“Yellow hat” told us subsequently, with reference to this curious picture of their domestic life, that it was the custom of the country so to take out their pet canaries and other little songsters for an airing, instead of lapdogs.
These they reserve for their pies and other choice dishes.
Ned and I seemed to pass through miles of real nightmares as we went along, the people and their surroundings having an air of unreality.
The only things about Pekin we thought genuine were the smells, which were something awful; as we learnt from bitter experience during our four weeks’ captivity here, locked up in a cell with all the common criminals, and, I believe, all the vermin of the city.
Somehow or other, the old man had mysteriously disappeared after leaving us at a quiet inn in the Tartar quarter, where, as well as we could understand him, we were to remain until he had a chance of communicating with the approaching English force to have us ransomed.
“Chin, chin!” he said to Ned as he left us. “Mi go one piecee and yo waittee; Fanqui comee one piecee by by.”
The next day, instead of his coming back again, a file of rough Tartars belonging to Prince Sankoliu-sin’s army rushed into the room where we were, and throwing us roughly on the floor, proceeded to strip us of everything we had about us, leaving us only our shirts, which were rather ragged by this time and not in a condition to do our laundress credit!
We were, after this, cruelly tied with ropes that cut our wrists and ankles, and then dragged to prison, where we remained until one day we heard the booming of guns in the distance.
“Good heavens, Jack!” cried poor Ned, who was by this time the wreck of his former self, and whom nobody on board the ship certainly would have recognised, “Those must be Armstrongs! I know the sound of them too well. Thank God, our comrades now are near at last to release us or revenge us!”
Later on, the same day, some Chinese soldiers entered, instead of the usual Tartar guard which we had seen since we had been in this hole; and these, putting chains round our necks, marched us off, as we thought, to execution.