But as the night grew later and later, some people began busying themselves packing boxes, still deluding themselves that they were going to leave comfortably on the morrow as if nothing had happened.  Yet the world is really upside down as far as we are concerned, and it is quite absolutely impossible that the situation should end so normally as to find us quietly retreating down the Tientsin road.  Others kept sending out servants to discover at what price carts would undertake to drive the whole way down to the sea, or at least to Tientsin.  Forty, fifty, and even one hundred taels were demanded for three days’ work; and then, although the carters said they would come if the government sends proper escorts of soldiers as has been promised, Heaven only knows if they will ever dare to move near our stricken quarter.  Still in some Legations they ordered fifty carts at any price, with the most lavish promises of reward for those that could manage to secure them.  All the official servants soon came back trembling, saying that they had found a few carts, but that it was pu yi t’ing—­not at all sure whether the carters would dare to move when daylight came.  For the whole city is already in a fresh uproar; people are flying in every direction in the night.  Stories come in of officials who have been pulled out of their chairs and forced to K’et’ou to Boxers to show their respect to the new power.  Prince Tuan has been appointed President of the Tsung-li Yamen, high Manchus have been placed in charge of the Boxer commands, and rice is being issued to them from the Imperial granaries.  There is no end to the tales that now come in, since everybody has understood that there is no need for concealment and that there is going to be some sort of war.  At two o’clock I even began to get news of what the Empress Dowager had been doing, and how the Boxer partisans had become so strong that it was absolutely impossible to hope for anything but the worst.

Once when I got some details which I thought of importance, I tried to find my chief in order to communicate it to him.  But he was lost in the middle of the night, conferring unofficially with some of his colleagues; and I could but feel immensely amused when in his office I saw that he had been scribbling some frenzied notes on the back of a completed despatch, dealing with one of those petty little affairs which were so important only the other day.

Ah, where are the dear little political situations of only a few weeks ago; those safe little political situations which redounded so much to the credit of those that made them and did not contain any of the dread elements of our present very real and terrible one!  Like soldiers who have degenerated from the chasing of mere vagabonds of mediocre importance, so have our Peking Ministers Plenipotentiary and Envoys Extraordinary fallen from their proud estate to mere diplomatic make-beliefs full of wind—­wind-blown from much tilting at windmills, with their Governments rescuing them Sancho Panza-like at the eleventh hour....