quantities—all kinds of tobacco (long black cigars and Egyptian
cigarettes) and dozens of cases of wines, mostly red and white, which
will be a great help to the Continentals here. These supplies were
procured by the committee from deserted shops near enough to the
Legation centre to make their procuring not too dangerous. I think the
general public was more pleased at the arrival of these stores than were
the missionaries in charge, for with misgivings the question arose
surely in their minds, Were these things sent to us from Heaven or from
the other place?
_Friday, June 23._
The excitement to-day is terrible, and much more intense than anything
we have yet had. Fires are starting in all our “lines.” The horror and
dislike of leaving our respective Legations to concentrate in the
British is nothing compared to the fact that if we leave our Legation
the Boxers and Chinese soldiers will immediately burn them and loot
them, and this may give them such a lust for loot and pillage that it
may become an incentive strong enough to overcome their national fear of
attacking, and make it most terribly difficult for us to hold out until
the troops come. Until the troops come! What a wail that is! and it is
heard at all times, and all people take their turn in asking somebody
else, “When will they come?”
This afternoon we were in Mrs. Coltman’s room, and her sweet baby was
asleep in a funny, old-fashioned, high-backed crib. Although the sound
of exploding bullets was to be heard outside the house, we were much
startled to feel one—you can’t see them, they come so fast—enter the
room, hit the headpiece of the baby’s crib, detaching it from the main
part, and bury itself in the opposite wall. An inch lower and it would
have cut through the baby’s brain. His mother picked him up, and all of
us flew into a room on the other side of the house, where we felt we
would be free from shot, at any rate coming from that direction.
We were accompanied by the wife of the Chief, Mrs. Conger, conspicuous
for her concise manner, and an open follower of Mrs. Eddy. She earnestly
assured us that it was ourselves, and not the times, which were
troublous and out of tune, and insisted that while there was an
appearance of warlike hostilities, it was really in our own brains.
Going further, she assured us that there was no bullet entering the
room; it was again but our receptive minds which falsely lead us to
believe such to be the case. With these calming (!) admonitions she
retired, and I can honestly say that we were more surprised by her
extraordinary statement than we were by the very material bullet which
had driven us from the room.
All women are busy sewing up sandbags to strengthen our defence, while
bullets are raining into the compound like hailstones. A man comes
rushing to where we are working, and tells whoever is in charge of
filling the sandbags that a hundred, or as many as possible, must be
taken to such and such a barricade, or it _cannot hold out_. We get
snatches of the real state of affairs very often in this way.
_June 23._
Yesterday, the 22nd, the Austrian marines vacated their Legation,
although Von Rostand, the Austrian Chargé d’Affaires, and other people
greatly criticized them for having left too soon. These marines then
went to the French Legation, and M. and Mme. von Rostand became Lady
Macdonald’s guests at the British Legation. The Belgians stayed with the
Austrians until they left, when they came to this compound, and the
Belgian Minister also became a guest at the Legation. The Dutch compound
and the Austrian compound are still burning.
Yesterday at ten o’clock in the morning a sort of terror, almost
unaccountable, seemed to sweep over the entire length and breadth of our
lines; the French soldiers got in a terrible funk, left their Legation
to Boxers, fire, or anything else that might appear, and ran all the way
without stopping to the British Legation, where they said everything was
“lost.” The Germans also got the fright, but after coming up Legation
Street half-way, they turned back, and not only took a stand in their
own Legation again, but they sent men into the deserted French Legation
and kept it manned, so that if the Boxers came they would be resisted,
and not be allowed quietly to take possession.
The Russian compound is the only passage-way by which the American
marines can escape and retire to the British Legation, and it was
understood that in case of an attack from the Chinese serious enough to
necessitate everyone leaving their Legations, the Russians would not
close their big gate opening on Legation Street until our American
soldiers had entered, when they would hold out there (in the Russian
compound) as long as possible, and then retreat all together to the
British Legation. Our Russian friends, however, forgot this little
arrangement, and when our men were also seized with this panic and left
the Wall, and retreated through our Legation across Legation Street to
the Russian gate, they found it not only locked and barred against them,
but no one near enough even to hear them knocking. They excused
themselves afterward by saying they had left a tiny gate open farther
down the street, but as none of our people knew there was such an
entrance, we thought this a rather poor excuse.
However, in an hour’s time, after this terror had passed over the entire
line, our marines had returned to the United States Legation, and had
manned the Wall again. The French returned later to their Legation which
the Germans had kindly guarded for them in the interim, rather
disheartened to think that the scare they had started should prove to
have been only in their own overwrought minds. As the French and German
Legations occupy two important positions, and are constantly being
attacked by Boxers and soldiers, the French Legation could have been
taken very easily by the Chinese had the Germans not occupied both
Legations. They are directly opposite each other in Legation Street.
Our men already have the reputation of being the crack shots of any of
the guards in Peking. It has been noticed that when our men aim they
bring down their game—whether the game is a Chinese soldier’s head or a
Boxer.
Yesterday it seemed too hard that, after the nervous excitement and
fright to everyone in the morning, Providence did not withhold the
terrible fire that broke out almost in our very midst in the park
directly next the Wall. Each hour seemed more terrible than the one
before. A huge column of smoke went up into the air, and in its centre
forked tongues of flame burst out. It seemed impossible that this
enormous fire—one so large or so near I have never before seen in my
life—would not in an hour or so completely burn us up. The Boxers or
soldiers who had so successfully started it must have been overjoyed to
see their work, knowing it would take almost superhuman power to put it
out, although I am sure they could not have thought it possible that we
could extinguish it.
There was little enough hope written on people’s faces in our compound
to make us feel, for a time at least, that perhaps the Chinese might be
successful, and by burning one wall that played so important a part in
our defence, they could enter and massacre us without having to attempt
an attack by scaling. Had there been a wind blowing this enormous column
of fire in our direction, we could not have fought it at all, and the
entire long wall which divides the British Legation from the
Empress-Dowager’s carriage park would have fallen.
Our men scaled ladders and worked like New York firemen in the way they
strove together and in the good sense they exhibited. I suppose man is
able to keep his head clear when he knows that this may be his last
chance in this world to save his skin from Chinese savages, and that his
arm develops in consequence a good deal of strength. Men who were on top
of the wall, throwing down buckets of water on the fire, and handling
with as much care as possible the small rubber pipe that we are using as
a hose, came down every fifteen minutes, to be relieved by others, for
they were half scorched, some badly burned from cinders and falling
débris, and all of them had lost their breath in that terrible heat.
It must be remembered that while these men were on this wall they were
beautiful targets for Chinese sharp-shooters, and we found afterwards
there were many in the Chinese troops. There were three wells in the
compound, and from the two biggest there was a line of men and women
passing buckets, ewers, and any other kind of vessel that was available,
filled with water, to the men who were actually fighting the fire on the
wall. One realizes the heroism it takes to continue working at a fire
though half scorched, but what shall one say of these men who worked
under the ordinary danger of a scorching fire, and who knew they were
the target for the continuous rifle-fire and sniping that was kept up
throughout? The sky was grey, and the men on the Wall made agonizingly
big and black silhouettes for the Chinese to aim at.
If I live to be a thousand, I could never see a queerer collection of
people working together to extinguish a fire, and with the object to
save themselves from a massacre—coolies, missionaries, soldiers, and
Ministers Plenipotentiary working and straining every muscle for the
same object. Surely Peking never before saw such unanimity of her
foreign residents. I was in that line of men and women passing buckets,
and so was the wife of the French Minister, and many other well-known
women.
[Illustration:
MRS. R. S. HOOKER
]
Fargo Squiers, Dr. Martin, and Dr. Poole, surgeon for the British
Legation, were three soot-covered people who came to our rooms after the
fire was entirely out,—which meant they had worked desperately for many
hours without stopping. To say they were thirsty would not be
truthful—they were parched. Dr. Poole whispered that the only cup he
knew big enough to quench his thirst was a big loving-cup that was in a
small closet in a corner of the room (this house having been his before
the siege), and that if I would fill it with Apollinaris he would put in
the whisky. I filled my order, and he poured out about four fingers of
Scotch into the bottom of that big loving-cup, and as he drank it
slowly, holding it by both hands, I thought I had never seen such
thankful eyes as were his during that long and pleasant well-earned
drink.
Again to-day thousands of sandbags have been made by the women. Shooting
continues all the time, and to-day a cannon was fired from the Ch’ien
Men Gate, which we hope may mean that our troops are coming and the
Chinese resisting them. Prince Ching is supposed to have under his
command in China fifty thousand troops, and he must be friendly to us,
or we feel he would have ordered half of his troops to Peking before
this to finish us. It is stated that some of them have shot at the
Boxers, but this is hardly credible. Prince Ching is a Prince of the
first Order, and head of the Tsung-li Yamen. Dr. Morrison is the most
attractive at our impromptu mess; he works wherever a strong man is
needed, and he is as dirty, happy, and healthy a hero as one could find
anywhere.
_June 24._
Two weeks ago to-day the troops started from Tien-tsin. Yesterday by
11.30 a.m. the Hanlin Library, directly behind Sir Claude’s house in the
compound, was fired by the Chinese, and the way we fought the flames I
described yesterday, only perhaps the men felt a little stronger. They
have succeeded once in putting out an enormous fire, so why should they
not be able to do so to-day? This time, however, the wind was against
us, so that from the morning until seven o’clock at night we were
fighting it desperately.
How absurd it is to have any “consideration” for people like the
Chinese! After the big and dangerous fire of the day before yesterday,
the committee on fortifications and defences suggested that the
world-famous Chinese College (the Hanlin Library) should be burnt by us
in such a way that the Chinese could not use it as a position to fire on
us from. There was danger, too, that they would fire it themselves,
taking it for granted that the fire would surely spread to such an
extent—aided by themselves with kerosene—as to burn this entire end of
the Legation. The Defence Committee was afraid of this, and at a
conference of the Ministers it was discussed, and more or less
unanimously disapproved of. “Such vandalism!” they said. “This trouble
will soon be over, and then what a disgrace to have to acknowledge to
the world that we deliberately burnt one of the finest, if not the
finest, libraries in the East!” We only had to wait twenty-four hours to
see that our consideration for the famous library was thoroughly thrown
away, for, notwithstanding the troubles “will be over in a few days,”
the Chinese seem so anxious to destroy us before these troubles have
passed that they themselves burned this gorgeous old library, containing
as it did all their oldest and most revered literature, _in the hope_
that they could burn out a large enough part of our Wall to facilitate
their getting in.
The great danger was over by seven o’clock, but careful sentries watched
all night in case a strong wind should start, and small isolated
buildings were burning all night, so that, looking down from our house
to that end of the compound, it made one think of the blazing flames one
sees at night in the oil districts of Pennsylvania. With these terrible
fires the Chinese are clever enough to keep up a volley of rifle-fire,
so our labour is a frightful danger to every man working. The suspense
was hard to bear, because it was over five hours before the most
optimistic dared say, “We are comparatively out of danger;” and nobody
knew just what would happen if this end of the compound was to go, for
this British compound is looked upon by all as the strongest and last
resort in Peking, and that is why, of course, all of the women and
children and stores of every description have already been sent here.
Twenty-five Chinese Sisters, who were rescued from the Nan-t’ang, come
to our tiny little courtyard at the back of our house—on which charming
view, by the way, our windows look—and cook in a big caldron their
portion of rice that is allowed them by the General Committee. These
people and all of the families of Mrs. Coltman’s “boys,” and Mrs.
Squiers’s “boys,” fill up our tiny backyard with their cooking, etc.,
until, from the propinquity of these people, one is almost convinced
that one is living and sleeping in the heart of the Chinese settlement
of San Francisco.
The marines at our Legation, who naturally will not come here until they
are forced to, are in a very bad way about food. From May 29, when they
arrived in Peking, they were fed by a Chinaman who contracted to feed
them all at so much per man, and he fed them splendidly, but since we
have been besieged he naturally has no market to call upon. Mr. Squiers
has fed them for some days out of his own storeroom, but each meal makes
a terrific hole in his supplies. There are fifty men and two officers,
and naturally they do not get satisfied on one tin of sardines and a
loaf of bread. We have cooked rice in great quantities, putting many
tins of corned beef into it, cooking it in the same big caldron that the
Sisters use. Preparing the food over here makes it very difficult
getting it to them, as there is constant sniping going on, and it is
extremely dangerous to walk from one Legation to another.
_June 25._
So far the moral of the Legation, or, I should say, of this compound, is
decidedly good. The weather is very warm, but the heavy rains that
generally come at this time of summer are not here yet. Only a few
babies are sick with dysentery, and there are some cases of scarlet
fever and malignant malaria. The hospital, a house of four rooms, only
holds a comparatively small number of patients. Let us pray it will not
have time to fill up. Dr. Velde, a surgeon of the German army, who has
been detailed for three years to the Legation in Peking, is a man who
for very clever and consecutive work has already been decorated by his
Emperor. His forte is surgery, and it looks as if he would save the
medical day here in Peking. Dr. Poole, I think, will consult and work
with him. One of our marines has already been killed, and two are at the
hospital wounded. These people, who are the first to lose their lives
and get hurt, make one feel that truly this is war.
I was at the hospital with Mrs. Squiers this morning. Several men were
brought in, and they all had to wait their turn to be operated on, and
the two nurses were so busy assisting with the work in connection with
the operation of the moment that nothing was done for a wounded Cossack
who was laid on the floor. He was covered with blood, and it trickled
down his chest and formed into a pool all around him, his face an
olive-green—the colour one sees in unskilfully painted pictures of
death—so livid, I never believed even dying people could look that way.
He lay there for some time, everyone in authority too busy except to
tell me to do what I could for him, and keep the flies from bothering
him until he should die, probably in twenty minutes. He was shot through
the lungs.
People continue to be cheerful, but it is strange considering that we
have death around us morning, noon, and night. The gossip, if one can so
call the reports and rumours that are circulating throughout the
compound nearly every few hours, is that a Russian declares he knows
their troops are coming, because during the night a sentry saw a green
rocket go up into the sky. It is supposed that the Chinese have no green
rockets; therefore, as the Russians constantly use green rockets, it
_must_ be a signal from the Russian troops to let us know they are
practically at the door. And so on and so forth.
To-day Dr. Morrison went over to the Fu, where the Chinese Christians
are, to assist Colonel Shiba in some difficult and dangerous barricading
work, and incidentally to take a part in a sortie. He was in command of
a squad of Japanese and Italian soldiers, the latter most ineffective,
and the former magnificent. They cleared the Chinese out of some alleys
which Colonel Shiba decided must be added to their lines for the
protection of the Chinese converts. The brunt of the fighting fell on
the Japanese, and one was killed and three wounded. Such a clever idea
it was of Dr. Morrison’s and Dr. H. James’s to put these poor wretches
in Prince Su’s park, which, owing to its close proximity to the Japanese
Legation, seems now to fall upon the Japanese to defend.
Dr. H. James met with such a terrible end yesterday! From the gate of
the British Legation facing the canal, he looked down towards the
Imperial Wall, and seeing there several Chinese officers carrying a
regimental flag with which he was familiar, he started out, as if on the
impulse of the moment, to parley with them. He was watched with
breathless interest. Although from the time he left our wall until he
reached them he held his hands up to show he was unarmed, they grasped
him in the fiercest way, dragging him over the bridge beyond our range
of vision. The horror of his too probable fate is hanging like a pall
over the compound. We cannot understand how a man, knowing the Chinese
as well as he does, could have been so mistaken in their character as to
trust himself to them with such confidence.
During the two fires in the Mongolian Market Place and in the Hanlin
University a great many Chinese were shot by us, and when possible we
straightway threw their bodies into the flames. Unfortunately, some
Boxers were captured during the almost hand-to-hand fighting that has
taken place, and confined in this compound. They were all shot at dawn
this morning.
Captain Myers has been in command for two days and two nights on the
Tartar Wall, with no sleep. This afternoon the marine quarters in the
United States Legation caught fire and for a time it looked as if the
whole American compound would go, but with hard fighting it was put out.
Mr. Cheshire, of the United States Legation, is willing to take the most
difficult and dangerous work wherever an interpreter is needed, and for
some nights now he has been on the Tartar Wall directing and encouraging
the picked Chinamen forming the gang of labourers who nightly help our
marines to strengthen the barricades. Many Chinamen who advance towards
our lines too rashly, are killed every night, and after hours of this
work the number of corpses that accumulate is astounding. For the sake
of the health of the community, Mr. Cheshire has to spend much of his
time superintending his gangs in throwing dead bodies over the Wall, and
to-day he facetiously remarked he thought he should be dubbed
Major-General of the Corpses, as he comes in touch with so many. Such
gruesome tales as these do we hear and talk of daily!
_June 26._
Yesterday afternoon, at four, five gorgeously costumed Imperial Standard
bearers appeared on the bridge in Legation Street with a flag of truce,
saying the Emperor would send later a despatch to the bridge for us to
read, and that there was in consequence an armistice. It was brought
later, and it read: “The Emperor desires the Ministers to be protected.
Therefore, firing must cease, and a despatch will be handed to them
later on the bridge.” It was apparently not brought; but on seeing some
mounted Chinese officers belonging to Jung Lu’s regiment passing over
the Imperial bridge, we hailed them with a white flag, and with some
soldiers to back up the meaning of the flag we spoke to them long enough
to find that they were going the rounds of this part of the town,
telling their people not to shoot this night on us, as there was an
armistice. We told them to send the Emperor’s letter or despatch (which
has not yet arrived on the bridge) to the British Legation. They
promised that it should be brought to us, but it has not yet arrived at
noon to-day.
Last night I was talking to M. Pichon, the French Minister, when the
French Interpreter of Legation came up to us in great excitement, saying
the Russian officers had heard, without any possible doubt, _les
sonneries du canon_ of the Russian troops. It is in this way we hear so
many tales that one is lost when one tries to think. The captains of all
nationalities have had a council of war, and they agree that with great
care and hard work we can hold our own for eight or ten days longer, but
after that we are lost.
Mrs. Coltman, the mother of six lovely children, was speaking of the
impossibilities of clean linen or having any washing done. “But after
all,” she said, “what does it matter? If the troops come within ten
days, my children can wear what they are wearing; if Peking is not
relieved within that time, we will all be dead.” She was not
melodramatic, but spoke very quietly. A hundred other remarks of this
sort that one hears daily go to show how the people really feel about
our condition. Women with husbands and children suffer horribly. They
dread lest their children may die of disease or by torture, as certainly
would be the case if the Chinese get in—as they are notoriously cruel
and without mercy even to babies—and fear for their husbands, who may be
killed during any attack.
At one o’clock this morning a terrific firing began, apparently coming
from all sides at once, which proved to be the case later, when the
officers in charge of the defence compared notes. At this Legation the
air hummed with bullets, but the noise was so frightful one could not
tell if all the Legations were being attacked or just the British. They
tried to frighten us, and they certainly succeeded with women, children,
and some men, but, thank heavens, the officers in charge of defending us
and the sentries—most of them, at least—know that our high walls and
strong barricades are our safety, and that, unless good and well-aimed
artillery is brought to shell them down, with our soldiers and
soldier-sailors to man them, it will be hard for the Chinese to get over
the Wall and end our lives.
It all seems like a story from the Middle Ages to be able to place such
confidence in the strength and manning of our walls. Certainly the
foreign-drilled Chinese soldiers must be down at Tien-tsin, and we are
owing our present immunity from properly aimed artillery-fire to the
fact that the Chinese gunners here are utterly incompetent.