The messengers came to us apparently from nowhere, walking in after the Chinese manner, which is quite nonchalantly, and with the sublime calm of the East.  One of the first slid in and out of the enemy’s barricades with immense effrontery at dawn, and then climbed the Japanese defences, and produced a little ball of tissue paper from his left ear.  Fateful news contained so long in that left ear!  It was a cipher despatch from General Fukishima, chief of the staff of the relieving Japanese columns.  It said that the advance guard would reach the outskirts of Peking on the 13th or 14th, if all went well.  Heavens, we all said, as we calculated aloud, that meant only three or four days more....

This news was soon duplicated, for hardly had the first excitement subsided when the news spread that a second messenger from the British General of the relieving forces had managed to force his way through.  It was a confirmation, was his message; three or four days more....  But the messenger, when he spoke, had other things to say.  He had been sent out by us a week before by being lowered by ropes from the Tartar Wall.  Forty miles from Peking he had met Black cavalry and Russian cavalry miles in advance of the other soldiery.  They had charged at him and captured him, and led him before generals and officers....  The roads leading to Peking were littered with wounded and disbanded Chinese soldiery; there had been much fighting, but the natives could not withstand the foreigner—­that is what their compatriot said.  Everybody was terrified by the Black soldiery from India; they had come in the same way forty years before....

So the relieving armies are truly rolling up on Peking.  It seems incredible and unreal, but it is undoubtedly true, and it must be accepted as true....

As if goaded by the terrors conjured up by these avenging armies, which are now so close, the Tsung-li Yamen, in some last despatches, has informed our Plenipotentiaries that it is decapitating wholesale the soldiery that have been firing on us—­that it wishes for personal interviews with all our Ministers to arrange everything, so that there may be no more misunderstandings later on.  Vain hope!  Numbers of documents are coming in, and every Minister wishes to write something in return—­to show that with the return of normal conditions there will be a return of importance.  Somehow it seems to me that not one of them can become important again in Peking.  They have been too ridiculous—­politically, they are already all dead.

XXVII

THE ATTACKS RESUMED

12th August, 1900.

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