Even in this matter of Chinese refugees the attitude of our foolish Legations is rather inexplicable.  Actually up to within a few days ago some of the Ministers were still resolutely refusing to entertain the idea that native Christians—­men who have been estranged from their own countrymen and marked as pariahs because they have listened to the white man’s gospel—­could be brought within the Legation area.  In consequence of this hardly any Chinese Protestants have as yet come in.  Of course circumstance, the force of example, and a timidity in the face of the growing irritation, have at length broken down this weak-kneed attitude, but people have not yet finished discussing it.  For instance, there is a remarkable story about the well-known S——­, who wrote that celebrated book, “Chinese Characteristics.”  He turned up at the British Legation late one evening, long before the Boxers entered the Tartar city, and brought positive proof that unless S——­ was hurried in we would all be murdered by a conspiracy headed by the most powerful men.  S——­ was kept waiting for an hour, and then told that no time could be spared to see him as everybody was busy writing despatches!  This is indeed our whole situation expressed in a trivial incident; all the plenipotentiaries are trying to save their positions and their careers by violent despatch-writing at the eleventh hour.  They know perfectly well that it is they alone who are responsible for the present impasse, and that even if they come out alive they are all hopelessly compromised.  Young O——­ told me that in their Legation they were actually antedating their despatches so as to be on the safe side!  This shows how absolutely inexcusable has been the whole policy for three entire weeks.

We do not know what is going on around us; we do not know of what the Peking Court is thinking; we do not know by whom S——­ has been stopped.  We know nothing now excepting that we are gradually but surely getting so dirty that our tempers cannot but be vile.  One never realises how great a part soap and water play in one’s scheme of things until times like these.  With upturned Peking carts blocking the ingresses to our quarter; with everything disgruntled and out of order; with native Christians crowding in on us, sensible heathen servants bolting as hard as they can, ice running short, we, the eleven Legations of Peking, await with some fear and trepidation and an ever-increasing discomfort our various fates under the shadow of the gloomy Tartar Wall.  What is to be the next thing?  I could possibly imagine and write something about this were I not so tired.

XII

HELL HOUNDS

Night, 17th June 1900.

* * * * *

It is past twelve o’clock at night, but in spite of the late hour and my fatigue—­I have been dead tired for a week now—­I am writing this with the greatest ease, my pen gliding, as it were, over a surface of ice-like slippiness, although my fingers are all blistered from manual work.  Why, you will ask?  Well, simply because my imagination is afire, and taking complete control of such minor things as the nerves and muscles of my right arm, my eyes and my general person, it speeds me along with astonishing celerity.  Let your imagination be aflame and you can do anything....