1955-01-29 — Page 6

The barracuda is rightly called the Tiger of the Sea.

THE CHINA MAIL, SATURDAY, JANUARY 29, 1955.

!

Hidden Mysteries Of The Undersea Jungle

D

By JEAN FOUCHER CRETEAU

IAMONDS may be a only the mesitis

intat girl's

friend, and prevarank

pardilaum

But the pearl-new, romance there is really some-

thing to stir the imaging

of a liveislunal.

11

JES 11

elek

Broken Lives-Paying The Terrible Price Of Pearls

by

for

fantasia,

craft net

our plans, but is intrigued pure moored in the buy of Noers, they seemed moat anxious beneath the ue white house of Silvio Nusi, a man every bit as colourful as his surroundinga.

To the natives, Silvio is known as King of Debiak-King of the Isten of Pentris

ร

An allan by origin, he has sailed the world and taken part in almost every conceivable kind of adventure. Bul www. close un 80 your of age. sailor of fortune aeems to have aritled down ra his island paradise-trading. making

and ap- grent deal of money, parently spending it as quickly as it commRYS

Handsome,

swashbuckding Silvio Une pakek A visit to Paris. It was typical that he should turn up at Le but des the charity Petits 1s Blanc,

bal of the year, and there, win the first prize m a big lottery

motor

car

S and luxurious

For some time afterwards he could be seen gliding round the city in it like the little king he เช proudly escorting many ot

The empital's loveliest women,

ever

In fact, it might be said that Silve's fortunes cine and go. meagre them to depths of 120 feet and

Loz 493 more, sharting the many dangers at Silvio himself goes 72430

I belive at of that set then.

was the fist time anyone Aimed and photojo apbed!

the even tho

with

the pearl

and the bigger

Bea; the way it is brought drop the better to the surface by native

1-

the

them

and!

Seal

HOURIS

*-*-

he

They say it is borty

es nud cradled in the depuis

then 1214 They believe that tion. Everything about it is of the ocean

share this adventures each year suing the montot!

We had hoped, of course, that romantic.

faits, the oysters yawn and

astite bite molo

he would jom us on Đur the Tawt

We enve

He was unable to do pedition Its origin in the shell of this catch a drop of rain; that

becomes bout,

Mitwa bend and head for

so as he had arranged to go on an oyster on the bed of the astos drop which

guttering. sun-worched Noera,

Bardine-fishing trip, but the Island of Pearls. Tie

broken helped us in many ways as a pond.

menacing

Bud

uncher No sooner

our Everywhere else- coral reefs

touched bottom than the Luciu T is The Geen and the sky

by dozens of was surrounded Birt crowded in bargaining

matheuvrable the deep, richest blue.

hours highly There are the reefs it

from bazaars Oriental

#5

fashioned native cOIRIER A loolish fable, perhaps, but lose

And maybe patches of puutel green

the trunks of trees Imported again and a beautiful o changes hands

from Indio at the top of our again; and, finally, the new the poetry of the steadfast

Squatting uttle

the mast Native look-out. lease of life, the new lustre

pointing the shouls constantly. it assumes

divers who risk their lives KING OF THE ISLES and there by for n mere pittance; the

ALH

it

thet

exister

helps it.

Lobable fowarsis Brak nestles miserabile the bosom of wretched divers fair and

proudly on

some Jady.

fortunate

Even the nurtive divers of the Red Sea, to whom the pearl is

Certainly I realised The greatest ambitions

1.

He

the navigational dungers to the of belinstal

of

fit

of my

Aber a recently and joined the natives through in their work, plunging with which

le when I went to the Red Sea

water expedition,

OM

we

out into

the open

again. sca

went almost at suce And as we prepared our oppor- atus, amusemoint and septicism

**** it to stay away, I begin to move

carefully and slowly upwards. It follows me,

And then, from nowhere it весть, one of my companiona

his harpoon gun. But he does not re. The barracuda is 100 quick for him and goes stroit-

un join them on an under. In this third article of his fascinting ad- venture series, Jean Foucher Creteau takes you to sun-scorched Nocra, the Island of ashes in view, attacking with Pearls, where you can watch the almost- naked pearl - fishers going about their ing off into the blue haze of the dangerous work in the bottom of the sea. at work Arriving above the natumi Creteau is filming the divers natives were preparing to work when he meets a giant barracuda, right

showed

natives.

the faces

of the

oyster bed, we noticed that the

one diver and in pairs 437XC paddler to each houri.

diving Before

began, hours moved over the surface

in front of him. The barracuda is the the most feared creature in those waters, and is far more dangerous than any shark, He describes the tense moments as the

of the sea with the diver leat ing overboard. ha head hidden

in an old five-gallon petrol tin from which both ends had been

removed. With a piece of glass

the re-

fastened over one end, which is held under the water. flection is minimised and it is possible to see far below

DOWN THEY CO

When pearl-ysters are sight- d, the diver picks up a small basket made of hemp and inp of rock which is fastened to the bout by a cord Then down he goes.

The rock enables hum to de- cend quickly, surely, and with the minimum of energy. diver owns and prizes hely own to suit stone, which is chosen

Each

his own weight, and is always hauled back to the surface soon as he is at the bottom

us

None of the divers wears any clothing except a остар от

nut lom cloth and sometimes

His only diving But,

appar- consists of a horn clip. attes rather like a clothes peg, which he Axes over his nose.

bottoni, On the

each oyster is torn from its bed and

In placed

the basket. The

The best hostris are made in divers, relying only on the re-

on the Remarkable the Hudhramaui,

on our travels The natives

we

of

their

for as Kather- 011 cuch

angry barracuda is about to attack ... ... ... ... ....

French @

The author,

businessman,

won a prize at the 1953 Cannes Film Festival for an underwater colour film.

dopths.

The pearl diver tugs hard on the cord about his waist and is haules quickly to the surface. I follow him with all speed--vary And thankful for my

shaken

cape.

Safely back aboard the Lucha

how my

companions I learn were warned of my plight by their petrol-can "telescopes, who natives looking through saw the barracuda approach me.

After hours of work the cances

with arc stacked We uystera.

move back wards the shore and the pro- to cious cargoes are tipped on the beach.

In amazement tuse

Such Is the true prley

of

the with which the natives, squatting on the sand with their leg fucked under their haunches, open up the tightly clenched shells. And wo are surprised, too, to see how many are thrown away.

100

us still Now I am lying possible on the sea-bed, Alming the natives as they gather their harvest.

ELS

Age did not seem to matier. We saw divers as old as 80 and pearls!

But

the work as young as 12.

the puts tremendous strain on human body.

Apart from the risk of heart injuries, the divers are afflicted by serious eye and car ailments. They do not appear to take any of their health

care whatever and many of them quickly de- teriorate into the most physical condition,

all Besides other dangers.

pitiful

this.

there

аге

The sea is full of swimming enemies ready to bite or slink diver cruelly, the defenceless maybe fatally. And there is the menace of the giant clam.

On an average 1,500 to 2,000

to ba Red Sea oysters have

ono pearl opened before found.

Suddenly I notice one of the HEAD MAN divers waving his arms in great spitalier. I stup my camera and

look in the direction which he is pointing.

to

19

uf

Coming down the beach words La now is on Arub There,

stationary in front of magnificent bearing. He is the me, is a greal barracuda, nearly head man of the village, and ho the most feared offers to show us round and six feet long.

far explain the details of pearl creature in these watera,

than any dealing.

that he He tells dangerous more

himself trodes iTa everything shark.

from paraffin to pearls, and we think to ourselves that business must be very good. He has that lonk about him.

I look straight into its cold, glassy eyes. I notice that the in on its back is standing erect. It is a sign that the barracuda 18

angry, ready to attack at my moment,

Us

years

He brings us back to earth by reminding us that the pear! begins, not as a drop of monsoon a tiny parasite

through

the 2 which enters the oyster shell, Then (usually seven) the oyster tries the parasite by to suffocato 269

covering it with layers of self- calcium carbonate, produced thus slowly building up pearl.

This is a bivalve roughly the capacity and Sen coast of Arabia,

can remain submerged shape of an oyster, but as much tungs,

Daring at last to take my rain, but as as two yards across, It lies on them everywhere under heavy pressures encountered

the pee-bed with its great shell eyes off the creature for a trac- in those parts. few hours of sailing

long as three minutes.

its prey. And tion of a second, I ginnce around open, awoking them have world.

Yor Thank watery

to 50 oysters ing 40

The pear! woe hetkie the man who puts a

for signs of help. Wali

dive. Disney. getting quickly from one island pure

band or Ivot, an arm or leg diver is simply watching. Lo another and they are always

though spell-bound. In any used for pearl fishing.

within its reach.

case, he is unarmed and can do nothing. I cannot companions,

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With members acting

of our <7^MA

the

as Interpretera, occupants of the bouris quickly Ob- showed their friendliness.

vlously they were surprised und

My companion and 1 believed that we were in good shape for after we had been diving day day. But after an hour filming them Ashers hausted. Yet they seemed ready to go on all day.

We

were X -

necident Usually, such an mens death. Bun one diver freed himself by cutting off his leg at the knee-and trapped survived.

Staring at

the

БОС

כות

barracuda again, trying desperately to will

Miss Hobson, Can You Really

Say Goodbye To All This?

W

WHEN an actress at the

peak of her

cureer

says: "Goodbye to all this,' can she really mean it?

of

So strong is the aura romance around the theatre, so Irresistible the smell of greasepaint (we are told), NO hypnotising the foot lights, and, I suppose, 80 satisfactory the salary, that when an actress says she is giving it all up for marriage we just smile cannily wait for her next pearance.

And

surprising it is seldom we are disappointed,

By ANNE SHARPLEY

and flims, lot

but TV, radio-the

Can the do it?

I asked two women who took

Last year and

have not been

reir domestic vows during the heard of, in the theatrical sense;

since.

Dinah

Sheridan

Florence Desmond.

and

"And how right she is to go out

Success. Perhaps if on 2 Genevieve hadn't been such a hit I might have wanted to go on and make a real winner."

Mis Desmond who, In

February last bundled all her versatility into being the wife of a Lloyd'e insurance broker, Mr Charles Hughesden, sald,

"I'm sure she can," says Dinah

who married Mr Sheridan, and John Davis, bose of the 1.

"I know just how she feels. Arthur Bank Organisation to Acting is much a 24-hour business ap- March

that the husband of on, actress

how

Now we have Miss Valerie Hobson (who after steady star- dom for years broke into highly successful if wavering Fong n little over a year ago and became England's first star at Drury Lane for 14 years) my- ing sho is giving up everything to become a "100 percent wife" to Mr John Profumo, Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport.

And by "overything" sho says she moans not only the stago

the with

remark woman's place is in the home" (and evidently meant it).

24-hour job

"If she is like me she will nevar regret it," says Mrs Davis, now mistress of an old manor RCTER and/ house in Kent, 235 00 cows,

"Why even I get terrible nostalgia

undi

have to put

my little pair of ballet shoes

th

ils

After it is taken from shell the peart is washed with a and then native soup powder

according sorled and clasified

colour weight, size,

to lustre,

and

Our trader friend spreads ◊ green cloth on a table and pro- duces a small pair of scales with weights made of agate, a patr of tweezers, magnifying glass and a small book of TO- ference in English and Arabic to which he rofers before each transaction.

CASCADE

Next he unwraps from

the

1 always keep in the corner of traditional red cloth a packet as She'll have to fight big * an egg. It contains MY TOOM.

in a that nostalgia and the know-pearls, He pours them

on the green tedge that she could have been glorious cascade

tablecloth. With obvious love, a top girl for yours and years.

with a sort of veneration. ho them about with his

"The only reason I have been rolls able to Aght that fooling singers. because I'm still really part of if only show bizsiness-oven from the wings."

If you must..

And so the pearls are nondy to start on their long journeys to London, to Parts. to Now York, to Rio--who know's where?

On the way through the bazaars of the Orient, through Aden or Djibouti they will pass Last authority I want to quote from hand to hand. Eich bid horsell-over will be higher than the lost. when Miss Dinah The value will soor. ronunciation of the

can find himself wondering what le Miss Hobson it's all for, sitting at home a year ago having solitary meals and walt- Sheridan's ing for his wife to come home," limelight was being discussed.

But now, every time I soon pearl being worn by a beautiful "Turn down your career only woman I think only, of its real "It can't be done," says Mrs

of the broken hoarts admit price forced to she when you're Vai Parnell, who before

of the VOLTE not adaptable and broken lives married, the Palladium 17 years that ago was a well-known dancer. enough to do both jobs success-divers to whom pearls mean ho fully: It VOLL MUST choose, more than a meagre, precarios don't hesitate plump for livelihood back there "She's cheating herself making marriage and babies, but it telli searing heat of the Red Sea. such a terriblo decision. I'll be a great plly if you have to." have a R5 bet with you she

to

koop her word She. If the passing of a your can "Never for one moment have won't I wanted to go back," says the can't. Talent like hors and a make all that difference to Miss ox-star, whose jast Alm, Ilfetime of being on the stage Hobson's point of velw-let's 'Genov love,' was her greatest and in alms is too strong, it's wait and son, what another your

bocere an instinct: success.

MANDRAKE THE MAGICIAN

WE HAVE YOUR POSITION, EX94Y. WHAT IS YOUR TROUBLE

I DON'T KNOW --BUT IT'S SERIOUS TROUBLE,

AND

KAWE CAN'T MOVE, AND ONE OF OUR

PARTY-CELER--

will do..

By Lee Falk and Phil Davis

(eeeek

'HELLO--2X54Y--

CAN YOU HEAR MEJ

iri "the

To be continued next Saturday WORLD COPYRIGHT · 1954-

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