The Triangle and The Mountain: A Bermuda Triangle Adventure

by Jake von Alpen

  Gone was the leisurely pace that they used to bring the water. They took the straightest way down, hopping from rock to rock and jogging in between where they could. The old man knew every foothold and the youngster watched him carefully. They joined up with the path that led to the col between the two peaks, the same one they had followed earlier. Only, now they went the opposite way, which was down. The vegetation became dense. Large bushes bloomed with red, orange and yellow flowers that looked like balls of fluff with colourful pins stuck into them. Sunbirds, both large and small, flitted between the flowers and chirped happy songs.

  The beauty was not lost on the runners. “These flowers,” said the old man, who was not breathing hard at all, “are more beautiful here on this mountain than anywhere else in the world.”

  “I saw these others when it was winter,” said his companion, who was breathing hard. He pointed to a bush with broad blue-green leaves. “I could not get my arms around a flower.”

  “That is why the Dutch come here all the way from Cape Town. You don’t find flowers like this on Sea Mountain. He used the word Hoeri Quagga, which was the how the KhoiKhoi called Table Mountain. “They have to come and pick them from our mountain. They even come for the red ones.”

  They turned their heads around. From this vantage point, three quarters down the mountain, one had a view of the red flowers on ledges high and unreachable. As they both knew, in spring time it was even more impressive, with flowers often spilling like waterfalls down the cracks in the rocks.

  “There are two kinds,” said the old one. The young one knew that but then he had to listen to a lot of things that he had heard before or was aware of anyway.

  “You get the one that clings to the rocks wherever there is a bit of moisture, without needing a lot of soil. That one does not want to grow at the houses of the Dutch when they take them down. Then there is another one with bulbs that grow best wherever it finds a lot of soil on the ledges, especially in dung from the rock hyraxes. That one grows at the houses of the Dutch. How do I know this? I have been talking to the young Goringhaikona that they bring here to climb up where even a baboon will not go. I can show you a few places here where one can still see their bones.”

  “I am Goringhaikona,” said the young one.

  “Yes you are,” said the old one. “You were named after a famous king of the Goringhaikona, Hadah.”

  “Tell me about him,” said Hadah.

  Just then the master lifted his hand and turned into the bushes at right angles. At Hadah’s enquiring look he waved him down impatiently and motioned to his ear. Hadah listened. He could hear the sunbirds and the redwing starlings and the wind in the bushes. Then he heard something else. There was the sound of heavy breathing and footfalls. Somebody, more than one person in fact, was coming up the steep path and they were in a hurry. They were running. Master and learner positioned themselves so that they had a glimpse of the path through the leaves. Three large black men ran by.

  “Runaway slaves,” said the master.

  Hadah wanted to continue on the way down for the hunt but the master snatched his arm in that grip that was so surprisingly hard.

  “No,” he said. “Somebody will be following, maybe soldiers. If they see us they might shoot. How many of our people nowadays are shot for no reason at all? ”

  “But we can hide when we see them,” said Hadah.

  “Not if they have some of our people as trackers. They will pick up our presence. In fact, they might lead the Dutch to our home. We have to get away from this side of the mountain until things are quiet again.”

  They backtracked to their cave, lifted a heavy stone to unearth the rabbit from its cool hiding place, loaded up with the water and set off on the path. Halfway to the col connecting the two peaks they came across the three runaways.

  “Where are you going?” asked the master, using Kitchen Dutch, which he spoke fluently.

  “We are running away,” said the one in front. They looked nervous, which was understandable. Running away was punishable by death. Perhaps they also knew that the KhoiKhoi might carry poisoned arrows in their quivers. You never knew when you met them in their traditional dress.

  “Why are you going this way?” asked the master.

  “We heard that there is a cave down this path where we can hide.”

  “Too many people know about this cave. If you are followed they will corner you there and catch you.”

  “The Dutch will not know.”

  “That could be true but then the Dutch like to use our people to track. They will follow you there. It will be better for you to continue on the other side of the neck. Follow the path that goes down. Turn right at the bottom. Don’t stop. Don’t use the cave down there either. Just follow the path and go home.”

  “Where is home?”

  “That way.” He pointed north. “’Go on until you meet up with our people and ask them the way. Don’t stop. If you follow the path it will lead you to a break in the Great Mountains, at the place where this mountain ends.”

  The two KhoiKhoi watched the runaways go and then turned south. They gingerly picked their way over the rocks. The hot side of the mountain was a totally different prospect from the other side. It was due to the fact that the mountain was just not high enough. The cloud-carrying north-westerly winds came directly from the Atlantic Ocean, screamed through the craggy peaks with a noise that the two would have equalled to hundreds of jet engines had they lived three centuries later, and stopped dead against the massif of the Great Mountains on the other side of the valley to the north. For that reason it rained a lot on the lee side of their mountain, strange as it may seem and almost nothing along the windward ridge. It had sparse vegetation that the master had only seen in the desert, many days’ travel to the north, where the black slaves were headed. He pointed out plants with edible tubers that grew only here and they dug up several to go with their evening meal.

  “Watch out for the puff adders,” he warned. “And tonight we need to watch where we put our feet. The scorpions on this side of the mountain can sting so bad they will hear you scream all the way to Stellenbosch.” They looked down on the Dutch settlement. It was a full day’s travel way, but from on top here it looked so close that you had the feeling that you could spray your water on it when you peed.

  ***

  Grant brought down the spinnaker not only because he needed to get away from his fellow traveller’s questioning. He reckoned that it would be prudent to reduce speed for the night, given the lower visibility. He would be able to pick up other vessels easily enough but logs and half-submerged ship’s containers were another story. You did not want to hit one of these at full speed. He hove to and let the sheets fly. Once again it was tough going, doing it all by himself. As he laboured he realised that it was very ambitious putting the big sheet up in the first place, with just the two of them on board. And it was not as if his day was over. There was no change in Madeleine’s condition and he reckoned with almost complete certainty that he would be alone on the watch for a minimum of twelve hours. He fervently hoped that his only crew member would somehow be fit enough in the morning to at least keep a lookout. He would really have liked to put in four hours of sleep once the sun was up.

  He turned the wheel and watched the sails fill again with the wind. In order to increase the chances of Madeleine recovering during the night, he had decided on a slightly new course and pointed the bow northwards. That way they were not crossing the large rollers at an angle. It was a gentle lift and fall and he expected the slower speed of six knots to help as well.

  He marvelled at the steadiness of the trade wind. No wonder people liked to come sail in these waters. If the wind stayed like that, he reckoned that they could see a seven day journey being reduced to five or even four.

  He realised that Madeleine had disappeared again without him noticing. He could not keep himself from taking a quick look behind the yacht for a blonde head bobbing in the waves. There was no
ne. For a moment he considered whether he should set out a trailing rope with a buoy and its own beacon at the end. After a particularly robust episode of horseplay on their way across the South Atlantic they let it out and never pulled it in again until they had reached St Martin. He decided against it. There was just the two of them and one tended to stay below while the other knew his way around on deck. She took his admonitions about the safety harness very seriously anyway. At least so far.

  It was dinner time. Madeleine was nowhere to be seen when he stepped into the galley. The gourmet chef was missing on her first assignment. Yesterday, when he was looking forward to this trip, including well-prepared meals by a real cook, he had not reckoned with seasickness.

  He decided on a pre-packed beef curry and nothing for her. She could help herself when she felt like it. He warmed up the curry in a saucepan on the gas cooker and took the whole pan out with him into the cockpit. Eating straight from the saucepan meant that there was one less plate to wash. Only two things, in fact, because he ate it all with a single spoon. This was perfectly in line with the unofficial meal code that prevailed on the trip up to St Martin. For dessert he stood up and took a beer from the fridge. It was delicious. The second one no less so. It was simply remarkable how much nicer a good quality beer tasted after a day of exposure to sun and sea. Especially if it was fully deserved. It happened to be the perfect sundowner. Yes, he considered the general rule about how much alcohol the person on the watch was allowed to consume, which was nothing at all. But the beers were there and somebody had to drink them.

  The short dusk of the lower latitudes was soon a thing of the past. A gibbous moon rose and reflected off the glassy swells. He looked up at the stars. They were so amazingly bright out here, where there were no lights from a city to interfere with the darkness. He realised that he was looking for the stars of the southern hemisphere. Where was the Southern Cross? His searching eyes found it on the horizon. And then where was the Pole Star? This was the northern hemisphere after all. It did not take him a long time to locate it. For somebody from the southern hemisphere this first discovery was a special moment, almost magical. It was supposed to be on the other side of the main mast for the course that they were taking and close to the Big Dipper, which he also identified. He leaned out to the starboard side and found it hugging the horizon. Every now and then a gentle sea pushed the yacht off course and he caught a better glimpse of it. Sailing by the Pole Star. How far back have people been doing exactly this? He felt a close connection to generations of seafarers from the earliest dawn of man. What did the vessels look like that these people used right at the beginning? He tried to remember from TV programmes what a Viking boat looked like. He looked out over the shimmering seascape and saw a wooden vessel with a high bow and high stern, about the same length as his own, the moonlight reflecting off a square sail, running before the breeze.

  He dreaded the night for its long hours of boredom but it turned out not to be so bad. Mostly, it was because of the phosphorous effects. On their journey across the Atlantic he could remember perhaps two nights that were this spectacular. The yacht left a sparkling trail so bright that it competed with the night sky. He could be sailing amongst the stars for all that brightness. Also, all around him the sea came to life. On the port side fiery loops approached and threatened the boat. Were these dolphins? Probably. On the starboard side another set of pyrotechnics developed, round and round. These were big fishes chasing smaller fishes, the experienced hands explained. He looked over the side into the water and could see an occasional comet with a tail of sparks pass in the depths several metres below. Probably a shark. Or another dolphin. He looked for tell-tale sparks of fishes that were following the yacht like they had done in the doldrums of the Southern Atlantic but saw nothing. They were going just a bit too fast for that.

  The effects of the phosphorescence all around gave him a sense of the wildlife in the sea. It was far from a watery salt desert but a complete world in itself. As a sailor he travelled on the intersect, where one world met another. He thought about dipping into the world on which they sailed. He had several fishing rods stashed in their covers and he knew where to find the lures in the tackle box. He enjoyed the spectacle around him so much, however, that he decided against it. Rather, he’d try to put some of his observations down in the log. He got hold of the notebook that he used, recorded their departure time and the conditions, which were most favourable and thought about something memorable to say that would remind him of this balmy night. It took him several hours to pen a few sentences. No, he was not a writer.

  At about twelve o’ clock he was tired of writing and walked up to the pulpit for a better look ahead. There was only moonlit sea. He wondered what John, his former skipper, would have said if he saw him sailing in the middle of the night with the sea directly to starboard. He was always the one who warned against the surprise wave. “You don’t know what has happened behind the horizon,” he liked to say. “Sometimes a wave just climbs on top of another and it will throw you on your beam ends before you know it.” He must have had a few experiences like that in the Atlantic before, though not on their trip together. It was a pretty uneventful journey during which nothing hit them but normal sized seas and a steady south-easterly trade wind.

  There was plenty sea-craft that John had imparted to him while he was working on his own skipper’s licence. The man was his mentor in a very real sense. The problem was that he was now completely shocked in this guy. If he was untrustworthy, what about his teaching? Perhaps he was just lucky to have passed his final examination for the skipper’s licence two months after arriving at St Martin. What the heck. He was just happy to be out here, in charge of his own boat for the very first time.

  Thinking about his former skipper had prompted a question, however, which did not quite go away. He surveyed the rollers coming in from the east with renewed interest. The yacht went up and down in a sleepy rhythm as they passed below. Surely nothing bad could come from that direction. To make sure, he made his way to the navigation station and downloaded a fax with the latest weather forecast onto a laptop. Nothing but mildness for now, with a steady wind from the east, varying from south-east to east. The trade winds ruled. In his favour. He decided to leave the course as it was.

  His thoughts refused to stay idle but returned to the thing that burned him most over the last number of weeks: the thing that these three guys had done. Which one of the three had the imagination to come up with such a scheme?

  With a grin he remembered the reactions of the other yachtsmen and their crews at the marina in Simpson’s Bay when he left. They had observed him prepare for the journey. He made no secret of the fact that he was leaving and where he was going. Many of them saw him throw off his mooring lines and motor out towards the exit for the last time. There were some frowns amongst his drinking pals and he could only guess what they were all thinking. He never told anyone that he had figured out the truth, which was that there was no such thing as the ‘Curse of the Mountain’. It was simply his three paid crew trying to scare him into selling his yacht. If he was not a sportsman with a code he would have exposed them as frauds. But who wanted his boat so bad? What was he prepared to pay? And what was the buyer prepared to pay in ‘commission’ to his three crew members? Those were the questions he still had no answers for. What he was quite sure about was that he rejected with complete contempt the notion that there could be any other explanation to the so-called ‘Curse of the Mountain’. There was not more truth to that than to the Triangle thing.

  In the early hours of the morning Grant was distracted from his creative attempts slash ruminations when there was a thumping noise in the sails and then a harder one as something hit the deck. Immediately, he grabbed the rubber bucket that they kept for just this purpose - and bailing, should it ever be required. He scrambled forward with the flashlight in one hand and the bucket in the other. The flying fish was flopping about on the deck, trying to fly off but unable to laun
ch itself without the water to give it speed.

  “In you go,” said Grant and scooped the fish into the bucket. It look disappointingly small in the light of the torch. A few minutes later the ritual repeated itself. Eventually he had four flying fishes for breakfast, all small. Perhaps they just did not grow big in the Northern Atlantic.

  It was hardest in the hour just before dawn, as it always is. He longed for his bunk. He walked around on deck and decided to put a reef in the mainsail to slow things down just a tad more for when he was sleeping, which, by his reckoning was forty minutes away. Fine, it might mean that they arrive at their destination one day later but they were not in a race.

  Day two announced itself in a golden glow that reflected from the wavelets around the yacht. Just before sunrise Grant took his grimy coffee mug into the galley and started preparing the fishes. All four fitted into the pan.

  Maybe it was the sizzling noise that attracted her but Madeleine appeared. Grant was pleased. Firstly, he now knew for sure that she was still on the boat. Secondly, she appeared to be in better shape. There was life in the hazel eyes that was not there the last time he saw her.

  “You look much better this morning,” he said, hoping against hope that he was right.

  “Oh, I do,” she said and lifted her arm. “This wrist band works wonders.”

  Grant figured that keeping the gentle swells at right angles to the boat had more to do with it but he kept his opinion to himself.

  “Are you hungry?” he asked.

  “Absolutely. What are you frying?”

  “Flying fishes. Fresh from last night. I’ll show you how to catch them.”

  “I’ve never had flying fish before.”

  “They are nice. Where is your plate?”

  They had the fish and then decided on a full English breakfast with eggs, bacon and croissants, which they had with butter imported from the Netherlands and preserves made from a mix of French berries. For her size, Madeleine had quite an appetite.