Page:The further side of silence (IA furthersideofsil00clifiala).pdf/300

 fisher-folk who, for many unrecorded centuries, have been accustomed to risk their lives on the dangerous river bars and the treacherous waters of the China Sea. If ready presence of mind in the face of peril, and a quick appreciation of the surest means of escape had not become for them an inherited in- stinct, the breed would long ere now have become extinct.

Ûmat, however, has at his command pluck of quite another stamp-the courage which is no mere asli in the pan, born of excitement and an instinet of self-preservation, but is long enduring when beset by a danger before which a man must sit down and wait. It is no light thing to stare death in the eyes for days and weeks on end, to expect it in some cri ), violent form, and yet to possess one's soul in patience, and to keep a heart in one's body that does not sink and quail. Yet Ûmat has successfully withstood this test, and though the limitations of his imagina- lion doubtless made the situation easier for him than it would be for a white man, cursed with the restless brain of his kind, he fully grasped the risks to which he was exposing himself. All his light-heartedness vanished, for unlike my friend Raja Haji Hamid, whose eyes never danced so happily as when danger was afoot, Ûmat came of a class to whom a gamble with death is a hated thing. For once the look of calm patience had deserted him, for he was enduring consciously, and by a hundred tokens it was evident that his nerves were strung like a bow. In a word, he detested the whole position: but though noth-