236 THE SALT OF MY LIFE 



thought of danger. We had only to drop the 

 hook, baited with a fragment of limpet or whelk 

 (there were no mussels on those rocks), in the 

 midst of a seemingly empty pool, when from under 

 every rock or stone, from behind every curtain 

 of waving weed, little fishes darted to it like iron 

 filings to a magnet. 



The sea ran so high that morning, that even 

 old " Beicana " (the Portuguese love nicknames, 

 and this one had reference to our friend's gener- 

 ous lips), an experienced veteran, declared the 

 weather unsuited for tunny fishing. " Bei9ana," 

 as will be seen from my photograph, in which he 

 is holding a pair of newly caught becuda, or sea- 

 pike, is of that strikingly Moorish type so notice- 

 able in the fishermen of those islands. The travel- 

 ler who is familiar with the Barbary States will 

 find among the loafers in the Funchal fishmarket 

 many familiar ruffians, as truly Moorish as any 

 that years gone by sailed out of fair Salee to cut 

 a throat and scuttle a merchantman. Morocco 

 may have been swept from the seas ; she may 

 even have come low among the land nations ; 

 but undeniable Nature has set a hall-mark on 

 many of those seamen in the Spanish and Portu- 

 guese archipelagoes of the eastern Atlantic, link- 

 ing them with the merry rovers who raided, 

 burnt and loved in the golden days of their sea- 

 manship. Nature has set the stamp, and time 



