Page:Max Havelaar Or The Coffee Sales of the Netherlands Trading Company Siebenhaar.djvu/205

 whose information my father-in-law was suspended! That sentence the General cannot destroy, however much he might wish to.’

“I took over the administration of the division of Natal, and my predecessor left. After a while I received word that the General was to arrive in the North of Sumatra in a man-of-war, and would also visit Natal. He alighted at my house with a large retinue, and immediately asked to see the original depositions with regard to ‘the poor man who had been so shockingly ill-treated.’ ‘They themselves deserved the lash and the branding-iron!’ he added.

“I couldn’t make head or tail of the matter. For the causes of the quarrel about Yang di Pertooan were still unknown to me, and it could not, therefore, occur to me that either my predecessor would wittingly and purposely have sentenced an innocent man to so severe a penalty, or the General take a criminal under his protection against a just sentence. I received orders to arrest Sootan Salim and the Tooankoo. As the young Tooankoo was much loved by the population, and we had but a small garrison in the fortress, I asked the General’s permission to leave him at large, to which he agreed. But for Sootan Salim, the particular enemy of Yang di Pertooan, there was no mercy. The tension among the population was great. The people of Natal suspected that the General stooped to be the tool of Mandhéling hatred, and it was in those circumstances that I was enabled from time to time to act in a manner which he called ‘resolute,’ and no wonder, as he did not offer the small force that could be spared from the fortress, nor the detachment of marines which he had brought with him from the ship, when I might have been considered to require protection in riding out to the places where there were assemblages of discontented natives. On that occasion I became aware that General Vandamme took very good care of his own safety, and it is for that reason that I cannot subscribe to the renown of his bravery until I shall either have seen more instances or a different example of it.

“He formed in desperate haste a Council which I might call ad hoc. The members of it were: two of his adjutants, some other offi-