Golden Bats and Pink Pigeons

CHAPTER FIVE THE ENCHANTED WORLD

Outside the French windows that led from the sitting-room of the hotel suite lay a spacious and cool verandah. Step off this, and one walked twenty yards or so across coarse grass planted with tall casuarina trees that sighed like lovers in the wind, until one came to the wide, frost-white beach with its broken necklace of corals and coloured shells, lying wavering across the shoreline. In the distance lay the reef, white and thunderous with surf, and beyond it the royal blue of the Indian Ocean. Between the white beach, decorated with its biscuit-brittle graveyard of coral

fragments, and the wide reef with its ever-changing flower bed of foam, lay the lagoon. Half a mile of butterfly-blue water, smooth as a saucer of milk, clear as a diamond, which hid an enchanted world like none other on earth.

Any naturalist who is lucky enough to travel, at certain moments has experienced a feeling of overwhelming exultation at the beauty and complexity of life, and a feeling of depression that there is so much to see, to observe, to learn, that one lifetime is an unfairly short span to be allotted for such a paradise of enigmas as the world is. You get it when, for the first time, you see the beauty, variety and exuberance of a tropical rain forest, with its cathedral maze of a thousand different trees, each bedecked with gardens of orchids, epiphytes, enmeshed in a web of creepers; an interlocking of so many species that you cannot believe that number of different forms have evolved. You get it when you see for the first time a great concourse of mammals living together, or a vast, restless conglomeration of birds. You get it when you see a butterfly emerge from a chrysalis; a dragonfly from its pupa; when you observe the delicate, multifarious courtship displays, the rituals and taboos, that go into making up the continuation of a species. You get it when you first see a stick or a leaf turn into an insect, or a piece of dappled shade into a herd of zebras. You get it when you see a gigantic school of dolphins stretching as far as the eye can see, rocking and leaping exuberantly through their blue world; or a microscopic spider manufacturing from its frail body a transparent, apparently never-ending line that will act as a transport as it sets out on its aerial explorations of the vast world that surrounds it.

But there is one experience, perhaps above all others, that a naturalist should try to have before he dies, and that is the astonishing and humbling experience of exploring a tropical reef. It seems that in this one action you use nearly every one of your senses, and one feels that one could uncover hidden senses as well. You become a fish, hear, and see and feed as much like one as a human being can; yet at the same time you are like a bird, hovering, swooping and gliding across the marine pastures and forests.

I had obtained my first taste of this fabulous experience when I was on the Great Barrier Reef in Australia but there, unfortunately, we had only masks and no snorkels, and my mask let in water. To say that it was fascinating, was putting it mildly, for there below me was this fascinating, multi-coloured world and I could only obtain glimpses of it, the duration of which was dependent upon how long I could hold my breath and how long it took my mask to fill and drown me. The tantalising glimpses I did get of this underwater world were unforgettable and I determined to do it properly at the first available opportunity. This came in Mauritius, for there at the Le Morne Brabant Hotel, the lagoon and its attendant reef were literally on my doorstep. I could not have been closer without moving my bed into it.

The first morning, I made myself a pot of tea and carried it out on to the verandah, together with one of the small, sweet Mauritian pineapples. I sat eating and watching the boats arrive farther down the beach, each piloted by handsome, bright-eyed, long-haired fishermen ranging from copper-bronze to soot-black in colour, wearing a variety of clothing in eye-catching colours that shamed the hibiscus and bougainvillaea flowers that flamed in the gardens. Each boat was loaded down with a cargo of snow-white pieces of coral and multi-coloured, pard-spotted cowries and cone shells. From sticks stuck in the gunwales, hung necklaces of tiny shells like glittering rainbows. The sun had just emerged from the mountains behind the hotel. It turned the sky and the horizon powder-blue; gilded a few fat, white clouds that sailed in a slow flotilla across the sky; gave a crisp, white sparkle to the foam on the reef and turned the flat, still lagoon transparent sapphire.

Almost as soon as I had seated myself on the verandah, the table at which I sat had become covered with birds, anxious to share with me whatever breakfast I had. There were mynahs with neat, black and chocolate plumage and banana-yellow beaks and eyes; Singing finches, the females a delicate leaf-green and pale, butter-yellow, and the males, by contrast, strident sulphur-yellow and black; and the Whiskered bulbuls, black and white, with handsome scarlet whiskers and tail flash. They all had a drink out of the milk jug, decided the tea was too hot and then sat, looking longingly at my fruit. I extracted the last of the juicy core from the glyptodont skin of the pineapple and then placed the debris on the table where it immediately became invisible under a fluttering, bickering mass of birds.

I finished my tea and then, taking my mask and snorkel, made my way slowly down to the shore. I reached the sand and the ghost crabs (so transparent that when they stopped moving and froze, they disappeared) skittered across the tide ripples and dived for safety into their holes. At the rim of the lagoon, the sea lapped very gently at the white sand, like a kitten delicately lapping at a saucer of milk. I walked into the water up to my ankles and it was as warm as a tepid bath.

All round my feet on the surface of the sand were strange decorations that looked as though someone had walked through the shallow water and traced on the sandy bottom the blurred outlines of a hundred starfish. They lay arm to arm, as it were, like some strange, sandy constellation. The biggest measured a foot from arm tip to arm tip, and the smallest was about the size of a saucer.

Curious about these ghostly sand starfish, I dug an experimental toe under one and hooked upwards. It came out from under its covering and floated briefly upwards, shedding the film of sand that had been lightly covering it and revealing itself to be a fine, robust starfish of a pale brick-pink, heavily marked with a dull white and red speckling. Though they looked attractively soft and velvety — like a star you put on top of a Christmas tree — they were, in fact, hard and sandpaperish to the touch. The one I had so rudely jerked out of its sandy bed with my toe performed a languid cartwheel in the clear water and drifted down on to the bottom, landing on its back. Its underside was a pale, yellowish ivory, with a deep groove down each arm that looked like an open zip-fastener. Within this groove, lay its myriad feet — tiny tentacles some four millimetres long, ending in a plate-shaped sucker. Each foot could be used independently so that there was a constant movement in the grooves and the tentacles contracted and expanded, searching for some surface on which the suckers could fasten.

Discovering none, and presumably concluding that it was upside down, the starfish curled the extreme tip of one arm under itself. Finding a foothold, it then curled its arm further in an effortless, boneless sort of way. At the same time, it curled under the two arms on either side of the first one, and slowly and gently, the animal started to lift itself with this triangle of arms. The arms on the opposite side of its body curled and spread upwards like the fingers of a hand to support it, and soon the body was vertical like a wheel, supported by the ever- stiffening arms. The arms on the farthest side now spread wide and the body sank towards them slowly and gracefully like a yogi completing a complicated and beautiful asana. The body was now turned upright; it remained only for the starfish to pull out its remaining arms from underneath it and the animal was the right side up. The whole action had been performed with a slow-motion delicacy of movement that would have brought tears to the eyes of any ballet dancer.

Now, however, the starfish did something that no ballerina, be she ever too talented, could have emulated. It lay on the sand and simply disappeared. Before my eyes, it vanished and left behind it, like the Cheshire Cat left its smile, merely a vague outline, the suggestion of a starfish, as it were, embossed upon the sand. What had happened, of course, was that while the starfish remained apparently unmoving, its hundreds of little feet, out of sight beneath it, were burrowing into the sand, so the animal simply sank from view and the white grains drifted to cover it. The whole thing, from the moment I had unearthed the creature until it disappeared, had taken no longer than two minutes.

I had approached the lagoon with every intention of plunging in and swimming out to deep water, but I had already spent five minutes watching the ghost crabs, five minutes admiring the necklace of flotsam washed up by the tide, and another two minutes standing ankle-deep in the water watching what was obviously a guru starfish attaining a sort of sandy nirvana. During this time, the fishermen, perched like some gay parrots in their boats, had been regarding me with the same avid interest as I had bestowed upon the natural history of the shoreline. Their curiosity had been well concealed, however, and there had been no attempt to solicit my custom for their wares in the tiresome way that is indulged in by pedlars in other countries. Mauritians were too polite for that. I waved at them and they all waved back, grinning broadly.

Determined not to be sidetracked again, I waded out waist- deep into the water, put on my mask and plunged my head under the water to get my head and back wet and protect it a little from the sun, which was hot even at that early hour. As my mask dipped below the surface, the sea seemed to disappear and I was gazing down at my feet in the submarine territory that immediately surrounded them.

Instantly I forgot my firm resolve to swim out into deeper water, for I was surrounded by a world as bizarre as any science fiction writer had thought up for a Martian biology. Around my feet, a trifle close for comfort, lay six or seven large, flattish sea urchins, like a litter of hibernating hedgehogs with bits of seaweed and coral fragments enmeshed in their spines so that, until one looked closely, they appeared to be weed-covered lumps of dark lava. Entwined between them were several curious structures, lying on the sand in a languid manner, like sunbathing snakes. They were tubes some four feet long and about four inches in circumference. They looked like the submarine parts of a strange vacuum cleaner, apparently jointed every three inches and manufactured out of semi-opaque, damp brown paper that had started to grow a sort of furry fungus at intervals along its length.

At first, I could not believe that these weird objects were alive. I thought they must be strange, dead strands of some deep-sea seaweed now washed into the shallows by the tide, to roll and undulate helplessly on the sand to the small movements of the sea. Closer inspection showed me that they were indeed alive, unlikely though it seemed. Sinucta muculata, as this strange creature is called, is really a sort of elongated tube, which sucks in water at one end and with it microscopic organisms, and expels the water at the other.

As well as Sinucta, I saw some old friends lying about, placid on the sea-bed — the sea slug that I had known from my childhood in Greece, thick, fat, warty creatures, a foot long, looking like a particularly revolting form of liver sausage. I picked one up; it was faintly slimy, but firm to the touch, like decaying leather. I lifted it out of the water and it behaved exactly as its Mediterranean cousins did. It ejected a stream of water with considerable force, at the same time becoming limp and flaccid in my hand. Then, having exhausted this form of defence, it tried another one. It suddenly voided a stream of a white substance that looked like liquid latex and was sticky beyond belief, the slightest portion adhering to your skin more tenaciously than Sellotape.

I could not help feeling that this was a rather futile form of defence for should an enemy be attacking, this curtain of adhesive, rubber-like solution would only serve to bind it more closely to the sea slug. However, it seemed unlikely that any weapon as complex as this would have been evolved in a creature so primitive unless it had fulfilled a necessary purpose. I released the slug and he floated to the bottom, to roll gently on to the sand, fulfilling the gay, vibrant, experience-full life that sea slugs lead, which consists of sucking the water in at one end of their being and expelling it at the other, while being rolled endlessly by the tide.

Reluctantly, I dragged my attention away from the creatures that lived in the immediate vicinity of my feet, and launched myself on my voyage of exploration. That first moment, when you relax and float face downwards, and, under the glass of your mask, the water seems to disappear, is always startling and uncanny. You suddenly become a hawk, floating and soaring over the forests, mountains and sandy deserts of this marine universe. You feel like Icarus, as the sun warms your back, and below you, the multi-coloured world unfolds like a map. Though you may float only a few feet above the tapestry, the sounds come up to you muted as if floating up from a thousand feet in still air, as you might be suspended and hear sounds of life in the toy farms and villages below a mountain. The crunch of the gaudy parrot fish, rasping at the coral with its beak; the grunt or squeak or creakings of any one of a hundred fish, indignantly defending their territory against invaders; the gentle rustle of the sand moved by tides or currents; a whisper like the feminine rustle of a thousand crinolines. These and many more noises drift up to you from the sea bed.

At first, the sandy bottom was flat, littered with the debris of past storms and hurricanes; lumps of coral now covered with weed, and the abode of a million creatures; pieces of pumice stone. On the sand, lay battalions of huge, black sea urchins, with long, slender spines that move constantly like compass needles. Touch one of them, and the spines moving gently to and fro suddenly become violently agitated, waving about with ever-increasing speed like mad knitting needles. They were very fragile as well as being sharp, so that if they penetrated your skin, they broke off. They also stained the immediate area of the puncture, as though you had been given a minute injection of Indian ink. Although they looked black, when the sunlight caught them, you found that they were a most beautiful royal blue with a green base to each spine. This species was fortunately flamboyant enough to be very obvious and, although some lay in crevices and under coral ledges, the majority lay on the sand, singly or in prickly groups, and were very apparent.

Interspersed with these were more of the elongated hosepipes and a further scattering of sea slugs. These, however, appeared to be of a different species. They were very large, some of them eighteen inches long and a mottled, yellowish-green. They also seemed much smoother and fatter than their black cousins, most of them being some four or five inches in diameter. I dived down to pick up one of these dim and unattractive creatures. As I was swimming to the surface with him, he first of all squirted water in the usual way and then, finding this did not make me relinquish my grip on his fat body, exuded his sticky rubber.

I was astonished at the attractive effect it had under water. When the sea slug used this, his ultimate deterrent, in the air, it came out simply as a sort of squishy, white, sticky stream, but viewed under water, the same phenomenon was different and beautiful. The substance was revealed as being composed offifty or more separate strands, each the thickness of fine spaghetti and about eight inches long. One end remained attached to the beast while the filaments at the other end curved out and floated in the water like a delicate white fountain. Whether these strands had the power to sting and perhaps paralyse small fish, I don’t know. One could touch them without feeling anything or getting any irritation, but certainly, spread out in a graceful spray, the tentacles presented much more of an adhesive hazard to an enemy than I had thought.

I swam on and, quite suddenly, like a conjuring trick, I found I was swimming through and over a large school of extraordinary-looking fish. There were about fifty of them; each measured some three to four feet long and was coloured a neutrally-transparent grey, so that it was almost invisible. Their mouths protruded almost into an elongated spike, as did their tails, so that it was difficult to tell at first glance which way they were pointing until you saw their round, rather oafish eyes staring at you with caution. They had obviously been doing something very strenuous and were now exhausted. They hung, immobile in the water, facing the current, meditating. They were most orderly, for they hung in the water in ranks, like well-drilled, if somewhat emaciated soldiers. It was interesting to note that they hung in exactly the right juxtaposition to each other, like troops on parade, so many feet between the fish in front and behind, and the same distance between the one above and the one below and the ones on each side. My sudden presence caused a certain amount of panic in their ranks, like someone marching out of step on an Armistice Day parade, and they swam off in confusion. As soon as they put enough distance between themselves and me, they re-formed ranks, turned to face the tide, and went into a trance again.

Leaving these fish, I swam on, gazing enthralled at the sandy bottom, barred with broad stripes of gold by the sun and these, by some optical alchemy, spangled all over with golden, trembling rings. Then, looming up ahead of me, I saw a shape, a dim blur which materialised into a massive rock some nine feet by three, shaped like the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral. As I got closer, I saw that the whole rock was encrusted with pink, white and greenish corals and on top of it there were four huge, pale bronze sea anemones, attached like flowers to a monstrous, multi-coloured bonnet.

I swam over this fascinating rock and anchored myself against the slow pull of the tide by catching hold of a projecting piece of coral, having first examined it carefully to make sure that there was nothing harmful lurking on, or under, or in it. That this was a wise precaution, I soon realised for as soon as my eyes got focused, I saw lurking, almost invisible, in the coral-and reed-encrusted grotto, a foot or so away from my hand, a large and beautifully coloured Scorpion fish whose dorsal spines can cause you agony and even, in rare cases, death, should you unwittingly touch it and it jabs them into you. He was some seven inches long, with a jowly, pouting face and huge, scarlet eyes. His predominant colours were pink and orange, with black bars and stripes and specklings. His pectoral fins were greatly elongated so he looked as though he had two pink hands growing out from under his gills, with attenuated fingers. Along his back was the row of scarlet spines that could prove so lethal. Altogether, he was a most flamboyant fish and, once you had spotted him, he glowed like a great jewel; yet until I had noticed a slight movement from him, he had, with his striped and spotted livery, melted into the background. Now, realising he had been spotted, he moved his great trailing fins gently and gradually edged his way round and down the rock away from me. Beautiful though he was, I was relieved not to have him at quite such close quarters.

Living in and around the anemones, were some handsome Clown fish, about three inches long, a bright orange colour, banded with broad stripes of snow-white. These pretty little fish have a symbiotic relationship with the anemones. They live among the stinging tentacles which would kill other fish, and so the anemone becomes their home; a formidable fortress in which the Clown fish takes refuge in moments of danger. In return for this protection, the fish, of course, drops some of its food which then becomes the anemone’s lunch. Why, or how, this curious relationship came about, is a mystery. Anemones can hardly be described as having scintillating intellects, and how they managed to work out the usefulness of the Clown fish and refrain from stinging them, is a puzzle.

Wedged deep into the coral here and there were a number of large clams. All that could be seen of them were the rims of their scalloped shells, over which the edge of their mantle protruded, so they appeared to be grinning at you with thick, blue and iridescent green lips. These, each about the size of a coconut, were, of course, relatives of the famous giant clam found farther out on the reef — a monstrous shell that could weigh up to two hundred pounds and measure three feet. Many blood-curdling stories have been written about unfortunate divers who by chance have put their foot into one of these shells, which immediately slammed shut like a man-trap (as all clams do in moments of stress) thus consigning the diver to death by drowning. There does not appear to be an authenticated record of this ever having happened, although of course it is perfectly possible, for the shell could snap shut and unless the diver had a knife with which to cut the massive muscle that acts as both hinge and lock on the two halves of the shell, it would be as immovable and unopenable as a castle door. Again, in the case of these highly coloured clams, there is a curious symbiotic relationship, for in the brilliant mantle there are a number of small, unicellular algae, called by the rather attractive name of

Zooxanthelae. These minute creatures obtain their sustenance from the food the clam sucks in, and in payment they give the clam an additional supply of oxygen. It is rather like paying for your daily bread with air, a thing most of us would like to do.

I shifted my vantage point to the other side of the rock, making sure of the whereabouts of the Scorpion fish, and came upon yet another symbiotic relationship. There was a small shoal of various multi-coloured fish, which included a Box fish and three canary-yellow Surgeon fish. The Box fish was quite incredible. He was only three inches long, vivid orange with black polka-dots all over him; but it was not the colouration so much as the bizarre shape of the creature which amazed me, for the whole body is like a square box of bone and through holes in this protrude the creature’s fins, vent, eyes and mouth. This means that the tail has to wave around like the propeller of an outboard engine. This mode of locomotion, coupled with the fish’s big, round, perpetually surprising-looking pop-eyes, its square shape and polka-dot suiting, combine to make it one of the most curious inhabitants of the reef.

The Surgeon fish were quite different. Their yellow bodies were roughly moon-shaped, they had high domed foreheads and their mouths protruded, almost like the snout of a pig. They get their name from the two sharp, scalpel-like knives set just behind the tail. These dangerous weapons can fold back like the blade of a pocket knife into a hidden groove.

But, fascinating though these two species of fish were, it was what was happening to them that was so curious. The two Surgeon fish were close to the rock, hanging in a trance-like state while the Box fish puttered to and fro like some weird, orange boat, occasionally coming to a standstill. Among them darted three lithe little fish, small gobies with bright Prussian- blue and sky-blue markings. They were cleaner fish and they worked assiduously on their three customers, zooming in to suck the parasites off their skin and then, as it were, standing back to admire their handiwork before dashing in again, rather like effeminate hairdressers admiring the creation of a new hairstyle. Later on, on the big main reef, I sometimes saw queues of fish waiting their turn at the barber’s shop, where the little blue barbers worked in a frenzy to keep up with their customers.

So captivated had I become by all I had seen, for every inch of what we came affectionately to call ‘St Paul’s’ was covered with tiny anemones, sea fans, feather worms, shrimps, crabs and a host of other things, that I discovered I had spent over an hour suspended in one spot and even then, had been unable to take it all in. Here, on this one rock, was a myriad of life which would require a naturalist to spend a dozen lifetimes even to start to unravel it. What, I wondered, as I swam slowly back to breakfast, was the reef going to be like? I was soon to know. It was overwhelming.

As soon as we could, I made arrangements for a boat and a boatman to come early each morning so that we would be able to spend a couple of hours on the reef without it interfering with our other activities. So, two days later, the boat puttered its way across the silk-smooth lagoon and ground, with a faint sigh, in the sand just outside our bedrooms. Abel entered our lives. He was a slender young Creole with extensive side whiskers and a moustache, a wide, engaging African grin and a curiously husky, high-pitched voice. He had been stricken with polio at 12 years old when Mauritius had a virulent epidemic of this frightful disease but though this had partially withered his right arm and leg, he was still agile in his boat and could swim and dive like a fish. Like most countrymen and fishermen, he was extraordinarily knowledgeable about the sea life and where to find it, but his learning was mixed up with much inaccurate folk lore. Nevertheless, his knowledge of the reef was superb and he could take you to see anything you asked him, from octopus to oysters; from long, pointed shells like unicorns’ horns, spattered with blood-red spots, to coral forests that defy description.

The first day we went out with him, he explained that the reef was divided roughly into five sections. There was the deep water reef where you swam outside the lagoon; there was the sandy area with only a scattering of rocks (like ‘St Paul’s’) along the shoreline; and then there were the three separate sections of coral bed. In each one you saw something different. So, the first day he took us out to what we called the ‘Stags’ Graveyard’ or ‘Landseer’s Corner’.

First, we crossed the sandy stretch. Lying on the tiny deck in the bows, with the early morning sun warming my back, I could gaze down into the clear water. First there were a host of sea slugs and the strange hosepipe-like Sinucta, then literally thousands of the big, red starfish, lying ghost-like, just buried under the sand, and interspersed with these on top of the sand, a great many cushion starfish. These are fat and round, like a pudding, and the arms are short and blunt so that the edges look almost scalloped. They are a yellowy-orange in colour and studded all over with slimy, jet-black, conical spikes like straight rose thorns.

Gradually we passed over more and more crops of coral and then the sand disappeared and we were gliding over a multi-coloured Persian carpet of weed and coral, and schools of bright fish shot from under our bows. Reaching the spot he had chosen, Abel turned off his engine and tossed the anchor, a huge lump of iron with a ring on it, over the side. We came to a standstill in some six foot of water, so clear it would have made vodka look murky. Hastily, we donned our masks and slipped over the side of the boat into a world so enchanted that it surpassed all poetic descriptions of fairy land one had ever read or imagined. One’s first impression was of a blaze of colour, gold, purple, green, orange, red, and every conceivable shade in between. Once you had got over your astonishment at this polychromatic world, it was the shapes that captured your imagination. In this particular section, the predominant coral was Stag’s horn, exactly like a great graveyard of all the finest Victorian deer trophies, decked out in white and electric blue. Some were only a few feet high, but here and there the coral formed huge shapes like white and blue Christmas trees, through whose branches drifted flocks of small, multi-coloured fish, as parakeets drift and swoop through trees in a tropical forest. Interspersed with these forests of Stag’s horn were the Brain corals, some as big as plum pudding, others the size of an armchair, and interspersed between these, a bewildering array of delicate sea fans, soft corals and weeds.

If their habitat was breathtaking and confusing by its diverse colouration and shape, then so were the inhabitants. I was interested in a certain similarity to the land. The small, multi-coloured fish flew through the forests of Stag’s horn like flocks of birds while below, the black and white Damsel fish in schools moved like herds of zebra among the sea fans. From the crevices in the coral, another dark chocolate and pink-coloured fish with large fins and a sulky, pouting mouth came out to threaten you when you invaded its territory, spreading its fins as an elephant spreads its ears when it charges. Then there were smouldering orange and black fish, like tigers, prowling in the shadowy depths of coral and quick-moving flocks of slender orange-brown fish like gazelles or antelope. Here in crevices, like sleeping porcupines, lay sea urchins, vivid blue and jade-green, and others of palest lavender.

I swam through this enchanted world, drugged by the colours and bizarre shapes, until I rounded a coppice of Stag’s horn with vivid blue tips to each spike, and came on a small, sandy clearing, with sea slugs and purple and black sea urchins littering the bottom. Over them lay in the water perhaps fifty or so small fish which were to become my favourites. They were about four inches long and at first glance, because of their position, they seemed to be all pale leaf-green, the tender and beautiful green of lime trees with their buds just about to burst but with an iridescence as if each fish had been varnished. As I swam closer, however, I discovered the most spectacular thing about them. Slightly wary of my proximity, they swam past me. As I followed them, they turned, in one blink of the eye, from their delicate leaf-green to the most beautiful blue, the blue they used to use in medieval paintings for the robes of the Virgin Mary, a Madonna blue, with the same iridescence.

Enchanted, I made haste to swim past them and then turn back again, and so in a flash they turned back once more to green. So beautiful was this effect that I spent half an hour harrying the poor school so that they turned now this way and now that, changing from green to blue and back to green again as the sunlight caught them. What was so astounding was that, as they all turned at the same moment, each fish changed instantly with its neighbour. Eventually, bored with my attention, they swam off determinedly into the forest of Stag’s horn where I could not follow them at speed, and so I soon lost them; but for me, they had become one of the most beautiful fish of the reef. All the others — purple, yellow, bronze, wine-red; spotted, striped, sequined; of bizarre shapes and sizes — were fascinating but my Leaf fish as I call them, as they have no common name and rejoiced only in the scientific Cromiis selurialis, became, for me, the personification of the reef.

Abel was not taciturn, indeed he could be very loquacious if he thought the occasion warranted it, but if he thought your observations or instructions were of an imbecile nature, he would not reply.

‘Abel,’ you would say, sternly, ‘we only want to go a short way today.’

Abel would be riveted by something in the blue distance, or maybe fall into a trance.

‘Only a short way. We must be back by eight-thirty,’ you would say.

Abel would look at you, unseeingly.

‘Did you hear?’ you would shout above the stutter of the engine.

His eyes, expressionless, would flick on to you briefly and then go back to their contemplation of the horizon. You would get back to the hotel by half past nine, owing Abel twice what you intended, but it was always worth every penny. He knew what you wanted and you did not.

Once we had been several times to taste the pleasures of the Stag’s horn area, Abel, without any reference to us, took us to an area which we eventually named the ‘crockery shop’. We dropped over the side expecting the prickly ‘Swiss forest’ of the Stag’s horn, and were amazed at what we found. Here, the coral was in great plates or bowl shapes and was brown and with perforations like a brandy snap. In places, it was in tottering piles like a giant’s washing-up, and in other places, it had formed monstrous candelabra or the sort of rococo fountains that you find in the beautiful gardens of remote French chateaux or Italian villas. This was totally unlike the Stag’s horn forest, where you could swim with the fish, for here, if you got too close, they simply disappeared amongst the crockery, where you could not follow them. You had to adopt a new technique. You simply drifted slowly along and let the fish come to you.

It was here that I saw my first Moorish idol, one of the strangest-looking of fish. If you could imagine a delta-winged aircraft with wings curved into a point, a small, blunt tail and a very protuberant engine, the whole thing flying on its side and striped in yellow and white, and black, you would have some conception of this strange fish.

It was in the crockery shop too, that I was engulfed suddenly by a large school of coral-pink and orange fish, some eight to ten inches long and with enormous dark eyes. I had been floating there, watching a sea slug standing up on end and wondering what it was doing, when I caught a flash of red out of the corner of the side windows of my mask, and the next minute this flock of colourful fish surrounded me, swimming very languidly and coming close enough for me to touch, gazing at me with their soulful black eyes. I recognised them with delight as being a fish I had always wanted to meet, which rejoices in the name of the Wistful Squirrel fish. They certainly look wistful. They gazed at me with a sort of lugubrious expression that gave the impression that they had all just returned from an exceptionally trying interview with their bank managers. Their eyes seemed to be full of tears and they looked so depressed that I longed to comfort them in some way. Hoping to relieve their gloom, I dived down and overturned a slab of dead coral lying on the bottom, thus unearthing a host of titbits in the shapes of shrimps, crabs, minute worms and diabolical-looking black starfish with their writhing, snake-like limbs covered in what looked like fur. Normally, fish delighted in this largesse, but the Wistful Squirrel fish merely gazed at me in a grief-stricken way, and quietly edged away. Obviously I was not sufficiently sympathetic.

One of the exhausting things about swimming on the reef was the bewildering number of life forms that surrounded you everywhere you looked. In the four-and-a-half months that we were in Mauritius, we went out on the reef nearly every day and on each occasion, we would all see at least four new species of fish that we had not identified before. However, I really began to despair when, towards the end of our stay, Abel took us to the area we came to call the ‘flower garden’; for it was here, in an hour’s swim, that I hit the mind-boggling, all-time record of seeing sixteen species of fish I had not seen before during four months of snorkelling!

The flower garden was a very shallow reef, mostly three to three-and-a-half feet with parts of it only just over a foot in depth, so that you had to search for a channel through the coral lest you scrape your chest or knees. In this shallow water, the colours seemed even brighter and there were species of coral which one did not find elsewhere — the Mushroom coral, for example, which is free-living; that is to say, it does not form a reef as the other corals do, but lies about on the bottom, moving from place to place. It looks like the underside of a large, pinky- red and brown mushroom and only when the small, pale yellow tentacles come out from between the gills and wave about, do you realise that it is alive. Then there were the corals that looked like mounds of tiny green chrysanthemums, the size of a little finger nail. These were in constant movement and so they looked like great mounds of flowers being blown by some underwater breeze. And there were the startlingly vivid blue corals, a really bright cobalt blue; and the red corals which varied from the colour of blood to the palest sunset-pink. One could see heads of coral that looked as though they had been neatly clipped into round shapes by an expert in topiary. Each of these heads was so neat that you could not believe they had grown like that. Closer inspection revealed that each of these heads (about the size of a large bouquet of flowers) consisted of pieces of coral shaped like small, snow-covered Christmas trees.

It was these coral heads that were particularly favoured by the Leaf fish, which would float in schools near them and take refuge from danger by diving in amongst the Christmas trees. It was near one of these corals that I found a school of about fifty baby Leaf fish. At that age, I discovered, they do not possess the green iridescence but are sky blue, a much lighter shade than the adults, but just as exquisite. I amused myself for a long time by simply stretching out my hand towards this glittering group of minute fish, whereupon they would dive into the coral and disappear. The moment my hand was withdrawn, they would reappear out of the coral head like blue confetti bursting from a snow-covered pine forest.

It was in the flower garden that you saw the greatest number of species in the smallest area, and it was particularly attractive because, owing to the shallow water, you could get closer to them. The File fish were always a joy to watch. These were leaf-shaped fish with a curved, unicorn’s horn on their foreheads, a brilliant green with longitudinal lines and bright orange spots, an orange striped snout and orange and black striped eyes. They get their name from the rough file-like quality of their skins. A relative of the File fish is the Trigger fish which goes locally by the jaw-breaking name of Humu-humu-nuku-nuku-a-puaa. They are a deep-bodied fish, roughly leaf-shaped but instead of having a protracted mouth like the File fish, the Trigger fish has a pouting, belligerent face like a Brigadier-General watching slovenly recruits. This is helped by its striped uniform of black and white and grey, and a bright blue band across the top of its nose, which makes it look as though it has got bushy eyebrows. The Trigger fish gets its name from a rather extraordinary defence mechanism. Like the File fish, it has a sort of curved horn, but this lies behind the eyes and can lie flat. When the fish is pursued by an enemy, however, this spine erects and another, smaller spine locks it into position to keep the trigger erect and immovable. This not only makes the fish a difficult and dangerous mouthful, but when it dives into the coral and erects its trigger, it is impossible to dislodge it without dismantling the whole coral head.

It was in this area that an incident happened that took me back to my childhood in Greece, when I used to go out with the fishermen. I was swimming down a canyon between the multi-coloured pieces of coral, when I came to an open, sandy area where I arrived simultaneously with an octopus, with tentacles some four feet long, who had just decided to shift from one area of the reef to another. When he saw me, he increased speed across the sand, looking unpleasantly like a hunchback with a trailing cloak of tentacles. He could not make it to the reef proper, so he took refuge in a large coral head in the middle of a sandy area. I swam over to see what he was up to, and found that he had wedged himself, or rather squished himself, into a small crevice and had slitted his eyes, as octopus do when in danger, for the eyes are very obvious otherwise. His skin was flashing and blushing, as octopus always do in moments of stress, in a startling variety of colours, including peacock blues and greens. Instead of making him more obvious, this firework display of colours helped him to merge in with his colourful background. I was within three or four feet of him, wondering if I could flush him out, when a trident slid down over my shoulder and plunged into the octopus, which immediately became a writhing, Medusa head of tentacles. Great gouts of black ink stained the water as Abel, who had manoeuvred the boat up behind me, triumphantly hauled the wriggling octopus on board.

Having a dying octopus spouting ink pulled up nearly into my face was not the pleasantest memory I had of the reef, which is a ravishing place, indescribably beautiful and complex. At present, it is exploited and over-fished; shells are collected for sale and the coral is dynamited so that bits may be carried home by triumphant tourists, pathetic pieces of once-beautiful living organisms to collect dust on some distant mantelpiece. It is to be hoped that the Mauritian Government will follow the enlightened lead of other Governments, such as those of the Seychelles and Tanzania, and declare its reefs Marine National Parks so that their beauty may be a joy for ever to visitors and to Mauritians alike; for the reef is an elixir that is within reach of all.

As I write this, the sky outside is grey and a fine snow is falling, but I have only to close my eyes and I can recall the splendours of the reef and they warm and cheer me.

In the flower garden one day I suddenly came upon a huge concourse of Leaf fish. There must have been a couple of thousand of them, spread over an area of fifty or sixty square feet. I swam with them for half an hour and it was unforgettable; one moment it was like being in a forest of green leaves greeting the spring, the next like floating through bits of Mediterranean-blue sky that had miraculously fallen into the sea in the shape of fish. At length, drugged and dazzled, I found a smooth coral head free from urchins and Scorpion fish and sat on it in two feet of water. I took off my mask and there, in the distance, were the mountains of Mauritius humped and shouldering their way to the horizon, like uneasy limbs under a bed covering of green forest and patchwork quilt of sugar cane with here an elbow and there a knee of hill sticking up. Across this were looped no less than five rainbows. I decided I liked Mauritius very much indeed.