fell over each other in heaps. But Kwan Yung-jin was my
man, and all that saved him when I made my rush was the intervention of
his satellites. They were flabby creatures. I made a mess of them and a
muss and muck of their silks ere the multitude could return upon me.
There were so many of them. They clogged my blows by the sneer numbers
of them, those behind shoving the front ones upon me. And how I dropped
them! Toward the end they were squirming three-deep under my feet. But
by the time the crews of the three junks and most of the village were on
top of me I was fairly smothered. The planking was easy.

"God in heaven, what now!" asked Vandervoot, another cuny, when we had
been bundled aboard a junk.

We sat on the open deck, like so many trussed fowls, when he asked the
question, and the next moment, as the junk heeled to the breeze, we shot
down the deck, planks and all, fetching up in the lee-scuppers with
skinned necks. And from the high poop Kwan Yung-jin gazed down at us as
if he did not see us. For many years to come Vandervoot was known
amongst us as "What-Now Vandervoot." Poor devil! He froze to death one
night on the streets of Keijo; with every door barred against him.

To the mainland we were taken and thrown into a stinking, vermin-infested
prison. Such was our introduction to the officialdom of Cho-Sen. But I
was to be revenged for all of us on Kwan Yung-jin, as you shall see, in
the days when the Lady Om was kind and power was mine.

In prison we lay for many days. We learned afterward the reason. Kwan
Yung-jin had sent a dispatch to Keijo, the capital, to find what royal
disposition was to be made of us. In the meantime we were a menagerie.
From dawn till dark our barred windows were besieged by the natives, for
no member of our race had they ever seen before. Nor was our audience
mere rabble. Ladies, borne in palanquins on the shoulders of coolies,
came to see the strange devils cast up by the sea, and while their
attendants drove back the common folk with whips, they would gaze long
and timidly at us. Of them we saw little, for their faces were covered,
according to the custom of the country. Only dancing girls, low women,
and granddams ever were seen abroad with exposed faces.

I have often thought that Kwan Yung-jin suffered from indigestion, and
that when the attacks were acute he took it out on us. At any rate,
without rhyme or reason, whenever the whim came to him, we