NOT ALL EXPERIENCES ARE USEFUL 209 



The what?' 



*The crabs.' 



*All right, well shut up now. We'll give you the stuff and 

 then go by with the engines right down.' 



*Ah ha! Les voilà! Done nos savants!' Dammit, the benign 

 and smiling face of His Excellency the Viceroy came up 

 alongside that of Bruno. Bruno's whiskers tightened per- 

 ceptibly. 



*0A, Excellence^ Us sont si fatigues, si fatigues que . . .' 



^Ah ha! Magnifique! Je veux vous donner la main. Monte Zy 

 monte 4.!^ 



We went up. We felt rather bare in our slips. We made a 

 dozen or more painful bows. The Minister of Agriculture 

 asked in good Italian for information about the vegetation 

 of the island. The Minister of Education assured us that for 

 that promised show-case of biological material we had 

 already got some good examples. His Excellency, the Viceroy, 

 followed us with beaming eyes and manifest satisfaction: 

 ah. ha! ces Italiens! . . . 



As well as playing water basket-ball with a balloon fish in 

 the Red Sea, I also had a game of football with some odd 

 fish about the length of a finger. 



They swarmed along the beach about a yard away from 

 the water's edge. I noticed them one day, and decided to 

 catch at least one, since we had no specimens of them. I tried 

 with the shrimp net, but it was too far gone to be of any use. 

 I tried with a stretch of triple net but they slipped through 

 the lot in a wink. So I got more violent. I took up my position 

 and waited for the arrival of the shoal. When it came I 

 jumped on them and lashed out with my feet, kicking in the 

 direction of the beach. Most of them slipped off to safety. 



