ran wildly about, hoping to escape the inevitable. Some of the
poor wretches reached the British Consulate, alive or half alive,
clamouring for shelter; but Mr. Meadows, then Consul, refused to let
them in, fearing to turn the riot from an anti-Portuguese disturbance
into an anti-foreign outbreak, and the unfortunate creatures
frantically beat on the closed gates in vain.

Perhaps much of their fate was well deserved--some historians say
so--but it was none the less terrible when it came; and I can imagine
that the predicament of Meadows and young Hart, standing behind the
barred gates of the Consulate, could have been little worse, mentally,
than that of the wretches outside praying to them in the name of
Heaven and the saints for shelter.

All were hunted down at last, dragged out of their hiding-places in
old Chinese graves among the paddy fields, butchered where they stood
defending their lodging-house, or taken prisoners only to be put on
one of their own lorchas, towed a little way up the river and slowly
roasted to death. Then, "last scene of all," the Cantonese stormed the
Portuguese Consulate, pillaged and wrecked the building, and were
just climbing on to the flat roof to haul down the flag when a stately
white cloud appeared far down the river, serenely floating towards the
disturbed city.

It was the French warship _Capricieuse_, under full sail. She had
come straight from South America and put in at Ningpo after her long
voyage, all unconscious of the terrible events passing there. Was
ever an arrival more providential? I greatly doubt it; for had she not
appeared in this miraculous fashion, who knows what would have come to
the handful of white men left in that last outpost of civilization?