The party who had captured Thompson had, upon the preceding day, been to a grand review of the bannermen of the Eleven districts, and as most of their number had friends in the city near which the review took place, it was determined that they should not return to their native town until daylight the next morning. They had bidden their hospitable entertainers farewell at sunrise, and being brave with wine when they sighted Puffeigh and his companions, and thinking they were a party of southern merchants who travel about those parts with Chinese trinkets, the bannermen laid their heads together, and determined to attack and rob them, it being a custom of the volunteers, when upon what they called active service, to behave like the regular troops of his Highness and Mightiness the Father and Mother of the Empire, who were never known to leave a sapeck in the pouch of any unfortunate wayfarer they chanced to fall in with during a march. Great was their astonishment upon finding they had fallen across some Western devils; and when they succeeded in capturing one of the party they felt as brave as lions, and quite as eager to see blood. After much discussion, the leader of the party, a tailor by profession, named Choo-Too, the combined words forming also a nickname which might be translated "pig-stomached," commanded silence, and thus addressed his fellows,--"My honourable persons, will you with reverence hear the words of this little one? I, Choo, had this morning a dream, in which I saw Kwan-ti, the god of war, sitting on a cloud which smelt of gunpowder. Abject, I grovelled in the dust, as I (in my own mind) never before believed in Kwan-ti. Then crackers exploded and gingalls discharged all around him, after which he spake as follows:--'Choo, arise, and get thee to the sea-shore, you and all your company, there ye will meet with fortune, and capture a devil, fear him not, he will be harmless, but watch well that he escape not, or woe be to ye all.'" At this moment his speech was interrupted by the prisoner requesting "one of the _old ladies_ to hand him a chaw of baccy." Choo frowned upon the undaunted one, and thus continued:--"This little one then swooned, and so remained until found by you, my honourable friends." "Wonderful! wonderful!" exclaimed the other bannermen, but added aside to each other, "Why, we imagined Choo-Too was drunk." "Now, my honourable friends, I think it better we secure this malignant western devil, and take him to our native town. None of the regular troops, with all their bravery, have ever been able to catch sight of one of these creatures, much less capture it alive, so we will gain honour and perhaps a reward, if we take him to the military governor, or even give him up to our own mayor, who will probably pay us for such a curiosity." "But why not torture him a little now?" observed a weasel-faced dealer in bean-curd.