For the next few weeks, James would alternate between brooding in the house and rushing about the place for conferences with Mr Hart, Mr Murray, or Admiral Keppel. I was not invited to these conferences and I cannot pretend this was not hurtful. Perhaps it was that James was conscious I was not entirely happy with these schemes, but I fear he was ashamed of me before Admiral Keppel. For there was no doubt the Admiral had a presence to him we were not used to in our little country. And, on the Dido, James was surrounded by adoring midshipmen whose youth was untainted by any association with poverty. Certainly none of them had ever woken before dawn to milk a cow. Before this, I would have thought my early struggles made me the better man but, watching James bask in their adulation, I wondered if this was how he viewed it.
Whether, in the end, he would have acquiesced in the series of attacks Admiral Keppel planned, I do not know. In the event, the Admiral received orders directing him back to the waters off Canton and the Dido and its crew vanished from our lives as suddenly as it had entered, though not without many promises to visit Sarawak again.
With Keppel gone, a campaign against the pirates was no longer possible and our lives moved slowly back onto their accustomed path. With no midshipmen to impress, James was mine again. He took care to spend as much time as he could at home with me, as if to make up for his previous neglect.
It was a happy time. We made some visits to a few of the nearer Dyak longhouses, dispensing gifts and trying, by our behaviour, to show we considered the days of bloodshed could be put behind us. Even so, we did quietly undertake some additional measures for the defence of the populace. Our trip up the Saribas had shown the value of the shallow-draft prahus in negotiating mud banks and sand spits. They could also be more easily beached when landing men against an enemy ashore.
The Skimalong was on hand only when the Royalist was in Kuching, and James decided we should have a boat ready at all times so we could respond to news of pirate attacks. Thus the decision was made to build a boat in native style but fitted with rowlocks and oars such as our men were used to handling. Mr Hart deputed a couple of his men to work with a tribe whose craft we had admired when they visited the market in Kuching. The work was swiftly done, and less than a month after the Dido’s departure, James proudly took possession of the latest addition to his fleet. Colin Hart, Mr Murray, and I escorted him to the quay where a bottle of rice wine was ceremoniously smashed against her prow and the Jolly Bachelor was officially christened.
Our experience on the Saribas had also convinced James we needed to have more men under arms, readily available if another expedition were called for. To that end, Patterson was given the title of lieutenant and told he was, henceforth, in charge of Sarawak’s standing army, which was doubled in size to one hundred men. James had learned from our previous mistakes. The force was not split up and billeted among the various villages but maintained as a single unit in Kuching, from where it would be despatched hither and yon as we heard reports of pirate activity. The plan was not to capture the pirates in the course of a raid but, by showing ourselves prepared for battle, to serve as a reminder of what had been achieved on the Saribas and as a warning we could repeat the lesson elsewhere, if necessary.
The cost of maintaining such a force fell heavily on our exchequer. Although James’ trip to Singapore had resulted in some improvement in the revenue from the antimony trade, still the country barely covered its costs, even before the expenses of war. Now James was forced to borrow to keep our economy afloat.
Paying the interest on these debts and making Sarawak cover its expenses became our major concern over the months ahead. There was no real prospect of increasing our income from antimony and the fees for using the port were already as high as we felt could be sustained.
At first, we were reduced to such small economies as any householder might indulge in when money was tight. For some time we had accepted mail at the house and this was despatched to the mine workings or Chinese trading outposts or wherever, as and when any of our boats were making the journey. Now James decided this business should be put on a more regular footing and a postage service introduced so people might pay for the delivery of their mail.
Unfortunately, as many a householder has discovered, the inconveniences attendant upon such an economy were out of proportion to the benefit obtained. We had to have stamps printed and then had to arrange with some selected merchants to sell them, and that meant myself having to institute an audit to ensure we did not pay commission on stamps that had not actually been sold. Then we put up a proper post box, with a lock, so the mails could be posted in decent form. After all this, many of the letters in the post box would not be stamped, the idea of paid postage being a novel one. James would worry some vital message might be delayed, so he would insist it be carried anyway … thus encouraging the populace to view stamps as an optional addition to the envelopes, making the whole exercise even more fatuous.
Overall, I would guess the paid postal service cost us several guineas a year to run, while the free service had at least not been an actual burden on our finances.
Such ‘economies’ were clearly not sufficient to save us from financial ruin, so a higher strategy had to be developed.
James was, as were we all, convinced of the merits of free trade as a thing good in itself. It had the additional benefit, though, that as goods were traded, so the possibility of taking a small percentage of the trade value as tax could generate revenue for us without impoverishing the population. Indeed, the benefits that should inevitably accrue to the people through the exercise of such trade should serve to increase their wealth and happiness. So it was that James determined we should encourage trading between the villages of the country.
The main problem with this grand design was that the Dyaks had scarcely any interest in such a way of life. Nevertheless, James directed much of our efforts to encouraging the tribes in commerce with the settlements around them. Besides exhorting them as to the benefits that might attend such a change in their economy, we took practical measures to make such intercourse between neighbouring tribes more practical. Our tiny army spent days at a time pursuing not pirates but small groups of head-hunters who, for reasons of personal gain, petty pride, or historical enmity, would prey on strangers and hence add to the natural perils of travel in the jungle.
Often James would lead such expeditions himself, leaving me to deal with the more sedentary aspects of the administration. He would return with tales of epic pursuits through the jungle and desperate fights when they would finally fall on one of the pillaging bands. James would always dwell on the bravery of the Dyaks – both those he was fighting alongside and those who were, on that occasion, his foes. Yet the stories I heard from others always put James at the forefront of the fighting. Though he might have a pistol at his belt, he was far more likely to be seen swinging at his adversaries with his old cavalry sabre – hardly the most sensible weapon for close fighting on foot.
One day, to his immense delight, one of the tribal chiefs presented him with a mandau, the traditional jungle sword of the Dyaks. The blade was not flat but thick, giving it much more weight than a European sword. The edge, though, was ground to razor sharpness. James insisted I take a walk with him and his new plaything and we strolled through the woods with him hacking at every branch and vine we passed. His enthusiasm was only slightly dimmed when a misjudged blow led to the blade kicking in his hand and coming dangerously close to taking his leg off. Later I was to learn these swords would often behave in this way – a result of the curve their design put on the blade. Among the Dyaks this reaction was ascribed to a malicious spirit, rather than the mechanics of the swing, and some swords were regarded as cursed and dangerous to the user.
James had greater luck in mastering the blowpipe or sumpitan. His own specimen of this native artillery was regarded as a mere toy by the Dyaks as it was only about a yard long – a heavy wooden tube with a hole bored precisely down the centre of it. We would practise together, rolling little balls of clay and taking turns to blow them at leaves. I had little success but James was soon an expert and the trees nearest our home had leaves so riddled with tiny holes it looked as if they had been struck by a plague of caterpillars.
James had always been popular with the native tribes, who saw him as a protection against the Malays. As he spent more and more time in their company, their appreciation and respect grew into love. He became more fluent in their tongues than I was myself and would take every opportunity to escape his labours in Kuching to spend a night or two in the interior. He slept on the floor of the longhouses and spent his days hunting with the young men or just sitting peacefully on the balconies of their homes, watching village life proceed around him.
As his efforts to stop headhunting and warfare between the tribes began to bear fruit, so the different tribes would seek each other out to exchange goods rather than simply for the purposes of warfare, as had all too often been the case in the past. People began to understand it was safe to travel between the villages and trade such surplus commodities as they might have available. The principal beneficiaries of these improvements, though, were not the Dyaks but the Chinese.
‘I would see my Dyak friends benefit more,’ he would complain to me. ‘But what have they to trade? They hunt for the meat they need; they grow a few crops in their mean fields. They do a little weaving. Where are the goods they can sell?’
The Chinese, on the other hand, were consummate traders. Junks began to appear regularly at our wharves. They carried ironware, pottery, bolts of brightly coloured cloth, beads and bangles and bracelets, spices and pickles, and tinned goods of every sort. Under Makota’s sway, they had already established rudimentary trading links with the native villages. Now, as our new policies were put into effect, their activities increased.
Such were the benefits of free trade to the Chinese that those already established in the country sent for others of their clans to join them. The population of Kuching was swollen by a score or more Chinese families who built themselves simple wooden houses in an enclave to the south of the main town, on the opposite side of the river from our bungalow. I would often venture there to admire the bright reds and golds of the temple they had constructed in their midst and to enjoy the sight of their colourful lanterns swinging in the evening breeze during one of their many festivals. But James avoided the Chinese quarter, as he termed it. He would often complain of the noise from their firecrackers and, indeed, placed strict limitations on the use of fireworks – ostensibly for the protection of the town, which was predominantly of wood.
As we struggled to develop our small country, word of what was happening in Sarawak spread about and we received letters from young gentlemen in Singapore – and even one or two in England – who asked if there were any opportunities for a younger son to join our enterprise and, perhaps to rise in fortune or, at least, in rank.
At first we dismissed such letters out of hand. As I journeyed in the Jolly Bachelor to parley yet another agreement between neighbouring villages, sleeping on the hard ground at night and spending my days struggling to find a compromise between two proud chiefs with a thousand years of history and accumulated grievances I could not begin to understand, it was difficult to see why any European would want to join our enterprise. We seemed often the servants of these people, rather than their masters – rushing hither and yon to deal with rumours of piracy or adjudicate over an unpaid debt. And the idea there was a fortune to be made was ludicrous. Every month saw us spending more of James’s dwindling funds and it was only his increasingly desperate negotiations with the Singapore banks that kept our country solvent.
Eventually, though, we came to realise the administration of a country – even with so small a population as Sarawak – was too great a job to be handled by those of us who had started on this adventure. Colin Hart was seldom to be seen, spending much of his time at an office James had established in Singapore to represent our interests. Murray, though often passing through Kuching, was forever dashing about the country, surveying this or measuring that. Besides, his naturally irascible temper showed no signs of improving and we had no desire to draw him closer to us than necessity already required.
Thus it was we decided the time had come to recruit fresh blood to our administration. From those who had written to us, we selected Simon Corkerdale, late of Oxford, and George Willetts, who had spent three years in Singapore and now sought employment in less civilised surroundings.
George Willetts was the first of the two to arrive, being to hand, as it were. He was a tall man and would be a big man when he was older, but he was just five and twenty when he arrived in Kuching and still had the look of youth about him. Yet he had seen something of the world, spoke fluent Malay, and, like the chap in the play, knew a hawk from a handsaw. He hailed from Liverpool and, though his father was a gentleman and he’d had an education, yet there was a solidness to him that impressed the men and they were happy to follow him despite his youth. He generally moved slowly, but with an easy grace, and when the occasion demanded, he could shift himself like lightning.
Soon after he arrived, I was showing him the loading of the Swift with ore when a hawser parted and a net full of rock was deposited on the deck. We had but a moment’s warning, from the sound of the snapping cable, but Willetts spun about, sweeping me into his arms before throwing us both to the timbers of the deck, safely out of harm’s way. I will not say he saved my life, for the great bulk of the stones fell safely away from where we had been standing. Still, his instinctive response boded well for his future inland, where he would be almost solely dependent on his own resources for months at a time.
Willetts had already left Kuching – sent away to mediate between two tribes in a dispute over a girl who may or may not have consented to her marriage and whose family may or may not have been insulted and whose brother may or may not have resolved this in the time-honoured way of lopping off the head of his sister’s paramour. It was trivial, impossibly confusing, and about to lead to a small-scale war that would kill a dozen or so warriors and twice that number of women and children, besides making trade in the area impossible for the next couple of years. I wished him luck … he was clearly going to need it.
Simon Corkerdale was as different from George Willetts as one could imagine. Just a year or two younger, he yet gave the impression of being little more than a lad. Where Willetts was slow yet graceful, Corkerdale was always in edgy, impatient movement. In his company I did not feel the calm assurance Willetts radiated, yet there was no questioning the sharpness of his mind. He was full of ideas for improving the local economy. He proposed changes in our port fees that encouraged captains to bring their vessels in at times when we were best ready to service them, reducing the clutter of shipping that could block the approach to the docks and keep our own vessels waiting, and losing money, while others jostled for position ahead of them. He had read the latest works on the prevention of disease through public works and proposed a system of trenches and bamboo piping to ensure the effluent of the growing township was discharged below the point at which water was drawn from the river.
He also introduced me to the wonders of double-entry bookkeeping. I had thought my accounts were already smartly enough presented and I found these new ideas difficult to master but master them I did, to his great satisfaction. ‘Why, John,’ he would say, ‘we’ll have Sarawak solvent yet.’ His energy seemed unbounded and after his day’s work, he would spend his evenings in recitation. He loved poets like Alfred Lord Tennyson, then a new and strange voice and certainly a change from the readings from Shakespeare and ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’, which were the nearest James ever came to high culture.
Corkerdale was obviously clever – much cleverer than I and cleverer, I think, even than James. Even so, I was not sure how he would cope when left alone to administer a chunk of territory on our behalf. Because of my concerns, I arranged that he would be kept not too far from Kuching and I would make some excuse to call upon him every few weeks. In the event, he proved a very able administrator and, although he never excited admiration or love amongst those he was sent to govern, still his district was always smoothly run. He arranged for regular patrols by our small army and set out to administer justice in a more systematic way than had been the case heretofore. He would even arrange court hearings where he would preside in a frock coat and a beaver hat, arguing the dignity this costume added to the proceedings was well worth the discomfort of wearing such attire in that climate.
The growth of our little colony was beginning to attract more interest, both in Singapore and in England itself. Several Singapore merchants wrote, suggesting they might set up their own houses in Sarawak. Most expressed their interest in terms of the assistance they could afford to our own enterprise by being readily to hand, without the problems of transport and communication that inevitably resulted from our remote location.
However, as Corkerdale was quick to point out when he learned of these approaches, almost all our income derived, directly or indirectly, from our monopoly of trade on the island. We therefore decided no other European merchants were to be allowed to set up in Sarawak. James would have liked to extend this ban to the Chinese but this was, frankly, impossible. So many Chinese merchants were already established and they were always bringing in relatives from their vast clans, enabling them to establish sizeable trading empires under the guise of family firms. We decided we should take what action we could to limit the expansion of Chinese mercantile activity and to tax what we could not control. However, the extirpation of Chinese trade was not to be attempted.
So it was that we imposed additional port taxes on goods we knew to be destined for Chinese traders and limited the number of new trading posts they could establish. Instead we set up new outposts manned by agents of our own who traded on our behalf. At the same time, we sought to buy for ourselves all the antimony mines in the country. Whilst we could not confiscate these from the Malays who held them by the authority of the Sultan, we could – and did – prohibit their transfer to others. As the owners grew older or needed to realise the capital in their investments, they were given no choice but to sell to us and thus, little by little, our monopoly was extended.
With the influx of mine managers and traders operating under our aegis, the size of the European population of Sarawak was growing fast. While James remained nominally in charge, I now found myself responsible for the administration of what was, in effect, a growing British colony – and growing not just in size but in prosperity. For, finally, our finances were edging into surplus. By recruiting men with a background in engineering, we were able to introduce modern methods to the antimony mines. The new tools I had foreseen when I visited the workings were, at last, introduced. Machinery was improved. Roads began to replace the rough tracks to the mines, so the ore could more easily be transported to the rivers.
Although James still affected contempt for the East India Company’s approach to the management of its colonies, he understood their managers knew all the ways revenue could be extracted from a primitive economy. So he had Mr Hart sound out about Singapore for a man with experience in the Company and send him to us.
The gentleman who arrived was Mr Johnson. He was a great, round fellow, much given to sweating, and with very little hair. He wore a waistcoat, even on the hottest of days, and was continually wiping his face with a yellow handkerchief. He was intelligent enough and could make pleasant conversation when the occasion warranted it, but neither James nor I liked him and there was no question of his joining our establishment. Nor do I think he would have wanted to. He had no interest in the place or the people, beyond the possibilities of converting their skills and resources to money.
‘Cash, Mr Brooke. Gold, gelt. Commodities are not valuable of themselves but solely in terms of the income they can generate.’
He would stride up and down our veranda of an evening, smoking a foul cigar – he had brought a supply with him from Singapore – and lecturing us on what he called ‘the practical application of economic theory’.
‘You have done well to limit the activities of the Chinese.’ He gestured disdainfully across the river, presumably intending to indicate the Chinese quarter of the town. ‘They are not honest or straightforward in their dealings. Too much is done through family connections.’
I could see James nodding. His time in Kuching had brought him to the point where he was better able to conceal his dislike for all things Chinese, but he was happy to agree to any argument that bolstered his prejudice.
‘Replacing Chinese merchants with your own agents means there can be a proper record of trading activities. Thus not only do you increase profit but you are in a position to extract revenue by taxation of such activities as yield that profit. As trade is increasingly conducted through outposts manned by your own servants, so we are able to take a small proportion of each transaction and thus generate income for your Treasury.’
He smiled complacently, no doubt envisaging the possibility of our growing rich on the plunder of our country, and we did not disillusion him. We smiled and offered him more drink and paid him – paid him well – for his advice and then, when the Royalist was next on its way to Singapore, we despatched him back to the counting houses that were his natural abode.
We took his advice on taxes, though. But rather than increase our overall income, we used this money to finance activities that had been previously supported by levies on the Dyaks. For example, our army had been fed by those they protected: to wit, the Dyak tribes on which they were billeted. The Chinese, though benefiting from the peace they brought to the country, did not contribute to their upkeep. Now, with all paying taxes, we could use the income to buy food from the tribespeople who, in turn, could spend that money on trade goods from the Chinese.
My reading of the great economists, and my conversations with Simon Corkerdale, demonstrated clearly that this change could not but be for the good of all. The benefit to the Dyaks was clear and immediate but the Chinese also gained advantages from the increase of trade that followed.
With so much going on, I found myself more and more kept in the house, working on my ledgers like any clerk or poring over new regulations to ensure they were workable and fair. I had less time to spend at leisure and, when I did, I naturally spent as much of it as I could with James. His black moods had passed and Keppel’s name was never mentioned between us. He was boyish and gay, spending, it seemed, ever more of his time off in the Jolly Bachelor, exploring his kingdom.
After a trip to one of the Dyak tribes, he informed me he had felt it necessary to introduce a woman into our ménage. I was not a little surprised at his news, for James, though easy with women, had no desire to be on closer terms with them than society demanded. Indeed, he had firmly forbidden the introduction of any ladies into our colony and the European population of Sarawak was composed entirely of bachelors. Fortunately, he had not gone so far as to prohibit fornication, so this proscription was not generally viewed as onerous.
James saw the unease on my face and raised a warning hand. ‘I’ll hear nothing against Betsy, so you needn’t start to say anything, John.’
‘Betsy!’
I confess – I squawked. The idea of James introducing a local girl to our house was almost incredible. Admittedly we had the cook, but we scarce saw her from one month to the next. And how had he found a ‘Betsy’ in Sarawak? And why was he referring to any woman so informally?
James response to my cry was to burst into laughter. ‘Come in, Freddy!’ he called. ‘Put Mr Williamson out of his misery.’
The door opened and our servant entered hand in hand with Betsy.
She certainly wasn’t human but she was too big for a monkey – about three feet tall. Most of the creature was covered in long, orange hair, but the face was bare, and from it two large brown eyes gazed soulfully up at me.
‘It’s an orang-utan, John. A gift from Urdisa.’ Urdisa was the chief he had been visiting. ‘She’s young yet but I want to keep her and see how she grows.’
Betsy had, by now, moved away from me and was seating herself at the table, as if she had spent her life in polite society … except that she seemed uncertain what to do with her legs. She tried them this way and that, eventually folding them in her lap and picking at her toes.
‘It’s all right, John. She’s afraid to cross water, so I’ve arranged a sort of kennel for her on an old boat. She’ll be quite safe there.’
A loud crash brought our attention sharply back to the beast’s activities. She had left her seat and was sprawled on the floor, clutching a sextant which, moments earlier, had decorated one of the shelves of the room. She was apparently unsatisfied with the effects of the fall, as she was trying to reduce the larger pieces of the device to their component parts.
I decided it was time to dress for dinner. As I left the room, James and the ape were sitting on the floor together, her long arms wrapped around him. The Rajah had, it seemed, made yet another conquest.
Betsy’s antics seemed to reflect James’ own simple pleasure in life at Kuching. While she roamed about the house, exploring from below the floorboards to the peak of the ridged roof, James ranged around the countryside. He would follow Betsy’s wild cousins as they clambered from tree to tree, sleeping in nests in the leaf canopy and hardly ever descending to the ground. He listened to the ear-splitting dawn chorus of the gibbons and heard the maniacal laugh of the helmeted hornbill whose huge ornamental beak was valued at twice the price of ivory by the Chinese traders.
Looking back, it is clear the two of us were too wrapped up in our own affairs … and in each other. I should have spent more time in the town, listening to the talk among the Chinese traders. James should have spent longer with Budrudeen’s friends, keeping in touch with Malay gossip.
As it was, the blow, when it fell, caught us quite unawares.
We learned afterward that Surabada and his agents had been active around Kuching for months. He had opened negotiations with the Chinese, promising them freedom to trade as they had in the past and a reduction of taxes. To the Malays he promised a return to the old ways, offering them a free hand in the exploitation of the Dyaks. Even some Dyak chiefs had been approached – those who had fallen foul of our efforts to stop headhunting or who felt that their interests had not been properly reflected in the rulings of our officers.
They had plotted subtly, approaching only those they knew to be disaffected by the changes we had brought in. Their allies were few but they were powerful … and we were not prepared for their assault.
It happened on a Sunday night. I remember it had been a quiet day. James was not a religious man – indeed, he had earned the enmity of the Bishop of Singapore by refusing to allow a missionary station in Kuching. Nonetheless, we would attend a service on board the Royalist or the Swift when they were in port, but both were at sea that day and we had spent the Sabbath relaxing. James had played with Betsy. He allowed her at my library and I complained she had torn the covers from one of Mr Dickens’ novels. We dined early and retired to bed soon after dark.
I was wakened with a hand upon my mouth. To my astonishment, I saw Freddy standing beside our bed, his fingers to his lips. As soon as he saw I was awake, he roused James in the same way.
James moved to light a candle, for the room was illuminated only by moonlight shining through the open shutters. Freddy, though, signalled urgently he should not do so. ‘They must not know you are awake,’ he whispered. ‘Your only chance is to flee.’
Then what confusion followed! We both wanted to ask Freddy a multitude of questions, but he whispered we must be as near silent as possible.
‘The house is surrounded by your enemies.’ This into my ear and relayed by me to James. ‘If they hear us, they will kill you.’
We dressed ourselves as best we could in the moonlight and, following Freddy, tiptoed through the sitting room to the doors that opened to the veranda. The night being warm these, like the shutters, were ajar, and we were able to nudge them slowly wide enough to creep out.
Outside, the moonlight showed a scene as innocent as any other of the nights we had slept peacefully in our bed. Yet as I lay flat upon the boards around the house, I heard a whispering that was more than just the breeze in the bushes. Then I saw a shadow move, beyond my little garden. A moonbeam caught, for an instant, a glint of metal. Freddy’s warning was true – we were about to come under attack.
While I still hesitated, wondering how to escape the trap I found myself in, Freddy – who had remained behind in the house – opened the doors on the other side and ran from the building. From all around him, figures moved silently from the darkness, hustling him away. Yet we heard no sounds of violence, so we supposed – correctly as it turned out – that our besiegers had no quarrel with our servant but only with ourselves.
Later we were to learn Freddy had been warned that evening that he should leave the house. His courage in waking us and warning of the plot was all that saved us from the assassin’s knife.
James’ martial instinct took over while I was still trying to work out what had happened. Recognising Freddy has distracted attention from our position, if only for a few seconds, James rolled across the boards and slipped to the ground underneath them, pausing just long enough to beckon me to follow.
There was no possibility of escape across the open ground around the building, so we retreated further under the veranda and waited to see what would happen next.
From our hiding place we could just make out shadowy figures moving closer until, all at once, there was a yell and our home was surrounded by armed men rushing to the doors. We heard their feet on the boards overhead. Then James was dragging me out and we were running toward the shelter of the trees.
Behind us, we could hear the cries of our attackers as they searched the house and the crash of furniture being wantonly destroyed. So eager were they to tear apart our home in search of us that we had almost gained the shelter of the trees before anyone looked in our direction and set the enemy in pursuit.
We were two and unarmed. We had no choice but to run, relying on our knowledge of the area and the cover of darkness. We made the trees, a few shots sounding ineffectually behind us. Then we were plunging through the jungle, branches tearing at our clothes, tripping on roots and sprawling every dozen or so paces in the litter of the forest floor.
Fortunately, we had spent many an hour exploring in these woods and knew the lie of the land better than our pursuers, who were more acquainted with the alleys of the town across the river. We made for a creek that ran through the woods some half a mile from the house. As soon as we arrived upon its bank, we pulled off our boots and, without any further preparation, plunged into the waters and swam for the farther bank. There we sat shivering in our wet clothes and listening as the sounds of our pursuers drew away from us.
Sitting in the dark beside the creek, we reviewed our resources. We had water at our feet, but no bottle to carry it in. We had no food, no arms, no map, no compass. The Royalist and the Swift were at sea. Our army, such as it was, was scattered about the country, the nearest force some two days upriver, if we had a boat … which we didn’t.
James decided our first step should be to reconnoitre the town, to establish whether this attack was a part of a larger rising or an isolated attempt on his life. This was easier said than done. The river at Kuching was wide and the current strong – swimming it was hardly possible. We resolved instead to work our way upriver, away from the bungalow, until we could find some craft small enough to manage and then to use that to make our crossing.
We made our way to the river by moonlight but decided against travelling farther in the dark. We were moving steadily away from the parts of the forest we knew and the risk of carrying on by night was too great to hazard.
We rested as best we could. I slept but fitfully and what sleep I had was disturbed by dreams. I saw the dark shapes of men attacking our home but they were Keppel’s tars and, as we fled, we stumbled across the bodies of the dead on the Saribas.
I woke the next morning more tired than I had been when we stopped for the night. Forcing myself to wakefulness and remembering the danger of our position, I fell in behind James as he set off along the river. We made as good a speed as we could, trying to put as much space as possible between us and any pursuit.
After about an hour, we came upon a canoe pulled out of the water near some fields. Pausing only to ensure there was no watch being kept on it, we seized the opportunity to get ourselves upon the water. This not only meant we could move more quickly, but we were no longer as immediately threatened by pursuers on foot, as we now had the protection of the river.
Bobbing in comparative safety on the stream, we reviewed our options and decided on our strategy. The first thing we had to do was to establish the scale of the trouble and find out what support we could still draw on in the town. This we could do only if we returned to Kuching. Our first move, therefore, had to be back in the direction of the horrors of the previous night.
Reluctantly we set off downstream, paddling cautiously and staying close to the bank, taking advantage of such cover as was provided by the branches hanging out over the water. About a mile North of Kuching, we left the canoe and again made our way along the river’s edge, slipping into the trees as we came toward the town.
Even from the shelter of the jungle, it was clear all was not well. The docks were deserted and there was a smell of burning on the air. Smoke could be seen rising from some of the buildings.
James looked at me. ‘Budrudeen is away, but if we can get to his compound, we can seek shelter and find the extent of this revolt.’
Our adventures so far had left us wet, dirty, and bedraggled. Our clothes were torn and our faces bruised from falling in the dark. We decided our best chance was to walk through the streets, keeping to the side alleys as much as possible and hoping not to draw attention, but relying on being mistaken for a couple of drunken sailors if we were.
The streets were almost deserted, which made it the easier to walk through the town without notice. James clearly hated it, slinking from shadow to shadow instead of striding proudly through the streets acknowledging the greetings of his subjects.
In the event, we did not have to make our way directly to Budrudeen’s compound. As soon as we were within sight of it, the clouds of smoke billowing from behind the compound walls told us all we needed to know. We turned and headed back toward the jungle.
Kuching was clearly not safe. We decided our best chance was to head upriver, in the canoe we had appropriated. We reckoned if we pushed ourselves to our limit, we could reach Corkerdale’s post in two days. We would have to trust to the water of the river to satisfy our thirst, and we would not starve in two days.
‘Think,’ said James, with grim humour, ‘how much effort we shall be saved by not having the necessity to carry provisions for the journey.’
In the event, we passed a grove of sugar cane soon after we started our journey and crept ashore to break off some stems. With not even a knife to cut them, breaking the canes was harder than we had expected, but we were able to snap off sections we could chew the ends of, sucking out the sweet sap to stave off the pangs of hunger. Nevertheless, the absence of any solid food sapped our strength and we had made much less progress than we had hoped when night forced us to stop paddling and try to rest. Without any weapons and with nothing we could use to start a fire, the fear of wild beasts meant we were forced to sleep in the boat. With no anchor, we moored by driving ourselves hard into the branches of a fallen tree, the boughs of which projected some way into the river. The constant wash of water and the scraping of the dead branches against the hull invaded our dreams, and neither of us slept well.
James’ old chest wound began to trouble him. By noon, he was visibly weakened, and well before nightfall he was coughing in a way that began to alarm me. As his condition deteriorated, we paddled even more slowly and were still far from our goal at the end of the second day.
Another night sleeping on the boat in clothes we had worn continuously since our escape meant flesh rubbing into evil sores which, in turn, attracted all manner of biting insects. We were stiff and hungry and cold, and in fear for our lives. Every real or imagined sound on the bank would have us reaching for sword or pistol … before remembering we were unarmed.
The thin dawn light found us pale and haggard and almost totally unrested. We decided we must reach Corkerdale that day. If we spent another night on the boat, hunger, wretchedness, and fatigue would mean we would make barely any progress the next day – and we knew every passing day made it more likely the Revolt would have spread throughout the country, leaving us with no place of refuge.
All that day we paddled. Around noon, it rained. The water fell as if in solid sheets, battering us with its force. We had no cloaks to shelter under and could not afford the time to pull to the bank and wait out the storm under the trees. So we paddled on, our wet hands blistering, the sores on our bodies a constant dull pain.
Eventually the rain stopped. Our clothes steamed but did not dry and we travelled in silent misery until the sun fell.
Fortunately, the storm had left clear skies behind it and the waning moon provided enough light for us to see our way. We paddled in a sort of torpor, aware of nothing except the effort of raising and lowering our arms and the moonlight on the water, marking out the way upstream.
Suddenly we were roused by shouts from the bank. Too tired by now to care if these were the cries of friend or foe, we turned toward them and soon willing hands were pulling at our tiny craft and helping us as we staggered ashore.
‘Who’s there? What’s going on?’
Corkerdale’s voice sounded clear on the night air and there was the man himself, hurrying toward us, surrounded by Dyaks, all carrying swords and shields.
He pushed through the crowd that had gathered around us, stopping as soon as he realised who we were. ‘Heaven be praised! You’re safe.’
James turned and stepped toward him but almost immediately swayed uncertainly on his feet and had to be caught by the men who had helped us ashore.
Corkerdale started to issue urgent orders in the native tongue and men moved forward to carry us toward the longhouse.
I heard someone say, ‘He’s a lot better at the language than I ever thought he would be.’ I had just time to realise the speaker was myself before I passed out.
I recovered consciousness to see James’ face looking down at me, concern in his brown eyes. As he saw my own eyes open, there was a flicker of a smile at the corners of his lips and he bent forward quickly and kissed me.
I was lying on the ground near to the longhouse, wrapped in a blanket. The reason I was not in the house itself was clear – I was resting alongside a fire that brought relief to my shivering bones. The Dyaks did not need to heat their houses so fires were used only for cooking, which was done well away from the dry wood of their dwellings.
James sat cross-legged alongside me. ‘Are you well enough to talk?’
I nodded.
‘The others are sleeping now. I said I would stay here with you. We’re safe enough. There are sentries posted.’
He coughed gently, but his chest was clearly troubling him much less already. His hand went to his throat and he fiddled with the collar of his shirt. He was wearing clean, dry clothes, and I realised he must have borrowed them from Corkerdale, a rather smaller man than he was.
‘Word has already spread of the Revolt. Surabada is behind it, of course. But the Chinese are backing him. It is their treachery that has lost us Kuching.’ He grimaced. ‘Some of the Malays have taken the opportunity to advance themselves by joining the Revolt. Most of the Dyaks are loyal, though.’
He leaned forward toward the fire, stretching his hands to the warmth. ‘Corkerdale’s called the local chiefs together and put the villages on a war footing. The warriors are ready for a fight. The trouble is …’ His voice tailed off and he turned to look at me.
‘John, you know how many men Surabada can command. He’s been planning this for months. If we face him without even the Royalist, we’ll be destroyed. We need firepower. I need my ships.’
He was right, of course. On our own in the jungle, we could no more help the Dyaks defend themselves against pirates now than they had been able to defend themselves in the past. Our only chance was to reach one of our ships and then fight our way back to Kuching with all the power we could command. But how to reach our vessels? The River Sarawak was closed to us, as there was no way we would be able to pass through Kuching. If we sailed back down the river and abandoned our boats above the town, we would be in the same situation as we had just escaped – trapped in Kuching with no way of reaching the coast.
The alternative was to make our way overland to another river, negotiate a vessel from one of the tribes that lived there, then head out to sea. The nearest river where we could be reasonably confident of finding a friendly tribe was the Rebu, which lay fifteen miles to the Northeast … but that fifteen miles was solid jungle.
The next morning James, Corkerdale, and I met for a council of war with the village chief, Dinda. He was accompanied by three of his warriors, magnificent young men, their arms and legs decorated with elaborate tattoos, their heads wrapped with scarves.
Corkerdale took charge of the meeting. James seemed diminished in his too-small borrowed clothes, but Corkerdale had a clear authority with these people and they listened carefully as he explained the situation.
Dinda seemed concerned about an expedition to the Rebu. Although Corkerdale’s efforts had almost eliminated headhunting, a journey of fifteen miles would take them far away from their traditional hunting grounds and was not to be entered into lightly. The young warriors, though, seemed excited at the prospect of travelling to another settlement and they urged their chief to let them go.
In the end, it was agreed that James and I would be escorted by a dozen warriors. Corkerdale was to remain at the village to reassure the tribe that Rajah Brooke’s authority was still to be respected.
We rested for the rest of the day. I relaxed on the long veranda of the great hut that housed all the people of the tribe. The women had taken their handlooms out of the gloom of the communal hall and were weaving in the sun. As I watched, war bonnets, tunics, and carrying sacks formed themselves beneath their busy fingers, while inside the hut I heard a woman singing to her baby as she ground tapioca for the evening meal. All was as it had ever been, here in this clearing by the river – and the plotting and planning that occupied our lives in Kuching seemed an illusion.
Alas, the next morning I had to leave that demi-Eden to set off on the march that marked the first stage in James’ battle to regain his kingdom.
We started along a well-trodden path leading from the village to the fields where sugar cane, tapioca, bananas, and pineapple were grown to provide the basic requirements of the tribe. Then we started away, striking into the jungle on a narrower path almost hidden beneath the long rank grasses and tangled creepers. Soon we were deep in the forest. The path had vanished and without the tracking skills of our companions, we would have been hopelessly lost within a hundred paces.
Despite the absence of a path, we were able to move easily. The trees here were old and tall and in their shade we walked in a perpetual twilight where little vegetation grew. From time to time we would come to places where the trees grew thinner. Here, scorch marks showed lightning had struck, starting a blaze that left a clearing a mile across. There, the slope was too steep to hold enough earth for the taller trees to grow. In these places, the jungle was the stuff of adventure storybooks, with bushes and scrub fighting for the light, covering every inch of the ground. We had to either go around – perhaps travelling a mile or more out of our way – or we had to cut our way through, our escort’s swords rising and falling in an easy rhythm with every step we took.
After a few hours our route led us uphill and the nature of the ground changed, becoming steadily rockier. The jungle gave way to a low scrub, which was much harder to make our way through until we came on a path some two yards wide. It was a pig-track, marking the route of the annual migration of the boar which form a valuable addition to the natives’ diet. We were able to follow the track for a full mile before we had to branch off and again hack our way, step by painstaking step, through the scrubland.
All at once, the scrub gave way to woodland. Here, the trees grew shorter and farther apart than in the jungle proper. You could almost imagine yourself in a beech forest back in England, pushing through bushes and scrambling over roots. Suddenly our guides motioned us to silence and then, slowly and with evident caution, started to edge back the way that we had come. Only after we had, with painstaking caution, worked our way a good quarter of a mile did one of them whisper, ‘Leopard!’ before setting off in a new direction.
Such delays and detours meant we made slow progress. As when James and I had travelled from Kuching, we carried no provisions, but now we had gourds to carry water and weapons so we could kill our food on the way. Indeed, in the late afternoon, our guides insisted we sit and wait beneath a particularly tall and stately tree while they vanished with their blowpipes into the forest. They returned some thirty minutes later with two small deer, which they carried slung over their shoulders until we made camp some two hours later.
Sitting by the firelight, sniffing appreciatively as the deer cooked above the flames, I was struck again by the timeless peace of the place and I slipped easily into a dreamless sleep.
The chattering of monkeys woke us with the dawn.
The day passed much as the previous one. Our progress was slow but steady, and toward the end of the afternoon we came upon the River Rebu. Our guides started downstream, urging us to hurry. They wanted to be safe in the village by dark. In part, this was because of a natural desire to spend the night in the safety of human habitation, but they were also anxious that the inhabitants of the place should not find strangers coming upon them after the sun had set. For all that the land was safer now than it had been, still the people harboured real fears of assault and would likely attack any travellers they found in the dark rather than risk strangers in their vicinity by night.
As it was, we arrived just as the last rays of the sun were lighting the river and we were greeted as friends by the people of the village. Our warriors had killed two more deer that afternoon, though they had always planned to eat in the village. Their quarry they now presented to the chief, it being customary for travellers to bring some sort of gift. James and I had nothing to present, our circumstances having rendered us destitute, but the deer served as a gift from all and the excuse for a welcoming feast.
That evening being given over to eating and drinking, the object of our journey was not mentioned until the following morning when, as we had done three days before, we sat with a Dyak chief and his warriors to plan our next step.
Word had already reached the village that Kuching was fallen to the enemies of the Rajah. It is a constant source of amazement to me that these things are known so quickly, with no semaphore, no telegraph, and little in the way of everyday communication. Yet it is rare that a traveller carrying, as he thinks, the latest intelligence, does not find that his news has run ahead of him to every tiny village that he visits. Indeed, there was news for us – Surabada and his pirates were already in Kuching.
We explained we needed a vessel to take down the river and out to sea. There we hoped to link up with either our own ships or those of Keppel’s squadron which, we believed, were again on patrol in the China Seas.
The Chief was clearly nervous at the turn events had taken. Surabada would not stay long in Kuching. With James deposed, he could return to his principal interest: raiding the tribes of the interior. Our hosts reasoned, with justice, that Surabada would first turn his attention to those tribes most loyal to the Rajah. By assisting us in the way we asked, the whole tribe would be put into danger. Yet these people remained loyal to James, even in his present state. He was stripped of his power and sitting among them in borrowed clothes, begging their assistance – and, for the love of him, they gave it.
Our friends were not prepared to risk too open a confrontation with Surabada. They could provide us with a vessel – a boat not unlike the Jolly Bachelor – and they could provide a crew. But they would not take us beyond the mouth of the river. The boat, they argued, was not really fit for the sea and Surabada might well have vessels patrolling the coast, which would be bigger and designed for naval warfare. The Chief was not prepared to risk his men in such a one-sided conflict. Nor could we blame him, given that the pirates would show his people no mercy if they were caught aiding us.
We explained that without a vessel we could take to sea, we had no chance of rejoining our forces and mounting any sort of a counterattack.
In the end, the Chief agreed to a compromise. He would provide the vessel and a crew to the river mouth. We would be escorted by another craft carrying provisions. Once we reached the sea, we would be provisioned for a long voyage and the crew would return in the second craft. We could jury-rig a sail to our boat and, provided the weather remained calm, we would be able to set out into the shipping lanes and hope to meet up with a European vessel.
It was a desperate gamble. To manage any vessel on the open sea with just a crew of two would be difficult in the best of circumstances, and impossible if a storm blew up. We would never make it to Singapore. Our one hope would be to fall in with another vessel before our provisions ran out or the weather changed. Yet the alternative was to rot in hiding in the jungle, watching as all we had achieved was destroyed.
James rose to his feet and bowed graciously at his hosts. ‘We thank you for your kindness. Your offer is most generous. We will leave tomorrow.’
What can I say of that journey? We were carried to the coast in just one day, our crew paddling lustily, leaving James and me silent and idle in their midst, each lost in his own thoughts. That night we camped together. No fires were lit and we posted sentries all about but there was no sign of pirates.
The next morning dawned fair. There was a mild breeze carrying out to sea. Conditions were as good as they would ever be. We transferred our provisions and rigged a crude mast amidships from which we hung a sail improvised from the same sort of cloth I had watched being woven only a few days before.
We clambered aboard our frail craft and willing helpers pushed us from the shore, through the lazy breakers, and out to sea. We turned and waved, but already our escort were launching their own craft, hurrying to return to the comparative safety of the interior.
I am not a praying man but I confess I prayed that day. I prayed no patrolling pirate would see our craft. I prayed the weather would hold. And I prayed that somewhere, on the measureless horizon, we would see a friendly sail.
At first, it seemed all our prayers were to be answered. No pirate patrol intercepted us. (Later we were to learn that Surabada’s men were too busy pillaging Kuching to have mounted any patrols at all.) The weather remained calm and the wind, as far as I could judge, favourable.
As the long day wore on, though, our most urgent prayer remained unanswered. We saw no other vessel.
We had no charts and no compass to use them if we had. I had not thought to grab my pocket watch as we fled Kuching and James’ was destroyed by immersion in the course of our adventures. We could estimate time only by the height of the sun, and our direction by its position at what we judged midday. For all that we would trim our sail to hold the breeze or take a turn or two at the paddles, we were essentially adrift on the ocean.
By nightfall, we had seen nothing. Our supplies had seemed plentiful when we set out but a day in an open boat under the tropical sun had seen our water supply dwindling faster than we had expected.
We sat in the starlight and chewed the dried monkey meat we had been given and resolved that we would drink less the next day.
Morning came and with it the sun. The clear and cloudless sky that had seemed such a blessing when our greatest fear had been storms was now our enemy. The sun blazed down and we had no escape. We contemplated taking down our sail and rigging an awning but decided against it. Lost as we were, we knew every mile we could move North put us further from Surabada and nearer to the shipping lanes. And, probably more importantly, the sail made our little craft more likely to be seen should we pass within sight of any vessel.
Desperate for shade, we tore off our clothes to rig a tiny shelter amidships. Yet even in this patch of shadow, the heat was nigh unbearable and we were plagued all day by thirst. That evening we discovered that, despite all our efforts, more than half our water was gone.
The third day was like the second, and the fourth like the third.
On the fifth day, our water ran out.
The sixth morning I woke to what I supposed was to be my last day in this life. The two of us were near delirium. Our sole comfort was each other and we clung together for most of the morning. Every hour or so – as far as I could judge – one of us would clamber laboriously to his feet and scan the horizon for a few minutes before collapsing back into the bilges. Even to stand was exhausting and squinting into the glare for a sail that was never there … that destroyed our souls.
When I did see the ship, I thought it was a hallucination. But then I pulled James to his feet and he saw it, too. We waved and shouted and at first we thought it had not seen us but then, slowly, she came about.
She was the Van de Meer out of Utrecht. She was engaged by the Dutch East India Company. Her captain spoke not a word of English and his mate, who did, loathed our race in general and, in particular, those who traded in what he saw as Dutch territory. He saw two near-naked bearded men, half delirious, adrift on a native boat, and he did not care to disguise his contempt.
The crew were surly and the ship’s doctor, who pronounced us fit, an ass.
They saved our lives.