At least the road existed. This made the rajah glad. Now, at its further end, Chinese labourers would begin building three large longhouses, on stilts, close to the river. The rajah had told them that these were to become a hospital and regretted saying this when he realised that many of them had taken fright at the idea of the sick from Kuching being brought here and simply run away.

To those who stayed loyal to his project he gave an impromptu address. Drawing himself up to his not inconsiderable height, tying a gold satin ribbon in his thick grey hair, and wearing his (by now rather ancient and rusted) regimental sword in his belt, he stood on one of the wooden crates that had contained Septimus Scaife’s gunpowder and told his ‘little mushrooms’ that they were the heroes of his kingly domain. A hospital, he reminded them, is the greatest edifice a man can build. By doing this work, he interposes himself between life and death. It was for this reason that he had decided to pay those who remained till the end of the endeavour, not in base coinage, but in silver.

Staccato notes of astonishment came from the assembled labourers and then they began to applaud the rajah. He had not, of course, said how much silver he would give them. In the minds of some, perhaps it was a paltry sixpence and in the imagination of others a shining ingot or a three-tiered necklace. But the word ‘silver’ worked a kind of inevitable magic in Borneo at this time. Speculation about how great a quantity of silver ore Sir Ralph had hidden somewhere in his mighty house was widespread among the Malays under his rule and the rajah – despite fear of armed robbery – did not discourage this. He wished to be thought of as being as rich as Queen Victoria herself. He knew that such power as he had depended not so much upon his voracious will, as upon his fortune.

Returning from giving his address to the Chinese workers, Sir Ralph realised that for the first time in a long while, his spirits had lifted. He found himself retrospectively pleased with the image he had presented to the ‘mushrooms’: a strong, virile ruler whose compassionate heart and eccentric dress set him apart from other colonial masters. He found himself foolishly hoping that the forest itself had been listening and watching. For was the building of a hospital not a magnificent defiance against the depredations of Nature? He swore to himself that when the Mal de peste arrived on his lands, nobody would die of it.

Leon had been at his side during the speech. Indeed it had been Leon who had found and tugged into place one of Scaife’s gunpowder crates for the rajah to stand on and then, in the middle of the address, had had a moment of intense worry that the box still contained dynamite unused by Scaife and might, by some means known only to science, ignite itself and blow the rajah into the sky.