An Englishman of gentle birth is naturally expected to tell the truth, to be clean in all his dealings, to keep his temper, and not to show his fears. Not being a beastly cad, Brooke as a matter of course conformed to the ordinary standards and, having no worries, was able to do so cheerfully. One may meet men of this stock, size and pattern by thousands the world over, but in a decayed Malay state, at war with the Dyaks ashore and the pirates afloat, Brooke was a phenomenon just as astonishing as a first-class comet, an earthquake eruption, or a cyclone. His arrival was the only important event in the whole history of North Borneo. The rajah sought his advice in dealing with the Dutch, the Dyaks and the pirates. The Malays, Dyaks, pirates and everybody else consulted him as to their dealings with the rajah. On his second visit he took a boat’s crew from his yacht and went to the seat of war. There he tried to the verge of tears to persuade the hostile forces either to fight or make friends, and when nobody could be induced to do anything at all, he, with his boat’s crew and one native warrior, stormed the Dyak position, putting the enemy to total rout and flight. Luckily, nobody was hurt, for even a cut finger would have spoiled the perfect bloodlessness of Brooke’s victory. Then the Dyaks surrendered to Brooke. Afterward the pirate fleet appeared at the capital, not to attack the rajah, but to be inspected by Brooke, and when he had patted the pirates they went away to purr. Moreover the rajah offered to hand over his kingdom to Brooke as manager, and the Englishman expected him to keep his word. Brooke brought a shipload of stores in payment for a cargo of manganese, but the rajah was so contented with that windfall that he forgot to send to his mines for the ore. Further up the coast a British ship was destroyed by lightning, and her crew got ashore where they were held as captives pending a large ransom. Even when the captain’s wife had a baby the local bigwig thereabouts saw a new chance of plunder, and stole the baby-clothes. Then the shipwrecked mariners sent a letter to Brooke appealing for his help; but nothing on earth could induce the spineless boneless rajah to send the relief he had promised. Then Brooke wrote to Singapore whence the East India Company despatched a war-ship which rescued the forty castaways. The rajah’s next performance was to arrange for a percentage with two thousand, five hundred robbers who proposed to plunder and massacre his own subjects. Brooke from his yacht stampeded the raiders with a few rounds from the big guns--blank of course. Brooke was getting rather hard up, and could not spare ball ammunition on weekdays.