Page 369 - The Tigris Expedition

From Asia to Africa; from Meluhha to Punt

represented on Tigris had approached South Yemen with negative
result.
The sun set.
On 14 March, shortly after midnight, a strong wind sprang up
and we started steering. No sooner were the two sails filled, when
the wind turned from w to sw and s, and then suddenly back in the
opposite direction. We ran about, turning the sail and helping with
the rowing-oars all night, but never brought Tigris back on to
course before the sail back-filled again. In the end we exhausted
ourselves rowing in turns and circles, and in the dark I ran my
forehead into the end of a thick bamboo rafter and got my hands and
beard full of blood. At daybreak, shortly after six, I crawled out
again and to my great amazement saw the entire rugged coastline of
Socotra right before the bow. The seated polar bear was there too; it
proved to be a colossal white sand dune running way up a hill and
forming a headland in the central part of the island. Our bearings
soon told us that we were looking at the north coast of Socotra,
seventy miles long, from end to end, and when the sun rose we were
only twenty miles off. As it set, the distance was only fourteen.
In the meantime we had struggled non-stop all day to get further
out, or at least hold our distance from shore. With our bow turning
aimlessly in all directions, our school of dolphins swam bewildered
around us in a ring. The island had peaks and pinnacles that seemed
higher and wilder than any land we had sighted on the voyage.
Norman was constantly on the radio, and learnt that an appeal on
our behalf had been directed to the South Yemen Embassy at the
United Nations, but to no avail. Permission could only be granted
by the island itself. When Norman tried his amateur set a Russian
radio ham named Valery was among those who called him back,
and I asked Yuri to send a message to his superiors in Moscow
explaining our unintentional drift towards Socotra. Soon after­
wards we got a reply through Valery that the First Deputy Minister
of the USSR Foreign Office had sent one dispatch to the South
Yemen Embassy in Moscow and another to the Soviet Embassy in
Aden. Evening came, and all sight of the island was lost again, while
Detlef reported from the bridge that we seemed to hold our distance
from land as we sailed westwards along the island against a tidal
current of at least one knot. That night faint gusts of confused wind
sometimes brought a marked smell of flowers or vegetation, and
once we thought we scented roasted coffee. In the direction of land a
single strong light was once turned on for seconds, then the night
was as black as before.

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