Henry de Monfreid came from a distinguished family and was friends with Matisse, Gauguin, Cocteau, and Teilhard de Chardin. After several frustrating years as an engineer, he set off for Djibouti on the Red Sea in 1911 and from then on called himself Abd-el-Haï, "Slave of Creation." He bought a ship and lived among fishermen, pearl divers, smugglers, pirates, and arms dealers as one of their own. The law meant little to him, and he held only contempt for the officials of the colonial power. In three thousand letters to his friends, he had already recounted his adventures when Joseph Kessel persuaded him to finally write a book. When "The Secrets of the Red Sea" was published, he suddenly became a legend. His experiences on the Red Sea and later in Africa form the vast, enchanting, mythical material for an extensive body of work that has lost none of its fascination to this day.