and
straightforwardly, and by the testimony of my former landlord, Sen,
and an official at the bank where I had changed my money, established
my identity as the person who had passed two days in the town with
Wong, and accompanied him on board the despatch-boat. This was
sufficient to procure my release. Everything I said was very carefully
noted down. My interrogation was conducted before a couple of
mandarins. The Taotai I believe to have been absent from the place at
this time. He is alleged to have deserted his position and to have
been ordered back again. This may or may not be so, but it is
undoubtedly the fact that he fled from Port Arthur the night before
the Japanese attacked it. He does not appear to have been open to the
accusation of heroism.

I was informed by the aide-de-camp that the port had been visited only
a day or two before by the British warship _Crescent_, the officers
of which had landed for a short while. Fate seemed resolved that I should
have no chance of leaving the place without seeing in it something
worth remembering, as I had no sooner returned to Sen's inn, which I
did on my release, than I was seized with a kind of aguish fever, the
effect, no doubt, of the exposure I had recently undergone. It was
nothing serious, but caused a feeling of great lassitude and
depression, and confined me indoors for some ten or twelve days. I had
the place almost to myself, as the approach of the Japanese armies had
not been favourable to custom, and the usual course of travel to and
from the north had been suspended. Sen was anxious to learn from me
whether I considered it advisable for residents and townspeople to
leave the port. I replied, as I sincerely thought, that the Japanese,
if they succeeded in taking the place, would do no harm to
non-combatants. I was, however, fatally mistaken.

The inn was a place of two storeys--few Chinese habitations have more.
Most of the rooms opened round a partially covered courtyard. I had a
good one in the upper storey, or the "top-side," as it is expressed in
"pidgin." There were no fireplaces; the apartments were chiefly warmed
by charcoal in braziers. Along one side of that which I occupied was a
long low hollow bench, filled with hot air from a furnace. This
contrivance usually served me for a bed, for although they use
bedsteads, there is nothing on them but an immense wadded quilt, in
which you roll yourself up. I transferred it to the hot-air holder,
whi