The River of Diamonds

'Well, bugger me!' exclaimed the big South African. He looked at the clear sky. 'Plenty of storm around!'

Here on the deck of the ship the whole thing seemed more ridiculous still. Shelborne came racing down the ladder from the bridge.

'Use your full revolutions,' he snapped. 'Steer due north until North Head bears 50 degrees. Got that? — North Head must bear 50 degrees…'

My voice was ironical. 'What does the barometer say?'

'High and steady now, but in a moment it will drop like a gannet. The beetles…'

'For crying in a bucket!' exclaimed Minnaar. 'Are you trying to get rid of us?'

He swung his head in his odd way from Minnaar to me. 'Good luck!' He said to Minnaar, who was grinning. 'I showed Captain Tregard the significance of the hygroscopic membranes on the beetles. They mean a storm, a big storm.'

Caldwell's goodbye rose spontaneously to my lips as Shelborne started to leave: '"Good luck to you, Shelley, perhaps my luck will change now."'

Had I struck him the reaction could not have been more sudden. His face blanched. He reached out in a reflex action and grabbed my shirt front. Then he dropped his hand slowly and I stood staring into the green depths of those strange eyes.

'I'm sorry you said that,' he said softly, 'I'm really very sorry. Like ex-champs, you never come back in the Namib.'

'Is that a threat, Shelborne?'

He clasped the heavy sealskin jacket close. 'Mary Caldwell…' he began, then checked himself. He stood for a moment absorbed in his thoughts. Then he said formally, Thank you for being kind to Mary Caldwell. It'll be pretty rough. I'm sorry.'

He spun on his heel and jumped into the waiting boat, which shot away towards Mercury.

Minnaar said, That's what being alone on a dump

like Mercury does. Nuts. Staring, raving nuts! Beetles and storms. Ag, hell!'

I shrugged it off. 'We'll work on the slave stations again this afternoon. Maybe I'll get the Sudhuk one rigged.'

My eyes went to the towering cliff.

There was no land.

A grey cloud raced towards the Praying Mantis, hanging like a wave breaking and, although the crest curled, it did not smoke.

Sand!

Namib sand!

It obliterated Sudhuk, the wrecks, the line of breaking surf, the weird landing-beach and the desert beyond. Shelborne was right.

'Minnaar!' I yelled. 'Minnaar! Get forrad with some men and cut the cables while I get her under way…!'

I jumped for the bridge. With the swift oblivion of an anaesthetic mask, the sand gagged my shouted orders. I could not see the bridge, let alone the bows. A moment before I had been breathing clean salt air; now I was spitting a semi-solid mixture which choked and blinded me as I tore up the rungs to the wheel. It whirled and blanketed the deck, the bridge, the men rushing to the anchors. The sand probed and needled its way into every crack, every orifice, every crevice; it was already inside my shirt, clinging where I had sweated. A scorpion scuttled under my feet, blown from the land. North Head, my key bearing, was still visible. Shelborne's instructions thrummed in my brain: I must steer for that, steer the way he had said. The deck leaned, and above me the ship's siren sobbed impotently against the howl of the wind. I found the terrified Coloured helmsman hanging on to its cord when I fought my way in, cut, stung, half-blinded. The bridge door hung ajar. I tried to ram it closed, but the cant of the vessel and the savage wind smashed it out of my hands, ripping off a fingernail.

I seized the speaking-tube to the engine-room. 'Sven! In the name of all that's holy, 300 revs! Everything you've got!'

'Diesels are cold, Skipper,' came his anxious reply. 'I didn't think we'd need them again so soon after the trip…'

Minnaar burst in. 'Cut? Shall I cut the cables?'

'No! Belay there! The diesels are cold. Sven wants ten minutes…'

'She'll drag long before that!' He snatched the voice-pipe from me. 'Sven, give them the gun, for Christ's sake! If you saw what's up aloft…'

The wind struck another hammer-blow. The whaler wheeled away stern-on, and then came up with a sickening thump forrad.

'One anchor cable gone!' Minnaar shouted above the roar of the wind. 'The other…'

He never finished. The whaler sprang free as the second cable parted. She had been secured facing the south-west and now she plunged backwards into the maelstrom. The water poured ankle deep on to the bridge. The all-pervading sand changed the thrashed-white spume a dirty grey. I pulled myself from the gratings where I had been thrown. The voice pipe whistled for attention. I grabbed it. Minnaar lay half-stunned in a corner.

'You boys play roller-coasters?' asked Sven in his broken English. 'That was one hell of a dive arse-ways. Revs in two minutes.'

'Minnaar!' I propped him up. 'Pull yourself together, man! She'll be under power in a minute! Take that wheel!'

The spokes spun madly as the whaler yawed again, completely out of control.

Minnaar dragged himself up. 'Where's her bitching head?' he mouthed, wiping a runnel of blood from his mouth. The bitch! The flippin' bitch! What did that bastard Shelborne say…?'

'Due north. Get her due north, for God's sake!'

I rang down to Sven. 'Half astern! Gently, man, gently, or she'll never come round!'

'Due north, aye aye sir!' Minnaar shook the cobwebs out of his brain. Bows to wind, the whaler's motion eased momentarily. The sand, now wet with flying spray, stung more but it was easier to breathe. I could not see any farther than the bridge dodgers.

'Port twenty! Speed for 250 revolutions!'

Her head fell off and she lay beam-on to the sea until the gratings under my feet were awash. She was capsizing, being swamped. But she hadn't ridden the Roaring Forties for nothing, my old whaler. Though she was dying, she was dying very hard. But I knew she would never come up.

I went through the motion of giving orders. 'Hard aport! Full ahead!'

It may have been the torque action of the single screw or a freak shift of the wind which did bring her head up. She rolled upright Wearily, hundreds of tons of water pouring off her upperworks, tearing away the gunnels like rotten paper and then — like an off-course missile — she jinked downwind.

'Due north! Due north!'

Minnaar understood. The compass needle steadied. Thank God! I breathed. Shelborne's directions would save us yet. There was a loom of rock way ahead. North Head!

The fact penetrated even Minnaar's fogged senses. 'We can't have got so far so soon…' He peered into the binnacle. 'Shoot that bearing now, Skipper, if there is any bladdy thing left to shoot it with.'

'Steer three-one-zero. Steady as she goes.'

Minnaar peered uncertainly at the compass needle. 'This flaming thing looks sick, it's coming round so slowly…'

It was the last time Jan Minnaar looked at a compass rose. The ship leapt high into the air. The steel keel and plating screamed as she planed, in full career, across the reef. The old whaler stopped, pivoted amidships across a spine of rock, and her guts spilled into the white water. Then she broke off slightly after the foremast, leaving the bridge as a square, sawn-off section. The mast shuddered for a moment before pitching overboard with the forepeak and tophamper. I think most of the crew were drowned at that moment. The bridge tilted stern-ways under my feet. The rudder disintegrated as it smashed on to the reef. The wheel mule-kicked: Minnaar screamed. A spoke of the wheel had caught his lower jaw, — it gibbered agape, a bloodied mass of dismembered sinews and broken teeth. Another lurch sent him through the doorway and over the side. The shattered stern gave another jerk. I had to jump overboard on to the reef before the stern took me to the bottom with it. The rock was black under me. The ship canted, and I threw myself headlong. The rock tore at me, and the sea was cold, cold. The Benguela current, I told myself between consciousness and unconsciousness, it's been cold for a million years since it closed the coast and brought its tribute of ice-white diamonds. A million years, and it's still cold.