The Triangle and The Mountain: A Bermuda Triangle Adventure (12 page)

“It was so many,” said the master, that the cloud of dust
kicked up by the hooves hid the sun from our eyes. Aitsi-!uma was still alive.
She and I stood and watched as the Dutch drove the cattle to Cape Town.” At the
mention of her name an involuntary shudder passed through the circle.

“That is our history,” continued the king. “Others have a
similar story to tell. Who can nowadays go back into the valley by Snake
Mountain, or take their cattle, sheep and goats into the shadow of Sea Mountain
where it always rains, even in the dry season?”

Heads nodded in agreement.

“The
Chainouqua
, the
Hessequa
and the
Gouriqua
think that they are safe here behind the Great Mountains. But are they? Recent
history tells us that the Dutch will expand and take our pastures and out
watering places from us even here.”

The master nodded. It was an old theme, shared by concerned
grey heads and young warriors alike and it could lead to heated discussion,
especially when quantities of the fermented drink from the sugar bush was in
evidence. When everybody calmed down, however, nobody was nearer to a solution.
He had already guessed that the kings had something more concrete in mind this
time and that he and his apprentice were going to play a role in it.

“Aitsi-!uma did more than just look on,” said the king of
the
Cochoqua
.

“Yes, that’s true,” said the master.

“Did she not prepare potions and called the sea serpents?”
asked the king.

“She called on the spirit who lives in Snake Mountain,” said
the master.

“And was there not a mighty storm that destroyed the fleet
of the Dutch in the bay?”

“It was so indeed.”

“Unfortunately it was not enough. It took them a few years
to recover and they stayed. This time, however, there is something happening
that will make a difference.”

The master nodded his anticipation. He was about be
enlightened about something he was unaware of until now.

“The Dutch are dying. They have brought a sickness on their
ships from Holland and they are dying from it. It is called the pox.” He looked
askance at the master, who said nothing. He had heard of the pox only the day
before and knew too little about it.

“It is a Dutch sickness,” he continued. “It makes them weak
since everybody dies from it, men, women and children.”

“It is our chance!” said the new young king of the
Chainouqua
,
who could not contain himself anymore. “If most of them die from sickness and
the ships are destroyed on top if it they will all go back home!”

“Their ships must be destroyed again,” said the king of the
Cochoqua
.

The master did not respond at first. Even Hadah was
uncomfortable with the faith put into the two of them since he realised that there
was no way out for the sorcerers of Snake Mountain without losing serious face.
Eventually the master spoke. “We will need strong medicine for something like
this.”

Everybody understood what he meant.

“How many will you need from us?” asked the king of the
Cochoqua
.
He remembered very well the price demanded by Aitsi-!uma for the previous
operation of this nature. It was still being talked about by the women in his
kraal and not fondly so.

The master spread his hands in front of him. He calculated the
time available. It was a well- known fact that the homeward bound fleet was due
in about a month to two months’ time. The farmers were planting for it and even
these
KhoiKhoi
were making large quantities of butter for it.  There was
the distance to Snake Mountain, to the place where they had to slaughter these
babies, that came into the reckoning as well. With Hadah, however, there were
two of them to do the carrying. “We will need ten,” he said. The meeting fell
silent. Even though they wanted it, finding ten malformed babies in such a
short space of time was going to be a big ask, perhaps impossible.

“We will provide the ten babies,” said the new king of the
Chainouqua
resolutely.

For the next month the sorcerers travelled far and wide over
the lands on the landward side of the Great Mountains. Whenever there was a
birth, they were there to appraise the new arrival. Word about their activities
spread quickly and nowhere were they welcomed. The hands of the women who
handed them the buttermilk that they craved were often shaking and the joyous
laughter with which they were initially greeted made way for a sullen silence.
Wherever they went, they had to be accompanied by the king’s warriors, since
they feared for their lives. Hadah found this unfair, since they were only
acting in the interest of the people.

Three times they made the journey to Snake Mountain, each of
them with a newborn baby in his leather bag. The master carried a pouch with a
good supply of the fat leaves of a plant that grew in the land of the
Attaqua
and which they traded for dagga.  They gave a leaf to the infants to chew on
whenever there was a sound and soon they were asleep again.

They chewed on the fat leaves themselves and Hadah was
amazed at how it took away all his tiredness on the road. It allowed them to
cover the distance to their mountain in one night as opposed to the two nights
and three days they initially needed to get to their temporary home in the
king’s kraal. The inhabitants of the areas that they ghosted through never knew
they were there, unless they noticed their tracks in the morning.

With all their endeavour, however, once the first month was
over, they had only managed the six babies. There were just no more that they
knew of. Time was getting short. The return fleet was due to arrive any day. There
was, however, something else that was also essential.

“We have to travel to Cape Town,” he said. “We need to find
parts of ships.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

Food came in the form of a wonderful omelette, spiced with
bacon, cheddar cheese, green peppers and mushrooms. Grant could smell it the
moment Madeleine appeared through the companionway to hand him his plate. He
switched to autopilot to free up his hands and just kept an eye on the weather
side as he tucked in. He was still embarrassed about the earlier incident in
Madeleine’s cabin, but he had a plan.

He spoke between mouthfuls. “Tell me, with regards to all
these stories about the Bermuda Triangle, what is actually so interesting about
it all?”

“On the one hand we Bermudians don’t like being associated
with something negative and on the other hand it is part of the lure of the
region. What is it you want to know?”

“What do
you
actually know?”

“There have been mysterious disappearances.”

“How?”

“Well, things may have been happening in the Triangle for
many years, but it was only in the sixties of the last century that somebody
coined the phrase ‘Bermuda Triangle’. He was a chap called Vincent Gaddis. He
noticed that for a about a hundred years ships and aeroplanes had been
disappearing in  mysterious fashion in the area covered by the Triangle, that
is, an area with Bermuda, Puerto Rico and Florida as its extremities.”

“What do you mean by ‘mysterious disappearances?”

“Well, when a ship or a plane goes down, you usually find a
debris field. In all these cases, however, there were no debris fields. It is
as if they simply disappeared into thin air. There was no oil slick, now
wreckage and no bodies. The other strange thing was that it happened so
suddenly. You’d expect a distress signal if there was trouble. In most cases,
however, the ship or the plane simply disappeared without any signal. In the
few cases where there was radio contact, the people on the vessels seemed strangely
disorientated. They had lost their bearings, including the horizon.”

“It sounds a bit spooky.”

“It is a mystery that nobody has been able to explain
satisfactorily.”

“There must be a lot of theories out there. How big were the
ships that disappeared?”

“There were some really big ships. For instance, there was a
Navy supply ship with hundreds of people on board, which simply disappeared
just after the First World War. Nobody ever found a sign of her. She was the
Cyclops
.
Other ships were of a similar size. There was one carrying insecticide and
another carrying manganese. What got people’s attention as well was that the
weather was often totally calm. The American East Coast is called the Atlantic
Graveyard not for nothing, but usually there is a storm, or a ship strikes a
reef, which means that you know the cause.”

“And there are remains.”

“Yes, there usually is wreckage of some sort. A ship will go
down and it will leak oil and air bubbles for months or even years. But not
these ships that I mentioned.”

“So we are talking big ships only?”

“There have been smaller ones, as well as aeroplanes.”

“All of this happened during the wars?”

“We are going back into the nineteenth century, way before
the two world wars, or the Cold War era. These things may have been happening a
long time already, only nobody noticed because it was in the time before ships
and planes carried radio equipment.”

“I’ve heard about those five planes that disappeared.”

“Six, actually. First five and then another one. There were
five TBM Avenger bombers on a routine flying exercise. They took off from Fort
Lauderdale in Florida in clear weather and a calm sea below. They were to complete
a triangle over the sea, about a hundred and forty miles out, then to another
point and back. In this case, there was an emergency call. The flight leader
called the ground station, saying that they had an emergency. He could not see
the land, which was supposed to be visible from where they were. As I said, it was
a clear day. Also, when the ground control told them to head west, they told
him that they did not know where west was. They were totally confused. The sun
was setting in the west, it being late afternoon, but they could not see it. They
could not even see the sea below them. The flight leader was panicking and
completely at a loss as to what to do. As a result he relinquished command of
the flight to another pilot. A little while after that they lost communication
in mid-sentence.”

“And nothing was ever found?”

“No oil slick, not debris, nothing. Shortly after this
happened they sent out a flying boat to investigate and to obviously pick up
survivors if there was a crash. The flying boat also mysteriously disappeared,
this time without any emergency call. For days thereafter every available
aeroplane scoured the surface of the sea in strict grid patterns, but they
found nothing, nothing at all.”

“And the theories to explain all of this?”

“Well some people say that there are alien forces at work in
the Triangle.”

“And these aliens abduct people?”

“That is the theory.”

“OK, so what proof do the alien supporters have?”

“People see all kinds of things in these seas.”

“Like what?”

“Like strange lights.”

“We’ve seen a strange light just now. That was pure
atmospherics.”

“It was just a beautiful sunrise. What I’m talking about are
strange moving lights at night that are not stars.”

“So they are planes.”

“They are not planes either. Why would a plane have its
landing lights on far out to sea? And why would such a light as mysteriously
disappear?

“We had a discussion around the barbeque in the marina once and
the guys say that it’s all a hoax. If there was anything to it the authorities
would have issued some warnings by now.”

“There is an official communication by the US Coast Guard
that says it all has to do with the fact that there is no deviation from north
on the compass in the Triangle and that it confuses people, but I’ve heard that
it’s not much of an excuse.”

“I don’t buy it either, because there is a small deviation.
But I think that the conditions play a role. They say the Gulf Stream is not a
joke. Here and there you sail over shallow shoals and the wave patterns change
without warning. You broach to or you get pooped out of nowhere and before you
know it you go down to the bottom. You’ve got to be awake all the time. Also, I
hear that the air is so unstable over the Gulf Stream that anything can cause a
disturbance. Apparently you sometimes have pockets of air that rise from a hot
spot on an island and when it mixes with the sea air you have a small but
vicious hurricane that shows up on nobody’s weather chart. Think of that severe
squall that we’ve encountered yesterday.”

“Well then, you’ve got all the answers.”

“Do you know what convinces me more than anything else? If
there was anything particularly dangerous about the Triangle, the insurance
companies would have charged higher premiums to anybody who sails or flies
across it. They would not let such an opportunity go. As a person from a
banking family you should know that. I’m sure somebody somewhere had been
studying the statistics and came up with nothing.”

“We are talking about a very busy shipping area. These cases
comprise a minute part of a percent. The regular accidents are many, many more,
especially if you go back over the centuries. It is the strangeness of these
comparatively few incidents that make them stand out. What Gaddis remarked on,
was that there were so many unusual commonalities.”

“The squadron leader seemed to have lost control of himself.
Is that common as well?”

“I don’t really know. There are reports of ships that were
found further up the Gulf Stream, with nobody on board, everything apparently
in order and meals half-eaten, which indicated a panic of some sort. That
happened in the nineteenth century.”

“Have they come up with a reason why people would start
acting irrationally and leave their ships when they were still seaworthy?”

“There is a theory that the city of Atlantis is still down
there. There might be people in it, but in another dimension. According to this
theory these people reach out to people in our dimension when they pass over
the city in their ships or planes and affect them in strange ways. Some also
say that Atlantis had been destroyed but that its power source is still there.
It causes radiation that has strange effects that could be scary and affect
your mind, yes.”

“It gets more and more interesting. How do you know all this
stuff?”

“Actually, I have a reason to be interested. I’ve told you that
my uncle had disappeared in the Triangle. It happened on a bright and sunny day
and there was no trace. It makes you think.”

“I’m sorry. Was he in a yacht?”

“No, he was fishing from his ski boat. They went out to a
shoal well inside the Triangle and just disappeared.”

“And only the boat was found.”

“No, there was no sign of the boat. They searched for weeks
and found nothing.”

“Freak wave, most probably.”

“Then why was the boat not found? It was unsinkable.”

“It had a buoyancy hull?”

“Whatever. I suppose that is what it was.”

“It must have been hard on your family. Were there any
theories as to what had happened?”

“I’ve given you some of the crazy ones already but there are
more. Some people say a wormhole from outer space is pointed at earth and has
its entrance in the Triangle. If you get close to it you get sucked up, only to
be spat out in some far place of the universe. Others say that you flip into another
dimension, perhaps, as I said, the one in which Atlantis still exists. Still others
point downwards. They say the missing vessels were sucked into a vortex in the
sea.”

“The sea swirled around and they went down to the bottom and
stayed stuck there?”

“Something like that. They say that there are some very
strong currents under the surface. Once you are caught in it there is no
escape.”

“What causes the currents?”

“Perhaps the force of the Gulf Stream.  Then there are
people who say that there are aberrations in the molten part of the earth close
to the crust that cause anomalies in the gravitational field in particular
spots, hence powerful swirling currents.”

“Whow! What a mouthful, but I like it better as an
explanation.”

“I suppose it is because it is a natural explanation, isn’t
it? You will like the next one as well.  There are people who say that methane
gas sometimes rise from the bottom and create a mass of bubbles down which a
boat could fall.”

“Right down into the crust of the earth.  Do you know which
shoal your uncle was fishing at?”

“Yes, but that did not help the search.”

“It sounds like a place to avoid. Or perhaps to find
Atlantis.”

“You’re not very sympathetic.”

“Sorry, I just find all of this funny. I could not help
myself. I did not mean to be insensitive.”

***

Accepting that business was down for the moment, the master
and Hadah crossed the Great Mountains empty-handed. This time they did not run.
They knew from experience that running meant two or even three days of recovery
and they wanted to avoid that. They stopped at the kraals where they were
received many weeks ago on their inbound journey in response to the call of the
king and where they had visited again for professional reasons. The inhabitants
sensed that they were not on the prowl this time and fed them well, even if
there were little signs indicating how they craved the pleasure of their
departure.

They descended into the land of the Dutch about mid-morning.
Hadah looked out for the rocks that  crushed his toes when they passed this way
in the dark just a week ago and made a mental note of where he had to slow down
to a walk next time they came down here at night.

Once they had reached the valley the master did not take the
path that would eventually lead up to their lair on Snake Mountain. He stayed
on the wagon track that lead to Cape Town. Not far from Eland’s Pass the track
split. They took the right hand prong of the fork, the one that led to
Stellenbosch. Hadah was a little surprised but said nothing. The reasons for
the master’s choice could be multiple. They desperately needed to fill their
quota. That much was sure.

After an hour’s jog he realised what the master had in mind.
They turned into the entrance to the new farming development that they had
spied from the top of the mountain many weeks ago.

“See how deep these wagon tracks already are,” said the
master. “It means this farmer is a busy man.”

They looked out for signs of cattle and sheep. Hadah knew
now that the master was putting in action the plan that he had made on the
mountain. They were going to present themselves as herders. That way they could
legitimise their presence in the area.

As they came closer they realised that the farmer had been
active indeed. On the banks of the stream that started deep inside the folds of
the mountain he had already planted a double row of small oak trees, on the
left and right side of the track, in order to shade the approach to his house.
The latter was a three roomed affair in the style of all the houses in and
around Stellenbosch, thatched with reeds that grew profusely in the marshes
about half a day’s travel away by ox wagon. Rows of clay bricks stood on end in
the sun, undoubtedly meant for further improvements to the homestead. In fact,
three black slaves were working with the brickmaking machine, mixing straw and
clay with their bare feet before feeding it into the forms.

The master was favourably impressed. If you owned three
slaves it meant that you were a man of means. He greeted respectfully in his
best Kitchen Dutch. The slaves returned the greeting and stood up from their
labour, clearly glad for the interruption.