Accordingly we altered our course and sailed for the west coast of Corea. I do not know how far we followed it but we stopped at the mouth of a small river, which ran close to the cemetery, about twelve miles up. We went up to it at night in a steam launch we had bought at Hong Kong; Norton, the merchant, and I, and eight men. The cemetery, which was five hundred yards back from the river, was an open space of perhaps ten acres, filled with funny-looking graves, covered with signs and charms. In the centre of it was an unroofed structure about fifty feet square, with stone walls twelve or fifteen feet high. It was there, said our guide, that the money was concealed. Just as we came to the edge of the burying ground a procession of twenty or twenty-five white-robed men, marching in Indian file and carrying a number of ladders, appeared on the opposite side. They marched to the square structure, raised their ladders against the wall and went over. In half an hour they climbed out again, with several large and heavy sacks which were lowered with some difficulty, took down their ladders and marched away in silence. Our guide explained, with many Chinese curses, that they doubtless were a delegation sent from Seoul after the treasure. Certainly they had taken something away with them and it probably was money. There was no telling whether it was gold, silver, or copper, for all our guide professed to know was that a “large amount” was hidden there. From the size and weight of the numerous sacks in which it was carried away I got the idea that the “treasure” consisted of the cheap “cash” used in that country and China and that the total value of it probably did not exceed a few hundred dollars at the most. Had it been made up of gold coin it would have represented the national wealth of Corea. Some of the store might have been left behind, but I did not care to investigate. The outlook was not promising and the situation was uncanny to a degree that got on my already depressed nervous system; so, with some random remarks about Corean methods of burying their dead and hiding their money, we walked back to the launch and returned to the ship, without having derived even a reasonable amount of excitement from the trip. That fiasco finally fixed in me a resolution, that had been forming for some time, to get entirely away from that part of the world. We turned about and landed our disappointed passenger at Shanghai and from there took a course almost due south, which carried us east of the Philippine Islands, down through Molucca Pass, past the Island of Celebes, into the Florida Sea, and out through the Floris Strait into the Indian Ocean. Our final objective port was London, but I had no wish to make another trip through the China Sea and its islands at the south, which held so many painful memories, and took this roundabout course to avoid them. CHAPTER X THE BURIAL OF THE “LECKWITH”