The Triangle and The Mountain: A Bermuda Triangle Adventure (19 page)

***

Just after twelve Grant woke up from his alarm. When he
stuck his head out, he found Madeleine in the companionway. She was on her way
to call him.

“It’s gone very quiet,” she said. “It is as if nothing is
happening or is going to happen, in fact. The wind is barely moving, there is
no lightning anywhere, only clouds.”

“So you reckon we are safe?” asked Grant.

“I’m just saying that there is no sign of trouble,” she
said. “Maybe it is still coming, but the air is cold and the sea is cold. It’s
not the kind of conditions that hurricanes like. I reckon that it will blow
out.”

“I still want a bit of it,” said Grant, “just to give us a
little push toward Bermuda. Let’s cut the suspense and have a look at the
weather.” He placed himself on the chair at the navigation station, with
Madeleine standing by, looking over his shoulder at the laptop screen.

 There was indeed a fresh update of the newly formed
hurricane and its progress. They tried their best to make sense of the GRIB
files and weather faxes. The new information included a satellite picture.

“Look at the eye,” said Madeleine. “It is very peculiar.”

“What about it?”

“It’s so small. The saying goes that the smaller the eye,
the stronger the hurricane is.”

“Do you really think this is a powerful one? It does not
seem to cover such a wide area.”

“The power does not lie in the size of the spread,” said
Madeleine.  “It is small but from the structure you can deduce that there must
be massively powerful winds inside this hurricane. This looks like something
you usually see in September, not this time of the year. I think it can stay
right where it is.”

“But it’s not,” said Grant. “It’s running. At six o’clock it
was here and now it is over here, closer to the Lesser Antilles, but it is not
running east to west.”

“Where is it going?”

“It is running north. If it continues, it will pass us to
the east and not so very far from where we are.”

“Hopefully it is not coming too fast.”

“Let me just measure the distance that it has travelled over
the six hours. Aha, it has moved northward almost six hundred kilometres. It’s
been running at a hundred kilometres per hour! How is it possible? How can these
things move that fast?”

“They can move even faster,” said Madeleine. “What worries
me is its direction.”

“Ghee whizz,” said Grant. “On the face of it this thing is
running toward a point east of us at ten times the speed that we can do. Your
theory of cold water had better work out now or we are sitting ducks for
trouble.”

“As I said,” repeated Madeleine, “the air is cold and the
water is cold. It will probably fizzle out.”

“Probably? On the other hand, you are the local expert.” He
drew with his finger on the screen. “This is its current course and this is
where we are. It will hit us without a doubt.”

“Unless something happens.”

“Like fizzling out?”

“I would say so. Strong as it appears on that satellite
picture, it needs water surface temperatures upward of twenty six degrees to
grow. I think we have temperatures lower than twenty. These are simply not
hurricane conditions.”

“When they fizzle out, do they stop running?”

“Usually.”

“So what do you think we can expect?”

“I think we will get a storm anyway,” she said.

“Whether full hurricane or not, the point is that we should
avoid it if we can, just in case it is still nasty. Let me look at this chart
again. Aha, see here is what it is heading for. Do you see the isobars here,
where they are bunched up?”

“You are getting a little too technical for me.”

“Ok, let me explain. This here is the subtropical ridge of
high pressure. They call it the Horse Latitudes.”

“Because the ships got becalmed and the Spanish who named it
like that had to eat their horses.”

“Exactly. See, you know what it is. It is like a mountain
with a series of peaks. This year it is quite far south, for some reason. It is
supposed to be closer to the latitude of Bermuda. You have this series of high
pressure peaks here, running east to west and then it stops to the east of us.
To the west of us, however, there is another high pressure cell in the same
ridge. We are heading for this break between the two cells, which is like a mountain
pass of low pressure. My guess is, however, that this storm is heading for the
same pass. In other words, it will not turn west or east. It will go north,
following the low pressure. It also means that our current course is putting us
on a sure collision course with it.”

“It could be a tight squeeze.”

“One that I’d like to avoid.”

“We don’t want to go back, because that’s where the trouble
comes from and we don’t want to go north. So we go either east or west and hide
inside one of these cells of high pressure.”

“I say we go east.”

“It could be the way to go. Not so long ago, however, I’ve
heard somebody tell the story of the captain of the Bounty replica. There was a
hurricane coming in, closer to the USA. He thought he was clever and that he
could sail across its approach. But he was wrong. It caught up with him. They
lost the ship and at least one life. Afterward, he did not look so clever at
all.  If this hurricane surprises us all and keeps on going at its current
speed and course, it will hit us with its right front quadrant. Let’s say it is
a mild hurricane with winds between a hundred and fifty and two hundred kilometres
an hour. When you add the hundred kilometres an hour with which it is running,
it makes two hundred and fifty kilometres an hour to three hundred kilometres
per hour. This boat has been built for rough conditions but I just don’t want
to test it. Do you follow me?”

“I think so.”

“Going into the cell of high pressure to the west could be
the better option, in my opinion. I sense that you don’t like it?”

“Not really.”

“The Triangle again?”

 “Why don’t we give it just a bit more time? Perhaps it will
stop and blow itself out as I predicted, without even getting here.”

“And we continue on our course?”

“Yes.”

Just then they experienced a sensation like going up in a
lift in a high-rise building. Up and up they went. Grant slapped the laptop
closed, secured it in a split second and scrambled all the way up the stairs.
Fighting to keep upright, he slammed the hatch shut in the doghouse.

***

The farmer had a new wife – young, virile and attractive.
She was not new to farming. Her parents had a house in a small town on the
inland side of the Great Mountains but they also owned a farm of their own not
far away. As a child she often wished that they had lived on the farm instead
of in the town and stayed there, never to leave again. There was a reason for
this. Her father married his cousin, which meant that she had a father and
mother of the same surname. In a rural community where everyone knew everyone
else’s business this was grist to the rumour mill. Whenever a Van Der Stel
child said something daft or downright stupid or acted out the immediate
response of the community was that yes, you could not expect otherwise, the
parents were so close, practically brother and sister. Poor little kids.

Little Juliana van der Stel became aware of the whisperings
from a very young age. From the start she hated it, regardless of how many
times her patient and loving parents advised her to ignore it all. In school
she suffered and hated. The girls in her class were generally too diplomatic
and too careful to raise her ire, doing their commenting one on one or in tight
circles of friends where secrets were kept. The boys, on the other hand, were
open and crude and sometimes delighted in calling her attention and everybody
else’s to the fact that oh yes, her father and mother had the same surname. She
was probably retarded - so what could you expect?. They were only repeating the
refrain learnt from their parents.

She was not retarded at all. At first, during the initial
grades, she bit her tongue at times and at other times lashed onto something
that would put the boy in bad light. The problem was that the boys never really
had a bad thing such as her own to make them feel bad. And so, powerless, the
hatred grew and eventually found an outlet in fantasies in the way that
powerless passions do. She imagined the most horrendous fates for each of her
tormentors and often sat daydreaming in class, enjoying her fake world more
than what was going on in class.

She was already in middle school when she realised that
dreams could be turned into action. Being too well aware of her disadvantage,
she knew that she could not do anything overtly. Instead, she started studying
her tormentors. There were many of them, since she never forgot. A snide
received in first grade rankled with her like it was from yesterday. Now,
several years into her school career, she began to examine the boys. Everyone
had to have a weakness, wasn’t it, even if it was not as bad as her own.  And
she found them. By listening to her parents and to the talk of other grownups
she found out an amazing amount. Often it was just enough to start something
going. She became the point of origin for many rumours that even penetrated
into the realm of the grownups. So and so’s father had a drinking problem.
Another one beat his wife half to death. Farmer Scheepers was losing his farm
and his children were going to be given away to welfare. She knew just how to
add something special to make it juicy and to ensure that her little packages
had wings. She watched, sometimes days and even weeks, before she saw the
effects of her labours in a downcast look or a frown that appeared to be stuck
on permanently. She celebrated her triumphs in secret.

She found that she was a lot more effective when she teamed
up with the other girls. Soon the school had a gang of teenybopper girls who
was forever planning the downfall of this or that boy. Some were from their own
grade, some were older and some were younger. Their victims did not have a
chance. Many a boy progressed into adulthood carrying a wound that would have had
him end up on the couch of a psychologist, were these available during those
times.

As it were, at the time that her victims limped into careers
as farmers, prison warders or railway workers, Juliana van der Stel went to the
university town of Stellenbosch to study and catch herself a husband. There
were prospective doctors, ministers and lawyers to choose from.

The young woman from the interior found herself amongst many
of her ilk and her sex, all of whom had the same idea. Trying to steal a march
on the competition, she joined as many associations and organisations as she
could, be it culture, theatre or prayer groups, with a fair measure of success.
Liaisons started to develop. However, all of the future pillars of society
politely gave it up after just a few months or so.  With her conditioning, what
was a mild comment in her own ears sounded like a vicious attack to her male
partners. It made no difference whether her comments were directed at friends
of foes, they sensed her darkness and withdrew.

After almost four years, salvation came in the form of a shy
farmer who worked his property not far from the university town. He was a
bachelor who had his nose in the clods between his vines and his mind never far
from it either, a man very much like the ones she grew up with.  They were
introduced by mutual friends who identified a common need. The deed was done
without undue delay.

She was incensed. It was tantamount to defeat but she saw no
way out. What made the pill easier to swallow was the extent of the farmer’s lands,
which spread all across the upper reaches of a wide valley nestled against the
Kamberg Mountain.

The spirit of the mountain, with eons of experience of
humankind, loved her from the first contact.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

From every location inside the yacht came the sound of
things crashing as the boat tilted to port, first thirty degrees and then quickly
to a full forty five. From outside came a sound like that of a powerful waterfall,
a sound that was transferred inside as water poured through the hatches, all of
which were still open.

Grant hung on in the doghouse while trying to make out the
extent of the monster wave. Inside the yacht Madeleine slid all the way to the
galley and into water. They had the sea inside! The lights flickered as a
battery or a cable came loose somewhere and then mercifully came back on again
while they watched in horror as clothes, empty boxes and plastic wrappers
floated about. Madeleine sat up to her hips in it. In the space of two or three
seconds the wave had deposited several tons of water into the interior of the
yacht.

It felt like a full minute before the vessel settled back
onto an even keel.  

“That was a big one,” was all that Grant could get out. He
got into the cockpit. The giant wave had disappeared into the darkness as
quickly as it came. He scrutinised the east, listening intently as well, but
there were only smaller waves to be seen. Without further ado he swung the
yacht around to port.

Madeleine stood in the companionway. “What happened?” she
asked.

“We just caught a big one. It must have been two waves
sitting on top of each other. What a mess. Help me quickly so we can get all
the hatches closed up.”

“How tall do you think it was?”

“In order to push this yacht on its side like that I’d say
nothing under thirty five feet. This is a heavy boat. Nothing pushes her over.
There is a correlation somewhere. It think a wave needs to be fifty five
percent of the length of the boat in order to knock it flat. We are seventy
four feet long, which means my guess is about right. If we were forty feet long
this wave could have capsized us completely.”

“So we were lucky.”

“We were so, so lucky. Especially with our hatches open. We
could have been halfway to the bottom now. Sometimes,” said Grant, “size
matters.”

“Where did it come from?”

“It could have been from anywhere in the east, from north-east
to south-east. It definitely came from that side,” he said, indicating to the
rear.

“I thought it came from
that
side,” said Madeleine,
pointing to starboard.

“Yes, it hit us from that side, but I have just turned the
boat to the west.”

“Oh yes, I can see now, the waves are coming from behind.
Isn’t this more dangerous?”

“Nope. Catching more of these monsters from the side is
dangerous. I don’t know how many of them are out there. I’ve heard tales of
sailors who met a series of these big ones. They come in pairs or in groups. We
cannot take any chances.”

“But they can swamp us from behind, can they not?”

“It is safer this way. I have not seen it in action, but
this yacht was built with a keel that disturbs the cresting action of a big wave.
Which means that it should not be able to poop us.”

 “Theoretically.”

“I trust the designer and I’ve had experts give me their opinions
on the yacht while it was being built.”

“But you cannot be sure.”

“What are you saying, Madeleine? We cannot go east, giving
our bow to the big waves, because that would put us smack bang in the way of a
massive hurricane. We cannot go north. It would be like jostling with a giant
to get through very small door. It would be even more irresponsible because
there now exists a chance of meeting more of these monsters and we could broach
to more severely. We could get skylights smashed in, the yacht completely filling
up with water, the electronics knocked out, the engine swamped. We will be a dead
in the water. Would you like that? No, I don’t think so. That leaves going west
without further delay, searching for that high pressure cell. I say we go west
north-west. We will cut across the upper corner of the triangle and see if we
cannot shelter in the lee of Bermuda until the storm has passed.”

“So the Triangle it is.”

“The Triangle it is indeed.”

“You are the captain.”

“Sure I am. For now I will be captain at the wheel. I want
to be here when the twin arrives.”

 “I’ll start cleaning up inside.”

“Thanks.”

“What about the water?”

“There is nothing we can do about it. My poor carpets! Now I
definitely have to get those shampooing people.”

“What?”

“Don’t worry. Leave it to the bilge pumps. I can see that
they are working overtime. Get some sleep. You will need it. It cannot be much
longer before the fun starts. Another thing, please bring me my harness. Also,
don’t come into the cockpit without yours. And remember to clip on. We will
have to stick to this arrangement until the storm is all over.”

“Yes captain.”

Grant shook his head in silence. It was just luck that the
monster wave did not hit earlier, with Madeleine standing in the cockpit all
unsecured. As they bore into the night, carried forward by the thrust of the
diesel engine, he looked behind more than ahead. He wanted to see the twin
coming.

***

It took Juliana only a few years to cut her husband to
pieces and to reconstitute him according to her vision. By the time she had her
fifth child, the process was complete. The farmer struggled valiantly at times
to assert himself, but it was to no avail. The struggles just made it more fun
and in the end she had him down cold. Then she became ill.

The doctors could not find the reason for her illness,
despite sending her to various specialists. It was a worrisome development that
brought the local minister to her bedside as much as the young family doctor.
They observed with deep concern how she sometimes slipped in and out of
delirium, her consciousness in a world of its own. The minister talked in
hushed tones to the farmer about the children. Who would look after them?

What the doctor and the minister did not know was that there
was a third visitor in the room. The spirit, resident of the mountain which
towered over the farm, made contact with the feverish mind of the young woman,
whispering all kinds of things. It took her along to her favourite fantasies,
those which involved massive calamity of her enemies. And who were her enemies
in her current situation? Were they not around?

There was the neighbour, for instance. He offered to help
when it was time to slaughter the big hog. Her husband knew about vines and
things that grew in the soil and yes, some basic things about animal husbandry
but not enough about preparing the best cuts from the big boar pig. She had a
special relationship with that pig. Was she not the one who fed it the remains
of her own table twice a day? She was entitled to all of that pig. But the
neighbour had other ideas. He got her weak-minded husband to give him the best
cuts. Actually, her husband offered, but it did not matter. He had no business
accepting.

When she focused on the neighbour and poured hatred on him,
somehow she felt so good. In fact, much, much improved. She opened her eyes and
saw the young doctor at her bedside.

“How do you feel,” he asked.

“Much better,” she said.

“It could be that the injection I gave you yesterday is now
working,” he said hopefully. If only he knew. She closed her eyes and in her
fantasy world the neighbour came to a grisly end. Whenever she felt the fingers
of the illness closing in on her she went into her fantasy. And then it really
happened.

The neighbour was on his way to the market in Cape Town, an
hour’s drive away, when a tyre blew out. The truck rolled, spilling produce all
over the road and crushing the two workers who rode on the open load body. It
happened in exactly the same spot where wagons sank to their bellies into the mud
three hundred and fifty years before, giving Aitsi-!uma reason for much mirth.
Juliana woke up in a good mood and declared herself healed. The doctor praised
his medicine. The minister called it divine intervention and made Juliana stand
up in the first church meeting that she attended after her recovery. She was an
instant celebrity and lapped up the warmth that the faithful bestowed on her. Henceforth
she would enjoy a special status amongst those who valued spiritual things.
More than one person said that she could actually sense the spirituality in
her.

Only Juliana knew exactly how she was touched. She was
learning, and many an accident, seemingly purely at random, befell those who
dared to cross her. From time to time a bout of illness visited her again and
every time she threw off its coils by exactly the same means. Only the victims
differed. Not that she needed an illness to do what she did.

On a wall in the pantry, a place where no visitor was
allowed, she began to assemble bits and pieces that reminded her of her
targets. Mostly, it was photos, but other personal items also made an
appearance. Only on a very deep level, so deep that she was unable to
articulate it, did she sense her oneness with shadowy figures that went before
her, including an old man called A!-man, who had done exactly the same thing on
a ledge of the mountain directly overlooking her farm.

***

Grant motored north westward, every nerve alert to the seas
and the weather. After two hours of uneventful cruising he decided that the
monster wave of earlier was probably a loner. How do waves like that develop? Perhaps
there was an earthquake on the ocean floor. Perhaps they were hit by two waves
criss-crossing each other and they just happened to be at the point of
intersection. The sea was nobody’s playmate. That much was true and he was
learning to appreciate it. Hopefully his boat was up to anything that the sea
could throw at them. When he mentioned to the French customs guy in Marigot
that she was built for the rough stuff he was not kidding. He remembered those
trials in Table Bay. It gave him confidence. You had to have faith that your
boat could do it. Your life literally depended on all the systems functioning
as they should. If you did not have the faith, you’d rather not go onto the
ocean at all.

The north easterly wind picked up again. He could feel it
blowing on them from a ninety degree angle to their course and it confused him.
Have they passed the high pressure cell?  He had to know. He unhooked himself and
grabbed some cold Mahi-Mahi and hot coffee. He had his meal at the navigation
station from where he sent an email to request the latest Gridded Binary File
for the area. Two minutes later he opened up the freshly arrived weather map.  He
identified the bunched up isobars that meant high winds from the west, not from
the east. But where was that high? He could not make head nor tail of it. The
time of the forecast was 06:00 UCT, which was very current. He downloaded a
text forecast but had no help from it either. He took the barometric pressure
and tried to match it with the isobars on the weather map.

The matching pressure told him that they might have crossed
the cell of high pressure. They were on the other side! He requested a bigger
map and found the hurricane, which he studied carefully, especially noting the
distance between themselves and its centre. It was still too far away to be of
any significance yet. But the further away they could get from it, the better. They
needed speed and the new north-easterly breeze was just what he required. He
finished his coffee, closed the computer and made his way up to the deck. He unfurled
the mizzen and used it to keep the yacht pointed into the wind as he hoisted
the main sail and set up the foresail as well. Then it was rudder to windward. The
sails filled and the yacht accelerated all the way to eight knots. He hit the button
that killed the engine and noticed that they maintained their speed.

The yacht felt like a sailboat again. The fact that he was
leaving a nasty hurricane far behind the transom made him happy too. At six
thirty he felt that he had had enough. Yes, Madeleine would probably be
sleeping deeply right now, as she had done on the day before, but duty was duty.
You had to be robust to sail on the open ocean. He called but there was no
response, just as he expected. He called twice more before he opened the cabin
door and grabbed the sleeping bag where he thought he’d find a leg. Bingo. There
was no monkey business this time and he was grateful for it. He just had to do
it again, get into her cabin so that he knew whether it was still there, the
thing that took possession of him the day before.

Madeleine was completely unimpressed. “Ahemm,” she moaned.

“Time for your watch,” said Grant.

“Are you sure? I’m still so tired.”

“Yes it is, I’m afraid. It’s beginning to get to you, but
I’m tired too.”

“I’ll be there in a minute,” she said.  He stood in the door
until she sat up. He thought that she was going to fall over again but gave her
the benefit of the doubt. To his mild surprise she staggered into the cockpit a
few minutes later.

“I think we have moved out of harm’s way,” he said. “We have
a cell of high pressure between us and the hurricane.”

“And what about the monster wave?”

“The mate of the earlier monster must have gone to sleep or
perhaps it went elsewhere.”

“Or perhaps it will only come later.”

“Not after all this time. It’s cold. Get yourself some
coffee and then I want to see if I can raise my routers on the SSB.  We still
have a hurricane somewhere east and you cannot be too cautious.”

“You know your hurricanes,” Grant said when he joined
Madeleine where she sat tethered to the railing.

“It’s fading,” she said and immediately unclipped herself.

“You’re right. It’s no longer a hurricane. It’s been
downgraded to a tropical storm, which means we might just be spared.”