but the
natives could not withstand the foreigner--that is what their
compatriot said. Everybody was terrified by the Black soldiery from
India; they had come in the same way forty years before....

So the relieving armies are truly rolling up on Peking. It seems
incredible and unreal, but it is undoubtedly true, and it must be
accepted as true....

As if goaded by the terrors conjured up by these avenging armies,
which are now so close, the Tsung-li Yamen, in some last despatches,
has informed our Plenipotentiaries that it is decapitating wholesale
the soldiery that have been firing on us--that it wishes for personal
interviews with all our Ministers to arrange everything, so that there
may be no more misunderstandings later on. Vain hope! Numbers of
documents are coming in, and every Minister wishes to write something
in return--to show that with the return of normal conditions there
will be a return of importance. Somehow it seems to me that not one of
them can become important again in Peking. They have been too
ridiculous--politically, they are already all dead.

XXVII

THE ATTACKS RESUMED

12th August, 1900.

* * * * *

All thoughts of relief have been pushed into the middle distance--and
even beyond--by the urgent business we have now on hand. For the
attacks have been suddenly resumed, and have been continuous, well
sustained, and far worse than anything we have ever experienced
before, even in the first furious days of the siege. What stupendous
quantities of ammunition have been loosed off on us during the past
forty-eight hours--what tons of lead and nickel! Some of our
barricades have been so eaten away by this fire, that there is but
little left, and we are forced to lie prone on the ground hour after
hour, not daring to move and not daring to send reliefs at the
appointed intervals. So intense has the rifle-fire been around the Su
Wang-fu and the French Legation lines, that high above the deafening
roar of battle a distinct and ominous snake-like hissing can be
heard--a hiss, hiss, hiss, that never ceases. It is the high-velocity
nickel-nosed bullet tearing through the air at lightning speed, and
spitting with rage at its ill success in driving home on some
unfortunate wretch. They hiss, hiss, hiss, hour after hour, without
stopping; and as undertone to that brutal hiss there is the roll of
the rifles themselves, crackling at us by the thousand like dry
fa