A Twist Of Sand

I took the chart from the navigator's table and went towards my cubbyhole: "Call me at once if we catch up on that noise."

John nodded.

In my solitary cabin I started to unfold the chart I had brought with me, but my mind was against Simon Peace's little mysteries, and I threw it down in disgust. I glanced through the remaining letters. A bill or two and a neatly wrapped copy of The Times. I opened it and saw that the "deaths "column had been ringed with blue pencil. I could see the precise circle being drawn by the schoolmasterly hand. The news was like a cold douche. So he was dead! He had deserved to die with a deck under his feet, had old Arctic-eyes. "Killed in an air raid…" It left the Director of Naval Intelligence and myself. The only two who knew about NP I outside Germany. That neat circle of blue was both a courier of news and a warning. My little cubbyhole suddenly seemed unbearably stifling. It was quite clear; it needed no words, no admonition, to carry to me the meaning of the man with the pedantic and heart full of secrets.

I tossed the paper aside and went through to Bissett. He looked up inquiringly and nodded as I came in. "Still there, sir. Steady seven knots, maybe eight. I just can't make out what that noise can be."

"Steady course, no deviations?"

"Absolutely steady, sir."

The control room boys were chattering between themselves as I came through, but they were on the job all right. I had a feeling of unease which I could not explain

I threw myself down on my bunk again, but I couldn't sleep. I got up and reached for a cigarette and then cursed my forgetfulness. On the handkerchief sized table lay I Hodgson, Hodgson and Hodgson's letter. Curva dos Dunas! I took the navigator's chart and checked again on the position. I remember that I had crammed a couple of the old man's charts into my grip. I rummaged round and found them, crumpled, but not in bad shape really. At that moment I knew I had NP I in the bag. Curious how one's mental processes range apparently without purpose or pattern and then suddenly crystallise. When I saw old Simon Peace's chart — criss-crossed with soundings and annotations — I knew that I had been right in what I had intuitively reasoned before — that NP I must have a base.

And there it was: my island, Curva dos Dunas, exactly where old Simon Peace had positioned it. Curva dos Dunas — a Twist of Sand!

I looked at the formidable stretch of coast about twenty miles south of the mouth of the Cunene — what a fool I had been about the old man's dying words! Not south of north as I had thought. But south of — and there it was plain on the older chart — south of what the river used to be called, the Nourse. Twenty miles south of the Nourse lay the island, amongst the worst shoals and foul ground that could be charted anywhere. Most of them weren't anyway, not on the Admiralty map.

I studied Simon Peace's map in utter fascination. It was obvious that he had surveyed and charted the whole area himself. There, like a jewel set amid broken patterns of ore, was Curva dos Dunas. Guarded from the south by a needle-shaped rock (" ten feet at high tide, eight fathoms under "said the precise lettering in old Simon's hand) and protected farther south still by the Clan Alpine shoal, Curva dos Dunas was the most perfect hide-out anyone could wish for. North of it lay a series of shoals: the water shallowed with incredible abruptness from thirty-two to five fathoms in one place: on the landward side was a rock-strewn, hilly coast surmounted by high shifting dunes; a three-topped hill guarded a tiny beach marked "only sandy beach." This lay half at the back of the island, which seemed only a short distance from "the mainland itself. This mainland is known to sailors as the Skeleton Coast, a coastline beaten by high, thundering surf from the south-west; low, wind-blown scrub relieves the utter baldness of the dunes, and everywhere are the wicked shoals. The high dunes stretch northwards almost to the mouth of the Cunene (or Nourse as old Simon called it). The mouth itself is guarded by a most wicked constellation of shoals.

All this had been carefully charted, a labour which must have taken the old man years. The thought that he might have done it all in a sailing ship along that coast of death made me shudder and marvel at old Simon's intrepidity.

Curvas dos Dunas! The name rang like a bell.