comfort 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....

It began last night. No sooner had the gates which pierce the Tartar
Wall been closed by the Imperial guards, who still remain openly
faithful to their duties, than there arose such a shouting and roaring
as I have never heard before and never thought possible. It was the
Boxers. The first time the Boxers had rushed in on us, it was through
the Ha-ta Gate to the east of the Legations. Last night, after having
for three days toured the Tartar city pillaging, looting, burning and
slaying, with their progress quite unchecked except for those few
hundred rifle shots of our own, the major part of the Boxer
fraternity, to whom had joined themselves all the many rapscallions of
Peking, found themselves in the Chinese or outer city after dark, and
consequently debarred from coming near their legitimate prey. (The
gates are still always closed as before.) Somebody must have told them
that they could do as they liked with Christians and Europeans; for,
mad with rage, they began shouting and roaring in chorus two single
words, "_Sha-shao,"_ kill and burn, in an ever-increasing crescendo. I
have heard a very big mass of Russian soldiery give a roar of welcome
to the Czar some years ago, a roar which rose in a very extraordinary
manner to the empyrean; but never have I heard such a blood-curdling
volume of sound, such a vast bellowing as began then and there, and
went on persistently, hour after hour, without ever a break, in a
maddening sort of way which filled one with evil thoughts. Sometimes
for a few moments the sound sank imperceptibly lower and lower and
seemed making ready to stop. T