260 SUBMARINE MUSIC. 



proceed mysteriously from the bottom of the vessel. This 

 strange sub-marine chorus of fishes continued to amuse 

 us for about a quarter of an hour, when the music, if so 

 it might be called, suddenly ceased, probably on the 

 dispersion of the band of performers. 



The peaceful avocations of the student of nature, when 

 engaged in active service, may sometimes be interrupted 

 by disastrous events, an example of which I shall here 

 relate \ nor is it the only instance in which, in my capa- 

 city of Assistant Surgeon, I have been a party concerned. 

 The incident I allude to, occurred one night during one 

 of the most tremendous storms I have witnessed in 

 Borneo, while the 'Samarang' was anchored off the 

 Santubong entrance of the Sarawak river. The horizon 

 was overcast long before the storm burst forth, and a 

 portentous lowering gloom gathered in every direction, 

 but when the rain came down in torrents, and as it does 

 only in the tropics, the sky was like an universal pall, 

 spread out over nature, or a hugh black curtain, shutting 

 out the stars of heaven, illumined only now and then by 

 vivid and continuous flashes of forked lightning, followed 

 by terrific peals of thunder, which seemed to shake the 

 earth. 



The surface of the ocean was violently disturbed, and 

 lashed into foam by the driving gale, and on the shore 

 the lightning had struck a huge Casuarina tree, under 

 which our carpenters, who were cutting wood here, had 

 erected their tent, and had fallen and crushed a poor 

 Dutchman, as he lay on the sand at its root. On my 

 proceeding in the barge to his assistance, the fury of the 

 sweeping blast throwing the spray about, contrasting 



