He clamped his teeth back on to his pipe and exclaimed, Why can't that bloody boat hurry up from the island? That 39 wreck gives me the willies. It shows what can happen around here.'
'Aren't you staying tonight?'
'Nooit nie! – never! I'm pulling out as soon as you're on your way ashore. That dump also gives me the creeps. I see they've got the ghost light going already and the sun's not even down.'
A point of light showed in one of the panes of a prefab. It resembled a chance reflection of the sunset.
'It burns all night, every night. No gamat would stay otherwise.'
Gamet is an affectionate term for the fine half-caste Malay fishermen of the Cape and South East Africa. Their Far Eastern origin-the first were brought as slaves in the seventeenth century-endows their rites and religion with a touch of the supernatural. Like all other sailors, they are deeply superstitious.
Captain Murray measured the distance of the approaching boat.
'If you get a sight of it from the sea through the fog it • looks like a damn ghost itself.'
'Whose ghost is it supposed to be?'
'A woman's. She was drowned in an old windjammer called the Auckland over on the island's west side. A shark took her legs. They say she haunts the place searching for them with two huge hounds for company. They were with her in the Auckland.'
'Nice neighbours I'll be having!'
'It sounds like a vealjapie (brandy) yarn to me. but once you've lived on Possession for a while you'll believe anything. If you want an example, take a gander at that lot!'
'Buffel, ahoy!'
The cry came from a gamat standing in the stern of the approaching island boat, and using a steering oar with great skill. The boat's design was new to me-some whaling ancestry somewhere.
•
'He's the laziest bastard in the isles – Breekbout.' '
Breekbout I You must be joking! That's not a name!' 'He got it because he split his arse in half from sitting on it too much: Breek-bout.'
'It doesn't affect the way he handles that boat.'
'No, he's good. First-class But look at that sonofabitch 40 ruin with him.'
He was the headman I'd come to relief, Van Rensburg. They threw a mooring line from the Buffet It hit him but he didn't make a move to make it fast, He was hipped in his own twilight world.
'For crying out loud!'.
`Maybe Breekbout's sense of humour will save you from going the same way. It's pretty way out, but anything's better than nothing on Possession. Take my tip though-get to know that gamet over there.'
He pointed with his pipe at a fishing cutter riding at anchor at the head of the channel, close to the dangerous shoals.
'Kaptein Denny. Damn fine sailor. He's one off for a gamet. Keeps to himself. If my ship was in trouble I'd like him around.'
He broke off abruptly. They'd tied up the whaleboat while he'd been talking and now Van Rensburg came up the bridge ladder to join us. He might have been one of Possession's strolling ghosts-the stiff way he walked, like a marionette. I decided to leave, quick.
`Totsiens (goodbye) Captain. Thanks for the ride!
I tried to edge past but Van Rensburg blocked my way. His eyes were shuttered and remote.
'Good luck, Captain Weddell You need good luck on Possession.'
His form of address caught me off balance for a moment It had slipped my mind that I was, in the ship tradition of the isles, Possession's new captain. It flashed through my mind that there'd been some leak of the C-in-C's secret when he called me by my naval title. So I didn't answer.
He said in a thin, venomous, unnatural voice. 'A high-hat and a shit, eh? Possession'll cut you down to size damn quick.'
I stopped with one foot on the ladder,
We'll see.'
His laugh was as bad as his voice, mainly because it left his face completely blank, and his eyes, too.
'We'll see I Possession's a prison-house, didn't you know. No escape. Anywhere. Anyhow Good luck, Captain-stuffyou-Weddell I' '
I went quickly overside. A couple of the crew passed down my kit, which I'd had ready on deck. The transceiver from 41
Slivermine I carried, myself, in a battered old leather suitcase which we had specially chosen to hide its contents. Captain Murray began to shout sailing orders.
My first close-up view of Possession turned me off as quick as it apparently did Captain Murray, who was hightailing to sea by the time the whaleboat reached the island's concrete jetty. He was right about the stink The wind, blowing directly off the guano rocks, was pissy and ammoniacal as a shebeen urinal.
Another impression struck me forcibly. I hung for a moment on the rusty iron ladder leading from the water to the top of the jetty and looked down at Breekbout
'There aren't any birds, man!' one. Fly away April. Back in July.
Same every year? I liked his grin.
Away from the jetty the birds' breeding-fiats were walled off from a group of stores, barracks and the headman's cottage. Everything was smeared a dirty unpleasant grey by the guano. As jy daar loop, dan val jy in die nat op jou gat-if you walk there when it's wet you'll fall on your backside,' Breekbout went on. 'Ms waarom ek altyd sit-that' s why I always '
'Jou skelm!-you bastard!'
His cheerfulness was a buffer against the grim, depressing, graveyard air of the place. The first wisps of fog were drifting in from the sea and the grey coastline was becoming greyer. The only man-made object in sight was the cutter, which was named Gaok. Her deck was deserted.
'What's she doing here?' I asked Breekbout.
`Fish.'
'Fishing's banned inside the twelve-mile limit.'
'Kaptein Denny always fishes here,'
We'll see about that tomorrow.'
`Kaptein Denny is a very good sailor.'
`So I hear. But that doesn't give him the right to fish where he shouldn't. Any self-respecting fisherman would be snug at home on a night like this.'
'Kaptein Denny has no wife, no girl. Maybe his prick's too small. Gaok is his home.'
`Gaok- what the devil does that mean?'
Ask Kaptein Denny. He knows everything.'
`He's quite a boy, it seems.'
'Very strong. Very tough. Speaks Unman too.' `
How old?'
'Fifty, fifty-five maybe. He'll live to be a hundred. No women, no brannewyn;
We'll pay him a visit tomorrow,'
He couldn't be doing much out of line, whatever it was, is the Force 5 wind which was kicking up sharp seas in the channel and whistling down the grotesquely-shaped rocks of my new home. Breekbout showed me over Van Rensburg's cottage. Most of the furniture was gone and it shared an air of forsakenness with the empty barracks where the labourers; slept during the guano scraping season. Breekbout had a corner in the barn-like place. I plumped for company rather than comfort and found myself a bunk. There wasn't even the scratting of a mouse to give life to the shadows where the lantern didn't reach. The atmosphere was as relaxing as a blow to the Adam's apple. I would have put two ghost lights in the window. I slept badly.
In the morning Breekbout turned out, from the ship-type galley, a slovenly breakfast of half-burnt mealie-meal porridge and boiled penguin eggs. We ate the mess by lantern light, as the island was still shrouded in impenetrable fog. It dripped in outsized drops off everything. A complex of gutters from the roofs channelled the precious water into big concrete storage tanks. Baths were out.
I wanted to get up and go and explore Doodenstadt but the fog made it impossible. So I killed time by setting up the transceiver. The gleaming set had everything that opened and shut. My code call-sign was wv. 5Bx, the C-in-C's choice. The instrument fascinated Breekbout, so I taught him how to operate it. Transmissions, however, were out because of the C-in-C's ban; but I rang the reception changes from longto short-wave, as well as VHF. There was enough island and ship gossip on the air to give us plenty of practice When I could make out the breakers on the mainland under the haze I decided to set off in the whaleboat. It was about mid-morning. Wisps of fog still clung round the island's stark topography; shorewards it was lighter. Gaok remained bidden in the curtain to the north-east. The previous day's . southerly blow had backed into a light north-wester. Breekbout propelled the boat by means of an odd and seemingly unworkable rowing action with one oar in a stern row43 lock. Once clear of the jetty the murk was still thick on the water and I was lost but he seemed to know where he was all the time.