A Dweller in Mesopotamia | Page 3

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 used to the feel of the ground as a preliminary to what was coming later. It had rained heavily two or three days before, consequently there were lake districts, slimy reaches of mixed oil and mud and dried, hard-looking islands that were in reality traps to the unwary. The top only was firm, and it had the playful property of sliding rapidly on the greasy substratum and thus sitting you down without warning when you thought you had reached dry land.
[Illustration: "A mysterious-looking furnace tower."]
Had I known more about Abadan before I started I would have taken a course of lessons in tight-rope walking, for that seems to be a great asset in getting along. The Chief was quite a Blondin. He could walk or run any length of