Page 109 - Malay sketches

IN THE NOON OF NIGHT

between low slimy banks, and right and left the eye
wanders over a desolation of glistening mud with an
almost imperceptible slope to the edge of the distant
sea.
Pools of shallow water and tiny channels, through
which the receding tide finds easier road to river
or sea, alone break the monotony of the unsightly
waste.
That is as far as physical features go. The
mud-flats have their denizens, but they are not over-
attractive.
First, there is the Malay fisherman, hunting for
mussels and other shell-fish. If he is there at all
he will be hard to see, for he pushes his little dug-
out fifty or a hundred yards up a mud creek, leaves
it and fossicks about, sunk above his knees in the
mire.
Then there are myriads of birds, attracted by the
of to the industrious searcher
great possibilities gain
after garbage, stranded fish, and all sorts of particu-
larly loathsome-looking and foul-smelling dead things
to be found in such a place. These birds are often
strange-looking creatures, vast of size, long and lank
of leg, snaky of neck and spiky of bill. But they
are wary to a degree, they always seems to be stand-
ing just in the tiny ripple of the smallest wavelets
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