Extract .mat data without matlab - tried scilab unsuccessfully

I've downloaded a data set that I am interested in. However, it is in .mat format and I do not have access to Matlab.

I've done some googling and it says I can open it in SciLab.

I tried a few things, but I haven't found any good tutorials on this.

I did

fd = matfile_open("file.mat")

matfile_listvar(fd)

and that prints out the filename without the extension. I tried

var1 = matfile_varreadnext(fd)

and that just gives me "var1 = "

I don't really know how the data is organized. The repository described the data it contains, but not how it is organized.

So, my question is, what am I doing wrong in extracting/viewing this data? I'm not committed to SciLab, if there is a better tool for this I am open to that.