as the rest. The great rafters of Burmese teak, brought by
Mongol Khans six centuries before to Peking, were as dry as tinder
with the dryness of ages; and thus almost before we had noted that
the bottom of the tower was well alight the flames were shooting
through the roof and out through the hundreds of little square windows
which in olden days were lined by archers. Higher and higher the
flames leaped, until the top of the longest tongues of fire, pouring
out through a funnel of brick, was hundreds of feet above the ground
level. Only Vereschagin could have done justice to this holocaust; I
have never seen anything so barbarically splendid.

Meanwhile below this in the Chinese city all had become quiet, except
for the increasing and growing roar of the all-devouring flames. The
Boxers, as if appalled by their own handiwork and the mournful sight
of the capital in flames, had retreated into their haunts and had left
the unfortunate townfolk to battle with this disaster as they could.
From the top of the wall, which I hastily climbed as soon as I
obtained permission to leave my post, thousands and tens of thousands
of figures could be seen moving hurriedly about laden with
merchandise, which they were attempting to save. Busy as ants, these
wonderful Chinese traders were rescuing as much of their invested
capital from the very embrace of the flames as they could at a moment
when the Boxer patriots, menacing and killing them with sword and
spears as _san mao-tzu,_ or third-class barbarians who sold the cursed
foreigners' stuffs and products, had hardly disappeared.

Yet it seemed vain, indeed, to talk of salvage with half the city in
flames, for other fires now began mysteriously in other places, which
"lighted" the horizon. "_Tout Pekin brule_," muttered a French sailor
to me as I passed back to my post, and his careless remark made me
think that this was the Commune and Sansculottism intermixed--the
ends of two centuries tumbled together--because we foreigners had
upset the equilibrium of the Far East with our importunities and our
covetousness of the Yellow Man's possessions....

And what of S----, what of the Peking Government--what is everybody in
the outside world doing--the distant world of which we have so
suddenly lost all trace, while we are passing through such times? We
do not know; we have no idea; we have almost forgotten to think about
it. S---- was heard of twice some days ago from Langfang, a station