A Twist Of Sand

Anne's dry interruption gave me the measure of her thoughts about Stein. In words at least, it aligned her on my side.

"You forget, the solution has been worked out by a British submarine captain." She looked levelly from him to me. "Very ingenious, Captain Peace. No wonder they loaded you up with decorations." She must have sensed something of the drift of my thoughts, and the barb followed with all the flickering speed of the Bushmen's arrows out there in the desert behind the wreck. "But I'd really like to know something about your last fling that didn't come off."

I thought our truce was peace, but I was wrong.

"Course three-one-oh," I snapped savagely at the Kroo boy. I rang the telegraphs.

"Half ahead."

"I'll take over," I went on to John, quite unreasonably. "You get some rest, unless you really want to tag along here. I'm going outside the Clan Alpine. The chart says sixty fathoms, but I'd swear it's nearer six at fifteen miles offshore. There's a lot of discoloured water and breakers between the shoal and the coast. I don't want to risk it — particularly as it will be dark quite soon."

Stein left.

"You said I could stay…" Anne began.

"Yes," I retorted curtly and I saw, to my surprise, the hurt in her eyes. "I repeat, you can stay. But don't get in the way of anybody. And any fortuitous comment will be out of place."

She went over to where she could see the coastline — for what it was worth — and leaned out across the starboard wing of the bridge. For an hour or more Etosha, her port bow towards the lowering sun, shook herself free of the grim tentacles of the Skeleton Coast — the innumerable, shifting shoals of sand, the uncharted, hidden rocks and the sailor's nightmare which is put down on charts in the classic understatement of "foul ground, discoloured water." The laic afternoon was clear but cold — even in midsummer, let alone midwinter, the mercury falls owing to the peculiar juxtaposition of desert and Antarctic air which comes on the wings of the perpetual south-westerly gale. The afternoon's winteriness and the morning's fog arise from the warmer, moist air which sweeps in in June and July from the humid, tropical seas to the north, creating a fog similar to that of the Grand Banks of America.

Anne stood alone without looking round for that whole hour. The coastline was clearer than at any time during the morning and in the far distance I could see the ragged tumble of blue which marked the mountains of the interior, anything up to a hundred miles from Etosha.

I jammed myself on the opposite side of the helmsman away from the girl. It needed all the cold, fresh sea air to dampen my anger against her. What damnable nerve! I brooded to myself. I was angry at her unconcealed opinion of me and at the same time puzzled when I thought of the other side of her I had seen for a moment when she believed I could do something about the Dunedin Star. Then the holiday mood on the bridge — which was real, the cool, self-poise, or the holiday mood? She seemed to have an ability, a kind of psychological homeopathic flair, for bringing pain. I thought the old wound was healed. Why should I put up with her anyway? I asked myself savagely. I thrust myself back on the smooth surface of the stool and almost slipped over backwards. How she'd laugh if I did, I told myself with unnecessary heat. Why should I find myself snarling; what the hell did it matter what she did or didn't think? I glanced overtly at the slim back and line of her buttocks beneath her corduroy slacks. I couldn't tell myself she was just one of Stein's minions — she'd made it perfectly clear she'd come on the expedition with her eyes open — wide open — to both Stein and myself. And yet I couldn't reconcile her devoted scientific attitude, her "keep-off-the-grass" line to me, with those moments looking at the old wreck. She'd come out in my defence over the sinking of the Dunedin Star — if that meant anything after what followed. I'd handed Stein the black spot, and that meant her too, I brooded, taking my eyes from her back. It was a fair fight between Stein and myself but Anne was so obviously in a neutral corner… The wide expanse of sea seemed weary with the day's care. The strange light did nothing to alleviate my mood. Too much sea and too much Skeleton Coast!

I got up suddenly and joined her at the rail. She said nothing. She seemed scarcely aware of me. She continued to stare out towards the coast.

I fumbled for something to say.

"It gets cold towards evening. You'll want something more than that thin sweater," I said lamely.

She barely glanced towards me. An opening gambit like that deserves it, I told myself in a moment of introspection.

I was wrong. She gestured towards the dimming coastline. I felt as lost among her vagaries of mood as I once did among the shoals of Curva dos Dunas.

"It tends to get a hold on one, doesn't it?"