Clash of Eagles by Carol Clark

Author:Carol Clark
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lyons Press
Published: 2012-09-17T16:00:00+00:00

VIII

The Dead Sea

At twilight, with the sky reflecting the fading beauty of the golden sunset, the boats passed a gravelly point jutting out into the sea from the mud banks of the northern shore. Trying to discover their location before the light faded, Lynch sighted the narrow isthmus connecting the peninsula to the shore and decided that the land mass was the island at the mouth of the river that previous travelers had described—though they must have visited in flood years when the isthmus was an island.

He feared they would miss the appointed rendezvous with the land party. But what if their compatriots had been waylaid? Either case meant a wet and hungry night. The sheikh of Huteim, whom they had brought along as a guide, offered no help. He gestured his bewilderment, useless at determining their location; he was still frightened, from the gale winds that had threatened to swamp the boats, and disoriented, never having been afloat before. The shadow of the mountains obscured what little moon had yet to rise, so the men pulled at their oars by starlight, carefully trying to hug the shore without running aground.

At last, to the south, they caught the gleam of a fire upon the beach. Lynch ordered one of the men to shoot his gun to draw the Bedouin’s attention and steered the boat toward the light. Shortly, however, the light faded, and the men had to rest on their oars, waiting for a signal, so as not to pass the spot in the dark. Then all became confused as they saw gun flashes and heard retorts and voices echoing from the cliffs, followed by more flashes and reports behind them from the shore they had already passed. Were their friends being attacked? How could they help? If they helped, how could they protect the boats? They pulled closer to land, parallel with the beach, sounding the depth as they went.

It wasn’t until almost two hours after sunset that they came upon their camp at Ain el Feshkah, a brackish spring nestled beneath a towering cliff. The scouts and the caravan had become separated, and the two groups, trying to signal each other, while also responding to the signal from the boats, had caused the chaotic commotion of shots and shouts. “It was a wild scene upon an unknown and desolate coast—the mysterious sea, the shadowy mountains, the human voices among the cliffs, the vivid flashes and the loud reports reverberating along the shore,” Lynch wrote.154

The spring lay about a mile from the lake, so they pulled the boats up on the beach below and left some of the Bedouin to guard them. The land party had pitched camp in a cane-break beside the spring, and the sailors, tired and wet, ate a hasty supper. The scene depressed Lynch, but he tried to get what rest he could in a “bed of dust, beside a fetid marsh” with “dark, fretted mountains behind and the sea, like a huge cauldron, before us, its surface shrouded in a lead-colored mist.

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