Page 142 - The Tigris Expedition

To Dilmun, the Land of Noah
with us. Each time it was with strangely mixed feelings of security,
fear and disappointment that I observed the steady lights from a big
ship right ahead. But of course it was the friendly Slavsk, with
Captain Igor, Yuri and Carlo probably sound asleep aboard, not
feeling, on their big steel ship, the nerve-racking snatches from the
rope that held us together.
The strain on our ship was sometimes scaring. Terrible shrieks,
cracking and gnawing noises came from ropes, lashed wood,
bamboo and berdi. The huge shafts of the rudder-oars banged and
hammered from side to side in their wooden forks so hard that they
literally shook the ship and could be felt as veritable shocks through
the wooden cases on which we slept. Dctlefand I were out once and
worked in the dark to lash the shafts into a tight position. This
stopped the terrible hammering.
During the night Norman and I had also been out together to toss
bright bits of berdi from the bow, which we followed with
flashlight in the black water and timed as they passed the ten-metre
mark on the side bundle. Thus we checked that the engineer of
Slavsk lived up to Captain Igor’s promise not to go faster than two
knots, the speed we had been sailing towards Failaka. The lights of
Slavsk ahead of us gave me continuously mixed feelings of relief and
disappointment. Relief from the burden of responsibility I had felt
for all the men some hours ago in the shallows of Failaka. Now the
rascals and the reefs disappeared ever further behind us in the dark.
But we were being towed away. We had failed to escape under our
own sail. But for the human vultures somewhere out there in the
night it would probably have been safer for our sickle-shaped
reed-stack to have run its bow into the mud flats; it would have
been safer than being dragged to windward, violently bumping
every five seconds into the rising wall of a contrary wave.
Now the sun shone freely above the horizon. Someone whistled a
merry tune in the open galley nook. I could discern the movements
of the whistler through the thousand cracks in the cane wall and
catch the pleasant odour of something reminiscent of pancakes. It
must be HP. His sleeping bag was empty. The others, except the
watch on the bridge, were still asleep, probably relaxed and happy
to be towed along. Perhaps not Norman, for he was dead set on
solving the sailing problem.
The purpose of our reed-ship experiment this time was not
merely to float and drift, but to navigate. Therefore the beginning
of the voyage had been a glamorous failure which we could only
laugh at as we gathered at the breakfast table. The southerly wind

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