A Twist of Sand

"John," I said as Jim made his way aft, never taking his eyes from the deadly shore. "You and I are the only two who know our position. For all the crew knows, we're anywhere at all." I took my eyes from the shore and gazed at him levelly. "No one is ever to know about this little picnic. We've never been away from the fishing grounds, do you understand? I want your word on that."

"You have it," he replied.   "But the crew will talk."

"What they saw was a submarine eruption which they imagined was the shore -- that's the explanation you'll give. Your charts, not those you saw of mine, will show our position at sea -- and nowhere near this coast. Is that clear?"

"No need to come the heavy skipper with me," he grinned. "Just as you say."

I knew that Etosha was fast, but I did not realise that her slim lines underwater and the fine engines would give her such pace. The coast was tearing towards her bows. Diaz's Thumb looked a biscuit toss away. Beyond, the sea smoked evilly and the angle of the turn looked impossibly acute. I began to have grave doubts whether we would make it.

The air was humid and the islets in their birth-throes gave off a peculiar smell, for all the world like newly-sawn stink-wood -- a fetid, half sickly-sweet, semi-acrid pungency, combined with the warm odours of superheated steam.

John stood impassive.

"The scientists say this is the oldest coast in the world," I said slowly. "They say it was here that earth first emerged from chaos. Maybe life also emerged first, here, too. We're probably seeing the same thing before our eyes now as happened on the first day of Creation. . . ."

He took up the speaking-tube. There was a curious exaltation about his voice.

"What is she doing, Mac?" he asked.

The voice came indistinctly back, but John gave a low whistle. "Nearly nineteen," he said. "She's splendid. But if she so much as touches anything now----"

"Get a lifebelt on," I said tersely.

"No time now," he said.  "I want to watch the last act."

The water creamed under Etosha's forefoot. Diaz's Thumb was now so close that one could see its smooth, wicked fang sticking up a hundred yards away on the port bow. If I could feel any kind of relief, it was that Etosha was now --  by no doing of mine -- north of the dreaded shoal, although still on the shoreward side of it. She'd run through the vital gateway by the grace of God. I gave the wheel a spoke or two and she leaned over slightly towards the rock. Fifty yards now. The crew stood below me on the deck, some cowering beneath the bridge overhang. The ship roared on like an express train. Then suddenly one of them gave a wild shout -- it might have been the leadsman -- clambered over the bulwarks and jumped into the sea, swimming strongly towards the jagged pinnacle.

John snatched at a lifebelt.

"No," I snapped. "Don't throw it. Let him go. He's finished anyway. You'll only prolong his agony with that. The first surf will smash him to pieces."

John obeyed, but his hand was shaking. One of the crew shouted something obscene at the bridge, but it was drowned in the crash of the bows through the water.

Twenty yards now.

"Take a grip of something," I said quietly. "Here we go."

I spun the wheel hard to port. At the same time I ordered the port screw to "full astern."

At that moment the wave hit us.

Generated by the great south-west winds which strike at gale force out of a sky so clear it might be yachting weather, the sea in these parts works itself up to a demoniacal fury within a space of minutes. This was the wind and the sea which I had dreaded as I put Etosha at full speed across the open stretch of water in the hope that she might get clear before anything struck. The giant wave carried with it not only the elemental force of the sudden gale, but also the punch of the submarine eruptions. No one had seen it towering up astern as we raced towards the Thumb. I caught sight of the massive chocolate-coloured wall, freckled here and there with the white belly of a dolphin or shark killed in the eruptions, and towering above it all a cream-and-dun crest of breaking water. The port screw had begun to bite and the rudder too as the great mountain of sea struck aft the bridge structure.

I felt Etosha's stern cant and sink under the shock of tons of water and the action of the port screw. There was a great rending sound of metal and wood. The transom felt as if it had been mule-kicked. I started to shout to John, but heard no words above the gigantic clangour. I rang the telegraph to "full ahead." Out of the corner of my eye I saw John snatch an axe and dart aft. The sea poured in over the bridge rails. The stern canted over more steeply.