70 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA 



undue persistence of what we in more temperate climes 

 call fine weather, meaning the appearance day after 

 day of cloudless, rainless skies, and the succession of 

 soft dry winds, means death by starvation to millions 

 of our fellow-creatures. We cannot sympathize with 

 them in their dumb patient longing for the change of 

 the monsoon or understand the immense significance 

 of the four words flashed across the wires from continent 

 to continent, " The monsoon has burst." When at last 

 the change does come, it comes with a suddenness 

 entirely justifying the use of the last word of the 

 telegram. The monsoon does burst upon the burnt-up 

 soil, and the long pent-up rain is borne by the on- 

 rushing south-west wind all over the gasping country 

 with a violence that seems as if it would complete the 

 destruction more slowly wrought by the desiccating 

 breath of the north-east monsoon. At first the iron- 

 hard soil refuses to permit the beneficent flood to 

 percolate and the foaming torrents overrun the land, 

 roaring down the crevasses which gape everywhere. 

 The grateful earth swells, revives, and its cruel wounds 

 close up. The barren-looking stalks of the crops, 

 which have long looked dead, revive and put forth 

 their tender green shoots, until in an incredibly short 

 space of time the whole land is clothed in an emerald 

 mantle of surpassing loveliness. Man and beast revel 

 in the delightsome relief, and almost as rapidly as the 

 vegetable world responds to the life-giving call of the 

 heavens by girding themselves with fresh strength, 

 forgetting all their miseries. 



But out at sea the sailor mourns, for to him the 

 advent of the south-west monsoon spells dirty weather, 

 which never sailor loved yet. In place of the gentle 



