Page:The further side of silence (IA furthersideofsil00clifiala).pdf/311

 had been received; and this I was prepared to be- lieve, for the Sultan was far too astute a person to commit himself in such a fashion.

"Then," said I, "suffer me, as an old friend, to give you this much counsel. Turn a deaf ear to any alleged verbal command, for if you act against the British now, and have no formal mandate from the Sultan for your action, you, and you alone, will be held responsible. At this moment I and the men with me are few and weak; we are a tempting morsel for the youthful, the warlike, and the unwise-like the bait that killed the shark. You can kill me now." (The Dato' politely hastened to disavow any such desire.) "You can kill me now, you can kill the men in my stockade to-morrow or in a day or two; but that will be only the begiming. If we fall, in a little space more white men than you have ever seen or heard of will coine pouring over the hills. They will burn your villages, fell your cocoanut groves, kill your cattle, and they will never rest until they have hanged you by the neck until you are dead, for the war will be your war, and in the absence of a mandate from the Sultan nothing will clear you of guilt. Even were the Sultan openly at your back, you would, at the best, be banished to some distant island, as is the white man's way. It would indeed be sad,” I concluded, "if such calamities should befall because the advice of hot-headed youngsters had been suffered to prevail over the wise deliberations of their elders."

This was the gist of my argument, but Malay fashion, we talked about and about it for hours. In