A Twist of Sand

It was Etosha's sudden emergence from the fog which threw Stein off balance. I wasn't surprised, although my stomach was turning over. It was the morning after my talk with Anne and Etosha had torn north-westwards through the night to be in position off Curva dos Dunas by mid-morning. She was only doing six knots when she broke through the encumbering gloom into bright sunlight maybe five miles offshore, sunlight reflecting more whitely by contrast as it came off the creaming surf. Back in the fog I had watched the soundings plummet from sixty-five to forty-seven fathoms, and I knew exactly where I was. Off Curva dos Dunas. I'd played the Benguela current off all night against a small local stream, narrow but powerful, which forces its way from the mouth of the Cunene River through the wild welter of broken, discoloured death traps southwards to the Clan Alpine shoal. The great Benguela current is cold, majestic; it has made its way past a thousand obstacles from South Georgia and Tristan; it is broad, life-giving with its countless myriad's of living plankton for the fish; the narrow but powerful down-coast current from the Cunene, which I called the "Trout," bounces and races south and south-west at fully five knots and scrapes along the landward edge of the kingly Benguela, but it is wicked, diabolonian, fickle, and turns the entrance to Curva dos Dunas into a sailor's idea of hell. When I took Trout in against NP I I hadn't known it existed, but all the time since I had patiently spent charting its vagaries in Etosha made me sweat at the thought of my ignorance at that time. I'd brought Etosha to Curva dos Dunas with the Benguela under her stern and the Trout under her bow, and I was not a little pleased when the 65-47 soundings came up, familiar as Table Mountain.

And now this madman Stein threatened to spoil it all as he saw the savage breakers hammering at the sand-bars of Curva dos Dunas. Admittedly, it was a staggering sight under the lash of a wild south-westerly blow. The run of the sea, thundering against the fang-white sand-bars, threw up acres of water, smashed to white, high into the air; the Trout current, tearing down past the entrance, provided a more flexible, if not less formidable barrier, and the sea also broke wildly out of reach of the sand itself, well out to the fifty fathom line.

Etosha lay bucking at this stupendous vista while my eyes sought, automatically, my lifelines -- seawards, Simon's Rock to the south, and on land the three-topped hill a little to the south-east, and the mountain in the north. With those three, and daylight, and my soundings dead on, I'd take her in just as I had taken Trout in that unforgettable night.

Stein's mouth was wet and whether he stammered slightly from fear or the blow as he crouched, I could not have cared less.

"Captain Peace, I forbid it! Do you hear, I forbid it!" His voice rose. "You want to kill me, I know. But I won't let you."

"Pull yourself together," I snarled. My attention was only half on him. The three-topped hill was beginning to bear -- one hundred, and Etosha's head was easing, one hundred and three. One hundred and five degrees! She was dead right for the entrance, with the great northern pile steady on seventy degrees.

"Hold her like that," I rapped out to John.

"Soundings?"

"Thirty, twenty-seven, twenty-three. . . ."

"We're bang on," I exclaimed, and the magic of it came upon me. Perhaps that is the deadly fascination for the Peace sailormen of Curva dos Dunas. The one degree error that spells death, the foreknowledge of what cold, low-density water will do against warm, high-density currents, in juxtaposition with wind, sea and tide. Not a problem in navigation, but a primitive problem of survival. A deadly throw of the dice, man against the sea.

"Take a look," I said harshly to Stein, who had got to his feet. "That's what you wanted, wasn't it -- to go ashore in safety? I'm taking you ashore. ..." I grinned at his patent fear -- "through that lot. A moment ago I could have stopped, but it's too late now."

Stein said quickly:  "I never expected ..."

"Of course you didn't," I retorted without sympathy. "But if you have to hang over the side retching your guts out, I'm taking you inside."

Through Stein's fear came a flicker of reluctant admiration. He made a ghastly attempt at a smile.

"They all say you are the best skipper on the coast Captain Peace," he replied. "Now I think so too."

I rang "slow ahead."

"Watch those bearings," I said to John, who was back at the wheel. "You miserable bastard," I said to Stein. "I'm risking my ship and all our lives for you, but I'm going to show you what keeping a bargain means. I hope you like it."

I couldn't see the line of the channel as such, the confusion of water was too great. There was no quiet water anywhere. Old Simon must have been a genius as a sailor.

"Steer one-oh-oh," I said tersely to John. The dun coast lay deadly quiet, poised like a giant Anglosaurus lizard about to strike.