When the Manchiu envoy was about to leave Seoul, some of the prisoners determined to put in execution a plan of escape. They put on Dutch clothes, under their Corean dress, and awaited their opportunity. As the envoy was on the road about to depart, some of them seized the bridle of his horse, and displaying their Dutch clothing, begged him to take them to Peking. The plan ended in failure. The Dutchmen were seized and thrown into prison. Nothing more was ever heard of them, and it was believed by their companions that they had been put to death. This was in March. In June there was another shipwreck off Quelpart Island, and Weltevree being now too old to make the journey, three of the Hollanders were sent to act as interpreters. Hamel does not give us the result of their mission. The Manchiu ambassador came again to Seoul in August. The nobles urged the king to put the Hollanders to death, and have no more trouble with them. His Majesty refused, but sent them back into Chulla, allowing them each fifty pounds of rice a month for their support. They set out from Seoul in March, 1657, on horseback, passing through the same towns as on their former journey. Reaching the castle-city of “Diu-siong,” they were joined by their three comrades sent to investigate the wreck at Quelpart, which made their number thirty-three. Their chief occupation was that of keeping the castle and official residence in order—an easy and congenial duty for the neat and order-loving Dutchmen. Hamel learned many of the ideas of the natives. They represented their country as in the form of a long square, “in shape like a playing-card”—perhaps the Dutchmen had a pack with them to beguile the tedium of their exile. Certain it is that they still kept the arms and flag of Orange, to be used again. The exiles were not treated harshly, though in one case, after a change of masters, the new magistrate “afflicted them with fresh crosses.” This “rotation in office” was evidently on account of the change on the throne. Yo-chong ceased to reign in 1658, and “a new king arose who knew not Joseph.” Yen-chong succeeded his father, reigning from 1658 to 1676. Two large comets appearing in the sky with their tails toward each other, frightened the Coreans, and created intense alarm. The army was ordered out, the guards were doubled, and no fires were allowed to be kindled along the coast, lest they might attract or guide invaders or a hostile force. In the last few decades, comets had appeared, said the Coreans, and in each case they had presaged war. In the first, the Japanese invasions from the east, and, in the second, the Manchius from the west. They anxiously asked the Dutchmen how comets were regarded in Holland, and probably received some new ideas in astronomy. No war, however, followed, and the innocent comets gradually shrivelled up out of sight, without shaking out of their fiery hair either pestilence or war.