Page 139 - The Tigris Expedition

The Tigris Expedition
Tigris with a grip in a stay and stretched out over the water as far as I
could with a thick stack of dinars in my free hand. A dark-faced
Arab sailor on the dhow stretched out as far as he dared to meet me,
while the rest of our men worked with bamboo rods to push the
two wild vessels apart if they should get entangled in the dark. The
man grabbed the cash, and now we clung to the side of the dhow as
the pack of paper money was brought to the chief on the pillows.
He took his time counting the wad of notes one by one while
someone held the lamp over his turban-covered head. Then he
nodded and in a leap Rashad was with us. Slavsk, fully lit, was now
coming to our side. The men on the dhow blew out their lamp and
like Aladdin’s genii they vanished into the darkness. There was no
further sign of them.
We were dancing along with the men in the orange lifeboat and
had to take great care not to be smashed against the steel hull of the
big rolling ship that approached us. Slavsk was alternately pitch
black and blood red as we were tossed up and down past its
waterline. Both the lifeboat and Tigris were in danger, first from the
suction of the big revolving propeller, next from the bottom
platform of the staircase lowered from the lofty deck of the big ship.
It rose and fell like a giant piston, one moment high above our heads
and the next disappearing with a splash deep into the turbulent
waves. It was difficult enough for the crew of the lifeboat to get on
to the platform before it escaped over their heads or sank into the
black sea. It was worse still for the four men who had to repeat this
wild performance from Tigris to Slavsk by way of the riotous
lifeboat. We all held our breath when Captain Igor and his mate
jumped. Igor almost tumbled into the sea as the lifeboat shot
skywards just when he jumped down. Yuri and Carlo followed in a
fraction of a second. The four men were then lost in the darkness
until we saw them all enter a light-beam as they hurried up the long
stairways at the side of the Slavsk.
Yuri had whispered to me before they jumped that Carlo had a
serious leg infection. He wanted to take this opportunity to clean
and treat Carlo’s leg carefully.
We pushed off with our long bamboos to avoid getting sucked in
and cut to pieces by the propellers. Soon we hung on a long rope
behind the empty lifeboat, now in the tow of its Russian owners.
We felt violent jerks from the bow each time the ship, the lifeboat
and Tigris rose and sank out of time. Igor had refused to let us loose
before we were safely out of the reach of the jackals. He had
promised to go as slow as his pistons could churn the propellers, for
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