the working hands in each crew, and to the owners of the crafts and nets, are all
determined by ancient custom. The unwritten law is clearly recognised and
understood by all concerned, and thus the constant disputes which would
otherwise inevitably arise are avoided. Custom—Aädat—is the fetish of the
Malay. Before it even the Hukum Sharä, the Divine Law of the Prophet, is
powerless, in spite of the professed Muhammadanism of the people. 'Let our
children die rather than our customs,' says the vernacular proverb, and for once
an old saw echoes the sentiment of a race.
The average monthly earnings of a fisherman is about sixteen shillings ($8), and
though to our ideas this sounds but a poor return for all the toil and hardship he
must endure, and the many risks and dangers which surround his avocation, to a
simple people it is all-sufficient.
A fisherman can live in comfort on some three shillings a month, and wife and
little ones can, therefore, be supported, and money saved against the close
season, if a man be prudent. The owners of boats and nets receive far larger
sums, but none the less they generally take an active part in the fishing
operations. From one end of the coast to the other, the capitalist who owns many
crafts, and lives upon the income derived from their hire, is almost unknown.
The fish crowd the shallow shoal waters, and move up and down the coast,
during the whole of the open season, in great schools acres in extent.
Occasionally their passage may be marked from afar by the flight of hungry sea-
fowl hovering and flittering above them; the white plumage of the restless birds
glints and flashes in the sunlight as they wheel and dip and plunge downwards,
or soar upwards again with their prey. I have seen a school of fish beating the
surface of the quiet sea into a thousand glistening splashes, as in vain they
attempted to escape their restless pursuers, who, floating through the air above
them, or plunging madly down, belaboured the water with their wings, and kept
up a deafening chorus of gleeful screamings.
These seas carry almost everything that the salt ocean waters can produce. Just
as the forests of the Peninsula teem with a life that is strangely prodigal in its
profusion, and in the infinite variety of its forms, so do the waters of the China
sea defy the naturalist to classify the myriad wonders of their denizens. The
shores are strewn with shells of all shapes and sizes, which display every
delicate shade of prismatic colour, every marvel of dainty tracery, every beauty
of curve and spiral that the mind of man can conceive. The hard sand which the
tide has left is pitted with tiny holes, the lairs of a million crabs and sea insects.