THE ISLAND
The trip to the island--Fishing--Frenchmen, Greeks and
Chinamen--Sharks and bêche-de-mer--El Kori.
"Is the boat ready, Buralli?" I ask the Somal sub-inspector of
police.
"Ha! Sahib, it is ready."
"Who are coming with me?"
"A sergeant of the water police, two boatmen, your orderly, your
cook, your servant, and the Arab Syyed. I am sending the riding
camels to El Kori to-night and they will await you there in the
morning. You can cross from the island, where the Chinamen are, to
the mainland near El Kori in half an hour."
"Thank you, Buralli. Good-bye!"
"Salaam, Sahib!"
Half an hour later we are all aboard, bound for the island near the
French Somaliland border, where a party of Chinamen are collecting
bêche-de-mer and shark's fins. With her nose pointing North of West,
her dhow-rigged sail bellying to the fresh north-east breeze, the
little government boat is soon making her seven knots. Syyed, the
Arab, has brought lines and hooks and is busy adjusting the bait.
A small fish, a little bigger than a sardine, is attached to the
hook at a special angle, so that it will spin as it glides over the
water. Syyed, who works with the assurance of a past master of his
art, binds the bait with a piece of palm-grass as a finishing touch.
There is a twist of his arm and the line is trailing far out to the
stern, where it ends in a little silver streak on the surface of the
blue water. The boat is small, the breeze is fresh, and the cook is
feeling both afraid and unwell. He droops like a tired plant and
all expression fades from his face until, with a sharp jerk of his
line, Syyed begins to haul in. In a second he gives a cry of pain
and almost drops the line: it has cut his finger to the bone. I grab
in time to save the situation, and there is an exciting tussle. The
line swings out left and back again right like a huge pendulum. I
can feel it biting into the flesh of my hand, but haul away, and,
with a swing, land a huge barracouta in the bottom of the boat. Then
it is I learn that the cook, alarmed by Syyed's cry, and thinking
the boat was going over, had attempted to jump overboard. A heavy
blow on the head from the water police sergeant's fist had caused
him to change his mind. My remarks on his foolishness soothed him
back to his former state of lethargic misery. The bait is bent
again, the line spins out, but nothing happens for some time. Syyed
tells me of a fine box he hopes to sell me when we return to Zeila,
and I am very interested, when whir-r-r-r goes the line. Syyed is
not napping this time; he has the affair well in hand, but the line
is all out, and he is making no headway.
"It cannot hold on much longer, Syyed, or something is going to
break," I say, as I take a hand.
There is a sharp tussle and the line comes away. I watch Syyed
hauling it in.
As soon as we can see we both ejaculate, "hook gone!"
"That was a whopper, Syyed."
"Yes, sir, a ray; they run to over three hundred pounds sometimes on
this coast. The best way to get them is with a harpoon. One day I
will take you off Sa'ad-d-din and show you sport."
We are running near an island now and the water is shallow, so the
line is stowed away. Bump, bump, bump, we are aground. The men
spring overboard and push her over a hundred yards of shallows and
spring in as we reach the deep water. Syyed is making ready more
bait when crash goes the bamboo yard and the sail collapses. It is
lowered and freed as quickly as possible. Meanwhile I keep a stern
eye on the cook, who informs me nothing in the world will induce
him to return in this boat on the morrow. A splint of sticks,
evidently kept for such an emergency, makes a temporary repair of
the broken bamboo, and a smaller sail is bent instead of the large
one we have been using. No more fishing now; we anxiously watch the
bamboo as the breeze stiffens, and we fairly fly through the water.
At four-fifteen p.m. we are close to the Chinamen's island, just two
and a quarter hours since leaving Zeila. It is a low sandy island,
so narrow that I could almost throw a stone across it. From it,
when the tide is out, it is possible to walk along a narrow winding
riband of sand to the mainland.
As we come alongside the beach a dhow passes us a few yards away.
It is from Jibouti, and a white man in the stern stands up to doff
his cap. Syyed informs me he is a Greek fishing for a Frenchman who
is camped on the island. Sure enough there is his camp, and a tall
figure rises from a chair to give me a salute. Two Chinamen are
waiting on the beach and ask me to drink tea, but, much as I dislike
hurting their feelings, I cannot face the interior of their hovel,
a construction of grass mats and driftwood. My own table is set up
outside, and I drink their excellent tea and enjoy some very good
cake. After that I talk for some little time before walking to the
Frenchman's camp to pay my respects and satisfy my curiosity. They
have a nice clean little encampment, in which I enjoy the drink
so hospitably offered. The Frenchman informs me that he employs
natives to net fish, and pays them by the pound for what they bring
to him. He provides the nets, of which he shows me a wonderful
collection, ranging from drag nets imported from Marseilles to the
African circular throwing net. A sporting little affair this latter.
They cut up the fish--nearly all sharks--into strips, which they
cover with salt for twenty-four hours, then wash in the sea and
hang in the sun to dry. The shark skins, fins, and tails are saved.
The venture is as yet unproved, and the Frenchman informed me he
hoped to find a market for the bulk of his dried shark's flesh at
Zanzibar. I am doubtful if he will. Their catch to-day, they tell
me, consisted of one hundred and thirty sharks. My face must have
betrayed my inward doubt of this statement for I was conducted to a
heap of tails and fins fresh enough to convince me of its truth.
It is getting dark and we sit down and chat.
"It is peaceful, Monsieur," said the tall Frenchman. "It is
difficult to believe there is so much unrest in the world when one
sits here at eventide."
I look round. Two natives are wading through the shallow water
towards our island, and as they come they stop occasionally to
throw the circular nets they carry. They are making a good haul.
Syyed is talking to the Chinamen, a hundred yards away; my servant
and orderly are erecting my camp bed. A few fishermen are kneeling
round camp fires cooking their evening meal. I can see all over the
tiny island. Along the coast a red light, and then a white, becomes
visible as the darkness closes quickly round us.
That is Jibouti. Perhaps there is a liner lying in the harbour,
homeward bound, full of passengers going to Europe. There will
be ladies and little children, and now it is nearly dinner-time.
How far away and unreal it all seems. There is scarcely a sound.
My companion is very silent. I am aroused from my reverie by the
splash, splash, splosh, splosh in the water of small fish trying to
escape from some monster who seeks his evening meal.
"You have not answered my question, Monsieur," says the tall
Frenchman. "It is peaceful here?"
"Pardon," I reply, "I did not realise it was a question, but even
here there is war."
"How? Where?"
"In the waters!"
"True, and never ending war!"
"Were you fighting in France, Monsieur?"
"Yes!"
"Well, doubtless you find it peaceful here."
Again a very long silence, then, "Monsieur, my companion has just
returned from Jibouti. Have you heard any news?"
"No! my European news is seventeen days old. What is it?"
Later I sit down to dinner, and, as I must be up betimes, I call the
Chinamen to ask some questions concerning their work.
"You are collecting bêche-de-mer and shark fins?"
"We were, but our master has gone to China, and there are only two
of us left; until he returns we have ceased work."
"So I cannot see you at work in the morning."
"No! we are not working now."
I am bitterly disappointed as I have come purposely to see them
catching and preparing the bêche-de-mer for market, but I turn in
determined to find out all I possibly can, under the circumstances,
on the morrow.
Next morning I woke up to find Syyed and an Arab standing near my
bed with lines out. With prawns for bait they were having splendid
sport. The waters were swarming with fish.
Dressing hurriedly I saw the first of the Frenchman's boats coming
in with a load of fish, and I ran along to meet it. Over seventy
sharks was the haul, but the biggest one was not more than three
feet long. There were very few other fish, and they were mostly
gurram. There was some talk between my men and the fishermen.
"This," said the water police sergeant, picking up a shark eighteen
inches long, "is a Sheiba (old man), he will not grow another inch!"
"Certainly not, he is dead," I remark.
"I mean he is full grown," replied the sergeant.
The fishermen said that was a fact.
"This," said someone else, picking up a shark with a head like a
plane, on the sides of which projected his eyes, "is a youngster,
and of all the sharks he is the worst kind."
In the centre of his flat head (and underneath) was his mouth, and
it was easy to understand that he must, as the men explained, turn
on his back to seize his prey.
For a solid half-hour I listened to yarns that would have given
any writer of sporting fiction valuable material to work on, yet I
believe they were in the main true. There was one of a pearl diver,
attacked by one of these flat-headed monsters, which seized him
by the face. How he struck out wildly with a pearl oyster he was
holding in his hand, and by sheer good luck hit the fish on the eye,
causing it to let go. Like a flash he struck out for the surface and
was pulled out, just in time, by his mates in the boat. Not one
gruesome detail was omitted, from the first attack to the ending,
when the doctor sewed up the wounds. I heard of fights with sword
fish caught up in nets. How the men's faces showed their hatred of
these brutes that throw their cruel swords about in their struggles
to get free, and woe betide the obstacle of flesh and blood that
stops a blow. When they find a sword fish in the net the fishermen
drop a noose over his sword and, hauling him close against the boat,
beat him with poles until there is no fight left in him, when they
haul him aboard and cut off his head.
But breakfast is ready and the sun comes up like a great ball of
molten metal to remind me that the day will be too hot to allow of
any waste of the precious morning hours.
Breakfast over a Chinaman produces a specimen of the sea slug
(bêche-de-mer) in which I am so interested. It might quite easily be
a banana turning black from over ripeness, judged from appearances
at least. The skin appears to be rough, but is not exceptionally so
to the touch. The Chinaman conducts me to a furnace of plastered
mud in which is set a flat-bottomed pan which might once have been
a low bath of the kind used in bedrooms. In this pan, he explains,
the fresh slugs are roasted before being buried in the sand for
twenty-four hours. They are then washed in the sea, roasted
again, and finally hung out in the sun to dry. When quite dry
they are shipped by dhow to Aden; thence to China by steamship.
Fortunately, he had a few specimens of the dried slugs, and again
they might quite easily have been mistaken for dried bananas.
[Illustration: SYYED KHUDAR THROWING THE CIRCULAR NET.]
The Chinaman could speak no English, but his Arabic, though
ungrammatical, was fluent enough to enable me to extract much
interesting information. The slugs like shallow water with a sandy
bottom. On hot, sunny days when the sea is calm they lie on top of
the sand, and, though they have no fins, can swim quite well. If
the weather is cloudy and the sea rough they burrow into the sand
and lie low. They are most easily caught on clear calm days with a
circular throwing net, smaller than the ordinary throwing net but
of precisely similar construction. This net is of the same shape as
a spider's web, is weighted all round the outside with small pieces
of lead. When the net, which is of fine cotton string, is held in
the centre by the hand lifted as high as the head of a medium-sized
man the weights are well on the ground. The net is doubled over and
over on the back of the right hand until the pieces of lead are just
clear of the fingers. A few of the lead weights are caught lightly
in the fingers of the left hand and with a circular sweep of the
right arm the net is thrown. The left hand at the same moment being
drawn gently back as its fingers release their hold. This ensures
the full spread of the net, which opens out like the loop of a
well-thrown lasso, the lead weights lying in a circle on the sandy
bottom of the shallow water in which alone it is used. The right
hand retains hold of a cord in the centre of the net which gradually
takes the form of a spherical cone (as the hand is raised), the
base of which is held to the bottom by the weights. The net is then
gradually raised and these weights drag along the bottom until,
at last, they meet, and in the folds of the net above them is the
quarry that has been unwary enough to allow the near approach of the
fisherman.
Before leaving the island I was curious to hear to what use the
dried sharks' tails and fins are put. A Chinaman picked at a dried
fin with his knife, exposing a number of white fibres within.
These, he said, were what were eaten, and I was shown a biscuit
tin full of the prepared article that was exactly like transparent
shredded gelatine. It is used for thickening soups and giving a
highly appreciated flavour to meat dishes. Nothing is wasted, I am
informed, even the shark's liver being boiled down for oil, and
good skins saved for fancy work. Yes! I heartily agree with that
statement. In neither the French nor Chinese camp is there any sign
of waste.
Saying good-bye I sailed away from one of the most sporting little
communities it has ever been my lot to visit. Syyed is of the same
opinion.
A half-hour's sail and a two mile walk, in an unbearably fierce
sun, brought us to El Kori, a small police post on the Anglo-French
border. What a barren spot! One small police hut and the gurgi[6]
of an old man employed to pack water on his donkey for the police
here, and the men on the island. There is a Somal burial ground, and
the graves are well cared for. Some are ringed round with stones, on
which are laid sea shells and the mounds made of red, blue, black,
and white coloured stones. The graveyard is the cheeriest spot at El
Kori.
[6] Somal wigwam, a shelter of mats.
By three o'clock I had finished my business, the camels were
saddled, and we were soon wending our way home along a good hard
track. Three miles outside Zeila we stopped at Tokusha, where
are the wells that supply the town with water. Here are several
native gardens, the best one being owned by an ex-Pathan soldier,
who, after taking his discharge in India, returned to Zeila where
lived his Somal wife, whom he had married whilst serving in her
country. His garden of lime and orange trees, flowering shrubs and
vegetables, irrigated from the wells, is a beautiful little spot,
which the old man loves with heart and soul. 'Tis a pity there are
not more of his kind in Somaliland.
Home from the wells to find the boat has returned hours ago. Syyed
is waiting with a beautiful old Arab box, the like of which I have
been hunting after for years, and, when it changes owners at a
reasonable price, I feel that I have spent a perfect day.
The waters of the Somaliland coast literally team with fish. At one
spot in particular it would be possible to load a ship with crabs. I
once saw His Majesty's Commissioner send two servants with a bucket
each to bring crabs from this place. He might have been ordering
them to bring sand from the seashore, so certain he seemed they
would find crabs. Within three-quarters of an hour the men were back
with both buckets brim full. For such a splendid supply surely there
must be a market somewhere in the world. But I think I have written
enough about fish for one day.