Page 288 - The Tigris Expedition

Tigris and the Superships: the Voyage to Pakistan

hoping it might again dig into the bottom and take a hold as had
happened off Failaka. But here the water was still too deep. As the
wind forced us shorewards the four fathoms under us were reduced
to three, then two-and-a-half, and then two. From now on fathoms
were no use for measuring and we began to reckon in metres. We
pulled both rudder-oars up until the blades were level with the
bottom of the vessel, and secured them there with ropes.
We who were left on the bundles had a most exciting but
nerve-wrecking afternoon, with Tigris hanging on in the two tight
ropes. Our lives were probably not in danger unless breakers
should drag us overboard and throw us against rocks, but we had
fears for all our deck cargo and of jeopardising our chances of ever
getting to sea again if Tigris were washed ashore on this desolate
Makran coast. All along the stormy bay we heard the rhythmic
drone of ocean surf from the big swells that came rolling in from the
open sea. The height of the breaking walls could only be under­
stood by their roar, as they turned their round backs towards
us.
In spite of fear and uncertainty, we had time to look around and
realise that we had come to a truly exotic place, unlike anything we
had ever known. If the setting was both scenic and spectacular, with
rocky side-curtains flanking a flat, sandy stage-set against the open
sky, the performers were no less reminiscent of the theatre. The first
we saw was a long caravan of camels coming out from the rock
draperies at the dragon’s tail and passing right along the four-
mile-wide stage at the water’s edge. The turbanned drivers, with
bag-shaped trousers and coloured shirts, drove their striding beasts
right along the shore where the sand was wet and hard. No sooner
had one caravan disappeared among the rocks to the left before
another emerged at the right, with twelve or fourteen camels in
each procession, always striding across the stage from right to left.
From the opposite direction came camel drivers with single beasts,
or pairs, all with big burdens of twigs that could only be firewood.
With them, or independently, came women carrying large bundles
on their heads, robed from top to toe in green, red or other very gay
colours. Soon we had them passing us only some four hundred
yards away, and with the surf drumming between them and us we
certainly felt as if watching from orchestra stalls in a theatre, the
more so since none of the people ashore paid us the slightest
attention. Not one stopped to look, or even as much as turned a
head our way to glimpse a reed-ship arriving tail first, with
dragging anchors, from another world into their own.
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