The first thing necessary was to supply each with a strip of white calico, to be worn in the head-dress as a distinguishing mark, to prevent our people knocking them over if met by accident while prowling about the jungle. We also established a watchword, "Datu," which many of them, who had great dread of the white men, never ceased to call out. Sheriff Jaffer, in command of their force, had promised to join us from the beginning; but as they did not make their appearance off the mouth of the river, we thought no more of them. It was necessary to dispatch messengers up the rivers to inform our boats of this re-enforcement, as in all probability an attack would have been made immediately on the appearing in sight of so formidable a force.
At 10 A.M. our boats returned, having gone up the right-hand branch as far as it was practicable. That to the left having been obstructed by trees felled across the stream, was considered, from the trouble taken to prevent our progress, to be the branch up which the enemy had retreated, and not being provisioned for more than the day, they came back, and started again in the afternoon with the first of the flood-tide. Of this party Lieutenant Horton took charge, accompanied by Mr. Brooke. It was a small, but an effective, and determined, and well-appointed little body, not likely to be deterred by difficulties. A small native force of about forty men accompanied them, making, with our own, between eighty and ninety people. The forts having been destroyed, no further obstacles were expected to our advance beyond the felling of trees and the vast odds as to numbers in case of attack, the pirates being reckoned to be about six thousand Dyaks and five hundred Malays.
The evening set in with rain and hazy weather. Our native skirmishing parties were returning to their boats and evening meals; our advancing party had been absent about an hour and a half, and I had just commenced a supper in the Jolly Bachelor on ham and poached eggs, when the sound of the pinnace's twelve-pounder carronade broke through the stillness of the night. This was responded to by one of those simultaneous war-yells apparently from every part of the country. My immediate idea was that our friends had been surrounded. It was impossible to move so large a boat as the Jolly Bachelor up to their assistance; nor would it be right to leave our wounded without a sufficient force for their protection. I immediately jumped into my gig, taking with me a bugler, whom I placed in the bow, and seeing our arms in as perfect readiness as the rain would allow us to keep them in, I proceeded to join the combatants.