Indiscreet Letters From Peking Part 15

Nothing now occurred for a quarter of an hour, and I heard not a sound. Then suddenly half a dozen arms clasping bamboos appeared at different points, and as soon as I had fired six heads swooped out and directed this bamboo fishing. In a trice they had harpooned the flag, and before I could fire again it was back in their camp. I had been beaten! Then, as a revenge, I was steadily pelted with lead for more than half an hour and had to lie very low. They searched for me with their missiles with devilish ingenuity. This firing became so persistent that one of our patrols at last appeared and crept forward to me from the line of main works behind. Only by ingenious lying did I escape from being reported....

Probably incidents like this account for the outpost duels which are hourly proceeding, in spite of all the Tsung-li Yamen despatches and the unending mutual a.s.surances. Many of our men shoot immediately they see a Chinese rifle or a Chinese head in the hopes of adding another scalp to their tale. In any case, this does no harm. It seems to me that only the resolution of the outposts, acting independently, and sometimes even in defiance to orders from headquarters, has kept the enemy so long at bay. The rifle distrusts diplomacy.

This diplomatic correspondence with the Yamen is rapidly acc.u.mulating.

Many doc.u.ments are now coming through from European Foreign Offices in the form of cipher telegrams, that are copied out by the native telegraphists in the usual way. No one is being told what is in these doc.u.ments; we can only guess. The Yamen covers each message with a formal despatch in Chinese, generally begging the Ministers to commit themselves to the care of the government. They now even propose that everyone should be escorted to Tientsin--at once. And yet we have learned from copies of the _Peking Gazette_ that two members of the Yamen were executed exactly seven days ago for recommending a mild policy and making an immediate end of the Boxer _regime_. It is thus impossible to see how it will end. Our fate must ultimately be decided by a number of factors, concerning which we know nothing.

This breathing s.p.a.ce is giving time, however, which is not being entirely wasted on our part. At several points we have managed to enter into secret relations with some of the Chinese commands, and to induce traitors to begin a secret traffic in ammunition and food supplies....

It is curious how it is done. By tunnelling through walls and houses in neglected corners, protected ways have been made into some of the nests of half-ruined native houses. And by spending many bags of dollars, friendship has first been bought and then supplies.

The j.a.panese have been the most successful. Instead of killing the soldier-spy, who had been selling them false news, they pardoned him and enlisted him in this new cause. He has been very useful, and arranged matters with the enemy....

The other night I crept out through the secret way to the j.a.panese supply house to see how it was done. There were only two little j.a.panese in there squatting on the ground, with several revolvers lying ready. A shaded candle just allowed you to distinguish the torn roof, the wrecked wooden furniture. n.o.body spoke a word, and we all listened intently.

A full hour must have pa.s.sed before a very faint noise was heard, and then I caught a discreet scratching. It was the signal. One of the little men got up and crawled forward to the door like a dog on his hands and knees. Then I heard a revolver click--a short pause, and the noise of a door being opened. Then there was a tap--tap--tap, like the Morse code being quietly played, and the revolver clicked down again.

It was the right man. He, too, crawled in like a dog; got up painfully, as if he were very stiff, and silently began unloading.

Then I understood why he was so stiff; he was loaded from top to bottom with cartridges.

It took a quarter of an hour for everything to be taken out and stacked on the floor. He had carried in close on six hundred rounds of Mauser ammunition, and for every hundred he received the same weight in silver. This man was a military cook, who crept round and robbed his comrades as they lay asleep, not a hundred yards from here. Of course, he will be discovered one day and torn to pieces, but I have just learned that by marvellous ingenuity and with the aid of a few of his fellows thousands of eggs have been brought in by him. It is a curious business, and adds yet another strange element to this strangest of lives.

XXIV

DIPLOMATIC CONFIDENCES

6th August, 1900.

Firing has been more persistent and more general during the last two days, although the armistice ostensibly still continues in the same way as before. A number of our men have been wounded, and two or three even killed during the past week. It is an extraordinary state of affairs, but better than a general attack all along the line. We have no right to complain. The day before yesterday several Russians were badly wounded; yesterday a Frenchman was killed outright and a couple of other men wounded; to-day three more have been hit. In spite of the discharges from the hospitals, the numbers _hors de combat_ remain the same.

To-day, too, trumpets are again blaring fiercely, and more and more troops can be seen moving if one looks down from the Tartar Wall. Up on the wall itself, however, all is dead quiet. It has been like that for weeks. No men have been lost there.

Neither is there any news of the thick relief columns which should be advancing from Tientsin. In spite of the shoals of letters I have duly recorded, a.s.suring us of their immediate departure, the majority of us have again become rather incredulous about our approaching relief. It has become such a regular thing, this siege life, and all other kinds of life are somehow so far away and so impossible after what we have gone through, that we look upon the outer world as something mythical.... Some men have their minds a little unhinged; two are absolutely mad. One, a poor devil of a Norwegian missionary, who has been living in misery for years in a vain effort to make converts, became so dangerous long ago that he had to be locked up, and even bound. But one night he managed to escape, climb our defences and deliver himself up to the Chinese soldiery. They led him also to the Manchu Generalissimo, Jung Lu, half suspecting that he was crazy. Jung Lu questioned him closely as to our condition, and the Norwegian divulged everything he knew. He said the Chinese fire had been too high to do us very much harm; that they should drive low at us, and remember the flat trajectory of modern weapons. After keeping him for some hours and learning all he could, Jung Lu sent him back. The poor devil, when he lurched in again, vacantly told the people in the British Legation what he had said, and a number demanded that he be shot for treason. If they once began doing that an end would never be reached....

Some go mad, too, during the fighting. It is always those who have too much imagination. Thus, during a lull in the attacks against the French lines, a Russian volunteer, with rifle and bandolier across his back and a bottle of spirits in his hand, charged furiously at the Chinese barriers with insane cries. No effort could be made to save him, because hundreds of Chinese riflemen were merely waiting for an opportunity to pick off our men. So the doomed Russian reached the first Chinese barricade unmolested, put a leg over, and then fell back with a terrible cry as a dozen rifles were emptied into his body. By a miracle he picked himself up even in his dying condition, and made another frantic effort to climb the obstacle. But more rifles were then discharged, and finally the wretched man fell back quite lifeless. Then over his body a fierce duel took place. Chinese commanders having placed a price on European heads, these riflemen were determined not to lose their reward. Man after man attempted to drag in that dead body; but each time our men were too quick for them, and a Chinese brave rolled over. In the end they hooked the corpse in with long poles and it was seen no more.

A yet more blood-curdling case is that of a British marine, who has been hopelessly mad for weeks now. He shot and bayonetted a man in the early part of the siege, and the details must have horrified him. They say he first drove his bayonet in right up to the hilt through a soldier's chest; and then, without withdrawing, emptied the whole of the contents of his magazine into his victim, muttering all the time.

Now he lies repeating hour after hour, "How it splashes! how it splashes!" and at night he shrieks and cries.... In that miserable Chancery hospital, swept by rifle-fire and full of such cries and groans, the nights have become dreaded, until it is a wonder the wounded still live....

Still, with all this, the Yamen messengers continue to come and go with clockwork regularity. Yesterday the Chinese Government excelled itself, and made some who have still a sense of humour left laugh cynically. In an original official despatch--that is, not a mere covering despatch--it politely informed the Italian _Charge d'Affaires_ that King Humbert had been a.s.sa.s.sinated by a lunatic, and it begged to convey the news with its most profound condolences!

Perhaps, however, there was a wish to point a moral--a subtle moral such as Chinese scholars love. Yes, on second thoughts that was rather a clever despatch; in diplomacy the Chinese have nothing to learn....

XXV

THE PLOT AGAIN THICKENS

8th August, 1900.

Some strange deity is helping the Chinese Government. There is always something appropriate to write about. Yesterday the Duke of Edinburgh died. We were officially informed to that effect, after the King Humbert manner, and the condolences were great. Yesterday, also, during the evening, sh.e.l.ling suddenly commenced and the cannon-mouths that have been leering at us from a distance in dull curiosity at their inactivity have barked themselves hoa.r.s.ely to life again. Thus, while diplomacy still continues, shrapnel and segment are plunging about. At times it really seems as if the Chinese Government had succeeded in dividing us up into two distinct categories. It has tried to save the diplomats from sh.e.l.ls and bullets; since they remain with the others they must share their fate.

We listened to this cannonade with tightly pressed lips last night for an hour and more, and, lying low, watched the splinters fly; and then, just as the clamour appeared to be growing, it ceased as suddenly as it had commenced, and the uproarious trumpets, that we know so well, once more called off the attacking forces with their stentorian voices. It seems as if an internecine warfare had begun outside our lines--that the loosely jointed Chinese Government is also struggling with itself. Thus legs and arms thrash around for a while and cause chaos; then the brain rea.s.serts its sway, and the limbs become quieted and reposeful for a time. Never will there be such a siege again. I am beginning to understand something of all its vast complexity, to know that everybody is at once guilty and innocent, and that a strange deity decrees that it must be so....

For while we are beginning to be attacked fitfully, other strange things have been observed from the Tartar Wall. There has been some fighting and shooting in the burned and ruined Ch'ien Men great street down below, and Chinese cavalry have been seen chasing and cutting down red-coated men. A species of Communism may in the end rise from the ashes of the ruined capital, or a new dynasty be proclaimed, or nothing may happen at all, excepting that we shall die of starvation in a few weeks....

The native Christians in the Su w.a.n.g-fu are already getting ravenous with hunger, and are robbing us of every sc.r.a.p of food they can garner up. Their provisioning has almost broken down, in spite of every effort, and the missionary committees and sub-committees charged with their feeding are beginning to discriminate, they say. These vaunted committees cannot but be a failure except in those things which immediately concern the welfare of the committees themselves. The feeble authority of headquarters, now that puny diplomacy has been so busy, has become more feeble than it was in the first days, and, like the Chinese Government, we, too, shall soon fall to pieces by an ungumming process. Native children are now dying rapidly, and two weeks more will see a veritable famine. The trees are even now all stripped of their leaves; cats and dogs are hunted down and rudely beaten to death with stones, so that their carcases may be devoured.

Many of the men and women cling to life with a desperation which seems wonderful, for some are getting hardly any food at all, and their ribs are cracking through their skin. There is something wrong somewhere, for while so many are half starving, the crowds of able-bodied converts used in the fortification work are fairly well fed. n.o.body seems to wish to pay much attention to the question, although many reports have been sent in. Perhaps, from one point of view, it is without significance whether these useless people die or not. Hardly any of the many non-combatant Europeans stir beyond the limits of the British Legation, even with this lull. All sit there talking--talking eternally and praying for relief, calculating our chances of holding out for another two or three weeks, but never acting. A roll, indeed, has been made at last, with every able-bodied man's name set down, and a distribution table drawn up. But beyond that no action has been taken, and the hundred and more men who might be added to our active forces are allowed to do nothing.

This might be all right were there not certain ominous signs around us, which show that a change must soon come. For the enemy has planted new banners on all sides of us, bearing the names of new Chinese generals unknown to us. Audaciously driven into the ground but twenty or thirty feet from our outposts, these gaudy flags of black and yellow, and many other colours, flaunt us and mock us with the protection a.s.sured by the Tsung-li Yamen. Still, those despatches continue to come in, but the first interpreter of the French Legation, who sees some of them in the original, says that their tone is becoming more surly and imperative.

It is ominous, too, that the Chinese commands, which have been so reinforced and are now of great strength, are so close to our outer line that they heave over heavy stones in order to maim and hurt our outposts without firing. All the outer barricades and trenches are being hurriedly roofed in to protect us from this new danger. One of our men, struck on the head with a twenty-pound stone, has been unconscious ever since, and a great many many others are badly hurt in other ways. The Chinese can be very ingenious devils if they wish, and the score against them is piling up more and more.

XXVI

MORE MESSENGERS

10th August, 1900.

At last some great news! Messengers from the relief columns have actually arrived, and the columns themselves are only a few days'

march from Peking. What excitement there has been among the non-combatant community; what handshaking; what embracing; what fervent delight! This unique life is to end; we are to become reasonably clean and quite ordinary mortals again, lost among the world's population of fifteen hundred millions--undistinguished, unknown--that is, if the relief gets in....

The messengers came to us apparently from nowhere, walking in after the Chinese manner, which is quite nonchalantly, and with the sublime calm of the East. One of the first slid in and out of the enemy's barricades with immense effrontery at dawn, and then climbed the j.a.panese defences, and produced a little ball of tissue paper from his left ear. Fateful news contained so long in that left ear! It was a cipher despatch from General f.u.kishima, chief of the staff of the relieving j.a.panese columns. It said that the advance guard would reach the outskirts of Peking on the 13th or 14th, if all went well.

Heavens, we all said, as we calculated aloud, that meant only three or four days more....

This news was soon duplicated, for hardly had the first excitement subsided when the news spread that a second messenger from the British General of the relieving forces had managed to force his way through. It was a confirmation, was his message; three or four days more.... But the messenger, when he spoke, had other things to say. He had been sent out by us a week before by being lowered by ropes from the Tartar Wall. Forty miles from Peking he had met Black cavalry and Russian cavalry miles in advance of the other soldiery. They had charged at him and captured him, and led him before generals and officers.... The roads leading to Peking were littered with wounded and disbanded Chinese soldiery; there had been much fighting, but the natives could not withstand the foreigner--that is what their compatriot said. Everybody was terrified by the Black soldiery from India; they had come in the same way forty years before....

So the relieving armies are truly rolling up on Peking. It seems incredible and unreal, but it is undoubtedly true, and it must be accepted as true....

As if goaded by the terrors conjured up by these avenging armies, which are now so close, the Tsung-li Yamen, in some last despatches, has informed our Plenipotentiaries that it is decapitating wholesale the soldiery that have been firing on us--that it wishes for personal interviews with all our Ministers to arrange everything, so that there may be no more misunderstandings later on. Vain hope! Numbers of doc.u.ments are coming in, and every Minister wishes to write something in return--to show that with the return of normal conditions there will be a return of importance. Somehow it seems to me that not one of them can become important again in Peking. They have been too ridiculous--politically, they are already all dead.