An Artist in Egypt

by Walter Tyndale

He amused himself by fishing occasionally, and told us of the extraordinary number of crayfish which were to be got by the simple process of getting on to the coral reefs at night and holding a candle over the pools. The stupid creatures then come to have a look at the light, and you have only then to pick them out of the water and put them in the basket. Should we care to have a try, he would be delighted to take us to the best place that very night. The moon was the difficulty, for a dark night was necessary. It was settled that he should bring some men and lanterns at midnight, when he reckoned that the moon would have disappeared.

We turned in after our dinner, so as to get what sleep we could before starting on our fishing expedition. When the doctor summoned us that night, the moon was so high in the sky that we were loath to turn out. Bed was so comfortable; while pottering about on a sunken reef, with the moon to spoil our sport, seemed hardly good enough. The doctor hoped that the moon would be down before we reached the coral reefs, and for the first time we realised that the reefs were three miles away. It seemed, however, ungracious not to go, so off we started.

The doctor was rather depressed when he heard moonlight effects being discussed, though we were thinking more of its pictorial aspects than of its influence on crayfish. Early recollections of coral islands, in a book which made my tenth birthday memorable, excited my curiosity to see at last what a coral reef was like. Grottos as pink as a necklace, of a ten-year-old little girl I associated with my book, rose in my imagination, and to see these in a brilliant moonlight might more than compensate me for a poor catch of crayfish.

We found several fishermen on the reefs, and we were puzzled to guess what they were up to. They appeared to be walking on the water, for when we first saw them they were some distance out at sea, and the water looked no shallower than that which we had hitherto skirted. Some were running about and beating the surface with long sticks, and the proceedings had an uncanny look until we got near enough to follow what they were about. A long net, which a couple of men hung on to at the water’s edge, reached some distance into the sea, making a slight curve to its furthest extremity, which was held by some men far out on the partially submerged reef; the water was being beaten with the object of driving the fish into the net. The men furthest out presently advanced towards the shore, dragging the net through the deep water while they walked along the edge of the reef. We were able to reach them by seldom being more than ankle deep, taking care, however, to avoid the deep holes in the coral. As the net curved more and more on the advance to the shore of its further end, our interest to see what it would bring in became as great as that of the fishermen.

When finally the whole net was drawn on to the strand, we beheld as strange an assortment of creatures as can be seen in the Naples Aquarium. Some had transparent bodies with long filmy tentacles, others were difficult to class, whether as fish or as marine plants, for they were so rapidly picked up and thrown into baskets that we had little time to examine them. The queer things left on the shore might safely be classed as unedible. The men telling us that the moon would not be down till three o’clock, I bothered no more about crayfish, but found plenty of entertainment in peering into the holes in the reef. The water was so transparent that, where the moonlight reached the bottom, the shadow of my head was clearly defined. I might have been looking into a depth of one or two feet instead of into several fathoms of water. Some of the beautifully arranged tanks in the Aquarium at Naples might have been modelled on what I saw here. The holes were sometimes globular in shape, though passages might have existed where the moonbeams did not fall. Two lights, an inch or two apart, moved about in the shadow of one of these holes, and disappeared whenever they reached the moonlit part. I crept down on my knees to see if I could distinguish any form around these weird lights, and as I could not do so, I concluded that they were the eyes of a transparent fish such as those we had seen taken out of the fishermen’s nets. The lights disappearing, I crept round to a hole a few yards off, and there I could distinguish the entrance to a passage leading towards the hole I had left. The two lights reappeared, were lost again as they passed through the moonlit space, and seen once more until they were lost in some cavern in the darkness.

Sea-anemones stuck to the sides and hung from the roofs of these fairylike chambers, the claws of a hermit crab just distinguishable in a hollow at the base of what looked more like some hot-house plant than of a conscious creature. On touching the spreading tentacles with my stick, they rapidly contracted to a conical knob.

The reefs in themselves were a disappointment, for I should hardly have known them as coral had I not been told so; but what we saw of the marvellous forms of life contained in their caverns well repaid us for our night’s excursion. Some attempts were made to beguile the crayfish with lighted candles; three were brought back to our camp, but I never quite got rid of a suspicion that the Syrian doctor had caught these out of the fishermen’s net by means of a piastre. He need not have looked so sad about his miscalculations, for each one of us had spent a most interesting hour or more on the reefs. It became too cold for us to remain any longer in our wet clothes, and we were glad to tramp briskly back to our camp.

Weigall and Erskine Nicol rode on the following morning to the ruins of Old Kosseir, some five miles north of the Arab town, while Whymper and I returned to the mosque to finish our drawings. We paid the doctor a visit in his dispensary, and were shown how up-to-date was its equipment. ‘But what is the use of all this,’ he said, ‘if no one is ever ill?’—one more proof of the ingratitude of the native.

We bid farewell to the kindly governor, and hoped for his sake that he might soon be transferred to some more congenial place, trusting that one who had the welfare of the people at heart as much as he had might be found to fill his post. May his charming little daughter be where suitable companions abound, and also frocks long enough to reach to her ankles. The doctor may now be surrounded with patients more than enough, for the two years’ exile he then anticipated are now over. Let us hope that the Austrian engineer has been replaced by one whose orders may allow him to distribute the distilled water without having to exact the farthing per bucket from the impoverished people of Kosseir.

We bought some pretty shells—about the only things the town had to sell. The good Mudir spoke the truth when he said, ‘In Kosseir dere is nozing, nozing, nozing!’