extracting messages

Hello

I am unable to extract a base64 encoded mail message with mimencode -u
or mimencode -ubp.  This command i am running on the message saved as text.
All I get is 183 bytes of this kind of thing:

)?çëº+ÿr??®!^o_uóþ|ÿMu÷ßQyÇ¢½çÿ~º&?¨¥þv?{Ü¢oÞÆ

Please tell me the way out to extract a legal binary (or whatever) file
from the mail message.

Thanx a lot for your help.

-- 
Eric Smith
<eric(_at_)fruitcom(_dot_)com>
Vodacom 082 780 7888