“Right, sir,” said Dick: but he finished the dinghy first, said that there’d be a row about the cut painter, and then had his glass of grog before he changed his things.
Chapter Twenty.
A Run after a Rajah.
Fresh news reached the residency the next day from the sultan, who sent word that he had had a very threatening letter from Rajah Gantang, declaring that if he did not break at once with the English, ruin, destruction, and death would be his fate before many months had passed.
This threatening language had completely upset the sultan, so the chief who bore the message said, and he begged that his friends and allies, the English, would not let him suffer for his fidelity to them; and when asked what he wished done, the chief replied that while Rajah Gantang lived there would be no peace, for the rajah’s emissaries were in every part of the country, ready to carry news, to rise on their lord’s behalf, even to assassinate, should their orders be to that extent.
The result of all this was a promise that the rajah should be found, if possible, though how it was to be done the resident could not say.
Just in the nick of time a good-sized prahu came down the river, and on anchoring by the steamer her captain went on board, with a pitiful tale of how he had been treated higher up the river.
Believing the rajah’s power to be broken, he had been on his way down, laden with a good cargo of tin, when he was summoned by a prahu to stop. This he refused to do, not knowing who summoned him, when he was attacked by a party from the prahu, two of those on board were killed, and he himself severely wounded.