Page 76 - The Tigris Expedition

C"*ll of'tte blades, and this, as

unless we also reduced the dimj'isi ^ of the Southampton
Norman pointed out, would n tbc test if we ignored the
model test. And Norman was rign . y

navigator Detlef, and HP, and all the other men one by one, except
Carlo and myself, and Yuri who suffered from pains but ran horn
bed to bed with his special medical kit designed for Russian
astronauts. Even the camera teams tumbled into bed, and for a
while the outlook was very serious. A cholera epidemic had struck
the surrounding Arab world and was reportedly raging in villages
down river, but no cases were reported from the Qurna region.
While nearly all the men were in bed the rain came. The real rain.
It poured down as described in the story of Noah. The Marsh Arabs
kept to their reed houses and waited for their islands to lift and float.
The sandy clay in the Garden of Eden turned to sticky mud. With a
couple of men I tried to cover our vessel with reeds to shed the
worst of the water, for we could see that the bundles were gathering
weight. I was terrified when I saw some of the vertical poles of our
perfect jig begin to lean outwards. Tons of water must have been
added to the weight of the vessel and the jig was ready to collapse.
We hurried to hammer slanting props into the ground to support
the endangered structure, and Mohammed ran to Qurna and came
back with green plastic sheeting to cover the entire ship. Ugly
though this material was, it looked now like a Noah’s Ark with its
gabled roof streaming with rain, while pools of water grew in size
and number on the ground. It was exciting to see if the woodwork
of the launching-jig would resist the pressure. It did. And as the
clouds drifted away and the sun shone as before on the Garden of
Eden, the mud dried up, the ugly plastic was removed, and Noah s
Ark lay as dry as if it had landed on Mount Ararat. , , i
It was time to decide whether to cover our golden ship v\ it ‘
asphalt. We pulled the two test bundles up from the anj
river. To our horror they both lay much deeper 111 ^and with a
were obviously waterlogged. We dragged thcn\*S!T- ht through,
saw cut them off at mid-length. They were soake g but add
both of them. The asphalt had cracked and doi
stood speechless
extra weight to the bundle. who
I looked at Gatac and his marshmen, bewildered as I was
around the waterlogged pieces. They were <
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