A Dweller in Mesopotamia | Page 3

begin my story.
It was evening. The sun was setting in the orthodox manner described
above. Abadan was looking very much as usual. The smoke was
smoking, the pumps were pumping, the works were working, and all

the oilers along the quay, like all well-behaved oilers, were oiling.
As if to protest against the frankly commercial atmosphere of
everything and everybody at Abadan, a dhow that might have belonged
to Sinbad the Sailor himself was making slow headway before the
failing breeze under a huge spread of bellying canvas--an apparition
from another age, relieved boldly against the dark hull of a tank
steamer.
The flood tide had spent itself and the river seemed unusually still as
twilight deepened and the many lights of the works wriggled in long
reflection in the water. A spell of enchantment seemed to lie over
everything, and the faint purring hum from the distant oil blast furnaces
pervaded the still air. Old Sinbad came to anchor and night set in.
This is all very peaceful and picturesque to write about now, but at the
time I was in a motor boat that had left Mahommerah to take me for a
run and it had broken down and seemed unlikely to start again in spite
of all the coxswain's efforts. Consequently we were drifting about on
the stream and likely to be swept down by the ebb tide. We were
unfortunately on the far side of the river from Abadan, and
consequently our plight would not be observed from the works. The
situation was not a pleasant one because we stood a very good chance
of being run down by some incoming steamer.
[Illustration: "Serried ranks of tall iron funnels."]
When it was clear that we should drift down below the region of the oil
quays I thought we would see what our lungs could do. Timing our
shouts together, the coxswain and I, we sent up a tremendous hail to the
lowest of the piers. Again and again we startled the night, until at last
we heard an answering hallo.
In a few minutes a motor-boat bore down upon us. It was the British
Navy in the shape of an engineer lieutenant commander. He took us in
tow, carried me off to his bungalow, arranged about the boat being
berthed and looked after till the morning, and proved a most cheery
soul full of good looks and given to hospitality. When I explained my

job he roared with laughter.
"Just the right time to arrive," he said. "Subject one, Abadan at night
complete with tanks; subject two, works, oil, one in number--sketched
in triplicate--why, my Lords Commissioners will be awfully bucked.
They've put a couple of millions into this show, you know. Say 'when,'
it can't hurt you, special Abadan brand."
[Illustration: Ship loading with oil.]
I said "when." I kept on saying "when," and then as a measure of
self-protection suggested sketching the works while I could distinguish
tanks from palm trees. So we went out and had a preliminary look
round, reserving the "Grand Tour of the Inferno," as my host named
our projected expedition, until after dinner.
I will not attempt to explain the processes of oil refining. I am merely
concerned in narrating what it looks like. I know little beyond the fact
that the crude oil arrives by pipe from the oilfields by means of several
pumping stations and that it is cooked or distilled over furnaces and
converted into different grade oils from petrol to heavy fuel oil. As a
spectacle, however, I found a journey through this weird region most
fascinating and mysterious. At night it appears as a vast plain gleaming
with lights and studded with dark objects, half seen and suggesting
primitive machinery of uncouth proportions. Huge lengths of pipes
creep from the shadows on one hand into the far-off regions of
blackness on the other.
Armed with an electric torch, which the Chief carried, and a large
sketch-book which I regretted taking almost as soon as we started, we
set out on our quest of Dantesque scenery. At first our road ran along
the quays by the river side. A camouflaged Admiralty oiler was loading
fuel oil by means of three pipes that looked like the tentacles of an
octopus clutching on to the side of the ship. Near this quay was a gate,
and we entered the wire fence that surrounds the works and the area of
the tanks and struck out over a dark waste.
The novice who roams about this place in the dark spends a lot of time

falling over pipes. They are stretching all over the place without any
method that is apparent. The Chief showed up most of them with his
torch, and so I fell about only just enough to get