A Twist of Sand

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."