A Twist of Sand

"It could not have failed to meet your keen submariner's eye," Stein continued sarcastically, "that even though my party came on board at night, they were without camping equipment, food, water or provisions for a trip which you yourself regard as hazardous."

I had scarcely given it a thought.

"I have a list here," and he drew it from a pocket, "of what I will require from your ship's stores. You will give instructions to that effect."

"But...."

"There are no buts, Captain." He added impatiently: "Did you want all Walvis to know what was going on --  tents, equipment, food, all being loaded aboard your ship? You would never have been allowed out of port without the police coming aboard."

I said nothing, but took the long, old-fashioned pair of ivory dividers with" its pearl-inlaid top and needles of porcupine quills instead of steel -- something which I had found amongst old Simon Peace's things -- and stepped off a twenty-mile circle from the mouth of the river. The old dividers looked as if they had originally been in an Indiaman in John Company's service.

They were plotting the mathematics of my strategy at the moment. Anne was looking at them curiously. The map did not show the great cataract about twenty miles from the river's mouth; it was so great, according to old Simon's chart, that the river sagged like a great intestine to the south in overrunning it. I followed the course of the river with the old dividers. The second cataract, too, within fifty miles of the coast -- well, they were Stein's affair. His plan had the virtue of great simplicity, but those mountains would never have remained inaccessible for half a century of white , occupation to the south and north if the path to them were simply up the dry bed of a river. Where Curva dos Dunas lay was simply an unsurveyed light brown patch on Stein's map, which showed an even coastline, sand-hills and escarpment rising through steps of 1,000 and 2,000 feet to the grim fortresses of the Hartmannberge, the first sentry of the Baynes Mountains beyond. The Portuguese cartographers had at least added the words "dunas moveis" -- shifting dunes -- on their side of the frontier.

"What are you working out?" asked Stein keenly.

I must have been completely lost in my own thoughts, for the girl was looking at me also.

"You see where the river turns northwards right at the mouth?" I asked.

They nodded.

"Well, the mouth is actually one mass of sand-bars and often after the rainy season the delta changes its complexion considerably. Depending on the sand and the state of the mouth, I shall decide on the spot where exactly to put you ashore," I lied.

I'd give them a course for the river from Curva dos Dunas and, after half a day's march, they'd never find it again. It would take a skilled navigator to recognise it anyway, and I was prepared to bet that from the landward side it resembled an anchorage even less than it did from the sea.

"You mean, you don't know a channel into a landing-spot ?" Stein asked suspiciously.

I laughed. "Look at your map," I retorted. "See any landing-spots?"

"Of course not," said Stein. "That's exactly why I got you to bring me to the Skeleton Coast. You have it all in your head."

My round, I thought. "I have the mouth of the Cunene ' in my mind,' too, if you want to know, and that's why I shall decide when we get there. There is also the question of the wind, and the tide, plus inshore currents," I elaborated with equal untruth. "You can't judge these things until you are there."

"I don't like it," frowned Stein. "I thought you'd do better than this, Captain. Any clever skipper could do what you are intending to do."

"Then let's turn back and you can get another -- with pleasure," I snapped.

"What's going to happen if the wind and the currents are not right when you come to pick us up again?" he went on.

I was enjoying myself.

"That'll be just too bad," I said. "You'll have to wait for the next slow boat to China."

The cruel mouth tightened. Stein seemed abstracted for a moment or two". I was not to know that my sally was to cost an innocent man his life.

Etosha tore on through the day. The fog scarcely lightened. In the middle of the morning I left the bridge to John.

"Call me when it begins to lift," I told him. "I'm going below to catch up on my beauty sleep. We should be somewhere off Cape Frig when it disperses."

"That's a long day's fog," murmured John, looking at the endless moisture.

"Damn good for this sort of job," I replied.

"About Cape Frio, then?" he repeated.

"Or sooner, if it starts clearing. But I don't think so with the wind in the north-west. Barometer's steady. Not that that means much off this coast. If it starts to blow hard, call me. It could mean we're in for a swell which will shake the guts out of us all."

"In other words,"- grinned John,  if almost anything happens to the sea, the fog or the wind."

I grinned back.

"You've got it dead right," I said.