A Twist of Sand

XIV The Secret of Curva dos Dunas

I thought it only a gigantic black shadow against the rock — until it moved. The face, cased in black hair to the end of its square, blunt nose, peered at us in concentrated animosity.

Johann raised the Remington, but Stein spoke swiftly in German. It was a long shot, and upwards as well into the long ledge which ran along the left side of the gorge.

"What is it?" Anne asked me in a whisper of fear.

"Back a little," said Stein.

The four of us withdrew from the gloom of the narrow defile towards the brighter light where the sand of the river still caught, whitely, the sun from overhead, despite the tree-lined banks. It was about ten the next day and we had marched since eight. Stein had had nothing to say when we returned to camp the previous evening from the old ship. I had lain awake long with my own thoughts, and now and then I had heard Anne turning restlessly, too.

For the two hours of the morning's march the river bed had gained altitude considerably, and the gorge narrowed sharply. Now, at a point which I estimated to be half-way between the previous night's camping-spot and our turn-off point down the Nangolo valley flats, a huge spur of the Ongeamaberge threw itself, as if in despair to link up with peaks on the Portuguese side, right into the course of the river, leaving a passage so narrow that in flood time the water must have shot through with the velocity of an open faucet.

We had come upon the narrow gap after rounding a steep bend.

Now we fell back towards some huge trees a couple of cables' lengths from the gap.

Stein turned to me venomously.

"You never mentioned this," he said furiously. "Is there still another cataract? What is that — that animal?"

I shrugged my shoulders.

"Let's go and have a look," I said ironically. "Give me the gun."

Johann burst into a cackle.

"If there's any shooting to be done, we'll do it," he snapped. "What is that animal — is it dangerous? Can we get past without its tackling us?"

"How should I know?" I retorted.

"You soon will," he said. He spoke to Johann in his own language again. Reluctantly the U-boat sailor passed him the Remington. Stein carried all the arms now. But he wasn't going to take any chances. He took the Luger in his right hand and swung the rifle under his left.

"Forwards," he said to me. "You and the girl wait here, Johann. If there's any shooting, come after us."

I led. We rounded the bend again, gloomy and overhanging. The giant shadow moved. He was standing sentry.

I looked up the gorge and my heart froze. The river bed had narrowed until it had cut its way through solid rock. There must have been another sharp bend a little higher up, for the water had swathed away the rock on our left until it looked for all the world like the last lap of the Cresta run, smooth, polished rock instead of snow, with a shallow runnel above extending for maybe three hundred yards. If a toboggan can touch ninety miles an hour on the Cresta, my guess was that the Cunene in flood came round this bed with the speed of Nautilus. Above the gigantic furrow of rock was a ledge running the whole length of the bed. I thought it was in black shadow.

The shadows were gigantic black lions.

Stein drew back in amazement and fear.

"A lion!" he exclaimed. "But it cannot be! There is no living lion as big as that!"

The sentry beast got to its feet from a crouching position and looked over at us, measuring the distance. For the first time I saw the tawny coat as well as the enormous black mane which enveloped not only its head and shoulders, but its back and chest. It was the size of an ox, though not as tall.

"Not one lion, Stein," I said. "Look, the whole ledge is crawling with them!"

I laughed in his face.

"Now find the ace," I sneered at him. "Remember what I said — ' famous last words.' You'll have to go back. Stein."

"Never!" he shouted. "I'll shoot every one… "

"Don't be a bloody fool," I said. "How many do you think you'd get before they'd get you? Look at that, man!"

There were stirrings on the ledge and a whole troop of eyes swivelled on to us. The great brute at the mouth of the rock tunnel opened his mouth and purred softly. It was the most frightening noise I have ever heard. The great black heads, majestic, contemptuous, watched lazily, vigilantly, every muscle at the ready.

"It's the Cape lion!" screamed Stein. A quiver ran through the beast when he heard the noise of the human voice. "My God! It's been extinct for over a century. The old Cape hunters said it was the most dangerous animal in Africa! They shot it out on the plains. Now — the Skeleton Coast is its last retreat."

I gazed in fascinated awe at the huge beast poised on the ledge. Stein's was the only explanation. I was looking at history, looking at antiquity. Deadly, hellishly dangerous antiquity! The Skeleton Coast guarded its gateway with the world's oldest and deadliest animal! I felt weak at the knees. I also knew that Stein and his crazy expedition was at an end.

I said so.

"This is the point of no return, Stein," I said roughly. "You couldn't get past that lot, even with a tommy-gun. I doubt whether a high velocity two-two would even halt one of those brutes."

Stein rounded on me so savagely that I thought he would use the Luger.

"You capitulate, Captain Peace, but I don't! We go on, even if we have to go round the mountains."

"What is it you're so keen to find there in the Otjihipo mountains?" I said bluntly. "Not some piddling beetle. Is it a cache of diamonds?"

He looked surprised. He wasn't lying.

"No, Captain Peace, not a cache of diamonds. Something much more valuable. The Onymacris beetle. Found only in the Gobi Desert and North Borneo once. No longer."

He must be mad, I decided.

"Let us go back and talk this over with the others," he said, and there was nothing irrational in the way he said it. "But understand, we are going on — at whatever cost."

We retreated cautiously again, with a careful eye on the huge black-covered face.

We were starting to emerge when I heard the noise at our backs.

"Listen!" I rapped out. I heard it again.

"Sounds like thunder," he said uncertainly. "But there's no cloud about —"

"Run!" I yelled. "It's the river coming down! The highest trees farthest up the bank — quick!"

I grabbed his shoulder as he stood hesitantly. The narrow gorge funneled the sound. Anne and Johann saw us come sprinting towards them in amazement.

"Quick!" I yelled. "The river's coming down! Listen! It's like distant thunder! Those trees over there!"

We scrambled up the steep bank, slipping and scrabbling. The noise sounded like an approaching Underground train. We hoisted each other wildly into the branches, praying that the water would not reach as high.

The flood broke through the narrow tunnel and spread into the sand.

It wasn't water. It was thousands of zebra.

They came through the rock-lined gap at full gallop, packed so close together that they sprayed out like water as the river bed widened. The thunder of thousands, tens of thousands, of hoofs on the rock, was deafening.

"It's a mass migration," I yelled above the uproar. "It happens once in a lifetime. They'll tear on for scores of miles. Fifty years ago a magistrate in South West Africa saw the same thing happen with springbok. They threw themselves into the sea and drowned by the thousand. Mass suicide—"

Look!" screamed Anne.

The huge sentry-lion dropped like a stone off the rock on to the mass of animals below him. His victim staggered under his weight, but was borne remorselessly clear of the narrow section by the impetus of the herd behind. Almost without effort, it seemed, the black-maned brute struck the zebra across the head and together they tumbled into the sand. Terrified, those behind opened out around the lion and the prostrate zebra. Another huge lion dropped among the herd from above and was carried out into the sand by the flood. Like experienced paratroopers, lion after lion catapulted himself into the mass of thundering animals passing below. Soon the white sand was dotted, black and white stripes on the ground and huge black forms kneeling over them. Once the thundering zebra overran a lion and his victim. He rose savagely and struck out. I heard the dull sickening thud even above the other noise. I saw the outline of his gigantic paw across the rib-cage of one crazed creature which had overrun him, the mark outlined against the black and white stripes in scarlet blood. It was so swift and sudden that the zebra ran for fully thirty yards before it pitched head over heels in the sand, a shattered, bloody corpse.

The slaughter went on for half an hour. Then, like magic, the thunder of the hoofs stopped. The white bed of the river was red as the lions ripped at their victims. There must have been more than a hundred, each with his own kill. The nearest was perhaps fifty yards from our tree. He tore open the zebra's stomach and pawed among the bowels, still quivering with latent life. We watched fascinated, sickened. He scraped them on one side and then plunged his whole head into the hole in the carcass. The black mane emerged, soaked in blood. The black and scarlet looked like a flamenco singer's costume. He chewed some inner delicacy with gusto, uttering that same low purring.

The silence, except for the chewing noises like tearing sacking, was complete.

Stein's voice broke it.

"Down, all of you!" he rapped.

He was sitting on a branch below us. I looked at him incredulously.

"Hurry!" he went on.

"I'm staying," I said. Anne nodded in agreement, white-faced.

He made a faint gesture with the Luger and smiled.

"This is our moment," he said. "This sort of thing happens once in a generation. You said so. I'm playing my luck on this migratory compulsion complex of the zebra, as our American friends would call it. For once the rock passage is clear. All the lions are feeding. We can get through — now. There's nothing to stop us."

He was right. Dead right.

But he'd forgotten something.

"How about the return?" I asked.

His eyes gleamed.

"That's my problem," he replied shortly. "Get down!" he rapped.

We climbed down silently to the foot of the tree. Anne took my hand and her fingers were shaking. There was no avoiding the great beasts. Stein took the lead. I give him full marks for his guts. We passed within twenty-five yards of one of the huge animals, but it didn't even look up. Clear of the carcass-scattered sand, we broke into a run. We kept it up right through the gloomy tunnel with its overhanging ledge of death. The stench was unbelievable. I could set-that the water never reached quite as high as the ledge, but when the river foamed through the gap, it must have been a stupendous sight.

We ran on, panting and slipping.

Then we were through. In front the mountains drew back their fangs and I could see that we were not far from the Nangolo Flats, our turn off point into the forbidding mountains.

It froze that night when we made camp among the high peaks at an altitude of nearly seven thousand feet. As if relenting, the going had been easy all day. We left the river where the broad shelf of the combined Kapupa and Otjijange rivers meet the Cunene, striking south now instead of east. The view of the Baynes Mountains on our left as we rose steadily upwards, following the course of the Kapupa, was superb. About twelve miles from the river the Kapupa strikes down from the heart of the massive Baynes range and joins the Otjijange, which steps out from behind a huge dun peak, isolated, at the head of the valley. We followed the lead of the Kapupa — dry like all rivers in this territory — into the heart of the Otjihipo peaks, which are not ten miles from the Cunene as the crow flies. But between lies such an inextricable tumble of peaks and valleys, fretted with razor-edged kranzes and unscaleable cliffs, that it would be quite impossible to venture through them.

Stein pushed on eagerly. At the sharp easterly swing of the Kapupa into the mountains I would have liked to have had time to have studied a great fissure running south and east from the sentinel peak at the head of the valley, but Stein would not even pause. If the gap persisted, it must run roughly towards the Kandao Mountains which could — might — lead to the Orumwe valley where the caravel lay. I took careful mental bearings on the key peaks. It might be a way of escape. Even as sunset came and we were all panting at the unaccustomed altitude, Stein pushed on. Superb in all its primitive wonder, the great seven-thousand-rive-hundred-foot Baynes Mountain, dusted chalk-rose by the flaring sunset at our backs, stood as magnificently captain of the peaks as the huge lion at the rock tunnel entrance.

Even Stein was moved by the splendid panorama.

"We'll be right at the spot, or very nearly there, tonight," he enthused. "We'll start looking for Onymacris to-morrow."

Anne had scarcely spoken all day. She shrugged.

Now, with the coming of night, it was bitterly cold. The easterly wind, blowing in our faces all afternoon, had dropped. Anne sat by my side. Orion hunted over the Baynes Mountains and the Southern Cross hung lopsidedly over the Onjamu peaks towards Walvis Bay.

A slow light trailed across the frosty sky.

"Meteor or sputnik?" asked Anne. She felt for my hand. There was premonition in the cold flesh. Stein sat immobile, staring into the leaping flames. Half a dry tree was burning. It was the loneliest fire in the world. Anne and I sat close, scarcely exchanging a word. There were no words for what we felt, anyway. Her face was drawn in the light, not with fatigue, but with some inward tumult. Occasionally she glanced at me and smiled.

I rolled out her bedroll next to mine, our feet pointing at the flames. She squeezed my hand and pulled the blankets round her hair. I did likewise.

In about ten minutes she called softly.

"Geoffrey!" she said.

"Yes, Anne?"

The voice dropped until I could scarcely hear.

"Remember, I forgave you — everything?"

I reached out, but she had withdrawn her hand.

Stein took Anne away with him after an early breakfast. I was left in the care of the sullen Johann. My usefulness seemed to have come to an end as far as I could see. Except that Stein might not feel himself able to find Curva dos Dunas again. My plans were complete, now that I was alone with Johann. He was target number one. I occupied myself about the camping-spot, finding more wood, washing up dishes. Anne and Stein set off to go higher up the steep path — obviously a game track — round the shoulder of the mountains, below which the camp was pitched on an open, flat clearing. As she reached the turning she turned and waved.

The next two hours were a torment. The tension inside me knotted every nerve. It was far worse than waiting for a depth-charge attack to start. I kept myself from glancing at Johann. When I struck, it must be as swift and deadly as a black mamba. There would be no second chance. Therefore I waited until I could be sure that Stein was well clear of the camp in case there was a shot. The sound would carry far among the echoing peaks. He and Anne were lost to view since the path wound steeply upwards.

I was dumbfounded when Stein appeared, alone, before ten o'clock.

"Captain Peace!" he shouted as he turned the last bend in the path. "Captain Peace! Onymacris! Onymacris! We found it! Look! Look!"

He came forward at a slight run, holding his hand outstretched.

My hopes regarding Johann fell to the ground.

"What is it?" I asked dully.

"The Onymacris!" he said, scarcely able to contain himself. "Right where I said it would be! It's the biggest scientific find of the century! Look, man, look — pure gold!"

He was obviously speaking metaphorically, for the two dead beetles in his hand were an undistinguished off-white. To me they looked no different from any common beetle crawling round a suburban backyard in Windhoek or Cape Town.

"The Gobi, North Borneo and now the Skeleton Coast — living!" he cried. "Congratulate me, Captain Peace! I congratulate myself. I am rich, richer than my wildest dreams!"

Two putty-coloured beetles didn't seem worth all that.

He slapped me on the shoulder.

"Congratulations to you, too, Captain Peace! The navigator of my hopes! Congratulations to Johann, the watchman! You have all played your part nobly! You shall be rewarded as is your due! And now," he turned to me and I was again struck by the ray-like gash of the mouth and jaw, "you must go and congratulate Miss Nielsen. She is waiting up the path for you. She asks if you will go and join her — soon!"

There was a curious inflexion about his last words. But if Anne wanted me to join her alone, there it was.

I set off up the steep track, which narrowed to a spine across the back of a huge, eroded peak; it ran clean across the summit. It was well defined. There was no other way, for the ground fell away on both sides to a colossal drop. On the left it must have been every bit of fifteen hundred feet, and slightly less on the right. The wind tugged at me as I strode forwards. Thank God there was less sand, although I could still feel the rasp of it on the wind's breath.

The path struck across the peak and converged at two great boulders. There was no sign of Anne. She must have remained pretty far up, I thought. I strode between the two boulders and in passing my eye caught something on. my right.

Anne was sitting with her back against one of them.

"Anne…" I started. Fear ran like ice down my spine.

She was dead.

The eyes were half shut and her face had a curious look of resentment — resentment as if she had been taken away from something which meant more than the loss of her life.

I could scarcely distinguish the bullet hole from the bright scarlet of her sweater.

I wrenched up the sweater and saw the neat surgical incision of the Luger bullet. There was scarcely any blood. It had crushed in the left nipple. A few strands of ragged nylon from her brassiere fringed the hole. It might have been passion, not death, which stared at me. She was sitting neatly. Stein must have shot her as she sat.

There was almost no violence about the whole scene. Only the expression of resentment. Only the puckering of the right eyelid. I knelt down and kissed the rumpled lid. I pulled the sweater down and straightened the unseemly dent on the outside. Only then, a great, blind rage overwhelmed me. I have killed men with weapons — with torpedoes, with fire, with machine-guns — but now I longed for the feel of killing with my fingers, the gurgle of life being choked out, of hot blood reeling under pressure to make it eternally cold. It was so overpowering that it made me icy-cool in caution. I saw it all — she had found his precious beetle, and, her work done, he had killed her with as little compassion as he had had for the Kroo boy. Why murder for a blasted beetle? It kept going through and through my mind. He had sent me up here to be killed. He wouldn't do that himself, not only because I think he was frightened, but because of Johann. Johann would kill me and Stein would kill Johann. Then he would beat it for Curva dos Dunas with enough food and water and a plausible story. There couldn't be any search — not in this forbidden country. John Garland's hands would be tied. He might be as suspicious as hell, but he'd never be able to prove anything.

I edged forward on my knees and peered round the rock. As sure as clockwork, there came Johann. He was coming quickly, the Remington under his arm. His head was swaying like a hound's on the scent.

I drew back farther, sheltering half behind a huge boulder. I had no plan. I was as kill-crazy as he.

Johann rounded the rock and stopped short when he saw Anne's body. He wasn't fifteen feet from me. Now or never.

I sprang forward. In a flash Johann covered me with the rifle.

"She died very easy," he said. "I died very hard all those years with the little black men; I died. I died over and over. You will die slowly, Captain Peace." He swung the Remington back without taking his burning eyes off me and threw it sideways over the cliff. I felt a brief feeling for him; I, too, wanted to kill with my hands. He pulled a sailor's knife from his belt and we faced each other like wrestlers. He wasn't afraid. He was fearful only lest he would do it too quickly.

I moved so that the rock was on my left and slightly behind me. He saw I was unarmed and grinned, a fiendish, satisfied grin. He was going to enjoy the fight, like a sailor fights a harlot in bed. As he reached forward with the knife, I whipped my right hand out of my pocket and extended the palm. It was my faintest hope. As he saw Trout's little mascot hand he blenched and I whipped forward and grabbed his knife hand with my left and slipped my right under his armpit. It was the same grip which had torn Hendrik's arm out of its socket. Johann struck punily at my kidneys with his left, but there was no force in the blows — there never can be, with that fearful hold.

I twisted his arm. He held on with the strength of a maniac, but he said nothing. I felt one tendon start to tear. The knife moved back from three inches from my right eye to six. ' I threw myself against his weight. I felt his muscles tear. But he wasn't going to get away with it as Hendriks did. I forced the arm still farther back. His eyes were frantic with terror. I marched him remorselessly back past the dead woman towards the precipice at his back. The knife now hung back over his right shoulder in a grotesque parody of a strike. I knew exactly what I was going to do. Like a released spring, I ducked back, freeing my arm and shoulder, in one movement and kicked him in the stomach. I give him credit. Any other man, with the bite of that heavy seaboot in his vital parts, would have fallen over backwards. Johann stood swaying, his face grey-green with terror and pain. For a second we stood panting in great gasps facing one another. Then I stepped forward and administered the coup de grace. I hit him twice with my right forearm across the side of the neck. He pitched and rolled dustily backwards. I never heard the final crump of the body far below. The dead woman gazed at me sightlessly.

I picked up the knife from the path and sagged down on a rock, my breath coming in frantic inhalations. I felt no remorse, no sorrow, no triumph even. My mind kept saying: Stein! Stein!

What had she said? "I would like to be buried there."

It came to me like fire amid the icy clarity of my lust to kill. I looked down at the quiet face and eyes whose pupils I would never see again. I'll carry you there, I vowed. You'll lie forever beside those other lovers. And then, like a scream of taut nerves: but I'll kill Stein first! Give him time, and he would come looking for either Johann or myself. He came, hours later. I withdrew up the narrow path, flanked with boulders. There was simply no way of deviating from it. I caught the glimpse of sun on metal before I actually saw Stein himself. He was making sure. He had the Luger out. I crouched down as low as I could and withdrew from boulder to boulder until eventually on my right I found a slight cleft, wide enough to take a man's body. I balanced the heavy knife. At least I had something on my side. I stood sweating between the hot rocks. I reckoned he'd take another half an hour to reach Anne's body. I'd lost my cap in the struggle and the sweat poured off me, as much reaction and anticipation as heat.

I'd never thrown a knife before, and it's a tricky business at the best of times. He'd see me yards before he reached the cleft, and there was no hope of an ambush from above. I forgot all about that. I clutched the knife until my fingers ached.

I flicked a glance down the path and then jerked my head back. Stein was coming on like a cat, holding the Luger, There was a jagged boulder which I had judged would be my best marker for a throw before he saw me.

I whipped out of the cleft and cast the heavy knife. The shot followed simultaneously. I reeled back streaming blood as the bullet tore through my right shoulder.

I bit down the searing pain.

Then Stein's voice came. It was strained.

"Step out of that hole, Captain Peace, unless you want me to come and ferret you out."

I remained where I was. But he had courage, had Stein.

He came forward until he could see me propped against the hot stone wall.

The knife projected from his left arm. It must have bitten deep, for his face was grey, but it was low and anything but fatal. That fact passed through my mind with quick, bitter realisation.

In the other hand he pointed the Luger steadily at me.

"So you killed Johann at last," he said. "At least I presume you did?"

There was no point in denying it. I nodded.

The voice gained some of its earlier sneering quality.

"Brave, resourceful Captain Peace!" he said. "No histrionics on my part about shooting you, I assure you, Captain. No confessions, no deathbed gloating."

He raised the Luger and fired. But I saw him flick the barrel aside from me as his finger whitened on the trigger. I saw his face contort and he fired again and again and again.

The first zebra galloping down the path stumbled as the heavy bullets struck home, but its impetus swept both itself and Stein over the precipice beyond. It was a small group of about fifty and they thundered by without a pause. How many of them went over the edge with Stein I do not know. In less than a minute the path was clear and the dust was filtering down into the red-gold hair by the rock. The animals had not touched her as she sat back from the pathway. I could hear their clatter down the mountain towards the camp.

I was oblivious of the pain from my shoulder until I reached camp, carrying Anne over my other shoulder. Of the next days, in fact, only salient points remain with me now, interspersed with some completely trivial, I remember how fresh her lipstick was and I was at infinite pains not to blur it. She would have liked it that way. By the remains of the camp fire I cut lengths of rope and tied her hands and feet for the long carry back to the caravel. I had no rational thought. My movements were automatic. There was no gap in the remorseless vacuum of grief which encased me. I rummaged among her things and found a scarf. I tied her jaw firmly and bound a handkerchief across the half-closed eyes. I wrapped the duffle-coat round her head. I feared the sand would tarnish the brightness of the lovely hair. It was not until later that I found I had made a careful selection of food and one nearly full canteen of water.

I set off down the bed of the Kapupa river. I set course as automatically as were my other reactions. Perhaps something instinctive came to my rescue. I might have fumbled or hesitated had I been conscious of what I was about, but I wasn't. Instead of branching northwards towards the Nangolo Flats up which we had trudged from the Cunene, I struck left at the sentinel rock up the gigantic break in the rock towards the Kandao mountains, which are the southern outposts of the great crag which juts into the river to make the lions' tunnel. The sun struck into my face as it dropped in the afternoon. The sweat poured off me. I had nothing to protect my head. I could smell the sweet woman-smell of the body as my sweat soaked through her jersey. I followed blindly a track not dissimilar to the one on which she had found the fatal Onymacris. It ran too much to the south for my liking, but it had a lot of west in it. And I must get to the west. My one thought was not to return to Curva dos Dunas, but to get my burden to the caravel. My right shoulder where the bullet had pierced it — high and by no means dangerous — ached like hell. With my left cramped with the weight of the dead woman and the wound in my right, it felt as if someone had strapped a red-hot poker across the base of my neck.

I stopped at evening when it was too dark to stumble on. The great valley of the Otjijange lay at my back. I camped where a slab of eroded rock lay spreadeagled on the edge of a mile-wide drift of sand. In front lay the highest peak of the Kandao range, almost directly opposite me, four tiny peaks on the right and one sloping summit attached to them — like four little warthogs running after their mother. I could see the track stretching round the left flank of the peak — but I was getting anxious about the way it continually bore south. I must get more north. I reckoned, roughly speaking, that on a line to the coast I would now be twenty miles south of Curva dos Dunas.

I have little recollection of the next morning. Perhaps I was a little delirious for the wound hurt more than ever. I became fully aware of things when my sailor's instinct told me there had been a change in course. The track was now veering northwards, and I saw the Kandao peak was a dozen miles behind me. It was also downhill. I stumbled on. I scarcely noticed that the sun had burned the skin off my forehead and face. The smell of sweet sweat from Anne's clothes drove me on. Death and corruption were holding back. I knelt in the burning sand to drink from the canteen and blessed the Skeleton Coast for that mercy. I staggered on into the afternoon sun.

Like the lift of fog off the Skeleton Coast, my consciousness cleared. I was heading due north, but something else had penetrated. I rubbed my sweat-soaked eyes against the rough hair of her duffle-coat. The pool! Away to the left against the cliff was the caravel. In half an hour it would have been in shadow. The thought that I might have stumbled past and missed it woke me to full realisation like an injection of adrenalin. I knew what I had to do. I skirted the pool, my mind numb with memories. I pushed the body through the open gunport, when I reached the ship. There was no rigor mortis. The Skeleton Coast was pouring its balm still. I swung myself up, and cried aloud at the pain in my shoulder. I carried her through the doorway. I didn't go into the lovers' cabin. There was a smaller one on the left.

The bunk was bare and I laid her on it. I unwrapped the head and jaw.

I leant down and kissed the rumpled eyelid.

I stood back and tossed a lighted match into the red-gold hair.

It was all over in an hour. The old ship crackled like a chord from Ravel while I stood and watched the blaze. Before the moon came up there was scarcely even a glow among the ashes.

I decided to have some food and try to sleep.

The food and the water canteen were missing. I had left them aboard in my agitation. I was alone in the Kaokoveld without food or water.

The realisation took a long time to sink in. Panic really only assailed me next day when I tried to dig for water in the bed of the Cunene. The going was easy enough and I had traversed the Orumwe valley and was following the main course of the Cunene downhill towards the first easy cataract. My half-conscious strike along the zebra path over the formidable peaks of the Kandao range had made a wide detour of the lions' barrier. I panicked when I found that I couldn't get the hole for the water more than about eighteen inches deep. The sand poured back far quicker than I could scoop it out with my hands. It was like playing sea side sandcastles — but death stood by and laughed. It had seemed so easy with one of the small spades Stein had brought. I clawed frantically. The sand returned mercilessly. The tips of my fingers were wet. I sucked them frantically. Then a wave of panic swept over me and I threw myself at the flaccid hole like a rabid dog. The gritty stuff tore the skin off my fingers. I plunged my face into the damp sand and only got a caking like a custard pie across my face. I knew, then, how weak I was. I had tapped my strength across those high peaks. A muscle kicked spontaneously in my left arm above the elbow which had been crooked round Anne's body. The exertion brought a faint new trickle of blood from the wound in my shoulder.

I sat back and weighed the chances. I must take it easy, I told myself. Imagine you're playing golf, I told myself. Swing easily, never force the swing, I kept repeating. If I could get at the water a couple of feet down, I could make it to the sandy delta where we had first encountered the Cunene on our way in. I'd drunk as much water as I could at the pool before leaving the site of the old ship. I was only thirsty now, not really in desperate need of water. Assuming I could get to the seaward turn-off, I would have another two days' march to Curva dos Dunas. It might be a bit longer in my present condition. I had no food. Nor was there the slightest chance of finding any. We had seen on our way in that the game hid itself pretty thoroughly during the day. Even a rifle wouldn't be a particularly big asset. I made up my mind. I'd dig for water farther down where the river bed looked firmer. I'd strike out for the turn-off. I'd drink as much water as I could and then try and make Curva dos Dunas…

I got as far as the turn-off when the north-westerly gale started. Had I been in better shape my mind might have registered the fact that the wind, instead of being behind me from the east, had backed rapidly into the north-west. At sea a sudden backing into the north-west in winter time means only one thing. An enormous sea builds up and chops against the great Benguela current. For miles the sea bucks like a tormented thing. The winter north-west gales have twice the lash of the perpetual south-westerlies; the most remarkable thing about them is that the wind, blowing one moment high up in the Beaufort scale, will suddenly end, as if cut off by a knife. The sea remains anguished, while complete calm prevails. Then comes fog — the thickest fog I have ever encountered at sea.

I might have tried for water sooner had it registered that the wind had changed. But I was pushing mindlessly for the turn-off. The full realisation struck me when I emerged from the sheltering funnel of the cliff-bound river into the open. A solid curtain of sand struck me. I couldn't see where I was. The sun was hidden in the murk of white, gale-lashed sand. The gale seemed to bring every particle of sand with it which lay between me and the mouth of the river, ten miles away. I retreated a quarter of a mile the way I had come, but it was too late. The gale was now funnelling up the narrow bed and, if anything, the sand was even worse than in the open. Eyes smarting and streaming, my nose and mouth blocked with sand, I staggered back into the' open delta, keeping as far to my left as I could. I sank down and tried to make a small cup in the sand — anything to get water. It was hopeless. I couldn't even get a wet finger-tip. I remembered how we had had to go down almost four feet, Stein and I, for water here. My mouth was so full of sand that I retched weakly. It made things worse. Now I couldn't get rid of either the sand or the vomit in my mouth. Turning my back to the sand-driven whiteness, I scooped the muck out of my mouth with my fingers. This is where I had counted on one last long drink before my trek to Curva dos Dunas. If I stayed, I might wait for three or four days before the gale blew itself out. They seldom last less than that. I knew I'd be dead long before then. The only thing was to strike south — if I could find the elephant track along the edge of the sand delta, the wind screaming and plucking, bitter with sand. Now I knew why the feel of the sand had tormented Johann.

After about three hours I found the track. I stumbled southwards.

By sunset I knew I was finished.

Blind with sand and heat, my knees sagged and I fell full length off the right hand side of the track. The bright white sand of the Cunene had given way to grey, gritty filth. My ears, eyes, nostrils, mouth and throat were encased in one remorseless band of sand. The wind was an invisible thug choking me with a thong of sand. I fell clear of the path. I regained consciousness perhaps half an hour later as darkness fell. I felt strangely detached. My hair was half sunk in sand now. I was a dead man for all intents and purposes. I watched a small beetle suddenly shoot out from the sand not a foot in front of my eyes. Then another, and another. They catapulted up as suddenly as a submarine with her tanks blowing.

Then my detachment, the detachment of approaching death, vanished. I struck out hysterically, blindly, madly, at the half dozen or so tiny grey beetles.

Onymacris! I was so weak that I only succeeded in crushing them into the sand without doing them any real harm. They swarmed out of reach of my feebly striking hand.

Onymacris! The name was a curse. Why, I raved, had we not found them here, here within reach of Curva dos Dunas? My sense of grief and of helpless rage jerked me into a sitting position.

The big hyena, as tattered and sandblasted as myself, sat ten feet away looking at me. We gazed at one another. So the scavenger had arrived even before his victim was dead. I threw a handful of sand at him in impotent rage, but he simply paid no attention. Unable to rise to my feet, I dragged myself twenty yards farther away, off the path. The foul animal followed. I thought I could detect the stink of him — then a shock of realisation ran like a drink of life-giving water through me.

The wind had stopped.

I dragged myself farther from my tormentor. It was almost dark. The hyena advanced, and then stopped the same distance away. I saw two other smaller forms behind him. Jackals! I prayed that I would be dead before they started in on me.

The moon rose. I kept on dragging myself, away, but the animals followed. I saw to my horror that there were now about half a dozen of them, all in single file behind the hyena. He kept the same distance between himself and me. I let my head drop weakly. It didn't crunch on sand. It was packed hard. It was some sort of minor game track I had been dragging myself along.

I got semi-consciously on to all fours and struggled onwards — away from that dreadful queue of scavengers. They kept station on me with the precision of a destroyer line. I half got to my feet, but my knees would not hold me and I rolled down the slope. My tormentors followed at a slow trot. My head struck against a rock. I was beyond caring. I rolled over to avoid it.

The small conical tower, about four feet high, was silhouetted against the moon.

It was made of tiny flints, each one worked with infinite care, morticed together. I dragged myself into a sitting position. The little tower was firmly fixed in a concave rock structure. It was against the side of this that I had struck my head. The flints all amalgamated into one larger pattern, a long fluted spiral which twisted round like a fire escape to the top of the structure. The concave rock in which it rested must have been about six feet across.

The animals, still in Indian file, kept station behind me. I cursed them for not putting an end to it all.

Then everything went blank.

I thought I had passed out again, but it was fog. Thick, enveloping fog, so tightly woven of land heat and sea-cool that I couldn't even see the strange conical tower a hand's-breadth away.

I heard the tinkle of water. I knew then that I was dying. Yours was a much easier death, Anne, I said aloud. A bullet is neat and swift. Johann has had his revenge. I am dying more slowly than he could ever have wished.

The hyena came right up to my feet. I stared fascinated into the reddish eyes. He stank worse than anything I have ever smelt, before or since. I wondered if my breath was as bad. I debated how he would begin, and what the first bite would feel like. But he wasn't looking at me. He was looking past my head at the conical tower. The other animals crowded closer, but still didn't move out of position.

Water was dripping down the conical stonework, gathering momentum as it accumulated more from the lower flints, and was dripping into the stone basin. There must have been a cupful even as I watched. I didn't wait. I thrust my head under the stone funnel and felt cold, pure water pour into my parched throat. As it dripped across my face and mouth I saw that the fog was condensing against the stones and precipitating into the stone basin. What dead race — for this was human construction — had made this ingenious drinking fountain? The principle was simple: adiabatic warming. The flints had been heated in the same way as a bicycle pump heats up when used; by a change in air pressure, The air pressure in this case changed steeply between mountain slope and sea level, heating itself. The stone flints absorbed it, retained it, and when the cold sea fog struck the little tower, pure moisture condensed. The simplicity of genius!

For how many centuries had this ingenious source of life in a country of death been working? The heavy sea fog was miraculously converted to channelled, life-giving water. The water was running in a steady stream and I let it wash away the sand from my head and face.

The animals stood and watched, crowding, but none came forward to drink. I realised with amazement what was happening. They were waiting for me to finish! I had been ú first in the queue. The life-giving liquid was so precious that it had impressed a code of behaviour even on these savage animals. They were waiting in line while the one in front drank from the fountain! I took another long drink and pulled myself to one side. The hyena came forward eagerly and drank. He paid no attention to me or the other animals. Water had declared eternal truce among the wild creatures. He drank long and eagerly, waiting for the water to accumulate in the stone basin. He must have taken a quarter of an hour over it.

Then he withdrew and one of the jackals came forward. The ritual was repeated as each reached the basin. Tin n was no hurrying, no jostling, no fighting for place. The priceless fluid dripped from the tooled flints. I waited until I had drunk, and then I drank again, as much as I could take.

If I kept going all night, I would be on the beach in the morning.

As I left the ancient drinking-fountain another stinking animal passed me. He took no notice, but his tongue was almost black with thirst and he was panting heavily. A strandwolf! A savage, nomadic animal called a wolf which wanders the surf-line of the beaches preying on carrion swept up by the sea. He took no notice of me and brushed past as I regained the main track.

I found the surf-boat at sunrise. The sea was shrouded in fog. Etosha would be out there all right. The tide was receding from the causeway. I could imagine John's surprise when a scarecrow emerged, literally from the sea! It was perfectly calm.

I went across to the boat to see if there was anything left of the Kroo boy.- There wasn't. A narrow pathway of sand stretched out in the grey light, pointing out to sea. I started to walk out along the causeway. The sea was a curious metallic grey. A wave slopped over my feet and I stopped to straighten the torn boot. My hand came away oily and sticky.

Oil!

With the clarity of mind which follows complete fatigue, I saw it all in a flash.

The charts — they all said "discoloured water."

Discoloured — with oil!

Onymacris — the oil beetle of the North Borneo and Gobi oilfields!

NP I — she didn't have to refuel, she was atomic driven! I had set the sea on fire round her. And the sea had burned because it was — oil! Natural oil!

The Onymacris beetle — that is why Stein was prepared to do murder, anything, to find it. He knew the connection.

Everywhere where Onymacris is found, there is oil. It's a surer pointer than any wildcat. And they'd struck oil in Angola, only a couple of hundred miles north of the South African border.

Oil! The whole of Curva dos Dunas anchorage was oil! So much oil that it filled the sea as it burst up from its untapped billions of gallons beneath. And Curva dos Dunas was mine! Except in the Sahara, they'd never struck oil richly in Africa. And here it was, the same kind of pitiless desert, bursting with oil! Stein went for the mountains first — he must have had a strong hunch — but if only Anne had seen the Onymacris as I had done within five miles of the sea! The whole sand had seemed to crawl with them as I lay there.

I limped slowly out towards where Etosha lay with my seaboots coated in oil.