SHEIKH SAID, GREEN ISLAND 35 



fisherman for a week, and he had doubtless decided to take 



no chances and keep his catch to himself. 



At Massawa the story of the big pike (the Eritreans reject 



the pirate name of barracuda) went around for days and 



weeks afterwards; we were even told that someone found a 



fillet of it on his plate in a restaurant. But for us, and above 



all Gigi, nothing remained but a tempestuous memory and 



one speargun the less. 



* 



We got to know almost all there was to know about Sheikh 

 Said, but the thing that remained most fixed in our memories 

 was its mangrove forest. 



Sheik Said is made of sand and madreporic rocks. To the 

 south a vast beach gets covered, and then abandoned to the 

 sun, by the tide ; the coast is bare of trees, a short slope from 

 the beach leading only to thorny scrub and a few tough 

 grasses. On the north, east and west, however. Sheikh Said 

 rises from the sea clad in green mangroves that look like 

 giant white-trunked bushes. Here too the sea comes up 

 from a long way off, advancing over the vast stretch of sand 

 and few dwarfed madrepores at high tide. This expanse of 

 water becomes almost a lake, still and blue between the 

 island and the barrier which lies four to five hundred yards 

 further out to sea, marked by the breaking surf 



At low tide the mangroves rise from the yellowish mud 

 which is overrun with crabs and hermit-crabs and patterned 

 with the soft triangular imprint of herons' claws. The tide 

 rises rapidly, drinking up a yard of sand every ten seconds. 

 Advancing with its rolling coronet of foam, the warm shallow 

 water mercilessly swallows the crabs and their holes, wipes 

 out the heron marks, and lifts flocks of oyster-catchers into 

 flight. There is something inevitable in the rising of the tide 



