Chapter IX: Part II: The Siege (4)

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.