After prolonged deliberations amongst the authorities, it was decided that the prisoner should be beheaded at Kiukiang, that being the centre of the district in which his crime was committed.
Still clad in crimson clothes, the poor wretch was dragged by the chain from his cell, too emaciated and broken to even stand. His hands and feet were bound together with sharp cords and a bamboo pole thrust between them, and in such manner he was carried through the streets by two coolies, escorted by a few runners, to be thrown like a bundle of old clothes into the hold of a police junk, which bore him more dead than alive on his last voyage.
Owing to information extracted from Wang two further arrests were made of members of the junk's crew, but the lowdah and one other succeeded in making good their escape.
It was now summer, and the view looking south from Kiukiang city wall was peaceful and grand. In the distance rose the majestic Lushan range, the peaks of which were illumined by the setting sun. Nearer, the low hills, clothed with firs and azaleas, rolled as a carpet to the lake, which lay between them and the city ramparts. A narrow causeway from the city to the hills, cut the lake in two. At the far end of the causeway was a plot of level ground, strewn with potsherds and heaps of refuse. Here, in contrast to its usual solitude, a dense crowd had collected in evident anticipation of some interesting event. Presently two or three horsemen and a motley gang of soldiers emerged from the city and proceeded quickly along the causeway. Closely following were coolies carrying three red burdens, on bamboo poles, and these in turn were followed by more soldiers and a few officials in sedan chairs. It was an execution. The hurrying cavalcade was swallowed up in the dense crowd which happily served as a curtain to hide this ghastly scene of human wrath from Nature's smiling landscape. Half-an-hour later the official procession returned as quickly as it went, and gradually the crowd, sauntering by the water's edge, laughing, joking and making merry of the gruesome spectacle just witnessed, filtered back through the city gates.
Next morning three wooden baskets on long poles were exposed from the top of an archway, and in each basket was a human head. Wang and his companions had met their just rewards.