The Land God Made in Anger. John Davis Gordon
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‘Because the coast walks.’
This was true. The Skeleton Coast changes, the winds and tides slowly shifting the great expanses of sand, so that old wrecks are sometimes found buried hundreds of yards inland. McQuade burrowed his hand into his pocket. He counted off four fifty-rand banknotes elaborately. He held them out to Jakob.
‘Please take me to this place.’
They drove back through the scrub-rock hills towards the Skeleton Coast, stones flying from the wheels, dust billowing up behind. McQuade wanted to make the coast while the sun was still high enough to use the sextant. Then the yellow-grey hills gave way to the rock mountains heaped up on the horizon, iron-brown and shimmering under the merciless blue sky. It was afternoon when they reached the ranger’s post at Springbokwasser, midst a clump of reeds. McQuade got a twenty-four-hour permit.
They drove on. Slowly the iron-brown mountains gave way to the flinty dunes, grey-brown and yellow. McQuade said to Jakob:
‘This man spoke in German. You understand German?’
‘I understand many words.’
McQuade said: ‘How was it when the Germans ruled this country?’
Jakob stared through the windscreen. ‘Sleg,’ he said. Bad.
‘Why?’
Jakob shook his head. ‘Twenty-five lashes. And if the whip does not whistle that lash does not count.’ He added: ‘Blood.’
‘For what offence did people get twenty-five lashes?’
‘For anything.’ He added: ‘For falling down. Even women and children.’
McQuade frowned. ‘Why did they fall down?’
‘Because the loads were too heavy. When the Germans were building the harbour at Lüderitz. I was a boy then.’
‘Were you ever lashed?’
For answer Jakob pulled up his shirt. His back was a mass of scar tissue.
McQuade was shocked. ‘For what offence?’
Jakob said: ‘The sickness of hunger. And the cold.’
‘But did they not feed you enough?’
‘There were no crops. The Germans had killed very many men in the wars, and so no crops were planted. The women and children had to build the harbour because there were no men left, but there was no food because there were no crops.’
McQuade did not believe this. The old man was repeating folklore. History was not McQuade’s strong point, but nobody had taught him this at school. He knew something about the German colonial war against the Hereros, and presumed it was a pretty bloody affair, as wars of pacification were in that era. What about the Red Indians in America? What about the Aborigines in Australia? But he did not believe this story about women and children being worked and starved and lashed by the Germans of South West Africa.
The gravel-encrusted hillocks gave way to the yellow sand dunes, row after jumbled row, going on and on: then, way ahead, a haze came onto the horizon and then the mauve-black of the Atlantic.
McQuade stopped where the road joined the coastal track. He made a note of the mileage, and said to Jakob, ‘Which way?’
Jakob pointed left. South.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Sure,’ Jakob said.
But Jakob was not so sure. On his instructions McQuade drove off the road half a dozen times in the next two hours, grinding down to the shore, and then along it, while Jakob peered all around for landmarks. He said he was looking for a promontory of rocks sticking out into the sea. It was after four o’clock when he pointed with conviction.
McQuade stopped. From Jakob’s description he had expected the rocks to reach much further into the sea. ‘How can you tell?’
‘By the shape of that rock. Like a seal.’
‘So where did you first see the two men come out of the sea?’
Jakob pointed behind them.
McQuade turned the Landrover north again and drove along the sandy, hummocked shoreline. After about a mile Jakob signalled him to stop. Jakob got out, looked up the shoreline, at the pounding, seething surf, then down it. He studied the sea for a full minute, then began to trudge northwards, up the coast, with conviction.
McQuade followed him in the Landrover.
After ten minutes Jakob stopped, looked at the sea, then at the sky. He looked south, at the featureless surf. Then he looked east, inland, at the featureless sand dunes. He announced, ‘Here.’
McQuade looked at the moonscape of desert and sea.
‘How do you know? The coast has changed much in forty years.’
‘I know.’ Jakob pointed at the black Atlantic, the rows of breakers rolling in, the flatness beyond. ‘There,’ he said.
McQuade had to work fast. It was after five o’clock and the sun was dangerously low on the horizon: any angle approaching ten degrees had to be treated with suspicion. If he had to wait for tomorrow for the sun-sight he would have to wait until noon because the morning sun would be in the east, over the desert, and he would not have a usable horizon because of the dunes. He sat on the sand, hastily opened his notebook, put the sextant to his eye and pulled down some shades. He fiddled with the angle-adjuster, until he found the image of the sun. Then he slid the adjuster and brought the sun’s image down, until the lower limb of it just touched the horizon. He rocked the sextant, so the sun just skimmed the horizon in an arc. Then he looked quickly at his digital watch. He noted down the exact hour, minute and second, allowing for reaction time. Then he read off the angle shown on the adjuster, and sighed.
The angle of the sun was eleven degrees, twenty-four minutes and about thirty seconds. That was perilously close to ten degrees. If he had been at sea, where it did not much matter if he’d been a mile or two out, he would have used the angle: but in this case, if he was a mile out in calculating where on the earth’s surface he was sitting, he could waste a lot of money, and not find that submarine at all. The only sensible thing was to spend the night here and get a noon-shot tomorrow to verify his position.
Jakob had been watching him in amazement. McQuade picked up a piece of driftwood, and stuck it upright in the sand. He went to the Landrover and got out the provisions and the pots.
He poured brandy into two mugs, added a dash of water, and gave one to Jakob. He sat down.
If Jakob was telling the truth, somewhere just out there was an old German submarine. Loaded with loot. And James McQuade was going to be a rich man. He said to Jakob:
‘So somewhere near here lie the bones of the man who was killed? Do you think we will see his ghost tonight?’
Jakob stared at him.
‘Baas, we must not sleep here tonight! We must sleep a long way down the beach from this place!’
And McQuade knew that Jakob had been telling him the truth.
They slept two miles down the beach. McQuade was awake at sunrise, and thank God the sky was clear. He would get his sun-sights.
He built up the fire. Jakob was still asleep, curled up in his blankets; he had got drunk last night. McQuade put a pot of water on the fire. There was nothing to do but wait till noon. He went to the Landrover and got his fishing rod.
He walked along the beach, looking for bait. It was plentiful, in brown, spongy lumps the size of fists. He selected one and cut it open. The bait was inside little pockets – meaty, pink, like plums. He thought: H.M. could have survived on this stuff alone. He threaded a lump onto