Table Mountain came up over the horizon like a noble blessing; after two days of foul weather, they were gliding into Table Bay as if across a carpet, quartering the calm sea towards peace and the long-hoped-for landfall. The mountain itself was cloud-topped, wreathed in misty white; it stood poised above the town, which straggled up its slopes until first the houses, and then the tree-line, surrendered to rock and scree. Sunshine seemed to fill every part of the horizon, reflected on pink and yellow buildings, on bronzed green roofs, on exotic trees; the gateway of Africa opened to them in hot splendour. They edged into the harbour, past a bright-painted Union Castle ship which was just getting up steam. People waved a welcome; black faces looked up at them; flower-sellers offered tiny pin-points of red and orange and blue; the quays sprang to life as they nudged a way gently into their berth. On the deck of the Alcestis, all storm and stress forgotten, the passengers counted their blessings and basked in the sunshine. Cameras clicked and whirred. Over all, the mountain stared down on them in hazy blue detachment.
The Professor, gazing round him, threw out an arm and declaimed sonorously:
Cook's son, duke's son, son of a belted earl, Forty thousand horse and foot going to Table Bay!
"What was that?" demanded Kincaid from near by. He often followed the Professor round nowadays, standing within earshot, hoping for ammunition. "Who said it?"
"A forgotten poet of Empire," answered the Professor courteously, "singing of our past glories." "This is the twentieth century, you know," said Kincaid, with unpleasant emphasis.
"Oh, yes," said the Professor. He sighed. Though it was early in the forenoon, he was tired already. "Let us try to make the most of it."
PART FIVE
"Listen to the heart-beat of savage, untamed, mysterious Africa"
"You've all seen what the choice is," said Carl. "There's a trip by air up to Johannesburg, and then on to the Game Reserve. Or there's a bus-tour along what they call the Garden Route, between here and Durban, with various stop-overs. The ship itself stays here about four days, before moving on to Durban. That's where we all get together again." He looked round them, trying to curb the nervous irritation which had lately been plaguing him. "Personally, I'm going to stay with the ship, and I think you might as well do the same. There'll be plenty of people left on board."
It was after lunch, on the first day of their stay in Cape Town; the delay in arrival had meant some last-minute changes in the routine, and only now had the choice of arrangements been made clear. They were all with him in the day cabin, except for the Professor, who had retired to bed with a headache; Diane and Louis sat silent on the big sofa, while Kathy had her usual station at these meetings, standing close by the open porthole as if she belonged to two worlds, and could not make up her mind between them. There would be no shore excursions until the morrow, when Tiptree-Jones set out with the Johannesburg contingent, and the Purser headed the cavalcade by road to Durban.
Diane was the first to speak, and she prefaced it with a yawn and a stretch.
"It suits me O.K. to stay on board," she said, in an off-hand voice. "I don't want to go chasing after any wild animals. I'm tired!"
"How about a little work?" said Louis snappishly.
"I'll work when I'm good and ready."
Kathy turned from the porthole momentarily. "Do you happen to know who's staying on board?" she asked Carl.
He shook his head. "No. Everyone's been thrown out—they're still making up their minds."
Diane asked: "Who do you want to stay on board?"
"No one special," answered Kathy. Her voice positively forbade any further discussion.
"What's the Prof going to do?" asked Louis.
"He'll stay too," answered Carl. "I want to work a few things out with him, maybe mail some of the stuff home." He looked at Louis. "That leaves you."
Louis also yawned, not so convincingly as Diane; where she had looked tired, he seemed almost theatrically indifferent. Finally he said:
"I was thinking of taking in the Johannesburg trip."
There was silence after he had spoken; his words had been normal, his choice hardly worthy of note; it was only his manner which drew attention to both of them, so that those who heard him were left wondering what it was all about. Carl spoke for all of them when he asked:
"What do you want to go all the way up there for?"
"Just for the hell of it," answered Louis off-handedly. "It's all part of the cruise, isn't it?"
"I'm not so sure of that," answered Carl. He hardly knew why he was arguing, except that Louis's manner had put him on his guard. "We're not here to enjoy ourselves."
"Hell, chief!" said Louis. "I've been cooped up in the ship since God knows when. I want to get away."
There was another silence. Once again, the phrase "I want to get away" was entirely normal, like the line of thought behind it; it was the way Louis said it, as if he had rehearsed it earlier, and was now coming in on cue, which nudged the attention. This time it was Diane who challenged him.
"We all want to get away," she said aggrievedly. "But it means you'll be gone for nearly a week, just loafing around. How about that?"
"I won't be loafing."
"What, then?"
"Gee, I don't know!" said Louis, with somewhat overdone irritation. "There'll be a big party going up. Maybe sixty people. I'll find someone to work on."
"Mrs. van Dooren?" inquired Carl.
"Could be."
"And could be not," said Diane. "I heard she was taking the other trip."
"So what's the difference? I'm nearly two thousand bucks ahead, there. I've just about run through her."
Diane said: "It's the other way round, by the look of you."
Louis did not answer. He was indeed looking wan and pale; a nervous twitch at the side of the mouth spoke of tension and tiredness. At the beginning, he had given them all a ribald account of Mrs. van Dooren's tastes and demands, but latterly he had not been at all communicative, on this or any other point. Yet Carl, looking at him, decided that he would let the thing go. Louis had earned a rest, if it was a rest he was really looking for. There could be no possible harm in giving him a run ashore.
"O.K.," he said briefly. "Let's leave it like that. We all stay on board, except Louis who does the Johannesburg trip. I may do a bit of shopping here, but that's about all." He glanced across at Kathy, still stationary by the porthole. "I suppose we should really buy some souvenirs, while we're in this part of the world." There was almost a coaxing quality in his voice; she had been very remote lately, he could not get near her at all. He supposed it to be due to her embarrassment that, even now, she had not contributed a single cent towards their earnings. . . . "Would you like that, Kathy?"
"If you would," she answered, without feeling.
Diane sniffed. "Try me," she suggested caustically. "I'd like some nice souvenir bars of gold."
"They've got diamonds here too," said Carl jokingly, to ease the moment. "Up at Kimberley. They just dig them up out of the ground." He recalled a guide-book phrase. "They say it's the biggest man-made hole in the world."
"Now take it easy, Carl!" said Diane, in pretended alarm. "You'll get Romeo all worked up again."
Snugly berthed in the inner harbour, sheltered by the enormous mountain at its back, the Alcestis fell silent. More than two-thirds of her passengers had taken one or other of the shore trips; and this was the time when the Captain, aware that most of his crew needed a break, granted leave-periods of two and three days at a time, to anyone who could be spared. Cape Town was not the ideal place for this; not for nothing had it been nicknamed, for over three hundred years, the Tavern of the Seas; almost always, someone landed in trouble, and had to be rescued, or bailed out, or, in extreme cases, left behind to languish in jail. Apart from the formidable domestic brandy, it was not that opportunities for sin were anything out of the ordinary. It was just that the local rules were perceptibly stricter. All he could do was to see that knowledge of this filtered down to the lower deck. The most important could be summed up in a succinct phrase: "Coloured girls are illegal."