Etzel had repeatedly suggested to me that by getting a junk we might reach Kaiping or Port Adams or Port Arthur, and find out what the Japanese were doing. It was a proposal I negatived. The risks were greater than the results appeared to promise. He was very keen on the scheme, and ultimately made the attempt in the company of the _Daily Mail_ representative. A few days before he embarked he accompanied me as far as Kaopantze, in the neutral territory, where he was getting together the necessaries for his voyage. The matter was kept quite secret. Instead of going to Messrs. Bush Bros., or Bandinel & Co., and having a junk and crew known on the river, or even obtaining the protection of their house flag, he chartered through an Englishman a small, light, fast-sailing junk of the type known locally as “sea swallows”; it also resembles unfortunately some of the piratical craft with which the waterways are infested. At the last moment he was implored not to go, and almost persuaded. He seemed to have a presentiment of approaching catastrophe. One of his friends bidding him good-bye said he never expected to see him alive again, so he woke up that friend between three and four the next morning to reassure him of his mistake. Then he started--taciturn, glum and oppressed with foreboding. At first all went well, but long before the “sea swallow” was out of Chinese waters the strange craft was sighted by soldier guards on the watch for pirates, smugglers and blockade runners. These guards bore down on the vessel and in Oriental fashion fired first and inquired afterwards. They were informed that there were foreigners on board, and they hastened away. But the deed had been done. Etzel, whilst performing his duty, had been killed accidentally in a volley fired from behind by men with whom he had no quarrel, by men who would have risked their lives to save his. CHAPTER IX Consuls, Correspondents and Others Every British subject who attempts any business in China is handicapped by the apathy of British consuls to individual interests. Owing to their training they seem to live in a different atmosphere to that inhabited by the ordinary residents in the treaty ports, are shut off from the ideals of the people of the settlement in which they live, have aspirations of quite a dissimilar character, and are absolutely out of touch with the more enterprising of their own nationals.