This story may not be true, for similar stories of bribes were prevalent when the Japanese seized Amoy. No bandits helped them then; only Formosan thieves assisted. These Formosans who had settled in Amoy and had taken Chinese papers, trimming their sails to every change of the wind. The go-between was a clever rascal; he had betrayed his comrades before and demanded $20,- 000 of the Japanese booty as his share and commission. The payment and arrangement of this large sum may have been one of the reasons that
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.