We could see from our mountain balcony that the railroad station at Feng-tai, with its foreign settlement, was burning. The immense steel bridge was gone, too, showing that dynamite and high explosives had been used to destroy it. The locality was thick with smoke and the flames sky-high. Our servants told us our highly picturesque guard of twelve had run away as soon as they were sure the Boxers were burning Feng-tai, for, they argued, the mob will surely sack this foreign-devil temple when they finish with Feng-tai. Since they had begun, they certainly would not desist until everything foreign this side of Peking was sacked and burned, and this guard had no desire to pose as the guardians of foreigners, but thought it much safer to join the so far victorious rabble at Feng-tai. We also learned that over a hundred men engaged in agricultural and other peaceful occupations in and around the temples, of which ours was one, had left during the day to join the Boxers.
Our position now, to say the least, was critical. Not a foreign man on the place to protect us; a quantity of badly frightened Chinese servants to reassure; three children, their governesses and ourselves, to make plans for. We did what women always have to do—we waited; and our reward came when we saw down in the valley a dusty figure ambling along on a dusty Chinese pony, coming from the direction of Feng-tai and making direct for our temple. It was Dr. Morrison, correspondent of the London Times, and an intimate friend of the Squierses.
On hearing early in the day of the mob at Feng-tai, and the burning of the place, he promptly started off in that direction to get as near as possible to the scene of action, and ascertain for himself if the wild rumours circulating in Peking were truths before cabling them to London. Finding the worst corroborated by what he saw from a point near the mob, yet unseen by it, he started on his return trip to Peking, hot haste for the cable office, when he became oppressed with the startling remembrance that we were at the temple, and probably alone and unprotected. So, instead of returning to Peking, he promptly came to us. He feared lest Mr. Squiers had not heard of the burning of Feng-tai, or, if he had heard of it, that possibly the city gates might be closed against the approaching mob, and he might be unable to leave the capital that night. The fact that our temple was directly on the line of march to Peking for the rioters made it look to Dr. Morrison as a most probable possibility that they would stop chez nous before proceeding to the capital. In case of such horrible eventuality he hoped to defend us for a while, and to send to glory as many Chinese as possible before turning up his own toes!
He was studying a possible defence of our balcony-home when Mr. Squiers arrived post-haste, bringing with him a Russian Cossack, whom he had borrowed from the Russian Minister. Plans were now made to defend the place from attack or incendiaries during the night. The Chinese servants worked with a will—our successful defence meant safety for us and life for them. Sentry work of the most careful sort continued all night, as well as the packing up of our clothes and valuables.
At 6 a.m. we were en route for Peking—an enormous caravan—most of us in Chinese carts, some riding ponies, mules, or donkeys, the forty servants placing themselves wherever they could—anywhere, in fact—so that they should not be left behind. The three protectors, heavily armed, rode by us, and three or four of the Chinese were armed also, and the carts held such a position in the caravan that in a moment they could be swung round as a defence in case of an attack.
The fifteen miles through which we travelled were utterly deserted except for the long, lonely lines of coal-carrying dromedaries. It seemed as if the country people en masse had deserted their villages and gone to some rallying-point for a demonstration; and how anxiously and slowly each half-hour of the trip passed, for, while it brought us nearer to our Legation, it also brought us nearer to the possibility that our caravan would run into yesterday’s rioters with added numbers of to-day’s malcontents.
At 10.30 we reached the American Legation compound, and most painfully but thankfully we untwisted ourselves from the awful position we were forced to take in the cart, and joyously grasped the hands of friends. William Pethick, Li Hung Chang’s private secretary for twenty years, a person of tremendous influence with the Chinese, was in the compound, and was on the point of going to the War Office to demand a regiment to go with him to our rescue out in the hills. He had feared for us desperately during the night following the burning of Feng-tai.
May 30.
The times have become so dangerous that no women are allowed to leave the compound, but, of course, the diplomats and the military—such as are here—must move about and try to find out what the situation really is. The people who know the most about it are the most pessimistic as to what may happen before the marines arrive from Tien-tsin.
We were glad to hear that the Belgian officials at the Feng-tai station had heard of the intentions of the Chinese to burn them and the place, and had escaped to Peking without loss of life.