A Twist of Sand

"Christ!" he burst out. "Geoffrey, where in heaven's name are we? And why. . . ." he gestured inarticulately at the lack of breakers. Had there been surf, I realised quickly, it would have lifted Etosha and torn the bottom out of her by now. It was only because she was lying in calm water that she was not bumping on hard sand and biting outcrops of rock.

"Get a lead-line out: sound! sound! sound!" I roared at the petrified native boy who cowered in pitiful terror in the bows. He reached out numbly for the line with its leather and calico markers. "Sound!" I roared, cupping my hands. "Quick!"

With almost elephantine slowness, he took the line. Its heavy lead sinker might have weighed a ton, he was so slow. He cast forward.

"We must be miles off course," said John quietly. "If she strikes, we'll never come out of this alive. We are hemmed in to seaward by the eruption and the shoal and she's so close in that the sand must be stirring under the screws."

"By the deep three," chanted the leadsman feebly. Out of the corner of my eye I caught sight of several others of the crew who had made their way on deck and were gazing, with the fatalistic resignation of the African, at the shore --  and at death.

"What sort of bottom?" I shouted back. He picked up the lead and fumbled with the tallow. His moves seemed to be all in slow motion. "Shingle," he replied.

It confirmed what I wanted to know. I turned to John and smiled. "Do you want to know where we arc? See that hillock -- no, not the higher one, that one bearing about: ten degrees? I call it Inyala Hill because you'll see there are stripes of brown and red down the side, for all the world like the markings on an inyala buck's side. It hasn't a name on the chart. And that," said I, pointing to the one towering farther inland, " is Gomatom. With something over three fathoms under us, and shingle at that, do you realise that we are where no ship has ever got before -- even Hyane --  and just because of the lack of breakers? This place is a maelstrom ordinarily."

"The Swallow Breakers," he exclaimed hoarsely.

"You saw the photostat," I said briefly. "H.M.S. Swallow in '79."

"But," said John incredulously staring out to starboard, " that means we've been carried miles to the nor'ard. . . ."

"There's no damned time to worry about that now," I snapped. MacFadden, the engineer, joined us on the bridge. He looked without a great deal of interest at the shore, the burning islets and the sea.

"What's this all about?" he asked in his broad Scots accent.

"Mac," I said, "for once your bloody double-action diesels are going to get the chance of their lives. Do you see that dark thing sticking out "-- I gestured towards the bows  -- "about a mile and a half ahead ? That's what I've named Diaz's Thumb. You won't find it on the chart either. Nor did Diaz, despite having been here four hundred years before us. Take a look almost due north -- there, where the fog has just lifted. You see . . ."

"There's a gap," exclaimed John excitedly.

"Aye, about as wide as a schoolboy's arse," said Mac. "How'll ye ever get her round that rock into a damn near ninety-degree turn, I ask? Fah! Ye're asking me for eighteen knots. This isn't a speedboat."

"Take a look at the alternatives," I said quietly.

"B------ the alternatives," replied Mac.  "All I want is to get those diesels at full pelt once before I die. Eighteen knots at three-eighty revolutions." He smiled a thin, cold smile. "Double-action diesels. Fastest things afloat."

He turned and went below to his beloved engines, ignoring the desperateness of the situation.

John and I clattered down to the bridge. I took the wheel from the Kroo boy.

"Full ahead," I snapped. John rang down. "Any moment that surf may break," I said. "We want every knot we can get out of her. If the wind comes up --  and you know how it does out of a dead clear sky here --  we're finished. Once the surf breaks under her, you can say your prayers."

"Geoffrey," said John, "there have been times when I started to say my prayers before with you in command, and I feel damn like it now. You know this coast better than any skipper living. ..."

"Cut out the pretty speeches," I said briefly, spinning the spokes. "I'm taking her on a line with that striped hillock." Etosha began to tremble like a horse as Mac opened up the great engines.

John laughed suddenly, as he always did in the face of danger. "Mac's whipping 'em up. Inyala Hill bearing green one-oh, speed fifteen," he mimicked a destroyer man, "Enemy in close range. Bearing all round the bloody compass. Director-layer sees the target -- and how!"

Etosha was picking up speed rapidly. As her head steadied on the bearing it seemed sheer suicide to be taking her in at speed.  Suicide anyway, with a few feet of water under her keel, water which might start breaking at any moment.

"Get the crew on deck," I told the Kroo boy. "Get their lifejackets on, and your own too. If she strikes, it's every man for himself.  Make it snappy!"