Stories of heroism began to filter through after the storm abated, led by the extraordinary tale of the piano tuner, the Sikh policeman and the Chinese godown worker. Herbert Bevan was hardly a colonial stereotype. His family had lived in Hong Kong since the early 1880s and his father, William, had held an overseer's position in the public works department. Herbert's moment of glory came when the Lane Crawford piano tuner leapt into heavy seas beyond Statue Square to rescue Pau Wa-lin, a godown labourer for shippers Norddeutsche Lloyd, who was blown across the road and into the waters. A passing Sikh policeman, Alli Bux, had unwrapped his turban, and tying the cloth to a lamppost, tried to use it as a lifeline. 'Upon this, a European gentlemen came up and he caught hold of my turban and jumped into the water,' he wrote later. The Sikh policeman, and two other passers-by struggled to haul Bevan to safety as the frayed turban began to break. It took 20 minutes of resuscitation to bring Pau around. Bevan later moved up the ladder at Lane Crawford, joined the Hong Kong Volunteers and during the first world war served as an officer with the Chinese Labour Corps in France. He died in California in the 1960s.