Page 201 - The Tigris Expedition

The Tigris Expeditioti
house coming up far ahead of us seen early enough for the helms­
men to avoid collision course. Outside the cabin 1 immediately
realised that something was wrong cither with our position or with
the chart. The sky was pitch black on our port side, with no
light-flashes as there should have been. All fixed lights and flares
were on our starboard side, but there were several ship lights to be
seen on our port side. Could a current have pulled us north of the
whole barricade of oilfields and too close to the shipping lane?
On the bridge I found Norman with three of the other men
eagerly discussing the chart. Something was obviously wrong, or at
least different from what we had expected.
‘What has happened, Norman?’
‘I had to alter course, we were going by the wrong light!’
Norman had been lying restless on his mattress inside the airy
cane wall when he heard agitated voices from the bridge. It was
Toru, Asbjorn and Norris in a confused discussion from which it
sounded as if they saw more lights than was to be expected from the
chart. Norman had rushed up on the bridge to find us headed for the
reef. The island lighthouse was out, and the one we were steering
by was flashing the wrong signal.
‘The safest thing we could do was to shear off to the north,’ said
Norman. ‘We squeaked by the reef with about a mile to spare!
Of all the oil flares we saw, only one appeared to be in the right
position, the others were not as plotted on the chart, or not shown
on the chart at all. We soon passed them one by one, and although
none of us quite seemed to understand just what had happened, it
was clear enough that Norman’s alertness and quick action had
saved us from the reefs. We agreed that we seemed somehow to
have bypassed all the obstacles on our starboard side; in some
inexplicable way the reefs and all had been marvellously out­
manoeuvred, so we permitted ourselves to turn further to starboard
and set our course at 80°, straight for the Hormuz Strait.
Just before sunrise the wind went mad. It turned more westerly,
with violent gusts, and the sea was as chaotic as one would normally
expect it to be only where there is interference from reefs or
currents. We had just discovered some strange formations on the
port side far in front of us, and we strained our eyes to understand
what they could be. Through the binoculars in the twilight they
looked like crazy castles from Arabian legend, with white foam
from an angry sea shooting up along ramparts and towers. We also
got a glimpse of a tiny speck that came and went on the horizon in
that same area, probably our dhow with Rashad on board. Then we

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