When we had got back to the hotel, showered, changed and anointed our mosquito bites, we assembled in the diningroom.
Why don’t we celebrate our capture,’ I suggested. ‘How about a dozen oysters and then some grilled lobster with green salad, followed by bananas flambeed in rum, washed down with a nice white wine?’
Both Ann and John said that, as a light snack, this met with their approval, and I gave the order accordingly. Presently, our waiter, who rejoiced in the name of Horace, came back. ‘Please, Sir,’ he said, ‘I’m sorry for the lobsters.’
Although English is the official language of Mauritius, I had run into trouble from time to time. The Mauritian habit of saying ‘mention’ as an abbreviation for ‘Don’t mention it’ when you thanked them, took a little getting used to. Now, I was faced with a new problem. Horace was sorry for the lobsters. Did this mean that, as a fully paid-up member of the RSPCA, the thought of the demise of these delectable crustaceans filled him with such remorse that he could not bring himself to serve them? Nothing in Horace’s demeanour led me to believe this was so, but, at the same time, I did not want to risk hurting his feelings.
Why are you sorry for the lobsters, Horace?’ I asked, prepared to be gentle and sympathetic.
‘Because there are no lobsters, Sir,’ said Horace.
We had fish instead.
CHAPTER THREE
ROUND ISLAND
Unlike most sea expeditions undertaken in the tropics, our expedition to Round Island was an unqualified success; if, that is, you overlook the fact that Wahab was seasick, Dave suffered from heat-stroke, and I attempted to gain an Olympic Gold Medal for the longest most painful elbow-slide attempted to date on the island.
Getting up at four in the morning in a strange hotel is always sobering, especially when you suspect, from bitter experiences in other parts of the world, that you are the only member of the expedition who is being stupid enough to be on time, or, maybe, to appear at all. I always have a guilt complex when I get up too early in an hotel, and feel it incumbent upon me to creep about so as to avoid disturbing my less eccentric fellow guests. However, blundering about in unfamiliar territory is fraught with difficulties. On this occasion these started with trying to find the light switch, and knocking over the bedside table with its decoration of large water-jug, glass, clock, and three pamphlets on the fauna of Round Island. Next came the crashing descent of the lavatory seat (like a cannonade being fired across the bows of every sleeper in the place) to be followed by a rattle as of musketry as the waterpipes cleared their throats, merging into a roar of the shower which, at that hour, sounded like the cataclysmic eruption of Krakatoa in 1883. The only pleasure I derived from this whole dreary performance was the thought that I was waking my companions, who should have been up already.
Eventually, we piled sleepily into the car, complete with all the curious gear demanded of animal collectors (snake bags, nets, bottles, string, as well as cameras and binoculars), and drove off down the road, shiny wet with night rain between the whispering walls of sugar cane, towards the Yacht Club, at whose pier we were supposed to meet the rest of the party. Halfway there, luckily, we crossed paths with a car which contained Dave, who was driving in the wrong direction with great skill and confidence. Fortunately, he saw us, turned round and joined the cavalcade. Shortly afterwards, we came upon Wahab in his car, waiting under a tree to guide us; his wide, glittering, schoolboy grin was so mischievous and eager that we immediately felt not only confidence in the success of our mission, but even that getting up at four in the morning to accomplish it was a positive treat.
Arriving at the Yacht Club grounds, we parked our cars under the trees. Hopefully unseen by the Yacht Club’s Garden Committee, John and I cut ourselves lengths of the bougainvillaea hedge to make lizard-catching sticks. Then, with our bags full of food and equipment, we trooped down the pier and surveyed our craft.
She was like a baby tug, with a tiny fore-deck, closed-in bridge- deck area, and a well-deck (with polished wooden benches around the perimeter) that was roofed, but otherwise open to whatever elements we were likely to encounter. She was snub-nosed and rather bossy-looking, with a practical ungainliness which somehow gave me confidence in her sea-going abilities. According to the brass plate fastened to her, she was nearly twenty years old, and had been built, of all unlikely places, in Colchester. She had started life with the somewhat butch name of Corsair but now had been re-christened the Dorade.
She already had a cargo of humanity aboard her for, apart from a very smart-looking captain in a peaked cap, there was his first officer, who looked like a young version of Haile Selassie; a tiny walnut of a man who was a diver (in case we sank, one supposed); a benign Moslem barrister, who was a friend of Wahab’s; Tony Gardner and three forestry guards (who also ‘belonged’, so to speak, to Wahab); and a strange, portly gentleman, his sleepy-eyed, plump wife, and two female companions, all of them dressed in immaculate clothing which seemed more suitable for Henley regatta than the rigours of Round Island. As Wahab, Tony, and the rest of us joined them, I couldn’t help reflecting that we looked not unlike the strangely ill-assorted collection of individuals that the Bellman had taken with him to hunt the Snark.
With a certain amount of shouting, argument, and rearrangement of people and belongings, as always happens on these occasions, we were safely settled in the well-deck area and our luggage bestowed. The ropes were cast off, and the good ship Dorade started on her way across a black, velvety sea, besprinkled with the waning star reflections, for the eastern sky was already pale with hosts of tiny, dark cumulus clouds like a flock of curly black sheep grazing on a silver meadow. The sea was incredibly calm and the wind warm and pleasant. Those of our number who had felt qualms about the sea-going ability of their internal organs relaxed perceptibly.
The first island we passed, looming large and dark on our left, was Gunner’s Quoin, so-called because of its resemblance to the triangular-shaped piece of wood (like a flat-sided piece of cheese) that used to be wedged beneath a cannon to give it the right elevation and trajectory. Actually, as we chugged past it, I thought it looked more like the wreck of the Titanic, bottom-up and sinking by the stern. The dawn sky had now turned from silver to yellow. Those flocks of cumulus grazing on the horizon, became jet-black, with each curl rimmed in golden light, while the flocks that meandered higher in the pasture of the sky, turned slate blue with flecks and stripes of delicate purple. In the distance now, we could see the silhouette of Flat Island which, except for a protuberance at one end, lived up to its name. Then there was Ile aux Serpents, or Snake Island, like an inverted pudding basin, and lastly, our destination, Round Island, which, at that angle, did not look round at all but, with the aid of a certain amount of imagination, vaguely like a turtle with its head protruding from its shell, lying on the surface of the sea.
‘Tell me,’ I asked Tony, since geographical nomenclature, like the zoological, sometimes needs explanation, ‘can you explain the anomaly of the names of those two islands?’
‘Which ones?’ asked Tony, puffing clouds of aromatic smoke from his pipe.
‘Round Island and Ile aux Serpents,’ I said.
‘I don’t quite see what you mean,’ said Tony, puzzled.
Well, Ile aux Serpents is round, and has no snakes inhabiting it, while Round Island is not round and is inhabited by two species of snake.’
'Ah, yes, that is curious,’ admitted Tony. ‘My own view is that they got the islands muddled up when they were drawing the maps. It can happen, you know.’