Oh we must be destroyed by our crimes, none can escape who opposeth the
laws of Government. May you then feel compassion for those who are
deserving of death; may you sustain us by your humanity!"

The Government that had made so many lamentable displays of its
weakness, was glad to make an unreal parade of its mercy. It was but too
happy to grant all the conditions instantly, and, in the fulsome
language of its historians, "feeling that compassion is the way of
heaven--that it is the right way to govern by righteousness--it
therefore redeemed these pirates from destruction, and pardoned their
former crimes."

O-po-tae, however, had hardly struck his free flag, and the pirates were
hardly in the power of the Chinese, when it was proposed by many that
they should all be treacherously murdered. The governor happened to be
more honorable and humane, or probably, only more politic than those who
made this foul proposal--he knew that such a bloody breach of faith
would for ever prevent the pirates still in arms from voluntary
submitting; he knew equally well, even weakened as they were by
O-po-tae's defection, that the Government could not reduce them by
force, and he thought by keeping his faith with them, he might turn the
force of those who had submitted against those who still held out, and
so destroy the pirates with the pirates. Consequently the eight thousand
men, it had been proposed to cut off in cold blood, were allowed to
remain uninjured, and their leader, O-po-tae, having changed his name to
that of Hoe-been, or, "The Lustre of Instruction," was elevated to the
rank of an imperial officer.

The widow of Ching-yih, and her favorite Paou, continued for some months
to pillage the coast, and to beat the Chinese and the Mandarins' troops