A Twist of Sand

II Rays and Beetles

I brought the Etosha into Walvis Bay towards sunset. John was with me on the bridge. As Pelican Point, a narrow peninsula which juts into the sea at the harbour mouth, came, clearly to view about five miles to the southward, the moderate wind to seaward suddenly switched northerly and the uneasy lop of the waves from the south-west indicated that we were in for a couple of days of the great rollers which crash so mercilessly on the coast after a northerly blow, more so at this late autumn season than during the summer.

Etosha eased towards the harbour mouth at seven knots. "If she'd been a sailer, we'd be all aback now," John remarked. His lips were cracked from the wind, and the top of his thick woollen polo-necked jersey was stained with salt and paint. He was tired, too, after the excitement of the dawn. He had been on his feet solidly since.

"I've got some old sailing directions below," I remarked. "It would drive me round the bend bringing a schooner, even under snug sail, up to an anchorage like this."

The wind off the land, blowing powerfully across the direction of the northerly wind outside the harbour, threw up a short, nasty sea.

"Starboard fifteen," I told the Kroo boy at the wheel. "Slow ahead," I rang.

The sun, endowed by the great surge of volcanic dust thrown up by the eruptions, was making a great show of going down. Sunsets are always spectacular on the Skeleton Coast, but this one was out-vying them. Gold spears stabbed heavenwards like molten searchlights, refracted and diffused by the volcanic dust over the sea and the fine particles of sand whipping in from the desert which backs the port.

As Etosha edged in towards her buoy, I laid her length parallel with the sandy peninsula.

John laughed. "Not forgotten the tricks of the trade, eh? Put her against the sunset with a spit of land behind and what do our nosey-parkers see from the shore of damage? Nothing. Only blackness. I suppose it's in the blood, Geoffrey — you might as well ask a wolf not to stalk a caribou as expect a submariner not to hide himself!"

I joined in the laugh, although a little cautiously. I was not sure how much the Kroo boy understood of what we were saying.

"You've done such a damn fine job that it's scarcely necessary to conceal the damage," I said.

He nodded. "With a more responsive crew, I'd have had her more shipshape still," he remarked. "We certainly scared the pants off this lot to-day."

John had done wonders. Apart from the missing boats, twisted davits and the mast aft, even the idlers hanging around the quayside (they never seemed to disperse) would not have noticed much amiss. The paintwork had been restored where the blistering eruption had stripped it off her plates like a blow-lamp, although there were still obvious signs on the deck of her ordeal — the twisted winches and bent bulwarks. Nevertheless, I could take her to sea any ' time. Mac had not reported from the engine room, but I knew he would be along once we had secured. In addition to the repairs, we had heaved about ten tons offish overboard which had been spoilt by the heat of the eruption.

I brought Etosha up to her moorings, which lay well away from most of the other fishing boats anyway, most of them local wooden sail-and-engine craft which (to my mind) have none of the seaworthiness or grace of those fine cutters one finds off the Norwegian coast or on the Icelandic grounds.

The angry sun transformed the harbour, even the ugly Cold Storage works with its tall chimneys and fortress-like structure, to a world of golds, blues, ambers and blacks. The quick late autumn night was falling when we cleared away the crew for the night — I did not allow them to sleep aboard, which they resented, but it was a point on which I was adamant.

John, Mac and I had the Etosha to ourselves.

"Come in, Mac," I called from my sea-cabin where John was having a drink with me later.

"Scotch?" I asked.

"Aye," he replied in his dour way. "No water."

"Anything left of your engines after this morning?" asked John.

"Bluidy little," he growled. He turned from the painting of a full-rigged ship which he was contemplating above my desk. Although I had known Mac for more than fifteen years, I still felt a little chilled at his eyes, like a line of surf under the Northern Lights, coupled with his morose dour-ness.

"Some day," he said angrily, "ye'll go too far, skipper, and you won't have me to haul you out of the muck." He smiled grimly at his inner knowledge. "The luck's been with you, so far, laddie. It damn near wasn't to-day."

I refilled his glass. For Mac to utter more than half a dozen words a day was surprising. This sounded almost like an unburdening. I poured the Haig slowly and thought, he does know too much. What do I know about him? Precious little. And yet everything a man can learn from another from being in tight corners together and carrying out deeds beyond the arm of the law. Did the same rules apply in the Glasgow gutter where Mac had been born? Was our alliance one of expediency or one of loyalty, the gamin's loyalty to the gang, so long as the leader paid off? Certainly, Mac knew too much.

Mac took the straight drink without a word. "Bit of strain in the shaft, I think, but nothing t' worry about."

"That means that the whole damn thing's as sweet as a nut," laughed John. "What was it like down in your stokehole when we staggered through that bit of flame, Mac?" "Like someone had put a blow-lamp under my backside," he said shortly.

"Everything will be all right for getting out on to the fishing grounds in the morning?" I asked him.

He treated me to one of his hard stares. "Aye," he said slowly, spinning the amber liquid round and round in the glass, obscuring the deep oil stains on the capable fingers. "Where were we this morning, laddie? Anywhere near the old place?"

Blast Mac, I thought. I had enough on my hands without his raking up what was dead. Certainly he knew a lot too much. I played for time. "Another drink, John?"

A heavy knock at the door saved my answering. I opened it. There stood a policeman. He spoke in Afrikaans. "Which of you is Captain Macdonald?"

"I am," I replied in the same language. "Come in."

"Venter," he said, introducing himself in the German way. "Sergeant."

Still speaking in Afrikaans, I said: "This is my first mate, Mister John Garland, and my engineer, Mister Macfadden." He shook hands formally.

"Neither of them speak Afrikaans," I said to relieve the uneasy air in the cabin. "Shall we speak English?"

Now was the time for my act, carried out whenever I came to port. I dropped into English with a South African accent, that clipped, staccato form of English which shortens its vowels and studs its sentences with the word "man." They say the first word you hear on arriving in Cape Town from overseas is the typical "man." Ask a South African to say "castle "and listen to the value he gives the "a" and you'll recognise him anywhere. It has none of the twang of Australia, but has an individuality all its own.

"Have a drink, Sarge?" I said with forced heartiness. "Whisky, or the real stuff?"

I pulled out a bottle of well-matured Cape brandy.

Venter gazed at the label in admiration. "Jesus!" he said with a wink. "You sea b——s certainly get the mother's milk. A nice little sopie of that, and you can't say I'm sucking on the hind tit."

I caught John's amazed eye at this little introduction and nearly burst out laughing. Mac gazed at him with the sort of expression I should imagine he reserved for delinquent pieces of machinery.

Venter took a big swallow, tossed his helmet on the table and sank with a big sigh into my chair.

"Man, captain," he said. "They sent me to ask about this bastard of your crew who got drowned."

I glanced swiftly across at John, for I had told him earlier that I had sent a note with the Kroo helmsman to the police advising them officially that I'd lost a man overboard.

"I'll get the charts," said John.

"I'll show you the exact place where we lost him. It was during a volcanic eruption, you know."

"Have your drink first," said the sergeant. "No hurry. This is bladdy good brandy. A non-European, wasn't he?"

"Yes," I said. "I was making a run at speed to get clear of a couple of volcanic islands, and the fellow — his name was Shilling — jumped overboard and swam for a rock which was sticking out of the sea. I never saw him again."

"Silly bastard," replied Venter expansively. "What did he want to go and do that for? Not a solitary clue, I'd say."

"There was no chance to go back for him," I added. "I was moving at full speed and almost at the same moment we were hit by a big wave."

"Ag, man, the docks are full of unskilled hands — you'll find another boy quite easily," commented Venter.

"Another brandy," I suggested.

"It's good stuff," approved Venter.

John slipped out and returned with the chart. He had found time even to complete the duplicate. There were the neat crosses and position of the chain of islands, about 150 miles from where we really had been. It would be safe enough, for islands on this coast simply appear one day and disappear the next. No one could dispute it.

"Our position was about twenty degrees fifty minutes South" he began in a formal voice which took me back to Royal Navy courts-martial.

"Jesus!" exclaimed Venter: "I don't understand that sort of thing. I wouldn't know how even to write it down. Tell me something simple, just for the report."

"Won't there be an inquest?" I asked tentatively.

"Nothing more than just a formality," said Venter. "No, man, just tell me where it was and I'll write it down for the major. That's about all. Bit of a waste of time, I'd say, but there it is."

John looked relieved. I don't think he liked the job of explaining faked charts.

"I should say it was about 150 miles N.N.W. of Walvis Bay. He went overboard somewhere about six o'clock."

Venter slopped some brandy on to his notebook. He raised it to his mouth and gave it a neat lick, and then went on writing. Mac regarded him with distaste. He laboriously wrote down a few details of the affair. Well, there shouldn't be any questions about where we were to judge from the policeman's attitude.

"Captain Macdonald — what is the voornaam — first name?"

"Geoffrey," I replied.

He wrote it down "Jeffrie". That wouldn't do any harm either.

"South African?" he said.

I dropped into Afrikaans with a bonhomie which sounded as false as a sham beard to me, but it didn't worry Venter.

"Man, have you ever heard a rooinek speak Afrikaans like I do? I was born in the Free State."

"Ag, here," he replied matily. "I'm a Transvaaler. Ventersdorp."

"Parys," I replied cheerily, thinking of the little resort which clings to the banks of the Vaal River with one foot in the veld of the Northern Free State, and the other in the Vaal River.

"This calls for a drink," he said without a blush.

I filled up his glass.

"Gesondheid! (good health)," he said. "Man. I'd like to stay and have a party with you boys, but I've got to get back to the station."

Mac breathed a visible sigh of relief. He took his helmet. "Cheerio, heh!" he said. "Totsiens, you chaps." I saw him over the rail. John was convulsed when I returned. "How to win friends and influence people!" he laughed. "Well, well, well. He couldn't have cared less, could he?" "And not a bad thing either," I replied. "It's a nice little chart you have there," said Mac ironically. "Hundreds of miles out to sea, and nothing to prove it to the contrary. What if they ask the other members of the crew?"

"They won't," I replied. "They could swear blind that they'd seen dry land, but John and I could prove beyond any doubt that they were talking nonsense."

"Aye," said Mac slowly, "You'd prove it to me, too. But just for interest's sake, seeing I saw it with my own eyes, where were we?"

"Off the Skeleton Coast," I said looking into his cold eyes, now a little shaded with the whisky he had drunk. "The Skeleton Coast, Mac."

"Aye," he said. "That was all I was wanting to know." We all felt the jar as the boat, inexpertly handled, bumped against the Etosha's side. In the silence, the unease which had been with me in the morning returned. Who was this now? Was there some further shadow looming? I felt sure it was not the police. Some aftermath of Mac's words remained, the meaningful "aye." He might well brood over the Skeleton Coast. As I might.

Heavy feet clumped on the deck. The three of us stood silent, drinks in hand, waiting for the unknown visitor. The imponderable sense of tension running like a tideway under our lives, made us view the newcomer, whoever he was, as an intruder. We followed the progress of the feet down the companionway; they hesitated for a moment, and then chose the cabin door. Without waiting for the knock, I pulled it open swiftly.

Our pre-occupation with the coming of the unknown man to the Etosha at night, the sense of indefinable tension which his presence engendered throughout the later tumultuous events, were characteristic of all I ever knew about the tall, slightly bent figure which blinked in the light as I pulled open the door. - As a figure, he would have passed anywhere without comment, for his sand-coloured hair had receded slightly from the temples and his grey eyes were those of a thousand other respectable citizens. But it was the strong, cruel gash of the face below the bridge of the nose and his quiet, mirthless chuckle which ever afterwards never ceased to frighten me. I still wake at night sweating when I think of that chuckle as he emerged to kill me on the mountain.

"Captain Macdonald?" he asked with a slightly German accent.

"Yes," I said curtly. I have never approved of sudden incursions into my privacy. That privacy was to be respected, as the crew knew.

He stood a moment in his cheap tweeds as his eyes flickered beyond me, a quick, appraising glance.

"Stein," he said holding out a hand. "Dr. Albert Stein. Not 'Stain' if you please, but 'Stine'."

I didn't ask him in. If he'd come about today's business up the coast, he'd go away quicker than he came. I didn't speak.

"May I come in?" The eyes were friendly, but the jaw looked like one of those strange creatures the net brings up out of the depths, snapping at the steel gaff to its last expiring breath.

I stood aside, my ungraciousness apparent.

He looked at John and Mac.

"I haven't also had the pleasure…"

"My mate and engineer," I said briefly.

For some reason he held out his hand to Mac. "This is a very fine ship," he murmured. "You must be proud to be the engineer. Fine big engines, eh?"

Mac ignored the outstretched hand. I blessed him for his taciturnity.

"Engines from the Humber," he said. "Would have been better from the Clyde."

"Ah, the pride of the Scot," said Stein amiably. "Two Scots and one Englishman on such a fine little ship."

"I am a South African," I said, underlining it with a heavy accent.

"But the mate is English, yes? And the ship too? Fine, fast ships the English build."

He nodded to the three of us, but his eyes searched the cabin.

"Can I do something for you, Doctor Stein?" I asked coldly. "You haven't rowed yourself out all this way just to admire my ship. Otherwise…" I waved a hand vaguely towards the companionway.

"Ah but yes," he cried. "It is about business that I wish to talk."

We remained on our feet.

"If it's a matter of business," I began. "We can discuss it ashore some other time. I sell all my fish on a contract basis."

"I am a scientist, not a fishmonger," he smiled and I liked his smile less than a sting ray. "I wish to discuss with you a matter of catching beetles."

Stein certainly didn't look like a crazy beetle hunter, however odd his words sounded.

"The matter of beetle-catching I wish to discuss is private," he said, looking pointedly at John and Mac.

"These men are also my close friends. You may say anything you wish in front of them."

"What a happy little ship," he said encouragingly. "Well, I wish you to take me on a short trip so that I can catch beetles.".

John joined in and he laughed grimly. "You don't catch beetles out in the Atlantic, Dr. Stein," he said. "We may catch a lot else, but not beetles."

Stein grinned in his mirthless way.

"Yes, I know," he went on, as if speaking to a child. "But I wish to take your ship and go up the coast to find beetles, or rather, one particular beetle."

I shrugged. I wasn't having Stein, or anyone else, trippering up and down the coast in Etosha.

"It's worth a lot of money to you," he said. "Five hundred pounds."

"Where to?" I pressed him.

He hedged. "When I wish to find my beetle, I go to people who know about ships, and I ask, which is the finest ship sailing out of Walvis Bay? They tell me, the Etosha. But that is not all I want. The Etosha might be the best ship, but it is the skipper who really matters. And who, I ask, knows these waters best of all the fishing skippers? Macdonald of the Etosha, they tell me. And here I am. Five hundred pounds for my passage."

I was more amused at the offer than anything. "Where do you expect to go for £500 — to South America?"

"No," he said crisply. "I want you to put me ashore on the Skeleton Coast."

I burst out laughing.

"Good God, man, you can't be serious," I exclaimed. "Every policeman knows where every ship goes from this port. I'd only have to tell them what you've said — in front of witnesses — and they'd watch you like a hawk."

"I don't think you'd do that," he said evenly.

"Why not?" I asked.

He looked at me searchingly, and his reply was long in coming.

"I don't quite know," he said, "but I think I am right in saying you won't spread this around. Why? I base my ideas on what I see. I see a fine ship with lovely lines, when big holds are what make a ship pay. Everyone says the Etosha must be fast, and yet no one has ever seen her making much above twelve knots. I drop a question to the engineer, and he closes up like a clam, instead of displaying a warm admiration for his engines." He swung suddenly at me. "I hear you lost a man overboard to-day."

I was rapidly losing my temper.

"Yes," I snapped. "And there'll be another one over the side very soon now. Damn you and your impertinence, Stein. Get out!"

He continued to look at me coolly. "My mind is made to inquire and search out the truths of things in nature," he said in a pompous Teutonic way. "If Etosha were a beetle, I'd say she was a throwback from her species. But gentlemen, I waste your time. You will not reconsider?"

"No," I snapped.

"Ah well," he smiled while the jaw remained cruel. "Ah well." He turned and went.

The unpleasant taste left in our mouths by Stein's visit was to worsen a day or two later on the fishing grounds into something more sinister, almost a sailor's superstition that he was a harbinger of evil, through a strange incident. I took Etosha out into deep water at the spot where I judged the plankton, which comes up in the cold currents from the Antarctic, would be when it meets the warmer seas of the tropics. Judging the right place — in that wilderness of waters — is the measure of a skipper's success as a trawlerman, and it may mean everything between prosperity and adversity. Skippers have their favourite (and jealously-guarded) secrets of wind and weather which will bring the fish. One I know worked out his bearings on the fishing grounds by a thermometer trailed in the water astern, at a depth of four fathoms. He claimed it worked, and his holds were certainly never empty,

I had tried in vain to replace the boats smashed in the eruption, but had had to be content with a double-ended substitute which turned out to be a surf-boat. It was certainly quite appropriate to its work in breakers, but not much good for the open sea. The lack of boats was to play a big role in the events which later took their toll of lives.

The net had been out since dawn and Etosha was patrolling the great open South Atlantic with the leisurely gait of a policeman on beat. It was about two bells in the first dog watch. And a policeman would not have seen anything to disturb his thoughts in the calm, easy swell, with the sun dropping towards St. Helena far in the west. We'd had a fair haul of pilchard, stockfish and maasbanker, but not what I was hoping for when we met that elusive marriage-point of plankton and tropic waters.

"All aboard for the yachting trip," said John lazily, yawning and stretching himself on the bridge-rail. He swept the horizon with his eyes. "Not a damn thing in sight — I all alone in a wide, wide sea!'

The immensity and stillness of the coming evening had put all thoughts of Stein away and I would not have wished anything but the present idyll of sea and sky merging, somewhere in the east, into Africa.

"I think we must be a little too far south," I murmured. "The water's probably a bit cold for the fish."

"Lucky little planktons," grinned John. "Nothing to darken the shadow of their one-cell lives. Oh happy, happy plankton! Why not try the thermometer trick?"

"To hell with that," I said, falling into his easy mood. "Why don't we pour some whisky over the stern and make them all drunk, and then we can be sure of catching the drunken fish at the end of the bender."

The helmsman eyed me quizzically, not knowing whether this was the white man's humour or not.

"At this rate we'll be out here for a week," replied John. "Hallo, a stranger coming into the nest."

I followed his pointing finger, but it was a minute or so before I saw the flash of white in the south-west. I think the habit of vigilant, never-ceasing watchfulness, the hall-mark of the submariner, had become an unconscious part of John's life. The sea — it always is the enemy.

I reached for my binoculars and focused them on the white triangle rising above the sea.

"Pirates in these waters," I remarked, still in the easy mood of the last hour of daylight. "A windjammer. Stand by to repel boarders."

John watched the sail rising quickly.

"She's crackin' it on, all right," he said, "and I'll eat my boots if she isn't that old Grand Banks schooner from Luderitz."

I kept my glasses on her.

"She's got a wind that we haven't," I said.

I saw the gleam of flying jib narrow, the sun catching it with a yellowing shaft.

"She's altering course towards us," I observed. "She was lying a couple of points nearer north a moment ago."

"I'd have loved to have seen her in her heyday and not under Hendriks," said John watching the lovely sight of a sailing-ship at sea under full sail. "They say, though, he's not such a bad skipper for a Coloured."

"A throwback to some of his Malay ancestors. They love the sea," I said.

The three masts of the schooner were in full view now, although her hull, dark-painted, was not clear to the eye yet.

"He'll sail the masts right out of the old Pikkewyn if he's not careful," said John. "I hate his guts for those jackyard topsails, though. Why couldn't he leave her clean, as she was? I never thought I'd see her under three jibs, though. That old hull must have a lot of life in it yet to stand ail-that sail."

I smiled at John's fastidious appreciation of sail.

The old Grand Banks schooner was a brave sight. The sails were yellow Bushman-ochre on a ground of grey, for all the world like the rock the old primitives used as their desert canvas. The slant of the sun and the distance concealed her age and neglect. She was a lovely, living thing, young and alive in her glory.

"She's coming our way — look at the bone in her teeth," cried John as a nicker of white creamed under her forefoot. "Eleven knots, if she's moving at all."

The old schooner was coming straight at us. Something in my mind sounded a note of warning — that dead straight course, the alteration when she sighted Etosha: but I dismissed it as fantasy.

The schooner came on and I could see her fine lines clearly. She was leaning over close-hauled, so far that the boat swinging from the davits seemed almost to skim the water spurting down her rail.

At a mile distance she made no alteration of course. Etosha was lying almost at a standstill.

John, too, I could see felt a little uneasy, despite his enthusiastic comments.

"Shouldn't we get out of her way, Geoffrey?" he asked. "Steam gives way to sail, and all that."

"Give her a spoke or two," I told the man at the wheel. Then I thought of the heavy net trailing astern. "No, port fifteen," I corrected, ringing for a slight increase in speed to swing her bows away from the newcomer.

"That should clear us, all right," I said, "even if Hendriks is fool enough to come racing through the water as if we didn't exist."

"She's put her helm down," exclaimed John with a note of anxiety. "What the devil is she playing at?"

The Pikkewyn had allowed her head to fall off slightly and was bearing down straight at us. She was half a mile away.

"Blast!" I exclaimed. "Hard a'port," I snapped. I couldn't ring for more speed because of the heavy net holding us down. Ordinarily, nothing but a warship could have outmanoeuvred Etosha. But now she was wallowing like a hamstrung horse.

The schooner again altered course and came roaring down upon us. I have never been at the receiving end of a torpedo, but the sight of that old ship tearing down upon me, seemingly hell-bent on ramming Etosha, gave me some idea of what it is like to see that inexorable track streaking through the water.

I snatched a megaphone. "Cast off that net," I roared, "quick, damn you! cast it off!"

John stood aghast. We were sending over the side our profits just because some damn fool Malay was showing us how he could sail a schooner.

The crew, aware of their peril, jumped to it. The thick hawsers snaked overboard with a splash — away went the catch to Davy Jones.

"Full ahead," I rang, watching the oncoming doom, travelling like an express train. Then I saw her lean over as she luffed slightly until her lee scuppers were under water. It was clear she did not intend to ram us. But she was coming as close as she dared. I snatched up the megaphone as she came within a biscuit's toss — it was plain she had meant to cut across our stern and foul the trawl. My anger rose as I saw what she was up to. The fool! Had that light wooden hull, even at eleven knots, fouled the heavy hawsers of the net, her bow would have swung in towards the Etosha, and heaven alone knows what would have happened.

I could see Hendriks near the mizzen shrouds, grinning and waving. The figure next to him was Stein.

The stream of invective which had arisen to my lips at Hendrik's deliberate act of provocation was cut short at the sight of Stein. Bracing himself against the angle of Pikkewyn's deck, he cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted, but the words were lost in the wind.

John turned to me furiously. "We'll have Hendriks's scalp for this, Geoffrey — you can't damn well play about with ships like that. Full ahead and after him?"

"No," I rapped out, for I thought I saw part of Stein's game. "No. She's doing a good eleven knots, and it'll take everything Etosha has to catch up with her on that course before night. I think I see what Stein is up to. You remember how he tried to get Etosha's speed out of Mac? He's played a double game here — he knew we'd have to cut the trawl for fear of being rammed and then go tearing after him to ask what the hell. No. I've lost the net and my catch and I'm damned if Stein is going to find out what Etosha can do. We'll let him go."

The schooner was drawing away rapidly.

"But," said John vehemently, "You can't go attempting

to ram another ship on the open sea "

"He's got the perfect defence," I replied shortly. "A ship under sail has the right of way. Anything under steam must give way to it. We were under way. He was perfectly within his rights. We can't do anything about it."

"Wait till I find Hendriks alone ashore," expostulated John, "I'll teach him"

"To sail close to the wind," I remarked grimly, nodding my head after the schooner.

A shout from one of the crew, who had been busy watching the antics of the Pikkewyn, cut across my anger. A couple of cables' lengths away, as if brought up with the wind of the schooner, was one of the most extraordinary sights I have ever seen at sea. The sea boiled as if from a thousand torpedo-tracks, all running parallel. It foamed, it roared, it churned. Ahead, like a convoy escort, and in perfect formation of threes, a dozen or more huge rays rose, splashing back into the sea with breath-taking slaps. A school of porpoises, helplessly bewildered, were being shouldered along the surface, and my glance of amazement caught a fifteen foot shark struggling to force his way down into the seething mass carrying him along.

It was the barracouta, or snoek, as we call them. The cartoonists' butt from the hard days of food rationing merits more than the contempt poured on the snoek then. He is the finest fighter in the seas, more brutal and relentless than a shark. In these waters the snoeking season generally ends in early winter, but snoek is one of the most important catches in South Atlantic waters.

The sight was like one of those gigantic migrations of springbok in the Namaqualand desert when scores of thousands of buck, moving in gigantic phalanxes a dozen miles across, pour across the countryside, oblivious of fences, oblivious of homesteads, of guns, fire and man. They pour on and on, in countless numbers, and once they threw themselves by the thousand into the sea. Why they do it, man still has to learn.

And the barracouta were the same. As far as I could see, the water boiled with them.

"Get your lines overboard, quick." I roared at the crew. Here was the chance to fill our holds in an hour. Lines flew over the side, scarcely baited. Then the first solid phalanx roared under the ship. The helpless porpoises rolled and kicked, trying to get free of the seething mass. The barracouta ignored the lines but some, like those luckless springbok of the giant herds which impale themselves on barbed wire while the others push until the wire breaks, got caught up in the hooks. There was no catch. Again and again the lines went over the side into the apparently unending mass roaring by, but they were ignored as the huge school, intent on some hidden goal, swept by. They crashed oblivious into the ship's side. They jumped and seethed and milled, like nothing I have ever seen. I stopped the screws for fear of fouling them. Then suddenly, after about fifteen minutes, the water ceased to boil and they had passed. But not quite.

Like a destroyer escort astern of a convoy, three giant rays followed.

On the bridge we were too thunderstruck to utter a word. Now the keenness of our disappointment at missing the catch of our lives emerged. It was John who put the thought into words that Stein was the hoodoo.

He jerked his head at the distant schooner.

"Stein's the Jonah," he said. "We'd have got them if he hadn't been around."

Her sails merged into the gathering night.