Page 19 - The Tigris Expedition

The Tigris Expedition
How often such shouts of warning and despair must have been
drowned by the thunder of surf against reefs or by a roaring ocean
which in fury tried to devour a tiny vessel fighting to resist an
unexpected gale.
‘All hands on deck!’
This time the warning was for me. For me and my sleeping
companions inside the tiny bamboo cabin. It was Norman’s voice.
A roaring noise filled the darkness. This was reality. In my sleep my
body had bounced about so violently that I had dreamed I was
riding in a car with one wheel off the road. Instead I found myself
clinging to a bamboo post to stay put in a strange bedstead where
water trickled down my face.
We were in trouble. Out.
‘Out!* I shouted, and kicked the sleeping-bag away.
Others were already crawling over my legs, flashlights in their
hands, heading through the tiny door opening.
No time to dress. Just to tie the safety ropes around our waists.
We were all needed on deck. This was the real thing, no bad dream.
A gale had suddenly overtaken us during the night. Hard to stand
upright for the wind and rolling. Spray and rain whipped the skin.
Seeing nothing, we fumbled from stay to stay or clung to the
bamboo wall trying to locate the threatened sail and rigging with
our flashlights.
‘Tie yourselves on!’ I shouted. A wild sea sent our ship bouncing
like an antelope. Sea and air were in uproar, the noise of waves and
screaming woodwork was terrifying. The storm howled and whis­
tled in ropes and bamboo. The kerosene lamps had all blown out
except for one swinging like a maddened firefly high in the mast
top, shedding no light on deck.
‘Get Norman to reef the sail!’ It was Yuri at the rudder oar,
yelling to Carlo on the cabin roof. Suggestions, orders, questions,
violent exclamations in many languages were swallowed by the din
before they reached the ears they were intended for, though the
voice of Norman, our sailing master, cut through from somewhere
with overtones of despair. We all knew that our rigging was in
danger.
The mast, rather than the sail, was our Achilles’ heel. The sail
might split, but it could be repaired. The feet of the straddle-mast
were set in wooden shoes lashed to the reed-bundle ship with rope.
We feared that the reeds or the ropes might rip away and all our
rigging with sail and masts would disappear in the wind. Whilst we
all hung upon stays and halyard to press the mast legs down and to

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