At last he lost interest in America and asked why I had come to Trengganu. I told him I had come to trap animals and I wanted his permission. He shook his head and replied that there were no animals in Trengganu.
"If you will send your messengers out," I answered, "you will find that an immense herd of elephants is crossing from Pahang into your country."
"How do you know?"
"I heard." It was a Malay answer, and I could see that he was interested. A roaming herd of elephants is dangerous; it spoils rice crops, terrorizes the natives—and most important of all—reduces the Sultan's income.
He ordered coffee and Malay cakes and plunged into thought. The coffee was muddy and bitter, but I drank it joyfully because I knew the Sultan, being worried, would probably see the wisdom of allowing me to enter his country and capture the elephants. Also I suggested that he would receive a bonus on each animal I captured. He nodded and asked me to come to the palace the next day.
Each day for three weeks I called on him and spent hours in telling him of my travels. And he told me something of the worries of being a Sultan. He was afraid that one of the big powers would establish a protectorate over Trengganu, depose him and reduce his people to slavery. He knew very little of foreigners, but he had come to the conclusion that the best thing to do was to keep them out. What did I think was the best plan? We held long conferences, in which I enlightened him on the ways of white men. The subject of elephant hunting scarcely came into the conversations, but I knew that he had sent messengers out to see if there was any truth in my story about the herd crossing from Pahang. I was slowly winning his confidence; everything depended upon the truth of that rumor I had picked up in Singapore.
Exactly three weeks after our first meeting, he greeted me with the words: "Tûan châkap bêtul (Sir, you spoke the truth)."
"I always speak the truth," I answered, as if I were annoyed. The messengers had returned with the news that the herd had been seen near the Pahang River.
He asked what I proposed to do, and I drew a diagram of the trap I wanted to build. He asked if it would not be a better plan to shoot the big elephants and capture the young. I put stress on the royalty payments he would receive, and thus I won him to my way of thinking.
He assigned his nephew Omar—a tunku—to the duty of assisting me, and gave him full power to force as much labor as we might need. A few days later, Omar and I, accompanied by the Sultan, sailed down the coast to the Pahang. It was a wide, deep river, infested with crocodiles; settlements dotted the banks. At each of these we stopped and called on the headmen to conscript labor.