them. As soon as they got into order, they divided into two parties,
performed mock skirmishes, discharged blunt arrows, drew their swords,
fled and pursued, attacked and retired, and, in short, discovered the
best military discipline I ever beheld. The parallel sticks secured them
and their horses from falling over the stage: and the emperor was so
much delighted that he ordered this entertainment to be repeated several
days, and once was pleased to be lifted up and give the word of command;
and, with great difficulty, persuaded even the empress herself to let me
hold her in her close chair within two yards of the stage, from whence
she was able to take a full view of the whole performance.

It was my good fortune that no ill accident happened in these
entertainments; only once a fiery horse, that belonged to one of the
captains, pawing with his hoof, struck a hole in my handkerchief, and
his foot slipping, he overthrew his rider and himself; but I immediately
relieved them both, and covering the hole with one hand, I set down the
troop with the other, in the same manner as I took them up. The horse
that fell was strained in the left shoulder, but the rider got no hurt,
and I repaired my handkerchief as well as I could; however, I would not
trust to the strength of it any more in such dangerous enterprises.

About two or three days before I was set at liberty, as I was
entertaining the court with feats of this kind, there arrived an express
to inform his majesty that some of his subjects riding near the place
where I was first taken up, had seen a great black substance lying on
the ground, very oddly shaped, extending its edges round as wide as his
majesty's bed-chamber, and rising up in the middle as high as a man;
that it was no living creature, as they had at first apprehended, for it
lay on the grass without motion; and some of them had walked round it
several times; that, by mounting upon each other's shoulders, they had