A Pale Glow in the East 29 



one by one they raise a white cloth and start pulling towards him. 

 And as the first draws under the towering side, everybody on 

 board crowds to the rail and peers down. Lines are tossed and will- 

 ing hands leap into the sea to attach them to large hidden things that 

 revolve just below the surface. And soon these things are hauled 

 into view. The deck crew chant as they heave, and slowly the forms 

 rise out of the waters high into the air. Then they are swung aboard 

 and dropped upon the deck. More of the little boats pull slowly 

 back to the ship until only two are left far upon the horizon. Neither 

 raises the white cloth, and the remaining black sea-beasts have now 

 all vanished. The sails are hoisted and the ship tugs slowly across 

 the wind; immediately the last two skiffs alter course and creep to- 

 wards her. But meanwhile there is an excitement drenched in blood 

 upon the well deck of the ship. 



Brandishing heavy knives, copper chisels, and hammers, men with 

 almond eyes and soft brown skins set to work upon the mighty 

 corpses. Pounding, slashing, and hammering, they work upon the 

 mouths of the beasts, cutting out the great ivory teeth and handing 

 them one by one to a tall, bearded man clad in a long coat and a 

 turban who keeps a tally on a stylus and drops each tooth into a 

 closed box. Long before this work is done the two remaining boats 

 are alongside; ropes are thrown and they are ignominiously hauled 

 aboard. Then the mainsail is reset and the ship leans determinedly 

 before the wind. Slaves fall upon the toothless corpses with great 

 knives. Later the oily blubber and flesh will be rendered into clear 

 golden oil with which some of the older slaves may buy their 

 freedom. 



The year, by our modern calendar, is 2000 B.C.; the place is an 

 imaginary point a hundred miles south of the arid Makran coast of 

 what is now Baluchistan, midway between the mouth of the Indus 

 River in India and Muscat at the mouth of the Gulf of Oman. The 

 ship is an early, ocean-going, Phoenician bireme sailing back from 

 India to its home port on the upper western shores of the Persian 

 Gulf. Its crew is composed of sundry peoples nurtured in the coun- 

 tries around Mesopotamia, but its captain, helmsman, and artificers 

 are Phoenicians. The pilot is a Dravidian from the Malabar coast of 



