Page 119 - Malay sketches

XII

VAN HAGEN AND CAVALIERO

How loved, how honoured once, avails
thee not,
To whom related, or by whom begot,
A heap of dust alone remains of thee
POPE

many months after my first arrival in the
NOT East I met, in a club in Singapore, an
Italian called Cavaliero. He was quite young, tall,
dark, and good-looking, of a pronounced Italian
type. What his occupation was I have no idea ; I
suppose he had some sort of business, but it could
not have been very attractive or profitable, for one
day I was told that he and a Hollander named
Van Hagen had collected about a hundred natives
of all sorts and conditions and had accepted service
with the Viceroy of the Sultan of Selangor.
Selangor was then an absolutely independent
Malay State, so independent in fact that the principal
and almost only employment of its inhabitants was
fighting.
103