To the Arab sailors such a voyage as from Bombay to Aden, and on through the whole length of the Red Sea, must be an adventure like that of a voyage of Ulysses. As to the old Hero so to them all accidents are due to the personal intervention of God, or of good and evil spirits, and there is no dividing line between fact and legend. Distances, which for us have so dwindled, remain for them enormous. I have myself spent as long over a voyage of a hundred miles, anchoring each night in yet another desolate creek or “khor,” as over the whole voyage by steamship from Marseilles to Port Sudan. At that rate 1000 miles in a sambûk would be almost equivalent to a circumnavigation of the globe in a modern vessel. But what a difference! In the latter case, to the passenger deck chairs and novels, to the officers methodical routine and the keeping the running correct as per time-table, in the former ceaseless personal effort, at frequent intervals the direct pitting of oneself against the chances of the sea, the winds and waves, reefs and hidden coral pinnacles, the everyday hardship often aggravated by the rarity of the points at which water and food may be procured. Rarely are two days alike, and the date of the voyage’s close is, as they would express it, known to God. And adventures everywhere, the calling at strange little desert towns, the outer fringe of even Arabian and Turkish civilisations, islands and harbours unknown to the outer world, wild peoples, communities living apart, connected with the world only by some rudiments of their common faith, savages even to the Arab sailors. There is too, even yet, the chance of meeting pirates, or of a windfall or ruin resulting from some smuggling adventure. I would that they could be conscious of the poetry of it all. To them the glory of the battle is but the hardship of everyday life, strange scenes and places only the possible failure to procure provisions or the chances of being robbed by petty tyrants. At least it is a life that makes real men, men who must have learned some communion with the God of Nature and the Sea.
Plate XIX
Fig. 40. Hamitic fisherman
Fig. 41. A small pearling gatîra
Fig. 42. A large pearling sambûk with ten canoes
The Hamites are skilful sailors of their small boats and of the little dug-out canoes in which pearl fishing is done. These measure about 16 ft. in length with a beam of 18 in. to 2 ft. For a short distance weather seems to be of no consideration to them; one sees canoes tearing along under full sail, the steersman busy throwing out[34] the water with his spare hand, while the other occupant hangs to the mast which threatens to be carried away by the wind at every moment, and leans as far over the side as he can to prevent her capsizing. I know several cases of men travelling eighty to a hundred miles along the coast in such canoes, partly on the open sea and partly on the shallow water over the reefs. One instance is particularly remarkable, a bent old man, practically blind with age, appeared, having travelled from the next village to the north, eighty miles away. His only companions were two particularly irresponsible-looking little boys, whose ages I should estimate at 8 and 10. I enquired how he managed the boat seeing he was blind. “The boys tell me to luff or bear away and I do as they say” he replied, as if that were quite a simple, safe, and easy method of travel.
Pearl fishing is carried on by the Arabs all over the Red Sea by means of vessels of every size from the smallest, carrying four men and a boy, to the largest with a crew of twenty or more. Frequently the captain is a patriarch, the crew being largely his family and connections, with a few negro slaves or ex-slaves.