“Rock Chalk! Jay Hawk! K U! oo!” they shouted again and again, ending in the long quavering wail as the University yell must always end.
Up and up went Titus, sixty feet, to the top of the wall. Then as he stood above the strange old Oriental city, rilled now with frenzied fighters; above the poor starving Christians in their Compound—saved as by a miracle; above the twelve thousand soldiers sent hither from the far homelands beyond the seas to rescue human beings from deadly peril. As he stood over all these, a target for a hundred 388 guns, the khaki-clad young Kansan lifted his right hand high above his head and swung out the Stars and Stripes to all the breezes of that August morning.
Then came the belching of cannon, the bursting of huge timbers, the groaning of twisting iron, and through the splintered gates the Allied Armies had entered the city.
Inside the walls the hundred thousand Boxers renewed the strife. The walls and gates of the Foreign Legation were as stubbornly defended by the Chinese fanatics on the outside now as the besieged Christians had defended them against the Chinese on the inside. Entrance was made at last through the sluiceway, or open sewer, draining out under the city walls.
It was a strange looking line of creatures who came crawling, waist-deep in filth, through the sewer’s channel. The old Aydelot sense of humor had saved Thaine many a time. And he wondered afterward if he had not seen by chance the ludicrous picture of himself in a huge mirror, if his heart would not have burst with grief when Pryor Gaines came toward him, mute and pallid, with outstretched hands.
The little group of soldiers who had fought and marched together had not had off their clothes for seven days. A stubby two weeks’ beard was on each face. Their feet were raw from hard marching. Rain and dust and mud and powder smoke had trimmed their uniforms, and now the baptism by immersion in the Compound sewer had given them the finishing touches. But the gaunt-faced men and women, the pitiful, big-eyed children, whose emaciated forms told the tale of the six weeks’ imprisonment, made 389 them forget themselves as these poor rescued Christians hugged and kissed their brave rescuers.
Thaine hadn’t kissed any woman except his mother since the evening when he and Leigh Shirley had lingered on the Purple Notches in a sad-sweet moment of separation. It lifted the pressure crushing round his heart when he saw Goodrich, with shining eyes, bending to let a poor little missionary stroke his grimy cheek.
The Boxers retired by degrees before the superior force, entrenching themselves inside the Imperial City. Never in its history, centuries on centuries old, had this Imperial City’s sacred precincts been defiled by foreign feet. Here the Boxer felt himself secure. Here the gods of his fathers would permit no foreigner to enter. On these hoary old walls no Christian would dare to stand. On three sides of the Imperial City these walls were invincible. The fourth was equipped with six heavy gates.
In a council of the powers the impossibility of storming these gates was fully made clear. The number of soldiers was carefully estimated—American, Japanese, Russian, German, French, and Italian, Sikh and Sepoy, Bengalese, Scotchman, Welsh, and Royal Englishmen. All had suffered heavily in this campaign. None more grievously than the American.
The decision of the council was overwhelming that the Imperial City could not be taken by this little force outside its battlements. Only General Chaffee protested against giving up the attempt.