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Cornelius went off, creeping sluggishly down the hill on the side of the Rajah's palace, and after some delay a few of Tunku Allang's men came up, bringing a scanty supply of rice, chillies, and dried fish. This was immeasurably better than nothing.
This we did without deigning to notice their pathetic gestures, heart-rending appeals and protestations to the "Sons of the Heaven-Born" that they could not lift one hundredth part of such burdens. The Crowning of a Malayan Prince Tunku Ibrahim was just past seventeen when his father, the Sultan Abubaker, chose to recognize him as his heir and Crown Prince of Johore.
"Yes, I've changed all that," he went on, with a sidelong glance at the two patient squatting fishermen; "but only try to think what it would be if I went away. Jove! can't you see it? Hell loose. No! To-morrow I shall go and take my chance of drinking that silly old Tunku Allang's coffee, and I shall make no end of fuss over these rotten turtles' eggs. No. I can't say enough. Never.
Old Tunku Allang, almost out of his mind with fear and indecision, either kept a sullen silence or abused them violently for daring to come with empty hands: they departed very much frightened; only old Doramin kept his countrymen together and pursued his tactics inflexibly.
In 1874, however, there were new disturbances and alleged piracies, and Tunku Dia Udin, the Sultan's son-in-law and viceroy, overmatched by powerful Rajahs, gladly welcomed an official, who was sent by Sir A. Clarke, "to remain with the Sultan should he desire it, and, by his presence and advice give him confidence, and assistance to carry out the promises which he had made," which were, in brief, to suppress piracy and keep good order in his dominions; not a difficult task, it might be supposed, for it is estimated that he had only about two thousand Malay subjects left, and the Chinese miners were under the efficient rule of their "Capitan," Ah Loi.
The immense and magnanimous Doramin and his little motherly witch of a wife, gazing together upon the land and nursing secretly their dreams of parental ambition; Tunku Allang, wizened and greatly perplexed; Dain Waris, intelligent and brave, with his faith in Jim, with his firm glance and his ironic friendliness; the girl, absorbed in her frightened, suspicious adoration; Tamb' Itam, surly and faithful; Cornelius, leaning his forehead against the fence under the moonlight I am certain of them.
It was a long time since Tunku Allang had had ammunition for the score or so of old muskets rusting in their arm-racks in the audience-hall. The open intercourse between the hill and the palace unsettled all the minds. It was already time for men to take sides, it began to be said. There would soon be much bloodshed, and thereafter great trouble for many people.
Tunku Ibrahim had made one trip to England when he was fifteen years old, and with his little cousin, the Tunku, or Prince, Othman, had dined with the Queen at Windsor. So, when the Sultan returned from a long stay at Carlsbad and found that the Sultana was dead and that Ibrahim had shot up into a man, he said: "I am getting to be an old man and may die at any time.
"In the days when Tunku Ali III. ruled over Maur, from Malacca to the confines of Johore, the Portuguese came, and Albuquerque with his ships of war and soldiers in iron armor sought to wrest from our people their cities and their riches. My ancestor was a dato, our laksamana, high admiral, of his Highness's fleet.
I tried to do my duty by Stein, but I had also other matters to think of. When I escaped to Doramin old Tunku Allang got frightened and returned all my things.
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