the bones and decapitating the then governor of the five provinces,
himself an adherent of Chong Mong-ju, I was made governor of the

seven home provinces of ancient Koryu. In Cho-Sen seven is the
magic number. To complete this number two of the provinces were

taken over from the hands of two more of Chong Mong-ju's adherents.
Lord, Lord, a sea-cuny . . . and dispatched north over the Mandarin

Road with five hundred soldiers and a retinue at my back! I was a
governor of seven provinces, where fifty thousand troops awaited me.

Life, death, and torture, I carried at my disposal. I had a
treasury and a treasurer, to say nothing of a regiment of scribes.

Awaiting me also was a full thousand of tax-farmers; who squeezed
the last coppers from the toiling people.

The seven provinces constituted the northern march. Beyond lay what
is now Manchuria, but which was known by us as the country of the

Hong-du, or "Red Heads." They were wild raiders, on occasion
crossing the Yalu in great masses and over-running northern Cho-Sen

like locusts. It was said they were given to cannibal practices. I
know of experience that they were terrible fighters, most difficult

to convince of a beating.
A whirlwind year it was. While Yunsan and the Lady Om at Keijo

completed the disgrace of Chong Mong-ju, I proceeded to make a
reputation for myself. Of course it was really Hendrik Hamel at my

back, but I was the fine figure-head that carried it off. Through
me Hamel taught our soldiers drill and tactics and taught the Red

Heads strategy. The fighting was grand, and though it took a year,
the year's end saw peace on the northern border and no Red Heads but

dead Red Heads on our side the Yalu.
I do not know if this invasion of the Red Heads is recorded in

Western history, but if so it will give a clue to the date of the
times of which I write. Another clue: when was Hideyoshi the

Shogun of Japan? In my time I heard the echoes of the two
invasions, a generation before, driven by Hideyoshi through the

heart of Cho-Sen from Fusan in the south to as far north as Pyeng-
Yang. It was this Hideyoshi who sent back to Japan a myriad tubs of

pickled ears and noses of Koreans slain in battle. I talked with
many old men and women who had seen the fighting and escaped the

pickling.
Back to Keijo and the Lady Om. Lord, Lord, she was a woman. For

forty years she was my woman. I know. No dissenting voice was
raised against the marriage. Chong Mong-ju, clipped of power, in

disgrace, had retired to sulk somewhere on the far north-east coast.
Yunsan was absolute. Nightly the single beacons flared their

message of peace across the land. The Emperor grew more weak-legged
and blear-eyed what of the ingenious deviltries devised for him by

Yunsan. The Lady Om and I had won to our hearts' desires. Kim was
in command of the palace guards. Kwan Yung-jin, the provincial

governor who had planked and beaten us when we were first cast away,
I had shorn of power and banished for ever from appearing within the

walls of Keijo.
Oh, and Johannes Maartens. Discipline is well hammered into a sea-

cuny, and, despite my new greatness, I could never forget that he
had been my captain in the days we sought new Indies in the

Sparwehr. According to my tale first told in Court, he was the only
free man in my following. The rest of the cunies, being considered

my slaves, could not aspire to office of any sort under the crown.
But Johannes could, and did. The sly old fox! I little guessed his

intent when he asked me to make him governor of the paltry little
province of Kyong-ju. Kyong-ju had no wealth of farms or fisheries.

The taxes scarce paid the collecting, and the governorship was
little more than an empty honour. The place was in truth a

graveyard--a sacred graveyard, for on Tabong Mountain were shrined
and sepultured the bones of the ancient kings of Silla. Better

governor of Kyong-ju than retainer of Adam Strang, was what I
thought was in his mind; nor did I dream that it was except for fear

of loneliness that caused him to take four of the cunies with him.
Gorgeous were the two years that followed. My seven provinces I

governed mainly though needy yang-bans selected for me by Yunsan.
An occasionalinspection, done in state and accompanied by the Lady

Om, was all that was required of me. She possessed a summer palace
on the south coast, which we frequented much. Then there were man's

diversions. I became patron of the sport of wrestling, and revived
archery among the yang-bans. Also, there was tiger-hunting in the

northern mountains.
A remarkable thing was the tides of Cho-Sen. On our north-east

coast there was scarce a rise and fall of a foot. On our west coast
the neap tides ran as high as sixty feet. Cho-Sen had no commerce,

no foreign traders. There was no voyaging beyond her coasts, and no
voyaging of other peoples to her coasts. This was due to her

immemorial policy of isolation. Once in a decade or a score of
years Chinese ambassadors arrived, but they came overland, around

the Yellow Sea, across the country of the Hong-du, and down the
Mandarin Road to Keijo. The round trip was a year-long journey.

Their mission was to exact from our Emperor the empty ceremonial of
acknowledgment of China's ancient suzerainty.

But Hamel, from long brooding, was ripening for action. His plans
grew apace. Cho-Sen was Indies enough for him could he but work it

right. Little he confided, but when he began to play to have me
made admiral of the Cho-Sen navy of junks, and to inquire more than

casually of the details of the store-places of the imperial
treasury, I could put two and two together.

Now I did not care to depart from Cho-Sen except with the Lady Om.
When I broached the possibility of it she told me, warm in my arms,

that I was her king and that wherever I led she would follow. As
you shall 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-