On the seventh day, Princess Nell walked naked into the sea at dawn, 
vanished beneath waves turned pink by the sunrise, and did not return. Carl 
followed her a minute later, though unlike the Princess he took the precaution 
of wearing a gill pack. Then all of the barbarians stepped into the ocean, 
leaving their filthy clothes strewn across the beach, relinquishing the last 
foothold of Chinese soil to the Celestial Kingdom. They all walked into the 
ocean until their heads disappeared. The rearguard was made up of the last part 
of the Mouse Army, which charged naked into the surf, linked up into a raft, 
and made its way slowly out to sea, nudging a few sick and wounded along with 
them in makeshift rafts. By the time the last girl's foot broke 
contact with the sandy ocean bottom, the end of the land had already 
been claimed by a man with a scarlet girdle round his waist, who 
stood on the shore laughing to think that now the Middle Kingdom was 
at last a whole country once more.