Indiscreet Letters From Peking. Various

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СКАЧАТЬ man with his walking stick, and before he could escape had beaten a regular roll of kettledrums on his hide. Then the Boxer, after a short struggle, abandoned his knife, and ran with some fleetness of foot into a neighbouring lane. The gallant German Minister raised the hue and cry, and then discovered yet another Boxer inside the cart, whom he duly secured by falling on top of him; and this last one was handed over to his own Legation Guards. The fugitive was followed into Prince Su's grounds, which run right through the Legation area, and there cornered in a house. The mysterious Dr. M—— then suddenly appeared on the scenes and insisted upon searching the Manchu Prince's entire grounds and most private apartments. But time was wasted in pourparlers, and in spite of a minute inspection, which extended even to the concubine apartments, the Boxer vanished in some mysterious way like a breath, and is even now untraced. This shows us conclusively that there are accomplices right in our midst.

      No sooner had this incident occurred and been bandied round with sundry exaggerations, than the life of the Legations and the nondescripts who have been coming in from the country became more abnormal than ever. For in spite of our extraordinary position, even up to to-day we were attempting to work—that is, writing three lines of a despatch, and then rushing madly out to hear the latest news. Now not so much as one word is written, and our eleven Legations are openly terribly perturbed in body and mind and conscious of their intense impotence, although we have all the so-called resources of diplomacy still at our command, and we are officially still on the friendliest terms with the Chinese Government.

      This morning, the 12th, there was another commotion—this time in Customs Street, as it is called. Three more Boxers, armed with swords and followed by a crowd of loafers, fearful but curious, ran rapidly past the Post Office, which faces the Customs Inspectorate, and got into a small temple a few hundred feet away, where they began their incantations. It was decided to attack them only with riding-whips, so as to avoid drawing first blood. But when a party of us arrived, we could not get into their retreat, as they had barricaded themselves in. So marines and sailors were requisitioned with axes; after a lot of exhausting work it was discovered that the birds had flown. This was another proof that there is treachery among friendly natives, for without help these Boxers could never have escaped.

      And now imagine our excitement and general perturbation. Since the 8th or 9th, I really forget which date, we have been acting on a more or less preconcerted plan—that is, as far as our defences are concerned, as we have been quite cut off from the outer world. The commanders of the British, American, German, French, Italian, Russian, Austrian and Japanese detachments have met and conferred—each carefully instructed by his own Minister just how far he is to acquiesce in his colleagues' proposals, which is, roughly speaking, not at all. We can have no effective council of war thus, because there is no commander-in-chief, and everybody is a claimant to the post. There is first an Austrian captain of a man-of-war lying off the Taku bar, who was merely up in Peking on a pleasure trip when he was caught by the storm, but this has not hindered him taking over command of the Austrian sailors from the lieutenant who brought them up; and everybody knows that a captain in the navy ranks with a colonel in the army. There are no military men in Peking excepting three captains of British marines, one Japanese lieutenant-colonel and his aide-de-camp, and some unimportant military attachés, who are very junior. So on paper the command should lie between two men—the Austrian naval captain and the Japanese lieutenant-colonel. But, then, the Japanese have instructions to follow the British lead, and the senior British marine captain has orders to follow, his own ideas, and his own ideas do not fancy the unattached Austrian captain of a man-of-war. So the concerted plan of defence has only been evolved very suddenly, a plan which has resolved itself naturally into each detachment-commander holding his own Legation as long as he could, and being vaguely linked to his neighbour by picquets of two or three men. But about this you will understand more later on. The point I wish you now to realise is that the counsels of the allied countries of Europe in the persons of their Legation Guards' commanders are as effective as those of very juvenile kindergartens. Everybody is intensely jealous of everybody else and determined not to give way on the question of the supreme command. Of course, if the storm comes suddenly, without any warning, we are doomed, because you cannot hold an area a mile square with a lot of men who are fighting among themselves, and who have fallen too quickly into our miserably petty Peking scheme of things.

IX

       Table of Contents

THE COMING OF THE BOXERS

       Table of Contents

      14th June, 1900.

      …

      I had risen yesterday some what late in the day with the oddness and uncomfortableness—I do not mean discomfort—which comes from too much boots, too much disturbance of one's ordinary routine, too much listening to people airing their opinions and recounting rumours, and, last of all, very wearied by the uncustomary task of transporting a terrible battery of hand artillery (for we are at last all heavily armed); and consequent of these varied things, I, like everybody else, was a good deal out of temper and rather sick of it all. I began to ask myself this question: Were we really playing an immense comedy, or was there a great and terrible peril menacing us? I could never get beyond asking the question. I could not think sanely long enough for the answer.

      The day passed slowly, and very late in the afternoon, when some of us had completed a tour of the Legations, and looked at their various picquets, I finished up at the Austrian Legation and the Customs Street. Men were everywhere sitting about, idly watching the dusty and deserted streets, half hoping that something was going to happen shortly, when suddenly there was a shout and a fierce running of feet. Something had happened.

      We all jumped up as if we had been shot, for we had been sitting very democratically on the sidewalk, and round the corner, running with the speed of the scared, came a youthful English postal carrier. That was all at first.

      But behind him were Chinese, and ponies and carts ridden or driven with recklessness that was amazing. The English youth had started gasping exclamations as he ran in, and tried to fetch his breath, when from the back of the Austrian Legation came a rapid roll of musketry. Austrian marines, who were spread-eagled along the roofs of their Legation residences, and on the top of the high surrounding wall, had evidently caught sight of the edge of an advancing storm, and were firing fiercely. We seized our rifles—everybody has been armed cap-â-pie for days—and in a disorderly crowd we ran down to the end of the great wall surrounding the Austrian compounds to view the broad street which runs towards the city gates. The firing ceased as suddenly as it had begun, and in its place arose a perfect storm of distant roaring and shouting. Soon we could see flames shooting up not more than half a mile from where we stood; but the intervening houses and trees, the din and the excitement, coupled with the stern order of an Austrian officer, shouted from the top of an outhouse, not to move as their machine-gun was coming into action over our heads, made it impossible for us to understand or move forward. What was it?

      Presently somebody trotted up from behind us on a pony, and, waiting his opportunity, rode into the open, and with considerable skill seized a fleeing Chinaman by the neck. This prisoner was dragged in more dead than alive with fear, and he told us that all he knew was that as he had passed into the Tartar city through the Ha-ta Gate a quarter of an hour before, myriads of Boxers—those were his words—armed with swords and spears, and with their red sashes and insignia openly worn, had rushed into the Tartar city from the Chinese city, slashing and stabbing at everyone indiscriminately. The foreigners' guns had caught them, he said, and dusted them badly, and they were now running towards the north, setting fire to chapels and churches, and any evidences of the European they could find. He knew nothing more. We let our prisoner go, and no sooner had he disappeared than fresh waves СКАЧАТЬ