While these stirring events had been following each other in quick

succession down on level ground, the grim Tartar Wall has been at once

our salvation and destroyer of men. The Germans have been having a

terrible time, and although they have borne themselves with soldiery

composure, they have been at last driven clean down with

heart-breaking losses. The guns, which the Chinese had been firing

from the great Ha-ta Gate half a mile off, were advanced during the

night of the 30th June to within a hundred yards of the imperfect

German defences, and on the 1st of July four marines were killed and

six wounded out of a post of fifteen men with nerve-shaking rapidity.

The Chinese soldiers, then swarming forward under the Tartar Wall

itself, threatened the little blockhouse at the base, which kept up

connection with the Club and the German Legation line of barricades,

and soon there was no help for it, the eastern Tartar Wall posts had

to be abandoned. With the German retirement the Americans abandoned

their positions facing west and rushed down to safety below. It cannot

be said that the Americans are afraid; they have merely realised from

the beginning what a few of us have understood. The motley crowd

gathered in the British Legation, as well as our commander-in-chief,

were much stirred by the American retirement, for they already saw

themselves directly bombarded from the menacing height of the city

walls--a prospect which can enchant no one, as the confusion already

reigning would have been worse confounded had all the elderly persons

been given a taste of what the outworks are experiencing. So a council

of war was hastily convened very much after the style of the Boer

commandoes, with everybody talking at once, and it was at once decided

that the blessed Tartar Wall must be at once reoccupied at any cost.

A mixed force, under the command of the American captain, stormed back

again, and with a rush found themselves back in their old quarters

with everything intact. The representation of the American marines had

at last made themselves felt, for British marines took the places of

half the Americans, who were given duty elsewhere. We thought that

that had solved the question.

But this was on the 1st of the month. To-day, the 3rd of the month,

the position became once more untenable, for the Chinese now being

able to attack the wall defences from both sides, were pushing their

barricades rapidly closer and closer until only a few feet separated

them from their prey. So more men were called for, and this morning,

after a short harangue, a storming-party, numbering sixty bayonets and

composed of British, Americans and Russians, dashed over into the

Chinese lines killing thirty of the enemy and driving the rest back in

great confusion. It was a brilliant little affair and well conducted,

but unfortunately Captain M----, who commanded, was wounded in the

foot, and the Americans have no officer now fit to lead them. It is a

curious fact worth recording that owing to wounds and staff work,

neither the British nor Americans have any good officers left. It is

only many days of this close-quarter fighting that shows you that

without good officers no men care for moving out of shelter. Unless

there are men who will sacrifice themselves, the ordinary rank and

file feel under no obligation to do anything more arduous than to lie

comfortably firing at the enemy. You can have no idea how hard it is

to get men to make sorties; on the slightest provocation, once they

have left their own barricades, they rush back to safety....

Fortunately with all these events, we have been given something else

to think about, and it is a thing of this sort which re-establishes

confidence more than any warlike deeds. I mention it because it is the

simple truth. It is also a pretty commentary on _la bete humaine_.

You remember the V-shaped barricade garrisoned by Russian sailors, I

spoke about a few days ago? Well, if you do not happen to remember, I

merely need say again, that it is a barricade facing both ways on

Legation Street, which now in the fulness of time has blossomed into a

whole network of barricades which protect our inner lines and the

British Legation base from any rush of the enemy which might succeed

momentarily in getting past our outworks. The Russian sailors who

furnish these posts have been having a very easy time with nothing to

do but to eat and to sleep, and to mount guard, turn and turn about.

Of course, this comparative idleness in all the storm and stress

around us gave them time to look around and to loot the vacant houses

near them. Not content with this, some of them discovered that a large

number of buxom Chinese schoolgirls from the American missions were

lodged but a stone's throw from their barricades. The missionaries,

fearing that some scandal might occur, had placed some elderly native

Christians in charge of the schoolgirls, with the strictest orders to

prevent any one from entering their retreat. This was effective for

some time. One dark night, however, when the usual fusillade along the

outer lines began, the sailors made tremendous preparations for an

attack which they said was bound to reach them. At eleven o'clock they

developed the threatened attack by emptying a warning rifle or two in

the air. Then warming to their work, and with their dramatic Slav

imaginations charmed with the _mise en scene_, they emptied all their

rifles into the air. Then they started firing volley after volley that

crashed horribly in the narrow lanes, retreating the while into the

forbidden area. Fiercely fighting their imaginary foe they fell back

slowly; and as soon as the elderly native converts had sufficiently

realised the perils to which they were exposed, these cowardly males

fled hurriedly through the passageways which have been cut into the

British Legation. The sailors then placed their rifles against a wall

and disappeared. Unfortunately for them a strong guard sent to

investigate this unexpected firing almost immediately appeared, and

presently the sailors were rescued, some with much scratched faces.

The girls, catlike, had known how to protect themselves!

The next day there was a terrible scene, which everybody soon heard

about. Baron von R----, the Russian commander, on being acquainted

with the facts of the affair, swore that his honour and the honour of

Russia demanded that the culprits be shot. I shall never forget that

absurd scene when R----, who speaks the vilest English, demanded with

terrible gestures that the ring-leaders be identified by the victims.

It was pointed out to him that the affair had occurred when all was

dark--that the whole post was implicated--that it was impossible to

name any one man. Then R---- swore he would shoot the whole lot of

them as a lesson; he would not tolerate such things. But the very next

day, when a notice was posted on the bell-tower of the British

Legation forbidding everyone under severe penalties to approach this

delectable building, R---- had his _revanche a la Russe_, as he

called it. Taking off his cap, and assuming a very polite air of doubt

and perplexity, he inquired of the lady missionary committee which

over-sees the welfare of these girls, "_Pardon, mesdames_," he said

purposely in French, "_cette affiche est-ce seulement pour les civiles

ou aussi pour les militaires!_"

VII

THE HOSPITAL AND THE GRAVEYARD

5th July, 1900.

* * * * *

It depends very much on moments as to whether one has time to laugh or

to cry. The last time I wrote, we were nearly all laughing--when we

had the time; to-day most of us are doing the reverse. Be one ever so

hardened, it is impossible to go to the humble hospital and the little

graveyard of our battered lines without tender feelings welling up,

and perhaps even a silent tear dropping. We have all been to either

one or the other place to-day; our losses are mounting up. In the

hospital alone there are now fifty sorely wounded and tortured men,

groaning and moving this way and that. The bullet and shell wounds

have so far been distinguished for their deadliness, probably because

of the close ranges at which we are fighting. It is a strange

assembly, in all truth, to be mustered within the precincts of a

diplomatic Chancery, wherein were prepared only a few short weeks ago

dry-as-dust documents, which so hastened the storm by not promptly

arresting it. For the Chancery of the British Legation is now the

hospital, and on despatch tables, lately littered with diplomatic

documents, operations are now almost hourly performed and muttered

groans wrung from maimed men. It is a curious thought this--to think

that the vengeance of foolish despatches overtakes innocent men and

lays them groaning and bleeding on the very spot where the ink which

framed them flowed. It does not often happen that cause and effect

meet like this.

It is a wretched hospital, too, even though it is the best which can

be made. Every window has to be bricked in partially; every entrance

where bullets might flick in must be closed; and in the heat and dust

of a Peking summer the stench is terrible. Worse still are the flies,

which, attracted by the newly spilt blood of strong men, swarm so

thickly that another torture is added. Half the nationalities of

Europe lie groaning together, each calling in his native tongue for

water, or for help to loosen a bandage which in the shimmering heat

has become unbearable. And as the rifle cracking rises to the storm it

always does every few hours, more men will be brought in and laid on

that gruesome operating table. The very passageways have been already

invaded by men lying on long chairs, because there are no more beds.

Even they are happy; they have crept to a place where they can gasp in

quiet; that is all they ask for.

In a hideous little room at the back the dead are prepared for their

last resting place--prepared in a manner which is shocking, but is the

best that can be done. I cannot describe it. In the cool of the

evening, when perhaps the enemy's fire has slackened a little, and the

bullets only sob very faintly overhead, and the shells have ceased

their brutal attentions, stretcher parties come quietly and carry out

the corpses. That is the worst sight of all.

There are no coffins, and the dead, shrouded in white cloth, have

sometimes their booted feet pushing through the coarse fabric in which

they are sewn. Never shall I forget the sight of one man, a great,

long fellow, who seemed immense in his white shroud. A movement of

the bearers struggling under his unaccustomed weight burst his winding

sheet and his feet shot out as if he were making a last effort to

escape from the pitiless grasp of Mother Earth extending her arms

towards him in the form of a narrow trench. There was something

hideous and terrible in these booted feet. One man, unnerved at the

sight, gave a short cry, as if he had been struck. That is the brutal

side of life--death.

There is also no room and not time to give each one a separate grave,

these our dead; and so, strapped to a plank, they are lowered into the

ground, a few shovelfuls of earth are hastily dropped in on top, and

then another corpse is laid down. Sometimes there are three or four in

a single grave, and when the grave is filled up the dead men's order

is written on rough crosses. That is all.

At such burials you may see the real truth which is hidden by the mask

of every-day life. Men you thought were good fellows turn out to be

hearts of stone; the true hearts of gold are generally those who are

devil-may-care and indifferently regarded when there is no _Sturm und

Drang._ I, who have never been religious, begin to understand what

such phrases mean--"that many are called, but few are chosen." It is

not possible that the final valuation can be that of the every-day

world. Then when I think of these things, I long to get away from this

imprisonment; to revalue things in a new light; to see and to

understand.

But as you pass away from this torture room and this execution ground

a sullen anger seizes you. Why should so many be called--why should we

die thus in a hole?...

VIII

THE FAILURE

6th July, 1900.

* * * * *

I have always found that there is a corrective for everything in this

world. Action is the best one of all, people say. It is not always so.

The little Japanese colonel stood this morning pulling his thin

moustaches very thoughtfully and looking earnestly ahead of him when I

came on duty with a dozen others. In front was a great mass of ruins,

concealing a couple of entrenched posts of our own men, where I was

going, and farther on, half masked by the ruins, some of the enemy's

advanced barricades lay.

"I think," said the colonel finally, pronouncing on the situation with

inherited Japanese caution, "that it will be very difficult, but we

must try."

He referred to the wretched Chinese gun belonging to the redoubtable

Tung Fu-hsiang, as we had discovered from big banners pitched near by,

which had been steadily and methodically smashing in the northern

front of our defence, and was fast rendering our lines untenable here.

We always went on duty at these posts with little enthusiasm. We could

not hit back. Another gun, a newcomer, had also been posted somewhere

near the ruins of the Chinese Customs, as if encouraged by the success

of the other one, and was now playing on the main-gate posts of the Su

wang-fu, and rendering even these more and more dangerous for us to

hold permanently.

The newcomer was, however, still, comparatively speaking, far away; it

was our old friend we most dreaded. Well hidden, it pelted us with

rusty but effective shells night and day. To make another sortie was

highly dangerous for the ill-success of the first one in this quarter

had certainly encouraged the Chinese, and this time we would have to

be prepared for a very vigorous defence, which might bring on a series

of counter-attacks. Then, too, the wall-split and barricaded grounds

beyond our own feeble defences meant that a single false step would

lead us into an _impasse_ from which we could not lightly escape.

Rifle-fire would pelt us at close quarters, shells would burst right

in our midst; it was not a pleasant prospect even for the biggest

fire-eaters of our lines. We had, however, to remember that so long as

we held firm on the outer rim of our ruins would the enormous piles of

brickwork which lie around, either in the form of ruined houses or

wrecked compound walls, act as traverses and make the heavy rifle and

cannon fire being poured in nothing very terrible. But as soon as we

are forced to abandon our advanced lines the enemy speedily will swarm

in, and then no sortie, however well planned, can dislodge him. He

will make our best defences his parallels--and in a week he will be

able to split us in half. These things made immediate action really

advisable, and soon the word was passed round that a big sortie was to

be made at once.

Once more all the morning was spent in making preparations. Marines

and volunteer reserves were brought over from the British Legation to

line the trenches and barricades, and cover the advance with a heavy

rifle fire; the Italians, who were to co-operate by jumping down off

their northwestern hillock and rushing forward, were warned for duty,

and had fresh ammunition served out to them; and finally volunteers

were called for, and the command of the sortie handed over to a

Japanese officer, Captain A----.

When everything was ready, we stood for a minute massed together while

some parting instructions were given. We presented a curious and

unique spectacle. There were fifteen Japanese sailors in the dirty

remains of their blue uniforms, without caps or jumpers, with broken

boots and begrimed faces; and alongside of them were twenty-five

miscellaneous volunteers, some with bayonets to their rifles, some

with none--but all determined to get home on the enemy at all costs

this time. There had been sixteen days' incessant work at the trenches

and barricades with next to no sleep. Mud and brickwork clung to us

all with an insistence which no amount of rough dusting would remove.

We were a tattered and disreputable crowd.

There was little time to reflect or to cast one's eyes around,

however, for no sooner had Captain A---- received his last

instructions than his bugler sounded the charge, and from the Italian

lines, eight hundred feet away, which were hidden from us by walls and

trees, came an answering blast. The Italians were ready. I gripped my

rifle and took the flank of my detachment.

We tumbled forward in silence, forty effectives in all, with a couple

dozen native converts behind us, who had been provided with some of

the captured rifles and swords. As soon as we were clear, Captain

A----, who was a tiny man, even among a tiny race, drew a little

sword, and pointing to the enemy's barricades now looming up very

close, ordered his bugler to sound the charge once more. The notes

ripped out, and giving a mixed attempt at a European cheer, we

quickened our pace, running as rapidly as we could over the rubbish

which covered the ground and taking advantage of every piece of cover.

A few stray shots pecked at us, but in this quarter, so strange that

it appeared unreal, the enemy gave hardly a sign of life. Behind us,

on our left, a tremendous fusillade was in progress, and the cracking

of the rifles came back to us in one high-pitched roar. But the

intervening trees and the ruins did not allow us to see or understand

what was the cause. We had completely lost touch with the others.

Rushing round a corner, we suddenly came on the gun we had been sent

to capture; it was perched high on a long, loopholed barricade, and

stood quite silent and alone. We gave a shout and pitched forward in a

momentary ecstasy of delight, but like a flash the scene around us

changed. Dozens of soldiers jumped up around us, looking every bit

like startled pheasants in their bright uniforms, and retired, firing

rapidly. This, as if a preconcerted plan, was the signal for a

tremendous fire on all sides, which absolutely surprised us. From

every adjacent ruin and roof the enemy appeared by magic, and fired at

us with ever-increasing vigour. Now just above us the selfsame gun

which had demolished my outpost house a few days before loomed

invitingly, and determined to have our revenge and stick the gunners

like pigs if we could only get to grips, a knot of us ran on. The

bugler blew a few sharp notes to rally some of those who were hanging

back in confusion, and finally, riflemen in advance and the converts

herded tremblingly behind by a brave Japanese Secretary of Legation

in spectacles, we succeeded in climbing up on to the gun platform. The

gunners, who had been lying beside their weapon, fled precipitately as

soon as they saw our heads come over the barricade, but to our right

and left the enemy was now swarming forward with frantic yells. The

converts, who were to drag off the gun while we covered them with our

rifles and bayonets, could not be made to advance, but clung to the

wall screaming piteously. We beat some of them over the head with our

rifle-butts and kicked them savagely in a fever of anxiety to put some

spirit in them, but nothing could move them forward. It must be always

so; the Christian Chinaman face to face with his fierce, heathen

countrymen is as a lamb; he cannot fight. Then before we knew it the

little Japanese captain was on the ground, two or three Japanese

sailors fell too, a _sauve qui peut_ began, and everything was in

inextricable disorder. The Chinese commanders, seeing our plight,

urged their men forward, and soon hundreds of rifles were crashing at

us, and savage-looking men in brightly coloured tunics and their red

trouser-covers swinging in the breeze leaped forward on us. It was a

terrible sight. There was nothing to do but to retire, which we did,

dragging in our wounded with brutal energy. At a ruined wall, half a

dozen of us made a stand, covering the retreat, which had degenerated

into a rout, and, firing steadily at a close range, we dropped man

after man. Some of the Kansu soldiers rushed right up to us, and only

fell a few feet from our rifles, yelling, "Sha, Sha,"--kill, kill, to

the last moment; and one fellow, as he was beaten down, threw a sword,

which stabbed one of our men in the thigh and terribly wounded him.

It must have been all over in a very few minutes, for the next thing I

remember is that we were all inside our lines again, and that my knees

were bleeding profusely from the scrambling over barricades and ruins.

We were completely out of breath from the excitement and the running,

and most of us were crimson with rage at our ill-success when we had

practically had everything in our own hands. Everyone was for

shooting a convert or two as an example for the rest, but in the end

it came to nothing. Meanwhile the fusillade against us grew enormously

in vigour. From every side bullets flicked in huge droves. The

Chinese, as if incensed at our enterprise, strove to repay us by

pelting us unmercifully, and awakened into action by this persistent

firing, the roar of musketry and cannon soon extended to every side

until it crashed with unexampled fury. Messages came from half a dozen

quarters for the reserves to be sent back, and in the hurry and

general confusion we could not learn what had happened to the Italians

or the rest of the enterprise.

Meanwhile our wounded were lying on the ground, and the news soon

spread that the Japanese surgeon had pronounced the little captain's

case hopeless. I went to see him as soon as I could, and seldom have I

seen a more pitiful sight. Lying on a coat thrown one the ground, with

his side torn open by an iron bullet, the stricken man looked like a

child who had met with a terrible accident. He could not have been

more than five feet high, and his sword, which was a tiny blade, about

thirty inches long, was strapped to his wrist by a cord, which he

refused to have released. Beating his arms up and down in the air with

that tiny sword bobbing with them, he struggled to master the pain,

but the effort was too great for him, and he kept moaning in spite of

himself. A few feet from him sat a wounded Japanese sailor, who had

been struck in the knee by a soft-nosed bullet. His trousers had been

ripped up to put on a field dressing, and never have I before seen a

more ghastly wound. The bullet had drilled into his knee-cap in a neat

little hole, but the soft metal, striking the bony substance within,

had splashed as it progressed through, with the result that the hole

made on coming out was as big as the knee-cap itself. The sailor bore

his wound with a stoicism which seemed to me superhuman. The sweat was

pouring off his face in his agony, but he had stuffed a cap into his

mouth so that he might not disgrace himself by crying out, and even in

his agony he lay perfectly still, with staring eyes, as he waited to

be carried to the operating table.

Presently the captain died with a sudden stiffening, and news came in

from a number of other posts that men were falling, and we must detach

some of ours to reinforce threatened points. In utter gloom the day

ended, and miserably tired, we got hardly any sleep until the small

hours.

IX

AN INTERLUDE

8th July, 1900.

* * * * *

And yet in spite of such things there are plenty of interludes. For of

the nine hundred and more European men, women and children besieged in

the Legation lines, many are playing no part at all. There are, of

course, some four hundred marines and sailors, and more than two

hundred women and children. The first are naturally ranged in the

fighting line; the second can be but non-combatants. But of the

remainder, two hundred and more of whom are able-bodied, most are

shirking. There are less than eighty taking an active part in the

defence--the eighty being all young men. The others have claimed the

right of sanctuary, and will do nothing. At most they have been

induced to form themselves into a last reserve, which, I hope, may

never be employed. If it is.... The duties of this reserve consist in

mustering round the clanging bell of the Jubilee Tower in the British

Legation when a general alarm is rung. When the firing becomes very

heavy that bell begins clanging.

There was a general alarm the other night when I happened to be off

duty, and I stopped in front of the bell-tower to see it all. The last

reserve tumbled from their sleeping-places in various stages of

deshabille, all talking excitedly. The women had too much sense to

move a great deal, although the alarm might be a signal for anything.

A few of them got up, too, and came out into the open; but the

majority stayed where they were. Presently the commander-in chief

appeared in person in his pyjamas, twirling his moustaches, and

listened to the increasing fusillade and cannonade directed against

the outposts. The din and roar, judged by the din and roar of

every-day life, may have been nerve-breaking, but to any one who had

been so close to it for eighteen days it was nothing exceptional. The

night attack, which had been heralded after the usual manner by a

fierce blowing of trumpets, simply meant thousands of rifles crashing

off together, and as far as the British Legation was concerned, you

might stand just as safely there as on the Boulevard des Italiens or

in Piccadilly. There was a tremendous noise, and swarms of bullets

passing overhead, but that was all. The time had not arrived for

actual assaults to be delivered; there was too much open ground to be

covered.

The groups of reserves stood and listened in awe, the

commander-in-chief twirled his moustaches with composure, and two or

three other refugee Plenipotentiaries slipped out and nervously waited

the upshot of it all. It was a very curious scene. Well, the fusillade

soon reached the limit of its _crescendo_, and then with delighted

sighs, the _diminuendo_ could plainly be divined. The Chinese

riflemen, having blazed off many rounds of ammunition, and finding

their rifle barrels uncomfortably warm, were plainly pulling them out

of their loopholes and leaning them up against the barricades. The

_diminuendo_ became more and more marked, and finally, except for the

usual snipers' shots, all was over. So the reserves were dismissed and

went contentedly off to bed. As far as the actual defence was

concerned, this comedy might have been left unplayed. In the dense

gloom those men could never have been moved anywhere. Such a manoeuvre

would have brought about a panic at once, for there is little mutual

confidence, and nothing has been done to promote it.

At first, in the hurry and scurry and confusion of the initial

attacks, when everything and everybody was unprepared and upset, this

state of things escaped attention. Now all the fighting line is

becoming openly discontented. There is favouritism and incompetency in

everything that is being done. Two days ago a young Scotch volunteer

got killed almost on purpose, because he was sick and tired of the

cowardice and indecision. And now, not content with all this, there is

a new folly. An alleged searchlight has been seen flickering on the

skies at night, and M----, the British Minister, has in a burst of

optimism declared that it is the relief under S---- signalling to us.

Yet there are men who know exactly what it is--the opening of the

doors of a blast-furnace in the Chinese city, which sends up a ruddy

light in certain weather.

Discipline is becoming bad, too, and sailors and volunteers off duty

are looting the few foreign stores enclosed in our lines. Everything

is being taken, and the native Christians, finding this out, have been

pouring in bands when the firing ceases and wrecking everything

which they cannot carry away.

A German marine killed one, and several have been dangerously wounded.

In our present condition anything is possible. Still, the

fortification work is proceeding steadily, and the appearance of the

base, the British Legation, has been miraculously changed. Enormous

quantities of sandbags have been turned out and placed in position,

and all the walls are now loopholed. With all this access of strength,

we are much more secure, and yet our best contingents are being very

slowly but very continuously shot to pieces. Our casualty list is now

well into the second hundred, and as the line of defenders thins, the

men are becoming more savage. In addition to looting, there have been

a number of attempts on the native girl converts, which have been

hushed up.... Ugly signs are everywhere, and the position becomes from

day to day less enviable.

X

THE GUNS

10th July, 1900.

* * * * *

Had we a single gun how different it would be! We could parade it

boldly under the enemy's nose; sweep his barricades and his advanced

lines away in a cloud of dust and brick-chips; bombard his camps which

we have located; make him sorry and ashamed ... as it is we can do

nothing; we have not a single piece which can be called serious

artillery; and we must suffer the segment which the enemy affects in

almost complete silence. Listen to our list of weapons.

First, there is the Italian one-pounder firing ballistite. It is

absolutely useless. Its snapping shells are so small that you can

thrust them in your pocket without noticing them. This gun is merely a

plaything. And yet being the best we have, it is wheeled unendingly

around and fired at the enemy from a dozen different points. It may

give confidence, but that is all it can give. The other day I watched

it at work on a heavy barricade being constructed by night and day by

the methodical enemy. By night the Chinese soldiery work as openly as

they please, for no outpost may waste its ammunition by indiscriminate

shooting. But during the day, orders or no orders, it has become rash

for the enemy to expose himself to our view; and even the fleeting

glimpse of a moving hand is made the excuse for a hailstorm of fire.

This has made excessive caution the order of the day, and you can

almost believe, when no rifles are firing to disturb such a

conviction, that there are only dead men round us. Yet with nothing to

be seen, countless hands are at work; in spite of the greatest

vigilance barricades and barriers grow up nearer and nearer to us both

night and day; we are being tied in tighter. These mysterious

barricades, built in parallels, are so cunningly constructed that our

fiercest sorties must in the end beat themselves to pieces against

brick and stone; if the enemy can complete his plans we shall be

choked silently. That is why the Italian gun is so often

requisitioned.

I was saying that I watched the one-pounder at work against the

enemy's brick-bound lines. Each time, as ammunition is becoming

precious, the gun was more carefully sighted and fired, and each time,

with a little crash, the baby shell shot through the barricades,

boring a ragged hole six or eight inches in diameter. Two or three

times this might always be accomplished with everything on the Chinese

side silent as death. The cunning enemy! Then suddenly, as the gun was

shifted a bit to continue the work of ripping up that barricade,

attention would be distracted, and before you could explain it the

ragged holes would be no more. Unseen hands had repaired the damage by

pushing up dozens of bricks and sandbags, and before the game could be

opened again, unseen rifles were rolling off in their dozens and

tearing the crests of our outworks. In that storm of brick-chips,

split sandbags and dented nickel, you could not move or reply. That is

the Italian gun.

The next most useful weapon should be the Austrian machine-gun, which

is a very modern weapon, and throws Mannlicher bullets at the rate of

six hundred to the minute. Yet it, too, is practically useless. It has

been tried everywhere and found to be defective. When it rattles at

full speed, it has been seen that its sighting is illusory--that it

throws erratically high in the air, and that ammunition is simply

wasted. It cannot help us in the slightest. The value of machine-guns

has been always overrated.

Then there is a Nordenfeldt belonging to the British marines, and a

very small Colt, which was brought up by the Americans. The

Nordenfeldt is absolutely useless and now refuses to work; the Colt is

so small, being single-barrelled, that it can only do boy's work. Yet

this Colt is the most satisfactory of all, and when we have dragged it

out with us and played it on the enemy, it has shot true and straight.

They say it has killed more men than all the rest put together....

There should be a Russian gun, too--a good Russian gun of respectable

calibre. But although the shells were brought, a thousand of them,

too, the gun was forgotten at the Tientsin Station! Such a thing could

only happen to Russians, everybody says. But some people say it was

forgotten on purpose, because De G---- had received absolute assurance

from the Chinese Government that the Russian Legation would not be

attacked under any circumstances, and that sailors were only brought

up to keep faith with the other Powers....

This miserable list, as you will see, means that we have nothing with

which to reply to the enemy's fire. We are not so proud and foolish as

to wish to silence the guns ranged against us, but, at least, we

should be able to make some reply. In desperation, the sailor-gunners

tried to manufacture a crude piece of ordnance by lashing iron and

steel together, and encasing it in wood. Fortunately it was never

fired, for in the nick of time an old rusty muzzle-loader has been

discovered in a blacksmith's shop within our lines, and has been made

to fire the Russian ammunition by the exercise of much ingenuity. It

belches forth mainly flames, and smokes and makes a terrific report.

Some say this is as useful as a modern twelve-pounder....

About the Chinese guns we can find out very little, excepting that

none, or very few, of the modern weapons which are in stock at Peking

have been used against us. There are at most only nine or ten in

constant use; perhaps the others have been dragged away down the long

Tientsin road. But even these nine or ten, if they were worked

together, would nearly wreck us. Our sorties have pushed some of them

back.

Two of these guns are being fired at us from a staging on the Palace

wall--sometimes regularly and persistently, sometimes as if they had

fallen under the influence of the conflicting factors which are

struggling to win the day in the Palace. If they bombarded us without

intermission for twenty-four hours, they would render the British

Legation almost untenable. Two or three more guns are on the Tartar

Wall; three or four are ranged against the Su wang-fu and French

lines; some are kept travelling round us searching for a weak spot.

They have no system or fire-discipline. Some use shrapnel and segment;

others fire solid round shot all covered with rust. Silent sometimes

with a mysterious silence for days at a time, they come to life again

suddenly in a blaze of activity, and wreak more ruin in a few minutes

than weeks of rifle fusillade and days of firing on the fringe of

outer buildings. And yet we cannot complain. We have so many walls,

so many houses, so many trees, so many obstructions of every kind,

that they cannot get a clear view of anything. These singing shells,

which might breach any one part, were the guns massed and their fire

continuous, are sneered at by most of us already. Provided you can lie

low, shell-fire soon loses even its moral effect.

XI

SNIPING

* * * * *

The siege has now become such a regular business with everyone that

there are almost rules and regulations, which, if not promulgated

among besieged and besiegers, are, at least, more or less understood

things. Thus, for instance, after one or two in the morning the

crashing of rifles around us is always quite stilled; the gunners have

long ceased paying us their attentions, and a certain placid calmness

comes over all. The moon may then be aloft in the skies; and if it is,

the Tartar Wall stands out clear and black, while the ruined

entrenchments about us are flooded in a silver light which makes the

sordidness of our surroundings instantly disappear in the enchantment

of night. Our little world is tired; we have all had enough; and even

though they may run the risk of being court-martialled, it is always

fairly certain that by three or four in the morning half the outposts

and the picquets will be dead asleep. It was not like that in the

beginning, for then nobody slept much night or day; and if one did, it

was only to awake with a moan, the result of some weird nightmare.

Now with the weeks which have gone by since we broke off relations

with the rest of the world it is quite different, and we pander to our

little weakness of forty winks before a loophole, although orderly

officers may stumble by all night on their rounds and curse and swear

at this state of affairs. By training yourself, however, I have found

that you can practically sleep like a dog, with one eye open and both

ears on the alert--that light slumber which the faintest stirring

immediately breaks; when you are like this you can do your duty at a

loophole.

It is such dull work, too, in front of the eternal loopholes, with

nothing but darkness and thick shadows around you, and the rest of a

post of four or five men vigorously snoring. The first half hour goes

fairly quickly, and, perhaps even the second; but the last hour is

dreary, tiresome work. And when your two hours are up, and contentedly

you kick your relief on the ground beside you, he only moans faintly,

but does not stir. Dead with sleep is he. Then you kick him again with

all that zest which comes from a sense of your own lost slumbers, and

once more he moans in his fatigue, more loudly this time, but still he

does not move.

Finally, in angry despair you land the butt of your rifle brutally on

his chest, and he will start up with a cry or an oath.

"Time," you mutter. The relief grumblingly rises to his feet, rubbing

his glued eyes violently, and asks you if there is anything.

"Nothing," you answer curtly. It is always nothing, for although the

enemy's barricades rear themselves perhaps not more than twenty or

thirty feet from where you stand, you know that it takes a lusty

stomach to rush that distance and climb your fortifications and

ditches in the dark in the face of the furious fire which sooner or

later would burst out. For we understand our work now. Experience is

the only schoolmaster.

So with your two hours on and your four hours off the night spends

itself and dawn blushes in the skies. It is in all truth weary work,

those long watches of the night.... Sometimes even your four hours'

sleeping time is rudely broken into by half a dozen alarms; for

separated sometimes by hundreds of feet from your comrades of the next

post, the instinct of self-preservation makes you line your loopholes

and peer anxiously into the gloom beyond, when any one of the enemy

shows that he is afoot. A single rifle-shot spitting off near by is as

often as not the cause of the alarm; for that rifle-shot cracking out

discordantly and awakening the echoes may be the signal for the dread

rush which would spell the beginning of the end. Once one line is

broken into we know instinctively that the confusion which would

follow would engulf us all. There is no confidence....

When you have time you may relieve his monotony by sniping.

In the early morning, the very early morning, is the time for this

work--say, roughly, between the hours of four and six, when the

soldier Chinaman beyond our lines is yawningly arousing himself from

his slumbers and squats blinking and inattentive before his morning

tea. Then if you are a natural hunter, are inclined to risk a good

deal, and something of a quick shot, you may have splendid chances

which teach you more than you could ever learn by months in front of

targets. Baron von R----, the cynical commander of the Russian

detachment, is the crack sniper of us all, because he has not a great

deal to do in the daytime, and, also, because beyond his lines of the

Russian Legation all is generally quiet with a curious and suggestive

quietness. At four in the morning R----, with his sailor's habits,

generally rises, shakes himself like a dog, lights his eternal Russian

cigarette, takes a few whiffs, and then sallies forth with a

Mannlicher carbine and a clip of five cartridges. His sailors are duly

warned to cover him if he has to retire in disorder, but so far he has

met with no mishap. Cautiously pushing out beyond his barricades, he

climbs a ruined wall, reaches the top and buries himself in the dust

in pleasant anticipation of what will follow.

Presently he is rewarded. A Chinese brave comes out into the open,

selects a corner, and sits down to smoke under cover of a barricade.

The Baron pushes his clip of cartridges deliberately into the

magazine, shoots one into the rifle barrel through the feed, and then

very cautiously and very slowly draws a steady bead on the man. I have

seen him at work. Five seconds may go by, perhaps even ten, for the

Baron allows himself only one shot in each case, and then bang! the

bullet speeds on its way, and the Chinaman rolls over bored through

and through. On a good day the bag may be two or three; on a bad day

the Russian commander returns with his five cartridges intact and a

persistent Russian shrug, for he never fires in vain, and there are

certain canons in this sport which he does not care to violate

lightly.

Myself, enamoured with this game, after I had watched the Russian

commander two mornings, I, too, determined that I would embark on it,

although I have no such leisure in the early hours. Eleven or twelve

o'clock in the bright sunlight has become my hour, when the sun beats

down hotly on our heads, and everyone is drowsy with the noon-heat.

Then you may also catch the Chinaman smoking and drinking his tea once

again, and if you are quick a dead man is your reward. Every dead man

puts another drop of caution into the attackers. It is therefore good

and useful.

Yesterday I had great luck, for I got three men within very few

minutes of one another; and then when I was fondly imagining that I

might pick off dozens more from my coign of vantage, I was swept back

into our lines under such a storm of fire as I have never experienced

before. I should tell you that there are practically only two

shooting-grounds where this curious sport may be had; there are only

two areas of brick and ruins where by judicious manoeuvring you may

steal out and get the enemy on his exposed flank where no barricades

protect him from an enfilading fire. These two areas lie opposite the

Russian front, and beyond the extreme Japanese western posts of the Su

wang-fu. Since the Russian front is the Russian commander's own

preserve, it is from the Japanese posts that I work.

On the day when I made my record bag, half-past eleven found everybody

drowsy and the time propitious. Our northern Peking sun beats down

pitilessly from the cloudless skies at such a time, and so I had the

field completely to myself. Firing had ceased absolutely on all sides,

and the Chinese had begun to sleep. Crouching low down I scurried

across from the Japanese post to some ruins fifty feet off, and

remained quietly squatting there, panting in the heat, to get myself

bearings. Around me all was silent, and thirty or forty yards from

where I lay I could see the brown face of the Japanese sailor laughing

at me through a loophole. Presently bringing my glasses into play I

swept the huge pile of ruined houses and streets lying huddled on all

sides.

There was not a twig stirring or a shadow moving. All was dead quiet.

The main Chinese camp on this side was placed in H----'s abandoned

compounds--that we had discovered long ago--but the battalions there

were now apparently asleep with not so much as a sentry out. So,

gaining confidence, I pushed on, working parallel to Prince Su's outer

walls and about fifty feet beyond them. Suddenly I stopped and

dropped, quite by instinct, for although my mind had telegraphed the

danger to my knees, I did not fully realise what it was until I was on

the ground. Just round the corner there was a glimpse of three men

stripped to the waist to be seen. Had they seen me? I waited in some

suspense for a few seconds pressed my glasses back into their case,

and gripped my rifle. My anxiety was soon set at rest, for with a

clatter, which seemed ten times greater than it really was, the men

set quickly to work on a structure. They were building something, and

now was my chance. Getting to the corner again I peered cautiously

around, and there but seventy or eighty feet from where I lay three

strapping fellows were raising a heavy log. They had pulled off their

red and black tunics, and were only in their baggy breeches and the

curious little stomach apron the Northern Chinaman affects to keep

himself from catching cold.

Their brown backs glistened with sweat in the bright sunshine, and

between their belts and the loose black turbans, under which their

pigtails were gathered up, an ideal two-feet target presented itself.

Carefully I fired.

In a flash one broad brown back was suddenly splashed with red, a

fellow sank on his knees with outstretched arms, and at last rolled

over without a moan, apparently as dead as dead could be. It was

brutalising.

The log the men were carrying crashed down heavily on the ground and

the two remaining soldiers started back in surprise. From whence came

that shot? In front of where they were working lay their advanced

posts, which, facing our own, two or three hundred feet away, should

completely cover them. They peered around for a few minutes, anxiously

searching their front and not looking behind them. At last they

apparently decided that it must have been a stray shot, for, bending

down, they once more raised the log, paying no more attention to their

dead companion than they would to a dead dog.

This time I let them advance towards their outposts until they were a

hundred feet farther away. Then I fired again. The log came down once

more with a dull thud, and both the men fell as well. But imagine my

disgust when they both rose to their feet, one man merely showing the

other a snipped shoulder which must be bleeding, but was evidently

nothing as a wound. I cursed my government rifle, which always throws

to the right. At less than a hundred yards such practice was

disgraceful. This time both the men were aroused, and, abandoning

their log, they disappeared round some ruins, only to reappear with

their tunics on, their bandoliers strapped round them, and their

Mausers in their hands. They meant to have some revenge. I lost sight

of them for quite ten minutes, only to have them both out again almost

halfway between myself and the Japanese posts from which I had sallied

forth. I was cut off! I would have to wipe those two men out or else

they would do that to me.

They were in no hurry, however, for they began by beating the ground

carefully and taking advantage of every piece of cover. They evidently

suspected that some of our men had come out in skirmishing order and

were still lying hidden; at last one saw something. He had caught

sight of the Japanese sentry who was looking out anxiously to see what

had become of me. So rising hurriedly, the soldier fired at the brown

Japanese face. Before he had sunk on his knees again I had drilled him

fair with a snapshot--in the head it must have been, because he went

over with a piercing yell and with his hands plucking at his cap. The

other man did not wait to see what would happen, but fled as fast as

he could down a small lane that ran only twenty feet past me. Seeing

the game was played out, I rose and fired rapidly from under the crook

of my arm and missed. Reloading as I scrambled after him, I drove

another bullet at him, and he staggered wildly but did not fall. My

blood was now up, and I was determined to get him, even if I had to

follow into the Chinese camp, so I sped along too. The fellow was now

yelling lustily, calling his comrades to his aid, and I seemed to be

going mad in my excitement. I fired again as I ran, and must have hit

him again, for he reeled still more; then he turned totteringly into a

ruined doorway....

Just as I determined that I must give it up the scene changed like the

flash of a lamp. My quarry stumbled and fell flat; dozens of

half-stripped men came charging towards me, loading as they ran, and

almost before I knew it, the ground around me was ripped with bullets.

Then in turn how I raced!

Such was the storm of fire around me that I nearly dropped my rifle so

as to improve my pace, and all the moisture left my mouth. Holding

grimly on I at last cleared the exposed ground, and jumped through

into the Japanese barricades. In their rage the Chinese soldiery

rushed into the open after me, firing angrily all along the line, and

before the loopholes could be properly manned and the fusillade

returned they were almost up to us. Then, as always happens, they

suddenly became irresolute, and trickled away, and from behind safe

cover they poured in the same long-range rifle-fire....

This, however, is only an incident--one which I provoked. Generally we

are not so enterprising, but are inclined to accept events as they

unroll. But this escapade proved to me that attacks are thrown against

us only after special orders have been issued by the government, and

that the camps of soldiery established round our lines are as much to

imprison us as to slay us. They have bound us in with brickworks, and

they bombard us intermittently with nine or ten guns; but each

bombardment and each attack seems to be conducted quite without any

relation to the general situation.... Fortunately, then, although we

are ill organised and badly commanded as a whole, our units are well

led, and we meet the situation as it actually is on the best plan

possible for the time being. But will this last? Will not something

happen which will fling our enemy against us animated by one desire

--a desire to slay us one and all? It requires now but one rush of the

thousands of armed men encamped about us to sweep our defence off the

face of the earth like so many dried and worthless leaves.

XII

THE GALLANT FRENCH

14th July, 1900.

* * * * *

The post fighting is becoming more desperate, and the French are

steadily losing ground. Is it true that they are losing courage? Of

course, everyone knows that they are a gallant race, and that

although the Germans, by their relentless science and unending

attention to detail, are rated superior in machine-like warfare, they

can never be quite like the brilliant conquerors of Jena, Austerlitz,

and a hundred other battles; and yet no one expected the French were

going to cling to the ruins of their Legation with the bulldog

desperation of which they complained in the English at Waterloo; a

desperation making each house a siege in itself, and only ending with

the total destruction of that house by shells or fire; were going to

treat all idea of retirement with contempt, although their shabby

treatment caused them two weeks ago to temporarily evacuate their

lines in a fit of moroseness.... This is what has happened until now,

for the French have set their teeth, and now everyone almost believes

that nothing--not even mines, shells, myriads of bullets, and foolish

order after order from headquarters ordering men to be sent elsewhere

--will beat them back. And yet they cannot keep on this way for ever.

All round them the connecting posts and blockhouses are losing more

and more men, and matters are reaching a dangerous point.

It is now nearly four weeks since the first bullet flicked out the

brains of the first French sailor ten minutes after the opening of

hostilities at barricades far away down Customs Street, and in these

twenty-five days which have elapsed the French positions have been

beaten into such shapeless masses that they are quite past

recognition. I had not been there for a week, and was shocked when I

saw how little remains. The Chinese have, foot by foot, gained more

than half of the Legation, and all that is practically left to the

defenders is their main-gate blockhouse, a long barricaded trench and

the remains of a few houses. These they have sworn to retain until

they are too feeble to hold. Then, and then only, will they retreat

into the next line behind them, the fortified Hotel de Pekin, which

has already four hundred shell holes in it.

Yesterday's losses at the French lines were five men wounded, four

blown up by a mine, of whom two never have been seen again, and two

men killed outright by rifle-fire. Then the last houses were set fire

to by Chinese soldiers, who, able to push forward in the excitement

and confusion of the mine explosions, attempted to seize and hold

these strategic points, and were only driven out by repeated

counter-attacks. Such events show that for some occult reason the

Chinese commands are trying to carry the French lines by every

possible device.... It has been like this for a week now.

For, from the 7th of July, the Chinese commands having prepared the

ground for their attacks by a heavy cannonade lasting for sixty hours,

which riddled everything above the ground level with gaping holes,

started pushing forward through the breaches, and setting fire, by

means of torches attached to long bamboo poles, to everything which

would burn. No living men, no matter how brave, can hold a glowing

mass of ruins and ashes, and the Chinese were showing devilish

cunning. Isolated combats took place along the whole French line--in a

vain effort to drive off the incendiaries, little sorties of two or

three men furiously attacking the persistent enemy, and each time

driving him back with loss, only to find him dribbling in again like

muddy water through every hole and cranny in the imperfect defences.

But even this did not do much good. No one could keep an accurate

record of these curious encounters during the first few days, for they

have succeeded one another with such rapidity that men have become too

tired, too sleepy to wish to talk. They try to act, and some of their

adventures have been astonishing.

Thus a young Breton sailor, not more than seventeen years old, seeing

men armed with swords collecting one night for a rush, jumped down

among them from the top of an earthwork, and shot and bayonetted three

or four of them before they had time to defend themselves. Then it

took him half an hour to get back to safety by creeping from one hole

in the ground to another and avoiding the rifle-fire....

Self-preservation makes it necessary to rush out thus single handed

and ease your front. Every man killed is a discouragement, which holds

the enemy back a bit.

Exploits of this nature must at length have shown the Chinese soldiery

that they have to face men endowed with the courage of despair in this

quarter; and fearing cold steel more than anything else, they have

decided that the only way of reaching their prey is by blowing them up

piecemeal. That is why they have taken to mining--most audacious

mining, carried on under the noses of the French defenders. If you

come here at night, and remain until one of those curious lulls in the

rifle-fire suddenly begins, you will distinctly hear this curious

tapping of picks and shovels, which means the preparation of a

gallery.

So as to save time, such mining is not begun from behind the enemy's

trenches; it is audaciously commenced in the ruins which litter some

of the neutral territory, which neither side holds and into which

Chinese desperadoes creep as soon as it is dusk. For a few days the

French did not dare to make sorties against such enterprises, but some

of the younger volunteers, discovering that these sappers were only

armed with their tools, have taken to creeping out and butchering in

the bowels of the earth.... This is terribly but absolutely true. Thus

a young volunteer, named D----, found, after watching for two days,

that a number of men crept into a tunnel mouth every night only twenty

feet from his post, and began working on a mine right under his feet.

He decided to go out himself and kill them all.... He told me the

story. He crept out two days ago as soon as he had seen them go in,

and, posting himself at the entrance, called on the men to come out,

else he would block them in and kill them in the most miserable way he

could think of. They came out, crawling on their hands and knees, and

as each man slipped up to the level he was bayonetted.... in the end

thirteen were killed like this. Three remained, but D----'s strength

was not equal to it, and he had to drive them in as captives. Then

they were despatched and beheaded. They say the French sailors slung

back those heads far over into the advanced Chinese barricades with

taunts and shouts. That stopped all work for a few hours. But it was

not for long enough.

Yesterday, the 13th, the Chinese had their revenge for the loss of the

hundred odd men who have been shot or bayonetted along this front

during the past week. At six in the evening, when the rifle-fire all

along the line had become stilled, a tremendous explosion shook every

quarter of our besieged area and made everyone tremble with

apprehension. Even in the most northerly part of our defences--the

Hanlin posts beyond the British Legation, which are probably three or

four thousand feet away--the men said it was like an earthquake. In

the French lines it seemed as if the end of the world had come. The

Chinese, having successfully sapped right under one of the remaining

fortified houses, had blown it up with a huge charge of black

gunpowder. D----, the French commander, R----, the Austrian _Charge

d'Affaires,_ the same indomitable volunteer D----, and a picket of

four French sailors were in the house, and were buried in the ruins.

Hardly had the echoes of the first explosion died away, when a second

one blew up another house, and out of the ruins were lifted, as if the

powers of darkness had taken pity on them all, the defenders who had

been buried alive, excepting two. Never has such a thing been heard of

before. Providence is plainly helping us. The wretched men thus

cruelly treated were all the colour of death and bleeding badly when

they were dragged out. The two missing French sailors must have been

crushed into fragments. Only a foot has been found....

That was afterwards; for the mine explosions were the signals for a

terrible bombardment and rifle-fire all along the line, from which we

have not yet recovered. The French, more than a little shaken, were

driven into their last trench--the _tranche Bartholin_, which has just

been completed. They held this to this morning and then

counter-attacked. That is why I have found myself here. Reinforcements

were rushed in by us at daybreak, and after a sleepless forty hours

the Chinese advance has been fairly held. But for how long? If they

act as earnestly during the next week we are finished!

XIII

THE BRITISH LEGATION BASE

15th July, 1900.

* * * * *

Fortunately, startling events of the sort I have just described are

confined to the outposts, and the half a dozen closely threatened

points. Our main base, the British Legation, is little affected, and

many in it do not appear to realise or to know anything of these

frantic encounters along the outer lines. They can tell from the

stretcher-parties that come in at all hours of the day and night, and

pass down to the hospital, what success the Chinese fire is having,

but beyond this they know nothing. They secretly hope, most of them,

that it will remain like this to the end; that bullets and shells may

scream overhead, but that they may be left attending to minor affairs.

As I look around me, it appears more and more evident that

self-preservation is the dominant, mean characteristic of modern

mankind. The universal attitude is: spare me and take all my less

worthy neighbours. In gaining in skin-deep civilisation we have lost

in the animal-fighting capacity. We are truly mainly grotesque when

our lives are in danger.

In the British Legation time has even been found to establish a model

laundry, and several able-bodied men actually fought for the privilege

of supervising it, they say, when the idea was mooted.

Neither have our Ministers improved by the seasoning process of the

siege. Most of them have become so ridiculous, that they shun the

public eye, and listen to the roar of the rifles from safe places

which cannot be discovered. And yet fully half of them are able-bodied

men, who might do valuable work; who might even take rifles and shoot.

But it is they who give a ridiculous side, and for that, at least, one

should be thankful. It is something to see P----, the French Minister,

starting out with his whole staff, all armed with _fusils de chasse_,

and looking _tres sportsman_ on a tour of inspection when everything

is quiet. Each one is well told by his tearful wife to look out for

the Boxers, to be on the alert--as if Chinese banditti were lurking

just outside the Legation base to swallow up these brave

creatures!--and in a compact body they sally forth. These are the

married men: marriage excuses everything when the guns begin to play.

Thus the Secretary of Legation, whose name I will not divulge even

with an initial, amused me immensely yesterday by calculating how much

more valuable he was to the State as a father of a family than an

unmarried youngster like myself. He tried to prove to me that if he

died the economic value of his children would suffer--what a fool he

was!--and that my own value capitalised after the manner of

mathematicians was very small. I listened to him carefully, and then

asked if the difference between a brave man and a coward had any

economic significance. He became suddenly angry and left me. Some of

the besieged are becoming truly revolting.

Even P----, who some people think ought to stay in the remains of his

own Legation, is rather disgusted, and as he marches out in an

embroidered nightshirt, with little birds picked out in red thread on

it, he is not as absurd as I first thought. Poor man, he is

attempting to do his duty after his own lights, and excepting two or

three others, he has been the most creditable of all the elderly men,

who think that position excuses everything.

Labouring at the making of sandbags, the women sit under shelter, and

keep company with those men who have not the stomach to go out. And as

shells have been falling more and more frequently in and around this

safe base, and rumour has told them that the outer lines may give way,

bomb-proof shelters have been dug in many quarters ready to receive

all those who are willing to crouch for hours to avoid the possibility

of being hit....

Otherwise, there is nothing much to note in the British Legation, for

here the storm and stress of the outer lines come back oddly enough

quite faintly, excepting during a general attack. The dozens of walls

account for that. In the evenings the missionaries now gather and sing

hymns ... sometimes Madame P----, the wife of the great Russian Bank

Director, takes compassion, and gives an _aria_ from some opera. She

used to be a diva in the St. Petersburg Opera House, they say, years

ago, and her voice comes like a sweet dream in such surroundings. A

week ago a strange thing happened when she was giving an impromptu

concert. She was singing the Jewel song from _Faust_ so ringingly that

the Chinese snipers must have heard it, for immediately they opened a

heavy "fire," which grew to a perfect tornado, and sent the listeners

flying in terror. Perhaps the enemy thought it was a new war-cry,

which meant their sudden damnation!

Yet we have had so much time to rectify all our mistakes that things

are in much better working order. Public opinion has made the

commander-in-chief distribute the British marines in many of the

exposed positions and thus allow inferior fighting forces to garrison

the interior lines. Twice last week, before this redistribution had

been completed, there was trouble with both the Italian and the

Austrian sailors and some volunteers. Posts of them retreated during

the night.... They gave as their excuse that they knew that the loose

organisation would cause them to be sacrificed if the enemy began

rushing. There is much to be said for them; the general command had

been disgraceful, especially during the night, when only good fortune

saves us from annihilation. One single determined rush is all that is

needed to end this farce....

These retreats, which have not been confined to the sailors, have

ended by causing great commotion and alarm among the non-combatants,

and reserve trenches and barricades are being improved and manned in

growing numbers. Still, the distribution is unequal. There is a force

of nearly sixty rifles in what is the northern front of the British

Legation--the sole front exposed to direct attack on this side of the

square. With difficulty can the command be induced to withdraw a

single man from here. They say it is so close to all those who have

sought the shelter of the British Legation, so close to the women and

children and those who are afraid, that it would be a crime to weaken

this front. And yet there has been hardly a casualty among those sixty

men during four weeks' siege, while elsewhere about one hundred and

twenty have been killed and wounded....

The fear that fire-balls will be flung far in from here, or

fire-arrows shot from the adjacent trenches, has made them institute

patrols, which make a weary round all through the night to see that

all's well. In the thick darkness these men can act as they please,

and already the are several _sales histoires_ being sold. One is very

funny. The patrol in question was composed entirely of Russian

students, who are not rated as effectives. Beginning at nine o'clock

the day before yesterday, the patrol had got as far as the Japanese

women's quarters at this northern front of the British Legation, when

they were halted for a few minutes to communicate some orders. One of

the volunteers, of an amorous disposition, noticed a buxom little

Japanese servant at work on a wash-tub in the gloom. An appointment

was made for the morrow....

The next night duly came. Once more the patrol halted, and once more

the young Russian told his companions to go on. The patrol moved away,

and the adventurous Russian tiptoed into the Japanese quarters.

Cautiously feeling his way down a corridor, he opened a door, which he

thought the right one; then the tragedy occurred. Suddenly a quiet

voice said to him in French out of the gloom:

"_Monsieur desire quelque chose? Je serai charmee de donner a Monsieur

ce qu'il voudra s'il veut bien rester a la porte_." The wretched

Russian student imagined he was lost; it was the wife of a Minister!

He hesitated a minute; then, gripping his rifle and with the perfect

Russian imperturbability coming to his rescue, he replied, with a deep

bow: "_Merci, Madame, Merci mille fois! Je cherchais seulement de la

vaseline pour mon fusil_!"

This phrase has become immortal among the besieged.

XIV

THE EVER-GROWING CASUALTY LIST

16th July, 1900.

* * * * *

And yet one is lucky if one can laugh at all. The rifle and cannon

fire continues; barricades are pushing closer and closer, more of our

men are falling--it is always the same monotonous chronicle. A few

days ago poor T----, the Austrian cruiser captain, who aspired to be

our commander-in-chief with such disastrous results, was killed in the

Su wan-fu while he was encouraging his men to stand firm and not

repeat some of their former performances. To-day little S----, the

British Minister's chief of the staff, has been mortally hit, and has

just died. It was a sad affair. In the morning a party from

headquarters was making a tour of inspection of the Su wang-fu posts,

in order to see exactly how much battering they could stand, and how

soon the Italian contention that already the hillock works were

untenable would become an undeniable fact. The Italian defences had

been inspected and the little party was crossing the ornamental

gardens, which are always swept by a storm of fire, when suddenly

S---- fell mortally wounded, M----, the correspondent, was badly hit

in the leg, the Japanese colonel alone escaping with a bullet-cut

tunic. They had drawn the enemy's fire. Great was the dismay when the

news became generally known; it meant that the authority of

headquarters had received a cruel blow. There is no officer left who

can really perform the duties of the chief of the staff, and all the

outer lines will feel this loosening of a control which has really

only been complimentary and nominal. Casualties among the officers of

the other detachments had allowed the British marine commanders to

increase their influence. Now it is finished. The only two good ones

have now been struck off the list.

All day long men looked gloomily about them, and felt that gradually

but surely things were progressing from bad to worse. Six of the best

officers have either been killed or so badly wounded that they cannot

possibly take the field again; about fifty of our most daring regulars

and volunteers have been killed outright; the number of admittances to

the hospital up to date is one hundred and ten; and thus of the four

hundred and fifty rifles defending our lines, nearly a third have been

placed out of action in less than four weeks. Excepting for a small

gap across the Northern Imperial canal bridge, a continuous double, or

even treble, line of the enemy's barricades now stretch unbroken from

a point opposite the American positions on the Tartar Wall round in a

vast irregular curve to the city wall overlooking the German Legation.

These barricades are becoming more and more powerful, and are being

pushed so close to us by a system of parallels and traverses that at

the Su wang-fu and the French lines only a few feet separate some of

our own defences from the enemy's. Already it had twice happened that

a fierce and unique deed had taken place at the same loophole between

one of our men and a Chinese brave, ending in the shooting of one or

the other, forcing a retirement on our part to the next line of

barricades. Thus, by sheer weight of brickwork they are crushing us

in, and if they have only two weeks' more uninterrupted work, it can

only end in one way. Colonel S---- has made two more frantic sorties,

in both of which I took part at daybreak, with a few men, which

succeeded each time in pushing back the enemy for a few days in one

particular corner at the cost of casualties we cannot afford. But the

work and the strain are becoming exhausting, and even the Japanese,

who are being driven by little S---- like mules, are showing the

effects in their lack-lustre eyes and dragging legs. The men are half

drunk from lack of sleep and from bad, overheated blood, caused by a

perpetual peering through loopholes and a continual alertness even

when they are asleep. The strain is intolerable, I say, and pony meat

is becoming nauseating, and fills me with disgust.

On top of it all the trenches are now sometimes half full of water,

for the summer rains, which have held back for so long, are beginning

to fall. The stenches are so bad from rotting carcases and obscene

droppings that an already weakened stomach becomes so rebellious that

it is hard to swallow any food at all.

In the morning it is sometimes revolting. For four days I was at a

line of loopholes, with Chinese corpses swelling in the sun under my

nose.... At the risk of being shot, I covered them partially by

throwing handfuls of mud. Otherwise not I myself, but my rebellious

stomach, could not have stood it.

Scorched by the sun by day, unable to sleep except in short snatches

at night, with a never-ending rifle and cannon fire around us, we have

had almost as much as we can stand, and no one wants any more. I

wonder now sometimes why we have been abandoned by our own people.

Reliefs and S---- are only seen in ghastly dreams....

And yet there are others near who must be faring worse than we. Far

away in the north of the city, where are Monseigneur F----'s

cathedral, his thousands of converts, and the forty or fifty men he so

ardently desired, we hear on the quieter days a distant rumble of

cannon. Sometimes when the wind bears down on us we think we can hear

a confused sound of rifle-firing, far, far away. They say that Jung

Lu, the Manchu Generalissimo of Peking, whose friendship has been

assiduously cultivated by the French Bishop, is seeing to it that the

Chinese attacks are not pushed home, and that a waiting policy is

adopted similar to that which the Chinese have used towards us. But no

matter what be the actual facts of the case, the besieged fathers must

be having a terrible time....

Ponies and mules are also getting scarcer, and the original mobs,

numbering at least one hundred and fifty or two hundred head, have

disappeared at the rate of two or three a day as meat. Our remaining

animals are now quartered in a portion of the Su wang-fu, where they

are feeding on what scant grass and green vegetation they can still

find in those gloomy gardens. Sometimes a humming bullet flies low and

maims one of the poor animals in a vital spot. Then the butcher need

not use his knife, for meat is precious, and even the sick horses that

die, and whose bodies are ordered to be buried quickly, are not safe

from the clutches of our half-starving Chinese refugees....

A few days ago a number of ponies, frightened at some sudden roar of

battle, broke loose and escaped by jumping over in a marvellous way

some low barricades fronting the canal banks. Caught between our own

fire and that of the enemy, and unable to do anything but gallop up

and down frantically in a frightened mob, the poor animals excited our

pity for days without our being able to do a single thing towards

rescuing them. Gradually one by one they were hit, and soon their

festering carcases, lying swollen in the sun, added a little more to

the awful stenches which now surround us. Some men volunteered to go

out and bury them, and cautiously creeping out, shovel in hand, just

as night fell, once more our Peking dust was requisitioned, and a

coverlet of earth spread over them.

The droves of ownerless Peking dogs wandering about and creeping in

and out of every hole and gap are also annoying us terribly. These

pariahs, abandoned by their masters, who have fled from this ruined

quarter of the city, are ravenous with hunger, and fight over the

bodies of the Chinese dead, and dig up the half-buried horses; nothing

will drive them away. In furious bands they rush down on us at night,

sometimes alarming the outposts so much that they open a heavy fire.

An order given to shoot everyone of them, so as to stop these night

rushes, has been carried out, but no matter how many we kill, more

push forward, frantic with hunger, and tear their dead comrades to

pieces in front of our eyes. It is becoming a horrible warfare in this

bricked-in battle-ground.

Inside our lines there are a number of half-starving natives, who were

caught by the storm and are unable to escape. They are poor people of

the coolie classes, and it is no one's business to care for them.

Several times parties of them have attempted to sneak out and get

away, but each time they have been seized with panic, and have fled

back, willing to die with starvation sooner than be riddled by the

enemy's bullets. The native troops beyond our lines shoot at

everything that moves. A few days ago an old rag-picker was seen

outside the Tartar Wall shambling along half dazed towards the

Water-Gate, which runs in under the Great Wall into the dry canal in

our centre. The Chinese sharpshooters saw him and must have thought

him a messenger. Soon their rifles crashed at him, and the old man

fell hit, but remained alive. After a while he raised himself on his

hands and knees and began crawling towards his countrymen like a poor,

stricken dog, in the hope that they would spare him when they saw his

condition. But pitilessly once more the rifles crashed out, and this

time their bullets found a billet in his vital parts, for the beggar

rolled over and remained motionless. There he now lies where he was

shot down in the dust and dirt, and his white beard and his rotting

rags seem to raise a silent and eloquent protest to high Heaven

against the devilish complots which are racking Peking.

The feeding of our native Christians, an army of nearly two thousand,

is still progressing, but babies are dying rapidly, and nothing

further can be done.

There is only just so much rice, and the men who are doing the heavy

coolie work on the fortifications must be fed better than the rest or

else no food at all would be needed....

The native children, with hunger gnawing savagely at their stomachs,

wander about stripping the trees of their leaves until half Prince

Su's grounds have leafless branches. Some of the mothers have taken

all the clothes off their children on account of the heat, and their

terrible water-swollen stomachs and the pitiful sticks of legs

eloquently tell their own tale. Unable to find food, all are drinking

enormous quantities of water to stave off the pangs of hunger. A man

who has been in India says that all drink like this in famine time,

which inflates the stomach to a dangerous extent, and is the

forerunner of certain death.

To the babies we give all the scraps of food we can gather up after

our own rough food is eaten, and to see the little disappointed faces

when there is nothing is sadder than to watch the wounded being

carried in. If we ever get out we have some heavy scores to settle,

and some of our rifles will speak very bitterly.

Thus enclosed in our brick-bound lines, each of us is spinning out his

fate. The Europeans still have as much food as they need; the Chinese

are half starving; shot and shell continue; stinks abound; rotting

carcases lie festering in the sun; our command is looser than ever. It

is the merest luck we are still holding out. Perhaps to-morrow it will

be over. In any case, the glory has long since departed, and we have

nothing but brutal realities.

XV

THE ARMISTICE

17th July, 1900.

* * * * *

The impossible has happened at the eleventh hour. Around us those

hoarse-throated trumpets have been ringing out stentoriously all day.

How blood-curdling they sounded! Calling fiercely and insistently to

one another, this barbaric cease-fire of brass trumpets has grown to

such a blood-curdling roar that attention had to be paid, and

gradually but surely the rifles have been all stilled until complete

and absolute silence surrounds us. At last diplomacy in the far-away

outer world has made itself heard, and we who are placed in the very

centre of this Middle Kingdom of China, being parleyed with by the

responsible Chinese Government. It has been a long and heart-breaking

wait, but it is always better late than never.

This is exactly what has happened, although I have only just learned

the full details. On the 14th--that is, three days ago--a native

messenger, bearing our tidings, was sent out in fear and trembling,

induced to attempt to reach Tientsin by lavish promises, and by the

urgency of missionary entreaties. But instead of even getting out of

the city, the messenger was captured, beaten, and detained for several

days at the headquarters of the Manchu commander-in-chief, Jung Lu, in

the Imperial city. Then, finally, when he thought that he was being

led out to be put to death, he was brought back to our barricades,

presenting a very sorrowful appearance, but bearing a fateful despatch

from Prince Ching and all the members of the Tsung-li Yamen. This

despatch had nothing very sensational in it, but it marked the

beginning. It merely stated that soldiers and bandits had been

fighting during the last few days; that the accuracy and vigour of our

fire had created alarm and suspicion; and that, in consequence, our

Ministers and their staffs were invited to repair at once to the

Tsung-li Yamen, where they would be properly cared for. As for the

rest of the thousand living and dead Europeans and the two thousand

native Christians within our lines, they were not even dignified by

being mentioned. Most people inferred from this that by some means

even the extremists of the Chinese Government had realised that if all

the foreign Ministers were killed, it would be necessary for Europe to

sacrifice some members of the Imperial family.

But the despatch, although its terms were trivial and even childish,

had a vast importance for us. It showed that something had happened

somewhere in the vague world beyond Peking--perhaps that armies were

arriving. We were reminded that we were still alive. A dignified reply

was sent, and the very next day came an astonishing Washington cipher

message, which has been puzzling us ever since. It was only three

words: "Communicate to bearer." No one can explain what these words

mean; even the American Minister has cudgelled his brains in vain, and

asked everybody's opinion. But about one thing there is no doubt--that

it comes straight from Washington untampered with, for these three

words are in a secret cipher, which only half a dozen of the highest

American officials in Washington understand, and in Peking there is no

one excepting the Minister himself who has the key.

This is absolutely the first authentic sign we have had. If the reply

message ever gets through, public opinion may force our rescue....

Finding that they could trust us, our own messenger has been followed

by Chinese Government messengers, who, tremblingly waving white flags,

march up to our barricades hand in their messages, and crouch down,

waiting to be given a safe-conduct back.

There have been several such messages delivered at one point along our

long front while the rifle duel was continuing elsewhere with the same

monotony. Now those trumpets, gaining confidence, have brought

absolute silence.

At first there was only this absolute silence. It seemed so odd and

curious after weeks of rifle-fire and booming of old-fashioned cannon,

that that alone was like a holiday. Then, as everyone seemed to

realise that it was a truce, men began standing up on their barricades

and waving white cloths to one another.

Both sides did this for some time, and as no one fired, a mutual

inquisitiveness prompted men to climb over their entrenched positions

and walk out boldly into the open. Still the same friendliness.

By midday friendliness and confidence had reached such a point, that

half our men were over the barricades, and had met the Chinese

soldiery on the neutral zone of ruins and rubbish extending between

our lines. All of us left our rifles behind, and stowed revolvers into

our shirts lest treachery suddenly surprised us and found us

defenceless. I placed an army revolver in my trousers pocket, with a

vague idea that I would attempt the prairie trick of shooting through

my clothing if there was any need to resort to force. I soon found

that this was unnecessary.

Boldly walking forward, we pushed right up to the Chinese barricades.

Nothing surprised us so much as to see the great access of strength to

the Chinese positions since the early days of the siege. Not only were

we now securely hedged in by frontal trenches and barricades, but

flanking such Chinese positions were great numbers of parallel

defences, designed solely with the object of battering our sortie

parties to pieces should we attempt to take the offensive again.

Lining these barricades and improvised forts were hundreds of men, all

with their faces bronzed by the sun, and with their heads encased in

black cloth fighting caps. Relieving the sombre aspect of this

headgear were numbers of brightly coloured tunics, betokening the

various corps to which this soldiery belonged. What a wonderful sight

they made! There were Tung Fu-hsiang's artillerymen, with violet

embroidered coats and blue trousers; dismounted cavalry detachments

belonging to the same commander in red and black tunics and red "tiger

skirts"; Jung Lu's Peking Field Force; Manchu Bannermen; provincial

levies and many others. All these men, standing up on the top of their

fortifications, made a most brilliant picture, and we looked long and

eagerly. I wish some painter of genius could have been there and

caught that message. For there were skulls and bones littering the

ground, and representing all that remained of the dead enemy after the

pariah dogs had finished with them. Broken rifles and thousands of

empty brass cartridge cases added to the battered look of this

fiercely contested area, and down the streets the remains of every

native house had been heaped together in rude imitation of a fort,

with jagged loopholes placed at intervals of eight or ten inches,

allowing any number of rifles to be brought into play against us under

secure cover. The men who had manned these defences had left their

rifles where they were, and by peering over we could see that the

majority of these fire-pieces were tied into position by means of

wooden forks so as to bear a converging fire on the exposed points of

our defences. Only then did I realise how much a protracted resistance

places an attacking force on the defensive. We were afraid of one

another. Sauntering about, some of the enemy were willing to enter

into conversation. A number of things they told filled us with

surprise, and made us begin to understand the complexity of the

situation around us. The Shansi levies and Tung Fu-hsiang's men--that

is, all the soldiery from the provinces--had but little idea of why

they were attacking us; they had been sent, they said, to prevent us

from breaking into the Palace and killing their Emperor.

If the foreigners had not brought so many foreign soldiers into

Peking, there would have been no fighting. They did not want to

fight.... They did not want to be killed....

Somebody tried to explain to them that the Boxers had brought it all

on. But to this they answered that the Boxers were finished, driven

away, discredited; there were none left in Peking, and why did we not

send our own soldiers away, who had been killing so many of them. Such

things they repeated time without number; it was their only point of

view.

The morning passed away in this wise, but there were several

_contretemps_ which nearly led to the spilling of blood. In one case,

an English marine tried to take a watermelon from a soldier, who was

very anxious to sell it; but as the latter would not give it up

without immediate payment, the marine thumped his head and then

knocked him over. Everyone rushed for their rifles, but some of us

shouted for silence, and going over to the marine, whispered to him to

keep quiet while we tied up his hands. We told him to march back into

our lines, and informed our audience that he would be beaten, and that

the man who had been knocked over would get a dollar. We managed by

this crude acting to save an open rupture, but it was plain that the

rank and file must not be allowed to mix. We managed eventually to

restore a semblance of good-fellowship by purchasing at very heavy

prices a great number of eggs. The women, the children, and the

wounded have been long in want of eggs and fresh food, and we knew

that these would do a great many people good.

Late in the afternoon, as a result of this extraordinary fraternising,

a very singular thing occurred along the French front, where the

bitter fighting has rebounded into a hot friendship. A French

volunteer, who is as dare-devil as many of his friends, suddenly

climbed over the Chinese barricades and shouted back that he was going

away on a visit. They tried to make him return, but in spite of a

little hesitation, he went on climbing and getting farther and farther

away. Then he suddenly disappeared for good. Nobody expected to see

him alive again, and everybody put it down to a manifestation of the

incipient madness which is affecting a number of men....

But two hours afterwards a letter came from the French volunteer. It

merely said that he was in Jung Lu's camp, having an excellent time.

Very late in the evening he came back himself. In spite of the

foolhardiness of the whole thing his news was the most valuable we had

received.

It shows us plainly that not only has something happened elsewhere,

but that the Boxer plan is miscarrying in Peking itself.

The young Frenchman had been really well treated, fed with Chinese

cakes and fruit, and given excellent tea to drink. Then he had been

led direct to Jung Lu's headquarters, and closely questioned by the

generalissimo himself as to our condition, our provisions, and the

number of men we had lost. He had replied, he said, that we were

having a charming time, and that we only needed some ice and some

fruit to make us perfectly happy, even in the great summer heat.

Thereupon Jung Lu had filled his pockets with peaches and ordered his

servants to tie up watermelons in a piece of cloth for him to carry

back. Jung Lu finally bade him good-bye, with the significant words

that his own personal troops on whom he could rely would attempt to

protect the Legations, but added that it was very difficult to do so

as everyone was fearful for their own heads, and dare not show too

much concern for the foreigner. This makes it absolutely plain that

this extraordinary armistice is the result of a whole series of events

which we cannot even imagine. It is like that curious affair of the

Board of Truce, but much more definite. It means ... what the devil

does it mean? After S----'s mysterious disappearance, when he was only

a day's march from Peking--month ago--it is useless to attempt any

speculations. How long will this last?... In the evening, when we

had exhausted the discussion of every possible theory, somebody

remarked on the silence. I will always remember how, for some

inexplicable reason, that remark annoyed me immensely--made me nervous

and angry. Perhaps it was that after weeks of rifle-fire and cannon

booming, the colourless monotone of complete silence was

nerve-destroying. Yes, it must have been that; a perpetual,

aggravating, insolent silence is worse than noise.... But this will

mean nothing to you; experience alone teaches.

XVI

THE RESUMPTION OF A SEMI-DIPLOMATIC LIFE

20th July, 1900.

* * * * *

The third phase continues unabated, with nothing even to enliven it.

Despatches in Chinese from nowhere in particular continue to drop in

from the Tsung-li Yamen; pen had been put to paper, and the despatches

have been duly answered, leaving the position unchanged. I have been

even requisitioned, rebelliously, I will confess, to turn my hand to

despatch writing; but my fingers, so long accustomed only to

rifle-bolts and triggers, and a clumsy wielding of entrenching tools,

produce such a hideous caligraphic result, that I have been coldly

excused from further attempts. It is incredible that one should so

easily forget how to write properly, but it is nevertheless

true--eight weeks in the trenches will break the best hand in the

world. An ordinary man would think that what I write now is in a

secret cipher!

But of diplomatic life. All these despatches which come in are in the

same monotonous tone; they are entreaties and appeals to evacuate the

Legations and place ourselves under the benevolent care of the

Tsung-li Yamen, to come speedily before it is too late. Of course, not

even our Ministers will go.

But there is more news, although it is not quite cheering or definite.

On the 18th the Japanese received a message direct from Tientsin,

giving information to the effect that thirty thousand troops were

assembling there for a general advance on Peking. They say that ten

days or a fortnight may see us relieved, but somehow the Japanese are

not very hopeful.

On this same date came a secretary from the Tsung-li Yamen in person,

accompanied by a trembling _t'ingoh'ai,_ or card-bearer, frantically

waving the white flag of truce. They must been very frightened, for

never have I seen such convulsiveness. The secretary, walking quickly

with spasmodic steps, held tight to the arm of his official servant,

and made him wave, wave, wave that white flag of truce until it became

pitiful.

Thus preceded, the Tsung-li Yamen secretary advanced to the main-gate

blockhouse of the British Legation, where he was curtly stopped, given

a chair, and told to await the arrival of the Ministers, or such as

proposed to see him. Seated just outside this evil-smelling

dungeon--for the blockhouse, encased in huge sandbags, is full of dirt

and ruins and has many smells--the feelings of this representative of

the Chinese Government must have been charmingly mixed. Near by were

grimy and work-worn men, in all manner of attire, with their rifles;

in the dry canal alongside were rude structures of brick and

overturned. Peking carts, line upon line, thrown down and heaped up to

block the enemy's long-expected charges; and on all sides were such

stenches and refuse--all the flotsam and jetsam cast up by our sea of

troubles. Until then I did not realise how many carcases, fragments of

broken weapons, empty cartridge cases, broken bottles, torn clothing,

and a hundred other things were lying about. It was a sordid picture.

Presently the British Minister, in his capacity of commander-in-chief

and protector of the other Ministers, came out and took his seat by

the side of his guest, an interpreter standing beside him to help the

interview. Then the French Minister approached and insinuated himself

into the droll council of peace; the Spanish Minister, as _doyen_,

also appeared, and one or two others. But those Ministers who are

without Legations, who so uncomfortably resemble their colleagues at

home--those without portfolios--formed a group in the middle distance,

humble as men only are who have to rely upon bounty. I saw the Belgian

Minister and the Italian Charge for the first time for several weeks.

My own chief was also there, rubbing his hands, trying to seem

natural. The interview proceeded apace, and as far as we could judge

there were no noticeable results.

There were assurances on both sides, regrets, the crocodile tears of

diplomacy, and vague threats. All our Ministers seemed comforted to feel

that diplomacy still existed--that there was still a world in which

protocols were binding. And yet nothing definite could be learned from

this Yamen secretary. He said that everyone would be protected, but that

the "bandits" were still very strong. After this official interview,

other private interviews took place. Buglers and orderlies from the

Chinese generals around us trooped in on us for unknown reasons. Three

came over the German barricades, and were led blindfolded to the British

Legation to be cross-questioned and examined. One trumpeter said that

his general wished for an interview with one of our generals at the

great Ha-ta Gate, where were his headquarters. He wished to discuss

military matters. Other men came in a big deputation to the little

Japanese colonel, and said they wanted an interview too. It means the

temporary resumption of a species of diplomatic life. I suppose it is

in the air, and everybody likes the change. Yesterday, too, came another

despatch from Prince Ching and others--as these letters are now always

curiously signed, the lesser men hiding their identity in this

way--asking the Ministers once more to do something impossible; and once

more a despatch has gone back, saying that we are perfectly happy to

remain where we are, only we would like some vegetables and fruit....

And so, to-day, four cartloads of melons and cabbages have actually come

with the Empress Dowager's own compliments. The melons looked

beautifully red and ripe, and the cabbages of perfect green after this

drab-coloured life. But many people would not eat of this Imperial gift;

they feared being poisoned. More despatches from Europe have also been

transmitted--notably a cipher one to the French Minister, saying that

fifteen thousand French troops have left France. Evidently a change has

taken place somewhere.

But while these _pourparlers_ are proceeding, some of us are not at

all quieted. Fortification of the inner lines is going on harder than

ever. The entire British Legation has now walls of immense strength,

with miniature blockhouses at regular intervals, and a system of

trenches. If our advanced posts have to fall back they may be able to

hold this Legation for a few days in spite of the artillery fire.

French digging, in the form of very narrow and very deep cuts designed

to stop the enemy's possible mining, is being planned and carried out

everywhere, and soon the general asylum will be even more secure than

it has been since the beginning. Undoubtedly we are just marking

time--stamping audibly with our diplomatic feet to reassure

ourselves, and to show that we are still alive. For in spite of all

this apparent friendliness, which was heralded with such an outburst

of shaking hands and smiling faces, there have already been a number

of little acts of treachery along the lines, showing that the old

spirit lurks underneath just as strong.

In the Northern Hanlin posts which skirt the British Legation, a

black-faced Bannerman held up a green melon in one hand, and signalled

with the other to one of our men to advance and receive this gift. Our

man dropped his rifle, and was sliding a leg over his barricade, when

with a swish a bullet went through the folds of his shirt--the nearest

shave he had ever had. The volunteer dropped back to his side, and

then, after, a while, waved an empty tin in his hand as a notice that

he desired a resumption of friendly relations. The Chinese brave

cautiously put his head up, and once again, with a crack, the

compliment was returned, and the soldier was slightly wounded, and now

we only peer through our loopholes and are careful of our heads. The

novelty of the armistice is wearing off, and we feel that we are only

gaining time.

Still, we are improving our position. There is a more friendly feeling

among the commands in our lines, and the various contingents are being

redistributed. By bribing the Yamen messenger, copies of the _Peking

Gazette_ have been obtained, and from these it is evident that

something has happened. For all the decreeing and counter-decreeing of

the early Boxer days have begun again, and the all-powerful Boxers

with their boasted powers are being rudely treated. It is evident that

they are no longer believed in; that the situation in and around

Peking is changing from day to day. The Boxers, having shown

themselves incompetent, are reaping the whirlwind. They must soon

entirely disappear.

It is even two weeks since the last one was shot outside the Japanese

lines at night, and now there is nothing but regular soldiery encamped

around us. This last Boxer was a mere boy of fifteen, who had stripped

stark naked and smeared himself all over with oil after the manner of

Chinese thieves, so that if he came into our clutches no hands would

be able to hold him tight. The most daring ones have always been boys.

He had crept fearlessly right up to the Japanese posts armed only with

matches and a stone bottle of kerosene, with which he purposed to set

buildings on fire and thus destroy a link in our defences. This is

always the Boxer policy. But the Japanese, as usual, were on the

alert. They let the youthful Boxer approach to within a few feet of

their rifles--a thin shadow of a boy faintly stirring in the thick

gloom. Then flames of fire spurted out, and a thud told the sentries

that their bullets had gone home.

When morning came we went out and inspected the corpse, and marvelled

at the terrible muzzle velocity of the modern rifle. One bullet had

gone through the chest, and tiny pin-heads of blood near the

breast-bone and between the shoulders was all the trace that had been

left. But the second pencil of nickel-plated lead had struck the

fanatic on the forearm, and instead of boring through, had knocked out

a clean wedge of flesh, half an inch thick and three inches deep, just

as you would chip out a piece of wood from a plank. There was nothing

unseemly in it all, death had come so suddenly. The blows had been so

tremendous, and death so instantaneous, that there had been no

bleeding.

It was extraordinary.

Meanwhile, from the Pei-t'ang we can still plainly hear a distant

cannonade sullenly booming in the hot air. We have breathing space,

but they, poor devils are still being thundered at. No one can

understand how they have held out so long.

Our losses, now that we have time to go round and find out accurately,

seem appalling. The French have lost forty-two killed and wounded out

of a force of fifty sailors and sixteen volunteers; the Japanese,

forty-five out of a band of sixty sailors and Japanese and

miscellaneous volunteers; the Germans have thirty killed and wounded

out of fifty-four; and in all there have been one hundred and seventy

casualties of all classes. Many of the slightly wounded have returned

already to their posts, but these men have nothing like the spirit

they had before they were shot.

The shell holes and number of shells fired are also being counted up.

The little Hotel de Pekin, standing high up just behind the French

lines, has been the most struck. It is simply torn to pieces and has

hundreds of holes in it. Altogether some three thousand shells have

been thrown at us and found a lodgment. The wreckage round the outer

fringe is appalling, and in this present calm scarcely believable.

Another three thousand shells will bring everything flat to the

ground.

XVII

DIPLOMACY CONTINUES

24th July, 1900.

* * * * *

The situation is practically unchanged, and there is devilish little

to write about. During the last two or three days no Chinese soldiers

have been coming in to parley with us, except in one or two isolated

instances. Cautious reconnaissances of two or three men creeping out

at a time, pushing out as far as possible, have discovered that the

enemy is nothing like as numerous as he was at the beginning of this

armistice.