SIX WEEKS IX A TOWKi;. 87 



illness. It was a dark, dreary, cold, wet evening, 

 rendering doubly depressing the painful task of watch- 

 ing the poor sufferer, as he moaned piteously in his 

 lethargic moments, and uttered wild disjointed talk 

 in his more excited moods. Where, I thought, look- 

 ing on his white face and wasted form, had sunk the 

 full strong stream of life 1 or what invisible malign 

 power, hostile to man, was holding him in its deadly 

 grasp 1 It was like standing by a shrunken and al- 

 most dried-up stream, feebly stealing between slimy 

 stones, and sinking, every now and then, down into 

 some unknown subterranean depth. The dark spirit 

 of Azrael was hovering over our tower, doubting 

 whether there was a soul there to be borne under his 

 Aving into the dark kingdom. It was to me rather a 

 relief when, after a tap at the door, "Wong a Shui and 

 his eldest son entered with very long faces, and what 

 they imagined, an alarming story. So far as I could 

 understand their statement, it was that the hostility 

 of the gentry to emigration, and our reputation for 

 having collected an immense quantity of gems and 

 jewels, had culminated in a plan of the vagabonds of 

 Tam-shui to attack us that night, and see what they 

 could obtain. They had prepared, said Wong, long 

 bamboo ladders, on which they proposed to mount 

 upon the roof and cut us off in our tower. This was 

 the weak point of our position ; and it was not par- 

 ticularly strengthened by A Shui's remark that all I 

 had to do was to shoot down a few of them, on which 



