No sooner had this incident occurred and been bandied round with sundry exaggerations, than the life of the Legations and the nondescripts who have been coming in from the country became more abnormal than ever.  For in spite of our extraordinary position, even up to to-day we were attempting to work—­that is, writing three lines of a despatch, and then rushing madly out to hear the latest news.  Now not so much as one word is written, and our eleven Legations are openly terribly perturbed in body and mind and conscious of their intense impotence, although we have all the so-called resources of diplomacy still at our command, and we are officially still on the friendliest terms with the Chinese Government.

This morning, the 12th, there was another commotion—­this time in Customs Street, as it is called.  Three more Boxers, armed with swords and followed by a crowd of loafers, fearful but curious, ran rapidly past the Post Office, which faces the Customs Inspectorate, and got into a small temple a few hundred feet away, where they began their incantations.  It was decided to attack them only with riding-whips, so as to avoid drawing first blood.  But when a party of us arrived, we could not get into their retreat, as they had barricaded themselves in.  So marines and sailors were requisitioned with axes; after a lot of exhausting work it was discovered that the birds had flown.  This was another proof that there is treachery among friendly natives, for without help these Boxers could never have escaped.

And now imagine our excitement and general perturbation.  Since the 8th or 9th, I really forget which date, we have been acting on a more or less preconcerted plan—­that is, as far as our defences are concerned, as we have been quite cut off from the outer world.  The commanders of the British, American, German, French, Italian, Russian, Austrian and Japanese detachments have met and conferred—­each carefully instructed by his own Minister just how far he is to acquiesce in his colleagues’ proposals, which is, roughly speaking, not at all.  We can have no effective council of war thus, because there is no commander-in-chief, and everybody is a claimant to the post.  There is first an Austrian captain of a man-of-war lying off the Taku bar, who was merely up in Peking on a pleasure trip when he was caught by the storm, but this has not hindered him taking over command of the Austrian sailors from the lieutenant who brought them up; and everybody knows that a captain in the navy ranks with a colonel in the army.  There are no military men in Peking excepting three captains of British marines, one Japanese lieutenant-colonel and his aide-de-camp, and some unimportant military attaches, who are very junior.  So on paper the command should lie between two men—­the Austrian naval captain and the Japanese lieutenant-colonel.  But, then, the Japanese have instructions to follow the British lead, and the senior British marine captain