Page:The further side of silence (IA furthersideofsil00clifiala).pdf/326

. They are a band of vainglorious young fighting men, recruited from the sons of nobles, chiefs, descendants of the Prophet Muhammad, and men belonging to the more well-to-do families. It is their business to watch over the person of the Sultan, to follow at his heels when he goes abroad, to paddle his boat, to join with him in the chase, to kill all who may chance to offend him, and incidentally to do a mort of evil in his name. Their principal aim in life is to win the fickle favour of their master, and having once gained it, freely to abuse the power thus secured. As the Malay proverb has it, "they carry their lord's work upon their heads, and their own under their arms"; and woe betide those, who are not themselves under the immediate protection of the king, with whom chance brings them in contact. At times they act as a sort of irregular police force, levying chantage from people detected in the commission of an offence; and when crime is scarce. it is their amiable practice to exact blackmail from wholly innocent individuals by threatening to accuse them of some ill deed unless their good will be purchased at their own price. There is, of course, no abomination which their master can require of them that they are not willing, nay, eager, to commit in his service; and no Malayau râja, in the old days, ever needed to ask twice in their hearing: "Will no man rid me of this turbulent priest?"

During the long, long hours which the Sultan spends among his women, the bûdak râja have to be in attendance in the courtyards of the palace or at the