Bêche-de-mer

“ The functions of bêche-de-mer are not only interesting, but requisite in the commonwealth of the coral reef, however purposeless to the observer intent upon the obvious and external only; while the genera are so numerous that doubtless to each species is consigned the performance of a special office. Some seem to delight in a diet of slush of the consistency of thin gruel; others prefer fine grit; others, again, coarse particles of shell and coral grit and rough gravel. ”

“ It may, by chance, be temporarily uninhabited, but fishermen from China come to all these places to collect tortoise-shell and bêche-de-mer. I have seen no other living beings except ourselves; nevertheless, the islanders may live on the south side."
Another pause. Amidst the thrilling sensations of the moment Iris found herself idly speculating as to the meaning of bêche-de-mer, and why this common sailor pronounced French so well. Her thoughts reverted to the steamer.
"It surely cannot be possible that the Sirdar has gone to pieces—a magnificent vessel of her size and strength?" ”

“ The progress of all species of bêche-de-mer is sedate and cautious, and this, probably the longest and the weakest and limpest of all, surpasses the race in deliberateness. It cannot move as a whole, so it progresses in sections. When the head has been advanced to its utmost, about the middle of the body an independent series of succeedant ripples or wrinkles manifests itself and travels consistently ahead, while farther towards the rear another series follows, and so on, until the lagging tail is enabled to wrinkle itself along. ”

“ A great trade is carried on in the bêche-de-mer which is found on the coast of New Guinea and transported to Thursday Island for export to China. This holuthuriea, or sea-cucumber, trepang or bêche-de-mer (a corruption from the Portuguese bicho-do-mar, or sea-worm) , is a slug about six inches long, and "effects its locomotion by rows of ambulaced-tubed feet, or by the alternate contraction and expansion of its worm-like body." The natives are employed by the colonists in diving after these slugs, and after being boiled, they are dried by the heat of the sun. ”

“ These nests are procurable twice every year; the best are found in deep, damp caves, which, if not injured, will continue to produce indefinitely. It was once thought that the caves near the sea-coast were the most productive; but some of the most profitable yet found are situated 50 miles in the interior. This fact seems to be against the opinion that the nests are composed of the spawn of fish, or of bêche-de-mer. The method of procuring these nests is not unattended with danger. ”

“ Another group of worm-like or snaky creatures common on a coral-reef are the sea-cucumbers or bêche-de-mer. In my experience the most singular branch of the family is at once the longest and thinnest, for it resembles a snake so closely that at first sight the observer subconsciously assumes an attitude of hostility. There seem to be two varieties of the species. One is much more ruddy in appearance than the other, and its body is the smoother ”

“ The men engaged in the bêche-de-mer fisheries find that those hideous gelatinous slugs which appear so very helpless, are also capable of inflicting severe pain. They resemble great sausages of dark-coloured india-rubber, black, grey, red, or greenish, inflated with sea-water. ”

“ Someof the old shells are so covered with coral and other growths as to be not easily discernible, and it is said that some of the native běche-de-mer fishermen, having trodden in these, their feet have been seized by the clam with such force as to hold them prisoners until the rising tide overwhelmed and drowned them. ”

“ Most of them wear nothing but a waist-cloth, and a few of them may be seen all day long wandering about the half-deserted streets of Dobbo offering their little bit of merchandise for sale.
Living in a trader's house everything is brought to me as well as to the rest,—bundles of smoked tripang, or "beche de mer," looking like sausages which have been rolled in mud and then thrown up the chimney; dried sharks' fins, mother-of-pearl shells, as well as birds of Paradise, which, however, are so dirty and so badly preserved that I have as yet found no specimens worth purchasing. ”

“ We learned from the "Boss" that his men had been working the district for the previous twelve months, and having now cleared off the trepangs from all the neighbouring reefs, he expected soon to move on to some other location further north.
The Beche-de-mer industry seems simple enough to conduct. The sluggish animals are picked off the reefs at low tide, and at the close of each day the produce as soon as landed is transferred to a huge iron tank, propped up on stones, in which it is boiled. ”

“ The bêche-de-mer, pearl, oyster, and sponge fisheries yield an annual revenue of upward of half a million dollars, and when all of the resources of the reef are properly exploited the returns will be more than doubled.
The habitat of the reef-building coral is in clear tropical waters. The polyps thrive best near the surface; they cannot live at a depth exceeding one hundred and twenty-five feet. The reef-building coral must not be confounded with the precious, or red, coral, which flourishes in a muddy sea-bottom and is found chiefly in the Mediterranean Sea. ”

“ The species I have described is found in the neighbourhood of the island of Ceram. Mr Hooker told us that it feeds chiefly on fallen fruits, and on insects or Crustacea. The female lays from three to five large eggs of a shagreen-green colour, upon a bed of leaves. The male and female sit alternately for about a month upon them. The articles we saw exposed for sale in the fair were chiefly pearl shell and the tripang, known also as the bêche-de-mer; as also tortoise-shell, edible birds’ nests, pearls, and birds of paradise, or rather their stuffed skins. ”

“ Though Mbau did not long enjoy a monopoly of muskets she was able to purchase more ammunition than her rivals. European sailors still continued to pour into the islands, for after the exhaustion of the sandal-wood forests, whalers began to frequent the group, and there sprang up a desultory, but profitable trade in beche-de-mer, the sea-slug so highly prized by Chinese epicures, and in cocoanut oil. None of these attained the same influence as Savage. They were rather the chief's sycophants and handy men, who mended muskets, and beguiled his leisure by telling stories of far-off lands. ”

“ On the mound beneath more skulls and other human bones were scattered. These were supposed to be the remains of a party of bêche-de-mer fishers, murdered some years ago by the Aroma people. Dilapidated and repulsive looking as the spot looked, overgrown with weeds, and ghastly with human debris, it was interesting enough to record photographically, but the conditions rendered this impossible, the high wind swaying about the suspended skulls in a manner which would blur any sun picture. ”

“ There you could acquire suitable land, set up copra works, collect the grotesque but profitable bêche-de-mer, plant sugar, and have a model plantation from whence you could obtain well-drilled recruits for your own service. By this means, or something after this way, you would get better men; you would secure a fair proportion of the hill tribes who are more adapted for acclimatisation ”

“ The fins are small—so small as to appear almost rudimentary—yet the fish swims, or rather darts, along the bottom with amazing rapidity. They love to lie along the banks a few feet from the shore, where, concealed in the sand, they can dart out upon and seize their prey in their enormous 'gripsack'mouths. The approach of a boat, or a person walking along the sand, will cause them to at once speed like lightning into deep water, leaving behind them a wake of sand and mud, which is washed off their backs in their flight. ”

“ But Will was quite right, for when we dragged down the heavy net we found that the water, which half an hour before, though under the light of myriad stars, had been black and silent, was now a living sheet of phosphorescent light, caused by the passage up the creek of countless thousands of agitated fish, driven in by hundreds of porpoises and savage, grey ocean-haunting sharks, whose murderous forms we could see darting to and fro just outside the shallow bar, charging into and devouring the helpless, compact masses of salmon, whose very numbers prevented them from escaping ”

“ If it is a small, dead fish, or other food which is sinking, say ten yards in front, he will gradually come up closer and closer, till he satisfies himself that there is no line attached—then he makes a lightning-like dart, and vanishes in an instant with the morsel between his strong, thick jaws. If, however, he sees the most tempting bait—a young yellow-tail, a piece of white and red octopus tentacle, or a small, silvery mullet—and detects even a fine silk line attached to the cleverly hidden hook, he makes a stern-board for a foot or two, still eyeing the descending bait ”

“ In one bay there was said to be a giant devil-fish with arms as long as a tree, lurking in malignant patience, awaiting the passage that way of an unwary canoe, when up would flash those terrible arms with their thousand suckers and, seizing their prey, would drag down the men to the bottom of the sea, there to be mangled and devoured by the horrid beak. ”

“ As the tide flows in over the sand there come with it, first of all, myriads of small garfish, mullet, and lively red bream, who, if the bait were left exposed, would at once gather round and begin to nibble and tug at it. Then perhaps a swiftly swimming “Long Tom,” hungry and defiant, may dart upon it with his terrible teethed jaws, or the great goggle-eyed, floundering sting-ray, as he flaps along his way, might suck it into his toothless but bony and greedy mouth ”

“ Like ravening wolves the sharks dashed upon their prey, and ere the people had time to give more than a despairing cry, those hideous jaws and gleaming cruel teeth had sealed their fate. Maddened with fear, the rest of the people threw everything out of the six other canoes to lighten them, and as the bundles of mats and baskets of food touched the water the sharks seized and bit, tore and swallowed. ”

“ For whiting and silvery bream, rather fine lines are used; but we each have a heavy line for flathead, for these fish are caught in the tidal rivers on a sandy bottom up to three feet and four feet in length. They are in colour, both on back and belly, much like a sole, of great width across the shoulders, and then taper away to a very fine tail. The head is perfectly flat, very thin, and armed on each side with very sharp bones pointing tailward. ”

“ With uncommon slowness, the mermaids donned more or less of their apparel, a few preferring to carry their robes over their arms; for the air was delicious, and ropes of sea-weed are accounted full dress in that delectable latitude. Down on the sand the mermen heaped their scaly spoils,—fish of all shapes and sizes, fish of every color; some of them throwing somersaults in the sand, like young athletes; some of them making wry faces, in their last agony; some of them lying still and clammy, with big, round eyes like smoked-pearl vest-buttons set in the middle of their cheeks ”

“ The grayling fisherman on the Northern streams has the water ousels for his constant and charming companions, true to the mountain river as in the days of Merlin and Vivien, busy as big black-and-white bees as they flit up-stream and down-stream, flying boldly into the waterfalls, dropping silently from mossy stones into the clear brown eddies, singing when the sunbeams shine and warm the crag-tops, and even floating and singing on the water, like aquatic robins. ”

“ Whenever it is low-water, they must rise to pick shell-fish from the rocks, and the women, winter and summer, either dive to collect sea-eggs, or sit patiently in their canoes, and with a baited hair-line jerk out small fish. If a seal is killed, or the floating carcase of a dead whale discovered, it is a feast. Such miserable food is assisted by a few tasteless berries and fungi. ”

“ The destruction that is then wrought among them is terrific. On the occasion of which I speak, every heavy roller that reared and then dashed upon the beach flung upon the sands hundreds of the fish, stunned and bleeding. At one spot where the beach had but a very slight inclination towards the water from the line of scrub above high-water mark there were literally many thousands of salmon, lying three and four deep, and in places piled up in irregular ridges and firmly packed together with sand and seaweed. ”

“ That oval beetle which is swimming on its back, and using two legs like oars, is the water boatman. It fastens on to the head of small fish, and soon kills them. It lives in the water, but if put on land it can fly. Look at that brute crawling over the mud, with its lobster-like head. It has sharp claws and a hollow snout. It lies in wait for its victims, and when it seizes them it sucks the juice out of them with its beak. It looks only of a dull brown now, but when its wings are expanded its [167] body is of a blood red colour, and its tail is forked. ”

“ Strange fish and other products of the tropical seas had drifted hither across the Atlantic from the West Indies and America, and in the fishing season the fin whale, blue shark, threshers and others had been caught, also the sun fish, boar fish, and the angler or sea-devil. Rare mosses and lichens, with agates, jaspers, coloured flints and corals, had also been found on the Chesil Bank; but the most marvellous of all finds, and perhaps that of the greatest interest, was the Mermaid, which was found there in June 1757. ”