I was soon ready to go; on the same afternoon I had completed all my preparations.  I had so little to prepare.  Then I rode out for the last time with all my men behind me, and not a single other person.  We passed down the streets out from the Tartar City, through the ruins of the great Ch’ien Men Gate, and then followed straight along the vast main street, still covered with debris and dirt, and skulls and broken weapons, as if the weeks and months which had gone by since the fighting had been quite unheeded.  Near the outer gates of the city I met my three cavalrymen of the Indian regiment waiting to bid good-bye.  They joined me with some attempt at gaiety, but that soon fizzled out.  I had so plainly collapsed.

We passed into the country with the tall crops still rotting as they stood, because everyone had fled and no one dared to return.  We went on faster and faster as the roads broadened, and as we galloped we met new troops marching in on Peking.  They were Germans driving captives of many kinds in front of them.  “Damned Germans,” said the smaller officer, who was the senior, and who had been quite silent for some time.  “Damned Germans,” repeated the two others mechanically, as if this was a new creed, and I, approving, faintly smiled.  That stirred them to talk again, and they told me that the expeditions had been settled on, and that they would have to go, too.  Orders had come from home that they must not fall out with Waldersee.  It was highly important to placate the Germans because of South Africa.  But the Americans would not go, neither would the Russians, nor yet the Japanese.  It was to be a new arrangement.  They went on talking in this wise for a long time, and I heard these scraps of conversation vaguely as in a dream.  Cynically I thought that, although I was leaving it all behind me in company of men who were strangers to Peking, the last words would still be concerned with our tortuous diplomacy.  Yet my gallant friends were only trying to console me—­to make me forget.  Such things they understood far better than others.  They were from India, where men think a good deal, and sometimes act.  They were treating me as best they could.  Then when we came to a sharp rise over which the road curled and crawled, they halted suddenly, stretched out their hands, and bade me good-bye.  They meant it to be a sharp wrench—­to be over quickly.  Just on the rim of the horizon stretched the grey of the fading Tartar Walls with their high-pitched towers.  The sun sinking behind the western hills threw some last flames of golden fire, but the air remained chill.  It was becoming cold, and even the dust no longer rose in clouds.  Everything was pinned to the soil—­tired—­finished....

I rode on abruptly.  Then, for the last time, my cavalrymen turned round and shouted faintly back to me.  It was a word which carried well.  “Chubb, Chubb, Chubb,” they were shouting, to give my thoughts a turn.  They knew what I must be thinking.  They knew; they had been in India.  I quickened my horse into a gallop, rode faster and faster, and before night had fallen I had gained the river-boats.  It was over....