A Twist Of Sand

And the barracouta were the same. As far as I could see, the water boiled with them.

"Get your lines overboard, quick." I roared at the crew. Here was the chance to fill our holds in an hour. Lines flew over the side, scarcely baited. Then the first solid phalanx roared under the ship. The helpless porpoises rolled and kicked, trying to get free of the seething mass. The barracouta ignored the lines but some, like those luckless springbok of the giant herds which impale themselves on barbed wire while the others push until the wire breaks, got caught up in the hooks. There was no catch. Again and again the lines went over the side into the apparently unending mass roaring by, but they were ignored as the huge school, intent on some hidden goal, swept by. They crashed oblivious into the ship's side. They jumped and seethed and milled, like nothing I have ever seen. I stopped the screws for fear of fouling them. Then suddenly, after about fifteen minutes, the water ceased to boil and they had passed. But not quite.

Like a destroyer escort astern of a convoy, three giant rays followed.

On the bridge we were too thunderstruck to utter a word. Now the keenness of our disappointment at missing the catch of our lives emerged. It was John who put the thought into words that Stein was the hoodoo.

He jerked his head at the distant schooner.

"Stein's the Jonah," he said. "We'd have got them if he hadn't been around."

Her sails merged into the gathering night.

III

Four Beers for the Wrong Man

the dust, in suspension with hot diesel fumes from the engine, seeped — steadily into the bus. The driver changed down for one of the hummocky dunes across which the road straggles out of Walvis Bay, and the jerk brought in fresh clouds. A bounce against the upholstery of the seat in front was enough to bring on its own little sand-storm, for the whole vehicle was impregnated with it, after doing this route every day for I do not know how many years. The dust in the deserts of South West Africa is laden with fine particles of mica. Normally this is a mixture to be shunned, but add to it blinding heat, sweat, discomfort and thirst, and it — becomes an irritant like mild pepper. Not only the nostrils, but the eyes and the ears get choked with the fine, irritating atoms. I have heard hay-fever sufferers (and the majority of people seem to have some sort of catarrhal complaint) sneeze thirty times running. Lower down the coast, near the mouth of the Orange River, there is a settlement where ninety per cent of the wretched inhabitants have tuberculosis.

The bus, run by the railways, swung up the steep gradient and turned left on to the harder desert road. At least on the open stretches the dust would tend to be left behind in the airstream. Walvis Bay lay on the left as we headed northwards towards Swakopmund. There were half a dozen European passengers in the forward end of the bus, and in conformity with the creed of apartheid on public transport, a score or so of Coloureds and natives sat behind the wire-meshed dividing grill. Whether they were dustier or more uncomfortable than the European passengers forward, it is difficult to say. But the grill was certainly not enough to make one unaware of their presence, if such was its intention, for with the dust and oil fumes were wafted in heavy, ammoniacal odours of unwashed bodies, that repellent which may be one of the deep, unconscious roots of apartheid. It cuts both ways, however, and a non-European will tell you that he cannot bear the stink of a white (washed) European. Livingstone was the first to find that out.

I caught a glimpse of Etosha at her mooring, and the thought of the sweet, clean sea-air made me regret I had not stayed with her for a day or two rather than come ashore. After Hendriks's sailing-ship had nearly cut us down, we spent another five days out on the fishing banks. The hoodoo of Stein persisted, in its effect on the catch. After" five days of fruitless, temper-fretting fishing which had yielded a bare four or five tons, I put back to port.

Etosha had to be got ship-shape again, although I was little perturbed when I found out that the two new boats which I had ordered from Cape Town would not be ready for an indefinite period. Mac wanted to iron out some infinitesimal fault in the engines and the spell in port would give him the opportunity. I felt rather like an admiral without a quarterdeck, so I decided to spend a few days ashore. I must admit that the first day was not auspicious. I started a round of golf in the morning, but in the rising wind it would have taken Bobby Locke In keep the ball in play. In disgust I gave it up. At the clubhouse I rang Mark, who kept the Bremen, a neat little hotel at Swakopmund which was almost a club to me ashore.