It was now 1279, a year after Tiping's death. The Mongols lay in fancied security, not dreaming that there was in all China the resolution to strike another blow, and probably unsuspicious that a fleet was bearing down upon one of their captured ports. What would have been the result had Chang Chikie been able to deliver his attack it is impossible to say. He might have taken Canton by surprise and captured it from the enemy, but in any event he could not have gained more than a temporary success. As it was, he gained none. Fate had destined the fall of China, and the elements came to the assistance of its foes. A sudden and violent tempest fell upon the fleet while near the southern headland of the Kwantung coast, hurling nearly or quite all the vessels on the shore or sinking them beneath the waves. The bold leader had been counselled to seek shelter from the storm under the lee of the shore, but he refused, and kept on despite the storm, daring death in his singleness of purpose. "I have done everything I could," he said, "to sustain the Sung dynasty on the throne. When one prince died I had another proclaimed. He also has perished, and I still live. Should I be acting against thy decrees, O Heaven, if I sought to place a new prince on the throne?" It appeared so, for the winds and the waves gave answer, and the last defender of China sank to death beneath the sea. The conquest of China was thus at length completed after seventy years of resistance against the most valorous soldiers of the world, led by such generals as Genghis, Kublai, and other warlike Mongol princes. In view of the fact that Genghis had overrun Southern Asia in a few years, this long and obstinate resistance of China, despite the incompetence of its princes and ministers, places in a striking light the great military strength of the empire at that period of its history. [Illustration: MARKET SCENE IN SHANGHAI.] _THE PALACE OF KUBLAI KHAN._ In the middle of the thirteenth century two eminent Venetian merchants, Nicolo and Matteo Polo, of noble birth and adventurous spirit, left their native city for a long journey to the East, their purposes being those of ordinary travel and also of barter, for which they took with them a stock of jewels, as the commodity of most worth with least weight. Visiting Constantinople and several Russian cities, they journeyed to the capital of the khan of Kaptchak, where they remained three years, trading and studying the Mongol language. Subsequently they met in Bokhara a Persian ambassador on the way to the court of Kublai Khan, and were persuaded to keep him company as far as Kambalu (the modern Peking), the capital of the Mongol emperor of Cathay, or China.