Bertram and I gave many receptions to our Malay friends, and it did not take us long to pick up again the threads of our life in Sarawak. I should like to give an account of some journeys which Bertram and I took to some of the outstations. For instance, I was anxious we should visit the Rejang district together, and the Rajah, agreeing with these plans, gave us his yacht for our journeys. We started one morning from Kuching, accompanied by our great friend Mr. C. A. Bampfylde, then administering the Government in the Rajah’s absence, and Dr. Langmore, who had come with us from Europe, for a round of visits to our Dyak and Kayan friends. We stayed a day or two at the little village of Santubong, at the mouth of the Sarawak River, where the Rajah had built a bungalow for the use of Europeans requiring change of air to the sea. The chief of this village is a kindly, well-educated Malay, named Hadji Ahmad. This gentleman has been to Mecca, and is thought a great deal of both by Europeans and natives. At any of these small settlements in the Rajah’s country, Malay gentlemen of the standing of Hadji Ahmad occupy the office of magistrate, and are entitled to inquire into, and try, all the petty cases that may occur even in such simple out-of-the-way and almost sinless communities. As I think I have remarked before, the more serious criminal cases are under the control of the Rajah and his Council at Kuching. When we arrived at the bungalow, we found Hadji Ahmad’s wife, sisters, aunts, and female cousins sitting on the floor arrayed in silks and satins with gold bangles, waiting for us. Hadji Ahmad was anxious we should be amused during our stay, and, being an enthusiastic fisherman, he was eager to show us a good day’s sport. He offered to erect a fishing-shed for us, with as thick a roof as possible, to protect us from the sun, on the shallow, shelving bank of sand which at low tide lies uncovered for miles on the Santubong shore. When the hut was built, some twenty fathoms from the shore, Hadji Ahmad asked permission to bring his family to join in the expedition. We started off at ebbtide in a long, narrow canoe, covered with white awnings. The Malay ladies had taken their position in the boat for about an hour and a half before our arrival, and as I stepped into the canoe they almost sent us overboard in their tender attempts to settle me down in the most comfortable corner. Hadji Ahmad’s wife was a buxom dame of thirty years. She and her five companions talked incessantly, and one of the elder women kept us amused and the Malay women in a perpetual giggle, at the manner in which she chaffed her brother, who was our helmsman. She was most personal in her remarks, drawing attention to his swarthy complexion, his beard and moustache that sparsely covered his chin and lips (Malay men are seldom adorned with either beard or moustache), but he took his sister’s witticisms good-humouredly.