Part 12

They listened silently, and then their scarred old chief stepped forward and placed a naked kris in the white man's hand and kissed his feet.

Before the sun went down that day the White Rajah was on his throne again, and ten thousand grim, fierce Suloos were hunting the Chinese like a pack of bloodhounds.

In 1848 Rajah Brooke decided to visit his old home in England, and ask his countrymen for teachers and missions. His fame had preceded him. All England was alive to his great deeds. There were greetings by enthusiastic crowds wherever he appeared, banquets by boards of trade, and gifts of freedom of cities. He was lodged in Balmoral Castle, knighted by the Queen, made Consul-General of Borneo, Governor of Labuan, Doctor of Laws by Oxford, and was the lion of the hour.

He returned to Sarawak, accompanied by European officers and friends, to carry on his great work of civilization, and to make of his little tropical kingdom a recognized power.

He died in 1868, and was carried back to England for burial, and I predict that at no distant day a grateful people will rise up and ask of England his body, that it may be laid to rest in the yellow sands under the graceful palms of the unknown nation of which he was the Washington.

His nephew, Sir Charles Brooke, who had also been his faithful companion for many years, succeeded him.

Sarawak has to-day a coast-line of over four hundred miles, with an area of fifty thousand square miles, and a population of three hundred thousand souls. The country produces gold, silver, diamonds, antimony, quicksilver, coal, gutta-percha, rubber, canes, rattan, camphor, beeswax, edible bird's-nests, sago, tapioca, pepper, and tobacco, all of which find their way to Singapore, and thence to Europe and America.

The Rajah is absolute head of the state; but he is advised by a legislative council composed of two Europeans and five native chiefs. He has a navy of a number of small but effective gunboats, and a well-trained and officered army of several hundred men, who look after the wild tribes of the interior of Borneo and guard the great coast-line from piratical excursions; otherwise they would be useless, as his rule is almost fatherly, and he is dearly beloved by his people.

It is impossible in one short sketch to relate a tenth of the daring deeds and startling adventures of these two white rajahs. Their lives have been written in two bulky volumes, and the American boy who loves stories that rival his favorite authors of adventure will find them by going to the library and asking for the "Life of the Rajah of Sarawak."

There is much in this "Life" that might be read by our statesmen and philanthropists with profit; for the building of a kingdom in a jungle of savage men and savage beasts places the name of Brooke of Borneo among those of the world's great men, as it does among those of the heroes of adventure.

One evening we were pacing back and forth on the deck of the Rajah's magnificent gunboat, the Raneé. A soft tropical breeze was blowing off shore. Thousands of lights from running rickshas and bullock carts were dancing along the wide esplanade that separates the city of Singapore from the sea. The strange old-world cries from the natives came out to us in a babel of sound.

Chinese in sampans and Malays in praus were gliding about our bows and back and forth between the great foreign men-of-war that overshadowed us. The Orient was on every hand, and I looked wonderingly at the slightly built, gray-haired man at my side, with a feeling that he had stepped from out some wild South Sea tale.

"Your Highness," I said, as we chatted, "tell me how you made subjects out of pirates and head-hunters, when our great nation, with all its power and gold, has only been able after one hundred years to make paupers out of our Indians."

"Do you see that man?" he replied, pointing to a stalwart, brown-faced Dyak, who in the blue and gold uniform of Sarawak was leaning idly against the bulwarks. "That is the Dato (Lord) Imaum, Judge of the Supreme Court of Sarawak. He was one of the most redoubtable of the Suloo pirates. My uncle fought him for eight years. In all that time he never broke his word in battle or in truce. When Sir James was driven from his throne by the Chinese, the Dato Imaum fought to reinstate him as his master.

"Civilization is only skin deep, and so is barbarism. Had your country never broken its word and been as just as it is powerful, your red men would have been to-day where our brown men are--our equals."

An hour later I stepped into my launch, which was lying alongside. The American flag at the peak came down, and the guns of the Raneé belched forth the consular salute.

I instinctively raised my hat as we glided over the phosphorescent waters of the harbor, for in my thoughts I was still in the presence of one of the great ones of the earth.

AMOK!

A Malayan Story

If you run amok in Malaya, you may perhaps kill your enemy or wound your dearest friend, but you may be certain that in the end you will be krissed like a pariah dog. Every man, woman, and child will turn his or her hand against you, from the mother who bore you to the outcast you have befriended. The laws are as immutable as fate.

Just where the great river Maur empties its vast volume of red water across a shifting bar into the Straits of Malacca, stands the kampong of Bander Maharani.

The Sultan Abubaker named the village in honor of his dead Sultana, and here, close down to the bank, was the palace of his nephew--the Governor, Prince Sulliman.

A wide, red, well-paved road separated the village of thatch and grass from the palace grounds, and ended at a wharf, up to which a steam-launch would dash from time to time, startling the half-grown crocodiles that slept beneath the rickety timbers.

Sometimes the little Prince Mat, the son of the Governor, came down to the wharf and played with the children of the captain of the launch, while his Tuan Penager, or Teacher, dozed beneath his yellow umbrella; and often, at their play, his Excellency would pause and watch them, smiling kindly.

At such times, the captain of the launch would fall upon his face, and thank the Prophet that he had lived to see that day. "For," he would say, "some day he may speak to me, and ask me for the wish I treasure."

Then he would go back to his work, polishing the brass on the railings of his boat, regardless of the watchful eyes that blinked at him from the mud beneath the wharf.

He smiled contentedly, for his mind was made up. He would not ask to be made master of the Sultan's marvellous yacht, that was sent out from Liverpool,--although the possibility made him catch his breath: he would ask nothing for himself,--he would ask that his Excellency let his son Noa go to Mecca, that he might become a hadji and then some day--who knows--Noa might become a kateeb in the attap-thatched mosque back of the palace.

And Noa, unmindful of his father's dreaming, played with the little Prince, kicking the ragga ball, or sailing miniature praus out into the river, and off toward the shimmering straits. But often they sat cross-legged and dropped bits of chicken and fruit between the palm sleepers of the wharf to the birch-colored crocodiles below, who snapped them up, one after another, never taking their small, cruel eyes off the brown faces that peered down at them.