Sir James Brooke
“The Santah River,” he wrote, “is famous for its diamonds. The workers seem jealous and superstitious, disliking noise, particularly laughter, as it is highly offensive to the spirit who presides over the diamonds.... A Chinese Mohammedan with the most solemn face requested me to give him an old letter; and he engraved some Chinese characters, which, being translated signify ‘Rajah Muda Hassim, James Brooke, and Hadju Ibrahim present their compliments to the spirit and request his permission to work at the mine.’”
There were great doings when the sultan of Borneo had Mr. Brooke proclaimed king in Sarawak. Then he went off to the Straits Settlements, where he made friends with Henry Keppel, captain of H. M. S. Dido, a sportsman who delighted in hunting pirates, and accepted Brooke’s invitation to a few days’ shooting. Keppel describes the scene of Brooke’s return to his kingdom, received by all the chiefs with undisguised delight, mingled with gratitude and respect for their newly-elected ruler. “The scene was both novel and exciting, presenting to us—just anchored in a large fresh water river, and surrounded by a densely wooded jungle—the whole surface of the water covered with canoes and boats dressed with colored silken flags, filled with natives beating their tom-toms, and playing on wind instruments, with the occasional discharge of firearms. To them it must have been equally striking to witness the Dido anchored almost in the center of their town, her mastheads towering above the highest trees of that jungle, the loud report of her heavy thirty-two-pounder guns, the manning aloft to furl sails of one hundred fifty seamen in their clean white dresses, and with the band playing. I was anxious that Mr. Brooke should land with all the honors due to so important a personage, which he accordingly did, under a salute.”
It was a little awkward that the Dido struck a rock and sank, but she chose a convenient spot just opposite Mr. Brooke’s house, so that Brooke’s officers and those of the ship formed one mess there, a band of brothers, while the damage was being repaired. Then came the promised sport, a joint boat expedition up all sorts of queer back channels and rivers fouled by the pirates with stakes and booms under fire of the artillery in their hill fortresses. The sportsmen burst the booms, charged the hills, stormed the forts, burned out the pirates and obtained their complete submission. Brooke invited them all to a pirate conference at his house and, just as with the land rogues, charmed them out of their skins. He fought like a man, but his greatest victories were scored by perfect manners.
The next adventure was a visit from the Arctic explorer, Sir Edward Belcher, sent by the British government to inspect Brooke’s kingdom, now a peaceful and happy country.
Later came Admiral Sir Thomas Cochrane with a squadron to smash up a few more pirates, and the smashing of pirates continued for many years a popular sport for the navy. The pirate states to the northward became in time the British colonies of Labuan, and North Borneo, but Sarawak is still a protected Malay state, the hereditary kingdom of Sir James Brooke and his descendants. May that dynasty reign so long as the sun shines.
XI
A. D. 1842 THE SPIES
I
From earliest childhood Eldred Pottinger was out of place in crowded England. Gunpowder is good exciting stuff to play with, and there could be no objection to his blowing up himself and his little brother, because that was all in the family; but when he mined the garden wall and it fell on a couple of neighbors, they highly took offense; and when his finely invented bomb went off at Addiscombe College he rose to the level of a public nuisance. On the whole it must have been a relief to his friends when he went to India. There he had an uncle, the president in Scinde, a shrewd man who shipped young Pottinger to the greatest possible distance in the hinder parts of Afghanistan.