148 DAHLAK 



for the day and dashed for home to put the trophy in for- 

 malin. Half-way there we met the Formica coming from 

 Cundabilu and sailing towards Massawa. At our signals she 

 stopped and we reached her. 



'What's up? Something wrong?' Captain Solari shouted. 



*No,' I replied. 'Tell them all to come on deck.' 



One by one, the 'Formichieri' came drowsily out. When 

 they were all lined up on the gunwales I stooped and lifted 

 up the cefalone without a word. There was a moment's 

 silence and then a general cheer, for the others, too, had lost 

 a month and a half over the bewitched beast and had for- 

 feited lines and arrows in the chase. 



Back at Mersa Nasi we discovered that the cefalone would 

 not go into any of the zinc chests we had. It was too long. To 

 get it in one we should have had to throw away at least 

 twenty pounds of several other rare fish that had cost us 

 hours and hours of work and risk. In addition, we found that 

 we had not enough formalin. It was useless thinking of 

 waiting for the return of the Formica in one or two days' 

 time, in that heat. We looked at our cefalone in mute con- 

 sternation. They were tragic or comic minutes, according to 

 the point of view. Then, without saying a word, Priscilla 

 grabbed it by the tail, as if it were a poisonous snake, and 

 dragged it up to the house. 



That evening, we ate it. Apart from the fact that it was 

 insipid and tasted like wood, we felt we were swallowing 

 sacred slices of an 'only specimen' stolen from a museum. 



The after-effects were serious. We lived for another month 

 under the spell of the cefalone. We suffered the cefalone 

 complex all over again. And when I set out from Asmara by 



