And now this madman Stein threatened to spoil it all as he saw the savage breakers hammering at the sand-bars of Curva dos Dunas. Admittedly, it was a staggering sight under the lash of a wild south-westerly blow. The run of the sea, thundering against the fang-white sand-bars, threw up acres of water, smashed to white, high into the air; the Trout current, tearing down past the entrance, provided a more flexible, if not less formidable barrier, and the sea also broke wildly out of reach of the sand itself, well out to the fifty fathom line.
Etosha lay bucking at this stupendous vista while my eyes sought, automatically, my lifelines — seawards, Simon's Rock to the south, and on land the three-topped hill a little to the south-east, and the mountain in the north. With those three, and daylight, and my soundings dead on, I'd take her in just as I had taken Trout in that unforgettable night.
Stein's mouth was wet and whether he stammered slightly from fear or the blow as he crouched, I could not have cared less.
"Captain Peace, I forbid it! Do you hear, I forbid it!" His voice rose. "You want to kill me, I know. But I won't let you."
"Pull yourself together," I snarled. My attention was only half on him. The three-topped hill was beginning to bear — one hundred, and Etosha's head was easing, one hundred and three. One hundred and five degrees! She was dead right for the entrance, with the great northern pile steady on seventy degrees.
"Hold her like that," I rapped out to John.
"Soundings?"
"Thirty, twenty-seven, twenty-three… "
"We're bang on," I exclaimed, and the magic of it came upon me. Perhaps that is the deadly fascination for the Peace sailormen of Curva dos Dunas. The one degree error that spells death, the foreknowledge of what cold, low-density water will do against warm, high-density currents, in juxtaposition with wind, sea and tide. Not a problem in navigation, but a primitive problem of survival. A deadly throw of the dice, man against the sea.
"Take a look," I said harshly to Stein, who had got to his feet. "That's what you wanted, wasn't it — to go ashore in safety? I'm taking you ashore…" I grinned at his patent fear — "through that lot. A moment ago I could have stopped, but it's too late now."
Stein said quickly: "I never expected…"
"Of course you didn't," I retorted without sympathy. "But if you have to hang over the side retching your guts out, I'm taking you inside."
Through Stein's fear came a flicker of reluctant admiration. He made a ghastly attempt at a smile.
"They all say you are the best skipper on the coast Captain Peace," he replied. "Now I think so too."
I rang "slow ahead."
"Watch those bearings," I said to John, who was back at the wheel. "You miserable bastard," I said to Stein. "I'm risking my ship and all our lives for you, but I'm going to show you what keeping a bargain means. I hope you like it."
I couldn't see the line of the channel as such, the confusion of water was too great. There was no quiet water anywhere. Old Simon must have been a genius as a sailor.
"Steer one-oh-oh," I said tersely to John. The dun coast lay deadly quiet, poised like a giant Anglosaurus lizard about to strike.
Etosha went in. I could hear Stein's breath rasping faintly. Anne came over to the pelorus and when her hand rested on its stand, I could see the fingers trembling. I adjusted the line of my bearing.
"One-oh-five," I said to John. John stood there, his face like granite, withdrawn, remote. I was taking her in towards the first great swing in the channel, which then doubled back almost on its own tracks. The bearings from the night of NP I's doom were indelible on my mind. Spray began to blow across the bridge in fine clouds.from the breaking water. Etosha crept on.
Suddenly Anne gave a cry. "Look, a ship!"
Every eye flashed to the spot where she pointed. The old bluffbows of the Phylira looked as ugly in death as I had seen them that first day when Georgiadou had taken me down to the Table Bay docks where she lay in an out-of-the-way corner. I was surprised to find myself quite impersonal. That wild night seemed to have no connection with myself, somehow.
Stein was beside me, his face intense.
"Georgiadou would be very interested," he sneered. "A fine piece of wrecking, if I may say so, Captain. And a colossal nerve it must have taken to do it there too."
"You may say so, but I don't know what you're talking about," I rejoined. Circumstantially, there was only one answer — they would say I had wrecked Phylira and sent the crew to their deaths in the creaming holocaust. So Stein thought, anyway.
"Come, come, Captain Peace, that's the ship you put ashore. You can't bluff me."
I stared him out of countenance.
"Do you see her name, or any identification?" I asked. "What makes you think I know anything about thai wreck? I don't. Georgiadou wouldn't thank you for thai kind of information. She's probably been there for years."
There was almost admiration in Stein's tone when he replied.
"It is clever, Captain, too clever. As you say, Georgiadou wouldn't thank me for it. I couldn't even say where this wreck was, and if I could, how would one ever get close enough to look — unless Captain Peace showed them how?
How did you get out alive, Captain, from " he waved at the breakers — "that?"
Anne looked at me tight-lipped. "I don't believe it," she said slowly. "No one could ever come out alive."
If racing drivers have their brains in the seats of their pants, then I think some of mine must be in the soles* of my feet. Some slight movement, something out of accord, warned me. Concentrating on the grave of the Phylira, I'd missed a trick. The bearing had passed.
"Quick," I rapped out to John. "Steer three-one-five." Simultaneously I rang "Full ahead." Etosha juddered. Sand? I wasn't sure, but the screws and full wheel would bring her round, if anything would.
John never raised his eyes, but his face was set. He spun the spokes. Etosha bucked. Looking at the creaming surf through salt-stung eyes, it was impossible to judge whether pr not we were against the far side of the channel or not. I thanked God that we were afloat — just. One slight lapse, and the Skeleton Coast would trump your ace.
I glanced at the bearings of the two hills ashore and then swung right round to Simon's Rock. Not so bad. I breathed easier.
"Three-two-oh," I said, tension making my voice grate.
I waited for the tell-tale bump which would spell the end, just as I had waited for it in Trout. Two minutes — three minutes — four. Etosha was clear in the channel again!
She was running back, slowly now, almost parallel to the way she had come, her stern now pointing at the coast. Out to sea, the perpetual morning fog hung like a shroud. She had about fifteen minutes' steaming to the next, wide, shallow turn to the north.
I straightened up. John met my eye; he looked the way he had done when I thought he had turned against me at the court martial.
"Five minutes' clear?" he asked in his best quarterdeck voice.
I nodded.
"Those bearings and the course, they are exactly the same, aren't they?"
I nodded again. I didn't look at him.
"You took Trout in through this after — something?"
"Yes," I replied, inaudible almost to myself.
"Geoffrey," he went on remorselessly, and his tone drew Anne into the circle too. "All these years I wondered — did you sink her? Or," and his eyes looked at mine and I saw pain and doubt which I had never suspected, "was it something in the mind that sank you — for always — that night?"
I turned slowly round until I faced east-nor'-east. Straining through the blowing spray, I thought I caught a glimpse, a momentary glimpse, of the object.
"What is it?" Anne burst out. "What is it?"
Doubt was written all over John's face. I could see it all in his attitude: "I've opened up the old wound, and now he's round the bend again — poor bastard."
I came back and gripped one of the spokes of the wheel. My voice was unsteady.
"I sank her,"
I said simply. "The wreck bears about one-two-oh degrees at this moment."
John was too good a sailor to take his eyes off the course.
"I'll see her again when we get inside this lot?"
"Yes," I replied. "You'll see her all right. On the far side of the anchorage."
John's glance didn't waver. "Was it as important as all that — important enough that you kept your mouth shut? Who were you shielding?"
Stein joined us. He was lapping up the drama avidly.
"See here," I said to the three of them. "It's history now, and I want the record straight. It's history now, and that's why I can tell you. An atomic submarine is nothing new today. But in the early war years it was God's answer to the U-boat Command. All it had to do was to prove itself. Blohm and Voss made one. She sank the Dunedin Star with torpedoes from which the warheads were drawn. She came back here. I went in after her. I sank her."
Stein goggled: "You mean we — Germany — had an atomic submarine and it was never used in the Atlantic?"
I rounded on him. "Yes," I said. "The U-boat Command were dubious because they thought it too much of a break with the old, engine-driven U-boat. So they sent it out on a trial raiding cruise. They thought it would blow up. Two men in England besides myself knew about it. My orders were to destroy the new U-boat. I did. She's lying — or what's left of her — a couple of miles away inside this channel."
Stein looked unbelievingly at me. Then he said slowly: "So it was Lieutenant-Commander Peace, D.S.O. and two Bars, that did more than any other single man in the war to win the Battle of the Atlantic! Why, we would have torn England's throat out with atomic submarines! And you sank her! God's truth, how?"
John butted in. "Yes, how? Trout never fired a torpedo."
I laughed in their faces. "I sank her with a recognition flare."
John thought I had gone off my head.
"A recognition flare?"
"She was fuelling and the burning flare fell in the fuel. She went up like a Roman candle."
Stein looked at me, still in disbelief.
"No survivors?"
I looked at him squarely; the nightmare of the men on the sand-bar came back to me.
"I shot down the survivors with a machine-gun."
"No, Captain Peace," said a voice, ragged with menace from the head of the bridge companionway, "you didn't. One got away."
The three of us, even John, swung round electrified. Johann stood at the back of the bridge. He carried a heavy wooden bar, called a kierie, we used to kill the snoek. Gone was the vagueness, the hesitancy of the man whose dazed mind fumbles. Curva dos Dunas had jerked him back to reality. The eyes had lost their blurred perception and were blazing now — with the lust to kill. There was no doubt that Johann had come up on to the bridge to kill. It was his deadly quiet which frightened me.
"You fired the gun in our faces," he said slowly. "I can see you now as you swung the barrel round, Captain. And now I am going to kill you. But there won't be any doubts about this kill. For three days I lay on the sand. It was all sand, all sand and salt. The bullets got me here " — he pulled up a sleeve, never taking his eyes off me in case I jumped him — and showed me the underside of his left arm where almost all the flesh was missing. It was a hideous wound.
"I prayed to die, Captain, out there on the sand. I prayed that you would die slowly, like me. I went back to the U-boat — you'll see her just now, because I know this part of the world better than you. I should do. It is a trap.
You die slowly here. I walked every inch of sand looking for a way out. There was not one."
I couldn't credit that he had missed the sand causeway to the beach. Perhaps the pain and mental shock of being all alone in this wind-driven hell had deadened his faculties.
"I went aboard the U-boat when she had cooled down." He laughed and the high note revealed the mind on the verge of being unhinged again. "They were all cooked, Captain. All my friends were cooked. But it was easier to eat my friends cooked than raw, wasn't it?" He gave a high giggle and Anne shrank back at the sound.
"And now, after all that cooked meat, I must have some raw, not so?" He came forward with the kierie. I could see he had the strength of a maniac. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Stein glance anxiously over the side.
"This is a fascinating story," he said and the mouth was as cruel as a sting-ray with its victim under its eyes. "We have now added war crimes to Captain Peace's long ú — and often nefarious — record."
I saw the sudden tautening of Johann's muscles. It telegraphed the warning, but there was little I could do about it. With lightning speed the kierie flickered upwards, but Stein struck first with the deadly venom of a cobra. Even in that moment of mortal peril it made me wonder where he had learned his trade. The Luger hit Johann high above the ear, just where the hair leaves the scalp. He stood swaying in front of me, the eyes unconscious. He slumped at my feet.
"Don't waste your time on him, Captain, or on thanking me," whipped out Stein. "We'll be ashore in a moment. Get your bearings, or whatever you do, in God's name!"
I swung the pelorus with hands that trembled. I gave John a new course. We were almost opposite Galleon Point.
I could see the spar out to port where Trout had gone aground. I nodded towards it.
"That," I said to John, "is where we damaged the hydroplanes."
He didn't reply. I could see that the deadly swiftness of Johann's attack had shaken him. His helmsmanship remained masterly.
Stein kicked the still figure without compassion.
"All this makes him a better bodyguard than ever, doesn't it," he grinned evilly. "With a score like that to settle, particularly."
He bent down and examined the unconscious man's head. "He'll be out for another hour at least," he said. "Will that get us safe into the anchorage? If it won't, I'll make sure that he doesn't wake up for another couple." He took the kierie and looked questioningly at Johann. The cold precision of it revolted me.
"It'll be enough," I said.
"In this channel you're far more valuable — for my life in particular — than this," he said kicking the still form again without compunction. "But there may well be occasions when the position is reversed."
The high hill to the north, clearly visible, and the three-topped one to the south, peered down at the ship making her way in. The dun beach and the dunes, tonsured by clinging, wind-torn shrub, were half opaque through the driving salt. There was still enough glare, however, to make the eyes wince. I gave John the course. As Etosha came, abreast Galleon Point I could see the tall spar rising from the sand. A sailing ship's mast? A landmark? A beacon? Even at a couple of hundred yards it was impossible in know. One never would know. In silence, John, Anne, Stein and I watched the scene. Etosha swept round the last great whorl of the channel and again turned parallel to the way she had come in, facing due west now. The hammering of the sea eased. The wind continued to lash out blindly.
Etosha was safe inside Curva dos Dunas.
"Course two-seven-oh," I said.
She headed across the anchorage. Through the opaque light I saw what I had been looking for. NP I. The high, fin-like conning-tower was black with rust, the ethereal quality of it as I had seen her that night now gone, like the colour which dies when a lovely deep-sea creature is brought to the surface. The fin was slightly canted, but the merciful salt and whiteness still blanketed the wounds which sank her. I included John and Stein in my nod towards her.
"There's the atomic U-boat."
Stein went forward and I could see how white his knuckles were as he gripped the top of the dodger.
"The ultimate weapon," he murmured almost to himself. "And a British captain with an ordinary submarine sank her with a recognition flare!" He turned to me and his voice rasped with bitterness. "Congratulations, Captain Peace! It is so like the British to reward their heroes with the boot."
John relaxed at the wheel. He grinned a little.
"I'll never forgive you, Geoffre
y, for not letting me in on this," he said. "Now you can be reinstated."
"Rubbish!" I said sharply. "There's no question of reinstatement now. That's all in the past."
Anne surprised me by agreeing with John.
"If you're innocent, then the court martial can reverse 'its findings." She turned to John. "It's up to you to tell them."
John nodded.
I rang for slow ahead. I'd anchor near NP I and then send the party ashore in the boat.
"Now see here," I said. "This particular place happens to belong to me. In that sense it's private. And NP I is part of its private history. You, John, can go and tell your story to the Admiralty — if you like. They'll want some proof. And where will you get it? Do you think the Admiralty is going to believe a sentimental, unlikely little story about a hidden anchorage from a friend who feels sorry that his former chief was kicked out of the Service years ago? They'll want proof." I turned to Anne. "John's a sailor. He couldn't find this place, let alone bring in a ship. There's only one man living who can do that, and that is me. The only other man to do it was the skipper of the U-boat, and he's roasted. I expect Johann ate him into the bargain."
A Twist of Sand Page 21