s and cities had been destroyed. It was no man's land,
infested with wild animals and traversed by companies of mounted Tiger
Hunters whose business was to kill any human being they found. That way
there was no escape for us, nor was there any escape for us by sea.

As the years passed my seven fellow-cunies came more to frequent Fusan.
It was on the south-east coast where the climate was milder. But more
than climate, it lay nearest of all Cho-Sen to Japan. Across the narrow
straits, just farther than the eye can see, was the one hope of escape
Japan, where doubtless occasional ships of Europe came. Strong upon me
is the vision of those seven ageing men on the cliffs of Fusan yearning
with all their souls across the sea they would never sail again.

At times junks of Japan were sighted, but never lifted a familiar topsail
of old Europe above the sea-rim. Years came and went, and the seven
cunies and myself and the Lady Om, passing through middle life into old
age, more and more directed our footsteps to Fusan. And as the years
came and went, now one, now another failed to gather at the usual place.
Hans Amden was the first to die. Jacob Brinker, who was his road-mate,
brought the news. Jacob Brinker was the last of the seven, and he was
nearly ninety when he died, outliving Tromp a scant two years. I well
remember the pair of them, toward the last, worn and feeble, in beggars'
rags, with beggars' bowls, sunning themselves side by side on the cliffs,
telling old stories and cackling shrill-voiced like children. And Tromp
would maunder over and over of how Johannes Maartens and the cunies
robbed the kings on Tabong Mountain, each embalmed in his golden coffin
with an embalmed maid on either side; and of how these ancient proud ones
crumbled to dust within the hour while the cunies cursed and sweated at
junking the coffins.

As sure as loot is loot, old Johannes Maartens would have got away and
across the Yellow Sea with his booty had it not been for the fog next day
that lost him. That cursed fog! A song was made of it, that I heard and
hated through all Cho-Sen to my dying day. Here run two lines of it:

"_Yanggukeni chajin anga_
_Wheanpong tora deunda_,
The thick fog of the Westerners
Broods over Whean peak."

For forty years I was a beggar of Cho-Sen. Of the fourteen of us that
were cast away only I survived. The Lady Om was of the same indomitable
stuff, and we aged together. S