favor except that there was deep water - two and a half miles offshore. In a blinding shamal or sand storm the first construction crew set its tents and went to work. To construct buildings to replace the tents the men first had to make the brick, with the aid of Arab workmen. But in a matter of months there was a sizeable community and it even acquired a name.

The conformation of the shoreline at that point was vaguely reminiscent of the forked stick or mishaab which Arab herders carry. And so the Arabs called the new town Ras el Mishaab, and so the maps now place it.

Not even barges could come ashore in the shallow water, but soon a sand jetty and then a crushed stone pier stretched out into the blue water. And barges brought ashore general cargo, tools, and the first pipe.

Then the Tapline planners, always seeking by initiative and imagination to meet the requirements of a private enterprise job - economy without loss of efficiency - borrowed a page from the book of the Douglas fir loggers in Oregon and Washington.

At certain places in those states the inventive loggers had rigged overhead cables on which to haul timber from otherwise inaccessible mountain slopes. Such skyhooks had never been used for other purposes, but Tapline's executives saw how they could be used on the Persian Gulf on the other side of the world.

And so a skyhook was erected three miles out into the Persian Gulf, connecting the shore with a manmade island built to serve as

in Arabia