.

IX

THE COMING OF THE BOXERS

14th June, 1900.

* * * * *

I had risen yesterday some what late in the day with the oddness and
uncomfortableness--I do not mean discomfort--which comes from too much
boots, too much disturbance of one's ordinary routine, too much
listening to people airing their opinions and recounting rumours, and,
last of all, very wearied by the uncustomary task of transporting a
terrible battery of hand artillery (for we are at last all heavily
armed); and consequent of these varied things, I, like everybody else,
was a good deal out of temper and rather sick of it all. I began to
ask myself this question: Were we really playing an immense comedy, or
was there a great and terrible peril menacing us? I could never get
beyond asking the question. I could not think sanely long enough for
the answer.

The day passed slowly, and very late in the afternoon, when some of us
had completed a tour of the Legations, and looked at their various
picquets, I finished up at the Austrian Legation and the Customs
Street. Men were everywhere sitting about, idly watching the dusty and
deserted streets, half hoping that something was going to happen
shortly, when suddenly there was a shout and a fierce running of feet.
Something had happened.

We all jumped up as if we had been shot, for we had been sitting very
democratically on the sidewalk, and round the corner, running with
the speed of the scared, came a youthful English postal carrier. That
was all at first.

But behind him were Chinese, and ponies and carts ridden or driven
with recklessness that was amazing. The English youth had started
gasping exclamations as he ran in, and tried to fetch his breath, when
from the back of the Austrian Legation came a rapid roll of musketry.
Austrian marines, who were spread-eagled along the roofs of their
Legation residences, and on the top of the high surrounding wall, had
evidently caught sight of the edge of an advancing storm, and were
firing fiercely. We seized our rifles--everybody has been armed
_cap-a-pie_ for days--and in a disorderly crowd we ran down to the end
of the great wall surrounding the Austrian compounds to view the broad
street which runs towards the city gates. The firing ceased as
suddenly as it had begun, and in its place arose a perfect storm of
distant roaring and shouting. Soon we could see flames shooting up not
more than half a mile from where w