'It's a duty,' says he, as one might say it was warm for the time of year. 'I suppose it began with Sarawak, which at first seemed to me like a foundling, which I protected with hesitation and doubt, but it has repaid my trouble. I have freed its people and its trade, given it a code of laws, encouraged industry and Chinese immigration, imposed only the lightest of taxes, and protected it from the pirates. Oh, I could make a fortune from it, but I content myself with a little - I'm either a man of worth, you see, or a mere adventurer after gain, and God forbid I should ever be that. But I'm well rewarded,' says he blandly, 'for all the good that I do ministers to my satisfaction.'
Pity you couldn't set it to music and sing it as an anthem, thinks I. Old Arnold would have loved it. But all I said was that it was undoubtedly God's work, and it was a crying shame that it went unrecognized; worth a knighthood at least, I'd have said.
'Titles?' cries he, smiling. 'They're like fine clothes, penny trumpets, and turtle soup - all of slight but equal value. No, no, I'm too quiet to be a hero. All my wish is for the good of Borneo and its people - I've shown what can be done here, but it is for our government at home to decide what means, if any, they put at my disposal to extend and develop my work.' His eyes took on that glitter that you see in camp-meeting preachers and company accountants. 'I've only touched the surface here - I want to open the interior of this amazing land, to exploit it for the benefit of its people, to correct the native character, to improve their lot. But you know our politicians and departments - they don't care for foreign ventures, and they're jolly wary of me, I can tell you.'
He laughed again. 'They suspect me of being up to some job or other, for my own good. And what can I tell 'em? - they don't know the country, and the only visits I ever get are brief and official. Well, what can an admiral learn in a week? If I'd any sense I'd vamp up a prospectus, get a board of directors, and hold public meetings. `Borneo Limited', what? That'd interest 'em, all right! But it would be the wrong thing, you see - and it'd only convince the government that I'm a filibuster myself- Blackbeard Teach with a clean shirt on. No, no, it wouldn't do.' He sighed. 'Yet how proud I should be, some day, to see Sarawak, and .aIl Borneo, under the British flag - for their good, not ours. It may never happen, more's the pity - but in the meantime, I have my duty to Sarawak and its people. I'm their only protector, and if I leave my life in the business, well, I shall have died nobly.'
Well, I've seen pure-minded complacency in my time, and done a fair bit in that line myself, when occasion demanded, but J.B. certainly beat all. Mind you, unlike most Arnoldian hypocrites, I think he truly believed what lie said; at least, he was fool enough to live up to it, so far as I could see, which is consistent with my conclusion that he was off his head. And when you remember that he excited the wrath of Gladstone25 - well, that speaks volumes in a chap's favour, doesn't it? But at the time I was just noting him down as another smug, lying, psalm-smiter devoted to prayer and profit, when he went and spoiled it all by bursting into laughter and saying:
'Mind you, if it's in a good cause, it's still the greatest fun! I don't know that I'd enjoy the protection and improvement of Sarawak above half, if it didn't involve fighting these piratical, head-taking vagabonds! It's just my good luck that duty combines with pleasure - maybe I'm not so different from Makota and the rest of these villains after all. They go a-roving for lust and plunder, and I go for justice and duty. It's a nice point, don't you think? You'll think me crazy, I dare say'— he little knew how right he was —'but sometimes I think that rascals like Sharif Sahib and Suleiman Usman and the Balagnini sea-wolves are the best friends I've got. Perhaps our radical MPs are right, and I'm just a pirate at heart.'
'Well, you look enough like one, J.B.,' says Wade, getting up from the board. 'Main chatter, sheikh matter- it's my game, Charlie.' He came to the rail and pointed, laughing, at the Dyaks and Malay savages who were swarming on the platform of the prau just ahead of us. 'They don't look exactly like a Sunday School treat, do they, Flashman? Pirates, if you like!'
'Flashman hasn't seen real pirates yet,' says Brooke. 'He'll see the difference then.'
I did, too, and before the day was out. We cruised swiftly along the coast all day, before the warm breeze, while the sun swung over and dropped like a blood-red rose behind us, and with the cooler air of evening we came at last to the broad estuary of the Batang Lupar. It was miles across, and among the little jungly islands of its western shore we disturbed an anchorage of squalid sailor-folk in weather-beaten sampans - orang laut, the Malays called them, 'sea-gipsies', the vagrants of the coast, who were always running from one debt-collector to another, picking up what living they could.
Paitingi brought their headman, a dirty, bedraggled savage, to the Phlegethon in one of the spy-boats, and after Brooke had talked to him he beckoned me to follow him down into Paitingi's craft, saying I should get the 'feel' of a spy-boat before we got into the river proper. I didn't much care for the sound of it, but took my seat behind him in the prow, where the gunwales were tight either side, and you put your feet delicately for fear of sending them clean through the light hull. Paitingi crouched behind me, and the Linga look-out straddled above me, a foot on either gunwale.
'Don't like it altogether,' says Brooke. 'Those bajoos say there are villages burning up towards the Rajang, and that ain't natural, when all that's sinful should be congregated up the Lupar, getting ready for us. We'll take a sniff about. Give way!'
The slender spy-boat shot away like a dart, trembling most alarmingly under my feet, with the thirty paddlers sweeping us silently forward. We threaded through the little islands, Brooke staring over towards the far shore, which was fading in the gathering dusk. There was a light mist coming down behind us, concealing our fleet, and a great bank of it was slowly rolling in from the sea, ghostly above the oily water. It was dead calm now, and the dank air made your flesh crawl; Brooke checked our pace, and we glided under the overhanging shelter of a mangrove bank, where the fronds dripped eerily. I saw Brooke's head turning this way and that, and then Paitingi stiffened behind me.
'Bismillah! J.B.!' he whispered. 'Listen!'
Brooke nodded, and I strained my ears, staring fearfully across that limpid water at the fog blanket creeping towards us. Then I heard something - at first I thought it was my heart, but gradually it resolved itself into a faint, regular, throbbing boom, coming faintly out of the mist, growing gradually louder. It was melodious but horrible, a deep metallic drumming that raised the hairs on my neck; Paitingi whispered behind me:
'War-gong. Bide you; don't even breathe!'
Brooke gestured for silence, and we lay hidden beneath the mangrove fronds, waiting breathlessly, while that h--ish booming grew to a slow thunder, and it seemed to me that behind it I could hear a rushing, as of some great thing flying along; my mouth was dry as I stared at the fog, waiting for some horror to appear - and then suddenly it was upon us, like a train rushing from a tunnel, a huge, scarlet shape bursting out of the mist. I only had a glimpse as it swept by, but the image is stamped on my memory of that long, gleaming red hull with its towering forecastle and stern; the platform over its bulwark crowded with men - flat yellow faces with scarves round their brows, lank hair flowing down over their sleeveless tunics; the glitter of swords and spear-heads, the ghastly line of white bobbing globes hanging like a horrible fringe from stem to stern beneath the platform - skulls, hundreds of them; the great sweeps churning the water; the guttering torches on the poop; the long silken pennants on the upper works writhing in the foggy air like coloured snakes; the figure of a half-naked giant beating the oar-stroke on a huge bronze gong - and then it was gone as swiftly as it had come, the booming receding into the mist as it drove up the Batang Lupar.26
The sweat was starting out on me as we waited, while two more praus like the first emerged and vanished in its wake; then Brooke looked past me at Paitingi.
'That's inconvenient,' says he. 'I made 'em Lanun, the first two; the third one Maluku. What d'ye think?'
'Lagoon pirates from Mindanao,' says Paitingi, 'but what the helI are they doin' here?' He spat into the water. 'There's an end tae our expedition, J.B. - there's a thousand men on each o' those devil-craft, more than we muster all told, and—'
'—and they've gone to join Usman,' says Brooke. He whistled softly to himself, scratching his head beneath the pilot-cap. 'Tell you what, Paitingi - he's taking us seriously, ain't he just?'
'Aye, so let's pay him the same compliment. If we beat back tae Kuching in the mornin', we can put oursel's in a state o' defence, at least, because, by God's beard, we're goin' tae have such a swarm roond oor ears—'
'Not us,' says Brooke. 'Them.' His teeth showed white in the gathering dark; he was quivering with excitement. 'D'ye know what, old 'un? I think this is just what we wanted - now I know what we can expect! I've
