His message sprang the palace revolution.  I was not due to return until midnight, and by midnight all was over.  At nine in the evening the conspirators secured possession of the Emperor in his own apartments.  They compelled him to order the immediate attendance of the heads of all departments, and as they presented themselves, one by one, before his eyes, they were cut down.  Meantime the Tiger Hunters were up and out of hand.  Yunsan and Hendrik Hamel were badly beaten with the flats of swords and made prisoners.  The seven other cunies escaped from the palace along with the Lady Om.  They were enabled to do this by Kim, who held the way, sword in hand, against his own Tiger Hunters.  They cut him down and trod over him.  Unfortunately he did not die of his wounds.

Like a flaw of wind on a summer night the revolution, a palace revolution of course, blew and was past.  Chong Mong-ju was in the saddle.  The Emperor ratified whatever Chong Mong-ju willed.  Beyond gasping at the sacrilege of the king’s tombs and applauding Chong Mong-ju, Cho-Sen was unperturbed.  Heads of officials fell everywhere, being replaced by Chong Mong-ju’s appointees; but there were no risings against the dynasty.

And now to what befell us.  Johannes Maartens and his three cunies, after being exhibited to be spat upon by the rabble of half the villages and walled cities of Cho-Sen, were buried to their necks in the ground of the open space before the palace gate.  Water was given them that they might live longer to yearn for the food, steaming hot and savoury and changed hourly, that was place temptingly before them.  They say old Johannes Maartens lived longest, not giving up the ghost for a full fifteen days.

Kim was slowly crushed to death, bone by bone and joint by joint, by the torturers, and was a long time in dying.  Hamel, whom Chong Mong-ju divined as my brains, was executed by the paddle—­in short, was promptly and expeditiously beaten to death to the delighted shouts of the Keijo populace.  Yunsan was given a brave death.  He was playing a game of chess with the jailer, when the Emperor’s, or, rather, Chong Mong-ju’s, messenger arrived with the poison-cup.  “Wait a moment,” said Yunsan.  “You should be better-mannered than to disturb a man in the midst of a game of chess.  I shall drink directly the game is over.”  And while the messenger waited Yunsan finished the game, winning it, then drained the cup.

It takes an Asiatic to temper his spleen to steady, persistent, life-long revenge.  This Chong Mong-ju did with the Lady Om and me.  He did not destroy us.  We were not even imprisoned.  The Lady Om was degraded of all rank and divested of all possessions.  An imperial decree was promulgated and posted in the last least village of Cho-Sen to the effect that I was of the house of Koryu and that no man might kill me.  It was further declared that the eight sea-cunies who survived must not be killed.  Neither were they to be favoured.  They were to be outcasts, beggars on the highways.  And that is what the Lady Om and I became, beggars on the highways.