CHAPTER 



6 



MERSA NASI 



ON 13th February the Formica anchored in the Channel of 

 Nocra before Mersa Nasi and unloaded most of her 

 guests: Casciani with his jeep, Giorgio Ravelli and Folco 

 Quilici with their cameras and photographic equipment, the 

 Bucher couple with their imderwater guns, Priscilla with her 

 brushes, paints and paper (Priscilla paints tropical men and 

 fish with great talent), Cecco, Gigi and I with our spear 

 guns, shot guns and the entire scientific arsenal — zinc chests, 

 wooden boxes, glassware, jars, flasks of formalin, wadding, 

 straw, various instruments, fishing tackle, cameras, cine 

 cameras, and tools of every kind. We had two boats with 

 outboard motors: one was twelve feet long, getting on in 

 years and suitable for donkey work; the other was large, fast 

 and 'distinguished'. 



With us was the landlord of the house we were to live in, a 

 house he had built alone with the help of a negro, the only 

 house on the boney coast of Dahlak Kebir. He was an Italian 

 with a pleasant pirate face and a Turin accent and his name 

 was Silvio Nasi. From Massawa to Asmara, and I would say 

 even further, it wa' enough to mention 'Nasi' to win the 

 immediate friendship of the natives or arouse the suspicion 

 of a European . . . Nasi had been a corsair in three or four 

 continents, a millionaire, his own bricklayer, a millionaire 



