The only things about Pekin we thought genuine were the smells, which were something awful; as we learnt from bitter experience during our four weeks' captivity here, locked up in a cell with all the common criminals, and, I believe, all the vermin of the city. Somehow or other, the old man had mysteriously disappeared after leaving us at a quiet inn in the Tartar quarter, where, as well as we could understand him, we were to remain until he had a chance of communicating with the approaching English force to have us ransomed. "Chin, chin!" he said to Ned as he left us. "Mi go one piecee and yo waittee; Fanqui comee one piecee by by." The next day, instead of his coming back again, a file of rough Tartars belonging to Prince Sankoliu-sin's army rushed into the room where we were, and throwing us roughly on the floor, proceeded to strip us of everything we had about us, leaving us only our shirts, which were rather ragged by this time and not in a condition to do our laundress credit! We were, after this, cruelly tied with ropes that cut our wrists and ankles, and then dragged to prison, where we remained until one day we heard the booming of guns in the distance. "Good heavens, Jack!" cried poor Ned, who was by this time the wreck of his former self, and whom nobody on board the ship certainly would have recognised, "Those must be Armstrongs! I know the sound of them too well. Thank God, our comrades now are near at last to release us or revenge us!" Later on, the same day, some Chinese soldiers entered, instead of the usual Tartar guard which we had seen since we had been in this hole; and these, putting chains round our necks, marched us off, as we thought, to execution. "Good-bye, Ned, old fellow, if they separate us," said I. "Should you escape, please tell my old Dad about me, and the people at home." "Nonsense, Jack," he replied, trying to laugh it off. "If we die, we'll die together. But, I should like to pay out old `yellow hat' first. By Jove, I should like to see him now!" Talk of--angels! At that every moment, as we were passing through a narrow stone passage beneath the walls of the city, as we judged from their height, the very individual of whom Ned had been speaking the instant before appeared on the scene; and, all I can say is, that if we had thought him the reverse of an angel previous to his coming, we were, on the contrary, inclined to believe him to be the genuine article as soon as he told us his errand! It was to release us, and take my poor emaciated and ragged comrade and myself to the English camp. Then it was that we heard the news that had happened since our imprisonment. Sir Hope Grant, with the French troops under Montauban, had fought their way up to Yuen-ming-Yuen, the Summer Palace of the emperor.