t 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 occasional
inspection, 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 sh