CHIRPING GIANTS it)! 



Off the Isle of Mara. Fifty, a hundred or a thousand dolphins? 

 Our little boat was chugging around in dolphins, not water. 

 They were dashing everywhere at high speed, playing at 

 ducks and drakes, disappearing under and then springing 

 out with a squeak. The sea was full of squirrels, clowns, 

 jesters, rubber tumblers. They leapt out of the water for a 

 couple of yards and flopped down again with all the force 

 of their tails. The sea was churning foam. It was the carnival 

 of the mad fish of the sea. As they passed by, they covered us 

 with confetti. The sea was a mass of rainbows. It was the 

 mad carnival of a torrid winter afternoon. 



Cundabilu. There was a manta down below and our com- 

 panions on the Formica left for the hunt. Bruno was the first 

 in and he shot it in the wing. The manta made a quick get- 

 away, taking Bruno by surprise and tearing the gun from his 

 hand. The manta weighed a good three hundredweight so 

 perhaps it thought it could break away scot-free. But Silverio 

 had placed himself across its path. He in turn fired and hit 

 it. The manta spun round, snapped the line and kept the 

 arrow-shaft in its back as a souvenir. 



If anyone should come across a manta of about three 

 hundredweight, with an arrow in its back and another in 

 its wing with an entire gun hanging from this, will they 

 please remember that the equipment is ours? 



Port of Massawa. Mantas here, mantas there. Priscilla had 

 shot one too. But the biggest one of all shot underwater, 

 bigger than Cecco's, Gigi's and mine, was the one shot by 



