Into Matabeleland!

In the 1800’s explorers, prospectors and hunters alike risked their lives for lawful access to Matabeleland. To those who were given the road, the treasures seemed uncountable...

Just finished editing another twenty-one thousand words, a ‘middle-bit’ from Sons of Africa. Totally knackered. Mentioned it before, I know, but want it finished and out with Amazon Kindle this April. Already started the sequel, Rex – and a standalone, Empress Gold. Both well under way. Golf has gone out the window, too much work so cannot justify. Think I’ll get drunk and go bite the dog. Only jesting; couldn’t do that – dog’s too quick for me.

.... On the window in front of me, the RR logo for Rhodesia Railways was etched into the glass. We were steaming north-west, rattling down that same, narrow-gauge track that Rhodes’ lot had laid to reach Victoria Falls. My Dad said the bridge up there was massive and the water was a million feet down if you fell off. We weren’t going that far, though; not this time.

If the track bent far enough to the right I could sometimes see the hot glow from the engine’s fire-box, but only when the driver’s helper opened the door to shovel in more coal. Steam shot out from behind the wheels – near to the ground and smoke from the engine sometimes got inside my collar and made my neck black.

Mother crooked her finger at me.

‘Something I want you to see.’

I went back inside the compartment. It was almost dark outside. My mother was reading from Frederick Russell Burnham’s, Scouting on Two Continents. She pointed out through the window. The sky was orange and red. A bit like Red hot poker plants.

‘Not too far from here there was a very famous battle between the Matabele and some British soldiers.’

I looked at her book. Black with gold writing on the front. Inside the cover, the Burnham man had signed it and written, ‘To Walter Weaver...’ The battle she was talking about was in there. The Shangani Patrol – all the men were killed. Thinking about it made me a little bit sad.

‘The man who wrote this, did he not get killed?’

Mother shook her head. ‘Just him and his friend got out in time. Everyone else died out here in the jungle.’

‘Why did they fight?’

She closed the book and smiled.

‘Because they were men, Jeffrey. That’s what men do.’

Fifty years on, older and wiser, I still have the book...

Sons of Africa; an extract:

... Nathan pushed himself upright. A bullet had lodged in his thigh; the pain now almost unbearable. He was light-headed, the desire to sleep unrelenting, heavy about his shoulders.

‘Damn them all. What are they waiting for?’ He fed a fresh cartridge into the breach of Dillon’s rifle. Incessant cold and loss of blood cramped his fingers.

‘Have they gone, Captain?’

‘Keep your finger on the trigger, boy.’ Linen bandage, black with blood covered most of Dillon’s face. ‘Fire when you hear them come in close.’

‘Are they coming back, sir?’

‘Anyone special back home?’

‘My mother and father, and a girl.’ Dillon’s mouth softened. ‘Mary. Pretty as a picture, sir. Lives with her mother. Hurst Green... a small village in the north of England.’

 ‘Best be ready, lads,’ warned Jack Robertson. ‘The beggars are coming back.’

At first, the sounds were no louder than a light drumming – distant – rain on canvas tents.

‘I can hear them,’ said Dillon. ‘Captain Goddard, sir – I can’t see. Will you stand with me?’ The sound of rain became the thunder all around them. A thousand spears to long shields.

 ‘I’m here, boy.’ Nathan drew Dillon’s head against his shoulder. At twenty yards both men heard the rasp of stabbing spears being wrenched from their leather thongs; with his free hand, Nathan levelled the Boxer-Henry.

‘Can you hear me, Dillon?’

‘I can hear you, Captain. Will it hurt, sir? When they kill us.’

*

A slight wind moved amongst the dead as though gathering up souls from the fallen. Upwards of a thousand warriors stood about the killing ground – not a single man spoke.

Alone, Mjaan paused at every soldier’s corpse to marvel at the devastation reeked upon it – some were little more than boys, though they had fought with the hearts of lions. He walked slowly from the killing and at the edge of the redoubt waited for the silence to become total.

Mjaan raised his spear to the heavens.

‘No man shall defile the dead nor speak ill of them or he will die by this blade!’

Thunder growled above the battleground; the eyes of a thousand amadoda were all upon their General...



Bulawayo and Onwards!

Hi everyone. Taking time out today – staring out my study window at the weather; grey, dank and almost the same as yesterday, but not quite.  Next to the garden wall, two long lines of virginal snow-drops and alongside them, daffodils, green-headed and fresh up this morning – just to have a look-see. Maybe they think they’re missing out on something?  Bottom line, spring is on its way to Britland. Down in Oz and South Africa guess some cooler weather’s homing in on you folks – should imagine a lot of people are looking forward to it, after a summer of fires and horrendous floods reckon a little peace and quiet wouldn’t go amiss.

Apart from the obvious ‘book promotion’ side to my blog, landing myself a load of friends has been taken on board as a welcome bonus. From all over the world; Australia to Denmark and the USA, Singapore, Zimbabwe and Hong Kong. Wish I could thank you personally, who knows? If I can hang on in there and get some books off the ground, maybe we’ll meet. I look forward to the possibility...

Now then; where did I leave the kid on the train...?

... Bulawayo has (the last time I saw it) one of the longest railway station platforms in the world. Rhodesia’s turn-around point for Union Castle’s, boat train. After a three day haul from Cape Town we were off the train and free. I was there – in the middle of Africa, being led away from the platform by my very own pair of wary parents. Outside the station, the street boiled with new smells, sunshine and a sea of different people. Morris Minors, Vauxhall Crestas and six-cylinder Chevrolets shimmered in the heat. I liked the Chevrolets with their big steering wheels and whitewall tyres. When they moved, their engines growled. Petrol was cheap and lots of it with a sixpenny-tip for the pump attendant who always smiled and said; ‘clean your windscreen, sir?’ How I miss those days.

After a night at the Grey’s Inn we were back on the station platform. The boat train had gone; back the way it came. That’s when I had my very first Coca-Cola – two pence a bottle, straight from the kiosk fridge. The taste was heaven sent; black as English Sarsaparilla, loaded with sugar and bubbles enough to make you burp for England. We were heading for (wait for it) Wankie! Couple of hundred miles north-west of Bulawayo. Guess the colonists who named the coalfield after Chief Hwange just didn’t realise...

‘Your aunt and uncle have been living there for a year.’ Mother informed me. ‘We’ll be staying with them, Jeffrey so remember your manners. And think on – there are bound to be lots of wick things so watch where you sit and always check inside your shoes before putting them on.’

‘Wick things?’

‘Insects, Jeffrey – creepy-crawlies.’

I knew what they were, just didn’t like the idea. Where we came from, if something was ‘wick’ it was categorised as small, possibly airborne with horrible scratchy legs, nippers and stings. The ‘wick’ bit made reference to rapidity of movement. I had a quick shiver.

‘Do they bite?’

‘Some of them. Leave them alone and you’ll be fine.’

I had no thoughts of ever touching one; not intentionally...



The Kalahari

Often, I will think back to some of Mother Africa’s more remote regions; her deserts and forsaken corners that until the twentieth century few men would dare venture in to. Torrid, sun-riven tracts, vast enough to swallow the British Isles a hundred times over – hot enough to flay the skin from your face and the soles from your shoes. Places inhabited only by wild beasts, the scorpion and nomadic desert dwellers, the San; more wily than the fox, more resilient than the beings and the plants they feed on – the Basarwa, guardians of the deep Kalahari – a place they call, The Great Thirst...

... After dinner, I sat alone in the dining car; the stewards went about stripping off tablecloths and filling up salt and pepper pots. Everything had to be just right for breakfast. Outside, bruised by oncoming nightfall, the sky was filled with blues, purples and high, pink Cumulus clouds; the stewards said it was a sign of the oncoming rainy season. Up here, where we were, it rained in the summer; in winter it just went dry and a bit colder, but not much.

Every hour I was learning something new, England was falling further and further behind. Africa had taken hold of my hand.

‘Penny for them?’

‘Penny for what?’ I grinned at the steward. He was a nice man; a kind face.

‘For whatever you’re dreaming of.’

‘All sorts,’ I said. ‘Wild animals mainly, out there in the jungle.’

For a moment, the steward paused from his work and stared out with me; into the twilight – through to that wild place on the other side of the window.

‘Wouldn’t want to walk around out there,’ he said. ‘The Kalahari Desert runs from here all the way to the sea.’

‘A long way?’

‘More than enough for the likes of you and me, young man. Strange things go on out there.’

‘Cannibals?’ I hoped he would say no.

‘Who knows what you might find. Lions, elephants, snakes...’

‘What about tigers?’

‘No tigers in Africa. You have to go to India for tigers.’

‘What else?’

‘Springbok – thousands of them.’

I looked at him; my interest provoked – my imagination running riot across the dining car.

‘What are they?’

‘Antelope,’ he told me. ‘Black, white and gold with sharp horns and they can jump really high.’

‘How high?’ I grinned, thrilled by his stories of leaping, multi-coloured antelope.

‘High as the window,’ he looked out. ‘Sometimes in their millions. I’ve read about them somewhere.’

That night, wrapped away in my top bunk, through my mind’s eye I saw them; covering the wilderness, a sea of wild antelope – bounding through the Kalahari, jumping high as our train’s windows...

Sons of Africa; an extract:

...Mathew rode head to head with the American, loose on the reins and long into the stirrups. He rode with a natural flair for the mare’s unusual gait, letting her find her easiest speed by changing the lateral drive of her legs to that peculiar, diagonal gait of the trippling horse. Burnham brought them to a halt at the edge of a small plateau and they looked beyond it, down into the valley. Short of a small breeze rustling its way amongst scatterings of sweet thorn there was no sound, no sight of a single manmade thing for miles at either hand.

Burnham shook his feet free of the stirrup-irons.

‘Once we pass that line of hills we’re on our own. No houses, no farms, nothing. Maybe the odd prospector or hunter on his way back from the fly country.’ He looked to the boy alongside him. ‘Just open veld until we reach the Tati River, eight weeks from now.’

‘Suits me fine,’ said Mathew, ‘though right now I’m more concerned with the embarrassment of going back to the wagons empty-handed.’

Up to that point they had seen nothing of any size that warranted the use of a single bullet. The scrubby landscape had been stripped clean of all but the smallest signs of wildlife, what remained had hidden away from the heat in deep burrows and thorn thickets, for even at that distance out from Kimberley, contract meat hunters had been busy with their rifles.

Burnham reached for his saddlebag and drew out a brass telescope. Gently he adjusted the lens to suit his eye then moved the glass through a wide arc. He took his time, probing shadows, rocky defiles and those almost invisible scars left by ancient watercourses. Where the veld was thickest he would let his interest linger there, searching out shapes that were irregular to their surroundings. Sometimes, Mathew heard the American’s breathing catch, and briefly the steady sweep of the spyglass would falter.

 ‘As God is my witness,’ Burnham marvelled, ‘I don’t believe what I am seeing.’ He thrust the glass at Mathew. ‘That break in the hillside. In my entire life I’ve seen nothing like it.’

Mathew adjusted the lens. Through a rolling cloud of dust he saw rank upon rank of wild antelope – a single mass of colour; charcoal, gold and flashes of white; as the fingers of some ancient delta the migrating herd spread across the valley floor.

 ‘I see them.’

‘That’s right laddie, you see them and you will not meet many men who have.’

 ‘What in God’s name are they?’

‘Trekbokken, the Boers call it.  Millions of Springbok. Been known to take upwards of a week for the entire herd to pass the same spot’

‘Stay well clear of the trekbokken,’ an old Boer had warned him, his wagon battered and scarred where the springbok had dashed themselves to a bloody pulp. ‘Even now there are pieces of bone still inside the wood. I think more than a hundred were piled to the side of my wagon.’ And with a wistful smile recalled the memory of his windfall. ‘Ja kerel, my butcher’s knives were busy for three days – enough dried meat for that whole year and not the price of a single shot from my old roer.’

‘So what are we waiting for?’ Mathew handed back the spy-glass and gathered his reins. ‘We should be up with them while we still have the chance.’

‘And how many Springbok would you be planning on shooting?’

‘Ten? Twenty? As many as I have bullets for.’ Already his rifle was out from its scabbard; so much bounty had awakened the urge for him to butcher out of hand...

*

Halfway There!

... For the likes of Cecil Rhodes, I9th century Kimberley was where ‘it all began’. Originally dubbed, The New Rush, from a chance finding came the largest diamond mine in the then, known world. Now seventy years on, I was there; standing where diamond diggers had toiled, cursed and for those less fortunate, been stripped of every penny by that same, lascivious Lady Luck who had earlier welcomed them to Hell with open arms.

Big-eyed and covered in yellow dust, not too far from the exact spot where Rhodes and his partners had gazed with wonderment at that great pit, the wind swirled and caught me unawares; perhaps descendent of those that sullied the clothes of diggers and diamond buyers, blowing outwards from the diggings – mixing in with oven-hot winds from a westward, ancient Kalahari...

‘Jefereee!’ Mother was shouting for me. I was still outside on the platform. The guard was waiting to blow his whistle; a sunburned man with small moustache like Hitler’s. Reminded me of Mrs Sager, back home on William Street. I grinned at the memory of her rushing out from her front door, spitting through her whiskers and lashing at us kids with her broomstick.

‘All aboard!’ he shouted for a second time so I climbed back into the train and watched Kimberley Town dwindle behind to nothing. Now there was only parched bushveld; the click and clack of iron wheels and the acrid stench of new smoke from the engine stack. The driver was laying on steam – Dad said we were more or less halfway up the line to Bulawayo. We were heading for British Bechuanaland and again, the thrill of new discoveries ruffled the back of my neck with goose bumps...

Sons of Africa; an extract:

Catherine Goddard stood within yards of the opencast diggings. She looked down from the unfenced edge of that sombre pit and as she had done a hundred times before, watched a race of tiny insect-like figures risk life and limb for those elusive, precious stones of pure carbon – some no bigger than a single grain of sand, though sometimes for the more fortunate, larger than the egg of the wild Namaqua dove that had once nested there before the trees were felled and the earth laid back to expose the richest diamond mine the world had ever seen. It was more than a mile across and where once the arid ground had risen up as a desolate, thorn-capped hillock above the Boer farm Vooruitzigt, now there gaped a deep and ominous scar in the earth’s crust and already men as far away as England were calling this phenomenon ‘The Big Hole’.

  Below her feet, desperate men swarmed as ants to a broken mound of yellow earth. In their hundreds they climbed and crossed from rickety ladders to narrow causeways, some going even deeper into places Catherine’s eyes were unable to reach. Others rose up for the sunlight and it was on one such ladder that she recognized her son Mathew, coming up hand over hand for the rim on which she was standing. For one indulgent moment, Catherine looked down again into the ominous throat of that great pit, and she remembered that time, more than two years ago when her husband had enlightened her inquisitive mind as to the intricate workings of this vast, all powerful emporium.

 ‘Those are the steam engines that power the pumps and winches…’ He had explained, then together they had looked down through almost two hundred feet of dizzying heights to the chasm’s floor where the endless ropes were anchored to their sheaves and men so black as human chips of wetted coal were filling skips with yellow diamond-bearing earth. ‘The full one is winched to the surface – the empty one replaces it,’ he had told her, and she had been amazed, almost overwhelmed by the complexity of the operation. Now, through lack of funding and shattered expectations, men were abandoning their dreams so that gaps of a hundred yards and more had appeared between the diggings. Rumours of dwindling ore reserves had been spread amongst the claim owners by unscrupulous men, convincing others as to their folly in hanging on to what would soon be seen as worthless pieces of torn earth, for the friable yellow Kimberlite oxides were bottoming out. However, veiled by ignorance and hidden beneath that diminishing soft upper layer of accessible earth were the untouched ores of ‘blue ground’, a mile-wide pipe of living rock which in its molten state had been forced by immeasurable pressure from deep inside the earth’s mantle, now a quiescent guardian of uncountable fortunes, though without explosives and hefty financial backing, harder to break from the depths of that pit than the pillars of hell itself...

*

The Road North!

... Morning folks. There has to be at least one eager reader out there? Must start talking to other bloggers. Already written about my first book’s arrival date sometime in April – providing I get the editing done. Isn’t easy; finding a readership for a first-time-out-of-the-trap novel is going to be tough. Anyone know where I can find a million downloads for Sons of Africa? It’s taken me 25 years to reach this stage of my writing career. Other writers talk about ‘six months’ – twelve if they’ve struggled. Guess I’m a slow learner – have to speed things up if I want to survive the current writing race. On a more positive note, a leading UK supermarket has brought out their own e-reader for around about the fifty quid mark; half the price of a Kindle – but is it any good? We shall see. Although any market interest in electronic publishing is a huge advantage for potential lost talent. Read on or you’ll miss some of the scenery; the miles are clicking by...

... On the lower slopes of Devil’s Peak, built from living granite, love it or hate it, an imposing memorial commemorating the rich though contentious life of Cecil John Rhodes, undisputed master of Victoria’s colonies in Africa, faces northwards – his dream, as it was a hundred years ago, to bring the darkest of continents under the protection of the realm. To do so he needed access to her riches, her peoples and her spirit – a link from that southernmost Aghulas point, reaching over seven thousand miles from  Table Bay, to Egypt’s desert cities of Cairo and Alex. He needed a railway; this same ribbon of silver steel upon which our mail-train with its migrants, fugitives and adventurers now clattered. Through verdant valleys, between the towering mountain ranges and then, with a full head of steam and powered by the blackest of Africa’s coal, we went out into the wilderness – out amongst a billion ant hills and that forever, open space – The Great Karoo.

We had a four berth compartment – second-class. Apart from the mirror and one, smaller than small stainless-steel wash basin, damn near everything else was green. Oh, and I forgot the drop-down table. Mahogany, I think. More like an ironing-board hinged to the wall and when not in use, held up out of the way by a leather strap strong enough to snatch the Titanic from her grave on the sea bed. For three days and two nights, this cramped compartment would be our home; the innards of a jointed, wooden snake – a giant’s clattering toy filled with people.

‘What’s that noise?’ I looked to my mother.

‘A xylophone, Jeffrey. That’s the dinner bell.’

‘A bell?’

Mother nodded, somewhat vigorously. The heat was getting to her.

‘Not really a bell; the dining car’s open – that’s what it’s for.’

I gave in. The noise grew louder, then, as though left behind by some, New Orleans steel band the xylophonist, decked out in white gloves, white linen jacket and black tie boing-a-boinged past our open compartment doorway. I stuck my head out and watched him hurry away down the corridor; our very own pied piper sent by chef to coax us out.

The dining car was to me a gastronomic wonderland. Waiters with slicked hair and big smiles flooded our plates with delicacies; five, sometimes six courses; fish, fowl, lamb or beef or both – followed by desserts and cakes of a hundred different colours. And always, tagged to the end of it all, to my father’s delight came the coveted wooden board, filled to overflowing with different cheeses; Baker’s Digestives and a full flush of Baker’s cream crackers. Coffee was poured into little cups – dark coffee with dark, Demerara sugar and milk in silver-plated jugs. The butter was displayed as small, individual portions; scooped straight from the block, rolled up like tiny yellow pangolins and corralled by a central, silver dish. Always ice cold and dewy from being in the galley fridge all night.

‘How long before we reach Bulawayo?’ I asked my mother.

‘Two more days, I think.’

‘Will we see elephants?’

‘Don’t know. Don’t think so. We’ll be stopping at Kimberley. Your father says most of the world’s diamonds came from there. Not any more, though.’

‘Why not?’

‘There are other places now.’

‘Can we look for diamonds?’

‘No.’

I was bored. Time for me to seek out those of my own age...

The Dark Continent!

... For me this is home ground. Born in England and proud of the label, but Africa without a doubt is still the dominant woman; salacious, always watching from the shadows – how much I miss her. So much joy, so much excitement, and yet amongst all of this there is always so much sorrow – a continent of vast extremes. England, in comparison, I see as a gentle leafy stroll, beautifully sedate and often I am grateful for this. For the quiet of her countryside, the solidarity of her infrastructure, for the nights when I sleep without the need for a gun at my bedside...

Africa was different then.  I know – I was there.

... Like marauding ants they swept through the ship’s innards; overzealous baggage handlers touting for business.  Two appeared at our cabin door; mother screamed and almost fainted. Borrowed from the ship’s library she had recently finished, Sir Reginald Coupland’s recount of the slaughter of British soldiers at Isandhlwana, a battleground she knew to be somewhere north of where the captain of the RMS Carnarvon Castle was abandoning us to the wilderness. However, in the face of Cetshwayo’s imaginary impis, my father merely laughed. Shirt stained with English blood and torn open to his britches’ belt he shrugged off help from the army surgeon, left his short chamber, Boxer-Henry .45 calibre rifle against the wardrobe door and, oblivious to a thousand fluting spears stepped with drawn sabre from behind a redoubt of upturned suitcases and wire coat hangers; every inch the protagonist of mother’s Zulu fantasy.

‘We take your bags to railway station?’ Both men were six feet plus, bared to the waist and black as, dare I say it; ‘polished anthracite’ (love that description) and would in Haggard’s day been described as ‘fine specimens of ethnic masculinity’. Naivety and political incorrectness always paint a colourful picture. Mother had never seen black guys before. Not real ones – only at the pictures. To her, all were ‘Zooloos’ and people to be wary of.

Between the boat and the railway station I struck up my first African friendship. The baggage handlers were really cool guys. They taught me new words; Zulu swearwords befitting the interest of their ‘new chum’ fresh out from Blighty; both men shrieked with laughter at my pronunciations. Mother looked on, though somewhat disapprovingly, as was expected of a white woman newly arrived in the colonies. They hid their spears really well and could have, as she told me later, ‘skewered us all on the station steps for the vultures to pick at’. God – it was going to be tough in Africa.

Somewhere inside the station, my father was shouting obscenities at half a dozen uniformed officials for ripping him off... I refuse to repeat the actual words for fear of censorship. However, the day progressed; our baggage was duly loaded aboard the Cape to Bulawayo mail train and we clambered aboard.

People were crying, some laughed, all gesticulated wildly and most, struck with the angst of parting, mouthed final words of endearment to those of us leaning out from opened windows. Smoke and steam belched from the engine; the guard blew his whistle, the carriages clanked in their couplings and as some eager giant our 19D class locomotive flexed its iron muscle and ground away from the southernmost station platform in Africa...

Halfway down the World!

... Just this minute, heard on the radio; a topic close to this old prospector’s heart – GOLD. The geology boffs reckon this united, ancient kingdom of ours is full of the stuff – red, raw and exciting just like we read about in the classic adventure stories (especially in Sons of Africa). For all these years, right there under our noses. Ireland is the place to head for with your donkey, picks and prospecting pan. A month’s grub-stake will see you into the Wicklow hills and don’t come back with less than a million – ‘cause thar’s gold in them thar hills!’

Okay, gottagrip; back to the real world. Offloaded all my stuff from the donkey and stuck him back in the field. Anyway, wouldn’t have worked, Ireland’s a bit far from where I live and Eeyore hates swimming. My wife’s a bit disappointed though, guess she was looking forward to the peace and quiet for a month and had secretly pinned her hopes on me taking up with   darlin’ Clementine for a year or twelve. Will put my ‘Miner, Forty-Niner’ T-shirt back on eBay. I’ll keep the picks and the pan though – you never know...

Now then... where were we? Ah yes, the equator...

... By the time we got to the swimming pool, Neptune, his assistants and other seabed dignitaries were already there. The ‘Crossing the Line’ ceremony was well under way and ninety percent of tourist class kids were howling abuse from the pool deck balcony – heads through the railings – ice creams half melted and splattering down on sunburned adults.

The ‘pool’ was sort of a square hole in the deck with a canvas liner slung inside – any kid under six feet tall who couldn’t swim would drown; the shipping companies hadn’t heard of shallow ends in those days so you jumped in, thrashed around like eels in a bucket of water then struck out for the side before exhaustion, choking spasms and first-stage rigor mortis set in.  More fun than you could shake a stick at – splashing around in wee from a hundred mucky kids and water salty enough to burn two hundred eyeballs blood red within the space of half an hour. Anyway, back to crossing-the-line...

At the pool’s side had been fixed the dreaded, ‘Neptune’s ducking chair’. Victims were made to sit, with their back to the water and face-on to King Neptune who would then dispense rough justice from some ancient script – nod to his assistants for the obligatory bucket of custard, fish-heads and God knows what else to be administered and then, like the last of Bodmin’s executioners, he would yank the lever on the tipping mechanism.

There was always a scream; the bigger the victim the bigger the splash and the bigger the roar of laughter from us kids on the balcony. The unfortunate candidate was seized by another trio of old salts and ducked three times, then everyone cheered, an official Crossing the Line certificate was handed over and the next victim strapped in for a repeat performance. The next week thundered past uneventfully, but the flow of ice cream never faltered. Then one morning – from out of a turquoise sea, rose Africa – two weeks out from Southampton we had reached the ‘fairest Cape in all the world’. With a warm wind on my face and fingers locked to the ship’s railings I stared up wide-eyed. A flat-topped mountain clothed in white cloud – my gateway to a lifetime of adventure...