Page 262 - The Tigris Expedition

Tigris and the Superships: the Voyage to Pakistan
here and there in the darkness. But the illusion lasted only so'
as the lights were at a distance. While Yuri and Gherman snarea
the night watch a tanker passed so fast and so near t at un
jumped from the toilet seat while Gherman waved frantically wit
the stern lamp.
On the third day after leaving Muscat, the good northerly wind
died and came back as feeble gusts from E and se, slowing down our
progress towards the cape and giving Norris a faint new hope. The
sea had been moderately polluted since we left port, but now we
sailed into a serious oil slick with scattered lumps. We tried to
escape the traffic by getting on the shoreward side of the shipping
lane, but did not know that Bahrain Radio had warned all ships in
the area of our presence in the Gulf of Oman. Before we could avoid
it, a large luxury liner seemed as if about to run us down when it
unexpectedly changed course as if to give the passengers a closer
look at a rare form of watercraft. Next a small freighter suddenly
stopped its engine and lay drifting, as if trying to trap us, crosswise
to our course, then started again as if in despair when it became
apparent that we could not stop like them. Shortly afterwards, yet
another ship turned off its course and came chasing straight for us as
if intending to ram us, but it turned out to be a small Norwegian
freighter, Brunette, which circled us twice, then resumed its course
and disappeared with three blasts of its siren. A big Russian ship,
Akademik Stechkin, came for us next and repeated the same man­
oeuvres, as if dancing around a Christmas tree, while a loud-speaker
shouted ‘Yuri Alexandrovitch’ and asked if we needed anything.
We did not, and we sailed closer inshore as fast as possible, to avoid
the beaten path.
Fishing with rod and spoon, HP caught a big fish, he said, so big
that it broke his line and disappeared with his favourite spoon
before any of us could testify to the one metre length indicated by
the fisherman. A few hours later Asbjorn dived overboard on a line
and came up with a really large fish on his hand harpoon. It was a
big dolphin, also known as dorado or gold-mackerel. Moreover, it
had HP’s precious spoon in its mouth, with a piece of broken line
trailing behind. HP had not exaggerated. Soon afterwards, ^ a six-
foot shark came circling and headed for the big red buoy we always
towed behind for security. The buoy was bumped left and right or
a moment, then the shark took off. ,
On the fourth day we sighted wild mountains above a -jc
coastline on the inside, while all the ships were now °" th^°nd was
For a moment we had escaped the traffic lane. But the w

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