It took the boy a long time to walk back to Peking, and, finding the Water Gate too dangerous to enter by daylight, he waited until dark, and it was this letter that spread such a gloom over everything this morning. This communication of Mr. Carles was most unsatisfactory in every way, and the only excuse for this letter was that he was afraid it would fall into the hands of the Chinese. He wrote: “The rest of the British contingent, under General Gaselee, coming from Singapore, are expected on the 24th. Most of the Japanese troops are in Tien-tsin, and mobilized. The Russians are only landing at Taku. There are many Chinese troops between Tien-tsin and the coast. If you have plenty of food, and can hold out for a long time, the troops will save you. All foreign women and children have left Tien-tsin, and plenty of soldiers are on their way to your succour.” This was all very disheartening; but we realize more than ever before how long we still may be besieged, and the consequent economy of stores which should be practised, and there is talk of commandeering all private food-supplies.
The last sentence of his letter was hopelessly confusing. We did not know whether the troops had already started, or whether he was speaking of the Singapore contingent. Most people now feel that no reasonable Foreign Office should take two months to get a military relief party ready.
August 1.
This is a piping hot day, 108° in the shade. Our principal conversation now is asking each other, “Is Colonel Shiba’s messenger reliable?” This man brings in almost daily to the Japanese camp the most cheerful and apparently accurate news that the troops are not far from Tungchou. If he is reliable, we may expect them very soon, but we can hardly believe his statements, owing to Mr. Carles’ letter. This is simply another variation to our old song of the siege.
The day before yesterday a letter came to Sir R. Hart from the Yamen, asking him to be so kind as to send a telegram to London telling the people there of our safety, because the different Governments were clamouring for news of their Ministers, and if he (Sir Robert) would send this telegram, it would be received as truth by the world, but they could not allow the Ministers to use their own codes.
Sir Robert answered immediately that the Ministers were quite right to decline to telegraph without cipher, and that he distinctly refused to send any telegram of such a nature as to reassure the world, because if he telegraphed the truth, the world would be so horrified that they would not believe his telegram. Well answered, Mr. Inspector-General.
I had the good luck to-day of being allowed to go over our defences on the Wall, and saw all of our protective barricades while getting there. Baron von Rahden and Mr. Squiers took me, and, needless to say, it was most interesting and thrilling. The conditions I had heard discussed for nearly two months I can now understand by seeing them all. I could also now understand the all-pervading charnel-house smells which at times during the siege have almost caused us to faint.
On each defended barricade loopholes have been made so that we can see, to some degree at least, the enemy. In many instances the loopholes are arranged with small mirrors, as the Chinese snipers often hit even these peepholes when a sentry’s eye is seen, so that this further protection has been deemed necessary.
I looked through one from a barricade in the Hanlin, and what I saw was what I might see in looking through the wicket-gate of a horror chamber at the Eden Musée in New York. A group of gorgeously-apparelled Boxers with their insignia were pitilessly caught by death in a mad dash at this barricade, and there they were, stiff and stark, nearly all in the furious attitudes of assault! Even the standard-bearer was stiffly and conscientiously gripping his gay-coloured pennant. A couple were shot in the back as they had started to run, and were lying flat on the ground, but a dozen or so, making up the body of the attacking party, held these horrible life-like positions with the most incredible rigidity. The sentry tells us that this hideous, almost theatrically posed, death-group has been thus for a couple of days. The Chinese would not come for their bodies, we could not, and there they were to remain until the carrion-dogs finished them, or until they eventually decomposed.
The combinations of barricades here, there, and everywhere are glorious, especially on the Wall, and well they might be, as they are made out of the huge rocks that were used hundreds of years ago to pave this wonderful piece of masonry. To stand and look down from the Wall into the British compound makes one realize more than ever how delightfully easy it would be for the Chinese, if they ever manned this part of the Wall, to point their guns downward and annihilate us.