The Triangle and The Mountain: A Bermuda Triangle Adventure

by Jake von Alpen

  CHAPTER THREE

  When Grant stumbled into the cockpit after a four and a half hour sleep he found Madeleine in good spirits and apparently in charge of things. She had the headphones of her iPad on her ears and bounced around with the rhythm. She gave him a silent salute. Disgusted with such excessive display of energy he withdrew for a wash and a shave.

  Armed with a mug of coffee he entered the cockpit again after twenty minutes.

  “Anything happened?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” she said. “Just the sea and the sky. The sails did not flap long, just a little bit a few times but the boat corrected itself and we moved on. And there was a ship.”

  “A ship?”

  “Yes, a large freighter. It sailed very fast in the same direction that we do.”

  “Why didn’t you call me?”

  “I did not see it. One minute there was nothing behind us and then it was there out of the blue.”

  “Yes, can you see how fast things can happen?”

  “Well, nothing happened. They hooted and I waved. They whole crew stood on the railing and waved as they passed.”

  “I have not heard a thing. Why did you not wake me up?”

  “I thought I’d let you sleep.”

  “So you gave them a show from the cockpit?”

  “I did nothing, just waved back.”

  He wondered about that. She was way too perky. The whole crew on the railing? She gave herself away there.

  “And why is it that you are not wearing your harness?”

  “I did not think it was necessary. I feel safe without it and you have not been wearing yours at all.”

  “Hmm, you must not take safety so casually. See, I’m now forced to let out this safety rope.”

  He switched on the light of the beacon on the buoy and dropped the contraption overboard. The coiled line snaked off the deck.

  “Do you see this? It’s for your safety. If you fall overboard you swim for the rope. At night you look for the LED flashing on top of the buoy. And you shout.”

  “If you could not hear a ship’s hooter how will you hear me shout?”

  “It’s a ship’s horn and maybe I am not asleep. So you shout. In fact, we have a whistle around here. Let me find it and put it around your neck.”

  “I’m not wearing a whistle!”

  He gave her a good, hard look. It was a struggle not to show his irritation. But she was his only crew.

  “Then don’t fall overboard,” he said.

  “Am I off duty now?”

  “Yes, you are off for four hours.”

  “So we do four hours on and four hours off?”

  “That’s the way it goes on a yacht. Before you go, though, there are one or two things. For instance, how long have those clouds been on the horizon?”

  “Those little ones?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, actually, I have not noticed them before now.”

  “OK, I’ll keep an eye on them. They have those flat bottoms that come with storm clouds. For your information, they are called Nimbus clouds.”

  “I know that word,” said Madeleine. It’s from Harry Potter.”

  “I got it from my skipper’s course,” said Grant tersely. “Also, it’s time you get a steering lesson. Are you ready for it?”

  “Sure. Where do we start?”

  “Sailing one point one.”

  “Which is?”

  “Read the compass. Do you see it?”

  “I could be wrong but I think this is it.”

  “Yes, it is pretty big and quite obvious, since it is right in front of you. Do you see what course we are sailing?”

  “Yes, it is to the side of north.”

  “We are actually sailing exactly northward, but we are allowing for the deviation. Do you see this arrow here? This is our course. Look to the bow of the boat and you should see it all line up.”

  “OK, I do.”

  “Good, stand here. I’ve taken the autopilot off and the wheel is live. Put your hands on it. Can you feel the rudder?”

  “Yes, I can.”

  “Now change to north-east.”

  “Why? I don’t want to miss Bermuda. I know we have to go north to get there.”

  “We are going to Bermuda, but I’m sure we are off course.”

  “How can that be?”

  “It’s the drift caused by these big swells. I’ll show you on the GPS screen. See here,” said Grant as he pressed the buttons on the large viewer. “That is Bermuda and this line is us. If we continue the way we are, we are going to miss the islands to the west.”

  “That won’t be a good thing,” said Madeleine. She traced an imaginary line on the screen with her free hand, connecting Bermuda in the north to Puerto Rico in the south. “If we go on like this we are going to get right inside the Triangle. We are very close to it.”

  “Don’t tell me you believe in that stuff!” said Grant sharply.

  “Not at all,” she said, backing off. “There is no need to explode on me. But if you live here you grow up with all the stories. It’s not a matter of believing. It’s just interesting.”

  “Well, let’s concentrate on the sailing. I’m going to shake out all the reefs from the mainsail and then I’m going to roll out the foresail and mizzen to their maximum.”

  “What do I do?”

  “You just hold your course.”

  Grant returned to the cockpit after ten minutes and threw a critical glance on the compass.

  “Is it good?” asked Madeleine.

  “It’s ok. Now sailing one point two. Keep the wind in the sails. Apart from looking ahead of you, you always watch the sails, not only the compass as you have been doing.”

  “If I lose wind, how do I get it back?”

  “You turn in the direction that the wind blows.”

  “Going along with the wind?”

  “Yes.”

  “For how long?”

  “Until the sails fill again. Once you are satisfied that it has happened, you return to your original course.”

  “Is that all?”

  “No. Here comes sailing one point three. Don’t get blown over. There is an example right in front of you. Unless this wind takes those clouds out of our path, we are going to have some squalls hitting us. When that happens the wind can vary a lot. If a surprise squall hits us you need to steer for a moment or two into the wind to keep it from pushing the yacht down. Watch the ocean. You can see where the wind creates cat’s paws the surface. That will tell you where a sudden squall comes from.”

  “Which is kind of opposite of what you just told me.”

  “Exactly.”

  “So the difference is the strength of the wind.”

  “I’m impressed. If you learn so fast, why have you not been sailing before? I’d imagine that all of you who grew up on the islands would be on the water from kindergarten.”

  “My parents forbade me. My father’s brother died out at sea and because of that we were all forbidden to start sailing.”

  “Were they not upset then that you worked on a yacht off St Martin?”

  “No. I sent them pictures of it and they said it was big enough to be safe.”

  “So your parents don’t know that you are here with me?”

  “No. I want to surprise them before Thanksgiving so I can help with the preparations.”

  “Won’t they miss you if they cannot contact you for ten days?”

  “I’m Skyping and this is the thing I wanted to ask you. I cannot figure out the password for the LAN. I’ve tried the boat’s name, I’ve tried your name but nothing works.”

  “It’s one-two-three-four,” Grant said. “I should have changed it for something else but I never did. If you manage to Skype, good luck. The internet is slow because it goes over satellite. It’s better just to email. Just a thought though. Won’t your parents know that you Skyped from a boat?”

  “If I Skyped from your office it’ll be fine. It looks nothing like
a boat.”

  “There is proprietary information on my screens.”

  “I won’t show your screens and its lunchtime,” said Madeleine. “Could I make you anything now in the galley?”

  “Sure,” he said. “Let’s use up the fresh things first. We have some baguettes that will be hard soon. How about you put on it whatever you fancy?”

  He leaned back and spread his arms wide. The good feeling of the previous night was returning. What helped was that there were promising signs that his crew was staying and that she was not going to give him any major trouble.

  The baguettes, when they came, were a bit overweight in the greens but tasty anyway. She put pre-cut pieces on a plate and had not forgotten the bottle of champagne, so they could celebrate his coup with Tencent. He popped the cork and filled their glasses.

  “Tell me about your castle,” said Madeleine.

  ***

  The two KhoiKhoi did not move from their sleeping positions until the sun was already very hot. The South Easter, which had quietened down during the night, had picked up again by the time they made themselves comfortable in the clearing from where that they could observe the ship movements in both Table Bay and False Bay. In that way they were consciously or subconsciously exactly like the Dutch colonists, whose first word was always about the latest ship that had arrived. In Table Bay they could make out almost nothing, since all the ships had their canvas down but in False Bay a small schooner was leaving Simon’s Town. They watched it beat against the wind in the open mouth of the bay.

  There was a rustle in the undergrowth. A duiker antelope appeared, apparently spooked. It saw them, stopped for a split second and then bounced across the clearing to the other side.

  “Leopard,” said the master. “It hunts the duiker during the day when it sleeps. It uses the wind to disguise any sound and then it creeps up on the buck from downwind. This one was just lucky to have escaped.”

  “Maybe we prevented the leopard from getting its meal,” said Hadah. He sounded apologetic, as if he had sympathy for the predator.

  “It will try again,” said the master. “The leopards in these mountains are very clever.”

  When the sun was exactly above them they made a smokeless fire and roasted the last of the tubers that they had dug up the day before. Then the master decided that it was time to return to the other side of the mountain. Their water reserves were depleted. They gathered up their belongings and approached the path crossing the col between the two peaks with great caution. Nobody seemed to be around. They examined the soft soil and came to the conclusion that yes, indeed, the slaves of the day before were followed by people who wore shoes made in the workshops in Cape Town or maybe even somewhere far away. The heavy boot marks covered smaller, softer marks made by the sandals preferred by the KhoiKhoi. It was exactly as the master had predicted. The slaves were followed by Dutch, who used KhoiKhoi trackers. The pursuers must have gone down the col on the hot side of the mountain and somewhere down there they decided to give up the chase because they came up again. The two sorcerers followed the tracks down the cool side until they got to the place where they could slip into their secret watering spot in the ravine.

  A while later, with their water containers refilled, they cautiously approached their cave with all their senses on the alert when the master stopped. He sniffed the air. Hadah followed his example. They came to the same conclusion. There was a smell of the buchu herb in the air. Something that was not there the day before. The only people who mixed buchu with fat and cow’s dung and smeared it on themselves were KhoiKhoi who lived away from the Dutch. These were the people who willingly let the sorcerers have their sickly offspring so that they could do what they had to do. Buchu was used in great quantities whenever there was a ritual of passage, for instance when there was a birth. The two men kept a tally of all the pregnant women within three days’ travel. Who could have had a baby now? Perhaps it was not a birth, perhaps it was another ritual of passage. Perhaps a death? Whatever the occasion, the smell they picked up was that of business.

  They found a young man, dressed like themselves, sitting on a rock a few paces away from the entrance to the cave. He stood up when he saw them.

  After a respectful greeting for the master and a more abbreviated one for Hadah he informed them of the purpose for his visit.

  “I come from Oqtis, the king of the Chainouqua ,” he said. “Here, I’ve brought gifts. He put an earthenware jar in front of them. It was filled with curdled milk. Then he unfolded items wrapped in smooth skin. It was beef, so fresh it had no smell on it yet.

  The master took up the jar with curdled milk and had a long drink. He passed it over to Hadah, who found it very welcome indeed. He eyed the pieces of meat. The master nodded at him and he left to find sticks for the fire.

  The meat was sizzling on rocks in the centre of the coals when the master spoke. “Yes, I know Oqtis,” he said. “His father grew up in front of me and I was also there when Oqtis was born. He was the first child and a strong, healthy boy. It was a very proud day. They slaughtered a big ox in his honour. Now they’ve slaughtered another one because the father has passed on to the forefathers.”

  The messenger nodded. When he mentioned that Oqtis as the king, he knew that the old sorcerer would get the picture.

  “Now Oqtis is king and he wants to see you,” he said quietly.

  “Has he told you what it was about?”

  “No, but it is an urgent matter. You have to come with me now.”

  “Unfortunately we have some business to attend to tomorrow. We will travel on the day after tomorrow.”

  “The king will not be pleased.”

  “Tell the king we regret that we cannot come with you immediately but that we will definitely be there.”

  “I will stay until you leave.”

  “No, you cannot do that. Do you have children?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, what we do here could affect you so badly that all the children your wife has in future will look like baboons.”

  The messenger’s eyes widened. “Fine, I will not stay any longer. I’ll take your message to the king.” He stood up to leave.

  “Don’t you want to eat some meat with us before you go?”

  “No, I’m not hungry.” With that he picked up his spear and his throwing stick and hopped onto the rock that was the first one of the path out.

  The sorcerers had nothing to do the next day of course, but the master did not want to give people the impression that he was at everybody’s beck and call. Especially if it was a new young king. They barbequed more of the meat and left some overnight. Over the fire the master told more stories of the good old days and Aitsi-!uma, his predecessor.

  “When I was your age,” he said, “people came to us all the time. Aitsi-!uma was very strict with them. She demanded many things, like food for us and access to the pregnant mothers at all times.

  “What did they come for?”

  “Mostly, it was to get our help in warfare. You don’t hear about it so much now, but in those days the tribes of our people fought all the time. Every day the men of the tribe would send the young boys out to look after the cattle and the sheep while they stayed behind making weapons. Some made arrows, some made spears and others were training the oxen for battle. They did this because they knew sooner or later they were going to use them.”

  “What did they fight about?”

  “Everything. Sometimes it was a squabble at about a waterhole that started the war. Sometimes it was a new area of grazing that just sprouted after being burnt. Sometimes they fought about women.”

  “What did Aitsi-!uma do?”

  “She did what all the custodians before her did. She told them who was right and who was wrong and they had to abide by it.”

  “And if they did not?”

  “Then they knew what the consequences would be. Once, there was a war between the Hessequa and the Attaqua. The Hessequa came to her first but th
e Attaqua never came. She prepared the potions and called on the powers of the serpent. A cloud came over, full of lightning. It struck inside the enclosure of the Attaqua and killed all the cattle of the chief.”

  “Did it settle the war?”

  “Yes, it did. The Attaqua could not have a chief who owned no cattle, so they had to find another elder to take over as their leader. This man made peace with the Hessequa.”

  “Have the Hessequa given you many babies after that?”

  “We were invited every time they slaughtered a cow or a goat. Those were good times.”

  “So in those days all the tribes listened to us?”

  “In those days, yes. There was the time that Cochoqua was fighting with the ChariGuriQua. Eventually the chief of the Cochoqua came here to the mountain himself. Aisi-!uma prepared the potions and danced. A few days after that a giant whirlwind came up in the night and took away the houses of the ChariGuriQua, together with the people and the cattle and sheep. Not one person in the house of the chief survived.”

  “But nowadays,” said Hadah, “they don’t come so often.”

  “It’s because of the Dutch,” said the master. “They have guns that shoot better than our arrows and they come with horses that are faster than our oxen. People are more scared of the Dutch than they are of Aitsi-!uma or you and I.”

  “I heard somebody say a KhoiKhoi man can outrun a horse.”

  “Yes, you can, but only if you have the whole day. A horse does not have endurance but it is fast. It catches up with you very quickly and the man on top shoots further than your arrows can travel.”

  “So the ways of the Dutch are better than ours?”

  “No. The thing that happened was not better. You can see that from the tribes that started going to the Dutch instead of coming to us to settle wars. The Dutch wanted cattle and farms in exchange for helping. Once they got what they wanted they never left. They stayed and pushed the tribes away from the land where their forefathers grazed their livestock for as long as anyone could remember. We only wanted the misshapen babies but they don’t want our assistance anymore.”