owner of the brothel never ceased until she was dead
and mashed almost to a jelly before the eyes of the other inmates, to
teach them a lesson of warning against trying to escape. Let us not
mourn. It was better so than to have been left alive unrescued. The
pity is that the keepers and the "Watch-dogs" hold them alive to their
task as long as they do. The angels of heaven, God's rescue party, are
not far off from such victims, nor His angels of wrath and vengeance
from such inhuman fiends. We wonder how many of the little slaves were
lifted up into a better life than this by the merciful earthquake; and
how many of their masters and outragers saw hell gape and themselves
swallowed up in the horrible earthquake,--God's deliverance or God's
judgment,--according to the character of the individual.

When the missionary enters a den, and by means of some carefully
devised scheme identifies the girl who has had conveyed to the
missionary her desire to be rescued, and attempts to take the girl,
she often screams for help, kicks, fights, bites, scratches, spits,
and sometimes swears at her liberator, but often is secretly clutching
with almost a death-grip the rescuer's hand. She will sometimes fight
at being thrust through the doorway into the street, calling lustily
for help, but whisper to the missionary, "Tell the officer to carry
me out." When once, in spite of the feigned struggle, she is carried
outside, and her pursuers are well behind in the chase, the ruse is
cast aside, and it becomes a race for dear life between the rescuer
and the rescued to make the city of refuge,--the mission home,--and
generally the fugitive gets there first. Once a rescue worker found
her girl secreted with four others in a loft, to which she had been
removed because the brothel-keeper feared an attempt at rescue. She
was so carefully guarded and watched that the poor thing dared not
signify to the missionary that she was the one who wished to be taken,
and all five struggled with equal apparent fierceness against rescue.
What was the missionary to do! She lifted her heart in the despairing
cry, "Oh, God, if ever you heard a human prayer and answered it, for
Christ's sake hear me now! Tell me which one to take!" She instantly
seized one of them, who fought savagely, and bit and scratched and
swore. Out she went with her, and all the way to the mission the girl
abused her terribly. But the instant the door closed behind them and
they were saf