The Argus Pheasant Part 26

"I beg your pardon--I should not have asked it of you. All I ask is a chance to work out my plans without hindrance from those whose welfare I am seeking."

Koyala's lips curled derisively. "You can promote our welfare best by going back to Java, _mynheer_," she retorted.

Peter Gross looked at her sadly.

"_Juffrouw_," he said, "you are speaking words that you do not know the meaning of. Leave Bulungan? What would happen then? The Chinese would come down on you from the north, the Bugis from the east, and the Bajaus from every corner of the sea. Your coasts would be harried, your people would be driven out of their towns to the jungles, trade would cease, the rice harvests would fail, starvation would come upon you. Your children would be torn from you to be sold in the slave-market. Your women would be stolen. You are a woman, _juffrouw_, a woman of education and understanding; you know what the white man saves you from."

"And what have you whites given us in return for your protection?" she cried fiercely. "Your law, which is the right of a white man to cheat and rob the ignorant Dyak under the name of trade. Your garrisons in our city, which mean taking away our weapons so that our young men become soft in muscle and short in breath and can no longer make war like their fathers did. Your religion, which you force on us with a sword and do not believe yourself. Your morals, which have corrupted the former sanct.i.ty of our homes and have wrought an infamy unspeakable. Gin, to make our men stagger like fools; opium, to debauch us all! These are the white man's gifts to the Dyaks of Borneo. I would rather see my people free, with only their bows and arrows and sumpitans, fighting a losing fight in their jungles against the Malays and the Chinese slave-hunters, than be ruined by arrach and gin and opium like they are now."

She was writhing in her pa.s.sion. Her bosom rose and fell tumultuously, and her fingers opened and closed like the claws of an animal. In this mood she was a veritable tigress, Peter Gross thought.

"All that you have said is the truth," he admitted. He looked very weary, his shoulders were bent, and he stared gloomily into the hearth.

Koyala stared at him with a fierce intensity, half doubtful whether he was mocking her. But his dejection was too patent to be pretense.

"If you believe that, why are you here?" she demanded.

"Because I believe that Bulungan needs me to correct these evils, _juffrouw_," he replied gently.

Koyala laughed shrilly, contemptuously. Peter Gross's form straightened and the thin, firm lines of his lips tightened. He lifted a restraining hand.

"May I speak for a few moments, _juffrouw_?" he asked. "I want to tell you what I am planning to do for Bulungan. I shall put an end to the gin and opium trade. I shall drive the slave-hunters and the pirates from these seas, and the head-hunters from their _babas_ (jungles). I shall make Bulungan so peaceful that the rice-grower can plough, and sow, and harvest with never a backward look to see if an enemy is near him. I shall take the young men of Bulungan and train them in the art of war, that they may learn how to keep peace within their borders and the enemy without. I shall readjust the taxes so that the rich will pay their just share as well as the poor. I shall bring in honest tax-collectors who will account for the last grain of rice they receive. Before I shall finish my work the _Gustis_ (Princes) will break their krisses and the bushmen their sumpitans; hill Dyak and coast Dyak will sit under the same tapang tree and take sirih and betel from the same box, and the Kapala Kampong shall say to the people of his village--go to the groves and harvest the cocoanut, a tenth for me and a tenth for the state, and the balance for you and your children."

Koyala looked at him searchingly. His tremendous earnestness seemed to impress her.

"You have taken a big task upon yourself, _mynheer_," she observed.

"I will do all this, _juffrouw_, if you will help me," Peter Gross affirmed solemnly.

Scornful defiance leaped again into Koyala's eyes and she drew back proudly.

"I, _mynheer_? I am a Dyak of Bulungan," she said.

"You are half a daughter of my people," Peter Gross corrected. "You have had the training of a white woman. Whether you are friend or foe, you shall always be a white woman to me, _juffrouw_."

A film came across Koyala's eyes. She started to reply, checked herself, and then spoke, las.h.i.+ng the words out between set teeth.

"Promise upon promise, lie upon lie, that has been the way with you whites. I hate you all, I stand by my people."

Swift as the bird whose name she bore, she flashed through the door.

Peter Gross took a half-step forward to restrain her, stopped, and walked slowly back to his chair.

"She will come back," he murmured to himself; "she will come back. I have sown the seed, and it has sunk in fertile ground."

In the banyan grove Koyala, breathing rapidly because of her swift flight, came upon Kapitein Van Slyck. The captain rose eagerly as she darted through the cane.

"What did he say?" he asked. "Did he try to make love to you?"

Koyala turned on him furiously. "You are a fool, we are all fools!" she exclaimed. "He is more than a match for all of us. I will see you later, when I can think; not now." She left the clearing.

Van Slyck stalked moodily back to the fort. At the edge of the grove he slashed viciously at a pale anemone.

"d.a.m.n these women, you never can trust them," he snarled.

When the only sounds audible in the clearing were the chirping of the crickets and the fluting of the birds, a thin, yellow face with watery eyes peered cautiously through the cane. Seeing the coast clear, Cho Seng padded decorously homeward to the _controlleur's_ house, stepping carefully in the center of the path where no snakes could lie concealed.

CHAPTER XV

THE COUNCIL

The council of the chiefs was a.s.sembling. From every part of Bulungan residency they came, the Rajahs and the Gustis, the Datu Bandars or governors of the Malay villages, and the Orang Kayas and Kapala Kampongs, the Dyak village heads. Their coming was in answer to the call of Peter Gross, resident, for messengers had been sent to every part of the province to announce that a great _b.i.t.c.hara_ (talk) was to be held in Bulungan town.

They came in various ways. The Malay Datu Bandars of the coast towns, where the Malays were largely in the ascendent, voyaged in royal sailing proas, some of which were covered with canopies of silk. Each had twenty men or more, armed to the teeth, in his cortege. The inland Rajahs traveled in even greater state. Relays of slaves carried them in sedan chairs, and fifty gleaming krisses marched before and fifty after. The humbler Orang Kayas and Kapala Kampongs came on foot, with not more than ten attendants in their trains, for a village head, regardless of the number of buffaloes in his herd, must not aspire to the same state as a Rajah, or even a Gusti. The Rajah Wobanguli received each arrival with a stately dignity befitting the ruler of the largest town in the residency, and a.s.signed him and his people the necessary number of houses to shelter them.

But these were not the only strangers in Bulungan. From all the country round, and from every village along the coast, Dyaks, Malays, Chinese, and Bugis, and the Bajau sea-wanderers, streamed into the town. The usually commodious market-place seemed to shrink and dwindle as the crowd of traders expanded, and the raucous cries of the venders rang about the street to a late hour at night.

In every second house a c.o.c.k-fight was in progress. Sweating, steaming bodies crushed each other in the narrow streets and threatened ruin to the thatched houses. Malays scowled at Dyaks, and Dyaks glared vindictively at Malays. Shrewd, bland Chinese intermingled with the crowd and raked in the silver and copper coins that seemed to flow toward them by a magnetic attraction. Fierce, piratical Bugis cast amorous glances at the Dyak belles who, although they shrank timidly into their fathers' huts, were not altogether displeased at having their charms noticed.

There was hardly a moment without its bickering and fierce words, and there were frequent brawls when women fled shrieking, for hill Dyak and coast Dyak and Malay and Bugi could not meet at such close quarters without the feuds of untold generations breaking out.

Foremost in the minds and on the lips of every individual in that reeking press of humanity was the question: "What will the _orang blanda_ (white man) want?" Speculation ran riot, rumor winged upon rumor, and no tale was too fantastical to lack ready repet.i.tion and credulous listeners. _Mynheer_ would exact heavy penalties for every act of piracy and killing traced back to Bulungan, so the stories ran; _mynheer_ would confiscate all the next rice crop; _mynheer_ would establish great plantations and every village would be required to furnish its quota of forced labor; _mynheer_ would demand the three handsomest youths from each village as hostages for future good behavior. Thus long before the council a.s.sembled, the tide was setting against Peter Gross.

Bulungan was ripe and ready for revolt. It chafed under the fetters of a white man's administration, lightly as those fetters sat. Wildest of Borneo's residencies, it was the last refuge of the adventurous spirits of the Malay archipelago who found life in the established provinces of Java, Sumatra, and Celebes all too tame.

They had tasted freedom for two years under Muller's innocuous administration and did not intend to permit the old order to be changed.

Diverse as their opinions on other matters might be, bitter as their feuds might be, hill Dyak and coast Dyak, Malay, Chinese, Bugi, and Bajau were united on this point. So for the first time in Bulungan's history a feeling of unanimity pervaded a conclave of such mongrel elements as were now gathered in old "Rotterdam" town. This feeling was magnified by a report--originating, no one knew where, and spreading like wildfire--that the great Datu, the chief of all the pirates of the island seas, the mysterious and silent head of the great confederation, was in Bulungan and would advise the chiefs how to answer their new white governor.

Peter Gross was not wholly ignorant of public sentiment in the town. One of Captain Carver's first acts on coming to Bulungan was to establish the nucleus of a secret service to keep him informed on public sentiment among the natives. A Dyak lad named Inchi, whom Carver had first hired to help with the coa.r.s.est camp work, and who had formed an immediate attachment for his soldierly white _baas_, was the first recruit in this service and brought in daily reports.

"Inchi tells me that the chiefs have decided they will pay no more tax to the government," Carver announced to Peter Gross on the morning of the council. The resident and he were on the drill-ground where they could talk undisturbed. Peter Gross's lips tightened.

"I expected opposition," he replied non-committally.

"Too bad we haven't the _Prins Lodewyk_ here," Carver remarked. "A few sh.e.l.ls around their ears might bring them to their senses."

"We don't need such an extreme measure yet," Peter Gross deprecated gently.

"I hardly know whether it's safe for us to venture into the town,"

Carver observed. "Couldn't you arrange to have the meeting here, away from all that mob? There must be thirty thousand people down below."

"I would rather meet them on their own ground."

"It's a big risk. If there should be an attack, we couldn't hold them."