A Twist Of Sand

The first thought that rushed into my racing brain was to run the old Phylira ashore at Curva dos Dunas and slip ashore. I thrust it aside. I couldn't leave Mac and twenty-seven innocent men to die a hideous death, not for all the diamonds in South West Africa. Automatically I went over and tapped the scuffed old Kew pattern barometer hanging on the bulkhead. It was almost a reflex action, for the weather would be a vital factor in my plans. I didn't like the sultry night. The long swell under the old freighter portended a stiff blow from the west-south-west if — but then one never can tell on the Skeleton Coast. It might remain fine with a heavy sea for days, or, in line with the subtle alchemy of cold South Atlantic currents and hot desert air, to say nothing of the fickle and unpredictable elements which a land breeze might throw into the weather's chemistry, a raging south-westerly gale might descend out of a clear blue sky and whip up the sea in the opposite direction, throwing up a barrage of wind 'and water which would nullify any plans I might have of getting ashore. Olafsen, the mate, in his drunken state would not know how even to keep the old wreck afloat under conditions like that.

I wiped the sweaty stickiness of my palms, opened a leather suitcase, and took out old Simon's annotated chart, the one I had used when I sank NP I. I spread it out and measured off the distance from Curva dos Dunas to Tiger Bay. About fifty miles as the crow flies, but I would skirt round the Portuguese post at Posto Velho and avoid the track along the seaward dunes running from the outpost on the Cunene River boundary to Cacimba, at the southern end of Tiger Bay. I might have to walk anything up to eighty miles on the detour, if I could get ashore. I hadn't any fixed plan yet. I would come in to Cacimba from the east, not the south. No one would then suspect I was a shipwrecked sailor.

And the Phylira herself? I felt quite certain Olafsen would put into a Portuguese port once he was sure I was missing — Lobito, probably. He would never attempt Tiger Bay with its tricky entrance. By that time I'd be well out of the way. Certainly Georgiadou wasn't the man to spread it around what the Phylira was carrying; I was quite sure, looking at the scruffy crew, that there was not a man among them who was the wily Greek's watchdog over me.

I flicked through a table of tides. The causeway would start to flood slowly from about four a.m. onwards with the rising tide. I could get ashore in the half-light of dawn and even if Phylira had the temerity to hang around, they would see no link between the sea and the shore except a line of breaking surf. My bet was that Olafsen would head her straight out to sea as soon as he saw that, if he waited that long looking for me.

I bent over the chart again and was stepping off the distance carefully between Curva dos Dunas and Cacimba when I sensed more than anything that I was not alone.

I wheeled round.

There was Mac. He was grinning — a curious, one-sided, evil grin. In his hand he held a massive wrench. His eyes were without a trace of mercy.

"Aye," he said slowly, glancing at the chart. "Aye, I thought so right from the start. Lost without trace at sea, eh? Nice insurance for that Greek bastard."

I saw the way to do it, then. With an accomplice it would be easy, alone it would be near impossible.

I nodded.

"Almost, Mac, but not quite."

"Including the Scots engineer who deserted the Royal Navy to be with his skipper?"

He said it without rancour. His morals were those of the gutter. He understood, instinctively, what I was about, though he didn't know the details. The killer instinct, beggar-your-neighbour, morals of the gutter.

I glanced at the heavy wrench. I'd toy with him a moment. I don't think he was offended, even while he thought I was about to leave him to drown. It was what he would have done in my position. We understood each other perfectly. My action, as he saw it, didn't even violate his code of loyalty to me.

He jerked his head at the chart.

"Going back to where all the fuss was over the court martial?"

"Yes, Mac," I replied evenly.

He hadn't got my drift, but he had assessed the measure of the lure that Curva dos Dunas had for me. He did not know, however, on the one hand the age-old challenge which old Simon Peace had faced — and won up to a point — and which he had bequeathed to me, and on the other the material prospects of a valuable harbour to which I held sole title.

Mac looked at me squarely.

"With some men it is women, and with some it is whisky," he said. "With me it's machinery. With you, skipper, it's some God-forsaken piece of land or sea, I'm not quite sure which. It's ruined you once. Why not leave it alone now?"

Mac would be in this now, I decided: up to his neck in it with me. There could be only one way to get his assistance and that was by telling him everything.