'No,' said the Eldest Magician. 'That is a new and a bad play.'

'Look!' said the Man, and as he spoke the great Sea came up the
mouth of the Perak river, driving the river backwards till it
overflowed all the dark forests for miles and miles, and flooded
the Man's house.

'This is wrong. Launch your canoe and we will find out who is
playing with the Sea,' said the Eldest Magician. They stepped
into the canoe; the little girl-daughter came with them; and the
Man took his kris--a curving, wavy dagger with a blade like a
flame,--and they pushed out on the Perak river. Then the sea
began to run back and back, and the canoe was sucked out of the
mouth of the Perak river, past Selangor, past Malacca, past
Singapore, out and out to the Island of Bingtang, as though it
had been pulled by a string.

Then the Eldest Magician stood up and shouted, 'Ho! beasts,
birds, and fishes, that I took between my hands at the Very
Beginning and taught the play that you should play, which one of
you is playing with the Sea?'

Then all the beasts, birds, and fishes said together, 'Eldest
Magician, we play the plays that you taught us to play--we and
our children's children. But not one of us plays with the Sea.'

Then the Moon rose big and full over the water, and the Eldest
Magician said to the hunchbacked old man who sits in the Moon
spinning a fishing-line with which he hopes one day to catch the
world, 'Ho! Fisher of the Moon, are you playing with the Sea?'