Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - The Achehnese Vol II. - tr. Arthur Warren Swete O'Sullivan (1906).djvu/108

 keep quiet, else he, who had no fear of such a froward boy, would bring him to reason by force.

His prohibition was of no effect. The scheme of Pòchut Muhamat remained unaltered, and the other two brothers declared themselves ready to lend the financial coöperation necessary to set it on foot. The king now prepares to go with the soldiers of his bodyguard (sipahis, among whom were to be found, according to the poet, both English, French and Dutch) to his young brother's house, to show him that his commands were not to be disobeyed. But Pòchut Muhamat, at the head of his followers, meets him at the gate of the Dalam, and addresses him in so high-handed a manner that the king retires in alarm. Muhamat calls it a a subterfuge on the king's part to shelter himself behind a behest of his dying father, to refrain from fighting against Jeumalōy the descendant of the Prophet, and rather to ally himself with him by marriage.

"What you follow by remaining inactive," says he, "is not our dying father's command, but the faithless advice of certain chiefs who are traitors to you and in their hearts adhere to Jeumalōy."

Shortly afterwards there came to the capital the Panglima of the XXII Mukims, Keuchiʾ Muda Saʾti, a man renowned for his bravery, to ask the king for a concession in the mountain district of Seulawaïh for the collection of sulphur. When he heard how matters stood, he ridiculed the king for his inability to bring a boy to reason. The Sultan thereupon gave him full power to use his best endeavours to prevent civil war; but the Panglima soon found that he had spoken too loftily and could do naught against Pòchut Muhamat. Ashamed of his failure and fearing the king's anger, he fled back to his own territory.

Although the young hero had not as yet given any proof of his prowess in action, his determined attitude created so deep an impression in Acheh proper that none of the chiefs opposed him, and he soon collected a following of from two to three hundred men and a con- siderable sum of money, and proceeded overland to Pidië to enlarge the number of his adherents.

The description of this journey is most graphic. The little army rests for a time in Kuala Batèë and Pòchut Muhamat does all he can to