Besides fish of ordinary size the larger species, such as rays and sharks, are generally captured by spearing. Nowadays the spear is a piece of round bar iron, half an inch in diameter, a rough unbarbed point at one end and with an eyehole, to which a line is attached, at the other. It is twelve feet long, and quite small fish may be impaled upon it in twenty-four feet of water. Its use is often combined with pearl fishing. Should the captain see a fish the spear is handed to him as he leans over the side of the canoe, and he watches the fish through the water glass in one hand, the spear being held in the other, with perhaps half its length in the water, more or less according to the depth. The canoe being rightly placed, a sudden jerk sends the spear shooting downwards, and more often than not the fish is impaled at the first attempt; so little splash is there, that it is often possible to throw it several times without driving the fish away altogether.
There are in most tropic seas certain gigantic rays or skates, whose horizontally flattened bodies are like a huge square, ten to twenty feet across. One corner is the head, eyes above, mouth underneath, the two side corners are fins, while to the fourth is attached the tail. This is a strange thing for a fish, being like a whip-lash, say 6 feet long, provided at its base with one or more erectile spikes four to six inches long, sharp and barbed all along each edge, and further very poisonous. The natives of both Zanzibar and the Red Sea assure me that even in the case of the smaller species, to tread on these spikes is death. Hence the common name of the family, Sting Rays. It is interesting to note that these dangerous implements are used purely in self-defence. All species are conspicuously coloured, one being yellow brown with large bright blue spots, another black with round white spots. The largest are black, and so conspicuous on the sandy bottoms they frequent that none but the most unteachable animal, human or otherwise, can incur the dreadful penalty of careless interference with them. Otherwise the animals are perfectly harmless, living on shellfish which their small but powerful jaws can crush up[37]. Yet so impressive is the size of some species, so ghostly the appearance of a vast black living shadow rising from the blue depths under the boat, and so queer the formation of the head in some, that they are universally known as Devil fish. And for all their harmless diet and their warning colour which considerately advises that one interferes with them at one’s own risk, I join in hearty approval of their opprobrious name.
Plate XXI
Fig. 47. Pearl-divers
As is so sadly true of most marine organisms, we know far too little of their habits. What is the reason for the strange leaps they make into the air, falling back on to the water with a thudding splash that can be heard a mile away? It is usually done by night, a circumstance that adds to the strangeness of this sudden obtrusion upon our minds of the existence of a scarcely known world beneath the water, which we, in our preoccupation with our own half of the world, had almost forgotten.
So much for the prey, now to its hunting. They occasionally appear on the surface, two or three pairs swimming together, the black point of the side fin appearing above water, now on this side, now on that. On one occasion I was out in a small sailing boat with three or four canoes of pearl-divers, and as the fish when chased went down wind, we were able to follow, spread out in a long line so that whichever vessel saw the prey could signal to the others. We thus kept the chase going for an hour or more, striking with fish spears repeatedly, but as these are not barbed, and as in all that hundred or more square feet of body the brain and heart occupy but a few square inches, the spears may go through and through, and be withdrawn again when all the line has been run out, with no appreciable damage to the animal. So on this occasion we made no capture, but the hour’s chase over this silver sea with glimpses of mystery beneath was a pleasure to remember.
Another chase, also without capture, was stranger still. I found a pearling canoe moving over the dead calm sea with no visible means of propulsion. On reaching them I found they had made fast to a fish and dared not play the line attached to the spear for fear of its breaking away. Looking down into the blue with a water glass one saw the dim shadow of one of those monsters, Pristis by name, half shark, half ray, in which the snout is prolonged into a beak, into the sides of which are set formidable teeth, an object frequently exposed for sale in curio shops as the sawfish’s jaw. This was one of the largest species of the genus and must have been ten to twelve feet long without the toothed snout.
We seemed to be in a dilemma; hauling upon the line would almost certainly withdraw the spear before the fish would be near enough for further attack, and the canoe had already been drifting about for two hours or so. However I understood that there was some hope of capture if the beast could be induced to approach shallow water, though I was left to wait and see the bold plan which was in the natives’ minds. By dint of careful manœuvring we at last approached a reef, when one of the sailors unrove the boat’s rigging and made a running noose with which he actually dived to the bottom, braving the six feet of two-edged saw, to slip the noose over the monster’s tail! I, watching in safety from above, saw one of the finest diving feats imaginable, the man with the noose swimming to and fro, following the slow beats of the gigantic tail, watching his opportunity. Alas, as might have been expected, the monster was startled, a sudden wriggle and he disappeared, carrying the spear with him.