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 peace-beacons flared, while day and night Chong Mong-ju’s messengers killed horses on all the roads of Cho-Sen.  It was my luck to see his messenger arrive at Keijo.  At twilight, as I rode out through the great gate of the capital, I saw the jaded horse fall and the exhausted rider stagger in on foot; and I little dreamed that that man carried my destiny with him into Keijo.