Dove by Robin L. Graham

Author:Robin L. Graham
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 1972-10-13T04:00:00+00:00

7

Drumbeats and Bridal Suite

WHAT TO EXPECT OF AFRICA? Hollywood had fixed images in my mind of tangled jungles and lions under the bed, of natives dancing around big iron pots, of rivers swarming with crocodiles and outpost mission stations manned by men in pith helmets.

The first surprise was on October 21 when I reached Durban. I hadn’t expected a skyline like San Francisco’s. And anyone who has not been to Africa cannot understand that Africa has its own blood beat, a sort of rhythm that you can’t hear but feel.

Beyond the modern high-rise cities where the paved roads lead to red dirt tracks and the huge vistas of the veld, the throb seems to come from deep inside the earth. In Africa you get the feeling that you are seeing the planet earth before man began to ravage nature.

I was to spend nine months in South Africa and I was tempted to stay there until the sun bleached my bones. It was a fantastic time.

I turned into Durban’s broad harbor and as I approached the basin of the Royal Natal Yacht Club a figure on the mole waved and shouted at me. I didn’t take any special notice until I heard my name. It was Mac McLaren, who had worked with me at the Darwin power station. Mac dived into the water and swam to Dove. When I had pulled him aboard he told me that he had been keeping a watch for Dove along with Patti. Between gulps of air he explained how soon after Patti had arrived she had read the newspaper story of Dove’s foundering. Patti, he said, was waiting for me on one of the ocean cruisers in the yacht basin.

After I cleared customs, Mac took me to the yacht where Patti was and there, in the cabin, I held her in my arms again.

Neither of us had ever spoken of marriage Life had seemed too uncertain to be tied by legal bonds. Both of us were cautious of marriage, anyway, for there were too many of our relatives and too many of our parents’ friends whose marriages had broken down. We knew married couples as compatible as a mongoose and a cobra. Then too, by the calendar if not by experience, we were very young.

For both of us it was marvelous just to be together when we could. This was all we had asked for. A wedding and a starchy reception at a country club, a honeymoon car covered with confetti and rattling with tin cans could not pull us closer together than we were.

But at our Durban reunion a new idea crossed my mind. I longed to give Patti a pledge that she meant much more to me than just being a sailor’s wife. I wanted to show her that I believed the day would come when we would not be torn apart by a fair wind and the need to make another port.

We had only ten minutes together in the cabin before someone tapped on the door of the companionway.

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