bait. Some are worked round schools of fish by a single boat, which flies in its
giant circle, propelled by a score of paddles dripping flame from the
phosphorescence with which each drop of the Eastern sea is charged. Some are
cautiously spread by the men in one boat, according to directions signalled to
them by a second, from the side of which a diver hangs by one arm, listening
intently to the motion of the fish, and judging with marvellous accuracy the
direction which they are taking. Lines of all sorts, hooks of every imaginable
shape, all the tricks and devices, which have been learned by hundreds of years
of experience on the fishing grounds, are employed by the people of the East
Coast to swell their daily and nightly takes of fish.
In the sheltered water of the Straits of Malacca, huge traps are constructed of
stakes driven into the sea-bottom, and in these the vast majority of the fish are
caught. But on the East Coast such a means of taking fish is forbidden by nature.
A single day of monsoon wind would be sufficient to destroy and scatter far and
wide the work of months, and so the Fisher Folk whose lot is cast by the waters
of the China Sea, display more skill in their netting and lining than any other
Peninsula Malays, for on these alone can they depend for the fish by which they
live.
Their boats are of every size, but the shape is nearly the same in each case, from
the tiny kôlek which can only hold three men, to the great pûkat dâlam or seine-
boat, which requires more than a score of paddlers to work her. They are all
made of chĕngal, one of the hardest and toughest woods that is yielded by the
jungles of the Peninsula. They all rise slightly at the stern and at the bows; they
all are decked in with wide laths of bamboo; they all carry a mast which may be
lowered or raised at will, and which seems to be altogether too tall and heavy for
safety; they all fly under a vast spread of yellow palm-mat sail, the sight of
which, as it fills above you, and you lie clutching the bulwark on the canting
boat, while half the crew are hanging by ropes over the windward side, fairly
takes your breath away; and all are so rigged that if taken aback the mast must
part or the boat be inevitably capsized. But the Fisher Folk know the signs of the
heavens as no others may know them, and when danger is apprehended the mast
is lowered, the sail furled, and the boat headed for shore.
The real danger is when men are too eagerly engaged in fishing to note the
signals which the skies are making to them. A party of Kĕlantan fisher folk
nearly came by their death a year or two ago by reason of such carelessness. One
of them is a friend of mine, and he told me the tale. Eight of them put to sea in a
jâlak to troll for fish, and ran before a light breeze, with two score of lines