VISITORS FROM OVER THE SEA 201 



blood on the breast filled them with the deepest dismay. I 

 was not sure whether they had never seen a gun before or 

 whether they had just never seen one being used. 



They were less excited at the underwater exhibition of 

 Cecco and myself They watched us from the beach while 

 we dived from the reef in front. In not more than a quarter 

 of an hour we landed two pampano, a small grouper and a 

 moray . One of the pampano and the moray were still on the 

 harpoons when we presented them to our friends. Their eyes 

 were wide open. They beat their chests and examined the 

 moray with particular attention (evidently they did not 

 know it well, even though it is one of the most common fish 

 on the reefs). They studied the harpoons meticulously, but 

 were not as impressed as we had anticipated. 



They in their turn amazed us. They asked us if we liked 

 turtle eggs. We told them that we had never tried them and 

 that in any case we did not know where to find them. This 

 last revelation made them laugh sympathetically. Under the 

 sand that we had been tramping over for the past two weeks 

 there were without doubt some six to seven hundred eggs. 

 We did not believe it ? Just you watch ! Then one of them 

 armed with a stave began walking slowly along the coast, 

 slightly inland, spying out the secret signs on the sand. He 

 walked like this for twenty yards then suddenly stopped, dug 

 the stave slowly in, apparently found a hollow and withdrew 

 it. The end of the stave was covered with yolk. He knelt 

 down and dug with his hands for about a foot . . . and a 

 dozen golf balls came to light. But the more he took the more 

 seemed to be lying below. It was like a conjuring trick. 

 Finally he took out a hundred, although only just over half 

 of them were good. The ones from underneath at a depth of 

 three feet, were irregular, small and without yolks. The 

 Yemenites showed us how to find the deposits. You have to 



