The fleet then sailed to call Sherip Usman to account. His stronghold in Marudu Bay was attacked by a force of 550 men in twenty-four boats, and after a stout resistance was taken with a loss of some twenty killed and wounded. Amongst the former was Lieutenant Gibbard, and near him, when he fell, was the present Rajah, then a midshipman on the Wolverine. The pirates suffered heavily. Many sherips and chiefs were killed, and Sherip Usman was himself mortally wounded—he was carried away to die in the jungle. As in the Batang Lupar the year previously, several proofs of piracies committed upon European vessels here came to light in the shape of articles taken from ships; and such articles would probably have been more numerous had there not been a market in Singapore for the more valuable commodities.
The Rajah now returned to Sarawak in the Cruiser, visiting Bruni on his way. Here he learnt that two days after he had left the town, Pangiran Usup, full of rage and resentment, had gathered a force to attack Bruni and take and kill Pangiran Muda Hasim, and his brother Pangiran Bedrudin, but the latter met him, inflicted on him a signal defeat, and Usup was constrained to fly to Kimanis, some seventy-five miles to the north-east of the capital, over which district he was feudary lord. Then the two uncles insisted upon their nephew the Sultan issuing a decree for his execution. This was done, and the order transmitted to the headman at Kimanis. It was carried out by him with characteristic perfidy. Pretending to entertain a lively friendship for the refugee, he seized an opportunity, when Usup had laid aside his weapons in order to bathe, to fall upon him and strangle him. His brother, Pangiran Yakub, was executed at the same time.
At the close of 1845, Sarawak was at peace within and without. Trade was flourishing, and by immigration the population had increased fourfold, and what had been but a few years before a most miserably oppressed country was now the happiest and most prosperous in Borneo.
The Rajah felt more secure, but he still wished for a man-of-war to guard the coast, and, above all, for British protection, and a flag with the Union cantoned in it.
In October, Sherip Mular, with Sherip Ahmit,[[129]] was again amongst the Sekrang Dayaks, and had induced them to go on a piratical expedition with Sherips Amal, Long, and their father Sherip Abu Bakar, but this rising the Rajah was easily able to suppress with his own Malays aided by the Balau Dayaks. The marauders were met and defeated by the Balaus, who captured their eighteen boats, arms and ammunition, and slew the Sekrang Dayak chief, Apai Beragai, but the three sherips unfortunately escaped into the jungle, and fled to Saribas. Timely warning of Sherip Mular's conduct had been sent the Rajah by the well-disposed Malay and Dayak chiefs of the Sekrang, of whom there were now many. But the sherips returned, and again gaining confidence and ascendency over the well disposed, in February, 1846, the Sekrang Dayaks once more burst out, and with a force of some 1200 men laid waste the coast, burning villages, killing men, and carrying women and children into slavery. They had fortified themselves up the Sekrang, and felt themselves to be in a position to repel the attack of any force that might be sent against them.
In the Sadong, on the Rajah's recommendation, a Malay chief named Abang Kasim had been appointed governor by the Bruni Government in succession to Sherip Sahap, with the title of Datu Bandar;[[130]] he was a man weak in character, but with brains enough to be mischievous and get himself into trouble; and the Land-Dayaks there were again being so oppressed by the Malays that the Rajah found it necessary to warn the latter that they would be punished and turned out of the river if they did not desist.
The Sea-Dayaks of the Kanowit river, a large affluent of the Rejang running towards the head of the Sekrang, by reason of their raids on the Melanaus of Muka, Oya, Matu, and the Rejang delta, now came under the Rajah's notice. The Datu Patinggi Abdul Rahman,[[131]] who was the nominal Bruni governor of this large river, had sent letters to the Rajah stating his desire to put down piracy; these were accepted as an expression of good faith, though he was suspected of conniving in these raids, and the Rajah promised him assistance. The Kanowit Dayaks were from the Sekrang, and were joined in their expeditions by the Saribas and Sekrang Dayaks, who marched overland to join them, so as to obtain a safer outlet to the sea than was now afforded by the mouths of their own rivers. They had lately destroyed Palo, in the delta, killed the men, and had carried the women and children into captivity.
After the death of Pangiran Usup it might have been supposed that the Sultan, feeble and irresolute, would have fallen under the influence of his uncles, Hasim and Bedrudin, and would have been led to favour the English alliance, but this was not so. He was angry at the rout of the pirates of Marudu, and sore at being constrained to sign the death warrant of Usup, his favourite and adviser; as also at the shrinkage of the profits derived from the pirates, though at the expense of the lives and persons of his own subjects. He bore towards Hasim and Bedrudin that dislike which a narrow and dull mind feels towards those who are morally and intellectually his superiors, and such as a reigning prince not infrequently entertains towards the man who will succeed him on his throne. Accordingly he surrounded himself with a number of scoundrels, led by one Haji Seman, a man of low birth, the successor of Pangiran Usup as the Sultan's chief adviser, who fawned on and flattered him, and to whom he could pour forth his grievances; and these men, many of them pangirans and chiefs, fanned his animosities, and encouraged him in his evil courses, for they were still favourable to the piratical party, and were desirous of avenging the death of Pangiran Usup and the destruction of Marudu. The princes, especially Hasim, who had recently been publicly declared successor to the throne by the Sultan, with the title of Sultan Muda, and Bedrudin, were well aware that they were regarded with disfavour, and that there was a powerful party against them; they knew they were in danger, though they did not suspect that the danger was so imminent, and had applied for protection or release from their engagements, but, to quote the Rajah, "they were not protected, they were not released, except by a bloody death in their endeavour to carry them out." The Sultan detested them as favouring the English Rajah, and inclined to a pro-British policy, and he resented having these men so near the throne, and that the succession should devolve on Hasim to the prejudice of his own reputed son, so he resolved to sweep them from his path, and to break his engagements with and to defy the English. As a further incentive his avariciousness was played upon, and it was pointed out to him how much he would gain by acquiring the riches of his uncles were he to put them to death. Swayed by his own atrocious motives, this wretched imbecile, "brutal in spite of his imbecility," who had "the head of an idiot and the heart of a pirate," readily yielded to the promptings of his perfidious counsellors, and issued orders for the despatch of all his uncles. So secretly were preparations made to carry out the execution of this mandate that the doomed princes were taken completely by surprise by the well-armed bands that silently and simultaneously surrounded their houses in the darkness of the night. With most of the brothers resistance was impossible, and they were soon butchered, but Bedrudin fought heroically. He could, however, do little against the large body of murderers opposed to him, with only a few followers to assist him. These latter were soon cut down or had fled. His sister and a favourite concubine remained, and fought by his side, as well as a faithful slave, a lad named Japar. Desperately wounded, having had his left wrist broken by a shot, his shoulder and chest cut open so as to disable his right arm, and his head and face slashed, but not before he had cut down several of his assassins, Bedrudin, with the women and the lad, who had also all been wounded, retired into the house and barred the door. He bade the lad bring him a keg of powder, break in the head, and strew some of the contents about himself and his female companions; then he drew off his signet ring, and ordered Japar to escape and bear it to his friend the Rajah, with the message that he should tell the Queen of England of his fate, that he had been true to his engagements, and begging his friend, with whom his last thoughts were, never to forget him. Japar slipped through an aperture in the floor, dropped into the water, and swam to a canoe, in which he escaped. Then, whilst the murderers, awed by his courage and desperation, were hesitating to break into the house, the true-hearted prince applied the match which blew himself and his two noble companions into eternity.[[132]]
The Sultan Muda Hasim, though wounded, managed to escape from his burning house to the opposite side of the river with several of his brothers, his wife and children, but he was pursued and surrounded by numbers. Most of his brothers had been killed, and others wounded, and no hope remained to him but to throw himself on the mercy of his nephew, the Sultan. He sent messages to him to beg that his life might be spared, but this was peremptorily refused. Death being inevitable, he retreated to a boat that chanced to be moored to the bank, and placing a cask of gunpowder in the cabin called upon his three brothers and his sons who were with him to enter, and immediately firing the train, the whole party was blown up. Hasim, however, was not killed by the explosion, but, determined not to be taken alive, he put a pistol to his head and blew out his brains.
Of the many uncles of the Sultan but four escaped, and many of their relations, as well as other chiefs, were sacrificed. Hasim's full brother, Muhammad, was desperately wounded, and so cowed as to have his spirit broken. He was spared as being harmless. Another brother went permanently mad with terror. Thus the royal family had been nearly exterminated, and the omen of the death of Rajah Api fulfilled.