But it was necessary to chastise and bring these troublesome neighbours into subjection. Before the Tuan Muda had left for England an ultimatum had been sent to Akam Nipa to deliver up the murderers of Steele and Fox. They had been committing great depredations on the lower Rejang, and Mr. Cruickshank, the Resident there, had appealed to the Government at Kuching to bridle them. Not only were the murderers of Messrs. Steele and Fox with them, but, as we have previously mentioned, they had lately descended and made a treacherous attack on the Katibas Dayaks, who had stood true to the Sarawak Government. Professing friendship, they had seized an occasion when most of the men of Katibas were absent, and had killed seventeen of the men who had remained at their homes, and a hundred women and children. Their captives they tortured in the most horrible manner, hacking them with knives and gouging out their eyes before putting them to death. And not only were the men thus treated, but also most of the women. They burnt fourteen long houses, or villages, and decamped. Then they had engaged a man named Paring to lure some of the Dayaks into an ambush. Paring, a Kayan, had married a Dayak wife, and when he came to Katibas to visit his wife's relations he persuaded eighteen men to accompany him into the Kayan country to propose terms of peace, and when they demurred he made himself responsible for the safety of the whole party. Having thus overcome their fears he led them to a place where the Kayans, under their chief Oyong Hang,[280] were lurking in waiting for them. Eleven were at once bound hand and foot, but seven managed to escape into the jungle, and after several days returned in a famished condition to Katibas. The eleven were conveyed up the river, and on their way were carried into every Kayan house to be tortured by the women. On arriving at Oyong Hang's abode, one of them named Boyong was singled out to be sacrificed so as to attend in the abode of spirits the soul of Oyong Hang's son, who had lately died. He was to be buried alive under a huge wooden pillar, the mausoleum of Oyong Hang's son, early on the following morning. However, during the night, Boyong and another effected their escape, ran into the jungle, and found their way to the foot of the first rapids after twenty days' wandering. They were then in such an exhausted condition that they found it impossible to proceed further on foot, accordingly they lashed themselves by rattans to a log in the river, drifted down stream, and were eventually picked up and rescued. All the remaining men were strangled by the Kayans. The scoundrel Paring, not thinking that his villainy had been disclosed, had the audacity to go among the Dayaks again, when he was seized and brought to Kanowit, where he was sentenced to death. But when in confinement, awaiting the approval of the sentence from Kuching, he effected his escape. The alarm was, however, at once given, and he was