Having paid their respects, the black band brought out several movable screens, which they placed before the opening, upon which the music recommenced. After a short interval the gong again sounded, and some persons behind took the screens and carried them out of sight, when the spectators beheld about sixty men, clad only in blue trousers, kneeling with their hands resting upon the sawdust, it being noticed that all of them were deprived of their queues. At the back of the arena was a mat-covered pile, over which an assistant executioner, armed with a ladle was throwing some liquid. At a signal from the Taontai, a scribe read the names of the sixty prostrate men, and when that was completed called to four executioners, who stepped forward, paid their respects to their master and his guests, then taking up their positions, each at the head of fifteen recumbent criminals, raised their short swords and awaited the final order. Their weapons were very keen-edged, thick-backed affairs, slightly curved, and loaded with quicksilver, in order to give force to the blows. The chief executioner received the orders and directed his assistants, he taking the left-hand row, over the last man of which he was now standing, with his eyes fixed upon the Taontai. So rapidly had all this been accomplished that the Stingers could hardly comprehend the meaning of their action; but when the Governor elevated the claw-like nail of his right thumb, and the four executioners simultaneously swept the heads off four of the recumbent figures, they all understood it was a real execution, and not a theatrical representation that was being enacted before their eyes. As the movements of the executioners were regulated by those of the chief, it will be sufficient to describe his action. When he gave the swinging blow with his sword which swept off his first victim's head, he dexterously skipped across the neck of the body, and planting himself behind his second victim, repeated the cut, upon which off flew another head, he continuing his blows until he had decapitated four of the kneeling ones, when he changed his sword for a keener weapon and recommenced his labour. In a few moments fifteen heads were lying upon the sawdust near the trunks of their former bodies. It was wonderful to see how easily he sliced them off, and with what rapidity the whole of them were executed. When all was finished the executioners picked up the heads, and carelessly placed them upon their trunks; then advancing to the front, knelt, kow-tow'd, and retired. In a few moments a number of men entered, and dragged off the bodies and heads, after which fresh sawdust was sprinkled, and the arena raked clean, in the same manner as the supers prepare the ring of a circus for a new entertainment.