I ain’t sentimental, but suddenly I could feel the tears running down my face, and I was muttering her name in the darkness, over and over, alone in my empty bed, where she ought to have been, all soft and warm and passionate—and just then there was a scratching at my door, and when it opened, there was Whampoa, bowing from his great height on the threshold. He came forward beside the bed, his hands tucked into his sleeves, and looked down at me. Was my shoulder, he asked, giving me great pain? I said it was agony.
“But no greater,” says he, “than your torment of mind. That, too, nothing can alleviate. The loss you have suffered, of the loveliest of companions, is a deprivation which cannot but excite compassion in any man of feeling. I know that nothing can take the place of the beautiful golden lady, and that every thought of her must be a pang of the most exquisite agony. But as some small, poor consolation to your grief of mind and body, I humbly offer the best that my poor establishment provides.” He said something in Chinese, and through the door, to my amazement, glided two of his little Chink girls, one in red silk, t’other in green. They came forward and stood either side of the bed, like voluptuous little dolls, and began to unbutton their dresses.
“These are White Tigress and Honey-and-Milk,” says Whampoa. “To offer you the services of only one would have seemed an insulting comparison with the magic of your exquisite lady, therefore I send two, in the hope that quantity may be some trivial amend for a quality which they cannot hope to approach. Triflingly inadequate as they are, their presence may soothe your pains in some infinitesimal degree. They are skilful by our mean standards, but if their clumsiness and undoubted ugliness are offensive, you should beat them for their correction and your pleasure. Forgive my presumption in presenting them.”
He bowed, retreating, and the door closed behind him just as the two dresses dropped to the floor with a gentle swish, and two girlish giggles sounded in the dimness.
You must never refuse an Oriental’s hospitality, you know. It doesn’t do, or they get offended; you just have to buckle to and pretend it’s exactly what you wanted, whether you like it or not.
For four days I was confined in Whampoa’s house with my gashed shoulder, recuperating, and I’ve never had a more blissfully ruinous convalescence in my life. It would have been interesting, had there been time, to see whether my wound healed before Whampoa’s solicitous young ladies killed me with their attentions; my own belief is that I would have expired just about the time the stitches were ready to come out. As it was, my confinement was cut short by the arrival and swift departure of H.M.S. Dido, commanded by one Keppel, R.N.; willy-nilly, I had to sail with her, staggering aboard still weak with loss of blood, et cetera, clutching the gangway not so much for support as to prevent my being wafted away by the first puff of breeze.
You see, it was taken for granted that as a devoted husband and military hero, I was in a sweat to be off in quest of my abducted spouse and her pirate ravisher—that was one of the disadvantages of life on the frontiers of Empire in the earlies, that you were expected to do your own avenging and recovering, with such assistance as the authorities might lend. Not my style at all; left to old Flash it would have been a case of tooling round to the local constabulary, reporting a kidnapped wife, leaving my name and address, and letting ’em get on with it. After all, it’s what they’re paid for, and why else was I stumping up sevenpence in the pound income tax?
I said as much to old Morrison, thinking it was the kind of view that would appeal to him, but all I got for my pains was tears and curses.
“You’re tae blame!” whimpers he, for he was far too reduced to bawl; he looked fit to pass away, his eyes sunk and his cheeks blenched, but still full of spite against me. “If you had been daein’ your duty as a husband, this would never have happened. Oh, Goad, ma puir wee lamb! My wee bit lassie—and you, where were ye? Whoorin’ away in some hoose o’ ill fame, like enough, while—”
“Nothing of the sort!” cries I indignantly. “I was at a Chinese restaurant,” at which he set up a great wail, burying his head in the bed-clothes and bawling about his wee bairn.
“Ye’ll bring her back!” he croaks presently. “Ye’ll save her—you’re a military man, wi’ decorations, an’ she’s the wife o’ your boozum, so she is! Say ye’ll bring her back tae her puir auld faither? Aye, ye’ll dae that—ye’re a guid lad, Harry—ye’ll no’ fail her.” And more in the same nauseating vein, interspersed with curses that he had ever set foot outside Glasgow. No doubt it was very pitiable, and if I’d been less disturbed myself and hadn’t despised the little swine so heartily, I might have felt sorry for him. I doubt it, though.
I left him lamenting, and went off to nurse my shoulder and reflect gloomily that there was no help for it—I would have to be first in the field when the pursuit got under way. The fellow Brooke, who—for reasons that I couldn’t fathom just then—seemed to have taken on himself the planning of the expedition, obviously took it for granted that I would go, and when Keppel arrived and agreed at once to put Dido and her crew into the business, there was no hanging back any longer.
Brooke was in a great lather of impatience to be away, and stamped and ground his teeth when Keppel said it would be at least three days before he could sail; he had treasure from Calcutta to unload, and must lay in stores and equipment for the expedition. “It’ll be river fighting, I dare say,” says he, yawning; he was a dry, likely-looking chap with blazing red hair and sleepy, humorous eyes.18 “Cutting out, jungle work, ambushes, that sort of thing? Ye-es, well, we know what happens if you rush into it at half-cock—remember how Belcher ripped the bottom out of Samarang on a shoal last year? I’ll have to restow Dido’s ballast, for one thing, and take on a couple of extra launches.”
“I can’t wait for that!” cries Brooke. “I must get to Kuching, for news of this villain Suleiman and to get my people and boats together. I hear Harlequin’s been sighted; I’ll go ahead in her—Hastings will take me when I tell him how fearfully urgent it is. We must run down this scoundrel and free Mrs Flashman without a moment’s delay!”
“You’re sure it’ll be Borneo, then?” says Keppel.
“It has to be!” cried Brooke. “No ship from the south in the last two days has sighted him. Depend upon it, he’ll either run for Maludu or the rivers.”
It was all Greek to me, and sounded horribly active and risky, but everyone deferred to Brooke’s judgement, and next day off he sailed in Harlequin. Because of my wound I was to rest in Singapore until Dido sailed two days later, but perforce I must be down at the quay when Brooke was rowed out with his motley gang by Harlequin’s boat crew. He seized my hand at parting.
“By the time you reach Kuching, we’ll be ready to run up the flag and run out the guns!” cried he. “You’ll see! And don’t fret yourself, old fellow—we shall have your dear lady back safe and sound before you know it. Just you limber up that sword-arm, and between us we’ll give these dogs a bit of your Afghan sauce. Why, in Sarawak we do this sort of thing before breakfast! Don’t we. Paitingi? Eh, Mackenzie?”
I watched them go—Brooke in the stern with his pilot-cap tipped at a rakish angle, laughing and slapping his knee in eagerness; the enormous Paitingi at his elbow, the black-bearded Mackenzie with his medical bag, and the other hard-cases disposed about the boat, with the hideous little Jingo in his loincloth nursing his blow-pipe spear. That was the fancy-dress crowd that I was to accompany on what sounded like a most hair-raising piece of madness—it was a dreadful prospect, and on the heels of my apprehension came fierce resentment at the frightful luck that was about to pitch me headlong into the stew again. D--n Elspeth, for a hare-brained, careless, wanton, ogling little slut, and d--n Solomon for a horny thief who hadn’t the decency to be content with women of his own beastly colour, and d--n this officious, bloodthirsty lunatic Brooke—who the d---l was he to go busybodying about uninvited, dragging me into his idiot enterprises? What right had he, and why did everyone defer to him as though he was some mix
ture of God and the Duke of Wellington?
I found out, the evening Dido sailed, after I had taken my fond farewells—whining and shouting with Morrison, stately and generous with the hospitable Whampoa, and ecstatically frenzied in the last minute of packing with my dear little nurses. I went aboard almost on my hands and knees, as I’ve said, with Stuart helping me, for he had stayed behind to bear me company and execute some business for Brooke. It was while we were at the stern rail of the corvette, watching the Singapore islands sinking black into the fiery sunset sea, that I dropped some chance remark about his crazy commander—as you know, I still had precious little idea who he was, and I must have said so, for Stuart started round, staring at me.
“Who’s J.B.?” he cried. “You can’t mean it! Who’s J.B.? You don’t know? Why, he’s the greatest man in the East, that’s all! You’re not serious—bless me, how long have you been in Singapore?”
“Not long enough, evidently. All I know is that he and you and your…ah, friends…rescued me mighty handy the other night, and that since then he’s very kindly taken charge of operations to do the same for my wife.”
He blessed himself again, heartily, and enlightened me with frightening enthusiasm.
“J.B.—His Royal Highness James Brooke—is the King of Sarawak, that’s who he is. I thought the whole world had heard of the White Raja! Why, he’s the biggest thing in these parts since Raffles—bigger, even. He’s the law, the prophet, the Grand Panjandrum, the tuan besar*—the whole kitboodle! He’s the scourge of every pirate and brigand on the Borneo coast—the best fighting seaman since Nelson, for my money—he tamed Sarawak, which was the toughest nest of rebels and head-hunters this side of Papua, he’s its protector, its ruler, and to the natives, its saint! Why, they worship him down yonder—and more power to ’em, for he’s the truest friend, the fairest judge, and the noblest, whitest man in the whole wide world! That’s who J.B. is.”
“My word, I’m glad he happened along,” says I. “I didn’t know we had a colony in—Sarawak, d’you call it?”
“We haven’t. It’s not British soil. J.B. is nominal governor for the Sultan of Brunei—but it’s his kingdom, not Queen Victoria’s. How did he get it? Why, he sailed in there four years ago, after the d-mfool Company Army pensioned him off for overstaying his furlough. He’d bought this brig, the Royalist, you see, with some cash his guv’nor left him, and just set off on his own account.” He laughed, shaking his head. “G-d, we were mad! There were nineteen of us, with one little ship, and six six-pounder guns, and we got a kingdom with it! J.B. delivered the native people from slavery, drove out their oppressors, gave ’em a proper government—and now, with a few little boats, his loyal natives, and those of us who’ve survived, he’s fighting single-handed to drive piracy out of the Islands and make them safe for honest folk.”19
“Very commendable,” says I. “But isn’t that the East India Company’s job—or the navy’s?”
“Bless you, they couldn’t even begin it!” cries he. “There’s barely a British squadron in all these enormous waters—and the pirates are numbered in tens upon tens of thousands. I’ve seen fleets of five hundred praus and bankongs—those are their warboats—cruising together, crammed with fighting men and cannon, and behind them hundreds of miles of coastline in burning ruin—towns wiped out, thousands slaughtered, women carried off as slaves, every peaceful vessel plundered and sunk—I tell you, the Spanish Main was nothing to it! They leave a trail of destruction and torture and abomination wherever they go. They set our navy and the Dutch at defiance, and hold the Islands in terror—they have a slave-market at Sulu where hundreds of human beings are bought and sold daily; even the kings and rajas pay them tribute—when they aren’t pirates themselves. Well, J.B. don’t like it, and he means to put a stop to it.”
“Hold on, though—what can he do, if even the navy’s powerless?”
“He’s J.B.,” says Stuart, simply, with that drunk, smug look you see on a child’s face when his father mends a toy. “Of course, he gets the navy to help—why, we had three navy vessels at Murdu in February, when he wiped out the Sumatra robbers—but his strength is with the honest native peoples—some of ’em were once pirates themselves, and head-hunters, like the Sea Dyaks, until J.B. showed ’em better. He puts spirit into them, bullies and wheedles the rajas, gathers news of the pirates, and when they least expect it, takes his expeditions against their forts and harbours, fights ’em to a standstill, burns their ships, and either makes ’em swear to keep the peace, or else! That’s why everyone in Singapore jumps when he whistles—why, how long d’you think it would have taken them to do anything about your missus—months, years even? But J.B. says “Go!” and don’t they just! And if I’d gone along Beach Road this morning looking for people to bet that J.B. couldn’t rescue her, good as new, and destroy this swine Suleiman Usman—well, I’d not have got a single taker, at a hundred to one. He’ll do it, all right. You’ll see.”
“But why?” says I, without thinking, and he frowned. “I mean,” I added, “he hardly knows me—and he’s never even met my wife—but the way he’s gone about this, you’d think we were—well, his dearest relatives.”
“Well, that’s his way, you know. Anything for a friend—and with a lady involved, of course, that makes it all the more urgent—to him. He’s a bit of a knight-errant, is J.B. Besides, he likes you.”
“What? He don’t even know me.”
“Don’t he, though! Why, I remember when we got the news of the great deeds you’d done at Kabul, J.B. talked of nothing else for days, read all the papers, kept exclaiming over your defence of Piper’s Fort. ‘That’s the man for me!’ he kept saying. ‘By Jingo, what wouldn’t I give to have him out here! We’d see the last pirate out of the China Sea between us!’ Well, now he’s got you—I shouldn’t wonder if he doesn’t move heaven and earth to keep you.”
You can guess how this impressed me. I could see, of course, that J.B. was just the man for the task in hand—if anyone could bring Elspeth off, more or less undamaged, it was probably he, for he seemed to be the same kind of desperate, stick-at-nothing adventurer I’d known in Afghanistan—wild men like Georgie Broadfoot and Sekundar Burnes. The trouble with fellows like those is that they’re d----d dangerous to be alongside; it would be capital if I could arrange it that Brooke went off a-rescuing while I stayed safe in the rear, hallooing encouragement, but my wound was healing nicely, b---t it, and the outlook was disquieting.
It was a question which was still vexing me four days later when the Dido, under sweeps, came gliding over a sea like blue glass to the mouth of the Kuching river, and I saw for the first time those brilliant golden beaches washed with foam, the low green flats of mangrove creeping to the water’s edge among the little islands, the palm-fringed creeks, and in the distant southern haze the mountains of Borneo.
“Paradise!” exclaims Stuart, breathing in the warm air, “and I don’t give a d--n if I never see Dover cliffs again. Look at it—half a million square miles of the loveliest land in the world, unexplored, except for this little corner. Sarawak’s where civilisation begins and ends, you know—go a day’s march in yonder”—he pointed towards the mountains—“and if you’re still alive you’ll be among head-hunters who’ve never seen a white man. Ain’t it capital, though?”
I couldn’t say it was. The river, as we went slowly up it, was broad enough, and the land green and fertile, but it had that steamy look that spells fever, and the air was hot and heavy. We passed by several villages, some of them partly built over the water on stilts, with long, primitive thatched houses; the water itself was aswarm with canoes and small boats, manned by squat, ugly, grinning little men like Jingo; I don’t suppose one of them stood more than five feet, but they looked tough as teak. They wore simple loin-cloths, with rings round their knees, and head-cloths; some had black and white feathers in their hair. The women were fairer than the men, although no taller, and decidedly good-looking, in an impudent, pug-nosed way; they
wore their hair long, down their backs, and went naked except for kilts, swinging their bums and udders in a way that did your heart good to see. (They couple like stoats, by the way, but only with men of proved bravery. In a country where the usual engagement ring is a human head, it follows that you have to be bloodthirsty in order to get your muttons.)
“Sea Dyaks,” says Stuart. “The bravest, cheeriest folk you’ll ever see—fight like tigers, cruel as the grave, but loyal as Swiss. Listen to ’em jabber—that’s the coast lingua franca, part Malay, but with Portuguese, French, Dutch, and English thrown in. Amiga sua!” cries he, waving to one of the boatmen—that, I learned, means “my friend”, which gives you some notion.
Sarawak, as Stuart said, might be the civilised corner of Borneo, but as we drew closer to Kuching you could see that it was precious like an armed camp. There was a huge log boom across the river, which had to be swung open so that Dido could warp through, and on the low bluffs either side there were gun emplacements, with cannon peeping through the earthworks; there were cannon, too, on the three strange craft at anchor inside the boom—they were like galleys, with high stern and forecastles, sixty or seventy feet long, with their great oars resting in the water like the legs of some monstrous insect.
“War praus,” cries Stuart. “By Jove, there’s something up—those are Lundu boats. J.B.’s mustering his forces with a vengeance!”
We rounded a bend, and came in sight of Kuching proper; it wasn’t much of a place, just a sprawling native town, with a few Swiss cottages on the higher ground, but the river was jammed with ships and boats of every description—at least a score of praus and barges, light sailing cutters, launches, canoes, and even a natty little paddle-steamer. The bustle and noise were tremendous, and as Dido dropped anchor in mid-stream she was surrounded by swarms of little boats, from one of which the enormous figure of Paitingi Ali came swinging up to the deck, to present himself to Keppel, and then come over to us.
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