A Twist Of Sand

I said nothing. So he thought I had deliberately disposed of the Phylira and her crew. Well, even to deny it wouldn't send me up much in Stein's opinion. With hellish ingenuity this German beetle-hunter — so he said — had put together a chain of unrelated things and found out just who and what I was. Would any man go to those lengths just for the sake of finding some extinct species of beetle? Curva dos Dunas! There lay my trump card, and I intended to play it. Let him think what he liked about the Phylira. It seemed that Curva dos Dunas was the only thing Stein had not unearthed, that and the fate of NP I.

Stein looked at us both blandly. He jerked his head generally at the Etosha. "Lowestoft?" he remarked, knowing perfectly well that she had first tasted water on Oulton Broad.

He was enjoying himself enormously. It was simple enough, of course; he could have seen the brass plate by the bridge companion. But with his evil air, it smelt to me of black magic again.

I nodded briefly.

Stein rose and fingered the panelling in the saloon.

He hummed and then broke into a surprisingly clear tenor.

"In Lowestoft a boat was laid,

Mark well what I do say!

And she was built for the herring trade,

But she has gone a-rovin', a-rovin', a-rovin',

The Lord knows where!"

"Kipling had a way of putting these things, did he not?" he went on urbanely. "The operative words being, of course, 'the Lord knows where!' The Lord and Captain Peace know where!" he mocked.

Then the mockery died in his voice and he rapped out: "You will be ready to sail at dawn tomorrow, Captain Peace. I shall be here and I shall want room for my assistant, too."

"You can go to hell!" I retorted. "You and your beetles. Garland isn't here, won't be until tomorrow afternoon and I'm damned if I sail without my first lieutenant."

"You have no choice at all," Stein replied smoothly.

"I must wait for the boats," I replied. "Mine got smashed up in a heavy sea. They'll take a couple of weeks to get here."

"Don't play for time," sneered Stein. "You can't bluff me like that. We sail the morning after tomorrow, then. Garland can be safely back on duty. The rest is unimportant."

He turned by the companionway and smiled.

"No need to see me off the ship, Captain Peace," he said. "It's a dark night, and accidents can always happen. This has been a most instructive and informative evening. I can understand why the Royal Navy respected your talent, Captain Peace. I do too, or else I would not be asking you to take me. Gentlemen, to the Skeleton Coast."

With a melodramatic wave of the hand, he disappeared.

XI

A Lady for Onymacris

"It lighteneth," observed John biblically. He raised his night glasses from their strap and rubbed off the moisture with the tip of his elbow, heavily swathed in an off-white sweater.

And almost a biblical figure he looked, too, in his thick sweater and balaclava cap dripping droplets of moisture, the whole picture slightly out of focus in the swirling fog.

I glanced at the compass card.

"Christ!" I exploded at the Kroo boy. "Can't you keep on course without swinging a point or two either way!"

He looked truculent. More truculent than scared, although in his hands lay the fate of Etosha and us all, ripping through this cursed darkness with all the power of the great diesels. The telegraph stood at full ahead; she had her head, striding out through the murky water almost dead into the light breeze from the nor'-nor'-west. She had been doing gloriously since I rang down to Mac hours ago when Etosha slipped out of Walvis into the fog. The winter fog was ideal cover for our movements, and if the wind did not freshen from the north-west, it would hang around until the middle of the afternoon.

I steadied the wheel over the Kroo boy's shoulder. The fog came in through the open bridge windows, wet, clammy, but fresh with the sea — unlike the land smog with its tale of filth and cities.

"When do you think we should sight it?" asked John.

"In about ten minutes, if this black bastard can keep his mind on the job that long," I replied acidly. "Bearing oh-five-oh. You can't miss it."

"You can miss anything in this fog," rejoined John.

"No, you won't," I said. "I've been keeping her about six miles offshore all night…" I saw him wince as he thought of the shoals and the rocks as close in, and the wicked currents which come and go along the Skeleton Coast… "and in about ten minutes the sun will be at a sufficient angle to refract under the fogbank. You won't miss the hill in Sierra Bay. It's about six hundred and fifty feet high, and you'll catch a glimpse of white water as the sun glances off the fogbank."

"Neat as a problem in physics," laughed John.

"Oh, for God's sake!" I burst out. Then I regretted it. My nerves were shot to hell, tearing through a fogbank like this at sixteen knots and never being sure that I was' not taking Etosha — to a sudden and dreadful death. "Sorry," I said. "But this isn't a pleasure cruise to me — and you know anything can happen on this coast."