Orders were given for the guard to turn out, and the resident and Major Sandars hurriedly prepared to meet their distinguished guest, who, however, did not stop at the island, but went straight on to the corvette, where he was received by a guard of marines, the captain awaiting his visitor upon the quarter-deck. The visit was but short, for at the end of a few minutes Captain Horton accompanied the sultan on board the naga, and the long low vessel was swiftly turned, and rowed with no little skill to the island landing-place, where a sufficiently imposing military force, under Captain Smithers, was ready to receive him, the sultan walking up to the residency verandah, between a double line of infantry with bayonets fixed. The eastern potentate's opal eyeballs rolled from side to side as, looking rather awkward in his ill-fitting European dress, he tried hard to emulate the dignity of his bronze followers in baju and sarong, each man with the handle of his kris carefully covered by a silken fold. On landing here, the sultan was followed by his kris and sword-bearers, each having his appointed station behind the monarch, holding the weapons by the sheath, with the hilt against the right shoulder, so that a very respectable procession, full of colour and glow, was formed from the landing-place to the residency. The most incongruous part of the following was the appearance of the officer who bore an umbrella to keep the rays of the sun from his liege's head; but as in place of one of the gorgeous, gold-fringed, scarlet-clothed sunshades generally used for that purpose, this was an unmistakeable London-made chaise gingham, with a decidedly Gampish look, it robbed its master of some of his dignity, though he was so busily employed in trying to carry his richly-jewelled sabre with the ease of the English officers, and at the same time to show the splendid weapon to the best advantage, that he saw not the want of dignity in his umbrella, and walked awkwardly to where Mr Linton received him in company with Major Sandars, and such officers as could hurry on the uniforms they so scrupulously avoided in that torrid clime. Tom Long, who paid more attention to the embellishment of his person than any man in the detachment, was one of the officers present, and although nervous about the Sultan's visit, and feeling certain that it had to do with the rescue of the slave girls, he could not help a smile at the umbrella, and a congratulatory sensation that Bob Roberts was not present, for he would have been sure to laugh, when an extension of the risible muscles might have been taken as an insult not to be endured.