I had got as far as this from all sides came a
tremendous blaring of barbaric trumpets--those long brass trumpets
that can make one's blood curdle horribly, a blaring which has now
upset everything I was about to write and also my inkpot. I rushed
out to inquire; it was only a portion of the Manchu Peking Field Force
marching home, but the sounds have unsettled us all again, and in the
tumult of one's emotions one does not know what to believe and what to
fear. Everything seems a little impossible and absurd, especially what
I am now writing from hour to hour.

VIII

SOME INCIDENTS AND THE ONE MAN

12th June, 1900.

* * * * *

Even the British Legation--"the stoical, sceptical, ill-informed
British Legation," as S---- of the American Legation calls it--is
wringing its hands with annoyance, and were it Italian, and therefore
dramatically articulate, its curses and _maladette_ would ascend to
the very heavens in a menacing cloud like our Peking dust. For on
England we have all been waiting because of an ancient prestige; and
England, everyone says, is mainly responsible for our present plight.
Everybody is lowering at England and the British Legation along
Legation Street, because S---- was not sent for two weeks ago, and the
language of the minor missions, who could not possibly expect to
receive protecting guards unless they swam all the way from Europe, is
sulphurous. They ask with much reason why we do not lead events
instead of being lead by them; why are we so foolish, so confident.
What has happened to justify all this, you will ask? Well, permit me
to speak.

The day before yesterday several Englishmen rode down to the Machiapu
railway station, which is just outside the Chinese city, and is our
Peking station, to welcome, as they thought, Admiral S---- and his
reinforcements, so despairingly telegraphed for by the British
Legation just fourteen days later than should have been done. Their
passage to the station was unmarked by incidents, excepting that they
noted with apprehension the thickly clustering tents of Kansu soldiery
in the open spaces fronting the vast Temples of Heaven and
Agriculture. Once the station was reached a weary wait began, with
nothing to relieve the tedium, for the vast crowds which usually
surround the "fire-cart stopping-place," to translate the vernacular,
all had disappeared, and in place of the former noisiness there was
nothing but sile