ow I heard screams
of "_Chucomita! Chucomita!_" ("Wait! wait!") "_Kidare!_" ("Stop!") I
stopped, accordingly, and tried to look across the open ground, where I
saw about a score of men, nearly two hundred yards away, apparently
pointing at me. As the setting sun was glaring in my eyes, I could not
well discern what they were doing, and, thinking that their shouts to me
were only by way of joke, I made a step forward, but hardly had I done so
when a noise like a rocket going past was heard, and a bunch of arrows
became deeply planted in the earth, at a white circular spot marked on
it, only about two yards in front of me. I counted them. They were ten in
number. My danger, however, was, after all, practically of no account,
for these archers, as I found out by repeated observation of them, hardly
ever miss their target. Still, even in the case of these Cho-senese
William Tells, it was by no means a pleasant sensation to hear that bunch
of arrows whistling in front of my nose.

As I was attentively listening to the information supplied me by the
native gentleman who was accompanying me through the labyrinthian ways of
the royal palace, young Prince Min appeared on the scene, and announced
that His Majesty wished, through him, to welcome me to the royal palace,
and that he wished me now to partake of dinner. First, however, he said,
the King would be pleased if I would take a sketch from a particular spot
to which he led me. As there was nothing specially worth sketching at
that place, I suggested to the young prince that another spot would be
preferable; but the latter insisted, in the King's name, that I should
paint from there and left me. I noticed, however, that there was, just
behind this spot, a window, that namely, of the queen's apartments, which
led me at once to fancy that it was to satisfy her curiosity that I was
made to work there; accordingly I began the sketch with my back to the
window--for, it must be remembered, to look at the queen is an offence
punishable by death. I had not been many minutes at work, nevertheless,
before I heard the sliding window gently move. I knew what was coming,
and tried to screen the sketch with my body, so as to compel the
observer, whoever it was, to lean well out of the window if he wished to
see it. A little way off were hundreds of soldiers, walking or squatting
on the ground, and on the wall of the King's house and smaller trees the
fat and repulsive eunuchs had perched th