Towards the end of this year a comet appeared. It was followed by two others which were both seen at once for the space of two months, one in the southeast and the other in the southwest, but with their tails opposite to each other. The court was so alarmed by this phenomenon that the king ordered the guard at all the forts and over all the ships to be doubled. He likewise directed that all his fortresses should be well supplied with warlike stores and provisions and that his troops should be exercised every day. Such were his apprehensions of being attacked by some neighbor that he prohibited a fire to be made during the night in any house that could be perceived from the sea. The same phenomena had been seen when the Tartars ravaged the country, and it was recollected that similar signs had been observed previous to the war carried on by the Japanese against Korea. The inhabitants never met the Dutch sailors without asking them what people thought of comets in their country. Comformably to the idea prevalent in Europe, the Dutch replied that comets prognosticated some terrible disaster, as pestilence, war, or famine, and sometimes all three calamities together. At the end of twelve years of this forlorn exile, eight of the crew of the _Sparrow-hawk_ succeeded in stealing away from Korea in a staunch sea-going junk. Eight others of the thirty-six officers and men were still alive, but they had to be left behind. With some rice, a few jars of water, and an iron pot, the fugitives sailed the junk to the coast of Japan, where the fishermen directed them to Nagasaki, where Dutch ships were at anchor in the bay. The eight Dutchmen who remained in Korea were never heard of again, nor was any word received of Jan Wettevri, now seventy years old, and that great red beard well streaked with gray. When a sailor kissed his wife or sweetheart good-by in those rude, adventurous centuries, the voyage was likely to be darkened by these tragedies of enforced exile, which were ever so much worse than shipwreck. Quite typical of its era was the fate of the crew of the English privateer _Inspector_ when foul weather set her ashore near Tangier in the year of 1746. Incidentally, the narrative of the experience of these eighty-seven survivors conveys certain vivid impressions of an Emperor of Morocco, Zin el Abdin, and of his amazing contempt for the Christian powers of Europe and their supine submission to his ruthless dictates. This was in accordance with the attitude of centuries, during which the treatment of foreign envoys in Morocco was profoundly humiliating, and the gifts they brought were regarded in the light of tribute. Indeed, it was not until 1900 that the custom of mounted sultans under umbrellas receiving ambassadors on foot and bareheaded was abolished.