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The surface of the water was dotted over with the long serpent-like bangkongs, gaily painted and adorned with flags and streamers of many colours, which looked all the brighter against the solemn jungle background. Then they feasted and rejoiced together.
These Dyaks were always head-hunters, and used to pull the oars in the Malay prahus for the sake of the heads of the slain, which they alone cared for. But, in course of time, the Dyaks became expert seamen. They built boats which they called bangkongs, and went out with the Malays, devastating the coast and killing Malays, Chinese, Dyaks, whoever they met with.
They were afterwards joined by bangkongs of friendly Dyaks, three hundred men from Lundu, eight hundred from Linga, some from Samarahan, Sadong, and various places which had suffered from the pirates, and were anxious to assist in giving them a lesson.
Upwards of eighty prahus and bangkongs were captured, many from sixty to eighty feet long, with nine or ten feet beam. The English officers on that night offered prizes to all who should bring in captives alive: but the pirates would take no quarter; in the water they still fought without surrender, for they could not understand a mercy they never accorded to their enemies.
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