There was an appalling roar as the Constellation approached Sarawak; a bomb burst in the baggage compartment, setting the aircraft afire. Pilot Captain D. K. Jatar, showing incredible skill and nerve, managed to guide the shattered plane to a jolting belly-landing at 150 miles an hour. But the impact with the sea tore the Constellation apart and it sank in moments, leaving a circle of flames on the surface. Before the radio went dead, the ship had issued an international distress call. Eleven passengers and five crewmen, including Captain Jatar, died in the crash and explosion. Three surviving crew members drifted in a life raft for nine hours until they were picked up by the British frigate _Dampier_. All the Chinese delegates were among those killed, and Peking charged sabotage. The accusation proved to be well-based; the bomb had been planted by a Nationalist saboteur, employed as a cleaner by the British maintenance company at Kai Tak Airport. Hong Kong police offered a $17,500 reward for his arrest, but he escaped to Taiwan on another airplane. The Hong Kong government issued a warrant for the bomber’s arrest, but the Nationalist authorities replied that they had no legal basis for his extradition to the colony. There the matter rested, with the abiding hatred between Peking and Taipeh continuing as before. Each of the sea and air incidents threatened the security of the colony to some degree, but none rocked its internal structure with the earthquake power of the Double Ten riots of October, 1956. No other crisis since World War II has presented such a frontal challenge to its ability to preserve law and order. Three days of savage guerrilla warfare raged through thickly congested streets, and when the fight was over, the British administration had had the fright of its life. Statistics convey none of the heat of these bloody battles, but they measure a few of their dimensions: 59 people killed, 500 injured, nearly $1,000,000 in property damage, 6,000 arrests, 1,241 prison sentences and four executions for murder. Nearly 3,000 police and several army battalions were engaged in subduing the rioters. From east to west, the riots extended across eleven miles of Upper Kowloon and the New Territories, and were marked by fifty-four skirmishes between mobs and the uniformed forces. If the genesis of the riots were to be narrowed down to a single proximate cause, it would have to be something as trivial as an argument over a few paper flags pasted on a concrete wall. Physically, that was where they started, but their true origin goes back at least three centuries.