At last we got away with everybody who was still alive, as far as we could judge.  Tramping back slowly and painfully, the rescued looked the most pitiable concourse I have ever seen.  Somehow it was exactly like that eloquent picture in “Michael Serogoff,” showing the crowds of Siberian prisoners being driven away by Feofar Khan’s Tartars after the capture of Omsk.  Among our people there were the same old granddames, wrinkled and white haired, supporting themselves with crooked sticks and hobbling painfully on their mutilated feet; the same mothers with their children sucking their breasts; the same little boys and little girls laden with a few miserable rags; the same able-bodied men carrying the food they had saved.  The older people gazed straight in front of them with the stolid despair of the fatalist East, and did not utter a word.  A woman who had given birth to a child the very night before was being carried on a single plank slung on ropes, with a green-white pallor of death on her features.  I have never taken part in such a remarkable procession as this.

Thus bloodstained and very weary we finally reached our Legation quarter, and once again the energy and resolution of Dr. M——­ expressed themselves.  The grounds of the Su wang-fu, belonging to the Manchu prince Su, where the first Boxer we had openly seen had sought refuge a few days previously, were commandeered by him, and by evening nearly a thousand Catholic refugees were crowded into its precincts.  All day people were labouring to bring in rice and food for their people, and camp-fires were soon built at which they could cook their meals.  Several of the chefs de mission were again much alarmed at this action of ours in openly rescuing Chinese simply because they were doubtful co-religionists.  They say that this action will make us pay dearly with our own lives; that the Legations will be attacked; that we cannot possibly defend ourselves against the numbers which will be brought to bear against us; that we are fools.  Perhaps we are, but still there is some comfort in discovering that this nest of diplomacy still contains a few men.

Meanwhile there is not a word of news from S——­, and there are indications that our despatches to the Chinese Government, which are being sent from every Legation more and more urgently, are hardly read.  The situation is becoming more and more impossible, and our servants say it is useless bringing in any news, as there is such confusion in the Palace that nobody knows anything reliable.

XI

SOME MEN AND THINGS

16th June, 1900.

* * * * *