Thus China's capital, rudely roused by foreign guns from the sleep of ages, is now awake and in a fair way speedily to take a prominent place among the progressive cities of the world.
None of these things were thought of, however, on that June day of 1900 when Rob Hinckley, accompanied by his stanch friend, Chinese Jo, hesitatingly approached the great city; for at that moment it was shadowed by the darkness of despair. The tidal wave of Boxer uprising had reached and overwhelmed it. The I-Ho-Chuan were in complete possession, and Pekin, with its teeming population, its accumulated wealth of years, and, above all, with its hundreds of hated foreigners, diplomats, missionaries, business men, and legation guards, lay at their mercy. They had nothing to fear from imperial troops, for these, always in sympathy with their movement, already had begun to co-operate with them in their killing of Christian converts, their burnings and their lootings. Bolder and bolder they became, wilder and wilder grew their excesses, until shortly before the arrival of Rob and Jo they had started fierce conflagrations in all parts of the city, had destroyed two Roman Catholic cathedrals, and were regularly besieging a third with cannonade and rifle-fire. In this great fortress, and within its spacious, wall-enclosed grounds, ninety foreigners, forty-three of whom were French and Italian marines, and more than three thousand native converts had taken refuge. For sixty days this isolated stronghold of Christianity was shelled and bombarded with cannon-ball and rifle-bullet; but it held out to the end, and stands to-day a monument to the heroic endurance of its defenders. The attack on it had been begun three days before the arrival of our lads, and the sounds of heavy firing that had so aroused their anxiety was the cannonade directed against its walls.
With many misgivings they skirted the southern city, which seemed a seething caldron of riot and flame, and sought an entrance to the Tartar City through one of its western gates. Here, to Jo's great satisfaction, he found, in the officer of the guard who examined them, an acquaintance not only willing to admit them, but of whom he could ask questions. Believing Jo to feel even more bitterly than himself concerning foreigners, this officer did not hesitate to give him the very latest news. He confirmed the report heard at Pao-Ting-Fu of the defeat and driving back towards Tien-Tsin of the combined American and British relief expedition, under Admiral Seymour, told of the siege of the northern cathedral, and, most startling of all, informed Jo of the imperial edict, issued that very day, ordering the destruction of every foreigner within the walls of Pekin.
"Already," he said, "have the invincible troops of Jung Lu entered the city, and with them are the Kwang-su tigers, under the terrible Tung-Fu-Hsang, who thirsts for foreign blood as does a babe for its mother's milk. To-day they are placing guns to command the legations, and to-morrow at four o'clock, if the ocean devils have not left the city, they will be attacked and killed like rats in their holes."
It was fortunate that Rob failed to comprehend what the officer said, for he could not have listened unmoved as did Jo. That the latter did so was because he was not quite certain that he did not approve of the plan for driving all foreigners from China. Foreigners expelled Chinese from their countries, so why should not his people in turn expel foreigners from China? Still, he did not express any views on the subject at that time, but changed the topic of conversation by asking the officer if he could tell him where his father might be found.
For a moment the latter hesitated, and his face assumed a peculiar expression. Then he said: "Did you not know that his excellency Li Ching Cheng had been given a position on the Board of Punishment? It is doubtless at the yamen of that illustrious body that you will find him."
Thanking the officer for his courtesy, Jo and his companion took their departure, and, making their way through alleys and the quieter streets as remote as possible from conflagrations and all scenes of disturbance, they finally reached the yamen of the Board of Punishment, which corresponds to what in an American city would be a combined court-house and jail.
A main entrance through the street wall led to a court, reached by the descent of several steps. This court was surrounded by low buildings, occupied as offices of the board, and in its centre was a pond of water. As no person of whom they could ask questions was to be seen here, our lads passed on to a second or inner court that opened from the first. It also contained a stone-bordered reservoir of water, and was surrounded by fantastically ornamented buildings. In one feature that was immediately noticeable, these low buildings differed from any other that Rob ever had seen in China. They were provided with cellar-like basements, divided into small compartments, from each of which a little, grated window opened into a tiny outside well-hole.
About one of these well-holes stood a group of half a dozen Chinese officials, towards whom Jo made his way, intending to ask them where his father might be found. As he drew near and was about to speak, he glanced downward to see what so had attracted their curiosity that no one of them had turned at his approach. What he saw was a human face, tortured and livid, pressed against the grating, and straining upward in mute agony. The man was supporting himself by hands clinched about two bars of the grating, and evidently was standing on tiptoe.
Rob, looking over Jo's shoulder, also saw the awful face, and for an instant wondered at the black line that seemed to cut it at the uplifted chin. Then it flashed across him that this was a line of black water, slowly but surely rising, and that in another moment the man would be drowned. And no one dared try to save him, even were it possible to do so, for he was a condemned prisoner suffering one of the innumerable, ingeniously awful forms of Chinese capital punishment.