89 



sibilities he carried, and he was far from young. To all suggestions 

 about Malan I said firmly, 'Not until we have exhausted all other 

 possibilities.' My wife was the most persistent on that theme, and 

 when I repeated, 'Only as a last resort', she prophesied that I 

 would go to him in the end, which I did. Trust a woman to have 

 the last word. 



Frank Evans said there was a Sunderland flying-boat at 

 Durban which would be just the thing if I could get it. He knew 

 the local chief and would go off and have a word with him, and my 

 wife went with him to send Hunt a cable which I had drafted, as 

 follows : 



IF POSSIBLE GET TO NEAREST REFRIGERATION 

 IN ANY CASE INJECT AS MUCH FORMALIN POSSIBLE 

 CABLE CONFIRMATION THAT SPECIMEN SAFE. 

 SMITH.' 



There is little pleasant in the recollections of those particular 

 hours of the 24th December 1952. Everything with Coelacanths 

 so far had been troublesome, and here was quite the worst 

 situation I had ever encountered. There were so many difficulties 

 that there seemed no way out. This precious fish was so far away, 

 in one of the worst places in the world for safe preservation with 

 probably only a mere speck of formalin. I had probably been to 

 more remote areas of the coastal regions along East Africa than 

 any other man, and if only this fish had turned up in some part I 

 knew, how much easier it would have been, even in foreign 

 territory like Portuguese East Africa. But here it was in quite 

 unknown foreign territory, so little known that it might almost 

 be another planet, and I had no knowledge of conditions and no 

 personal contacts in that part. The tense uncertainties of the 

 situation in some aspects resembled those of the first Coelacanth, 

 and yet how different it was this time. The doubts about its being a 

 Coelacanth the first time were due to a battle between facts and 

 my common sense, the fish itself was accessible enough. Now the 

 doubt about identity came from the difficulty of getting to the 

 fish, and although he was exceptional, the whole thing rested 

 only on the word of a layman I hardly knew and on that opinion 

 I must stake a great deal. I was not even at home, with the re- 

 sources of my Department and organisation, but on a vessel in 



