A Twist of Sand Read online

  I fell for his bait. Even if one did not make the trip, half the fun was planning it.

  "I'm game," I said. "What about Oshikuku?"

  "Where in hell's that — Japan?" said the voice, suddenly becoming disembodied as (we always averred) a heavy gust of wind struck the wires across the desert.

  "Middle of swamp — north of Etosha." I yelled.

  "Blast it!" replied Mark faintly. "Come up on the afternoon bus and we'll discuss it." The rest of his words passed into oblivion. Into the sand. Always the sand. The sand is the master of this world.

  The driver changed down. A fresh spate of sand and more hot oil fumes filled the interior of the vehicle as the force of the wind caught up with its speed. We ground our way up to the top of the sandhills, which lie on a level higher than the shifting dunes lower down and must, however, be traversed before the hard desert road is reached. I looked eagerly to the north and north-east, hoping to catch at least a glimpse (although they were twenty miles away) of either Mount Colquhoun beyond the railway track, or its neighbour, which stretches up a 2,000-foot thumb like a hitchhiker thumbing his way through eternity. The air was too full of sand — swirling, sickening, everlasting sand — which blotted out even the road a mile ahead.

  The Brandberg and Mount Colquhoun are the pickets of a great tumble of peaks, broken tablelands, sand-blasted plateaux, waterless river courses and gullies untrodden by man since the dawn of time which go to make up the Kaokoveld or, as it is more sinisterly known, the Skeleton Coast. This territory, without a river, a well, or surface water anywhere at all, is the size of England. It is closed to man, first, by Government decree because it is thought it may be rich in diamonds and a sudden access of the precious stones might upset world market prices; and, second, more than the decree, rigidly enforced, is the Kaokoveld's timeless, sleepless guardian — thirst. And always at his back, death. Plenty of men have slipped across (lie forbidden border — it is nowhere marked and I suppose the nearest to a frontier in the furnace-like world is in the south, the so-called Hoanib River. It never flows, although in its broad bed, glistening white like Muizcuteerg beach, water can be had for the digging. Elephants and antelope in its wild, untrodden places dig in the river bed and make their own wells. Man dies before he gets there. The adventurers and diamond-seekers who slip away in the night are never heard of again. Thirst and death claim them.

  In its 50,000 square miles there may be one or two white men. I suppose the little wild Bushmen and their stranger cousins, the Strandlopers (Walkers on the Beach) do not number more than several thousands. The Strandlopers, whom some believe to be almost the lowest type of living man closest to the "missing link," wander eternally by the shore, never going far from the moving dunes whose sand rasps and tears the skin as it blows and shifts under the great sea-winds. They live on shellfish, dead seals and other creatures swept up by the huge rollers. Blacker than the tan-coloured Bushmen, the Strandloper has longer hair, matted with grease and sand. Their stink is worse than any wild animal. The offal of the sea they share with the lean jackals and hyenas which scavenge the desolate seashore engaged on the same relentless, unsatisfied quest as themselves.

  The Skeleton Coast stretches from the Hoanib River in the south to the Cunene River in the north, the international boundary between South West Africa and Portuguese Angola. The territory is about 150 miles long and, at its broadest, opposite Cape Frio, about the same distance across, although the width is not maintained, particularly in the south. From the seaward side it looks like a huge cheetah's head, which faces south-east into the great sandy tracts which stretch eastwards towards the Kalahari Desert. For fifty miles from the mouth of the Cunene, it gapes like a shark's mouth, the wicked fangs jutting into the sea round Cape Frio and running backwards into a savage orifice of mountains which turn the north-eastern shores into a brutal amphitheatre of jagged rock, entered (if that were possible) from the seaward side by undulating, but steadily rising layers of dunes, like the velvet-soft membrane round a shark's lips, while behind them are the death-dealing fangs.

  There is no port and, indeed, no seaward entrance to the Skeleton Coast, which well merits its name. The shore is littered with wrecks, from dhow to destroyer, from liner to clipper and New England whaler. The gigantic graveyard does not allow its corpses to rot. The dryness and the sand keep them indefinitely. Men, crazed by thirst, have come back to tell of old ships and treasure chests with dead men sitting round them as they have sat for centuries — but no one risks his life or his sanity to go back, even if he could go legally. Permits to enter the Kaokoveld are given but rarely, and then under very exceptional circumstances. From the sea the Kaokoveld has sealed itself by means of huge rollers and fiendish sandbars.

  From the landward side it is easier. The jeep has broken part of the Kaokoveld open. There is an airstrip where a light plane may land at Ohopoho, the administrative "capital "of the Skeleton Coast, where one unfortunate white official lives. There are negotiable tracks through some of the canyons for a jeep or a truck expertly driven, but these are merely the fringes. The whole vast area is for all intents and purposes a closed book. What secrets lurk in the mountains it is impossible to say. One thing is certain, however, the easy talk that Rhodesia might build a railway to the Atlantic is so much hot air. Tiger Bay, say the Rhodesians, is their "natural "port. As a sailor it seems to me that the precarious harbour, locked in by a sandy peninsula which juts into the South Atlantic simply would not be worthwhile. Safe enough in some winds, I can think of conditions when a liner would be as safe at anchor there as running blind among the sandbars of the Skeleton Coast. Like other railways in Africa, it would cost a life a fishplate laid.

  All Africa's pent-up hatred of man, of his ways, the cities he has thrown up out of steel and concrete on the veld, of his roads and railways through which her wealth and secrets have been won, stands at bay, fangs bared against the last intrusion, here in this remote corner of the continent called the Kaokoveld. Round her skirts she has gathered the last untamed remnants of her once countless herds of antelope, giraffe, zebra, lion and elephant.

  She stands at bay with her back to the wild sea and her face to the impregnable mountains. Man is puny against this concentrated might of Africa. The Matto Grosso is as well-known as Piccadilly compared to the Kaokoveld. Only a few of the men who dared to enter have ever lived to tell what they saw, and that has been little enough.

  The bus was running more easily now on the hard desert road. When the winds blow, sand will cover the surface to a depth of a couple of feet within forty-eight hours. One of the principal expenses of roads — and railways — is the need to keep shifting the sand away from them, season after season. It is a stark reminder that if man's hand were taken away for only one year, there would be few traces of his occupation left. With the increased speed, the grains of sand spurted in the cracks of the steel floor, but fortunately the hot diesel fumes joined the swirling dust-cloud which marked our path towards Swakopmund.

  Upon Mark and myself the Kaokoveld exercised its lure. Sitting in the jolting vehicle, my mind went back to the end of the previous winter. Mark and I had wished to make a trip northwards to the Cunene and return via the great mass of swamps and tributary channels which flow into the great lake of Etosha, probably the finest game reserve in the world, where one counts the buck in herds of thousands. There the elephants, homeward-bound across the sand-dunes, link trunk to tail in a "train "which may be a furlong long!

  A peremptory official "no "cut across our plans; such was the suspicion of officials that we even wanted to go to the Kaokoveld for no well-defined purpose, that we decided it was useless to try and press it. Instead, we took Mark's Land Rover and made for a great tableland of unexplored mountains and peaks along the southern border. It was from a peak 5,000 feet above the Hoanib River that I first saw the wild tangle of mountains and gullys, shimmering, reflecting, changing colours like chameleons in the mica-ridden air. The isolated peak, which had taken us from earl
y till mid-morning to climb, jutted up on a high peninsula which stood out towards the "river "on its southern side. Using my powerful naval binoculars I could see the green of the tiny settlement of Zessfontein fifteen miles away on my right; on my left the air was clear and one could almost detect the clean sparkle of the sea — a glimmer of white moving, changing, reflecting, seemed to be the remorseless surf shattering itself against the coast, with the whole force of the South Atlantic behind it. Far away below on my left a ragged herring-bone pattern of gullies marking its backbone into the mountains, I could see the "river," the dry sand merely being whiter and more defined than the surrounding dun to which the eyes were accustomed. A 4,000 foot clill' beyond, we had decided were the Geinas mountains, but it was impossible to fix them for the Kaokoveld has never been surveyed.

  "Moses viewing the promised land," remarked Mark.

  "Like hell!" I replied. "Why would anyone want to go there?"

  "For Mallory's reason — 'because it is there'," replied Mark.

  He scanned the forbidden land with his own glasses.

  "Why shouldn't we go on?" he said impetuously. "No one would know. We've both wanted to — look at it!" he cried with a wide sweep of his arm.

  "Let's call this a reconnaissance in force," I said, for I had no wish to get tied up with the authorities. "We'll get there — one day."

  We had left it at that. Trips with Mark were a joy. As the bus bucketed on, I wondered if he had a new one in mind. We would plan weeks ahead, whenever I brought Etosha to port. Mark was a fine climber and an ardent lover of exploring unknown ranges and tracts of country "just because they are there "as the famous Everest climber said. Without his Land Rover, however, it would have been suicide to try. Fitted with twelve forward gears and a Rolls-Royce engine, it was a superb vehicle for the untracked wilderness. The low gearing and four-wheel drive made it ideal for the shifting sand-dunes, where any other type of vehicle, even a more conventional jeep, would have stuck. We would load under the canvas hood food, guns, tents, lamps, camp beds and the like; water was carried in special jerry-cans fixed in steel brackets welded to the side; when it was all packed and lashed down under the canvas against the sand Jannie, the cross-bred Ridgeback, would leap on top and we would disappear for weeks at a time. The Land Rover had a car compass fitted, but Mark was delighted when I brought a sextant and a boat's compass, for navigation in the sand is not unlike finding one's way on the open sea. The only sort of maps of the area are aeronautical, but the scale is small, and they are full of inaccuracies.

  To a sailor it was the incredible silences of dusk and evening which were even more remarkable than the age-old, saurian-like rocks, fretted by sand and wind until many of the softer ones eroded like palms bent in a Pacific wind. The Land Rover would almost merge into the blackness beside the tiny flicker of fire which elevated us above the wild animals; the stars looked larger than at sea because of the refraction of the dust; there might be an occasional, disembodied howl from some mysterious marauder of the sands which never showed itself by day, like the black hyena; at the end of a long day's run gin never tasted as fine as it joined in the great conspiracy of soothing, selfless silence.

  The bus changed gears again, bringing more choking sand into the interior. Swakopmund lay ahead. In the late autumn twilight it looked dreary in the extreme, drearier than Mark's comment that it was dull now the season had ended would have led me to believe. The cluster of unattractive houses, hanging perilously between the desert and the sea, seemed lifeless and neglected. The sea beyond, grey and glassy, held the menace of a north-west gale which would send every skipper into the nearest harbour posthaste.

  The bus ground to a standstill at the terminus. Stiff and dusty, I got down. It was only a minute's walk to Mark's place. As I stepped down my growing sense of frustration and irritation suddenly blazed. For there stood Hendriks, the coloured skipper, on the sandy pavement, grinning impertinently at me. I paused and gazed levelly at the taunting grin.

  "Hendriks," I said slowly in Afrikaans, "Jou verdomde halfnaatjie." ("Hendriks, you damned half-caste.") In these parts the word "halfnaatjie" embodies all the white man's revulsion for the half-caste; bastard is a neutral, unbelligerent term by comparison.

  Hendriks's grin changed to a snarl. In a flash he came at me at a shambling run. Caution, caution bred of long dealings with his kind, tore my eyes from his face to the hand which flashed into his belt. The knife was raised and plunged at the moment the danger telegraphed itself to my mind. I stepped forward a pace and caught the upraised wrist with my left hand and, in the same movement, slipped my right arm under Hendriks's armpit. Our bodies clashed and the harsh, ammoniacal smell of the coloured man's body made me feel sick. My right arm curled round and gripped my own wrist and locked the plunging downstroke. For a moment I thought the impetus of the stroke would tear his hand free, but the wicked South American grip held. I could feel his arm taut as a steel bar; slowly I applied the savage pressure which gives the grip its notoriety among the back streets of Montevideo and Buenos Aires.

  Someone in the throng of passengers shouted hoarsely, but the duel between Hendriks and myself was silent. My wristlock tightened and I saw the sweat and fear start out in his face. The savage beauty of the grip is that a man cannot use his left hand either. Ruthlessly I threw in all the strength I had. I heard the muscles of his shoulder start to tear. I gave a final twist and his shoulder gave, just as one rips the leg off a Christmas turkey. Hendriks never uttered a sound, but hung from his shoulder in my grip in a dead faint. I slipped free and he fell, an untidy bundle of rags, at my feet. I kicked the knife away.

  When I looked up Mark was standing there, his face white with concern.

  "Good God, Geoffrey," he burst out. "He would have killed you!"

  "Not a man who can look after himself like that," grinned a husky Afrikaaner farmer who had been on the bus. "Man 111 give you fifty pounds to teach me that grip."

  I felt sick and angry with myself when I saw the pathetic bundle of rags on the pavement.

  "Get a doctor," I said harshly. "Tell him he'll find the shoulder muscles torn and ligaments probably damaged. Send me the bill."

  "Nonsense," said the farmer, "If a man puns a knife he's got all that's coming to him."

  My revulsion welled up and I turned upon the farmer. But I checked myself.

  "Mark" I said, "let's get out of here. I need a drink and a bath."

  A voice stopped me as we turned away.

  "Captain Macdonald," it said smoothly. "As well as congratulating you on your sailoring, may I add that a hold like that is the acquisition of a very determined-or a very desperate man."

  It was Stein. The ugly jaw was smiling. For a moment I felt like putting the hold on him.

  "At least," I rejoined as calmly as I could, "it will prevent your friend for a while from taking you for joy-rides out to sea to smash up my trawl."

  Stein continued to smile.

  At the bar after a quick bath, Mark having brought me a whisky-and-soda, I could not shake off the sense of foreboding and depression which the unpleasant incident Hendriks had occasioned. I felt no qualms at having disabled Hendriks, although I was prepared to admit that I had been more savage than I need have been. Still there was Stein. Subconsciously I felt that it was he who was behind something that I could not fathom. No, he could not have known about me, it was all too long ago. Had he penetrated my facade, I would have seen it when he first came to the ship. How could he suspect anything? But, the thought followed quickly, who is Stein anyway? He might be anything from an insurance broker to a civil servant. That cruel mouth was the clue. I really couldn't imagine Stein docilely sitting behind a desk in the South West African Administration.

  My eyes roved round the bottle labels as I turned the problem over in my mind. My gaze fell upon the eel in the case between the bottles. I grinned to myself. It was Mark's boast that the old stuffed eel was the finest weather prophet on the coast. A grey metallic colour norma
lly, Mark averred it turned a steel-blue when the winter north-westerly gales were due, and a peculiar shade of dun when the summer south-westers came. He had another gunmetal shade for fog — the joke of it was that he often seemed right. I walked over to have a closer look at the weather-eel when four Germans came in.

  "Bier," cried one gutturally. I took him for one of the post-war newcomers. The previous German residents of the territory seem to have soaked out some of their native arrogance in the desert heat. I went behind the bar to serve them. Mark had gone off earlier to the kitchen to cook one of his superb meals. All four of the Germans looked tough, and one had a slightly vacant stare. Perhaps he was half-drunk. The others were noisy enough. One of them slapped down the money on the bar counter and they sat round a table in the far corner. I couldn't get the drift of what they were saying, but they certainly seemed to be on the way to having a night out.

  "Besatzung stillgestanden!" roared the vacant one. The others leapt to their feet and all four stood at attention for a moment and then collapsed with laughter. "Bier!" shouted another. I got four bottles down from the shelf and was about to open them when a word in the rowdy conversation caught my ear — "Der Pairskammer." Now "der Pairskammer" is as much part of the jargon of U-boat men as "uckers" is to British submariners. "The House of Lords "is the quarters of German seamen ratings in a U-boat. I looked at the four beery Germans with renewed interest. It was the vacant-looking one who had used the term. He seemed launched on a war-time reminiscence; while the other interjected, apparently pulling his leg. The vacant one, whom one of the others addressed as Johann, thumped the table and the others guffawed their disbelief. There was no one else in the bar, but the four of them were making enough noise for a whole room full. I went across with the beer.