Page 114 - The Tigris Expedition

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and
creature, all arms revolving together. All the toisos swung uj
down at the same time. Then a head rose up in ,onl*
‘Yuri! Yuri Alexandrovitch Senkevitch!
They were Russians. They knew Yuri by his full name. Violent
hand shakings. Carlo quickly threw them a long rope, which Yuri
asked them to tic to the buoy which was now about 300 yards away.
They immediately resumed their seats and started their combined
cranking operation, now steering tor the buoy. 1 hey could not tow
us but they carried our mooring rope. The longer the rope in the
water the more drag there was on their progress. Carlo worked
desperately to tie on more and more sections of rope, until there v/as
no more, and to his dismay the last end slipped away overboard. We
waved to the Russians to come back with all our rope but they only
waved back in salute. They continued to crank as fast as they could
for the buoy. Dead tired, they dragged the hundreds of yards of
heavy rope to it, making the end fast. Then they signalled anxiously
to us to start pulling in free rope. We were already far from our own
lost end, so far that we could no longer read the number on the
buoy.
The Russians at first seemed quite bewildered. But not for long.
We had at any rate no time to think of them or of the great length of
lost rope. We had to prepare to run aground. To get ready our two
small anchors. Our anchor ropes were not very long, but we hoped
that one or both anchors would take hold before we became stuck
on the mud-flats. The bottom where we were drifting was only
loose silt from the river. The ships out at the good anchorage had
long chains that could reach bottom anywhere in the gulf. Fortu­
nately there were neither reefs nor rocks awaiting us.
‘Look!’ Norris on the cabin roof pointed to a big black cargo ship
that had left its place among the others and came straight towards us
guided by the orange-red lifeboat. They came right up to us.
Minutes later we had one end of the lost rope-line back again,
with the other end now secured to the lifeboat, which in turn was
towed away by the big ship. Straight back to the anchorage area.
A short, thickset sea-dog had led the whole operation horn the
bow of the lifeboat. With a broad smile he asked for permission to
visit our vessel. He jumped on to the reeds like a short-legged
kangaroo and introduced himself as Captain Igor Usakowskv.
Ruddy, jovial, middle-aged and in shorts, our visitor was in i out
mand of the ship we hung on to, the 17,000-ton Soviet lieightci
Slavsk of Odessa. He was as excited as a boy on a roc king
when he felt the supple bundles under his feet and ti ie< t u a a n u\

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