But efficient aid was at hand.  In the summer of 1843 the British ship Dido anchored off the entrance of Sarawak River.  She was commissioned to suppress piracy in and about the Chinese Sea.  Her commander readily entered into the views of the English Rajah.  A boat expedition against the strongholds of the Sarebus pirates was projected.  Mr. Brooke assisted with seven hundred Dyaks.  A curious incident occurred, showing how clearly the natives appreciated their dependence on their English friend.  When he asked their chiefs if they would aid him, they besought him not to risk his life in so desperate an enterprise.  But when he assured them that his purpose was fixed, that he should go, alone if necessary, they replied:  “What is the use of our remaining behind?  You die, we die; you live, we live.  We will go too.”  The expedition was perfectly successful.  Three fortified villages were stormed, many guns spiked, many boats destroyed, and their defenders driven to the jungles.  This chastisement not sufficing, in the following year another expedition from the same vessel attacked the Sakarran pirates and inflicted upon them a punishment even more severe than that which had fallen to the lot of their Sarebus brethren.  Six forts, one mounting fifty-six guns, scores of war-boats, and more than a thousand huts, were burned.  These lessons, though sharp, did not permanently subdue.

The blow which broke the power of these confederacies was inflicted in 1849.  News came to Sarawak that the pirates had put to sea, marking their course by fearful atrocities.  At once Mr. Brooke applied to the English Admiral for assistance, and the steamer Nemesis was despatched to the scene of action.  The Rajah joined her with eighteen war-boats, to which were afterwards added eleven hundred Dyaks, in their bangkongs.  On the 31st of July, at night, they encountered the great war-fleet of the Sarebus and Sakarran pirates, numbering one hundred and fifty bangkongs, returning home laden with plunder.  The pirates found the entrances of the river occupied by their enemies,—­the English, Malay, and Dyak forces being placed in three detachments, while the Nemesis was fully prepared to assist whenever the attack should begin.  “Then there was a dead silence, broken only by three strokes of a gong, which called the pirates to a council of war.  A few minutes afterwards a fearful yell gave notice of their advance, and the fleet approached in two divisions.  In the dead of the night there ensued a terrible scene.  The pirates fought bravely, but they could not withstand the superior forces of their enemy.  Their boats were upset by the paddles of the steamer.  They were hemmed in on every side, and five hundred men were killed sword in hand, while twenty-five hundred escaped to the jungles, many of them to perish.  The morning light showed a sad spectacle of ruin and defeat.  Upwards of eighty prahus and bangkongs were captured, and many more destroyed.”  The English officers would have gladly saved life;