I regretted teasing him the moment I had spoken, for I was far from convinced myself. I was so uncertain that I sat down with Detlef on the portside bench, watching the wall of mist that had risen so suddenly to obscure the view of the distant mountains I had seen so clearly with Norris and Asbjorn. I was almost falling asleep with my back against the springy cane wall when something happened to the low cloud bank we were sailing along. Its milky color began to turn more yellowish, and many vertical stripes or cracks began to show up very distinctly, as if the broken ice edge of a
Captions for the following four pages
41. Into the Indian Ocean.
42-43. Far from land Tigris always found space between the ocean
swells.
44. After a storm we had problems in replacing a broken topmast.
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Captions for the preceding four pages
4$. Ocean pollution; a red belt with no visible beginning or end ran from horizon to horizon in midocean.
46-4y, The sun rose and the sun set as months passed by, and Tigris was still floating high.
48. With lines built for ocean voyages and not for river travel, Tigris might disappear from sight between the waves when we went out to take pictures from the rubber dinghy; sometimes the waves rose higher than the top of the mast, but the reed bundles always reappeared over the swells.
Greenland glacier were slowly throwing off a thin veil of night mist. The mist lifted and dissolved. The clouds were gone. But left naked in the moonhght were pale cMffs of lime or petrified clay, smooth as crystal, rising to an even height of 600 to 700 feet all along, as far as we could see under the sparkhng sky. Obscured by mist and camouflaged by a milky sea discolored by erosion from the rock itself, the coasthne of Makran had been close beside us for hours. Excessive leeway or a northbound current had brought us out of our intended course after passing Astola Island. But these cliffs had stopped our leeway and set us on a straight course. The same elements that had pulled us toward the coast had been halted by the cliffs themselves and forced to turn aside. Both ocean current and airstream had been diverted and were forced to follow the limestone wall, and Tigris with them. Out at sea the wind and water had their freedom. In here the rocks were in command. And for once they had arranged everything in our favor; they had even calmed the waves.
What Norris had discovered on his watch were the distant inland mountain ranges of Baluchistan. Their 3,000-foot peaks and crests were seen against the stars while we were still so far out at sea that the extensive lowland deserts and the 700-foot coastal cUffs in front of them were yet too low to show up against the sky. As we had come closer, however, the seaboard waU had risen above our heads, all wrapped in sea mist, and obscured the view beyond.
We were now so busy trimming the sail and forcing a course farther away from the spooky cliffs that we forgot to try Carlo's string, and although his instinctive concern was certainly warranted we shall never know if the milky water was due to shallows or to erosion from the chalky cliffs. Certain is it that Makran was actually only a gunshot away while we were admiring the high ridges in distant Baluchistan.
We managed with no great effort to hold our own and even increase our distance from the long rock wall, and I crawled back into bed. I was awakened a couple of hours later by Detlef shaking my legs violently: "We can see Ras Ormara now, and it is doubtful if we can clear the capel"
I felt an icy chill through my bones. It was before sunrise on the twenty-seventh and we coasted with good speed along moonlit white cliffs, but just ahead they ended and opened up into a large bay. Beyond the bay a towering promontory, twice as high as the other chffs, jutted into the sea with wild peaks and precipices that
scared the helmsmen from coasting on, the more so since we began to get a very strong onshore wind the moment the chflFs inside disappeared. The wind followed the cliffs. It was again as if nature took the lead and wanted us to turn with the rock walls and flotsam into an imknown bay. Ras Ormara towered in front like a policeman guiding the traflBc to follow the curve in a left turn.
Against an intensely red sky that preceded the first Hght, Ras Ormara reminded me of the lofty North Cape of Norway, dropping into a black sea at noon in midwinter with the sun just below the horizon. But this was more of an Asiatic dragon, drinking from the ocean, its dorsal crest towering against a sky the color of blood, its jagged tail sloping off toward the inner bay.
We had to take an immediate decision. I wakened Norman, who was on the bridge in two leaps and taking the bearings.
"We will never make it," he yelled. "We are steering for sure collision with the cHffsl"
"Let us steer into this bay and drop anchor," I shouted back. There was no time to lose. All hands were siunmoned. The topsail went down. The mainsail was trimmed. With the wind at our back we turned in to a huge bay. Ras Ormara at our starboard side provided a magnificent sight, the more impressive as the sky behind the dragon began to play in brighter shades, until the sun shone on the ivory chffs on the other side of the bay while we were still in shadow and could only see rays of silver radiating above the head of the dragon. Three white sails began to show up deep inside the bay. As they approached we hoisted the Pakistani flag, green and white with moon and star, but the sails belonged to fishing canoes which passed us cautiously at a great distance. We could not see where the inner part of the bay ended.
Tom and Asbjom went out in the rubber dinghy to film the sunrise and to sound the depth ahead of us with lead and string. "Five fathoms!" "Four fathoms!" they yelled back to us. Really shallow for this far out. Here, too, the water was milky. Norman tried to call Ormara, Karachi, Bahrain; he called "all stations"; he tried anybody who could help us ask for landing permit. Nobody heard us anywhere. We could only prepare the anchors and go in without permission. Without charts we entered an unknown bay with the two men ahead probing the bottom, which now seemed to maintain the same depth. Well inside the bay we lowered the mainsail too, and threw out both anchors at four fathoms. They dragged
over a sandy bottom and we noted that the onshore wind was increasing. Heavy clouds rolled up over the ocean behind us and we began to see swirls of desert sand rising into the air on both sides of the bay. A storm came in from the ocean and although the promontory gave us partial shelter, tall waves tumbled in and Tigris danced and continued to drag on the anchor ropes. The birds were so tame in this bay that they landed among us without fear. One big gannet rode about with the two men in the dinghy and left its visiting card on Detlef when he refused to stop rowing and allow it to perch on his oar. There were obviously no bird hunters in this area, but we could smell fish half a mile away when the sailing canoes passed.
At noon we were still slowly dragging our anchors and by now the wind was striking us hard. This was not the right weather to risk hfting anchors and start crossing about among unknown cliffs, looking for a bottom that would give a better hold. I sent Norman and Rashad ahead into the bay on reconnaissance, to look for people and try to learn with Enghsh or Arabic where we could best ride off the storm. Asbjorn took them in, and with three men in life vests the rubber dinghy was loaded to capacity and vanished behind every wave.
Hours passed. Asbjorn had been back once to report that the surf was terrific, but they had found a small sheltered comer of the beach under the rocks to the far right. The other two had walked inland with a man who could speak some Arabic. Having told us this much, Asbjorn returned to wait for them, but this time none of the three came back.
The eight of us left on board reahzed that we could never transfer ourselves to the sheltered corner found by the men in the dinghy. Sand was whirling high on either side of the bay, the anchors dragged, and we began to see a wide stretch of low land ahead, apparently a sandy isthmus hnking the lofty cliffs of the Ras Ormara peninsula to the mainland. To the far right, wher
e Asbjorn had indicated, we saw some black canoes pulled up on the sand, but no dinghy. We took the bearing of some lonely palms that came into sight near the tip of the dragon's tail, and as it showed that we were still moving slowly we threw out the canvas sea anchor, 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 vdnd forced us shoreward 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 meters. 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 tightropes. Our lives were probably not in danger unless breakers should drag us overboard and throw us against rocks, but we had fears for aU our deck cargo and of jeopardizing 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 understood by their roar, as they turned their round backs toward us.
In spite of fear and uncertainty, we had time to look around and realize that we had come to a truly exotic place, unhke 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 theater. 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 turbaned drivers, with bag-shaped trousers and colored 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 than another emerged at the right, with twelve or foiirteen 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 colors. 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 we were watching from orchestra stalls in a theater, 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 ghmpse a reed ship arriving tail first, with dragging anchors, from another world into their own.
No one stared, not even the animals, when we came close enough to see goats and dogs pattering along in the long-legged company. We from our deck absorbed all these strange surround-
ings as we struggled to save our ship and all our possessions. None of us failed to realize that this was the most appropriate setting we could have found for the arrival of a reed ship. Although everything seemed staged for us, we were simply rehving history.
The village must be somewhere behind the sands to the right, where the smaller groups hurried with firewood and bundles. On this side of the dunes, facing our bay, were only some tiny huts of mud and mats tucked away imder the few pahns at the dragon*s tail. The canoes, too, were on the beach on that side. But we could make out the tower of a Httle mosque behind the dunes. It was Friday, and it seemed that Muslims from the desert were returning to the wilderness from a visit to the town. The others, with firewood, were coming home before the sun set, for it was aheady low in the western sky.
Much to our surprise, a large flock of pink flamingoes circled above us in plow formation, their necks and legs extended as if shot from a bow. Then came the thunder and the rain. No doubt a real storm was raging out in the open sea; Ras Ormara clearly gave us some protection. The men in the dinghy were not back. The silence among us on board Tigris was emphasized by the rhythmic droning of the surf and the occasional clatter in the thunderclouds. Torn was quietly frying dolphin and onions in the open galley. HP was measuring the depth with his own lif ehne. He reported two meters (six feet). I double-checked and got 2.20 meters. This would leave us half a meter clearance in calm water. But the water was anything but calm. For a while the surf had been rising, and breakers now began to fumble into vertical walls around us and throw themselves with force against the sickle-shaped ship. With the anchor ropes lashed to the bow, the stem was turned to the land and the purpose of the elegant sickle shape became clear again. The ma-gur was not designed as a riverboat. The curve was there to help it ride a stormy sea and let the ship Hft its tall neck or tail over the surf like a swan in choppy water. The broad, raised chest of Tigris leaped up, split the surf, and as it came down again sent spray to either side, in fact wetting the deck less than the rain.
Carlo grabbed one of the oak oars and an ax, and with Detlef s help began to ram the oar into the bottom beside the bundles. The sand gave no hold; the oar yielded and came out. The sun was getting low, and there were no more people on the beach. Now the ebb tide started and began to suck the water away from the bay. To our
despair we saw the beach creeping toward us, getting wider and wider, while we had ever less water beneath our reeds. We had the impression of being still completely afloat, hugging the surf with our seabound bow in wild leaps. But almost certainly the landward stem was now touching the bottom in the intervals between the high waves, and this, combined with the seaward suction of the ebbing tide, helped the two small anchors and the buried sea anchor to hold us in one spot, ridiculously close to the obhterated camel tracks ashore. It had been my last hope that, when the stern ran aground, the drag on the anchors would diminish and we could dance the weather oflF, half afloat in one spot, until the storm abated and we could pull ourselves back into deep water.
In this desperate position we sat down at the long table to eat a warm supper, feeling Hke passengers on a racing speedboat jumping the waves toward nowhere.
At 5:40 P.M. Tigris time the sun set and HP ht the kerosene lamps. Far away someone lit another smaU lamp among the mat huts at the end of the bay. The rain had ceased. At 6 p.m. we heard shouting from the sea and waved our hghts from the cabin roof. Riding with the surf in the dark came Asbjom, alone in the inflated dinghy; he was grasped by many arms and pulled on board. He had no news of the other two. He had walked inland alone until he found a small house with a tower; he had peeped inside but had learned from a few praying Orientals that this was a mosque, and that the village was far away on the other side of the sandy isthmus. He then came back to the dinghy, which he had hidden behind a big canoe, wrote Tigris in the sand and a message to the others that if they signaled he would come to fetch them.
Nobody signaled. For a moment we saw another faint hght at the opposite end of the beach, then even that disappeared and all remained dark.
At 7 P.M. we all leaped from our seats around the long table. We heard more shouting from out at sea. There were lights. I could have sworn I recognized Norman's voice. We aU shouted, but our voices were drowned by the surf and carried inland by the wind. Then we heard many voices and the sound of an engine. We climbed roofs and mast ladders with aU the lamps we had and waved and yelled warnings, for we did not want to lure the boat into a trap. It was a small and shallow dhow that came into the range of our lights, full of Pakistanis and with Norman and Rashad
in the bow. They came straight for us and near enough for otir two friends to jump on to the reed bundles before any of our visitors realized we were half up on land. Caught by surprise and drenched by surf, the experienced crew of the dhow performed a briUiant maneuver, throwing their vessel about and steering at full speed out again until their hghts and the sound of them were lost in the darkness.
Once again we were eleven men to share the fate of Tigris. Norman and Rashad told us they had walked a couple of miles across the low sandy isthmus until they reached a village by the sea
on the other side of Ras Ormara. Rashad explained enthusiastically that the scattered houses along the trail were built from mats v^dth arched roofs, following the very same design as that of the Marsh Arabs. In the village some of the houses were built of stone, and these had been the houses of the schoolmaster and the police. There was a real storm out in the ocean and the friendly villagers feared for our hves on the west side of Ras Ormara. They had finally decided to send a rescue vessel around the cape to come to our assistance. It had been a terrible trip aroimd the cape. What happened to the rescue vessel after it had brought us our two companions we shall never learn; once it was swallowed up by the night it never came back. Norman and Rashad assured us that the rescue party, in passing Ras Ormara, had been in greater danger than us, and the friendly fishermen would certainly have their work cut out to round the cape once more and get back to the more sheltered village bay before the storm got worse. After all, they had found us ahve, riding our large bundles close to land, unhurt and cheerful. And the dhow captain had shouted to Rashad that this anchorage was safe for us but not for them.
It began to seem as if he was right, although never had we heard of anyone using an anchorage hke ours, in the midst of high surf, with the stem almost ashore. There was no longer any visible change in our position, however, nor any sign of an immediate worsening of the storm, so we could only relax and console ourselves with the knowledge that three of us had been ashore in Pakistan. We divided the night watch and crept to bed in the two cane shacks where we were rocked brusquely asleep on our reed cradle to the diabohc lullaby of the Makran surf.
Chapter 9
IN THE INDUS VALLEY IN SEARCH OF MELUHHA
The Tigris Expedition Page 31