My junk, with five Chinese aboard, will go up the river under the French flag, which is already a protection. The war department has decided it to be more prudent—although my servant and I are armed—to send two soldiers with us, two men with horses carrying guns and munitions.
Beyond Tien-Tsin, where I have spent another day, one may go an hour further by train in the direction of Pekin, as far as the town of Yang-Soon. My junk, with two soldiers, Toum, and the baggage, will await me there at a bend in the river, and has gone on ahead to-day with a military escort.
I dine this evening with the consul-general, the one who escaped being shot almost by miracle, although his flag was for a long time, during the siege, a mark for the Chinese gunners.
III
Monday, October 15.
I left Tien-Tsin by railway at eight o'clock in the morning. An hour on the road, across the same old plain, the same desolation, the same cutting wind, the same dust. Then the ruins of Yang-Soon, where the train stops because there is no road left; from this point on, the Boxers have destroyed everything, the bridges are cut, the stations burned, and the rails scattered over the country.
My junk is there awaiting me by the river's side. For the present, for three days at least, I must arrange for a life on the water, in the little sarcophagus which is the cabin of this queer boat, under the roof of matting which gives a view of the sky through a thousand holes, and which to-night will permit the white frost to disturb our slumbers. But this room in which I am to live, eat and sleep in complete promiscuity with my French companions is so small, so very small that I dismiss one of the soldiers. We could never manage there with four.
The Chinese of my train, ragged and sordid, receive me with profound bows. One takes the rudder, the others jump onto the bank, where they harness themselves to the end of a long line attached to the mast of the junk—and we are off, being towed against the current of the Pei-Ho, a heavy poisonous stream in which, here and there amongst the reeds on the banks, parts of human bodies appear.