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.
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.