Page 299 - The Tigris Expedition

The Tigris Expedition
direction completely. The storm now struck the village bay cast of
Ras Ormara. The dhow would have been better off had it remained
on our side.
The cliffs
now protecting us stood like the walls of a glacier
rising from the sea. The shallow water was more milky than ever,
although the tide had risen and left only a narrow beach a couple o
hundred yards further away. I found Toru in the galley and c
offered me a cup of coffee. This was too good to be true. I craw e
back into bed but could not sleep. As the clouds were chased away
could see the moon and the familiar Plough and Pole Star.
The sky was clear and the wind still offshore when the sun rose.
For once all eleven men could crowd around the deck table at t e
same time. Gherman served porridge and fresh eggs, which he a
preserved by painting each one with oil before departure. A fnen y
group of Urdu-speaking fishermen brought along by Carlo vo un
tecrcd to help us to a good anchorage out in the middle of the ay.
Since Norman and Rashad had seen the village the day before, t ey
were left on watch while the rest of us took shore leave. The ding y
ferried us two at a time into shallow water and we waded on to a
broad and beautiful beach. Miles of white sand and not a human
soul but ourselves stepping on shells and sponges and scaring itt e
crabs into their wet holes as we trampled barefoot to the dry san ,
where we put on our shoes. ,
It was good to sec Tigris riding high and to remind ourselves t at
we were now ashore in Pakistan. We were still in part of what we
3 call the Makran coast today, but to the Sumerians this might have
been a transition area between Makan and Meluhha, since the west
ernmost of the Indus Valley military installations were behind us.
. The sand beyond the reach of the waves was full of potshcr s.^
3 - There were hardly any very ancient remains to be found on this o\\
isthmus, however, because the sea level, as in Mesopotamia, a
been higher in Sumerian times. The sandbar had probably been
completely submerged, leaving the high rocks of Ras Ormara as an
island. Local geology was fascinating: Asbjorn discovered that t e
limestone cliffs were full of perfectly round balls of soft chalky
stone the size of oranges which* when broken, revealed the most
beautiful fossils of fancy shells, clams and worm-like creatures. T e
men collected large quantities as souvenirs. But the hard-packe
crusts of sand forming the low isthmus were quite different from
the limestone cliffs and rose in a scries of arched terraces parallel to
the beach as a result of the successive formation of new beach-lines
each time the ocean had subsided. This was important, for, as Dales

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