Master of the Game

The busy foreman said, ‘We need strong backs. The problem is you might be a bit old for this kind of work.’

‘I’m only nineteen –’ Jamie started to say and stopped himself. He remembered that face in the mirror. ‘Try me,’ he said.

He went to work as a stevedore at nine shillings a day, loading and unloading the ships that came into the harbour. He learned that Banda and the other black stevedores received six shillings a day.

At the first opportunity, Jamie pulled Banda aside and said, ‘We have to talk.’

‘Not here, Mr McGregor. There’s an abandoned warehouse at the end of the docks. I’ll meet you there when the shift is over.’

Banda was waiting when Jamie arrived at the deserted warehouse.

‘Tell me about Salomon van der Merwe,’ Jamie said.

‘What to you want to know?’

‘Everything.’

Banda spat. ‘He came to South Africa from Holland. From stories I heard, his wife was ugly, but wealthy. She died of some sickness and Van der Merwe took her money and went up to Klipdrift and opened his general store. He got rich cheating diggers.’

‘The way he cheated me?’

‘That’s only one of his ways. Diggers who strike it lucky go to him for money to help them work their claim, and before they know it Van der Merwe owns them.’

‘Hasn’t anyone ever tried to fight back?’

‘How can they? The town clerk’s on his payroll. The law says that if forty-five days go by without working a claim, it’s open. The town clerk tips off Van der Merwe and he grabs it. There’s another trick he uses. Claims have to be staked out at each boundary line with pegs pointing straight up in the air. If the pegs fall down, a jumper can claim the property. Well, when Van der Merwe sees a claim he likes, he sends someone around at night, and in the morning the stakes are on the ground.’

‘Jesus!’

‘He’s made a deal with the bartender, Smit. Smit sends likely-looking prospectors to Van der Merwe, and they sign partnership contracts and if they find diamonds, Van der Merwe takes everything for himself. If they become troublesome, he’s got a lot of men on his payroll who follow his orders.’

‘I know about that,’ Jamie said grimly. ‘What else?’

‘He’s a religious fanatic. He’s always praying for the souls of sinners.’

‘What about his daughter?’ She had to be involved in this.

‘Miss Margaret? She’s frightened to death of her father. If she even looked at a man, Van der Merwe would kill them both.’

Jamie turned his back and walked over to the door, where he stood looking out at the harbour. He had a lot to think about. ‘We’ll talk again tomorrow.’

It was in Cape Town that Jamie became aware of the enormous schism between the blacks and whites. The blacks had no rights except the few they were given by those in power. They were herded into conclaves that were ghettos and were allowed to leave only to work for the white man.

‘How do you stand it?’ Jamie asked Banda one day.

‘The hungry lion hides its claws. We will change all this someday. The white man accepts the black man because his muscles are needed, but he must also learn to accept his brain. The more he drives us into a corner, the more he fears us because he knows that one day there may be discrimination and humiliation in reverse. He cannot bear the thought of that. But we will survive because of isiko.’

‘Who is isiko?’

Banda shook his head. ‘Not a who. A what. It is difficult to explain, Mr McGregor. Isiko is our roots. It is the feeling of belonging to a nation that has given its name to the Great Zambezi River. Generations ago my ancestors entered the waters of the Zambezi naked, driving their herds before them. Their weakest members were lost, the prey of the swirling waters or hungry crocodiles, but the survivors emerged from the waters stronger and more virile. When a Bantu dies, isiko demands that the members of his family retire to the forest so that the rest of the community will not have to share their distress. Isiko is the scorn felt for a slave who cringes, the belief that a man can look anyone in the face, that he is worth no more and no less than any other man. Have you heard of John Tengo Jabavu?’ He pronounced the name with reverence.

‘No.’

‘You will, Mr McGregor,’ Banda promised. ‘You will.’ And Banda changed the subject.

Jamie began to feel a growing admiration for Banda. In the beginning there was a wariness between the two men. Jamie had to learn to trust a man who had almost killed him. And Banda had to learn to trust an age-old enemy – a white man. Unlike most of the blacks Jamie had met, Banda was educated.

‘Where did you go to school?’ Jamie asked.

‘Nowhere. I’ve worked since I was a small boy. My grandmother educated me. She worked for a Boer school-teacher. She learned to read and write so she could teach me to read and write. I owe her everything.’

It was on a late Saturday afternoon after work that Jamie first heard of the Namib Desert in Great Namaqualand. He and Banda were in the deserted warehouse on the docks, sharing an impala stew Banda’s mother had cooked. It was good – a little gamey for Jamie’s taste, but his bowl was soon empty, and he lay back on some old sacks to question Banda.

‘When did you first meet Van der Merwe?’

‘When I was working at the diamond beach on the Namib Desert. He owns the beach with two partners. He had just stolen his share from some poor prospector, and he was down there visiting it.’

‘If Van der Merwe is so rich, why does he still work at his store?’

‘The store is his bait. That’s how he gets new prospectors to come to him. And he grows richer.’

Jamie thought of how easily he himself had been cheated. How trusting that naive young boy had been! He could see Margaret’s oval-shaped face as she said, My father might be the one to help you. He had thought she was a child until he had noticed her breasts and – Jamie suddenly jumped to his feet, a smile on his face, and the up-turning of his lips made the livid scar across his chin ripple.

‘Tell me how you happened to go to work for Van der Merwe.’

‘On the day he came to the beach with his daughter – she was about eleven then – I suppose she got bored sitting around and she went into the water and the tide grabbed her. I jumped in and pulled her out. I was a young boy, but I thought Van der Merwe was going to kill me.’

Jamie stared at him. ‘Why?’

‘Because I had my arms around her. Not because I was black, but because I was a male. He can’t stand the thought of any man touching his daughter. Someone finally calmed him down and reminded him that I had saved her life. He brought me back to Klipdrift as his servant.’ Banda hesitated a moment, then continued. ‘Two months later, my sister came to visit me.’ His voice was very quiet. ‘She was the same age as Van der Merwe’s daughter.’

There was nothing Jamie could say.

Finally Banda broke the silence. ‘I should have stayed in the Namib Desert. That was an easy job. We’d crawl along the beach picking up diamonds and putting them in little jam tins.’

‘Wait a minute. Are you saying that the diamonds are just lying there, on top of the sand?’

‘That’s what I’m saying, Mr McGregor. But forget what you’re thinking. Nobody can get near that field. It’s on the ocean, and the waves are up to thirty feet high. They don’t even bother guarding the shore. A lot of people have tried to sneak in by sea. They’ve all been killed by the waves or the reefs.’

‘There must be some other way to get in.’

‘No. The Namib Desert runs right down to the ocean’s shore.’

‘What about the entrance to the diamond field?’

‘There’s a guard tower and a barbed-wire fence. Inside the fence are guards with guns and dogs that’ll tear a man to pieces. And they have a new kind of explosive called a land mine. They’re buried all over the field. If you don’t have a map of the land mines, you’ll get blown to bits.’

‘How large is the diamond field?’

‘It runs for about thirty-five miles.’

Thirty-five miles of diamonds just lying on the sand … ‘My God!’

‘You aren’t the first one to get excited about the diamond fields at the Namib, and you won’t be the last. I’ve picked up what was left of people who tried to come in by boat and got torn apart by the reefs. I’ve seen what those land mines do if a man takes one wrong step, and I’ve watched those dogs rip out a man’s throat. Forget it, Mr McGregor. I’ve been there. There’s no way in and there’s no way out – not alive, that is.’

Jamie was unable to sleep that night. He kept visualizing thirty-five miles of sand sprinkled with enormous diamonds belonging to Van der Merwe. He thought of the sea and the jagged reefs, the dogs hungry to kill, the guards and the land mines. He was not afraid of the danger; he was not afraid of dying. He was only afraid of dying before he repaid Salomon van der Merwe.

On the following Monday Jamie went into a cartographer’s shop and bought a map of Great Namaqualand. There was the beach, off the South Atlantic Ocean between Lüderitz to the north and the Orange River Estuary to the south. The area was marked in red: SPERRGEBIET – Forbidden.

Jamie examined every detail of the area on the map, going over it again and again. There were three thousand miles of ocean flowing from South America to South Africa, with nothing to impede the waves, so that their full fury was spent on the deadly reefs of the South Atlantic shore. Forty miles south, down the coastline, was an open beach. That must be where the poor bastards launched their boats to sail into the forbidden area, Jamie decided. Looking at the map, he could understand why the shore was not guarded. The reefs would make a landing impossible.

Jamie turned his attention to the land entrance to the diamond field. According to Banda, the area was fenced in with barbed wire and patrolled twenty-four hours a day by armed guards. At the entrance itself was a manned watch-tower. And even if one did somehow manage to slip past the watchtower into the diamond area, there would be the land mines and guard dogs.

The following day when Jamie met Banda, he asked, ‘You said there was a land-mine map of the field?’

‘In the Namib Desert? The supervisors have the maps, and they lead the diggers to work. Everybody walks in a single file so no one gets blown up.’ His eyes filled with a memory. ‘One day my uncle was walking in front of me and he stumbled on a rock and fell on top of a land mine. There wasn’t enough left of him to take home to his family.’

Jamie shuddered.

‘And then there’s the sea mis, Mr McGregor. You’ve never seen a mis until you’ve been in one in the Namib. It rolls in from the ocean and blows all the way across the desert to the mountains and it blots out everything. If you’re caught in one of them, you don’t dare move. The land-mine maps are not good then because you can’t see where you’re going. Everybody just sits quietly until the mis lifts.’

‘How long do they last?’

Banda shrugged. ‘Sometimes a few hours, sometimes a few days.’

‘Banda, have you ever seen a map of those land mines?’

‘They’re closely guarded.’ A worried look crossed his face. ‘I’m telling you again, no one can get away with what you’re thinking. Once in a while workers will try to smuggle out a diamond. There is a special tree for hanging them. It’s a lesson to everybody not to try to steal from the company.’

The whole thing looked impossible. Even if he could manage to get into Van der Merwe’s diamond field, there was no way out. Banda was right. He would have to forget about it.

The next day he asked Banda, ‘How does Van der Merwe keep the workers from stealing diamonds when they come off their shifts?’

‘They’re searched. They strip them down mother-naked and then they look up and down every hole they’ve got. I’ve seen workers cut gashes in their legs and try to smuggle diamonds out in them. Some drill out their back teeth and stick diamonds up there. They’ve tried every trick you can think of.’ He looked at Jamie and said, ‘If you want to live, you’ll get that diamond field off your mind.’

Jamie tried. But the idea kept coming back to him, taunting him. Van der Merwe’s diamonds just lying on the sand waiting. Waiting for him.

The solution came to Jamie that night. He could hardly contain his impatience until he saw Banda. Without preamble, Jamie said, ‘Tell me about the boats that have tried to land on the beach.’

‘What about them?’

‘What kind of boats were they?’

‘Every kind you can think of. A schooner. A tugboat. A big motorboat. Sailboat. Four men even tried it in a rowboat. While I worked the field, there were half a dozen tries. The reefs just chewed the boats to pieces. Everybody drowned.’

Jamie took a deep breath. ‘Did anyone ever try to get in by raft?’

Banda was staring at him. ‘Raft?’

‘Yes.’ Jamie’s excitement was growing. ‘Think about it. No one ever made it to the shore because the bottoms of their boats were torn out by the reefs. But a raft will glide right over those reefs and onto the shore. And it can get out the same way.’

Banda looked at him for a long time. When he spoke, there was a different note in his voice. ‘You know, Mr McGregor, you might just have an idea there …’

It started as a game, a possible solution to an unsolvable puzzle. But the more Jamie and Banda discussed it, the more excited they became. What had started as idle conversation began to take concrete shape as a plan of action. Because the diamonds were lying on top of the sand, no equipment would be required. They could build their raft, with a sail, on the free beach forty miles south of the Sperrgebiet and sail it in at night, unobserved. There were no land mines along the unguarded shore, and the guards and patrols only operated inland. The two men could roam the beach freely, gathering up all the diamonds they could carry.

‘We can be on our way out before dawn,’ Jamie said, ‘with our pockets full of Van der Merwe’s diamonds.’

‘How do we get out?’

‘The same way we got in. We’ll paddle the raft over the reefs to the open sea, put up the sail and we’re home free.’

Under Jamie’s persuasive arguments, Banda’s doubts began to melt. He tried to poke holes in the plan and every time he came up with an objection, Jamie answered it. The plan could work. The beautiful part of it was its simplicity, and the fact that it would require no money. Only a great deal of nerve.

‘All we need is a big bag to put the diamonds in,’ Jamie said. His enthusiasm was infectious.

Banda grinned. ‘Let’s make that two big bags.’

The following week they quit their jobs and boarded a bullock wagon to Port Nolloth, the coastal village forty miles south of the forbidden area where they were headed.

At Port Nolloth, they disembarked and looked around. The village was small and primitive, with shanties and tin huts and a few stores, and a pristine white beach that seemed to stretch on forever. There were no reefs here, and the waves lapped gently at the shore. It was a perfect place to launch their raft.

There was no hotel, but the little market rented a room in back to Jamie. Banda found himself a bed in the black quarter of the village.

‘We have to find a place to build our raft in secret,’ Jamie told Banda. ‘We don’t want anyone reporting us to the authorities.’

That afternoon they came across an old, abandoned warehouse.

‘This will be perfect,’ Jamie decided. ‘Let’s get to work on the raft.’

‘Not yet,’ Banda told him. ‘We’ll wait. Buy a bottle of whiskey.’

‘What for?’

‘You’ll see.’

The following morning, Jamie was visited by the district constable, a florid heavy-set man with a large nose covered with the telltale broken veins of a tippler.

‘Mornin’,’ he greeted Jamie. ‘I heard we had a visitor. Thought I’d stop by and say hello. I’m Constable Mundy.’

‘Ian Travis,’ Jamie replied.

‘Headin’ north, Mr Travis?’

‘South. My servant and I are on our way to Cape Town.’

‘Ah. I was in Cape Town once. Too bloody big, too bloody noisy.’

‘I agree. Can I offer you a drink, Constable?’

‘I never drink on duty.’ Constable Mundy paused, making a decision. ‘However, just this once, I might make an exception, I suppose.’

‘Fine.’ Jamie brought out the bottle of whiskey, wondering how Banda could have known. He poured out two fingers into a dirty tooth glass and handed it to the constable.

‘Thank you, Mr Travis. Where’s yours?’

‘I can’t drink,’ Jamie said ruefully. ‘Malaria. That’s why I’m going to Cape Town. To get medical attention. I’m stopping off here a few days to rest. Travelling’s very hard on me.’

Constable Munda was studying him. ‘You look pretty healthy.’

‘You should see me when the chills start.’

The constable’s glass was empty. Jamie filled it.

‘Thank you. Don’t mind if I do.’ He finished the second drink in one swallow and stood up. ‘I’d best be gettin’ along. You said you and your man will be movin’ on in a day or two?’

‘As soon as I’m feeling stronger.’

‘I’ll come back and check on you Friday,’ Constable Mundy said.

That night, Jamie and Banda went to work on the raft in the deserted warehouse.

‘Banda, have you ever built a raft?’

‘Well, to tell you the truth, Mr McGregor, no.’

‘Neither have I.’ The two men stared at each other. ‘How difficult can it be?’

They stole four empty, fifty-gallon wooden oil barrels from behind the market and carried them to the warehouse. When they had them assembled, they spaced them out in a square. Next they gathered four empty crates and placed one over each oil barrel.

Banda looked dubious. ‘It doesn’t look like a raft to me.’

‘We’re not finished yet,’ Jamie assured him.

There was no planking available so they covered the top layer with whatever was at hand: branches from the stinkwood tree, limbs from the Cape beech, large leaves from the marula. They lashed everything down with thick hemp rope, tying each knot with careful precision.

When they were finished, Banda looked it over. ‘It still doesn’t look like a raft.’

‘It will look better when we get the sail up,’ Jamie promised.

They made a mast from a fallen yellowwood tree, and picked up two flat branches for paddles.

‘Now all we need is a sail. We need it fast. I’d like to get out of here tonight. Constable Mundy’s coming back tomorrow.’

It was Banda who found the sail. He came back late that evening with an enormous piece of blue cloth. ‘How’s this, Mr McGregor?’

‘Perfect. Where did you get it?’

Banda grinned. ‘Don’t ask. We’re in enough trouble.’

They rigged up a square sail with a boom below and a yard on top, and at last it was ready.

‘We’ll take off at two in the morning when the village is asleep.’ Jamie told Banda. ‘Better get some rest until then.’

But neither man was able to sleep. Each was filled with the excitement of the adventure that lay ahead.

At two a.m. they met at the warehouse. There was an eagerness in both of them, and an unspoken fear. They were embarking on a journey that would either make them rich or bring them death. There was no middle way.

‘It’s time,’ Jamie announced.

They stepped outside. Nothing was stirring. The night was still and peaceful, with a vast canopy of blue overhead. A sliver of moon appeared high in the sky. Good, Jamie thought. There won’t be much light to see us by. Their timetable was complicated by the fact that they had to leave the village at night so no one would be aware of their departure, and arrive at the diamond beach the next night so they could slip into the field and be safely back at sea before dawn.

‘The Benguela current should carry us to the diamond fields sometime in the late afternoon,’ Jamie said. ‘But we can’t go in by daylight. We’ll have to stay out of sight at sea until dark.’

Banda nodded. ‘We can hide out at one of the little islands off the coast.’

‘What islands?’

‘There are dozens of them – Mercury, Ichabod, Plum Pudding …’

Jamie gave him a strange look. ‘Plum Pudding?’

‘There’s also a Roast Beef Island.’

Jamie took out his creased map and consulted it. ‘This doesn’t show any of those.’

‘They’re guano islands. The British harvest the bird droppings for fertilizer.’

‘Anyone live on those islands?’

‘Can’t. The smell’s too bad. In places the guano is a hundred feet thick. The government uses gangs of deserters and prisoners to pick it up. Some of them die on the island and they just leave the bodies there.’

‘That’s where we’ll hide out,’ Jamie decided.

Working quietly, the two men slid open the door to the warehouse and started to lift the raft. It was too heavy to move. They sweated and tugged, but in vain.

‘Wait here,’ Banda said.

He hurried out. Half an hour later, he returned with a large round log. ‘We’ll use this. I’ll pick up one end and you slide the log underneath.’

Jamie marvelled at Banda’s strength as the black man picked up one end of the raft. Quickly, Jamie shoved the log under it. Together they lifted the back end of the raft and it moved easily down the log. When the log had rolled out from under the back end, they repeated the procedure. It was strenuous work, and by the time they got to the beach they were both soaked in perspiration. The operation had taken much longer than Jamie had anticipated. It was almost dawn now. They had to be away before the villagers discovered them and reported what they were doing. Quickly, Jamie attached the sail and checked to make sure everything was working properly. He had a nagging feeling he was forgetting something. He suddenly realized what was bothering him and laughed aloud.

Banda watched him, puzzled. ‘Something funny?’

‘Before, when I went looking for diamonds I had a ton of equipment. Now all I’m carrying is a compass. It seems too easy.’

Banda said quietly, ‘I don’t think that’s going to be our problem, Mr McGregor.’

‘It’s time you called me Jamie.’

Banda shook his head in wonder. ‘You really come from a faraway country.’ He grinned, showing even white teeth. ‘What the hell – they can hang me only once.’ He tasted the name on his lips, then said it aloud. ‘Jamie.’

‘Let’s go get those diamonds.’

They pushed the raft off the sand into the shallow water and both men leaped aboard and started paddling. It took them a few minutes to get adjusted to the pitching and yawing of their strange craft. It was like riding a bobbing cork, but it was going to work. The raft was responding perfectly, moving north with the swift current. Jamie raised the sail and headed out to sea. By the time the villagers awoke, the raft was well over the horizon.

‘We’ve done it!’ Jamie said.

Banda shook his head. ‘It’s not over yet.’ He trailed a hand in the cold Benguela current. ‘It’s just beginning.’

They sailed on, due north past Alexander Bay and the mouth of the Orange River, seeing no signs of life except for flocks of Cape cormorants heading home, and a flight of colourful greater flamingos. Although there were tins of beef and cold rice, and fruit and two canteens of water aboard, they were too nervous to eat. Jamie refused to let his imagination linger on the dangers that lay ahead, but Banda could not help it. He had been there. He was remembering the brutal guards with guns and the dogs and the terrible flesh-tearing land mines, and he wondered how he had ever allowed himself to be talked into this insane venture. He looked over at the Scotsman and thought, He is the bigger fool. If I die, I die for my baby sister. What does he die for?