A Twist of Sand

No need for my glasses to tell me that.

"No," I said quietly, and I felt Anne sagging a little. "It's only about forty feet high. There are plenty of footholds on the rocks."

The rocky shelf stretched up in front of us, the rock polished to a dull gunmetal gloss by water and sand. A schoolboy could have climbed up it without assistance. Stein had brought a length of rope, but we all managed to scale the easy rock slope without it, even Anne. She had become completely silent. Stretching upriver was more sand, but there was more greenery, too, indicating water not too deep down. The sand, softened by the greening banks, looked more friendly.

Stein was full of himself.

"Why, there is absolutely no obstacle if the next cataract is like that," he said. "We'll follow the course of the river and turn off just as I said. All this country needs is a little initiative and a little planning.

I looked at him searchingly.  "Famous last words," I retorted-.

But he was not to be fobbed off.

"The Skeleton Coast has a reputation and everyone who comes here builds it up, until the whole thing is a mumbo-jumbo of superstition. When someone fails through his own lack of foresight, he adds still another legend to the Skeleton Coast. We've broken it wide open. It's straight-forward going. Nothing to it." He looked at me quizzically. "Not much in the way of navigation required, is there, Captain Peace?"

I knew what he meant. I saw Anne's face go pale. The cruel mouth of the German showed what he meant, too.

"Come on," I said harshly, "let's get on."

Stein called a halt, surprisingly, at about three in the afternoon at a group of huge ana trees near the river's edge. We had made good progress. Perhaps he was feeling the effects of the rapidly increasing altitude, discernible even in the bed of the river. The river, only a couple of hundred yards in width now, was flanked by cliffs which rose up sheer. Where they met the river, they had been burnished still brighter by the water, which, when the river was full, must have cut past them like a file through the narrow passage. We stopped where a gap showed to the right, the entrance channel to the Orumwe River, whose delta splayed out in a welter of white sand. I remembered that old Simon's chart had marked it "Rio Santa Maria." Had the Portuguese explorers ever got as far as this ? I couldn't imagine how they would ever have got through the wicked sandbars at the mouth of the river, even with surf-boats and surf crews.

For the hundredth time that day I lifted the binoculars from their lanyard round my neck and searched the cliffs. I had done it so often that even Stein took no notice any more. More greenery, thicker trees to the left. Deep channels from the Portuguese side into the river, unscaleable cliffs. Round and back. To the right. The wide cleft of the Orumwe, narrowing within a mile to cliffs not incomparable with the ones on either side of our river route.

Then I saw the ship.

She was full rigged and lay at anchor. She might be five miles away.

The sand and the fatigue of the march have created an hallucination, I told myself. I found my hands trembling. Stein was watching me idly. There must be no give-away from me. Deliberately I swept the glasses farther round to my right. I must not fix on any point, or Stein would be suspicious immediately. I let the lenses sweep back past the ship. She was still there.

"Satisfied, Captain?" sneered Stein. "No way of escape ?"

"Satisfied," I replied, my heart pounding with excitement. I wanted to shout -- a ship! a ship! I must play this one gently. I gave it fully five minutes before I looked at the spot where I had seen her. There was nothing. You fool, I said, you can see her only with the glasses, not with the naked eye. Stein must have no suspicion that I had seen anything. For another half an hour I searched about, finding wood for the fire. Anne smoked, lying back against the trunk of a tree. She hadn't said anything all day. I could see this march to the death -- for me at least -- was preying on her nerves. I hoped she wouldn't do anything foolish. I have never known half an hour go so slowly. I deliberately checked every movement.

At the end of the time I said casually to Stein.

"Do you mind if I take a walk?"

"Haven't you had enough?" he asked sarcastically. "You remind me of a tiger I once saw in a zoo, Captain. Pace, pace, pace, bumping himself against the bars until his shoulder was raw. You can go and bump your shoulders against the bars if you wish."

I could have rubbed his smug face in the sand.

"I'm going for a walk up this valley for a couple of miles,*' I replied, keeping my temper under control. "I'll be back by sunset.  I don't suppose any white man has ever been up it before."

"I expect it's the same sort of bug which makes you want to do that as made you find your anchorage. Good hunting, Captain. I won't come and look if you don't come back. There'll be another skeleton in a couple of days, that's all."