Well, well, well. He couldn't have cared less, could he?" "And not a bad thing either," I replied. "It's a nice little chart you have there," said Mac ironically. "Hundreds of miles out to sea, and nothing to prove it to the contrary. What if they ask the other members of the crew?"

  "They won't," I replied. "They could swear blind that they'd seen dry land, but John and I could prove beyond any doubt that they were talking nonsense."

  "Aye," said Mac slowly, "You'd prove it to me, too. But just for interest's sake, seeing I saw it with my own eyes, where were we?"

  "Off the Skeleton Coast," I said looking into his cold eyes, now a little shaded with the whisky he had drunk. "The Skeleton Coast, Mac."

  "Aye," he said. "That was all I was wanting to know." We all felt the jar as the boat, inexpertly handled, bumped against the Etosha's side. In the silence, the unease which had been with me in the morning returned. Who was this now? Was there some further shadow looming? I felt sure it was not the police. Some aftermath of Mac's words remained, the meaningful "aye." He might well brood over the Skeleton Coast. As I might.

  Heavy feet clumped on the deck. The three of us stood silent, drinks in hand, waiting for the unknown visitor. The imponderable sense of tension running like a tideway under our lives, made us view the newcomer, whoever he was, as an intruder. We followed the progress of the feet down the companionway; they hesitated for a moment, and then chose the cabin door. Without waiting for the knock, I pulled it open swiftly.

  Our pre-occupation with the coming of the unknown man to the Etosha at night, the sense of indefinable tension which his presence engendered throughout the later tumultuous events, were characteristic of all I ever knew about the tall, slightly bent figure which blinked in the light as I pulled open the door. - As a figure, he would have passed anywhere without comment, for his sand-coloured hair had receded slightly from the temples and his grey eyes were those of a thousand other respectable citizens. But it was the strong, cruel gash of the face below the bridge of the nose and his quiet, mirthless chuckle which ever afterwards never ceased to frighten me. I still wake at night sweating when I think of that chuckle as he emerged to kill me on the mountain.

  "Captain Macdonald?" he asked with a slightly German accent.

  "Yes," I said curtly. I have never approved of sudden incursions into my privacy. That privacy was to be respected, as the crew knew.

  He stood a moment in his cheap tweeds as his eyes flickered beyond me, a quick, appraising glance.

  "Stein," he said holding out a hand. "Dr. Albert Stein. Not 'Stain' if you please, but 'Stine'."

  I didn't ask him in. If he'd come about today's business up the coast, he'd go away quicker than he came. I didn't speak.

  "May I come in?" The eyes were friendly, but the jaw looked like one of those strange creatures the net brings up out of the depths, snapping at the steel gaff to its last expiring breath.

  I stood aside, my ungraciousness apparent.

  He looked at J
ohn and Mac.

  "I haven't also had the pleasure…"

  "My mate and engineer," I said briefly.

  For some reason he held out his hand to Mac. "This is a very fine ship," he murmured. "You must be proud to be the engineer. Fine big engines, eh?"

  Mac ignored the outstretched hand. I blessed him for his taciturnity.

  "Engines from the Humber," he said. "Would have been better from the Clyde."

  "Ah, the pride of the Scot," said Stein amiably. "Two Scots and one Englishman on such a fine little ship."

  "I am a South African," I said, underlining it with a heavy accent.

  "But the mate is English, yes? And the ship too? Fine, fast ships the English build."

  He nodded to the three of us, but his eyes searched the cabin.

  "Can I do something for you, Doctor Stein?" I asked coldly. "You haven't rowed yourself out all this way just to admire my ship. Otherwise…" I waved a hand vaguely towards the companionway.

  "Ah but yes," he cried. "It is about business that I wish to talk."

  We remained on our feet.

  "If it's a matter of business," I began. "We can discuss it ashore some other time. I sell all my fish on a contract basis."

  "I am a scientist, not a fishmonger," he smiled and I liked his smile less than a sting ray. "I wish to discuss with you a matter of catching beetles."

  Stein certainly didn't look like a crazy beetle hunter, however odd his words sounded.

  "The matter of beetle-catching I wish to discuss is private," he said, looking pointedly at John and Mac.

  "These men are also my close friends. You may say anything you wish in front of them."

  "What a happy little ship," he said encouragingly. "Well, I wish you to take me on a short trip so that I can catch beetles.".

  John joined in and he laughed grimly. "You don't catch beetles out in the Atlantic, Dr. Stein," he said. "We may catch a lot else, but not beetles."

  Stein grinned in his mirthless way.