"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."