th 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.

Forty long years of persecution followed, for Chong Mong-ju's hatred of
the Lady Om and me was deathless. Worse luck, he was favoured with long
life as well as were we cursed with it. I have said the Lady Om was a
wonder of a woman. Beyond endlessly repeating that statement, words fail
me, with which to give her just appreciation. Somewhere I have heard
that a great lady once said to her lover: "A tent and a crust of bread
with you." In effect that is what the Lady Om said to me. More than to
say it, she lived the last letter of it, when more often than not crusts
were not plentiful and the sky itself was our tent.

Every effort I made to escape beggary was in the end frustrated by Chong
Mong-ju. In Songdo I became a fuel-carrier, and the Lady Om and I shared
a hut that was vastly more comfortable than the open road in bitter
winter weather. But Chong Mong-ju found me out, and I was beaten and
planked and put out upon the road. That was a terrible winter, the
winter poor "What-Now" Vandervoot froze to death on the streets of Keijo.

In Pyeng-yang I became a water-carrier, for know that that old city,
whose walls were ancient even in the time of David, was considered by the
people to be a canoe, and that, therefore, to sink a well inside the
walls would be to scupper the city. So all day long thousands of
coolies, water-jars yoked to their shoulders, tramp out the river gate
and back. I became one of these, unt