less dazzling than that of day, or when the thousand wonders of the southern
stars gaze fixedly upon us from their places in the deep clear vault above our
heads, and Venus casts a shadow on the grass; from dawn to dewy eve, from
dewy eve to dawn, the lights of the Peninsula vary as we watch them steep us
and all the world in glory, and half intoxicate us with their beauty.
But the sea is the best point or vantage from which to watch the glories of which
I tell—speaking as I do in weak colourless words of sights and scenes which no
human brush could ever hope to render, nor mortal poet dream of painting in
immortal song—and if you would see them for yourself, and drink in their
beauty to the full, go dwell among the Fisher Folk of the East Coast.
They are a rough, hard-bit gang, ignorant and superstitious beyond belief, tanned
to the colour of mahogany by exposure to the sun, with faces scarred and lined
by rough weather and hard winds. They are plucky and reckless, as befits men
who go down to the sea in ships; they are full of resource, the results of long
experience of danger, and constant practice in sudden emergencies, where a loss
of presence of mind means a forfeiture of life. Their ways and all their dealings
are bound fast by a hundred immutable customs, handed down through countless
ages, which no man among them dreams of violating; and they have, moreover,
that measure of romance attaching to them which clings to all men who run great
risks, and habitually carry their lives in their hands.
From the beginning of November to the end of February the North-East
monsoon whips down the long expanse of the China Sea, fenced as it is by the
Philippines and Borneo on the one hand, and by Cochin China and Cambodia on
the other, until it breaks in all its force and fury on the East Coast of the
Peninsula. It raises breakers mountain high upon the bars at the river mouths, it
dashes huge waves against the shore, or banks up the flooded streams as they
flow seaward, until, on a calm day, a man may drink sweet water a mile out at
sea. During this season the people of the coast are mostly idle, though they risk
their lives and their boats upon the fishing banks on days when a treacherous
calm lures them seaward, and they can rarely be induced to own that the
monsoon has in truth broken, until the beaches have been strewn with driftwood
from a dozen wrecks. They long for the open main when they are not upon it,
and I have seen a party of Kĕlantan fishermen half drunk with joy at finding
themselves dancing through a stormy sea in an unseaworthy craft on a dirty
night, after a long period spent on the firm shore. 'It is indeed sweet,' they kept
exclaiming—'it is indeed sweet thus once more to play with the waves!' For here
as elsewhere the sea has its own peculiar strange fascination for those who are at