Page 281 - The Tigris Expedition

. The Tigris Expedition
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brought the madly flapping topsail down. A full moon peeped at us
in fleeting gaps between rapidly accumulating clouds, then it
disappeared as the rattling, rumbling blitz came over us and over
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the unseen coast of Makran. We had sailed into really bad weather.
I fell asleep before my midnight watch; then, as I grabbed my
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flashlight and lifeline to climb up on the steering-bridge with Toru,
we found the masts naked: no sails. As Norris and Asbjorn huddled
away and left further problems to us, they reported that the wind
had swung about in all directions each time an extra black thunder
cloud had passed overhead. It had been impossible to undo and
refasten sheets and braces fast enough every time they had to trim
the sail, and the rolling had been so bad that they had feared the
dancing yard-arm would break and the mainsail be torn to shreds.
Norman had been out to help them save the sail, and we were now
adrift with only the sea-anchor to help keep our stern to the wind.
The coast was near and there was an island somewhere, so we had to
be alert. The West Coast of India Pilot left no doubt that it was risky to
be adrift completely without steering control in such treacherous
waters. A faint wind began to blow in our favour from the direction
of the Hormuz Strait, and after half an hour I woke up enough men
to hoist the mainsail in a heavy rolling sea. Three whales came up
around us, breathing deeply in the dark, and by our sparse light we
noted two big white birds riding high at either end of our vessel.
I i The sail came up, but no sooner was it filled before the wind
changed to ne, the proper direction of the monsoon. If it really was
the monsoon that had now come to stay, then we would run the risk
of never seeing land in Pakistan. Never had our desire to get on to
the Makran coast been stronger.
We studied the chart again. The dead reckoning would place us
off the Ashing village of Pasni. Land was just below the horizon.
This was still Makran and not yet the Indus Valley. But the Indus
Valley civilisation had dominated this coast. Archaeologists had
found ruins of prehistoric forts built by the founders of the Indus
Valley civilisation; they blocked access to the only two valleys
leading inland from this coast. One was at Sutkagen Dor, which we
already had behind us, very near the borders of Iran. The other was
at Sotka-Koh, the passage that opens at Pasni, which we now had
right inside us. In a report on recent surveys of these prehistoric
coastal forts, the archaeologist G. F. Dales had shown that they
contained numerous Indus Valley potsherds, and that these were
attributable to the earliest period of Indus Valley civilisation.
I According to Dales, this special type of ceramic ware had been
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