A Twist of Sand

Despite the fact that the signal had gone off, the destroyers were not taking any chances. They came round in a wide circle, doing every bit of thirty knots. An Aldis lamp clattered as I sent off a visual recognition signal.

"Stop both," I said down the voice-pipe.

John looked at me inquiringly.

"I'm taking no chances."

"Funny," murmured John. "They should know we are in this general area." Would they? I wondered. My guess was that Trout was on her own -- desperately on her own.

She lay down, pitching in the swell of the destroyers.

The signalman handed me a message.

"If you are Trout," it read, "what are you doing here? No notification of your presence from Admiralty."

I handed it to John, who started at its contents.

Reply: "Even the best fish, including Trout, must rise to breathe occasionally."

We waited. The cruisers hovered. Then one destroyer detached itself and came within hailing distance. The metallic bark of the loud-hailer came over the water.

"Trout... is that who you are?"

I was seized with impatience. "Damn it, of course I am. Do I look like a U-boat?"

The loud-hailer chuckled. "All right, all right. But remember . . . Look, I'm carrying mail for Trout addressed to Simonstown. I'm sending a boat with it."

She came close in and dropped a boat. The sub-lieutenant in command grinned over the couple of feet of sea separating us. "Shall I throw them across, sir?" he asked.

"Yes," I replied, thinking of what mail at sea, delivered at sea, would mean to my jaded, bored crew.

"Everything all right?" he added curiously. "No one expected you around these parts."

"It doesn't look like it," I grinned, waving a hand to the wary destroyers.

"Doesn't look so good at the receiving end," he rejoined. He tossed the packets of mail over. "Good-bye sir, and good luck."

"Thanks," I said.  "Call the dogs off now."

A wave of the hand and the boat pulled away to the destroyer's side.

"Good luck!" said the metallic voice.

The group of warships drew rapidly away southwards. The sun began to dip.

"Night stations," I said to John. "Clear the bridge. Sixty feet."

"No moonlight picnic tonight," he teased.

"Everyone will be happier well below the surface tonight reading about wives and sweethearts. Moonlight will only revive old memories."

He glanced at me sharply. There was an edge to my voice.

Trout dived under the darkening South Atlantic.

My share of the mail, in my tiny cubbyhole of a cabin with only its worn green curtain separating me from the rest of the .submarine, looked uninspiring. There didn't even seem to be a personal letter among the lot. I felt depressed at the stark little pile of letters and papers, all typewritten. No loving hand to smooth my way, I thought grimly. The whole depression of the mission hit me again. In London it was Trout's lack of even a sporting chance that had shaken me; deep under the South Atlantic tonight it was the awareness that the chance was never likely to occur at all.

I ripped open the mail. One bore the superscription "Hodgson, Hodgson and Hodgson, Lincoln's Inn Fields, London." It was from my grandfather's lawyers. The dry phrases seemed utterly sterile. "We have to inform you, as the sole legatee of the late Captain Simon Peace . . ." It seemed the old man had left me about £500 and a miscellaneous collection of old nautical instruments and charts. I'd taken some of the old charts with me from his desk the day he died, anyway. I'd not looked at them.

Then came a rustle amid the dry legal phrases: "You will notice from the enclosed copy of Captain Simon Peace's will that you have been bequeathed, in terms of it, the island of Curva dos Dunas, stated by the late Captain Peace to lie in 17' 30" S n' 48" E. A title deed, apparently legal, filed with the former German Administration of South West Africa, is attached. Owing to war-time restrictions on the availability of charts and maps, we have been unable to establish the identity of this island. The Admiralty states that it cannot disclose any such information in war-time but added, confidentially, that it was unaware that any islands existed in that part of the South Atlantic. The Admiralty, however, refuse to disclose what specific area of the South Atlantic it was referring to. However, we enclose a copy of the title deed for your perusal and suggest that when conditions are more settled, a thorough investigation be made into the whereabouts and value of this property. We await your instructions as to its disposal at a later date."

The old bastard! I thought amusedly to myself. So he had an island tucked away and no one knew anything about it! Well, it was easy enough for me to find out. I went through to the navigation table and pulled out an Admiralty chart "Bahia dos Tigres to Walvis Bay "with the annotation "principally from the German Government charts to 1930." I checked off the position in the letter with the dividers.