CHAPTER XVIII
A Summons to Sadong
With pen poised, Peter Gross sat at his desk in the residency building and stared thoughtfully at the blank sheets of stationery before him. He was preparing a letter to Captain Rouse, to assure that worthy that all was going well, that Paddy was in the best of health and proving his value in no uncertain way, and to give a pen picture of the situation. He began:
Dear Captain:
Doubtless you have heard from Paddy before this, but I want to add my assurance to his that he is in the best of health and is heartily enjoying himself. He has already proven his value to me, and I am thanking my lucky stars that you let me have him.
We have been in Bulungan for nearly a month, and so far all is well. The work is going on, slowly, to be sure, but successfully, I hope. I can already see what I think are the first fruits of my policies.
The natives are not very cordial as yet, but I have made some valuable friends among them. The decisions I have been called upon to make seem to have given general satisfaction, in most instances. I have twice been obliged to set aside the judgments of controlleurs, whose rulings appeared unjust to me, and in both cases my decision was in favor of the poorer litigant. This has displeased some of the orang kayas, or rich men, of the villages, but it has strengthened me with the tribesmen, I believe.
He described the council and the result, and continued:
I am now having a census taken of each district in the residency. I have made the controlleur in each district responsible for the accuracy of the census in his territory, and have made Mynheer Muller, the acting-resident prior to my coming, chief of the census bureau. He opposed the count at first, but has come round to my way of thinking, and is prosecuting the work diligently. The chief difficulty is the natives—some one has been stirring them up—but I have high hopes of knowing, before the next harvest, how many people there are in each village and what proportion of the tax each chief should be required to bring. The taxation system has been one of the worst evils in Bulungan in the past; the poor have been oppressed, and all the tax-gatherers have enriched themselves, but I expect to end this....
I had a peculiar request made of me the other day. Captain Van Slyck asked that Captain Carver and his company be quartered away from Bulungan. The presence of Carver's irregulars was provoking jealousies among his troops, he said, and was making it difficult to maintain discipline. There is reason in his request, yet I hesitate to grant it. Captain Van Slyck has not been very friendly toward me, and a mutiny in the garrison would greatly discredit my administration. I have not yet given him my answer....
Inchi tells me there is a persistent rumor in the town that the great Datu, the chief of all the pirates, is in Bulungan. I would have believed his story the day after the council, for I thought I recognized his voice there; but I must have been mistaken. Captain Enckel, of the Prins Lodewyk, who was here a week ago, brings me positive assurance that the man is at Batavia. He saw him there himself, he says. It cannot be that my enemy has a double; nature never cast two men in that mold in one generation. Since Inchi cannot produce any one who will swear positively that he has seen the Datu, I am satisfied that the report is unfounded. Maybe you can find out something.
As Peter Gross was affixing the required stamp, the door opened and Paddy Rouse entered.