The gill packs did not carry any tribal identification; they merely washed 
up onto the beach, by the thousands, with each high tide, cast up organically 
by the sea. The Atlantans, Nipponese, and others each assumed that they had 
come from their own tribes. But many perceived a connection between this and 
the rumors of Princess Nell and the tunnels beneath the waves. Such people 
migrated toward the center of the Pudong coast, where the tiny, weak, and flaky 
tribes had all been concentrated. This contraction of the defensive line became 
inevitable as the number of defenders was shrunk by the evacuation. Borders 
between tribes became unstable and finally dissolved, and on the fifth day of 
the siege the barbarians had all become fungible and formed into a huddle on 
the uttermost point of the Pudong Peninsula, several tens of thousands of 
persons packed into an area not exceeding a
few city blocks. Beyond that were the Chinese refugees, mostly persons strongly 
identified with the Coastal Republic who knew that they could never blend into 
the Celestial Kingdom. These did not dare to invade the camp of the refugees, 
who were still armed with powerful weapons, but by advancing an inch at a time 
and never retreating, they insensibly shrank the perimeter so that many 
barbarians found themselves standing knee-deep in the ocean.