A Twist of Sand

Etosha went in. I could hear Stein's breath rasping faintly. Anne came over to the pelorus and when her hand rested on its stand, I could see the fingers trembling. I adjusted the line of my bearing.

"One-oh-five," I said to John. John stood there, his face like granite, withdrawn, remote. I was taking her in towards the first great swing in the channel, which then doubled back almost on its own tracks. The bearings from the night of NP I's doom were indelible on my mind. Spray began to blow across the bridge in fine clouds .from the breaking water. Etosha crept on.

Suddenly Anne gave a cry.  "Look, a ship!"

Every eye flashed to the spot where she pointed. The old bluffbows of the Phylira looked as ugly in death as I had seen them that first day when Georgiadou had taken me down to the Table Bay docks where she lay in an out-of-the-way corner. I was surprised to find myself quite impersonal. That wild night seemed to have no connection with myself, somehow.

Stein was beside me, his face intense.

"Georgiadou would be very interested," he sneered. "A fine piece of wrecking, if I may say so, Captain. And a colossal nerve it must have taken to do it there too."

"You may say so, but I don't know what you're talking about," I rejoined. Circumstantially, there was only one answer -- they would say I had wrecked Phylira and sent the crew to their deaths in the creaming holocaust. So Stein thought, anyway.

"Come, come, Captain Peace, that's the ship you put ashore. You can't bluff me."

I stared him out of countenance.

"Do you see her name, or any identification?" I asked. "What makes you think I know anything about thai wreck? I don't. Georgiadou wouldn't thank you for thai kind of information. She's probably been there for years."

There was almost admiration in Stein's tone when he replied.

"It is clever, Captain, too clever. As you say, Georgiadou wouldn't thank me for it. I couldn't even say where this wreck was, and if I could, how would one ever get close enough to look -- unless Captain Peace showed them how?

How did you get out alive, Captain, from  " he waved at the breakers -- "that?"

Anne looked at me tight-lipped. "I don't believe it," she said slowly. "No one could ever come out alive."

If racing drivers have their brains in the seats of their pants, then I think some of mine must be in the soles* of my feet. Some slight movement, something out of accord, warned me. Concentrating on the grave of the Phylira, I'd missed a trick. The bearing had passed.

"Quick," I rapped out to John. "Steer three-one-five." Simultaneously I rang "Full ahead." Etosha juddered. Sand? I wasn't sure, but the screws and full wheel would bring her round, if anything would.

John never raised his eyes, but his face was set. He spun the spokes. Etosha bucked. Looking at the creaming surf through salt-stung eyes, it was impossible to judge whether pr not we were against the far side of the channel or not. I thanked God that we were afloat -- just. One slight lapse, and the Skeleton Coast would trump your ace.

I glanced at the bearings of the two hills ashore and then swung right round to Simon's Rock. Not so bad. I breathed easier.

"Three-two-oh," I said, tension making my voice grate.

I waited for the tell-tale bump which would spell the end, just as I had waited for it in Trout. Two minutes -- three minutes -- four. Etosha was clear in the channel again!

She was running back, slowly now, almost parallel to the way she had come, her stern now pointing at the coast. Out to sea, the perpetual morning fog hung like a shroud. She had about fifteen minutes' steaming to the next, wide, shallow turn to the north.

I straightened up. John met my eye; he looked the way he had done when I thought he had turned against me at the court martial.

"Five minutes' clear?" he asked in his best quarterdeck voice.

I nodded.

"Those bearings and the course, they are exactly the same, aren't they?"

I nodded again.  I didn't look at him.

"You took Trout in through this after -- something?"

"Yes," I replied, inaudible almost to myself.

"Geoffrey," he went on remorselessly, and his tone drew Anne into the circle too. "All these years I wondered --  did you sink her? Or," and his eyes looked at mine and I saw pain and doubt which I had never suspected, "was it something in the mind that sank you -- for always -- that night?"

I turned slowly round until I faced east-nor'-east. Straining through the blowing spray, I thought I caught a glimpse, a momentary glimpse, of the object.

"What is it?" Anne burst out. "What is it?"

Doubt was written all over John's face. I could see it all in his attitude: "I've opened up the old wound, and now he's round the bend again -- poor bastard."

I came back and gripped one of the spokes of the wheel. My voice was unsteady.

"I sank her," I said simply. "The wreck bears about one-two-oh degrees at this moment."

John was too good a sailor to take his eyes off the course.

"I'll see her again when we get inside this lot?"