A Twist Of Sand

For some reason he held out his hand to Mac. "This is a very fine ship," he murmured. "You must be proud to be the engineer. Fine big engines, eh?"

Mac ignored the outstretched hand. I blessed him for his taciturnity.

"Engines from the Humber," he said. "Would have been better from the Clyde."

"Ah, the pride of the Scot," said Stein amiably. "Two Scots and one Englishman on such a fine little ship."

"I am a South African," I said, underlining it with a heavy accent.

"But the mate is English, yes? And the ship too? Fine, fast ships the English build."

He nodded to the three of us, but his eyes searched the cabin.

"Can I do something for you, Doctor Stein?" I asked coldly. "You haven't rowed yourself out all this way just to admire my ship. Otherwise…" I waved a hand vaguely towards the companionway.

"Ah but yes," he cried. "It is about business that I wish to talk."

We remained on our feet.

"If it's a matter of business," I began. "We can discuss it ashore some other time. I sell all my fish on a contract basis."

"I am a scientist, not a fishmonger," he smiled and I liked his smile less than a sting ray. "I wish to discuss with you a matter of catching beetles."

Stein certainly didn't look like a crazy beetle hunter, however odd his words sounded.

"The matter of beetle-catching I wish to discuss is private," he said, looking pointedly at John and Mac.

"These men are also my close friends. You may say anything you wish in front of them."

"What a happy little ship," he said encouragingly. "Well, I wish you to take me on a short trip so that I can catch beetles.".

John joined in and he laughed grimly. "You don't catch beetles out in the Atlantic, Dr. Stein," he said. "We may catch a lot else, but not beetles."

Stein grinned in his mirthless way.

"Yes, I know," he went on, as if speaking to a child. "But I wish to take your ship and go up the coast to find beetles, or rather, one particular beetle."

I shrugged. I wasn't having Stein, or anyone else, trippering up and down the coast in Etosha.

"It's worth a lot of money to you," he said. "Five hundred pounds."

"Where to?" I pressed him.

He hedged. "When I wish to find my beetle, I go to people who know about ships, and I ask, which is the finest ship sailing out of Walvis Bay? They tell me, the Etosha. But that is not all I want. The Etosha might be the best ship, but it is the skipper who really matters. And who, I ask, knows these waters best of all the fishing skippers? Macdonald of the Etosha, they tell me. And here I am. Five hundred pounds for my passage."

I was more amused at the offer than anything. "Where do you expect to go for Ј500 — to South America?"

"No," he said crisply. "I want you to put me ashore on the Skeleton Coast."

I burst out laughing.

"Good God, man, you can't be serious," I exclaimed. "Every policeman knows where every ship goes from this port. I'd only have to tell them what you've said — in front of witnesses — and they'd watch you like a hawk."

"I don't think you'd do that," he said evenly.

"Why not?" I asked.

He looked at me searchingly, and his reply was long in coming.

"I don't quite know," he said, "but I think I am right in saying you won't spread this around. Why? I base my ideas on what I see. I see a fine ship with lovely lines, when big holds are what make a ship pay. Everyone says the Etosha must be fast, and yet no one has ever seen her making much above twelve knots. I drop a question to the engineer, and he closes up like a clam, instead of displaying a warm admiration for his engines." He swung suddenly at me. "I hear you lost a man overboard to-day."

I was rapidly losing my temper.

"Yes," I snapped. "And there'll be another one over the side very soon now. Damn you and your impertinence, Stein. Get out!"

He continued to look at me coolly. "My mind is made to inquire and search out the truths of things in nature," he said in a pompous Teutonic way. "If Etosha were a beetle, I'd say she was a throwback from her species. But gentlemen, I waste your time. You will not reconsider?"

"No," I snapped.

"Ah well," he smiled while the jaw remained cruel. "Ah well." He turned and went.

The unpleasant taste left in our mouths by Stein's visit was to worsen a day or two later on the fishing grounds into something more sinister, almost a sailor's superstition that he was a harbinger of evil, through a strange incident. I took Etosha out into deep water at the spot where I judged the plankton, which comes up in the cold currents from the Antarctic, would be when it meets the warmer seas of the tropics. Judging the right place — in that wilderness of waters — is the measure of a skipper's success as a trawlerman, and it may mean everything between prosperity and adversity. Skippers have their favourite (and jealously-guarded) secrets of wind and weather which will bring the fish. One I know worked out his bearings on the fishing grounds by a thermometer trailed in the water astern, at a depth of four fathoms. He claimed it worked, and his holds were certainly never empty,