IN PERILS BY SEA. 
161 
appears somewhat carelessly slung upon the mast, 
that bends and cracks in a most threatening 
manner in a furious gale. The Arab skipper 
sits silently upon a coil of rope or bundle of 
cloths in the stern, with a large paddle, shipped 
so as to act as a rudder, and with the rope of the 
sail twisted round his arm, or even held some¬ 
times in his teeth. The passenger is mounted 
dangerously high up in the centre of the canoe, 
and. is charged earnestly and often to keep ex¬ 
actly in the position appointed to him, or the 
whole affair will suddenly heel over and disappear 
beneath the waters. Hour after hour the canoe 
drifts onward before the wind, at a magnificent 
speed, and amid a silence broken only by the 
plash of the waves, or the cry of a startled sea¬ 
bird overhead, or the muttered devotions of the 
Moslem crew, who, if it happen to be their 
sacred month of Ramadan, will remain without 
food or water beneath the burning sun throughout 
the day, and only refresh their parched throats 
and bleeding lips when the sun has at length 
fallen into the western sea. At all times ab¬ 
stemious, these men during Ramadan barely 
touch food even of the simplest kind, and one 
cannot but admire their strength of principle and 
self-restraint, while pitying their intellectual and 
moral darkness. To them “ Azrael,” the angel of 
death, is an indescribable terror. The mention 
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