I established myself in the capital, to find the Sultan sulky at the failure of Mr. Edwardes' promises. I remained quiet for a few weeks, when I found his Highness gradually coming round, but it was long ere I was again established first adviser to the Crown, for Mr. Edwardes' promises had either been great, or had been misunderstood, and they thought that the British Government was about to remove the English from Sarawak, and return the country to them.[265] In April the Rajah went to Bruni. The Sultan and the wazirs received him warmly, and the good understanding between the two countries was established anew. The Sultan was now anxious to place Muka and the intermediate places under the Rajah's rule, but the latter waived this consideration until hostilities were over. The Rajah then went to Oya, Mr. St. John accompanying him, also the Sultan's envoy, Haji Abdul Rahman, bearing private letters and messages from the Sultan pressing Pangiran Nipa not to fight. Here the principal chiefs were seen, and the Sultan's commands that hostilities should cease and that Sherip Masahor was to be banished were read to them.[266] Mr. St. John then went to Singapore to obtain a man-of-war from which to deliver the Sultan's decree at Muka, and the Rajah made every preparation to assume the offensive against Muka, as it was not expected that the Sherip would quietly submit to even the Sultan's mandate. Masahor had defied both the Sultan and the Bruni Rajahs, and had heaped insults upon them so often before when in the plenitude of his power in the Rejang, where he had been practically an independent prince, with the dreaded and powerful Kayans and the Dayaks at his back, that his submission was doubtful. This was no idle supposition, as one writer has suggested, for when, two months after Mr. Edwardes' ill-advised action at Muka, the _Victoria_, conveying Messrs. A. C. Crookshank and L. V. Helms (of the Borneo Company), again visited Muka, to endeavour once more by peaceable means to re-open trade with Kuching, these gentlemen and the captain, who had foolishly gone up to the town unarmed and without a guard, met with a hostile reception on the part of the Sherip, and would have fared badly at his hands, had not his adherents been prevailed upon to desist by the wiser counsel of Pangiran Nipa. Mr. St. John went to Muka in H.M.S. _Charybdis_, and with Captain Keane and an armed force of 200 blue-jackets and marines proceeded up to the town. The Sultan's _titah_ (decree), "advising a cessation of hostilities, and that Sherip Masahor and his men were to leave the country," was read, and both Pangiran Nipa and the Sherip promised obedience. They were told that Mr. Edwardes' interference had not met with the approval of her Majesty's Government, and "Captain Keane's judicious conduct in taking an overpowering force up the river to the middle of the town showed them that Mr. Edwardes' support was no longer to be relied upon."[267]