John stood aghast. We were sending over the side our profits just because some damn fool Malay was showing us how he could sail a schooner.
The crew, aware of their peril, jumped to it. The thick hawsers snaked overboard with a splash — away went the catch to Davy Jones.
"Full ahead," I rang, watching the oncoming doom, travelling like an express train. Then I saw her lean over as she luffed slightly until her lee scuppers were under water. It was clear she did not intend to ram us. But she was coming as close as she dared. I snatched up the megaphone as she came within a biscuit's toss — it was plain she had meant to cut across our stern and foul the trawl. My anger rose as I saw what she was up to. The fool! Had that light wooden hull, even at eleven knots, fouled the heavy hawsers of the net, her bow would have swung in towards the Etosha, and heaven alone knows what would have happened.
I could see Hendriks near the mizzen shrouds, grinning and waving. The figure next to him was Stein.
The stream of invective which had arisen to my lips at Hendrik's deliberate act of provocation was cut short at the sight of Stein. Bracing himself against the angle of Pikkewyn's deck, he cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted, but the words were lost in the wind.
John turned to me furiously. "We'll have Hendriks's scalp for this, Geoffrey — you can't damn well play about with ships like that. Full ahead and after him?"
"No," I rapped out, for I thought I saw part of Stein's game. "No. She's doing a good eleven knots, and it'll take everything Etosha has to catch up with her on that course before night. I think I see what Stein is up to. You remember how he tried to get Etosha's speed out of Mac? He's played a double game here — he knew we'd have to cut the trawl for fear of being rammed and then go tearing after him to ask what the hell. No. I've lost the net and my catch and I'm damned if Stein is going to find out what Etosha can do. We'll let him go."
The schooner was drawing away rapidly.
"But," said John vehemently, "You can't go attempting
to ram another ship on the open sea "
"He's got the perfect defence," I replied shortly. "A ship under sail has the right of way. Anything under steam must give way to it. We were under way. He was perfectly within his rights. We can't do anything about it."
"Wait till I find Hendriks alone ashore," expostulated John, "I'll teach him"
"To sail close to the wind," I remarked grimly, nodding my head after the schooner.
A shout from one of the crew, who had been busy watching the antics of the Pikkewyn, cut across my anger. A couple of cables' lengths away, as if brought up with the wind of the schooner, was one of the most extraordinary sights I have ever seen at sea. The sea boiled as if from a thousand torpedo-tracks, all running parallel. It foamed, it roared, it churned. Ahead, like a convoy escort, and in perfect formation of threes, a dozen or more huge rays rose, splashing back into the sea with breath-taking slaps. A school of porpoises, helplessly bewildered, were being shouldered along the surface, and my glance of amazement caught a fifteen foot shark struggling to force his way down into the seething mass carrying him along.
It was the barracouta, or snoek, as we call them. The cartoonists' butt from the hard days of food rationing merits more than the contempt poured on the snoek then. He is the finest fighter in the seas, more brutal and relentless than a shark. In these waters the snoeking season generally ends in early winter, but snoek is one of the most important catches in South Atlantic waters.
The sight was like one of those gigantic migrations of springbok in the Namaqualand desert when scores of thousands of buck, moving in gigantic phalanxes a dozen miles across, pour across the countryside, oblivious of fences, oblivious of homesteads, of guns, fire and man. They pour on and on, in countless numbers, and once they threw themselves by the thousand into the sea. Why they do it, man still has to learn.
And the barracouta were the same. As far as I could see, the water boiled with them.
"Get your lines overboard, quick." I roared at the crew. Here was the chance to fill our holds in an hour. Lines flew over the side, scarcely baited. Then the first solid phalanx roared under the ship. The helpless porpoises rolled and kicked, trying to get free of the seething mass. The barracouta ignored the lines but some, like those luckless springbok of the giant herds which impale themselves on barbed wire while the others push until the wire breaks, got caught up in the hooks. There was no catch. Again and again the lines went over the side into the apparently unending mass roaring by, but they were ignored as the huge school, intent on some hidden goal, swept by. They crashed oblivious into the ship's side. They jumped and seethed and milled, like nothing I have ever seen. I stopped the screws for fear of fouling them. Then suddenly, after about fifteen minutes, the water ceased to boil and they had passed. But not quite.
Like a destroyer escort astern of a convoy, three giant rays followed.
On the bridge we were too thunderstruck to utter a word. Now the keenness of our disappointment at missing the catch of our lives emerged. It was John who put the thought into words that Stein was the hoodoo.
He jerked his head at the distant schooner.
"Stein's the Jonah," he said. "We'd have got them if he hadn't been around."
Her sails merged into the gathering night.
III
Four Beers for the Wrong Man
the dust, in suspension with hot diesel fumes from the engine, seeped — steadily into the bus. The driver changed down for one of the hummocky dunes across which the road straggles out of Walvis Bay, and the jerk brought in fresh clouds. A bounce against the upholstery of the seat in front was enough to bring on its own little sand-storm, for the whole vehicle was impregnated with it, after doing this route every day for I do not know how many years. The dust in the deserts of South West Africa is laden with fine particles of mica. Normally this is a mixture to be shunned, but add to it blinding heat, sweat, discomfort and thirst, and it — becomes an irritant like mild pepper. Not only the nostrils, but the eyes and the ears get choked with the fine, irritating atoms. I have heard hay-fever sufferers (and the majority of people seem to have some sort of catarrhal complaint) sneeze thirty times running. Lower down the coast, near the mouth of the Orange River, there is a settlement where ninety per cent of the wretched inhabitants have tuberculosis.
The bus, run by the railways, swung up the steep gradient and turned left on to the harder desert road. At least on the open stretches the dust would tend to be left behind in the airstream. Walvis Bay lay on the left as we headed northwards towards Swakopmund. There were half a dozen European passengers in the forward end of the bus, and in conformity with the creed of apartheid on public transport, a score or so of Coloureds and natives sat behind the wire-meshed dividing grill. Whether they were dustier or more uncomfortable than the European passengers forward, it is difficult to say. But the grill was certainly not enough to make one unaware of their presence, if such was its intention, for with the dust and oil fumes were wafted in heavy, ammoniacal odours of unwashed bodies, that repellent which may be one of the deep, unconscious roots of apartheid. It cuts both ways, however, and a non-European will tell you that he cannot bear the stink of a white (washed) European. Livingstone was the first to find that out.
I caught a glimpse of Etosha at her mooring, and the thought of the sweet, clean sea-air made me regret I had not stayed with her for a day or two rather than come ashore. After Hendriks's sailing-ship had nearly cut us down, we spent another five days out on the fishing banks. The hoodoo of Stein persisted, in its effect on the catch. After" five days of fruitless, temper-fretting fishing which had yielded a bare four or five tons, I put back to port.