However, in an hour’s time, after this terror had passed over the entire line, our marines had returned to the United States Legation, and had manned the Wall again. The French returned later to their Legation which the Germans had kindly guarded for them in the interim, rather disheartened to think that the scare they had started should prove to have been only in their own overwrought minds. As the French and German Legations occupy two important positions, and are constantly being attacked by Boxers and soldiers, the French Legation could have been taken very easily by the Chinese had the Germans not occupied both Legations. They are directly opposite each other in Legation Street.
Our men already have the reputation of being the crack shots of any of the guards in Peking. It has been noticed that when our men aim they bring down their game—whether the game is a Chinese soldier’s head or a Boxer.
Yesterday it seemed too hard that, after the nervous excitement and fright to everyone in the morning, Providence did not withhold the terrible fire that broke out almost in our very midst in the park directly next the Wall. Each hour seemed more terrible than the one before. A huge column of smoke went up into the air, and in its centre forked tongues of flame burst out. It seemed impossible that this enormous fire—one so large or so near I have never before seen in my life—would not in an hour or so completely burn us up. The Boxers or soldiers who had so successfully started it must have been overjoyed to see their work, knowing it would take almost superhuman power to put it out, although I am sure they could not have thought it possible that we could extinguish it.
There was little enough hope written on people’s faces in our compound to make us feel, for a time at least, that perhaps the Chinese might be successful, and by burning one wall that played so important a part in our defence, they could enter and massacre us without having to attempt an attack by scaling. Had there been a wind blowing this enormous column of fire in our direction, we could not have fought it at all, and the entire long wall which divides the British Legation from the Empress-Dowager’s carriage park would have fallen.
Our men scaled ladders and worked like New York firemen in the way they strove together and in the good sense they exhibited. I suppose man is able to keep his head clear when he knows that this may be his last chance in this world to save his skin from Chinese savages, and that his arm develops in consequence a good deal of strength. Men who were on top of the wall, throwing down buckets of water on the fire, and handling with as much care as possible the small rubber pipe that we are using as a hose, came down every fifteen minutes, to be relieved by others, for they were half scorched, some badly burned from cinders and falling débris, and all of them had lost their breath in that terrible heat.
It must be remembered that while these men were on this wall they were beautiful targets for Chinese sharp-shooters, and we found afterwards there were many in the Chinese troops. There were three wells in the compound, and from the two biggest there was a line of men and women passing buckets, ewers, and any other kind of vessel that was available, filled with water, to the men who were actually fighting the fire on the wall. One realizes the heroism it takes to continue working at a fire though half scorched, but what shall one say of these men who worked under the ordinary danger of a scorching fire, and who knew they were the target for the continuous rifle-fire and sniping that was kept up throughout? The sky was grey, and the men on the Wall made agonizingly big and black silhouettes for the Chinese to aim at.
If I live to be a thousand, I could never see a queerer collection of people working together to extinguish a fire, and with the object to save themselves from a massacre—coolies, missionaries, soldiers, and Ministers Plenipotentiary working and straining every muscle for the same object. Surely Peking never before saw such unanimity of her foreign residents. I was in that line of men and women passing buckets, and so was the wife of the French Minister, and many other well-known women.
MRS. R. S. HOOKER
Fargo Squiers, Dr. Martin, and Dr. Poole, surgeon for the British Legation, were three soot-covered people who came to our rooms after the fire was entirely out,—which meant they had worked desperately for many hours without stopping. To say they were thirsty would not be truthful—they were parched. Dr. Poole whispered that the only cup he knew big enough to quench his thirst was a big loving-cup that was in a small closet in a corner of the room (this house having been his before the siege), and that if I would fill it with Apollinaris he would put in the whisky. I filled my order, and he poured out about four fingers of Scotch into the bottom of that big loving-cup, and as he drank it slowly, holding it by both hands, I thought I had never seen such thankful eyes as were his during that long and pleasant well-earned drink.