THE WINDS OF THE OCEAN 71 



breezes and bright skies, the wonderful nightly illu- 

 mination of the heavens, and all the pleasantness of 

 steady fine weather at sea, he has now to be content 

 with tremendous rains, murky skies that seem to 

 enclose him in a steamy oven, and heavy winds often 

 rising to gale force. It is a time of dread, especially 

 for sailing vessels, where the ropes swell so that they 

 will hardly render through the blocks, and the hands 

 of the mariners, soaked and made tender by the 

 incessant wet, become so painful that it is agony to 

 handle the ropes at all when pulling and hauling 

 it seems as if the cordage is redhot. In the Arabian 

 Sea the full-powered steamships of the mail and 

 passenger carrying lines, homeward bound, are held 

 back by the furious thrust of wind and sea, and life 

 on board seems hardly worth living for the comfort- 

 seeking passenger, often getting his first taste of 

 Indian weather. 



In the great indentation between Hindostan and 

 Burmah, especially on what is known as the Coromandel 

 coast of India, this tremendous visitation of the south- 

 west monsoon is robbed of all its terrors for the seaman 

 and becomes mild and pleasant. Because it has already 

 done its great work, fulfilled its mission of revivifying 

 the arid, sun-baked plains of India, and emerging 

 upon the sea once more, its exuberance is thoroughly 

 subdued, its stores of rain are all expended, and con- 

 sequently it greets with a gentle mildness the sea 

 from whence it came so boisterously. But by the 

 time it has crossed the great Bay of Bengal and has 

 reached the coast of Burmah, it has regained much 

 of its original strenuousness and has replenished its 

 stores of rain, so that it strikes that part of Asia with 



