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.”