“The palace they call the Little Detached Palace will soon be picked clean—­clean as any dog’s bone, with the Frenchies only fifteen feet off, and you’ll get nothing more from there.  Sometimes the Frenchies suspect and want to march right in on us, but our corporals are waiting, and are ready for them, and our bayonets stop them short.  Twice it’s happened that their officers march a guard right up to the gates of the Little Detached, and want to stay there all night with our fellows crawling about inside.  They suspected.  But we bluffed them away every time, and now that all the good things are gone we are carrying away the big ones—­vases, small tables, carvings, jars, bowls—­everything.  We wrap them up in a bundle of great-coats and feed-bags in the morning, and carry them away; no one’s ever the wiser.  All round the Palace they are doing the same.  The Yankees, the Russians, and all of them are in the same boat.  All night they climb the walls to get the swag.  Give them another six months and there will be nothing left.”

Thus spoke the spokesman of the party.  It was organised plundering, and everybody winked at it.  After they had gone I sat long and reflected.  This was the retribution and the vengeance.  We were all tarred with the same brush; we were returning to primitive methods.  Yet, what could be done—­what steps could be taken?  It was rather a hopeless tangle, and once more I gave it up.

IX

DRIFTING

September, 1900.

* * * * *

There is not a single scrap of news worth recording, although telegrams are now coming through more and more freely by the field telegraphs from Europe.  Still, no one knows what is going to happen.  As an appreciation of the astute action of the Court in fleeing at the last second of the eleventh hour becomes more and more general, people begin to see how absurd we have become with our avenging armies which were going to do so much, and are now merely traders collecting and valuing and slowly taking away the best loot of the capital.  The troops effected the relief, it is true; but there should have been other steps.  If these are now taken it is too late.  Some, indeed, say that punitive expeditions are going to be sent into the country as soon as a transport service can be organised.  Even now nests of Boxers and disbanded soldiers are reported in great numbers only a few miles beyond Peking.  These men seem to understand that they are quite safe even so close as this to the European corps, and that ample warning will be conveyed to them directly there is any movement, so as to allow them to escape.  They, too, are now pillaging and setting fire far and wide.  Cossacks and other cavalry are supposed to be out many miles beyond Peking, sweeping the country, and blowing up or setting fire to temples and rich country-seats as a warning to others of the fate which