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RIOTS AND CONFUSION
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yard. My effects, my guns, and camp-bed, my tent and stores, were packed and roped. The horses had been loaded; the hotel account had been settled, when my interpreter quietly told me that my servants had struck for ten dollars Mexican—one sovereign—monthly increase in the wages of each. Mr. Emberley stood out against the transaction; I offered to compound with half; they were obdurate. It seemed to me that a crisis was impending. I was too tired and too cross to remonstrate. I raised my offer to eight dollars; it was refused—the servants were dismissed. Uproar broke out in the courtyard, which Mr. Emberley pacified by inducing the boys to accept my last offer—a rise of eight dollars Mexican. My head-servant, the brother of my interpreter, repudiated the arrangement, but the significance of this increase had assumed great importance. It was necessary to be firm. I think now that it was unwise to have entertained any change at all in the standard of payment. Upon the question of the additional two dollars I stood firm; nothing more would be given. The interpreter approached me to intimate that if his brother did not go he also would stay behind. I looked at him for a moment, at last understanding the plot, and struck him. He ran into the courtyard and yelled that he was dead—that he had been murdered. The grooms in charge of the horses gathered round him with loud cries of sympathy. Mr. Emberley called them to him and explained the position of affairs. I strode into the compound. The head groom came up to me, demanding an increase of thirty dollars, Korean currency, upon the terms which he had already accepted; he wanted, further, three-quarters of the contract price to be paid in advance; one quarter was the original stipulation.