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You may perhaps have observed a steamer shipping mines You did? Yes, I thought you would. Well, that steamer is the Koryu Maru, a very smart boat, steaming twenty-two knots, which I have had fitted as a mine-layer.
Next, after breaking the bones and decapitating the then governor of the five provinces, himself an adherent of Chong Mong- ju, I was made governor of the seven home provinces of ancient Koryu. In Cho-Sen seven is the magic number. To complete this number two of the provinces were taken over from the hands of two more of Chong Mong-ju's adherents.
Two days later our fleet weighed and proceeded to sea, leaving the Koryu at anchor, with our fourth and fifth destroyer flotillas and fourteenth torpedo-boat flotilla twelve craft in all to protect her.
Now it is not meet that a princess espouse a sea-cuny, or even a claimant of the ancient blood of Koryu, who is without power, or place, or visible symbols of rank. So it was promulgated by imperial decree that I was a prince of Koryu.
And the Koryu had the speed to do it, the destroyer having lost much of her speed by the barnacles and weed on her bottom, which she exposed at every roll.
The mines which the Koryu is shipping are not harmless; on the contrary, they are exceedingly formidable affairs, containing charges ranging from one hundred to two hundred pounds of Shimose explosive, and they are arranged to automatically adjust themselves to varying depths of water. The ship which strikes one of them will be done for!
Like an arrow shot from a bow, the Koryu started forward and, edging well out to windward of the destroyer, opened a brisk fire upon her with our Hotchkisses, aiming at her deck tubes, round which I had seen some men busily clustering.
Naturally, the Koryu turned when our cruisers did, following them up at full speed until we were close in their rear, while Dewa was far too busy attending to the pursuit to spare any attention to me and my doings. It was at this juncture that the Russian destroyers made a gallant effort to check our pursuit by distracting our attention from their big craft to themselves.
And there were young women whose faces warmed with compassion as they gazed on the bulk of my shoulders, the blue of my eyes, and my long yellow hair I who had once been a prince of Koryu and the ruler of provinces. And there were rabbles of children that tagged at our heels, jeering and screeching, pelting us with filth of speech and of the common road.
As I palpitated to the situation, princess and sea-cuny and love not a little that threatened big, I racked my cuny's brains for wit to carry the thing off with manhood credit. It chanced, early in this first meeting, that I mentioned what I had told all the Court, that I was in truth a Korean of the blood of the ancient house of Koryu. "Let be," she said, tapping my lips with her peacock fan.
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