A Bridge Of Magpies (6 page)

'It burns all night, every night. No
gamat
would
stay otherwise.'

Gamet
is
an affectionate
term for the fine half-caste Malay fishermen of the Cape and South East Africa. Their Far Eastern origin–the first were brought
as
slaves in the seventeenth century–endows their rites and religion with a touch of the supernatural. Like all other sailors, they are deeply superstitious.

Captain Murray measured the distance of the approaching boat.

'If you
get
a sight of
it
from the sea through the fog
it
•

looks like a damn ghost itself.'

'Whose ghost is it supposed to be?'

'A woman's. She was drowned in an old windjammer called the
Auckland
over on the island's west side. A shark took her legs. They say she haunts the place searching for them with two huge hounds for company. They were with her in the
Auckland.'

'Nice
neighbours I'll be having!'

'It sounds like a
vealjapie
(brandy)
yarn to me. but
once you've lived on Possession for a while you'll believe anything. If you want an example, take a gander at that lot!'

'Buffel,
ahoy!'

The cry came from a
gamat
standing in the stern
of
the approaching island boat, and using a steering oar with great skill. The boat's design was new to me–some whaling ancestry somewhere.

•

'He's the laziest bastard in the isles – Breekbout.' '

Breekbout I You must be joking! That's not a name!' 'He got it because he split his arse in half from sitting on it too much: Breek-bout.'

'It doesn't affect the way he handles that boat.'

'No,
he's
good. First-class But look at that sonofabitch
40

ruin with him.'

He was the
headman
I'd come to relief, Van Rensburg. They threw a mooring line from the
Buffet
It hit him but he didn't make a move to make it fast, He was hipped in his own twilight world.

'For crying out loud!' .

`Maybe Breekbout's sense of humour will save you from going the same way. It's pretty way out, but anything's better than nothing on Possession. Take my tip though–get to know that
gamet
over there.'

He pointed with his pipe at a fishing cutter riding at anchor at the head of the channel, close to the dangerous shoals.

'Kaptein Denny. Damn fine sailor. He's one off for a
gamet.
Keeps to himself. If my ship was in trouble I'd like him around.'

He broke off abruptly. They'd tied up the whaleboat while he'd been talking and now Van Rensburg came up the bridge ladder to join us. He might have been one of Possession's strolling ghosts–the stiff way he walked, like a marionette. I decided to leave, quick.

`Totsiens
(goodbye) Captain. Thanks for the ride!

I tried to edge past but Van Rensburg blocked my way. His eyes were shuttered and remote.

'Good luck, Captain Weddell You need good luck on Possession.'

His form of address caught me off balance for a moment It had slipped my mind that I was, in the ship tradition of the isles, Possession's new captain. It flashed through my mind that there'd been some leak of the C-in-C's secret when he called me by my naval title. So I didn't answer.

He said in a thin, venomous,
unnatural
voice. 'A high-hat
and
a shit, eh? Possession'll cut you down to size damn quick.'

I stopped with one foot on the ladder,

We'll see.'

His laugh was as bad as his voice, mainly because it left his face completely blank, and his eyes, too.

'We'll see I Possession's a prison-house, didn't you know. No escape. Anywhere. Anyhow Good luck, Captain-stuffyou-Weddell I' '

I went quickly overside. A couple of the crew passed down my kit, which I'd had ready on deck. The transceiver from
41

Slivermine I carried, myself, in a battered old leather suitcase which we had specially chosen to hide its contents. Captain Murray began to shout sailing orders.

My first close-up view of Possession turned me off as quick as it apparently did Captain Murray, who was hightailing to sea by the
time
the whaleboat reached the island's concrete jetty. He was right about the stink The wind, blowing directly off the guano rocks,
was
pissy and ammoniacal as
a
shebeen urinal.

Another impression struck me forcibly. I hung for a moment on the rusty iron ladder leading from the water to the top of the jetty and looked down at Breekbout

'There aren't any birds, man!'

one. Fly away April. Back in July.

Same every
year?
I liked his grin.

Away from the jetty the birds' breeding-fiats were walled off from a group of stores, barracks and the headman's cottage. Everything was smeared a dirty unpleasant grey by the guano.
As jy daar loop, dan val jy in die nat op jou
gat–if
you walk there when it's wet you'll fall
on
your backside,' Breekbout went on.
'Ms waarom ek altyd sit–that'
s
why I always '

'Jou
skelm!–you
bastard!'

His cheerfulness was a buffer against the grim, depressing, graveyard air of the place. The first wisps of fog
were
drifting in from the sea and the
grey
coastline was becoming greyer. The
only
man-made object in sight was the cutter, which was named
Gaok.
Her deck was deserted.

'What's she doing here?' I asked Breekbout.

`Fish.'

'Fishing's banned inside the twelve-mile limit.'

'Kaptein Denny always fishes here,'

We'll see about that tomorrow.'

`Kaptein Denny is a very good sailor.'

`So I hear. But that doesn't give him the right to fish where he shouldn't. Any self-respecting fisherman would be snug at home on a night like this.'

'Kaptein Denny has no wife, no girl. Maybe his prick's too small.
Gaok
is his home.'

`Gaok–
what
the devil does that mean?'

Àsk Kaptein Denny. He knows everything.'

`He's quite a boy, it seems.'

42

'Very strong. Very tough. Speaks Unman too.' `

How old?'

'Fifty, fifty-five maybe. He'll live to be a hundred. No women, no
brannewyn;

We'll pay him a
visit
tomorrow,'

He couldn't be doing much out of line, whatever it was,
is the
Force 5 wind which was kicking up sharp seas in the channel and whistling down the grotesquely-shaped rocks of my new home. Breekbout showed me over Van Rensburg's cottage. Most of the furniture was gone and it shared an air of forsakenness with the empty barracks where the labourers; slept during the guano scraping season. Breekbout had a corner in the barn-like place. I plumped for company rather than comfort and found myself a bunk. There wasn't
even the
scratting of a mouse to give life to the shadows where the lantern didn't reach. The atmosphere
was
as relaxing as a blow to the Adam's apple. I would have put two ghost lights in the window. I slept badly.

In the morning Breekbout turned out, from the ship-type galley, a slovenly breakfast of half-burnt mealie-meal porridge and boiled penguin eggs. We ate the mess by lantern light, as the island was still shrouded in impenetrable fog. It dripped in outsized drops off everything. A complex of
gutters
from the roofs channelled the precious water into big concrete storage tanks. Baths were out.

I
wanted to get up and go and explore Doodenstadt but
the
fog made it impossible. So I killed time by setting up the transceiver. The
gleaming
set had everything that opened and shut. My code call-sign was wv.5Bx, the C-in-C's choice. The instrument fascinated Breekbout, so I taught him how to operate it. Transmissions, however, were out because of the C-in-C's ban; but I rang the reception changes from longto short-wave,
as
well as VHF. There was enough island and ship gossip on the air to give us plenty of practice When I could make out the breakers on the mainland under the haze I decided to set off in the whaleboat. It was about mid-morning. Wisps of fog still clung round the island's stark topography; shorewards it was lighter.
Gaok
remained bidden in the curtain to the north-east. The previous day's

. southerly blow had backed into a light north-wester. Breekbout propelled the boat by means of an odd and seemingly unworkable rowing action with one oar in a stern row43 lock. Once clear of the jetty the murk was still thick on the water and
I
was lost but he seemed to know where he was all the
time.

Gaok
showed up unexpectedly. She was
a
typical sturdy, bluff-bowed job, beautifully built by Fritz Nieswandt's yard in Luderitz.
She was
about seventy feet long, powered by both sail and diesel. The enclosed deckhouse
was aft,
and the mainsail boom swung clear above it. Scores of similar vessels
I
had seen in the fishing grounds had all bad
a
typical blunt stem but this one had a kind of carved whalebone figurehead added.

'Gaok!
Ahoy!'

The deckhouse door opened and
a
short stocky figure dressed in a sun-faded fisherman's jersey and thick corduroy pants emerged. His head was round and set close on his shoulders and there were a few grey streaks in his otherwise very black hair, not short and curly as a
gamat's
usually is, but straight and rather long. His face was weatherbeaten, more tawny than copper, and strangely smooth. It had the typical high cheekbones and Oriental
appearance of the
Malay.
He made us fast with large, strong hands.
I
jumped aboard. My first impression
was
of his rather dignified aloofness–something natural in his bearing, perhaps–because he was quite friendly.

`Kaptein Denny?'

`Dis
my–that's me.'

'Weddell. The new headman of Possession.'

'So?'

Ì've arrived,'

'I
saw.'

He inclined his head towards the long-boat, switching into English. Some of his vowels had unusual values.

`You're out early, Captain Weddell. With a rifle, too: 1 'Your English is pretty good.'

'I thank the Sonop School in Cape Town.
I
like
to give it a workout when
I
can.
I
don't get much chance. There's not much need for that rifle around here, Captain.'

Ìt's a
standard headman issue.'

'Van Rensburg used his a lot on the seals.'

'I'm not Van Rensburg. It's my job to protect them. And the fish–inside the twelve-mile
limit.'

'That's a new duty for a headman. I hadn't heard about it,'

44

'Every fisherman knows it's illegal to fish inside the twelve. mile limit, Kaptein Denny.'

'Not all fish, Captain'

'All fish.'

'It's cold up here on deck. Come below.'

He led me to a day cabin under the wheelhouse; a second smaller one led off it. Both were much better fitted out than the spartan accommodation I had seen in other cutters. He fiddled at a small mahogany bar. 'Something to keep out the cold–a
dop-en-dum
(brandy and water)?'

'The sun's not over the yardarm yet,'

He smiled f!eetingly. 'We'll call it night because of the fog. That makes it all right.'

'A small one then.'

He turned to fix the drinks and I almost
sat
on a cushion which had been crushed down hurriedly on the locker. It half concealed a woman's handbag and a white silk scarf. I supposed the woman was hidden away somewhere below. We must have disturbed them by coming unexpectedly out of the fog. It blew Kaptein Denny's image which Breekbout had given me. Yet it was nothing to do with me if he brought his goodies along to enjoy in the solitude of the Sperrgebiet. He must have noticed the crumpled cushion when he handed me my brandy but gave no sign. He drank orange juice: Breekbout was correct about him there.

'I can't drink alone,' I said,

'It's against my religion–sorry.'

'Don't be sorry. You a Mohammedan?'

'No. Malay. My sect forbids it,'

'Gesondheid!'

'Good health.'

He sat down and stared at me with curious, unreadable
eyes.
I felt awkward drinking his liquor and pulling my authority while doing it.

'I don't want to crack down on you about this fishing business. It'll be okay if you just clear out. Say
it's a
friendly warning.'

'I've been coming here every winter for .. , over thirty years, it must be. It gives me a sort of squatter's right.'

An unexpected remark from a fisherman, but it gave me a clue to why he had taken over leadership of the Luderitz
gamat
community,

45

'In court that would be called argument by false analogy.'

His eyes remained expressionless. He just sat passively regarding me. I felt uncomfortable.

'Look, I don't want to play rough and start acting like a new broom. But you know it's against the regulation' 'I come only in winter.'

'Why?'

'It's the sort of fish. In the summer the current's wrong for them.'

'It could be as you say.'

'I know this coast very well, Captain Weddell, There are some very strange things.'

Strange as hell! Right under his keel was the strangest of all: a lost city. I told myself I mustn't make an overkill of the fishing issue
or
else he might suspect something. On the other hand I didn't want him hanging around and watching,
once
Koch arrived. That could be any time. I downed the brandy. 'Thanks for the drink. It's my first day and I'm taking a look-see at my kingdom. I'm on my way for a run ashore.'

'I wouldn't go, Captain Weddell. There's a big blow coming up. You could be trapped.'

We had a gale, yesterday.'