A Twist of Sand

by Geoffrey Jenkins

  "Stop both," I said down the voice-pipe.

  John looked at me inquiringly.

  "I'm taking no chances."

  "Funny," murmured John. "They should know we are in this general area." Would they? I wondered. My guess was that Trout was on her own — desperately on her own.

  She lay down, pitching in the swell of the destroyers.

  The signalman handed me a message.

  "If you are Trout," it read, "what are you doing here? No notification of your presence from Admiralty."

  I handed it to John, who started at its contents.

  Reply: "Even the best fish, including Trout, must rise to breathe occasionally."

  We waited. The cruisers hovered. Then one destroyer detached itself and came within hailing distance. The metallic bark of the loud-hailer came over the water.

  "Trout… is that who you are?"

  I was seized with impatience. "Damn it, of course I am. Do I look like a U-boat?"

  The loud-hailer chuckled. "All right, all right. But remember… Look, I'm carrying mail for Trout addressed to Simonstown. I'm sending a boat with it."

  She came close in and dropped a boat. The sub-lieutenant in command grinned over the couple of feet of sea separating us. "Shall I throw them across, sir?" he asked.

  "Yes," I replied, thinking of what mail at sea, delivered at sea, would mean to my jaded, bored crew.

  "Everything all right?" he added curiously. "No one expected you around these parts."

  "It doesn't look like it," I grinned, waving a hand to the wary destroyers.

  "Doesn't look so good at the receiving end," he rejoined. He tossed the packets of mail over. "Good-bye sir, and good luck."

  "Thanks," I said. "Call the dogs off now."

  A wave of the hand and the boat pulled away to the destroyer's side.

  "Good luck!" said the metallic voice.

  The group of warships drew rapidly away southwards. The sun began to dip.

  "Night stations," I said to John. "Clear the bridge. Sixty feet."

  "No moonlight picnic tonight," he teased.

  "Everyone will be happier well below the surface tonight reading about wives and sweethearts. Moonlight will only revive old memories."

  He glanced at me sharply. There was an edge to my voice.

  Trout dived under the darkening South Atlantic.

  My share of the mail, in my tiny cubbyhole of a cabin with only its worn green curtain separating me from the rest of the.submarine, looked uninspiring. There didn't even seem to be a personal letter among the lot. I felt depressed at the stark little pile of letters and papers, all typewritten. No loving hand to smooth my way, I thought grimly. The whole depression of the mission hit me again. In London it was Trout's lack of even a sporting chance that had shaken me; deep under the South Atlantic tonight it was the awareness that the chance was never likely to occur at all.

  I ripped open the mail. One bore the superscription "Hodgson, Hodgson and Hodgson, Lincoln's Inn Fields, London." It was from my grandfather's lawyers. The dry phrases seemed utterly sterile. "We have to inform you, as the sole legatee of the late Captain Simon Peace…" It seemed the old man had left me about £500 and a miscellaneous collection of old nautical instruments and charts. I'd taken some of the old charts with me from his desk the day he died, anyway. I'd not looked at them.

  Then came a rustle amid the dry legal phrases: "You will notice from the enclosed copy of Captain Simon Peace's will that you have been bequeathed, in terms of it, the island of Curva dos Dunas, stated by the late Captain Peace to lie in 17' 30" S n' 48" E. A title deed, apparently legal, filed with the former German Administration of South West Africa, is attached. Owing to war-time restrictions on the availability of charts and maps, we have been unable to establish the identity of this island. The Admiralty states that it cannot disclose any such information in war-time but added, confidentially, that it was unaware that any islands existed in that part of the South Atlantic. The Admiralty, however, refuse to disclose what specific area of the South Atlantic it was referring to. However, we enclose a copy of the title deed for your perusal and suggest that when conditions are more settled, a thorough investigation be made into the whereabouts and value of this property. We await your instructions as to its disposal at a later date."

  The old bastard! I thought amusedly to myself. So he had an island tucked away and no one knew anything about it! Well, it was easy enough for me to find out. I went through to the navigation table and pulled out an Admiralty chart "Bahia dos Tigres to Walvis Bay "with the annotation "principally from the German Government charts to 1930." I checked off the position in the letter with the dividers.

  It was about twenty miles south of the mouth of the Cunene River. There was no sign at all of an island. Curva dos Dunas? I double-checked the position. There it was — a foul looking piece of coast, if ever there was one, with broken water and shoals all over the place, but no sign of Curva dos Dunas. There were plenty of isolated rocks which pass as islands south of Walvis Bay, but nothing so far north, or near the mouth of the Cunene, which is the international boundary between South West Africa and Angola.

  I was puzzling over the little mystery when the hydrophone operator's voice reached me clearly.

  "Captain in the control room," called John.

  "What is it, John?" I asked.

  "Bissett's getting some odd noises," he said. "He just can't identify them."

  "H.E?" I asked.

  "No, hell," laughed John. "Elton says it's all Bissett's imagination, but you know Bissett is the best we have."

  "I'll go and have a look and listen myself," I said.

  Bissett had the earphones over his head and Elton, his relief and junior, was standing by, looking rather bored and amused.

  "Listen to that, sir," said Bissett, giving me one earpiece.

  At first I could hear nothing. Then there was a kind of gurgling noise, very faint, and then a slight, resonant hiss, almost like a bubble slowly bursting under water. It kept repeating in a kind of cycle. In the background there was a slight churning noise.

  I simply couldn't make it out.

  "Propellers!" I asked tentatively.

  "No, definitely not," replied Bissett. "But it's moving sir. Left to right, about ten knots, I reckon."

  "About south-east," I reflected aloud.

  "Sounds to me like a whale farting," commented Elton.

  The remark stung me, epitomising as it did the slack attitude of the crew on this warm-weather cruise.

  I turned savagely on Elton: "Another remark like that, Elton, and you'll find yourself in serious trouble."

  "Sorry, sir," he muttered, but the contemptuous amusement was not entirely gone from his face.

  "It's slowing, sir," said Bissett.

  "I'm going to follow it," I told him. "Keep on to it and don't let me lose it. If it speeds up, let me know."

  I went back into the control room!" Steer one-six-oh," I told John. "Seven knots."

  "Aye, aye sir," he said. "Plot?"

  "No." I said. I drew him on one side. "Frankly, John, I haven't a solitary clue what we are following, but I can't stand this bloody square search a moment longer. Anything is better than that."

  "Aye, aye, sir," he grinned.

  I took the chart from the navigator's table and went towards my cubbyhole: "Call me at once if we catch up on that noise."

  John nodded.

  In my solitary cabin I started to unfold the chart I had brought with me, but my mind was against Simon Peace's little mysteries, and I threw it down in disgust. I glanced through the remaining letters. A bill or two and a neatly wrapped copy of The Times. I opened it and saw that the "deaths "column had been ringed with blue pencil. I could see the precise circle being drawn by the schoolmasterly hand. The news was like a cold douche. So he was dead! He had deserved to die with a deck under his feet, had old Arctic-eyes. "Killed in an air raid…" It left the Director of Naval Intelligence and myself. The only two who k
new about NP I outside Germany. That neat circle of blue was both a courier of news and a warning. My little cubbyhole suddenly seemed unbearably stifling. It was quite clear; it needed no words, no admonition, to carry to me the meaning of the man with the pedantic and heart full of secrets.

  I tossed the paper aside and went through to Bissett. He looked up inquiringly and nodded as I came in. "Still there, sir. Steady seven knots, maybe eight. I just can't make out what that noise can be."

  "Steady course, no deviations?"

  "Absolutely steady, sir."

  The control room boys were chattering between themselves as I came through, but they were on the job all right. I had a feeling of unease which I could not explain

  I threw myself down on my bunk again, but I couldn't sleep. I got up and reached for a cigarette and then cursed my forgetfulness. On the handkerchief sized table lay I Hodgson, Hodgson and Hodgson's letter. Curva dos Dunas! I took the navigator's chart and checked again on the position. I remember that I had crammed a couple of the old man's charts into my grip. I rummaged round and found them, crumpled, but not in bad shape really. At that moment I knew I had NP I in the bag. Curious how one's mental processes range apparently without purpose or pattern and then suddenly crystallise. When I saw old Simon Peace's chart — criss-crossed with soundings and annotations — I knew that I had been right in what I had intuitively reasoned before — that NP I must have a base.

  And there it was: my island, Curva dos Dunas, exactly where old Simon Peace had positioned it. Curva dos Dunas — a Twist of Sand!

  I looked at the formidable stretch of coast about twenty miles south of the mouth of the Cunene — what a fool I had been about the old man's dying words! Not south of north as I had thought. But south of — and there it was plain on the older chart — south of what the river used to be called, the Nourse. Twenty miles south of the Nourse lay the island, amongst the worst shoals and foul ground that could be charted anywhere. Most of them weren't anyway, not on the Admiralty map.

  I studied Simon Peace's map in utter fascination. It was obvious that he had surveyed and charted the whole area himself. There, like a jewel set amid broken patterns of ore, was Curva dos Dunas. Guarded from the south by a needle-shaped rock (" ten feet at high tide, eight fathoms under "said the precise lettering in old Simon's hand) and protected farther south still by the Clan Alpine shoal, Curva dos Dunas was the most perfect hide-out anyone could wish for. North of it lay a series of shoals: the water shallowed with incredible abruptness from thirty-two to five fathoms in one place: on the landward side was a rock-strewn, hilly coast surmounted by high shifting dunes; a three-topped hill guarded a tiny beach marked "only sandy beach." This lay half at the back of the island, which seemed only a short distance from "the mainland itself. This mainland is known to sailors as the Skeleton Coast, a coastline beaten by high, thundering surf from the south-west; low, wind-blown scrub relieves the utter baldness of the dunes, and everywhere are the wicked shoals. The high dunes stretch northwards almost to the mouth of the Cunene (or Nourse as old Simon called it). The mouth itself is guarded by a most wicked constellation of shoals.

  All this had been carefully charted, a labour which must have taken the old man years. The thought that he might have done it all in a sailing ship along that coast of death made me shudder and marvel at old Simon's intrepidity.

  Curvas dos Dunas! The name rang like a bell.

  I looked at the soundings and shuddered. It meant that I would have to go in through the shoals and pick off NP I as she lay there. "Discoloured water," said the chart. God! I knew what that meant: sand, stirred up from the shallows, and obscuring what little view there might be of channels. Channels! That was what I needed. There must be a channel in from the entrance — was there such a thing as a harbour? I checked the meticulous array of soundings. Seven, four, eight, fifteen, thirty fathoms — all in a jumble. If I took Trout in there I'd have her aground before I could say NP I. How did the Germans know about Curva dos Dunas? Well, that was probably easy enough to guess — the Admiralty charts were based on German ones compiled during their long occupation of South West Africa. I remembered that a German warship had done a survey before World War I, and the thorough German mind must have tucked away information like Curva dos Dunas for all the intervening years.

  I knew quite instinctively that that was where NP I was lying low. I looked at the map again. On the seaward side of the stark little beach where the neat lettering said "three-topped hill," were two words. They said simply: "see inset." So the old man had made another map of the island, too? Where the devil was it? A brief look through the other crumpled charts and papers in my grip assured me that it was not there. I looked at the stiff parchment map: no, there was no inset. True, the chart would take me there, but on that wicked coast I would need more than just that. For by now the conviction was firm in my mind that I would take Trout in, whatever the cost.

  The chart, laid out on the tiny table, crumpled itself and automatically I straightened it.

  Then I saw.

  The thick parchment had been split on the lower right-hand corner. With trembling fingers I felt. They met another edge of thin paper. Scarcely able to control my fingers and dreading that I should tear it, I slipped it out. I could have wept for joy. Silently I blessed old Simon. Curva dos Dunas! — a large-scale map with the entrance channel close to the ten-foot rock which I had first seen on the other chart.

  The one I was now examining was a little masterpiece of cartography. The old sailor had taken bearings of the three-topped hill and the entrance channel in relation to the rock in the sea. Small wonder he had called it Curva dos Dunas — a Twist of Sand. The entrance channel curved like the whorls of a man's inner ear, swinging sharply north from the entrance and away from its first easterly direction, then doubling back almost on its own course; in between was a bar of what was marked as "hard sand." I thought what a brief end that sand-bar would make of a ship. The channel then swung round northwards in an irregular semi-circle — north, east, due south and then west again, debouching into a "harbour "contained in the enclosing arms of sand. It was thirty fathoms deep in places. It was something like the Jap base of Truk, in the Pacific, on a much smaller scale. What a funk-hole, I thought to myself. You could not winkle a submarine out of there with a can-opener, and it would be way out of range of the odd sea-search bomber of the South African Air Force at Walvis Bay. To the north lay neutral, largely unknown territory, and to the east the mainland appropriately known as the Skeleton Coast. Yes, that was where NP I was! I'd take Trout down that tortuous channel and sink the super U-boat with torpedoes in the deep water inside! Thank God that interminable box-search was at an end! I'd make for Curva dos Dunas and lie in wait for NP I.

  Excitedly I got a ruler and made a rough calculation of my course to the island from Trout's present position. One hundred and sixty degrees. That would bring her nicely to the ten-foot rock — I'd call it Simon's Rock, in honour of the old sailor who might yet be my salvation — and, for that matter, the salvation of the fighting fleets and merchantmen in the North Atlantic. The thrill of the chase welled through my veins as I turned again to the beautifully drawn map of the channels into the "inner harbour "of Curva dos Dunas. My island! And in occupation by the most lethal submarine in the world! I could be there by late to-morrow…

  The appalling significance of it struck me like an icy sea down the conning-tower hatch. One-six-oh! That was exactly the course we were steering! And we were on that course because — dear God! — could it be? Bissett had said the course was steady, and the sound was travelling steadily ahead of us at about seven knots. Course one-six-oh! The homeward-bound course of NP I to her base! Trout was, in fact, trailing along merrily, without any attempt at concealment, behind a nuclear-powered submarine!

  I broke out in a cold sweat. The noise, that bursting bubble effect — it could well be that the Germans, with all their ingenuity, had abandoned the ordinary propeller and were using a form of
hydraulic jet propulsion which ejected the water in exactly the same way that a squid sucks water into its gills and expels it again under high muscular pressure, thus providing its enormous speed and motive power. The thoughts tore through my brain. For a submarine fitted like that — and apparently all the power in the world with which to expel the water — it would be a double advantage, for those death-dealing, tired, trigger-happy men of the North Atlantic escort groups were accustomed to ordinary propeller noises and this new one would deceive them — at least at the outset. I knew hydraulic jet propulsion had been tried out with great success on shallow-draught small craft, but its application to anything else — well, that was a brand-new lesson for the North Atlantic.

  Christ! How many precious minutes had I wasted in thinking this out, and for every one of them Trout was in mortal peril! Or had NP I simply not heard us because her hydrophones, listening dead astern, might be confused by the upsurge of ejected water. She had only to change course slightly, and she would hear Trout's asdic, as sure as little fishes were waiting for us at the bottom of the ocean.

  I bounded towards Bissett, leaping through the control room as I did so. John and the others there gave me a startled glance.

  "Switch that infernal thing off!" I roared to the astonished Bissett. He flicked a switch. I could feel the sweat moistening on my face.

  "Same course, same speed?" I snapped.

  "Aye, aye, sir," he replied, wonderment written all over his face.

  "How long have you been listening to that — that — noise?" I whipped out.

  "Ever since you…" he began, but stopped at the look on my face. "Nearly two hours, sir," he replied woodenly.

  "You could identify it again?" I asked.

  "Why, yes sir…."

  "Shut off everything, then. I may want you to listen later. But you will not use any of this listening gear without my express permission. Understood?"

  "Aye, aye, sir," he replied. There was equal astonishment as I whirled round and entered the control room.