was very sure that it had never held anything more than about R200 or R300 at a time – the price of a few fish or crayfish. Where had such a huge amount as R50 000 come from? And why did Sharkey need to go to Lüderitz to work if he had R50 000 sitting in his cell phone account?
Then a horrible thought gripped him: Oom Daan knew about the money and he wanted it for himself. Then he had another thought: he knew Sharkey’s secret code. If there really was R50 000 in Sharkey’s FLASH account, he could get to it, use it to travel to Lüderitz and speak to Sharkey himself, face to face.
Yes, he would hide out tonight amongst the dunes, and tomorrow he’d head straight for Lüderitz – wherever that was.
He shoved the cell phone into his pocket. Right now, he needed to get going. He raced back to the kitchen, grabbed his fishing bag off the hook and tore through the house, throwing whatever he thought he’d need into it. He hesitated before the whalebone carving that had stood on the table next to his bed for as long as he could remember – the small seagull Sharkey had made for his young wife as a present when Grant was born. Why take a useless little carving all the way to Lüderitz with him? Then he remembered how the rich people had raved about what they called scrimshaw and been more than happy to swap a whole fridge for it. He threw it into the bag.
As he stepped onto the dusty road he heard the deep diesel rumble of Hasie Viljoen’s truck in the distance. Not a moment too soon.
After reading
| 1. | Find at least three details that capture the peaceful atmosphere of their home, and their simple lifestyle. You may quote from the passage. |
| 2. | There are at least two clues which suggest that Sharkey left home in a sudden and unplanned way. Write these down. |
| 3. | Name two ways in which Oom Daan helps Sharkey with his work (poaching). |
| 4. | Explain why Grant puts Sharkey’s small seagull carving into his pack. |
| 5. | Name some of the possible reasons for Grant’s decision to run away rather than go to Cape Town with Oom Daan. |
| 6. | At this stage, Grant has mixed feelings towards Oom Daan. Can you explain why? |
Before reading
| 1. | What difficulties would you face if you had to leave your home suddenly and had no time to plan where you are going? |
| While reading | |
| 2. | In the third paragraph, the writing is fast-moving and brisk. Most sentences are short and written in the active voice. How does the writing style add to the atmosphere at this point? |
3. The great white nothing
Grant slipped off the road and onto a narrow track that ran through the veld. His bare feet made hardly any sound.
Before long he was at the point where the track petered out. Just one kilometre on the tar road and he would find the dune track. Grant ran as fast as he could, but he still hadn’t quite reached the dunes when he heard the diesel roar of Hasie Viljoen’s truck behind him.
Adrenalin lent him some extra speed and he hurtled the last few metres and crashed his way onto the dune track. He had to hide, quickly. His side ached from a stitch; his chest was rasping and his mouth dry. He tried to silence his breathing as he thrashed through the veld in search of a suitable hiding place. He tripped over what felt like a root and fell heavily. Unbelievably, as he lay there, he heard the unmistakable sound of Hasie Viljoen’s truck roaring past. They hadn’t even thought to stop and search the dune track. He felt a strong vibrating sensation on his leg: another message. His pulse quickened as he anticipated hearing his father’s voice.
He dialled 100.
A voice he didn’t know, a man with a rough West Coast accent:
Sharkey! Sharkey! Do you think you can cheat me?
That voice gave Grant the shivers. Who was it? One of Sharkey’s card-playing Paternoster friends? Or did this message represent something more sinister?
The fog that Oom Daan had predicted was already sliding up the land. It cooled the air and dampened the night sounds. Grant started jogging again, slowly, pondering the disturbing message.
The fog reached him, surrounding him completely. He couldn’t see where he was going and his breathing seemed like the only sound in a noiseless world. He shoved the phone back into his pocket and jogged on through the fog. He felt safe in its invisibility, his West Coast instincts guiding him, sure as sonar, through the thick white fog.
After some time, Grant felt the sliding sand of the dunes under his feet and was forced to slow down to a walk. The sandhills were studded with creeping thorn bushes and sharp, slicing reeds. Suddenly, the cotton wool quiet was rent by a snorting, rolling-eyed monster. It reared up next to him, kicking sand up onto his chest and spraying his face with its hot breath.
Grant didn’t stop to think. He ran in the opposite direction, as fast as his legs could carry him through the thick sand, so that by the time he realised that the monster had really only been a dune buck, into whose night grazing he’d accidentally stumbled, he had quantities of thorns in his feet and a painfully thudding heart.
“Bloody fool,” he chided himself the way he’d heard Sharkey do, as he sat down to pull the thorns out. He was alert now, nervous … and cold. He pulled on his anorak and got wearily to his feet again. They were sore and stinging.
The fog no longer seemed protective. It rushed at Grant in blowsy billows out of the darkness. For the first time in his life, Grant felt unwelcome on the West Coast. Who are you? the fog mocked, unmistakably the master of this night and this place and this time. Grant pulled his woollen cap further down over his ears and eyes so that he wouldn’t have to hear its taunts and see its hostile rushing, rushing.
He walked on and on into the great, white nothing.
What felt like hours later, his toe hit something hard and unmoving and he yelped. The fog was so thick that his cry of pain didn’t travel at all; it was swallowed the moment it was uttered. But the pain in his foot was real enough. He looked down. He had kicked a rock, a big, round rock with something painted on it. He peered closely and a cold shiver started in his knees and ran all the way up his body to the very top of his head. He was staring at a cross.
I’m probably standing on a grave, he thought.
Surrounded as he was by this wild, white night, that thought filled him with a sickening horror that deepened to intense terror when the fog cleared slightly and he saw, sailing silently up the beach towards him, a truly ghastly apparition: a ghost ship, full of gawping holes.
Grant’s mouth went dry. The horrible, hulking presence, darker than the night, challenged him. But he couldn’t run away. He couldn’t even move. All he could do was stare and wait for terrible, unthinkable things to happen.
But nothing happened. No headless captain ordered him aboard, no wailing of a drowned crew sounded from the aft deck. The fog swirled in the still night just as before.
That’s when Grant realised that the ship itself was stationary and it was only the fog rushing past it that gave it the appearance of movement. His fear waned a little and as it receded, a suspicion of a thought crept in to take its place.
“I wonder if maybe …” He marched straight up to the ship and banged it hard with his fist. Flakes of rust drifted down onto the sand. He walked all around the wreck. “It’s only an old wrecked wheelhouse after all.”
Grant found the entrance on the far side and felt for Sharkey’s phone. He pressed the button
