The friendly governor of Quelpert was succeeded by an unpleasant old tyrant who made life so uncomfortable that the stubborn Dutchmen resolved to escape to Japan, sink or swim. The pilot and six sailors stole a junk, but luck was against them. The rotten mast went over the side as they were sailing out to sea, and so they were carried back for punishment. Their hands were tied to a heavy log of wood, and they had to lie in a row flat upon their stomachs while a sturdy Korean jailer flailed them with a heavy cudgel, twenty-five blows each upon that part of a Dutchman’s back where his baggy breeches were the most voluminous. So cruel was this chastisement that several of them lay a month in bed. So long as they were content to submit to circumstances, the Koreans were inclined to treat them with a certain good humor and toleration. After several months they were conveyed to the mainland and lodged in the capital city, where the king had his palace. He enrolled them in his body-guard, and they received wages of seventy measures of rice per month. Armed with muskets, they drilled under the command of Jan Wettevri. Henry Hamel, the purser, relates: Curiosity induced most of the great men belonging to the court to invite them to dinner, that they might enjoy the satisfaction of seeing them perform the military exercises and dance in the Dutch manner. The women and children were still more impatient to see them, a report having been propagated that they were monsters of deformity and that in order to drink they were obliged to fasten their noses behind their ears. Their astonishment, however, was so much the greater when they saw that they were handsomer and much more stalwart than the natives of the country. The whiteness of their complexion was particularly admired. The crowds that flocked about them were so great that during the first days they could scarcely pass through the streets or enjoy a moment’s rest in their huts. At length, the general was obliged to check this curiosity by forbidding any one to approach their lodgings without his permission. For some reason the Dutch company of musketeers was mustered out of this service after a year or so, and they were more or less turned adrift and scattered, always under the vigilant eyes of provincial governors or other officials. Sometimes they loafed and again they worked for their board or begged their way from one village to another, and were entertained by the peasantry, who never ceased to wonder at them. Once an ugly-tempered governor refused to give them clothing and said they might starve for all he cared; but the account was handsomely squared, for he held his dignity only four months, and being accused of having condemned to death several persons of different ranks on insufficient grounds, he was sentenced by the king to receive ninety strokes on the shin bones and to be banished for life.