Fig. 46. Landing on Dongonab beach
The captain only dives for an hour or two in the morning, after which he saves his eyes for finding the shells which his paddler secures. These men, whether Arabs of the sambûks or Hamites who go out from their villages in canoes, dive without any apparatus at all. A few negroes descend by a weight and cord in likely places where the water is too deep to see the bottom, on the chance of coming across shells. The Hamites ridicule them for using this method, but so far as I can see their results are just as profitable. Two or three large shells seem to be considered an adequate reward for a day’s great labour.
The provisions for a sambûks cruise of six months are of the simplest, sacks of dûra corn and a barrel or two of the brackish warm water of the desert wells. Stones for grinding the corn, a big cooking-pot and a basin or two are the whole equipment. The fire is kindled on a box of sand. A sheep kept alive until a feast day, is sometimes seen on board, but coffee is the one luxury. It is a terribly hard life. Think of coming in from a day’s work of diving and paddling a canoe under that blazing sun to a meal of tasteless dûra porridge, sometimes a little fish, burnt rather than cooked[36], and warm brackish and dirty water, eaten probably without shelter from the sun, or at best under a scrap of flimsy cotton, here set against a sun which blazes and scorches rather than shines. Well have they earned their night’s rest, yet what a bed is theirs, a surface of hard wood without even the flatness and smoothness of the plank bed of a prison cell.
Though sharks occur and are sometimes common in the Red Sea, a native does not look round for them before going overboard, though if one should be seen, diving is over for the day. To one locality, named Shark Island, divers will not go for fear of these beasts, but diving is continually going on in a bay where several sharks are captured each year. I have only heard of one fatality, in which case a man’s feet were taken off and he bled to death after regaining his canoe.
Fishing is done by running a net round a shoal of fish, by throwing-net, hook and line, trolling with a scrap of white rag or sheepskin with white wool left on, and by spearing. The latter method alone is peculiar to this coast so far as I know, so the former need but scant mention. The throwing-net is circular, about twelve feet in diameter, made of fine string with small mesh. The circumference is weighted with small pieces of lead. In use the fisherman grasps the centre of the net and folds the rest over his arm carefully, after wringing out excess of water. He then walks cautiously along by sandy shallows, looking for the ripplings, invisible to foreign eyes, which indicate the movements of fish. On seeing these, bending double, he creeps up as cautiously as possible until near enough to throw. This is done very suddenly and with a circular motion, so that the net spreads out parachute fashion in the air and descends vertically upon the fleeing fish. The fisherman kills any that are enclosed by biting their heads through the meshes of the net before removal. The fish thus captured is generally a species of mullet about the size of a herring, and excellent on the table. Its native name is El Arabi, i.e. the Arab. The method is of course only possible in shallow water with a sandy bottom, but such ground occurs at the head of all the harbours, so the throwing-net is much used. I have seen two men returning from fishing with festoons of “Arabs” covering their whole bodies, but such good luck as this is not common.
Hook and line fishing is the same here as anywhere else. The favourite baits are “sardines” and pieces of the flesh of the giant clam (Tridacna) or of the big whelks (Fusus, Murex, and Strombus), all of which are as easily obtained as lug-worms or mussels at home. Clams’ flesh is the commonest, and anyone interested in curio-collecting should ask a fisherman to keep for him the pearls found in them. As the clam shell is an opaque white, so are the pearls, which, though consequently valueless, are as much true pearls as those formed by the lustrous pearl oyster.
“Sardines” are known even to the natives by this name, but are a small species of anchovy of the sardine size. At certain times they collect, presumably for breeding purposes, into shoals in the shallow water so dense as to form black patches 10 or 20 yards across, from which it is easy to collect a bucket-full in a few minutes by means of a sheet. They are kept alive by the fisherman allowing his canoe to be a third full of water in which they swim until thrown overboard to attract fish, or impaled on the hook as bait.
The number of species of fish thus caught is large and the greater number are very good. The best are several species of Caranx known as “bayâda,” some of which attain to a great size, sometimes four or five feet long, but the smaller are better for eating. The most peculiar is perhaps the “abu sêf” or “father of a sword,” a most appropriate name. It is ribbon-shaped, three feet long or so, back and belly quite straight and flattened from side to side, in fact just the shape of a sword blade. Further, its sides are of the most dazzling whiteness, brighter than any silver, and its ferocious teeth and vigorous movements bring the terror of a sword to all the smaller fish.
The nets and spears bring in the greatest variety of all, the brilliant blue, pink, and green species of the parrot-beaked Pseudoscarus, which actually eat coral; the queer bladder-fish, in which also the teeth are fused up like beaks, which can blow themselves up like footballs, in one species (Tetraodon hystrix) thus erecting the hundreds of fearful spines into which its scales are modified; the box or coffer fish, the skins of which are quite stiff and bony and cover square bodies, which in some species have horn-like spikes pointing forward over the eyes; file fish (Ballistes) which feed by crunching up shellfish (including pearl oysters) with their powerful jaws; in fact enough variety of strange habits and shapes and colours, striking by their brilliance or interesting by their resemblances to the inanimate environment of their possessors, to fill another book (were half known) or stock a museum.