MALAY SKETCHES
The Resident, we were told, had been murdered at Pâsir Sâlak, and we could not well doubt the truth of that report. Then the people on both banks of the river for miles above and below Pâsir Sâlak were on the watch for us; the Residency was in the hands of the Maharaja Lela's people, the Sikhs killed or fugitives in the jungle; worst of all, the river at Pâsir Sâlak was staked from bank to bank, and if so no boat could pass that barrier.
There were two points of minor moment—first, that the Residency boats were all painted white, we had one of them, and no native-owned boat in the country was white. That fact made us so conspicuous that we did not think it worth while to lower the Union Jack we carried at the stern. Secondly, up to that time no house-boat had ever made the journey from Blanja to Pâsir Sâlak in anything like twelve hours, and we calculated, therefore, that we should reach the point of greatest danger in broad daylight, probably about 9 A.M. the next morning. Speed was our best chance, but here again we were handicapped by the fact that our men had been paddling since 8.30 A.M., they had had one meal, and now there was a night's work before them and no time to stop for cooking.
If the conditions were as they had been stated,
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