269



XXI
NAKODAH ORLONG

Two things greater than all things

are,
One is Love and the other War

RvDYAKS Kipling

ON the day after my arrival at Bandar Bharu,
Captain Innes, R.E., came from Penang
accompanied by two officers and sixty men of the
First Battalion of H.M. loth Regiment, together
with the Superintendent of the Penang Police (Hon.
H. Plunket) and twenty native constables armed
with rifles.
Captain Innes, an exceptionally able member of
his distinguished corps, was then in civil employ as
head of the Public Works Department in Penang.
When the news of Mr. Birch's murder reached that
place, the nearest British Settlement, Captain Innes
was sent with a force to take charge of the
Residency.
270



NAKODAR ORLONG

It is not my intention to detail the subsequent
events except in so far as is necessary for a right
understanding of an incident connected with the
death of a man called Nakodah Orlong, a Sumatran
Malay.
With the force at our disposal, which included
Lieut. Abbott, R.N., his four bluejackets, and
about fifty so-called Sikhs, it was determined to
attack Pasir Saiak before the Maharaja Lela had
time to collect a large following. An immediate
advance was also considered advisable to prevent
the number of our enemies being increased by what
might look like our indecision. With Easterns, to sit
still and stockade your position is probably, under
such circumstances, the worst course possible.
We knew that the Maharaja Lela was throwing
up works, npt only in his village, but outside of it,
and to force them it was decided to take two
howitzers and a rocket-tube.
