l62 DAHLAK 



Raimondo. It measured eight feet across and weighed over 

 two hundred pounds. (Its true weight was probably greater 

 because it was weighed a day after capture.) It was shot and 

 killed in the filthy, yellow water of the harbour with people 

 cheering the lonely toreador from the quayside: 'Here — 

 there — no, behind you — it's coming. . . .' Raimondo had 

 already got one arrow into the beast and he followed it to 

 the bottom plugging it with another. After a bitter fight the 

 manta surrendered. While Raimondo hauled it on deck the 

 Yemenites and the Dankals who had been watching from 

 the sambuks and the wharves applauded, laughed and 

 slapped their turbans. 



On the wharf there was the customary colonial wiseacre 

 who knew all there was to know about sharks. 'There are 

 dozens in the port of Massawa, of the most ferocious kind, 

 the ones that follow the ships. During the war of '36,' he 

 said, 'because of a slip-up, a lighter with twenty-five soldiers 

 aboard tipped over.' Dramatic pause. 'Not one of them got 

 away.' Our friend had been watching the toreo in silence. 

 He shook his head gravely and went off. 



Ras Ilet. Among the many abominable dangers of tropical 

 waters which we had read about was the infamous giant 

 clam or tridacna. This is the biggest shell in existence (a 

 bivalve mollusc). Examples found in the Indian Ocean 

 measure up to five feet across and weigh up to two and a half 

 hundredweight. Sometimes these shells are used as holy 

 water basins (those in St Sulpice, Paris, for instance, given 

 by the Venetian Republic to Francis I). These horrible 

 creations are fixed to the sea floor and camouflaged perfectly 

 by a varied vegetation growing on their ancient jaws, which 



