ssy?" asked Captain Martin. "You see," the Captain went on,
"I'm rather anxious to land you boys under the protecting folds of the
American flag, for there my responsibility ends."

"No, not to the embassy," Ned replied. "As yet I have nothing of
importance to confide to the ambassador. I can only tell him that we
are here, that we had numerous nibbles on the road from Taku, but that
all the fish got away."

"Holy smoke!" exclaimed Jack. "I hope you don't think of staying out in
the open until you can convey a couple of diplomats to the embassy! You
can't catch your man single handed. You're not in New York now, but in
a heathen town, a town where the life of a foreign devil is not worth a
grain of rice."

"Just the same," Ned replied, "I'm going to stick around this town until
I get what I want."

"In this dump?" asked Jack.

"No; there's an American hotel up the street--an American hotel operated
by Chinks! We'll go there and take rooms and wait for something to turn
up."

So, in spite of the protests of Captain Martin, the change was made, and
late that night Ned awoke to find himself sitting up on the edge of his
bed, automatic in hand, listening to the steady boring of a tool of some
sort around the lock of his door!

CHAPTER XIX

A BOY SCOUT SURPRISE PARTY

When Ned heard the assaults of the midnight visitor on his door he
looked at his watch, then slipped over to the window facing the street.
Twelve o'clock and the thoroughfare below still teeming with life.
Peking has something over three millions of population, according to the
records, but, as a matter of fact, no one knows the exact size of the
town as to humanity, for the Chinese live in densely-packed districts,
and there are no census reports given out.

The city is many centuries old. It was a thriving capital three
thousand years before Christ was born and during all the years of war
and starvation and intrigue it continued to grow.

The hardy races from the North, which overran the country and kept a
Tartar on the Chinese throne for centuries, are virile and pertinacious.
It has been the fate of every civilization we know anything about to be
wiped out by hardy races. Rome went down before the Northmen, and
England had its oversea conqueror. Greece and Italy succumbed to the
might of brawny arms, and civilization shrank back for hundreds of
years. So China fell before the men of the mountains, and her records
were destr