the imploring eunuch on the ground, the huddled mass of slaughtered men swimming in their blood in the shadow behind; that thick smell of murder and sudden death rising and stinking in the hot air; and the last cruel note of that Chinese figure, with a shriek of agony and fear petrified on the features, swinging in long, loose clothes from the rafter above.  In the bright sunlight and the sudden silence which had come over everything, there was a peculiar menace in all this which chilled one....

Perhaps the eunuch had divined from my different dress that he would be better understood by me than by these rough crowds of rank and file who crushed him in; for, as I gazed, he had thrown himself at my feet, with muttered words and a constant begging and imploring.  I noticed then that the unfortunate man could not walk, could only drag himself like a beaten dog.  The reason soon transpired:  both his legs had been broken by some mad jump which he must have essayed in his agony to escape.  I quieted the man’s fears as best I could, and, tearing a sheet from a note-book, wrote a description of him, so that a field hospital would dress him.  Then, anxious to learn something concrete with this vapour of haziness and confusion blinding us all, I began questioning him quickly about the Palace, the numbers of soldiery within, the strength of the inner enclosures, and the residences of the Emperor and the Empress Dowager.  The man answered me willingly enough, but suddenly said it was all no use, that we were too late.  The Emperor, the Empress Dowager, indeed, the whole Court, had disappeared—­had fled, was gone....

Gone!

On my life, I could scarcely believe my ears.  After all these weeks of confusion and plotting, had the Empress Dowager and her whole Court fled at the very last moment, and, by so doing, escaped all possibility of vengeance?  Was it really so?  One might have known that this loose-jointed relief expedition could accomplish nothing, would do everything wrong; and still we were acting as if everything was in our hands.  Then, suddenly, I fined down my questions, and imperatively asked when the Court had fled; exactly at what hour and in what direction.

At first I could get no reliable answer, but, pushing my questions and assuming a threatening attitude, the shattered eunuch at length collapsed, and whiningly informed me that the flight had taken place at nine o’clock exactly the previous night, and had been carried out by way of the Northern Gates of the city.  They had left five hours after the relief had come in!  I calculated quickly.  That meant twenty hours’ start at four miles an hour—­for they would travel frantically night and day—­eighty miles!  It was hopeless; they were safe through the first mountain-passes, and if they had soldiery with them, as was more than certain, these had most certainly been dropped at the formidable barriers which nature has interposed just forty miles beyond Peking.  The mountain-passes would protect them.  There could be no vengeance exacted; no retribution could overtake the real authors of this debacle.  Nothing.  It was a strange end....