A Bridge Of Magpies (12 page)

When it ended we waited for Kaptein Denny's reaction. He said in a strained, tired voice, 'That was like a conversation with a voice from the grave.'

I said, 'You must have seen what happened
to
U-I60!
You were there!'

'My activities really began in
a
big way where it leaves off. The liner ran ashore:
I
went to help, as you know.'

'You and the U-boat must have passed smack next to each
other,
on opposite courses in the channel,'

'Maybe.'

'Surely you
spotted
her!'

'It was foggy. Very thick. A wild night. The liner was my only concern.'

'The explosion
of
Gousblom's
magazine must have lit up the whole channel.'

'It did–for a moment.'

'Yet, you never spotted
U-I60?'

'No. I sighted a lot of oil later.'

The oil was in the north. You took the southern exit. You said so yourself.'

'I went backward and forward all night to the
City o/
Baroda.
The sea was breaking right across her. The passengers jumped form the stern to reach my boat. She was still among the breakers and not far up on the rocks, like now. When I left next day
I
could see the oil–and the warships waiting.'

I couldn't fault him and he wouldn't be drawn, so dropped questioning him further. But his attitude served only to keep the finger on him
as far as
Koch and
I
were concerned. Jutta didn't mention what I'd told her about the 82

underlying reason for
Gousblom's
sortie into the channel Nor did I ... at least, not until the early hours of them following morning. She'd stayed by the fire for a long time and I had finally seen her back to the cheerless cottage. I didn't blame her for not wanting to be there, especially alone. The fog was thicker than ever.

I slept fitfully, and so much on a hair-trigger, that I was already awake at some other noise before a violent knocking at the bunkhouse door had me on my feet and racing for it Kaptein
Denny
leapt up at the same instant. It was Jutta. She was shoeless and had been sleeping In her old shore clothes.

I didn't have to ask what it was when I wrenched open the door. I felt the sound in my belly. It wasn't the sharp retching crack of small-arms, but a flight of deep decibels through the darkness which socked one below the diaphragm. She might have been Possession's lady ghost herself, she was so white.

"The sound of guns",' she whispered,

83

It wasn't-guns, of course. But what was it?

Kaptein Denny and
I
ran outside, but Jutta kept to the doorway. Denny stood listening and swinging his head about like a radar scanner. The fog was warmer and clammier. The past was unwinding and rewinding like Jutta's tape machine. It underscored
Gousblom's act
of blind courage. I said in a murmur to Jutta,
as
if a human voice could possibly have erased the mysterious sound, 'In the Royal Navy it is a captain's prerogative to steer for the sound of guns – Nelson started it'

`What ... what . . .?' she began, but Koch yelled from his bunk, `Struan–what the hell gives?'

I shut him up. It was only nerves-because you couldn't miss that deep horizon-thudding sound again.

We waited. We strained our ears. It didn't come again. Then Kaptein Denny asked, as softly
as a
hoarse whisper could be soft, 'What did you say about guns?'

I gave
him a
collapsed version of the Convoy WV.5BX

affair ... 'Here!' I exclaimed, 'why am I telling you this? You
were
at Possession that night! If
Gousblom
heard gunfire, you must have-too.'

Perhaps it was the distorting effect of the fog, but there seemed to be a dead-fish gleam in his eyes which I couldn't get past. He'd got control of his voice since his tension-shot whisper earlier: it was dry and flat now,

'I heard it'

'Go on, man!'

'It was heavy gunfire ...

somewhere south of the island.

The sound was carried on the wind. It was very loud–louder . than tonight – and frightening.'

'Did you see the gun flashes?' asked Jutta.

`No. It was a dark, stormy night'

I said, 'It might have been guns in wartime but it couldn't be guns tonight'

Ìt couldn't be guns tonight,' he echoed.

'Don't stand there repeating what I say,' I snapped. Ìt 84

could have been some side-kick to the main event–then. What is it
now?'

'I don't know.'

'You've been fishing here for thirty years and you don't know . . .?'

He
remained silent under my stare. Breekbout and Koch joined us.

Breekbout said-'It's that ghost leaping up out of hell. It happens when she comes.'

'Bly stil–
pipe down!' ordered Koch. 'What are you talking about guns for? All that's over–years ago.'

I went closer to Kaptein Denny-
as
if that way
I
might get
at
what he knew ... if he knew. There were new dark stains under his
eyes,
which were
as
unreadable as fog-clouded lenses.

'Let's have it!'

'I've heard it now and I heard it then.
I
don't know what
it
is any
more than you do.'

It was impossible to get anything more out of him. I didn't believe him. The man's duplicity underlined my belief that the decision to break up the Jutta-Denny party the next day was a right one.

We all stood around near the door in uncomfortable silence-until it became too cold. There was no repetition of the sound. I told myself there must be some explanation for itbut what? Sonic boom? Not in the pre-jet era of 1943. Thunder? It never rains on the Sperrgebiet. Man-made? If so, how? After all, you don't mock up a 16-inch broadside on an uninhabited coast just in order to entertain the birds and seals. They'd never heard of Nelson.

Finally we all went inside and had coffee. At 1.30 a.m.
the
human brain is supposed to be at its lowest ebb and I couldn't get anything out of mine to make sense out of my suspicions about Kaptein Denny, though I was broad awake and on edge. We all were Jutta decided to come to the bunkhouse for what remained of the night, and I fetched her blankets and shoes from the cottage. We kept a light going. Even indoors the condensation dripped from the lamp-glass and made a mini-sound which jarred in the silence. None of us slept much.

It wasn't much of a way to start our passage to Luderitz next day. Kaptein Denny remained uncommunicative and 85

dampened any breakfast sparkle Koch or Breekbout might have been capable of. Jutta and I said perfunctory goodbyes to the others. Breekbout ferried us out to my official boat, the cutter
Ichabo.
The anchorage was blotted with fog and layers of cloud lay low down on the south-western horizon. A slight northerly breeze rippled the channel. The
Ichabo was a
sharp contrast to Kaptein Denny's boat. She was spartan, neglected and dirty. The diesel hadn't been cared for and it sounded pretty rough after I'd battled to start it. I headed for the gap between the Kreuz shoals and Possession's northern tip:
Gousblom's
short cut to get at
U-160.
Making it dangerous was Broke Rock, an evil fang which stuck like a bone in the throat of the passage. Jutta was distant and unco-operative. She stood on deck all the time I
was
busy with the preliminaries of getting under way; staring at what she could make out of the liner wreck and shore, with the intentness of a lovesick teenager. I was working my way past the reefs before standing off the coast to avoid squalls as Kaptein Denny had advised, when the engine died.

'Jutta!' My temper was shot to hell–by the danger combined with her attitude.

'Forget that view: lend a hand here with the wheel while J fix the engine.'

'I don't know the first thing about steering.'

'You don't have to. Hold it steady, that's all. And keep your eyes skinned, straight in front of you.'

She did as I said, reluctantly. I went below; I tinkered with this and tinkered with that but the diesel wouldn't fire. After a while I put my head out of the box which was the engine room and took a look at the sea.
Ichabo
was being carried towards Broke Rock by the seaward set of a fairly strong current that was pushing northwards up the channel at a couple of knots.

'The bloody thing won't start,' I told Jutta. 'Ira in a shocking state.'

`That means we'll have to go back?'

The relief in her voice needled me. J wasn't going to have my plans wrecked at the outset. My irritation laid my decision slap on the line.

'No. We sail.'

'You never give up, do you?'

86

I'd begun to sound a bit tough-even to myself.
I
softened the come-back. 'No, Jutta. Especially not when I've got a thing like that–' I gestured at the Broke-which was now not more than a couple of cables' lengths away to starboard – '

almost under my keeL'

The northerly wind was backing and becoming flukier:
I'd
have to make a couple of sharp tacks to get clear. The sea was changing, losing its green and becoming greyer. I didn't like the look of that cloud-bank either. But there was no turning back now:
I was
committed.

'Steer . . I gave her some elementary helm orders while
I
made sail. The big high boom–the height of a man by the mast gooseneck–was designed to swing clear of the wheelhouse roof, so that the helmsman could have an unobstructed view. I wanted the cutter on the port tack. The wind was freshening all the time and backing north-west. I was afraid that the boat would be caught in irons with someone inexperienced like Jutta at the wheel but the sail took
all
my attention. Eventually-however,
Ichabo came
round slowly and clawed her away past the Broke and we moved out to sea by way of the narrow passage.

I
took the wheel after that and we stood off the coast with the wind freshening still further and the squalls churning up the water in the rebound from the land,
as
Kaptein Denny said they would. Behind Elizabeth Point–the old ghost town site–the land was a dreary waste.
Ichabo
handled well: she came from the same yard as
Gaok
and probably had much the same underwater lines. But with that ugly menace of the storm on the southern horizon
I
could have wished for someone better than a girl for my crew. Still,
I
had gone into it with my eyes open, and by resorting to sail had made my commitment complete to the in-shore route.
Yet,
looking at the grim, deadly shore and the growing line of white breakers,
I
wondered with some trepidation what
the
next twenty-four hours would hold.

By afternoon it was blowing a fresh gale and the wind was steady in the south-south-west. Kaptein Denny's forecast might have been computerized for accuracy.
Ichabo
had begun to run towards the coast in the final leg of a somewhat Sshaped course to pick up the entrance to the inshore route, which lay well to the north of Elizabeth Point. The scud and 87

overcast were down
to mast-height.
Ichabo
was riding well: waves would come up astern and her bow would dip on the summit
as
if she were crouching for some stupendous leap, then she would careen into the trough, bucking and shredding the seas. It was an exhilarating and frightening motion, all at once, to be caught in the gigantic crossfiow of energy between wind and sea. It was an uncomplicated challenge of survival. It clarified my senses and I didn't feel tired any longer. Alabama Cove was opce the famous Confederate raider's funkhole. It is roughly a funnel-shaped affair with the broad end of the funnel in the north and the narrow end in the south. The coast forms one side of it and a discontinuous line of reefs and sandbars the other. There are gaps of deep water between these hazards. From end to end the place measures three or four miles. There is a safe channel up the middle This can only be entered via the narrow section in the south. At the other extreme is Tuscaloosa Islet, a low-lying group of rocks which offers a safe anchorage in almost any weather. The islet is named after the
Alabama's
auxiliary and onetime prize, the
Tuscaloosa.
If you could put a trapdoor across the entrance-nothing could winkle out a ship inside, That half-mile-wide gap is a death-trap. You have to negotiate it–Kaptein Denny had briefed me in detail–by steering for
a
strange beacon made out of whale skeletons, set up at the foot of a solitary sandhill. It's called New Bedford Point. The bones were put there by American whalers that frequented the Sperrgebiet before the Declaration of Independence. The dry, salt-impregnated air has preserved the bones ever since,

J checked the briefing in my
mind
as I headed for the point The suspicion also arose, when I saw the holocaust ahead, that it might be
a
death ride Kaptein Denny had organized to take care of me. But the time for choice was almost past: astern loomed a wild, bleak and rain-scourged sea; chunks of it kept slapping in our faces like wet clothes. There was a continual lash and splutter of spray past the wheelhouse and
Ichabo
writhed and twisted
in the
mounting seas. The sky was a solid wall of cloud.

`There!' I pointed, to show Jutta.

The landmark
I
was homing in on–a fan-shaped patch of white among some curious black hummocks behind the whale bones–came into sight. I felt easier. They were spot on
88

where Kaptein Denny said they would be. Once again, Jutta didn't share my relief.
She
hung on to the grab-handle in the wheelhouse, her oilskins streaming. I had the
windows
open because the wipers didn't work.

In. . .
there?'

I had to admit to myself it didn't look
too
good. To myself alone. Spray was exploding forty or fifty feet high on the outer chain of sand-spits and reefs. A clear line of white water demarcated it all the way down to that savage little blinder off the southernmost point. A patch of breakerless water near it was the entrance-way.
lchabo
was like a wild animal being driven by beaters into the mouth of a
boma
thornbush trap. Violent gusts and squalls bouncing back from the land stirred up the channel like a gigantic swizzle stick.