Page 269 - The Tigris Expedition

The Tigris Expedition
At noon we suddenly made radio contact with a ship in Muscat
harbour that telephoned the navy coastal station that had a twenty-
four-hour watch. Our agent was alerted; he had already given up
his search for us off Sur and now had the camera in Muscat. This
was almost too exciting. Particularly for Norris, who for nearly a
week had felt like a lumberjack without an axe. The manager of the
agency, Leif Thoernwall, promised to bring us the camera himself if
we came closer to Muscat. In renewed squalls of rain, but with a
main wind direction from sse, we kept moving ever closer to the
dreaded shipping lane, but as another night fell we had not seen a
sign of a rendezvous ship. Nor could we any longer make radio
contact with Muscat or Bahrain, although Norman suddenly heard
a voice giving landing instructions to an aeroplane in Hawaii. He
tuned up his receiver, and we all heard an American voice say:
\ . . maintain 200 knots and keep in contact!’ We could only join
Norman in a roar of laughter at the tragic-comic message.
As I went to bed the lights of Muscat could be clearly seen
reflected in the night sky. The wind had calmed for a moment. We
came close enough to have ships unpleasantly near, then turned
around and sailed away from land. The previous night’s experi­
ences were still too fresh in our minds. We spent this night in
drizzle, safely outside the traffic, seeing a few ship’s lights far away
and lightning flashes followed by thunder over Iran. As we crawled
into sleeping-bags or under blankets we all commented on how
good it was to be away from the brutal wakes of the superships.
Detlef confessed that a few times during the last couple of days, he
had lain down feeling a bit seasick, and I, who never feel the sea, had
experienced pain as if my stomach was being tossed about inside .
me.
i
Next day, at 10 a.m., Norman managed to make contact with
Bahrain, and we learnt that a tugboat had gone eighteen miles from I
Muscat the previous day, looking for us, but the weather had been
too rough and they had been forced to return to port. More bad
weather was forecast, so no one would come out to look for us that
day.
The day was so dark that HP had to light a kerosene lamp to read i
inside the cabin. We had painted the vaulted roofs with asphalt
Sumerian fashion, but rain trickled down the cane walls in this kind
of weather. Four sharks followed us all afternoon. The sea might
have seemed terrible for those who saw it from port, but to us it was
a real blessing: long, regular rollers, the heavy rain smoothing off all
the choppy wave crests. Tigris moved over the water as quietly as
228

I

■ I