Skeleton Coast Read online

  Peter knew he shouldn’t have opened his mouth. He’d made a pledge to Assa. But he wanted to fit in with these rough-and-ready men who spoke so knowledgeably about things he himself was unaware. They were worldly, especially Varley and H. A., and Peter wanted them to respect him more than anything he’d ever wanted in his life. So with lips made slack by brandy he told them of the dozen clay pots filled with uncut diamonds in the royal kraal of King Maharero.

  “How do you know this, boy?” Varley had hissed like an adder.

  “Because the lad’s father is the preacher in Hereroland,” H. A. had answered and looked at Peter. “I recognize you now. I met your old man a couple of seasons back when I went to see the king about hunting concessions on his land.” His steady eyes swept the group. “He’s been living with the Herero, what, five years now?”

  “Almost six,” Peter answered proudly. “They know me and trust me.”

  Before another fifteen minutes had passed they were discussing openly the possibility of stealing the beer pots. Peter went along with the scheme only after the others promised that the five of them would only take one container each and leave seven for the Herero people; otherwise he wouldn’t tell them where the stones were located.

  At a trading post a further hundred miles south, H. A. Ryder sold his wagon and its precious load for half of what he could have fetched for the ivory in Kimberley and outfitted the men with proper horses and gear. He’d already decided the course they would take out of the Herero empire, the one that afforded their only chance of escape once the theft was discovered. The trading post was at the end of a newly laid telegraph line. The men waited three days while Ryder made arrangements with a trader he knew in Cape Town. H. A. shrugged off the staggering cost of what he ordered, figuring he’d either be a millionaire able to pay the debt or a corpse lying in the searing Kalahari sun.

  It was impossible to sneak into the royal kraal. Runners reported their presence to the king as soon as they crossed into his domain. But H. A. was known to the king, and Peter’s father was surely eager to have his son returned to him, though Peter suspected he’d be given a treatment worthy of Job rather than that of the prodigal son.

  It took a week to reach the kraal from the border and Samuel Maharero himself greeted the riders when they finally reached his camp. He and H. A. spoke for an hour in the king’s native tongue, the guide giving him news of the outside world since the king was in exile by order of the German colonial office. The king in turn told Peter, to his great relief, that his parents had just left for the bush, where his father was baptizing a group of women and children, and wouldn’t return till the following day.

  The king granted them permission to spend the night but denied H. A.’s request to hunt on Herero land, as he had four years previously.

  “Can’t blame a man for trying, Your Highness.”

  “Persistence is a white man’s vice.”

  That night they’d stolen into the rondoval. The hut was packed to the roof poles with hay and they had to burrow into the pile like mice to reach the spot where the diamonds were hidden. It was when John Varley plucked a second pot from the ground and dumped its contents into a saddlebag that Peter Smythe realized he’d been duped from the beginning. The Watermen brothers, too, emptied several pots into their bags. Only H. A. kept his word and took the contents of only one of the beer pots.

  “If you don’t take them, I will,” Varley whispered in the dark.

  “Your choice,” Ryder drawled. “But I’m a man of my word.”

  As it was they didn’t have enough bags for all the stones, and after stuffing pants pockets and anything else they could, four of the big pots remained unmolested. H. A. carefully reburied the cache and did everything he could to hide the theft. They left camp at dawn, thanking the king for his hospitality. Maharero asked Peter if he had any message for his mother. Peter could only mumble to tell her he was sorry.

  LYING on the crest of the dune above the water hole, H. A. allowed himself just a moment to watch the king’s men.

  When they’d started out after the thieves there had been an entire impi, an army of a thousand warriors, tracking them from the tribal lands. But that had been five hundred miles ago, and the hardship had whittled their numbers. H. A. estimated there were still more than a hundred of them, the very strongest, and they ran at a ground-eating pace despite their own hunger and thirst. The sun was just high enough to glint off the honed blades of their assegais, the stabbing spears their people used to vanquish any who stood in their way.

  H. A. tapped Tim Watermen on the leg and together they slid to the bottom of the dry wash where the others clustered nervously. The horses had picked up on the sudden shift in mood. They shuffled their hooves in the dust and their ears twitched as if they could hear the approaching danger.

  “Mount up, lads,” Ryder said, accepting the reins from Peter Smythe.

  “We’re going to ride?” he asked. “Through the day?”

  “Aye, boy. It’s that or one of Maharero’s warriors going to garland his hut with your insides. Let’s go. We have only a mile on them and I don’t know how long the horses are going to take the heat.”

  Ryder was aware that had they not found water last night, the Herero would have been on them like a pack of wild dogs by now. As it was, only one of his canteens was full when he threw a rangy leg over his horse’s broad back. They climbed out of the wadi abreast, and all five men turned when they left the shadow of the depression and felt the raw sun burning at the backs of their necks.

  For the first miles, H. A. kept them at a steady trot that gained them a mile for every three on the advancing Herero impi. The sun baked the earth and dried their sweat the instant it burst from their pores. Under the protection of his big slouch hat, H. A. had to ride with his eyes closed to slits to protect them from the blinding reflection off the dunes.

  Resting under a sunshade as the Kalahari turned into an oven was bad enough, but trying to cross the empty waste under its brutal onslaught was the hardest thing H. A. had ever done in his life. The heat and the light were maddening, as if the fluid in his skull was being boiled. The occasional sip of water did little more than scald his throat and remind him of his raging thirst.

  Time lost meaning and it took all of Ryder’s concentration to remember to check his compass to steer them ever westward. With so few distinctive landmarks to guide him, his navigation was more guesswork than science, but they pressed on because there was no alternative.

  The wind, like the sun, was their constant companion. H. A. estimated they weren’t more than twenty miles from the South Atlantic and had expected a breeze off the ocean to hit them head-on, but the wind kept at them from the rear, always pressing them onward. Ryder prayed that his compass hadn’t malfunctioned and the needle that was to guide them to the west was somehow leading them deeper into the raging interior of the molten desert. He checked it constantly, relieved that the men had strung out somewhat so no one could see the consternation on his face.

  The wind grew and when he looked back to check on his men he could see the tops of the dunes were being eaten away. Long plumes of sand were cast from crest to crest. Grit stung his skin and made his eyes tear. He didn’t like this at all. They were heading in the right direction but the wind wasn’t. If they were caught out in a sandstorm without adequate cover there was little chance they’d survive it.

  He debated calling a halt to erect a shelter, juggling the odds of a major storm hitting them, their proximity to the coast, and the enraged army that wouldn’t stop until every last man in their party was dead. Sunset was in an hour. He turned his back on the wind and nosed his horse onward. Despite its flagging pace, the animal was still faster than a man on foot.

  With a suddenness that left H. A. reeling he reached the top of one more featureless dune and saw that there were no more. Below him spread the slag gray waters of the South Atlantic and for the first time he could smell its iodine tang. Rolling waves turned to whit
e froth as they roared onto the broad beach.

  He lowered himself from his horse, his legs and back aching from the long ride. He didn’t have the strength to whoop for joy so he stood silently, a ghost of a smile on the corners of his lips as the sun retreated into the cold dark waters.

  “What is it, H. A.? Why’d you stop?” Tim Watermen called when he was still twenty yards back and just coming up the final dune.

  Ryder looked down on the struggling figure, saw that Tim’s brother wasn’t far behind. A bit further back, young Smythe clung to his horse’s back as the animal followed in its brethren’s footsteps. Jon Varley wasn’t yet in sight. “We made it.”

  It was all he had to say. Tim spurred his horse for the final ascent and when he saw the ocean he let out a triumphant yell. He reached down from the saddle and squeezed H. A.’s shoulder. “Never doubted you for a second, Mr. Ryder. Not for one damned second.”

  H. A. allowed himself a laugh. “You should have. I sure as hell did.”

  The others joined them within ten minutes. Varley looked the worst of the group and H. A. suspected that rather than rationing his water, Jon had drunk most of it in the morning.

  “So we’ve reached the ocean,” Varley snarled over the crying wind. “What now? There’s still a bunch of savages after us and in case you didn’t know we can’t drink that.” He thrust a shaky finger at the Atlantic.

  H. A. ignored his tone. He pulled his Baumgart half hunter from his pocket and tilted it toward the dying sun to read its face. “There’s a tall hill a mile or so up the beach. We need to be on top of it in an hour.”

  “What happens in an hour?” Peter asked.

  “We see if I’m the navigator you all hope I am.”

  The dune was the tallest in sight, towering two hundred feet above the beach, and on its crest the wind was a brutal constant weight that made the horses dance in circles. The air was filled with dust, and the longer they stayed on the hillock the thicker the dust seemed to get. Ryder made the Watermen brothers and Jon Varley look up the beach to the north while he and Peter kept watch to the south.

  The sun was well down as seven o’clock came and went according to H. A.’s pocket watch. They should have signaled by now. A weight like lead settled in his stomach. It had been too much to ask: crossing hundreds of miles of empty desert and thinking he could come within a few miles of a specific spot on the coast. They could be a hundred or more miles from the rendezvous.

  “There!” Peter cried and pointed. H. A. squinted into the darkness. A tiny red ball of incandescence hung close to shore far down the coast. It stayed within sight for no more than a second before vanishing once again.

  A man standing at sea level can see approximately three miles before the curvature of the earth blocks his view. By climbing the bluff, H. A. had extended their range to eighteen and a half miles in either direction. Adding the height the flare had climbed, he guessed their rendezvous was about twenty miles down the coastline. He had led them across the barren wastes to within sight of their target, a remarkable feat of navigation.

  The men had been awake for forty-eight torturous hours, but the thought that their hardships were almost at an end, with a king’s ransom for a reward, buoyed them those last miles. The bluffs sheltered the broad beach from the intensifying sandstorm, but dust was clouding the waters along the surf line as sand settled onto the ocean. The once white crests were mud brown, and it seemed the seas were sluggish under the tons of sand blowing into it.

  At midnight they could see the lights of a small ship anchored a hundred yards from shore. The vessel was steel-hulled and coal-fired, a littoral cargo ship about two hundred feet long. Her superstructure was well aft, punctured by a single tall funnel while the forward part of her hull was given over to four separate hatch covers for her holds, serviced by a pair of spindly derricks. Sand blasted at the ship and H. A. couldn’t tell if her boilers were still fired. The moon was mostly hidden by the storm, so he couldn’t be sure if there was smoke coming from her funnel.

  When they were abreast of the steamer, H. A. plucked a small flare from his saddlebag, the only item besides the stones he’d refused to leave behind. He ignited the flare and waved it over his head, yelling at the top of his lungs to be heard over the gale. The men joined him, whooping and hollering, knowing in a few minutes they would be safe.

  A searchlight mounted on the ship’s flying bridge snapped on, its beam cutting through the whirling sand and coming to rest on the group of men. They danced in its glow as the horses shied away. A moment later, a dory was lowered from the lifeboat mount, a pair of men working the oars with swift professional strokes that cut the distance in moments. A third figure sat in the back of the craft. The men rushed into the water to greet the boat as its keel sliced into the sand just inside the surf line.

  “That you, H. A.?” a voice called out.

  “You damned well better hope so, Charlie.”

  Charles Turnbaugh, first officer of the HMS Rove, leapt from the dory and stood knee deep in the surf. “So is this the biggest cock-and-bull story I’ve ever heard or did you actually do it?”

  H. A. held up one of his saddlebags. He shook it, but the wind was too fierce for anyone to hear the stones rattling around inside. “Let’s just say I’ve made your trip worth your while. How long have you been waiting for us?’

  “We got here five days ago and have been firing a flare every night at seven just like you asked.”

  “Check your ship’s chronometer. It’s running a minute slow.” Rather than make introductions H. A. said, “Listen, Charlie, there’s about a hundred Herero bucks after us, and the sooner we’re off the beach and over the horizon the happier I’ll be.”

  Turnbaugh began directing the exhausted men into the dory. “We can get you off the beach but not over the horizon for a while.”

  Ryder put a hand on his dirty uniform jacket. “What’s the matter?”

  “We grounded ourselves when the tide went out. The shoals and sand-bars along the coast are always shifting. Come next high tide we’ll float free. Don’t worry.”

  “Oh, one thing,” Ryder said before stepping into the little boat. “Do you have a pistol?”

  “What? Why?” H. A. twitched his head over his shoulder to where the horses huddled together, growing more terrified as the storm strengthened.

  “I think the captain has an old Webley,” Turnbaugh said.

  “I’d be obliged if you fetched it for me.”

  “They’re just horses,” Varley said, huddled in the dory.

  “Who deserve something better than dying on this forsaken beach after what they did for us.”

  “I’ll do it,” Charlie said. H. A. helped push the little craft until she floated free and waited with the horses, talking to them soothingly and rubbing their heads and necks. Turnbaugh returned fifteen minutes later and silently handed over the weapon. A minute after that, H. A. climbed slowly into the dory and sat unmoving as he was rowed out to the tramp freighter.

  He found his men in the wardroom devouring plates of food and drinking enough water to make each of them look a little green. H. A. took measured sips, allowing his body to adjust. Captain James Kirby stepped into the small room with Charlie and the ship’s engineer just as H. A. took his first bite of stew left over from the officers’ mess.

  “H. A. Ryder, you’ve got more lives than a cat,” the captain boomed. He was a great bear of a man with thick dark hair and a beard that reached midway down his chest. “And if it had been anyone other than you making such a damned fool request I would have told them to shove off.”

  The two men shook hands warmly. “At the price you’re charging I knew you’d wait until hell froze over.”

  “Speaking of price?” One of Kirby’s bushy eyebrows climbed halfway up his forehead.

  Ryder placed his saddlebag on the floor and made a show of undoing its buckles, drawing out the moment until he could taste the crew’s greed. He opened the flap, rummaged through the b
ag’s contents until he found a stone he thought appropriate, and set it on the table. There was a collective gasp. The light in the wardroom was just a pair of lanterns hanging from hooks in the ceiling but they caught the diamond’s fire and cast it around so it looked like they were standing inside a rainbow.

  “This ought to pay you for your trouble,” H. A. deadpanned.

  “With a little change left over,” Captain Kirby breathed, touching the stone for the first time.

  A rough hand woke H. A. the following morning at six. He tried to ignore it and turned away on the tiny bunk he was using while Charlie Turnbaugh was on duty. “H. A., damnit. Get up.”

  “What is it?”

  “We’ve got a problem.”

  The grimness in Turnbaugh’s voice brought Ryder instantly awake. He swung off the bunk and reached for his clothes. Dust spilled from the cloth as he struggled into his pants and shirt. “What is it?”

  “You have to see it to believe it.”

  Ryder was aware that the storm continued to blow stronger than ever. The wind screamed over the ship like an animal trying to claw its way in while even stronger gusts made the entire vessel shudder. Turnbaugh led him up to the bridge. Dun light filtered though the windscreen and it was almost impossible to see the Rove’s bow only a hundred and fifty feet away. H. A. saw the problem immediately. The storm had dumped so much sand on the freighter’s deck that the weight of it pinned her to the bottom despite the rising tide. Furthermore, where once they had a hundred yards of water between them and the beach, now less than fifty separated ship from shore.

  The Kalahari and the Atlantic were locked in their eternal struggle for territory, a fight between the erosive actions of waves verses the awesome volume of sand the desert could pour onto the waters. They had fought each other since the dawn of time, constantly reshaping the coastline as sand found weaknesses in the constant scouring of current and tide and struggled to expand the desert a foot or a yard or a mile. And all this played out with little regard to the ship caught in the tumult.