their usual seats around the room. The deceased is then brought in
attired in his best clothes, with a cigar fixed in his mouth; and,
being placed on the mat in the same manner as when alive, his betel box
is set by his side. The friends go through the form of conversing with
him, and offer him the best advice concerning his future proceedings,
and then, having feasted, the body is deposited in a large coffin and
kept in the house for several months.”
The habits of the natives have been interfered with by the Malays, who
conquered most of them and carved their island up into kingdoms more or
less civilized, but not managed at all in the interests of the Dyaks.
These kingdoms were decayed and tumbling to pieces when the Dutch came
in to help, and helped themselves to the whole of Borneo except the
northwestern part. They pressingly invited themselves there also, but
the Malay rajah kept putting them off with all sorts of polite excuses.
While the rajah’s minister was running short of excuses to delay the
Dutch an English yacht arrived in Sarawak. The owner was Mr. James
Brooke, who had been an officer in the East India Company, but being
hit with a slug in the lungs during the first Burma war, was retired
with a pension of seventy pounds for wounds. Afterward he came into a
fortune of thirty thousand pounds, took to yachting, traveled a great
deal in search of adventure, and so in 1839 arrived in Sarawak on the
lookout for trouble.
An Englishman of gentle birth is naturally expected to tell the truth,
to be clean in all his dealings, to keep his temper, and not to show
his fears. Not being a beastly cad, Brooke as a matter of course
conformed to the ordinary standards and, having no worries, was able
to do so cheerfully. One may meet men of this stock, size and pattern
by thousands the world over, but in a decayed Malay state, at war with
the Dyaks ashore and the pirates afloat, Brooke was a phenomenon just
as astonishing as a first-class comet, an earthquake eruption, or a
cyclone. His arrival was the only important event in the whole history
of North Borneo. The rajah sought his advice in dealing with the Dutch,
the Dyaks and the pirates. The Malays, Dyaks, pirates and everybody
else consulted him as to their dealings with the rajah. On his second
visit he took a boat’s crew from his yacht and went to the seat of war.
There he tried to the verge of tears to persuade the hostile forces
either to fight or make friends, and when nobody could be induced to
do anything at all, he, with his boat’s crew and one native warrior,
stormed the Dyak position, putting the enemy to total rout and flight.
Luckily, nobody was hurt, for even a cut finger would have spoiled the
perfect bloodlessness of Brooke’s victory. Then the Dyaks surrendered
to Brooke. Afterward the pirate fleet appeared at the capital, not to
attack the rajah, but to be inspected by Brooke, and when he had patted
the pirates they went away to purr. Moreover the rajah offered to hand
over his kingdom to Brooke as manager, and the Englishman expected him
to keep his word. Brooke brought a shipload of stores in payment for a
cargo of manganese, but the rajah was so contented with that windfall
that he forgot to send to his mines for the ore.
Further up the coast a British ship was destroyed by lightning, and
her crew got ashore where they were held as captives pending a large
ransom. Even when the captain’s wife had a baby the local bigwig
thereabouts saw a new chance of plunder, and stole the baby-clothes.
Then the shipwrecked mariners sent a letter to Brooke appealing for his
help; but nothing on earth could induce the spineless boneless rajah to
send the relief he had promised. Then Brooke wrote to Singapore whence
the East India Company despatched a war-ship which rescued the forty
castaways.
The rajah’s next performance was to arrange for a percentage with two
thousand, five hundred robbers who proposed to plunder and massacre his
own subjects. Brooke from his yacht stampeded the raiders with a few
rounds from the big guns--blank of course. Brooke was getting rather
hard up, and could not spare ball ammunition on weekdays.
So King Muda Hassim lied, cheated, stole, betrayed, and occasionally
murdered--a mean rogue, abject, cringing to Brooke, weeping at the
Englishman’s threats to depart, holding his throne so long as the white
yacht gave him prestige; but all this with pomp and circumstance,
display of gems and gold, a gorgeous retinue, plenty of music, and
royal salutes on the very slightest pretext. But all the population was
given over to rapine and slaughter, and the forest was closing in on
ruined farms. The last and only hope of the nation was in Brooke.
Behind every evil in the state was Makota, the prime minister, a polite
and gentlemanly rascal, and at the end of two years he annoyed Brooke
quite seriously by putting arsenic in the interpreter’s rice. Brooke
cleared his ship for action, and with a landing party under arms
marched to the palace gates. In a few well-chosen words he explained
Makota’s villainy, showed that neither the rajah’s life nor his own was
safe, and that the only course was to proclaim Brooke as governor.
No shot was fired, no blow was struck, but Makota’s party vanished, the
villain fled, the rajah began to behave, the government of the country
was handed over to the Englishman amid great popular rejoicings. “My
darling mother,” he wrote, “I am very poor, but I want some things from
home very much; so I must trust to your being rich enough to afford
them to me. Imprimis, a circle for taking the latitude; secondly, an
electrifying machine of good power; thirdly, a large magic lantern;
fourthly, a rifle which carries fifty balls; and last, a peep-show.
The circle and rifle I want very much; and the others are all for
political purposes.” Did ever king begin his reign with such an act as
that letter?
But then, look at the government he replaced: “The sultan and his
chiefs rob all classes of Malays to the utmost of their power; the
Malays rob the Dyaks, and the Dyaks hide their goods as much as they
dare, consistent with the safety of their wives and children.” Brooke
found his private income a very slender fund when he had to pay the
whole expense of governing a kingdom until the people recovered from
their ruin.
February the first, 1842, a pirate chief called to make treaty with
the new king. “He inquired, if a tribe pirated on my territory what
I intended to do. My answer was ‘to enter their country and lay it
waste.’ ‘But,’ he asked me again, ‘you will give me--your friend--leave
to steal a few heads occasionally?’ ‘No,’ I replied, ‘I shall have a
hundred Sakarran heads for every one you take here!’ He recurred to
this request several times--‘just to steal one or two’-as a schoolboy
asks for apples.”
Brooke used to give the pirates his laughing permission to go to
Singapore and attack the English.
[Illustration: 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.
The political situation in Afghanistan was the usual howling chaos of
oriental kingdoms, and the full particulars would bore the reader just
as they bored me. It was Pottinger’s business to find out and report
the exact state of affairs at a time when any white man visiting the
country was guaranteed, if and when found, to have his throat cut.
Being clever at native languages, with a very foxy shrewdness, the
young spy set off, disguised as a native horse dealer, and reached
Cabul, the Afghan capital.
The reigning ameer was Dost Mahomet, who was not on speaking terms with
Kamran, king of Herat, and Pottinger’s job was to get through to Herat
without being caught by Dost. The horse-copper disguise was useless
now, so Pottinger became a Mahomedan _syed_, or professional holy man.
He sent his attendants and horses ahead, slipped out of the capital on
foot by night and made his way to his camp. So he reached the country
of the Hazareh tribes where his whole expedition was captured by the
principal robber Jakoob Beg, who did a fairly good business in selling
travelers, as slaves, except when they paid blackmail. “The chief,”
says Pottinger, “was the finest Hazareh I had seen, and appeared a
well-meaning, sensible person. He, however, was quite in the hands of
his cousin--an ill-favored, sullen and treacherous-looking rascal. I,
by way of covering my silence, and to avoid much questioning, took to
my beads and kept telling them with great perseverance, much to the
increase of my reputation as a holy personage.”
The trouble was that Pottinger and his devout followers were of the
Sounee faith, whereas the robber castle was of the Sheeah persuasion.
The difference was something like that between our Catholics and
Protestants, and Pottinger was like a Methodist minister trying to
pass himself off for a cardinal without knowing the little points
of etiquette. The prisoners prompted one another into all sorts
of ridiculous blunders, so that the ill-favored cousin suspected
Pottinger of being a fraud. “Why he may be a Feringhee himself,” said
the cousin. “I have always heard that the Hindustanees are black,
and this man is fairer than we are.” But then the Feringhees--the
British--were supposed to be monsters, and Pottinger was in no way
monstrous to look at, so that he managed to talk round the corner, and
at the end of a week ransomed his party with the gift of a fine gun to
the chief. They set off very blithely into the mountains, but had not
gone far when the chief’s riders came romping in pursuit, and herded
them back, presumably to have their throats cut according to local
manners and customs. The chief, it turned out, had been unable to make
the gun go off, but finding it worked all right if handled properly
dismissed the spy with his blessing. Eighteen days’ journey brought
him to Herat, where he felt perfectly safe, strolling unarmed in the
country outside the walls, until a gang of slave catchers made him an
easy prey. His follower, Synd Ahmed, scared them off by shouting to an
imaginary escort.
Shah Kamran with his vizier Yar Mahomed had been out of town, but on
their return to Herat, Pottinger introduced himself to the king as a
British officer, and his gift of a brace of pistols was graciously
accepted.
Not long afterward a Persian army came up against Herat, and with that
force there were Russian officers. For once the Heratis could look for
no help from Afghanistan; and for once this mighty fortress, the key
to the gates of India, was guarded by a cur. If Herat fell the way was
open for Russia, the ancient road to India of all the conquerors.
There is the reason why the British had sent a spy to Herat.
The Heratis were quick to seek the advice of the British officer who
organized the defense and in the end took charge, the one competent
man in the garrison. Shah Kamran sent him with a flag of truce to the
Persian army. The Persian soldiers hailed him with rapture, thinking
they would soon get home to their wives and families; they patted his
legs, they caressed his horse, they shouted “Bravo! Bravo! Welcome! The
English were always friends of the king of kings!”
So Pottinger was brought before the shah of Persia, who would accept no
terms except surrender, which the Englishman ridiculed. He went back to
the city, and the siege went on for months.
A shell burst the house next door to his quarters, but he took no
harm. One day he leaned against a loophole in the ramparts, watching a
Persian attempt to spring a mine, and as he moved away his place was
taken by a eunuch who at once got a ball in the lungs. He had narrow
escapes without end.
At the end of six months, June twenty-fourth, 1838, the Persians
tried to carry the place by assault. “At four points the assault was
repulsed, but at the fifth point the storming column threw itself
into the trench of the lower fausse-braye. The struggle was brief
but bloody. The defenders fell at their posts to a man, and the work
was carried by the besiegers. Encouraged by this first success, the
storming party pushed on up the slope, but a galling fire from the
garrison met them as they advanced. The officers and men of the column
were mown down; there was a second brief and bloody struggle, and the
upper fausse-braye was carried, while a few of the most daring of the
assailants, pushing on in advance of their comrades, gained the head of
the breach. But now Deen Mahomed came down with the Afghan reserve, and
thus recruited the defenders gathered new heart, so that the Persians
in the breach were driven back. Again and again with desperate courage
they struggled to effect a lodgment, only to be repulsed and thrown
back in confusion upon their comrades, who were pressing on behind. The
conflict was fierce, the issue doubtful. Now the breach was well-nigh
carried; and now the stormers, recoiling from the shock of the defense,
fell back upon the exterior slope of the fausse-braye.
“Startled by the noise of the assault Yar Mahomed (the vizier) had
risen up, left his quarters, and ridden down to the works. Pottinger
went forth at the same time and on the same errand. Giving instructions
to his dependents to be carried out in the event of his falling in the
defense, he hastened to join the vizier.... As they neared the point
of the attack the garrison were seen retreating by twos and threes;
others were quitting the works on the pretext of carrying off the
wounded.... Pottinger was eager to push on to the breach; Yar Mahomed
sat himself down. The vizier had lost heart; his wonted high courage
and collectedness had deserted him. Astonished and indignant ...
the English officer called upon the vizier again and again to rouse
himself. The Afghan chief rose up and advanced further into the works,
and neared the breach where the conflict was raging.... Yar Mahomed
called upon his men in God’s name to fight; but they wavered and stood
still. Then his heart failed him again. He turned back, said he would
go for aid.... Alarmed by the backwardness of their chief the men were
now retreating in every direction.” Pottinger swore.
Yar roused himself, again advanced, but again wavered, and a third
time Pottinger by word and deed put him to shame. “He reviled, he
threatened, he seized him by the arm and dragged him forward to the
breach.” Now comes the fun, and we can forsake the tedious language of
the official version. Yar, hounded to desperation by Pottinger, seized
a staff, rushed like a wildcat on the retreating soldiers, and so
horrified them that they bolted back over the breach down the outside
into the face of the Persians. And the Persians fled! Herat was saved.
An envoy came from the Persian army to explain that it was infamous of
the Shah Kamran to have an infidel in charge of the defense. “Give him
up,” said the Persians, “and we’ll raise the siege.” But the shah was
not in a position to surrender Pottinger. That gentleman might take it
into his head to surrender the shah of Herat.
Another six months of siege, with famine, mutiny and all the usual
worries of beleaguered towns finished Pottinger’s work, the saving of
Herat.
II
Now we take up the life of another spy, also an army officer, old
Alexander Burnes. At eighteen he had been adjutant of his regiment and
rose very steadily from rank to rank until he was sent as an envoy
to Runjeet Singh, the ruler of Punjab, and to the ameers of Scinde.
In those days Northwestern India was an unknown region and Burnes was
pioneer of the British power.
In 1832 he set out on his second mission through Afghanistan, Bokhara
and Persia. See how he wrote from Cabul: “I do not despair of reaching
Istamboul (Constantinople) in safety. They may seize me and sell me for
a slave, but no one will attack me for my riches.... I have no tent, no
chair or table, no bed, and my clothes altogether amount to the value
of one pound sterling. You would disown your son if you saw him. My
dress is purely Asiatic, and since I came into Cabul has been changed
to that of the lowest orders of the people. My head is shaved of its
brown locks, and my beard dyed black grieves ... for the departed
beauty of youth. I now eat my meals with my hands, and greasy digits
they are, though I must say in justification, that I wash before and
after meals.... I frequently sleep under a tree, but if a villager
will take compassion on me I enter his house. I never conceal that I
am a European, and I have as yet found the character advantageous to
my comfort. The people know me by the name of Sekunder, which is the
Persian for Alexander.... With all my assumed poverty I have a bag
of ducats round my waist, and bills for as much money as I choose to
draw.... When I go into company I put my hand on my heart, and say
with all humility to the master of the house, ‘Peace be unto thee,’
according to custom, and then I squat myself down on the ground. This
familiarity has given me an insight into the character of the people
... kind-hearted and hospitable, they have no prejudices against a
Christian and none against our nation. When they ask me if I eat pork,
I of course shudder, and say that it is only outcasts that commit such
outrages. God forgive me! for I am very fond of bacon.... I am well
mounted on a good horse in case I should find it necessary to take to
my heels. My whole baggage on earth goes on one mule, which my servant
sits supercargo.... I never was in better spirits.”
After his wonderful journey Burnes was sent to England to make his
report to the government, and King William IV must needs hear the whole
of the story at Brighton pavilion.
The third journey of this great spy was called the commercial mission
to Cabul. There he learned that the Persian siege of Herat was being
more or less conducted by Russian officers. Russians swarmed at the
court of Dost Mahomed, and an ambassador from the czar was there trying
to make a treaty.
Great was the indignation and alarm in British India, and for fear of
a Russian invasion in panic haste the government made a big famous
blunder, for without waiting to know how Dost was fooling the Russians,
an army was sent through the terrible Bolan Pass. That sixty-mile abyss
with hanging walls belongs to the Pathans, the fiercest and wildest
of all the tribes of men. The army climbed through the death trap,
marched, starving, on from Quetta to Candahar and then advanced on
Cabul. But Dost’s son Akbar held the great fortress of Ghuznee, a quite
impregnable place that had to be taken.
One night while a sham attack was made on the other side of the
fortress, Captain Thomson placed nine hundred pounds of gunpowder at
the foot of a walled-up gate, and then touched off the charge. The
twenty-first light infantry climbed over the smoking ruins and at the
head of his storming column Colonel Dennie, in three hours’ fighting,
took the citadel. Dost Mahomed fled, and the British entered Cabul to
put a puppet sovereign on the throne.
Cabul was a live volcano where English women gave dances. There were
cricket matches, theatricals, sports. The governor-general in camp
gave a state dinner in honor of Major Pottinger, who had come in from
the siege of Herat. During the reception of the guests a shabby Afghan
watched, leaning against a door-post, and the court officials were
about to remove this intruder when the governor-general approached
leading his sister. “Let me present you,” said Lord Auckland, “to
Eldred Pottinger, the hero of Herat.” This shabby Afghan was the guest
of honor, but nobody would listen to his warnings, or to the warnings
of Sir Alexander Burnes, assistant resident. Only the two spies knew
what was to come. Then the volcano blew up.
Burnes had a brother staying with him in Cabul, also his military
secretary; and when the mob, savage, excited, bent on massacre, swarmed
round his house he spoke to them from the balcony. While he talked
Lieutenant Broadfoot fell at his side, struck by a ball in the chest.
The stables were on fire, the mob filled his garden. He offered to
pay then in cash for his brother’s life and his own, so a Cashmiri
volunteered to save them in disguise. They put on native clothes,
they slipped into the garden, and then their guide shouted, “This is
Sekunder Burnes!” The two brothers were cut to pieces.