I changed the subject abruptly: 'You said you laid down beacons along the shore years ago. I don't see one.'
There they are!' His eyesight was superb. Look! To the right above the landing-place. There are another two directly opposite the Praying Mantis on the high-water mark. And another on the seaward edge of North Head — see?'
I followed with my binoculars. 'Do you know that every one is between thirty and forty yards from where you originally sited them?'
'According to your instrument. Ground reflection errors, maybe.' He threw my jargon at me.
'No. Minnaar and I took ten or twelve readings on successive carrier frequencies. I checked the carrier shift and Minnaar followed all the fine A-pattern readings as we went along. I concede you an error of not more than two or three inches.'
He shrugged. 'Uplift of the land relative to the sea, eh? That would also account for the way the sandbars formed and trapped the old warship. It must have been pretty quick though.'
'Volcanic upheaval,'I suggested.
'No. There's not a sign of lava…'
If Shelborne knew about what we call continental lift — land tilting and sea receding — then he knew a great deal else. He wasn't a simple old prospector, I reminded myself: he'd been with Caldwell on the Oyster Line…
I played it down. 'There's a hell of a layer of sand, maybe forty or fifty feet, and there may be anything underneath it. It would require thorough investigation.'
He smiled. 'You didn't come to Mercury to talk like Stratum.'
'There's such a thing as scientific proof…'
He was staring fixedly in the direction of the old beacons. He said abstractedly, 'We'll relocate the beacons, then, on the basis of space-age equipment.'
He paused; another sandslide tobogganed soundlessly into the sea.
I said nervously. 'Those slides… What happens when…?'
I did not finish the sentence. Shelborne's gaze was riveted on the shoreline dunes where they lapped the foot of the cliff.
I saw nothing. 'What's going on?'
'Quick!' he rapped. 'Quick! Get this thing packed! Come on!' Without waiting for me, he spun the wingnut holding the instrument to the tripod and thrust it into my hands. 'Get it into the case!'
'There's nothing…'
Shelborne swept up the batteries and heavy instrument case and started off not for our landing-beach, but towards the dunes inland. I trailed awkwardly with the tripod and by the time he had reached the bottom of the cliff, I was fifty yards behind. The rough descent he had made loaded with equipment seemed to make no impression on him; his breathing was scarcely more than normal when I reached him.
'Across there, towards that rise.'
I hadn't enough breath to question him. The whole place looked exactly the same as on our way up. Our new course seemed purposeless, into the desert away from the flatboom, away from Sudhuk. Shelborne plunged into sand up to the ankles of his moccasins, and fell into a peculiar shuffling gait without lifting his feet; but he travelled fast. I'd only seen it once before; the old half-Bushman guide who had taken me up Mount Bruk-karos to the American solar ray station had used it. It is the hallmark of the desert wanderer, the 'sand-trapper' or sandshuffler as they call him in the Namib. After less than a mile into the high seas of sand, Shelborne stopped and waited for me.
'Look!'
The crest of the next dune was alive with tiny creatures, jumping, rolling like balls in eddies of wind, leaping, cavorting.
'Beetles!' I panted. 'Beetles! God's truth, I haven't been dragged all this way to see beetles!'
Shelborne did not answer, but shuffled to where the beetles were thickest, cartwheeling about in the air almost as if they could fly properly. I stumbled in his wake, trying to get my breath. He knelt, took a beetle between his fingers, and held it up to me. It was transparent: I could see right into it, like one of those plastic anatomical models.
He was excited. I had not seen him like this before.
'Look at those sandshoes! If I had them, I'd be able to go up and down dunes like a bat out of hell!'
Tiny snow-shoe-like bristles and brushes spun round and round.
He laughed in a relaxed way. 'You know, Tregard, I once had ideas of modelling a pair of my own shoes on these. Of course, it didn't work…' Then his mood changed and he said, 'It'll be one hell of a storm.'
I still had hardly enough breath to comment on this non sequitui. I gasped. 'Storm? What the devil have beetles to do with a storm?'
The migrating legions rolled, jumped and spun, swarming by the ten thousand.
Shelbome was not disconcerted. 'It's a sure sign. A mass migration heralds a storm. But this is a surer pointer still.' He held up his captive. This section of his body becomes diaphanous in moist air — it's highly hygroscopic, it absorbs water from the air. No man-made instrument if half as sensitive.'
I found some breath. 'Did you pick that up from Caldwell too?'
I can see him yet, kneeling with the beetle in his fingers while the rest of the host rolled by. He looked up sharply at Caldwell's name, but his animation remained. 'I learned everything about the desert from Caldwell.' He freed his beetle, watching it thoughtfully as it scrambled away at high speed. 'You really think you'll strike it lucky, you and Rhennin and the Mazy Zed?.'
'Yes. I'm backing my hunch. That's why I'm here.'
'You mean, at Mercury?'
'Generally, Mercury — in particular, perhaps, Strandloper's Water.'
'Tregard,' he said quietly. 'I've spent a whole lifetime looking for something. You're trying to take a short cut. It doesn't work, you know. The Namib sees to that.'
'You say you have spent your whole life looking for a diamond field under the sea?'
His voice dropped, became mysterious. It was almost as if he was talking to himself when he replied. 'No. What I told the court about dropping a few grabs and, dredges was quite true. That was about the extent of my sea-bed prospecting. Our search — Caldwell's and mine — was for… something really…'
He fumbled, choosing his words, but he couldn't prevent that mysterious private stratum of his thoughts breaking through, like a gold reef in a quartz hillside.
'I heard you talk a lot of bull about the Hottentots' Paradise.'
He smiled faintly. 'I agree, it was bull. But you mustn't forget how different our orientation was in those early days. The next strike might have been the Oyster Line, Oranjemund, Kleinzee…'
'You are listing only Caldwell's failures.'
'We were like the early explorers who sailed beyond the horizon, not knowing whether or not they would fall over the edge of the world.'
'The Atacama, the Takla Makan, what about them? You've got two images in your mental rangefinder; they're irreconcilable, you can't match them up together.'
The concept remains basic, it is only the physical aspects which differ.'
'Why didn't you sell that night aboard the Gquma? You're on to something big, aren't you?'
He came close so that I was aware of that dry-rot odour which I recognized now as coming from the dunes.
'I have told you, you can't take a short cut to it.'
'What is it?'
'Caldwell
'I'd rather talk about Shelborne.'
'What if the Oyster Line itself were only an adjunct, a supplement as it were to…'
'What do you mean?'
'I tried to tell the Judge, it isn't only the diamonds, although they are woven into the fabric of the thing. That is why…'
That is why you killed Caldwell.'
For a moment the green flame flickered in his long eyes, but almost at once there was a pity, a compassion. I knew then that I had missed my trick as he gathered his cards, as it were, from the table. The confession was over.
'You must beat out to sea before the storm strikes. You must follow my directions.'
I was not interested in a hurricane at the moment. I tried to drag the conversation back. 'Shelborne, it is not too late for that dea
l: your knowledge, your secret, if you like…'
He laughed softly. There was a ruthless note too, as I was later to remember. 'Confessions are always dangerous, are they not?'
'In melodramas they may lead to murder.'
'The storm,' he said urgently. 'You must get to your ship.'
'Blast the storm and blast the beetles!'
'You wouldn't last a day in the Namib, Tregard. The storms here hit like a piston: one moment it's peaceful like now and the next it's a howling mass of solid sand so you can't see your hand in front of your face and the sea is breaking over Sudhuk.'
'You can't tell all that from one beetle.'
'We're getting out of here… fast. Dump that tripod if it worries you. Or give it to me.' He snatched it up as if the extra weight were nothing and struck off towards the landing-beach. Soon he had gained a quarter of a mile. By the time I reached the boat, breathless, she was riding at the oars and Shelborne's eyes were on the south-west. The wrecks stood like ghouls on the eroded shore. We swung alongside the Praying Mantis.
'Where's your barometer… in the wheelhouse?'
I nodded and he grabbed his sealskin coat and jumped aboard. Only later was I to ask myself why he wanted to see the barometer when he was so sure that his beetles were more sensitive than any man-made instruments, and why he took his coat, which had lain in the boat while we had been ashore.
Minnaar called out in surprise. 'What's up? Why did you cut off the test? What's eating that old bastard?'
'We made a snap expedition into the desert. Saw some fascinating beetles. Going to be a God-almighty storm, the beetles say.'
'Well, bugger me!' exclaimed the big South African. He looked at the clear sky. 'Plenty of storm around!'
Here on the deck of the ship the whole thing seemed more ridiculous still. Shelborne came racing down the ladder from the bridge.
'Use your full revolutions,' he snapped. 'Steer due north until North Head bears 50 degrees. Got that? — North Head must bear 50 degrees…'
My voice was ironical. 'What does the barometer say?'
'High and steady now, but in a moment it will drop like a gannet. The beetles…'
'For crying in a bucket!' exclaimed Minnaar. 'Are you trying to get rid of us?'
He swung his head in his odd way from Minnaar to me. 'Good luck!' He said to Minnaar, who was grinning. 'I showed Captain Tregard the significance of the hygroscopic membranes on the beetles. They mean a storm, a big storm.'
Caldwell's goodbye rose spontaneously to my lips as Shelborne started to leave: '"Good luck to you, Shelley, perhaps my luck will change now."'
Had I struck him the reaction could not have been more sudden. His face blanched. He reached out in a reflex action and grabbed my shirt front. Then he dropped his hand slowly and I stood staring into the green depths of those strange eyes.
'I'm sorry you said that,' he said softly, 'I'm really very sorry. Like ex-champs, you never come back in the Namib.'
'Is that a threat, Shelborne?'
He clasped the heavy sealskin jacket close. 'Mary Caldwell…' he began, then checked himself. He stood for a moment absorbed in his thoughts. Then he said formally, Thank you for being kind to Mary Caldwell. It'll be pretty rough. I'm sorry.'
He spun on his heel and jumped into the waiting boat, which shot away towards Mercury.
Minnaar said, That's what being alone on a dump
like Mercury does. Nuts. Staring, raving nuts! Beetles and storms. Ag, hell!'
I shrugged it off. 'We'll work on the slave stations again this afternoon. Maybe I'll get the Sudhuk one rigged.'
My eyes went to the towering cliff.
There was no land.
A grey cloud raced towards the Praying Mantis, hanging like a wave breaking and, although the crest curled, it did not smoke.
Sand!
Namib sand!
It obliterated Sudhuk, the wrecks, the line of breaking surf, the weird landing-beach and the desert beyond. Shelborne was right.
'Minnaar!' I yelled. 'Minnaar! Get forrad with some men and cut the cables while I get her under way…!'
I jumped for the bridge. With the swift oblivion of an anaesthetic mask, the sand gagged my shouted orders. I could not see the bridge, let alone the bows. A moment before I had been breathing clean salt air; now I was spitting a semi-solid mixture which choked and blinded me as I tore up the rungs to the wheel. It whirled and blanketed the deck, the bridge, the men rushing to the anchors. The sand probed and needled its way into every crack, every orifice, every crevice; it was already inside my shirt, clinging where I had sweated. A scorpion scuttled under my feet, blown from the land. North Head, my key bearing, was still visible. Shelborne's instructions thrummed in my brain: I must steer for that, steer the way he had said. The deck leaned, and above me the ship's siren sobbed impotently against the howl of the wind. I found the terrified Coloured helmsman hanging on to its cord when I fought my way in, cut, stung, half-blinded. The bridge door hung ajar. I tried to ram it closed, but the cant of the vessel and the savage wind smashed it out of my hands, ripping off a fingernail.
I seized the speaking-tube to the engine-room. 'Sven! In the name of all that's holy, 300 revs! Everything you've got!'
'Diesels are cold, Skipper,' came his anxious reply. 'I didn't think we'd need them again so soon after the trip…'
Minnaar burst in. 'Cut? Shall I cut the cables?'
'No! Belay there! The diesels are cold. Sven wants ten minutes…'
'She'll drag long before that!' He snatched the voice-pipe from me. 'Sven, give them the gun, for Christ's sake! If you saw what's up aloft…'
The wind struck another hammer-blow. The whaler wheeled away stern-on, and then came up with a sickening thump forrad.
'One anchor cable gone!' Minnaar shouted above the roar of the wind. 'The other…'
He never finished. The whaler sprang free as the second cable parted. She had been secured facing the south-west and now she plunged backwards into the maelstrom. The water poured ankle deep on to the bridge. The all-pervading sand changed the thrashed-white spume a dirty grey. I pulled myself from the gratings where I had been thrown. The voice pipe whistled for attention. I grabbed it. Minnaar lay half-stunned in a corner.
'You boys play roller-coasters?' asked Sven in his broken English. 'That was one hell of a dive arse-ways. Revs in two minutes.'
'Minnaar!' I propped him up. 'Pull yourself together, man! She'll be under power in a minute! Take that wheel!'
The spokes spun madly as the whaler yawed again, completely out of control.
Minnaar dragged himself up. 'Where's her bitching head?' he mouthed, wiping a runnel of blood from his mouth. The bitch! The flippin' bitch! What did that bastard Shelborne say…?'
'Due north. Get her due north, for God's sake!'
I rang down to Sven. 'Half astern! Gently, man, gently, or she'll never come round!'
'Due north, aye aye sir!' Minnaar shook the cobwebs out of his brain. Bows to wind, the whaler's motion eased momentarily. The sand, now wet with flying spray, stung more but it was easier to breathe. I could not see any farther than the bridge dodgers.
'Port twenty! Speed for 250 revolutions!'
Her head fell off and she lay beam-on to the sea until the gratings under my feet were awash. She was capsizing, being swamped. But she hadn't ridden the Roaring Forties for nothing, my old whaler. Though she was dying, she was dying very hard. But I knew she would never come up.
I went through the motion of giving orders. 'Hard aport! Full ahead!'
It may have been the torque action of the single screw or a freak shift of the wind which did bring her head up. She rolled upright Wearily, hundreds of tons of water pouring off her upperworks, tearing away the gunnels like rotten paper and then — like an off-course missile — she jinked downwind.
'Due north! Due north!'
Minnaar understood. The compass needle steadied. Thank God! I breathed. Shelborne's directions would save us yet. There w
as a loom of rock way ahead. North Head!
The fact penetrated even Minnaar's fogged senses. 'We can't have got so far so soon…' He peered into the binnacle. 'Shoot that bearing now, Skipper, if there is any bladdy thing left to shoot it with.'
'Steer three-one-zero. Steady as she goes.'
Minnaar peered uncertainly at the compass needle. 'This flaming thing looks sick, it's coming round so slowly…'
It was the last time Jan Minnaar looked at a compass rose. The ship leapt high into the air. The steel keel and plating screamed as she planed, in full career, across the reef. The old whaler stopped, pivoted amidships across a spine of rock, and her guts spilled into the white water. Then she broke off slightly after the foremast, leaving the bridge as a square, sawn-off section. The mast shuddered for a moment before pitching overboard with the forepeak and tophamper. I think most of the crew were drowned at that moment. The bridge tilted stern-ways under my feet. The rudder disintegrated as it smashed on to the reef. The wheel mule-kicked: Minnaar screamed. A spoke of the wheel had caught his lower jaw, — it gibbered agape, a bloodied mass of dismembered sinews and broken teeth. Another lurch sent him through the doorway and over the side. The shattered stern gave another jerk. I had to jump overboard on to the reef before the stern took me to the bottom with it. The rock was black under me. The ship canted, and I threw myself headlong. The rock tore at me, and the sea was cold, cold. The Benguela current, I told myself between consciousness and unconsciousness, it's been cold for a million years since it closed the coast and brought its tribute of ice-white diamonds. A million years, and it's still cold.
I saw some big rocks on my right and beyond a kind of flat plateau. Between ridges and gullies the water raced and creamed. While I kept to the ridges I might be safe. I inched forward on my hands and knees, ripping my trousers on the barnacles. I found one rock, a peardrop-shaped thing about the size of a tennis-court. Two others, each the size of a cottage, acted as bastions on my left against what I feared — the wrench and grip of the ravaging sea. The smaller of these two was at the base of the plateau. I could see a sort of inlet in this. Slipping, half-in and half-out the water, I dragged myself into it. For the first time — in hours it seemed — I was able to breathe. The hole was fashioned like a corkscrew stair, not dry, but at least sheltered. I crawled cautiously forward. It was dark, like twilight. I manoeuvred myself to the top of the rocky stair, afraid that the demented wind might pluck me away when my head emerged. It led to a platform half an acre in extent, high and safe. A blinder reef! That's what they call them on the Sperrgebiet — mostly half awash but with some shelter, they are favourites of birds and seals. This was the kind of spot on which the two educated drunks sweated it out on Hollam's Bird Island.
The River of Diamonds Page 10