stinct from the first, for Malayan and
Kling, Tamil and Siamese, Dyak and Javanese, Hindu, Bugis, Burmese,
and Lascar, recognized the famous White Rajah of Borneo, the man who,
all unaided, had broken the power of the savage head-hunting Dyaks,
and driven from the seas the fierce Malayan pirates. The yell was
not a cheer. It was a tribute that a tiger might make to his tamer.

The Rajah understood. He was used to such sinister outbursts of
admiration, for he never took his eyes from the course. He was secure
on his throne now, but I could not but wonder if that yell, which sent
a strange thrill through me, did not bring up recollections of one of
the hundred sanguinary scenes through which he and his great uncle, the
elder Rajah Brooke, had gone when fighting for their lives and kingdom.

The Sultan of Johore's griffin won, and the Rajah stepped back to
congratulate him. I, too, passed over to where he stood, and the
kindly old Sultan took me by the hand.

"I have a very tender spot in my heart for all Americans," the Rajah
replied to his Highness's introduction. "It was your great republic
that first recognized the independence of Sarawak."

As we chatted over the triumph of Gladstone, the silver bill,
the tariff, and a dozen topics of the day, I was thinking of the
head-hunters of whom I had read in the morning paper. I was thinking,
too, of how this man's uncle had, years before, with a boat's crew
of English boys, carved out of an unknown island a principality
larger than the state of New York, reduced its savage population
to orderly tax-paying citizens, cleared the Borneo and Java seas
of their thousands of pirate praus, and in their place built up a
merchant fleet and a commerce of nearly five millions of dollars a
year. The younger Rajah, too, had done his share in the making of
the state. In his light tweed suit and black English derby, he did
not look the strange, impossible hero of romance I had painted him;
but there was something in his quiet, clear, well-bred English accent,
and the strong, deep lines about his eyes and mouth, that impressed
one with a consciousness of tremendous reserve force. He spoke always
slowly, as though wearied by early years of fighting and exposure in
the searching heat of the Bornean sun.

We became better acquainted later at balls and dinners, and he was
never tired of thanking me for my country's kindness.

In 1819, when the English took Malacca and the Malay peninsu