The Tuan Muda had only Muhammadan Malays with him; to them the person of a Sherip, a descendant of the Prophet, was sacred, and to have him seized and put in irons was simply impossible. At dawn he called upon those who did not court destruction to leave the Sherip's prahus, which several did, and then he opened fire with round shot; so as to spare life, grapeshot was not used. The Sherip's vessel was struck about the water-mark, and soon began to fill, when a breeze springing up, he cut his cables and drifted ashore, escaping into the jungle with a few followers. The Tuan Muda's men were reluctant to follow him; some thought the Sherip invulnerable, others that he had the power of damping powder and blunting weapons from a distance, and the search for him was but half-hearted. Three times the Tuan Muda had raised his rifle and covered the Sherip as he climbed the bank, but spared him. It is a pity he was merciful, for wandering down the banks of the river the Sherip and his followers came across a boat from which two Malays had landed. The boat they seized, and in it escaped to Muka—the Malays they wantonly murdered to cover their tracks. Among other articles found in his prahu was the Sherip's long execution kris; his bringing this was significant. Then the Tuan Muda returned up the river. At Semunjan he learnt that the Bandar Kasim had incited the Malays there to rush the fort whilst he, the Tuan Muda, was engaged with the Sherip, but they had declined to have anything to do with him. On arriving at Gadong, then the principal Malay settlement, the Tuan Muda found that the Bandar Kasim and his rebellious clique had decamped over the border. He assembled the now thoroughly cowed people, and told them they had all been imposed upon by a man, passing himself off as a Bruni Rajah, and that he did not blame the lower class people. As Bandar Kasim had disavowed and challenged the Government the whole of his property was confiscated, and all his slaves were liberated. The people were assured by the Tuan Muda that he had no intention of taking steps to punish their misconduct, though he plainly told them they should have known better, and he begged them to be more careful in future. They loudly upbraided their chiefs for having misled them, and one man angrily turning to the people, exclaimed, "You are all a parcel of babies, only fit to crawl, instead of standing upright." He spoke the truth, but these poor ignorant creatures had not yet learnt to stand upright. The words of their chiefs were still law to them, and years of oppression had taught them to submit without murmur to the rule of the great over their lives and property. But the spell was broken. Their chiefs had fled before the Tuan Muda, and the greatest Sherip in the land had been utterly routed. The agent of the Bruni Government, whose presence on the coast has been mentioned, on hearing that the Sherip had been fired upon, left his large prahu and fled in fear to