Page 267 - The Tigris Expedition

The Tigris Expedition

might be the one where the ship was coming and bring us under its
bow.
Stiff with cold and apprehension, we could only hang on to the
oars with the wind straight at our backs. The thumping grew
unbearable; it came straight down upon us with the wind and woke
everyone in the two cabins. Our world was compact darkness, we
could not see the sail, but knew it was filled with wind and rain as
we took the weather from the stern. I could not even turn my head
to look behind us, for the rain was slashed full force into eyes and
face by the following wind.
'Hear the engine!’ Carlo shouted in despair through the cane wall.
Then we heard no more from our companions as the droning rose
to a crescendo and the ship caught up with us. A second later I was
overcome with joy. ‘Yes,’ 1 shouted back through the cane wall, ‘I
hear it, and I smell it too!’ Then I added: ‘I can even feel its heat!’
The giant passed by with thundering pistons, so close that we
could really smell the oily air from the engine room, and for a
moment I even felt a warm radiation from the colossal steel wall
that slid by my side, almost invisible in the rain, although right
alongside our starboard bundles. In the dark, behind a compact
curtain of falling water, I was left with the unclear impression of
lights passing high above my head at mast-top level. Up there
someone with radar and automatic steering had seen even less of us
than we of them. Dctlef could tell us from experience that in heavy
rain even a radar is affected and shows nothing at all in distances less
than a mile. Even our strips of tinfoil were of no avail in this
weather.
The screen of rain thinned abruptly, so that we could see our bow
in the night mist; at the same time we also caught sight of two
clusters of lights close ahead. Two more ships. They looked like
two galaxies of bright stars moving one after the other from right to
left across our course; we were just about to pass between them at a
distance we could not quite grasp, due to confused visibility. But in
the next second we realised that these ships were shockingly near,
! both moving incredibly fast, with identical speed and constant
separation. No tug towing a barge could move that fast. For an :
instant Torn and I were bewildered at their speed, then simultane­
ously we flung ourselves against the tillers to force Tigris to
starboard as far as we could go. An unlit ship’s side had come into
view straight ahead; it joined the two speeding galaxies in their
common rush. All three clung together; then it dawned on us that
they were in fact one ship. A huge supertanker, heavily loaded, with
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