palace eunuchs say yes, and the wife of one
eunuch, living near the South Cathedral, is quite positive, my
servants inform me. Wife of a eunuch, did I say? You will think me
mad, but it is nevertheless true, for Chinese eunuchs have wives. Why
have they wives, you will ask, since they are only half men, and
cannot perform the duties of the male? Well, I can only answer as did
my teacher once when I asked him years ago. "Eunuchs are still men,"
he said, smiling doubtfully, "insomuch as they like homes of their own
beyond the Palace walls and desire children to play with. Since their
wives can bear no children they buy children from poor people, and
these duly become their own. Thus when the eunuch dies he has children
to worship at his grave." In this land of mystery even eunuchs can
correctly become ancestors. Yet this is a trivial detail which I
should not speak of.

So the eunuch's wife living near the South Cathedral, who gossips with
her Black Catholic neighbours, and whose gossip gives me news many
times a day, avers most positively that the chief eunuch has been in
town--that the whole matter has been decided--and that every foreigner
will die. And very late in the evening my Manchu servant rushed in on
me with his eyes sparkling strangely, and his voice so hoarse with
excitement that he did not speak, but shout. "Master," he cried, "I
have seen myself this time; three long carts full of swords and spears
have passed in from the outer city through the Ha-ta Gate. The city
guards stopped and questioned the drivers--then let them go. They had
a pass from the Governor of Peking, and the people all say it is now
coming." Now do you wonder about our clocks and our watches, and our
time? Nothing can ever be normal again until this terrible question is
solved.

VI

THE LICKING FLAMES APPROACH

9th June 1900.

* * * * *

It is getting desperate, of that there is now no shadow of doubt. The
Tientsin trains that have been lately running more and more slowly and
irregularly, as if they, too, were waiting on the pleasure of the
coming storm, are going to run no more, and the odds are heavily
against to-day's train ever reaching its destination. It is true these
trains have long ceased running as far as we are personally concerned,
for the weariness of living forty-two hours during twenty-four dulls
one's perception of everything excepting one's immediate surroundings.
And even o