I stopped and grabbed her arm.
"You think I've gone off my mind, don't you? I saw a ship through my glasses. She's lying over there," I nodded with my chin, for I still was wary of Stein and a gesture might give me away.
She shook her head and there were tears in her eyes.
"All right," she said softly. "Go ahead. Show me your ship."
I gave it another half a mile and pulled the lanyard and glasses from my neck. The ship was there, all right.
I gave them to Anne.
"There, take that overhanging reddish cliff as your line. In the sand, at the foot."
I couldn't see her eyes, but her mouth registered her dumbfoundment.
She dropped the Zeiss glasses from her hands and looked unbelievingly in the same direction.
"I don't believe it!" she repeated. "But it's not an ordinary ship, Geoffrey. It's — my God! — it's an old-fashioned ship!"
I shared her amazement.
I said very slowly: "It is a very old ship, Anne."
Her knuckles were white where they gripped round the glasses, worn to the brass by my own hands and those of her one-time owner, a U-boat skipper. I'd won them in Malta in a wild orgy in the mess after some sinkings.
She dropped them from her eyes and looked at me. The eyes, coming quickly back to near-focus, added to her air of being dazed.
"How on earth did it get here? Fifty miles from the sea? — why, it looks like, like…" she paused uncertainly.
"Say it!" I said. "No one will think you mad except me, and I have seen it with my own eyes."
She said very slowly. "It looks like one of those ships… those ships… that Columbus… no, it's just too fantastic!"
We were getting closer now and we could see her with the naked eye.
"It would take a sailor's sight to have spotted her from where we were," said Anne, still gazing ahead of her in disbelief. "Anyone else would have thought they were just bare branches of a tree."
"She could never have sailed up here," I said, still more shaken as the three masts, with the mizzen awry to take a lateen sail, became clearly visible. "The coast must have changed radically some time during the past centuries — some enormous volcanic upheaval, perhaps. Just think of all the flat, low-lying country we have come through — perhaps this was a bay once, hundreds of years ago."
"It could be, behind these mountains," said Anne. "Perhaps the seabed was thrown up and created all those dunes. Maybe the true coastline was here where the mountains and the rocks are. It's quite feasible."
"I've heard strange stories about a ship in the desert," I said. "But they're the sort of yarn one hears when the drinks have gone round a good few times. No one ever substantiated them. I've heard stories of an Arab dhow and a galleon — but all of them were so surrounded with mist and legend that one simply couldn't credit them. It's a strange coast this — anything can happen."
"Is she a dhow?" asked Anne. As if we had not trudged all day, we stumbled, sometimes half at a run over the harder patches, towards the ship that had lain dead there for centuries.
"No, never," I said. "She's European. A caravel. Look, you can even see the deadeyes and the cordage holding up the mizzen truck. How those masts have stood… "
"Don't become nautical, I'm just a simple land girl," she grinned back. "What I just simply can't understand is how she has never rotted away."
"The sand and the dry air have unique properties of preserving things," I replied. "I remember reading somewhere that the first British warship which surveyed this coast before the turn of the century found a mummy in a coffin down the coast from Walvis Bay. They took it home and sold it to a sideshow in Blackpool, I think. It was the hit of the place for years."
"A body might be mummified on purpose," said Anne frowning. "But a whole ship… "
"There's a church in Dublin where Robert Emmet is buried," I said, searching for a rational explanation of a medieval caravel, intact, fifty miles from the nearest sea, perfectly preserved after centuries. "I myself saw a Crusader in the crypt who'd been buried since Richard the Lion-heart's time. The sexton told me that the ground had some unique chemical property of keeping bodies indefinitely. As we descended the crypt there were coffins everywhere and they looked like new. It must be something similar here — but on a gigantic scale."
"It seems so utterly impossible!" exclaimed Anne.
We stumbled over a low dune about a quarter of a mile from where the caravel lay, facing south and her starboard bow towards the high cliff another quarter of a mile farther on. Although I was looking at her, a glint like a mirror caught the corner of my eye. I put my hand on Anne's arm.
"If I'm not mistaken, I see water — a pool of it, there to the left, look!"
"It is water, Geoffrey! It's only a small pool, and I shouldn't think it's more than a quarter of a mile away."
"Not a word to Stein," I said. "This may well be our salvation, Anne."
The idea hit her.
"It's simple, then," she said. "We have water here and we can strike back to the coast. He'll never be able to catch us."
"With nothing to carry water in, no food, and — that?" I gestured towards the formidable mountain barrier on our right, for we were facing up the valley. We'd be half dead by tomorrow afternoon and completely dead by the next afternoon. It's only useful knowledge, this pool. We may be able to use it in the future, though."
The pool of water had distracted our attention, but now we paused in amazement at the sight of the old ship. The anchor rope was down, lost to sight in the deep sand. The gunports were open and the puny muzzles pointed defiantly. A good deal of the lower rigging was intact, although the foremast was broken off short above the truck and lay over towards the cliff. The mizzen stays, brown instead of their original tarred black, looked firm enough. She was bedded in sand almost up to the row of gunports. The gilding, or "gingerbread work," round her stern was tarnished and faded, but still clearly visible. I could make out the spokes of the helm on the high poop. I would not have felt surprised if a figure in an old-time helmet had paced her deck and called on us to declare our business.
"Let's go aboard," I said huskily.
"It's like — the past coming alive," whispered Anne. "What is she — Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch?"
"I should say Portuguese, but that's only a guess," I said. "Perhaps we'll find some identification when we get on deck."
"Isn't there a name?" asked Anne, her voice still low, as if in the presence of the dead. Dead she had been for centuries.
"All I can make out is something ending in 'az'," I said. "We may be able to decipher it close up."
The maindeck wasn't more than six feet from the level of the sand. I reached up and was about to haul myself through one of the gunports towards the poop when Anne stopped me.
"Geoffrey," she said urgently. "Don't go aboard. Let's go back. We've seen enough. I feel — there's something sacred aboard… perhaps, we should respect the dead. Don't let's pry. Please don't go. I have the strangest feeling… "
I laughed reassuringly.
"This is a secret and a mystery. How could I ever forgive myself in the future if I stopped now? Sooner or later someone is bound to find her. I want to be the first aboard since she sailed from Lisbon in fourteen something-or-other. Think, the first sailor to come aboard in five centuries!"
She looked at me and the tears welled in her eyes. ' You're assuming you've got a future," she said sombrely. "I've got a premonition, a hunch, call it what you like."
The right eyelid was rumpled. Her sweater, stained with sand and sweat, looked years, instead of weeks old. Her face was thin and drawn with inward tension.
"Come," I said, testing the wood to see whether it would hold my weight. "You're coming too. If there's any sudden death, or bolt of lightning, we'll share it."
I hauled myself past the cannon's mouth, which was not very rusted, and gave a quick glance round the deck before reaching for Anne's hands. The port side guns wer
e all run out and a curious-looking culver in on the rail of the poop pointed the same way. The starboard broadside was secure, and the gunports on that side were closed. By each gun was a neat little pile of shot, some no bigger than a cricket ball.
Some leather buckets, hard as iron with age, stood grouped round each gun. Of the crew there was no sign. A fine carpet of sand coated the deck.
"Nothing spooky here," I called cheerfully to Anne. "Give me your hands."
I leaned over the rail and pulled her up. She glanced round and shivered.
"What happened — to them?" she said with a sweep of her hands at the guns.
"Probably escaped ashore when the catastrophe struck," I said. "See, they were obviously expecting trouble. All the guns are run out, but on one side only. It would support our idea, too, that this was the seaward side and the other, the starboard side — maybe that very same cliff there — land. Something happened out to sea which made her captain run out a full broadside."
"We'll never know what it was," said Anne, with no change of mood.
"There are no bones about," I said. "That means they must have got away. Let's take a look below."
She glanced round again reluctantly.
"I can't get rid of the feeling that we're intruding, somehow," she said in a low voice. "All right, if you wish."
I tried the small door leading under the port side of the poop rail. I thought it was locked at first, it was so stiff, but it yielded about a foot. We edged in. The passageway was narrow and so low that I had to stoop. I led. Another door.
I opened it.
A man and woman were making love on the big bunk.
I was too dumbfounded to speak. I gestured to Anne. She squeezed past me and looked. She didn't draw back or make a sound. She just stood looking and, without turning round, drew me in by the arm.
The two lovers, naked, were dead.
He lay on top and slightly on her right side. Her face looked up into his. Her lips were slightly parted, a little lopsidedly to the right, and I could see the line of her white teeth. The hair, dark as passion, lay back across the pillow, filmed with sand. The eye sockets were full of sand. In the erect nipple of her left breast the sand had gathered in the runnels of flesh. Her other breast was somewhere under him. Propped on his left elbow, he looked down — as he had done for five centuries — into her eyes. His hair was dark and the hollow of his back was filled with sand. Below the waist, their two bodies were fused — for ever.
Anne was crying. She took me by the arm.
"Come," she said.
She led me back over the side and we dropped down into the soft sand near the stern. The sun was falling behind the mountain barrier.
She let a handful of sand run through her fingers.
"That is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen," she said. "That is how I would wish to die. I'd like to be buried near them."
I took her in my arms. I never knew her more than in that moment. The right eyelid was quite smooth.
A last shaft of light blazed into the big locked stern windows above us. Their stained glass bore the arms of Aragon and Castile.
XIV
The Secret of Curva dos Dunas
I thought it only a gigantic black shadow against the rock — until it moved. The face, cased in black hair to the end of its square, blunt nose, peered at us in concentrated animosity.
Johann raised the Remington, but Stein spoke swiftly in German. It was a long shot, and upwards as well into the long ledge which ran along the left side of the gorge.
"What is it?" Anne asked me in a whisper of fear.
"Back a little," said Stein.
The four of us withdrew from the gloom of the narrow defile towards the brighter light where the sand of the river still caught, whitely, the sun from overhead, despite the tree-lined banks. It was about ten the next day and we had marched since eight. Stein had had nothing to say when we returned to camp the previous evening from the old ship. I had lain awake long with my own thoughts, and now and then I had heard Anne turning restlessly, too.
For the two hours of the morning's march the river bed had gained altitude considerably, and the gorge narrowed sharply. Now, at a point which I estimated to be half-way between the previous night's camping-spot and our turn-off point down the Nangolo valley flats, a huge spur of the Ongeamaberge threw itself, as if in despair to link up with peaks on the Portuguese side, right into the course of the river, leaving a passage so narrow that in flood time the water must have shot through with the velocity of an open faucet.
We had come upon the narrow gap after rounding a steep bend.
Now we fell back towards some huge trees a couple of cables' lengths from the gap.
Stein turned to me venomously.
"You never mentioned this," he said furiously. "Is there still another cataract? What is that — that animal?"
I shrugged my shoulders.
"Let's go and have a look," I said ironically. "Give me the gun."
Johann burst into a cackle.
"If there's any shooting to be done, we'll do it," he snapped. "What is that animal — is it dangerous? Can we get past without its tackling us?"
"How should I know?" I retorted.
"You soon will," he said. He spoke to Johann in his own language again. Reluctantly the U-boat sailor passed him the Remington. Stein carried all the arms now. But he wasn't going to take any chances. He took the Luger in his right hand and swung the rifle under his left.
"Forwards," he said to me. "You and the girl wait here, Johann. If there's any shooting, come after us."
I led. We rounded the bend again, gloomy and overhanging. The giant shadow moved. He was standing sentry.
I looked up the gorge and my heart froze. The river bed had narrowed until it had cut its way through solid rock. There must have been another sharp bend a little higher up, for the water had swathed away the rock on our left until it looked for all the world like the last lap of the Cresta run, smooth, polished rock instead of snow, with a shallow runnel above extending for maybe three hundred yards. If a toboggan can touch ninety miles an hour on the Cresta, my guess was that the Cunene in flood came round this bed with the speed of Nautilus. Above the gigantic furrow of rock was a ledge running the whole length of the bed. I thought it was in black shadow.
The shadows were gigantic black lions.
Stein drew back in amazement and fear.
"A lion!" he exclaimed. "But it cannot be! There is no living lion as big as that!"
The sentry beast got to its feet from a crouching position and looked over at us, measuring the distance. For the first time I saw the tawny coat as well as the enormous black mane which enveloped not only its head and shoulders, but its back and chest. It was the size of an ox, though not as tall.
"Not one lion, Stein," I said. "Look, the whole ledge is crawling with them!"
I laughed in his face.
"Now find the ace," I sneered at him. "Remember what I said — ' famous last words.' You'll have to go back. Stein."
"Never!" he shouted. "I'll shoot every one… "
"Don't be a bloody fool," I said. "How many do you think you'd get before they'd get you? Look at that, man!"
There were stirrings on the ledge and a whole troop of eyes swivelled on to us. The great brute at the mouth of the rock tunnel opened his mouth and purred softly. It was the most frightening noise I have ever heard. The great black heads, majestic, contemptuous, watched lazily, vigilantly, every muscle at the ready.
"It's the Cape lion!" screamed Stein. A quiver ran through the beast when he heard the noise of the human voice. "My God! It's been extinct for over a century. The old Cape hunters said it was the most dangerous animal in Africa! They shot it out on the plains. Now — the Skeleton Coast is its last retreat."
I gazed in fascinated awe at the huge beast poised on the ledge. Stein's was the only explanation. I was looking at history, looking at antiquity. Deadly, hellishly dangerous antiquity! The Skelet
on Coast guarded its gateway with the world's oldest and deadliest animal! I felt weak at the knees. I also knew that Stein and his crazy expedition was at an end.
I said so.
"This is the point of no return, Stein," I said roughly. "You couldn't get past that lot, even with a tommy-gun. I doubt whether a high velocity two-two would even halt one of those brutes."
Stein rounded on me so savagely that I thought he would use the Luger.
"You capitulate, Captain Peace, but I don't! We go on, even if we have to go round the mountains."
"What is it you're so keen to find there in the Otjihipo mountains?" I said bluntly. "Not some piddling beetle. Is it a cache of diamonds?"
He looked surprised. He wasn't lying.
"No, Captain Peace, not a cache of diamonds. Something much more valuable. The Onymacris beetle. Found only in the Gobi Desert and North Borneo once. No longer."
He must be mad, I decided.
"Let us go back and talk this over with the others," he said, and there was nothing irrational in the way he said it. "But understand, we are going on — at whatever cost."
We retreated cautiously again, with a careful eye on the huge black-covered face.
We were starting to emerge when I heard the noise at our backs.
"Listen!" I rapped out. I heard it again.
"Sounds like thunder," he said uncertainly. "But there's no cloud about —"
"Run!" I yelled. "It's the river coming down! The highest trees farthest up the bank — quick!"
I grabbed his shoulder as he stood hesitantly. The narrow gorge funneled the sound. Anne and Johann saw us come sprinting towards them in amazement.
"Quick!" I yelled. "The river's coming down! Listen! It's like distant thunder! Those trees over there!"
We scrambled up the steep bank, slipping and scrabbling. The noise sounded like an approaching Underground train. We hoisted each other wildly into the branches, praying that the water would not reach as high.
The flood broke through the narrow tunnel and spread into the sand.
A Twist of Sand Page 25