Page:Scidmore--Java the garden of the east.djvu/353

Rh sensational downpours promised for the beginning of the rainy season, nor the terrific thunder-storms warranted to rend the heavens at the turn of the monsoon, nor any inconvenience or disarrangement of plans through the first instalments of the annual precipitation. The black clouds of the Java Sea did not suddenly envelop our ship in such sheets of rain that the vessel was forced to lay to, the lookout in the bows unable to see ten feet ahead of him, and the double sail-cloth awnings over the decks serving no more purpose than so much gauze. The rain did not descend in a flood or cloud-burst's fury at precisely three o'clock every afternoon, penetrating carriage-curtains and -aprons, filling the carriage-boxes like tanks, and saturating every garment and article. Nor any more did we play billiards by lightning, without lamps, like that British planter who eventually scared away a party of Americans by his account of thunder-storms in Java. This British resident assured the tourists that at his Preanger plantation the thunder-claps shook the house, rocked the furniture, and stopped clocks, and that he had often turned out the reeling lamps for safety's sake, and continued his games of billiards by the lightning's incessant, blinding green glare. And the Americans believed it, and remained away from Java—British humor and American credulity matched to equally surprising extremes.

There were gentle, intermittent drizzles and light showers on several days; many days when the gray skies sulked and seemed about to weep; but the only hard showers were at night. The one vaunted sensational, tropical downpour, with blue-and-green lightning's illumination, made my last Batavian midnight