28 DAHLAK 



*Don't know.' 



We went down again like bullets. But there was nothing 

 to be seen, not a living thing. Perhaps he had really gone for 

 good. What if he were behind me? I spun round . . . my 

 God! . . . but no, he wasn't there either. 



The beat continued nearer land. Gigi encountered a 

 barracuda, followed it, tried to shoot it, but with a sudden 

 jerk it disappeared. Barracudas too, then, those terrible 

 barracudas, don't 'always and inevitably' attack man; they 

 sometimes prefer to disengage. So, slightly reassured, we 

 began work collecting. Within an hour the boat was over- 

 loaded with corals (some shaped like fans, others like ferns, 

 others like elkhorns), shells and echinoderms found every- 

 where by lifting coral blocks and rummaging in the in- 

 numerable holes, clefts and crevices. In the evening, well 

 pleased with our first Red Sea day, we returned to the 

 mainland. 



Work at Sheikh Said went ahead. We were still only experi- 

 menting with our methods and theories of research, but it 

 was time well spent, for it meant that by the time we arrived 

 at Dahlak we were sufficiently expert tropical frogmen to 

 cope with the bigger and more strenuous experiences that 

 met us there. 



On 31st January we put the nets down for the first time, 

 Cecco working them while I rowed. Dropping them vertically 

 between the corals into the narrowing corridors of sand was 

 a tricky business and time after time Gigi had to dive in to 

 disentangle them from the petrified twigs of the reef This 

 made us realize something of the difficulties that non- 

 underwater naturalists, working with nets in the coral 



