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The animals are split open, boiled, pressed flat, and dried in the sun, and after a sufficient number have been taken, they are carried to the island rendezvous and there smoked with dry wood, which last process converts the slug into genuine 'beche-de-mer', fit for the market, and for the palates of Celestial epicures.
The big-eyed walking fish of the mangroves, which the learned have named PERIOPHTHALMUS KOELREUTERI, Tom knows as "manning-tsang," and Nelly as "mourn!" During one of his bachelordom interludes a smart young gin known as "Dolly" attracted Tom's fancy. He had just "signed on" for a six months' cruise with the master of a beche-de-mer schooner.
The ancients were wont to believe in the existence of hostile mutuality between the swifts and the beche-de-mer, though they have little in common in respect of appearance, attributes, and habits.
Captain William Guy immediately endeavoured to come to an understanding with Too-Wit on this matter, requesting him to authorize the construction of sheds in which some of the men of the Jane might prepare the bêche-de-mer, while the schooner should hold on her course towards the Pole.
Yet on the reef in a pool such an individual endures complacently water heated to a temperature of 108 . Though feeble and of such readily dissolvable texture, beche-de-mer may be regarded as among the mightiest agents in the conversion of the waste of the coral reef into mud the sort of mud of which some of the toughest of rocks are compounded.
That fellow is no whaler; look at his canvas, no smoke stains from the try-works there: he is a sandal-wood trader, or is after beche-de-mer. I am very glad it is so; it will be much more pleasant for the ladies; and if she is a Yankee, as a good many of these little traders are, the skipper will probably be glad enough to earn a few dollars by running us all across to the mainland."
There seemed to be only two white men, one of whom introduced himself as the captain, and asked us, in French, to come on board. The vessel was the 'Gabrielle d'Estonville', of New Caledonia, commanded by Captain Jean Labonne, and had put into Rockingham Bay for water, during a 'beche-de-mer' expedition. Anything to equal the filth of the fair 'Gabrielle', I never saw.
He fitted me out with a good stock of provisions, including a quantity of beche-de-mer, cabbage-palm, fruit, &c. I arranged my buffalo skin over my provisions as a protection, turtle-back fashion. Our preparations completed, Yamba and I and the dog pushed out into the unknown sea in our frail canoe, which was only about fifteen feet long and fourteen inches wide.
The export cargoes of this class of vessels consist principally of raw cotton, cotton yarn, cotton goods, opium, béche-de-mer or sea slug, pepper, tin, rattans, edible birds'-nests, deers' sinews, sharks' fins, fish maws, &c.
Too hopeless to expect mercy, she made no appeal for help, though the horrible fear that possessed her was eloquent in her wild-staring eyes. In the universal beche-de-mer English, Captain Van Horn had learned that she was not regarded with relish by her companions, and that they were on their way to stake her out up to her neck in the running water of the Balebuli.
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