Governor Chan Kwang Ming and President Wu Hon Man, of the Canton Assembly, sent out their torpedo-destroyers _Wu Ying_ and _Wupang_, and with the British gunboats _Robin_, _Sandpiper_ and _Moorhen_ from Hongkong, and the American gunboat _Callao_, attacked the West River pirates, and patrolled that romantic river as far as the shadow of Wuchow Pagoda, 220 miles of varied temples, islands, gorges, reaches and river peaks. Mercantile vessels steamed up two by two, their wheel-houses sheathed with steel, their gun racks full, the barred hatches, which let air in but no smuggled pirates out, nailed down on the ’tween decks, a guard at each hatch and over each port, and double quartermasters manning the wheel. Commerce had gone back to medieval conditions, and it was exciting. Rich compradores of Hongkong, like Chan Kang Yu, of Douglas, Lapraik and Company, contributed 2,000 uniforms and outfits to equip a regiment of President Wu’s provincial troops. Part of the rebel navy now made a four-hundred-mile dash at forced draught to Wuchang and Hanyang, from Shanghai, to try to keep the successful right wing of the imperialists from crossing to the rebels’ temporary capital. If the gunboats could keep the loyalists engaged at Hanyang, it was not impossible that the rebels, if greatly reinforced from Canton, could turn the flank and strike the loyalists’ supply railway in the rear. On December 5, 1911, new moves were made at Peking. Prince Chun, the regent father of the baby Emperor Pu Yi (his real and not his throne name), resigned in favor of two co-regents, one a Manchu, Prince Tsai Su, and the other a Chinese, Hsu Shao Ching. This was a buffer move to save the throne from the republican demands. For the first time in the three hundred years’ history of the Manchu dynasty, a Chinese was thus brought to share the regent’s power. Prince Tsai Su had been a grand councilor in the old days; and when a national assembly was granted he was put in as its president by Manchu power. Later he was president of the Navy Board, and president of the Wai Wu Pu (Foreign Board). He is a moderate progressive, a Manchu of the Manchus and related to the emperor. Hsu Shao Ching, a Pechili Chinese, is well known as a former minister to Russia and Germany, and the first president of the Chinese Eastern Railway. He was a grand councilor in the old days, a viceroy of Manchuria, and president of the Railway Board (Yu Chuan Pu) in charge of loans. He has visited America. The appointment of this republican general-in-chief was, of course, mere flattery, and he did not serve. [Illustration: Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company. Mortuary statues near tombs of the last native Chinese dynasty, the Ming, near Nanking. The crowning battle of the revolution swept over this hillside. ] [Illustration: Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.