A Twist of Sand

XIII 500 Years of Love

"HALT!" ordered Stein.

The cup of thick white sand, protected from the perpetual south-westerly gale, looked a good spot for the night. It seemed like a gigantic child's sandpit about a quarter of a mile each way, nestling against the westerly side of the peak which I had used as my northerly bearing to bring Trout and Etosha into Curva dos Dunas. The trails of naras creeper would provide some sort of fuel for a fire. The hard-packed game track we had followed all day branched off to the right, skirting the cup, but I felt sure that the soft sand must have been used by the elephants as a giant dry-cleaning shop. There had been no sign of a living animal all day, but that didn't mean to say they weren't around. Passing a low group of shrub some miles back, our noses had been assailed by a tangy game smell, and the elephant droppings along the track did not appear to be more than a day old.

Stein and Johann had marched behind us all day. Stein still kept the Luger ready, but every mile we drew away from the beach, he relaxed. He still kept his distance, however.

I slid the heavy pack from my shoulders and dropped it on to the sand, flexing my stiff shoulder muscles. Anne sat down with a sigh, releasing her pack too.

"A good day's run, as they say at sea," grinned Stein. He must have been in training, for although his face was streaked with sweat, he looked pretty fresh. Far too fresh to try any consequences with. "How far do you think we've come?"

"About fifteen — maybe eighteen, miles," I replied wearily.

"Good," he said.

He took the map from his pack and studied it.

"You're sure we're not near Okatusu?" There was a note of deep suspicion in his voice, for what he didn't know was the point we had started from.

"It's only a geographical expression, anyway," I replied, feeling utterly weary and frustrated.

"We must be somewhere between Okatusu and Otjemembonde," he said.

I sidestepped his little trap.

"I'll tell you when we hit the Cunene," I said offhandedly. "Now go to hell."

He hesitated a moment and then shrugged his shoulders. He knew he was wasting his time. He strolled off to collect some naras bush for a fire. I noticed that he had tucked the Luger away in his waistband.

I sat in the comfortable sand. I couldn't say where my thoughts were. Anne jerked them back to the moment.

"Geoffrey," she said, "can you manage another couple of steps?"

The use of my Christian name made me roll on to my elbow and gaze at her in astonishment.

She looked at me levelly.

"From that hill we might see the sea."

"It's not far away," I agreed cautiously. "A few miles as the crow flies, maybe."

"Shall we have a look-see?" she persisted. "One never knows."

I nodded and rose stiffly. I called to Stein, for I didn't want a bullet following us. "We're going to have a look at that hill over there."

He grinned and waved his hand in a wide gesture. He's damn sure of himself, I thought. I knew myself that we couldn't get far. The only escape road was the way we had come. Even if I made a break for the beach, he'd find me there before the next tide revealed the causeway.

Anne said nothing. We trudged together across the deep sand. Before we reached the western edge we were blowing like two spouter whales. We lit a cigarette each to still the pounding of our hearts and climbed up the gnarled flank of the hill. We reached the top. There, about five or six miles away, was-the sea. There seemed to be a bank of cloud far out.

I waited. She fenced for her opening.

"So near and yet so far," she said, twisting down the corners of her mouth.

"Very far indeed," I said. She'd come to say something. She'd kept up magnificently all day, despite Stein's blow. There was a faint mark under her cheekbone. Let her make the opening herself. I pointed to the jagged fret on. the seaward side of the hill. "Those projections are like razors. All summer the south-westerly gale eats away at the solid rock, and then in winter the easterly wind comes scouring down from this side. It's quite remarkable, really — it's not a high altitude wind. It sticks close to the desert, picking up the warmth of the sand as it goes. I've felt the grit in my mouth miles out to sea. When it hits the cold sea — fog, nothing but fog. You saw for yourself."

"Geoffrey Peace," she ruminated. "Those two names go well together. Peace is ironical for a man of war and violence, though."

I said nothing. She came up close to me.

"You saved my life this morning," she said, almost accusingly.

I laughed it off. "It was one of those things," I said.

"It was not ' one of those things '," she retorted vehemently. "Take it as read that my life did not matter one way or another. I'm looking at it from your point of view. You had nothing to gain at all by doing it. In fact, if Stein had shot me, it would have given you the moment of diversion in which to cope with him — and Johann. You wouldn't be here now. You would have been sitting pretty. You could have made both of them prisoner…"

I remembered our first encounter.

"No gain but my gain," I said ironically.

"No, Geoffrey," she said. She repeated it as if the sound pleased her. "No, Geoffrey."

It sounded good to me.

"A person can do many wrong things for right motives, but eventually they get so caught up in the doing that the Tightness of the objective gets lost sight of," she said. "That's the way it is with you. The U-boat, the old freighter, your secret landing-spot — it all fits into the pattern."

"Anne," I said. "You're just trying to excuse me. You're trying to rationalise away a whole past — and a present — which doesn't bear looking at under a spotlight. It's not very pretty. You may be right about motives. But the means I have used would outweigh the ends."

"If you'd run true to the general picture you're trying to paint of yourself, you would never have done what you did down there on the beach," she argued. "I refuse to accept it."

"You're just grateful to me for saving your life," I rejoined. "The confessional makes allowance for the pendulum swinging too far the other way. That's the way it is now. There comes an inevitable levelling-out. But it was nice to know."

She shook her head.

"In fact, I'm curiously ungrateful for your having saved my life. I might be a little resentful about losing it if I had something to care about which would make it worthwhile not losing. Even Onymacris has its shortcomings, you know. Does that sound terribly mixed up? But I am curiously grateful for what that incident has shown me of you."

"I thought you'd seen quite enough," I mocked.

She rounded on me angrily.

"What are you — doing wasting yourself — a man like you, chasing some will-o'-the-wisp you won't confide, and some resentment from the past you won't concede? What are you doing here on this isolated coast when, in the great world outside, things could be so full, so complete… " Her voice trailed off and she threw the cigarette butt away savagely.

"I've adapted myself — like the blind beetle."

"Oh, for God's sake stop quoting the rubbish I said then!" she snapped. "I still believe you are tough, but you're not 'evil, like Stein. I believe in you, that's what I'm trying to say… " She broke off suddenly and smiled. I saw that the rumple of her eyelid was quite smooth. She came right up close to me and looked up into my face. "You wanted analogies from the great world of nature," she smiled. "I suppose one of those wingless flies down on Marion or Heard would find it damned hard to understand if someone put their wings back again."

She slipped her arms through mine and ran her fingertips up my shoulder-blades. "I wonder how one sticks wings back on to flies full of prickles?" she asked.

Her lips brushed mine; as they did so she stiffened as her eyes went seawards.

"Look!" she gasped. "Either I'm drunk, or seeing double — do you see what I see, Geoffrey?"

She slipped out of my arms and pointed at the setting sun. There were two. There was a thick layer of cloud, although there was a very narrow band of clear sky between it and the sea's horizon. As we watched in amazement, one sun dropped slowly from the layer of cloud, while the other sun rose out of the west towards it. Like lovers who cannot wait for each other's arms, the two suns, the male sun reaching down and the female reaching up ecstatically, melted together, merging along their lower rims first, and, in passionate embrace, merged wholly together. Then only the one, descending, remained, and it hastened towards its sea-grave, throwing out great bars of triumphant reds, russets and purples.

"There's pure magic in this Skeleton Coast of yours, Geoffrey," she said. All the tiredness had gone from her face. "No wonder you love it. But how on earth…?"

"It must be something to do with the temperature and humidity layers," I replied. "I've never seen anything like that before. I suppose I have seen more magnificent sunsets off this coast than anyone has the right to claim, but never two suns, one rising and the other setting."

"It's the most beautiful thing I have ever seen," she replied, radiant. "I can forgive your Skeleton Coast, Geoffrey, its brutality, its primitive cruelty — like that killing this morning." She dropped her eyes. "I might even rationalise the whole situation and forgive — you."

I turned and faced her, but the moment was gone.

"Look!" she cried. "It's becoming more beautiful still. Look at the sea, there out beyond the surf! It's the loveliest yellow I've ever seen! Where can that shade of lemon come from a red sun?"

She was on her feet now, smiling like a girl.

I smiled too.

"That isn't light, even refracted light," I said. "That's fish."

"What!" she exclaimed. "I simply don't believe you!"

"Well," I grinned back, forgetting all about Stein and the unholy adventure we were engaged on. "Not exactly fish, but bloom on fish."

"You're just teasing me," she replied. Her face had caught something of the afterglow; I never saw it lovelier.

"If you want science to step in and ruin beauty, well then, here it is," I said. "You know the plankton — the minute things the fish live on — come up with the cold current from the Antarctic. In autumn and in early winter they bloom, just like grapes. It's called gymnodinium, and it's deadly poison. The plankton get that exquisite lemon-flush on them — I think someone told me once that the gymnodinium organism is five thousandths of an inch long. But when you get millions of plankton together…"

"I just don't want to hear any more of your dull scientific stuff," she said smilingly. "All I see is that it is lovely beyond description." She came close up to me so that I could smell the sweet sweat of the day's march, mingling with the acrid tobacco. She ran one hand inside my reefer jacket.

"If I'd never met Geoffrey Peace, I would never have seen such beauty," she said. "You'll remember that, won't you?"

I didn't touch her. She seemed as intangible as the bloom on the plankton.

"Yes," I replied slowly. "I'll remember that. I'll remember that you forgave Curva dos Dunas and the Skeleton Coast. I'll remember, some future day at sea when the plankton bloom, that you forgave me too."

She stepped back and looked long and quizzically at me.

"Food!" she said with a complete change of mood. "I need food if I'm going to tramp all day tomorrow again." Then she stopped impetuously and came back to where I stood, for I had not moved.

"No," she said. "To hell with food. I want to know about this great secret love of Geoffrey's, the Skeleton Coast. Give me another cigarette."

She sat down and blew a burst of blue smoke seawards. She pulled me down by her side.

"Come on," she said. "Wave your magic wand. Make your plankton bloom for me again. Make one sun into two."

I caught her mood.

"It's really all very simple and easy to explain scientifically," I said. "You see, this is the only place in the world where the Antarctic and the Tropics meet."

"If you told me this hill was solid diamond, I'd probably believe you," she replied.

"It might be," I responded. "If the diamond pipes of Alexander Bay continue up here, there's no reason why you should not become a sort of female Dr. 'Williamson."

"I have no intention of sublimating myself into diamonds," she smiled back. "I always felt sorry for Williamson — every golddigger in the world after his money."

"It's quite a simple explanation, although it sounds a paradox," I said. "You see, the Benguela current conies straight here off the ice. The Skeleton Coast is tropical, with a desert thrown in. One day, when I was close inshore, I saw a lion tackling some seals on the beach north of Cape Cross. Can you imagine — a tropical hunter like a lion living off an Antarctic creature like a seal?"

"Cape Cross," she frowned. "Why Cape Cross?"

"One of the earliest Portuguese navigators — I think it was Diego Cao — made his landfall there, way back before Diaz. He took one look at the Skeleton Coast and said to himself, if this is Africa, I'm on my way home. So he beat it back to Prince Henry the Navigator without going for the Cape."

"Is it the same sort of climatic mix-up which made us see two suns?"

"Yes. If we'd been lucky we might have seen some flamingo this evening too. You get huge flocks of them at sunset. Just think, a red sun, lemon sea, flamingo sky."

"You sound like something in Vogue," she replied. "Think what a seller it would be — Skeleton Coast black, with a flamingo stole."

We laughed and she threw down the butt of the cigarette.

"Now you've really made me feel uncivilised," she exclaimed. "My face must look like one of those jagged rocks there, from the feel of it. Come on now, food. No more lovely fairy tales until tomorrow."

She took my hand as we slithered down to the sand basin; it was hot and sticky and I could feel the tiny grains of sand between her fingers. Where the sweat had soaked through her sweater there was a line against the general dustiness of her breasts, emphasising their curve. The cheekbones were flushed — from the filing of the windblown sand, I thought. We trudged back to camp.

The grey monotony of the sand changed to white, white so dazzling that when I looked through my binoculars, my eyes crimped up under the magnification. I was leading the four of us next afternoon, Anne behind me, silent, lost in her thoughts, Stein next and Johann bringing up the rear. Occasionally he cursed softly in German at the weight and heat of the Remington. Stein had pocketed the Luger now; I was safe inside the sand prison.

"What is it?" said Stein coming up to me.

I gestured towards the whiteness.

"See that extra whiteness of the sand?" I said, moistening my lips and feeling the grate of the sand on my teeth.

"That's the river."

"Ah!" he exclaimed with deep satisfaction.

"Give me your glasses, Captain."

He took them and gazed for a long time at the whiteness about five miles away, below the level of where we were standing. The unbroken, savage ridge of hills and cliffs on our left as we slogged all day in the burning heat never repented. At the closest we must have been five miles from the sea, and at the farthest eight. We followed the hard track, sweating blindly. Once in the far distance ahead we saw an elephant — or thought we saw one — but otherwise the remorseless countenance of the Skeleton Coast remained unrelaxed.

"I don't see water," said Stein.

"And you're equally unlikely to," I said. "The Cunene is dry at this time anyway. It's probably dry all the year. About once in five years it comes down in full spate and it's twice the width of the Orange."

"How far inland are we hitting it?" asked Stein.

"About ten miles from the mouth, I reckon," I said.:' There's a cataract a few miles above. I've not seen it, though. I don't know if we can get by. But for some unknown reason, the course of the river widens below the cataract — it looks just like the advertisements you see for colonic irrigation."

Stein ignored the sally.

"Why shouldn't we get past the cataract?" he asked. "What do you know that you are keeping up your sleeve, Captain Peace?"

"Oh, for God's sake!" I said. "I've simply never been there, that's all! I know the river bed is there because I've walked across it. Every bit of three miles wide, but it's hard and much easier going than this. All I know is that if it had been as easy to get into the Skeleton Coast by using the dry bed of the Cunene as a track, lots of people would have tried it already. I don't know why they haven't."

"We'll find out," he replied tersely. "Nothing is going to stop me now."

I looked at the cruel face, sweat-stained. I believed him. I took the lead again. We marched towards the river.

I thought at first they were elephant or buffalo, but they were trees. Glorious, welcome shade after the lidless blaze of the past two days. I am a sailor and I suppose one's eyes get used to the endless monotony of the sea, but desert is different. The sand fretted at the eyes. It seeped into every crack, it made its presence known at every footstep. Anne had plastered her face with cream and she looked like an Everest climber in reverse. She was limping a little, but still game.

No word had been spoken since we first sighted the river. Now, although the cataract was not in sight, we were at the wide sweep of sand, still unbearably bright, which is the Cunene. There was no sign of water. In a shallow bay of sand were half a dozen huge trees whose roots, on the edge of the sand, were eroded like primeval things. By some sort of tacit consent, Anne and I flopped down under one and Stein and Johann under another, about thirty yards away. They were near enough to guard us, but far enough away not to be able to hear what was being said.

Anne stretched herself back and faced away from the sun.

"I couldn't care less whether there are half a dozen suns this evening," she exclaimed wearily. "You'll have to rustle up real magic to make me interested in anything at this moment."

"Gin." I said, tasting the metallic bite of the mica dust on my palate. "Gin. And lime. And lots of ice."

"The penalty for that sort of talk on this sort of day is to be made to take off my shoes," she grinned. "If they come off, I'll never get them on again."

Stein strolled over. "Let's get some wood together for a fire, Captain. This is game country all right. I think we should dig for water, too."

It was better now than later, I decided. I got uncertainly to my feet. Stein was almost friendly as we broke off dry branches and gathered them in a heap.

"We'll start a little later tomorrow morning — a late breakfast won't do any of us any harm," he said amiably. "Miss Nielsen has kept up very well. Now that we're at the river, the going should be easier."

I kept silent.

"You disagree, Captain?" he said quickly.

"I don't know," I replied. "I can only repeat what I said earlier, that if this had been the easy way in, someone would have done it long since."

"Baynes did," he retorted.

"He came in from the other side," I said. "North of Ohopoho there's Swartbooisdrift, but that's a couple of hundred miles upriver from here. There's a hell of a lot can happen in even twenty miles of Skeleton Coast, let alone a hundred."

"If it weren't so late, I would reconnoitre the cataract now," he said impatiently. "But we've still got to dig for water tonight."

We gathered up the wood and threw it down in a large pile between the two trees. Johann did not stir. He looked at me malevolently.

"That man will kill you without any pretext at all," said Stein conversationally, as if my death were the subject of a confidential little chat. "Remember that, if you have any ideas about me, Captain Peace. You wrecked his whole life. It's really a pity you didn't do the job properly."

I was too tired to argue.

"Look," I said, pointing out game tracks in the sand. "Those may lead us to something."

We followed the hoofmarks until they reached the far side of the sand bed. There were deep scratches in the sand, but originally the hole must have been deeper, for fresh sand had blown in. We dug with small folding shovels which had obviously come off the back of a jeep. At about four feet the sand grew damp. By dint of quick shovelling so that the sand did not run back in again, we found a shallow seepage. It seemed drinkable. We filled the canteens, although Stein carried them.

He put a match to the pile of wood as the sun sank. Facing down river, the great murky mass of the Hartmannberge lay behind me to my left and, although it was already almost dark in the river bed, a peak or two were silhouetted, still.

The fire threw a troubled, rosy glow over the white sand. There was absolute silence, except for the crackle of the flames. Anne lay where she had first sat, too weary to move. I flexed my knees and propped my back against the huge tree. Had all this been in company with Mark, the utter peace, the remoteness and the age-old quality of the African bush would have held me enthralled. As it was, my mind crawled with fear, fear because of what Stein was after — it couldn't be just a beetle, I told myself — again — even scientists don't go kill-crazy like he had done just for the sake of one lost species.

The deeper we got into the Kaokoveld, the less became my chances. I was only useful as a guide, a navigator. At what point my usefulness ended was what worried me. Certainly once the beetle had been found. Or was it one of those caches of diamonds real or imaginary, that have lured men to certain death so many times in this wild, untamed region? That was my guess. If so, then Stein must have some notion of the exact spot, but certainly on his map there was nothing to indicate it. He had been quite open about our destination — somewhere in the region of the Otjihipoberge, leaving the river at the Nangolo Flats. Such frankness with me meant one thing only — I wasn't meant to come back.

But why then all this talk about the Onymacris beetle? And why the girl? She obviously wasn't in the plot. Where did she fit into Stein's scheme of things? Looking into the leaping flames, I saw the answer to none of my queries. I only knew that in the Skeleton Coast I must obey the laws of the Skeleton Coast — I must kill or be killed. Johann must be my first objective. To subdue Stein I must have the Remington's range against the Luger's. And to get back, I must have water. I calculated that two days without food or water would see me at the end of my tether. I needed two days from this spot to Curva dos Dunas. Up river there might be more water. It would be suicide to venture from the course of the Cunene. The five-thousand foot peaks of the Hartmannberge were eloquent warning of that.

On the Angola side the Serra de Chela looked even worse. The outline of the massive range on the map looked like some evil animal clamped along the course of the Cunene for sixty miles, with a tail near the Nangolo Flats, where the river bent sharply northwards, as if stepping out of the way of the creature which sucked at its lifeblood on the other side of the Baynes Mountains. Stein had said there was a seven-thousand-five-hundred-foot peak in the Baynes Mountains not far from where we were headed; God alone knows what height they are in the Serra de Chela — no one has ever surveyed them, not even from the air.

I brooded into the gloom. Almost as if reading my thoughts, Johann stirred, and the barrel of the Remington gleamed dully in the firelight. Johann wouldn't sleep.

We ate out of tins, each one of us preoccupied with his or her own thoughts. The water, heavy with minerals, offset the overpowering taste of baked beans and bully beef. Far out in the night distance came the chuffering roar of a lion hunting. Stein looked at Johann and then at me. I suppose the roar of a lion when one is isolated in the bush is one of the most frightening things there is. He must have been miles away. Anne shivered slightly.

"No watch for you tonight, Captain," said Stein. "We shall guard you. But tomorrow night you'll take your whack."

"At least there are some compensations for being held hostage," I replied wearily. I took my single blanket and scooped out a place in the soft sand amongst the roots of the trees. Anne did the same. All the scorpions in the world could not have made me keep my eyes open.

Despite Stein's assurance about a late start, we were shuffling along the course of the river before nine o'clock. The east wind blew down the course of the river into our faces, but the sun was not unbearably hot yet; it had not had time to accumulate the heat of the slopes which makes temperatures in winter on the Skeleton Coast higher actually than in summer, when the seawind brings welcome coolness.

Stein marched alongside me, tensed and anxious. The fringe of the river was dotted with huge ana trees and a load of chattering monkeys made us all feel better. At least there was some sign of life. They stared at the small party in open disbelief and chattered wildly as we passed. We were as much out of place as a journalist at a garden party. The river gorge was narrowing rapidly and a glance ahead showed clearly that the course of the Cunene was the only cleft in the great mountains, and probably the only route through them. Looking at the giant tumble of the Ongeamaberge, which stretch out like a pirate's steel hook from the northern fringe of the Hartmannberge to the river, I could see that any thought of getting across them on foot was out of the question. There might be game tracks, but even so they would be scarce. Besides, it would only be purely mountain animals which could negotiate the riven clefts and precipices, which I could see through my glasses even at this distance. Another dry stream, the Orumwe, hit the Cunene above the cataract with a wide delta shaped like the roots of a dead tooth, but the cleft ran north and south and was no good to me. I wanted a cleft running east to west. There wasn't one.

The river gorge narrowed and more shrub and smaller trees appeared on its walls.

Then the cataract came in sight.

My reaction was one of extreme disappointment.

"Look," said Stein, jubilantly. "There it is! Why, there's nothing to it."

No need for my glasses to tell me that.

"No," I said quietly, and I felt Anne sagging a little. "It's only about forty feet high. There are plenty of footholds on the rocks."

The rocky shelf stretched up in front of us, the rock polished to a dull gunmetal gloss by water and sand. A schoolboy could have climbed up it without assistance. Stein had brought a length of rope, but we all managed to scale the easy rock slope without it, even Anne. She had become completely silent. Stretching upriver was more sand, but there was more greenery, too, indicating water not too deep down. The sand, softened by the greening banks, looked more friendly.

Stein was full of himself.

"Why, there is absolutely no obstacle if the next cataract is like that," he said. "We'll follow the course of the river and turn off just as I said. All this country needs is a little initiative and a little planning.

I looked at him searchingly. "Famous last words," I retorted-.

But he was not to be fobbed off.

"The Skeleton Coast has a reputation and everyone who comes here builds it up, until the whole thing is a mumbo-jumbo of superstition. When someone fails through his own lack of foresight, he adds still another legend to the Skeleton Coast. We've broken it wide open. It's straight-forward going. Nothing to it." He looked at me quizzically. "Not much in the way of navigation required, is there, Captain Peace?"

I knew what he meant. I saw Anne's face go pale. The cruel mouth of the German showed what he meant, too.

"Come on," I said harshly, "let's get on."

Stein called a halt, surprisingly, at about three in the afternoon at a group of huge ana trees near the river's edge. We had made good progress. Perhaps he was feeling the effects of the rapidly increasing altitude, discernible even in the bed of the river. The river, only a couple of hundred yards in width now, was flanked by cliffs which rose up sheer. Where they met the river, they had been burnished still brighter by the water, which, when the river was full, must have cut past them like a file through the narrow passage. We stopped where a gap showed to the right, the entrance channel to the Orumwe River, whose delta splayed out in a welter of white sand. I remembered that old Simon's chart had marked it "Rio Santa Maria." Had the Portuguese explorers ever got as far as this? I couldn't imagine how they would ever have got through the wicked sandbars at the mouth of the river, even with surf-boats and surf crews.

For the hundredth time that day I lifted the binoculars from their lanyard round my neck and searched the cliffs. I had done it so often that even Stein took no notice any more. More greenery, thicker trees to the left. Deep channels from the Portuguese side into the river, unscaleable cliffs. Round and back. To the right. The wide cleft of the Orumwe, narrowing within a mile to cliffs not incomparable with the ones on either side of our river route.

Then I saw the ship.

She was full rigged and lay at anchor. She might be five miles away.

The sand and the fatigue of the march have created an hallucination, I told myself. I found my hands trembling. Stein was watching me idly. There must be no give-away from me. Deliberately I swept the glasses farther round to my right. I must not fix on any point, or Stein would be suspicious immediately. I let the lenses sweep back past the ship. She was still there.

"Satisfied, Captain?" sneered Stein. "No way of escape?"

"Satisfied," I replied, my heart pounding with excitement. I wanted to shout — a ship! a ship! I must play this one gently. I gave it fully five minutes before I looked at the spot where I had seen her. There was nothing. You fool, I said, you can see her only with the glasses, not with the naked eye. Stein must have no suspicion that I had seen anything. For another half an hour I searched about, finding wood for the fire. Anne smoked, lying back against the trunk of a tree. She hadn't said anything all day. I could see this march to the death — for me at least — was preying on her nerves. I hoped she wouldn't do anything foolish. I have never known half an hour go so slowly. I deliberately checked every movement.

At the end of the time I said casually to Stein.

"Do you mind if I take a walk?"

"Haven't you had enough?" he asked sarcastically. "You remind me of a tiger I once saw in a zoo, Captain. Pace, pace, pace, bumping himself against the bars until his shoulder was raw. You can go and bump your shoulders against the bars if you wish."

I could have rubbed his smug face in the sand.

"I'm going for a walk up this valley for a couple of miles,*' I replied, keeping my temper under control. "I'll be back by sunset. I don't suppose any white man has ever been up it before."

"I expect it's the same sort of bug which makes you want to do that as made you find your anchorage. Good hunting, Captain. I won't come and look if you don't come back. There'll be another skeleton in a couple of days, that's all."

I wished I could have got my hands on him, but Johann was vigilant with the Remington and Stein was quick, mighty quick, with the Luger.

"Care to come?" I asked Anne.

She looked at me in amazement. "What!" she exclaimed. I had half turned from Stein. She caught something in my face. She was as quick as a needle.

"No thank you," she said almost offhandedly for Stein's benefit. "I've done enough walking to last me the rest of my life."

"Very well," I replied, walking away.

"Wait!" she called after me. "Perhaps I will, provided it's only a mile or two."

"As you wish," I said, also casually indifferent.

We must have gone a mile from the camp before either of us spoke.

I lit a cigarette. My hands were unsteady.

"What is it, Geoffrey? What is it? Tell me quickly!"

"A ship," I said hoarsely. "A ship at anchor."

I half gestured towards the distance.

The eagerness went out of her face. Pity and compassion took its place.

"Yes, of course," she said sadly. "Let's go and look at the ship. At anchor fifty miles from the sea. Is it a nice ship?"

I stopped and grabbed her arm.

"You think I've gone off my mind, don't you? I saw a ship through my glasses. She's lying over there," I nodded with my chin, for I still was wary of Stein and a gesture might give me away.

She shook her head and there were tears in her eyes.

"All right," she said softly. "Go ahead. Show me your ship."

I gave it another half a mile and pulled the lanyard and glasses from my neck. The ship was there, all right.

I gave them to Anne.

"There, take that overhanging reddish cliff as your line. In the sand, at the foot."

I couldn't see her eyes, but her mouth registered her dumbfoundment.

She dropped the Zeiss glasses from her hands and looked unbelievingly in the same direction.

"I don't believe it!" she repeated. "But it's not an ordinary ship, Geoffrey. It's — my God! — it's an old-fashioned ship!"

I shared her amazement.

I said very slowly: "It is a very old ship, Anne."

Her knuckles were white where they gripped round the glasses, worn to the brass by my own hands and those of her one-time owner, a U-boat skipper. I'd won them in Malta in a wild orgy in the mess after some sinkings.

She dropped them from her eyes and looked at me. The eyes, coming quickly back to near-focus, added to her air of being dazed.

"How on earth did it get here? Fifty miles from the sea? — why, it looks like, like…" she paused uncertainly.

"Say it!" I said. "No one will think you mad except me, and I have seen it with my own eyes."

She said very slowly. "It looks like one of those ships… those ships… that Columbus… no, it's just too fantastic!"

We were getting closer now and we could see her with the naked eye.

"It would take a sailor's sight to have spotted her from where we were," said Anne, still gazing ahead of her in disbelief. "Anyone else would have thought they were just bare branches of a tree."

"She could never have sailed up here," I said, still more shaken as the three masts, with the mizzen awry to take a lateen sail, became clearly visible. "The coast must have changed radically some time during the past centuries — some enormous volcanic upheaval, perhaps. Just think of all the flat, low-lying country we have come through — perhaps this was a bay once, hundreds of years ago."

"It could be, behind these mountains," said Anne. "Perhaps the seabed was thrown up and created all those dunes. Maybe the true coastline was here where the mountains and the rocks are. It's quite feasible."

"I've heard strange stories about a ship in the desert," I said. "But they're the sort of yarn one hears when the drinks have gone round a good few times. No one ever substantiated them. I've heard stories of an Arab dhow and a galleon — but all of them were so surrounded with mist and legend that one simply couldn't credit them. It's a strange coast this — anything can happen."

"Is she a dhow?" asked Anne. As if we had not trudged all day, we stumbled, sometimes half at a run over the harder patches, towards the ship that had lain dead there for centuries.

"No, never," I said. "She's European. A caravel. Look, you can even see the deadeyes and the cordage holding up the mizzen truck. How those masts have stood… "

"Don't become nautical, I'm just a simple land girl," she grinned back. "What I just simply can't understand is how she has never rotted away."

"The sand and the dry air have unique properties of preserving things," I replied. "I remember reading somewhere that the first British warship which surveyed this coast before the turn of the century found a mummy in a coffin down the coast from Walvis Bay. They took it home and sold it to a sideshow in Blackpool, I think. It was the hit of the place for years."

"A body might be mummified on purpose," said Anne frowning. "But a whole ship… "

"There's a church in Dublin where Robert Emmet is buried," I said, searching for a rational explanation of a medieval caravel, intact, fifty miles from the nearest sea, perfectly preserved after centuries. "I myself saw a Crusader in the crypt who'd been buried since Richard the Lion-heart's time. The sexton told me that the ground had some unique chemical property of keeping bodies indefinitely. As we descended the crypt there were coffins everywhere and they looked like new. It must be something similar here — but on a gigantic scale."

"It seems so utterly impossible!" exclaimed Anne.

We stumbled over a low dune about a quarter of a mile from where the caravel lay, facing south and her starboard bow towards the high cliff another quarter of a mile farther on. Although I was looking at her, a glint like a mirror caught the corner of my eye. I put my hand on Anne's arm.

"If I'm not mistaken, I see water — a pool of it, there to the left, look!"

"It is water, Geoffrey! It's only a small pool, and I shouldn't think it's more than a quarter of a mile away."

"Not a word to Stein," I said. "This may well be our salvation, Anne."

The idea hit her.

"It's simple, then," she said. "We have water here and we can strike back to the coast. He'll never be able to catch us."

"With nothing to carry water in, no food, and — that?" I gestured towards the formidable mountain barrier on our right, for we were facing up the valley. We'd be half dead by tomorrow afternoon and completely dead by the next afternoon. It's only useful knowledge, this pool. We may be able to use it in the future, though."

The pool of water had distracted our attention, but now we paused in amazement at the sight of the old ship. The anchor rope was down, lost to sight in the deep sand. The gunports were open and the puny muzzles pointed defiantly. A good deal of the lower rigging was intact, although the foremast was broken off short above the truck and lay over towards the cliff. The mizzen stays, brown instead of their original tarred black, looked firm enough. She was bedded in sand almost up to the row of gunports. The gilding, or "gingerbread work," round her stern was tarnished and faded, but still clearly visible. I could make out the spokes of the helm on the high poop. I would not have felt surprised if a figure in an old-time helmet had paced her deck and called on us to declare our business.

"Let's go aboard," I said huskily.

"It's like — the past coming alive," whispered Anne. "What is she — Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch?"

"I should say Portuguese, but that's only a guess," I said. "Perhaps we'll find some identification when we get on deck."

"Isn't there a name?" asked Anne, her voice still low, as if in the presence of the dead. Dead she had been for centuries.

"All I can make out is something ending in 'az'," I said. "We may be able to decipher it close up."

The maindeck wasn't more than six feet from the level of the sand. I reached up and was about to haul myself through one of the gunports towards the poop when Anne stopped me.

"Geoffrey," she said urgently. "Don't go aboard. Let's go back. We've seen enough. I feel — there's something sacred aboard… perhaps, we should respect the dead. Don't let's pry. Please don't go. I have the strangest feeling… "

I laughed reassuringly.

"This is a secret and a mystery. How could I ever forgive myself in the future if I stopped now? Sooner or later someone is bound to find her. I want to be the first aboard since she sailed from Lisbon in fourteen something-or-other. Think, the first sailor to come aboard in five centuries!"

She looked at me and the tears welled in her eyes. ' You're assuming you've got a future," she said sombrely. "I've got a premonition, a hunch, call it what you like."

The right eyelid was rumpled. Her sweater, stained with sand and sweat, looked years, instead of weeks old. Her face was thin and drawn with inward tension.

"Come," I said, testing the wood to see whether it would hold my weight. "You're coming too. If there's any sudden death, or bolt of lightning, we'll share it."

I hauled myself past the cannon's mouth, which was not very rusted, and gave a quick glance round the deck before reaching for Anne's hands. The port side guns were all run out and a curious-looking culver in on the rail of the poop pointed the same way. The starboard broadside was secure, and the gunports on that side were closed. By each gun was a neat little pile of shot, some no bigger than a cricket ball.

Some leather buckets, hard as iron with age, stood grouped round each gun. Of the crew there was no sign. A fine carpet of sand coated the deck.

"Nothing spooky here," I called cheerfully to Anne. "Give me your hands."

I leaned over the rail and pulled her up. She glanced round and shivered.

"What happened — to them?" she said with a sweep of her hands at the guns.

"Probably escaped ashore when the catastrophe struck," I said. "See, they were obviously expecting trouble. All the guns are run out, but on one side only. It would support our idea, too, that this was the seaward side and the other, the starboard side — maybe that very same cliff there — land. Something happened out to sea which made her captain run out a full broadside."

"We'll never know what it was," said Anne, with no change of mood.

"There are no bones about," I said. "That means they must have got away. Let's take a look below."

She glanced round again reluctantly.

"I can't get rid of the feeling that we're intruding, somehow," she said in a low voice. "All right, if you wish."

I tried the small door leading under the port side of the poop rail. I thought it was locked at first, it was so stiff, but it yielded about a foot. We edged in. The passageway was narrow and so low that I had to stoop. I led. Another door.

I opened it.

A man and woman were making love on the big bunk.

I was too dumbfounded to speak. I gestured to Anne. She squeezed past me and looked. She didn't draw back or make a sound. She just stood looking and, without turning round, drew me in by the arm.

The two lovers, naked, were dead.

He lay on top and slightly on her right side. Her face looked up into his. Her lips were slightly parted, a little lopsidedly to the right, and I could see the line of her white teeth. The hair, dark as passion, lay back across the pillow, filmed with sand. The eye sockets were full of sand. In the erect nipple of her left breast the sand had gathered in the runnels of flesh. Her other breast was somewhere under him. Propped on his left elbow, he looked down — as he had done for five centuries — into her eyes. His hair was dark and the hollow of his back was filled with sand. Below the waist, their two bodies were fused — for ever.

Anne was crying. She took me by the arm.

"Come," she said.

She led me back over the side and we dropped down into the soft sand near the stern. The sun was falling behind the mountain barrier.

She let a handful of sand run through her fingers.

"That is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen," she said. "That is how I would wish to die. I'd like to be buried near them."

I took her in my arms. I never knew her more than in that moment. The right eyelid was quite smooth.

A last shaft of light blazed into the big locked stern windows above us. Their stained glass bore the arms of Aragon and Castile.