MAUBIN
awnings, the mosquito nets, the table-linen, and the
punkha flaps, and from every object on which they
can secure a footing, including notably the corpus vile
of the white man, for whom Providence made the
Universe, is to have lived indeed. How to continue
to live after the novelty of the spectacle has worn off,
is the definite problem that occupies every one’s mind
in Maubin. It is achieved in the main by entrenching
one’s self within an iron fortress of fine mesh.
A European house in Maubin is thus a curiosity.
Every window—and in the tropics there is an infinity
of windows—is protected by sliding curtains of iron
gauze; every ventilator under the eaves, every open
460
space between the room partitions and the; roof (and
for the sake of air, such spaces are large and frequent),
is barred against invasion by sheets of gauze. In some
houses there is a special roomr a kind of inner citadel
and last refuge, which is wholly of iron gauze, and
within it, the master of the house sits like a vanquished
lion in a cage.
To enter this fortress in' advance of the enemy
calls for the exercise of agility of a high order. The
doors have swing-backs, and are made to close the
instant that they are released. Outside them, the light
cavalry of the enemy hover in 'clouds. The man within,
this Englishman in his strange castle, observes your
approach with furtive and anxious eyes, and if you be a
newcomer, he begs of you to be careful in entering.
Immediately you enter, he falls with an astonishing
onslaught upon such of the enemy as have come in on
your backl§n your hair, in the creases of your clothes,
and in an aurora of cloud about your brows.
FISHING IN THE DELTA