A Twist of Sand

I told him about my mission. I told him the details, the pros and the massive cons; I told him about Hans Tutte and what I would do in his place; I told him that I was convinced that NP I needed a base -- of sorts. The old man's eyes gleamed and then filled with tears.

"Geoffrey," he said in a whisper. "It breaks my heart to know what England has against her, and I can't do a mortal bloody damn about it." Then the self-pity died out of his voice and he asked strongly: "Where is NP I going to operate?"

"In the South Atlantic," I replied.

"If only I had a ship," he exclaimed. "God, I know it like my hand. None of the islands. Plenty of skulking holes in South America, though, but not the place for a rest cure with that climate. I'd go for Africa, if it were me. Too many people around, too, and the Navy is not so stupid that it wouldn't search across the trade routes to Buenos Aires. That's what put Harwood on to the Graf Spee," he chuckled.

"Africa has  the same disadvantages,"  I pointed out.

"Bad climate in the tropics, too many people. Even if they are blacks."

"South West Africa," cried the old man waving a pyjamaed arm." He was very excited.

"Not a harbour worth a damn between Tiger Bay, Walvis Bay and Cape Town," I said, bitterly disappointed now that I had mentioned the operation to a wandering old man on his death-bed. "I mentioned it to the Admiralty."

"God's truth!" roared the old sailor. "Admiralty! Why, that Captain Williams hydrographer-bastard wouldn't even look at my soundings. Get me a chart, boy -- in my desk. No, not the Admiralty one -- there's one of my own. What size is NP I? Three thousand tons? By the Lord Harry, she'd just about make it!"

He looked very excited and I slipped from the room. His desk was pure chaos. Papers, charts, maps, old ship chandler's orders, all kinds of nautical junk littered it. I rummaged about and saw a handwritten "last will and testament of Simon Peace, master mariner." I found what the old man must regard as "his chart "-- it looked, at first glance, like a stretch to the south of Angola, heavily annotated with figures. I went back.

The moment I set foot in the room I knew what had happened. A glance at the mottled, congested face told its own story. I ran swiftly to the door and called for the nurse. He lay back gasping and coughing, like a seaman full of chlorine gas.

"He's trying to say something to you," said the nurse gently.

He spoke loudly.

"North ?" I echoed. It sounded like north to me, but his voice was going.

"Twenty miles -- north." He just couldn't get his failing voice round the last word. "North -- north -- north"

but it wasn't quite north, the way he said it. "Twenty miles south of north -- big rock -- twenty miles south of. . ."

The death rattle severed the last word.

Then to our utter astonishment, he sat up straight and said quite clearly and strongly: "A twist of sand, boy. It's your damn property anyway."

The nurse was crying.  She put down the limp arm.

"His heart had stopped before he said that," she whispered.

VII On the Tail of a Whale

the long South Atlantic afternoon ebbed out westwards towards St. Helena. From the conning-tower the ocean stretched away, apparently limitless, across steamship routes forsaken for years of their peacetime traffic. War made the South Atlantic lonelier than it is in peacetime, and that is lonely enough. Sun-tanned, wearing shorts, off-duty men played Uckers on the casing near the gun. The swell from the south-west scarcely had energy enough to reach up the steel deck. Between Mossamedes and St. Helena we seemed the only craft afloat on the great waters.

John Garland, white shirt open at the neck, and tanned as an advertisement figure, looked down lazily on the group below.

"If this goes on, Geoffrey, we'll all be so bored that we'll be betting on the Uckers men too -- despite Navy regulations."

I said nothing. I was worried. I could see the signs of slackness, the canker of the present easy life, eating into my veteran, battle-tried crew. Sun-tanned beauties don't return from submarine cruises. It had all been so easy, and so unwarlike, that even the ghastly shadow of why I was here at all on a sunny afternoon in the South Atlantic seemed far away. I had flown out to Gibraltar and found Trout waiting. She was ready fuelled, ammunitioned and stocked up. On someone's orders -- someone high-up who smelled the danger of the Trout's mission without actually knowing it  -- cases of Canadian and American luxury foods had been sent aboard, a case or two of Scotch for the officers, and even a dozen of the finest Tio Pepe especially for me. For those about to die. ... I thought grimly to myself.