women, and
children were hastily formed to our wells and hundreds of utensils of
the most incongruous character were brought into play. I came back to
find ladies of the Legations handing even _pots de chambre_ full of
water to the next person in the long chain which had been formed; and
among all these people who were at length willing to work because of
the imminent danger of their being smoked out, I found long-lost
faces, including that of my own chief. Where they had all sprung from
I could not make out. But to see Madame So-and-so, a Ministerial wife,
handing these delectable utensils, and forced to labour hard, was
worth a good many privations. There are so many elements of the
tragic-absurd now to be seen.

That work on the British Legation lines confined me for some time to
this area, and determined to profit by it, I sought out Viscount
T----, who loves delicacies, and offered to exchange champagne for a
few tins of preserves. We have mules, we have ponies, and we have even
donkeys, it is true, and a great mass of grain and rice which will
last for weeks. But it is dry and sorrowful food, and I long for a few
delicacies. To-day my midday tiffin consisted of a rude curry made of
pony meat; and in the evening, because I was busy and had no time to
search out other things, I ate once again of pony--this time cold! 'I
will frankly confess that I was not enchanted, and had it not been for
the Monopole, of which there are great stores in the hotel and the
club--thousand cases in all, I believe--I should have collapsed. For
as Monsieur la Fontaine has informed us, even the most willing of
stomachs has certain rights, and there are times when a good deal of
zeal is necessary. It is true we have now a narcotic to feed on which
supports us at all times almost without the aid of anything else--the
never-ending roll of rifle-fire now blazing forth with grim violence
and sending a storm of bullets overhead, now muttering slowly and
cautiously with merely a falling leaf or a snipped branch to show
that it is directed at our devoted heads. You can live on that for
many hours, but it is a bad thing to feed on, of course, for it must
leave after-effects more hard to overcome than those of opium. Little
d'A----, of the French Legation, swears he never feels hungry at all
so long as the firing continues....

To perform this work of feeding so many mouths, there are
committees--committees far too big, since everyone is anxious