The Tigris expedition : in search of our beginnings by Heyerdahl Thor

Author:Heyerdahl, Thor
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Heyerdahl, Thor, Tigris (Boat)
Publisher: New York, NY. New American Library
Published: 1982-11-01T05:00:00+00:00

cious timber, nor would a dhow probably carry such quantities of crude oil on board. Only with difficulty did we avoid coUision with some of the heavy logs and beams that rose like torpedoes on the waves. The smaller ones we could not dodge. Never had we raced this fast with a raft-ship. Detlef measured our speed as more than four knots.

Time and again we lost steering control but were able to return onto course. The moment the sail threatened to flap the hehnsman on the leeward side of the steering platform had to manage the tiller with a single hand and use the other to pull sheet and brace until the sail turned back into the wind. Palms and fingers were scored and bhstered by rope. Carlo and Yuri could hardly open their fists; they were invariably called upon when rope fighting was at its worst.

Attentive to the rigging, and searching for the dhow, we were racing ahead at full speed when we heard Asbjom's calm voice from the steering bridge: "Look, what is that? Is it a cloud?"

The sky was blue above us, but there were white cloud banks along the entire horizon ahead. Cloud banks, but what the devil did we see above the clouds? I grabbed the binoculars and what As-bjorn had asked about jumped clearly into view. For a moment I could hardly beheve my eyes. Above the cloud banks, raised above the earth, was land, like another indistinct world of its own. SoUd rock was sailing up there, still so far away that the lower parts seemed transparent and did not even reach down to the clouds; the upper ridge seen against the clear sky was of a different shade of blue. What we all were staring at seemed far too high up to be real. Were we heading for the Himalayas? Was this an optical distortion, a Fata Morgana?

Our navigation chart had given us no warning of what we were to see. It showed nothing behind the coasthnes. Land masses were all equally white. We were so tuned in to the low profiles of the Iraqi plains and the mudflats and Hmestone shelves we had so far seen in the gulf area that we were not mentally prepared for a spectacular sight like this. We dug out of our boxes a land map of Oman. It showed that this Arabian dagger, with the Hormuz Strait at its tip, rose steeply to an elevation of 6,400 feet above the gulf. This was what we saw ahead of us. The whole peninsula was a lofty mountain chain with rock walls dropping almost perpendicularly into the sea on the gulf side that we were now approaching.

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