gloat over it; and in the end people
had taken a detestation for him, and looked upon him for some strange
reason as a little unclean. Now he was madly excited, and as soon as
he saw me he called out, in his thick Brussels accent, and made a long
broken speech, which I shall never forget.

"Have you seen them?" he said, not pausing for a reply. "It is the
sight of all others--the best of all. Hsu Tung, you remember, the
Imperial Tutor, who wished to make covers for his sedan chair with our
hides, and who was allowed to escape when we had him tight? Well, he
is swinging high now from his own rafters, he and his whole
household--wives, children, concubines, attendants, everyone. There
are sixteen of them in all--sixteen, all swinging from ropes tied on
with their own hands, and with the chairs on which they stood kicked
from under them. That they did in their death struggles. Everywhere
they have acted in the same way. They call it hanging, but it is not
that; it is really slow strangulation, which lasts for many minutes,
because at the last moment the victims become afraid and try to regain
their footholds."

The man paused a minute and licked his dry lips. To me there was
something hideous in this story being told on that sacked street. His
voice sounded a little like those Chinese trumpets, whose gurgling
notes make one think instantly of evil things. Then he went on, more
furiously than ever:

"And the wells near the Eastern Gates, have you seen them, where all
the women and girls have been jumping in? They are full of women and
young girls--quite full, because they were afraid of the troops,
especially of the black troops. The black troops become insane, the
people say, when they see women. So the women killed themselves
wherever they heard the guns. Now they are hauling up the dead bodies
so that the wells will not be poisoned. I have seen them take six and
seven bodies from the same well, all clinging together, and the men
have tried to kill me because I looked. But I was well mounted; I
could look as long as I liked, and then gallop away so fast that not
even their shots could catch me. The place is full of dead people,
nothing but dead people everywhere, and more are dying every minute."

Then he came up to me and whispered how soldiers were behaving after
they had outraged women. It was impossible to listen. He said that
our own inhuman soldiery had invited him to stay and see. Yet although
I swore at the