n muttered at me, as if they now
hated me bitterly, and yet did not know how to commence, and with the
women behind me chattering affrighted. In vain I tried to work out how
many eunuchs there really were in this vast Palace; whether a great
number had gone away with the Court, or whether these four men would
summon four more, or perhaps fourteen, and possibly even forty or four
hundred. They always say the Palace contains three thousand....

It was all no good, however, for it was my turn to play, and without I
played we might remain standing there in this manner until it became
dark. Then I could be beaten to the ground and thrown down a well
without any one being the wiser. No search could be made for me, and
if one was made, nothing would be found. Men were continually missing
in Peking, and no one knew how they met their fate....

I advanced now with my hands empty and my mind fairly made up.
Everything depended on a new theory, which I was about to test, a mere
Chinese theory concerning eunuchs--that their mutilation makes them
bestial, but also downtrodden and quite spiritless and peculiarly
weak. That is why the old Empress could thrash them to death whenever
they displeased her, without their daring to raise their hands or make
one single struggle. Now, as I walked forward, I could see my old
Chinese teacher, who had taught me these strange theories concerning
eunuchs, sitting in front of me and slowly waving his fan, and showing
by an analysis of things I did not clearly understand, how Nature had
laws and decrees which cannot be violated without bringing heavy and
immediate punishment in their train. As I walked forward I could not
help seeing that old figure of a Chinese teacher in front of me, and
prayed that he was correct. If he was not ... then I stopped thinking
and acted.

I did it neatly, with some brutality, because I had been absolutely
surprised, and had not yet recovered, and, also, because I was more
than a little afraid. Six paces off I threw myself in two savage
bounds against the tall man; caught him with my right hand by the
outstretched right arm, hurled him round once by the force of my own
impetus and the strength of my grasp; and then, as he swiftly swung
with loosened legs, stopped him suddenly short with a mighty up-driven
blow of my right knee, which sang so deep and cruelly into his soft
flesh, that it grated harshly against his spinal column. Nobody can
resist that blow--according