all see it
was truth, full truth, that she uttered.

It was Yunsan's fault for letting Chong Mong-ju live. And yet it was not
Yunsan's fault. He had not dared otherwise. Disgraced at Court,
nevertheless Chong Mong-ju had been too popular with the provincial
priesthood. Yunsan had been compelled to hold his hand, and Chong Mong-
ju, apparently sulking on the north-east coast, had been anything but
idle. His emissaries, chiefly Buddhist priests, were everywhere, went
everywhere, gathering in even the least of the provincial magistrates to
allegiance to him. It takes the cold patience of the Asiatic to conceive
and execute huge and complicated conspiracies. The strength of Chong
Mong-ju's palace clique grew beyond Yunsan's wildest dreaming. Chong
Mong-ju corrupted the very palace guards, the Tiger Hunters of Pyeng-Yang
whom Kim commanded. And while Yunsan nodded, while I devoted myself to
sport and to the Lady Om, while Hendrik Hamel perfected plans for the
looting of the Imperial treasury, and while Johannes Maartens schemed his
own scheme among the tombs of Tabong Mountain, the volcano of Chong Mong-
ju's devising gave no warning beneath us.

Lord, Lord, when the storm broke! It was stand out from under, all
hands, and save your necks. And there were necks that were not saved.
The springing of the conspiracy was premature. Johannes Maartens really
precipitated the catastrophe, and what he did was too favourable for
Chong Mong-ju not to advantage by.

For, see. The people of Cho-Sen are fanatical ancestor-worshippers, and
that old pirate of a booty-lusting Dutchman, with his four cunies, in far
Kyong-ju, did no less a thing than raid the tombs of the gold-coffined,
long-buried kings of ancient Silla. The work was done in the night, and
for the rest of the night they travelled for the sea-coast. But the
following day a dense fog lay over the land and they lost their way to
the waiting junk which Johannes Maartens had privily outfitted. He and
the cunies were rounded in by Yi Sun-sin, the local magistrate, one of
Chong Mong-ju's adherents. Only Herman Tromp escaped in the fog, and was
able, long after, to tell me of the adventure.

That night, although news of the sacrilege was spreading through Cho-Sen
and half the northern provinces had risen on their officials, Keijo and
the Court slept in ignorance. By Chong Mong-ju's orders the beacons
flared their nightly message of peace. And night by night the