tious 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 Kelantan 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 once its masters, its
slaves, and its prey.

When they have at last been fairly beaten by the monsoon, the fisher
folk betake themselves to the scattered coast villages, which serve to
break the monotonous line of jungle and shivering _casuarina_ trees that
fringe the sandy beach and the rocky headlands of the shore. Here under
the cocoa-nut palms, amid chips from boats that are being repaired, and
others that still li