Captain du Petit Thouars manned his boats and at once went off to Sakai; on the way he met the launch. Out of a crew of one midshipman and fifteen men, only two were dead; six were severely wounded, one unwounded, and seven missing, including the midshipman. Their bodies, cruelly mutilated, were afterwards given up. The machinery was riddled with bullets, but the sound man with the help of one or two of the less badly wounded men managed to rig up a sail and so escaped. The batteries on shore were manned and the foreign representatives were all in Ōsaka, and open to attack. The captain of the _Vénus_ and the French Consul were, moreover, supposed to be on their way from Ōsaka to Sakai, so Captain du Petit Thouars wisely refrained from taking any immediate action, which might have led to terrible reprisals. When the news reached Ōsaka in the dead of the night, the representatives were roused from their beds and a conference was at once held. They determined to make common cause with their French colleague, to strike their flags, and leave Ōsaka, until the demands of M. Roches, who had not yet left, should be satisfied. Those demands were: 1. The execution of the two officers in command at Sakai and all those who had taken part in the crime. 2. An indemnity of 150,000 dollars for the families of the victims. 3. That the Prime Minister should pay a visit to the _Vénus_ to express regret and apologize on behalf of the Government. 4. That the Prince of Tosa, to whose clan the murderers belonged, should do the same. 5. That men of the Tosa clan should be excluded from the foreign ports. Bad news for Willis and me; it was the very clan in whose hands we were. We felt that we were in a hornets’ nest. Our hosts, who should at least have remembered that we were there to save the life of their Prince whom they loved, were maddened by the news, frantic at the idea that clansmen, perhaps near relations of some of them, were to be executed for a crime in which they themselves would gladly have had a hand. When I got back to the _yashiki_ I was met by scowling looks and fierce mutterings. The more important men of the clan showed clearly that they, at any rate, had no sympathy with the murderers. Prince Yōdo himself and Gotō Shōjirō we knew would act loyally and do all in their power to insure our safety. But it is a near thing, and an uncomfortable pass to come to, when you can almost hear two or three hundred wild men debating the propriety of wreaking vengeance upon you, and that moreover in a country where at that time _kataki-uchi_, the vendetta, was a debt of honour. However, there was nothing to be done but to put a good face upon it, so our dear old medicine-man went on with his healing, and I took advantage of being in a city so famous and still so new to us Westerns to explore its many beauties, now long since unveiled and familiar to every tourist.