Page 115 - The Tigris Expedition

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The Tigris Expedition

of the lashcd-on straddle-mast and cane walls. He had to stand
on
our steering platform, lie down on our cabin floor, and sit on our
sewn-togethcr benches. And then, before we knew it, we were all
sitting around two long tables in Captain Igor’s own officers’ mess
on board Slavsk, eating Russian bortsch and admiring the appetis­
ing dishes piling up in front of us as well as the two shapely blondes
who brought them in. There was vodka, wine and Russian cham­
pagne. There were pork chops, meat cakes, cabbagc-and-carrot
salad and cheese with butter and fresh Russian bread. Captain Igor
rose to speak; I did, we all did. Our host was a great speaker,
humorist and big cater. His glass seemed open at both ends. He
was born in Georgia, the son of a Polish nobleman who had joined
the revolution. At the beginning of the evening he called me
‘Captain’ but later he called me ‘Father’.
‘Cheers, you are my father,’ he said each time he lifted his glass. I
wondered if he could really take me for that much older than
himself, until he added that he referred not to age but experience.
‘Then you had better call me grandson’, I retorted, well aware of
my own status as a mere landlubber who enjoyed drifting about on
prehistoric raft-ships, testing how long they would float. Captain
Igor was a real sea-dog. He had begun at an early age, whaling in
Arctic waters. Later he had mastered big ships on all seas. We ended
with the popular captain among his forty officers and crew in the
ship’s spacious assembly-room. The night air was filled with loud
metallic music from a Greek freighter anchored as nearest neigh­
bour. Time was surely long for all the hundreds of idle people stuck
in this floating steel village. Some ships had been anchored there for
over a month. Slavsk expected to wait another week or two before
her turn came to proceed up river to Basra.
In the night mist we had fun cranking ourselves back to Tigris
with the hand-propelled lifeboat. We had seen the regular motor
launch under repair on the deck.
We crept into our sleeping-bags in ample time before sunrise. It
was still dark when I awoke, feeling a chilly draught on my face
through the cane wall at my side. Wind. I woke the others. Wind!
Sleepily we tumbled to the sail and the rudder-oars. Sleepily we
discovered that for us this was the worst wind possible. Strong, but
from the south-east. The very opposite to normal, and completely
contrary to what we needed. We wanted to steer for the island of
Bahrain, but that was exactly where this wind was coming from.
All odds were against us. Yet we wanted to make a try rather than
hang on where we were. Slavsk pulled us clear of the anchorage
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