Agni

Under the water is another kingdom. In the long waving meadows of sea-grass, fish graze calmly like sheep amongst the fronds. Sun dapples the sea floor with crazy paving, the stones carefully arranged by mermaid hands to create paths and patterns invisible to the clumsy humans lining the beach like sausages on a grill. Below the shimmering surface there is no sound. Deep calm, the calm of the deep. Only the slow huff and puff of breath through the snorkel, punctuated with the rhythmic splash of one lazy flippered foot, and then the other.

An octopus has made his home under the concrete footings of the jetty. He is the boss, one tentacle suckered firmly onto the pitch-dark pine pole, his baleful eye watching over the bustle of the underwater thoroughfare. A school of whitebait, moving as if controlled by a single brain, swish past in a teasing giggle of silver but he is unmoved.

In a still corner between two jutting crags, a fish parliament is in session. Solemnly the bream are still and listen as one after another they state their views. Or perhaps it is a choir practice and they are singing in wonderful mysterious fish-harmonies. A special ear is needed to hear the songs of the sea.

It is a veritable underwater jungle. Tiger fish, zebra fish. Sea horses, scorpion fish. Further afield, many days of swim-safari and there might be dogfish, catfish, lion-fish too. We will dine on sea cucumbers and be entertained by the clown fish.

The path to the next bay is barred, to keep it exclusive for the luxurious motor yachts, but the coastline itself, all the thousands of miles of it in this country of islands, wrapping around the equator in its length, belongs to the people. Every centrimetre, even the beaches of Onassis’ Skorpios, even the tidy shores below the Rothschild and Agnelli villas. Anyone may pull up his fishing boat where he pleases, or indeed snorkel around the headland, guided by a smiling sea-bass. With a head popped out of the water, the gin-palaces rise like skyscrapers with gleaming sides in navy and white and gunmetal, and balconies of teak and chrome. But under the water their hulls are greenish and barnacled like the smallest fishing smack.