Geoffrey Jenkins - The River of Diamonds

'Any questions, Mr Shelborne?' asked the Judge.

The old prospector got to his feet, glanced at the witness-box, and then suddenly sat down again, as if he had changed his mind. 'None, my lord.'

The court orderly put on the lights. I had scarcely noticed, during the long exchanges, how the afternoon had slipped away. Company Land-Rovers and trucks ground past bringing men in from the workings and field screening plants. Every night Oranjemund and its villas became a fortress besieged by an army of dunes. Man-made security completed the laager. The desert's silence and its corrosive fogs fell in cold dun hostility on the scrapers, the massive tournadozers, tournapull scrapers and bucket excavators, dulling their burnished steel blades a little before they started next dawn to tear out its guts in the endless hunt for precious stones.

As we adjourned for the day, I rose quickly to intercept Shelborne. Rhennin had decided to make him an offer to withdraw his claim and I was to be the intermediary. It was distasteful to me, but I was keen to meet the strange figure. Shelborne stood uncertainly in the doorway. Mary Caldwell paused when she reached him on her way out with Mennin. She gave him a searching, quizzical look and then smiled. His eyes were upon her so that he did not notice either myself or Colonel Duvenhage waiting for him.

Duvenhage said, 'Mr Shelborne, I'm afraid we'll have to search your boat. I'm sending one of my men — MacDonald, who is a good fellow…'

Shelborne replied abstractedly, 'Of course, of course. He can sleep aboard, if you wish.'

That won't be necessary,' said Duvenhage, 'but we will have to search again before you leave.'

I said, 'Perhaps you won't mind if I go along to the cutter with MacDonald, Colonel. I have something to discuss with Mr Shelborne.'

Close to Shelborne, the latent power of the man was even more evident.

'I'm John Tregard,' I added.

' The Mazy Zed?'

'Yes, and partly no,' I replied. 'I'm a freelance surveyor for the outfit.'

'Can we not discuss your business with me here, Mr Tregard? It has been a long day, and you won't find the amenities of the Recreation Club aboard my boat.'

It was another way of saying he wouldn't butter up the opposition with a couple of drinks. The man fascinated me. Atacama and Takla Makan were names with a magic resonance for me.

'No,' I said. 'It's private, and you may want to think it over.'

He nodded without speaking.

'Come on, then,' said Duvenhage. The security Land-Rover, parked nearby with MacDonald at the wheel, was conspicuous as the only vehicle in the street now. I sat in the back and Shelborne climbed in next to the driver, Jerrycans of petrol and water were slung on the tailboard. The fine 9-mm Mauser and.45 Colt, sealed by plastic strips in leather cases, were not for playing sheriff around this diamond town. When we reached the first dune beyond the limits of the town MacDonald flicked a switch. The dashboard lighting died and in its place was the green-white glow of a compass. He pulled the vehicle round until the needle settled on south-west. We churned across the roadless waste.

Shelborne glanced at the stars. 'I would have steered a little more south.'

'It's near enough,' replied MacDonald. 'We can run parallel with the creek until we strike your boat.'

The headlights were puny in the great emptiness. Shelborne's coming inland up the disused waterway could have taken Oranjemund completely by surprise.

MacDonald was brooding upon it: 'I never knew this creek joined the river and I thought, until you came along, that the mouth was effectively sealed by the sandbars.'

Shelborne's voice was alive. He was among the things he knew. 'I wouldn't care to come through mouth with a really stiff south-wester blowing.'

'I wouldn't care to try it at any time — period,' replied MacDonald. 'Man, the thought frightens me — those bloody awful sandbars and cross-currents. We've got a fishing club here, but the mouth is out of bounds since we lost a couple of fellows off the bars.'

'There she is,' said Shelborne.

The mast, spreaders and tracery of rigging looked wholly incongruous among the waterless dunes. Mac-Donald cut the engine. The silence was immense. I got out and paused at the gangplank, my torch on the name.

'Gquma.' Pride made Shelborne's voice more resonant. 'It's a Bushman word, meaning "the roar of the sea".'

She was a lovely little craft, gaff-rigged, a little old-fashioned perhaps, with a long-handled tiller and dinghy atop the coach house. The message of her clean, uncluttered sweep of deck, soaring sailplan, simple gear and deep, self-draining cockpit was clear: speed and seaworthiness. The flaring bow would stamp down the savage Sperrgebiet seas, and she looked sweet and easy to handle.

He sensed my enthusiasm. 'Thesen's at Luderitz built her to my own design. They know boats. They have built everything worth while on the coast.'

'I like that bow,' I said.

He grinned and looked twenty years younger as that pucker of flesh under his right eye which had appeared so harsh during the hearing smoothed away.

'Maybe that was the secret of getting through the sandbanks. I prayed that the seas would not be short and steep and the wind light, or else she's inclined to lift her head a bit high. She practically sails herself with the wind anywhere near astern. I'd take her anywhere, she's so certain in rough seas.

'She's all yours,' he told MacDonald, leading through to the saloon where two arm-chairs were built in at the stove. He pulled up the collapsible table from the floor. Forward of the mast was a curtain and through a gap I could see a pair of bunks.

'Brandy?' asked Shelborne.

MacDonald rummaging about outside was the only sound in the silence.

Thanks.'

He pulled a bottle and only one glass from a cupboard. He shook his head in reply to my unspoken question; he wasn't intending to talk with MacDonald within earshot. I admired the waxed red cedar of the interior fittings. We talked small-ship talk. There was nothing to give a clue to the man himself.

MacDonald emerged after a quarter of an hour, a little apologetic, gave a perfunctory look into the lockers in the saloon, and arranged to pick me up later and Shelborne in the morning.

'Now, Mr Tregard?' asked Shelborne, when he had gone.

'I want to make clear at the outset that I am acting on behalf of the Mazy Zed organization.'

'To quote Mr Justice de Villiers, you are clarifying your locus standi?'

We both laughed. Perhaps the small-ship talk, an enthusiasm mutually shared, had something to do with it, or perhaps it was just the man himself, but I felt at home aboard the cutter. At that moment, I would have liked nothing better than to have gone cruising among the islands with the crack old sailor.

I side-stepped my unpleasant mission: 'I'd like to see your islands.'

He was non-committal. 'Know them — or the Namib?'

'Not the islands. My job — if we win — will be to resurvey them, as well as the sea-bed. You know what existing charts are like.'

'It will be a big job, if…'

He, too, seemed unwilling to drag the court battle into our conversation. 'Know the Namib?'

'Scarcely. I've been on the eastern side only — the easy sector where the mountain plateau rises up from the desert. Not really the sort of wilderness you were describing to the court, but it was tough enough. But then I had a railway only two days' hike away — no roads, of course.'

'Were you prospecting the mountains?'

He was sitting back, keen, it seemed, to hear about myself.

I found myself telling him: 'No, it was my first job after the war, one of those miscellaneous things. I was with the South African Hydrographic Survey for the duration — for me there were no glorious battles, no medals, only routine surveys. Then the Smithsonian Institution…'