Bluffed in his last move, and aware of the plots of Genkai, his enemy, Chin Ikei, at his wits’ end, resolved to escape to Konishi’s camp. The spies of Genkai immediately reported the fact to their master, who lay in wait for him. Suddenly confronting his victim, they demanded his errand. “I am going to treat with Kato, the Japanese general; I shall be back in one month,” answered Chin Ikei. He was seized and, on being led back, was thrown into prison. A searching party was then despatched at once to his house. There they found gold, treasure, and jewels “mountain high,” and his wife living in luxury. Believing all these to have been purchased by Japanese gold, and the fruits of bribery, the Chinese confiscated the spoil and imprisoned the traitor’s family. This ended all further negotiations until the end of the war. Henceforth, on land and water, by the veterans of both armies, with fresh levies, both of allies and invaders, the issue was tried by sword and siege. CHAPTER XVIII. THE SECOND INVASION. The plan of the second invasion was to land all the Japanese forces at Fusan, and then to divide them into three columns, which were to advance by the south to Nan-on castle in Chulla, and by two roads, northward and westward, to the capital. As before, Konishi and Kato Kiyomasa were the two field commanders, while Hidéaki, a noble lad, sixteen years old, was the nominal commander-in-chief. The Coreans had made preparations to fight the Japanese at sea as well as on land. Their fleet consisted of about two hundred vessels of heavy build, for butting and ramming, as well as for accommodating a maximum of fighting men. They were two hundred and fifty or three hundred feet in length, with huge sterns, having enormous rudders, the tillers of which were worked by eight men. Their high, flat prows were hideously carved and painted to represent the face and open jaws of a dragon, or demon, ready to devour. Stout spars or knotted logs, set upright along the gunwale, protected the men who worked the catapults, and heavily built roofed cabins sheltered the soldiers and gave the archers a vantage ground. The rowers sat amidships, between the cabins and the gunwales, or rather over on these latter, in casements made of stout timber. The catapults were on deck, between the bows. They were twenty-four feet long, made of tree-trunks a yard in circumference. Immense bows, drawn to their notches by windlasses, shot iron-headed darts and bolts six feet long and four inches thick. On some of the ships towers were erected, in which cannon, missile-engines, and musketeers were stationed, to shoot out fire-arrows, stones, and balls. At close quarters the space at the bows—about one-third of the deck—was free for the movements of the men wielding spear and sword, and for those who plied the grappling hooks or boarding planks. The decks crowded with men in armor, the glitter of steel and flash of oars, the