A Twist of Sand

XII Madness of the Sands

Stein saw the white death in front of him and blenched. His face turned a sickly green and he pulled out the Luger.

"Get back!" he screamed. "Astern, astern!"

He groped madly for the telegraph, pitching John, who was at the wheel, on to the plating of the bridge. Anne retreated, her white face accentuated by her scarlet polo-necked sweater and matching lipstick, to the head of the bridge ladder.

I wasn't afraid of Stein, but I was scared to death of the sand-bars of Curva dos Dunas.

"You bloody fool!" I shouted, making a grab at the spinning spokes as Etosha yawed twenty degrees off course. As I spun the wheel back I hit Stein across the face with the back of my left hand and he went reeling to his knees. Anne picked up his gun uncertainly.

Well, if that's the way he wants it, he'll get it, I thought grimly. "Full astern" I rang on the telegraph. Etosha slowed to a halt, like a horse about to take a jump, and then reined back almost in mid-flight.

It was Etosha's sudden emergence from the fog which threw Stein off balance. I wasn't surprised, although my stomach was turning over. It was the morning after my talk with Anne and Etosha had torn north-westwards through the night to be in position off Curva dos Dunas by mid-morning. She was only doing six knots when she broke through the encumbering gloom into bright sunlight maybe five miles offshore, sunlight reflecting more whitely by contrast as it came off the creaming surf. Back in the fog I had watched the soundings plummet from sixty-five to forty-seven fathoms, and I knew exactly where I was. Off Curva dos Dunas. I'd played the Benguela current off all night against a small local stream, narrow but powerful, which forces its way from the mouth of the Cunene River through the wild welter of broken, discoloured death traps southwards to the Clan Alpine shoal. The great Benguela current is cold, majestic; it has made its way past a thousand obstacles from South Georgia and Tristan; it is broad, life-giving with its countless myriad's of living plankton for the fish; the narrow but powerful down-coast current from the Cunene, which I called the "Trout," bounces and races south and south-west at fully five knots and scrapes along the landward edge of the kingly Benguela, but it is wicked, diabolonian, fickle, and turns the entrance to Curva dos Dunas into a sailor's idea of hell. When I took Trout in against NP I I hadn't known it existed, but all the time since I had patiently spent charting its vagaries in Etosha made me sweat at the thought of my ignorance at that time. I'd brought Etosha to Curva dos Dunas with the Benguela under her stern and the Trout under her bow, and I was not a little pleased when the 65–47 soundings came up, familiar as Table Mountain.

And now this madman Stein threatened to spoil it all as he saw the savage breakers hammering at the sand-bars of Curva dos Dunas. Admittedly, it was a staggering sight under the lash of a wild south-westerly blow. The run of the sea, thundering against the fang-white sand-bars, threw up acres of water, smashed to white, high into the air; the Trout current, tearing down past the entrance, provided a more flexible, if not less formidable barrier, and the sea also broke wildly out of reach of the sand itself, well out to the fifty fathom line.

Etosha lay bucking at this stupendous vista while my eyes sought, automatically, my lifelines — seawards, Simon's Rock to the south, and on land the three-topped hill a little to the south-east, and the mountain in the north. With those three, and daylight, and my soundings dead on, I'd take her in just as I had taken Trout in that unforgettable night.

Stein's mouth was wet and whether he stammered slightly from fear or the blow as he crouched, I could not have cared less.

"Captain Peace, I forbid it! Do you hear, I forbid it!" His voice rose. "You want to kill me, I know. But I won't let you."

"Pull yourself together," I snarled. My attention was only half on him. The three-topped hill was beginning to bear — one hundred, and Etosha's head was easing, one hundred and three. One hundred and five degrees! She was dead right for the entrance, with the great northern pile steady on seventy degrees.

"Hold her like that," I rapped out to John.

"Soundings?"

"Thirty, twenty-seven, twenty-three… "

"We're bang on," I exclaimed, and the magic of it came upon me. Perhaps that is the deadly fascination for the Peace sailormen of Curva dos Dunas. The one degree error that spells death, the foreknowledge of what cold, low-density water will do against warm, high-density currents, in juxtaposition with wind, sea and tide. Not a problem in navigation, but a primitive problem of survival. A deadly throw of the dice, man against the sea.

"Take a look," I said harshly to Stein, who had got to his feet. "That's what you wanted, wasn't it — to go ashore in safety? I'm taking you ashore…" I grinned at his patent fear — "through that lot. A moment ago I could have stopped, but it's too late now."

Stein said quickly: "I never expected…"

"Of course you didn't," I retorted without sympathy. "But if you have to hang over the side retching your guts out, I'm taking you inside."

Through Stein's fear came a flicker of reluctant admiration. He made a ghastly attempt at a smile.

"They all say you are the best skipper on the coast Captain Peace," he replied. "Now I think so too."

I rang "slow ahead."

"Watch those bearings," I said to John, who was back at the wheel. "You miserable bastard," I said to Stein. "I'm risking my ship and all our lives for you, but I'm going to show you what keeping a bargain means. I hope you like it."

I couldn't see the line of the channel as such, the confusion of water was too great. There was no quiet water anywhere. Old Simon must have been a genius as a sailor.

"Steer one-oh-oh," I said tersely to John. The dun coast lay deadly quiet, poised like a giant Anglosaurus lizard about to strike.

Etosha went in. I could hear Stein's breath rasping faintly. Anne came over to the pelorus and when her hand rested on its stand, I could see the fingers trembling. I adjusted the line of my bearing.

"One-oh-five," I said to John. John stood there, his face like granite, withdrawn, remote. I was taking her in towards the first great swing in the channel, which then doubled back almost on its own tracks. The bearings from the night of NP I's doom were indelible on my mind. Spray began to blow across the bridge in fine clouds.from the breaking water. Etosha crept on.

Suddenly Anne gave a cry. "Look, a ship!"

Every eye flashed to the spot where she pointed. The old bluffbows of the Phylira looked as ugly in death as I had seen them that first day when Georgiadou had taken me down to the Table Bay docks where she lay in an out-of-the-way corner. I was surprised to find myself quite impersonal. That wild night seemed to have no connection with myself, somehow.

Stein was beside me, his face intense.

"Georgiadou would be very interested," he sneered. "A fine piece of wrecking, if I may say so, Captain. And a colossal nerve it must have taken to do it there too."

"You may say so, but I don't know what you're talking about," I rejoined. Circumstantially, there was only one answer — they would say I had wrecked Phylira and sent the crew to their deaths in the creaming holocaust. So Stein thought, anyway.

"Come, come, Captain Peace, that's the ship you put ashore. You can't bluff me."

I stared him out of countenance.

"Do you see her name, or any identification?" I asked. "What makes you think I know anything about thai wreck? I don't. Georgiadou wouldn't thank you for thai kind of information. She's probably been there for years."

There was almost admiration in Stein's tone when he replied.

"It is clever, Captain, too clever. As you say, Georgiadou wouldn't thank me for it. I couldn't even say where this wreck was, and if I could, how would one ever get close enough to look — unless Captain Peace showed them how?

How did you get out alive, Captain, from " he waved at the breakers — "that?"

Anne looked at me tight-lipped. "I don't believe it," she said slowly. "No one could ever come out alive."

If racing drivers have their brains in the seats of their pants, then I think some of mine must be in the soles* of my feet. Some slight movement, something out of accord, warned me. Concentrating on the grave of the Phylira, I'd missed a trick. The bearing had passed.

"Quick," I rapped out to John. "Steer three-one-five." Simultaneously I rang "Full ahead." Etosha juddered. Sand? I wasn't sure, but the screws and full wheel would bring her round, if anything would.

John never raised his eyes, but his face was set. He spun the spokes. Etosha bucked. Looking at the creaming surf through salt-stung eyes, it was impossible to judge whether pr not we were against the far side of the channel or not. I thanked God that we were afloat — just. One slight lapse, and the Skeleton Coast would trump your ace.

I glanced at the bearings of the two hills ashore and then swung right round to Simon's Rock. Not so bad. I breathed easier.

"Three-two-oh," I said, tension making my voice grate.

I waited for the tell-tale bump which would spell the end, just as I had waited for it in Trout. Two minutes — three minutes — four. Etosha was clear in the channel again!

She was running back, slowly now, almost parallel to the way she had come, her stern now pointing at the coast. Out to sea, the perpetual morning fog hung like a shroud. She had about fifteen minutes' steaming to the next, wide, shallow turn to the north.

I straightened up. John met my eye; he looked the way he had done when I thought he had turned against me at the court martial.

"Five minutes' clear?" he asked in his best quarterdeck voice.

I nodded.

"Those bearings and the course, they are exactly the same, aren't they?"

I nodded again. I didn't look at him.

"You took Trout in through this after — something?"

"Yes," I replied, inaudible almost to myself.

"Geoffrey," he went on remorselessly, and his tone drew Anne into the circle too. "All these years I wondered — did you sink her? Or," and his eyes looked at mine and I saw pain and doubt which I had never suspected, "was it something in the mind that sank you — for always — that night?"

I turned slowly round until I faced east-nor'-east. Straining through the blowing spray, I thought I caught a glimpse, a momentary glimpse, of the object.

"What is it?" Anne burst out. "What is it?"

Doubt was written all over John's face. I could see it all in his attitude: "I've opened up the old wound, and now he's round the bend again — poor bastard."

I came back and gripped one of the spokes of the wheel. My voice was unsteady.

"I sank her," I said simply. "The wreck bears about one-two-oh degrees at this moment."

John was too good a sailor to take his eyes off the course.

"I'll see her again when we get inside this lot?"

"Yes," I replied. "You'll see her all right. On the far side of the anchorage."

John's glance didn't waver. "Was it as important as all that — important enough that you kept your mouth shut? Who were you shielding?"

Stein joined us. He was lapping up the drama avidly.

"See here," I said to the three of them. "It's history now, and I want the record straight. It's history now, and that's why I can tell you. An atomic submarine is nothing new today. But in the early war years it was God's answer to the U-boat Command. All it had to do was to prove itself. Blohm and Voss made one. She sank the Dunedin Star with torpedoes from which the warheads were drawn. She came back here. I went in after her. I sank her."

Stein goggled: "You mean we — Germany — had an atomic submarine and it was never used in the Atlantic?"

I rounded on him. "Yes," I said. "The U-boat Command were dubious because they thought it too much of a break with the old, engine-driven U-boat. So they sent it out on a trial raiding cruise. They thought it would blow up. Two men in England besides myself knew about it. My orders were to destroy the new U-boat. I did. She's lying — or what's left of her — a couple of miles away inside this channel."

Stein looked unbelievingly at me. Then he said slowly: "So it was Lieutenant-Commander Peace, D.S.O. and two Bars, that did more than any other single man in the war to win the Battle of the Atlantic! Why, we would have torn England's throat out with atomic submarines! And you sank her! God's truth, how?"

John butted in. "Yes, how? Trout never fired a torpedo."

I laughed in their faces. "I sank her with a recognition flare."

John thought I had gone off my head.

"A recognition flare?"

"She was fuelling and the burning flare fell in the fuel. She went up like a Roman candle."

Stein looked at me, still in disbelief.

"No survivors?"

I looked at him squarely; the nightmare of the men on the sand-bar came back to me.

"I shot down the survivors with a machine-gun."

"No, Captain Peace," said a voice, ragged with menace from the head of the bridge companionway, "you didn't. One got away."

The three of us, even John, swung round electrified. Johann stood at the back of the bridge. He carried a heavy wooden bar, called a kierie, we used to kill the snoek. Gone was the vagueness, the hesitancy of the man whose dazed mind fumbles. Curva dos Dunas had jerked him back to reality. The eyes had lost their blurred perception and were blazing now — with the lust to kill. There was no doubt that Johann had come up on to the bridge to kill. It was his deadly quiet which frightened me.

"You fired the gun in our faces," he said slowly. "I can see you now as you swung the barrel round, Captain. And now I am going to kill you. But there won't be any doubts about this kill. For three days I lay on the sand. It was all sand, all sand and salt. The bullets got me here " — he pulled up a sleeve, never taking his eyes off me in case I jumped him — and showed me the underside of his left arm where almost all the flesh was missing. It was a hideous wound.

"I prayed to die, Captain, out there on the sand. I prayed that you would die slowly, like me. I went back to the U-boat — you'll see her just now, because I know this part of the world better than you. I should do. It is a trap.

You die slowly here. I walked every inch of sand looking for a way out. There was not one."

I couldn't credit that he had missed the sand causeway to the beach. Perhaps the pain and mental shock of being all alone in this wind-driven hell had deadened his faculties.

"I went aboard the U-boat when she had cooled down." He laughed and the high note revealed the mind on the verge of being unhinged again. "They were all cooked, Captain. All my friends were cooked. But it was easier to eat my friends cooked than raw, wasn't it?" He gave a high giggle and Anne shrank back at the sound.

"And now, after all that cooked meat, I must have some raw, not so?" He came forward with the kierie. I could see he had the strength of a maniac. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Stein glance anxiously over the side.

"This is a fascinating story," he said and the mouth was as cruel as a sting-ray with its victim under its eyes. "We have now added war crimes to Captain Peace's long ú — and often nefarious — record."

I saw the sudden tautening of Johann's muscles. It telegraphed the warning, but there was little I could do about it. With lightning speed the kierie flickered upwards, but Stein struck first with the deadly venom of a cobra. Even in that moment of mortal peril it made me wonder where he had learned his trade. The Luger hit Johann high above the ear, just where the hair leaves the scalp. He stood swaying in front of me, the eyes unconscious. He slumped at my feet.

"Don't waste your time on him, Captain, or on thanking me," whipped out Stein. "We'll be ashore in a moment. Get your bearings, or whatever you do, in God's name!"

I swung the pelorus with hands that trembled. I gave John a new course. We were almost opposite Galleon Point.

I could see the spar out to port where Trout had gone aground. I nodded towards it.

"That," I said to John, "is where we damaged the hydroplanes."

He didn't reply. I could see that the deadly swiftness of Johann's attack had shaken him. His helmsmanship remained masterly.

Stein kicked the still figure without compassion.

"All this makes him a better bodyguard than ever, doesn't it," he grinned evilly. "With a score like that to settle, particularly."

He bent down and examined the unconscious man's head. "He'll be out for another hour at least," he said. "Will that get us safe into the anchorage? If it won't, I'll make sure that he doesn't wake up for another couple." He took the kierie and looked questioningly at Johann. The cold precision of it revolted me.

"It'll be enough," I said.

"In this channel you're far more valuable — for my life in particular — than this," he said kicking the still form again without compunction. "But there may well be occasions when the position is reversed."

The high hill to the north, clearly visible, and the three-topped one to the south, peered down at the ship making her way in. The dun beach and the dunes, tonsured by clinging, wind-torn shrub, were half opaque through the driving salt. There was still enough glare, however, to make the eyes wince. I gave John the course. As Etosha came, abreast Galleon Point I could see the tall spar rising from the sand. A sailing ship's mast? A landmark? A beacon? Even at a couple of hundred yards it was impossible in know. One never would know. In silence, John, Anne, Stein and I watched the scene. Etosha swept round the last great whorl of the channel and again turned parallel to the way she had come in, facing due west now. The hammering of the sea eased. The wind continued to lash out blindly.

Etosha was safe inside Curva dos Dunas.

"Course two-seven-oh," I said.

She headed across the anchorage. Through the opaque light I saw what I had been looking for. NP I. The high, fin-like conning-tower was black with rust, the ethereal quality of it as I had seen her that night now gone, like the colour which dies when a lovely deep-sea creature is brought to the surface. The fin was slightly canted, but the merciful salt and whiteness still blanketed the wounds which sank her. I included John and Stein in my nod towards her.

"There's the atomic U-boat."

Stein went forward and I could see how white his knuckles were as he gripped the top of the dodger.

"The ultimate weapon," he murmured almost to himself. "And a British captain with an ordinary submarine sank her with a recognition flare!" He turned to me and his voice rasped with bitterness. "Congratulations, Captain Peace! It is so like the British to reward their heroes with the boot."

John relaxed at the wheel. He grinned a little.

"I'll never forgive you, Geoffrey, for not letting me in on this," he said. "Now you can be reinstated."

"Rubbish!" I said sharply. "There's no question of reinstatement now. That's all in the past."

Anne surprised me by agreeing with John.

"If you're innocent, then the court martial can reverse 'its findings." She turned to John. "It's up to you to tell them."

John nodded.

I rang for slow ahead. I'd anchor near NP I and then send the party ashore in the boat.

"Now see here," I said. "This particular place happens to belong to me. In that sense it's private. And NP I is part of its private history. You, John, can go and tell your story to the Admiralty — if you like. They'll want some proof. And where will you get it? Do you think the Admiralty is going to believe a sentimental, unlikely little story about a hidden anchorage from a friend who feels sorry that his former chief was kicked out of the Service years ago? They'll want proof." I turned to Anne. "John's a sailor. He couldn't find this place, let alone bring in a ship. There's only one man living who can do that, and that is me. The only other man to do it was the skipper of the U-boat, and he's roasted. I expect Johann ate him into the bargain."

The anchor clattered over the side. Eight fathoms and a bottom of hard sand. Good holding ground.

Anne said, a trifle judicially, "I seem to remember an American lieutenant in that famous old-time battle off Boston — what was it?…"

"Shannon? Chesapeake?" said John.

"Yes," said Anne. "That's it — Chesapeake. They reinstated him donkeys' years later… "

I smiled grimly when I thought of the Director of Naval Intelligence. One played that game by their rules — until death do us part.

She might have been arguing for the man, not the cause.

Stein, however, aligned himself with me.

"Captain Peace has too much of a past to let him fo I comfortable," he said amiably. "The present is what matters. The Afrikaaners have an expression — ' Don't haul dead cows out of the ditch.' With Captain Peace in particular they are apt to stink."

Anne turned to John.

"You could send a radio message. There's nothing to stop you."

"Except," I said acidly, "a squadron of American ships which is cruising around here somewhere recovering guided missiles fired from Cape Canaveral. They've got aircraft with them, too. Go ahead. Broadcast to the world our illegal mission. They've got the latest radar and radio-interception devices in the world. Even so, they won't find Etosha. Not in this anchorage, anyway."

Stein glanced at me in veiled admiration.

"This Captain Peace would be a great poker-player — always a new ace up his sleeve."

"See the sand blowing across from the sand-bars there?" I said. It billowed like a windsock of snow from the summit of Mount Everest. '* That sand is laden with mica and chemical salts. You remember a thing the U-boats used in the war — Bold, they called it? They used to release a film of chemical components which hung like a curtain in the water and foxed our asdics. The same thing happens with that sand. Radar will simply not penetrate inside here." I turned to Anne with more vehemence than I really meant. "Go ahead. Get John to signal your American friends. And explain all this away too."

A flush came up on her cheeks, already bright with the wind.

"Computation — you remember?" was all she said.

"Are you ready to go ashore?" I asked Stein.

"In half an hour," he said. "I've got the stores all packed."

"You'll have to put up with the surf-boat," I said. "The others got smashed… er — at sea in a blow. I'll send the Kroo boy, he's the best surfman amongst the crew."

Stein's mouth hardened.

"You're going to send us ashore at the mercy of a single kaffir? What does he know about this anchorage?"

I almost felt sorry for Stein then. It was like dropping an unwanted puppy in a bucket of water with a brick round its neck. But he knew too much. The girl — well, I had a plan for her.

"Of course I'm coming," I said. "How far do you think you'd get without me?"

Stein relaxed. I refused to look at Anne.

"Get the boat alongside," I told John. "Detail the Kroo boy to come with me. Get some of the others to load the stuff into the boat. Smack it about."

Stein had certainly helped himself liberally to Etosha's stores. With typical thoroughness he had labelled everything. Jim, the Kroo boy, stood in the tossing surf-boat with its high prow, and the crew passed down things to him. Stein had even roped up some canvas — for a tent presumably. He came up with a Remington high velocity in one hand and the Luger in the other. He was like a child off on a picnic.

"Arms for the man," he grinned. He'd also stuck: i Bowie knife in his belt. "This will stop almost anything," he patted the Remington affectionately. "For person: \I protection, there's nothing at all to touch the old Lugci. Perfect balance in the hand."

Anne had changed into a thicker red sweater and a duffel coat. She was very silent.

Stein knelt down and listened to Johann's breathing.

"Tie his hands and throw him in the boat," he said callously. "He may come round on the way to the to the beach. He may cause trouble if he finds you in the boat also."

Johann was heaved like a sack of potatoes into the boat.

The native crew looked on goggle-eyed. The surf-boat looked very deep in the water, but I thought she would be all right.

I jumped in. Anne stood at the open rail and looked down into my face.

"Come on," I called. "Jump. I'll catch you."

It may have been the blowing salt, but her eyes were wet. The right eyelid was slightly rumpled. She gave a ghost of a smile and leapt lightly down, scarcely making use of my proffered hands.

Stein came last. I noticed the bulge of ammunition in his pockets. Well, he'd need it, every round of it, to get him out alive. You can't shoot the Skeleton Coast.

"Cast off," I said.

"Back in two hours," I called to John.

The Kroo boy cast off expertly. If he was something of a duffer at Etosha's wheel, he certainly was in his element now. He guided the heavily-laden boat expertly as I headed her towards the channel. Our course lay roughly across the causeway, now submerged, to the beach, which meant the boat would have the protection of the sand-bars for the tricky run in through the surf. Since they guarded the beach against the south-westerly swell, it shouldn't be too risky. A dollop of water came aboard and Anne gave a slight gasp. Curva dos Dunas certainly looked more terrifying from the low level of a boat than from a ship's bridge. The surf creamed on every side, but with the boat's compass I took a quick bearing and then headed her almost directly towards the high hill to the north. Once inside the channel it became smoother, and the water turned white with a pale blue backing — like the colour of a Lazy Grey shark. Satisfied that I was now over the causeway proper, I turned the boat directly shoreward.

"How's your surf-riding?" I asked Anne banteringly.

"Not so good," she replied, putting on a brave show, but I could plainly see she was terrified of the line of creaming surf ahead.

"This Kroo boy is as good as they come," I said. "He'll take her in like a ski-boat."

"It would solve a good many problems if we all got drowned," she said sombrely. She shivered inside the duffle-coat, now glistening with a faint film of white salt.

Stein was silent. Johann had given a stir, but his eyes remained shut. The Kroo boy, wearing only an ancient pair of Jantzen trunks, had unshipped the tiller and was steering with an oar. He was grinning with animation. It was a challenge to his skill. The ragged fringe of beard — all southern African natives are vastly proud of even a few wisps of a beard for it is a sign of virility — whipped back across his left cheek.

"I put her ashore — any pertikler place, baas?" he shouted. The boat bucked with the first of the inshore breakers.

"Anywhere you think best," I called back. "Anywhere on that beach."

"Good-oh," he yelled, remembering some sailor's expression.

Now that the beach was closer, I could see that it was not fine sand, but coarse, broken here and there by rocks fretted and polished by the wind.

The Kroo boy yawed slightly. I had not noticed the big comber building up about twenty yards to starboard. But he had, and in a moment we were carried majestically, high above the surrounding sea. Then the nose of the boat tilted downwards and, with the water vainly clutching at both gunwales, rushed at something like twenty knots for the beach.

Anne sank down by one of the seats and closed her eyes, clutching at the wood.

"Steady as she goes," I ordered, quite unnecessarily, to the Kroo boy. The sea had given him life. The underfed figure was proud and tensed under the whip of the wind and waves. The black face, usually sullen and unwilling, had become alive.

The great breaker streamed in towards the beach. If we touched anything, let alone the iron-hard beach, it would tear the planking out like matchwood. Even a strong swimmer wouldn't last five minutes in the maelstrom. But the oarsman knew his job. Suddenly the boat lurched sickeningly to port, into a welter of foam. Another great wave ahead of ours had crashed on the beach and was hurtling itself back seawards. The spindrift, thick as foam, enveloped the boat, and I had to peer to see above it. The boat's motion was stayed like a turbo-prop engine in reverse. She touched once, touched twice. In a second the oarsman was over the side, up to his waist and hauled her in towards the beach. I jumped out after him, hauling on the other bow at a short painter. The sea slopped inside my half-boots. Without looking back — we both knew the menace of that twenty knot wave even a biscuit-toss from the shore — we hauled the boat up on the tough shingle.

"Out!" I yelled to Anne and Stein. Their feet crunched on the beach. We hauled the boat still higher. The Kroo boy and I were panting, and my peaked cap was floating in an inch of bilge-water.

"My God! "said Stein.

"How'll you ever get back?" shuddered Anne^ her face pale.

"It's like Sputnik," I grinned back. "It's much easier going than coming."

There was a nervous air about Stein.

"Get Johann out and lay him here on the beach. Untie his hands," he said rapidly.

I stared at him in surprise. After his earlier attitude, it wouldn't have surprised me if he'd thrown him overboard. Now he was fussing like a hen over a chick.

The Kroo boy obediently hauled him out and laid him on the sand.

The touch of the gritty shingle electrified the unconscious man.

Without opening his eyes, his hands, as if of their own volition, reached out, fingering the shingle. Then the hand moved slowly up the side of the face, as if exploring the beach against his cheek. He gave a terrible scream and sat upright. Thank God his hands are still tied, I thought.

Stein jabbed him with the Remington, while the Kroo boy, aghast at the wide eyes and screaming mouth, like a gutted barracouta, cringed against the boat. I was glad to find Anne close to me.

"Shut up, you bloody fool," he shouted. "Besatzung Stillgestanden! Attention!"

Johann rose, U-boat discipline still automatic in his make-up, but he whimpered and gathered up another handful of sand. Sand had made him mad. It wasn't any wonder, looking along that desolate beach with the granules of hard sand chafing like sandpaper. It never seemed to blow away. There was always more.

Stein cut the ropes and gestured with the rifle to the boat.

"Unload," he said harshly.

Blindly, as if only his motor impulses and not his mind were working, Johann stumbled across to the boat. Without waiting, the Kroo boy started to pass the stores to him and together they piled them up a little way up the beach, out of reach of the sea.

Stein, still obviously tense, made a movement of his hand towards Johann.

"A living Nemesis of your misdeeds, Captain Peace," he sneered. "You should have made a good job with the machine-gun. See what the touch of the sand does to him."

I saw the fret of the wind and the sand and could sense the utter desolation the mad sailor must have felt when, somehow or other, he had got ashore — alone, utterly alone, with my ghastly machine-gun wound in his arm. The blowing sand made for a grey light, even with the sun shining and the white reflection off the surf; the sand had a quality of stinging which, after some time, would be like the drip of water in Chinese-torture.

The muscles tugged at the corners of my mouth and eyes. I sensed, too, what Anne was feeling.

"Poor devil," she said softly.

We watched the two men unload the stores and heavy tarpaulin. They had to drag it up the shingle by the ropes. The pile of wrapped pieces looked utterly forlorn and pathetic. In a few moments the drag-marks had been obliterated by the blowing sand. Everything seemed too inadequate against the mighty forces which were apparent on every hand. Johann came over to join us while the Kroo boy went to fetch one last thing out of the boat. I think it was my cap. He was about fifteen yards away. He was bending over, the underfed hipbones projecting from the ragged trunks.

Stein walked quickly over towards him. The boy's back was towards us. He couldn't have heard Stein coming.

Nor did Stein hear Anne's scream as she started towards him. Some sixth sense must have told her what he was about.

As it was, it was so unexpected to me that it hit me like a blow in the stomach.

Stein pulled out the Luger and shot the Kroo boy through the back of the head.

The wind carried the sound of the shot away, adding to the ghastly unreality of it all. It was like something happening in slow motion, miles away. Anne, sobbing, with arms outstretched, reached for the weapon. I saw Stein turn, in the same ghastly slow motion, death for her in his eyes too. He hadn't heard her until that moment. The black figure pitched forward slowly and lay raggedly half in and half out the boat.

One life more or less didn't matter at that moment to Stein. I think the madness which I saw in his eyes had obliterated all comprehension who it was reaching for his Luger.

Thank God my cap had fallen off in the boat. I was able to tear the heavy binoculars in their leather case from round my neck without obstruction and, using the strap as a sling, cast it at Stein.

The soft, harmless thump in his ribs jerked the kill-lust from his eyes. A split second before Anne was a dead woman. As she clawed at him for the gun I saw the mighty control he exercised over himself. He turned the barrel away almost as if he feared his own reflexes would beat his mind to the draw. At the same moment I saw his left forearm with its heavy watch crash into Anne's cheekbone. She fell sideways on to the shingle in an untidy heap.

I leapt forward.

Stein swivelled the Luger at my stomach. "Back!" he shouted hoarsely, "Get back! Johann!" He threw the Remington by the barrel away to his left. "Get that rifle, Johann! Kill him if he makes a move!"

The mad sailor's face creased in a grin. He grabbed the rifle and flicked the bolt expertly.

"Now, Herr Kapitan?" he grinned.

"No, soon," said Stein soothingly, as if talking to a patient. "Soon, see?"

"You murdering bastard!" I rapped out, "I'll…"

Stein had regained all his composure in a few brief seconds.

"On the contrary, Captain Peace, I have you to thank for not committing me to that reprehensible category. If you hadn't thrown that case, I might have forgotten myself — just for the moment. The consequences to myself, but more particularly to this expedition, would have been immeasurable. Without our scientist, all our best efforts would have been put to naught, not so?"

It seemed hardly possible that this bland, self-controlled man had just killed in cold blood.

"I'll get you back to Walvis to hang for this," I snarled.

I knelt down by the crumpled form on the beach. There was an ugly mark on her cheek. She moaned slightly. She wasn't badly hurt. She'd be round in a moment.

"Very touching," sneered Stein. "Sir Galahads have always got me down, even from the original prototype. But get this quite clear, Captain Geoffrey Peace. You've just saved this expedition in a way which you couldn't have foreseen. You wouldn't have got off this beach alive today but for your quixotic gesture. You are not going back to Walvis. You're coming with me."

"Like hell I am," I retorted.

I didn't like the look of the Luger, or the Remington. The girl moaned quietly. She was still stunned.

"You don't think," he sneered, "that I was going to allow you to go back to your ship merely on the promise that you would come back again, did you? Give me credit for a little assessment of your character, Captain Peace. You're a functional aid to this expedition, no more. Just like that silly woman there. She's a dedicated woman, Captain Peace, but I must say this little effort of hers took me unawares. She has her uses, just like you. Again I must thank you for what you did — it would have been too bad to have ended her functional usefulness prematurely." He half-bowed mockingly. "If I had allowed you back on board, all you had to do was to forget about Stein and his party, and the Skeleton Coast would do the rest. You don't think I — to quote a military phrase — would allow you to keep your lines of communication open while cutting mine?"

So Stein had anticipated my moves. All my neat plans for getting Anne back to Etosha and leaving Stein and Johann to their fate, a horrid fate, had been trumped.

He must have seen the look on my face, for he burst out laughing.

"You made me shoot that kaffir," he said, without pity. "You can't get the surf-boat back by yourself. It's the only boat in Etosha anyway. Garland has simply no option but to wait for our return. He couldn't navigate the channel out to sea. So you'll come along, whether you like it or not. I'll watch you every moment, so don't try any tricks. You'll guide the party to the Baynes Mountains."

"Without instruments or a compass?" I asked.

"The boat's compass is good enough, and you're an expert," he replied. "I don't want positions of exact latitude and longitude. You'll navigate — where I want to go. Johann will be your personal bodyguard. His finger's just itching on that trigger."

Anne lay quite still.

"And — the girl?"

My gesture must have had more in it than I thought.

"Ah, the girl," he said. "Scientist to spitfire in a flash! Chivalrous Captain Peace! She is, as you might say, a hostage to science. She is the only living person who can positively identify Onymacris, and as such she is absolutely indispensable. She comes along — unharmed. You are the only person who can get in and out of the Skeleton Coast without anyone else knowing. Johann is a hostage, a hostage to your past, Captain. He certainly won't let you forget that!"

Anne opened her eyes.

"Thank you," she whispered.

"Get some water," I said briefly to Johann. He paused, but Stein waved him on.

"Not the water-bottle," he added. "Just enough in a mug."

I played for time.

"You can't expect me to hike a hundred or two miles inland in this rig," I said.

"Why not?" he retorted, his eyes wary for some trap. Anne drank a little of the water from the mug. She sat up. I faced Stein. If only I could get him to remain near the beach until nightfall, when the tide would roll back the secret of the causeway, he'd get the surprise of his life. Anne and I were both merely expendable ciphers in his master-plan, whatever that was.

"You've got on a perfectly good pair of boots. Your clothes will do, even if the occasion isn't as nautical as they would seem to indicate."

I cast round: "I can't go far without a hat /of some sort. Within twenty miles I'll have sunstroke."

Stein laughed. "Keep him well guarded," he said to Johann. "Shoot him if there's any monkey business — him or the woman." He'd put her firmly on my side now.

He walked over to the boat and came back with my cap. He was about to hand it to me when he paused. There was a ghastly stain across the white.

"How these kaffirs bleed," he remarked indifferently. He bent down and waggled it to and fro in the surf. Then he tossed it at my feet.

"Wear that," he said. "We'll start right away."

I glanced at my watch. It was nearly midday.

"Aren't you going to arouse suspicion aboard Etosha if all of us are seen trekking away from the beach? Garland will be watching through his glasses."

Stein wheeled round. "I'm giving the orders from now on, Captain. We start at once. You know where this beach lies, and you know my route. You'll give Posto Velho, near the mouth of the river, a wide berth." He didn't know it was the best part of twenty miles away. "You'll aim to strike the main river flow away from the mouth somewhere near the first cataract. No nonsense."

I looked round despairingly at the desolate beach, with the grey gloom over it all. Through the murk to the north I could see the hilly plateau which runs westward from the high northern hill which was one of my landmarks. Macfadden and I had tried that way after the wreck of the Phylira. We returned exhausted after ten miles, for the jagged hills came right down to the beach and, if one wanted to get by, it was a question of dodging between the tide as it came in and a narrow strip of soft sand in which one sank halfway up to the knees. We had probed the back of the beach like two hounds tufting up a scent, and after two days we had found a narrow gap about four miles south and east of the causeway through which we had floundered. We had almost given up at the sight of the high shifting dunes on the far, or landward side of the neck, but our salvation was a path, hard and compacted by elephants' feet, leading northwards.

Stein still held the Luger and kept his distance. Once away from the beach, he could let me run away — to certain death. The only water was in a couple of canteens he had. I was his prisoner — if he could get me away from the beach.

"The loads are divided into thirty-five pound packs, and twenty-five pound for the girl," he said briefly. "You first, Captain."

I glanced at Anne and saw the misery in her eyes. I shrugged my shoulders and found a series of parcels — but no water — neatly marked "Captain Peace."

I shouldered it. It felt like lead. The wet cap on my head added to my general discomfort.

"There's no water," I said.

"Not for you," grinned Stein. "When they take a man prisoner in war, they take away his pants. Metaphorically speaking, water is your pants. You won't get far without it."

There was nothing to say.

"We strike south for a couple of miles," I said harshly. "There's a track on the other side of these hills. And sand. The track is hard."

"Why not north?" demanded Stein.

"I've tried that way," I smiled grimly. "There's no way through."

"I'll keep the compass until we get on to our main line of direction," said Stein. "Get the boat's compass," he told Johann.

"We go south and then almost due east through a gap in the hills," I said again. "You'll just have to take that on trust."

Stein looked wary.

"I trust you only when you are away from the sea," he said. "The sea is your ally, somehow. I don't feel safe when you and the sea are near. You've won together too many times, Captain Peace. So we'll get away from the sea as soon as possible."

Anne and I fell in together with the other two behind. Our feet crunched on the gravelly shingle. The boat, well above the tidemark, left a trail in the sand culminating in the forlorn figure of the Kroo boy. The strange nocturnal prowlers of the Skeleton Coast would leave nothing but his bones by morning. The day after, his bones, too, would be gone. Etosha was screened from view out in the anchorage.

I took a line on the three-topped hill. We struck into the Kaokoveld.