A Twist of Sand Read online

  "Yes, I know," he went on, as if speaking to a child. "But I wish to take your ship and go up the coast to find beetles, or rather, one particular beetle."

  I shrugged. I wasn't having Stein, or anyone else, trippering up and down the coast in Etosha.

  "It's worth a lot of money to you," he said. "Five hundred pounds."

  "Where to?" I pressed him.

  He hedged. "When I wish to find my beetle, I go to people who know about ships, and I ask, which is the finest ship sailing out of Walvis Bay? They tell me, the Etosha. But that is not all I want. The Etosha might be the best ship, but it is the skipper who really matters. And who, I ask, knows these waters best of all the fishing skippers? Macdonald of the Etosha, they tell me. And here I am. Five hundred pounds for my passage."

  I was more amused at the offer than anything. "Where do you expect to go for £500 — to South America?"

  "No," he said crisply. "I want you to put me ashore on the Skeleton Coast."

  I burst out laughing.

  "Good God, man, you can't be serious," I exclaimed. "Every policeman knows where every ship goes from this port. I'd only have to tell them what you've said — in front of witnesses — and they'd watch you like a hawk."

  "I don't think you'd do that," he said evenly.

  "Why not?" I asked.

  He looked at me searchingly, and his reply was long in coming.

  "I don't quite know," he said, "but I think I am right in saying you won't spread this around. Why? I base my ideas on what I see. I see a fine ship with lovely lines, when big holds are what make a ship pay. Everyone says the Etosha must be fast, and yet no one has ever seen her making much above twelve knots. I drop a question to the engineer, and he closes up like a clam, instead of displaying a warm admiration for his engines." He swung suddenly at me. "I hear you lost a man overboard to-day."

  I was rapidly losing my temper.

  "Yes," I snapped. "And there'll be another one over the side very soon now. Damn you and your impertinence, Stein. Get out!"

  He continued to look at me coolly. "My mind is made to inquire and search out the truths of things in nature," he said in a pompous Teutonic way. "If Etosha were a beetle, I'd say she was a throwback from her species. But gentlemen, I waste your time. You will not reconsider?"

  "No," I snapped.

  "Ah well," he smiled while the jaw remained cruel. "Ah well." He turned and went.

  The unpleasant taste left in our mouths by Stein's visit was to worsen a day or two later on the fishing grounds into something more sinister, almost a sailor's superstition that he was a harbinger of evil, through a strange incident. I took Etosha out into deep water at the spot where I judged the plankton, which comes up in the cold currents from the Antarctic, would be when it meets the warmer seas of the tropics. Judging the right place — in that wilderness of waters — is the measure of a skipper's success as a trawlerman, and it may mean everything between prosperity and adversity. Skippers have their favourite (and jealously-guarded) secrets of wind and weather which will bring the fish. One I know worked out his bearings on the fishing grounds by a thermometer trailed in the water astern, at a depth of four fathoms. He claimed it worked, and his holds were certainly never empty,

  I had tried in vain to replace the boats smashed in the eruption, but had had to be content with a double-ended substitute which turned out to be a surf-boat. It was certainly quite appropriate to its work in breakers, but not much good for the open sea. The lack of boats was to play a big role in the events which later took their toll of lives.

  The net had been out since dawn and Etosha was patrolling the great open South Atlantic with the leisurely gait of a policeman on beat. It was about two bells in the first dog watch. And a policeman would not have seen anything to disturb his thoughts in the calm, easy swell, with the sun dropping towards St. Helena far in the west. We'd had a fair haul of pilchard, stockfish and maasbanker, but not what I was hoping for when we met that elusive marriage-point of plankton and tropic waters.

  "All aboard for the yachting trip," said John lazily, yawning and stretching himself on the bridge-rail. He swept the horizon with his eyes. "Not a damn thing in sight — I all alone in a wide, wide sea!'

  The immensity and stillness of the coming evening had put all thoughts of Stein away and I would not have wished anything but the present idyll of sea and sky merging, somewhere in the east, into Africa.

  "I think we must be a little too far south," I murmured. "The water's probably a bit cold for the fish."

  "Lucky little planktons," grinned John. "Nothing to darken the shadow of their one-cell lives. Oh happy, happy plankton! Why not try the thermometer trick?"

  "To hell with that," I said, falling into his easy mood. "Why don't we pour some whisky over the stern and make them all drunk, and then we can be sure of catching the drunken fish at the end of the bender."

  The helmsman eyed me quizzically, not knowing whether this was the white man's humour or not.

  "At this rate we'll be out here for a week," replied John. "Hallo, a stranger coming into the nest."

  I followed his pointing finger, but it was a minute or so before I saw the flash of white in the south-west. I think the habit of vigilant, never-ceasing watchfulness, the hall-mark of the submariner, had become an unconscious part of John's life. The sea — it always is the enemy.

  I reached for my binoculars and focused them on the white triangle rising above the sea.

  "Pirates in these waters," I remarked, still in the easy mood of the last hour of daylight. "A windjammer. Stand by to repel boarders."

  John watched the sail rising quickly.

  "She's crackin' it on, all right," he said, "and I'll eat my boots if she isn't that old Grand Banks schooner from Luderitz."

  I kept my glasses on her.

  "She's got a wind that we haven't," I said.

  I saw the gleam of flying jib narrow, the sun catching it with a yellowing shaft.

  "She's altering course towards us," I observed. "She was lying a couple of points nearer north a moment ago."

  "I'd have loved to have seen her in her heyday and not under Hendriks," said John watching the lovely sight of a sailing-ship at sea under full sail. "They say, though, he's not such a bad skipper for a Coloured."

  "A throwback to some of his Malay ancestors. They love the sea," I said.

  The three masts of the schooner were in full view now, although her hull, dark-painted, was not clear to the eye yet.

  "He'll sail the masts right out of the old Pikkewyn if he's not careful," said John. "I hate his guts for those jackyard topsails, though. Why couldn't he leave her clean, as she was? I never thought I'd see her under three jibs, though. That old hull must have a lot of life in it yet to stand ail-that sail."

  I smiled at John's fastidious appreciation of sail.

  The old Grand Banks schooner was a brave sight. The sails were yellow Bushman-ochre on a ground of grey, for all the world like the rock the old primitives used as their desert canvas. The slant of the sun and the distance concealed her age and neglect. She was a lovely, living thing, young and alive in her glory.

  "She's coming our way — look at the bone in her teeth," cried John as a nicker of white creamed under her forefoot. "Eleven knots, if she's moving at all."

  The old schooner was coming straight at us. Something in my mind sounded a note of warning — that dead straight course, the alteration when she sighted Etosha: but I dismissed it as fantasy.

  The schooner came on and I could see her fine lines clearly. She was leaning over close-hauled, so far that the boat swinging from the davits seemed almost to skim the water spurting down her rail.

  At a mile distance she made no alteration of course. Etosha was lying almost at a standstill.

  John, too, I could see felt a little uneasy, despite his enthusiastic comments.

  "Shouldn't we get out of her way, Geoffrey?" he asked. "Steam gives way to sail, and all that."

  "Give her a spok
e or two," I told the man at the wheel. Then I thought of the heavy net trailing astern. "No, port fifteen," I corrected, ringing for a slight increase in speed to swing her bows away from the newcomer.

  "That should clear us, all right," I said, "even if Hendriks is fool enough to come racing through the water as if we didn't exist."

  "She's put her helm down," exclaimed John with a note of anxiety. "What the devil is she playing at?"

  The Pikkewyn had allowed her head to fall off slightly and was bearing down straight at us. She was half a mile away.

  "Blast!" I exclaimed. "Hard a'port," I snapped. I couldn't ring for more speed because of the heavy net holding us down. Ordinarily, nothing but a warship could have outmanoeuvred Etosha. But now she was wallowing like a hamstrung horse.

  The schooner again altered course and came roaring down upon us. I have never been at the receiving end of a torpedo, but the sight of that old ship tearing down upon me, seemingly hell-bent on ramming Etosha, gave me some idea of what it is like to see that inexorable track streaking through the water.

  I snatched a megaphone. "Cast off that net," I roared, "quick, damn you! cast it off!"

  John stood aghast. We were sending over the side our profits just because some damn fool Malay was showing us how he could sail a schooner.

  The crew, aware of their peril, jumped to it. The thick hawsers snaked overboard with a splash — away went the catch to Davy Jones.

  "Full ahead," I rang, watching the oncoming doom, travelling like an express train. Then I saw her lean over as she luffed slightly until her lee scuppers were under water. It was clear she did not intend to ram us. But she was coming as close as she dared. I snatched up the megaphone as she came within a biscuit's toss — it was plain she had meant to cut across our stern and foul the trawl. My anger rose as I saw what she was up to. The fool! Had that light wooden hull, even at eleven knots, fouled the heavy hawsers of the net, her bow would have swung in towards the Etosha, and heaven alone knows what would have happened.

  I could see Hendriks near the mizzen shrouds, grinning and waving. The figure next to him was Stein.

  The stream of invective which had arisen to my lips at Hendrik's deliberate act of provocation was cut short at the sight of Stein. Bracing himself against the angle of Pikkewyn's deck, he cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted, but the words were lost in the wind.

  John turned to me furiously. "We'll have Hendriks's scalp for this, Geoffrey — you can't damn well play about with ships like that. Full ahead and after him?"

  "No," I rapped out, for I thought I saw part of Stein's game. "No. She's doing a good eleven knots, and it'll take everything Etosha has to catch up with her on that course before night. I think I see what Stein is up to. You remember how he tried to get Etosha's speed out of Mac? He's played a double game here — he knew we'd have to cut the trawl for fear of being rammed and then go tearing after him to ask what the hell. No. I've lost the net and my catch and I'm damned if Stein is going to find out what Etosha can do. We'll let him go."

  The schooner was drawing away rapidly.

  "But," said John vehemently, "You can't go attempting

  to ram another ship on the open sea "

  "He's got the perfect defence," I replied shortly. "A ship under sail has the right of way. Anything under steam must give way to it. We were under way. He was perfectly within his rights. We can't do anything about it."

  "Wait till I find Hendriks alone ashore," expostulated John, "I'll teach him"

  "To sail close to the wind," I remarked grimly, nodding my head after the schooner.

  A shout from one of the crew, who had been busy watching the antics of the Pikkewyn, cut across my anger. A couple of cables' lengths away, as if brought up with the wind of the schooner, was one of the most extraordinary sights I have ever seen at sea. The sea boiled as if from a thousand torpedo-tracks, all running parallel. It foamed, it roared, it churned. Ahead, like a convoy escort, and in perfect formation of threes, a dozen or more huge rays rose, splashing back into the sea with breath-taking slaps. A school of porpoises, helplessly bewildered, were being shouldered along the surface, and my glance of amazement caught a fifteen foot shark struggling to force his way down into the seething mass carrying him along.

  It was the barracouta, or snoek, as we call them. The cartoonists' butt from the hard days of food rationing merits more than the contempt poured on the snoek then. He is the finest fighter in the seas, more brutal and relentless than a shark. In these waters the snoeking season generally ends in early winter, but snoek is one of the most important catches in South Atlantic waters.

  The sight was like one of those gigantic migrations of springbok in the Namaqualand desert when scores of thousands of buck, moving in gigantic phalanxes a dozen miles across, pour across the countryside, oblivious of fences, oblivious of homesteads, of guns, fire and man. They pour on and on, in countless numbers, and once they threw themselves by the thousand into the sea. Why they do it, man still has to learn.

  And the barracouta were the same. As far as I could see, the water boiled with them.

  "Get your lines overboard, quick." I roared at the crew. Here was the chance to fill our holds in an hour. Lines flew over the side, scarcely baited. Then the first solid phalanx roared under the ship. The helpless porpoises rolled and kicked, trying to get free of the seething mass. The barracouta ignored the lines but some, like those luckless springbok of the giant herds which impale themselves on barbed wire while the others push until the wire breaks, got caught up in the hooks. There was no catch. Again and again the lines went over the side into the apparently unending mass roaring by, but they were ignored as the huge school, intent on some hidden goal, swept by. They crashed oblivious into the ship's side. They jumped and seethed and milled, like nothing I have ever seen. I stopped the screws for fear of fouling them. Then suddenly, after about fifteen minutes, the water ceased to boil and they had passed. But not quite.

  Like a destroyer escort astern of a convoy, three giant rays followed.

  On the bridge we were too thunderstruck to utter a word. Now the keenness of our disappointment at missing the catch of our lives emerged. It was John who put the thought into words that Stein was the hoodoo.

  He jerked his head at the distant schooner.

  "Stein's the Jonah," he said. "We'd have got them if he hadn't been around."

  Her sails merged into the gathering night.

  III

  Four Beers for the Wrong Man

  the dust, in suspension with hot diesel fumes from the engine, seeped — steadily into the bus. The driver changed down for one of the hummocky dunes across which the road straggles out of Walvis Bay, and the jerk brought in fresh clouds. A bounce against the upholstery of the seat in front was enough to bring on its own little sand-storm, for the whole vehicle was impregnated with it, after doing this route every day for I do not know how many years. The dust in the deserts of South West Africa is laden with fine particles of mica. Normally this is a mixture to be shunned, but add to it blinding heat, sweat, discomfort and thirst, and it — becomes an irritant like mild pepper. Not only the nostrils, but the eyes and the ears get choked with the fine, irritating atoms. I have heard hay-fever sufferers (and the majority of people seem to have some sort of catarrhal complaint) sneeze thirty times running. Lower down the coast, near the mouth of the Orange River, there is a settlement where ninety per cent of the wretched inhabitants have tuberculosis.

  The bus, run by the railways, swung up the steep gradient and turned left on to the harder desert road. At least on the open stretches the dust would tend to be left behind in the airstream. Walvis Bay lay on the left as we headed northwards towards Swakopmund. There were half a dozen European passengers in the forward end of the bus, and in conformity with the creed of apartheid on public transport, a score or so of Coloureds and natives sat behind the wire-meshed dividing grill. Whether they were dustier or more uncomfortable than the European passengers forward, it i
s difficult to say. But the grill was certainly not enough to make one unaware of their presence, if such was its intention, for with the dust and oil fumes were wafted in heavy, ammoniacal odours of unwashed bodies, that repellent which may be one of the deep, unconscious roots of apartheid. It cuts both ways, however, and a non-European will tell you that he cannot bear the stink of a white (washed) European. Livingstone was the first to find that out.

  I caught a glimpse of Etosha at her mooring, and the thought of the sweet, clean sea-air made me regret I had not stayed with her for a day or two rather than come ashore. After Hendriks's sailing-ship had nearly cut us down, we spent another five days out on the fishing banks. The hoodoo of Stein persisted, in its effect on the catch. After" five days of fruitless, temper-fretting fishing which had yielded a bare four or five tons, I put back to port.

  Etosha had to be got ship-shape again, although I was little perturbed when I found out that the two new boats which I had ordered from Cape Town would not be ready for an indefinite period. Mac wanted to iron out some infinitesimal fault in the engines and the spell in port would give him the opportunity. I felt rather like an admiral without a quarterdeck, so I decided to spend a few days ashore. I must admit that the first day was not auspicious. I started a round of golf in the morning, but in the rising wind it would have taken Bobby Locke In keep the ball in play. In disgust I gave it up. At the clubhouse I rang Mark, who kept the Bremen, a neat little hotel at Swakopmund which was almost a club to me ashore.

  "Well, come up," he said. "But you know, Geoffrey, what hell Swakopmund can be when the season's finished. It's June, and there's not a soul about. None of the fine fishing and swimming which make it the Pearl of South West Africa!"

  "The fewer people about the better," I said. "And as for fishing — I damn well never want to see another fish again."

  Mark laughed. We got along well together.

  "What about a new trip to the Brandberg some time?" he said, half-seriously. A collection of Bushman paintings was Mark's chief interest in life, apart from the superb meals he cooked with his own hands for his personal friends. The Brandberg is a great chunk of mountain between Walvis Bay and the border of the Skeleton Coast where ancient rock paintings, said to be by Europeans of Egyptian or Mediterranean origin, can be seen if you take the trouble to climb the craggy heights. The main one is of a woman with red hair, known as the "White Lady of the Brandberg." I think Mark was one of the first people ever to see it. He had a truly Livingstonian passion for exploration coupled with his hobby, and we had done several trips together, first by jeep, and then on foot through the giant sand-encrusted, rock-strewn mountains to the north.