48 DAHLAK 



After a bit we saw something move between the rocks on 

 the beach of a small cove, like two large animals spying on 

 us. Gigi gave a tug at the tiller and we drew in to the coast. 

 Like lightning two nude natives sprang from their hiding 

 place and fled towards the agaves where they disappeared in 

 a trice. Although it was all over in a second, we were a bit 

 put out. Could we be such a terrifying sight ? 



The sun blazed down on us. The sea was brilliant, the 

 birds innumerable. High up on the last crest of the island's 

 point a dromedary's profile was drawn on the sky. Suddenly 

 the line stuck violently. 



*Gigi, stop, turn round, we've caught a rock.' 



Cecco tried hard to recover the line, but it was no good, 

 it was hooked in a block of coral. With the engine just 

 ticking over we arrived above the spot where the line lay 

 prisoner. Cecco pulled gently with all the art of his native 

 school of Porto Santo Stefano. 



'No, it's no good. There's something else here.' 



After much struggling we pulled into the boat a . . . 

 twenty-pound grouper. 



Only a fisherman can really appreciate the significance of 

 this. To say you had caught a grouper (a rock fish, sometimes 

 called rock-cod) by line would make you a laughing-stock 

 for life in Italy. In the Mediterranean the capture of a 

 grouper in this way would be like lassoing a hare or ferreting 

 for a partridge. To go even further I will say that out of 

 ten fish caught by line eight were groupers. This means that 

 the medium-sized grouper in the Red Sea is not exclusively 

 a rock-fish (in fact we often saw them navigating the coast 

 like tunny and bream) . They are, however, of a frightening 

 voracity and the more corpulent ones, those of a hundred- 

 weight upwards, are dreaded by the pearl-divers almost more 

 than the sharks. Our catch excited us. We had not expected 



