XII
VAN HAGEN AND CAVALIERO
How loved, how honoured once, avails thee not,
To whom related, or by whom begot,
A heap of dust alone remains of thee Pope
NOT many months after my first arrival in the
East I met, in a club in Singapore, an
Italian called Cavaliero, He was quite young, tall,
dark, and good-looking, of a pronounced Italian
type. What his occupation was I have no idea; I
suppose he had some sort of business, but it could
not have been very attractive or profitable, for one
day I was told that he and a Hollander named
Van Hagen had collected about a hundred natives
of all sorts and conditions and had accepted service
with the Viceroy of the Sultan of Selangor.
Selangor was then an absolutely independent Malay State, so independent in fact that the principal and almost only employment of its inhabitants was fighting.
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