"Stop both," I ordered, struck by the harshness of my own voice.
I consulted the chart again. I was almost exactly — if any navigator can hope to be anything like exact on that coast — where the rock should be. While Trout wallowed in the slight swell, I swept every inch of sea between myself and the shore.
There was nothing. No rock, no breakers, not a living or dead thing.
I scanned every inch of sea where I knew Curva dos Dunas should lie. Nothing!
So, I thought bitterly to myself, an old man's illusion and a young fool's dream turned out to be nothing but a stretch of empty water! I could take Trout through without a thought of wrecking her, if I wished.
Even to myself I could not answer the questions which arose about NP I — or rather the noise which I fatuously believed was the hydraulic jet machinery of NP I. Who had ever heard of a submarine being propelled by the expulsion of water anyway? Who would believe such a cock-and-bull story? It looked lamer every moment. I had made a complete fool of myself in front of my officers and my crew, standing a watch alone — in war-time — and conning a ship without a single soul aboard knowing where she was. Trout's log would look lovely before a court-martial! No entries, and the captain unable to say where he was. I looked round me, cursed the Skeleton Coast and cursed NP I and all the blasted fools who had given me this impossible mission.
I snapped open the voice-pipe.
"Course three-two-oh. Two hundred revolutions."
I'd get the hell out of this blasted coast, I thought bitterly.
Then I saw it.
It flashed white and evil, like a guano-covered fang, out of the sea a few hundred yards on the port beam. I had been on the inside of the damned thing and I had been searching landwards! A sick, cold feeling hit me in the stomach after my momentary elation. I was in the wickedest stretch of foul ground. The fathom line was contorted like a switchback at Blackpool. I had been fooled for the second time that morning by the current and fooled more still by the curious light refraction so that I had not seen Simon's Rock itself, but only its white-guano-littered tip where the sun caught it. I was like a blind man rushing through a roomful of glasses trying not to knock them over.
"Full astern!" I yelled in the voice-pipe. "No, stop both! Give me continuous depth readings."
"Echo-sounder reports four fathoms, sir," came up John's quiet, untroubled voice. What the hell would he be thinking about my hysterical commands screamed down from the bridge where there was no one else to tell him what was going on?
"Asdic reports obstructions bearing ah… hem… almost all round the compass, sir." The calm voice had a tinge of irony. "Hydrophones report all quiet, sir. No transmissions."
Trout lay in the troughs of the waves while I tried to make up my mind. It was easy enough to know where I was. I had Simon's Rock at my back, and the three-topped hill ashore to give me a fix. I pored over the annotated chart and saw that if I turned Trout's head I could get her into the position I had originally intended, a piece of deep water flanking the entrance to Curva dos Dunas. Curva dos Dunas! Where the hell was it? The sea was calm, almost oily, and there were no breakers. There should have been, looking at old Simon's annotations. "Breaks. Six fathoms. Breaks occasionally. Possibly less water. Heavy breakers. Surf."
I gazed hopelessly around for the sand-bars which must mark the channel into Curva dos Dunas. There simply must be! With trembling hands I took a bearing and cast my binoculars along the line of it seeking my island. Nothing! Had it disappeared in all the years that had elapsed since the chart was drawn? But, argued my sailor's mind, the rest of it is accurate enough. So damn accurate that had it not been so you and Trout would have been dead ducks already. Again I cast my eye along the line of the bearing. Suddenly I felt terribly afraid. My palms sweated. I knew why they called it the Skeleton Coast. I knew the terror of the men who drove in to this fearful, bland, cross-eyed shore and were called crazy when they got back to port — if they did. I shivered, despite the growing intensity of the sun. I noticed Trout's head beginning to swing away landwards.
God, what a race there must be here! The thought shook me out of my nameless terror. I would take Trout outside Simon's Rock and make a reconnaissance of the so-called entrance to Curva dos Dunas: if the soundings proved to be the same as on the chart, I would follow my original plan. The part about Curva dos Dunas simply not being there — I'd forget it, for the moment.
"Slow ahead both," I ordered. "Give me continuous soundings. Tell Bissett to keep his ears skinned."
"Aye, aye, sir," came John's voice.
I eased Trout round and she made her way slowly through and over the wicked sand-bars only a few feet under her keel. Had the water been breaking, I thought grimly. Now we were in deeper water. The soundings suddenly deepened — from five and six to twenty-nine and then forty-seven and sixty-one. I breathed freely again, knowing we were safe for the moment but remembering what the bottom looked like in case we had to dive. Dive! I thought of NP I. With this coast under us, we would be like two men fighting between themselves and a third at the same time. Certainly the Skeleton Coast would give neither of us any quarter.
I brought Trout round in a shallow circle and ran in towards where the entrance to Curva dos Dunas should lie. Using Simon's Rock and the three-top hill like a man in a fog holding on to one patch of light, I brought Trout in.
"Bottom shallowing, sir," came John's report.
I blurred a spot on the chart with a pencil where Trout lay. Thirty fathoms here, said old Simon's handwriting.
"Thirty fathoms, sir. Hydrophone operator reports no transmissions. Three knots."
Dead right. I felt the sea catch Trout by the tail and as she swung I felt the correction. Someone was certainly on the job down below. But it showed there was a tide race. Thirty, twenty-seven, twenty-five, twenty-three, twenty-five read the chart.
"Thirty fathoms, sir, twenty-seven, twenty-three, twenty-five. Asdic reports obstructions port, starboard and ahead. Clear astern."
God! The old man was right!
Then I saw Curva dos Dunas.
I think it must have been the slight gust of wind from the south-west — sailors on this coast mutter south-west in their dreams, for from that quarter come the waves and the wind to drive you against the ruthless shore. A ripple spread across the calm surface of the sea. I saw a sudden flicker of white. A rapid whorl of white, convulsed and turning like a man's inner ear. I saw the sand-bars curve and twist like the charted lines. The wind had whipped the sea against the wicked, waiting sand for a moment.
Curva dos Dunas had revealed itself, a veil rent aside only for a moment.
I couldn't see the inner anchorage clearly, but what I saw told its own deadly tale. Here was an anchorage — the only anchorage for a thousand miles, and it lay behind a convolution of sand-bars, completely hidden in calm weather but visible in anything of a breeze, when any sailor worth his sense would shy like a frightened horse at spotting those lines of broken surf. I marvelled at the guts of old Simon Peace at taking a sailing-ship in there; at his courage at winding his way through those broken lines of surf, now snarling as the wind broke the water across their half-concealed fangs; at his tenacity at coming back again and again to chart it. No wonder he had screamed on his deathbed! Sand, bars of sand, every one of them death at the touch of a keel. To take any ship, even under diesel or electric engines, into what appeared a broken holocaust of surf, would require a heart as steady as the three-topped hill away to starboard now. I looked with grim satisfaction at my island, my only landed possession in the world. It was a gift worthy of the old dead sailor: surf on this coast is death, but an anchorage is life. He had shown me where I could find NP I, if she was to be found.