A Twist of Sand

X A Nymph Rejoins her Ancestors

"It is only a very small request, and I shall pay you well," murmured Stein blandly. The shadow from the light above his head in Etosha's saloon did not conceal, but rather accentuated, the cruel mouth. The mouth was twisted ingratiatingly, but the eyes and the face were deadly cold.

The faint movement of Etosha at her buoy rocked the whisky in my glass. I focused on the amber liquid to compose my thoughts. I was angry, furiously angry, at Stein again pushing his way into Etosha's cabin when Mac and I were having a drink together, as we always did after the crew had gone ashore. It was a month since that dreadful scene in the bar at Mark's. The drunken German was removed screaming like a madman and shouting obscene threats at me. Stein had just stood and stared at me as if he were trying to sort some mental jigsaw into place. The whole thing still jangled on my nerves. I hadn't seen Stein since, but the sight of him back in Etosha brought forward all my latent fears and caution. What did Stein really want of me?

Mac sat under an open porthole, his face inscrutable.

"Stein," I said and my voice rasped at the goading of anger and whisky. "Once and for all, I shall not put you ashore on the Skeleton Coast, even for a thousand pounds each way."

"I am a scientist," he replied, ignoring my mounting anger. "All I ask is the opportunity to collect a beetle which has been lost to science for many, many years."

"To hell with you and your precious beetles!" I swore. "Now get out and leave me alone."

"I repeat," said Stein and the cruel gash of a mouth grinned more sardonically than ever, "I am a scientist. So when a man starts to scream in a bar for no reason at all, I say to myself, there must be a reason. Not so?"

"What has a drunken sailor got to do with my taking you to the Skeleton Coast?"

Stein evaded the issue. His voice became prim.

"I say to myself, a man does not scream for nothing. There must be a cause. Could it be the little thing which fell out of Captain Macdonald's pocket? I ask myself. And what is that thing — a little lucky charm which we have in southern Germany. Surely that alone would not reduce a man to a frenzy and send him into a mental hospital afterwards?"

Stein was smiling again. He had some good cards somewhere, and he was playing them skilfully. I bit down my anger.

"A mental hospital?"

"Yes, Captain, a mental hospital." He gazed at me as though I were a scientific curiosity.

"The psychiatrist is a good friend of mine, and he finds the case of the German sailor very interesting. He has what you call a fixation about a hand. Captain Macdonald's little lucky charm triggers off the malady all over again."

I began to sweat, even in the cold early winter night. I poured myself another Haig. Mac did the same. I didn't offer Stein one.

"So? "I asked.

"Ah, Captain, that is much better," smirked Stein. "You may even become so interested in my story that you will offer me a drink next time, eh?"

"Perhaps," I said grimly.

"So, both of us being scientists, we go into the case history of this Johann. A curious case, in fact. We find that Johann is, in fact, an orphan — his life only begins after 1944-"

"What the hell are you talking about?" I asked.

"I will be frank," continued Stein. "Johann has no past. He was found with a tribe of Bushmen on the Khowarib, near Zessfontein, by a missionary in 1944. He was brought to Winkhoek and spent two years in hospital. They never found out who he was. But one thing is clear — he is a sailor, a U-boat man. He knows nothing of how he came to be wandering with a tribe of dirty little wild men. He lives in mortal fear of a hand."

I thought of the victory hand painted on Trout's conning-tower. The whisky I was drinking might have been water for all the stimulus it gave me.

"Johann improves daily, however, and he will soon be back at his old job again in Windhoek," smiled Stein. He rose as if to go. He turned back at the doorway. He was playing me as a cat does a mouse.

"I was interested in Lieutenant Garland," he said casually. "A friend of mine in Cape Town checked on a Navy List, and I was fascinated to know that he also once commanded H.M.S. Trout, a British submarine, with a most distinguished war record under her first captain, one Lieutenant-Commander Geoffrey Peace."

I had not heard my own name in years and it sent a cold shudder down my spine. So Stein was going to blackmail me with my past in order to force me to take him to the Skeleton Coast. It was impossible that he should know about Curva dos Dunas.

Stein came a pace back into the saloon.

"Lieutenant-Commander Peace was discharged from the Royal Navy after a court martial," said Stein in a harsh voice. "And the emblem of H.M.S. Trout was a hand painted on her conning-tower. Strange, I said to myself, a crazed U-boat sailor who sees the fear of death in a hand, and a British submarine whose victory emblem was a hand, and a South African skipper who carries a lucky charm around in his pocket in the shape of a hand."

It was Mac who precipitated the situation. His attack on Stein was as swift, unheralded and savage as a wolf's. Like a striking mamba he was behind Stein and had grabbed a handful of loose skin under his left ear and with his right — I never saw the movement, it was so swift, but only heard the tinkle of the broken bottle — thrust the neck of the broken Haig bottle into the other side of his neck.

Involuntarily I struck at Mac's fearful weapon, even as it broke the skin. I saw the blood run, but it was not the death-spurt of an artery. Where Mac had learned that filthy trick, I do not know. As I grabbed his hand, Stein writhed loose and slipped from Mac's grasp.

The Luger never even trembled in his hand as he stood back against the padded locker by the porthole. He smiled mirthlessly.

"Two very desperate and dangerous men," he said, eyeing Mac and myself with respect almost. "I watched Captain… ah… Macdonald twist Hendriks's arm of! with the dirtiest hold I have ever seen. I myself nearly fall victim to an even worse trick from his engineer. You gentlemen must have been brought up very badly indeed."

Mac did not say a word. The dour mask remained un-penetrated. I measured the distance carefully to see whether I could jump Stein's gun. It seemed a slim chance. Mac would certainly provide the follow-up.

Stein spoke to Mac although his eyes were as wary as a lynx.

"I shall kill you in my own good time," he said quite dispassionately. "But not now. Now would not be the time, when we are having such an interesting discussion about Lieutenant Garland and his former skipper. Where is Lieutenant Garland, by the way?"

"He's ashore with friends," I said, looking for any chink in the man's vigilance.

"I have friends ashore too — good friends," continued Stein conversationally as cool as though death had not all but touched his jugular vein. There was a faint runnel of blood down his collar, but that was all. The Luger covered us steadily.

The plan to murder Stein dropped into my mind then.

It was just too simple. All I would have to do was to agree to his plan — and the Skeleton Coast would do the rest. I did not like the way he had been digging into my past. The merciless sands of Curva dos Dunas would be all that would hear his death-cries. I decided to play it softly, for he was a cunning devil.

"Are you going to threaten me at pistol-point to take you to the Skeleton Coast?" I asked sarcastically. "Beetle, my Aunt Fanny! Is it a packet of diamonds you are going to pick up?"

He eyed me blandly. "Strangely enough, Captain… ah… Macdonald, it is a beetle. I want that beetle more than anything else in the world. I am prepared to force you to take me there — at pistol-point if necessary — but somehow I don't think it will be necessary."

I didn't like the way he said it, but I let it ride.

"You have the whip-hand of me," I pretended to admit. "All right, I'll take you — but £500 is not enough. I want at least £1,000 and specific guarantees that there will be no leakage to the police."

Stein looked at me contemptuously and waved the Luger, not threateningly, but to emphasise his words.

"Five hundred pounds was the original offer, Captain, but now it is much less. In fact, I think I shall ask you to do it free, gratis and for nothing."

I thought I had bluffed him, but I hadn't. I took a pace towards him, but the Luger swung up at my stomach.

"Neither of you," said Stein ironically, "is likely to be scared by the mere sight of a Luger. Oh no, Captain Macdonald, your capitulation was much too quick. Perhaps with a less — shall we say, determined and resourceful — man I might have been persuaded. No histrionics, I beg of you. No, you shall take me to the Skeleton Coast and put me ashore just where I wish to be put ashore."

"The hell you say," I snapped.

Stein was enjoying himself. "Say you are Lieutenant-Commander Peace, the famous war-time commander of Trout. Assume that it is so for the sake of my argument. What of it? What good would it do either me or Lieutenant-Commander Peace, alias Captain Macdonald, to noise it abroad from the housetops that he is now a trawlerman operating from Walvis Bay? Good luck to him, they'd say. To quote the newspapers, he would have rehabilitated himself. The English sense of fair play. He'd taken his rap and got kicked out, why throw it up again in his face, even if he's got a different name and says he's a South African — and even speaks like one? It would not serve any useful purpose whatsoever. Nor would a man in that position on the mere threat of throwing open his past agree to do a job which might involve him with the law once again and wash out any chance at all of leading a decent life in the future. You agreed far too suddenly, Lieutenant-Commander Peace."

I inwardly cursed my own bungling. What did he mean? His use of my own name and his veiled references left me uneasy, very uneasy.

"So what?" I still tried to bluff it out. "Say I am Lieutenant-Commander Peace. What should the Navy care about a man kicked out and treated like dirt after what I'd done for them and the way I risked my neck? I tell you I got a raw deal and a man who has gone through that doesn't sniff at the opportunity of making a little on the side."

"Nicely taken," sneered Stein. "But when I first saw this ship I asked myself, where does a man like that get the best part of £200,000 for a modern trawler like Etosha? Why the double-action diesels? Why the yacht-like lines when they should be tubby to hold fish? I hear rumours ashore that Captain Macdonald knows the Skeleton Coast better than any other skipper sailing out of Walvis. They say in the waterfront bars that he keeps to himself. Why? Is he running diamonds from the Skeleton Coast? Is that what those fine lines and fast diesels are for?"

"Ah, bulldust!" snarled Mac, drawn by the reference to his engines.

Stein turned to him with a cold smile.

"That is what I said to myself — bulldust," he remarked agreeably.

He let it sink in and gestured sociably with the Luger.

"Don't you think we should sit down? We have so much to discuss — details of the trip to the Skeleton Coast and so on?"

"There is nothing to discuss," I said flatly, knowing perfectly well that there was. "I won't take you to the Skeleton Coast — under any circumstances whatsoever. That's flat. Now get out — and if you come back again, I'll throw you overboard."

"Brave words, Captain Peace — or is it Lieutenant-Commander? I can never be quite sure in a situation like this," he sneered. He sighed theatrically. "You force me to use cards I don't want to. Macfadden," he said harshly, anticipating a move by Mac, "I swear before God that I will kill you on the slightest pretext."

Mac saw that he meant it, too.

"Now, Captain Peace," he went on. "To get back to this very fine ship. Could it be that this fast, well-found ship is a diamond smuggler? I don't think so."

"Thanks for damn all," I said sarcastically.

"The point is, looking at this ship, that the man who bought her must have made his money before, not after. If you can afford a ship like this, you don't need to smuggle diamonds, do you, Captain?"

I felt the sweat trickling down my shirt. The swine was playing with me.

"I don't know the purpose of this ship yet," he said quietly. "But I intend to find out."

So he hadn't heard of Curva dos Dunas. I'd see that he never did — or never came back to tell about it.

"I became very interested in Lieutenant-Commander Peace," he went on, "and so I asked an acquaintance in Cape Town if he could find out something more about this famous submarine commander. I discovered, in fact, that he was drowned at sea eventually — after the court martial."

The cold fear tingled across my heart.

Stein put the Luger back in his pocket. It was a gesture of victory.

"Lieutenant-Commander Peace took an old merchant ship to sea in — when was it? April, '45. You remember the old Phylira, Captain? Fancy Georgiadou calling an old wreck like that after an ocean nymph! But then the Greeks, even old Georgiadou, are a sentimental lot, are they not?"

Automatically I poured myself another drink. So the Phylira was calling from her grave — and the twenty-seven men of the crew with her! Icy fear gripped me. So Stein knew about the Phylira, and had found out that I was her captain. By all the rules I was dead — the Phylira sailed from Cape Town for Tangier and was never heard of again.

"The old Phylira's engines were as bad as they come, weren't they Macfadden?" taunted this evil incarnation of a past which I thought I had buried alongside NP I on the sand-bars of Curva dos Dunas.

Stein laughed.

"A brilliant submarine commander as the skipper of a rotten old merchantman, and a brilliant engineer to keep her old engines going — just as long as they needed to be kept going, eh?"

There was pure murder in Mac's eyes. Stein knew he had us. He didn't even bother about the Luger any more.

"What did you do with her, Captain Peace? How can a man make away with a whole ship and twenty-seven men without a trace? And how did he disappear himself without a trace, to come back with a small fortune? Georgiadou would be terribly interested to know. No one could have been more heart-broken than that unsentimental shipowner about the loss of an old ship, for which he got more than her value in insurance, anyway. If he hadn't been so cut up about the loss of the Phylira, I'd have sworn he'd paid an enterprising, ruthless captain like yourself to get rid of her. But he still mourns the loss of the Phylira, Captain Peace. I'm sure he'd be only too keen to renew acquaintance with his erstwhile captain and the Scottish engineer. Tangier, too. What was her cargo?"

"If you know all this, I'm sure you've seen Phylira's manifests," I rapped out harshly.

"Of course I have," he said smoothly. "Canned fruit, brandy, wool — nothing in the least exceptional. But why Tangier? I ask myself. And in '45 when anyone and anything shady could be bought in Tangier."

I'd often wondered how Georgiadou took the loss of his packet of uncut stones, all £200,000 of them. From what I heard later, Georgiadou, under his respectable merchant trading cloak in Adderley Street, was the biggest rogue south of the Congo in organising the smuggling of uncut diamonds from South West Africa, Sierra Leone and West Africa through Tangier mainly to Iron Curtain countries. I can still see the look on the Greek's face when he handed me over a tiny parcel, carelessly done up in a small cardboard carton with the King's Ransom "round-the-world "label still on it.

"You will deliver these to Louis Monet in the ' Straits' bar in the Rue Marrakesh," he said incisively. "There are over £200,000 worth of uncut diamonds in that parcel. Many a man has had his throat cut for a tenth of that amount, Captain, so don't get any ideas about private enterprise, see?"

It was Georgiadou's own remark which sowed the seed.

Far to the south of Curva dos Dunas, off the mouth of the Orange River, the old Phylira wheezed along. It was a close night and my cabin was hot and stuffy from the dry wind coming off the land. Somewhere beyond the night out to starboard across the water the searchlights would be playing back and forth across the barbed wire which guards the Forbidden Area of the Diamond Coast. As I glanced out through the porthole, I could almost imagine I could see their reflection against the night sky. In that barren wilderness the policemen sent to patrol the desert go mad; they never see a woman in two years' shift of duty; they don't worry about the seaward side which the devilish sandbars make so safe.

Except for Curva dos Dunas, I thought grimly. That thought triggered the whole idea off. What in God's name was I doing skippering a floating wreck and relegating myself to the status of a pariah when I held sole title to the only harbour, except Walvis Bay, from Cape Town to Tiger Bay? I and I alone knew of the existence — and more particularly, the navigational hazards — of a harbour which either Rhodesia or South Africa would give millions of pounds to own. Curva dos Dunas was mine, but no government would even listen to a sailor's tale without proof. Proof! I could picture myself in the cool arched corridors of the Union 'Buildings in Pretoria being shifted — ever more impatiently — from one civil servant to another, fobbed off with evasive, ever-less polite answers to a man they would consider a crackpot — unless. Unless I had a ship of my own. A ship! I would have to go back and chart the place in case the tides and currents had closed or altered it since I sank NP I. I must have a ship. My own ship.

Perhaps in that lonely, stuffy cabin the ghost of old Simon Peace came to insinuate the idea into my mind. Above all, his challenge. Curva dos Dunas had cast its spell over him, and I likewise had been bewitched. Without formulating my ideas, or even putting them into rational form, I knew it was the lure, the challenge to me as a sailor and a man, as much as the other thoughts of a key harbour to which I alone held the secret, which drove me on.

I stared out of the porthole. Curva dos Dunas! The Achilles heel of the whole Skeleton Coast! What a magnificent hidy-hole to smuggle out diamonds!

The thought hit me with such force that I smacked my palm down on the table. Why not smuggle them in, not out? Georgiadou's precious parcel! Private enterprise! Two hundred thousand pounds would get me the sort of ship I wanted — fast, eminently seaworthy, handy. My thoughts tumbled over one another as it all fell into place. A fast trawler, putting up a front of fishing. I could operate out of Walvis legitimately, and no one would suspect my operations on the side at Curva dos Dunas.

Private enterprise!

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.

I took the battered King's Ransom carton from the suitcase and locked the door. Mac looked interested as the key turned, but he knew he could batter me into submission with the wrench. I tipped the contents, the dull uncut stones, on to the table.

Mac made a curious gesture as he flattened the pile down with the palm of his hand.

"That's very expensive whisky," he said. It was the only time I had ever seen Mac shaky.

"Enough," I said briefly.

"You taking them out?" he asked.

"No," I said. "I'm taking them in. You and me Mac. Two hundred thousand quid's worth, if I guess right. Maybe more."

"Do you want me to open the valves?" he asked cryptically. I knew he was in on it now as much as myself.

"No, Mac," I said, as if we were discussing a minor engine defect and not the biggest thing in diamonds since Cullinan. "In a little more than twenty-four hours from now you will stop the engines and report to me that something has come adrift in the steering gear — the rudder pintles have gone, or any other bloody technicality you like. You'll think up something, or you'll put it wrong yourself."

Mac grinned. He knew exactly what I meant.

"I'll lay the Phylira against the current. The Trout current, I call it, just for old times' sake."

Mac winced. I didn't think it would touch him so deeply.

"If you've got some real whisky somewhere, I'd find it useful," was all he said.

I pulled a bottle of my special Johnny Walker Black Label from a locker. Mac took it straight.

"You've a lot of very fine whisky in this cabin," he muttered.

"The Trout current sweeps down here at anything between four and six knots, close inshore," I told him. "You'll have to leave enough way on her to cope with that. It swings and weaves through these rocks and shoals like a matelot on a bender. It'll be damn tricky, even if the weather is calm. This swell is enough in itself."

"I don't get it," said Mac. "I've stopped the engines with just enough way on to hold her against the current and I report to you on the bridge that the steering gear's amiss. What then?"

"We go over the side to inspect the fault," I said crisply.

Mac tapped the edge of the whisky glass with the wrench until it rang dully, like a bell of doom.

"What time is all this?" he said slowly.

"About three-thirty a.m." I said.

"And then?"

"I'll have this old wreck lying a bit to the nor'ard of where I intend to land," I said. "As soon as the boat hits the water, the Trout current will sweep it away from the Phylira. In two minutes we'll be lost in the darkness. I know the way after that. I'll give a course of three-one-oh degrees just before we make our ' inspection.' That'll take the Phylira well out of the way."

Mac shook his head. "They'll simply turn round and search for us. A couple of hours and it will be full daylight. They'll find us, sure as nuts."

"You're wrong, Mac," I said quietly. "The Royal Navy never found the U-boat I sank. And no one in this rotten old tub, let alone that soak Olafsen, will find you and me where we are going." I smiled grimly at his set face. "I give you my assurance of that, Mac. I know."

Mac eyed me for a long time. "So it was a U-boat then? You never said so at the court martial."

"No, Mac," I said. "And the reasons still hold good to-day. There are others also."

Mac was as sharp as quicksilver.

"The… whale noises… special machinery?"

"Special machinery," I said, looking hard at him. "A lot of men died because of that special machinery."

"But you never fired a shot," Mac protested.

I heard the harsh grate in my own voice. "I know how to kill men without using torpedoes or bullets, Mac. The sea and I. See that chart?" I deliberately put my hand across it so he wouldn't see the whorls and the depth readings. "That's a murder weapon, Mac. I used it once to kill men. It's also worth more than all those diamonds, if I get back to do what I want to do. I used it once and I'm going to use it again — and you and I will be rich men."

"You're a more ruthless bastard than I ever imagined," he said slowly. "But I'm with you. This Skeleton Coast is eating into you, Skipper. If it's as bad as I think, it'll also get you in the end. Is that the plot?"

"Not all," I said. "It's all deadly simple. Once we're clear of the Phylira, I'll take you in to land. Can we use the small boat with the engine? Is it working?"

"If it's like everything else on this ship, it isn't," he said acidly. "But I'll make it work by tomorrow night." The thought struck him.

"But the sound of the engine — they'll pick us up easily…"

I heard the harshness in my voice again. "They bloody well won't because it will be drowned by the thunder of the surf. We'll be right close in, Mac, so close that it'll probably scare the pants off you. I want that engine working — well. I don't fancy the idea of taking anything in under sail through a deadly channel at night."

Mac flicked another measure of whisky into the glass.

"I saw Garland's face when he looked through that periscope," he said, his eyes shadowed. "He was as scared as a man could be. I'll get some water and food into the boat now. You've worked out the plot and I know there won't be any snags. A completely ruthless bastard," he repeated.

But there were snags.

As the boat with only Mac and me hit the water that inky night, Curva dos Dunas hit, too.

It was a savage right cross from the wind, followed by a brutal left hook by the sea. Phylira never stood a chance.

Except for the long swell, the sea was relatively calm as I gave the order to clear away the falls of the boat. It had been hauled up forward earlier so that it would run the length of the starboard beam before getting clear. This would give us a lee from the ship's side which would enable me to get her well under control — engineless until we were clear of the ship — as the swift current gripped her. A few minutes before Mac came to the bridge with his faked report about a rudder fault, I had altered course so that the old freighter lay with her head pointing slightly away and parallel to the land. This would get her clear to sea out of danger of the rocks and shoals. On her new course, Phylira now lay with her port beam square to the south-west.

The right cross of the gale struck with untamed ferocity out of the south-west, without warning. It was so violent that at first I thought it was a squall, but it was to blow for days afterwards. Ply/lira's whole length lay open to the blow. As the boat with Mac and me felt water under her, Phylira reeled under that gigantic elemental punch.

One moment Phylira was peering ox-like out to sea, the next I was staring horror-struck at the red-painted, rusty side swing over the tiny boat, alive and electrified by the galvanic force of the blow. There was nothing Mac or I could do. In the lee of the ship we were protected from the thundering charge of spray and frenzied wind which tore over the ship. Phylira hung poised over us.

Mac, one hand on the tiller and the other on the starting-handle, gazed awe-struck as thousands of tons of rusty old steel bent right over us, a moment's hesitation before the death-dealing roll which would take her and us to the bottom.

"Christ!" he screamed, and began to swing the starter like a madman. It stayed dead. But the Trout current already had us in its grip and we were swept as far as the engine-room. Phylira leaned still more over us and loose gear began falling in the water. Part of the deck came into view, so sharp was the list. Phylira was about to fall right on top of us.

Then the sea dealt its left hook. The savage mountain of water which the great gale had built up in front of it recoiled off the northerly point of Curva dos Dunas. It was almost the place where I had first seen the graceful, deadly dorsal fin of NP I. The sea staggered back' from the iron-hard sand-bar. The Trout current threw in all the weight of its six knots behind the recoiling wall. The current had already swung the old ship's head from north-west almost round to north-east. I could see Phylira sag as it burst all over her bows and, even above the scream of the wind, I heard the whimper of torn metal. Our cockleshell shot high into the air and we slid by the canting stern into the maelstrom. Phylira disappeared in the darkness.

Mac got the engine to fire as we swept past like a surf-boat, but it was a puny thing. The boat swung round in the grip of the enhanced current and made madly for the surf. I baled frantically. Then suddenly the water was calmer. We had been swept inside the northern entrance arm of Curva dos Dunas. In the small boat, half full of water now, but afloat, we were safe inside the sand-bars, despite the screaming wind and driving spume.

The King's Ransom packet lay soggy, but safe, in the water sloshing above the floorboards.

From the beach next morning we looked at the wreck of the Phylira through my binoculars, wiping them clean of the blowing salt every few minutes. We disposed of the boat by staving in a few planks and weighing her down on the causeway, where the next tide covered her. Phylira lay against the southern entrance — heaven alone knows what combination of sea and wind put her there. Her masts were canted over and from the way she lay I could see that her back was shattered. I spent the morning searching the rigging for traces of the crew, but there were none. When the causeway cleared at the next tide Mac and I got within a few hundred yards of the wreck, but there was not a sign of life.

Curva dos Dunas would keep Georgiadou's secret well.

Stein's voice cut into my line of memory.

"It must have been brilliantly executed, Captain Peace," he sneered. "Georgiadou would love to know the details. You and he should become partners, you know. On the one hand, a Greek with a tortuous, greedy mind, and on the other a sacked Royal Navy officer with a flair for brilliant, ruthless execution. It would be a great team, Captain Peace."

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.