He yelled at his headlong chargers to slow down. They were likely to cause a riot. Already a mob was buzzing angrily in their wake and several missiles were hurled at the ’rickshaw. Captain O’Shea had the sensations of a man who was being run away with. This brace of pig-tailed fiends had bolted hell-for-leather. He was of a mind to jump out and let them go their own gait, but this enlarged baby-carriage of a ’rickshaw was awkward to disembark from while under way, and he was reluctant to risk landing upon his head. If he menaced them with a revolver the mob would be apt to join forces with them against the foreigner. Still, this might be the peculiar fashion of conveying a gentleman to the governor’s yamen, and perhaps he had better sit tight and hold hard until the ship struck a rock. Presently, however, he observed that several big swarthy men in blue cotton blouses were running alongside the coolie in the shafts and holding shouted converse with him. They appeared to be friends of his, and Captain O’Shea did not like their looks. They were hardier, more truculent of visage, than the pasty-faced Shanghai coolie class. The tough has the same ear-marks the world over, and these fellows were ruffians whom one would not care to meet in the dark. A few minutes after these had joined company the ’rickshaw turned abruptly from one of the crowded streets and moved with undiminished speed into a wider but much less frequented thoroughfare lined with stables, straw-littered court-yards whose buildings were in ruinous decay, and hovels used as slaughter-houses where mangy dogs prowled in search of offal. The ’rickshaw tilted and veered sharply in the direction of one of these disreputable court-yards, and Captain Michael O’Shea, quite certain that he was not headed toward the governor’s yamen, acted decisively and on the spur of the moment. Things were going all wrong and very probably he would alight from the frying-pan into the fire, but this was nothing less than an abduction. The coolie in the shafts had coiled his queue under his cap, possibly to guard against the very manœuvre that O’Shea executed. But the wind and the rapid motion had loosed the end of the thick black braid and it bobbed between his shoulders and whipped free as he ran. Bending forward, O’Shea clutched the queue in a tremendous grip and laid back as if he were hauling on a main-sheet. The rascal’s head was fetched up with a dislocating jerk, his feet pawed the air for an instant, and his hands lost their hold of the shafts. Then, as he came down and tried vainly to get a footing, the careering ’rickshaw rammed him from behind and sent him sprawling on his face. Shot out from his seat went Captain O’Shea, his feet in front of him, a revolver in his fist, ready to bound up from the pavement and open the engagement on the instant.