dark little progress could be made excepting in removing all
possibility of any one going to sleep.

But the sublimely ridiculous was reached in an out-of-the-way building
facing the canal, an incident displaying even more than anything else
the attitude of some of the _personnel_ of our missions to China.
Sleeping peacefully in his nice pyjamas under a mosquito net was found
a sleek official of the London Board of Works, who wanted to know what
was meant by waking him up in the middle of the night. Investigations
elsewhere found other members of this Legation asleep in their beds;
everybody said the young men were all right, but those above a certain
age...!

The night thus spent itself very uneasily. They were only learning
what should have been known days before.

When day broke in the British Legation things had seemed more
impossible than ever. Orders and counter-orders came from every side;
the place was choked with women, missionaries, puling children, and
whole hosts of lamb-faced converts, whose presence in such close
proximity was intolerable. Heaven only knew how the matter would end.
The night before people had been only too glad to rush frantically to
a place of safety; with daylight they remembered that they were
terribly uncomfortable--that this might have to go on for days or for
weeks. It is very hard to die uncomfortably. I thought then that
things would never be shaken into proper shape.

In this wise has our siege commenced; with all the men angry and
discontented; with no responsible head; with the one man among those
high-placed dead; with hundreds of converts crowding us at every
turn--in a word, with everything just the natural outcome of the
vacillation and ignorance displayed during the past weeks by those who
should have been the leaders. Fortunately, as I have already said, so
far there has been no fighting or no firing worth speaking of. Only
along the French and Italian barricades, facing east and north, a
dropping fire has continued since yesterday, and one Frenchman has
been shot through the head and one Austrian wounded. It is worth while
noting, now that I think of it, that the French, the Italians, the
Germans, and, of course, the Austrians, have accepted Captain T----,
the cruiser captain, as their commander-in-chief, and that the
Japanese have signified their willingness to do so, too, as soon as
the British and Americans do likewise. Thus already there are signs
that a pretty s