The Consul-General now officially informed the Council of Sarawak that the British Government disavowed and totally disapproved of Governor Edwardes' proceedings. But though they reprimanded him, they supported him in office. His term as Governor was, however, very shortly to expire, but not till he had seen, what must have been gall and bitterness to his soul, as it certainly was to his backers in England, the cession by the Sultan to Sarawak of Muka and all the region of the sago plantations, the produce of which he had hoped to secure for Labuan, and the banishment of Sherip Masahor from Borneo.
Mr. St. John went on to Bruni and relieved Mr. Edwardes of his position as Consul-General, and was the tactful and just medium for arranging the difficulties produced by the conduct of the latter. He says:
I established myself in the capital, to find the Sultan sulky at the failure of Mr. Edwardes' promises. I remained quiet for a few weeks, when I found his Highness gradually coming round, but it was long ere I was again established first adviser to the Crown, for Mr. Edwardes' promises had either been great, or had been misunderstood, and they thought that the British Government was about to remove the English from Sarawak, and return the country to them.[[265]]
In April the Rajah went to Bruni. The Sultan and the wazirs received him warmly, and the good understanding between the two countries was established anew. The Sultan was now anxious to place Muka and the intermediate places under the Rajah's rule, but the latter waived this consideration until hostilities were over. The Rajah then went to Oya, Mr. St. John accompanying him, also the Sultan's envoy, Haji Abdul Rahman, bearing private letters and messages from the Sultan pressing Pangiran Nipa not to fight. Here the principal chiefs were seen, and the Sultan's commands that hostilities should cease and that Sherip Masahor was to be banished were read to them.[[266]]
Mr. St. John then went to Singapore to obtain a man-of-war from which to deliver the Sultan's decree at Muka, and the Rajah made every preparation to assume the offensive against Muka, as it was not expected that the Sherip would quietly submit to even the Sultan's mandate. Masahor had defied both the Sultan and the Bruni Rajahs, and had heaped insults upon them so often before when in the plenitude of his power in the Rejang, where he had been practically an independent prince, with the dreaded and powerful Kayans and the Dayaks at his back, that his submission was doubtful. This was no idle supposition, as one writer has suggested, for when, two months after Mr. Edwardes' ill-advised action at Muka, the Victoria, conveying Messrs. A. C. Crookshank and L. V. Helms (of the Borneo Company), again visited Muka, to endeavour once more by peaceable means to re-open trade with Kuching, these gentlemen and the captain, who had foolishly gone up to the town unarmed and without a guard, met with a hostile reception on the part of the Sherip, and would have fared badly at his hands, had not his adherents been prevailed upon to desist by the wiser counsel of Pangiran Nipa.
Mr. St. John went to Muka in H.M.S. Charybdis, and with Captain Keane and an armed force of 200 blue-jackets and marines proceeded up to the town. The Sultan's titah (decree), "advising a cessation of hostilities, and that Sherip Masahor and his men were to leave the country," was read, and both Pangiran Nipa and the Sherip promised obedience. They were told that Mr. Edwardes' interference had not met with the approval of her Majesty's Government, and "Captain Keane's judicious conduct in taking an overpowering force up the river to the middle of the town showed them that Mr. Edwardes' support was no longer to be relied upon."[[267]]
The Rajah then went to Muka with a large force to ensure that there should be no resistance, and Muka was surrendered to him. Pangiran Nipa and the Bruni aristocracy were sent to Bruni, and Sherip Masahor was deported to Singapore. The Rajah wrote: "He will never trouble Sarawak more, and I am not lover enough of bloody justice to begrudge him his life on that condition. He deserved death, but he was a murderer for political ends."
The Rajah now established himself at Muka, and spent a month working to bring order into the district, so torn by civil war and crushed by oppression that everything was in confusion, and where there had been no protection for either person or property, and justice had not been administered. The effect of opening the port was immediate. Numbers of vessels entered bringing goods from Kuching to traffic with the natives for raw sago.
Early in August the Rajah went to Bruni again, and for the last time. The concession to Sarawak of the coast and districts from the Rejang to Kedurong point was then completed. For many years the Sultan had derived little or no revenue from these parts, for what had been squeezed out of the natives by the pangirans went to fill their own pockets, and he was more than satisfied to receive a sum down and an annual subsidy, which would be paid into his own hands. And the natives rejoiced, for they were now freed from the rapacity of these Bruni pangirans.
"And thus," says the Tuan Muda, "were about 110 miles of coast annexed to the Sarawak territory—valuable for the sago forests, but in a most disturbed state, owing to a prolonged period of the worst anarchy and misgovernment. Its inhabitants had many redeeming qualities when once relieved from the Bruni tyranny and oppression, as they were industrious and clever in different trades, particularly that of working wood, and the rougher kinds of jungle labour. But they required a severe hand over them, although one that was just, and were scarcely able to appreciate kindness. They had considered it a merit to a certain extent to be the Sultan's slaves, although they had many times smarted under the foulest injustice, and been deprived of their wives and daughters; the majority of the latter class were often taken for the Bruni Rajahs' harems.