A lantern glimmered at the other end, it looked very far. There was water there, and perhaps rats, and certainly great water beetles and cockroaches, and sometimes, hours and hours after we had been packed in that gruesome place, a boatman came and crawled over us, and dipped out buckets of water. Men were tramping back and forth over our heads all night. I felt sure that some of them would come through, and there seemed to be enough racket to indicate a storm at sea, a collision or a fire--at times I was almost convinced it was all three. If it had been, we certainly could never have made our escape from the trap in which we were wedged like sardines. However, as we were merely sailing down a broad, but not very deep river, and could easily have neared the shore before sinking in most circumstances, things were not so bad as they seemed, and next morning when we emerged into the bright sunlight what had been a night fraught with awful probabilities was now simply an amusing episode. All day Sunday we sat on the deck in the sun, singing and enjoying the brilliant atmosphere. From Pai Chun we proceeded on foot or in chairs to Hai Ju, and thence to Sorai, where a theological leader’s class was waiting for Mr. Underwood. Everywhere the warm-hearted welcome which awaited us was a delightful surprise to me. People, even women and children, came out miles to meet us, and followed us in crowds when we left, as if they could not bear to let us go. There were only a few beginnings of work in Hai Ju at that time. It is the capital of the province and rather a demoralized town, even in a heathen country, full of hangers-on of government officials, people accustomed to getting a living out of the people through fraud, bribery, oppression, “_squeezing_” and all sorts of political dirty work and corruption; evil men and still more evil women spreading the cancerous disease through the little town, until every one appears to be steeped in “the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life,” and worshipers of the god of this world. [Illustration: KOREAN WOMEN AT WORK. PAGE 191]