A Twist of Sand

He looked truculent. More truculent than scared, although in his hands lay the fate of Etosha and us all, ripping through this cursed darkness with all the power of the great diesels. The telegraph stood at full ahead; she had her head, striding out through the murky water almost dead into the light breeze from the nor'-nor'-west. She had been doing gloriously since I rang down to Mac hours ago when Etosha slipped out of Walvis into the fog. The winter fog was ideal cover for our movements, and if the wind did not freshen from the north-west, it would hang around until the middle of the afternoon.

I steadied the wheel over the Kroo boy's shoulder. The fog came in through the open bridge windows, wet, clammy, but fresh with the sea -- unlike the land smog with its tale of filth and cities.

"When do you think we should sight it?" asked John.

"In about ten minutes, if this black bastard can keep his mind on the job that long," I replied acidly. "Bearing oh-five-oh. You can't miss it."

"You can miss anything in this fog," rejoined John.

"No, you won't," I said. "I've been keeping her about six miles offshore all night ..." I saw him wince as he thought of the shoals and the rocks as close in, and the wicked currents which come and go along the Skeleton Coast . . . "and in about ten minutes the sun will be at a sufficient angle to refract under the fogbank. You won't miss the hill in Sierra Bay. It's about six hundred and fifty feet high, and you'll catch a glimpse of white water as the sun glances off the fogbank."

"Neat as a problem in physics," laughed John.

"Oh, for God's sake!" I burst out. Then I regretted it. My nerves were shot to hell, tearing through a fogbank like this at sixteen knots and never being sure that I was' not taking Etosha -to a sudden and dreadful death. "Sorry," I said. "But this isn't a pleasure cruise to me -- and you know anything can happen on this coast."

John grinned. "Forget it," he said. "I'm only an unskilled help. You're the backroom boy -- you've got it all in your head. I must say it frightens the pants off me."

"Well," I said, mollified by his calm which was always a tonic to me in a tight corner, "I had to get well clear of Walvis before any of the fishing fleet started cluttering things up. At this speed, if Etosha hits anything, we will all take a nose-dive to the bottom. I'm making like a bat out of hell for Sierra Bay, and I think I'll get a fix on the high hill there. About eight miles to the north-west will be Cape Cross and when we spot the white water there .I'll change from this course nor'-nor'-west to nor'-west. But I'm holding her close in so that we'll be in fog most of to-day, and by this afternoon when it clears we should be somewhere around the Swallow Breakers."

John winced again. "Where I put up my classic boob and nearly had us ashore."

I looked at him sombrely. "I can't promise you I won't do exactly the same. I hope to get another fix there, and then we'll beat it for the mouth of the Cunene." I dropped my voice. "That's where our friend is going to be dumped."

John looked at me;  the fog distorted the size of his eyes.

"Dumped?"

"Put ashore," I hastily corrected myself. I wondered if John guessed I had no intention of bringing Stein back alive.

"Tricky," he said, turning away and raising his glasses.

"Watch this boy," I told John. "I'm going up above to see if I can get a glimpse of the breakers."

"Aye, aye," said John.

The fog seemed thicker up on the "flying bridge." I strode over to the starboard wing and my anger and frustration at the whole project boiled when I saw a duffle-coated figure looking landwards. If I was going to taxi Stein around this perilous coast, at least I wasn't going to have him or any of his party on my bridge.

I grabbed the coated shoulder.

"Get off my bridge," I snarled. "Get the hell out of here back to the saloon."

The hood fell back as the figure turned. It was a girl. Even in my anger I noticed that the long, red-brown hair seemed more to tumble out of her hood than anything else in its profusion.

I looked at her in stupefaction. The fog perhaps distorted her eyes, but I can see the look in them still. She gazed at me silently.

"As you wish," she said in a low voice.

She started to brush past me. All my pent-up anger at Stein and his machinations broke loose.

"What the bloody hell are you, a woman, doing on my ship?" I burst out. "If Stein thinks he can bring along his home comforts on a trip like this, then, by God, he's mistaken !" A plan flashed through my mind. Cape Cross! Yes, I'd send her ashore in the surf-boat under cover of the fog -- there was a primitive settlement there -- and she could have a look at life in the raw.

"Out there," I snapped, waving my hand landwards, "is a series of shacks round a saltpan. I'm putting you ashore there -- and you'll bloody well like it, understand? I'm not having any woman on board my ship on a trip like this."