Madness

A haul of fish is something that has always fascinated me. I put my book aside and stood up. More people were trooping down from the hotel veranda and hurrying over the beach to join the crowd on the edge of the water. The men were wearing those frightful Bermuda shorts that came down to the knees, and their shirts were bilious with pinks and oranges and every other clashing colour you could think of. The women had better taste, and were dressed for the most part in pretty cotton dresses. Nearly everyone carried a drink in one hand.

I picked up my own drink and stepped down from the balcony on to the beach. I made a little detour around the coconut palm under which Mr Wasserman had supposedly met his end, and strode across the beautiful silvery sand to join the crowd.

But it wasn’t a haul of fish they were staring at. It was a turtle, an upside-down turtle lying on its back in the sand. But what a turtle it was! It was a giant, a mammoth. I had not thought it possible for a turtle to be as enormous as this. How can I describe its size? Had it been the right way up, I think a tall man could have sat on its back without his feet touching the ground. It was perhaps five feet long and four feet across, with a high domed shell of great beauty.

The fisherman who had caught it had tipped it on to its back to stop it from getting away. There was also a thick rope tied around the middle of its shell, and one proud fisherman, slim and black and naked except for a small loincloth, stood a short way off holding the end of the rope with both hands.

Upside down it lay, this magnificent creature, with its four thick flippers waving frantically in the air, and its long wrinkled neck stretching far out of its shell. The flippers had large sharp claws on them.

‘Stand back, ladies and gentlemen, please!’ cried the fisherman. ‘Stand well back! Them claws is dangerous, man! They’ll rip your arm clear away from your body!’

The crowd of hotel guests was thrilled and delighted by this spectacle. A dozen cameras were out and clicking away. Many of the women were squealing with pleasure clutching on to the arms of their men, and the men were demonstrating their lack of fear and their masculinity by making foolish remarks in loud voices.

‘Make yourself a nice pair of horn-rimmed spectacles out of that shell, hey Al?’

‘Darn thing must weigh over a ton!’

‘You mean to say it can actually float?’

‘Sure it floats. Powerful swimmer, too. Pull a boat easy.’

‘He’s a snapper, is he?’

‘That’s no snapper. Snapper turtles don’t grow as big as that. But I’ll tell you what. He’ll snap your hand off quick enough if you get too close to him.’

‘Is that true?’ one of the women asked the fisherman. ‘Would he snap off a person’s hand?’

‘He would right now,’ the fisherman said, smiling with brilliant white teeth. ‘He won’t ever hurt you when he’s in the ocean, but you catch him and pull him ashore and tip him up like this, then man alive, y

ou’d better watch out! He’ll snap at anything that comes in reach!’

‘I guess I’d get a bit snappish myself,’ the woman said, ‘if I was in his situation.’

One idiotic man had found a plank of driftwood on the sand, and he was carrying it towards the turtle. It was a fair-sized plank, about five feet long and maybe an inch thick. He started poking one end of it at the turtle’s head.

‘I wouldn’t do that,’ the fisherman said. ‘You’ll only make him madder than ever.’

When the end of the plank touched the turtle’s neck, the great head whipped round and the mouth opened wide and snap, it took the plank in its mouth and bit through it as if it were made of cheese.

‘Wow!’ they shouted. ‘Did you see that! I’m glad it wasn’t my arm!’

‘Leave him alone,’ the fisherman said. ‘It don’t help to get him all stirred up.’

A paunchy man with wide hips and very short legs came up to the fisherman and said, ‘Listen, feller. I want that shell. I’ll buy it from you.’ And to his plump wife, he said, ‘You know what I’m going to do, Mildred? I’m going to take that shell home and have it polished up by an expert. Then I’m going to place it smack in the centre of our living-room! Won’t that be something?’

‘Fantastic,’ the plump wife said. ‘Go ahead and buy it, baby.’

‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘It’s mine already.’ And to the fisherman, he said, ‘How much for the shell?’

‘I already sold him,’ the fisherman said. ‘I sold him shell and all.’

‘Not so fast, feller,’ the paunchy man said. ‘I’ll bid you higher. Come on. What’d he offer you?’

‘No can do,’ the fisherman said. ‘I already sold him.’

‘Who to?’ the paunchy man said.

‘To the manager.’