| Remarks. | |
| Celery bouillon | Liebig extract, celery. |
| Anchovy on toast | Anchovy paste. |
| Broiled chicken | Procured at risk of cook’s life. |
| Green peas, fried potatoes | Tinned peas and two potatoes. |
| Bean salad | Tinned beans. |
| Black coffee | Plenty of coffee. |
The chickens remaining from the cook’s raid are being kept in a basket and fed as if they were babies, and will be used entirely for the children. We count eight at our mess as regular members, but our guests are constant and numerous. Its personnel consists of Dr. Velde (who does such glorious surgical work), Dr. Morrison, Mr. Cheshire, Mr. Pethick, Mr. Squiers, Fargo Squiers (who is Captain Strouts’ orderly), Mrs. Squiers (who, because of the great generosity in freely supplying from her limited stores those who are in need, has been called by many in this compound the “Lady Bountiful”), the three children and two governesses, and myself. We usually have missionaries in to tiffin, and our more intimate friends, many of whom are sadly in need of food, to breakfast and dinner.
The Russian Legation is so situated that at one point their defence is very weak, and they have almost nightly attacks at such close quarters with the Chinese, that the fighting is sometimes hand to hand. The men of the Russian guard were undrilled sailors, who had been forcibly enlisted from inland villages in Russia, and Von Rahden, their commander, and his under-officer, to keep them from running away when these close-range fights begin, get behind them and stick them with the ends of bayonets, so that they in turn will advance on the Chinese with fury. He claims that this is the only way to teach undisciplined troops to advance at close quarters, as they always become seized with terror—and I don’t wonder a bit, for the Chinese in attacking blow on shrill horns, shriek, howl, dance with the wildness of dervishes, and advance with the cruelty and cunning of Indians.
MRS. SQUIERS
Von Rahden is frequently up all night, and when he is, he usually comes to us for breakfast, which we have at any time between 6.30 and 8 o’clock. I have especial charge of the coffee-pot, and when the members of our mess have been up all night on duty, they look as if they could drink it all, instead of the one cup I have to limit them to. What a difference, instead of having your maid bring your breakfast-tray in the morning when you ring for it, to be waked up from a heavy morning nap at six o’clock by knocking on the door, to find two or three powder-begrimed members of your mess humbly inquiring: “How soon will breakfast be ready?” They have probably been up all night on the firing-line, and are dog-tired and faint.
We tell them to come back in half an hour, and then our skirmish begins. The sleepy cook is routed out of the Chinese-filled courtyard under our windows, and told it is time to cook the wheatena, the coffee and soda-raised biscuits, for which purpose he repairs to the broken stove in the box-like kitchen. We take a hasty sponge-bath, and our rough-dried shirt-waists and golf-skirts are donned, and we are ready for the day. Next we roll up our straw mattress, place it in a corner, and put the small eight-sided Chinese table in the middle of the room. We boast four chairs, and as our mess ranges from eight to twelve people, the ones who come late sit on the silver trunks or on the floor.
A fresh table-napkin we have procured from somewhere, and on the table we place some green leaves for decoration, and breakfast is announced. Besides Von Rahden, another breakfast guest we have almost daily is the Rev. Mr. Gamewell, a missionary who appears the mildest of men, but who is developing into one of the strongest in Peking. He is the brains of the Defence and Fortification Committee. Before entering the ministry he was a star student at Cornell, in the engineering department; and now this entire compound and the outer lines are included in his hands, and his recommendation for barricades, countermining to protect against the Chinese undermining, of which we are constantly aware, are all carried out as near as possible from his orders. Before dawn he is at work to take advantage of these hours of comparative quiet, to see just where the weak spots are, and how he can best provide for their strengthening during the coming day. He is a stooping figure, very quiet, and rarely speaks to us, and, when he does speak, never about what he is doing. He told me his working hours are so continuous, and everybody calling for him from every quarter, that he did not believe he could keep on if it were not for the hour’s rest and good hot breakfast that he gets daily in Mrs. Squiers’s rooms.
Another member of the mess is Dr. Velde, the German surgeon, who is doing such wonderful and constant work at the hospital day and night. He performs unheard-of operations one after another, and on the same old kitchen table that we found for him. The antique rifles used so frequently by the Chinese inflict the most heart-rending wounds, the treatment of which, to be successful, surely calls for surgical genius, and, thank Heaven! Velde has that. He is short, thick-set, and blond, with stumpy little hands and a keen blue eye, and is wonderfully practical and matter-of-fact. The various messes near the hospital asked him to join them, but without affectation—he knows he is the only surgeon in Peking, and he must guard his health—he answered: “No, I go only where I get the best and the most food;” and having been asked by Mr. Squiers to come to us, he gladly accepted, while reiterating the same reason for joining us that he had given for refusing the others. His duties are so constant that he usually is only able to get in to breakfast and dinner.
Another feature of this siege is one which shows what marvellous executive ability some people have. The proprietor of the Peking Hotel is Chamot, a Swiss who has played a wonderful part in the drama of our imprisonment. There have naturally been numbers of people without stores of any kind, and people who, if they had stores, would have no place to cook them; so Chamot stepped forward and undertook to feed daily I don’t know how many people. When we were first assembled in the British compound the confusion was something terrific, and he gave food to all those who had nothing, and later he made a permanent business arrangement to provide food for those who had no means of messing themselves. Among these are many Roman Catholic priests and twenty-five Roman Catholic Sisters, saved by himself and his wife from the Nan-t’ang just before it was burned, besides numerous families and detached individuals having no stores, who would have had a most serious time without his assistance.