PLEASURES OF COAST-LINING 19 



luck) at night ; all except the tide-watchers, who will 

 have to wait patiently watching their tide-pole for a 

 month or so. 



If we follow these different boats and launches, we 

 shall get some explanatory glimpses of life in the 

 sea-survey. 



The coast-lining party vvill, of course, make for 

 land, and if they are working on the Coromandel 

 coast, they are likely to have a pleasant pull of 

 3 or 4 miles in nice, choppy, muddy water, before 

 they reach it. If they are surveying among the 

 Laccadives or Andamans, they will probably have 

 to choose their mode of landing between jumping 

 into the surf, or being chucked out in disorder by a 

 playful octave wave. Supposing them and their 

 apparatus safely landed, we shall see them toiling 

 along shore all day with theodolite and sketch-board, 

 sometimes lurching through loose sand, sometimes 

 stumbling through mud, occasionally negotiating a 

 creek, or racing the flowing tide round a headland. 

 At midday they will stop for twenty minutes to refresh 

 themselves : they may find a square foot of shade 

 for the purpose, but they will hardly escape the 

 sportive sea-breeze that plentifully peppers their food 

 with sand, and sometimes a large party of those tiny 

 but peculiarly venomous mosquitoes known as sand- 

 flies will come to lunch with them. About sunset 

 they will have to fight their boat through the surf 



