questionable community of interests. Yet what
did it matter, I thought. One lives only once and dies only once. That
is elemental truth. So _tant pis_.

In our joy at being on those open streets again, with never a
passer-by or a vehicle to obstruct one's rapid passage, we went ahead
in a whirlwind of dust. We passed street after street with always the
same silence about us we had noticed the day before. Everything was
closed, tight shut; there was not a cat or a dog stirring abroad. Near
the Legations and the Palace, where the fear lay the heaviest, it
seemed like a city of the dead.

Yet we knew that there were plenty of living men only biding their
time and waiting their opportunity. It was only night that these
people desired; a good black night so that no one could see them flit
about. You felt in the small of your back as you rode along that ugly
faces were looking at you from the silent houses, and that at any
moment shots might ring out suddenly and bear you to the ground. But
that was merely a preliminary feeling. Soon it added zest to the
entertainment. What, indeed, did it matter? It only made one more and
more reckless.

We sped swiftly along, only twice seeing men of any sort in several
miles of streets. Once they were fellows who, on our approach,
scuttled so quickly away to hide their identity that we could not be
sure whether they were white or yellow. But once, without concealment,
a band of mixed European soldiery, in terrible disorder, who first
wished to fire on us, and then when they saw me set up a colourless
sort of cheer, appeared suddenly, only to disappear. We never paused
an instant; we kept straight on.

As we made our way farther and farther to the east and came across
rich districts of barricaded shops, signs were clear that pillaging
had gone on here already with insane violence, but by whom or at what
time it was impossible to say. Sometimes there were battered-in doors
and windows, with ugly, swollen corpses stretched near by; sometimes
the contents of a rich emporium had been swept, as if by some strange
whirlwind, out on the street to litter the whole driving road many
inches deep with the most heterogeneous things. On the ground, too,
were dozens of the rude imitation flags which had been so frantically
made by the terror-striken populace in order to disclaim all
association with Boxerism and the mad Imperialism being now so
summarily swept away. Jeering looters had torn these t