I brought Rachel around to see Turtle Beach. The local residents were, as I had hoped, out in full force, and she was amazed at the sight of them . . .
especially the giant ones. As it happened, some infant turtles were, at that moment, making their first journey down through the sand and on into the ocean. Rachel walked over to them and picked one of the little fellows up, then put him down, then picked him up again. When she perceived that the little turtles were trying to get to the water she carried her new friend to the water’s edge and carefully put him down . . . free of charge. She then continued this mission of mercy . . . giving some twelve other lucky turtles transportation to the sea.
I hadn’t eaten a turtle since Rachel’s arrival on Martindale Island, so she didn’t know that I had ever eaten a turtle. And that would have been . . .
in this situation . . . a relative of the little amphibians she had just now befriended. After this day, of course, turtle eating would be banned on the island, and my turtle shell collection . . . once a source of pride . . . now became a source of awkwardness and anxiety lest the little girl should ever discover these . . . articles of contraband . . . in the storage shed. And so, that night, as Rachel slept, I snuck out to the shed, removed the shells . . . and buried them.
We did, however, cook and eat lobsters . . . and she never showed any inclination to intercede on their behalf. I had built a lobster trap. Having grown up in Boston, I had, of course, seen lobster traps many times, and they were all fundamentally the same: A funnel of netting inside a wooden cage, a funnel that is easy for the lobsters to enter in through . . . and reach the bait inside . . . but impossible for them . . . owing to their large claws . . . to exit through. And the lobster hunting off Martindale Island was excellent.
One of our favorite recipes was:
1. Take one large lobster.
2. Boil until red.
3. Remove tail and claw meat and cut into small pieces.
4. Set aside.
5. Take three large potatoes.
6. Peel and then boil under tender.
7. Cut into small pieces.
8. Place lobster, potatoes, and four cups of goat’s milk into a large pot.
9. Let sit over a fire for an hour or so.
10. Stir occasionally.
There was a plentiful supply of fish off the island as well. The most effective means of catching them, I learned, was to take a large square of netting, attach four weights to its corners, sneak out to the coral reef, and toss the net over the fish. We always caught more fish than we needed, and would, each time, administer a pardon to the extras . . . letting them go free.
This, however, started me thinking about building some sort of holding pen for fish.
After a little planning I went out and dug a pit about seventy five feet from the ocean shore. It was quite wide but not very deep, and I lined it with rocks. I then dug a ditch from the pit to the ocean and lined it with rocks also. And when I knocked out the last chunk of earth that separated the ditch from the ocean the water flowed in and filled the pit. As an added touch I gathered some ocean plants and coral and transplanted them into our new little pond. And this was where we now stored our extra fish and lobsters.
This ditch . . . or canal . . . would fill with water, but only during periods of high tide . . . giving the little pond a twice-daily replenishment of fresh salt water. The worry, of course, was that the imprisoned sea creatures . . . if they were clever enough to discover it . . . now had a means of escape.
Initially I had wanted to leave it that way . . . giving the poor chaps a sporting chance to regain their freedom . . . but decided, in the end, to prop up some netting where the canal joined the pond.