But where was the Prince? The band played its hardest, fireworks crackled. with fearsome din, and the serried ranks of Chinamen pressed against each other with unsubduable eagerness to witness the great one descend from the vessel. But a whisper went round the great, concourse that Prince Chun was not on board, that he was still engaged in the mastication of his breakfast on the Bayern down at Woosung, and that he would not arrive until noon. The last firework sputtered a weak protest against the delay and the j waste of gunpowder; the press of people split up into small groups; the native band ceased its music; the escort of mounted Sikh policemen clattered away to headquarters; the foreigners bent on sight-seeing walked idly up and down the foreshore, and the Chinese stared with stolid persistency at the foreigners for another hour.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.