Indiscreet Letters From Peking. Various

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СКАЧАТЬ her on the road to light their way. She was the first victim of their rage we had as yet come across. That made us feel like savages. We were now not more than three hundred yards from the cathedral, and in the light of the flames, which were now burning more brightly than ever, we could see hundreds of figures dancing about busily. We had just halted to prepare for a final charge when something moved in front of us. "Halt," we all cried, marking our different nationalities by our different intonations of the word. A sobbing Chinese voice called back to us: "Wo pu shih; wo pu shih," which merely means, "I am not," leaving us to infer that he was referring to the Boxers; and then without waiting for an answer the night wanderer, whoever he might be, scampered away hurriedly. The immediate result was that we opened a terrible fusillade in the direction he had fled, our men firing at least a hundred shots. Many mocking voices then called back to us from the shadows. There was laughter, too. It was obviously hopeless trying to do anything in this dark; so when a bugler trotted up from our lines with stern orders from the French commandant for his men to retire, we all stumbled back more than willingly We had gone out of our depth.

      Meanwhile the flames spread farther and farther, until half the Tartar city seemed on fire. All Peking awoke, and from every part confused noises and a vast barking of dogs was borne down on us. What course should we take, if the attack was suddenly carried all round our area?

      The French Minister was by this time officially informed that native Catholics were being butchered wholesale; that there were plenty of men who were willing to go and rescue them, but that no one seemed to have any orders, and that everyone was swearing at the general incompetence. Absolute confusion reigned within our lines; the picquets broke away from their posts; the different nationalities fraternised under the excitement of the hour and lost themselves; and it would have been child's play to have rushed the whole Legation area. We felt that clearly enough.

      It was not until well past midnight, and after several heated discussions, that a relief party was finally organised; but when they got to the cathedral there was hardly anything to see, for the butchery was nearly over and the ruin completed. Several hundred native Roman Catholics had disappeared, only a few Boxers were seen and shot and a few converts rescued.

      How well I remember the scene when this second expedition returned, excited and garrulous as only Frenchmen can be. The French Minister led them in. He explained to us that the Boxers had already absolutely demolished everything—that it was no use risking one's self so far from one's own lines any more—that it was a terrible business, but que faire. … The French Minister did not hurry away, but stood there talking endlessly. It was at once dramatic and absurd. Sir R—— H——, in company with many others, stood listening, however, with an awestruck expression on his face. He carried a somewhat formidable armament—at least two large Colt revolvers strapped on to his thin body, and possibly a third stowed away in his hip pocket. From midnight to the small hours there was a constant stream of our most distinguished personages coming and looking down this street and wondering what would happen next. It was not a very valiant spectacle.

      In this curious fashion the memorable night of the 12th passed away, with sometimes one picquet firing, sometimes another, and with everybody waiting wearily for the morning. We had almost lost interest by that time.

      At half-past four the pink light began chasing away the gloom; the shadows lightened, and day at last broke. At six o'clock native refugees from the foreign houses that had been burned came slinking silently in with white faces and trembling hands, all quite broken down by terrible experiences. One gate-keeper, whose case was tragically unique, had lost everything and everybody belonging to him, and was weeping in a curious Chinese way, without tears and without much contortion of features, but persistently, without any break or intermission, in a somewhat terrifying fashion. His wife, six children, his father and mother, and a number of relations had all been burned alive—thirteen in all. They had been driven into the flames with spears. Moaning like a sick dog, and making us all feel cowardly because we had not attempted a rescue, the man sought refuge in an outhouse. Sir R—— H—— was still standing at his post, looking terribly old and hardly less distressed than the wretched fugitives pouring in. His old offices and residences, where forty years before he had painfully begun a life-long work, were all stamped out of existence, and the iron had entered into his soul. A number of the officers commanding detachments, and people belonging to various Legations, attempted to glean details as to the strength of the Boxer detachments from these survivors, but nobody could give any information worth having. I noticed that no Ministers came; they were all in bed!

      At eight o'clock, still afoot, we heard that there was a deuce of a row going on at the Ha-ta Gate, because it was still locked and the key was gone. It now transpired that a party of volunteers, led by the Swiss hotel-keeper of the place and his wife, had marched down to the gate after the Boxers had rushed in, had locked it, and taken the key home to bed, so that no one else could pay us their attentions from this quarter. This is the simplest and the most sensible thing which has been yet done, and it shows how we will have to take the law into our own hands if we are to survive.

      In this fashion the Boxers were ushered in on us. Most of us kept awake until ten or eleven in the morning for fear that by sleeping we might miss some incidents. But even the Boxers had apparently become tired, for there was not a sign of a disturbance after midnight. In spite of the quiet, however, the streets remain absolutely deserted, and we have no means of knowing what is going to happen next.

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BARRICADES AND RELIEFS

       Table of Contents

      16th June, 1900.

      …

      We have entered quite naturally in these unnatural times on a new phase of existence. It is the time of barricades and punitive expeditions; of the Legations tardily bestirring themselves in their own defence, and realising that they must try and forget their private politics if they are even to live, not to say one day to resume their various rivalries and animosities. Imperceptibly we are being impelled to take action; we must do something.

      We woke up late on the 14th to the fact that loopholed barricades had been everywhere begun on our streets, as effective bars to the inrush of savage torch-bearing desperadoes, each Legation doing its own work; and that the Chinese Government, with its likes and dislikes, would have to be seriously and cynically disregarded if we wished to preserve the breath of life. So barricades have been going up on all sides, excepting near the British Legation, where the same indifference and sloth, which have so greatly contributed to this impasse, still remain undisturbed. Near the Austrian, French, American, Italian and Russian Legations barricade-builders are at work, capturing stray Peking carts, turning them over and filling them full of bricks. So quickly has the work been pushed on, that in some places there are already loopholed walls three feet thick stretching across our streets, and so cleverly constructed that carts can still pass in and out without great difficulty. We are still on speaking terms with the Chinese Government, but who knows what the morrow may bring?

      But although you may have gathered some idea of the general aspect of Peking from what I have written, it is more than probable that you have no clear conception of the Legation quarter and what this barricading means. It seems certain that we will have to fight some one in time, so I will try and explain.

      Legation Street, or the Chiao Min hsiang, to give it the native appellation, runs parallel to the Tartar Wall. Beginning at the west end of the street—that is, the end nearest the Imperial City and the great Ch'ien Men Gate—the Legations run as follows: Dutch, СКАЧАТЬ