was not brought up for examination until the next day. Here, to my
great satisfaction, I found I had to deal with somebody who knew
English well--a military aide-de-camp, who spoke the language with
both fluency and correctness. To him I told my story plainly and
straightforwardly, and by the testimony of my former landlord, Sen,
and an official at the bank where I had changed my money, established
my identity as the person who had passed two days in the town with
Wong, and accompanied him on board the despatch-boat. This was
sufficient to procure my release. Everything I said was very carefully
noted down. My interrogation was conducted before a couple of
mandarins. The Taotai I believe to have been absent from the place at
this time. He is alleged to have deserted his position and to have
been ordered back again. This may or may not be so, but it is
undoubtedly the fact that he fled from Port Arthur the night before
the Japanese attacked it. He does not appear to have been open to the
accusation of heroism.

I was informed by the aide-de-camp that the port had been visited only
a day or two before by the British warship _Crescent_, the officers
of which had landed for a short while. Fate seemed resolved that I should
have no chance of leaving the place without seeing in it something
worth remembering, as I had no sooner returned to Sen's inn, which I
did on my release, than I was seized with a kind of aguish fever, the
effect, no doubt, of the exposure I had recently undergone. It was
nothing serious, but caused a feeling of great lassitude and
depression, and confined me indoors for some ten or twelve days. I had
the place almost to myself, as the approach of the Japanese armies had
not been favourable to custom, and the usual course of travel to and
from the north had been suspended. Sen was anxious to learn from me
whether I considered it advisable for residents and townspeople to