The Sons of Adam by Harry Bingham

Author:Harry Bingham [Bingham, Harry]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780007383986
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2011-12-26T16:00:00+00:00

89

Summer 1921.

The Persian sun baked the sky to brittle whiteness, while the burning earth turned to dust beneath it. The camp had mostly emptied of people now, and the bare dozen that remained worked like dogs from first light to well beyond the last lick of fire on the western horizon.

Since Alan had decided not to move the derrick, progress had been desperately slow. It was far too late to undo the decision – money was running through their hands all the time – but their disappointment was as bitter as the wind-blown dust that entered their clothes, their food and their bedding.

The Ameri No. 2 now stood at two thousand seven hundred feet. As Ahmed had predicted the lousy goddamn boiler didn’t want to go down any further, and breakdowns and stoppages were now an all but daily occurrence. On many days they made no progress at all. On other days they went five feet, sometimes ten feet, once and only once seventeen feet. Alan and Reynolds had stopped their meticulous sample collection. If they hit oil, they hit oil. If they missed, they missed. Things were inshallah – in the will of Allah – and rock samples wouldn’t help them much either way.

The shortage of money made economy increasingly essential. Kerosene lamps were permitted only for matters directly related to work. Food was now restricted to rice, flat breads and vegetables, except once a week when a couple of chickens would be shared among everyone. Fuel prices in Shiraz had risen because of bandit activity in the mountains, and fuel was desperately needed up at camp.

Nobody spoke the word, but they all knew that failure was creeping closer by the day.

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