imulating a false interest in our never-ending discussion. We really
wished to see with our own eyes these Legation Guards who might still
save the situation.

Strolling out in the warm night, just as we were, we first came on
them in the French Legation. The French detachment were merely sailors
belonging to what they call their _Compagnies de debarquement_, and
they were all brushing each other down and cursing the _sacree
poussiere_. Such a leading _motif_ has this Peking dust become that
the very sailors notice it. Also we found two priests from Monseigneur
F----'s Cathedral, sitting in the garden and patiently waiting for the
Minister's return. I heard afterwards that they would not move until
P---- decided that twenty-five sailors should march the next day to
the Cathedral--in fact at daylight.

In all the Legations I found it was much the same thing--the men of
the various detachments were brushing each other down and exchanging
congratulations that they had been picked for Peking service. It was,
perhaps, only because they were so glad to be allotted shore-duty
after interminable service afloat off China's muddy coasts that they
congratulated one another; but it might be also because they had heard
tell throughout the fleets that the men who had come in '98, after the
_coup d'etat_, had had the finest time which could be imagined--all
loafing and no duties. They did not seem to understand or suspect....

I found later in the night that there had actually been a little
trouble at the Tientsin station. The British had tried to get through
a hundred marines instead of the maximum of seventy-five which had
been agreed on. The Chinese authorities had then refused to let the
train go, and although an English ship's captain had threatened to
hang the station-master, in the end the point was won by the Chinese.
By one or two in the morning everybody was very gay, walking about and
having drinks with one another, and saying that it was all right now.
Then it was that I remembered that it was already June--the historic
month which has seen more crises than any other--and I became a little
gloomy again. It was so terribly sultry and dry that it seemed as if
anything could happen. I felt convinced that the guards were too few.

V

THE PLOT THICKENS

4th June, 1900.

* * * * *

No matter in what light you look at it, you realise that somehow--in
some wonderful, inexplicable m